Importance of Innerrancy to Moderate Christians

A message is only as real as the author. There is no such thing as a message without an author.There are disagreements about whether Jesus was a messenger sent from God or whether He was an author of the message that he brought. In that regard, the issue about whether the Bible was inspired by God and written by man assumes importence, IMHO. If the origin of the ideals of the book came from me, it is another in a long line of humanist philosophies...although one could argue that IF the humans were inspired by God as a source, the differecne would be important.You have pointed out before that our interpretation of a belief MUST be subjective...arising within our own hearts and minds.The innerrency group may counter by asserting that just as water cannot rise higher than its source, human philosophy can never really bring humans to a higher level than they are intrinsically at.Jesus forgave sins. No human has the authority to forgive the sins of another, apart from those done to them individually.Jesus was human, however. Do you believe He also was of Divine origin?
Would that make a difference as to the importance of the message He brought? If not, why not?

Hi Q,Augustine did take a lot of the Bible literally, but not all of it.For example, he didn't take the six days of creation literally, he maintained that ALL of creation was instantaneous. There are some other examples here. I don't have much time right now, but I can post a few examples for you tomorrow.There's an interesting quote from Augustine on that site that is very relevent to some of our members!Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. The best way I think to take Augustine's view of the Bible is that he took his interpretation literally.Brian.

Why? In art, the "message" often transcends what the artist consciously intends. Why not? We can receive messages that were not consciously sent - body language is an example. Author/messenger makes no difference to the value or validity of the message itself. One could also argue that the message is more valid if it comes from our fellow humans than from an alien source - a source that might not understand what it is like to be us. The incarnation of Jesus reassures us that the message is not just an edict from on high - it's from one of us. And why would we want to be at "a higher level"? Individual forgiveness is the only forgiveness that matters, the only forgiveness that effects our lives.Remember that the message is: God has forgiven (or God will forgive - same difference).
It's done. It's grace. It has no place in the equation. I believe it doesn't matter.If we believe the message based on authority, we haven't really assimilated the message.
If we "obey" just because the "author" is God, we have the wrong motivation. When you receive a message, does it matter if it came by e-mail, voice-mail or snail-mail?
Which would be more "important"?

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Phat,Consider that there is no such thing as a message without a receiver.
Recall the test where people listened to white noise through headphones. When asked what they heard they would often report hearing words. In the abscence of meaningful input the brain will project it.I was reading a book by a sleep researcher. He had a patient who was newly married and learned from his wife that he cursed in his sleep and he sought help. The researcher didn't know what to do so asked him to tape record himself sleeping thinking he might get some data to formulate a solution. A week later the guy returned and thanked the researcher profusely for curing him! Seems like just knowing the recorder was on changed something in his unconscious. A message is only as real as the effect it has on a recipient. The recipient doesn't even have to be a human, or alive, it could be a computer or other control device. If the computer is down, no message is received, nothing happens, it's like there was no message sent.You are so likable. I'll get angry with your church I guess. They use such poor reasoning. I see the point you are hoping to make, and you have a very nice religion but I get frustrated by the confusion in your arguments. Sorry. I really want Christians to not use such obviously wrong analogies. Honest, it will help everyone, believers and unbelievers alike in the conversation. Well, if you are monotheist, not even a nondualist, everything that exists is of divine origin. Unless,of course,Paul dreamed him up. Phat, reasoning by analogy requires care. Of course water can rise higher than its source, where do you think rain comes from?I'm frustrated with you in a friendly way. I know you want to bracket out the teachings of some people as divine. It's a tough problem.The only solution I see is faith. I know Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, but millions of Mormons on faith believe it was divine revelation. There is no good evidence, certainly no proof. In fact all the proof and evidence is on my assertion, but that is what religious faith is for. For believing things that otherwise can't be proven. If you've got something more than that I'd like to see it but so far no one has come up with anything other than faith.lfen

Hi, Brian. Quoting from the link you provided here, I agree with Augustine if the author interprets him correctly. Look at the implications of "spiritual light". If Jesus or the Holy Spirit are a spiritual source of light, this particular light does not have to be limited by the laws of physics. It can shine into the corners of dense minds and hardened hearts.The author at your source link quotes Augustine as saying that It seem that Augustine was quite a thinking chap! Water is a spritual metaphor, as mentioned by Jesus to the woman at the well. Similarly, water is mentioned in 1 John.I wonder if the blood mentioned so often in the bible is a spiritual thing as well? I certainly cant see literal blood being as deep as a horses bridal! RE: Interestingly, John, 1 John, and Revelation were said to originate from the same author by some scholars. They certainly all portray a similar type of symbolism.

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“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way” --C.S.Lewis

This is not the prevailing view of modern scholarship.
Book of Revelation - Wikipedia
"Although the traditional view still has many adherents, many modern scholars believe that John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, and John of Patmos refer to three separate individuals. Certain lines of evidence suggest that John of Patmos wrote only Revelation, not the Gospel of John nor the Epistles of John. For one, the author of Revelation identifies himself as "John" several times, but the author of the Gospel of John never identifies himself directly. While both works liken Jesus to a lamb, they consistently use different words for lamb ” the Gospel uses amnos, Revelation uses arnion. Lastly, the Gospel is written in nearly flawless Greek, but Revelation contains grammatical errors and stylistic abnormalities which indicate its author may not have been as familiar with the Greek language as the Gospel's author."Also note that some early church fathers in the 4th century did not consider Revelation to be part of the canon and none other than Martin Luther considered Revelation to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and stated that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it." And it is the only NT book not included in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church.This is just one more example of the problems with the inerrancy doctrine. The broader Christian church cannot even agree on what books should be in the canon let alone the content of the individual books. So how can one say it is inerrant? Fundamentalists seem to have this idea that what was in the Bible was all settled early on and set in stone. But it wasn't.

so why is a "modern" scholar any better equipped to answer the issue? Many of these so-called modern scholars are biased against God to begin with!

