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Author Topic:   Catholics & Inerrancy
KellyWilson
Junior Member (Idle past 4717 days)
Posts: 15
Joined: 04-24-2011


Message 1 of 89 (613897)
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


I found myself recently discussing biblical inerrancy. A good number of conversing Catholic folk ruled out the possibility of error in the Bible on the grounds that divine involvement in the process of composition would protect the human from erring.
Let me put my cards on the table: I view this as nonsense.
May I offer two aids to this discussion, encountered in Aidan Nichols' "The Shape of Catholic Theology":
First, genre or literary form has some relevance in distinguishing between real and supposed error. The Creation narratives, if intended literally, no doubt expose the error of their authors. However, to the extent that authorial intention was spiritual and ethical, rather than factual and descriptive (as you find Ratzinger arguing), then what appears to be error isn't really.
Thus, a consciousness of genre and literary form (not always an easy determination), can promote the Scriptures as free from error in the sense that the meaning intended is free from error.
However, this does not exhaust the types of alleged error, and so such a conclusion is insufficient. Perhaps a second aid compensates. The measure of biblical truth, the Second Vatican Fathers are seen to argue, lies in the economy of salvation. Paragraph 11 of Dei Verbum states: The books of Scripture teach firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God willed to be put down in the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.
And so, someone like Raymond Brown challenges a reader to discern beyond simply what authors intend to communicate, and move towards a discernment of what God does communicate for our salvation. Brown's view, and that of a good many, is that the inspiration of the Scriptures has the effect of rendering Scripture inerrant when relevant to human salvation. When relevant to human salvation is also not an easy determination.
Has God protected the human author from every form of error? It seems nonsense to me that he would. To a Catholic person like myself, Jesus Christ is God's Revelation. To the extent that a certain testimony messes up on the geography of one of Jesus' travels, seems to me not what needs safeguarding.
(I do not mean to suggest that only geographical errors exist...).
But what do you think? And why?

Kelly Wilson
Musings @ kellyjwilson

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Message 2 of 89 (613899)
04-28-2011 7:23 PM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum
Thread copied here from the Catholics & Inerrancy thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 3 of 89 (613900)
04-28-2011 7:27 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


When you say Catholic are you talking about the Roman Catholic Church?

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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KellyWilson
Junior Member (Idle past 4717 days)
Posts: 15
Joined: 04-24-2011


Message 4 of 89 (613903)
04-28-2011 8:32 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by jar
04-28-2011 7:27 PM


Yes.

Kelly Wilson
Musings @ kellyjwilson

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Jon
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 89 (613904)
04-28-2011 8:57 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


No Inerrancy Here
But what do you think? And why?
Think of what? These half-baked attempts to 'preserve' the notion of Biblical inerrancy?
I think they're down-right stupid. The Bible gets a lot of stuff wrong. Period.
It's not inerrant. Period.
Jon

Love your enemies!

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KellyWilson
Junior Member (Idle past 4717 days)
Posts: 15
Joined: 04-24-2011


Message 6 of 89 (613905)
04-28-2011 9:02 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Jon
04-28-2011 8:57 PM


Re: No Inerrancy Here
Fair enough.

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Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


(1)
Message 7 of 89 (613906)
04-28-2011 9:15 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


Hi Kelly,
Thus, a consciousness of genre and literary form (not always an easy determination), can promote the Scriptures as free from error in the sense that the meaning intended is free from error.
Given all of the varying styles and forms, and varying intended readers, how can you ‘know’ that you are not just interpreting the message to suit your needs? Seems like a risky way to send such an important message. Also, would it not follow that all of this confusion over the meaning was intended?
... lies in the economy of salvation.
Doesn’t this just mean that if you believe it then it is true? Mysterious ways.
Is your point that if you take the whole thing in, like you would a painting, then the message is flawless and cannot be misconstrued?
Edited by Dogmafood, : add an r

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 8 of 89 (613907)
04-28-2011 10:00 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Dogmafood
04-28-2011 9:15 PM


Economy of salvation is a technical term in theology, particularly Catholic theology.
The Fathers of the Church distinguished oikonomia from theologia; the latter term referring to the mystery of the internal life of the trinity (often called ‘ad intra’, Latin for inside,internal). The economy of salvation, on the other hand, refers to God's activity ad extra (external): creating and governing the world, particularly with regard to God’s plan for the salvation of the world in the person and work of Jesus Christ, a plan which is being accomplished through his Body the Church, in its life and sacraments.

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Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 9 of 89 (613910)
04-28-2011 10:37 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Dr Adequate
04-28-2011 10:00 PM


Yes, and like so many technical religious terms, it is a self-serving construct. It is being used in this case to explain the apparent inconsistencies in the bible. In other words, it’s all going according to plan even if it does not look like it.

