Conservative and Liberals: both in error in their approach to the Bible

*Disclaimer: I completely believe that all the words of the Bible are true and are the authoritative word of God.  (Having said all that, don't forget that Jesus IS the word.)

The Conservative Fundamentalist error:
- Scripture was written down by Moses in ~1400 b.c.
- All texts are to be understood in their very literal form.
- Any correspondence into this point of view is considered heresy.

The Liberal error:
- Most scripture in the Old Testament was written down after the exile, that is after 500 b.c. Some dates even get pushed as late as 140 b.c.
- Since scripture was written down so long after the events were purported to occur, they are really just texts that are made up to serve a political purpose.
- The texts can not be trusted as true, and have no bearing on the God of the universe.

I happen to believe that both of these positions are wrong. The two sides debate off against each other, throwing mud at each other thinking that the others side's agenda drives their scholarship. There is something significant though that is completely missing from the argument. Both sides of the argument are so embedded within a world view of literacy that they can not imagine another world view.

What do I mean by a world view of literacy? 
Let me give some parallel examples from the modern world. Try asking a 10 year old to imagine a world without the internet,  a 40 year old to imagine a world without the television, a 70 year old a world without radio, anybody you know a world without electricity or the car. Each of these people would find it hard to imagine such a concept. A time in the world when these things did not exist being before our lifetimes. There are still people around who speak of a different world so we can consider their claims with wide eyed wonder.

Consider a world without writing. Now such a concept is so much further removed than the birth of the car, electricity, radio, tv or the internet. In fact as we consider such a concept we only know of such a world from books and written records. None of us who comes from a world of literacy can easily imagine a world without writing. The world view of literacy so strongly pervades our thinking that some people draw the conclusion that the world is no older than 6000 years. Writing itself has its birth about 5000 years ago.

What is a world of orality?
The oral world is one where all knowledge is transferred to the next generation through the means of oral stories. Oral cultures have a strong structure to their stories. Their forms are secure and the stories do not get forgotten or lost. Oral languages use hundreds and thousands of elaborate word pictures to explain concepts. These word pictures link together easily in a chain. The story teller does not have to remember a string of hundreds of words, but rather a set of well known word pictures to tell a story.

What connection does the Bible have with orality?
Far more of the Bible is oral than we care to acknowledge. This means that many, many of the early stories were carried in oral form for centuries, even millennia. All of Genesis has its roots in early oral stories. Many of the stories right through the age up to King David are also oral stories. We from a literate world view need to be careful how we respond to this claim. We need to recognise that an oral text is not invalid in anyway. We need to realise that it carried great strength for the people who passed these stories on, more strength than it does for those of use who look the stories up in a book.

What about literary criticism and scholarship claims that the Old Testament was written in the post exilic period?
Peter Enns in his essay for the BioLogos Foundation says that:

...the Pentateuch as we know it is the end product of a complex literary process—written, oral, or both—that did not come to a close until the exile (586-539 BC) and post exilic period...


There are many source texts for the early books of the Bible. I tend to think that originally many of them were oral texts. Through out the history of the people of Israel, many of these stories began to be written down at different times for different purposes. It is hard to determine exactly at what point various texts and stories were written down. This is largely because they were then put through a final editing stage around the time of the exile.


Consider the stories of the Kings. Each time the story closes the chapter on the reign of a king the editor writes:
As for the other events of Solomon’s reign—all he did and the wisdom he displayed—are they not written in the book of the annals of Solomon?  


This is because the writer(s) was working from source documents that recorded the activities of the king, called annals. These are very much like the notes kept in parliaments today. In Esther it talks about scribes, whose full time it was to write down everything that the king did. They had rooms full of documents. It would have been a massive task to put together texts like Kings and Chronicles. The writers basically sifted through the documents and included the highlights and lowlights (as the case may be).

So even if there is a late date of compilation of the old testament, this does not mean that the stories are not a lot older. It does not mean that they are not true.