Hi, PB. Guess the writers of the Qumran Scrolls were biased, too, as they had no hesitation in wandering all over the place, drawing their theology from the eventual MT, or the LXX, or the Samaritan texts, quoting books outside our Canons, collecting new Psalms,coming up with different interpretations of Scripture, even showing how pesher was used to put different meanings on the use of Scripture for their day. No sign of the jot and tittle there. Inerrant? I think not.

Seems there is a question and an assertion lurking in there.As to the former, why a modern scholar might be better equipped than an earlier one, consider the medium you used to post your message. The simple fact is the modern scholar has tools that were not available to earlier scholars. There is also the evolution of knowledge. Each scholar builds on a base of research from those who came before.The later assertion is one without foundation. What makes you think that the scholars that believe that there were various authors of the John material have a bias against GOD? In fact, what makes you think that the idea that the various books attributed to a John were not written by the same person is even modern? Revelations has always been a contentious book, and there were arguments about whether it should be included from the very beginning. When I was in high school we discussed the multiple John theories as well as things like the later additions to Mark.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well first of all, I would note that I presented information about the book of Revelation being brought into question in the 4th century and also by Martin Luther.....But to your point about modern scholarship. Why is modern scholarship somehow suspect when it comes to the Bible but in every other area of endeavor modern scholarsip rules the day? Modern scholarship, for one, has the advantage of all of the other scholarship that has preceded it. Secondly, modern scholarship has many tools of textual analysis and other analytical tools that were not available to ancient scholars. Modern scholars have quick access to original sources worldwide and to a network of other scholars worldwide. Modern scholars have modern universities with modern libraries and ability to collaborate with scholars in technical fields that are of tremendous benefit in forensic analysis of original documents. So why would you not give a lot of credence to modern scholarship? What does their view of God have to do with it? - not that you have any evidence for the "bias against God" assertion. Either the evidence is there or it isn't.on edit: Well I see that Jar posted a nanosecond before I did and made many of the same points. I guess Phat must have heaved up a softball. Edited by deerbreh, : note Jar's message.Edited by deerbreh, : No reason given.

Things being brought into question that nevertheless were accepted by the majority do not compromise the inerrancy of the final collection. Many of the books of the Bible were questioned at one time or another. There was always a core that was recognized by all, and I don't know what all those included, but others were questioned and nevertheless finally accepted. Traditional Bible believers make use of all the same advantages of modern scholarship. It's quite sophisticated. But the word "modern" usually implies a mental set that comes to the task with modernist prejudices, such as against the reality of miracles and the supernatural, or an opinion about the dating of the books based on that preconception, and so on. It isn't the sophistication but the preconceptions that are the problem. Unfortunately this isn't so. Anti-supernatural bias has strongly affected the dating of the Old Testament, for instance, since they refuse to accept the reality of prophecy and are sure that therefore the prophetic books that appear to be fulfilled in their traditional placement must have been written after the events prophesied.And as usual with anything that investigates the past, scholarship is only as good as the interpretation of it.

Thanks Brian. On a slightly other hand, he did state fairly unequivocally that there could be no additions to the (then) current canon. I imagine he'd have rejected outright the Gospels of Mary and Judas (assuming they're not forgeries in the first place).Are there any other scholars/writers who expressed ideas similar to Augustine before or after (until Luther/Calvin)?

This is really more of a response to your post 45 than the one I'm replying to, but since we're this far along...I followed the exchange between you and Brian a bit, and you seem to be using inerrancy and literalness interchangeably. It seems unlikely that either you or he don't recognize the difference between those two words, so maybe I'm missing something, but here's my comment.Believing in inerrancy was very common in the early church. Justin Martyr, for example, believed that the Septuagint was translated by 72 Jewish scholars in 72 separate rooms and they all got the same word for word translation.Taking Scripture literally was very UNcommon, as Brian points out. I haven't read much of Augustine, but I'd be shocked if he didn't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. However, I'd be just as shocked if he read Scripture literally.I remember Irenaeus (c. AD 185) apologizing for reading the prophecy about the wolf lying down with the lamb literally. He said something to the effect of, "I know, as we all know, that this Scripture is about wolf-natured men and meek, lamb-natured men getting along in peace in the church, but I believe that it also will be literally fulfilled in the future with wolves no longer eating meat." He was very apologetic about it, because "everyone" in the church took such prophecies figuratively.So, before Martin Luther/Calvin, you should find mostly figurative interpretations being made by people who believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures.Just as a note, since this is an evolution vs. creation board. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, writing in AD 168, defended a literal 6-day creation (A Plea for the Christians, I don't have time to look up the chapter right now). Origen (c. AD 230), on the other hand, did not take the 6-day creation literally, and he referred to those who took the Adam and Eve story literally as "stupid."

So you say. That doesn't make it so. Not accepting prophecy is not bias against God, it is a difference in interpretation. If a researcher finds evidence that the prophesied event actually occured before the prophecy, that is not bias against God, that is scholarship. A human got it wrong, no need to blame God for it.

Scholarship is not a democracy. The majority doesn't determine what the real facts are. Good scholarship ferrets out the real facts. But sometimes the dogmatists have more power than the scholars and then good scholarship is suppressed, sometimes with torture or the threat of torture (in the case of Galileo). But only for so long. Truth will come out, always.