In this chapter we begin to look at that pair of crucial questions that every reader of the Bible comes to sooner or later, and usually sooner.  These are the controversial but central questions about the authority of the Bible and the inspiration of the Bible.  In the first chapter we saw the important place given to the Bible in all the churches, but then in the last chapter we saw that on the question of women preachers the Methodist Church and other churches as well choose to ignore what the Bible explicitly teaches.  

So in this chapter I want to look at what authority the Bible itself claims to have.  Those Christians who believe that the Bible has a unique authority in the Christian Faith usually justify their belief by reference to the special inspiration which they believe the Bible has.  The Bible speaks with authority, they believe, because it is the inspired "Word of God."  Some of those who believe this believe that every word of the Bible was directly inspired by God, whilst others believe that it was the Bible writers who were inspired by God in a unique way.  Either way, the Bible speaks with authority because it is inspired by God.  

One text in particular is quoted by those who believe that the Bible has a special authority because of its divine inspiration.  This text is 2 Timothy 3:16-17, and it is the only place in the Bible where the word "inspiration" is used about the Bible,  

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."  

There is actually a slight problem with this text straight away, because there are two ways of translating the first line which gives two rather different meanings.  The NRSV gives the other possible translation in a footnote, "Every scripture inspired by God is also..."  I propose to leave that little problem on one side even though the second way of translating the line changes the meaning of the verse a lot.  In what follows I shall use the first version, which is the one quoted by those who use it to support their views on the special authority and inspiration of the Bible.  The translation in the new NRSV is much the same as that of the old Authorised Version, which was, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is..."  

I need to comment on only three of the words or phrases in this text:  

a)  "All scripture..."  

The word "scripture" means "holy writing / "holy book" or "holy writings / "holy books".  In the previous verses the writer has advised Timothy to continue to be faithful to the truth he has known for a long time, and to the "sacred writings" which he has known since childhood [verse 15].  He then goes on to say that each of these holy books, inspired by God, and all of them together, are useful in equipping Timothy and every other Christian for God's work and service.   

Timothy would have been in no doubt about what books were meant.  The "scriptures" he had known since childhood were the books of what we call the "Old Testament."  At the time that this letter was written the scriptures of the first Christians would have been the books of the Old Testament, not quite in the same order as in our Bibles and certainly including what today we call the "Apocrypha."  The books which we know as the "New Testament" were only then in the process of being written, and were not accepted as scripture in the form in which we have them now until several hundred years after the life of Christ, as we will see in chapter 6.  

b)  "...inspired by God..."   

This phrase translates a single word found only here in the whole of the Bible.  The New International Version translates it literally, "God-breathed."  The scriptures which Timothy has known from childhood are "God-breathed."  They are "inspired."  A small problem with this is that because this word is only used here in the whole of the Bible we cannot be absolutely certain what it means, but its general sense is plain enough.  These scriptures come, one way or another from God.  It is his life which flows through them.  It is his breath that gives them voice.  So far so good.  

It can also be argued on the basis of this word that the scriptures have a special and powerful authority because they are "God-breathed" in a way that no other book or collection of books is "God-breathed."  Some Christians might disagree and say that this goes beyond what the text actually says, but most Christians would be happy to say that one way or another the Bible is one of God's special gifts to us.  So far so good also.  

But at this point those who use this verse to back up their belief in the inspiration of the Bible usually take a giant leap forward, and go way beyond what this word means or this text says.  This leap is to argue that because the scriptures are "God-breathed" they must therefore be without error.  They are inspired, therefore they are infallible.  So a doctrine of the infallibility or the inerrancy of scripture is established without any argument, and with only the simple assumption that if God is breathing into these books they must be without error.  

That is a huge leap into a dangerous doctrine.  It is a leap without any evidence or support from the word "God-breathed" or from the verse where this word is found.  Those who want to say that because the Bible is God-breathed it is without error are making an assumption.  Neither more nor less than an assumption.  What they ought to do next is to show from the Bible itself that it is a valid assumption and a true doctrine, but this simply cannot be done.  In chapter 5 I shall show from the Bible itself that there are errors within its pages.   And one error is enough to show that the assumption that because the Bible is inspired it is without error is a false one.  

c)  "... useful..."  

 What a let-down!  Timothy is reminded that the scriptures which he has known since childhood are "useful"!  This adjective is found in only two more places in the New Testament.  In Titus 3:8 it is translated "profitable" and in 1 Timothy 4:8 it is translated "of some value."  If the word "God-breathed" means what some people say it means, then the words of God in the scriptures ought to be a jolly sight more than useful.  They would surely be much more than "profitable."  They would be the answer to everything.  They would be the key to the meaning of life, the universe and everything.  Instead Timothy is reminded that they are "useful," "helpful."   

Moslems believe that the Quran is God-dictated, that it was actually dictated word for word to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel in God's presence.  They then go on to draw the logical conclusion from their belief.  If these words are inspired in this way then they are to be revered and reverenced.  They are to be memorised word for word, hallowed and obeyed.  They are the final answer to everything.  Any Moslem who said that the Quran was only "useful" would soon be in trouble with his local Imam.  But that is all that this verse says about the holy books that Timothy has known since childhood, that they are "useful."  No more.  No less.  The scriptures which God has given are a helpful thing to have for teaching about God, his will and his ways.  

So what claims does the Bible make for itself?  From the Bible itself what do we learn about its authority and its inspiration?  Let me repeat myself.  2 Timothy 3:16 is the key text used by those who believe that the Bible has a special authority because of its divine inspiration, and this verse is the only place in the Bible where the word "inspiration" is used about the Bible.  The verse does talk about the importance and the value of the scriptures, and I for one would not want to deny either of those things, but all that it says is that scripture is "useful."  This famous text says nothing about the historical accuracy or reliability of the Bible.  It makes no claims that the Bible is "without error."  It does not claim that the Bible is the supreme authority in the Christian Faith.  It is not even talking about any of the Bibles we actually use, for none of them existed in the forms we have them when these words were written.  2 Timothy 3:16 is the key text about the authority and inspiration of the Bible, yet the claim it makes is only a very modest one.  

Next we must look at what claims the Methodist Church makes about the Bible.  What does Methodism believe about the authority and inspiration of the Bible?

What does the Methodist Church say about the Bible?  What does it believe about the Bible's authority and inspiration?  

The easiest place to start is with Question 52 in the Methodist Catechism, approved at the Stoke on Trent Conference in 1986,  

                        52.  What is the Bible?  

The Bible, comprising the Old and New Testaments, is the collection of books, gradually compiled, in which it is recorded how God has acted among, and spoken to and through, his people.  The writers expressed themselves according to their own language, culture and point in history and in their different ways were all bearing witness to their faith in God.  The Bible is the record of God's self-revelation, supremely in Jesus Christ, and is a means through which he still reveals himself, by the Holy Spirit.  

Notice the six points in the answer:  

1  The Bible is not one book but a collection of books, gathered together over a long period of time,  

2  The Bible contains the record of how God acted among his people and spoke to them,  

3  The writers were real people who expressed themselves in the language and forms of their day,  

4  The writers in the Bible saw things differently and wrote in different ways, but each one is expressing his faith in God,  

5  The Bible shows us how God was making himself known to us,  

6  The Bible is one of the ways he still makes himself known to us.  

The "Title Deed" of the Methodist Church is the Deed of Union of 1932, agreed upon by the three branches of Methodism which came together again in that year to form the Methodist Church as it now is.  The Doctrine of the Methodist Church is dealt with in Section 2 of the Deed, in a section of only eleven short paragraphs taking up a page and a half of the Deed of Union's thirty pages.  The Bible is dealt with in the second full paragraph in Section 2:4, where it states that,  

"The doctrines of the evangelical faith which Methodism has held from the beginning and still holds are based upon the divine revelation recorded in the Holy Scriptures.  The Methodist Church acknowledges this revelation as the supreme rule of faith and practice ..."  

I gather that this wording came from the great Primitive Methodist layman and Biblical scholar, Professor A S Peake, whose "Peake's Commentary on the Bible" has helped many a student over the years.  It is a very carefully worded statement, and we should notice what it says and what it doesn't say:  

1  It says that our Methodist doctrines "are based upon the divine revelation recorded in the Holy Scriptures" and that Methodists acknowledge "this revelation as the supreme rule of faith and practice."  It does not say that the Bible is our supreme rule of faith and practice.  

