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Author | Topic: Importance of Innerrancy to Moderate Christians | |||||||||||||||||||||||
truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
This is really more of a response to your post 45 than the one I'm replying to, but since we're this far along...
I followed the exchange between you and Brian a bit, and you seem to be using inerrancy and literalness interchangeably. It seems unlikely that either you or he don't recognize the difference between those two words, so maybe I'm missing something, but here's my comment. Believing in inerrancy was very common in the early church. Justin Martyr, for example, believed that the Septuagint was translated by 72 Jewish scholars in 72 separate rooms and they all got the same word for word translation. Taking Scripture literally was very UNcommon, as Brian points out. I haven't read much of Augustine, but I'd be shocked if he didn't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. However, I'd be just as shocked if he read Scripture literally. I remember Irenaeus (c. AD 185) apologizing for reading the prophecy about the wolf lying down with the lamb literally. He said something to the effect of, "I know, as we all know, that this Scripture is about wolf-natured men and meek, lamb-natured men getting along in peace in the church, but I believe that it also will be literally fulfilled in the future with wolves no longer eating meat." He was very apologetic about it, because "everyone" in the church took such prophecies figuratively. So, before Martin Luther/Calvin, you should find mostly figurative interpretations being made by people who believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Just as a note, since this is an evolution vs. creation board. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, writing in AD 168, defended a literal 6-day creation (A Plea for the Christians, I don't have time to look up the chapter right now). Origen (c. AD 230), on the other hand, did not take the 6-day creation literally, and he referred to those who took the Adam and Eve story literally as "stupid."
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
And that "corrupt Roman Chuch" had a lot to do with the canon we use today. Well, not in the sense you're saying this to Faith. Although the gnostic sets were early and numerous, the "orthodox" church, which Faith would not consider corrupt or Roman, had its canon pretty much set by at least the mid-2nd century. You can Google the Muratorian Fragment and see a list made in AD 161. The list of Scripture quotes used by earlier writers like Justin, Polycarp, Ignatius, Barnabas, and Clement make it clear that the Muratorian Fragment was not a controversial list, and it is little different from the "official" list decided on in the late 4th century. In my opinion "the corrupt Roman church" would be, in the context y'all are using it right now, a reference to the councils of the 4th century and later. They had very little to do with the canon except to make it "official." The canon had varied very, very little over the previous two centuries.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
For moderate Christians, who do not believe in the inerrancy of the bible, what is the motivation for following faith? I am not a moderate Christian. By American standards, I am a very radical Christian, having joined a community of over 200 very radical Christians who live together and share their possessions. However, I do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. The center of my faith is God and his Son, Jesus Christ, not the Bible. I do not worship the Bible, but we hold the writings of the Bible--along with others that belong to the line of our people back to Abraham--to have been preserved by God for our guidance and edification. We do not see that this requires inerrancy, any more than we require inerrancy is our more spiritual teachers today. According to Jesus Christ, the accuracy and reliability of a Christian teacher is to be determined by the fruit he produces, not by a Biblical examination.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
If the faith(religion) is based solely on what it says in a <2000 text Right, it's not based solely on a 2000+ year old text. It's based on the power of God.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
so, what kind of thing makes for the strength of belief that can legitimize a faulty text. Sorry for answering your question repeatedly, but you asked them repeatedly earlier in the thread. The power of God makes for the strength of belief. I was moved by the idea that this man Jesus lived with 12 men for over three years, then after he died they were willing to give their lives for him. Along with some other things that were happening in my life at the time, that thought intrigued me enough for me to begin to believe that he might really have been the Son of God. Actually believing and admitting that belief brought an awareness of God and a transformation of life that was absolutely miraculous to me. 24 years of continuing in that faith and experiencing its results has made that faith deep and abiding. None of that requires inerrancy, nor do I bother trying to remove faults from the text of the Bible. There was no need to "legitimize" that faulty text, though, because it contains life-changing stories without needing to be inerrant.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
