Catholics & Inerrancy

It is my contention that scriptural authority is not well understood by just about everybody outside the church and by many inside the church as well. I realize that I am just presenting my view and that I may well be completely wrong as I am sure that there will be no shortage of both Christians and non-Christians only be too happy to point out. In Mathew Jesus says the following:

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And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

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So God the Father has given Jesus the Son authority the question becomes where do we find authority now. Jesus says this in John 20.

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21 So Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you."

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Jesus also said in John 14:

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26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. 27 "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. 28 "You heard that I said to you, 'I go away, and I will come to you.' If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 "Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; 31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here

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There is nothing to suggest that The Bible on its own has any authority. All authority is God’s authority and the Bible only has authority as delegated by God.As Paul writes in Timothy 2:

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16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness ; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

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The Bible then is the road map that we follow so that we may exercise God’s authority in our God given vocation as humans to bring truth, love, forgiveness, reconciliation, mercy, justice etc to God’s created world.I realize that in using Biblical quotes to make my point I’m using something of a circular argument, however, if my point is correct that the Bible is our road map then it makes sense. Also, although it looks like I’m quote mining I contend that what I have said can also be read that way in the context of the entire Biblical narrative.So in the end I see it this way. God the Father invested his authority in the Jesus the Son who invested that same authority in us, the creatures created in His image. The Bible then is a road map, telling the story of God breaking into the world through His people.Here is one example of how I see it working. You have just picked up your new born infant for the first time and you are filled with the joy and wonder along with the love and sense of responsibility. Yes there are many that doesn’t work for, but they know at some level that they are failing to be what they are called to be. I believe that calling comes from God and we know deep down that we have authority over that child and that we are called to the model of authority that we see in Jesus in the scriptures. Jesus’ model of authority doesn’t look what we normally think of authority to look like. In God’s kingdom authority means that we are to love, serve and sacrifice. In this case we are called to unconditionally love our children, we are called to unconditionally serve our children and we are called to sacrifice for them. That is how I see God’s authority working and that model of authority comes from the scriptural narratives.Here is the take on it by someone infinitely more qualified on the subject than I am. NT Wright, who is certainly one of the top theologians/historians in the world today has this to say about Biblical authority.The following quote is from a talk given by NT Wright titled How Can the Bible be AuthoritativeThe link will give you the whole lecture.

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Why is authority like this? Why does it have to be like that? Because God (as in Acts 1 and Matthew 28, which we looked at earlier) wants to catch human beings up in the work that he is doing. He doesn’t want to do it by-passing us; he wants us to be involved in his work. And as we are involved, so we ourselves are being remade. He doesn’t give us the Holy Spirit in order to make us infallibleblind and dumb servants who merely sit there and let the stuff flow through us. So, he doesn’t simply give us a rule book so that we could just thumb through and look it up. He doesn’t create a church where you become automatically sinless on entry. Because, as the goal and end of his work is redemption, so the means is redemptive also: judgement and mercy, nature and grace. God does not, then, want to put people into little boxes and keep them safe and sound. It is, after all, possible to be so sound that you’re sound asleep. I am not in favor of unsoundness; but soundness means health, and health means growth, and growth means life and vigor and new directions. The little boxes in which you put people and keep them under control are called coffins. We read scripture not in order to avoid life and growth. God forgive us that we have done that in some of our traditions. Nor do we read scripture in order to avoid thought and action, or to be crushed, or squeezed, or confined into a de-humanizing shape, but in order to die and rise again in our minds. Because, again and again, we find that, as we submit to scripture, as we wrestle with the bits that don’t make sense, and as we hand through to a new sense that we haven’t thought of or seen before, God breathes into our nostrils his own breaththe breath of life. And we become living beingsa church recreated in his image, more fully human, thinking, alive beings.

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That, in fact, is (I believe) one of the reasons why God has given us so much story, so much narrative in scripture. Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’. That, actually, is what the parables are all about. They offer, as all genuine Christian story-telling the does, a world-view which, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters the world-view that they were in already. Stories determine how people see themselves and how they see the world. Stories determine how they experience God, and the world, and themselves, and others. Great revolutionary movements have told stories about the past and present and future. They have invited people to see themselves in that light, and people’s lives have been changed. If that happens at a merely human level, how much more when it is God himself, the creator, breathing through his word.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Funny how there are no records of these eyewitnesses. Your incredulousness has no affect on reality.There have been lots of times lots of people have believed things that were not true.There are other threads to hash this out.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

If the testable portions of the Bible fail spectacularly, then what new tests are available once you opt into your view of the Bible? If no new tests are available, then how is what you say any different than wishful thinking?

