Inerrancy and Faith

[seer]

CS Lewis was one of best defenders of the faith in the last century. Yet in his book "Reflections on the Psalms" (one of his last works) he said that the bible was full of errors and contradictions. He also said that one of two things must go - inerrancy or the goodness of God. And believe me this man knew his scriptures.

I tend to agree. There are just some acts in the OT (and in the new,like in the Book of Revelation) that seem unworthy of a good God see Jer.19:9.

So can genuine faith and a belief in errancy go together? Is one chided for keeping the teachings and example of Christ as one's prime revelation of God.

[Solly]

You are assuming that we inerrantly have the teachings of Christ. Since CSL called into question the account of Judas' death, which calls into question the veracity of at least one gospel writer, you haven't a leg to stand on.

Christ quoted scripture, inerrantly as far as i am concerned. I follow the teaching and example of Christ.

And concerning CSL, the lack of quotation from the scriptures leads me to question that he really knew the scriptures.

[mandolin]

i think it's important to distinguish between errant and false.

I think that there are "discrepancies" in the bible. But these are merely awkward things that basically show that it is a book written by various men with various viewpoints trying to portray one thing...God.

To say that the bible is free of any discrepencies based on a presupposed theory that God gave the bible to men the way Allah supposedly gave the Koran to Mohammed is ludicrous. The bible is mens words...portraying God's being.

Joshua...a warrior by nature...is naturally going to be a book portraying the aggressive aspects of God. Various psalms are naturally going to portray the mercy of God. etc.

These aren't errors. They are a paradoxical viewpoint of God.

God isn't just love...or just vengeant...he is all these things. One verse portrays God as a blood-thirsty warrior while another portrays him as a loving father. Point is...God is all of these things and more. It doesn't mean the bible is totally full of errors. It means that the plot of the bible is tough to explain.

I personally feel that more exists about God than even the bible preaches. When listening to celtic bands doing instrumentals...i think God can be found there. When in the middle of a wicked crazy thrash guitar solo...God is there. When bobbing on a surfboard in the ocean waiting for the perfect wave...that is God. He is that peace...that love...that stoking feeling.
The same goes with the bible. When in war (OT with various cannanite nations) God is that victory. When afraid...God is that comfort. When surfing...God is that perfect wave :teeth:

This doesn't mean that the bible is full of errors...it means that the bible is attempting to put into words that which cannot hardly be explained.

I think it would have been easier if bible writers just said, "God is freakin' rad!"

That would have made studying theology a lot easier :smile:

[seer]

You are assuming that we inerrantly have the teachings of Christ. Since CSL called into question the account of Judas' death, which calls into question the veracity of at least one gospel writer, you haven't a leg to stand on.

That is just silly. I assume that we have accurate, if not perfect, accounts of Christ's teachings. The accounts of Judas clearly contradict. But are we honest enough to admit it? Another point Solly, obviously we do not have inerrant translation, so if I were to follow your logic, we could not trust anything in scripture.


Christ quoted scripture, inerrantly as far as i am concerned. I follow the teaching and example of Christ.

That of course is no where stated. As a matter of fact it is clear that certain quotations of Christ changed the OT references John 7:38 is one example.


And concerning CSL, the lack of quotation from the scriptures leads me to question that he really knew the scriptures.

First what lack of quotations are you speaking of? Second, if you believe the above you neither know the man or his works. But of course even Luther did not believe in inerrancy - do you question his knowledge of scripture also?

In the end Solly, what is more important - inerrancy or honesty?

[Solly]

That is just silly. I assume that we have accurate, if not perfect, accounts of Christ's teachings. The accounts of Judas clearly contradict. But are we honest enough to admit it? Another point Solly, obviously we do not have inerrant translation, so if I were to follow your logic, we could not trust anything in scripture.

Who claimed inerrant translation? You most certainly do not follow my logic.
However, who decides accuracy? The Jesus Seminar? Go over to the forums at TWeb where atheists are questioning the accuracy of the gospel accounts, and pointing to contradictions - many more than you would admit - and put up a good fight there, perhaps then I will accept your view.


As a matter of fact it is clear that certain quotations of Christ changed the OT references John 7:38 is one example.

And reasons can be seen for why. Nor do i think this ref a good example.


First what lack of quotations are you speaking of? Second, if you believe the above you neither know the man or his works. But of course even Luther did not believe in inerrancy - do you question his knowledge of scripture also?


I have read most of his works; a lot of what he writes is not based on exegesis of the text, but his own thoughts. Good thoughts a lot of them; not so good a lot of others - there is a man who brought platonism to his theology for a start.
Why bring Luther into it? Have I cited him as an authority?

Inerrancy or honesty. Either/or? Why?

[seer]

...Who claimed inerrant translation? You most certainly do not follow my logic.However, who decides accuracy?

Well who decides accuracy in the errant translations? Listen, I do not generally see a problem until we have an obvious contradiction - like the Judas thing.


...The Jesus Seminar? Go over to the forums at TWeb where atheists are questioning the accuracy of the gospel accounts, and pointing to contradictions - many more than you would admit - and put up a good fight there, perhaps then I will accept your view.

What view?

...As a matter of fact it is clear that certain quotations of Christ changed the OT references John 7:38 is one example.



...And reasons can be seen for why. Nor do i think this ref a good example.


I'am not sure what you mean Solly. Obviously Christ change (probably two) OT references. If they were inerrant in the first place there would be no need to change them.


...I have read most of his works; a lot of what he writes is not based on exegesis of the text, but his own thoughts. Good thoughts a lot of them; not so good a lot of others - there is a man who brought platonism to his theology for a start.
Why bring Luther into it? Have I cited him as an authority?


Well first,Augustine also brought neo-platonism to his theology, and that deeply affected the Reformers - concerning such doctrines as impassibility. And CLS came to his conclusions based on scripture - see "Reflections on the Psalms." And my point about Luther is simply this: many christians who know their bibles don't hold to inerrancy.

[Trinitarian]

Today @ 11:52 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=133906#post133906)
seer:

So can genuine faith and a belief in errancy go together? Is one chided for keeping the teachings and example of Christ as one's prime revelation of God.

I would certainly say yes. Inerrancy has never been a historic doctrine of core orthodoxy, and as such it is not an immediately central matter. That's not to say that it is not important, simply that it is not a test of orthodoxy.

[malach01]

"So can genuine faith and a belief in errancy go together?"

Even though I do believe in the "plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired and inerrant-in-the original manuscripts Word of God" I would say yes. But you might want to have a pretty good system of determining what scriptures you believe.:wink:

"Is one chided for keeping the teachings and example of Christ as one's prime revelation of God."

We do need to obey Christ's teachings and live a Christlike life as much as possible. But do not think Christianity is all about religion. Its about relationship, relationship, relationship. :pray:

[Socrates]

J. C. Ryle was right:


We corrupt the Word of God most dangerously, when we throw any doubt on the plenary inspiration of any part of Holy Scripture.

This is not merely corrupting the cup, but the whole fountain. This is not merely corrupting the bucket of living water, which we profess to present to our people, but poisoning the whole well. Once wrong on this point, the whole substance of our religion is in danger. It is a flaw in the foundation. It is a worm at the root of our theology. Once allow this worm to gnaw the root, and we must not be surprised if the branches, the leaves, and the fruit, little by little decay.

Francis Schaeffer was also right to identify inerrancy as a watershed issue -- see post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=140545#post140545

[Socrates]

06-28-2003 @ 09:21 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=134611#post134611)
Trinitarian:

I would certainly say yes. Inerrancy has never been a historic doctrine of core orthodoxy, and as such it is not an immediately central matter. That's not to say that it is not important, simply that it is not a test of orthodoxy.

Inerrancy never needed to be explicitly stated when the orthodox Trinitarian creeds were formulated—because it was implicitly underpinning them!

Creeds majored on refuting heresy, so they concentrated on where the Enemy was attacking the faith. In the early church, the Enemy was attacking the Trinity, e.g. Arianism and Sabellianism. For the last 150 years or so, the Enemy has been attacking the primary documents that teach the Trinity.

[Thomas2003]

Inerrancy never needed to be explicitly stated when the orthodox Trinitarian creeds were formulated—because it was implicitly underpinning them!

Creeds majored on refuting heresy, so they concentrated on where the Enemy was attacking the faith. In the early church, the Enemy was attacking the Trinity, e.g. Arianism and Sabellianism. For the last 150 years or so, the Enemy has been attacking the primary documents that teach the Trinity

Excellent, a most excellent observation and very true. For 2000 years Christianity has been defending the Faith, for the past 100 or so the great body of Christians are trying to figure out if the documents that present the faith are valid and reliable. I believe God's enemies are attacking Christianity with criminal intent and the most heinous of doctrines.

