Importance of Innerrancy to Moderate Christians

Spot on, nvr. The idea that if one questions any part of the Bible or some orthodox interpretation of it means that the whole thing has to be tossed out was/is a trap designed by the very people who were doing/are doing the orthodox interpretation. It is saying, "You don't believe it the way we believe it so you don't believe it at all." It is a kind of power trip and an attempt to seize control of the conversation. We decide what God said so therefore we decide who is "in" and who is "out". In my mind, it is a heresy.From a practical sense, it should be obvious that the Bible cannot be inerrant. Even if one accepts that all of it was inspired by God (which is debatable in itself because that assumes no human intervention in what was scripture and what was not and it assumes that the inspired original writers made no mistakes), there were numerous times over the years for human misunderstanding to alter scripture as new translations were developed and "translations of translations" were written. Even someone who reads the scriptures in the "original" Greek or Hebrew is not getting an inerrant view because no one today can possibly have a full understanding of the "original". So unless every translator and every interpreter is as inspired by God as the original writers and the original writers made no human mistakes, there can be no inerrant Bible.

This is not the prevailing view of modern scholarship.
Book of Revelation - Wikipedia
"Although the traditional view still has many adherents, many modern scholars believe that John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, and John of Patmos refer to three separate individuals. Certain lines of evidence suggest that John of Patmos wrote only Revelation, not the Gospel of John nor the Epistles of John. For one, the author of Revelation identifies himself as "John" several times, but the author of the Gospel of John never identifies himself directly. While both works liken Jesus to a lamb, they consistently use different words for lamb ” the Gospel uses amnos, Revelation uses arnion. Lastly, the Gospel is written in nearly flawless Greek, but Revelation contains grammatical errors and stylistic abnormalities which indicate its author may not have been as familiar with the Greek language as the Gospel's author."Also note that some early church fathers in the 4th century did not consider Revelation to be part of the canon and none other than Martin Luther considered Revelation to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and stated that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it." And it is the only NT book not included in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church.This is just one more example of the problems with the inerrancy doctrine. The broader Christian church cannot even agree on what books should be in the canon let alone the content of the individual books. So how can one say it is inerrant? Fundamentalists seem to have this idea that what was in the Bible was all settled early on and set in stone. But it wasn't.

Well first of all, I would note that I presented information about the book of Revelation being brought into question in the 4th century and also by Martin Luther.....But to your point about modern scholarship. Why is modern scholarship somehow suspect when it comes to the Bible but in every other area of endeavor modern scholarsip rules the day? Modern scholarship, for one, has the advantage of all of the other scholarship that has preceded it. Secondly, modern scholarship has many tools of textual analysis and other analytical tools that were not available to ancient scholars. Modern scholars have quick access to original sources worldwide and to a network of other scholars worldwide. Modern scholars have modern universities with modern libraries and ability to collaborate with scholars in technical fields that are of tremendous benefit in forensic analysis of original documents. So why would you not give a lot of credence to modern scholarship? What does their view of God have to do with it? - not that you have any evidence for the "bias against God" assertion. Either the evidence is there or it isn't.on edit: Well I see that Jar posted a nanosecond before I did and made many of the same points. I guess Phat must have heaved up a softball. Edited by deerbreh, : note Jar's message.Edited by deerbreh, : No reason given.

So you say. That doesn't make it so. Not accepting prophecy is not bias against God, it is a difference in interpretation. If a researcher finds evidence that the prophesied event actually occured before the prophecy, that is not bias against God, that is scholarship. A human got it wrong, no need to blame God for it.

Scholarship is not a democracy. The majority doesn't determine what the real facts are. Good scholarship ferrets out the real facts. But sometimes the dogmatists have more power than the scholars and then good scholarship is suppressed, sometimes with torture or the threat of torture (in the case of Galileo). But only for so long. Truth will come out, always.

And that "corrupt Roman Chuch" had a lot to do with the canon we use today. Doesn't that least give you pause? That corropt Roman Church was also the keeper of the orthodoxy for quite a long time and they did base their objections to Galileo on scripture, as much as you are wont to deny it.http://home1.gte.net/deleyd/religion/galileo/

If one accepts the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church as the Council of Nicea in 325 (convened by Emperor Constantine), certainly the book of Revelation was not an accepted part of the Canon by that time as the record shows that Bishop St. John Chrysostom argued against its inclusion and he wasn't even born until 347. The Eastern Patriarch was still disputing its inclusion in the 9th century and the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't accept it as part of their Divine Liturgy today. And of course none other than Martin Luther disputed its value as scripture. So at least with respect to Revelation your claim that the canon was "settled" before the era of the Roman Church is not true. I suspect if one did some research one could find that there were other books that were not so "settled" as well. Yes that would be because Galileo's acceptance of the Copernican solar system was not based on scripture but rather it was based on his own observations of the night sky with a telescope. Had nothing to do with the "Protestant view." And once again you are indulging in wishful thinking speculation. Show me one place in the Bible where the Copernican solar system is supported.

Evenings and mornings exist as a result of the earth's rotation relative to the sun. Yet the sun is not placed in the heavens until the fourth day. This does not contradict Galileo? The sun stands still for Joshua so the day is extended. The earth's rotation relative to the sun determines day length. This does not contradict Galileo? The few places where the sun is mentioned in the Bible it is always in the context of geocentric cosmology, not Copernican cosmology. Of course it contradicts Galileo and that is what had the Pope upset.