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Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2330 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 10 of 89 (613922)
04-29-2011 4:38 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


I appreciate the succinctness and focus of your opening post, and your frankness in acknowledging that the notion of biblical inerrancy, as understood and asserted by many, is bunk. But I'm not sure I understand your position regarding the quotation you cited ("Paragraph 11 of Dei Verbum"):
quote:
The books of Scripture teach firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God willed to be put down in the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.
This appears to be a statement of policy -- an instruction or command -- about what you are supposed to "know" while reading and trying to understand scripture. It obviously cannot be determined objectively on the basis of evidence. Any claim that the statement is "meaningful" (let alone "correct" or "true") must rely entirely on the authority wielded by the clergymen who assert it, and the compliance given by the people who accept it.
Given that you acknowledge the presence of errors in scripture, do you agree with Paragraph 11, or not? Implicit in its statement is the requirement that the scriptures must be kept and accepted as-is, and in order to overcome the errors and arrive at a "correct understanding" of some "underlying inerrancy", you must also accept some range of exegetic gymnastics, however difficult they may be.
If you're doing the "necessary reinterpretations" of scripture entirely on your own (as I suspect many self-proclaiming Christians do), you are simply taking up the clergy's hubris for yourself, without actually being free from their influence: you might disagree in various details with many or all religious "authorities", but you're still stuck in the mire of appealing to an authority that lacks any objective foundation.
On the other hand, if you accept the exegesis given you by whichever apologist you like best, you're just accepting and echoing what is ultimately a hollow assertion of "knowledge", with a bare minimum of learning, and effectively no (critical) thinking.
Either way, it's a fool's errand. Better to simply be very explicit about rejecting outright those portions that are clearly wrong, making it clear how they are wrong, and moving on to determine what is right, replacing articles of faith wherever possible with hypotheses that can be supported by evidence.
KellyWilson writes:
(I do not mean to suggest that only geographical errors exist...)
Indeed. For more on that, I highly recommend the youtube channel of "ProfMTH": his series on "Brief Bible Blunders" is entertaining and instructive, but perhaps not as substantive as the multi-part sequences on "Jesus was not the Messiah" and "DID the disciples die for a lie?"
To be frank, I have to take strong issue with your presupposition that "salvation" and "God's Revelation" have any meaning whatsoever, let alone any truth value that can stand up to reasonable scrutiny. I'm sorry if this is taking the discussion in a direction you don't want to go, but we're in one of those EvC forums where objectivity and evidence really matter.

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

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Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


(2)
Message 11 of 89 (613927)
04-29-2011 6:10 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


False Positives
Hi Kelly,
It seems to me that your approach is guaranteed to produce a lot of false positive results. I'll explain.
Take the hypothetical example of a passage that, if read literally, contains error. It could be a geographical error or a historical error, whatever. Now assume for a moment that the passage is simply wrong. It was originally intended to be read literally. The author's intent is quite plain in the text, it is meant to be read in a straightforward way. The surface meaning is the intended meaning. And it just happens to be wrong. The author messed up. He was mistaken.
Now if we apply your method, we would approach this passage looking for a sort of poetic meaning, a non-literal symbolic meaning or a meaning that is read in between the lines. You are almost guaranteed to find such a meaning, not because the author intended for there to be one, but simply because it's very easy to read symbolism into a text, even if it's not really there.
The human mind is extremely inventive, especially when trying to find a pattern that we wish were there (but isn't). If you go looking for hidden meanings you will find them, but that doesn't mean that they were originally intended to be there. It's like looking at an abstract painting; every individual who looks at it might form their own idea of what it is about, but those ideas will rarely match each other and are very unlikely to match the artist's intended meaning - if there even was an intended meaning.
Another problem with this approach is that often the messages that the Bible seeks to communicate are vile messages, not the sort of thing that one would expect from a benevolent god.
Take the story of Job and his trials for example. This is a horrible story with a horrible moral. Do you really think that this is the kind of thing that God, in all his wisdom and glory, would consider important? Can you really read through the slaughters of the Midianites and the Amalekites and the rest and draw an uplifting moral message from all the butchery? I can't. To me, the main message seems to be "Don't mess with God or his people unless you want to die horribly.", not a very uplifting message.
I think that your approach is designed to read whatever you like into the texts. This approach must be very handy in propping up a shaky theology, but it does not strike me as a good way of accurately analysing an ancient document. I think that a better bet would be to simply accept that the Bible has a lot of errors in it and get the heck over it.
Mutate and Survive

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 12 of 89 (613931)
04-29-2011 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


