My Credo

What I Believe And Don’t Believe About Beliefs About Believing The Bible

By Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

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Here are my core beliefs about Bible beliefs.

One, I believe that the Bible is not “perfectly clear” about anything.

Two, I believe that contemporary evangelical and fundamentalist claims about the authority of the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God are directly related to the development of the printing press and the relocation of authority in the Protestant Reformation.

Three, I believe that fundamentalist and evangelical claims that the Bible is inerrant and infallible demonstrate an ongoing conflict between the Hebraic roots of the Bible and the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian belief.

Four, I believe that belief cannot be proved. Whatever anyone believes to be true or false about anything in the Bible is a matter of belief, not proof.

Five, I believe that it is a denial of reality to claim that the Bible is the Word of God while ignoring the nature of the Bible as a fully human book.

Six, I believe it is a denial of reality to treat the Bible as nothing more than a human book.

Seven, I believe that the Bible comprises dramatically different theological perspectives rather than a singular, unitary perspective.

Eight, I believe that the most significant choice anyone can make about the Bible is to decide whether a constricting vision or an expanding vision has interpretative priority over the other.

Nine, I believe that much of what many people believe about the Bible comes under the category of “Bad Bible.”

Ten, I believe that “Good Bible” replaces an obsessive concern with obedience to external authority with a vision about authentic authority within a context of shalom.

Eleven, I believe that the disciplines, tools, and perspectives of biblical scholarship offer a liberating perspective to dogmatic, rigid, and authoritarian Bible study methods that lead to Bad Bible results.

Twelve, I believe that the only way to set yourself free from the power of Bad Bible verses is to begin with Whole Stories instead of Bible verses.

Thirteen, I believe in you. I believe that the expanding vision of the Bible values each human life. I believe that authentic biblical belief regards every human being as unique, unlike anyone else who has ever lived, unlike anyone else who will ever live.

Fourteen, I believe that the greatest benefit I can offer anyone about Bible beliefs is a liberating perspective that comes back to the difference between knowledge and belief.

Fifteen, I believe that an authentically biblical solution to the harm done by believing ”Bad Bible” is to recover the profoundly biblical Hebraic tradition of midrash.

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My Credo About Bible Beliefs

By Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

Here are my core beliefs about beliefs about the Bible.

One, I believe that the Bible is not “perfectly clear” about anything.

Any printed Bible you can hold in your hands is far removed from original writings in ancient languages, which were never produced as part of one coherent book.

Also, nothing in any part of the Bible was originally written in English or any other modern language.

This means that any claims about “what the Bible says” need to be tempered with awareness that EVERY Bible is the product of human limitations, human biases, and human efforts to write, copy, translate, edit, and comprehend ancient writings. Such claims also need to be tempered with awareness that no one has seen any original documents of any part of the Bible for almost two thousand years or more.

I believe that nothing is more important to any form of Bible study or biblical scholarship than recognizing these facts.

Two, I believe that contemporary evangelical and fundamentalist claims about the authority of the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God are directly related to the development of the printing press and the relocation of authority in the Protestant Reformation.

Printed Bibles played a significant role in the Protestant Reformation, which was profoundly concerned with a question of authority. Who or what was the reliable interpreter of God’s will for the Church?

The theologians of the Protestant Reformation relocated the authority to discern God’s will from the papal hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to the Bible itself.

The idea of sola scriptura–“scripture alone”–was a foundational principle of the Protestant Reformation, and continues to be a defining characteristic of Protestantism.

The actual meaning of the principle of “scripture alone” led to widely varying theological claims about the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. As Christian churches splintered into a vast array of churches and sects, each distinct church or sect claimed that it had unique authority to interpret the “true meaning” of “God’s Word.”

The mass printing of Bibles in vernacular languages made it possible for ordinary people to read the Bible and interpret its meaning rather than accept the authoritative claims of clergy. Who needs clergy when you have the book to tell you God’s will?

