By Revd. Robert Parrish
JUST over 500 years ago Western Europe was Catholic, had been for centuries, and looked like it would be so forever.
But the Church was about to be challenged by a new invention – the printing press, the internet of the day.
Pamphlets attacked the Catholic Church by contrasting it with the simpler Church of New Testament times, which could be read about in printed Bibles.
But Protestants (the name given to critics of the Catholic Church) were not united among themselves, because there were some issues the Bible doesn’t give a clear answer to.
For example, should babies be baptised (christened), or should it just be adults?
Now everything was up for grabs, and people started criticising the Bible itself in pamphlets, especially as science developed.
Despite what the Bible says, the world wasn’t created in seven days, only thousands of years ago.
People started thinking you had to choose between a literal belief in the Bible or non-belief.
But there were those who thought this was a false choice.
The Bible was written by men of an earlier age sometime after the events they describe and reflects the science of their time.
St Augustine of Hippo had written in the fourth century, ‘The Spirit of God did not want to teach people things that would be of no help to their salvation.’
And the astronomer Galileo quoted a priest as saying, ‘The Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go.’
The Bible is a religious, not a scientific document.
So, it is possible to extract the religious message of the Bible from the outmoded science of its time; to take the baby from the bath water, so to speak.
For example, the story of the ascension of Jesus seems to presume that heaven is literally above us.
It needs reinterpretation.
Christians can question whether the miracles recorded in the Bible happened or not, without feeling disloyal.
You don’t have to choose between the Bible and science.
But the supposed contradiction between the Bible and science is just one obstacle facing belief in today’s world.
I will turn to those others obstacles in the future.
Like or make comment below.
Many Christians do have divergent views on creation and evolution to name two examples but the thing that should unite us is our relationship with Jesus.
Sadly, the Bible has been used, over the years, to support war, slavery and the subjugation of women among other things. This is because isolated texts are used and interpreted to support a certain viewpoint.
So I am in agreement that the Bible is neither a history or science book rather, in my view, it is there to show us what God has chosen to reveal of himself and to point us to a relationship with Him.