They are re-introducing the heresies that the creeds militated against by altering the Greek texts and then re-translating them with those heresies inherit in the new documents. It is the most insidious of schemes, and unfortunately it is housed in the high seats of our seminaries - just as anti-Christian presuppositions are housed in the highest seats of accredited universities as well

The doctrine of Inerrancy is inescapable, to deny Scriptural inerrancy is simply to establish inerrancy somewhere else. If one holds that Scripture isn't inerrant, then one holds that based upon their own opinion being infallible and inerrant!

Scripture tells me God cannot lie and that Jesus Christ is THE TRUTH, not just a truth or about truth or man's opinion of truth - but inerrant and absolute TRUTH.

God is not double minded nor double tongued. The infallible God of Scripture speaks an infallible word and He promised to Providentially preserve His word, which I believe He has done. But you cannot find it in modern textual criticism because it denies the very basic foundation of Providential preservation, or with non-believers who deny that Scripture is God's plenary inspired word. You'd be surprised at the majority of modern textual critics - they aren't even Christians.

I'm constantly amazed at modern Christians and their lack of faith - if a man has a clipboard, glasses and nonsense talk about 'older more reliable manuscripts' they bite that barren hook like trout in a pay lake. Generally without question, if he is smug about an ignorant fisherman who couldn't have possibly written and inerrant document - it is just accepted. Who is going to challenge the scholars union? It's really sad, and the most don't seem to be able to see the truth or have any understanding of the consequences.

The Reformation changed the world over a period of 400 or so years it made more progress than thousands of years before it; it did so based upon an unswerving faith in the Providence of God and His inerrant and infallible word.

The counter-reformation has done more to harm the basics of Christianity in the last 100 years that it did in the prior 1900. It is Christians that no longer believe in God's Providence, but follow after cunningly devised fables and evolutionary theory of God's word.

Again, to say that God is not infallible and He has not spoken inerrantly and inscripturated that word - is to simply transfe the immutable character of God to man. Biblical religion mandates an infallible God and word.

Cordially,

Thomas

[Socrates]

We corrupt the Word of God when we make defective statements of doctrine.

We do so when we add to the Bible the opinions of the Church, or of the Fathers, as if they were of equal authority.

We do so when we take away from the Bible, for the sake of pleasing men; or, from a feeling of false liberality, keep back any statement which seems narrow, and harsh, or hard.

We do so when we try to soften down anything that is taught about eternal punishment, or the reality of hell.

We do so when we bring forward doctrines in their wrong proportions. We have all our favourite doctrines, and our minds are so constituted that it is hard to see one truth very clearly without forgetting that there are other truths equally important.

We must not forget the exhortation of Paul—to minister “according to the proportion of faith.”

We do so when we exhibit an excessive anxiety to fence, and guard, and qualify such doctrines as justification by faith without the deeds of the law, for fear of the charge of antinomianism; or when we flinch from strong statements about holiness, for fear of being thought legal.

We do so, not least, when we shrink from the use of Bible language in giving an account of doctrines. We are apt to keep back such expressions as “born again”, “election”, “adoption”, “conversion”, “assurance”, and to use a roundabout phraseology, as if we were ashamed of plain Bible words. [Here I think he is mistaken. We should not use English Christianese that might be misunderstood. Rather, we should teach the Biblical concepts, originally written in Hebrew and Greek, in a way that modern speakers will understand. It might have been OK in Ryle's day when people knew what they meant, but if we must use them to the typical unchurched person, we must explain them—Soc.]

I cannot expand these statements, for want of time. I content myself with mentioning them, and leave them to your private thought.

[Seeton]

Thats what I'm screamin. Linguistically I don't like the word inerrant. I feel that it is inadequate for describing the Bible. Why do we have to use words to describe it that it doesn't use itself. Why don't we just call it God breathed or something. That little word inerrant will keep me from being a Southern Baptist missionary. Whats so dang important about it. When ideas are more important than people, we are sorely wrong!

Does the book have authority over me? Yes.
Will I call it inerrant? No!
Will I be persecuted in my own denomination because of that? Yes!

Sometimes I feel that when people ask me if I believe the Bible is inerrant, what they are really asking me is. "Do you think that my interpritation of the Bible is inerrant?" That is what I feel about it. That little "eight letter" anxiety removing word. :rant:

"If you say this is false, when will you start saying that Jesus wasn't real?" This slippery slope concept is one driven out of fear and the need for control. People can't handle the anxiety that comes from the ambiguity of life. So they have to come up with something that makes sense. :rant:

Its hard to love sometimes.

[Socrates]

07-12-2003 @ 07:46 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=146807#post146807)
Seeton:

Thats what I'm screamin. Linguistically I don't like the word inerrant. I feel that it is inadequate for describing the Bible. Why do we have to use words to describe it that it doesn't use itself.

It doesn't have to, because it is logically implied. This is the same "reasoning" that cultists use when they spruik that the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible --- although the doctrine is logically deducible.


Why don't we just call it God breathed or something.

We could, if it weren't for dishonest people who claim to believe in that the Bible was God-breathed but affirms error, entailing that God breathes out error.


That little word inerrant will keep me from being a Southern Baptist missionary.

No loss.


Whats so dang important about it.

Without it, you have no foundation for your faith.


When ideas are more important than people, we are sorely wrong!

When emotions are more important than logic, we are sorely wrong.


Does the book have authority over me? Yes.
Will I call it inerrant? No!
Will I be persecuted in my own denomination because of that? Yes!

If you refuse to affirm the historic statements of faith of not only Baptists but practically all denominations, then indeed you should be denied any position of authority. Francis Schaeffer was very firm on it. If you want to call this "persecution" then go ahead and develop your martyr complex.


Sometimes I feel that when people ask me if I believe the Bible is inerrant, what they are really asking me is. "Do you think that my interpritation of the Bible is inerrant?"

No, they are asking you if you think the Bible affirms error :dunce: Try using a dictionary instead of trying to second-guess people. Once you've graduated from that, then please check the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (http://www.kulikovskyonline.net/hermeneutics/csbe.htm)


That is what I feel about it. That little "eight letter" anxiety removing word. :rant:

"If you say this is false, when will you start saying that Jesus wasn't real?" This slippery slope concept is one driven out of fear and the need for control.

It's actually driven by logic, since Jesus said, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).


People can't handle the anxiety that comes from the ambiguity of life.

People can't handle the idea that God's written Word is authoritative because they want to be in authority over the Word, so they resort to cheap psychologization of their opponents.


So they have to come up with something that makes sense. :rant:

As opposed to liberals that come up with nonsense :bonk:

[Seeton]

Socrates:

It doesn't have to, because it is logically implied. This is the same "reasoning" that cultists use when they spruik that the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible --- although the doctrine is logically deducible.

just cuz its logical don't mean its right.




We could, if it weren't for dishonest people who claim to believe in that the Bible was God-breathed but affirms error, entailing that God breathes out error.

I don't want to call the bible errant. I don't want to call it inerrant either. And it isn't about being one or the other. I think both of those terms are a severely bad way of describing the Bible.




No loss.

look. Were gonna spend eternity in heaven. How are we gonna love each other. I want to spend my life serving Jesus while believing things differently than you. Does Christ unite us?




Without it, you have no foundation for your faith.

I think that God is Perfect without error. I also think Jesus is the foundation for my faith. My faith is in a man. He lives within my heart. Christ is the solid rock I stand on. Not the terms and definitions of a western world trying to make sense out of an eastern book.



When emotions are more important than logic, we are sorely wrong.

You can't help seeing the Bible through your contextualized eyes. You bring every experience you have ever had to the reading of scripture. When honest emotions are left out, we become spiritually constapated. To be an honestly contextualized "Flesh and Blood" reader of Scripture is a hard thing to do.


If you refuse to affirm the historic statements of faith of not only Baptists but practically all denominations, then indeed you should be denied any position of authority. Francis Schaeffer was very firm on it. If you want to call this "persecution" then go ahead and develop your martyr complex.

Thank you. I was writing on a day that I was thinking about it too much. I don't want a martyr complex. Schaeffer is not God. He was a wonderful man of God who did a great work for the kingdom. If he called the Bible inerrant, I will disagree with him. There is a problem when interpritations of scripture are given the authority of the scripture they interprit.


People can't handle the idea that God's written Word is authoritative because they want to be in authority over the Word, so they resort to cheap psychologization of their opponents.

The Bible is authoritative over my life.

When people want to fire those who don't teach exactly what they want, it is like a child not getting their way. Its about control.

People who want to follow Jesus are commendable. When those people can't deal lovingly with others who would follow Christ in a different way than they do, its called sin.

You wouldn't hire me to be a missionary?:teeth:

I'm cute and soft and love Jesus!:bunny:

Please! :teeth:

:wink:

[Thomas2003]

I think that God is Perfect without error. I also think Jesus is the foundation for my faith. My faith is in a man. He lives within my heart. Christ is the solid rock I stand on. Not the terms and definitions of a western world trying to make sense out of an eastern book.

Wow, your faith is in a man?


If he called the Bible inerrant, I will disagree with him. There is a problem when interpritations of scripture are given the authority of the scripture they interprit.

Why? Scripture cannot be Scripture if it is not inerrant - the very fact you deny inerrancy simply means you've transferred inerrancy to yourself. If you can determine the Scripture is not inerrant you can only do so inerrantly. Thus you are your own final authority when you establish your own private interpretation as inerrant and superior to the Scriptures you supposedly believe in.


The Bible is authoritative over my life.

That is impossible if you deny the Doctrine of Inerrancy. As long as you hold this concept you will hold to multiple authorities and thus your selection, interpretation, concepts will always be authoritative as you continually establish yourself as inerrant in determining what God's word is.

You've just bought into higher criticism but rejected the critics and created a new doctrine of Sola Authority, where you are your own authority in the name of the Bible.

Your tactics are the same as the early heretics routed out of the Church during the conciliar purifications and creedal developments.


When people want to fire those who don't teach exactly what they want, it is like a child not getting their way. Its about control.

People who want to follow Jesus are commendable. When those people can't deal lovingly with others who would follow Christ in a different way than they do, its called sin.

You wouldn't hire me to be a missionary?

It is about control and well should be. The Faith once delivered to the Saints must be protected from those who don't have the faith necessary to serve in the office of that trust.

No one is being "unloving" to you - God comes first, the love of God comes first.


Thomas

[Socrates]

Today @ 07:34 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=147998#post147998)
Seeton, replying to:


Socrates:
It doesn't have to, because it is logically implied. This is the same "reasoning" that cultists use when they spruik that the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible --- although the doctrine is logically deducible.

just cuz its logical don't mean its right.

It does, if it is a logically valid deduction from true premises. Do you prefer illogicality? And does this mean that you think that the Trinity is not right either?


I don't want to call the bible errant. I don't want to call it inerrant either. And it isn't about being one or the other. I think both of those terms are a severely bad way of describing the Bible.

The Bible either has errors or it does not. It's the Law of Excluded Middle.


look. Were gonna spend eternity in heaven. How are we gonna love each other.

The biblical way, as explained in What is Agape and How Did It Work? (http://www.tektonics.org/whatlove.html) It is not "loving" to allow someone to be promoted to a position of authority who teaches error.


I want to spend my life serving Jesus while believing things differently than you. Does Christ unite us?

Which Christ? If it's not the Christ revealed by the Bible, it's a false Christ.


I think that God is Perfect without error. I also think Jesus is the foundation for my faith. My faith is in a man. He lives within my heart. Christ is the solid rock I stand on.

Again, which Christ? This is typical liberal obfuscation, which has been seen before time and time again. But the Southern Baptists have learned from the experiences of now apostate denominations how liberals work. Liberals always spruiked forth about unity and love in Christ, while the conservatives insisted on doctrinal statements defining who Christ is.


Not the terms and definitions of a western world trying to make sense out of an eastern book.

That is largely the problem, but proper hermeneutics recognizes the cultural and historical context of this authoritative book, which God inspired to instruct and teach us in doctrine (2 Timothy 3:15-17).


You can't help seeing the Bible through your contextualized eyes. You bring every experience you have ever had to the reading of scripture. When honest emotions are left out, we become spiritually constapated. To be an honestly contextualized "Flesh and Blood" reader of Scripture is a hard thing to do.

But we must do it. And this still presupposes that the propositions of Scripture, properly understood, are completely authoritative.

You seem to want to regard your own way of thinking as authoritative over the Bible.


The Bible is authoritative over my life.

How can it be if it affirms something errant? Can an error be authoritative?


When people want to fire those who don't teach exactly what they want, it is like a child not getting their way. Its about control.

Well, sorr-eee. If an organisation has an explicit position statement, they have every right to ensure that spokesmen reflect that statement. If a would-be spokesman can't adhere to that statement, he shouldn't work for the organization in the first place.

Consider a feminist organisation which had a statement of purpose that abortion was a woman's right, and a woman who salary was paid by this organization worked her way to a position of influence, and firmly and eloquently said that abortion is murder. The media would have a field day claiming that this woman was dishonest taking money from this organization to speak against its very foundation. However, when a clergyman spouts against the doctrines that he swore an oath to defend, the media praise him as a courageous and cogent thinker.


People who want to follow Jesus are commendable. When those people can't deal lovingly with others who would follow Christ in a different way than they do,

The problem is, is it the same Christ we follow?


... its called sin.

Where do you get your notion of "sin" from? No point quoting a biblical passage, because that could be one of the errant ones :saywhat:


You wouldn't hire me to be a missionary?:teeth:

I'm cute and soft and love Jesus!:bunny:

Which Jesus?

[Tercel]

Thomas wrote:
Scripture cannot be Scripture if it is not inerrant - the very fact you deny inerrancy simply means you've transferred inerrancy to yourself. If you can determine the Scripture is not inerrant you can only do so inerrantly. Thus you are your own final authority when you establish your own private interpretation as inerrant and superior to the Scriptures you supposedly believe in.However, what does believe in and accept as authoritative mean? Ultimately, to have any meaningful application, it involves interpretation. At any point where we ask "what does the Bible say about what I should do here?" we are implicitly asking "what do I think the Bible says about this?".
Regardless of whether the BIBLE ITSELF is inerrant, it is only possible to apply our interpretations of the Bible - which are, of course, fallible. As was pointed out earlier by another poster - even the translations themselves are fallible (and of course even our understanding of the Biblical languages themselves is fallible). Thus we end up basing our beliefs about "what the Bible says" on fallible interpretations of fallible translations regardless of whether the original writings themselves were inerrant.

Thus those who claim inerrancy can be seen to be doing so for the wrong reasons. A claim of inerrancy does not save us from private interpretations. A claim of inerrancy does not provide an infallible foundation for doctrine. Those are gone and there is no retreiving them with inerrancy.

I think many inerrantists have come to their absurd position because they see it as a way out of the difficulties they create for themselves by accepting the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Sorry guys, but Sola Scriptura is such a walking illogical self-contradiction that no amount of additional wishful doctrines is going to get you out of it. Face the facts: The Bible didn't fall from heaven, the books it contains were selected by Christians who didn't always agree. They could have chosen different books. But they chose books primarily that reflected what they believed. Any religious group is entitled to believe what it likes, and to have its own writings which express those beliefs. In the same way, the Christian Church has its beliefs and it has selected the books of the Bible as an expression of those beliefs. Similar expressions of those beliefs can be found in the doctrinal statements of the Church - such as the Trinity (which are not found clearly in the Bible, eg the Jehovah's Witness hold to inerrancy but not the Trinity) and in the writings of the Fathers. If we truly believe that the Holy Spirit guides believers into unity and truth, then we must surely accept that when believers throughout the ages speak with one voice that what they say is worth taking heed of. But what must be kept in mind is that it was the Church that wrote and choose and uses the Bible, not the Bible that does these things to the Church. The Church could have defined any books it liked (and hence any doctrines it liked) to be in the Bible - the authority is the Church's to define doctrine.
And of course, Sola Scriptura is found nowhere in Scripture and hence self-defeats.

Do you believe the Bible is the Inerrant Word of God? Then you believe the Church inerrantly chose the Inerrant Word of God. Those same people you believe were infallibly inspired in choosing the books of Scripture, you will not trust as authoritative or inspired in other matters... do you see the inconsistency?
Do you not see that you personally have decided in which areas God has infallibly guided the Church and which he has not?! It is back to personal authority - you have decided exactly how God is allowed to act and guide by his spirit, you have decided to accept some teachings of the Church, but not others - all on your piddly fallible authority: You have fallibly decided that the Bible is infallible. If you think this makes your position "more logical" or thinks it gives you "infallible authority" I can only feel very sorry for you indeed.


