| Part 1 The Theory of Faith | Hirohumi Hoshika |
On the other hand, the position of "infallibility" is not entirely correct. "Infallibility" means that the Bible is free from error regarding matters related to salvation, but the claim that there is "no error regarding salvation" is strange in the first place.
For, the teachings of salvation in all religions, not just Christianity, are sure to be infallible. "Salvation" is, so to speak, the exclusive domain of religion, and its falsification cannot be proven. Therefore, it is rather ridiculous for religions to claim that the salvation they teach is without error.
From the standpoint of "inerrancy," which extends the inerrancy of the Bible to its historical accounts, it is possible to prove discrepancies between the Bible and history, so the claim that "the Bible's historical accounts are inerrant" is meaningful. However, it is meaningless to claim that there is no error in "salvation," which cannot be proven false.
However, it can be said that it is because of "inerrancy" faction that we have to make such an obvious assertion. Because the inerrancy position asserts an extreme claim to the correctness of the Bible, in order to distinguish itself from it, the infallibility advocates have had to emphasize points that are essentially meaningless.
Now, the conservative book I will introduce later defines infallibility as "do not lead astray on doctrinal or moral matters," but I believe that if the absence of error in infallibility is expanded to include not only salvation but also morality, then the claim of infallibility becomes questionable.
I believe that the Bible is inerrant when it comes to its teachings about salvation ―― which, as I stated above, goes without saying ―― but I believe that the Bible contains errors when it comes to morality.
It is not pointing out that immoral content is included in various parts of the Bible. As long as the Bible is conscious of these things and portrays them as a picture of human sin, there is no moral problem with the Bible.
However, in some parts of the Bible, it is possible to see that the Bible writers were "unaware" of the content. In recent years, a theology known as "feminist criticism" has pointed out the problems with the Bible's references to numbers, such as the fact that it only counts men and that it describes God as "Father," that is, male, but what I am trying to show is a little more serious.
King David of Israel has been accused of three sins: He fought many battles, committed repeated plunderings while fleeing from the first king, Saul, and legally murdered one of his servants in order to covet his wife.
The Bible is conscious of exposing the faults of the hero David, and there is no biblical moral difficulty to be found here. The article on his third sin, however, is ridiculous.
To make Bathsheba his own, David sends her husband Uriah to the battlefield and kills him in battle. This "displeases God," and he is rebuked by the prophet Nathan and led to repentance. As a result, he loses his child with Bathsheba.
However, the Bible tells us the following fact. What a surprise, after this, David takes Bathsheba as his official wife. How can a man who causes the death of a woman's husband, and then admits that it was his fault, take her as his wife? The minimum responsibility of a man is to give up what he has gained through dishonesty as soon as the dishonesty is discovered. Although I think that by responsibility of him, he must be obligated to provide financially for Bath Sheva for the rest of her life, he should not have to make her his wife at all.
What makes this incident different from others related to his sin is that the biblical account presents it as a story of sin and repentance that culminates in David's repentance and the death of his illegitimate son, giving the impression of a complete story. It seems to me that David's subsequent relationship with Bathsheba is written as a peaceful epilogue after the incident is resolved. Here, I feel there is a biblical unconsciousness about this event.
If David knew this was a cunning act and still carried it out, there is still hope. But how is it that David himself, Nathan who rebuked him for his sin, the biblical scribe who recorded this, and even God — who is said to have rejoiced over his second son with Bathsheba — all seem unaware of the injustice of this fact?
David and Bathsheba are of the lineage of Jesus Christ, and the above fact carries no small amount of significance. However, the following matter is even more serious.
The covenant people of Israel gained the land of Palestine through wars of aggression during the time of Moses and Joshua. The first half of the Old Testament can be seen as the story of the Israelites' acquisition of land.
The basis for their claim to Palestine and Canaan was the Abrahamic Covenant that God made with Abram (later Abraham), the ancestor of Israel. This covenant first appears in Genesis chapter 12, and is subsequently repeated in various forms. Chapter 15 reads as follows:
――On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites." (Genesis 15:18-21 NIV)
What does this article tell us? I cannot see in any way that this conveys the legitimacy of the Israeli people's rights to the Palestinian territories to this day.
That God would go out of his way to promise the Israelites the land of Canaan is nothing more than an indication that the land did not originally belong to them. In fact, according to the above account, there were indigenous people on the land. The Abrahamic Covenant recorded in the Old Testament testifies to this fact even to the present day.
However, the Bible then gives no consideration to the historical fact that Canaan did not belong to Israel.
The Book of Joshua records how the Israelites, led by Moses and Joshua, invaded this land based on the faith that had been given to them. In Essay 2, I defined fundamentalism as a public belief that does not hesitate to infringe on the rights of others, and the Abrahamic Covenant is clearly fundamentalism.
The Jewish people
Much can be said about the fundamentalism of the Abrahamic Covenant (see Supplement 2), including what was stated in Essay 2, but here I will simply point out the moral unawareness of the Bible.
The Old Testament stipulates "tolerance for sojourner" as a law, and also includes provisions such as allowing those who do not own arable land to "gleaning" crops such as rice. The Book of Ruth is also a book with a striking pastoral scene.
However, it must be said that at the root of these Torah is an unawareness of the historical injustice of claiming the land as their own. Here, tolerance of others is as if they were the rightful owners of the land all along.
The following counterarguments might be made to such a point: "We must not measure ancient moral values with modern ones," or "Just as the Bible does not tell us all the facts of history, it does not tell us all the facts of moral events, so we cannot make a final judgment on those actions."
However, with regard to the former, it is sufficient to point out that from an early stage in their national history, Israel was a people who had the Ten Commandments, including "You shall not kill" and "You shall not steal." The realization of the Abrahamic Covenant should have been carried out in light of the Ten Commandments given by God before the invasion of Canaan.
Therefore, even today, the Abrahamic Covenant must be remembered not as the legitimate basis for Israel's rights, but as a constraint and check on their unjust rights to Palestine.
Regarding the latter point, it should be noted that we must not equate the Bible's failure to convey all divine or historical facts with its silence on ethical events.
The Bible, which does not mention all the facts relating to God and man, is "incomplete" in logical terms. However, the Bible is still considered to be "sound" in logical terms, in the sense that it is free from errors in the articles mentioned. This is consistent with the argument of inerrancy advocates that "the incompleteness of the knowledge provided by the Bible should not be considered an error."
On the other hand, however, we must remember that an "incomplete" reference to ethical events immediately leads to "unsound". Generally, turning a blind eye to a tort can be considered complicity in it. If the Bible lacks any ethical reference to David's unreasonable actions or the fundamentalism of the Abrahamic Covenant, it is one of omission or acquiescence.
I believe that in the cases listed above, there is not omission or acquiescence in the Bible, but unconsciousness. Otherwise, this situation would show an even worse morality in the Bible. However, for these reasons, I cannot regard the Bible as ethically perfect.
One can also raise some objections regarding Jesus' teachings. Jesus taught his disciples, who were arguing about who was greatest:
“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea." (MARK9:42 NIV)
Regarding the content of the metaphor referred to here as "better", however, there have been no small number of people who have actually been murdered in this way and their families to this day, so even if this was spoken only to the disciples who were present, it must be said that it is inappropriate as a metaphor to be recorded in the Bible.
In the well-known "parable of the prodigal son", Jesus describes pig farming as a menial job. However, this is not a problem as it is simply a reference to the way society viewed the job at the time. That is society's opinion, not Jesus'. However, the above "millstone" analogy is a terrible one used by Jesus himself.