2. The authority of the Bible¹

‘Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it … what thing soever I command you, observe to do it’

(Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32)

Christianity is a world religion: at the last count there were almost a thousand million Christians scattered round the globe. There is a huge diversity under the Christian umbrella, but we can confidently expect every Christian to share at least two beliefs: one, that there was a special person called Jesus who lived and died in Palestine 2,000 years ago and who sets an example that Christians must follow; and two, that there was and is a special book, the Bible, that has a particular authority and claim to truth for all Christians and indeed for all humanity.

The authority of the Bible is not just a matter for abstruse theological debate. The question whether justification should be by faith or by works – argued with reference not only to the New Testament, but also to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:1–6 – was a major factor underlying Martin Luther’s departure from the Catholic Church in 1521; religious wars raged throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries over the question of whether or not Christ was present in the bread and water of the host (Matthew 26:26–28); millions of individual fates to this day have been determined by the restrictions on divorce, and on the remarriage of divorcees, drawn from Jesus’ remarks in Matthew 19:3–9; and the restrictions on ‘usury’ (lending money at interest) drawn from Leviticus 25:36–37 governed the financial life of Europe throughout the late Middle Ages.

These are not just historical influences. Nor are they confined to Christians – for Muslims, Jews and Christians all draw on a common body of Old Testament stories and characters, recognise Jesus as a historical figure, and describe themselves as ‘people of the book’. Homosexual behaviour, notably between men, is banned in many parts of the world by reference to Leviticus 20:13; drawing on Old Testament principles, the Qur’an forbids the payment of interest and has consequently given rise to ‘Islamic banking’ throughout the Arab world; and the boundaries of the Promised Land set out in Joshua are used by the modern state of Israel to determine settlement policy in Jordan and the West Bank. Even more striking in its focus on a single Biblical text is the continuing decision of the Catholic Church to reject contraception on the grounds that Onan displeased God because he ‘spilled [his seed] on the ground’ (Genesis 38:9).

Reference to Catholicism may make Protestants feel a little smug. This would be unwise. Catholics believe that the authority of Scripture is interpreted by the ‘magisterium’ of the Church: as a result there is a continuing process of re-interpretation of doctrine going on within the Catholic Church, expressed in a series of Papal encyclicals. Recent examples are the increasing attention and status given to women in the Catholic Church (for example, the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus) and the way in which Catholics have reformed their attitude to and teaching on Jews. In these matters the Catholics are ahead of the Bible, which says nothing about Mary’s perpetual virginity (especially given that Jesus has a number of brothers and sisters (Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3)) and robustly blames Jews for the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:25, Mark 15:12–14, Luke 23:13–24, John 19:14–16).

By contrast, Protestantism arose as a rebellion against the way the Church stood between man and God; it has rested from the start on a conviction that men and women need no priests to interpret the word of God, and that all answers are to be found in the Bible. William Tyndale, who in the 1520s wrote the first translation of the Bible into English, remarked angrily to a fellow clergyman that ‘if God spares my life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!’ Protestants depend on the authority of Scripture because there isn’t any higher authority to appeal to.