And of course, hence why neither the Roman Catholics or Orthodox Catholics have felt the need for any doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy.


Let's face the facts, we have a God who respects freewill. The Bible was written by humans and humans, no matter how inspired, are subject to fallibility and error on occaision because God does not deny us our choices or abilities to be wrong. Whether or not the Bible is actually errant upon occaision, it certainly has the potential to be. And of course, as those of you who have done any reasonable level of unbiased Bible study will know, it does indeed have errors: the death of Judas, whether any before Moses knew the name YHWH, the timing of the arrival of the women at the empty tomb etc.


As regards the subject of Francis Schaeffer, be aware his son converted to Orthodoxy. He obviously understood where his father's beliefs were flawed. Of course Orthodoxy wasn't very well known at all in the west until fairly recently (and still isn't), so it's of course entirely possible the man himself would have converted had he known of it.

[Seeton]

:bow:

Dude!

:rockon:

I feel that the Bible isn't about being errant or inerrant.

I don't think it has to be one or the other. I think it lies somewhere else. To get there will require more right brained thinking. To get there will require old walls to be torn down. It will require love and humility.

Its so easy to call me names, associate me with "the bad guys." Its a lot harder to think of me as an intellegent honest loving seeker of truth just like you.

[Waterrock]

Dear Tercel, Socrates, and friends,

I generally agree with Socrates about the importance of inerrancy. (It's fascinating to see Socrates use Ryle's material, but that's another story.) The "Chicago Statement" goes into quite a bit of detail about what the doctrine of inerrancy does and does not say. It boils down to this:

Inerrancy means that God -- a God who is innately truthful -- caused the original producers of the Biblical text to produce exactly what He wanted them to produce. Thus, the original text of the Bible is free from error.

That's about it. To deny inerrancy is to imply either (a) God misled the author and desired for the author to mislead his readers, or (b) God did not guide the author.

If you go with "a" then the Bible ~ or at least the part of the Bible in a given examination ~ is not true, and should thus be rejected.
If you go with "b" then the Bible is not authoritative, and may thus be dismissed as something other than God's Word.

Tercel: "Ultimately, to have any meaningful application, it involves interpretation."

Granted. But what interpreter in his right mind is going to proceed to apply a text which he has interpreted to be an error?

Tercel: "Regardless of whether the BIBLE ITSELF is inerrant, it is only possible to apply our interpretations of the Bible - which are, of course, fallible."

Granted. But I think the discussion orbited the Biblical text, not interpretations of it. Just because one can misinterpret a text (and mistranslate it), that does not create an error in the text.

Tercel: "A claim of inerrancy does not save us from private interpretations."

Granted.

Tercel: "A claim of inerrancy does not provide an infallible foundation for doctrine."

Not granted. Since the nuances of your statement seem malleable, allow me to clarify what I mean: a claim of inerrancy does not make the Bible infallible; the claim is made because inerrancy is a logical extension of the attribution of the Biblical text to a truth-loving God. But once you have an inerrant text in the equation -- even if the inerrant text is not even 100% known in some cases, such as with some numbers in the Old Testament -- it serves as the foundation for doctrine. One can misinterpret it, sure. But there's a difference between doing that, and simply saying that the Bible is in error. One is a bad building on a good foundation; the other is a new edifice altogether.

Tercel: "I think many inerrantists have come to their absurd position ..."

Eh? /Absurd position,/ Tercel? It seems much more absurd, imho, to claim that the God of all truth inspired an error.

Tercel: "The Bible didn't fall from heaven, the books it contains were selected by Christians who didn't always agree."

Granted. Does the process by which the canon was formed preclude inerrancy? No.

Tercel: "If we truly believe that the Holy Spirit guides believers into unity and truth, then we must surely accept that when believers throughout the ages speak with one voice that what they say is worth taking heed of."

And does any of this mean that the Bible is errant? Nope. (Also, who gets to define who the "believers" are who do this speaking throughout the ages? Are you referring thusly to the Orthodox hierarchy? If so, please point out where they have taught with one voice throughout the ages that the Bible is riddled with errors. Otherwise this has nothing to do with the question of Biblical inerrancy.

Tercel: "The Church could have defined any books it liked (and hence any doctrines it liked) to be in the Bible - the authority is the Church's to define doctrine."

The church could have adoped any doctrines it liked??? Let's see: Barnabas was in the church; yet he and Peter were caught up in hypocrisy. Peter was in the church; yet he was called Satan by the Lord. All the seven churches of the Apocalypse were, by definition, in the church, yet several were severely rebuked. Judas was an apostle, but his beliefs evidently were in error. And Paul, writing to - lo - the churches of Galatia, stated very in no uncertain terms that if anyone -- Anyone, inside or outside the fellowship -- taught a different doctrine, he was to be considered anathema. Your idea that the church has a carte blanche to propagate whatever doctrine she prefers is severely mistaken! The Spirit-filled and Spirit-led body of Christ will not embrace false doctrine; that is very different from saying that the Church is capable of turning a falsehood into a truth.

Tercel: "Do you believe the Bible is the Inerrant Word of God? Then you believe the Church inerrantly chose the Inerrant Word of God."

So what? That still does not make the Biblical text errant. Also, there's a big difference between saying, "This decision, made by these people, was correct," and saying, "These people are, at all times, incapable of error."

Tercel: "Those same people you believe were infallibly inspired in choosing the books of Scripture, you will not trust as authoritative or inspired in other matters... do you see the inconsistency?"

Frankly, no, for several reasons:
(a) the individuals who made the decisions about the canon of Scripture have been dead for some time.
(b) those individuals did not act arbitrarily but made deductions based on fixed criteria (such as whether or not a particular book was accepted in the locale to which it was addressed, whether or not it displayed clear signs of being spurious, etc.).
(c) one may affirm that God providentially worked through men to perfectly accomplish a particular goal at a particular time without assigning perpetual perfection to those men.
(d) it is possible to independently ask the same questions about the canon which were asked by the early synods and reach the same conclusions about the canon.

Tercel: "The Bible was written by humans and humans, no matter how inspired, are subject to fallibility and error on occaision because God does not deny us our choices or abilities to be wrong."

Surely that is simply bad logic. Let's go through it again, putting a mathematics text-book in place of the Bible:
A: "Are there errors in this math-book?"
B: "There have to be. It was written by a human being, and therefore it must have mistakes."
A: "Ah. So even without actually identifying any errors, we may confidently call it errant."
B: "Exactly."
A: "And suppose we had a math-book inspired by God, who specially guided men to write it -- that is, while still capable of writing either correctly or incorrectly, at the end of the day they had written correctly for sustained periods of time, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is not impossible (since freedom to make mistakes does not /require/ one to make mistakes), and it seems consistent with the idea that God is not the author of confusion, falsehood, and such."
B: "Such a book would still be categorized as errant, as long as human beings are part of the production-process."
A: "So is there any way that more than one inerrant math-book, or any other kind of book -- bestowed straight from heaven, let's say -- could exist in your universe?"
B: "No."

Surely your premises require absurd concessions.

Tercel: "As those of you who have done any reasonable level of unbiased Bible study will know, it does indeed have errors: the death of Judas, whether any before Moses knew the name YHWH, the timing of the arrival of the women at the empty tomb etc."

All of these are resolveable without positing errancy.

Tercel: "As regards the subject of Francis Schaeffer, be aware his son converted to Orthodoxy. He obviously understood where his father's beliefs were flawed."

I'm not so sure that that was the reason. Have you read "A Time for Anger?" I think that Franky Schaeffer saw that the Western church (especially American evangelicalism) was thoroughly shirking its social responsibilities, and he got sick of it.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Seeton]

First I'm going to give you a problem.

Then I'm going to give you multiple choice answers lettered with "A" through "D."

What I'm going to do is just give you answers so that you realize that you are wrong.

I will not allow you to make up your own "E."

Then, it is important for me to call everyone else's opinion absurd.

Yes, your's too!



We need to look at the Bible as literature. Not just any literature, but literature. As literature it has qualities of story. It has plot, metaphor, characters, and all sorts of other stuff.

Like good literature, it can have multiple levels of truth and meaning.

I don't like to call the Bible errant even when the truth from the Bible contrdicts with historical truth.

Again I call for the board to leave the shackles of your left brain and become children in front of a story teller.

"Do you believe the Historicity of Genesis chapter 1?"

Let me tell you a story.

"Do you believe that Jonah was swollowed by a fish and not a whale?"

Let me tell you a story.

