“It's important for people in the Church to realize that the way they talk and think about the Bible isn't the way Bible scholars talk and think about it - and I'm including "Bible-believing" scholars there. There is a wide gap between the work of biblical scholars, whose business it is to read the text of the Bible in its own worldview context, and what you hear in church.” PeopleThinkingImportantRealizingChurchScholarBiblicalWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Scholarship aimed at truly understanding what the biblical writers meant often does not filter down into the church and through the pulpit to folks who show up on Sunday. I think that's just wrong, but scholars rarely make any effort to decipher their own scholarly work for people outside the ivory tower.” PeopleThinkingUnderstandingChurchEffortSundayScholarBiblicalScholarshipScholarly Author:Michael S. Heiser
“If you don't have the worldview of the people who produced the Bible - under inspiration no less, - you can't understand what they were trying to communicate in many respects. Biblical people weren't modern people. That's self-evident no matter how much we try to deny it.” PeopleTryingInspirationModernCommunicateBiblicalWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“How much of what the biblical writers believed about the supernatural world do I believe? They weren't us. We are products of the Enlightenment; they were not. So let's stop denying that reality. Rather than sitting in judgment on them from our Enlightenment perches, we ought to have them sit in judgment on us when it comes to informing us about the supernatural world. After all, what they wrote was ultimately overseen by God.” WorldBelieveRealityI BelieveJudgmentEnlightenmentBiblicalNatural World Author:Michael S. Heiser
“We like to pretend the core ideas of the faith are more palatable or workable within our modern rationalistic approach to Scripture than the stuff we want to call "too weird" because of our own intellectual sensibilities. The truth is they are not. So we come up with interpretations to eliminate the weirdness of the biblical worldview that makes us uncomfortable. Problem solved!” ProblemModernTruth IsIntellectualScriptureUncomfortableBiblicalSensibilityWorldviewWeirdness Author:Michael S. Heiser
“When biblical material touches on the natural world, we can legitimately use the tools of science. Sometimes that shows us - no shock here - that biblical writers didn't know as much as we now know about the natural world - but God knew that when he picked them, so that alone tells us that "doing science" that would satisfy a 21st century - and beyond - audience wasn't what God was interested in with respect to the enterprise of producing Scripture for posterity.” WorldSometimesNaturalAudienceScriptureEnterpriseBiblical21st CenturyPosterityNatural World Author:Michael S. Heiser
“The truth is that we don't know much about the spiritual world except for what Scripture tells us, so it's unwise to think we can speak with clarity about what a divine being can or cannot do. The tools of analyzing the natural world are of no use for analyzing the supernatural world. For the latter we need rules of logic, and the supernatural beliefs of the biblical writers are quite defensible in that arena.” ThinkingWorldSpiritualBeliefSpeakNaturalDivineTruth IsLogicScriptureClarityBiblicalNatural WorldUnwise Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Why are you uncomfortable with the supernaturalist worldview of the biblical writers? Evangelicals don't want to just say, "Well, the inspired writers were wrong about some of their beliefs about the spiritual world and its inhabitants." That really doesn't work in a confessional situation! So instead we come up with excuses and interpretations that allow us to remake the biblical writers in our own post-Enlightenment image. I understand that impulse, but it's not honest.” WorldSpiritualBeliefSituationHonestInspiredExcuseImpulseUncomfortableBiblicalWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser