AN IMPOSSIBLE BIBLE? Review by Joe Beach

AN IMPOSSIBLE BIBLE?   by Joe Beach

I recently read a book that I just couldn’t put down. Book lovers know what I mean.  You glance at a book, you pick it up, peruse it, start reading it, and simply cancel all other reading until you’ve finished. Worse, when you do finish, you’re, sort of, sad that it ends – the same way you feel at the end of a great movie or a great meal.  Sometimes, though, these same books (or movies or meals) surprise you by being somewhat uncomfortable at first. Later, you end up enjoying them – even if you’re still not totally “sure” about what you think. 

That book was Christian Smith’s, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. You can probably already tell that I liked the book and, for the most part, agreed with its proposal. You can also probably tell, from the subtitle of that book, that Dr. Smith’s book is a critique and that the target of his critique is something called “Biblicism.” The subject of this book is, obviously, the Holy Bible – the Holy Scriptures of the Christian Church – and how we should read it. 

Before I get back to Smith’s book and to my reaction to it, I should introduce you to Dr. Christian Smith. He is, admittedly, a sociologist trying to help theologians (especially evangelical theologians) think about the nature of Scripture and all of its surrounding doctrines: divine inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, etc.  It’s interesting, to say the least, that Dr. Smith would be so passionate about helping evangelicals. I say this because he, admittedly, recently converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Christian Smith (PhD, Harvard University) is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the author of the famous study about teenagers and young adults in America: “Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults.” In that study, he asserted that many of our young people practice the same form of religion that many of their parents do: a distorted version of the Christian faith he coined, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” That’s for another discussion, though. Let’s get “Back to the Bible.” 

I can attribute my early discomfort to only one thing. I must have had a bit too much “Biblicism” still in my system. When Smith defined “Biblicism,” I found myself thinking, “yes, and your point?” More than once, I had the thought, “Well, Dr. Smith, this is nothing that a little (skilled) hermeneutics can’t fix.” Hermeneutics (the art and science of how to interpret the Bible) has been my passion and my love for three decades – and I’ve always thought (with only a little tongue in my cheek) that the problem with people who disagreed with me was that they just weren’t very good at Hermeneutics. Sometimes, this was indeed the reason - some people aren’t very good at it. But, Dr. Smith kept hammering away at me. He forced me to recognize that there must be many interpreters out there who are equally skilled as I am (or, more likely, better than I am) that reach opposite conclusions on almost every issue (including both major and minor ones). I had to reluctantly accept that I couldn’t blame every disagreement between others and myself on “those people” being bad interpreters (although I wanted to). Smith calls all of this “disagreement” between equally good interpreters: “Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism.” He uses this descriptive phrase throughout his book and points to it as one of Biblicism’s incurable diseases or, more seriously, one of its insurmountable (impossible) obstacles.

I attended an “evangelical” college and seminary in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Not only was I a “systematic theology” major in seminary, my mentors were leaders in the “inerrancy” debates and major participants in the 1978 “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” To this day, I love, admire, and respect my two main theology professors. All I’d like to say here is that I am convinced that if Smith’s book had been published thirty years ago, it would have been – instantly and vehemently - lambasted as nothing more than a “liberal attack on God’s Word.” Smith, however, is quite clear on this (and I believe him) when he asserts “I am no theological liberal.” He makes it crystal clear throughout the book that he is, in fact, quite skeptical of theological liberalism as a project. In his introduction, for instance, he writes:

“I would go so far as to agree with J. Gresham Machen that theological liberalism is not one particular branch of Christianity; it is rather a very different religion from Christianity.”

He argues throughout the book, however, that in reading the Bible, we have more than two viable alternatives (biblicism vs liberalism). He argues passionately for a third option. Unfortunately, I fear, his book may still have more than a few “liberal” tags slapped on it by critics. This would be unfortunate, indeed, because (in my humble opinion) his critiques and proposals could very well help the evangelical church move out of some of the many embarrassing cul-de-sacs in which it finds itself. He, too, is worried about this possible reaction. He writes:

“Slapping the ‘liberal!’ label on others is still a knee-jerk reaction of many evangelicals against any argument that on first glance does not seem identical to or more conservative than their own position. This tendency has much more to do with the sociological process of maintaining safe identity boundaries and avoiding truly challenging intellectual engagements than it does with sustaining Christian faith with appropriate confidence, integrity, and trust in God. In any case, I deny any attempts to label the argument of this book ‘liberal.’”

