Feb 12
9
What is the Bible? – Christian Smith
If the bible is what the biblicist claims it is it cannot accomplish the purpose for which the biblicist claim. The biblicist will claim, according to Christian Smith, that the intelligent, sincere readers of the bible will find a single interpretation of virtually any passage of scripture. That theory is deficient because it does not work that way in the real world.
Additionally, Smith reasons that this is a theory that cannot work because of pervasive interpretive pluralism. It is within the nature of the bible to provide alternative meanings depending upon which intelligent, sincere reader is doing the reading.
That is one explanation.
Another consideration we must admit is that many differences of interpretation are created by our pre-understanding of what the bible is. Those who read the bible as a constitution will find alternative interpretations to those who read the bible as a history of Jewish and Christian understandings of God, as in, the bible is an interpretation of God.
And, what if we are looking for answers to questions which the bible does not consider; How to get rich? How to predict the future? How old is the earth? How to get a date or a good parking space at the mall? If those are the questions people ask of the bible, and they assume the bible will provide the answer, surely they will find it. Is the bible a good luck charm?
Some people see things that are not there. Others cannot see what is.
And there are more serious questions; what if the New Testament does not provide for a Sunday morning worship agenda, or an organizational chart for the governing of the church, or how to become a priest, or a justification for slavery? It will not matter because those matters we assume to be essential will be found.
Is there a difference between the bible and a Rorschach test?
“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 32. Kindle Version (July 1994)
Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture.