Karen Armstrong schools us all on how silly it is to really believe the Bible:
The search for Noah's flood is as irrelevant as an attempt to find the "real" Middlemarch or Cranford. Like George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, the authors of Genesis are not writing history, but are engaged in an imaginative investigation of the human predicament.
First Ms. Armstrong builds a straw man telling us what "fundamentalists" believe, then simply regurgitates an enlightened view of the Bible as nice stories, more or less the same as Aesop. It's instructive to read just to see the condescension.
The reality is, however, that the Christian faith is mercilessly historical. For the Christian the truth of Scripture is fundamentally (uh-oh, there's that word) tied to the historical reality of the death and resurrection of the Man, Jesus Christ. Paul recognized as much:
...if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith is also vain....
If we have hope in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. --1 Cor. 15:14, 19
Everything in Scripture hangs on the historical reality of what Scripture records, everything ultimately pointing to Jesus.
I don't think it's the believing Christians who are to be pitied here, Ms. Armstrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment