The more I understand the Bible, the more I come to understand why we require say the authority of a Church as one that can interpret that what is given qualifies as revelation such as the Bible which is the revealed wisdom of God. Just as a judge cannot dispense justice until it is firmly established what exactly is justice, or of the theologians, of hermeneutics, of the allegories, imageries and many things in the Old Testament finding its fulfillment in the New Testament. The more I am left like a child in wonder. How can a child not need a mother? How can I not require a friend? How can I not require an instructor or a lawmaker a hydraulic Engineer or an Architect? They all are authorities in their respective fields.
We put our faith everyday in ordinary matters on the mechanic who says the car part has gone bad and we will never know if he is lying and wants to make a buck or telling the truth. However, we can either spurn his counsel or run from pillar to post because we don’t trust him. The fact that I run from pillar to post presupposes that I have some knowledge that such a part cannot so easily go bad or that I have reasons to distrust him again presupposing that I know that his price quotation is disproportionate.
What do I do when I have no presuppositions? I have to take a leap of faith else my suspicion about the character of the mechanic can never teach me to trust people even if the suspicions are true and I stand to lose.
Today, we don’t know whom to put our faith in. Who has authority and where lies the truth? In such a crisis of trust which is really a crisis of belief is misconstrued as the crisis of truth. No truth remains but the individual’s own biased often uninformed or even whimsical search for truth and what he makes of things around him leading to some rejecting the very existence of Truth. What then remains of Truth is but what we make of it. Can there be a thousand truths?
Coming back to the Bible, time and again being heckled for antagonizing Science as if the Bible which is the wisdom and revelation of God tries to compete with Science which is the revelation of Man through reason. That science should be the revelation of Man through reason is something God wills and is the source of that reason and Man can access science simply because God has allowed him is something people don't comprehend. Pope Benedict XI has always maintained that Science is the discovery of God’s creation.
Science discovers nothing new from what God has readily made available. When Science finds out water on the moon, Science did not create the water or put it there. Either God has a plan for Man as we can see since the beginning of the Human race wherein Man has overcome certain disasters and periods of agony much because of the advancement of Science. Or God does not have a plan for Man and one virus or another will eventually overpower the greatest powers endowed to Science to serve Man and unveil slowly God’s creation, its complexity and intricacies. The point is, not whose wisdom is better or has more Authority, what the Bible says about Creation or what Science says?
The real question is whether we should look for scientific truths in the Bible. Is the Bible God’s Medical Journal? Applying the same standard, should we look for answers of greatest philosophical and theological questions from Scientists and Mathematicians? Shouldn’t the same apply to them? Their competence in one field does not entitle them to competence in another say, what Einstien has to say on God or what Hawkins has to say on the metaphysical question of the Universe cannot qualify as a philosophical or theological authority over what St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine have thought throughout the ages. By the same token, I don’t think many people would pay much heed if St. Thomas Aquinas would deem one painting better than the other simply by preferring one color over another or one style of painting over another. It remains simply his opinion even if he were to write or sing paeans of it. And yet we see this bias in the media which happily would try to dwell more on the insights of Einstein mulling on the existence of God or lack thereof than even inquire on St. Thomas’s five arguments for the existence of God that has made apologists and theologians expound and build their cases on it down the centuries.
And this is what Ronald Knox says on the Holy Spirit inspiring the writers of the Bible
"What do we mean when we say that any book of the Old Testament was inspired? That the Holy Spirit helped the writers, watched over the process and saw they did it right; That doesn’t necessarily mean that every word in the Old Testament, taken quite literally, is infallibly accurate. You find it stated in the Psalms, for instance, that God has made the round world. And when Galileo, or rather, first Copernicus and then Galileo, produced the idea which we all believe in nowadays, that the earth travels round and round on its own axis; that the sun doesn’t really "set ", when that idea was produced, a lot of people, chiefly Protestants, said, "That’s heresy! The Bible tells us that the earth can’t be moved, and here are these people wanting us to believe that it’s speeding round and round like mad!" But of course that was idiotic of them.
The Psalms weren’t written to teach us lessons in geography; they were poetry, and the person who wrote that verse was just talking in the ordinary language of his time. So you can’t be certain that every word of the Old Testament is literally true. But you can be certain that the theology of the Old Testament, once you have understood it properly and made allowances for the Hebrew way of saying things, must be true; because when it was written the Holy Spirit was at work to see that the thing got done right."
We require theologians to understand the truths communicated to us by God. If God is the source of all intellect, sure the Bible is not going to be a walk in the Park. If we require a journalist to place the facts and figures in an appealing way or a teacher to impart knowledge in an interesting way or a doctor to heal without skepticism, we ought to require theologians to understand the Bible. The question is of authority and obedience to people of authority whether it is of a local man giving you directions because you are foreign to a place or of a nutritionist advising you to stop eating burgers. Nothing becomes truth because it receives print space in the media. But truth ought to receive print in the media.
Often we question the bible not because it is not true but because we don’t wish to understand it. we are rather ok with what the local journalist has to say on the bible and his gibe makes more sense to us than what perhaps a priest has to say. We don’t wish to understand it because we don’t wish to recognize any other authority but ourselves. When an authoritarian wishes to dispense truth, we want to believe, “Now that is your version of truth. Who gave you the authority to claim it as truth”?
Well, if everyone’s opinion were equally good, it is goodbye to teacher’s doctors, scientists, mathematicians, politicians, lawmakers. But because we have all of these, we presuppose that some people have better opinion than others. Some people’s opinions are closer to truth than others and hence have more authority. And lastly, because not all the people in the world can invest all their time to determine whether Abortion is wrong or otherwise lest they all suspend their lives and professional work until they have come to the truth, a search that may never even end.
That is why we have ethicists, or perhaps to illustrate, the echoing and bellowing of one such authority as the Catholic Church that in recent time since the blatant pro-abortionist era, has vociferously opposed Abortion. No one asks or tries to inquire on how the Church has come to believe what she believes. In such matters, wherein lies the faith of over a billion Catholics lies the sound judgment of hundreds of moralists, theologians, bioethicists, and philosophers. A lawmaker can get it wrong if all that he has with him is his thumping fist or lobbying majority.
A weak or humbug authority only gives diktats and imposes itself on others by use of force. But a sound authority engages itself with the intellectuals and other authorities of the respective domains and lays its life down for its beliefs. They neither dilute them nor disown them. An authority is known by its conviction not by intimidation or power.
The forsaking of authority and to choose whom to give the same is really the problem of a breakdown of freedom. We are all confused to our limits to freedom and the purpose of individuality and liberty. I have liberty to live they way I want but not to change the truth of life itself. Such a liberty roots from pride of ‘my life my rules’ but if such an ideology is true, I wonder how a reader would determine which magazine is better than the other, which writer is better than the other. If there are no rules, there can be no game. Each can do as they think and there is no point of having a referee. For a referee establishes that a game can be enjoyed and played because each one has consented to accepting certain rules which are fair. So is life with its truths.
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