So... I guess this isn't going to be as easy as I thought it would. Missing the second day is a bad sign.... But I'll do my best to catch up. :)
What Lewis believed about the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture is found in his book Reflections on the Psalms.
First, Lewis believed that there were contradictions and probably errors in the Bible.
I know that's a WHOA for evangelical Christians, but listen to what he means...
He saw that there were differences between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke and the differing accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot. The first one, strangely, is easily reconciled. The genealogies differ because one is Mary's line ("and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the Mother of Jesus") and one is Joseph's ("[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph").
The thing about this is... Lewis didn't care. He believed all of the Gospel, including the miracles and "hard sayings." He knew what was important. He knew that all of the Bible could fall away except for the Gospels and you'd still have the core of our faith intact. If there were errors, he thought them natural human errors. He believed in the main stuff and didn't care whether the truly little stuff made perfect sense to him or not.
Secondly, he didn't believe that all parts of the Bible were historical. He didn't care. He just wondered. It inspires me that he read these Old Testament books close enough to wonder about such a thing.
Some parts of the Bible, like stories of David or Daniel, say they are true. In the reign of such and such at this specific time.... They claim to be history and give valid dates that can be checked against other dates.
Other parts, like Jonah, Esther, and Job, do not have such specific historical claims. They name specific places - places that existed - but so do many modern stories. They may well be ancient fiction.
Again, Lewis didn't care. Because they didn't mean anything different if they were fiction. The points they made were very valid whether it was "true" in the literal sense or not. Lewis, of all people, would have understood that story has power whether it actually happened or not. It's whether the story says truth. The fact that it's in the Bible means that the literary force of the story must be true, at minimum. And all of these stories point us to God.
I dislike that evangelicalism is quite so absolute. Some things are absolute: Jesus Christ's death, resurrection, and imminent return. Believing each and every part of the Bible is absolutely faultless whether it appears to be in contradiction with another part or not is irrelevant and disrespectful to common intellect. If something seems to contradict something else, we can...
a. believe that THAT part of the Bible is in error, a mistake by humans or
b. believe that we just don't have all the facts.
What else?
I'm sure Lewis wouldn't have cared if someone believed the Bible was inerrant - I can say that because he wrote on it so little, confining his thoughts mostly to a few chapters of his small book on the Psalms. And because he often gave the disclaimer that he was merely a layman writing for laymen.
I think we need a little dose of Aslan in our sometimes regrettably ridiculous world of doctrine. You notice God didn't write a book on systematic theology. He wrote a book of stories. We need a dose of Aslan, the beast, the untamable, the wild. The Aslan of things-never-happen-the-same-way-twice. - How do you systematize that??
Thank you for allowing me to poke gently at what is otherwise and usually a very good thing. :)
What are your thoughts?
What Lewis believed about the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture is found in his book Reflections on the Psalms.
First, Lewis believed that there were contradictions and probably errors in the Bible.
I know that's a WHOA for evangelical Christians, but listen to what he means...
He saw that there were differences between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke and the differing accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot. The first one, strangely, is easily reconciled. The genealogies differ because one is Mary's line ("and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the Mother of Jesus") and one is Joseph's ("[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph").
The thing about this is... Lewis didn't care. He believed all of the Gospel, including the miracles and "hard sayings." He knew what was important. He knew that all of the Bible could fall away except for the Gospels and you'd still have the core of our faith intact. If there were errors, he thought them natural human errors. He believed in the main stuff and didn't care whether the truly little stuff made perfect sense to him or not.
Secondly, he didn't believe that all parts of the Bible were historical. He didn't care. He just wondered. It inspires me that he read these Old Testament books close enough to wonder about such a thing.
Some parts of the Bible, like stories of David or Daniel, say they are true. In the reign of such and such at this specific time.... They claim to be history and give valid dates that can be checked against other dates.
Other parts, like Jonah, Esther, and Job, do not have such specific historical claims. They name specific places - places that existed - but so do many modern stories. They may well be ancient fiction.
Again, Lewis didn't care. Because they didn't mean anything different if they were fiction. The points they made were very valid whether it was "true" in the literal sense or not. Lewis, of all people, would have understood that story has power whether it actually happened or not. It's whether the story says truth. The fact that it's in the Bible means that the literary force of the story must be true, at minimum. And all of these stories point us to God.
I dislike that evangelicalism is quite so absolute. Some things are absolute: Jesus Christ's death, resurrection, and imminent return. Believing each and every part of the Bible is absolutely faultless whether it appears to be in contradiction with another part or not is irrelevant and disrespectful to common intellect. If something seems to contradict something else, we can...
a. believe that THAT part of the Bible is in error, a mistake by humans or
b. believe that we just don't have all the facts.
What else?
I'm sure Lewis wouldn't have cared if someone believed the Bible was inerrant - I can say that because he wrote on it so little, confining his thoughts mostly to a few chapters of his small book on the Psalms. And because he often gave the disclaimer that he was merely a layman writing for laymen.
I think we need a little dose of Aslan in our sometimes regrettably ridiculous world of doctrine. You notice God didn't write a book on systematic theology. He wrote a book of stories. We need a dose of Aslan, the beast, the untamable, the wild. The Aslan of things-never-happen-the-same-way-twice. - How do you systematize that??
Thank you for allowing me to poke gently at what is otherwise and usually a very good thing. :)
What are your thoughts?