I should, now, summarize the book itself. Smith divides the book into two parts. The first half of the book contains his description and critique of “Biblicism.” The second half contains his proposals for an alternative approach to Scripture that, he thinks, may provide the evangelical church a way forward. In the first half, he begins by defining “Biblicism” as he is using the term. This is the uncomfortable part that I referred to earlier. His description, on my first reading, contains beliefs and assumptions that seemed more familiar to me (and more self-evidently true) than my grandma’s homemade cookies.  I’ll let you read them for yourself but they all deal with common “evangelical” assumptions about the Bible such as: every word in the Bible is identical to God’s own words, that those words reveal God’s will on just about everything, that any reasonable person can interpret the Bible by themselves, that we don’t really need to rely on creeds and church traditions, that every detail of scripture fits together with every other detail and that (if read correctly) leads to a clean systematic theological system and, finally, that we can then apply these truths and systems to all people at all times in all places.

Throughout the first section of the book, Smith goes to great lengths to prove that the “pervasive interpretive pluralism” within the evangelical church makes Biblicism IMPOSSIBLE. By this he means that the myriad of positions and opinions on almost everything – including both major and minor issues and doctrines – prove that the Bible simply cannot be read as Biblicists attempt to read it. In other words, Smith argues that the Bible cannot be read that way because it was not given to us for those purposes. He points out - over and over again - that we must take the Bible as it is, i.e. at face value, on its own terms, and as it was actually written, edited, compiled, collected, and canonized. In other words, his main complaint against Biblicism is its refusal to receive God’s written word as God (in his sovereign providence) chose to give it to us.

This raises the question: “how did God, then, give us the Bible?” Smith devotes the second half of his book to answering this question. He argues that God (obviously) did not give us a Bible to be used in the way that “Biblicism” uses it. In other words, Biblicism, according to Smith, demands something of Scripture that it was never designed to provide. Holy Scripture was never given to us by God, or inspired by God (a doctrine that Smith never questions), to answer every “how to” question of life or to provide the “correct” answer to every theological/moral/ethical/political question or issue. Instead, Smith argues, the Bible’s God-given purpose was to witness to Jesus Christ. The Bible, from beginning to end, is a grand epic narrative that leads to Christ, is centered in Christ, and proclaims the good news of Christ - including his birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, present reign on the throne of his kingdom, and his return to establish heaven on earth in the new creation. This GOSPEL, Smith asserts, is the Bible’s infallible message. The entire Bible, therefore, is God’s written Word or, better, his divinely ordained and inspired WITNESS to THE WORD – Jesus Christ - the Word of God made flesh. The Bible, when viewed this way, is not a “how to” book. It is more of a “HERE IS WHO!” book:

 “First and foremost it tells everyone: HERE IS WHO Jesus Christ is and therefore HERE IS WHO you are and need to become in relation to him.” (emphasis mine). 

I think Smith is on to something special. He argues persuasively that this Christocentric approach to reading Scripture – this emphasis on the euangelion (the good news, the gospel) – is a more truly evangelical reading of Scripture. It makes sense. If the very word (evangelical) is based on being gospel-centered, then why not read the Bible that way? Why, he asks, would evangelicals (ironically and tragically) “turn the inspired and truthful witness to the good news into merely a holy handbook to help people live more manageable lives?” He goes on: 

“The Bible – however highly it is lauded in theory – easily becomes in Biblicism a tool in human hands to facilitate the kind of secure, stable, and therapeutically satisfying lives we wish to live.”

Smith argues that we do the same thing with doctrinal issues – using the Bible to build and defend our own theological opinions, camps and systems. On a large scale, you can see how Biblicism has led to thousands of denominational differences, battles, and divisions. On a smaller scale, and I’ve seen this often in twenty-five years of pastoral ministry, you can see how Biblicism can lead individuals to come up with all sorts of strange conclusions about “what the Bible clearly teaches.” In my experience, the men and women who have suffered the most pain and suffering in their own lives (and in those around them) have been those who decided to “read no man” other than the Bible and to rely solely on their own “private interpretations” of Scripture. This is the sad (but logical) conclusion of Biblicism.

 Smith never gives the impression that his proposals will end all denominational differences or eliminate the many different “flavors” of Christians and churches around the world. Likewise, he doesn’t seem to believe that he has come up with an exhaustive list of proposals or a thoroughly developed alternative to Biblicism. Indeed, several of Smith’s proposals are, by his own admission, merely embryonic and suggestive. Furthermore, he does not give the impression that if we make a substantial move out of Biblicism, we evangelicals will never have to work out complex and difficult issues. His hope, instead, in his own words, is:

 “…that, by becoming more genuinely evangelical with regard to the Bible, evangelicals might in time together find themselves living in a postbiblicist, Christ-centered, theologically orthodox world – a good and necessary thing all the way around.”

 

Comments

[Russ Hewett]

I used a few quotes from this book recently when speaking to a room full of evangelical and charismatic ministers to illustrate the futility of seeking unity or limiting fellowship with one another based on doctrinal agreement.
Peter, James & John extended the "right hand of fellowship" to Paul when they recognized the grace given to him, (Galatians 2:9) not because they agreed with him. (See Galatians 2:11) Seeing God's grace at work in another is reason enough to have fellowship with them.
Great book! Highly recommended.

[Idrian]

"Christ-centred" struck me there.