Three, I believe that fundamentalist and evangelical claims that the Bible is inerrant and infallible demonstrate an ongoing conflict between the Hebraic roots of the Bible and the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian belief.

Although the idea of the “evangelical movement” can be traced back to eighteenth century England, the distinctly American version of evangelicalism–originally called “neo-evangelicalism”–is firmly rooted in the twentieth century, partly in response to fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism originated in the United States in the late nineteenth century as a reaction against modernism. It got its name in the early twentieth century from its declaration of the five beliefs fundamental to Christian belief. The first of the “five fundamentals” concerns the Bible. It asserts that the Bible is inerrant because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The relevant point is that fundamentalism and evangelicalism vest God’s authority in the correct reading of a unitary, error-free, infallible book with God as its one true author.

The idea that the Bible is without error requires a leap of logic, based on the claim that the original writings that made up the Bible—“the original autographs”—were absolutely without error. The leap of logic is to apply the idea of originally error-free documents to contemporary Bibles. The reality is that contemporary Bibles are based on hand-written manuscripts that were riddled with errors and inconsistencies.

This demand for error-free perfection in “the original autographs” demonstrates Greek ideals of perfection.

In contrast, Hebraic tradition allows multiple versions of the same event in its sacred scriptures. This is why there are two creation stories and two flood stories. Hebrew tradition never tried to harmonize them into one unified story as Christian tradition does.

Four, I believe that belief cannot be proved. Whatever anyone believes to be true or false about anything in the Bible is a matter of belief, not proof.

This is why:

I do not claim to prove that God exists or doesn’t exist.
I do not claim to prove that any word of the Bible did or did not come from God.
I do not claim to prove that Jesus existed or did not exist.

I can go on and on but the point remains the same.

No one can prove that the Bible is true by claiming that the Bible is true
No one can prove that the Bible is false by claiming that the Bible is false

Five, I believe that it is a denial of reality to claim that the Bible is the Word of God while ignoring the nature of the Bible as a fully human book.

I believe that the Bible is a fully human book. It comprises religious traditions from thousands of years of human experience, which were written and passed down and revised and edited and translated and transmitted throughout time, place, languages, and cultures about human beliefs and experience in a transcendent reality.

This means any claims about the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, Word of God are unprovable faith claims.

Six, I believe it is a denial of reality to treat the Bible as nothing more than a human book.

I believe that human beings experience realities that transcend any Earth-bound logic or understanding. I believe that the Bible as we know it includes human efforts to convey their own beliefs and experiences about realities that surpass ordinary human experience.

This means that any claims that the Bible is nothing more than a human book are also unprovable claims, which deny the possibility that human faith can be grounded in experiences of transcendent reality.

Seven, I believe that the Bible comprises dramatically different theological perspectives rather than a singular, unitary perspective.

One of the fundamental challenges for believers who claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible is to explain away apparent contradictions and inconsistencies. Sometimes, this effort to harmonize obvious contradictions leads to extraordinary efforts to deny existing reality.

The explanation I heard as a student in an evangelical seminary was that there were no contradiction in the original documents—“the original autographs.” But since the original documents no longer exist, this faith claim also is unprovable, and leaves believers struggling to find a way to claim that evident differences really don’t exist.

Rather than attempt to harmonize what cannot be harmonized, I believe that the real truth of the Bible is that it is a fully human book, rife with contradictions and inconsistencies of human beings who wrote what they believed to be true about transcendent realities.

This means that the Bible contains within its pages various perspectives that are often are at odds with each other.

In broadest terms, there are at least two opposing theological currents, each with its own distinct perspective on God and humanity. The difference between these two currents is the difference between constriction and expansion.

The constricting current focuses on restrictions, roles, and exclusions. It uses guilt, shame, and fear as weapons to force obedience to authority. It is continually concerned with drawing boundaries between “us and them” to define who is included in God’s vision of blessing and who is excluded.