2  It says that God's revelation recorded in the Bible is our supreme rule of faith and practice.  It does not define what it means by "God's revelation recorded in the Bible" - is this revelation the words of the Bible themselves, or is it what the words are talking about, the great events of the Old Testament and the stories of Jesus?  

3  It does not say that "the Bible is the supreme authority for the Christian."  It says that God's revelation, which is recorded in the Bible, is the supreme authority for the Christian.  

4  It does not say that our Methodist doctrines are taken straight from the Bible.  It says that our doctrines are based on God's revelation which is recorded in the Bible.  

5  And it doesn't even say what it means by the Holy Scriptures!  Does it mean the Old and New Testaments, like the Catechism says, or does it include any of the books of the Apocrypha?   

These are the only two official statements which the Methodist Church makes about the Bible.  

I want to end this chapter with reference to an "unofficial" Methodist statement about the Bible.  In the Local Preachers' Training Course, "Faith and Worship," unit 5 is about the Bible and is called, "Exploring the Bible."  This unit looks at what the Bible is, how it came to us, which books belong to it, and at the variety of different kinds of writings found within its pages.  Then it comes to the question we are looking at in this book, "The authority of the Bible."  It does not give any answers but asks the students to think about various aspects of the question.  One task it sets is to look at this diagram,   

The Bible is the dictated                                                The Bible is the fallible

word of God, containing                                               product of human beings

no errors, and everything                                               and must be given no

in it is literally true                                                         more authority than any

                                                                                    other book written

[--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]  

and then to ask themselves: What are the errors with both of these positions?  

The question the students are asked assumes that both of these positions are wrong.  I think that whoever it was who thought up that diagram and decided on that question has understood the Methodist statements on the Bible which we find in the Deed of Union and in the Catechism.  These official statements suggest that both of the positions expressed in the diagram are wrong, and that a true position on the question of the authority of the Bible is going to lie somewhere on that line between the two extreme positions which are quoted.  

In the next chapter I will look at what is wrong with the first position, at why we cannot put the Bible on a pedestal as high as that.  In the one after I shall look at what is wrong with the second position, at why we cannot treat the Bible just like any other book. 

In the chapter before the last one we looked at how the churches selected some out of all of the writings that they possessed to go onto their official list of "Sacred Scripture." Or to put it another way, how the churches created The Bible or Bibles as we know them today from the large number of religious writings which they knew and valued.  The writings which ended up on the Official List, in the Bible, were obviously cherished from the first time that they were read.  Perhaps they were recognised as speaking with a special authority, or it was felt that they had the ring of truth about them.  Perhaps the fact that the writer was an important church leader had something to do with it.  Perhaps it was that they were so helpful to the ones who read them.  Whatever it was only some of the letters and tracts written by the first Christians survived and only some of those were given the status of Holy Scripture.   

In the last chapter we looked at how these books that were chosen came into being in the first place, at how and why they written and edited, and by whom.  Christians believe that in the Bible we hear God speaking to us, but we have seen that the way that he speaks is through people, and the books of the Bible were written and produced by human beings like ourselves using their own minds, mouths and pens.   

In this chapter I want to adopt the microscope approach and look at how the words and sentences arrived in those books.  We have looked at the big question of who chose these books?  We have looked at who wrote them and the sort of things they wrote.  Now we come to the next question that we need to look at before we can make sensible comments on what the Bible is and isn't, and about how it can and should be used.  So I have headed this microscope chapter "Two sorts of details," and in it I want to look at two things which can easily be overlooked or taken for granted.  The first is, What shall we translate?  The second is, How shall we translate it?  The second question is obvious enough.  I can best show what I mean by the first by using a hymn as an illustration.  After that all my examples will be taken from the New Testament.  

One of my Desert Island Hymns would have to be the great Holy Week hymn by Isaac Watts, "When I survey the wondrous cross."  Let us imagine that a member of the Cornish Language Society wants to translate that hymn into Cornish.  She looks up the hymn in Hymns and Psalms, reads it through, notices that a new verse has been put in which wasn't in the Methodist Hymn Book, and then stops at the fourth word in the second line of the last verse.  This good Methodist has sung "that were an offering far too small," all her life: but in the new book it says, "that were a present far too small."  

Which of these two words is she going to translate into Cornish?  Let this incomer assume that there is a Cornish word for "offering" and another one for "present."  So which does she use?  That is what I mean by the question, What shall we translate?  Obviously in this example the meanings of the two words are near enough: but which did Isaac Watts write?  How come there are two different "texts" of this hymn?  Which "text" should she translate?   

We have many hundreds of "texts" of the New Testament, many hundreds of different manuscripts of parts or all of the New Testament, and they contain thousands of variations.  Some of these are small ones like a different word or two as in the hymn, some are bigger differences.  Before translators can translate the New Testament from its original Greek into English they have to work out which "text" or set of words they are going to translate.  This is highly complicated work and "textual critics" devote their lives to poring over piles of manuscripts to try to decide what Paul or Matthew originally wrote, or to explain how these differences and variations arose.  

So then to the first detail: What shall we translate?  Here are three examples of places where different New Testament manuscripts have different readings, so forcing the textual scholars to try to decide which, if any, was the original reading and which reading the translator should translate.   

a)  The beginning and the ending of the Gospel of Mark.  

We'll start with the beginning because that is the simplest.  In the NRSV the first verse of the gospel reads,  

"The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."  

But at the bottom of the page there is a note about this verse which says "Other ancient authorities lack "the Son of God," which shows that we have some ancient manuscripts which do not include this phrase.  So scholars have to weigh up the pros and cons and reach a conclusion about which of these variations they think is the original.  

Turning to the end of Mark's gospel the NRSV stops at the odd ending, ".... they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."  Then there are two sentences in brackets called "The Shorter Ending of Mark" and then verses 9-20 are printed under the heading of "The Longer Ending of Mark."  The note at that point explains what is going on, and I will quote it in full,  

"Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8.  One authority concludes the book with the shorter ending; others include the shorter ending and then continue with verses 9-20.  In most authorities verses 9-20 follow immediately after verse 8, though in some of these authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful."  

Even the New International Version, which no one can accuse of being a liberal translation, draws a line after "they were afraid."   It then says in brackets that "The two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20" before it prints them.  How and where the Gospel of Mark should end is therefore quite a mystery.  

b)  The story of the woman taken in adultery with its marvellous line about the one who is without sin throwing the first stone must be one of the best known stories about Jesus.  But in the NRSV it is put in brackets with the note that,  

"The most ancient authorities lack [John] 7:53-8:11; other authorities add the passage here or after 7:36 or after 21:25 or after Luke 21:38, with variations of text; some mark the passage as doubtful."  

Likewise the New International Version also brackets it off with the words, "The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not have John 7:53-8:11."  If the story is not in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts should we allow it to stay in our New Testaments?  An interesting question.  

c)  I'm going to get around to the Black Pudding Question in a few pages' time.  The discussion about it is found in Acts 15:20 and 15:29 which is repeated in Acts 21:25.  These verses give the decision made by the Council of Jerusalem about which parts of the Jewish Law are no longer binding on Gentile converts to Christianity and which are still binding.  In Acts 15:28-29 we read that the decision was this,  

"For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication."  

But what I am quoting this for here is that in every one of these three places where that decision is quoted the NRSV has a note which says that "Other ancient authorities lack" any reference to strangling!  What the NRSV does not say is that this set of manuscripts not only omitted the reference to not eating meat from animals which had been killed by strangling, but also added at the two places in Acts 15 a much more wide-ranging, and to us a much more sensible, command that, 

"whatever you do not wish to be done to you, do not do to others."  

So even when it came to reporting what was probably the most important issue the early church had to debate, the one about how much of the Jewish Law the Gentile Christians were to be expected to keep, the manuscripts of the Acts of the Apostles give significantly different versions of the decision!  

These are only three examples out of many.  Just how many is beyond counting.  I started flicking through my new NRSV, which only gives the most important examples, but gave up after I had counted 72 notes in the margin which said that "Other ancient authorities read or add or lack..." and that was only in Matthew's gospel.  My Greek New Testament goes into much more detail, and on average it has 25 lines of New Testament on each page, plus half a dozen lines of textual notes at the bottom listing all the variations in the old manuscripts.   

All this goes to show that the original text that Paul or Luke wrote is impossible to recover - the detectives can only make deductions, and we have to be grateful for their patience and skill.  That much is widely agreed.  A second conclusion, much more controversial but based on the evidence, would appear to be that no one in the early centuries of the church's life thought that the New Testament writings were to be preserved word for word and down to the last dot and comma.  Instead they felt able to treat the manuscripts quite freely, expanding bits here and there, altering others, and making additions and subtractions.  Not only that, some of the copyists were downright careless.   

So on to the second detail: How shall we translate it?  I am not talking here about simple translation questions like, Is the first line of the popular German carol "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" best translated by "Silent night, holy night" as in Hymns and Psalms or by "Still the night, holy the night" as in the Methodist Hymn Book?  That is a question of style or taste, and opinions will differ, for both translations put over what the original means.  No.  Here I am talking about either not knowing what the original means at all, or about what to do when the original can be translated in different and conflicting ways.  Here are some examples from the New Testament.  

a)  In the Lord's Prayer we are used to saying, "Give us this day our daily bread."  But the meaning of the word translated "daily" is far from certain.  It can also be translated as "for tomorrow" as the note in the NRSV at Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 shows, but that too is little more than an educated guess.  

b)  The New Testament teaches clearly that Jesus is the Messiah or the Christ, that he is Lord and that he is the Son of God.  Whether it ever says bluntly that Jesus is God is debatable, and one of the verses to debate over is Romans 9:5 which according to the NRSV can be translated in at least three different ways which give very different answers to the question.  On the page the NRSV has  

"... and from them [that is, from the Israelites], according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever.  Amen."  

In the notes at the bottom of the page two other possible translations are given,  

"... and from them [that is, from the Israelites], according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed for ever.  Amen,"  and  

"... and from them [that is, from the Israelites], according to the flesh, comes the Messiah.  May he who is God over all be blessed for ever.  Amen."  

The first is ambiguous, the second says that Jesus is God, the third says that he isn't.  Each of these is a reasonable translation of the Greek - which is the proper translation is an impossible question to answer.  

c)  Exactly the same problem on the same issue is found at Titus 2:13.  On the page the NRSV reads,  

"... while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ,"  

which says that Jesus is God.  In a note at the bottom is another equally possible translation which says he isn't,  

"... while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ."  

d)  Leaving heavy theology aside how should we behave?  Should we "associate with the lowly" or "give ourselves to humble tasks?"  Both are fair translations of Paul's instruction in Romans 12:16.  

e)  I end with a passage we have looked at before.  What is the meaning of 2 Timothy 3:16?  Is it,  

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work?"  

Or is it the translation in the note at the bottom of the page,  

"Every scripture inspired by God is also useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work?"  

For they don't mean the same thing do they?  

These translation problems all come from the New Testament.  Such problems are much more frequent in the Old Testament, where the note "Hebrew obscure" or "The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain" occurs frequently in the footnotes of the NRSV.  

In conclusion we have to admit that the existence of variations in different manuscripts of the books of our Bible is a fact.  Different ways of translating the same sentence is also a fact.  Manuscripts differ for all sorts of reasons, a copyist made a mistake, a copyist added an explanation, a copyist changed what he was copying because it didn't look right or he didn't agree with it!  Here again is the human element.  Where translators have to choose between opposite ways of translating the same words, how do they it?  Here again is the human element.   

When you are reading your Bible keep an eye on the footnotes or the margin for variant readings and different ways of translating things.  The Bible is full of them, and they are often fascinating.  But I have looked at a few of them in this chapter for a different reason, because these two facts are important in the wider issue we are looking at.  They are pieces in the jigsaw of what the Bible is, and these two simple facts need to be taken into account before we can try to come to any conclusions at all about the inspiration and authority of the Bible.   

It is to that important question that we must now turn.

In this chapter we have reached the point where we can try to make a statement about the authority and inspiration of the Bible, which will take seriously the Bible as it is and the facts of how it has come to us.  

First let me recap on what we have seen in the last four chapters.  We have looked carefully at the Bible as it is and how it came to us and have made some important observations:  

1  that the Bible is not infallible,

2  that the Church created the Bible, 

3  that the Bible was written by human authors and

4  that we cannot always get back to what they wrote or meant.  

We have seen that it is wrong to think that "The Bible is the dictated word of God, containing no errors, and everything in it is literally true."  We have seen that the Bible is not a magic book where every word, dot and comma has been put where it is by God.  It contradicts itself at times and so it obviously contains mistakes or errors.  On the other hand those who edited the Bible didn't try to disguise the contradictions and were prepared to live with the Bible as we have it, errors included. We have seen that we must also be prepared to live with a lot of variations in the ancient manuscripts and the knowledge that sometimes we do not know the meanings of the ancient words.  

We have also seen that it is wrong to think that "The Bible is the fallible product of human beings and must be given no more authority than any other book written."  We have seen that the Bible is not something that Christians can simply take or leave as they feel like it.  The ancient churches drew up their official lists of those books which they regarded as special because the books themselves obviously contained something which they thought was special.  We have the Bibles that we do today because our forebears valued and chose these 66 or so books to be on their official lists and rejected the others.   

We have seen that although the Bible was produced by the likes of you and me, by people who spoke with real voices and who wrote at particular times and in particular places for particular reasons, those who read it also heard God speaking through it.  Presumably the writers said and wrote what they believed was true, and some went so far as to say explicitly that they were speaking and writing what God wanted to be said or written, and that is what the church of old heard.  So the Bible that we have is a library of human books in which the church down the years has believed that the voice of God comes to us through the words of human beings.  

All of this goes to show that the Methodist Catechism has got it about right when it says what it does about the Bible.  And if you've forgotten what that is, you can turn back to page 14!  

I write as one who believes passionately in the inspiration of the Scriptures.  I believe that the Bible is both inspired and inspiring.  And I suspect that there are very few of you who are reading this who do not share that belief.  So when I talk about the inspiration of the Bible I mean that it is able to inspire me in all kinds of ways in my Christian faith and pilgrimage today.  I believe that the reason that it can do this is that it comes from God.  I want to assert that the Bible speaks to us of God and that it comes to us from God.  

It has not, as we have seen, come to us directly from God.  It was written by human hands, edited with human eyes; its shape and content has been decided by human minds, even by people sitting in committees.  It certainly comes to us copied, printed, transported and sold by human beings.  Yet I still want to say, as has been said by so many in the past, that the ultimate source of the Bible is God.  He is the one who inspired the writers with visions of his truth, intimations of his glory, awareness of his power, convictions about his deeds, beliefs about his nature, and understandings of his will and his ways.  So I want to say that the Bible is the Word of God.  I want to affirm that the Bible's source is in God.   

If we ask the questions, How has God spoken this Word?  How has this Word come to us?  How is the Bible inspired?  Then our answer must take into account the Bible as it is and as we have seen it to be.  Our answer must take into account such facts as the Bible's errors and contradictions, and such facts as its diversity of authorship and complicated editorial work.  Do such facts as these invalidate the idea that the Bible is inspired by God?  They do not do so to me.  They do force me to ask however, that if the Bible as we have it is the result of God's inspiration then how does God's inspiration work?  What I am insisting on is that we must start from the Bible as it is, including its contradictions, inconsistencies and mistakes, and then go on to work out our theory of its inspiration which takes all that fully into account.   

I write this as a Methodist minister who has been "called to preach" and as one who believes that preaching is important.  I am told that much preaching is dull, tedious and boring, to use the favourite word of today's young: but for all that I still believe in preaching, and I wish that Methodist preachers would take it more seriously and take every opportunity and make every effort to learn to do it better.  What has that got to do with the inspiration of the Bible? I hear you muttering at this point.  Simply this.  I suggest that preaching provides a very good model for a workable theory of the inspiration of the Bible.  

Begin from your own experience.  Every Sunday I hope that most of you either sit in church and listen to a sermon, or stand in a pulpit and preach one as I do.  I believe that what I am doing there is speaking the Word of God to his people by the inspiration of his Spirit.  If I thought it was otherwise I would not dare enter a pulpit.  I am not giving my own opinions on this, that or the other religious topic: but a message which I believe God has for his people.  It is quite obvious that my ideas and words are being used, as are my voice and my mannerisms.  It is equally obvious that I am a much poorer medium for God's Spirit that Isaiah or Paul were, or than John Wesley or Cardinal Newman or David Watson: but the difference is one of degree, not of kind.  Surely that is inspiration, the human spirit opened up to God so that he can communicate through it?  In so doing he uses the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and experiences of the person concerned, and these are reflected in the end product, but so is his message.  To put it another way, God's word is always incarnate, embodied, and the character of the messenger is always there: but it is still God's word which is embodied, inspired and revealing his will.  That, it seems to me, is how inspiration works, and that is how we can think of the inspiration of the Bible in a way which takes the facts of the Bible seriously as well as enabling us to listen to its message with our full attention.  

I write as one who also believes in the authority of the Bible.  The Methodist Deed of Union says that the Bible records God's revelation, and that this revelation is our "supreme rule of faith and practice."  It does not say that every dot and comma of the Bible itself is God's revelation, nor that the Bible itself is our supreme authority.  But it says enough to make it plain that the Bible is important, and that what it says in matters of belief and behaviour is to be listened to very carefully indeed.  I learned this as a teenager in our chapel at Horsehay in Shropshire where in peeling paint above the pulpit there were the words from Psalm 119, "Thy Word is a Lamp unto my Feet."  So, What does the Bible say? is for me one of the most important questions to ask in working out what we ought to do or think on any issue.   

But that is not as simple a question as it looks, as we began to see in the discussion about Women Preachers in chapter 2.  Trying to answer it must take into account the Bible as it is and as we have seen it to be.  Our answer to this question must take into account such facts as the Bible's errors and contradictions, and such facts as its diversity of authorship and complicated editorial work.  Some people go so far as to say that such facts as these mean that the Bible cannot be used to give authoritative answers to today's questions.  I disagree.  Perhaps the model of preaching is helpful here also.  We take careful note of what preachers say, and are ready to be taught or challenged or guided by it.  But we do not believe or do everything that preachers say just because they say it.  We recognise that they believe in what they are saying, and that they believe that God has given them that message for us today: but we know that sometimes they are biased and have a few bees in their bonnets.  Or that sometimes they haven't had time to prepare properly.  We also know that sometimes they don't really know what they are talking about.  So we listen carefully, think about it, talk to others, read about it and try to come to a considered conclusion.  Sometimes we conclude that the preacher was one hundred per cent right, occasionally we will think that she got it completely wrong: but mostly we will be grateful for the help and guidance given.  Perhaps the authority of the Bible is like that of the preacher, only more so?   

The time has nearly come to talk about Black Pudding.

The time has come, nearly, to talk about Black Pudding.  But first I want to talk about divorce.  After Black Pudding I shall talk about other things.  

But why are we looking at these things at all?  Perhaps a brief recap might help.  This is a book about the Bible and the use of the Bible in the Methodist Church .  So far I have spent a lot of time looking at what the Bible is, at how it came to us, at what the Bible writers thought they were doing, as far as they tell us, and at how we got the Bible we use.  I have shown, I hope, that the Bible is a human book marked by the views of its different authors, and marked too by errors and inconsistencies.  I have also shown, I hope, that it is a special book, valued by the Church, as a way in which we hear God speaking to us, albeit through the voices of some very human characters.   

I have been looking at the Bible in this way because there is a big debate going on in the Methodist Church today, and in other churches as well, about the authority that the Bible has or should have for the Church and the Christian.  That is what we are going to begin to look at in this chapter.  How should we and how do we use the Bible in the Methodist Church ?  In questions about right and wrong do we simply accept what the Bible says?  Do we believe that the Bible can teach us about right and wrong?  Do we think that if the Bible says something about morals, then what it says has to be obeyed whether we like it or not?  Does the Bible have the final say, for Methodists and the Methodist Church , in matters of right and wrong?  Should it?  These are the questions I want to begin to look at in this chapter.  All the examples which we will look at now concern specific commands or statements in the New Testament.  

Let us begin with divorce.  The Methodist Church accepts divorce and permits the remarriage in church of people who have been divorced.  We have done that in the UK since 1945.  Obviously we would prefer it if divorce was never necessary.  Life would be much better if every married couple could live together in harmony until death did them part: but life is not like that.  Marriages go wrong and divorces happen, and the Methodist Church accepts that they do.  Some churches do not recognise divorce and therefore do not allow divorced people to remarry in church.  The Roman Catholic Church is logical and consistent in taking this stance - it does not recognise divorce, and so it does not allow divorced people to remarry in church.  If they do remarry in a Registry Office or anywhere else they cannot take communion any more.  The Church of England is sticky in parts about allowing divorced people to remarry in church but it does offer a service of blessing to people who have remarried in a Registry Office.  Speaking personally, I don't follow the logic of that.  Anyway, the Methodist Church recognises that divorce happens and offers divorcees a new start.  We do not remarry divorcees willy-nilly, and the minister has to make sure that any divorced person wanting to remarry did not make the major contribution to the breakdown of their previous marriage, or that if they did they have learned their lesson and are coming this time with a better understanding of what marriage is all about.  We offer a second, or even a third chance, presumably because we believe in a God who forgives and offers new starts. Methodist ministers are not obliged to remarry divorcees and those who in good conscience feel unable to do so do not have to do so.  In every case the Chairman of the District has to be consulted.  In statistical terms in my own ministry I have conducted two or three marriages involving divorcees to every one involving first-timers, and I think that my experience is quite typical.  So that is what we do in the Methodist Church .  

But what about the Bible?  In the Old Testament divorce is allowed and so is remarriage after it, although one of the prophets gets hot under the collar about it.  There was some controversy about grounds for divorce at the time of Jesus, and Jesus seems to have taken the hard line rather than the soft one, although the gospels do not agree on what he actually said on the subject.  According to Matthew 5:32 Jesus says,  

"But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."  

According to Luke 16:18 he takes an even harder line,  

"Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."  

According to both of these sayings of Jesus the remarriage of a divorced woman is adultery and therefore wrong.  Yet the Methodist Church permits the remarriage of divorced women which is contrary to both of these sayings of Jesus in the New Testament, and the remarriage of divorced men which is contrary to the saying in Luke.   

Why do we do it?  Our report on A Christian Understanding of Family Life, the Single Person and Marriage, which was adopted at the 1992 Conference, devotes three short paragraphs to answering that question [on pages 23-24].  In a nutshell it says that there are hints in the New Testament that the hard line in Luke was not seen as the last word on the subject, and that in any case our world is in many ways far away from the world of the New Testament.  In its final sentence it briefly touches on a different argument which I think is the crucial one.  It does not spell it out, but it is the argument which says that forgiveness and new starts is one of the "big themes" of the New Testament, and must be given more weight in this instance than the teaching of one or two specific texts.  

Whatever you think of these arguments it is a fact that on the question of the remarriage of divorced people the Methodist Church approves a practice which is forbidden by Jesus himself.  Personally I do not feel bad about this in any way, and regard the remarriage of divorced people as an opportunity to show in a practical way the forgiveness of a God who is always trying to make us whole and to make all things new.  

Now we come to Black Pudding.  A case in which no Methodists known to me personally actually do what the Bible says.   

Jesus was a Jew, and so were all the disciples and all the early Christians.  Then Saul was converted and became Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles.  As a result of Paul's missionary work gentiles, non-Jewish people, began to want to join the Church. So an urgent question arose: how much of the Jewish Law should gentile converts be expected to keep?  Should the men be circumcised?  Should they keep the laws about food?  Should they go to the Temple and offer the proper sacrifices?  Dispute on some of these issues was very bitter indeed.  According to Acts 15 the apostles and elders of the Church met together to consider the matter, and they made a ruling on this urgent question.  The ruling was suggested by James, Jesus's brother, and it was agreed that a letter should be sent to the gentile churches telling them of the decision.  The decision was this,  

"It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from fornication."    

We read this in Acts 15:28-29, which is repeated in Acts 21:25.  Note that this passage is talking about "essentials" and not options.  Christians must avoid these four things.  All the other Jewish food laws about clean and unclean animals do not have to be kept.  Jesus himself had dismissed those food laws [see Mark 7:18-19], and Peter had been told the same thing in a vision [see Acts 10:9-16].  So the Christians could eat pork sausages, bacon sandwiches and hamburgers if they wanted to, for pork was now okay to eat.  But on one condition, that when the pig was killed the blood from it was drained in the proper kosher way.  Pork was now okay, but blood was not - the old blood commandment from Leviticus 7:26 and 17:10 was still to be obeyed.  The ruling is clear.  Acts 15:28-29 repeated in Acts 21:25 is a general rule applying to all Christians - We should not eat blood.   

