All Scripture is God-Breathed

A priest asked a children’s Sunday school class, “Who broke down the wall of Jericho?”1 A boy responded, “It wasn’t me!” The priest was aghast. He turned to the teacher and said, “Can you believe this?” The teacher answered, “Father, the boy is trustworthy and honest. If he said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it.” The priest was shocked. He went to the chair of the Sunday school committee. The chair listened carefully. Then she said consolingly, “I’ve known the boy and his teacher for a number of years. I just don’t see either one involved with the incident.” In disbelief, the priest sought out the senior warden. The senior warden tried to do damage control. “Look, Father,” he said, “let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. Let’s just pay for the damages to the wall and charge it to the maintenance budget.”

It’s a joke, right? Or is it? A Methodist pastor’s wife was preparing a Bible trivia program for the parish. She asked the chair of the parish council – a lifelong Methodist – to name a book in the Bible that tells of the birth of Jesus. He answered, “Uh, you better ask my wife that one. She’s the one who knows that kind of stuff.”

Is this the kind of knowledge of Scripture that the writer of the second letter to Timothy had in mind? Here is what he says to Timothy in The Message, a contemporary translation: “There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”

Most of us have Bibles in our homes. Every Sunday we hear four selections from the Bible. But do we really know what the Bible says? Do we know anything about the chapters and books that never come up in the Revised Common Lectionary? More to the point, do we allow ourselves to be shaped and transformed by what Scripture has to teach us?

And most difficult question perhaps of all, how should we regard Scripture? As most of you know, in both of my ordinations, I had to publicly sign a document stating that I believe “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation….” What does that mean for us in the 21st century? To begin with, we do not believe that an angel perched on someone’s shoulder and dictated the Scriptures, or that God spoke directly into someone’s ear, as if into a tape recorder. That is close to what Muslims believe about the Qur’an, which is why they insist that the Qur’an must be read in Arabic, its original language. We also do not believe that the Bible is a rule book, a constitution, or a law book – although the Torah laid out many laws for the ancient Jews. Nor do we believe that we can wrench sentences of the Bible out of context and use them as battering rams against each other in argument.

Anglicans, along with Catholics and many Protestants, understand that the sixty-six books of the Bible were written and edited over a period of about eight hundred years. The earliest Hebrew Scriptures date from the 8th century BC. The Hebrew Scriptures were edited and regrouped after the Exile, in the 5th century BC, and then again in the 1st century AD. The books that we now call the New Testament were written between about 49 and 110 AD. Other gospels and letters were also written. Did you know that there was a gospel attributed to Peter, a gospel of Thomas, and also many other letters? Actually, it wasn’t until the Council of Carthage in 397 AD that church leaders reached consensus on what constituted the Christian Scriptures.

All this is by way of saying that Anglicans recognize that Scripture was written by faithful communities that struggled to understand their relationship with God and God’s aims for the world. They especially struggled to understand who Jesus was and what his life, death, and resurrection meant for them. We believe that Scripture is “God-breathed,” or inspired, in that we believe that the Holy Spirit continually guided these communities of faithful Jews and followers of Jesus, helping them to articulate what they were experiencing of God’s work in them. We also believe that Scripture had power – and has power – to transform lives, to enable us to partner with God in bringing in God’s reign, and to help us to hold fast to a vision of God’s promised future.

Scripture is thus an important beacon in our lives, a beacon to which most of us should pay much closer attention. Yet Anglicans also put forth one caveat: we do not hold, as do many Lutherans, to sola scriptura, Scripture alone. Anglicans understand that people will differ in their understanding of Scripture, however faithful they may be. And so for Anglicans, Scripture is one of three foundations for our faith. The other two are tradition and reason. We understand that God also speaks to us both through the ways in which the Holy Spirit inspired us in the past to fashion our lives as Christians and through our God-given reason. Most important, perhaps, for Anglicans, it is a community of the faithful, using all three elements of faith, Scripture, tradition, and reason, in which we may discern God’s leading.

All of that sounds pretty heady, Mo. Leslie, you may be thinking. So how should we as 21st century Christians in the Anglican tradition engage Scripture? How can we know who broke down the wall of Jericho, or which books in the Bible tell of Jesus’ birth? To begin with, we might actually read the Bible. Do you read novels or magazines? How about reading the Bible as you would a novel? Truth be told, much of the Hebrew Bible is racier than many novels! There are good modern translations. The Message is very contemporary. Not sure what all those laws in Leviticus refer to, or where all those places are? Try a study Bible that amplifies the difficult parts of the text. Go for a commentary – there are lots of them available in hard copy or on line that are inexpensive and accessible, and that will enable you to understand the historical contexts of the various books. And ideally, we should be engaging in this kind of reading of the Bible together, so that we can learn from each other as a community of faith, not as solitary individuals.

We can do more than simply acquaint ourselves with the historical contexts of our Scriptures. The Bible is still very much a live document. It is a two-edged sword that will cut us to the quick if we take it seriously. One way to deepen your understanding of the Bible is to pray with Scripture. We have already experienced lectio divina here, i.e., reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating a word or phrase in a Scripture passage. At our last quiet day, we practiced a method of prayerfully reading Scripture developed by Ignatius of Loyola that involves imaginatively putting yourself into the text. For example, what would it feel like to actually be the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and encounter Jesus, or to be Martha or Mary in Luke’s story? What do you think Peter felt when he recognized Jesus as God’s anointed one – and then when he betrayed Jesus? What is God saying to you through these stories? If you keep a spiritual journal, which I highly recommend, you can journal your reflections.

Similarly, we can let Scripture guide our actions in the social and political spheres. Those of you who are reading On God’s Side with me know that Jim Wallis’s understanding of the pursuit of the common good is deeply rooted in Scripture. Wallis argues that how we view Jesus profoundly colors our social and political views. He describes how the story of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 led to his conversion from an individualistic, pietistic faith to one concerned with justice for the poor and marginalized. By the same token, Wallis suggests that the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s gospel helped him to understand that in today’s world there are no “non-neighbors,” and that human trafficking and the supply chains for our consumer goods are issues with which earnest followers of Jesus must grapple. And you? What parts of Scripture influence you? Have you been transformed by any book or books of Scripture? In what way is Jesus a model for you and for how you want to live your life?

Scripture does not provide easy, one-size-fits-all answers to the many questions with which we struggle, or the decisions we face in our lives. Yet, Scripture is indeed God-breathed and still has the power to show us truth, expose our rebellion, correct our mistakes, and train us to live God’s way.

Praise we God, who hath inspired those whose wisdom still directs us; praise him for the Word made flesh, for the Spirit which protects us. Light of knowledge ever burning, shed on us thy deathless learning.

1. Based on Gregory L. Tolle, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH, 2006), 156-7.