Chapter and Verse

This article is part of a series of posts about my experience coming to, being in and leaving the Christadelphian Church and how my faith has grown, developed and evolved since. Whilst I no longer consider myself Christadelphian or aligned to a Christadelphian worldview, it is important to note that these articles are an expression of my personal journey and experience and not from a place of animosity or ill-will to any Christadelphian or the community at large. I have high respect for the commitment Christadelphians have to their faith and am very grateful to those in the community who have had a positive impact on my life and to the many Christadelphians who have been, are and always will be my friends.

Like other fundamentalist and evangelical Christian communities, the Christadelphians stress the importance of the Bible as the central source of knowledge concerning God. The Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith (BASF), the community’s main doctrinal creed, articulates this better than anywhere else.

THE FOUNDATION – That the book currently known as the Bible, consisting of the Scriptures of Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, is the only source of knowledge concerning God and His purposes at present extant or available in the earth, and that the same were wholly given by inspiration of God in the writers, and are consequently without error in all parts of them, except such as may be due to errors of transcription or translation.  2 Tim 3:16, 1 Cor 2:13, Heb 1:1, 2 Peter 1:21, 1 Cor 14:37, Neh 9:30, John 10:35.

Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith

As you can clearly see in the BASF, the Bible is central to the life of every Christadelphian.  Everyone is encouraged to follow The Bible Companion, a thrice daily Bible reading system which takes readers through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in a year (it’s actually really helpful and I still use it today). A common practice in the community is to start meetings, camps and conferences with one of the ‘daily readings’.  The chapter would often be read by a male or by ‘verse tag’ where people would take it in turns to read a certain number of verses and discuss it afterward.  Depending on how formal and conservative the context, females were sometimes able to participate in this form of reading, if they were lucky.  Sunday services included 2 Bible readings which, in most cases, were drawn from the daily readings. Sunday School was all about getting to know your Bible better, with the more conservative Ecclesias having Bible-based Sunday School exams. Wednesday night was Bible Class (which admittedly, I didn’t attend) and many Ecclesias* hold Sunday evening Bible lectures.  Ecclesias hold ‘fraternal weekends’ inviting members of neighbouring Ecclesias to participate in a Bible study and there are a number of family, youth and ecclesial camps which all have Bible-study as its focus. Some camps are even called ‘Bible Schools’.

(*An ecclesia is what Christadelphians use instead of ‘church’.  Ecclesia is based on the word Ekklesia which means ‘assembly or gathering’ in ancient greek and is the term often translated as ‘church’ in modern english Bibles).

It’s safe to say that Christadelphians know their Bibles which is hardly surprising considering the amount of time they spend reading it!  Christadelphians maintain that their beliefs are drawn solely from the Bible, or ‘God’s word’, and are uncompromised by tradition or unduly regulated by a pastor or priest as is the case with all of the other Churches.

Whilst my ideas were much more progressive than the Christadelphian average, I had come to share the same rigid framework of directly justifying my theological beliefs with the same chapter and verse method.  I would try to convince others by pointing to the chapter and verse that best suited my interpretation whilst others would point to a different chapter and verse to do the same. It’s not to say I was intolerant of differing opinions, in fact I welcomed being challenged by new ideas more than most, it’s that the community had taught me that faith was completely rooted in having the correct biblical interpretation. This heavy emphasis on Bible reading lead to faith, in the Christadelphian context, being a largely ‘academic’ persuit. There was little emphasis on spirituality and expressions of faith outside of Bible study or exegesis. Whilst music and other activities were acknowledged as valid expressions of faith, they were often seen as lesser expressions and an inferior substitute for Bible study. For those that didn’t connect with Bible reading, the Christadelphian environment was often dull and uninspiring.

Christadelphians believe the Bible doesn’t contradit itself and that it is internally consistent. Any apparent contradictions can be resolved by properly reading and translating the text or viewing it through the lense of Christadelphian doctrine.  In my experience, saying ‘that verse could be interpreted in many ways’ was very challenging to many Christadelphians.  In their eyes, the Bible, which is God’s word, is clear and the community had rediscovered ‘the truth’ and the perfect way to interpret it.  Any assertion of ambiguity was interpreted as challenging God’s sovereign kingship or doubting the existence of God himself.  The logic was, ‘how could a perfect God give us an imperfect book to interpret his will?’  The two, Christadelphians would aregue, are incompatible.

Because of their outstanding biblical knowledge, Christadelphians are able to quickly reference a number of sympathetic verses to ‘prove’ the ‘correctness’ of their doctrine.  This fixation on verse-based literal interpretation left little room for an exploration of broader biblical themes or understanding the wider context of each passage.  It was as if each verse existed in its own contextual and theological vacuum and because it was God’s word, remained consistent no matter the context or broader theological discussion the verse was positioned in.  It was a classic case of ‘the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it’. All you need to do is provide the chapter and verse to show that you’re correct.

A clear example is how Christadelphians interpret 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’

2 Timothy 3:16-17

This passage is used to justify the belief that the entire Bible is a product of plenary-divine inspiration. This asserts that the entire Bible is the literal ‘word of God’ and is 100% complete, accurate and true in its entirety.  Whilst I still think this interpretation is a stretch, I can understand how someone can arrive at this conclusion from an initial reading of the verse.  When we go 1 step further and look at the historical context of this passage, the reading of this passage changes substantially.  Scripture, in the 1^st century AD/CE referred to the Hebrew Bible or what Christians now know as the Old Testament.  Paul spent a large portion of his life as a student of the Hebrew Bible under the guidance of prominent religious leaders.  For Paul, any reference to scripture was that of the Hebrew Bible.  It is not plausible for the writings of the New Testament, many of which hadn’t even been written by this time, to have been in the scope of Paul’s thoughts when he penned this letter.  This shows how an interpretation which extends the claim of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to the body of work we now know as the New Testament as ‘God breathed’ is overly simplistic and well, missing the point.

