Is the bible authoritive and truly inspired?

But other people found that the number of books with divine authority was 73 or 77 or 81.If it took until the Protestant Reformation for the Spirit of God to communicate to anyone at all how many books were in his Holy Word, you've got to wonder what the Holy Spirit was doing all that time? Just watching the sparrows fall?

So maybe it'll take a little longer.Maybe the Holy Spirit has yet to guide the Church into the revelation that (for example) the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is so much bullshit, but will do so eventually.The hypothesis that eventually the Holy Spirit will guide the Church, or rather the Churches, into truth gives them no solid ground on which they can now stand --- or will ever be able to stand, since it is always possible to hypothesize that this thing that the Holy Spirit will get around to eventually hasn't happened yet.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Certainly the Holy Spirit has let people think that for the last couple of thousand years --- apart, of course, from the Unitarians, to whom he vouchsafed the truth.And if you don't like that conclusion, you have no basis to argue against it. If the very content of the Bible, let alone its interpretation, is something that the Holy Spirit can let most Christians be wrong about for a couple of thousand years, then where is the solid ground on which you can stand? According to your own theology, it is perfectly possible for devout Christians to be perfectly wrong about such subjects. Whereas someone from a different tradition of scriptural interpretation would tell you that you are blaspheming by asserting the divinity of Christ.And the Holy Spirit sits on his Holy Hindquarters for two thousand years without producing some sort of definitive Holy Statement.

You are quite right. Jar, who has made a mere 17757 posts on this forum, has never debated publicly. But if he ever does so, what rings you could run around him --- if only you could get him to publicly state his opinions! But he is so reticent when it comes to that.So for now you will have to content yourself with daydreams of what a wonderful rebuttal you could make if only he would ever publicly state his views, instead of keeping them to himself as is now the case.