How The Church Lost The Bible

Before 1450 A.D., scarce written material and low literacy rates was the common feature of the day. Indeed, the financial patronage for manuscripts and books production was limited. Monks were the bookmakers. Churches and monasteries were bookkeepers for Medieval Europe. To add to the scarcity of books, mistrust for the knowledge-starving public led the medievalists to secure books through the invention of chained libraries. Books loan was shrouded with anathema and highly sealed as “ the most meritorious of all acts of mercy”. Thus, restrained reading collections were shielded away from public access. Forcibly, cuffed books collection became highly valuable commodities. Not only books were scarce, likely so was honesty. Truth hit a big availability crisis in Medieval Europe! Hence, the book was seen as an attribute of God. Owning a copy of the Holy Bible was a rare privilege bestowed upon a few.

Nowadays, the printing age has launched us beyond the era of cumbersome and costly chained books. We have landed on a digital bibliomania landscape. Today’s christians are Bible great publishers, debaters and readers. Seemingly self-contradictory, the ecosystem of main christian denominations has become a Babel tower of theological confusion, in spite of our unlimited access to biblical knowledge. Tellingly, one can display an unprecedented biblical illiteracy despite managing a couple of Bible translation on top of speaking classical Greek and showing Hebrew proficiency. The oversupply of biblical literature had brought about an outgrowth of theological doctrinal debates being transported into political parties platforms of the first magnitude.

Surprisingly enough, despite the scarcity of written materials, a handful of first century christian believers displayed an extraordinary knowledge of the power of the Word to the point of being recognized as “these who have turned the world upside down ” in Acts 17:6. One question then arises. How did they relate to the Bible despite being mostly illiterate in the midst of a desert of books?

How to Turn Bible Believers Into Paganized Christians ?

Two millenniums of Church history had landed us on a double theological trajectory highway: liberal progressive, and Bible believing conservative theology. On the one hand, conservative christianity is often grotesquely referred to as a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. On the other hand, inbred converts to a Bible debating and rationally argumentative community of believers have risen as foes of historical biblical christianity, paving the way for liberal theology. In the late 1700s and 1800s, waves of critical political philosophies began to make inroad into social agendas. Among the committed adherents of critical thinking with a clear agenda of destructive biblical criticism, we find Immanuel Kant, Hegel, and K. Marx. Hegel disavows all absolutes except the State. Reason, a quasi-divinity, becomes the supreme horse of progress riding History as well as the new judge for History. K. Marx is a messenger of atheistic communism, while Kant turns thumbs down on the possibility of knowing God. To Kant, subjective religious experience is enough as authority.

Under the robe of intellectual defenders of the faith or reformers, liberal christianism had been fed spoon from the wells of critical thinking. It is nothing short of a progressive breakthrough, but a stock-in-trade of brilliant Hegelian clowns’ gags and pranks on theological arenas. By the end of the day, liberal theology amounts to a perdition trip. It is a Bible liquidation auction sale in order to replace christian most precious heritage by secular philosophies. How does the Bible auction sale goes on? To liberal theology, Jesus’ divinity and resurrection as well as the atonement of personal sin are denied. He is a simple teacher on the same platform with Buddha or Socrate. Therefore, there is no need of salvation and redemption. God’s judgment is refuted. Science can lead us to all truth. Christianism and other religions are similar rather than different. The supernatural and the natural, God and man, immanence and transcendence are moving to a final “one” reality symphony of orchestra. In a nutshell, to progressive christians, the Bible is no longer relevant to modern society. End of the blown up sale... everything historically Biblical must go fast to allow the organized risposte of the ancient world as we knew it before Christ!

What do we carry home when the transaction is approved ? A diet reconversion to losing some intellectual and theological weight. The assumption becomes that one is not evolving if one sticks to tradition or normative ethical conventions. The choice to be “different” from socially consecrated norms and values has been vouchsafed to the bill of rights. Nowadays, to be smart is to receive a mental blood transfusion from Hegel, Kant, and Marx. And convert to a post-modern clown bearing the tattoos of anything that sounds “different”, from becoming a sexual revolutionaire to a theological evolutionist. It then becomes fashionable to be a self-proclaimed atheist to be crowned smart thinker.

However, what had been traded for progressive new consumption gadgets is nothing creative but some recycled ideological items of the past to making the ancient Canaanites blush of jealousy. Promoting an intellectual paternalistic deception! Intellectualism is a spirit that holds captive the mind in search of deep knowledge. When applied to the Word of God, it amounts to accumulating and cooking up Bible knowledge without a relationship whatsoever with God. Impressive factual biblical knowledge and relevant information about the Bible do not necessarily amount to a genuine knowledge of God. Knowing God is engaging his written Word through an obedient relationship. The tragedy of modern christianism is building up religious performers and theologians detached from a commitment to the Word. Ironically enough, a bushman in a remote area could be more Bible proficient than a cutting edge Bible savvy scholar leaning only on his intellectual ivory tower for enlightenment.

