What Is The Bible Intended to Do?

Reading the Bible and the Complexity of Life

As you should know, if you know me, I’m thrilled that people read the Bible. However, I also want to talk about how we read the Bible because how we read the Bible has an impact on how we understand the Bible and subsequently how we live as Christians. This is why I have written my forthcoming book published by Wipf and Stock called Gospel Portraits: Reading the Bible as Participants in the Mission of God.

In his book Cross Vision, Greg Boyd writes, “I affirm the traditional view that the Bible is infallible. If we trust the Bible to do what God inspired it to do, and if we are interpreting it correctly, it will not fail us. But the all-important question is, what did God inspire the Bible to infallibly accomplish?”¹ I’m not far enough along in Boyd’s book to fairly evaluate it but I really like this question.

Like Boyd, I affirm the inspiration and authority of scripture and therefore affirm the infallibility of scripture. Infallibility literally means not liable to deceive. What this means for scripture is that I trust the Bible to accurately teach us who God is, how God is working within history to redeem his creation in Jesus Christ, and how we participate in this work of God as followers of Jesus Christ.²

That said, I’m also interested in Boyd’s latter question about what exactly is the Bible inspired and infallibly written to accomplish. This question piques my interest because we want to let the Bible accomplish what it’s meant for and likewise, we need to avoid attempts in making the Bible do something it’s not intended to do. For example, the Bible offers plenty to say about marriage but it never directly addresses how married couples manage their finances (which is an issue that has caused a lot of marriage troubles over the years). Similarly, the Bible offers a good bit of wisdom for raising children but it never says a word about where to educate children (public education, homeschool, etc). And yet, when we read the Bible we do so while living a very complex life that encounters all kinds of twists and turns.

Life is complex. There are many questions and challenges we face for which there are not any easy answers or solutions. So we pick up our Bible to begin reading but before we do, consider this somewhat provocative challenge from Tomáš Halík, who writes:

We are confronted by a whole set of specific questions that did not confront the people of the Bible, and if we substitute our problems for theirs, and relate answers to other questions to our own problems, then it is not the ‘Bible itself’ that speaks from our words, but instead our all-too-human manipulation of God’s world—and such manipulation is unavowed, unthinking, and often simpleminded. Such overuse and ab-use of the Bible is irresponsible not only vis-à-vis Scripture, but also toward those with whom we still have sufficient credit for them to invite us to dialogue and a joint quest.³

When we too quickly try to make the Bible address the challenges and questions we face today, we risk making the Bible say what we want it to say. So we need some patience that can trust God even when we don’t have an answer to whatever question or challenge is confronting us.

Now, as I said earlier, I trust the Bible to accurately teach us who God is, how God is working within history to redeem his creation in Jesus Christ, and how we participate in this work of God as followers of Jesus Christ. And therein lays the key: we are called to follow Jesus so that we may participate in the mission of God. But notice that I said, “we” and not “I.” Reading the Bible isn’t meant to be merely an individual activity done apart from a community of disciples, rather our reading of scripture should be engaged among a discerning community. Within this community is where we come to know God, understand his redemptive work within history, and participate in that work as followers of Jesus.

The Bible will not directly answer every question or challenge we face. However, it does teach us how to live as followers of Jesus. That’s what it is inspired and infallibly intended to do. I realize that so much more could be said and needs to be said about this. But I trust that when we discern together what the scriptures are saying and what it might look like to live in the moment, we can navigate the way forward. Sometimes the path will seem straightforward and sometimes the path forward will remain a challenge.

1. Gregory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How The Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017, 56.

2. The inspiration and authority of scripture are not a denial of human involvement in the writing of scripture. Rather, infallibility recognizes both divine and human elements in the writing of scripture and its formation into a complete biblical canon through which God speaks. Thus infallibility recognizes that God speaks in an illocutionary voice, meaning “the Spirit speaks by way of the speaking of the biblical authors.” See Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 73.

3. Tomáš Halík, Night of the Confessor: Christian Faith in an Age of Uncertainty, trans. Gerald Turner, New York: Image Books, 2012, 135.