(taken from a Larry Taylor sermon)

Here's a story about a little boy named David.
"Does the word Ruddy mean that he had red hair?"

Sometimes to take something literally is to crap on it.

:bunny: aw look a cute bunny!

[Tercel]

Waterrock:
Inerrancy means that God -- a God who is innately truthful -- caused the original producers of the Biblical text to produce exactly what He wanted them to produce. Thus, the original text of the Bible is free from error.

That's about it. To deny inerrancy is to imply either (a) God misled the author and desired for the author to mislead his readers, or (b) God did not guide the author.Your option (b) is flawed. You have limited the notion of "guidence" to a black or white issue.

Imagine a kid at primary school doing painting. The kid decides to paint a picture of his teacher. The teacher helps the kid by suggesting corrections - to use a different colour, or to try painting over a certain piece. Occaisionally the teacher reaches over the child's shoulder and takes hold of the brush - not taking it off the child, but guiding the child's hand. Eventually the child finishes the picture and takes it home and says "look mum at what I painted!" The picture is the child's - it was not painted by the teacher. The picture is imperfect - it was painted painted by the child. But the picture is far better than the child could ever have done on its own, because the child had the help of the teacher's guidence.

I see the Bible as similar to that picture - the Bible is the portrait mankind has drawn of God under the inspiration and guidence of God. Did God guide the authors? Yes. Did God steal their paintbrush, draw the picture Himself perfectly, then give them the finished result? No. That level of Divine dictation is what we find in man-made religions such as Islam or Mormonism. The Christian God respects our freedom and encourages our growth: He teaches and guides us with feather-light touches - never stealing our pen or compelling us.

To say "did God guide the authors?" is not to say "did God dictate every word inerrantly?" To answer that God inspired the writers of the Divine Scripture is not to say that the Scripture is without error. How indeed could we say such a crass thing - attributing to the works of humans the property of perfection found in only God Himself?

The isssue is not black or white, not a question of "did God steal the pen or didn't he?". Rather we recognise that God guides people by Spirit into truth. Therefore we say that the writings of the Church throughout the centuries are inspired, and we recognise the books of the Bible as being the most central part of the inspired Christian Tradition. These are what man, with God's help, has written about God.


Tercel: "The Bible didn't fall from heaven, the books it contains were selected by Christians who didn't always agree."

Granted. Does the process by which the canon was formed preclude inerrancy? No.Actually, it pretty much does.
Given that there have always been and still are numerous different Biblical canons in use throughout the Christian world, it is certain that either some of those canons contain books that are not inerrant or some of them lack books which are inerrant.
I would guess that you believe the Protestant canon is the inerrant one. Why? Have you done any extensive analysis into why the Protestant canon is the true one rather than the Orthodox canon, or the Roman Catholic canon, or the Syrian canon, or the Ethiopian canon?


The church could have adopted any doctrines it liked???Yup. It doesn't necessarily mean they would be right. But any religion to define its beliefs including what consitutes their holy book(s). It doesn't mean all members of the Church always agree 100% on doctrine - so citing individual arguments doesn't prove anything. But the Church, as a body of Christians, has the right to define its own doctrines including what consitute Scripture.


Your idea that the church has a carte blanche to propagate whatever doctrine she prefers is severely mistaken! The Spirit-filled and Spirit-led body of Christ will not embrace false doctrine; that is very different from saying that the Church is capable of turning a falsehood into a truth.I think we are in violent agreement: I am not saying that "If the Church declares 1+1=3 it will be true". I am merely saying that the Church has the authority to declare its beliefs. I also believe that the Holy Spirit will guide believers away from false doctrine.


Tercel: "Those same people you believe were infallibly inspired in choosing the books of Scripture, you will not trust as authoritative or inspired in other matters... do you see the inconsistency?"

Frankly, no, for several reasons:
(a) the individuals who made the decisions about the canon of Scripture have been dead for some time.So, do you suggest it was those individuals who had the inerrant authority rather than the positions they held? :hrm:
Do you accept everything else these inerrant individuals believed?


(b) those individuals did not act arbitrarily but made deductions based on fixed criteria (such as whether or not a particular book was accepted in the locale to which it was addressed, whether or not it displayed clear signs of being spurious, etc.).Are you prepared to accept to apply these criteria, I wonder? For example, when modern scholars say that the evidence strongly suggests a book was not written by whom it is claimed to be by, do you respond by saying that since the Bible is Inerrant the scholars are wrong - or do you accept the possibility that the book is not inerrant and indeed spurious? In other words, do you actually follow the methodology or do you really rely on "what I have been taught is true"?


(c) one may affirm that God providentially worked through men to perfectly accomplish a particular goal at a particular time without assigning perpetual perfection to those men.Of course: If you are an infallible authority, you can infallibly affirm anything you like. I as an Orthodox, don't recognise the authority of the Pope or any human individual (Christ exempted perhaps!) to infallibly claim anything, so I don't accept your infallibility. Don't you see that you are picking and choosing when you decide God acted in history and when He did not? You are sustituting the authority of the Spirit guided Church for the authority of your own opinion. Sola Self.


(d) it is possible to independently ask the same questions about the canon which were asked by the early synods and reach the same conclusions about the canon.Reeaalllyyy? Now that is interesting. Which synod in particular and which questions? I wasn't aware we knew anything more about the early synods other than their conclusions (and often we're not even sure of those). But you know what questions they asked? Do share!
I'm intrigued to hear that you agree with the conclusions of the early synods - you accept the Apocrypha?! I had assumed you were a Protestant.


Surely that is simply bad logic. Let's go through it again, putting a mathematics text-book in place of the Bible:
A: "Are there errors in this math-book?"
B: "There have to be. It was written by a human being, and therefore it must have mistakes."Correction: There is the potential to be errors because the book is the production of fallible humans. We have no reason or right to assert inerrancy without performing exhaustive checking and cross checking.


A: "Ah. So even without actually identifying any errors, we may confidently call it errant."
B: "Exactly."Nope, but we shouldn't call it "Inerrant". I particularly remember the Maths text book we used in my third year of highschool - it gave the "answers" in the back of the book, but about 2% of them were wrong, unintentionally. (my teacher was one of the authors and he made as bad a textbook writer as he did teacher).


A: "And suppose we had a math-book inspired by God, who specially guided men to write it -- that is, while still capable of writing either correctly or incorrectly, at the end of the day they had written correctly for sustained periods of time, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is not impossible (since freedom to make mistakes does not /require/ one to make mistakes), and it seems consistent with the idea that God is not the author of confusion, falsehood, and such."
B: "Such a book would still be categorized as errant, as long as human beings are part of the production-process."Correction: We could suspect that a book of sufficient length would probably be errant. Then we could look and see that it does indeed have errors.


Tercel: "As those of you who have done any reasonable level of unbiased Bible study will know, it does indeed have errors: the death of Judas, whether any before Moses knew the name YHWH, the timing of the arrival of the women at the empty tomb etc."

All of these are resolveable without positing errancy.Perhaps. Enough imagination and logic bending will "resolve" any difficulty in anything. But we wouldn't be attempting to resolve them unless we already subscribed to inerrancy: Any reasonable person you handed the Bible to and asked "read through this and tell me if it's inerrant or not" (and you made sure they were aware of these things), they would inevitably class them as errors. Yes inerrancy can be defended by imaginative logic, but unbiased inspection will result in a verdict of errancy.


God Bless.

[Tercel]

Or was my post so incomprehensible that it is not worth anyone replying to?

[Waterrock]

Greetings once again Tercel,

T: "Your option (b) is flawed. You have limited the notion of "guidence" to a black or white issue."

No I haven't, at least, that is not where the key issue is:
the /reliability of the finished product,/ not the degree of force built into the guidance which oversaw its production, is in view. At times God's inspiration may have been direct, at other times simply in sync with the author's own creativity, but at all times He did not allow error. That's a big reason why the Bible can be called "God-breathed" and "the Word of God."

T: "Imagine a kid at primary school doing painting ... The picture is imperfect - it was painted painted by the child. ... I see the Bible as similar to that picture ..."

Now let me tell you one. Imagine a king in charge of a country. He recruits some men, trains them, and sends them as his diplomats to the country of Tercelia. They say, "Hear ye the word of the King," and proceed to tell the people exactly what the King wanted the diplomats to say: "Surrender to the good king at once, or face his terrible wrath."

The Tercelians, however, respond, "You know, your message is like a picture which a child might paint. I am sure your king approves of your sincerity. It's really very sweet. And no doubt this message is superior to any you could have composed yourselves. The thing is, it contains errors. And why should we respond to a message which contains errors?"

