New Class on how we got our Bible and why I’m teaching it

Intro note: I love teaching the Bible, as many of you know who have been in my classes and I am very excited to start a new class at Orchard Community Church. I wrote the following to relate my teaching in the class to one of the core values of ECO, the new Presbyterian denomination which defines itself as “A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.” The class will start Sept. 21, 2014, 10:30 at Orchard Church, 8180 Telephone Rd., Ventura, CA 93004.

As we look ahead to starting our class about the Bible, I’d like to share why  care so much about this topic and to relate it one of the core values of our church affiliation with ECO, which is: “Biblical Integrity,” defined in this way:

We believe the Bible is the unique and authoritative Word of God, which teaches all that is necessary for faith and life. The prominence of God’s Word over our lives shapes our priorities, and the unrivaled authority of the Bible directs our actions to be in concert with Christ’s very best for our lives.

I love that statement and totally believe it. This is a truth we affirm as a denomination. But though we corporately and personally agree with the statement, what happens when questions like this come up from either friends or the media?

• Is the Christian Bible really different from the Koran, the Upanishads, the book of Mormon, or any other religious text? Don’t all their followers consider their books divinely inspired and true?
• Wasn’t the Old Testament written so long ago that we can’t be certain what it said? Didn’t the centuries of copying change it?
• Why do the Catholics have more books than Protestant Bibles do and aren’t we missing part of God’s Word without them?
• Aren’t there other gospels than the four we have, including the Gospel of Thomas, that the early church suppressed?
• Can you really trust the Bible as a guide for present living and eternal salvation? Or is it simply a helpful book filled with good suggestions for a prosperous life?

Many years ago, I struggled with questions like this. Though I’d been raised in a Christian home and had been very involved in the church and Christian ministry all my life, by the time I got to graduate school, I needed more than the assurance by my church and parents (at the time, First Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs) that the Bible was true.

I decided to get an MA in Church History because I wanted to find out what was true about the Christian faith throughout all of history, not just what I was taught as a white, female Christian living in America in the 20^th century. I decided to do it from a secular school because I didn’t want a Christian bias to influence what I was taught. I wanted to be able to tell myself and friends who were asking me, why I believed I could trust the Bible and what it taught me about Jesus.

Initially, I got a little more than I bargained for in wanting a not-Christian bias. My master professor was articulately, aggressively anti-Christian. He had been raised a Mormon and was one of the children who had to stand in for the people who had died and that were baptized in the Mormon temple. The falseness that this act would give departed souls a second chance at salvation was obvious to him, and sadly he made no distinction between the Mormon faith and a true Biblical faith. To him it was all a lie and one of his missions in life was to destroy the faith of anyone who disagreed with him.

But he was fair. He was a highly respected, brilliant historian and he taught without bias how to use the tools of historiography and research. Though tremendously difficult at first (these were pre-computer research days), not only did he not destroy my faith, but the more deeply I dug into historical sources the more my faith was strengthened. From my study, I realized these key truths:

• The Christian faith has had the same core throughout all of history—and that core is clear when a person or group bases their life and practice on the Bible.
• The Bible can be trusted as a valid, historical document. What we do with it in terms of faith is a separate question, but many of the questions raised or doubts about it as the questions listed earlier, are based on ignorance of the facts.

The result in my life was a contagious excitement about the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible. I didn’t fear any more that people who ask the sort of “gotcha” questions that I’d fumble around with in the past and that caused my heart to doubt what I believed. My faith took on a depth and assurance about the trustworthiness of the Bible and I am excited to talk to people about it.

I’ll be condensing many years of study for our class where I’ll answer all the questions at the first of this article, and many more. I trust it will be helpful to you personally and that it will undergird our core ECO value about the Bible. Please join us for:

The Story of the Christian Bible

Dates: September 21-October 26

Time: 10:30-11:30

Location: The Library, Orchard Church, 8180 Telephone Rd., Ventura, CA 93004

If you aren’t able to join the class, I will have a video PowerPoint of it and copies of the handouts on the church website. If you have any questions about the class, or want to make sure I cover a question in this series, please email me at: yvonprehn@gmail.com.