Summations Only

Of course my knowledge of Jesus comes from the Gospels, but apparently you read all the books of the Bible the same way. You give the same credibility to an ancient scribe, who is likely sustained by his human benefactor, as you do to those who compiled what we have written about Jesus.However, you say that Jesus actually wrote it all anyway. Presumably all the authors were largely superfluous to the process as they served as nothing more than robotic keyboards in writing down what Jesus transcribed to them. Their personalities were allowed to show through but not their personal biases or self interest.You are so busy proclaiming that Jesus is God that you completely ignore Jesus as man. I did say that the Gospel of John talks about the "Word" or wisdom of God became flesh in Jesus, but that is the Godly wisdom about life on this planet. That does not mean that Jesus embodied the total knowledge of God the Father.You hold a very docetic view of Jesus. From what you have written I assume that you believe that Jesus had certainty in regards to His resurrection on the third day. In that light what Jesus did on the cross is minimized when compared to those martyrs who have given up their lives in favour of others over the years simply because they had faith that it was the right thing to do.Jesus went to the cross on faith derived from His understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures and through prayer. Otherwise, what was the point of His praying to not have to go through with it in Gethsemane. For that matter, who do you think He was praying to? Himself? As a Christian I consider that blasphemous. Christians are called to gain their understanding of the nature of God through the one who embodied it, namely Jesus. In Jesus we are called to follow God because of His love for us so that we can willingly and joyfully reflect that love into His creation.You make it all about a god who wants us to follow him out of self interest. If you don't worship him it will go badly for you both in this life and the next. Your Bibleanity is 180 degrees out from Christianity. You have made it about looking out for number one as opposed to looking out for your neighbour. It is all about your personal salvation. In order to "get saved" you are prepared to worship a god who commands his followers to stone to death difficult children. The only difference I can see between those that espouse your views and the Taliban is that you don't actually follow through on what you say you believe.My contention for that is that you don't actually believe it. I contend that your belief is coloured by a society which has been molded to a large degree by Christ's teaching. You rationalize it by saying that was for then but it is different now. Do you not think that some societies today are just as bad as the societies that you believe God wanted to have eradicated.Let's just say that you are right. Why wouldn't he just do it himself instead of having his followers getting involved in slaughtering men, women and children? I will gratefully follow God as we see Him in Jesus but I am not about to follow a god that you seem to worship.

Of course I read all the books of the Bible the same way. They are all inspired by God, and that means by Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well as the Father. The early Church and the Church through the ages continued to affirm the inspiration of the majority of the body of scriptures that were eventually bound together as the Bible which was the final ratification of them as God's own word. If being inspired means they are God's word you cannot pick and choose among them as to which is the truth; they all are.Your problem is that you have a very narrow man-centered standard that you impose on the scriptures. There is only one way to read the scriptures and that is by submitting oneself and one's opinions completely to what they have to teach us. When I started out as a Christian I found that difficult with some parts of the Bible, just as you do, I found myself complaining to God about this or that message that I couldn't quite abide; but I knew the scriptures were inspired and knew that my own ego had to submit, and over time I grew into that new way of being. Your problem is that you stubbornly stopped short of submitting yourself to God on points that rub your flesh the wrong way.This idea that inspiration makes the authors of the Bible "robotic" is really a revelation of your own lack of knowledge of how the Holy Spirit works, which is no doubt due to your rejection of much of what He teaches. You can't know Him if you pick and choose among His teachings. But all of us who live by faith in God through the Holy Spirit and the entire Bible do know how the Holy Spirit works because He also inspires US; If we yield ourselves to Him -- that's the crucial IF that stumbles you -- He guides us in the living of our lives just as He did the authors of the Bible in the writing of their separate accounts. It doesn't make any of us into robots to yield ourselves to His leading. [abe: no, this doesn't put us on a level with the authors of inspired scripture; we know God chose them and guided them for that purpose and that they were yielded to Him for every word they wrote, which we can't say about much that we do. And we have faith that God preserved their writings for our instruction./abe]As for this idea that I only talk about salvation, you are failing to appreciate the context that I'm writing in here. I'm always having to answer challenges to the most basic Christian doctrine. When I'm talking to Christians who are born again and share my views we're more often talking about how Jesus inspires us to live our lives based on the foundation of our salvation.You make all kinds of accusations of me in your post, and I don't think I understand most of it well enough to attempt an answer. I get my understanding of Christian doctrine from teachers down through the history of the Church, as well as sermons from a variety of teachers and preachers who share the orthodox traditional point of view. Over the years from thousands of sources I've learned who teaches the truth and who doesn't. I don't depend on my own feelings for any of this as you seem to do in forming your doctrine. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Instead of attacking GDR to cover up your back-pedalling you could just admit that you were wrong to claim that Jesus authored the Bible.

