A test for your doctrine of Scripture

Here’s a test for you.

Suppose that scientists created a sort of time machine. Not one that could transport someone from the present into the past. But one that could give anyone in the present a perfect window onto the past: clear, detailed, and controlled. Like a God’s-eye documentary recording of all that transpired in then and there, whenever and wherever. You wouldn’t be able to affect or change anything—what’s past is past, what’s done is done—but you could observe it.

Here’s the question.

Would the time machine obviate the necessity or utility of the Bible for Christians?

Better put: Would the time machine render redundant any and all narrative texts in the church’s canon of Holy Scripture? Because the function of those narratives is to inform us of what happened at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place with such-and-such persons? And with the advent of the time machine, those happenings would be available to us in exponentially greater detail, minus literary and genre trappings and revisions and agendas and interpretations, plus supremely wider historical and factual context?

Your answer to these questions says a great deal about your understanding of the nature and purpose of Holy Scripture in the church.

And allow me to say, ever so gently, that if your answer to these questions is Yes, then there is a problem in your doctrine of Scripture.