The messengers reply, "Errors? What errors? Surrender at once or face the good king's terrible wrath!"

The Tercelians answer, "One glaring error is that your king is supposed to be 'good' -- a great magnanimous fellow, and yet you say his wrath is terrible. What a contradiction. No doubt if you think about this contradiction long enough, you will come up with some solution that will satisfy you, but as for us, it seems clear that this part of your message is entirely of your own making. And if one part is incorrect, how can we trust the rest?"

And so the Tercelians heeded every part of the king's message that they believed to be consistent with their idea of what a king should say, and rejected the rest. In other words, they rejected the entire message.

T: "He teaches and guides us with feather-light touches - never stealing our pen or compelling us."

Eh? My Shepherd /makes me/ to lie down in green pastures. He doesn't carry a feather; He carries a rod and a staff. Jesus did not go into the Temple and sweetly suggest to the money-changers that it might be a good idea to set up their tables somewhere else. It's not a matter of God "stealing the pen," it's a matter of the God of truth not allowing the father of lies to steal the pen.

Tercel: "To say "did God guide the authors?" is not to say "did God dictate every word inerrantly?"

Granted. And I am not saying that God dictated every word inerrantly; I am saying that God caused the authors to write exactly what He wanted them to write.

T: "To answer that God inspired the writers of the Divine Scripture is not to say that the Scripture is without error."

Unless you attribute some error to God, or posit some contaminating factor in the scenario which God, it *is* saying that. I don't think you really want to attribute some error to God, so I will deduce/guess that you posit some contaminating factor in the scenario. But so far you have not given any reasons /why/ any error-causing factor *has* to cause an error.

T: "How indeed could we say such a crass thing - attributing to the works of humans the property of perfection found in only God Himself?"

Easy: by acknowledging that God worked with and through those human beings, so that what was produced through them was entirely approved by the God of truth. This "crass" (ahem!) statement seems familiar -- oh yeah, that's just about what Paul said in II Thess. 2:13 ~ that the message he delivered was accepted "not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe."

But waitasecond! What am I thinking?! Second Thessalonians 2:13 can't be used as evidence! With your approach, you could just disregard it as one of the parts of Scripture that reflect the input of those error-prone human authors! Even if I were to quote a hundred passages in which the authors affirmed, "This is the perfect Word of God; hear and obey," none of them would be immune to your objection that they proceed from the human authors. In this way, your approach is liable to effectively strip away the authority of the Bible.

T: "I would guess that you believe the Protestant canon is the inerrant one. Why?"

Your guess is correct. I like the 66-book canon because some of the books in the other lists are teeming with errors (and because Jesus seems to approve the Hebrew Bible in Luke 24:44, and for other reasons. But before we cross canon-country, let's get through inerrancy-country, okay?).

T: "... But any religion to define its beliefs including what consitutes their holy book(s)."

Um ... huh?

T: "... I am not saying that "If the Church declares 1+1=3 it will be true". I am merely saying that the Church has the authority to declare its beliefs."

Ah. How did I ever imagine otherwise? [Meant rhetorically. It was because of your statement that "The Church could have defined any books it liked (and hence any doctrines it liked) to be in the Bible."]

T: "Do you accept everything else these inerrant individuals believed?"

Since it's hard to verify what other things they believed (Geocentrism? The existence of the phoenix-bird?), it's rather hard to say for sure, but considering that the Biblical authors wrote before a plethora of scientific advancements, there's a +99.99% chance that I do not believe everything the Biblical authors believed; nor do I know everything they knew. Nor do I need to do so to affirm that /the Bible/ is inerrant. Saint Peter might have thought dried tilapia was the world's greatest food. I can disagree and still regard his Biblical statements as inerrant.

T: "... when modern scholars say that the evidence strongly suggests a book was /not/ written by whom it is claimed to be by, do you respond by saying that since the Bible is Inerrant the scholars are wrong - or do you accept the possibility that the book is not inerrant and indeed spurious?"

Obfuscation, your honor. Particular claims of authorship, redaction, and so on are complex and merit their own threads; they are not capable of tipping the scales in regard to the question at hand (namely, "Did God cause the Biblical writers to write exactly what He wanted them to write?"). (For instance, a "Psalm of David" which an author other than David wrote in David's honor or in imitation of David's style, can still be an inspired and inerrant composition.)

T: "I as an Orthodox, don't recognise the authority of the Pope or /any/ human individual (Christ exempted perhaps!)"

Perhaps?!

T: "Don't you see that you are picking and choosing when /you/ decide God acted in history and when He did not?"

Not at all. I am considering the evidence and drawing a conclusion. Unless one makes a blind assumption, or perpetually fails to come to a decision, such decision-making -- i.e., /thinking/ -- is inevitable.

T: "You are sustituting the authority of the Spirit guided Church for the authority of your own opinion. Sola Self."

On the contrary, the church seeks truth, and so do I. It is not my opinion that falsehood is better than truth. The last time I checked, that was not the church's opinion either. Are you suggesting that I should accept something that, as a result of my own investigation, contemplation, and prayer, I believe is incorrect and unBiblical, simply because modern-day leaders of "the Church" say it is true? Are we living in a universe in which the only threats to correct doctrine have originated outside the church?

T: "Which synod in particular and which questions?"

Ack; more tangents! The topic is /inerrancy/. I like to follow the discussion wherever it flows, Tercel, but at times it simply spills. In the interest of brevity, we just can't pursue every tangent. (Okay, technically we can, but just how long do you really want this thread to be?)

T: "I'm intrigued to hear that you agree with the conclusions of the early synods - you accept the Apocrypha?! I had assumed you were a Protestant."

I did not say that I agree with the conclusions of the early synods; I just said that it's possible to independently come to the same conclusions that they came to. (And I think one can see plainly in patristic writings that NT canonicity leaned on questions such the identity of a book's author, how the book was received in the locale to which it was sent, the doctrinal relevance of the book, and so on -- the lists of books "accepted, accepted-sometimes, and rejected" in the early church indicate that this is the sort of thing which the synods relied upon as the bases for their lists.)

T: "... We have no reason or right to assert inerrancy without performing exhaustive checking and cross checking."

Okey-dokey. So after we go through the Bible and say, "There are sure some discrepancies, but nothing here precludes that the original documents contained any errors," what then? Istm that when the dust settles, the position the the Bible is inerrant, and the position that the Bible is errant, are both faith-based positions.

Tercel: "inerrancy can be /defended/ by imaginative logic, but unbiased inspection will result in a verdict of errancy."

How do you know? Who, besides God, has ever approached the Bible with a complete lack of bias? The same ubiquitous tendency toward error in humanity which you were describing a while ago (particular the aspect of that tendency which involves /moral/ error) would certainly apply here: people would naturally be more prone to squint sufficiently to see errors (as reasons to reject God's message) than to see resolutions (as reasons to take God's message seriously).

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Seeton]

Okey-dokey. So after we go through the Bible and say, "There are sure some discrepancies, but nothing here precludes that the original documents contained any errors," what then? Istm that when the dust settles, the position the the Bible is inerrant, and the position that the Bible is errant, are both faith-based positions.

So after we go through the Bible, we find historical conflicts.

In Brave heart, you don't call something that was historically inaccurate an error. Since Braveheart was a "story" about a historical setting with historical people, we call things that really didn't happen "historical inaccuracies." We don't call them errors.

People that aren't innerrantists aren't called errantists (most of them) I will call myself an non-inerrantist. I don't want to call historical inaccuracies errors. I want to call them what they are "historical inaccuracies." The historical events the Bible often mentions might not have happened exactly as they were written. "EXACTLY."

What says the Bible is inerrant, II Tim? I don't see that word there. I see something else. I don't know a single Baptist who doesn't call the Bible "inspired" or "God Breathed" or "Authoratative."

Then, if you think I follow "some other Jesus" then the love of Jesus is not more powerful than this doctrine to you.

My faith is not in a doctrine. My faith is not in a past experience. My faith is in a man named Jesus Christ. It sucks when that isn't enough to unite brethren in love. It sucks when that can't allot for loving argumentation.

Its hard to love over such boundaries.

[Waterrock]

Dear Seeton,

S: "So after we go through the Bible, we find historical conflicts."

Where? (Please show where, in the text of the autographs, you think a Biblical narrative says that something happened which did not happen. I'm not asking for an exhaustive dissertation; a Top Five will do.)

