Summations Only

I've been told I'm not representing the orthodox Christian point of view. These sermons are intended to show that's wrong.I've been told I'm wrong to claim that inspiration and inerrancy go together, meaning of course according to the orthodox point of view. These sermons answer that too.I've been told that inspiration is not what I've said it is, period. Well, here are a bunch of preachers who say it is what I've said it is. This is the orthodox, traditional point of view.That there are other points of view doesn't change the fact that I am representing one huge body of traditional orthodox thought and these sermons are intended as evidence for that claim.

Any sermons you could come up with to support your view would represent only a small part of the Church. My point was that I could show you hundreds from all over the Church that support what I've been saying here because it's the historical traditional position on inerrancy and inspiration.I've been using the term "orthodox" correctly to mean "correct" or "true" to refer to the traditional historical main body of theology and I'm sure you know that. If you don't, what term would you suggest I use to say that, "true Christianity?" You know where that will get me.ABE: definition from Google: /abedwise is wrong, it isn't minutiae that determines this group but major doctrine. We may differ on some minutiae but he doesn't say what differences he is thinking of. I differ with John MacArthur on some secondary points but regard him as a major spokesman for the traditional orthodox camp on main doctrinal issues.I don't know why you object to the term "partial inerrancy" for your view, it seems to fit well with how you describe it: some of the Bible wrong, the rest inerrant.Your view of the Protestant Reformation is revisionist and weird.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Got to say in general about the opposing views given here that you all show an amazing commitment to such a wishy-washy relativistic idea of how truth is determined that there could never be any truth at all. How you live in that kind of philosophical void I can't imagine.

Yes, it isn't "just opinion," but there's a very strange idea here about opinion, as if any opinion just by being opinion isn't to be taken seriously. When you are dealing with what the Bible says you are dealing with facts: the words say such and such. The "opinions" you arrive at are conclusions based on a logical consideration of the facts. It's a logical and rational process, it's how we understand anything that isn't measurable. Sure I agree God is involved in the process when we are talking about scripture, but the process itself is a normal process of thought and it leads to conclusions that can be reconsidered by going back through the evidence, the facts of what the words say, and either confirm or change your conclusion about them.I think this idea about opinion is a kind of relativism that cripples minds. I suppose it can be traced to Postmodernism.

I don't know why the Catholic Church was so stupid about all that, though they did tend to follow Aristotle far more than the Bible, but it's obvious now, and you'll find it mentioned on the sermon on inerrancy I posted, that scripture speaks from the human point of view about such things: the sun "rises and sets," even on the Weather Channel, although we know it's the earth that's turning.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I was talking about the methods of those who exegete the scriptures and arrive at the conclusions about inspiration and inerrancy that the orthodox traditional conservative churches do, as exemplified in the couple of sermons I linked and I'm sure by hundreds more at Sermon Audio since they represent the orthodox conservative traditional churches. They use those methods and they arrive at those conclusions which agree with what I've been saying here all along. What you get out of the scriptures I dare suggest is something pretty idiosyncratic.The way "opinion" has been used here is nothing short of idiotic.

I am not interested in defending all the ins and outs of Bible interpretation, the point of the sermons was to show that my opinions DO represent the orthodox traditional point of view, period.

Yes there is only one orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is defined by the major doctrines, such as salvation by faith, the Trinity, and including inspiration and inerrancy. These are held by all churches I'm calling orthodox.The secondary issues do not divide the churches from one another as far as shared orthodoxy goes although they may lead to new denominations. It's human nature to have a ton of disagreements, we won't all be on the same page on all the minor points until it's all over; but the Church as a whole includes all those who share the major doctrines. So all the ways that churches are a "little different" from each other means nothing in the big picture.The differences that make a difference are those that contradict major doctrine, such as salvation by faith plus works for instance, anti-Trinitarian views, denial of Biblical inerrancy and inspiration and so on. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

All that's being contradicted here is the wrong understanding of inerrancy and inspiration. I keep trying to say that inspiration does not bypass the human personality but you all keep insisting it does and that I'm talking about some kind of takeover of the mind. I'm not, never was, never had such an idea about inspiration. The Tower of Babel story is inspired truth and so is the gospel of Luke.

