Last week I came across this article describing a North Carolina Church’s Halloween plans to conduct a good old-fashioned book burning. Taking their cue from Acts 19.19 (I’m sure) the list of books to be banned was set to include none other than Satanic Bibles. Unfortunately, they weren’t referring to anything written by Anton LaVey but every other English translation of the Holy Scriptures than the good ol’ KJV.
Rather than waste my keystrokes refuting King James Only arguments (I mean, if I have to we can go there in the comments) I’d like to use this news item as a launching point for a brief series on the essentials of the Christian faith illustrated by instances where those essentials are corrupted, pushed too far, or added to without warrant.
So what do we believe about the Bible? While the creeds simply state “according to the Scriptures” our present discussion requires a bit more nuancing; most notably, which Scriptures? Briefly, we believe that the 66 books of the Bible are God’s truthful, authoritative, self-revelation that came by the dual agency of the Holy Spirit and human authors (click here for Hessel Church’s full doctrinal statement). If there is a “version” that we give priority to it is the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. Although we no longer have a single original in whole or in part, we are able to recreate and translate them with total and complete confidence.
Discussion Question: There’s probably a lot more I could have said about the Bible that is essential to the Christian faith, what have I left out?
