Bible as Divine Reference Book, Pt. 2 (Just for Fun!)

Okay folks, last’s weeks post was a serious attempt to describe the conservative approach to reading Scripture. This week, let’s have a little more fun. In particular, let’s see what can happen when we treat the Bible as a divine reference book, revering it more than we actually read it.

The Bible as Divine Reference Book, Pt. 1

In the next several posts, I want to contrast three different options for understanding the Bible – what it is and how it works. To choose only three may over simplify things a bit, but it also helps identify some clear trends animating our current religious scene.

So…with that in mind, let me describe option #1 as “The Bible as Divine Reference Book.” From this point of view Scripture is a very special book; indeed, it is unlike any other book in the world, not simply in terms of what it says (its content), but actually in terms of what it is (its very nature). It is in every way divine, inspired by God quite directly – as in the biblical authors taking a kind of holy dictation. The purpose of the Bible is to reveal true knowledge of God and what God expects of us. Hence, the Bible is most useful for articulating theology and morality – it tells us what God would have us think and do. This kind of view of Scripture is most often associated with a more conservative, literalistic pattern of interpretation where there are no errors in the Bible, not only theologically but also historically and scientifically. So if the Bible says that creation happened in seven days, it happened in seven days. (Or, a slightly “softer” version might argue, “day” can be translated as “age,” and so creation may have taken seven “ages” which still, importantly, correspond to the description in Genesis 1.)