The liberal error, based in a literacy dominated world view thinks that the stories only came into existence when they were written down. These are the seeds of disbelief. This error is a result of completely failing to understand the world view of orality and a long oral tradition.

The conservative error also thinks that the stories only came into existence when they were first written down. So they therefore must cling to a belief that a great prophet like Moses received the story from God and wrote it down in dictation style. This world view also completely fails to acknowledge the oral world view.

The liberals say "we know that the text was written at a date much later than the conservatives admit, therefore their claims are completely wrong". The fact is though, on one hand many stories are much older than conservatives admit (because they are oral), and on the other hand written down much later.

The controversy comes in most of all with the stories of creation. I have no doubt that these stories were oral tradition for millennia. This is easy to believe because there are many cultures around the world that also have creation stories. The striking thing is that there are many similarities in the other creation stories, from peoples who are removed from the middle east for many thousands of years.

Arguments are made from both the conservative and liberal side on how these stories should be interpreted. But when they are interpreted on an oral spectrum there is much that can be understood even in a scientific sense. I tend to think that the creation story of Genesis 1 says that everything was created from hydrogen. The word for hydrogen in the story is simply water. Read my earlier essay on this topic here.

The Old Testament is all about people interacting with God. Bono explains the purposes of the Old Testament very well:

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you're a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.


 This is an excerpt from the book "Bono on Bono: conversations with Michka Assayas". You can read a portion of the interview here.

It is God's nature to work through people. He therefore does this as much as possible, not as little as possible. The same is true with how the Bible came together. There are many more people involved with the development of the Bible than we will ever know. All of the oral stories come together from the people who were in the midst of the action movie. There is nowhere in scripture that actually says that Moses wrote down all of the pentateuch/ Torah. We are not required to believe this to be a follower of Jesus. But as I said earlier, this does not discount the stories as being holy scripture still.

It should not be surprising that the Old Testament did not come together in its entirety until the post exilic period, the Torah in its current form at a similar time. When the people in the Bible referred to the "law" they were likely referring to the actual legal documents found in Exodus and Leviticus. Deuteronomy repeats much of those two books anyway. It is only a later term of Jews to refer to the law as all of the first five books of the Bible. I had always thought it strange that Genesis would be referred to as the "law".

The New Testament did not come together in its entirety until the fourth century. This does not make it any less true. Conservative Bible scholars readily admit that the New Testament came together in stages. There was a growing and common understanding of what scripture was, but it was only finally defined in the Constantinian era. People in the first century saw "scripture" as all of the Old Testament. People in the pre-exilic period would have seen scripture as a lot smaller, a collection of some stories and some writings. In fact they may not have even seen them as scripture apart from the actual law itself (the legal documents of Exodus and Leviticus). The rest of the stories may very well have been viewed as simply history. (We still view history books today from more recent times as true.)


I would loathe to be labeled as a liberal in my faith for writing this. I very much hold to all of the precepts of God's creation and the gospel and Jesus' death and resurrection. Before some protestants begin to try labelling me as a liberal, please consider what Catholics or Orthodox people would say of protestants. As protestants we do not recognise the apocryphal books of the inter-testamental period as scripture, even though they are true. Catholics and Orthodox people could easily turn around and label us all liberal in the faith for picking and choosing what we consider scripture to be.


The very concept of scripture is connected to the fact that it is (a) preserved from ancient times and (b) is true. The Bible is full of God's interactions with people and people's interactions with God, it is true. It does not need to be subjected to the narrow world view of literacy that says people practically dictated it from God. The Bible firstly went through the filter of messy human lives before it ended up on the pages we have today. The Bible we have today is a result of the intersection in world history between oral and literal cultures.


*(I feel I need to start writing disclaimers these days, in case people misunderstand what I write or say.)

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

My parents in law put this book in my hands a few years ago. It was a sample copy from their book selling business. It never made it on to their distribution line. Perhaps it has too controversial a sounding title?

