"In terms of doctrine 1, which sets out The Salvation Army's understanding of the authority of Scripture as the divine rule of Christian faith and practice, it is completely irrelevant whether Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles, or Ephesians and Colossians. It is completely irrelevant whether Moses wrote Genesis. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as we receive them from our forefathers, are understood as given by inspiration of God and are therefore the foundation of our faith."
Set against the above, the following from a number of theologians:
The Christian story does not drop from heaven fully written. It grew and developed over a period of forty-two to seventy years. This is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. Christianity has always been an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.
JOHN SHELBY SPONG
I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, statements not coming directly or somewhat directly from God.....I realised that whatever "divine revelation" and the "inspiration of the Bible" meant (if they meant anything), they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority.
MARCUS J BORG
Properly understood the Bible is a potential ally to the progressive Christian passion for transformation of ourselves and the world. It is our great heritage. Along with Jesus, to whom it is subordinate, it is our greatest treasure.
MARCUS J BORG
My point is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are not smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN
The Bible is based upon the construct of theism and anthropomorphism as its primary literary vehicle for expressing the reality of "God." Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.
The ultimate authority of one's life is not the Bible. The highest truth is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside oneself. One's ultimate authority is the voice of truth within one's own innermost being.
JIM PALMER
Further to the quotation from John Dominic Crossan above, this from CARL JUNG:
The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically?
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