When a believer uses the Bible to make a point based on the Bible they’re using the Bible in an authoritative way. When I asked where is the authority, I am asking that given we know that parts of the Bible are incorrect then by what objective metric can be used to determine what is any parts are correct. If the writers were wrong about so much of what they wrote, why should anyone believe they were correct about any of their incredible statements?

I agree with the implication here, Tram law.
I don't think 'the message' is a waste of time at all if there's no historical event. In fact, I think it's far more important of a message if there was no historical event.Message of Christianity: "Be a good person"
Basis: Historical accuracy of the resurrection, real existence of Jesus/God.This, in essence, is saying that you should be a good person because Jesus/God is telling you to be a good person and they are real beings with real authority.Message of human imagination: "Be a good person"
Basis: None.This, in essence, is saying that you should be a good person simply because you want to be.What is 'better'? What is 'more right'? What is 'honourable'?
Should we be good people because some ultimate authority says we should? Doesn't that make us sheep in some sense? Doesn't that reduce our good actions to simply following orders?
Or, should we be good people because we want to be? Doesn't that make us good for the sake of being good?For me, it is more important to be good because we want to be that way, because we have faith in the honour of "good" being better than "evil". If we base our morality on some factual aspect of the world (resurrection, authority, loyalty, fear...) then we are restricting how far it can reach. Faith is as boundless as our imagination. Facts are restricted to what they are. "Good" must be unrestricted in order to triumph over evil, and the only way to do that is to base it on faith in itself that good really is good (boundless)... not faith in some fact being true to give us a reason to be good (restricted).

It seems to me that you think that the Bible is to be used as a book of laws. I don't see it that way. As I said it is a road map, and just as on any road map there is the correct route, there are also many side roads.The Bible is primarily a meta-narrative that involves many shorter narratives along the way. It isn't really a book at all but a collection of books with numerous authors. The writers in my view were inspired by God to record their history but I don't agree with the concept that God dictated it to them. The books are both culturally and writer conditioned.For example whenever they won a battle they write that God was with them, and whenever they lost a battle God was against them. I suggest that battles were lost and won for very human reasons and that God wasn't happy about them being involved in battles at all.I base this on the teachings of Jesus in the NT, and yet when we carefully go over what Jesus says in the NT we can see that it is based entirely on the Hebrew Scriptures. The early Israelites did just what we so often do today which is to mould God into the image that fits with our aspirations, but Jesus pulled out of the Hebrew Scriptures that which was of God. We are still called to do that with the Bible as we have it today.The so-called prosperity gospel is a good example of that. We also have cases where Christianity and nationalism become much to intertwined which can be extremely dangerous. All of us, me included, try to shape God into our image to one degree or another.However, as the prophet Micah says, what God wants of us is that we love kindness, do justice and walk humbly with our God, or as Jesus says love God and neighbour. If you want to the Bible to be a book telling you what to do that is all you need to know. The Bible though is more than that. It is the story of God involving Himself in the affairs of man as He interacts with us through our hearts and minds so that we freely accept having His love, kindness and justice written in our hearts and minds.I’ve posted this quote by CS Lewis before but I think that it is worth repeating in this context.

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My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.

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(From Lewis’ book Miracles Chap 15.)In the end though, as we are all fallible human beings there is no objective metric. All we come with our biases and subjective views. In reality I can’t see how there could be an objective metric that would allow for free will in general, let alone allowing for the unconditional love. If we know conclusively that we are to be rewarded for humbly loving kindness and justice then we aren’t free to love freely.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Good post and I agree. When I said that Christianity was a waste of time if the resurrection wasn't an historical event I didn't mean that the message of Christianity was wrong. I agree that I could have worded it better. I'll try and do better. Christianity came into being solely because of the resurrection. As Paul himself said in 1st Corinthians 15

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14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised ; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless ; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

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If the resurrection isn't true then Christianity is false and at best Jesus was a prophet with some funny ideas. There were numerous other Messianic movements during that 250 year or so period from the Maccabees through to the Bar Kokhba movement in 135 AD. All of the other movements failed and pretty much always meant that the leaders were executed. If Jesus was not resurrected then He was just another failed messiah, and so why should we then pay any more attention to him than any of the other failed messiahs? It is the resurrection that is the foundation of Christianity and without it Christianity is simply a Jewish sect with some false concepts.That does not mean of course that God doesn't exist or that He doesn't want us to live a life that humbly loves kindness and does justice. I am just saying that if the resurrection didn't happen then we have to come to our conclusions about what we believe about God, and how we live our lives, from some other source whether it be some other religion or through naturalistic means. I agree with all of that. I would add though that the fact that just because someone believes that the resurrection was an historical event, does not mean that they actually love goodness for its own sake. That is one reason that I have a major problem with those that sell Christianity on the basis that by giving intellectual consent to the Christian faith you get to live forever. If they just read their Bibles with an open mind and heart they could easily see that this is not the message that Jesus brought. Jesus' message is that we give our hearts over to God - a God that loves kindness, humility and justice.Jesus said this in Matthew 9:

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He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. 13 "But go and learn what this means : 'I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,' for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

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It is God's wish that everyone would turn to the way that He desires and by becoming incarnate in Jesus and through the death and resurrection He reached out to sinners, and for that matter all of mankind, in one great redemptive act.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

A good point.
I did not mean to imply that the two were mutally exclusive. Although, in reading my message again, it can easily come off that way. This was an unintended mistake.One can very easily have faith in the resurrection, Christianity, Catholicsm or any other religion and also enjoy being a good person just for the sake of being good.
It is also possible for one to not have any religious faith and also reject "goodness" and favour evil for their own reasons (likely selfish ones).

I agree completely. I would add though that it is my belief that the love of goodness can only come from God whether we recognize him or not, but of course that is a matter of faith.

I was trying to summarize GDR’s position. I also thought that this was what the OP was alluding to. I apologize to GDR if this was out of line or completely wrong.As a ‘notatheist’, I see the problem this way. We might think that as a God it would be easy to communicate with the sentient parts of your creation. But maybe that is not the case.If the message of the bible is that we should ‘love God and neighbour’ then perhaps the authority lies in the evidence that the world is a better place when we love. The bible certainly has some pertinent lessons for us regarding how to get along with each other. Many of these lessons seem to be applicable across a vast swath of time and are in that sense fundamental.The great irony for me is that the bible makes alot more sense when you remove the personification of god.

I don’t recall using ‘law’. ‘Road map’ sounds suspiciously close to ‘following a prescribed path’. Perhaps you wish to expand on the differences you see between the two terms? Is it your position that when the writers of the Bible go beyond the above they’re simply offering opinions? If so, how does opinion become a ‘map’?

Which I think is obvious by the inability of so-called followers to reliably convey the so-called messages. But that puts us back to why follow the book if the message is corrupted? It also raises the problem of either Christ had uncorrupted information or why trust Christ’s messages? Couldn’t someone just as easily point to all the problems of ‘love of God’ to show the opposite?If as people claim here that there is much that is incorrect in the Bible, then it would seem fair to raise ‘signal to noise ratio’. The Bible also contains pertinent lessons for we certainly should not follow. I’m confused, are you saying it makes more sense if you remove Jesus, or perhaps you’re saying if you remove an anthropomorphic God, or something else?

I mentioned "law" as you were talking about the Bible as an authoritative book. I assume that when you talk about authority you are talking about the thou shalt nots as opposed to the stories like that of Ruth and Boaz.I'm sure that when I use the term "road map" for the Bible that it isn't a perfect metaphor. It seems to me, as I've said before, that the Bible is primarily a meta-narrative that tells the story of God interacting with his image bearing creatures, from creation to new creation. Like a road map the story has many twists and turns, optional routes, as well as routes that get you lost and other various diversions.The one common theme throughout that keeps you on the direct route is unselfish love and to stretch it a little further we have God as seen in Jesus as the GPS.I think that's the best I can do with that and I've no doubt left myself open to attack and ridicule from all sides. I don't know how to answer such a general question as that. The Bible is as we all know a collection of books with many different authors collected together to create the one great meta-narrative. In general though, I don't see it as opinion but as people inspired to record all the narratives that together form the great narrative that is the Bible. I realize that the Bible isn't all narrative but I think that even the poetry, drama etc blend in and become part of the whole story.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I think though that the problem is that you are insisting on reading the Bible from the same perspective that a Christian who is a biblical literalist does. It isn't that the message is corrupted but it is written in an ancient style. Included in that are grand metaphors like the creation story, inspired mythologies like Noah and Jonah, the laws as written in Leviticus, Numbers etc as the writers struggle to work out how to serve their God, the inspired revelations in Daniel, Isaiah, Micah and others in the OT. As we come to the more modern times of 2000 years ago the truth of what is written becomes historically, but not necessarily perfectly accurate. Through all this though we are dealing with a variety of authors whose writing, like everyone else's writing, is personally and culturally conditioned.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

When I use authoritative I mean in the sense of, because the Bible says so. The Bible is often used as an authority on topics. Even those who grant the Bible may not be inerrant often site it as a reference for moral authority. ‘Love your neighbor’ isn’t really a lengthy laundry list of morals. The writers of the new testament give additional moral teachings. If the Bible is not inerrant why should anyone believe that the Bible writers are passing along a message from God, rather than their own beliefs?