S: "Since Braveheart was a "story" about a historical setting with historical people, we call things that really didn't happen "historical inaccuracies." We don't call them errors."

That isn't altogether relevant, but with a little tweaking it may become analogous: suppose the movie's direction told his audience, "This is the true story of William Wallace," and proceeded to depict Wallace driving a Porsche across the battlefield and peppering the English armies with bullets from a machine gun. That would be an error. And if the Bible says, "This is a message from God, in whom is no falsehood," and it proceeds to say that something happened, that is an error.

Important qualifications: an inerrant author can estimate, an inerrant author can present the false statements of others (as their statements), an inerrant author can put into language A words that were spoken in Language B, and an inerrant author can be succeeded by an errant copyist. But if an author writes something which can only be interpreted to mean that he said that something happened which in fact did not happen, that author is errant, and in that sense, we definitely *do* say that the originator of historical inaccuracies is errant.

S: "The historical events the Bible often mentions might not have happened exactly as they were written."

I agree.

S: "What says the Bible is inerrant, II Tim? I don't see that word there. I see something else."

Granted; depending on which version you consult, you probably see the words "inspired by God" or "God-breathed." The question is, what does "God-breathed" mean? If it means that the authors wrote like any other authors, then it means nothing. If a text originates from the breath/spirit of God, then such a text will reflect His character and will. Since God is good and truthful, the equation that takes us from "originating from and/or endorsed by God" to "free from error in the form in which it was originally produced" is not a complex one.

S: "I don't know a single Baptist who doesn't call the Bible "inspired" or "God Breathed" or "Authoratative.""

Fine and dandy. An assumption of inerrancy seems built-into those terms, Seeton: surely no one wishes to regard an error as authoritative, and no one wishes to accuse God of breathing out an error. Or to put it another way, istm that those Baptists who insist that the use of the word "inerrant" is very important are saying, in effect, that it is important that when we use the words "inspired" and "God-breathed," we agree on what they mean. Otherwise the church would become a sort of Tower of Babel, in which the same words are used but they mean different things to different people. What is the point of agreeing to use the same verbage, if people are using it to mean different things?

(I can think of a couple of reasons for doing so, but perhaps I would be inviting a tangent to really get into that.)

S: "My faith is not in a doctrine. My faith is not in a past experience. My faith is in a man named Jesus Christ."

Great. Since the foundation of your faith is not in (a) man-made creeds, or (b) a subjective experience, then to what is your concept of this man Jesus Christ anchored? Don't you /have/ to say that you get your information about Jesus Christ from the Bible? I think you do (and I think this is so evident that to save time I will assume a "Yes" answer) ~ and so it seems strange to hear you insisting that the objective foundation on which you rely for information about Jesus is erroneous.

S: "It sucks when that isn't enough to unite brethren in love."

Frankly that seems naive. Sorry. I do not mean that in a completely negative way. But allow me to ask a few people what they think about that statement you made ~ "My faith is in a man named Jesus Christ." (I will adopt the tole of an archaic-English-using Town Crier; the individuals listed will reply:)

TC: "O member of the Watchtower Society, thou who deniest the deity of Christ; thou who regardest the parousia as having begun in 1914; doest thou have faith in the man named Jesus Christ?"

Aye!

TC: "O Mormon, thou who believest that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a true prophet, doest thou have faith in the man named Jesus Christ?"

Aye!

TC: "O ancient Gnostic, whose heresies John denounced, doest thou have faith in the man Jesus Christ?"

Aye!

TC: "O liberal scholar, thou who asserteth that if the body of Jesus of Nazareth were to be exhumed today, it would make no great impact upon your beliefs, doest thou have faith in the man named Jesus Christ?"

Aye!

TC: "O Seeton, these men have the same faith as thou, is it not so? What sayest thou?"

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Seeton]

To say that a book is God breathed and then to logic it to inerrant has the mental leap of going from the fact that God breathed life into Adam and then to say he was inerrant. That is the same mental leap.


S: "It sucks when that isn't enough to unite brethren in love."

Frankly that seems naive. Sorry. I do not mean that in a completely negative way. But allow me to ask a few people what they think about that statement you made ~ "My faith is in a man named Jesus Christ." (I will adopt the tole of an archaic-English-using Town Crier; the individuals listed will reply:)


excuse me. It sucks when followers of Christ disagree honestly and one brother acts unjustly toward his brother. If you want a book full of taddling of unjust deeds done by fundies to non-fundies in the name of inerrancy, look up "What happened to the Southern Baptist Convention." I know that moderates aren't clean from this unloving attitude.

I don't have beef with anyone who disagrees with me with love and intellectual honesty. I have problems loving those for the sake of that word "inerrant" will ostrisize and act unjustly to those who disagree.

By the way, it would make a great impact on me if they had found Jesus' body.

You have touched on the big picture. Those baptists want a unified church who all agrees on the same terms. Its the quest for theological purity. What this takes away if freedom. Freedom is a dangerous thing. In America I have the freedom to protest and take down the government if I want to. Well, by peaceful means anyway. If we all agree in America we can change the system. If you take away the freedom to believe what we want to, you take away what is a very Baptist ideal. There are those who say that I don't have the right to believe as I feel that the Holy Spirit leads me. I let them believe as they feel led. However, I am not alloted the same freedom. i can't be a missionary or a Seminary teacher. This is a new thing. Since 2000, the rules have changed. I could take my ball and leave. However, I don't know what I will do. I really don't exactly don't know what I should do.
Some would have us all with the same dictionary. Their dictionary. I will look at God-breathed differently than you.
What is the correct orthopraxical task when you find that you and someone differ just slightly in a certain belief? How can you disagree and still show love? How can you show justice? When the moderates were "in power," they didn't do everything with love. There was an elitest attitude. However, Fundies could go be a missionary. Many (I believe) were employed in colleges.
I don't see love when an association in Mississippi fires a woman who goes to a church that has dealings with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I don't see love when the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological seminary gets to work and finds that the lock to his office is changed.
Deceptive things don't count as love to me. There is example after example of orthopraxical heresy in my denomination.
Not all inerrantist are "Bad Guys." One of the Godliest women I ever met was. My girlfriend is.

Seeton's favorite Historical inaccuracies in the Bible.(Seet doesn't call them errors)

1. Archiological edvidence would say that Jericho was 100 years before Hazor.(Seet is not an archeologist)

2. When did the Sermon on the mount stories happen? One time or over a period?

3. How did Judas die? Hanging or Falling off a cliff?

4. Just the ordering of the Gospel events themselves. What is the correct order of events?

Sorry. All you get is four. I can't think very good right now. I don't really go and look for errors in the Bible or anything. :smile:

Pardon me. 3 of these aren't more of just paradoxical texts than historical inaccuracies.

The Bible is open to multiple readings. The eunuch was concerned about the scripture with the shears. I'm sure he read that very differently than lets say a shepherd. Snip Snip had two different meanings.

Women read the passages in the old testament very differently than men do. African Americans do to. So since different meanings can be derrived from the same text, the difference is the people. You bring your entire life to the text. Theres nothing wrong with that. Except to realize that in our attempts to have Sola Scriptura, Scripture is rarely "Sola."

Sometimes the poets know God better than the theologians. Jesus was a poet in a prose world. The heavens declare the glory of God my king. The skys proclaim the work of his wonderous hands. The Bible is my main authority I derive my views of Jesus from. it isn't the only one. I derive it from my fellow Christians in whom He lives. Why the Bible is my Canon, my measuring stick, Many other channels are used by my God to reach me. We all listen for Him desperately in the wind at night. We look for Him in sunsets. We dream of Him. We find him where we weren't looking for Him. We lose him when we try our best to contain Him. "We don't have him contained in a box, our churches, our minds, or in ANY book. God will not be contained." (Idea from Taylor) God is a beast on a hill. A tiger roming the Jungle. why do we think that Aslan in C.S. Lewis was a Lion? We can't excape him or tame him. He comes and goes when he pleases. He will not be coraled into a statement. God is love but hey, that is a poets atempt to describe the infinite with finite.

So, hows my sermon so far? Sorry about the soapbox.

What is a good way to deal with those who don't believe as you. Lets assume you are in power. What is the propper way of "dealing" with these heretical "non-inerrantist" who are "corrupting" people and causing trouble?

We read that Eastern Book with Weastern eyes and mindset. We like comfortable statements that clear all doubt. Paul was concerned with his own contravercy's at the time. He wasn't writing so that people in the twentieth century could use his words "word for word" in arguements that he wasn't trying to argue.

