Feb 12
17
If God is one (Mark 12:29-31; Ephesians 4:4-6; 1 Timothy 2:5) and if he speaks with one voice, why do intelligent, sincere, committed believers hear him saying so many contradictory things?
The bible contains a variety of conflicting ideas about God, Christianity, the church and morality. We can know this because intelligent, sincere, committed believers hear conflicting voices. Therefore, according to Christian Smith, the bible is not useful as an authority to answer these questions.
The following is Smith’s concluding remarks on his four illustrations of pervasive interpretive pluralism:
Analogously, the road map may indeed be officially published by the state department of transportation, the binoculars may actually be officially certified by the military, the camera’s owner’s manual may be manufacturer-authorized, and the cookbook may be well known and the recipe clearly specified—all of that may be so. But it simply does not matter. That is because those apparent facts did not actually accomplish the important things that make them relevant, which being official, certified, authorized, and specified are meant to achieve—namely, clear, consistent, and focused instruction, direction, information, and guidance for users.
Furthermore and very importantly, none of the differences among users that arose in these scenarios will ever get resolved simply by their focusing and insisting on the believed official, certified, or authorized qualities of the road map, binoculars, owner’s manual, and cookbook per se. Merely asserting those believed facts itself contributes nothing to solving the functional problems of multiple, diverse, and incompatible “readings” of or through them.
Likewise, neither do increasingly insistent declarations of biblicist beliefs about the inerrancy, reliability, harmony, and perspicuity of the Bible actually address the fact and problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism concerning scripture, which is a major problem.
Questions:
- Why does the Army use binoculars?
- Why does the D.O.T. publish road maps?
- Why do camera manufactures provide owner’s manuals?
- Why do people use a cookbook?
Smith, Christian (2011-08-01). Bible Made Impossible, The (Kindle Locations 471-496). Brazos Press. Kindle Edition.