Bibliolatry

Bibliolatry is the worship of the Bible or any other text regarded as inerrant scripture. The word is a conflation of the words "bible" and "idolatry," and though it may also refer to an extreme devotion to books in general, it is more often used as a derogatory reference to extremely literal interpretation of a holy book.

There may be no one who actually claims to worship the Bible itself, but those who believe in biblical inerrancy and biblical literalism are often considered to be bibliolaters by those who take a less literal view of scripture. Many Christians believe that God is revealed only through the Bible and that everything about the Bible reveals God. Some contend that this is essentially worship of the Bible, and that God is also revealed through the study of nature, reason (Logos), traditional practice and individual experience (see the Wesleyan Quadrilateral), all of which must be taken into account when deciding how to truly follow God and how to properly interpret any scripture.

Often used as a smear word to label one's theological opponents as too extreme or close-minded, the word frequently appears in exchanges between different Christian sects or different wings of a Christian sect or church. In his book Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages (ISBN 0-670-03385-5), Jaroslav Pelikan writes of Unitatis Redintegratio 21, "the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic church of 1962-1965 could speak with a mixture of genuine admiration and ever-so-gentle reproof about a 'love and reverence, almost a cult, for Holy Scripture' among the 'separated Protestant brethren'." Southern Baptist Dr. William Merrell published an irate denial of the charge of bibliolatry by the Baptist Faith and Message Committee in 2000.^[1]