Yet I eat Black Pudding, fried for breakfast when my wife isn't looking, though I don't eat rare steaks because the sight of something oozing out when I cut them puts me right off  [The steaks I enjoy are charcoal coloured].  But if I was to take the Bible literally both Black Pudding and rare steaks are forbidden.  But I don't know any Christians who don't eat Black Pudding because of Acts 15.  I know a lot of people who don't eat the stuff because they can't stand the taste of it or the thought of it, or because they are vegetarians, or because they have just never thought of eating it because they've never tasted the real thing [modern supermarket black puddings are to real Black Puddings what sliced loaves in plastic bags are to bread]: but none who abstain because the Bible says so.  But the Bible is plain and straightforward on this one as the Jehovah's Witnesses remind us - yet we ignore it.  Why?  

The other ruling about food in Acts 15 was obviously controversial, which is presumably why a whole series of ancient manuscripts miss it out as we saw in chapter 8.  That is the decision that Christians should not eat meat from animals which have been strangled.  My gran had a chicken-run in the backyard, and every Christmas we had a cockerel that grampa, her dad, used to kill by wringing its neck.  Grampa knew his Bible, for he had been a Methodist New Connexion Local Preacher since about 1898, but Acts 15 never stopped him killing the Christmas bird that way.  

What about other things?  The Methodist Church baptises infants, and Infant Baptism is one of my favourite services, though I don't like the service in the Methodist Service Book and I like the proposed new one even less.  But there is not a shred of evidence in the New Testament that we ought to do any such thing and quite a bit which suggests we shouldn't.  If a Bible was put in one of these space probes and it landed on Mars, and if the Martians read it and were converted and tried to set up a Church on the New Testament pattern, then there is no way that they would baptise their little Martians.  Nor would they have Church Councils, Circuits, Ministers, organs, Collections, chapels, Hymn Books or Harvest Festivals either but I won't mention them.  

What about Methodists in court?  If you are called as a witness what do you do?  Do you swear on the Bible or not?  The Quakers used to make a big thing of this one on the basis of the saying of Jesus in Matthew 5:33-37 that swearing on oath was out and our "Yes" or "No" was to be enough.  Swearing on the Bible or anything else is forbidden by Jesus.  I've only ever been called as a witness once and in view of my dog collar the magistrate decided that I didn't need to swear on oath at all, but what should I have done if he hadn't?  What do you do?  Why?  

We've already had a chapter on women preachers and women church leaders.  The Bible is against them too, though we have them.  

So far my examples have been of things which the New Testament does not approve of but which Methodism practices.  For an opposite sort of example take alcohol, or rather, Don't take alcohol!  I am a teetotaller and have been since I was 17.  I consider alcohol to be a drug of the same order as tobacco, marijuana and heroin.  I do not see how any Christian who believes that his or her body is a temple of the Holy Spirit [as it says several times in the New Testament] can possibly take alcohol or any other drug.  Yet the Bible is quite happy with it.  Timothy is told to drink wine regularly for his health's sake [1 Timothy 5:23] and one of the pictures of God's kingdom come on earth is a picture of much eating and drinking. As for Jesus turning water into wine, I prefer to ignore that one.  On this issue I and quite a number of Methodists do not approve of something which the New Testament is happy with.  

Or what about the Use of Sunday?  The New Testament says absolutely nothing about the Use of Sunday.  It says quite a bit about the Sabbath, which is Saturday.  The Jews worshipped on a Saturday, the Christians from quite early on seem to have worshipped on Sundays.  Yet I can find nothing in the New Testament to justify the change.  By whose authority do we worship on a day different from the one the Bible says?  The Seventh Day Adventists stick to the letter of the Bible - they worship on the Sabbath, on Saturdays.  

Fifty years ago the Church was bitterly divided over the question of war and peace.  Could Christians go to war?  Could Conscientious Objectors be Christians, or could real Christians be anything but Conscientious Objectors?  Both sides claimed the support of the Bible.  In particular the Conscientious Objectors could point to words of Jesus about loving one's enemies and not resisting evildoers, yet the majority of Christians were not convinced.  In 1939 I would not have been convinced either.  

So in this chapter we have looked at a number of examples where the New Testament gives explicit commandments about right and wrong.  All the examples I have given are of issues where the Bible says one thing and the Methodist Church or Methodists do another, and my list was by no means a full one.  Obviously there are many more examples of New Testament commands with which the Methodist Church and individual Methodists agree wholeheartedly, from the big ones about murder, theft or adultery to smaller ones about patience, envy or honesty.  But divorce, Black Pudding and these other things all go to show that we do not simply make up our minds on right and wrong by reading texts of Scripture.  Perhaps we should: but we don't.  That is a fact.  We interpret the Bible, and in this process other things come into play in addition to what the Bible actually says.  That this is all right and proper I will show in the next chapter.

How does the Methodist Church use the Bible?  In the last chapter we looked at a number of examples of Methodist views on right and wrong which are at odds with sayings in the New Testament.  On questions of right and wrong the Methodist Church and individual Methodists do not simply read a text of the New Testament and do precisely what it says.  Sometimes they do that, but often they don't.  I promised at the end of the last chapter to try to show next how this picking and choosing was above board and proper.  If this is how the Methodist Church uses the Bible, how can such use be justified?   

One answer might be that because the Bible itself does not always speak with one voice it is inevitable that we must compare and contrast different passages on the same topic and pick and choose between them. Another might be that in view of how the Bible came into being, through the fallible opinions and decisions of our faithful forebears, it is inevitable that we must weigh up each individual viewpoint and discuss it in the light of the teachings of the Bible as a whole.  Another might be that the Bible as it is, obviously not a unified and systematic Handbook on Right and Wrong, makes using our own minds to examine it inevitable.  Another might be that as the Church created the Bible, with the guidance and help of God in the process, so the Church today has the right and the duty to interpret the Bible for today, also with the help and guidance of God in the process.  Another might be that everyone and every church, whether they admit it or not, picks and chooses - there is no other way.  

To give a careful Methodist answer let me quote the only person since Methodist Union in 1932 who has been President of the Conference twice, Rev Dr Donald English.  In 1985 the Home Mission Division of the Methodist Church , under his leadership, produced a very important report called "Sharing in God's Mission ."  The aim of this report was to get every church and circuit in the country to look at what it was doing and to ask what it ought to be doing.  The basic conviction of the report was that God is a God of love and that he is at work in his world.  It follows that our mission is to share in what God is doing or wanting to be done, and the report itself asked questions and made suggestions for churches and circuits to think about, as well as for individuals, so that we could share in God's mission where we were.  The Home Mission Division produced a tape to accompany the report, and a popular version of the report and the tape are still available from the Publishing House.  The first talk on the tape is about God and about how we know anything about him, and in its answer is the answer to our question in this chapter.  Donald English says this,  

"As Christians we gain our knowledge of God from the Bible in general and Jesus Christ in particular, a knowledge which has been and continues to be tested through our Christian traditions down the ages, in the exercise of God-given reason and in our personal experience of living in the world according to our faith."  

Here Dr English mentions four things which need to be kept in mind when we talk about God's will and his ways: Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.  He then goes on to say that these "sources of knowledge," as he calls these four things, can be likened to a child's mobile moving gently and gracefully round and round in a breeze.  The main centrepiece is the Bible, which for John Wesley, our founder,  

"was the centrepiece for our knowledge of God through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Revolving around the outside as supporting pieces in the mobile are Reason, Tradition and Experience.  As you watch the mobile you will always find the Bible in the centre, but you are looking at it through the perspective of Tradition, or Reason, or Experience at any given moment.  At the same time they receive their perspective and retain their position in relation to the Bible, it remains central."  

He concludes that this was, and is,  

"quite literally a mobile way of doing theology.  The centrality of the Biblical message was maintained yet Reason, Tradition and Experience had their proper places.  All three were used in the attempt to understand the Bible, yet all three were constantly examined, tested and verified or qualified according to the Bible as different questions arose and solutions were offered."  