The expanding current focuses on liberation, transcendence, and inclusion. It uses blessing, justice, and love to teach authentic wholeness of people and communities. It expands its vision of God’s blessing to include the “other” and well as “us.”

Eight, I believe that the most significant choice anyone can make about the Bible is to decide whether the constricting vision or the expanding vision has interpretative priority over the other.

As a student in an evangelical seminary, I learned that evangelical fidelity to the inerrancy and infallibility of the whole Bible allowed significant loopholes. One was the idea of the “canon within the canon.” This allowed evangelicals to declare that some portions of the Bible had interpretative priority over others. Evangelical theology also differentiates between rules and regulations allowed in different “dispensations.” This is why Christians can safely ignore the Hebrew dietary laws of the “inerrant and infallible Bible” because they no longer apply in “this dispensation” but other “rules” remain valid.

It was the same kind of argument that allowed various evangelicals to differentiate between parts of the Bible that are “universally normative” and those that are “culturally relative” to declare that that “what the Bible says” about the authority of women is universally normative while the prohibition against women wearing gold and pearls is culturally relative.

This theological hocus-pocus allowed some evangelicals to declare confidently that the Bible declares that women are “ontologically equal but functionally subordinate,” which is why women must continue to submit to male authority and not hold leadership positions in church.

It is the same theological hocus-pocus that fought against ending slavery, because the “the Bible says” that slaves must be obedient to their masters, which means of course that slavery is ordained by God.

My point is that everyone who reads the Bible makes these kinds of choices about what is truly authoritative and what is not. I believe that the expanding vision is more authentically “biblical” than the constricting vision.

Nine, I believe that much of what many people believe about the Bible comes under the category of “Bad Bible.”

The Bible becomes “Bad Bible” when the Bible is used to reduce people to roles and turns religion into obedience to human authority in the name of God.

This emphasis on the authority of the Word of God can easily become a weapon of power against the most vulnerable.

It uses guilt, shame, and fear as weapons to force obedience to the authority of the Word of God.
This obedience is almost always expressed as authority to human beings who have been given authority by God to rule over others, based on “what the Bible says” about proper roles based on gender, family relationships, social status, and political structures.

I believe that the Bible as “Bad Bible” can be one of the most harmful weapons ever inflicted on human beings.

It claims to teach ultimate truth but offers only a restricted vision of the value of each unique human life
Bad Bible bases its claims on a profoundly limited understanding of the Bible as the product of thousands of years of human efforts to write what they believe to be true about God and God’s relationship to human beings

Ten, I believe that “Good Bible” replaces an obsessive concern with obedience to external authority with a vision about authentic authority within a context of shalom.

The Bible becomes “Good Bible” when it fosters the experience of shalom. Shalom is the Hebrew word usually translated as “peace.” The word, “peace,” does not do justice to the meaning of shalom.

Shalom is a vision of wholeness in relationship with God, others, and the world as God’s creation.

Good Bible gives priority to what it considers an expanding vision of liberation, transcendence, and inclusion. It uses blessing, justice, and love to teach authentic wholeness of people and communities.

Eleven, I believe that the disciplines, tools, and perspectives of biblical scholarship offer a liberating perspective to dogmatic, rigid, and authoritarian Bible study methods that lead to Bad Bible results.

I believe that the highest value of Bible study is to:

Provide a deeper, richer, and empowering vision of the value of your own life and the lives of others
Provide wisdom about how to live life with authenticity, boldness, creativity, compassion, justice, gratitude, and joy

I believe that Bible study with the goal of finding out how to obey rules cannot have that kind of transformative power.

Twelve, I believe that the only way to set yourself free from the power of Bad Bible verses is to begin with Whole Stories instead of Bible verses.

I believe that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses in printed Bibles has done more than any other factor to turn the Bible into a sourcebook filled with out-of-context rules to follow.

Nothing is more liberating than starting with Whole Stories instead of Bible verses.

