Bible Stories

It is not always easy to handle problems in the Bible which are posed by modern knowledge. This is particularly so since difficulties usually reflect the larger problem of how to hold together differing attitudes to authority and knowledge. In modern thought we generally work ‘from below’ and only affirm those things which can be tested within the framework of ordinary human experience. This differs from an approach which accepts knowledge ‘from above’ — accepting the validity of revelation from God. It is vital to hold these two approaches together. Christians believe in one God who is sovereign over all life. This means that all truth comes from him. And so ultimately truth revealed and truth discovered will not be in conflict. But in practice to hold these approaches in the right tension is not easy.

One position sometimes adopted is to allow that the Bible is true in its moral and religious teaching but unreliable on matters of history and science. This is dangerous since it is precisely in the real world that God’s revelation is given. We can remove any possible conflict with the historian or scientist only by discounting what gives the faith its significance — the belief that God has truly and decisively entered into the realm of space and time.

There is no way we can remove all possible conflict. In practice, however, most of the famous conflicts turn out not to be conflicts at all. It is often (though not always) a defective understanding of what the Bible is saying that causes the problems. That is, the issue tends to be less to do with reliability than with interpretation.

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