I started to read it back then, but never continued with it. From my previous posts it is obvious that I have thought about topics of organic and home church for a long time.

More recently I bought Frank Viola's "Reimagining Church" on Amazon Kindle for the iPad. I began to read it, and felt really discouraged. Why? Because I so badly want what is written about in his books, in fact I have even had glimpses and tastes of "organic" or "open particapatory" or house church in my life in the past. But it just feels so impossible for this to happen where I live in Russia right now. I can't imagine any of the Christians I know being interested in organic church. So I put the book down. But I did sign up for Frank Viola's twitter feed. I did this, because he requested to follow me first.

Then Frank tweeted that his book was available on Kindle for $2.99 (it is now $9.99 again), I decided to get it. (I didn't bring many hard copy books here to Russia.) I seem to be a lot more frustrated with my church experience here in Russia, that I was again ready to read it. I also read Neil Cole's "Organic Church" while here in Russia.

One of Frank Viola's recent tweets was a quote: "Once your mind has been stretched it is impossible for it to go back to the shape it once was."  Over the years my mind keeps getting stretched further and further....

I will not give a full review of this book here. What I will do is implore you to read it. Frank Viola and George Barna have done extensive research in backing up their claims in this book. They have hundreds of references in their bibliography and hundreds of footnotes to substantiate their premise.

What is their premise?  That much of the practices we have in the modern institutional church are pagan in their roots and not biblical at all. The book calls us all to authentic worship and expression of the Body of Christ. They are very gracious in their approach towards the institutional church. They have some very important things to say. Everything they say is carefully researched and carefully lines up with scripture.

I know that I need to make a change in my life. I am completely and utterly stuck about how to do this.

I am now on to reading Viola's next book "Reimagining Church", which while full of hope will probably only make me sad about all that I am missing out on in my own Christian walk.

Help me Lord!

