What exactly does it mean to ask if an idea or behavior is ‘biblical’?
I recently had a conversation with a friend about the unsettling polarization that is emerging in the church around this term. For some Christians, to call something biblical is the most important endorsement is it possible to give. To be biblical is to be true, divinely authorized, aligned with God’s will for the world. These Christians are desperately afraid that culture—and even many other Christians—no longer have any place for a word that comes from outside the self and is authoritatively binding.
Other Christians I know react to the word biblical like a rattle in tall grass. They believe the simple-sounding term often papers over real textual complexity or ambiguity. They fear its authoritarian use to shut down reasonable disagreement and often suspect a concealed desire rewind the clock and reproduce some falsely idealized past moment in history.
My own belief is that both sides of this polarized debate have some valid concerns.
I’ve heard preachers scream about “biblical truth” while literally ejecting from the room anyone who dares to ask a sincere question. I’ve seen many Christians throw down the term like a trump card that automatically wins every argument—ignoring the interpretative decisions they made along to way to come to their present understanding of what the Bible intends to say.
On the other hand, I’m also in conversation with an increasing number of Christians who feel free to dismiss any verse with which they disagree. If it does not match their own worldview intuitions or those of their cultural peer group, they assume that it could not possibly be an accurate representation of God’s desires. It seems self-evident that Paul was simply sexist, that early disciples must have put twisted words in Jesus’ mouth.
This is not the first time in Christian history when factions of the church, reacting against each other’s perceived theological errors, have driven each other outward to problematic extremes. Theology formed primarily in opposition is easily distorted and coopted. I find myself thinking a lot these days about the conversations I’d like to have with friends and family on both sides of the ‘biblical’ wars:
To those shying away from the Bible—
Christianity is fundamentally an incarnational faith centered on a God who acts in history—in many times and places but above all in the person of Jesus Christ. It centers on a God who is working in Jesus to reconcile all things, to God and to each other. It is centers on a God who has acted in Jesus to reveal God’s self to the world. Such a story, rooted in history, relies on witnesses to give testament to what they saw, heard, touched, and tasted.
If Christianity has any real meaning at all, apart from as yet another human-invented morality system, we don’t get to just make it up. We are living in a story that we didn’t start and we don’t finish. History doesn’t begin or end with us. We aren’t the culmination of history or the center of the story. Jesus, our God-in-flesh, is.
Disconnected from the Bible, from the revelation of incarnation and its earliest witnesses, we descend immediately and inevitably into idolatry. This is oldest human story in the book. Our ideas about the character of God, about the meaning of love and justice and freedom, are overwritten by popular culture, personality, and fad philosophy. The idea of the world as a place where God is active and invested starts to feel foreign and strange. We begin to shape our lives by a story from some other, often unacknowledged, source that claims to be able to tell us what is true and beautiful and good.
Some of us have learned how to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to the Bible. But we have not learned to apply such a hermeneutic to ourselves. We are painfully aware of the faith elements of a ‘biblical worldview.’ But we are not equally aware of the faith-based assumptions that underlie other worldviews that the culture around us takes for granted. The truth is, nobody gets around faith. Nobody. We can only weigh who and what is most worth trusting and let ourselves be deeply humbled by awareness of our own fallibility and self-interested biases.
To the defenders of biblical truth—
For those who believe that God has spoken and acted in history, the Bible is a vitally important starting point for understanding God’s desires. But we also still need to consider how the Bible is meant to be read. For an action or idea to be ‘biblical’ is necessary but not yet sufficient for a Christian. This might sound controversial, but most of us already recognize this in practice.
Genocide is biblical. Killing disobedient children is biblical. So is outlawing cheese on burgers. So is requiring women to wear head-coverings while praying and to give up jewelry. All of these actions are biblical in the sense that there are verses in the Bible that command or forbid them. But most sincere, Bible-believing Christians I know do not follow these practices. Nor do I think they are wrong. Most of us instinctively recognize that not everything described, even commanded, in the Bible is equally binding or proscriptive across all times.
When we ask if something is ‘biblical,’ what we really want to know is if it represents the truth about the world and about God’s desires for us. And this is exactly what Jesus came to clarify for us.
The author of Hebrews opens his letter by writing, “In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” (Hebrews 1:1-3).
The point that the author of Hebrews is making is that while God has often spoken to humans—specifically and particularly in the story of Israel—not all revelations have been equally clear. Jesus is in a position utterly unique among humans to understand and interpret God’s desires. Because Jesus was there at the beginning, part of creation’s design team. Because all the world was made for Jesus’ sake. And because Jesus will be the one in the end who has been assigned by God to judge things. No one has ever been or will ever be as qualified as Jesus is to tell us how God sees things.
If this is all true, then it is not enough for an idea to be simply ‘biblical’ in the sense that we can find a verse to defend it. To be truly, fully, authoritatively biblical, every idea and behavior must be tested by Jesus, who came so that the words and will of the Father could be properly understood. It must be both biblical and Christlike. The Bible itself teaches this principle—that Christ is the interpretative key to properly deciphering the whole of the map.
The most important biblical truth is that Jesus Christ is the Truth incarnate. Christianity rises and falls on this central recognition. And this realization changes everything, as the New Testament writers well understood. Jesus’ revelation of God cast a whole new light on history, on scripture, on every claim that has been or ever will be made about God’s character and essential will. When we ask what is biblical and Christlike, we are asking what conforms to the Bible’s whole story which culminates in Jesus and his uniquely authoritative revelation of God and God’s desires.
I understand the theological distortions to which many of my Christian friends on across the continuum are fearfully responding. But a theology driven by negative reactions to each other will only lead to more idols on both sides. Some of us will end up worshipping idols that look just like us and our time. Others will reproduce the idols of previous generations. In doing so, what all of us will miss is Jesus—the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Only Jesus—the Jesus who lived, died, and rose in history and whose story the authors of scripture carefully researched and preserved—can save us from his fate. Only Jesus, the Word-made-flesh to whom the Bible gives reliable and inspired witness, can deliver from idols.
