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The Great Bible Debate

Chris Luxford tells us all about it

The Debating Society recently debated the motion “This house believes the bible is a waste of paper”. It looked interesting. I went along. Never having been to the Debating Society before, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had thought there might have been a few more people there but never mind.

So what was the quality of the discussion then? Well, Mark Standwick, proposing the motion, started off by pointing out that the Bible is quite a large volume with several hundred pages of fairly dense script. He went on to say that because this script needs to be carefully studied to be fully understood and appreciated it is clearly worthless. Contemporary society needs everything instantly, in small, easy to digest, bite size chunks. Personally I would say that this is more of a criticism of contemporary society than of the Bible, but I’ll let that pass for now.

Mark’s second, Marcus Steel, took an altogether different tack. He made a lot of points about corruption in the Vatican; various divisions and schisms within Christianity; the emergence of capitalism from within a Christian society; and the fact that some people who claim to be Christians don’t act in a suitably charitable way and are therefore hypocrites. Many of these points are quite valid when taken in context, but none of them really have much to do with the Bible itself. The point seems to have been that because its teachings are not always followed, or are interpreted in different ways, then this is the fault of the Book.

The arguments for the Bible, and against the motion, also took two very different angles. Corine Clarkson opened the batting by pointing out the number of contemporary laws which have their origins in Biblical teaching, both from the Old and the New Testaments. Countering the criticisms of the Bible’s inconsistencies and contradictions she reminded the audience that the Bible was written over the space of some five thousand years, and while there are a number of changes in the society of the people featured within its pages, there is no real change in the nature of the people themselves, nor of the value systems on which they based their communities. Simply stated, the Bible is relevant to people today, because it was relevant to people of the past. And that all societies, however diverse, contain people who are, more or less, unchanging.

The second speech against the motion, by Wilhemena Munns, put forward the view that even if you don’t actually believe any of it, the Bible is a great read, “the ultimate literary anthology”. I thought this was an interesting angle to take as it took the content of the Bible as being worthwhile in its own right, even if separated from the meaning. Whether one can divorce the content from its meaning is another question, and not one which I wish to tackle here. The point of Wilhemena’s argument was that the Bible is the greatest book ever written, regardless of the reader’s religion.

There were a number of other points raised, some from the floor and some within the speeches, which were of varying relevance. Possibly the most pointless was one man’s repeated questioning about David Jenkins the former Bishop of Durham. Most predictable were comments about the historical accuracy of Genesis and the tedious nature of the genealogies and other lists, both fair enough points in their way, but hardly enough to invalidate the whole of both Testaments. The most bizarre point raised was an analogy between the Bible and the Students’ Union Constitution. As far as I could tell the reasoning was that they are both a set of rules of which many people are either unaware, or they ignore them. I had both of them in my bag on the night, I’m not sure what that says.

Was the debate of any real value? Yes, I think it probably was. There may not have been many people there, but all those who did attend heard a number of re-appraisals of the Bible, and had the opportunity to think about their own faith, or lack of it. The outcome was 11 to 6 against the motion. It is highly likely that the majority of those present had already made their minds up about which way to vote before entering the room, but if only one of those eleven people was persuaded during the debate, then it could be called a victory for the Christian faith.

Chris Luxford

Last modified: 25th November 2005