Again, the only problem here is your expectation of what inspiration means. I never use the term "dictation" but that's the weird idea you all get and I don't know how to dispel it.I don't think anybody knows exactly how God inspired all the writers of the Biblical books, but we know He did.As for Jesus' authorship, maybe it would be clearer to say "Son of God" rather than Jesus.

You are making a false distinction based on how the writers came by their knowledge. All the gospel writers are considered to have been inspired in their writings. Matthew Mark and John had lived through the events but also made use of other written materials; Luke learned about the events from interviewing the people who had lived through them. The source of the knowledge has nothing to do with whether the writing was inspired or not.

I've already said whatever I have to say on the subject of the nature of inspiration, concluding that I don't think we can really know, so I'll just stay out of it if that's your focus. HOWEVER, there is nothing different about the first verses of Luke as I also said. It shouldn't make any difference what the source of knowledge is whether the writing is inspired or not OR how it was inspired.

Scripture says they were "moved by the Holy Spirit." Only the prophets used that phrase but all the writers are considered to have been inspired. And they didn't necessarily write down what God told them at the moment they received it either; they often say they received it at such and a such a time and place, such as by a river, where they wouldn't have been in a position to write it down. When it is said that God preserved every word they wrote it isn't meant to imply something as direct as dictation as I understand it, just that when they wrote it they were moved to use words that said exactly what He wanted them to say. I don't have a problem with this since I think God in some sense controls everything we all do all the time, only in the case of the writers what they wrote was all true and the rest of us get things wrong. That's just a passing thought though, don't skewer me with it. I don't know but dictation would only apply if they were writing at the moment they got the information which I don't think was ever the case.Again, the inspiration of the writing of scripture doesn't seem to be related to how the knowledge they are writing about occurred in the first place. Moses must have received a great deal of his knowledge from word of mouth, perhaps some from direct illumination from God, it doesn't say, and much from his own eyewitness experience as well. The prophets got their more esoteric knowledge straight from God as He revealed things to them they couldn't otherwise have known, but they didn't necessarily get it as they were sitting down to write, in fact I don't think any of them did. They are accounts of things that had already happened, including their receiving of esoteric revelations, prophecies etc. Luke got his knowledge from the eyewitnesses, he was also an eyewitness himself at times on the trail with Paul as he describes in Acts; other gospel writers were eyewitnesses and used each other's writings to fill in the blanks as well. To believe all this is inspired is simply to believe that God guided and protected the writing of it, which is apart from how the knowledge was acquired. John MacArthur explains it in a more direct way than I would normally think of it myself, so maybe I should listen to some other sermons about it.The difference you make between how Ezekiel and Luke were inspired isn't a difference in how they were inspired in the writing of their text but a difference in how they learned what they learned.abe: God is the source of the knowledge, sure, because He's the source of everything, but He's the source of the inspiration of the writing of it in another sense than that. All the writers had all kinds of knowledge they didn't write down, or if they did write it down the writing of it wasn't inspired. The determination of what writings were inspired was a judgment made by the churches through the Holy Spirit.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've listened to at least the beginning of a few more sermons on inspiration. Here's a very brief discussion that covers the main points.As this pastor Alan Cairns says, we do not know HOW God inspired the scripture, that isn't revealed to us, but we know that it is, not just by blind faith because we've been told it's inspired, but by various qualities of the scripture itself, such as the fact that every word has important implications for doctrine. This is something we all learn by studying it.Its qualities are further emphasized by the reading of A W Pink on the page Inspiration. I've reached the end of my ability to think about this but there's lots to think about still and lots of preachers on that page for anyone who wants further illumination.

No, God wrote the Bible, Jesus is the Son of God, the words are all His just as they are God the Father's and God the Holy Spirit's.