Chronicles of the Kings- Lynn Austin

My wife has convinced me to read some of the books she has been reading. Normally I don't read a lot of novels from the Christian book market. I usually find them too tame. The truth is that the evangelical market can be easily offended and therefore the content often strays from the depths of reality.
Anyway, the books that were put into my hand were a series called "Chronicles of the Kings." The author, Lynn Austin has chosen to portray the life of King Hezekiah in fiction. Hezekiah was one of the few kings in the history of Judah to truly honour God and his law. As far as the novels have been concerned (I am reading the third book in a five part series), the over all enjoyment factor for a good read has been reasonable. I guess I would give them a score of 7/10. A couple of things have annoyed me though. The prophets seem rather weak. When Micah came to Hezekiah at the start of his reign he "prophesied" on his academic knowledge of the Torah, rather than by a burning of the Holy Spirit inside of him. This seems to all to easily fit in with an evangelical stream that would rather have the Father, Son and Holy Book, rather than the Holy Spirit. So many evangelicals seem to be afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and it certainly comes through in Lynn Austin's books. Secondly, there is no doubting that these books are written for women, as much of the Christian fiction market is (perhaps why it is seen as impotent by people like me). There are far too many times when the heroine of the story dreams of her love for her man, and of being held in his arms etc. Now this is all very good when these books are mostly read by women, but when is someone going to have the courage to write something a little more palatable for both genders?
Aside from the fictionalisation of the story (which I will not spoil for you) one of Lynn Austin's obvious goals was to get people to pick up their bible's and read the stories of the kings in a new light. This is something I am greatly appreciative to her for. She has put faces on the characters of the bible. This is necessary because the biblical stories are set so far in the past and in such different cultures, that it is often difficult to relate to them. It certainly encouraged me to read the stories of the kings again to get a better context for the story I was reading in a novel.
Lynn Austin manages to make the Assyrians seem rather mean, but not as ghastly as a writer like John Grisham or Steven Lawhead would have the guts to do. But then those writers (Christians as they are) have been given the cold shoulder by much of the evangelical world for publishing in the secular market. It does give the reader a better impression of why Jonah wanted to disobey God when he was called to prophesy to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians.
So, I read the books of 1st and 2nd Kings. I decided to skip Samuel on this occasion, as I know the stories of King David better. A few things stood out to me as I read these books. (I calculated that they would be about 250 pages in normal paper back spacing, but the bible pages are rather thin with tiny type on them.) Firstly, Solomon was at once the biggest success and biggest failure that Israel ever had. It would be fair to say that God has accommodated our mistakes many times in his plans. Solomon is a big example of God doing this.
Let me digress. God never intended for sin to be in the world. But he lovingly decided to give us free choice. When sin entered the garden of Eden, God decided to come up with a salvation plan. Very early on God promised he would send a Saviour, who was yet unnamed. Later on, after many more human mistakes God let the Israelites know that it was his preference for them to not have a king like the other nations, because he wanted to be their King. Yet God showed grace to the Israelites and allowed them to have a king, even though it would be their down fall in the end.
Saul may have been Israel's first king, but David was God's choice for Israel's king. David was a man after God's own heart, yet even he had a lot to learn about God's will. Israel prospered under David. Israel began to fulfil its purpose as a light among the nations. Under Solomon, Israel prospered beyond imagination. Gold was so plentiful in his kingdom, that silver was considered worthless. He kingdom stretched up to the Euphrates river, just as God had promised Abraham. Kings and queens from all over the known world came to Solomon to seek his wisdom and hear where his wealth had come from. Israel was the most prosperous nation in the world under King Solomon.
But Solomon had a fateful flaw. He took on foreign wives. In fact the Torah already gave instructions that a king should not have many wives. It seems that Solomon did not know the law well enough. As Solomon took on 700 wives, many of them to form alliances with other nations, they also brought their foreign demigods. Solomon was tempted into worship of gods other than the true Creator God Yahweh. As he was tempted, he led his nation into the same sins. It was as a direct result of Solomon's sin of idol worship that Israel was split under his son Rehaboam. Rehaboam remained the king of Judah, and Jeroboam (not in the line of King David) became the king of Israel.
So many of the kings of Israel and Judah worshipped idols because Solomon led them into sin. So much of the old testament story is about Israel's struggle with temptation and God's desire for them to be a light to the world. Imagine if Solomon had remained a godly man and had not taken on extra wives. Imagine if his son had been a godly man too. It would stand to reason that a godly son would have inherited his kingdom and not only maintained it, but would have seen it prosper even more. The fame of Israel would have spread even further through out the world. Israel would truly have been a light to the nations. A succession of godly kings that did not take on idol worshipping wives would have made for a very different history.

The second thing that stood out to me, was that God promised that there would also be a son of David sitting on the throne of Judah. God promised that he would reserve a remnant for himself in the nation of Judah for "the sake of David." David is a "type" or a foreshadow of the Messiah Jesus. When God promised that he would do this "for the sake of David" he was in many ways saying he would do this for the sake of his Son, the coming Messiah.
When Jesus was born, he was the last King in the line of David to be born. He inherited the "throne" of Judah. This was declared to the world as he hung dying on the cross under the sign "King of the Jews" (Jew, being a derivative of Judah). Since Jesus rose from the dead, and lives for evermore, he continues to be the King of Judah, of the new spiritual Israel. No nation of Israel or Judah can exist without God's king in place.
Many believed that Israel being established in 1948 was a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecies that the Jews would return to Judah. But it would pay to read the return to Jerusalem in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra as a fulfillment of these prophecies. The modern nation of Israel does not pay any attention to the King in the line of David, therefore they are not the biblical nation of Judah. They are not some special fulfillment of prophecy. They need a saviour just like the rest of us, they need to call on King Jesus.
Reading 1st and 2nd Kings also helped me realise that I have both an earthly and a heavenly King in Jesus. He will return to establish his reign on earth some day. It is clear though, that Israel failed in being the light to the nations that God desired. The nation of Judah was destroyed in AD 70. His plan now is for the spiritual nation of Israel with Jesus as King to be his Light to the nations. But I do not buy into some notion in the middle east having a special part to play in that plan.

To own a Dragon

I just finished reading Donald Miller's latest book "To Own a Dragon: Reflections on growing up without a Father." It was a very enjoyable read. His style is conversational, humorous, honest and touching. His experiences are not the same as everyone and certainly different to my own.

Without a doubt, no one is perfect, no father is perfect, except our Heavenly Father. This was certainly one of Miller's points. He learnt that he could not blame his problems with other men on those men himself, his father left when he was very young. He also learnt that he could not blame any of that on God.

The conclusion I have drawn after reading this book, is that in some ways it is not that hard to be a good father, if you are confident in the love of your heavenly father. The job of a father is simple: be there for your children, listen to them, tell them you love them, play with them, discipline them (but never harshly) and most of all, introduce them to their Heavenly Father.

I said so myself before Abigail was born, that she really belongs to God. My chief responsibility is to introduce her to her Heavenly Father, who she will need to trust for her whole life. So I have started talking to her about this. It has been kind of cute, the first time I brought it up she looked at me with a confused face, but certainly listened. Abigail so far finds it a lot easier to relate to Jesus, who is far more tangible, he did come to earth as a human after all.

Introducing her to her Heavenly Father, does not absolve me of my responsibilities. Rather, I am aware that she will gain her image of a father from me. But as John Mc Murray pointed out in the book, he apologises to his children when he deals with them too harshly or yells at them, as he does not want to distort their image of who God is.

I think this is good advice. Whether you are a father or not, whether you had a father or not, this book is well worth reading. We all have a Heavenly Father who loves us, and this is worth our knowing.

Organic Church- review

This was a powerful book that shows how true transformational churches can happen, in ways outside the traditional church's mindset. Let me highly recommend this book.

In no way can I convey everything that this book speaks about because my mind is swimming with ideas and I am overcome with desire for a different kind of church experience.

The thing that strikes me the most is that there is no reason why any of us can not try this ourselves, today. There is plenty of permission and room to fail. There are many "radical" concepts that deserve to be comprehended and adopted. In a sense they are not that radical because they are things that the church has done in the past, but that very few churches try today.

Radical concept: Jesus is the captain of the team. How many churches have a pastor as the captain of the team? How many churches drop in attendance when the pastor is away, or people remark that they have missed him when he comes back? Imagine if one of these people were on your leadership team- Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa. Would not their personality have a big impact on the way the team works. Now imagine if Jesus were not only present on the team but the captain. Sadly, this is not the case in so many churches.

Radical concept: Do not expect people to come to you. When one successful church planter was asked why so many people had responded to Christ, his response was simple- Show up! The gospel can infiltrate whole networks of people and communities. But so often we expect people to leave their community and join something else when they believe. Imagine a church starting up inside a network of people who already exist, a ready made church appears very quickly as people respond to Christ.

Radical concept: New believers are capable of leading others to Christ, Baptising and Discipling. The traditional church behaves as if someone needs plenty of training first before they are capable of leading anything of significance. This has happened time and time again in the movement mentioned in the book. New believers lead their friends to Christ and baptise them, themselves and a church starts somewhere in their network of friends, be it a home, coffee shop or sports club- a location that their network already existed in.

There are many more radical concepts in the book, but I wanted to put just a few teasers our there for you. These ideas are bound to upset people in the traditional church, especially people who want to hold tightly to their church buildings. But I think that the church needs to be set free from the four walls that restrain it, and be let loose on a needy and waiting population. For the skeptic, let me say that the organic church movement has grown to 700 churches in 32 countries in 6 short years, with 10 000 people already a part of it. It is a revolution that has only just begun. Where as many mega churches will max out around 10 000- 700 small organic churches have exponential potential in their coming growth.

Why not start a church on your street today!

