An Appreciation for the Enduring Value of Scripture
How many translations of the Bible do you have in your home? How often do you read it?
According to LifeWay Research, “Americans treat reading the Bible a little bit like exercise. They know it’s important and helpful but they don’t do it.”[1] This has resulted in a significant decline in biblical literacy, not just in the culture at large, but also in many churches.
Kenneth Briggs, in The Invisible Bestseller notes, “Widespread ignorance and neglect of [the Bible] is a recipe for . . . distortion and abandonment of basic beliefs and practices . . . The future of Christianity seems dependent in no small measure on whether that bible storehouse of creation accounts, history, law, prophecy, morality, poetry, story, witness and miracle is the soil in which churches will be built––or not.”[2]
In contrast to our abundant access to God’s word, throughout Church History, Christians have sometimes struggled to gain access to Scripture. For some, especially around the time of the Protestant Reformation, access to the Bible was worth one’s wealth and even life itself.
Wycliffe
John Wycliffe first translated the New Testament into Middle English in 1380.
In 1408, with support from Archbishop Arundel, a synod at Oxford forbade people from reading Wycliffe’s Bible.[3]
Those who were caught reading the Bible were liable to forfeiture of their worldly goods. But the price of renting a Wycliffe Bible for an hour every day for daily reading was a load of hay–-a significant payment for a farmer living near subsistence. People would pay a high price for a privilege that could cost them everything.
A man named John Bale “as a boy of eleven watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord’s prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records. . . seven [disciples of John Wycliffe] burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.”[4]
These people saw the enduring value of Scripture and it cost them their lives.
Tyndale
On October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake.
Tyndale’s crime? Translating the Bible into English and importing it into his home land. His desire? That the King of England would allow the people access to the Bible in their own language.
He was arrested and executed by the King of England for having the courage to bring God’s Word from the original languages to the people. His hope was for their salvation and spiritual maturity. When a Roman Catholic scholar argued him at dinner, saying, “We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s.” Tyndale responded: “I defy the Pope and all his laws . . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”[5]
Tyndale died to bring Scripture into the common language. People paid big money to rent a copy, because it was so precious. People were starving for access to God’s Word.
But we have no such limitations. We have extra copies of the Bible to give away. That Bible is written in common language and offered at about an eighth-grade reading level. There are free translations of the Bible available online through Apps that you can download onto your mobile devices.
And Bible study tools? There are free websites that offer searchable Bibles that pastors and teachers could have only dreamed of in decades past.
We have an embarrassment of riches, but we don’t take advantage of them because we have Netflix and cable and podcasts and everything else that can keep us from God’s word. Our problem isn’t an access problem, it’s a value problem.
We often don’t properly act on the enduring value of Scripture. Even when we have Scripture, we don’t treasure it.
Enduring Value of the Content of Scripture
One common dismissal of Scripture’s authority in ethical debates is that it is an ancient book that doesn’t speak to today’s problems. Why should we listen to a book that was written a few thousand years ago? Isn’t the Bible just a regressive Bronze Age Book?
As an ethicist, this is one of the most common arguments I come across. Non-Christians make it to explain why they dismiss Christians without even listening. Theologically liberal Christians made the same argument when they ignore the parts of Scripture they don’t like and use other parts to support the sorts of ethics that they prefer.
And, lest I be unfair, I’ve heard people who claim to be theologically conservative skip or minimize the passages they find inconvenient while highlighting the stuff they like. Some like to celebrate that Scripture affirms private property rights, but they sometimes ignore the radical generosity toward the poor that Scripture calls us to. There is an impulse built into our self-justification to attempt to explain away texts of Scripture that disagree with our preferences.
Most of the time, when people are dismissing the Bible as ancient and irrelevant it is because they are engaged in what C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery. This is the belief that the new and modern is always better than the old.
It is on this grounds that people will argue that we have to reject the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality because of what year it is. Or, they might argue, “How can you possibly believe that God created the universe from nothing? It’s 2019, after all.” All of these arguments against Scripture are rooted in our particular cultural moment.
People that make their arguments by the year on the calendar are missing the fact that culture changes. Many of the things that our culture accepts as true––often without argument––are going to appear foolish in two generations. Thankfully, God’s Word does not change. It offers a critique for every culture, because it is grounded in God’s character.
To help people––those inside and outside the church––get through cultural challenges, Tim Keller writes,
“I urge people to consider that their problem with some texts might be based on an unexamined belief in the superiority of their historical moment over all others. We must not universalize our time any more than we should universalize our culture. Think of the implication of the very term ‘regressive.’ To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive.”
In contrast, God’s Word is permanent. Its truth is rooted in God’s character. It was God’s finger that wrote the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets, according to Deuteronomy 9:10. It is God’s Spirit that spoke through the prophets when they said “this is the Word of the Lord.”
Scripture is permanent because it is rooted in God’s character and God’s character is good.
Conclusion
Our main problem with Scripture is not an access problem, it is a value problem. One of the chief tragedies of our age is that many people who claim to believe Scripture is the ultimate authority for faith and practice are derelict in studying it.
Let us devote ourselves to the study of God’s unchanging Word. It is a gift and we have it in abundance.
[1] https://lifewayresearch.com/2017/04/25/lifeway-research-americans-are-fond-of-the-bible-dont-actually-read-it/
[2] Briggs, Invisible Bestseller, 57.
[3] B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed., rev. W. A. Wright (London: Macmillan, 1905), 22–23. Cited in Paul Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 283.
[4] “It is a dangerous thing. . . . as witnesseth blessed St Jerome, to translate the text of the holy Scripture out of one tongue into another; for in the translation the same sense is not always easily kept, as the same St Jerome confesseth, that although he were inspired . . . yet often times in this he erred; we therefore decree and ordain that no man hereafter by his own authority . . . translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue, by way of a book, pamphlet, or treatise; and that no man read any such book, pamphlet or treatise, now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe or since, or hereafter to be set forth in part or in whole, publicly or privately, upon pain of greater excommunication. . . . He that shall do contrary to this shall likewise be punished as a favourer of heresy and error.” William Tyndale, The Obedience of A Christian Man, editd with an introduction by David Daniel (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 202.
[5] Daniell, Tyndale, 79.
Reading your Bible is a battle. There’s a reason why Paul lists Scripture as the sword of the Spirit in his discussion of the armor of God (Eph. 6:17). More even than that, Scripture reveals God’s character and is, thus, central to worshiping well (Psalm 119). That’s why reading the Bible is a battle.