Season 4 - Episode 33
To listen to an audio version of this post, visit www.covenantchurch.ca/podcasts/covenant-weekly.
On a podcast I was listening to the other day, one of the hosts (an atheist) joked that church was a giant book club that never finished talking about the book. We know that there is a lot more to being the church than studying or talking about a book. But that host recognized the importance of the Bible in church life. That emphasis on the Bible is something we’ll consider today as we continue through our Be In Christ Church of Canada values. We’re considering the value of Believing the Bible in this Covenant Weekly for April 29, 2025.
Believing the Bible: We value the Bible as God’s authoritative word, study it together, and build our lives on its truth.
Different perspectives on the Bible have led to some of the fiercest church divisions over the past century. In the 1900’s, a conflict occurred in the North American church that one author referred to as “The Battle for the Bible.” On one hand, some scholars wanted to detach the Bible from any sense of being “God’s Word” and consider it purely from a historical perspective. On the other hand, there were many who pushed a view that, as “God’s Word,” every single detail in the Bible had to be read as 100% factually true in every way. (This view was called the “inerrancy” view.)
The BIC Church had existed for close to 150 years before this debate even started, and had always looked to the Bible as its guide for understanding and following God. But we never looked at it from either extreme that those in this “battle” were pushing for. In 1961 and 1986, the BIC Church, knowing about this “battle,” felt it was important to affirm our belief in the inspiration and authority of the Bible. But they intentionally avoided the language central to the conflicts of that day.
Still, this history doesn’t offer a lot of detail on what we mean when we say that we Believe the Bible and if it is different from what others mean when they say they believe the Bible. Because of the debates over the past century about the Bible, this expression can mean different things.
“I believe the Bible” can be shorthand for, “I believe that every word in the Bible should be taken as a literal fact, no matter what it is talking about.” Or it can mean, “I try to do what it says.” For many, “I believe the Bible,” is an argument claiming that anyone who disagrees with their view doesn’t actually believe the Bible.
The details of our value statement provide some clarity as to what we mean. We value the Bible as God’s authoritative word, study it together, and build our lives on its truth.
- There are three components to this:
We value the Bible as God’s authoritative word. We believe that God, in some way, speaks with authority through the Bible. This doesn’t mean we view it a list of commands, a rulebook, or an instruction manual. It means that we engage it with a sense that God speaks his wisdom, insight, guidance, and heart through it, and we want to submit to those things. They aren’t always easy to discern! But the effort to do so is worth it because God, whose love and grace we experience, genuinely wants the best for us. - We study it together. Throughout BIC history and tradition, there has been an emphasis on coming to an understanding of what the Bible is saying to us today in the context of community. While some have more training or education than others, each voice is valuable in working to study and understand what God is speaking through scripture.
- We seek to build our lives on its truth. The Bible isn’t just something to be known. It is truth to be obeyed. Again…this doesn’t mean it is a rule book or a law code. But as God’s wisdom, insight, guidance, and heart are revealed in scripture, we want to partner with the Holy Spirit to see our lives, and our life together, changed! It isn’t enough to be hearers of the word. We want to join with Jesus in being doers, too.
I’ll say one more thing about what it means for us to believe the Bible. It isn’t explicitly included in this value statement, but any BIC writing about Believing the Bible will insist that we understand it in light of Jesus. Jesus is the exact representation of God - the Word made flesh. We value the Bible because Jesus values the Bible. But he points us in the direction of working together to discern the heart of God in the Bible in a way that aligns with him. We read and study the Old Testament in light of him. We immerse ourselves in the Gospels because they are focused on revealing God through him. And we learn about the ongoing work of leaning into the hope of Christ and learning to live the way of Jesus through how the early church did it in the rest of the New Testament.
Believing the Bible is not a narrow, non-thinking reality. It is about recognizing that there is a wisdom deeper than our own, pursuing it in community through God’s revealed word, as read through the lens of God’s embodied Word, and building our life on its love-and-grace-infused truth.