In this mobile theology the teaching of the Bible is in the centre.  But when we read the Bible we read it from where we are now as Christian people in today's church ["Experience"].  We read it as heirs of a long tradition of looking at the Bible and learning other things of God's will and his ways over the centuries ["Tradition"].  We read it as people who bring all of the truth that comes through education and science to bear on any given question ["Reason"].  We read it also as people who believe that God's Spirit is active in our own lives and in the life of the church today, guiding and leading us on as Jesus promised that he would [John 14:26, 16:13 - more "Experience"].  At any given moment or on any particular question we will examine the Bible teaching from these other three perspectives, as well as looking carefully at the teaching of other parts of the Bible to see if these have any bearing on the issues to hand.  But equally, as Dr English said, we will also look hard at our own experience, or the traditions of the Church, or our own arguing and reasoning in the light of the Bible, for the Bible must inform these things as well as be informed by them.  All of this is involved in the process of looking at what a particular text or passage from the Bible has to say to us today.  To see what a particular text or passage has to say to us today is therefore no easy task.  

Let us assume that we want to look at a Bible passage about a moral issue.  To do it begins with a very careful look at the passage itself - we study its wording and the meaning of the words used, then we look at its historical context and where it is found in the Bible itself, at who wrote it and when, so that we can see what it might have meant to the people who heard it in the first place.  We will then try to see where this passage fits in with other similar passages or verses, and how it fits in with more general ideas or themes from the Bible.  An old way of putting this is to say that "Scripture must interpret Scripture," because it is so easy to lift a verse out of its context and make it mean what you want it to mean.  So a control and safeguard against this is to "compare Scripture with Scripture."  Next we should look at how our Christian forebears down the years have understood the passage or what they have thought about the issue, especially perhaps the Early Fathers, the great Reformers or our own Methodist ancestors from JW onwards.  We will also look at whatever insight modern knowledge has to throw on the question at hand, together with what our fellow Christians think about it today.  We will pray about the question and look for the guidance of God's Spirit.  We do all of this as thoroughly, carefully and prayerfully as we can, and then come to a conclusion.  Such is the process of understanding or interpreting the Bible.   

This is what every Preacher does every Sunday with every text or theme that they preach about, or at least it ought to be.  This is what every Christian does, even though they don't perhaps realise that they are doing some of it, when they decide that it's okay after all to swear on oath as a witness, or to eat Black Pudding or, for the women only, not to wear a hat when they go to church.   All of these decisions involve interpreting the Bible.  We all do it, one way or another.  Every time we read the Bible we interpret what we read.  We filter it through our minds, hearts and lives.  We ask, "What has this to say to us?"  And asking that question is to begin the process of interpretation.  

This is what the Methodist Church does when from time to time it is asked to make a ruling on a particular moral issue.  It follows this procedure and tries to come to a common mind, because one of the dangers in interpreting the Bible has always been that individuals can get it wrong.  I'm sure that all of us have heard sermons where Preachers have come up with something very odd indeed from the texts they were using.  There is a warning note about that in the New Testament itself.  In 2 Peter 1:20 we read, "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation."  This verse is about understanding prophecies in the Bible, but it surely applies to other things too when it says that trying to understand particular passages in the Bible is something that is better done together than privately.  Churches can get it wrong as well of course, but discussion helps to prevent it.  

Finally let me quote again from the Methodist Catechism, this time from Question 24: How does God guide us?  

God guides us from within, through the Holy Spirit's prompting of our conscience.  He guides us through the Bible, as we study its teaching.  He guides us through Christian fellowship, the advice of friends, and as we respond to daily events and circumstances.  He guides us particularly as we seek to be imitators of Jesus Christ.   

In this question and answer you can see the four elements of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience intertwined and influencing each other.  And it is by using this "mobile method" of doing theology that sometimes the Methodist Church justifies doing things of which the Bible disapproves.

This is a short, setting-the-record-straight sort of chapter before I go on to give an example of how some Methodists approve of something about which the Bible disapproves quite strongly.  

All the mainline churches in Britain have had human sexuality on their agendas in one way or another since the 1970's.  The Methodist Conference first looked at some of the issues in 1976 and a report was produced in 1979, though it was put on ice by the Conference of 1982 which concluded that "no definitive judgement was yet possible."  A new report was commissioned in 1988, presented in 1990 and came to the Derby Conference in 1992 for decision.  It was a wide-ranging report which covered many aspects of human sexuality, but controversy focussed on its discussion of homosexuality.   

The result of the day-long debate at Derby has itself been controversial.  Some have called it a fudge.  Some have called its six decisions a "delicate balance."  Some have left the Church because they believe that the conclusions mean that we now accept practising homosexuals as ministers in the church.  Some have left the Church because they believe that the conclusions mean that we don't accept practising homosexuals as ministers in the church.  Some have called for clarification, and clarification has been given.  So just to set the record straight I will first list the six points which the Derby Conference agreed:  

1.  The Conference, affirming the joy of human sexuality as God's gift and the place of every human being within the grace of God, recognises the responsibility that flows from this for us all.  It therefore welcomes the serious, prayerful and sometimes costly consideration given to this issue by the Methodist Church .   

2.  All practices of sexuality which are promiscuous, exploitative or demeaning in any way are unacceptable forms of behaviour and contradict God's purposes for us all.  

3.  A person shall not be debarred from the church on grounds of sexual orientation in itself.  

4.  The Conference reaffirms the traditional teaching of the Church on human sexuality; namely chastity for all outside marriage and fidelity within it.  The Conference directs that this affirmation is made clear to all candidates for ministry, office or membership and having established this affirms that the existing procedures of our church are adequate to deal with all such cases.  

5.  The Conference resolves that its decisions in this debate shall not be used to form the basis of a disciplinary charge against any person in relation to conduct alledged to have taken place before such decisions were made.   

6.  Conference recognises, affirms and celebrates the participation and ministry of lesbians and gay men in the life of the church.  Conference calls on the Methodist people to begin a pilgrimage of faith to combat repression and discrimination, to work for justice and human rights and to give dignity and worth to people whatever their sexuality.  

Controversy smouldered after Derby about the relation between points 4 and 6.  The Bristol Conference of 1995 settled the matter by saying what some of us had said all along, that point 6 had to be interpreted in the light of point 4.  This means, simply if not simplistically, that the Methodist Church welcomes those of a homosexual orientation, but that it will not condone homosexual practice.  The plain meaning of the list of resolutions taken together is that if we ask the pointed question about whether or not practising homosexuals should be accepted as ministers in the Methodist Church , the answer given is "No".  Obviously that answer has offended the gay community.  On the other hand, others have doubted if we really mean it and can be trusted to stick by it.  The vast majority of Methodists, as far as I can tell, want to put this matter behind them and get on with other things.   

Personally, I suspect that the real issue all the way through the debate wasn't  human sexuality at all.  The real issue was, I think, either the place of the Bible in the Methodist Church or, more sinisterly, the question of which of our competing groups holds power in the Church.  Without doubt, much of the heat in the debate was because it raised important questions about the authority of the Bible.  But now that I have set the record straight about the Methodist Church and homosexuality, I hope we can have a dispassionate look at some points about the Bible and that particular issue.

There is absolutely no doubt at all that the Bible condemns genital sexual acts between people of the same sex.  The question to ask is - almost needless to say by this point in the book I hope - Does that mean that we should also utterly oppose such practices?  My answer must be - also needless to say by this point I hope - Not necessarily.  

A friend of mine objects to me saying this sort of thing.  He says that he can just about see that there is enough in the New Testament to allow us to remarry divorced people despite the fact that there are some very clear New Testament prohibitions against doing it.  The same is true about women preachers, he says.  But he argues that there is absolutely nothing in the Bible which shows that we could allow gay partnerships.  Condoning same-sex sex, he says, is just going too far.   

But my question to him is, How do we measure what is too far?  Is the eating of blood products going too far?  The Jehovah's Witnesses would say yes it is.  Is worshipping on a Sunday rather than on the Sabbath going too far?  The Seventh Day Adventists would say yes it is.  Is remarrying divorced people in church going too far?  The Church of England, officially at least, would say yes it is.  Is permitting women to preach in church going too far?  Some Independent Evangelical Churches would say yes it is.  Is allowing women to appear in church without hats going too far?  Some Black Churches in Birmingham would say yes it is.  But in all of these examples there are other equally convinced and sincere Christians who would say no, it is not going too far.  The reasons these other Christians will give for saying that approving this or that practice is not going too far will vary from issue to issue, and I have already given examples of some of the reasons in some of these issues in previous chapters.  You will also know, if you think about it, your reasons for thinking that it is not going too far to allow women to go to chapel without a hat or whatever it is.  You are a "mobile" theologian too.  You know that it is nowhere near as simple as saying, "The Bible says ..."  

