Don Cupitt is correct: God was a human construct of a metaphysical /anthropomorphic entity, and human beliefs were human creations, not god given. It follows from this that the bible is not the infallible word of God, literally, symbolically or metaphorically.
Marcus Borg emphasises the bible is of human creation. It is valuable insofar as it sets out the teaching attributed to Jesus as that time. But, it is not fixed in the time it was written, it is for us to determine our understanding of the teaching in and for our own time. The teaching is not a set of rigid, fixed, unchangeable rules, rather it sets out broad, general principles capable of adaptation to changing cirumstances. The teaching is not in some musty, old, dead document rotting away in the mire of irrelevance: no, it is a living document assisting us to show the basic concept of love by our actions.
I subscribe to the postmodernist ideas of Jacques Derrida: in particular his thesis that words mean what the reader or hearer decides they mean. Such understanding may or may not accord with the intention of the author. Language is fluid, not rigid nor fixed in any timeframe. Thus ideas and concepts may mean one thing to their author: their interpretation and understanding is entirely within the domain of the recipient. It is not contexual within a specific timeframe. This suggests to me that seeking to understand scripture by reference to its historical context is a fruitless exercise, as is the quest for the historical Jesus.
Unsurprisingly there is diversity of opinion as to the import of passages of scripture. Can there be a literal meaning? How can we know the intention of the orginal author? Is the bible a sound, unchanging, repository of theological 'truth'. Or is it evidence of past thinking, worthy of study to assist us in grappling with the present day issues of belief and faith?
Added to the mix is disputation as to style. Is it metaphor, literal, narrative, prose, poetry, story, fable, allusion, symbolism etc.?
A few quotations:
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 to taught to think...Christianity is an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.
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.
My point is not that these 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.
I read scripture to better understand the principle of love your neighbour attributed to Jesus as set out in the synoptic gospels. It is not be to read as an instruction manual nor as a fixed set of narrow rules, rather it is a wide-ranging principle capable of broad interpretation and application. Sadly many christians do not accept this as they continue to support policies of marginalisation, exclusion and discrimination in our society.