In John 10:3, Jesus specifically exposed Nicodemus, the greatest Bible scholar of Israel, as a showcase of an educated ignorant, totally in the dark about the things of God despite his distinguished academic pedigree. How do we return christians to their pagan heritage? Otherwise, how do we transform believers into paganized christians? Make them religious performers, Bible debaters and uncommitted believers to biblical teaching. Let the the paganized christians arise ! This posture has substantially left us under the tutelage of a highly ceremonial church riding on the clouds of well-aged rituals, bearing the vestiges of Constantine’s high marks. While securing unity among the folk, a highly trained-to-perform christianism becomes more a badge of religious belonging and piety than a shared relationship to a living God. The pitfalls of a ceremonial christianism had cast a shadow over the fact that the posture of a ritual does not match the dependability of one’s character in a relationship.

Consequently, building a disconnected theology from its raison d’être to fit cultural, social and political mutations amounts to a theological amateurism. As the standard bearer for all currencies, the Word of God does not flip around to allow giveback by way of incentive compensation with regard to our social new incentives. In other words, as far as the Word of God is concerned, there is no provision for any downward adjustment to incentive compensation due to sexual, moral, cultural or political volatility. The Word of God is never swinging at any cultural or political currency exchange rate. God is not changing anytime soon. And He is bound to his own Word. For God had exalted his Word above all his name (Ps. 138:2). That is the reason why, theology out of context amounts to the perilous temptation found in Isaiah 14:13-14 “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb the highest heavens and be like the Most High.”

Man Tested Recipe For Losing the Bible in the Church

In 2 Kings 22:8, we discover how it takes a God-fearing Law and Rights abiding king to discover the lost Bible in the very Temple of God. “Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the court secretary. ‘I have found the Book of the Law in the Lord’s Temple!’ ”. How possibly in the world could the Book of Covenant - the Bible - be lost within the Temple’ premises where its is supposed to be stored by all means? The whole point of losing the Bible in the Church is a testimony of a self-inflicted wound within the Temple. It speaks loud to the fact that, the Book of Covenant had been lost in the Temple, because the whole nation was uncommitted to the terms of the written Law. The nation during king Josiah’ reign was rather committed and surrendered to the worship of some celestial spooks. The nation had pledged obedience to the moon, the stars, and the sun deity as a new found religious fascination. No one was found to be practicing, obeying, and committing to the Law. The Bible was lost.

The most tested way to losing the Bible in a nation is not through some well choreographed religious rituals or theological arguments and symposiums. Plainly spoken, losing the Bible in the Church occurs by not simply obeying the Word. Like in a married couple, the guarantee to losing a spouse is by ignoring the exchange of wedding vows and embark upon a cheating trip. Obedience to the terms of a contract is the key in maintaining the relationship, not a lifelong time arguments over the wedding signed document. For, as long as there is no commitment, the Word is lost. That is why a ceremonial church who fails to obey the Word is only indulging in religious orgies. Such a church does not represent any danger to the kingdom of darkness, nor enter into an agreed commitment with God. Performing religious ceremonies without commitment to the Word stands as a disgust in God’s eyes. In Jeremiah 7: 21-23, God says to Israel: “Take your burnt offerings and your other sacrifices and eat them yourselves! When I led your ancestors out of Egypt, it was not burnt offerings and sacrifices I wanted from them. This is what I told them. ‘Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.’ ”

During Josiah’s reign, God was looking for a priest and a king to bring back worship - a court secretary - in the nation. Worship is connected to the court system. Worship is not a ceremonial ritual but a pledge of allegiance to obedience to a covenant. It is the very act of bringing to pass the terms of a written law. As king Josiah rightly understood, it takes a national repentance, not a national conversation, for a nation to rediscover the Bible. “Our ancestors have not obeyed the words in this scroll. We have not been doing everything it says we must do.” (2 Kings 22: 13). The king then assumes his place of authority and renewed the covenant in the Lord’s presence. He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, laws, and decrees with all his heart and soul. That’s exactly what worship is all about: a pledge of obedience ! In this way, king Josiah brought about a confirmation of all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll, and all the entire nation pledged themselves to the covenant (2 Kings 23:3). Today, we have lost the Bible by entertaining highly Bible intellectual christians and theologians who are not yet ready for worship.

As laudable as it may be, biblical head knowledge without an intimate relationship and commitment to God through his Word, becomes futile, counterproductive, idle and often time destructive. When there is a disconnect between the mind and the heart, Bible knowledge becomes a dangerous predicament. It amounts to giving someone a live chicken to swallow without the commitment it requires to go through the necessary steps prior to enjoying a proper and life giving meal. The Bible is a manual of operations and procedures for Kingdom oriented - citizens. That’s what the primitive Church rightly understood.

Narcisse Jean Alcide Nana
Evangelist and a writer, his last book is, Virus Militarisés,