Scripture is often said to be the Word of God. For skeptics and the unchurched, that sentiment is fairly off-putting. I wonder whether the statement ought to be phrased a bit differently.
I would put it like this: Some portions of Scripture verbally express, in human and therefore fallible terms, some aspects of the Logos that God has graciously revealed to us so far.
That of course begs some other questions:
1. What exactly is the Logos?
- “A Greek philosopher named Heraclitus first used the term Logos around 600 B.C. to designate the divine reason or plan which coordinates a changing universe. This word was well suited to John’s purpose in John 1.” (Crosswalk KJV Greek Lexicon.)
- “A principle originating in classical Greek thought which refers to a universal divine reason, immanent in nature, yet transcending all oppositions and imperfections in the cosmos and humanity.” (Glossary from PBS Web site “Faith and Reason,” which is well worth your time.)
2. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that at least some parts of Scripture do set forth, in words, at least some part of the Logos. That’s all well and good, but there’s a lot of material in Scripture. How do we sort it out? Some of the scriptural writings seem superfluous or just plain wrong. (We may think of some portions of Scripture as akin to “junk DNA” in the human genome. But there may be a purpose for those portions that we simply don’t yet recognize, just as some researchers now feel that way about junk DNA itself.)
3. Scripture itself may help us filter out any superfluous materials. It seems to demand that its own teachings be judged by humanity’s collective experience: “You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.” (Deut. 18:21-22)
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