I am not arguing here that we should be in favour of condoning same-sex sex, nor am I arguing that we should be against.  In fact I am keeping my opinion on the matter firmly to myself.  What I am arguing is that simply saying, "The Bible says" does not settle the matter here, as it does not settle it about the other things.  Of course we must take the Bible seriously, but that does not necessarily mean that specific Bible texts should always have the last word.  You might argue that in this instance they should.  Or you might not.  But you must not necessarily accuse those who say "not" on this one of failing to take the Bible seriously just because they do not accept some specific commands in the Bible.  At least you musn't if, for example, you yourself are a woman preacher or are a divorced person who has been remarried in church or if you eat Black Pudding.  In the same way that you have justified those things you could, though I am not saying you should, justify same-sex sex.   

When I quoted the Black Pudding rule to another of my friends who was saying that because the New Testament forbids homosexual sexual acts then we must forbid them as well, she shouted at me and told me not to be silly.  She said that it is obvious to anyone that the question of eating Black Pudding is nowhere near as important as questions about personal and sexuality morality.  I agreed with her.  But then I had to say that God's people in Old Testament times would almost certainly not have agreed with us, nor would the members of the Council in Acts 15 necessarily have agreed.  It might be obvious to us, but it would not have been obvious to them.  We live in a culture where questions of sexual and personal morality have been much more important than questions about food, though this might be changing now, but they lived in a very different culture.  My friend was reading the Black Pudding texts through the spectacles of twentieth century British culture and Christian experience and concluding that the Black Pudding issue didn't matter very much and the rule could be ignored.  Is that so very different from those who say that the same-sex sex issue doesn't matter very much and the rule can be ignored?  

She has failed to remember that what's good for the goose is also good for the gander.  If she isn't going to take the Black Pudding texts literally, then why should I take too much notice of her if she wants to take the homosexuality ones literally?  She is not being consistent.  If she examines the Black Pudding texts carefully, decides to ignore them and reaches the conclusion that she can eat the stuff, why should she condemn another friend of my mine for not taking the Bible seriously when he examines the homosexuality texts carefully, decides to ignore them and reaches the conclusion that gay partnerships are okay?   

And so we are back to "interpreting" the Bible.  We all do it every time we read the Bible, usually automatically and without noticing that we are doing it.  We read the Bible through our own spectacles, and make decisions about what we read.  We all decide that this text is more important than that, or that we will accept this teaching but not that.  There is, in fact, no reading at all without interpreting.  Those who oppose same-sex sex can argue that those who support it are interpreting the Bible badly, and have come to a wrong interpretation of the texts and of the mind of the Bible on this question.  They may be right to say that.  They may be wrong.  But what they cannot do is to say that they read the Bible as it is whereas the others interpret it.  That is what my friend was saying, and she cannot have her cake and eat it at the same time.  

No matter what the issue is, there is a nettle to be grasped, the nettle of interpretation.  If we grasp it we will sometimes say, "Although the Bible says No, we will say Yes," and even vice versa!  Grasping this nettle is sometimes easy and painless, as when the issues are Black Pudding or suchlike, but some other issues, like same-sex sex, threaten us with a much more painful sting.  

Seeing that we cannot simply read Bible texts straight off but always have to interpret what we read worries some people.  They feel that we are picking and choosing.  They worry that if we don't need to believe this bit of the Bible any more, then it won't be long before we've stopped believing any of it.  I have tried to show in this book that interpretation is an inevitable thing to do and an essential part of taking the Bible as it is seriously.  But folks still worry.  They worry about slippery slopes or the thin end of the wedge.  It is a real anxiety for some people.  We will look at this worry in the next chapter.

"Slippery slopes" and "thin ends of wedges" are very strong sorts of arguments when people are frightened.  And many people today are frightened.  Our world is a frightening place.  Things are changing so fast, old values are going, places we knew and loved have become dangerous, familiar landmarks are no more.  It is no longer safe to go out, or even to stay in.  Crime, unemployment, AIDS, poverty, pollution, war, homelessness, terrorism, mass starvation and so many other terrifying things reach right into our living rooms via the telly.  Chapels are closing, marriages are breaking down and more and more people don't know where to turn.  It's no wonder that people look to the future with dread.  Only an ostrich wouldn't.  

In this frightening world many people look for reassurance, amid all the uncertainties of daily life they look for certainties, for something to hold on to, something firm and solid.  It is natural that Christians should look to their faith to give them this sort of solid certainty. Many Roman Catholics look to the Pope for a clear lead and a definite stand, and in the present hard-line Pope they find it.  Many of the growing churches in Britain today are those churches which give their members a clear lead, either through powerful leaders whose instructions the members follow and obey, or through a fundamentalism which says that the Bible has all the answers and all that you need to do is believe it.  It is no accident that fundamentalism is growing throughout the modern world and in every world faith, giving us Jewish fundamentalists, Moslem fundamentalists and Hindu fundamentalists as well as Christian ones.  And it is the fundamentalists in all faiths who talk most about the dangers of "slippery slopes" and "thin ends of wedges."  

Such talk about "slippery slopes" and "thin ends of wedges" is a symptom of the fear and uncertainty of our difficult world.  At first it sounds very sensible.  If we don't need to believe this part of the Bible any more, then which bits do we need to believe?  Before long we won't believe any of it.  Then where will we be?  But then it starts to falter.  If we don't do what the Bible says about gay partnerships it won't be long before we stop doing what it says about adultery, theft and murder will it?  Does that really follow?  I doubt it.  The fear is understandable, but like most fear it starts to disappear as soon as we face up to it.   

When we face up to this fear about the Bible it only takes two seconds to recognise that slippery slopes and thin ends of wedges are just red herrings.  They do not really exist at all.  Christians have always picked and chosen, observed some Bible instructions and decided to take no notice of others.  There have always been different interpretations of the Bible, and changes in what is thought to matter and what isn't.  There was a huge fuss when some Christians had the nerve to question the teaching of the Bible that slavery was the will of God.  Or when others tried to say that the obedience to the king commanded by the Bible was not the last word for the subject.  For me personally going against the Bible on divorce, Black Pudding and other things has not stopped me from looking to the Bible for guidance on questions of right and wrong. It has not stopped me from firmly believing that the Bible is to be taken with the utmost seriousness in all our decision-making about faith and morality, or from looking for a Biblically-based stance on all moral questions.   

Using the Bible in the way that all the mainline churches do is not easy, but there is no other way to use it with integrity if we are to take the Bible as it is seriously.  Over the centuries Christians have tried to read the Bible seriously, interpret it carefully and prayerfully and come to decisions about what it meant for them there and then.  It has never been a simple matter of believing every text or accepting all the Bible's statements as they stand.  In this process there have always been slip-ups, some very serious, and there have always been Christians who have gone off the rails.  But the Church is still here.  So is the Bible.  

I can understand why people worry about them: but in this case "slippery slopes" and "thin ends of wedges" are just red herrings.

Before we come to the last chapter this is another little interlude to comment on a problem which perplexes some sensitive readers of the Bible - what about the nasty bits?  

Among the nasty bits in the Bible are obviously the gory bits.  There are plenty of these, and not only in the Old Testament either.  These are the bits that the children seem to enjoy best.  Why is it that the most thumbed pages of illustrated Children's Bibles are Sodom and Gommorah getting destroyed by a thunderbolt, the Egyptian soldiers drowning in the Red Sea or King Herod staring at John the Baptist's head on a platter?  Life in those days was often nasty, brutish and short and the old stories of the Bible reflect that.  Which is what you would expect if the writers of the Bible were real people.  

But there are worse parts of the Bible than the gory bits.  There are the really nasty bits - the bits where the Bible applauds horrible things and approves of things that everyone these days knows to be quite wrong or primitive or barbaric.  I am only going to give one example of these and it is from the New Testament.  I could have picked some choice ones from the Old Testament, like the last two verses of Psalm 137, but the one I have picked comes from one of Paul's letters in the New Testament.  Other examples from the New Testament might be the way that it applauds God's capital punishment of Ananias and Sapphira for telling fibs to the Church Council [Acts 5:1-11], or where it approves of slavery [Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22 and Titus 2:9], or even where it insists that wives must be subservient to their husbands [Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Peter 3:1].  

My example is Paul's outburst against Christians who thought differently than he did on the question of whether or not gentile men who became Christians should be circumcised.  In Galatians 5:12 we read,  

"I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!"   

