[Note: This is one post in a series on Greg Boyd’s book Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with his Father’s Questions About Christianity. The aim of these posts is to help you start conversations with people in your community. Invite someone to read this book with you and discuss it together. You don’t need to agree with each other or the author to benefit from doing this type of activity.]
For this session, we’ll cover Correspondences 18-20
SUMMARY
In these letters, Greg and his dad discuss the nature of the Bible. Edward acknowledges that Greg’s arguments in favor of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are quite strong. However, he argues that it is creating severe cognitive dissonance because he cannot simultaneously believe in God when he finds the Bible so unbelievable.
After discussing the issue of cognitive dissonance and explaining to his father how one can separate belief in Christ from concerns about the Bible, Greg addresses Edward’s issues with the difficulty of understanding the Bible.
If you’re not aware, Greg’s answer presupposes some important information. For example, the idea of the Bible’s inerrancy as assumed by many in evangelical churches received its current definition in the late 1970s. Greg appeals to the larger horizon of church history and tradition to approach this issue. If you’re interested in diving into Greg’s points in these chapters, you should read a couple of his more recent works where he fleshes out his ideas and even takes some different approaches thirty years later. See Cross Vision and Inspired Imperfection.
INTRIGUING QUOTES
You can’t ask me only to consider your strong arguments and bypass your embarrassing material. -Edward, September 27, 1990
It seems to me that a good many of your problems with the Bible arise from misconceptions about what kind of book the Bible is supposed to be. -Greg, November 6, 1990.
So, Dad, taking the Bible seriously does not necessarily mean taking it all literally. -Greg, November 6, 1990
CONVERSATION STARTERS
In what areas do you deal with cognitive dissonance?
What do you find embarrassing or troublesome with the Bible? How do you deal with that?
What do you make of Greg’s argument that you arrive at your view of Scripture based on your understanding of Jesus?
If you’d like more questions, make sure you pick up a copy of the book. It has several questions for each correspondence.
Next week we’ll cover correspondences 21-23.