Whole stories disarm Bible verses as weapons of power
Whole Stories can set you free from constriction, fear, anxiety, and doubt
Whole stories replace single verses with big pictures
Whole stories demonstrate how people throughout the ages have asked deep questions about who they are and what life means
Whole stories describe what people believed about gods and God

Whole stories portray how human questions, beliefs, and experiences got gathered together, written down, preserved, and transmitted throughout the ages, to ask eternal human questions.

Who am I?
What does my life mean?
Who or what is God?
Does God really exist?
What happens to me when I die?

Whatever your own belief or disbelief in any part of the Bible as divinely inspired, I believe that Whole Story Bible Study based on the tools, insights, and disciplines of biblical scholarship has the power to set you free from the lasting legacies of Bad Bible.

Thirteen, I believe in you. I believe that the expanding vision of the Bible values each human life. I believe that authentic biblical belief regards every human being as unique, unlike anyone else who has ever lived, unlike anyone else who will ever live.

I believe that the greatest harm of religion enforced by Bad Bible is to insist you are nothing more than a role to play as a test of obedience to authority.

And now I will make this personal

I grew up being taught that “the Bible said” I had to obey the people who scared me, neglected me, abused me, and demeaned me. This focus on obedience to authority taught me that the angry Father God In Heaven cared only that I fulfill my role as an obedient child. As a person, I didn’t matter.

My strongest belief is that such teaching is a cruel and profoundly unbiblical travesty of the deepest, life-affirming impulses of the Whole Story of the Bible.

The Whole Story of the Bible obliterates such claims with a healing, liberating perspective that cannot justify such abuse of any human person in the name of “obedience to the inerrant, infallible, Word of God.”

If you believe that the Bible is crystal clear that the true the path to heaven is to be obedient to authority as defined in specific Bible verses, you and I have nothing to learn from each other.

Please don’t leave outraged comments telling me that I am wrong and that you can’t believe that I would deny what is so clear in the Bible. I am long past being persuaded or intimidated by such statements.

But, if you have your own story of being hurt, scared, demeaned, and scarred by Bible verses telling you that you had to be obedient to authority or else, and you have never quite managed to get free of the wounding power of these verses, I deeply believe that the path to freedom begins with Whole Stories rather than Bible verses.

Fourteen, I believe that the greatest benefit I can offer anyone about Bible beliefs is a liberating perspective that comes back to the difference between knowledge and belief.

This perspective is based on insights and skills I learned about reading the Bible through years of disciplined study and hard work.

I believe that the real secret of freeing yourself from bad experiences with church and Bible is to recognize that no one knows anything about ultimate reality.

Really, how can any finite being comprehend the entirety of what is infinite?

As a young child growing up on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, I understood very early that the ocean was far vaster than my experience of it. As much as I loved it, I knew that I could experience only a tiny part of the whole.

That insight has remained with me for a lifetime.

That insight underlies this distinction.

The fundamental difference between an agnostic and a believer is that the agnostic says out loud, “I don’t know” what is beyond my limited comprehension of ultimate reality. The believer declares, “I believe” that I know what is ultimate.

The liberating truth in this is that no one truly knows the truth of any belief. No one.

Fifteen, I believe that an authentically biblical solution to the harm done by believing ”Bad Bible” is to recover the profoundly biblical Hebraic tradition of midrash.

The word midrash is derived from the Hebrew verb, darash, which means “to seek.” As a method of Bible study, midrash encourages the seeker to find answers by asking questions.

Midrash is an invitation to dive deeply into sacred scripture, to ask questions freely without fear of reproach or judgment.

In contrast to midrash, much Christian education follows the model of catechism, which provides the answers and treats questions as signs of disbelief and disobedience.

If you are seeking to get free from the answers you learned from Bad Bible, I invite you to join me in the search for better questions.

For Your Freedom,

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

Creator Of The Freedom From Bad Bible Series

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