Trekson said:
Hi Junobet, Here is a quote from the article: “Inerrancy doesn’t mean every extant copy is inerrant. It is important to understand that the doctrine of inerrancy only applies to the original manuscripts.” That means no one is saying the KJV, for example, is inerrant. There could be translational errors, punctuation errors. The original manuscripts had no verses or chapters, so their later placement could be wrong which can lead to an inaccurate understanding when things are taken out of their full context.
You may be glad to hear that all evidence points to it that all in all the Biblical texts have been passed on to us with remarkable accuracy. Most differences between the available manuscripts are minor and utterly irrelevant to the texts' meaning. None of the differences touches any basic doctrine.
That is why we need to depend upon the HS over our intelligence to get a thorough understanding of what God wants us to know.
That is what the article is implying but I don’t necessarily agree with verbal inspiration to the point that God “dictated” what He wanted written. I believe the bible to be a factual, truthful and historically accurate account of what God wants us to know especially in regard to the accepted essential doctrines that need to be understood and the history of the world and how we got to where we are today. Imo, to be divinely inspired simply means that God revealed to men via the HS what truths He wanted us to know and they used their own style and words to get that truth across.
So to sum up, I choose to believe the bible to be God’s word to us and I have faith in the God AND in the WORD which is the way He decided to reveal His plan to us. Rom. 3:4 says, “Let God be true and every man a liar…” To have faith in God and in His word means that regardless of circumstances, scientific “evidence”, academia, etc. even our very own eyes, we believe the bible over all or any of that. What greater weapon could the devil use then to create doubt about the word of God?
You apparently decide to look at the Word with skepticism and I choose to look at the Word with faith. One leads us closer to truth and the other doesn’t. The bible overwhelmingly teaches us to choose faith even when it doesn’t make any apparent sense. That is what faith means. Are we to assume you declare yourself a Christian? If so, what part of your faith are you willing to die for? We know there is a great “apostasy” coming, so what would it take to put you over the edge into full fledge denial of Christ and His word? Perhaps, they’ll find a body some day and “prove” through DNA that it was Christ or maybe aliens will stop by and say they’ve traveled the universe and found no evidence of God, would either of those do it? Maybe, if you passed those tests, are you willing to risk watching your loved ones die from starvation over accepting a “mark” that would allow you to buy food? If you are ready to pass all those tests how much farther is it to accept that scientific evidence might be wrong? That our limited human understanding is being manipulated by satanic beings bent on proving everything we know and accept about God is wrong!
You also seem to put great store in what the ECF think. Why? We have that same HS to reveal the truths of God. Just because they are considered an ECF doesn’t mean they were right about everything or had more knowledge than we do. They were just as capable to being “way off base” as we are. Personally, I prefer present day truths as revealed by the HS over historical opinions unless they are actually part of scripture.
Trekson, Jesus Christ is the Word = logos = reason of God. Faith is not just for stupid people, but ought to be utterly compatible with our God-given reason.
And as much as I’m glad to hear that you don’t really believe God dictated the Bible, I wonder why you speak of “verbal inspiration” then. Is it possible you never ever bothered to think your beliefs through? It all sounds very inconsistent to me.
Now, believe it or not, but while it is far from me to mutate it into a fourth person in the Trinity, I love the Bible. That’s why I want to get an ever better understanding. And rather than weakening my
faith in Christ academic Bible study has strengthened it.
I’ve got so much love for these ancient writings that it pains me when people make an utter travesty of them just to make them fit their 20th century fundamentalist doctrine. It’s not faith that makes one burying one’s head in the sand, it’s fear.
The Bible itself points us to it that it is not inerrant. And IMHO that’s great: I’d never believe in the resurrection, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Gospels give differing witness accounts about it. Otherwise any criminologist would think the story was fixed. Does it matter to us whether the stone was still in front of the grave or already rolled away when the woman/the women arrived? Not at all.
Should you ever put your own creationist doctrine’s goggles off for a moment and open your eyes to Genesis 1-2, considering genre and historical setting, you’ll find powerful poetry followed by insightful prose: Two different texts giving very different orders of creation, certainly not being bothered with scientific explanations whatsoever, but both conveying deep spiritual truths about the one God, this world’s relationship with him, our need for relationship with each other and creation as a whole.
You apparently decide to look at the Word with skepticism and I choose to look at the Word with faith. One leads us closer to truth and the other doesn’t. The bible overwhelmingly teaches us to choose faith even when it doesn’t make any apparent sense. That is what faith means. Are we to assume you declare yourself a Christian? If so, what part of your faith are you willing to die for? We know there is a great “apostasy” coming, so what would it take to put you over the edge into full fledge denial of Christ and His word? Perhaps, they’ll find a body some day and “prove” through DNA that it was Christ or maybe aliens will stop by and say they’ve traveled the universe and found no evidence of God, would either of those do it? Maybe, if you passed those tests, are you willing to risk watching your loved ones die from starvation over accepting a “mark” that would allow you to buy food? If you are ready to pass all those tests how much farther is it to accept that scientific evidence might be wrong? That our limited human understanding is being manipulated by satanic beings bent on proving everything we know and accept about God is wrong!
You also seem to put great store in what the ECF think. Why? We have that same HS to reveal the truths of God. Just because they are considered an ECF doesn’t mean they were right about everything or had more knowledge than we do. They were just as capable to being “way off base” as we are. Personally, I prefer present day truths as revealed by the HS over historical opinions unless they are actually part of scripture.
Oh please, Trekson! Again you are mistaking insult for argument. And again I don’t feel insulted on my own behalf (God knows whether I’d be braver than Peter or not), but on behalf of those in my Church who did indeed die for their discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer – also an admirer of Karl Barth’s theology - is just one that you may have heard of.
Face it: you haven’t got a monopoly on the Holy Spirit.
You also seem to put great store in what the ECF think. Why? We have that same HS to reveal the truths of God. Just because they are considered an ECF doesn’t mean they were right about everything or had more knowledge than we do. They were just as capable to being “way off base” as we are. Personally, I prefer present day truths as revealed by the HS over historical opinions unless they are actually part of scripture.
This time I mentioned the Churchfathers because the very article you quoted misleadingly cited them as support for its doctrine of verbal inspiration.
While I have a lot of respect for them, I thoroughly agree with you that they weren’t right about everything. But if you don’t even know what they believed, you’ll never realize how many of your own beliefs you just hold because of the churchfather’s long-lasting influence on Christianity: the Trinity, original sin, free will, the already mentioned creatio ex nihilo … one would not necessarily see those things in the Bible, had Augustine and co. not taught Christianity how to read them into it. Pray the Nicene Creed as wholeheartedly as I do? That was formulated by the Church fathers in 325 AD. And – last but not least - where did you get the Bible from in the first place? It was the Churchfathers who eventually agreed on the first New Testament Canons, and who decided which texts should be in the Bible and which texts should not be in there. So, while we may question the Churchfathers in many issues, we should not underestimate these old fellows’ inspiration out of mere vanity concerning our own unreflected ‘present day truths’..