Brown's view, and that of a good many, is that the inspiration of the Scriptures has the effect of rendering Scripture inerrant when relevant to human salvation.
This seems a little peculiar. As if the Almighty had only so much inerrancy to go around, and so saved it for the really important bits.
The other thing that strikes me about this doctrine is that it's precisely the most important bits that are most obscure. If we want to know how many camels Job owned, that's easy, anyone can tell you that. Ask people how many Persons there are in the Godhead and they start chopping each other's heads off and sticking spikes into one another, there being apparently no other way to settle the question.
Arius or Athanasius? Faith or works? How many sacraments are there? Should I be Monophysite, Nestorian, or Chalcedonian? Transubstantiation or consubstantion? And, as you candidly point out, it is equally difficult to find out what the important things are.
And yet this is supposedly what God lavished extra care on.
Fortunately, we can all agree that Job owned three thousand camels. One wonders what he did with them all.

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 13 of 89 (613936)
04-29-2011 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Dr Adequate
04-29-2011 10:18 AM


This seems a little peculiar. As if the Almighty had only so much inerrancy to go around, and so saved it for the really important bits.
Let's not forget that we don't even have a single, consistent version of the text to play with in the first place.
According to Bart Ehrman in his book, "Misquoting Jesus," there are more "errors" (meaning differences between various versions of the texts, including mistranslation errors, errors due to illegible writing, and even sections added or removed) in the New Testament than there are words, simply because we have that many competing versions of the texts.
And we aren't talking about minor changes. There are major differences in the texts that significantly change the whole. Remember Jesus stopping a stoning by saying "let him who is without sin cast the first stone?" That little story isn't present in the earliest versions of the text - it was added much later. Clearly this couldn't be a translational issue or other mistake - you don;t have entire stories added to a text by mistranslating a word or two.
How could the Bible possibly be inerrant if the errors and mistakes and mistranslations and additions and subtractions are so blatantly obvious? Which copy of Matthew is inerrant? of Luke?
The most parsimonious answer is of course that none of it is inerrant. That all of it is no more or less accurate than most other religious texts, written by purely human beings, perhaps inspired by their faith but not guided by some omnipotent deity.

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GDR
Member
Posts: 6202
From: Sidney, BC, Canada
Joined: 05-22-2005
Member Rating: 1.9


Message 14 of 89 (613965)
04-29-2011 3:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by KellyWilson
04-28-2011 2:34 PM


Hi Kelly
Great thread.
Paul in writing in 2nd Timothy tells us that:
quote:
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness ; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
This is the verse that seems to be used most often to justify the suggestion of Biblical inerrancy. As a Christian I find that interpretation contrary to what I believe that we are to learn from reading the Bible.
First off I contend that there have been many people inspired by God to feed the poor, provide shelter for the homeless, care for the sick and dying etc. I don’t see anyone suggesting however that they did it perfectly.
Christianity teaches that we have been given free will along with our knowledge of good and evil, to make moral choices. Christianity teaches that what God wants is that we develop a heart that freely chooses goodness, and rejects evil. The Bible tells the story of the people that God has chosen to bring His message of love, justice and forgiveness to the world. Did they do it inerrantly? Far from it.
Throughout the OT we can see how in spite of the God’s revelation to them, (simple example being the 10 commandments), the early Israelites continued to be heavily influenced by the pagan religions of their neighbours. If it is to be taken as literal that God wanted His people to go into neighbouring villages and kill every man woman and child there, or that He wanted His people to stone to death their rebellious children then I’m not interested in worshipping a God like that. I worship a God that tells us to love our enemy and to turn the other cheek. I worship a God that asks us to care for those in need. I worship a God that asks that we love our neighbour as our self.
It is only in some Christian traditions that the Bible is read as if it was ghost written by God. I believe that God inspired those with literary skills to write down their story and that God wants us to learn from those stories. Where did they get it right? Where did they get it wrong? We have been given Jesus Christ as the filter to determine what in the OT is of God and what is from the culture.
For example I contend that when the Israelites claim to be told by God to slaughter every man woman and child amongst their enemies we are to understand that we are to learn not to let other gods, (in modern terms I suggest that the other gods are money and power), become part of our lives as they had done. When it says that god told them to do it then I suggest we ask which god. It kinda makes sense that when we look at the pagan gods of the more powerful nations around we can understand why they would view their god as being an entity that would make them more powerful, and be with them in battle. They were allowing the culture of the time, just as we often do today, to shape their god into their own image. In my view the most blatant example today of culture shaping our Christianity is the prosperity gospel.
Treating the Bible as a rule book as how to get on the right side of God is contrary to the idea that what God wants is for us, which is to have changed hearts that yearn for unselfish love to be the basis of our lives and all of creation. Treating the Bible as a rule book has often turned Christianity on its ear, making it all about me and how I get my salvation rather than it being about how to I reflect God’s love and forgiveness into the world around me. Isn’t that what Jesus was telling the Pharisees? In that sense I would argue that living by the scriptures that way takes us further away from the heart of God rather than closer. I’m not questioning the saving power of the gospel but what I’m saying is that if we make personal salvation the point of it all then we are widely missing the point that God actually intends.
So yes, I believe that what is in the Bible is inspired by God and that it is the book that God wants us to have. Another word for inspired is God breathed and I believe that we can be inspired by the book has been God breathed into our life, but that it is far more powerful when it is viewed in the way that I believe that God intended.
Edited by GDR, : typo

Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2330 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 15 of 89 (614027)
04-30-2011 8:05 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by GDR
04-29-2011 3:17 PM


GDR writes:
... As a Christian I find that interpretation contrary to what I believe that we are to learn from reading the Bible.
First off I contend that there have been many people inspired by God to feed the poor... etc. I don’t see anyone suggesting however that they did it perfectly.
Do I understand this correctly to mean something like the following?
You believe that some parts of the bible are, at the very least, inconsistent with what you believe to be God's truth (i.e. the bible is not inerrant); the people who wrote these unsuitable parts presumably thought that they were inspired by God, but they were wrong about that as well. {AbE: At least, they were wrong to think that they were correctly conveying God's intent -- they may have been "inspired by God", but they were getting it wrong nonetheless.}
Thereafter, the various groups of religious scholars who took on the task of deciding what writings should constitute the "official canon" for their own and future generations -- i.e. what should be retained, what should be set aside, and what should be added, e.g. for purposes of translating scripture to a new language -- likewise may have thought they were inspired by God when they chose to keep these erroneous parts in the canon. But they actually were as mistaken in making this choice as they were in attributing it to God's inspiration. {AbE: Again, maybe they had a palpable sense of being God-inspired, but still they erred.}
And that's all okay because according to your interpretation of that one passage you quoted from 2nd Timothy, even the parts that are wrong are useful for "training in righteousness", etc. As you say:
We have been given Jesus Christ as the filter to determine what in the OT is of God and what is from the culture.
The problem here should be obvious. The only means by which we are "given Jesus Christ" -- that is, the only basis we have for knowing what he supposedly said, what he intended his words to mean, what he actually stood for -- is through these very same scriptures.
The problem of errors and inconsistencies is not just in the OT. The NT is the product of the very same fallible methods of authorship and review. It suffers from the same propensity toward a mistaken sense of being inspired by God, and is known to be internally inconsistent, with an indeterminate quantity of errors. Recall that none of it was written down during Jesus' own life time.
To be sure, the timing of NT writings is a curious thing. There might have been, to some extent, a limited degree of literacy among his immediate followers, but I wonder if a more compelling reason might be that Jesus himself was promising that the "end of times" ("the rapture", "the second coming") was going to happen within the lifetimes of the people who listened to him. So long as they accepted that promise at face value, what point would there be in writing anything down?
It was only after decades had passed, and many of those first-hand listeners had died of natural causes with Jesus' promise unfulfilled, that the writings began. Of course at that point, it was quite difficult to get a consistent story about what had happened and what had been said decades before, and there was, I'm sure, already some degree of conceptual divergence among those who started writing -- that is, their various instructions to readers were not mutually consistent.
As for your conclusion:
I believe that what is in the Bible is inspired by God and that it is the book that God wants us to have.
... That is, even regarding the parts that are wrong, God wants us to have an erroneous and inconsistent set of assertions attributed to his inspiration? A strange notion.
... I believe that we can be inspired by the book has been God breathed into our life, but that it is far more powerful when it is viewed in the way that I believe that God intended.
Well, now we either have to get a better idea of what YOU believe, so we can all get this Christianity thing down the way it's supposed to be (are you ready to handle all the questions and disputes?), or else what you meant to say was something like "...when it is viewed in the way that any sensible person would believe that God intended", which is just another way of saying "it can mean whatever you think it should mean, within reason."
That's a very humanistic approach. It's what we atheists tend to rely on as a first recourse. The difference between humanistic and theistic approaches is simply that the humanists acknowledge the inherent imperfections, the incomplete knowledge, and the constant need for critical review and reassessment, in trying to establish what is "reasonable". We can definitely point to many human behaviors that are certainly wrong, and many others that are certainly right -- these certainties are based on consistent observations over many generations, and are backed by ample evidence showing how good behaviors (such as mutual respect, collaboration and altruism) tend to result in better overall survival than bad ones (such as isolationism, parasitism and violent pursuit of selfish interest).
The theists will try to argue that these certainties are imposed on us ("given to us") by a deity, but since their only "evidence" for this is an imperfect text that turns out to be inconsistent on these points, their argument is not sustainable.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : typo repair in last paragraph

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

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