There's a thing called Christian Apologetics which I've regarded with a crooked, curious smile, not sure whether to dismiss it entirely, attack it directly, or consider that maybe I don't know enough to understand it. I've actually read enough to address many of the common arguments – the ones brought up by Thomas Aquinas, for instance – but it's not on the top of my list of things to know, and I really don't see why it's necessary for such an argument to exist on either side.
I've also seen quite a bit of talk that looks and smells an awful lot like Christian Apologetics coming from the mouths of many an amateur theologian who has studied their scripture with considerable care and scholarship in an effort to better understand the mind of God. I admire these people for their dedication, and I have no qualms about their faith; I'm as dedicated to my own brand of theological study, and I know the Bible is full of wisdom and poetry that shouldn't be ignored. (Parts of the book of Proverbs, for instance, have both made me critically examine my own actions and made me laugh my ass off.) It's just my assertion that to apply something as sharp and hard as logic to something as soft and intangible as spirituality is rather foolish.
The issue that I have been mulling over the most lately is what many call the infallibility of the Bible, to the exclusion of all other sources. I've found that most of my discussions with Christians revolve around citations of the Bible, which is trusted as an authority on all subjects and not to be questioned directly. If anyone questions something the Bible says, it is indirectly, saying that it has been poorly translated or poorly interpreted; nobody considers that it might be poorly written or poorly conceived. The infallibility of the Bible is widely accepted as the basis for spiritual discussion, much as Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is in secular philosophy.
However, readers of Nietzsche will know to question even the sacred "I think, therefore I am", and those who examine Christian rhetoric closely will observe a fundamental logical flaw. A Baptist friend of mine who directs Bible Studies once cited this passage, from 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” He presented this quote as proof that the Bible – all of it, and only it – can be trusted to contain the whole of God's truth. This is known in logic as a circular argument: in order to accept the evidence (2 Timothy 3:16-17), you must already have accepted the conclusion (that the Bible is infallible). Without the conclusion, there is no reason to trust the evidence.
Another reasoning for the infallibility of the Bible is that it was divinely inspired, that it came from an infallible God. This is a leap of faith: that the authors of the Bible were the mouthpieces of a divine truth which speaks to us all. My Baptist friend spoke of how each of the Bible writers spoke a part of the truth, and that all their writings together present a complete picture of God. He also urged me to not fully trust any mortal claiming to own the truth, but to trust only God, and I heartily agreed with this approach. What he did not acknowledge was that the Bible was written and compiled by men. Fallible men. If we accept that it is possible for men to tell the truth about God, as the authors of the Bible did, then we must accept that the truth can present itself in other forms, from other sources. If we accept that men can make mistakes, and present a false image of God, then we must accept that anything in the Bible is possibly one of those false images.
The truth, in the spiritual sense, is evasive. It is hard to find, and easy to lose track of in the mundanity of daily living. If you try to grasp it in your hand, it slips away like a wet bar of soap. And if you try to apply logic to it, as so many theologians do, either the logic will crumble or the truth will die. I understand the motivation to trap the truth in a cage of reason, to show it to others so that they might be enlightened and saved, but there is no way to pass such enlightenment directly from person to person – only from God downward.
By no means do I advise an end to all theological discussion. After all, just as God can speak to us through an ancient scripture, he may also show his face briefly in an honest debate between seekers of truth. All that I would like to see is a little less rigidity: the Bible isn't necessarily right, and other sources are not to be entirely dismissed. Of course, I also know that the trustworthiness of the Bible is a deeply held belief for many people, and they won't find it very easy to set aside. Uncertainty is scary. All I can really hope for is that we all might find our way through the dark, hopefully with a little help from each other, for as unreliable as our various sources are, they're the only ones we have.
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