Historians cannot prove ancient events with mathematical certainty. Instead, they weigh evidence and ask which explanation best accounts for what we have. Historical conclusions are therefore normally expressed probabilistically along a continuum of virtually certain, highly probable, probable, plausible, possible, or improbable, rather than mathematically “proved.”
When it comes to Scripture, all of this is sometimes too complicated and nuanced for those who seek certainty in an uncertain world. Seeing the Bible as having dropped from heaven, leather-bound with gold edges, or dictated by God to humans via some form of magical psychography makes life simpler, more manageable, more understandable. Everything is black or white. All the answers are here.
The problem, of course, is that life is not simplistic. On the contrary, it is filled with mystery, incongruity, nuance, and complex interactions. Bad things happen to good people. Evil people get away with murder. At the quantum level, particles do all sorts of counterintuitive things. Biological evolution is far more complex than sudden special creation.
A flat Bible is simple, literalistic, straightforward, and wooden. It requires very little thought and even less intellectual wrestling. As with life in general, the Bible is not simplistic. It is profound meditation literature written in various genres—historical narrative, law, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic literature, Gospels, and epistles.
Biblical writers used metaphors, similes, hyperboles, personifications, paradoxes, and euphemisms. They wrote in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. There are no autographs (originals). That does not mean our best texts are unreliable. On the contrary, they are highly accurate. Fragments of texts are discovered and identified by archaeologists, then carefully pieced together and deciphered by textual scholars. From there, they are compared with early translations, quotations from other writers, and other manuscripts. Textual scholars collaboratively put together Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts that translators then use to produce Bibles in the vernacular.
Even that is not straightforward. Languages change and evolve. Word meanings shift. Finding the most accurate words and phrases in (for example) English that reflect what the authors meant in their context takes diligence and skill. Moreover, historians must be consulted to help determine the context of the writings and their original recipients. Some parts of the Bible are based on centuries of oral tradition that predates writing. The personalities and biases of the authors are preserved. God inspired the Scriptures to be written by people with individual personalities. There are discrepancies in chronology, numbers, and details that remind us that Scripture did not come to us as divine dictation. God is perfect, but God uses imperfect people, like those who authored the books of the Bible.
We need not fret. Scripture is sacred. Scribes very carefully preserved and copied their texts. What we have in our hands is a reliable, unified story leading to Jesus. What we don’t have is a science or history textbook. The Bible was not written to teach us biology or give us a flawless view of what happened as if recorded by video. It was written to lead us to Jesus.
Everything in the Bible must be interpreted through a Jesus-lens. God is exactly like Jesus. There is nothing unchristlike in God. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” and “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” When God is portrayed in ways incongruent with the life, example, and teachings of Jesus, those portrayals are, at best, incomplete.
Ancient people ascribed to their gods all sorts of brutality. The ancient Hebrews were no different. Just because they thought YHWH ordered them to commit genocide does not mean God actually ordered them to do so. Understanding of basic concepts concerning the nature of God evolved over time.
There are passages that present God as a warlord riding on the clouds, with a sword dripping with human blood. But God is not a warlord. God is exactly like Jesus—perfect, self-sacrificial, other-oriented, cruciform love. Within Scripture we can discern a trajectory that reaches its interpretive culmination in Christ. God is a God of love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, and comfort; never of coercion, violence, worldly power, or control. Evil is conquered by good, hatred by love, unrighteousness by justice. The true God subverts empire, melting avarice and dominance through God’s people in acts of service to the poor, incarcerated, addicted, homeless, morally compromised, sick, starving, and mentally ill. Subtly, quietly, God is making all things new. One day, all of creation will be resurrected, and heaven and earth will become one. Righteousness, justice, and peace will cover all creation.
A fair number of modern people don’t like this God. They prefer a bloodthirsty, macho, warrior god of vengeance who forces his way (in their view, God is entirely masculine) on the world. This invented god hates all sorts of people—Muslims, socialists, liberals, abortionists, evolutionary scientists, undocumented migrants, environmentalists, people of color, LGBTQ+ and Indigenous folks … the list keeps expanding. This false god is created in the image of its adherents.
This is where our understanding of Scripture ceases to be merely an academic question. The God we believe we find in the Bible eventually becomes the God we imitate. The god of contemporary Christian nationalism is a false god. The god of contemporary Christian nationalism is the exact opposite of Jesus. The god of contemporary Christian nationalism is a cruel warmonger who embraces the ultra-rich, destroys creation, and tramples on those Jesus called the least of his siblings.
This false god is propped up by misquoting Scripture. If you have a woodenly rigid, flat Bible, you can cherry-pick verses out of context to support anything you like. The Nazis did so. (Hitler claimed to be Christian, invoked Christianity publicly, and received support from significant portions of the German church.) Putin is fully endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church, which supports the war against Ukraine even as Orthodox Christians worship on both sides of the conflict. The current U.S. Secretary of Defense misquotes Scripture in many of his public speeches, often making the Bible say the opposite of what it actually means. National flags in sanctuaries, the National Anthem sung in churches, sermons supporting war, promoting hatred, and condemning the most vulnerable mark not only the demise of false Americanized Christianity, but its death.
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, Christianity has never really taken deep root in America or had any success in forming American consciousness; in its place, we have invented a kind of Orphic mystery religion of personal liberation, fecundated and sustained by a cult of Mammon.”
—David Bentley Hart, Orthodox philosopher
That is no cause for despair. All around the world there are small groups of Jesus’ apprentices meeting in homes, parks, community centers, on beaches, and even in church buildings. Together, they worship, study Scripture, and go out into their communities, meeting the practical needs of their most vulnerable neighbors. They visit the sick and incarcerated; they feed the hungry and house the homeless; they educate the ignorant, sit with the dying, mow lawns and shovel walks for the elderly, welcome the disabled, care for the environment, and support good causes. They don’t make headlines. They forgive enemies, practice nonviolence, resist injustice, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, tell the truth, are kind to everyone they meet, and seek to live by the Sermon on the Mount.
God is enthroned in heaven and on earth. The Kingdom of God is alive and well. And everlasting peace and joy are ensured.
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