I was listening to Fresh Air on npr yesterday . . .
side note: how many times do you hear that from a Bible-belt Evangelical Christian? Yes, I like npr - that liberal snore of a radio station, which I think is often enlightening and almost always very interesting, even when I don't agree with the running commentary at the moment.
Anyway, I was listening to Terry Gross interview Bart Ehrman - chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and most recently the author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. This little book of his "explores how scribes -- through both omission and intention -- changed the Bible (see npr synopsis of the Fresh Air interview and book description here)."
His little discussion was interesting, but what really made me go "huh?" was when he started talking about how he lived most all of his life as an Evangelical Christian but in the last few years had decided he no longer chooses to believe the lies and has become a "happy agnostic." However, he never really said why he no longer believes there is a god (or perhaps the more correct definition would be that he believes it is impossible to know whether there is a god). Instead, he backed up this statement by talking about no longer believing that the Bible as we have it today is the infallible Word of God. To me, that's quite a difference, especially as he continued saying that he believes the teachings in the Bible to be truths that we are right to follow. I really wanted to call him up and ask how he made the jump, but it wasn't a live show.
I recognize that people can claim discrepancies in Bible and even make cases for mistranslations and misinterpretations. I can even stretch on out there and say that if someone doesn't believe that the Bible we have today is the infallible word of God he can still be a Christian. The Bible was written by men. Men are not infallible. Unless the Holy Spirit placed all the original writers and then all the succeeding scribes in trances so that they were just puppets holding quills moved by the hand of God himself, there could possibly be the slightest bit of room for the slim chance of an error or modification. In my mind, there's nothing wrong with that line of questioning, or questioning in general. I've questioned quite a bit, especially in the past years, and it has helped to solidify my faith. However, I feel bad for the man who seemingly was let down when he decided that our current scriptures may not be as they were originally and may disagree with each other in different places and from this had to leap to the conclusion that it must therefore be impossible to know if God exists or not.
Dr. Ehrman claims that unlike most agnostics, he is a "happy agnostic" - content in his belief that it's impossible for him to ever know if there's a god, much less take the opportunity given to him to actually get to know God. He may think he's happy, but that saddens me.
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2 comments:
Great Post.
I like NPR too! I guess there's two of us down here.
I agree that "happy agnostic" seems like an oxymoron.
I also agree that the Bible is not God. While it may be an authoritative witness (Karl Barth's term) to who God is, it is a picture mirror of God and not actually him. It's ok if men wrote it and perhaps they fell asleep copying it and forgot a word, or tried to help in the translation by adding a phrase.
I took a class in textual criticism in Seminary and we looked at lots of passages that have problems. But the class really proved to build my faith not weaken it. It is incredible that we have an ancient document like the Bible with as few scribal errors as it has. It's amazing that it has been preserved like it has.
This careful preservation speaks to its value to the writers and copiers.
It's sad that this man allowed this to happen.
I just want to know why he made that leap. It seems that someone of his position, who has studied the Bible and religion all his life and is now respected enough to chair a religion dept at a major university, would not equate a book with a deity. I think there must be other reasons. No matter what they are, I feel bad for him. But I still wonder...
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