What is Scripture and sacred writing?
Many religions appeal to sacred writings or Scriptures such as the Vedas, Upanishads, Koran, Bible and so on. There are different views about if and how such Scriptures and their writers were inspired or God-breathed and how much, if at all, this causes such writing to overcome errors and mistakes. For some, such as Fundamentalists, these Scriptures form THE Authority for faith and conduct. The writers are seen as inspired by God’s Spirit, and since God is seen as perfect, then God’s Word is also seen as perfect, as inerrant. The Scriptures are God speaking directly to us through his enlightened people, and therefore authoritative.
Looking at the Bible as an example, we find it contains a mixture of biography, accounts of history, portions of teaching, portions of revelation and sections consisting of codes and laws. These accounts were often written by the ruling priestly class, and subsequently edited and modified by subsequent generations of this class. The historical and biographical accounts are written often by the victorious nation and class, and serve to act as means of propaganda. The Bible is made up of books, letters, gospels and revelations that were selected from a much wider range of literature in circulation at the time. Those who selected these particular writings to the exclusion of others were leaders of an orthodox or proto-orthodox movement within this wider range of beliefs and practices in the early church. They were seeking a unity of practice and belief, but this unity, this orthodoxy and orthopraxy is actually false. It is divisive: condemning alternative ideas and practices as heretical and the practitioners as apostates and heretics. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy has seen many a pilgrim burned at the stake or tortured in Inquisition. It is oppressive: suppressing and repressing those ideas and people which it sees as heretical. Thus books and people are condemned to be burned or otherwise destroyed in the name of unity.
To maintain orthodoxy, it is usually claimed that the body of Scripture is complete: no more letters, books, revelations or anything else is to be added to this finished set of writings. In this way, new, novel or alternative ideas and theologies are consigned as being heresies that are flawed and erroneous and their proponents are declared to be heretics, schismatics and deluded. The watchword is ‘To the Law and testimony!’ or ‘To the Law and Prophets!’. As James Barr points out in his book ‘Fundamentalism’ (SCM Press) this leads to a frozen, fossilized and stagnant theology; a set of ideas that at the time were relevant and vital to the society to which they were presented but which are increasingly out of date. It leads to a restricted and limited set of forms and ideas concerning the Divine. Yet despite these limitations, the Scriptures are capable of a wide range of interpretations and a wide range of meanings as different emphasis and weight is given to different passages. This is why Protestantism, despite a common base of the Bible as Word of God, soon fragmented into so many different movements and factions.
I have illustrated some problems with Scripture using the Bible as an example, because Christianity is the religion that I know best. A more detailed treatment of these issues for the Bible can be found at: http://leavingchristianfundamentalism.blogspot.com/ I am sure that similar questions can be asked of the Scriptures from other traditions.
But we may ask deeper questions of Scripture: How for example did the Apostle Paul know what he did about God? His writings may form part of Scripture, but where did he get his authoritative knowledge? This is a question that we can ask of wider Scriptures too: How did Mohammed obtain authoritative spiritual knowledge? How did the writers of Upanishads know what they did about God? Laying aside biographies, historical accounts, poems and psalms and some laws and codes, how did these writers know about the hidden, invisible things of God? What gave them authority to speak on these spiritual matters? Did they sit down and rationally think through some issues and come to these conclusions? Did they come up with ideas of their own that seemed reasonable and logical? Did they learn these ideas and theologies from others? Returning to the Bible again, the Apostle Paul tells us the source of this authority himself: ‘the gospel I preached is not something I made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation.’ (Galatians 1 v 11,12). Similarly John, author of Revelation: ‘[God] made it known by sending his angel to his servant John who testifies to everything he saw…..on the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice….’ (Revelation 1 v 1,2, 10).
The basis of some of the Bible and of much of the worlds Scriptures is personal revelation – a direct and immediate communication from the Divine. The Bible is not all the revelation that God has given, as some fundamentalists claim. The Corinthian church for example had people speaking in tongues and prophesying, but we are not told what they said. Neither are we told directly what God revealed to the Apostle Paul…we only receive some of the content indirectly through his teaching in his letters. I also note that many revelations recorded in various collections of documents like the Apocrypha and Gnostic gospels, have been excluded by orthodox leaders who used at least in part, spurious reasons for this exclusion. I am just noting for now that the teaching contained in much of the New Testament of the Bible and other Scriptures arises from immediate revelation, and I will return to this theme of direct revelation later.
A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH
Each Pilgrim has their own unique individual spiritual path and Scriptures may or may not be profitable, according to whether or not the path of that Scripture is close to the individual Pilgrim’s or not, whether it runs parallel to their own path or not. Reliance on Scripture is a move to extrinsic spirituality – that is, a dependence upon external means – with its risk of the imposition of codes and disciplines and the resulting burden and oppression of this. All Scriptures are regarded in same way: Koran, Bible, Upanishads, Gnostic gospels and so on. We should be wary of those who follow Scripture in a fundamentalist sense recognizing how these different but inflexible interpretations cause schism, debate and division. We should not reject Scripture, nor demand allegiance to a set of Scriptures, but we may find that some Scriptures are helpful. Of course, not all Scriptures say the same thing, and I will address this issue as we go on.
Tags: Bible, Koran, New testament, old testament, orthodoxy, Qu'ran, religious authority, revelation, Sacred texts, sacred writing, scripture, Upanishads, Vedas
