Understanding Mark as the Word of God
Mark begins his Gospel with the statement,
"This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." (Mark 1:1)
The word 'Gospel' comes from an Old English word 'godspel' which simply means 'Good News'. It is often used to translate the Greek word 'evangelion' which literally means 'Good News'. It is from this Greek word that we get the word 'evangelist' meaning 'someone who spreads Good News'. It could be argued, therefore, that Mark is not so much writing a book as spreading a message to others. In this he was doing something quite unique. Never before had anyone attempted to write a Gospel. Although Mark had lots of information about Jesus of Nazareth and wanted to pass this information on to his reader, he was primarily concerned with bringing his readers to the point of faith in Jesus as the Son of God. Some people have argued that Mark was not so much a historian but a theologian i.e. someone who tries to understand the nature of God.
Among Christians is a wide spectrum of belief when it comes to understanding the Bible as the Word of God. These range from literalist of the one hand to liberals on the other. It is important to understand this wide range of belief.
| Literalists | As the name suggests, these are people who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. This means that there is no room for reinterpreting the Bible. When the Bible says that God created the world in six days, literalists actually believe the world was created in six twenty-four hour periods. |
| Fundamentalists | Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is completely inspired by God, and cannot contain errors. Where there are apparent contradictions, people do not yet have enough understanding - either of the text or of truth. Fundamentalists might differ from literalists in their interpretation of the creation story. A fundamentalists might argue that when the writer of Genesis mentions God creating things in a day, we can understand this as meaning is a period of time e.g. could be a thousand years. |
| Conservatives | Conservatives believe the Bible was inspired by God and that the writers wrote what God wanted. They were writing 'the truth' from God for people to understand. The Bible is not a scientific text, and occasionally there may be difficulties with a text where understanding is not clear. In the case of the Creation story, this is setting out the truth about God as the Creator of the world. It was never intended to be a scientific account of creation as we understand science today. |
| Liberals | Liberals form the other extreme of the spectrum. They believe that the writers of the Bible were guided by God but because they were human they could make mistakes. The Bible contains the God's Word but needs to be interpreted by people. Much of the Bible is not intended to be taken literally, but to present spiritual truth using parables, imaginative stories and poetic writing. For a liberal the creation story in Genesis is a myth composed to illustrate truth i.e. the nature of evil, the basic goodness of the Creation. |
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