Never mind that the scripture that we call God breathed was different from the one that Paul used when he went out. Earlier Christians went on Roman streets with the Septugeant(bad mispelling) under their arms and stories of Jesus in their minds.

anyway. you have a dandy day. :smile:

[Tercel]

Greetings Waterrock,


At times God's inspiration may have been direct, at other times simply in sync with the author's own creativity, but at all times He did not allow error.That seems to me a fairly arbitrary statement. If we are agreed that inspiration or guidance is not always direct and that an unstoppable degree of force was not always used in the guidance (are we agreed on this?), then why add the seemingly tacted on proviso “but at all times He did not allow error”? In other words, have you got any good reason for this non-trivial addition?

Because, as I see it, there is a big difference between saying that God generally inspired at work and saying that God inspired it exactly in a particular way. You seem to me to be deciding for yourself just how you think God is or isn’t allowed to act.


Now let me tell you one....
The Tercelians answer, "One glaring error is that your king is supposed to be 'good' -- a great magnanimous fellow, and yet you say his wrath is terrible. What a contradiction. No doubt if you think about this contradiction long enough, you will come up with some solution that will satisfy you, but as for us, it seems clear that this part of your message is entirely of your own making. And if one part is incorrect, how can we trust the rest?"I hope you are not suggesting that we should disallow the use of logic in theology in case we disproved God!


And so the Tercelians heeded every part of the king's message that they believed to be consistent with their idea of what a king should say, and rejected the rest. In other words, they rejected the entire message.Being very careful about what part of the message (if any) to definitively reject is obviously a matter for very serious consideration. However just because a lack of inerrancy makes you have to think more about all parts of the message, testing them very carefully, doesn’t make inerrancy true. Are we not told to test all things carefully, anyway?

You allege that dangerous results can come from rejecting inerrancy, but let me assure you that just as dangerous results can come from accepting it. I have talked to dozens of people online who were brought up Christians and are now atheists for whom the major factor in their deconversion was that they had been taught to believe the Bible was inerrant only to read it themselves and discover it was not. It makes me sick when I think of how many intelligent people have had their faith destroyed because of the doctrine of inerrancy. Now of course this does not make inerrancy false any more than your argument makes inerrancy true, it merely shows that there are dangers in accepting inerrancy as well as in rejecting it.


It's not a matter of God "stealing the pen," it's a matter of the God of truth not allowing the father of lies to steal the pen.I hope you’re not trying to suggest that the devil is behind every mistake or error that humans ever make. If not, then why should the Bible be a different case?


And I am not saying that God dictated every word inerrantly; I am saying that God caused the authors to write exactly what He wanted them to write.What if He wanted them to have freewill to write whatever they chose?


Unless you attribute some error to God, or posit some contaminating factor in the scenario which God, it *is* saying that. I don't think you really want to attribute some error to God, so I will deduce/guess that you posit some contaminating factor in the scenario.Some people would admit the possibility that God might deliberately cause an error. Jesus’ reply in the gospels about why he used parables seems to boil down to “I don’t want them to understand”, and God is occasionally accused in the OT of deceiving prophets. Personally, I don’t think God has deliberately put any error in the Bible.

I do indeed posit a “contaminating factor”: It is called human imperfection, non-omniscience and free-will. Humans have the ability to write incorrect things intentionally due to dubious motivations, or to record a false state of affairs unintentionally due to incorrect knowledge, or to make simple mistakes of memory or logic or assumption.


But so far you have not given any reasons /why/ any error-causing factor *has* to cause an error.It doesn’t have to cause an error, but in a collection of works as long as the Bible the chances are very high and we’re pretty safe if we assume it would..


But waitasecond! What am I thinking?! Second Thessalonians 2:13 can't be used as evidence! With your approach, you could just disregard it as one of the parts of Scripture that reflect the input of those error-prone human authors!True, though I would expect you to produce a convincing justification for your actions if you made a claim the verse is in error!

With my approach it is more sensible to view the writings as a record of the beliefs of the authors. The New Testament, for example, records the beliefs of the early Christians. If you were to start saying “well these aren’t true” too much then I would have to wonder what justification could be found for you calling yourself a Christian.


Even if I were to quote a hundred passages in which the authors affirmed, "This is the perfect Word of God; hear and obey," none of them would be immune to your objection that they proceed from the human authors. In this way, your approach is liable to effectively strip away the authority of the Bible.Such passages would indicate it was the universal belief of the authors that their writings were inspired. I would take such a well-attested claim very seriously. However you don’t have that evidence and, in fact, nowhere does it say the Bible is inerrant. The closest any author in the Bible ever comes is to say that Scripture (and what he thought of as Scripture comprised only a part of our Bibles) is inspired and profitable for use. I agree with him on both these things, but that does not mean the Bible is without error. To try to wrangle such a statement out of the Bible involves merging statements made by several different authors.


T: "I would guess that you believe the Protestant canon is the inerrant one. Why?"

Your guess is correct. I like the 66-book canon because some of the books in the other lists are teeming with errorsI think you’ve got you’re being selective in your error detection when you say that some other books are “teeming” with errors and the 66-books have none. It’s not very consistent, for example, to allege (as one person I was arguing with did) that the Apocrypha is errant because it records Antiochus Epiphenies dying three different ways and then to insist that the New Testament is inerrant in its recording of Judas dying two different ways.


(and because Jesus seems to approve the Hebrew Bible in Luke 24:44”...the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms”. Hmm – what about the Writings and the Histories? Do you reject Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ester, Chronicles, Ecclesiastes etc because Jesus doesn’t refer to them in Luke 24:44? Why then reject the Apocrypha on these grounds?


But before we cross canon-country, let's get through inerrancy-country, okay?But they are very inter-related issues. Any claim of inerrancy involves defining exactly what is “inerrant” and any justification for that claim will involve justifying what is being claimed to be inerrant. In my opinion a reasonable understanding of the canon formation makes inerrancy laughable. It is certainly my experience that inerrantists tend to be lacking in their understanding of the canon issues.


For instance, a "Psalm of David" which an author other than David wrote in David's honor or in imitation of David's style, can still be an inspired and inerrant composition.Some inerrantists would disagree. They would argue that since God would not be misleading it must be really by David.


Are you suggesting that I should accept something that, as a result of my own investigation, contemplation, and prayer, I believe is incorrect and unBiblical, simply because modern-day leaders of "the Church" say it is true?No, but I think that if the Church throughout the centuries has been in strong agreement on a topic then you should submit to their opinion even if you think the Bible is unclear or silent on the issue or if you are inclined to think differently.


I think one can see plainly in patristic writings that NT canonicity leaned on questions such the identity of a book's author, how the book was received in the locale to which it was sent, the doctrinal relevance of the book, and so on -- the lists of books "accepted, accepted-sometimes, and rejected" in the early church indicate that this is the sort of thing which the synods relied upon as the bases for their lists.You say this, and yet you:
* Refuse to reject a book when the strong conclusions of modern scholarship are that the alleged author did not author it, on the grounds that you have been taught it was part of the canon.
* Refuse to accept books that were accepted by the early church but which your modern church does not.


T: "... We have no reason or right to assert inerrancy without performing exhaustive checking and cross checking."

Okey-dokey. So after we go through the Bible and say, "There are sure some discrepancies, but nothing here precludes that the original documents contained any errors," what then?If we find discrepancies then the natural conclusion is that there are errors. Nobody in their right mind reads a document and says “well what I noted were some serious discrepancies, but it’s possible there were no errors, therefore I’ll believe it’s inerrant”!

I disagree that “nothing here precludes that the original documents contained any errors”: Some errors can only be ‘explained’ by very very large amounts of imaginative thinking and textual contortions.


Tercel: "inerrancy can be /defended/ by imaginative logic, but unbiased inspection will result in a verdict of errancy."

How do you know? Who, besides God, has ever approached the Bible with a complete lack of bias?Because I can personally testify that I was biased towards inerrancy until I was convinced by careful inspection that inerrancy was false. I was a fundamentalist Christian when I came to a careful study of the Bible wanting to learn apologetics and to know how I could prove my faith. I studied the Bible, I grappled with the issues, I prayed, I read books, I talked to other Christians, I really wanted it all to be true. I went away an absolutely committed Christian, my faith stronger than it had ever been before, I had examined all the arguments and found at the end of the day that Christianity was true. I was no longer an inerrantist though.

[Seeton]

Yay. More for the ex-fundie club!

My girlfriends dad is a fundie inerrantist. When I meet him we are gonna have a talk. I can see it now. :help: