Just listened to yet another great podcast from The Nick and Josh Podcast with Dr. Timothy Paul Jones. Jones has got a book out called Misquoting Truth, its a response to Bart D. Ehrman book Misquoting Jesus. I’ve not heard of Ehrman before but the interview raised a lot of questions that I have wrestled with about Bible, like sections being added at much later dates (like the story of the woman caught in adultery, added much later…did it happen or not). Jones says is that the church needs to address these issues within our bibles.
- So what do we do with these problems as youth ministers/worker?
- Do we tell our young people that our bibles have got some very significant issues, miss translations and manipulated texts?
- Do we wrestle together with these issues?
- Or do we feel that we should protect young Christians from these problems and let them deal with them at a later date?
If we don’t, I feel, we will only set young people up for problem’s down the line, a little like parents that never talk to there children about sex, drugs rock and roll or drinking eventually these issues raise their head and have to be dealt with.
How Sweet!
This has been my case in regards to biblical infallibility and inerrancy and my biblical hermeneutic. I think that that is why so many people ‘fall away’ or have crisis of faith especially when studying theology for the first time because they may have grown up with the idea that the bible just came miraculously into existence and is infallible/inerrant. Yet if we tackle these issues in an intelligent way with young Christians now, they want be shocks to find that the bible we hold in our hands has got many problems.
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I’ve read Ehrman’s book and find that he’s a “literalist” on the other side of the spectrum. Since he concludes that not everything in the Bible is absolute fact or proven history, he has chosen to not beleive any of it. As to your questions regarding youth and the Bible, I say we should absolutely share with them the true nature of this human text and they our modern version has been but together bit by bit from scraps of manuscript and faulty translations. As you say, better they find out about it now, then later so that we can help them see that the value of the text goes beyond whether or not it’s literally factually accurate.
If Christianity is a religion of the book, then the make up and history of the book is important. If Christianity is a religion of the person of Christ, then the book takes second place.
If the church is an institution of the book, then the book is essential. If the bible is the book of the church, then its composition is less important than the book.
I think it’s a question of focus. Are we trying to make disciples of Christ or of the book?
Man, you can’t edit comments! I meant to say, in the second paragraph,
If the bible is the book of the church, then its composition is less important than the church.