Chris

Indeed.

Faith based on Bible writers’ apparent knowledge of science beyond their natural ability is no faith at all. Perhaps some of them had divine insight into the mechanics of the universe, perhaps they didn’t. It really doesn’t matter.

The Bible is interested, above everything else, in asserting that the God who made the world desires to be in relationship with the people he made to care for it, but went rogue. The developing means of entering into such a relationship are set out in a series of covenants between God and, at first, one family, then later, a whole nation and now, the entire world. The present covenant is the one in which people disciple themselves to the way of Jesus. Such people are called Christians and the collective noun for them is the Church.

The only really important questions are whether the God described by the Bible writers is trustworthy and true, and whether the way of life taught by Jesus and made possible by his life, death and resurrection, works as a means of bringing people into relationship with God and to a new life in what Jesus called the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. My confession is that God is trustworthy and true, and that the way of Jesus is too. Whether we can use the Bible to do science and history, in the way those things are understood by the modern mind, is an interesting topic to me, but it’s a side issue and not the source of my faith.