Sermon: "The Scandal of Scriptural Skepticism"-March 8, 2026

The Third Sunday in Lent, Topical Sermon

The Rev'd Cecil Patrick Perkins, The Rector 

Transcript

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Introduction:

“What’s so scary about Holy Scripture?” This is a question I constantly want to ask Episcopalians of a certain ilk. I don’t know whether the impulse toward biblical skepticism grew out of the anti-authoritarian spirit of the ’60s and ’70s or as a reaction to the “Moral Majority” of the ’80s and ’90s. But I can tell you one thing: a fair number of otherwise middle-of-the-road Episcopalians came to regard the Bible with such suspicion that responding “Thanks be to God” to the lector’s claim to have just read “the Word of the Lord” would be considered perjury in a court of law!

I think I understand how they got there. Biblical fundamentalism was on the rise in the 70s and 80s, and good Episcopalians were instinctively leery—as well they should have been. However, instead of heeding the measured rejoinders of Anglicanism’s best biblical scholars, Episcopalians gravitated towards the mainline mavericks of the time like Jack Spong and Dom Crossan. These gentlemen were gifted, popular communicators, but it would be generous to call them pariahs within the theological academy. They were progressive partisans who wanted to revise Christianity according to materialist and Marxist ideals. They believed that, because science couldn’t explain the supernatural, the Church would do well to get rid of it. (The idea of a “non-supernatural God” makes about as much sense to me as a “married bachelor,” but I digress.) They also thought that the New Testament had been so co-opted and corrupted by the “hegemony of white males” that almost none of it could be trusted historically let alone theologically. Honestly, I found this contention of theirs so ironic that I wrote a song about it:

                  White men duped me, this I know, for

                  Spong and Crossan told me so!

                  Even though they’re male and white,

                  Everything they say is right! 

Please understand: I’m not saying these were bad guys or were always wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day! What I am saying is that they (and those like them) so muddied the lines between academic scholarship and wishful thinking that well-intentioned Episcopalians didn’t realize they weren’t getting a real “scholarly consensus.” What is more, the power of their rhetoric often provoked their hearers to go even farther than they did. Like the old, Turkish proverb says, “If the Imam farts, the congregation gets diarrhea.” This very dynamic, frankly, led to a widespread “throwing out of the baby with the bath water.” That’s a bit of an understatement: In many parishes, the clergy boiled the bathwater and laced it with anthrax to make certain the baby was dead by the time it was thrown out!

You may be wondering, “Patrick, why are you being so passive-aggressive, this morning?” Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not being passive-aggressive. I’m being actively-aggressive, but I’m doing so, I believe, for good reason. For you see, I honestly believe that much of the decline of the Episcopal Church can be attributed to our separation from the biblical approach of Classic Anglicanism. Our Anglican forebears held tenaciously to a brilliant, biblical via media —a reasoned and reasonable middle way between uncritical literalism, on the one hand, and hypercritical skepticism, on the other. For the next few minutes, I’d like to unpack the rationale for that middle way and, hopefully, convince you that a return to it isn’t only justifiable but desirable.

Exposition:

I recently heard someone say, “I follow Jesus, but I don’t need to the Bible to do it.” That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Apart from the New Testament, we have almost no contemporary evidence that Jesus even existed, let alone what he did or said. A few, scattered references in ancient Roman and Jewish writers tell us that he lived, that he was crucified, and that his followers came to worship him as Lord, but that’s it. Take away the Bible, and what do you have? Nothing you can build a philosophy or religion on, to be sure.

If you call yourself a “Christian,” then there is no way possible to avoid being a Bible-believer. It’s the only source providing contemporary information about who Jesus was and what he taught. It becomes a fool’s endeavor to try and avoid it, and this reality leads me to a crucial but thorny statement: If you claim to be a Christian, the question, “Is the Bible true?” really isn’t available to you. The only question you can reasonably ask is, “How much of it is true?” Let me illustrate what I mean.

Winston Churchill once asked a young socialite whether she’d go to bed with him for ₤1,000,000. Blushingly, she nodded affirmatively. He then asked if she’d be willing to do so for ₤100. Indignantly, she snapped, “Sir Winston, what kind of woman do you take me for?” Churchill quipped: “Madam, you’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.” The same logic applies to Christians. The moment you’ve said “Yes” to being a “Christian,” you’ve admitted to being a “Bible believer,” at least to a degree. All that remains is haggling over exactly what you believe and why. But this, too, comes with a dilemma… 

How do you distinguish between what’s true and what isn’t? Based on what you believe to be plausible? That’s a circular argument, if I’ve ever heard one! “I believe it, because I believe it.” It’s also an inconsistent argument. For example, if you don’t trust the Gospel writers’ record of Jesus’ divine claims or miracles or Resurrection, why would you trust their record of his teachings? What makes their transcript any more reliable than their commentary? NOTHING! My friends, Progressives often suggest that biblical conservatives are delusional. But think about it: If you follow the teachings of a man, the only contemporary data about which comes from sources you think deluded in believing he was God…WHO’S DELUDED?

There’s a better way forward, and it’s the Anglican Way. It allows you to affirm a biblical text to be “the Word of the Lord” without requiring you to accept it uncritically. Let me explain.

Some of us were sold a bill of goods that “Scripture is nothing more than a record of people’s religious experiences.” Let me ask you a question: If that’s all it is, why should I take it any more seriously than I would sixty-six spiritual autobiographies, randomly selected from the members of the Mediator? Folks, I love you all, but I’m not about to shape my eternity around what you think about God. Yes, your experience is “valid” – whatever that means – but it’s not authoritative or, necessarily, even true. Some of you, unbeknownst to me, might be downright batty….Or, you may simply be wrong. What you take to be the movements of the Holy Spirit way down deep in your soul may be nothing more than the gaseous remnants of yesterday’s enchiladas working their way through your colon!

