What is the Bible’s Authority?

As I continue this blog series on “What Do Mennonites Believe,” a crucial question is how Mennonites understand the authority of the Bible. It is quite common for some churches to insist that a Christian must believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Mennonite Church USA does not believe this. We understand the authority of the Bible differently.

First of all, what does the “inerrancy” of the Bible mean? This means that the Bible is believed to be without any errors of any kind–historical, scientific, ethical, or theological. All of the authors of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit, writing exactly as God intended them to write. As a result, the Bible is thoroughly and factually true in everything it says.

There are some important caveats to this position. The authors, though inspired by the Holy Spirit, still displayed their own personalities as they wrote. Another caveat is that the Bible sometimes uses figurative language which should not be taken literally. Another important point is that what God willed in one part of the Bible may not be what God wills today–that some instructions were for a limited time and place. Finally, some minor mistakes did creep into the Bible due to scribal errors during the centuries of making hand-made copies; but the original writings of the original authors were totally free of any mistakes.

Even with all of these caveats, the Mennonite Church generally rejects the idea that the Bible is inerrant. Inerrancy misunderstands the nature, purpose, and authority of the Bible.

A term I often hear among Mennonites to describe the Bible is “infallible.” Some might think this means the same thing as inerrant. But when Mennonites say the Bible is infallible, they generally mean this: the Bible cannot fail in the purposes for which it was written. So what is the purpose of the Bible? Is the purpose of the Bible to give us scientific information about how and when the universe was formed? No. Is the purpose of the Bible to give us historical facts? Although there are certainly many historical facts in the Bible, telling history (in the modern sense) is not really its purpose. So what is the purpose of the Bible?

For Mennonites, the purpose of the Bible is to guide us into a trusting relationship with God, and then to live out that faith relationship through moral action and doing God’s will. So Mennonites commonly say that the Bible cannot fail in matters of faith and practice.

It seems to me this is the Bible’s own view of itself. For instance, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (NRSVUE). Notice that the purpose of scripture in this passage is practical: it teaches, guides, trains, and equips so that we can do God’s good work. When we use the Bible as a basis for scientific information about the universe, or as a final authority on who was king during a certain period of Israel’s history, we are misunderstanding its nature and misusing it. Mennonites, as I’ve pointed out in previous posts, focus on actual discipleship, actual following of God. That’s what most matters and that’s where the authority of the Bible lies.

Most Christians refer to the Bible as “the Word of God.” But many Mennonites prefer to call the Bible the human witness to the Word of God.

When the Bible refers to “the Word of God” it is referring to the words spoken by prophets, as well as to God’s rescuing actions in history, as well to God’s act of creation. The Gospel of John begins with the famous statement that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and that everything was created through the Word. One translator paraphrased this as: “In the beginning God expressed himself.” The Word is God’s self-expression, God’s creativity, God’s grace, and God’s rescuing action. We are then told that the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us.” What this all means is that the Bible is not the Word of God. Jesus himself is the embodiment of the Word of God. He himself is its clearest, most direct expression. The Bible, on the other hand, is the human, inspired witness to Jesus as the Word, and the witness to other less direct manifestations of the Word of God in the story of Israel.

This view is not unique to Mennonites. Martin Luther also made a distinction between the Bible and the Word of God. He called the Bible the manger that holds the Christ child who is the Word of God. An early Anabaptist leader referred to the Bible as the sign outside the wine shop, whereas it is the wine inside that is the actual Word of God. In other words, the Bible is the container for the Word of God. It’s not the pages or ink or even the individual words on the page that are the Word of God; it is the grace of God that it reveals.

This then has implications for how we interpret the Bible. it means that when we want to know God’s will in its greatest clarity and fulness, we should start with the teaching and example of Jesus. The rest of the Bible should be interpreted in his light.

It also means that we can freely acknowledge that the biblical authors, even though inspired by God’s Spirit, are still writing within their own historical and cultural contexts. They are limited by the facts they know and don’t know, and by the assumptions of their times. So to interpret the Bible correctly we must stay focused on the Bible’s underlying purpose: nurturing trust in God and putting God’s love into practice, not cultural assumptions or scientific/historical information.

Another implication of this understanding of the Bible’s authority is that it does not matter who wrote the individual books. It does not matter whether Moses did or did not write the first five books, or whether Paul did or did not write 1 and 2 Timothy, or whether the Gospels of Matthew and John were written by Jesus’ own disciples. These are issues over which scholars argue on the basis of internal and external historical evidence. For the church it is all beside the point. The Bible’s authority is its power to convey what God has done and is doing, and to nurture trust and a life of wholeness and healing.