And What Else Does the Bible Say? (mid-week message)

And What Else Does the Bible Say? 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

March 7, 2018

People who go to the Thursday Bible Study have heard many times Father Morgan Silbaugh’s reply to those who use the words “the BIBLE says” to try to prove some tendentious or downright harmful idea:  “And what ELSE does the Bible say?”  This is not simply an easy way to defang arguments claiming biblical grounds by undermining any authority for the Bible.  It stems from a deep truth:  the Bible is library of many varied ancient texts written over a thousand year period, and as a result contains competing doctrines, ideas, and moralities.   As a result, the trick in authentically letting the Bible teach us and inform our perceptions and way of life is finding the deep heart and center of Biblical teaching and ordering our understanding of all its competing teachings accordingly.  This is what Martin Luther called finding the “canon within the canon” of scripture, and what the Prayer Book advises when it asks us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Holy Scriptures (p. 236). 

Here are a few quotable snippets from the Bible that help us see the error in many fundamentalist or Calvinist commonplaces that are put forward as if they were the one true way of understanding the Bible: 

To the claim that God predestines a few people to salvation but intends damnation and punishment to most: 

“For the Lord …does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone” (Lamentations 3:31-33). 

“God our Savior … desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy  2:2-3)

To the claim that we are born wholly sinful, depraved, and tainted by a hereditary and sexually transmitted “original sin”: 

“God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.  God blessed them, and … God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  (Gen 1:27-31). 

 “For from my youth I reared the orphan like a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow” (Job 31:18).  This line shows that “I was XX from my mother’s womb” is simply a rhetorical device to say I am really truly that way.  It takes the poison out of the line: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).   

To the claim that God is full of wrath, demands blood and death for sin, and commanded Jesus to suffer death on the cross as a replacement for us (apart from the fact that this doctrine as such is never taught in any single passage of scripture): 

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?”  (Ezek 18:23)

“But your merciful promise is beyond all measure;
it surpasses all that our minds can fathom.

O Lord, you are full of compassion,
long-suffering, and abounding in mercy.

You hold back your hand;
you do not punish as we deserve.

In your great goodness, Lord,
you have promised forgiveness to sinners,
that they may repent of their sin and be saved.” (Prayer of Manasseh, vv. 6-7)

To the claim that God is stingy with blessing, rewarding only the righteous and punishing the wicked:    “God gives his blessings of rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike” (Matt. 5:45).   “Would any of you, if your child asks for bread, give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish, would you give a snake?  If you then, wicked as you are, `know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13).

Grace and peace. 

Fr. Tony+