Friends, we all know—deep down—that Scripture has to be more than John Q. Jew’s private “God experiences.” When we say, “The Word of the Lord,” all of us know that can’t simply mean “a word about the Lord.” If that’s all you think it is, then I don’t know how, with integrity, you can baptize your children, receive the Eucharist, sing Christmas carols, celebrate Easter, or participate in a Christian funeral. Doing such things is a sham, if you don’t believe that the Bible’s teaching about these things is both sufficiently true and authoritative.

But, since you’re here, I’m going to assume that, down deep, you really do believe that the Bible contains, not simply “words about the Lord,” but, in some way, “words from the Lord.” And, starting there, we can build an Anglican doctrine of Scripture.   

There is no contradiction between understanding Scripture as “the Word of God” and “the words of man.” It’s a false dichotomy. Just as Christ has both divine and human components, so too does Scripture. In Scripture, God speaks through human speech. The ideas come from God; they are divine communications or, better, revelations. The actual words of Scripture, however, are human. God inspired human beings to put God’s truth into their words. And this is both the beauty and the danger of Scripture.

God is, by definition, infallible; humans are not. For this reason, any “problems” in Scripture must be human problems. Some of the problems we see are in the eyes of the beholder—that is to say, the issue lies in our reading of the text rather than with the text itself. Other problems may be found in the text itself—issues of transmission. Well-intentioned—or not-so-well-intentioned—folks may have monkeyed with the texts to try and “improve” them. In either case, should we simply throw up our hands, lament any possibility of knowing the truth, and chuck the whole Bible? No! Neither should we try and paper over difficult texts. The problems are real, but they aren’t insuperable. Let me explain.

Our Anglican fathers and mothers “got” two things (dare I say) better than any other Christian tradition. First, they understood that God speaks through Scripture in more than one way. God speaks objectively through the ideas symbolized by the words on the page, and God speaks subjectively through the Holy Spirit, whom we encounter as we read those words. God has two “ins” to human minds and hearts—information and transformation—and both are always active. This is why, even when a Christian—or the whole Church—gets biblical details wrong, God can still lead them “into all truth.” Errors don’t necessarily lead to error—unless we really like them.

Second, our Anglican forebears understood the limits of Scripture. Holy Scripture doesn’t talk about everything we want it to talk about—it talks about salvation. When I was ordained deacon and priest, I declared: “I… believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.” That phrase, “necessary to salvation,” is crucial—and a quintessentially Anglican qualification.

Why? The Bible isn’t a science book. That’s not its purpose. Rather, it’s a book—or, better, a set of books—that describes God’s program of salvation. If you’re reading Scripture to figure out the finer points of astrophysics or human sexuality, you’re using it wrong. On the other hand, if you criticize it for failing to meet 21st-century scientific standards, you’re also using it wrong. Conservatives and progressives distort Scripture by projecting their scientific expectations on it. 

God didn’t need modern scientists to explain salvation, but he did need somebody. And to speak to somebody, God had to speak at a particular time—because all “bodies” exist at particular times. God chose ordinary, pre-scientific people to record his Word—people who thought in pre-scientific terms, spoke in pre-scientific idioms, and wrote for pre-scientific audiences. Might God have had a reason for this? (Give God the benefit of the doubt—he’s smarter than you!) God spoke through ordinary people because he wanted to speak to ordinary people. He didn’t need Einstein or Darwin to tell people what he was doing to restore them to right relationship with God and Creation. We don’t either. What’s more, there’s no evidence that the entrance exam for heaven will have a science section—or a theology section, for that matter. (There’s no evidence there will be an exam at all!

What humans need—and what Holy Scripture provides—is the knowledge that human selfishness and shame separated us from God and one another. Again and again, we tried to rebuild these relationships on our own terms, yet—sadly—the harder we tried, the more fractured they became. But God, motivated by steadfast love and amazing grace, came to us where we were and as we are, to restore us to fellowship with God and each other. God suffered to redeem our suffering and rose to effect our rising, in Christ. As if that wasn’t enough, God deigned to dwell in us and among us through the Holy Spirit, not only reminding us that we aren’t alone but also that he has made us partners in his work of cosmic reconciliation.

Conclusion:

Now that’s good news! But here’s the rub: you’d know nothing of it apart from the teaching of Holy Scripture. There is no Gospel without Scripture. Without it, all that remains are records of imperfect human longings for a God they aren’t even sure they can reach. The radical difference between Christian Scripture and other “holy books” is that it presents a God who does all the reaching. All we are asked to do is take hold—by faith.

To conclude, friends, I want to say this: Classical Anglicanism doesn’t require you to leave all your questions at the church door. In fact, it keeps the door open to all sorts of creative and critical engagement with Scripture. But its history is full of examples of pathological skepticism gone wrong. We forget—at our peril—that better people than we have thought through matters we don’t even know we should think about and arrived at consensuses far more subtle and sophisticated than we could imagine. 

Biblical deconstruction sometimes feels like a thrilling game of theological Jenga, while you’re playing—or watching—yet it is not a game. Pull the wrong pieces, and the whole structure begins to wobble. Eventually, if it isn’t shorn up, the structure will topple. And the consequences? Let’s just say some of them last forever. AMEN.