Monday, October 10, 2005

Guess what! The Bible's not true ... !

... or so say the Bishops of England and Wales, according to the London Times. I mean, what else could be meant by the following headline?


"Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible?"

According to the article, the bishops say:

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture. “We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture."


Gasp! Oh my word! Say it isn't so! Heaven forbid, watch out for the lightning! Oh no, how stupid could we have been all along!

There are such priceless gems of clulessness scattered about, such as the following list at the end:

BELIEVE IT OR NOT
UNTRUE
Genesis ii, 21-22
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

TRUE
Matthew v,7
The Sermon on the Mount


[snip]

Really now, the Sermon on the mount was more than one verse. And I see shades of the Jesus Seminar gathering, a horde of enlightened scholars giving the thumbs up or down, the yay or nay, on not just whether Jesus said such and such or did such and such, you know, really did it, but whether this particular part of the Bible is True or Untrue. Aren't we grateful that the dear Bish's across the pond finally get it? I mean, forty years after Dei Verbum, it's news that one doesn't take every jot and tittle "literally?"

But quibbles aside, this article so completey doesn't get it. I was going to fisk it over the weekend, but Jimmy Akin over at Get Religion ("The media just doesn't get religion!) does a superlative job.

As to what the Bishops actually said -- I've ordered a copy of the "Gift of Scripture" (which is based on the teaching of Dei Verbum) from the delightfully named Catholic Truth Society, and at a quite affordable £3.95 at that. Once it's arrive from across the pond, I'll be sharing the shocking new revelations from the British Bish's.

However, the one question that I've found really hasn't been definitively settled since Dei Verbum raised it, was just exactly how do we understand the Bible's inerrancy? What does it mean to say that the Bible is inerrant? We don't quite end up with what the friend of a son of mine said the other day (after having read this very article in the Times), trying to explain what he'd read, "You know, that it's just a nice guidebook or something." Nor are we like some of our evangelical sisters and brothers, convinced that dinosaur bones are God's way of fogging our mind, tripping us, and leading us to hellfire. As far as I recall, the Catechism simply requotes Dei Verbum, the Pontifical Biblical Commission's "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church" doesn't really address inerrancy. Maybe it really only matters to those of us who're surrounded by evangelicals who make a litmust test about a particular understanding of inerrancy. Maybe the "Gift of Scripture" does address the issue. Time for some Googling, methinks...

3 comments:

assiniboine said...

No, no. The Times of London ceased to be the newspaper of record when Rupert Murdoch bought it off Ken Thomson. The Canadian owner maintained The Times's historic high tone; the Australian has turned it into a clone of his other News Ltd/Fox News yammering tabloids. Distortion for the sake of right wing tub-thumping (albeit right wing anti-religion and anti-monarchy tub-thumping) is now the order of the day. Unless you are a fan of Fox News or you figure its audience is redeemable, you should screen out The Times of London as you switch off Fox News.

assiniboine said...

But why "evangelicals"? I think that our "evangelical" friends shouldn't be allowed to co-opt a perfectly good word for themselves and thereby steal it from those to whom it historically belongs: ie Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians and low church Anglicans. And for that matter, German Lutherans and Calvinists. That is, cheerful, hearty, broad-minded, inclusive, tolerant and LITERATE Protestants. Same goes for that perfectly respectable and descriptive Presbyterian coinage "fundamentalists" which these days means... well, "evangelicals" on the one hand and Wahabi Muslims on the other. I'm entirely comfortable in the company of authentic evangelical Protestants and even authentic fundamentalists. Not, however, with the soon-to-be Madam Justice Miers's constituency.

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Yes, the Lutherans are known as the Evangelicals in Europe. Sure. However, down here, it can mean a variety of things a) what you described, though maybe more in the North than here b) a term used as more polite epithet for what a "mainline" Protestant and some Catholics would call "fundamentalist" (I guess what you would call Madam Mier's co-religionists) c) members of the various independent, non-denominational and Baptist churches (who might also fall into b)) Trying to "reclaim" evangelical for a) alone would be like trying to insist that "gay" means happy, at least 'round here. :) I find myself quite comfortable in the company of c) most of the time, including with the rather visible nature of religious belief that makes the likes of the NYT editorial board shudder and think up apocalyptic visions of a theocratic takeover by the Wahabists of b) :)