Inspired? Yes. Absolute and final... maybe not.

There's a billboard along I-29 that you can see driving north from Grand Forks toward the Canadian border. I see it about once a week or so when we make the trip down to the "big city," and it reads like this: "The Holy Bible: Inspired. Absolute. Final."

There's one thing I like about this sign--well, maybe two things. I like that somebody cares enough to put the Bible on a billboard; it sure beats other things that people are selling. And I like that they use the word: "Inspired" rather than "inerrant," though I'm a little worried that, to the people who put this up, they mean the same thing. But if I'm being honest I also must admit that putting this on a billboard opens us up to other billboards, like these (put up by atheist groups):

I mean... if the Bible is absolute and final those second category of billboards seem to have a point. The language we use to talk about God's word is so important, because if we use phrases like absolute and final we think we are suggesting that the Bible is above criticism, being God-inspired as it is, but it also means that we are bringing some massive assumptions to the reading of holy scripture, namely that one verse is as true as all others and interpreting one verse--or one story, or one idea--in the context of others is pointless. After all, that's what "final" means, isn't it? So we're left shouting one Bible verse, while others shout others. If we've already decided that the Bible is absolute and final, then why even think, why even read? Nobody is listening--why would they?--because they have the absolute and final authority.

That first billboard I see on a regular basis has Psalm 119:89 quoted in the lower right-hand corner, which I find mildly troubling.

Psalm 119:89 reads,
"The Lord exists for ever;
   your word is firmly fixed in heaven" (NRSV)

OK, that's fine. I get it. You're pointing out that scripture seems to say that the word is eternal, but let's stop for a second and consider why you are putting this verse on your billboard. It seems to me that you are more concerned with showing that your Bible is perfect and absolute than you are with telling people about God... or Jesus... or anything else. I'm sure that you feel like this will lead people to eventually discover that the Bible is a book about Jesus, but why not just come out and say that? Why do we feel the need to first establish the perfection of the biblical witness before actually confessing what the Bible leads us to believe? This feels like worshiping the Bible, which is just another form of idolatry.

But it also shows a lack of comprehension of the biblical word. "The Lord exists for ever," writes the Psalmist. Absolutely. Terrific. "Your word is firmly fixed in heaven." Mmm.. yes... now that one requires some context. I realize that those who hold to this absolute and final understanding of scripture are likely to stop reading here, because they are going to hear any attempt at contextualizing to be a kind of squishy critical reading of scripture that they find inappropriate or maybe even sacrilegious, but I wonder how you can get to that belief without an a priori assumption about what scripture is saying. How can any of us know that the Bible is absolute and final without getting that information from the Bible? And if we're going to get that from the Bible, then we sure better be reading it thoroughly and well.

In this case, when I read that God's "word is firmly fixed in heaven" it immediately brings to mind John 1, "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was with God... and the Word was God," which not only gives the 119th Psalm some depth; it also places it more clearly in the wider brush strokes of the Bible's ultimate purpose, which seems closer to being the cradle that holds Christ than a perfect, inerrant accounting of history. In the Gospel of John the Word is clearly and unashamedly Jesus. This doesn't mean that the Psalmist had Jesus in mind when he wrote the 119th Psalm--being only human, how could s/he?--but, if we're being honest that all of scripture is God-inspired, as I believe that it is, then it is perfectly acceptable to read this verse from the Psalms in the context of John 1. God need not work linearly as humans do, so why should we treat God's written word as if it must?

So, then we come to the real matter here. If God's word is Jesus, then the 119th Psalm isn't talking only about a book but about the Word incarnate. This echoes Hebrews 13:8 in that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." We have to ask ourselves the question: "Do we have faith in the Bible, or in Jesus?" Of course, we need not necessarily make it an either-or choice. The Bible could be absolute and final as well as the cradle that holds Christ, but if we're going to get there let's at least come to it looking for Jesus, rather than biblical perfection. Or, better still, maybe we should just come to the Bible with arms wide open taking whatever it may give us--challenging though it may be. If the Bible is God-inspired it should free us to read everything openly--not cause us to tighten our grip on what we already know to be true. Instead, we can come to it trusting that what is there is sufficient for faith--not sufficient for a perfect understanding of God (good luck with that one!), but sufficient for faith.

See, the problem is that God's Word may never change, but our ability to perceive what is God's word certainly does. The Bible is part of that picture, but if we conflate the two: God's word and the Bible; and we honestly believe that that is all there is to God's word--that it is absolute and final--we are bringing an assumption to scripture that scripture itself does not hold. We are also, by the way, limiting God's ability to speak anything new to us today if God's word truly is done and complete.

Rather than bringing those assumptions to the Bible we should do something radical: just read it. Read the parts you don't like and the parts you do. Read for context and for clues as to what the authors intended, but acknowledge that we don't know and, in part, it doesn't matter, because what the biblical authors intended never captures what God is doing with those words. Divine words are playful, elusive, and, above all, they challenge us. You can either run from that challenge, coming to scripture with ideas that it is "absolute" and "final," or you can dive into scripture without any presumptions of what you will find. It's hard, but so is faith, and the only guarantee is that you will find yourself deeper into whatever God's word is. Still, I think that's exactly where God would have us be.