3/30/2004 02:12:00 AM|||Andrew|||While wandering around the blogosphere (I don't even want to think back on the various links and whatnot that brought me there) I came across this passage from a post in a blog called One Hand Clapping.


In Christianity, Scripture is revealed, but not ultimate. Christian faith has always held that the ultimate (though not final) revelation of God to humanity is in the person and work of Jesus Christ. What Scripture does is help mediate the presence of Christ to the present community of believers. But Scripture is not the only mediation. Scripture, then, illuminates and shows the way to God and Christ, but is an inferior revelation of God compared to the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

But in Islam, the Quran occupies the same theological space as Christ does in Christianity. There is no superior revelation of Allah in Islam than Quran.


The passage occurs within the context of a discussion of the integration of science and Islam and is a fascinating read if you have the time. Here's the specific post if you want it. But his passage in particular intrigued me. It strikes me that he gets it really, really right. The Bible, as much revered as it is in current evangelical circles (and in particular, in My circles), is not the ultimate authority or revelation of God. It is the person of Jesus Christ, not dead but alive and present among us. The Bible is only good in so far as it points us to him. If Christ is the mediator between God and man, then the Bible points us to Christ. I'm not sure that the Bible "mediates," since I believe that Christ himself is present with the believer, but it certainly connects us to him in a way so integral to Christianity.

Too often, of course, I hear (and cringe) people talking about the Bible as something divine in itself, an approach much more like that of Islam, where the Qu'ran itself is said to be a perfect copy of the eternal existing heavenly Qu'ran. Believe it or not, it's a major theological/philosophical Islamic question of which predates the other, Allah or the Qu'ran. Sort of similar to Plato's Euthyphro, I suppose, but more concrete. I'm reminded of an excellent quote that I read some years ago (and have no idea where, so I can't give you a source or anything), that all too often Christians act as if the Trinity is God the father, God the son, and God the holy bible. If that doesn't make you shiver.... The sad fact is that I've seen it. It's real.

So tonight (or this morning, or whatever) think on this ponderance: what is the nature of the revealed word of God? What is the nature of God's son, the one named Jesus? I will have it that the Bible is really only important insofar as it points us to the fufillment of all the law and all the prophets, the one in whom there is life everlasting, the words of spirit and of life, and fullness of joy, the Son of Man, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.|||108064153987116033|||