Organic Church continued

The first third of the book was very powerful, full of passion, exciting stories and evidence that a new approach to church planting is needed. The book is 230 pages long, but I feel that it really should have been 130 pages. I have no problem reading a book that is worth reading, but I do have a problem reading dead weight. The first 70 pages are action packed, the last 160 pages should be stripped in half.

I am labouring through and hope to have something more exciting to share soon. The problem is that the book is self published, no one told the guy to make it more palatable.

Organic Church

When I was younger I used to preach, "you say you want a revival, well good, God is not looking for a revival, he is looking for a revolution, a revolution of the heart and mind." It was like a prophecy. A prophecy that I did not fully understand. Over the years at different times I have thought that I understood what these words meant, and then, it slipped away again.

I was part of the embryonic forms of the emerging church movement back in Australia. I sat under the tutelage of Alan Hirsch for 6 years. I now think that many of the ideas people were throwing around in our community were a yearning. A yearning for what church is supposed to be. We all knew something was wrong with the church. The western church is gasping for air.

We knew that church was supposed to be about community. But some how, we inadvertently missed how much it is supposed to be about Jesus. It was like it was "on the tip of our tongues" but just not articulated well enough. As a community a church plant was attempted in the form of a restaurant. Sadly that went bust. But that is ok, I don't think God wanted people to come to that restaurant anyway.

I was also involved in a different church plant during those years. It lasted about 18 months in total, and then failed. We were trying to aim at community too, but some how we were still using old paradigms to attempt this.

I have just picked up a book called "Organic Church" by Neil Cole. Four chapeters into the book I already find myself saying "I want what they have, that is they way church is supposed to be." I don't want to go back to what I know church to be either.

Let me just throw out a few of my thoughts so far. These are not all well articulated yet as I am still reading the book and my thoughts are in process. But this is a MUST READ I can tell you. Please pick it up and tell me what you think.

Here are my thoughts and some quotes from the book (the quotes are from my head and so could be a bit paraphrased), these come from a Skype chat I was having earlier today:

me:
i am reading a very radical book at the moment and LOVING it
it is called "the organic church" by Neil Cole
in six years their movement have planted over 700 churches in 23 states and 31 countries

reply:
sounds good

me:
their church sounds so attractive, i want what they have, and a hole in my mind has been revealed about what i always thought was wrong with the church
i used to say to people "God does not want a revival, he wants a revolution"

reply:
that is?

me:
i always wanted to know exactly what that meant, and some times i have thought i knew, but i think this is the revolution God wants

reply:
God wants peoples hearts

me:
first: Jesus is not first in the church
people are playing church, building their own kingdoms and physical buildings

a few quotes:
"we lowered the bar on church and raised the bar on discipleship"
"delay your building project for 300 years"
"lives transformed and conversions are part of our ongoing experience on a weekly basis"
"i bumped into someone in the next street who had just started a new church, which happens to be in our same movement"
"he was converted before we even got to the "message" but then intimate fellowship with God and each other IS the message right?"

they have churches in parking lots, pubs, and even one started up in a strip club for the women who were working there, even though it would eventually move out of that location
churches are usually not larger than 15 or 20 people, not because there is a limit or anything, but because they are constantly reproducing
and it has naturally spread overseas
they wanted to start a coffee shop, when God spoke to him and said no, just go and spend time at the local coffee shop
they went there many evenings with their small team
played chess, checkers and dominoes with the regulars
just shared their lives and prayed for their new friends in their difficulties
then at home they would fervently pray for those new people they had met
their early meetings were almost entirely singing and prayer
someone asked, "when new people keep coming will they be uncomfortable if we keep praying for them?" they decided not to stop and people were convicted by the Holy Spirit

it just kept growing

i have long thought home church is the way to go, but he points out the essentials of how it should work, and does not say it HAS to be in the home, it can be anywhere

response:
but I think it sounds like what christianity is supposed to look like and what was
looked inviting
at early church

me:
but there are no real rules
just jesus, really

response:
isnt that it all of it

More later.