One of my favorite Advent poems is Yeat’s “The Second Coming,” with its line, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Granted, not your typical Advent/Christmas poem.
I grew up among pietists, evangelicals and biblical literalists to one extent or another. I must confess that a lot of the cognition in those traditions of faith never really took hold with me. Perhaps I was too critical for my own spiritual benefit even as a child. Issues about biblical inerrancy never interested me. During junior high school I learned that there are no extant original biblical manuscripts, the basis upon which the claims for biblical inerrancy are built (“There are no errors in the original manuscripts.”). That being the case it became apparent to me that it was a question of choice to believe in inerrant manuscripts—a belief that made no contribution to the quality of one’s Christian life or to one’s obedience to the message of the Bible, from what I could observe. Continue reading →
