All Things Necessary For Salvation

‘Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.’

I came across this on a network of Christian bloggers as a required belief for anyone wanting to join the network. Being inclined to contrariness, I immediately had reservations.

It is Jesus who saves us, not the Bible. The Bible is essentially an intricately carved and cunningly decorated piece of wood, at risk of becoming an idol.

I do know what the clause means, really, and - as a pointer - agree with it: Mark's Gospel introduces us to Jesus, Ephesians 2 tells us about salvation:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And John 10 links the two:

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

This post's opening sentence comes from Article 6 of the Church of England's 39 Articles of Religion, their attempt to navigate a faithful path between the extremes of Roman Catholicism on the one side and hard-line Protestantism on the other.

The way I have addressed the meaning of this above begs the question, what about the rest of the Bible? Paul's second letter to Timothy is helpful: he tells us that all scripture is useful for Christian living. Strictly speaking he is only referring to Old Testament scriptures there, but it is not a big jump to extend it to the rest of the New Testament also.

Whilst hard-line Protestants tend to emphasise sola scriptura - only scripture, nothing else - the C of E goes for prima scriptura: scripture first, but the Spirit guides us in other ways also (including reason, tradition and experience).

Actually sola scriptura falls at the first hurdle: the original scriptures were written in a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek. Without dictionaries and other translation tools these are meaningless to the modern reader. Even with translation tools you end up with circular, meaningless or tradition-determined translations without other writings to compare them to. You also need tools to determine which of a range of different ancient texts is closest to the original (note that the ones used by the original translators of the King James version are late and significantly different from earlier, better texts - the KJV was great in its day, but now it is only useful as a museum piece).

My view, in summary, is that the Bible is a wonderful book, filled with all sorts of poetry, narrative, drama, melodrama, and a variety of other writing types, which points us to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit and to God the Father, and which is a wonderful guide to living in God's way, the way recommended in love as the best way for us to live most fully. Some of the Bible is crystal clear, like the need to turn to God through Jesus to find healing and new life; some of it is less so; and some of the Bible is downright obscure and difficult to understand. Just like God's creation really. To my mind that is part of the joy of both - there is always more to discover, always more to learn, and always more to experience.

God is good ... and so is his word.

True Religion

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Continuing from my last post, about Jefferson (aka Jeffrey) Bethke's Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus poem/video: the above Bible verse makes it clear that God, and by implication Jesus, is not against all religious behaviour. This is no criticism of Bethke - his is a poem not a carefully balanced argument - but it should be a starting point in considering how to respond to that poem.

The other useful reference point would be clarity about what we mean by 'religion' anyway - something which all the responses I have seen manage to forget.

A key point to consider is why that poem resonates so widely. Those who have publicly responded to Bethke seem to miss this reality: 'religion' has become a very dirty word, not just among young churchgoers, but within much of non-churchgoing society. I see it in New Scientist, a scientific magazine (really!) which has become outspokenly anti-religion over the past decade or so, and I see it as a general trend within the liberal end of the media, in letters pages, and in comments across the internet.

In many ways I can see their point:-

• The US religious right has spent the past twenty years becoming increasingly vocal and influential with their rhetoric: anti-education, anti-science, anti-healthcare, anti-environment, anti-gay and now anti-women.
• The attack on the Twin Towers by religious/nationalistic extremists, followed by other atrocities around the world.
• The Middle East: the wars in Iraq - presented as religious 'crusades' - and Israel's unopposed flouting of international laws and standards.
• Roman Catholic child abuse scandals. Some blame religion for the child abuse (unfairly: child abuse happens at least as frequently in a non-religious context); others for the cover-ups and for allowing abusers to re-offend elsewhere.
• The Anglican/Episcopalian church tearing itself apart over equality of treatment for women and homosexuals.
• Intercommunal violence between groups with different religious affiliations: Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Nigeria, and so on.
• General partisan bickering within 'Christianity': protestant against catholic, evangelical against liberal, Calvinist against Arminian, little-enders against big-enders, whatever.

Responses along the lines of 'our religion isn't like that' honestly don't help.

"What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?" -  I'd reply that there is no evidence to support that in the Bible. Equally, there is no evidence that Jesus came to start yet another religion: the Bible tells us he came to save the world, surely much more important.

It's not really that "Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums"; comparing Jesus and religion is like comparing apples and aadvarks: what Jesus did and what religion does are qualitatively different.

"One is the work of God one is a man made invention ... because religion says do, Jesus says done." These two phrases make an important point ... one which can as easily be positive as negative.

The Bible tells us that Jesus came to save the world, to rescue humanity, to bring an end to sin (injustice, abuse, intolerance, hatred, that sort of thing). We are given the opportunity to accept what Jesus has done and to become a part of God's Kingdom, citizens in the new world that God is preparing. We can become Jesus' followers, disciples, children of God, however you like to put it. But that is a beginning not an ending.

Accepting what Jesus has done for us through his death and resurrection is the beginning of a journey, not the end. If we have become followers of Jesus then we need to live as such. Jesus has saved us, now we need to live in that salvation. God has done, so we must do. As the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith ... created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

If religion is the doing, then religion is intended to be the way that Jesus' followers respond to God's grace. Religion is humanity's answer to God's mercy.

But humanity is fallen, we may be saved but we remain part of a world that has gone horribly astray. Some followers of Jesus take their eyes off him and miss the point; many others want to follow God but have never met him. We try to live out God's love together and it often goes wrong.

Religion is not binary true/false, bad/good. Religion is a spectrum, from more true to God's way to less true. It covers those who don't know Him and are trying to do their best in their own strength, through those who are desperate to be Jesus' disciples but don't really know how, and those who just want an excuse, a fig-leaf for their own hatreds and intolerance.

Religions support the poor and they encourage repression of the poor; religions promote love and they preach hatred; religions stand up for education for all, and they oppose teaching of truth. Religions can be a blessing or they can be a curse ... just like any other human activity.

Religion is not the real problem, fallen humanity is the problem. And for that Jesus is the solution.