A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [41]
So we judge internal tension and debate as flaws or failures in the components of a constitution, but we see them as a sign of vitality and vigor in the literature of a culture.6 Now, at this point, somebody is waving a hand in the back of the room, about ready to explode: “Yes, but the Bible is inspired! What about inspiration?” And I would reply, “Imagine an inspired constitution. What would it look like? How would we respond to it? Now imagine an inspired cultural library. What would it look like? How would we respond to it?” In my reply, I’d be trying to show how constitutional assumptions sneak into the definition of the word “inspired,” so to say, “The Bible is inspired” comes to mean, “The Bible is an inspired constitution.” The same thing happens with a word like “authoritative.” An authoritative library is very different from an authoritative constitution. An authoritative library preserves key arguments; an authoritative constitution preserves enforceable agreements.
As a follower of Jesus and a devoted student of the Bible for many decades, I certainly believe that in a unique and powerful way God breathes life into the Bible, and through it into the community of faith and its members, and into my soul. And I certainly believe that the biblical library has a unique role in the life of the community of faith, resourcing, challenging, and guiding the community of faith in ways that no other texts can. It is uniquely valuable to teach, reprove, correct, train, and equip us for love and good works, as the apostle Paul says. It provides a kind of encouragement that is central and unique to the community of Christian faith.
I freely acknowledge that Plato and Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and Einstein, Muhammad and the Buddha all say interesting and brilliant and inspiring things, and I can learn a lot from reading their words, as I can from Clement, Gregory, Benedict, Francis, Teresa, Simons, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Bediako, Borg, Wright, Brueggemann, Crossan, and thousands of other gifted writers and speakers—even though they disagree with one another on many points. But to say that God inspired the Bible is to say that, for the community of people who seek to be part of the tradition of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Amos, John, Mary, and Jesus, the Bible has a unique and unparalleled role that none of these other voices can claim.7 But that still doesn’t mean it serves as a constitution!
We have plenty of scholarship that grows from the assumption that the Bible is a divinely inspired constitution. And we have plenty of scholarship that reads the Bible as a collection of human literature and nothing more, devoid of inspiration altogether. I’m advocating a third approach. I’m recommending we read the Bible as an inspired library. This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.8
This explains why my Brazilian friend Claudio Oliver says the Bible is a book that isn’t meant to be read. (It might be wise to puzzle over that sentence for a moment before moving on.) By this he means that the Bible is supposed to be heard. It’s not the solitary scholar with furrowed brow, bent over a book in a library, whose approach best resonates with the Bible as library; rather, it’s a community gathering in which people listen to the Bible being read, then respond and interact with it and with one another. After all, it’s only the last several generations who have lived in a world where Bibles are mass-produced and literacy is the norm instead of the exception.
I must add that