MetaCatholic

I normally find John Hobbins one of the most eirenic, balanced and coherent of bloggers, so I was a little surprised to find him making (what he cheerfully acknowledges) as an indefensible claim. He says:

One indefensible claim I am prepared to make is the following: that Scripture, just as we have it, in translation or in the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic copies in hand, is the Word of God and is fully and verbally inspired.

He justifies this statement by saying

That’s what happens when you are in love with something. You say indefensible things in praise of it.

He has, of course, already undermined himself by calling the versions and translations alike “fully and verbally inspired.” And then he promptly goes on to undermine it by pointing to  contradictions, copyists’ errors, and inadequacies. In the process he effectively redefines “fully and verbally” and, indeed “Scripture” in ways that would give those who normally use the language of plenary verbal inspiration conniptions if not infarctions. John defines these words and phrases (as I would define “Word of God”) by reference to the actual text(s) as we have it (them). But in so doing, I’m no longer sure what the words mean, or why one should need to make these claims, when they are prompted more by doctrinal disputes and definitions than by the texts under discussion.

It is all very well to say that love is blind, and then go on to make loving statements blindly, but that may not persuade anyone else that the object of our love is worth loving, or that we see clearly. So they may dismiss our infatuation as just that, and believing they see more clearly than us the imperfections of the beloved, simply turn their backs. So, I would rather find a language that looks realistically, and still loves. Perhaps, with sincere apologies to the Bard,¹ I might (tongue-in-cheek) offer the following:

My scriptures’ words are scarcely well set down;
Koran is far tidier, than its poor sort.
If texts be pure, why then its scripts are brown;
If words be clear, darkened be its import.
I have read moral fables, clear and bright,
But hateful deeds and crimes fill out its tales;
And in some traditions is more delight,
Than in the law which from its pages hales.
I love to read its words, yet well I know
that scribe and tradent have their own imposed.
I never heard how God’s words from him go;
In human tongues my Bible is composed.
But God-in-flesh, this scripture is so fine,
that human words, and life, can show divine.

1. Sonnet 130 [↩]