C.S. Lewis on the Bible as 'Word of God'
C.S. Lewis on the Bible as 'Word of God'
Passage of the Week (Sunday 18th February)
What does it mean to say the Bible is the ‘Word of God’?
For many modern Christians, to describe the Bible as the ‘Word of God’ is to suggest that it was miraculously preserved from error: scientific, historical or theological.
While there were human authors involved, the fallibility of these authors never impinged on the text itself. The words of the Bible (at least in their original manuscripts) are the very words God wanted the human authors to write.
Yet there are other ways to understand the Bible as ‘Word of God’.
For those who find the view that God literally dictated certain words to human authors untenable - noting that it does not pay careful enough attention to how the Bible actually behaves - the phrase ‘Word of God’ is better understood as metaphor.
And like all metaphors, Word of God is tensive. There are senses in which it is profoundly true, but other (important) senses in which it is not. What do I mean?
Departing from my friend this morning to write this blog, I might have said that I was off to ‘pick up my pen’. There is a sense in which this metaphor is true (I am writing); yet there is another sense in which it is not (no pen was involved in this blog!)
In her wonderful book, The Revelatory Text (1999), Roman-Catholic feminist biblical scholar Sandra Schneider teases out various valences of the metaphor, ‘Word of God.’ In her view, to say that the Bible is the ‘Word of God’ is principally to experience it is a place of spiritual transformation; not, always, a repository of accurate information.
This has an important implication. To be transformed by the Bible - indeed, for it to become what we can only call the ‘Word of God’ - is not simply to pay it passive obeisance. (What, indeed, could it really mean to force the disparate ancient worldviews of its writers into our twenty-first century minds?)
Rather, being transformed by the Bible is to actively wrestle with the text, like Jacob. Not necessarily to agree with the Bible - as if the Bible is simply asking us to assent to a series of propositions - but to hear God speak through the Bible’s ancient words.
One figure in recent history who models this ‘wrestle’ for transformation (rather than assenting to the Bible’s words as information) is the Oxford don, C.S. Lewis.
At various points in his Reflections on the Psalms, Lewis expresses vehement disagreements with the Psalmist. Yet he never positions himself against Scripture. Rather, he finds ways in which the Divine speaks through its humanity.
This week’s passage is therefore taken from the eleventh chapter of that work, appropriately entitled “Scripture,” in which Lewis outlines his views on the Word.
‘…. The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its over all message.
To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, no doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form— something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist’s view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic’s view of the Church. But there is one argument which we should beware of using for either position: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this. For we are mortals and do not know what is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done— especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.
We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped in some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the “ wisecrack.” He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be “got up” as if it were a “subject”. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, “ pinned down.” The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam….”1
C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1958), 111-113.