AlienInvader writes: salvation isn't supposed to be a "lesson" it's supposed to be a promise....how do they justify their belief in an afterlife with its only base in this extended parable? Ah, here's where I see the problem that's confusing you. If all we have is a book promising a heaven that may or may not exist, then inerrancy could really be an issue. We don't. Salvation is not just a promise of eternal life in bliss. Salvation is deliverance from "sin." It is the ability to live as we believe is right and good and to live in fellowship with God, rather than living as our lusts and desires drive us to live. If the message of the Bible can produce such a salvation, then the power of that message is visible, and you don't need inerrancy to guarantee the promise. Instead, you have a real, transforming power that guarantees the promise. The Scriptures do not teach that the inerrant Bible is the guarantee of our inheritance, but it teaches that we have received the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. This should be a real, tangible, ongoing experience. (You'd think that if God came to live in you, it would be noticeable, wouldn't you?) Jesus used the Scriptures to back up his message, but in the end he said that the love of his disciples for one another and their incredible unity would be what would cause people to believe (Jn 13:34,35 and 17:20-23), not the Bible or its inerrancy or lack of it.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
deerbreh writes: This is not the prevailing view of modern scholarship...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. To address the issue of modern scholarship, almost everything you gave as reasons for the Gospel and the Book of the Revelation to have different authors was set forth by Dionysius the Great of Alexandria in the 3rd century (see this entry in the Catholic encyclopedia). I can't find the place where I read it, but I remember that his arguments about the precision of the Greek in John's Gospel versus the vulgarity of the Greek in the Revelation were very compelling. I agree that modern scholarship tends to be better, but this is really modern scholarship agreeing with quite ancient scholarship.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
literalism seems like a fear I agree wholeheartedly.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
but the only way you know about the promise and the message is the book itself. No, the message was spread verbally first. The Bible is not one book. It is a compilation of many writings, and most of the New Testament ones are letters. They're not the only ones written with our message in it. So, no, I don't think the only way we know about the promise and message is "the book."
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
I'm not talking about scholarship, I'm talking about people led by the Holy Spirit. That is how the authenticity of inspiration of the Biblical writings was originally determined. Actually, it's not. To the early church, it was the apostles that held authority. The job of the church was to cling to apostolic teaching (which they referred to as "apostolic tradition"). Therefore, the criterion for what belonged in the canon was whether an apostle wrote it, or whether a companion of the apostles wrote it. Modern scholarship can shed light on whether they made accurate choices.
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
Beyond the first five books of the Bible are there ANY other books common to all Canon? What do you mean by all Canon? If you mean all Canon associated with the "orthodox" or "mainstream" churches, then yes. I don't think any of the 39 books of the OT found in the Protestant Bible were questioned. As to the NT writings, we have to call the 1st century unknown and debatable enough to be ignored. By the mid-2nd century, however, you'll not find a mainstream church without the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, both Corinthian letters, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians (I think on that one), First Thessalonians, and probably 1st John. That seemed like a strange question. Were you going to include the Ebionite and Marcionite canons or something?
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4059 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
then you have reason to suppose the mechanism you employ to be inerrant in deciding these things for you There's a difference between inerrant and reliable. I don't consider my local mechanic inerrant, but when he told me what needed to be done on my car's a/c, I believed him. Inerrant, in this discussion, is a doctrine that says that every word of the Bible is scientifically and historically accurate. It's clearly not, because the sky is not as hard as a brass mirror (Job 37:18), and it is not a hard dome supporting water and having the sun, moon, and stars in it (Gen 1:7,14-17). Correct? I believe the Bible is correct on a lot of things. In fact, since I believe that the Scriptures are "breathed by God and profitable for instruction in righteousness," there are ways in which I believe it is infallible. However, the public claims of inerrancy made by those who believe in word for word inspiration I reject as obviously not true.
There might not be a need for it to be inerrant in your view. But would it do any harm if it was? No. It would be a pretty awesome phenomenon if it were. But it's not.
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