Am I going overboard? I don’t think so. It starts small, as just a bit of new vocabulary, maybe a “cool” or “spiritual” way to talk about the Bible, but as it gets more and more commonplace to associate the biblical narratives with God himself, we get more and more comfortable trusting that these words — little w — are indeed the Word — big W.
So what exactly is “the Bible”? It is not one book. It is not by one author. It is not a solutions manual, a textbook, or anything else our modern-age scientific minds are used to. It is a compilation — a collection — over a few thousand years of many types of texts from many authors, written (many times first told orally) to real people in a real time, not just for us to study thousands of years later. There is poetry, song, prose, narrative, genealogy, prophetic and apocalyptic text, allegory, history, and much more. It is not written in only one genre by one author at one point in history, and thus should not be read as such. What if we dared to believe this about the Bible : the biblical authors were divinely inspired to be authentically human and to tell stories that described the person, character, nature, essence, and spirit of God? What if we dared to believe that maybe the biblical stories are not literal Truth in themselves, but that they convey and teach and reveal the One who is Truth?
Indeed, Jesus himself said, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” The bible should not, will not, and cannot be a fourth part of the Trinity.
As author Walter Wink says so perfectly, we need to “develop an interpretive theory that judges even Scripture in the light of the revelation in Jesus. What Jesus gives us is a critique of domination in all its forms, a critique that can be turned on the Bible itself. The Bible thus contains the principles of its own correction. We are freed from bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. It is restored to its proper place as witness to the Word of God. And that word is a Person, not a book.”
A witness to the Word. A witness to the Person.
The Word ≠ the Bible.
The Word = Jesus Christ.