Some question whether Paul actually wrote this letter to Timothy at all.  Many scholars have contended that a large number of the Pauline epistles weren’t written by Paul and instead by other authors who attributed their work to Paul.  Both 1^st and 2^nd Timothy have been identified as likely falling into this category of works called the pseudepigraphia, or falsely attributed works.  Regardless of who actually wrote the words in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, the author’s reference to scripture was to the Hebrew Bible with no way of foreseeing that the letter would be included as ‘scripture’ among the Christian community roughly 200 years later.

Despite this critique, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, as displayed at the start of this article, is quoted in the foundational clause of the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith as evidence for the direct inspiration of the Bible.  Questioning this fundamental belief is a big deal.  For many, doubting the plenary-divine inspiration of the Bible is like tearing down a spiritual house of cards.  I saw so many people lose their faith when they could no longer see the Bible as fully inspired, infallible and inerrant. They had been trained to think the Bible either had to be inspired and true or non-inspired and false with little knowledge that much of Christendom didn’t view the Bible and faith with such a dichotomous lense.  For others, openly questioning the inspiration of the Bible would put you out of step with orthodox Christadelphianism.  Displaying signs of doctrinal impurity would cause others to become concerned, opening you up to questioning, possibly losing friends, putting your family off-side and at its worst, get you disfellowshiped or shunned.

For me, another area where this system of thinking came unstuck was on the topic of women’s participation in the community.  The almost universal Christadelphian practice is complementarian, that is men are the head of the church and the house and that women are to stay silent in the church and accept the will of her husband.  Whilst Christadelphians were quick to mention 1 Cor 14:34 as the reason for women not speaking, I found myself pointing to writings earlier in the chapter such as 1 Cor 14:26 where Paul says ‘Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarise.  When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said.  But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.’  In 1 Cor 11 Paul discusses women praying and prophesying as a congregation in the context of headcovering and in a verse from Galatians, one of his previous letters he says ‘There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).  Despite my attempt to engage in robust discussion and address these points from a holistic perspective, I was passionately called a heretic and reminded that my view was out of step.  Even though I would highlight it was only 1 verse among a series of female-inclusive statements implying Paul may have been addressing a very narrow or specific point, I was dismissed.  1 Cor 14:32 was enough in itself to justify the silence of women in the ecclesias.

I found myself frustrated by many people’s lack of willingness to engage with scripture on a more open basis.  In areas such as women speaking, many men I spoke with had a considerable amount of power in the community. Admitting that the traditional interpretation was oversimplified would not only serve as a blow to their pride but signify a dilution of their power and influence, power and influence they often lacked in the non-Christadelphian world.

I felt myself conflicted.  On one hand I had been given a flawed, narrow system of biblical interpretation and theological enquiry and on the other I had an inquisitive mind which welcomed new ideas, rigorous analysis and robust discussion.  One system produced black and white thinking, yet my brain loved engaging with the grey.

Over time, I came to realise that the Bible wasn’t compiled to provide us with a clear list of doctrinal points or give us a direct line to God’s brain.  Instead, it presented a range of literature from poems, legend, biographies, letters and historical accounts and everything in between.  It had a range of authors who wrote in different languages separated by hundreds of years.  Many shared about their real struggles with faith and their anger at God.  Others penned works of guidance and wisdom whilst others claimed to write with authority from God. The Bible resembled a large patchwork quilt of uneven squares, multiple colours and a range of contributors rather than a single sheet of cloth.  The Bible is a rich tapestry of literature compiled from Yahwist, Jewish and early Christian communities guiding us in our life of faith.  Whilst it may be eclectic in its composition, it keeps you warm just the same.

Once I began to see the Bible as something to guide and support rather than a law book to interpret, my experience of faith completely changed. I credit Tim Mackie from the Bible Project and his podcast ‘Exploring My Strange Bible’ as well as the podcast ‘Almost Heretical’ with helping me reconstruct my approach to faith and the Bible. With my post-legalistic framework I am beginning to ask what God is trying to tell me through the Bible instead of ‘what’s the correct interpretation of this?’ It asked me to trust God and try to discern his will rather than rely solely on trying to find the ‘correct’ interpretation of a set of writings which weren’t intended to be read that way at all.

This has been the single biggest element in discovering post-fundamentalist Christianity and growing in my faith.

See Also

Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith – The most widely used and accepted Christadelphian Statement of Faith

Position Paper: Encouraging Personal Reading and Bible Study – Association of Australian Christadelphian Ecclesias

Position Paper: The Inspiration of the Bible – Association of Australian Christadelphian Ecclesias

Introduction to the Old Testament (Series) – Christine Hayes – Yale Courses

New Testament History & Literature (Series) – Dale B. Martin – Yale Courses

In the Truth But of the World – Also part of my series on ‘The Christadelphians’

How I Came Out and Left My Church – Also part of my series on ‘The Christadelphians’

Further Reading

Note: Maintaining a website is expensive! To help cover the costs, links marked with an (*) contain affiliate links. That means if you choose to make a purchase after clicking the link, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

* The Wrong Messiah – Nick Page

* Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why – Bart D. Ehrman

* The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right – Lisa Sharon Harper

Decentralised Power and Biblical Leadership: Lessons From Exodus 18