Summations Only

No, I'm not inventing a new meaning. Anyone familiar with the ordinary English usage knows that inspiring is not a synonym for authoring!You really need to recognise that you don't have that great a grasp of Christian doctrine. Even in this thread you mangled the Doctrine of Election even as you were "defending" it.

If you put a group of fervent and decent people of various Christian and other religious sects together they would all say the same sort of thing. Particularly religious leaders, they all have a calling and believe that they are doing god's bidding.Your problem Faith, is explaining why God is giving umpteen different messages. Why would God call an individual into your hated Catholic priesthood? Let alone in a Muslim or Jainist one?

I don't have a problem explaining any of that. But you do because you don't recognize the differences.

Hardly.

LOL!Faith, you simply don't know what you are talking about. You claim that the Doctrne of Election is a standard Christian doctrine and then contradict it in the same post. You claim that the Doctrine of Jnspiration is equivalent to Divine authorship when that is only one extreme view. As usual you put your pride before the truth.

The only 'difference' is the fact that you believe that YOU are right and everyone else is wrong. That's what you can't explain to anyone other than yourself. You can't explain at all, why others think and feel exactly the same as you, but believe something quite different.

Just FYI, I don't think anybody's attitudes here are provoked by your posts. Our attitudes are mostly the product of long experience with attitudes like yours.Of course, we don't often experience somebody who writes as well as you do while thinking as poorly as you do.

Didn't see this post till now, sorry. Can't answer it yet either, will try later.

If you have a Concordance look up the Greek for 2 Timothy 3:16, where you will find that the word translated "inspiration" in the KJV is based on the Greek theopneustos which some other versions literally translate as "God breathed." "All scripture is God breathed..." Rather they present a God whose wisdom takes situation and culture into account and has different objectives depending on context. In the OT His aim was to teach a nonsettled people, who had primitive means of executing justice, about the serious nature of sin, as a contaminant of the people that could defile them and lead them into worse sin, which would ultimately bring terrible judgments of God on the whole nation. A great many of the dire punishments are meant as protective of the integrity of the people as a whole, but also to demonstrate God's judgment that most sins are worthy of death, as well as foreshadowings of the punishments of Hell. And we are to learn from that too.But Jesus' teachings show that He has come in the role of merciful Savior according to the prophecy -- for the very purpose of saving us from the dire consequences of our sins which we should have learned about from the OT -- and not yet as Righteous Judge, which He will do on His second advent. On his second advent we will see Him as the Righteous Jehovah God whom you hate. You take Jesus out of context, tame him according to your own likes and dislikes. The merciful Jesus is just as much in evidence in the Old Testament as the New, and the Righteous Judge is also in the New Testament.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We are told that the scripture writers got it all right so we aren't free to speculate that sometimes they must have got it wrong exactly where our opinions disagree with theirs. We believe God guided and preserved their words for the sake of His Church so that they didn't err. For holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, and otherwise they didn't speak in writing. Same with the New Testament writers.You love the image of Jesus, as most do, so you are willing to throw out all the scripture that doesn't fit with your view of Him. The orthodox view sees Him as the author of all of it and the subject of all of it as well. All of it.

Yes, but that turns out to be of no help whatsoever. The term "God breathed" simply means inspired by God. No more and no less.

Well, that will do it as the controversy is about whether God inspired the scripture or not.And really, God-breathed is a more direct form of inspiration by God than GDR's idea of it. God didn't just put some interesting ideas into the writers' heads, He "breathed" it into them, pretty intimate direct inspiration. Like He breathed life into Adam.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Absolutely. God breathes life into the Scriptures They are inspired, but to say that means that they are inerrant is to misuse that entirely. Paul goes on to say that they are useful for teaching, for rebuke, for improvement and for training in righteousness.The Scriptures are a collection of writings that tell the history of God reaching out to His creation and how the understanding of the ancient Jews of Yahweh grew to its climax in Jesus of Nazareth. God reaches out to us through those stories in order to teach, rebuke, improve and train us.As you obviously know of course the NT didn't exist as Scripture when that letter was written and in fact the majority of the NT didn't exist at all except for the collection of written and oral material that formed the basis for the NT. As a result it could only be referring to the Hebrew Scriptures as they existed at that time. Did you actually read that. One of the things that as Christians we believe is that we are to be a just people and justice is based on the justice of God. As Christians we believe that ultimately God's perfect justice will prevail at the end of time as we know it.Let's look at that quote again:

quote:

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13 If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, "I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity," 15 then the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. 16 The girl's father will say to the elders, "I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 17 Now he has slandered her and said, 'I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.' But here is the proof of my daughter's virginity." Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the girl's father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. 20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you.

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The husband tires of his wife and claims she wasn't a virgin when they married. They go to the father and mother ask them to prove that she was. If they can prove that she was a virgin then his punishment is that he has to keep her as his wife and he can't divorce her. This means of course that she has no recourse and is stuck with this jerk for good. However, if the parents are unable to prove that she was a virgin, then guilty or not she is taken to the parents house and stoned to death.Tell me Faith, just how is this protective of the people as a whole. Is this an example of God's perfect justice? Is this what He wants of us? You say it is a foreshadowing of the punishment of Hell. That is Hell on Earth and you are saying that it's of God. Faith, that is simply blasphemous.You go on to say that "we are to learn from that too". In other words you believe in a god that wants to scare us into choosing the right way of life but telling us that we should stone to death a woman who couldn't prove that she was a virgin prior to marriage.In Jesus we receive the message that we are to freely choose the right way to live which simply involves having a heart that chooses to love unselfishly and even sacrificially. I love the Righteous Jehovah God. God as you seem to worship him is anything but righteous. When it comes to legalism you make the Pharisees second class. Yes, Jesus came as a merciful saviour as a Kingdom builder that calls His followers, the members of that Kingdom to reflect God's love, justice, peace, forgiveness and mercy to the world. Interesting that you take one part of one verse from Timothy, twist its meaning and then use that to justify a whole hermeneutic and the accuse me of taking Jesus out of context. Please explain to me where it is that I took Jesus out of context. You simply reject pretty much of the Sermon on the Mount which is the most comprehensive teaching of Jesus that we have. You do that in favour of making an idol out of the Bible.IMHO I read the Bible very much in context. As a Christian though I start with Jesus and work out from there. When you do that all of Scripture falls into place.

We are not told that the scripture writers got it all right. We are told that the scriptures are useful for correction, teaching etc. It isn't me speculating where they got it wrong. It is Jesus telling us where they got it wrong. All the law and the prophets are encapsulated in the command to love God and neighbour. If it doesn't fit that criteria given to us from Jesus as drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures, then we can see that as being useful for teaching, rebuking, for improvement and training in righteousness by illuminating the ways that we get it wrong and go away from God. That is hardly the orthodox view. It is your view. I don't throw out the Scriptures that disagree with the view of Jesus that comes from The Gospels. Once again, they are useful for all the reasons in Timothy 3:16, that verse you hang your faith on.

I really ought to know what the orthodox view is, I've read tons of theology and listened to thousands of sermons and still do, and I take my knowledge from those sources. Jesus is understood to be the author of all of it and the subject of all of it.God couldn't possibly inspire the scriptures and they not be inerrant.But I give up GDR. There's no point in continuing such a frustrating discussion.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.