An Uncertain Faith

BySkip Moen, Ph.D.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to [a]desire and to work for His good pleasure.  Philippians 2:12-13  NASB

Work out – Recently I conducted a month-long study of the sources and transmission of the text of the Hebrew Bible.  You’ll remember the list of conclusions that came from this study (see May 10, 2022 Today’s Word):

  1. In the first century, believing communities had much larger collections of sacred materials and the boundaries between sacred and profane were much more flexible.
  2. There was no “Bible” as a codex of authorized texts until after the 2nd or 3rd centuries of the common era.
  3. In the first century C.E., the shape of the biblical books was almost in place, but the actual text of those books was still fluid.
  4. Scribes felt comfortable adding, expanding, or deleting material from the texts as they deemed necessary for the community.
  5. In general, the message of the text was accepted without concern about the details.
  6. Each community accepted its collection as sacred and authoritative. There was no official list of sacred books.
  7. The process of canonization did not begin until the 2nd century C.E. and was not completed for at least another hundred years or more.
  8. The process of canonization was an effort to limit the collection of sacred texts.
  9. The process of canonization was motivated by political and social concerns, not exclusively religious one.
  10. There is no possibility of discovering a single urtext of the Bible since there were multiple streams of source texts with different content.
  11. The LXX represents a separate, older, and different collection of material from the MT.
  12. Qumran documents show us variations in the text itself, all accepted as authoritative.
  13. Uniformity and certainty do not seem to be crucial considerations in believing communities prior to canonization.
  14. The “New Testament” collection follows that same pattern with one notable exception: it comes fully formed. There is no historical evidence of a progressive development.
  15. The MT was an attempt to standardize the text, the pronunciation of the text, and the use of the text in assemblies. It “froze” the text from that point forward.
  16. Translation of the text occurred within the linguistic worldview of the translator. This often led to changes in the meaning of the text (i.e., idiomatic phrases).
  17. The various sources of the biblical texts when combined present a collage, not a single stream or single original.
  18. How the text was vocalized (i.e., how it was read) in believing communities had a significant influence on the writing of the text since the speaker had to add vowels, syllabication, and intonation to a text that had none of these. This means the community’s tradition of reading was as important if not more so than the writing.

If these points are true, then a serious question about “faith” emerges for us: How is faith possible if the sources of our beliefs are so flexible and varied?  We might ask it this way: What can I believe if the Bible isn’t absolutely true?

It seems to me that this issue isn’t going to be resolved with the right answer.  It’s going to be resolved with the right question, and what we have here is certainly the wrong question.  The clear fact is that people followed YHVH despite all the issues we have discovered much later.  They didn’t ask, “How can we believe when our sources are so flexible?”  They asked, “What has God done that we should rely on Him?”  Their question was experiential, not cognitive.  Things for us are different.  We have inherited a significant change in epistemology.  We are the Greco-Roman stepchildren of Hellenism.  For us, truth is the relationship between statements and facts.  For ancient Semites, truth is the relationship between trust and character.  Our discomfort with flexible texts and variant sources is the result of the traumatic discovery that the earliest followers didn’t expect certainty, didn’t operate on the basis of certainty, and didn’t care.  But we do!  A lot!  We have come to believe that without certainty something can’t be true!  To be true is to be unchanging, unassailable, eternal, indubitable, and rational.  Our picture of God is based on this Greek idea; that God is the ultimate exemplar of reason—transcendent, immutable, eternal, undifferentiated, in every way not like human beings.  What this implies for our concept of “God’s word,” that is, “the Bible,” is that it must reflect the nature and character of God.  Therefore, it too must be an exemplar of reason—transcendent, immutable, eternal, and without error.  The Bible is God’s eternal word and, in its original form, without any error and accurate in every detail.  When scholarship demonstrates that there is no book “the Bible,” and that all evidence points to multiple and varying sources subjected to human editing, our paradigm collapses.  It’s not that we don’t have an answer.  We do.  It’s that we don’t like the answer.  It explodes our mythology about certainty and faith.  And most of us just can’t live with that.

So, what do we do?  Well, first we reject the scholarship.  It must be nefarious attempts to attack God and His word.  It is inspired by evil men (or the Devil).  It has to be overturned, denounced, or at least, ignored.  Our faith is secure in dogma.  Don’t read anything else.  In fact, I’ve known more than one pastor whose job it was to “protect” the flock from thinking about these things.

Second, we retreat to the witness of the Holy Spirit.  Like pain, the action of the Spirit on inner conscience is entirely a private matter.  If you believe that God has spoken directly to you, assuring you, for example, that the KJV is God’s final word on the matter, then it is simply impossible to anyone else to ask for additional evidence.  The conviction of the Holy Spirit does not operate in the public arena.  A retreat to the realm of private spiritual knowledge guarantees immunity from criticism.

Finally, we surround ourselves with “like-minded believers.”  We play the “don’t ask—don’t tell” religious game.  Those who don’t believe as we do are automatically heretical and must be avoided.  Anything that disturbs our sense of divine presence or heavenly peace is a sign of doubt.  We pray for the souls of those poor lost liberals.  We close ranks and lift up the cross.  God will keep us safe in our own sanctuaries.  Nothing is more secure, more certain, than deliberate blindness.

Now look once again at Paul’s statement.  If Paul acknowledged the eighteen points we’ve elaborated, if he even suspected them, then his instruction to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling is much more than traumatic encounters with past sins.  It’s the real, daily process of choosing how to go forward in an uncertain world.  It’s the shaking hesitation of what to do next when I have to add the vowels to my reading of the text.  It’s the recognition that my tradition isn’t the only tradition.  Oh, that sounds like faith, that is, not knowing for sure but doing it anyway.  I’m convinced that faith is not what the modern religious believer really wants.  He wants security.  He wants guarantees.  He wants the final answer.

Good luck!

Topical Index: fear and trembling, text, transmission, security, certainty, Philippians 2:12-13

APOLOGIES:  I’m getting OLD!  Yesterday I forgot to post the VIDEO clip that was supposed to be with “The Vig” edition of Today’s Word.  It’s really pretty interesting, so if you want to see it, I think it will be fixed now, and you can resurrect yesterday’s TW from the web site and take a look.  Sorry.

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