Pastors’ questions are shameful

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In “A Pastor Questions the Bible He Loves,” Timothy J. Schultz displays an attitude of profound arrogance and condescension in what amounts to a dissertation of disbelief of the Bible.

(Speaking Out, Nov. 20). While paying lip service to the Bible being “reliable,” he fails to convince me that he really considers it to be “his guide for life” or why anybody should want to embrace it as their guide for life. My impression is that he is trying to encourage the questioning of Scripture as a way to be strengthened in one’s faith. Yet he would deal with difficult passages by simply dismissing them as not having to be true. He approaches the Bible with a hermeneutic of presumption, not faith. He implies that the only truth that can be found in the Bible is what conforms to his superior knowledge of how things can be, and the credible teachings of the Bible are only those that agree with what he has predetermined to be worthy of belief.

Where the Bible does not match what he believes, he assumes that the Bible may be in error; he does not entertain the possibility that he may be the one in error. Yet he claims that if what the Bible teaches us to be true in history is false, his faith is still intact because of “truth behind the stories.”
Truth based on a lie is no truth at all. If the Bible is the revelation of God, why would God reveal to us what is not accurate?

It is alarming enough that these ideas come from a credentialed pastor in Mennonite Church USA, let alone a pastor of youth. But why did The Mennonite see fit to devote an entire page to undermining the credibility of the Bible rather than to affirm and instruct people in the reliability and authority of God’s Word?

Associated Issue: Good preaching - Nov. 20, 2008

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