Reworking the Bible to Fit Your Doctrine (Part 1)

Reworking the Bible to Fit Your Doctrine (Part 1)

With all the many Christian denominations today, why do almost all of them believe the identical things about the essentials of the faith?  I'm talking about the essentials now, not secondary issues.  Secondary issues would include whether to have communion weekly or monthly, whether have a business meeting annually or every six months or whether to call your church leader "pastor" or "elder."  No, I'm talking about ESSENTIAL doctrines such as who God is, what God's written word is and how we as human being achieve peace with God, which the Bible refers to as Salvation.

Those who agree on the Bible, and the Bible alone as the only, complete and inerrant written word of God agree also that God is triune in nature, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that Salvation, being saved from the wrath that will someday be poured out up sin, is by the grace of God alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone to the glory of God alone.  This is the essence of Christianity and is believed emphatically by all Christians across an entire myriad Christian denominations, from Baptist to Lutheran, from Nazarene to Assemblies of God and uncountable others.

There are however, other religious groups who try to pass themselves off as Christian, but fail the test for Christianity in that they deny one or more of the basic tenets I listed above.  A real problem arises when these groups claim to believe in the Bible and yet their religious model bears little or no resemblance to Biblical Christianity.  In order to hold to their claim to believe in the Bible, they must somehow rework the Holy Scriptures in a number of ways to squeeze their teachings into a seemingly "Christian" mold, when indeed their doctrines are out of the Biblcal box to begin with.

How is this done?  There are a number of ways.  One is to basically rewrite the Bible itself to fit their doctrines, ignoring the Bible's actual wording.  An example of this would be the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, better known as the Jehovah's Witnesses with their New World Translation (NWT).  Over the course of their existence since the late 19th Century, Christians were continually pointing out to them (often in heated debate) that their teachings were way out of line with both the Old and New Testaments -- and they knew it.  But rather than surrender and become orthodox in their beliefs they simply rewrote the Bible, beginning with the New Testament (which they adamantly refused to call the "New Testament" but rather renamed it the "Christian Greek Scriptures") in 1950, followed by the Old Testament in 1961 (which the also renamed the "Hebrew Scriptures").  In other words, if you don't like the rules of the game, rewrite the rules!  Including the name of the rules themselves.

Another way a religion can claim to believe in the Bible and yet have doctrines that are far-flung from it, is to add to it.  The Roman Catholics and other groups have done this with the Apocrypha.  This work is usually found stuck between the Old and New Testament in certain Bibles.  It is writings by the Jews mostly during the intertestamental period.  The problem here is that the Jews themselves don't recognize Apocrypha as Scripture.  So why should we?  Besides when Jesus was bookending the martyrs who had come before him, he started with Abel and ended with the last martyr in the Old Testament, Zechariah, son of Barachias (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51).  Why did he leave out the martyrs of the Apocrypha.  Simple answer.  To Jesus the Apocrypha wasn't Scripture.  Other pseudo-Christian groups have added other works to "augment" the Bible, such as "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by the Christian Scientists and "Divine Principle" by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon.  These augmentations certain change doctrine.

A third way orthodox Biblical doctrine is eschewed in favor of a Bible-claiming religion's teachings is to claim the Bible has been either mistranslated or perhaps mistransmitted (through the copying processes down through the ages).  It is this technique that has allowed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons to proclaim for 184 years that, "Oh, yes, we believe in the Bible!" and yet have a teaching set that is closer to Islam than Christianity (however, that's a subject for a future blog).

Along with adding three other works of "scripture" (The Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price -- which would also put them in the first category above) to the Bible (King James Version only, mind you), the Mormons have tried to successfully vindicate their beliefs by attacking the Bible's translation and transmission.  If one finds a passage of Biblical scripture that contradicts Mormon doctrine, Latter-day Saints are quick to vociferate, "That's mistranslated!!"  However, it has always been a mystery to me why the only places the Bible that are mistranslated (according to the LDS) are the ones the stand in contraposition of the teachings of Mormonism.

To drive home their idea of Biblical inaccuracy, Latter-day Saints have included three places in their Standard Works that act to their desired vindication.  The first is the Eighth Article of Faith, which they included at the end of the Pearl of Great Price, making it the inspired word of God (in their eyes only).  It states, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly...." (of course, what "We believe" does not constitute truth -- one could certainly believe falsehood).

The second attack upon Biblical completion and sufficiency comes in the Book of Mormon, II Nephi 29:6,10 which states, "Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written." This tells Mormons everywhere that we Bible-only Christians are fools.  However, this is circular reasoning.  In order to believe such an idea as God will add to the Bible, one must believe the Book of Mormon to be a true addition to the Bible.

The Mormons' final and most pernicious attack on the inerrancy of the Holy Bible comes also in the Book of Mormon, I Nephi 13:28-40 and 19:3.  Eight times the Book of Mormon claims here that "plain and precious parts" are removed from the Bible, and therefore it follows that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been called by God to restore them.  Obviously, to the LDS, what has been restored by Mormonism and what plain and precious parts were left out are one and the same.

This is what the entire veracity of Mormonism hangs upon.  If plain and precious parts have been lost from the Bible, then the LDS church may (or may not) be true.  On the other hand, if the Bible is complete and inerrant, Mormonism cannot in any way be true.

Daily I hear Mormons pleading the case for their doctrines by telling me the "plain and precious parts" are missing from the Bible.  But as a Christian how would one prove they have NOT been removed?  It is a task that is not nearly as difficult as it sounds.  And I will demonstrate how that can be accomplished in my next blog.

(Part 2 to come)