The Godless Book

[I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’ from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity...]

Ever wondered what a Bible without God would look like...?

This week saw the publication of The Good Book: A Secular Bible (Bloomsbury), by A.C. Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, London. In an interview with The Guardian, Grayling refers to it as ‘a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who’ve experienced life, and thought about it’, but with ‘not one occurrence of the word God, or afterlife, or anything like that’. Philosophers from ancient Greece rub shoulders with Confucian sages and medieval poets, as Grayling takes ‘secular’ texts from western and eastern traditions and weaves together their insights about how ‘the good life’ should be lived.

This secular alternative to the Bible consciously mimics the design of Bibles with short chapters divided into verses. Organised in fourteen sections, it begins with Genesis and ends with The Good, taking in Wisdom, Parables, Lamentations, Songs, Histories, Proverbs, and Epistles along the way. Grayling’s decalogue, the ‘ten injunctions’, can be found in the final chapter: ‘Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try’ (The Good 8:11).

It’s unlikely that Christians will be thrown by this compilation. Indeed, believing in the ‘common grace’ of a God who sends rain and sun on all, there will be much to affirm about the virtue of friendship, wisdom for life, value of liberty, and more besides.

But perhaps most tellingly of all, Grayling’s Bible lacks a connecting narrative from beginning to end – which is what you might expect if there is no God. So, a ‘secular’ Bible has laws, but no redemption; it has sagely wisdom, but no God who calls us to live wisely in his world; it has lamentation, but no hope of restoration from the one whose mercies are new every morning.

For Christians, the Bible tells not a story about a god, but the story of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who will make good on his promise to Abraham to bless all nations. As such, Scripture is not merely a collection of writings, so much as a covenant document. And it doesn’t simply tell the story of God’s covenant with his people, but is itself the covenant document, the ratification of his promise and of our relationship with him – a good book indeed.