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This idea that inspiration makes the authors of the Bible "robotic" is really a revelation of your own lack of knowledge of how the Holy Spirit works, which is no doubt due to your rejection of much of what He teaches.

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It's not GDR's idea. It's yours.

You make these statements Faith that just aren't true. The early church did not believe in an inerrant Bible. Read Augustine for starters. This idea of inerrancy grew out of the reformation and was essentially a knee jerk reaction to having the Bible being with held from the general population for centuries. People died in order to have it available to the masses. It was revered and some took that reverence to extremes.Simply saying that God inspired the writers is no different than saying that God inspired CS Lewis to write what he wrote. I'm a fan of Lewis but he would be horrified if he thought that because God inspired him to chronicle his understanding of God that anyone should believe that it perfectly reflected what God wanted said.Yes, I believe that God speaks to us through the entire Bible. However, through the lens of Jesus in the Gospels we have been given the tool required to understand what is of God and what isn't in all of the scriptures. For example Jesus in Matthew 5 quotes Leviticus and Deuteronomy and says:

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You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy, But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you".

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Just look at that quote. Jesus says "that you have heard that it was said". He doesn't say that it was said, he says simply that you heard that it was said obviously implying that God never said it in the first place. He then goes on to correct the error in the early Scriptures. In this case they got the part about loving their neighbours right, but they got the part about hating their enemies wrong.The point is Faith that you can choose between worshiping God as embodied in Jesus, or you can worship God as embodied in the Bible. I choose Jesus and it appears that you have chosen to make an idol out of the Bible. Once again, that is biblianity not Christianity.

Just one answer for now: The Reformation did not invent inerrancy. What do you think the point was of the making of lists of books at the various councils that were regarded as inspired by God? The idea of inspiration is the idea of inerrancy.Oh make it two answers: Jesus is NOT "correcting" the Old Testament in His Sermon on the Mount, He is revealing its true meaning. He is God, He taught the Jews, He took their weaknesses into account during their time, and now since He has come in the flesh and we have the Holy Spirit to strengthen us we can stand the stronger meat of the complete revelation. {HOWEVER, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE OT THAT SAYS "HATE YOUR ENEMIESOh make it three: Jesus quoted from every book in the Old Testament, quoted it as THE WORD OF GOD. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yet they couldn't seem to get a single list, ever. There are still many different Canons and lists of what should be in and out.Sorry Faith, but that is fact, not fiction.Also there are so many things in every list that are simply factually false for there to be inerrancy.

Jesus DID author the Bible. The putting of some of His words in red in some Bibles confuses this fact because ALL the words of scripture are His, AND God the Father's AND God the Holy Spirit's. The Spirit of God who inspires us is the Spirit of Christ. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

MOST of the books on ALL the canonical lists were identical. The canon we now have in the Protestant Bible is all inspired scripture.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Too much of Lewis is Lewis and not God to call his writings inspired. And besides, as you acknowledge, he would say so himself.The Biblical writers were inspired though. "The word of the LORD came to me..." is a clue in some cases that you no doubt despise.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So you claim but as usual, that is simply false. The smallest Canon has only 5 books while the largest Canon has over 80, so they are not identical as you claimed.The Canon you and I happen to use is the Protestant Canon but that does not mean it is inerrant. And the books in that Canon still fcontain factually false material.

I understand you believe all that but it just doesn't hold up. You make assertions without any support. You are also revising the meaning of inspiration. I have no problem with the concept that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God to write what they did, that does not mean that what they wrote was inerrant. He is not revealing its true meaning. He was pointing out where it was in error. That is absolutely crystal clear. Your problem is that you read it with your self imposed blinkers so that it can't really mean what it actually says. By the way, are you suggesting that The Holy Spirit didn't exist before pentecost? Jesus constantly quoted the OT to His Jewish audience so that they would understand what He was saying and doing. Yes, God the Father as espoused by Jesus can be found throughout the OT, but also in there we can find the god that many of the Israelites looked to in order to gain societal and personal power at the expense of their enemies. For many it was about how they could use god as opposed to how He could use them.

So you "honestly" attacked your own ideas, and attacked GDR for - allegedly - holding those ideas.And you expect to be believed ?The Bible, of course, does not credit Jesus as author. It does identify human authors of some books. So in claiming Jesus as author you are contradicting the Bible anyway.

I do recognize that you are being honest, I am only suggesting that you are honestly wrong.

No, I answered GDR's claim that inspiration makes robots of inspired authors.

If you take the author in one of the OT texts as being correct when he says that "the word of the Lord came to me" then why can't you take it as correct when the Gospels quote Jesus as saying that the OT got it wrong. Once again, read what the writer says after saying that the word of the Lord came to him, but through the lens of Jesus the embodied Word of God, to see if the writer understood God correctly or not.Also, to respond to your edit about it not saying to hate your enemy in the OT then just read it in context. If commanding people to slaughter the men, women and children of another tribe doesn't involve hating them then I don't know what does.