If the self-disclosure of God is contained in the Bible, then to ignore the words of Scripture is equivalent to ignoring God. But to say, "Thus saith the Lord," when God didn't say it, is taking His name in vain, a practice which is tragically too frequent various churches and is equally offensive as ignoring Him. This is one of the "big ten" rules that we're not supposed to break (it's number three).
Most theologians (i.e. the theologians who go by their initials) consider the event to be a true event in the ministry of Jesus. In fact, Stephen Harris, a fellow of the Jesus Seminar (a group of college professors who got together to vote over which sayings of Jesus could be attributed to the Jesus they considered "historical") says, "Whether this episode belongs in John or not, it is consistent with Jesus’ nonjudgmental attitude toward individual ‘sinners’ in all four Gospels” (Harris, Stephen. The New Testament, p. 180). Harris seems okay with the text because it promotes something he wants Jesus to be, "nonjudgmental." However, we don't have the luxury (or perhaps the audacity) of voting on which texts are authoritative and which are not. It would be a better practice to simply reject the Scripture as authoritative at all, rather than picking those teachings that we like best (I realize that people do this practically all the time, but that does not mean it is a good practice and we all could stand to repent on this one).Determining whether or not the episode took place in the life of Jesus is superfluous and is not the issue. John tells us at the end of his account that, "There are many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25).
If the episode was not in the original text, then it cannot be said to be Inspired by God and it is not useful for preaching and teaching as a source of authority. It should be demoted from the text into a footnote or removed entirely.
In the next post, we will take a look at the arguments against including the adulterous woman episode and whether or not they are strong enough to constitute removing it from the text and we'll look at the arguments for inclusion....
3 comments:
I'm really glad you're tackling this publicly. I've had questions about John 8 for some time, but have never really explored...
I am enjoying reading your thoughts on John 8.
(Warning...I'm about to take one part of your blog and stand on my soap box, I hope you don't mind!)
You mentioned Christians picking out parts of Scripture they like the best, and how we should repent of this practice, I wholeheartedly agree. I had not realized the amount of Scripture I had been missing until I started reading through and digging in as deep as I could throughout the books. I wish in school I had been taught HOW to study Scripture instead of what was important, The truth of the Scripture is in what it says, not what man chooses to pick out.
Keri,
I think what you're discovering is that the Bible takes on its real meaning when it is not used as a "proof text" to cite certain ideas about God, life, politics, etc. When you ask questions about the author, audience, purpose, etc., you get into the true meanings of the Bible...and suddenly, what you thought it was saying, it may not have been saying at all, but it's actually saying something richer and fuller and more meaningful.
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