Challenging established Christian doctrine by reinterpreting scripture is Keith Giles' specialty. He has written several books doing so, most recently Jesus Unforesaken: Substituting Divine Wrath with Unrelenting Love (2021), which I favorably reviewed
In Jesus Unbound, Giles argues for reorienting Christianity from a Biblicist approach to a New Covenant Christ-centered one. In my view, he makes a stronger case for some of his contentions than for others.
Christians should not make an idol of the Bible, he says, since it's God we worship and follow. "Jesus is the Word of God, and the Word of God is a person," Giles asserts. We are saved by Jesus, not a book. We should read the book through the
lens of Christ.
In addition, we should place the greatest weight on the words of Jesus, as opposed to a flat reading of the Bible where every scripture is given equal weight, regardless of who said it. There are, after all, some verses that seem to conflict with what Jesus said. If all verses are equal, then Jesus is diminished. On the other hand, in the absence of a clearly defined rule, the Jesus-centric approach could be applied arbitrarily to demote verses we find inconvenient.
Some Christians insist the Bible is the only way we can learn about Jesus, though the Bible does not call itself that. While the Bible is an indispenable source, it is not the exclusive way to learn about Jesus, insists Giles. His source is Jesus.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come." (John 16:12-13)
Jesus likely didn't mean his listeners would have to wait several hundred years until the New Testament was canonized.
The gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word of God who lives within every one of us who abides in Him. Paul says that we “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) right now and that we can discern “the things that come from the Spirit of God…because they are discerned only through the Spirit” (2:15), and this Spirit is now alive within us. Other relevant verses in this regard are 1 John 2:27, 1Tim 2:5), and Matt. 23:10.
The Old Testament depiction of God contrasts sharply with Jesus in the New Testament. Since if we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father, Giles doubts the truth of Old Testament passages about God purportedly ordering genocide and violence, since it is so unlike Jesus. Giles does not convincingly explain how the warrior Jesus in Revelation who sends people into the lake of fire is consistent with the loving, forgiving Christ in the rest of the New Testament.
Giles also recognizes various contradictions in scripture. To take one of a dozen examples, the Old Testament explicitly states that God inspired David to take a census (2 Sam. 24:1), and that Satan inspired him to do so (1 Chronicles 21:1).
"Those who insist on an inerrant scripture ignore these discrepancies, or turn somersaults to make each contradictory statement true while ignoring the very obvious fact: The voices we hear in scripture are not infallible, nor inerrant."
Though Giles says some parts of scripture are false, he nonetheless assures us that we can rely upon what the gospels teach about Jesus. As to why the words attributed to Jesus must be reliable -- even though the gospels contain contradictions about his birth, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection -- Giles says the Holy Spirit will guide us.
Giles relies for support mainly upon a handful of verses from the gospel of John, in particular, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (14:9) There are other Jesusian verses, however, where Jesus distances himself from being confused with God: “No one is good but God alone.” (Luke 18:19). Regarding the end of the world, Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels... nor the Son, but only the Father." (Matthew 24:36). Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17). Jesus prayed to God – not to himself, (Mark 14:35-36.)
Giles clearly places far more weight on John 14:9 than on all those other Jesusian statements.
In How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman points out that
if we only look at the gospel of John, it seems clear that Jesus claimed to be god in such verses as, "Before Abraham, I am." "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." (John 17:5)
"No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man." (John 3:13)
Ehrmann contends the passages in John where Jesus clearly claims divinity do not pass the historicity test. There is only a single source for those quotes, none of which is in the three earlier gospels. It's hard to imagine, Ehrman says, that Matthew, Mark and Luke would leave out the most significant thing about
Jesus -- divinity claims -- if Jesus had made them. What Jesus said about himself contrasts most sharply between the earliest and the latest gospels, i.e. between Mark and John.
Giles effectively deconstructs the Biblicism that reigns among evangelicals. He also
explains why notorious verses appearing to require women to be quiet in church and to be excluded from leadership don't mean it. He does the same with verses seeming to condemn homosexuality. He is less persuasive in explaining why the Biblical passages he relies upon are accurate, while he contends many other passages are not. ###
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