Read the Bible, Understand and Believe

God is Truth and, as such, has no purpose in lying to us. He does not speak to us through the "ordinary product pen by humans which requires some discernment and judgment, but purely literally" (Commentary Notes on the Christian Biblical Movement, 11).

Fundamentalism tends to put on "the blinders" when confronted with the textual variations common to the gospel singing, and amplified in the more contemporary translations (such as the New International Version, The Living Bible, or the New American Standard Bible). The common response is frequently that the translators have tinkered with the actual for their own purposes, and use this line of reasoning to justify their alone(p) use of the King James Version of the Bible as the only "authorized" or acceptable text. [As the old jape goes, "The King James Bible is the one that Jesus quoted playscript from, and that's good enough for me."]

For the liberal believer, the matter of the resurrection is just as settled, although not as literally as for the fundamentalist. The resurrection is a literal event--and forms the basis of the Christian faith. However, t here(predicate) is some minor natural conflict between the accounts recorded in each of the Gospels as to the sequence of events, and this raises the potential problem of biblical accuracy.

For ex healthy, in Matthew, just as the two Marys--"Magdala and the other

In Mark, while the women ponder who will form away the stone, they discover that it has already been through (no mention of an earthquake). inner the tomb, they encounter "a young man in a white robe" who also informs them, "[Jesus] has risen, he is not here" (Mk 16:5,6, JBNT, 68-69).

Rather, we must take the approach of the philosopher of religion and bar outside our own personal beliefs for the moment. We must make an object lens first reading from the individual perspective we choose to investigate, and and then apply the rules of critical inquiry to ascertain if the philosophy is live on its face or not. Once we have done this, we can then interject our own beliefs and argue for or against the particular philosophy.

This paper does not permit an exhaustive analysis of each of these three philosophical approaches to the Bible. Yet thither is ample space remaining to permit at least a cursory examination of each.

The weakness in liberal divinity is that it permits one to construct exclusionary walls around one's beliefs. From the tops of these walls, one is shift to attack all other beliefs. At the same time, there is a high degree of intractibility. Don't try to persuade the honest Baptist that the six days of Creation spanned more than 144 hours! Methodists may well be surprised to discover Pentacostals on the other side of the fence in heaven!

This is also the colossal weakness of humanism. Just as the fundamentalist may be blind to alternative explanations that do not, ultimately, alter his or her faith, so, too, the improver is closed to the possibility that his or her philosophical beliefs may be in error. The attitude is cavalier: "Oh, well, if I'm wrong, then so be it. At least I won't suffer any ungodliness or anguish in the meantime. That's what religion is all about, in any case . . . making you feel guilty all the time."

No coherent Christian denomination, no matter how liberal its other beliefs, however, would recall the "fact"
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