Michael Knowles: the Church and its Scriptures 2

The Church and its Scriptures Michael Knowles

The Problem

The problem though is that the Bible does not agree with him. Brian suggests therefore that we shouldn’t take what it says about Samson seriously. However, the Bible in our faith is the Word of God. One essential element of the Christian religion consists in taking the Bible seriously. If we are not to take seriously the Letter to the Hebrews, which is the Word of God, why need we taken any statement of the Holy Scriptures seriously? By what authority and by what criteria can we pick and choose? The defect in Brian’s paper is that it raises this issue but does not appear to see the implications of what is implied. He does not address them; and by not addressing them, his solution that we resolve the issue of biblical support for violence by not taking it seriously is not just no solution but also places a monumental question mark against one pillar of Christian belief, that the Bible is the Word of God.

As Christians, if asked, we would say that we would never involve ourselves in anything which contributes in any shape or form to “a religious industry for justifying killing the innocent”. All very well. Maybe a bit late in the day but still all very right and proper. But if so, hadn’t we better repudiate the Word of our God itself? Where does such a right and proper attitude leave the Book of Judges? And the book of Numbers? And Deuteronomy? And that most tender and beautiful psalm “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept” where the psalmist cries out “O Babylon, Babylon the destroyer. Happy the man who repays you for all you have done to us. Happy is he who shall seize your children and dash them against the rock” (Ps.137.8f)? -verses that have been recited in the Divine Office as well as by individual Christians times beyond calculation for the past two thousand years. Are they really the mind and mentality of the Body of Christ. Are they what we are?[1]

There is a very considerable difficulty in telling us not to take Hebrews seriously if taking seriously both the Old Testament and the New, which includes both Judges and Hebrews, is one of the main things our religion’s all about. “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms was bound to be fulfilled”. Lk.24.44. Yet unarguably and undeniably the Old Testament, which is the Word of God, has God ordering the “killing of the innocent” and bringing it about. So, at least on the face of it, and that very much so, since the Old Testament is our Bible and the God of the Old Testament is our God, it does look as we are dogmatically, as a tenet of our faith, involved in “a religious industry for justifying killing the innocent”. We have to face up to our own texts.