Here is a simple example of a Christian leader who has lost his temper, and whose secretary does not have the sense to miss that outburst out of the dictation he is taking.  Here Paul is extremely angry at people who hold a different view on an issue which he regards as central to the Christian Faith.  And it was a central issue.  If Paul's opponents had won that debate our Christianity today would be a very different thing than it is, if it existed at all.  Here in this verse is someone a long way from loving his enemies and praying for those who were persecuting him.  Here is someone whose outburst we can understand and sympathise with, but here too is a verse of the Bible, out of a letter in which Paul gives advice and instruction to the Christians in Galatia .  

What are we to do with this nasty bit?  Are we to say that this outburst shows that all that we have in the Letter to the Galatians is an all too human Paul giving his opinions to the Galatians, and that if he has thoughts as bad as that it is obvious that we need not take that or anything else he writes as gospel truth?  You could think that: but if you do out goes the baby with the bathwater.  Or are we to say that because this verse is in the Bible, then obviously Paul must be right in what he thinks of his enemies, and God would be happy for Paul to get rid of them in whatever way he could?  You could think that: but you then end up saying that it is okay to be abusive, and how does that square with loving your enemy?  

The nasty bits in the Bible are there.  The people who wrote them might not have thought they were nasty at all: but we do, or some do.  Most twentieth century Christians believe that gratuitous violence is wrong, but it looks as if some of the writers of the Old Testament enjoyed it.  Most twentieth century Christians I know do not believe that wives should be subservient to husbands, but several New Testament writers did.  I call those bits "nasty bits" but the writers would not have seen them that way.  Nowadays we would be rightly considered to be nasty if we held those sorts of views or behaved in that sort of way.  These nasty bits show that the writers were very much people of their time, but who else could they be?  They also show how times have changed.  They show the "human element" in the Bible, God's message earthed in a particular time and place and person.  We do not need to throw the Bible out just because we don't like the nasty bits.  We don't have to say that the nasty bits aren't nasty just because they are in the Bible either.  

Knowing what the Bible is and how it got to us explains how the nasty bits are there.  That and our "mobile theology" explains how we can deal with them.

1  It leads us to beware of the old hymn and to appreciate the new one.  

It is not clear who we are praising in the verse of the Bishop's old hymn,  

            "O Word of God incarnate,

            O wisdom from on high,           

            O truth unchanged, unchanging,

            O light of our dark sky...." 

Friends have tried to convince me that we are praising our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the "Word of God incarnate", and who is our Wisdom, Truth and Light: but I am not convinced.  Whatever the Bishop meant I am sure that many who sing this hymn are praising the Bible as they sing these words, and that seems to me to be the natural way to understand this verse in the light of the three verses that follow it in our hymn book.  If that is so then the Bishop has surely got it seriously wrong, unless he is using gorgeous poetry which is not to be taken literally.  Whichever it is he has left us a dangerous hymn, because it encourages us to worship the Bible itself.   

By contrast Brian Wren's verses are mundane and down to earth,  

            ".... some, remembering the past           

              Recorded what they knew,

            And some, in letters or laments,

              In prophecy and praise,

            Recovered, held and re-expressed       

              New hope for changing days.

 

            For all the writings that survived

              For leaders long ago

            Who sifted, chose, and then preserved

              The Bible that we know,

            Give thanks...." 

Here are helpful verses which celebrate the Bible as it is, appreciate how it has come to us and give thanks for those whose faith created it for us.  

2  It leads us to treasure the Bible but not to idolise it.  

There is no doubt, in theory at least, that the Church down the centuries and Christians everywhere have valued and treasured the Scriptures which their forebears shaped and made.  But from the earliest chapters of the Old Testament we read warnings against worshipping and putting our faith and trust in anything other than God himself.  So I worry when I hear Christians saying that we should believe in the Bible.  I do not believe in the Bible.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  He is the only one in whom I put my faith and trust, and through whom I worship God the Father.  It is only a short step from saying that we believe in the Bible, to putting our trust and faith in the Bible, and so to worshipping it as an idol, which is what the Bishop's hymn nearly does.  I know that some put the Bible in the place reserved for God because they are searching for certainty and others tell them that this can be found in the Bible.  But we have seen, and not only because of the feet of clay, that such trust in the Bible is misplaced.  It will not deliver those goods.  

3  It leads us to recognise that the Bible does not speak for itself.  

The Bible is a huge anthology of books, chapters and verses.  It is so full of all sorts of things that with a bit of ingenuity, some imagination and the help of a computer you can find a text somewhere to prove anything you want to prove and make any point you want to make.  We have seen the danger and absurdity of that approach, and recognised that the business of interpreting the Bible is a demanding one.  The Bible does not speak for itself and it does not speak with one voice.  It speaks in many voices and through many more interpreters.  In fact it never speaks for itself at all!  There is always somebody speaking for it.   There is always the one who has decided to read this passage rather than that or to quote this verse rather than that!  There is always the reader, and every reader is an interpreter.   

We have recognised that interpreting the Bible is sometimes difficult.  It is not always so, but it certainly can be sometimes.  It may be that when we are trying to work through a big issue about belief or morality that our "mobile theology" just won't stay still enough.  Or it may be that other people in the discussion have "picked and chosen" other things from the Bible than we have, and we don't like each other's choices.  It certainly is the case that merely quoting, "The Bible says" is never good enough.   

At times we have debates in the Methodist Conference when Conference is asked to make a specific ruling on a matter of doctrine or practice: but they are relatively rare and Conference does not act as the "Official Interpreter" of the Bible or the Faith very often.  Mostly Conference trusts Methodist ministers, preachers and members to be faithful in their work of interpreting the Bible for themselves and for others, and accepts the inevitability that the interpreter is always there - even when you're reading a Bible passage alone by yourself - and that we will not always agree!  

4  It leads us to be careful about how we talk about the Bible, especially in worship.  

I wonder, for example, how much damage has been done by the Bishop's hymn?  I wonder too about what other damage is done when all sorts of other misunderstandings about the Bible are allowed to continue among us because they are not addressed from the pulpit?      

But here I will confine myself to one tiny protest.  It is at that growing modern habit of saying "This is the Word of the Lord" after every Bible reading.  Has it ever struck you how nonsensical this sounds at times?  I once heard a particularly long and bloody chapter of the Book of Judges read by an American nun.  At the end of it she paused and said - please imagine the inflections - "This (!?) is the word of the Lord (!??!??)".  I said a loud Amen at that honesty.  Using that formula mindlessly is not only seriously misleading but it also fails to take the Bible seriously enough.  There are indeed parts of the Bible which talk about God speaking to people and giving them a message, and those books or chapters do present themselves as the "Word of God" (parts of the books of the Prophets in the Old Testament are the prime example): but not much else in the Bible does.  In my view that formula should be used, if at all, only with care.  

5  It leads us to see that the Bible cannot be the "supreme rule of faith and practice" for Methodists or anyone else.  

Personally, I don't have any problem with the idea that there is a "supreme rule of faith and practice" for Christians.  I have always thought that faith and discipleship was about seeking "the mind of Christ" and doing the "will of God", to pull two Biblical phrases out of the hat.  And as I see it the Deed of Union uses the phrase in this general and helpful kind of way.  What worries me, though, is the way that some people use it makes the Christian life sound like a lifelong Driving Test in which we have to pay constant attention to some religious Highway Code with a heavy-handed Examiner waiting to swoop at our first transgression.  I just do not see life and faith like that.  

When it comes to the relationship between the Bible and the "supreme rule of faith and practice", my reading of the Deed of Union is that our supreme rule of faith and practice is God's revelation of himself to which the Bible witnesses.  This means that we read of that revelation in the Bible, but the revelation is bigger than the Bible.  This means that we cherish the Bible because it contains that revelation and not because it is that revelation.  This means that our "supreme rule of faith and practice" is that vision of God of which the Bible speaks and to which it testifies, that vision of the "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," whose name and nature is love.  This means that the Bible is God's gift to us through his church of old that we might see that vision and be transformed by it.  

But at the end of it all, no matter how much some might want the Bible to be our supreme rule or how much others might need reminding that neither Methodism nor any other sort of Christianity is a free-for-all for those who believe what they want and do what they please, the Bible itself simply cannot be Christianity's "supreme rule of faith and practice" because what it is and how it has come to us rule out using it in that way.