Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by all of this that I just want to give up.

Is it possible that there are mistakes in the bible, or that some teachings don't apply? If so, how on earth do we know which ones?

And as the article states, if the Bible is perfect, obviously our interpretation of it is not. This is why there is so much disagreement and division.

So if we look to the Holy Spirit rather than the scriptures for truth, do I believe what the Holy Spirit is telling Person A or Person B? Because they'll surely say two different things. And when I have an idea pop in my head, is it me, or is it the Holy Spirit?

If we have done a poor job of seeking the Holy Spirit to bring us to agreement on the role and meaning of scripture, I'm not sure I think we could do a better job of understanding the Spirit's guidance on anything else.

Where does that leave us?

If I am understanding correctly, Bill is saying that the main reason there are so many divergent beliefs claimed to be taught in the Bible by evangelicals is because some evangelicals believe the Bible to be inerrant, therefore they are worshiping it as a member of the trinity. If we drop inerrancy, all the divergent beliefs will collapse into unity in the truth.
Questions:

Why would God inspire erroneous text? "ALL scripture is inspired by God and profitable...

Regarding David Fitch: "The inerrant Bible” in essence allows us to interpret the Bible to mean anything we want it to because after all we believe it to be “inerrant.”

Replace inerrant Bible with errant Bible and you have the same thing only worse. No solution here.

I think this is a complete miss diagnosis. Bill does not like inerrancy for some reason ( he has not specified why yet, maybe it will be forth coming). He also does not like the divergent beliefs among evangelicals. (I don't like this either.) So he blames one thing he does not like on another thing he does not like. So far his basis for this claim is shabby and lacking in substance.

We know the Bible is spiritually discerned, it is not merely intellectually or cerebrally understood. When we are walking in the flesh, we will be ignoring certain amounts of the Spirit, thus we will miss it's meaning in many places.

I would like to propose that there is a reason so many highly educated men and women (leaders) are walking in the flesh and missing truth resulting in brand named uniformity, rather than spiritual unity. It is a reason that is systemic to Christianity as old as the Bible itself. Institutionalism. Institutionalized faith is a version of faith that has systematized flesh build into it that is claimed to be godly. Any time the flesh is mixed into faith habits, there are tragic side effects. A zillion different brands of institutions, some of which claim inerrancy and some which don't, are the results of a version of faith that requires, top-down pyramids of power and control, consuming huge percentages of "giving" to buy hired experts and cathedrals, crowd oriented venues that totally contradict obvious instructions, and on and on. Believers don't worship the King Bible. They barely read it, and fewer live it. They only read it through the lens of their King Pastor so-and-so. If they don't like him, they will find one they do like. He is now an intermediary between the believer and Christ. Protestants dropped the pope but replaced him with a local pope for every 100 saints. Institutionalism functionally rejects Jesus as the head of His church, just as the Israelites rejected God. That is my counter diagnosis.

Dropping inerrancy only muddies the living water further with more flesh and deeper expert dependency thrown in. Dropping institutionalism and putting organic faith in it's place brings the power of the body of Christ back into church life. When Jesus is the actual head of His church, no money is riding on the gathering, leadership is actually reproducible, believers are mutual, prepared, participants, and much more, the truth and unity will make great progress. No quick fixes claimed.

Yes, Bills posting is a perfect setup for another another exhortation that institutionalized faith is corrupt and leads the faithful into much foolishness.

Power, together...
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Eph. 3

"The Bible is the King we worship." This statement is purposely intended to create doubt in the minds of young and uneducated Christians who do not have a good working knowledge of the Bible. To be critical of a line by line study of the The Bible, or any other book for that matter, leads me to question the motives of such a suggestion. The hubris displayed by folks who make such statements is telling. Does Bill Kinnon have an insight to the mind of God beyond what the Bible actually says? In what form of literature does one automatically assume that the writer meant something other than what he said?
To say that the Bible is "...not clear...as to what it teaches" is not a statement from someone who knows the song of the redeemed or the mind of the Redeemer.

Neither Tim or elegance address why then we might not agree on the teachings of scripture. If it is as clear as elegance seems to indicate, why do we have 35000 denominations?

If there are no discrepancies or misunderstandings then we should be able to agree that a huge percentage of Christians are wrong about something.

What we don't need is a fight over a word. So I affirm that scripture is God breathed, very important to my faith and only understandable with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. What does the word inerrency add to that?

What seems to get lost is Tim's point that many of use view our own understanding as inerrent instead of the actual word of the Lord.

I also think NT Wright's statement (roughtly) that "scripture is authoritative because it is God's word, not because of the words that are on the page", is true.

"This statement is purposely intended to create doubt in the minds of young and uneducated Christians who do not have a good working knowledge of the Bible."

There are old, and educated Christians who don't have a good working knowledge of the bible, either.

Hi everyone - I think this may be the first time I've ever commented on one of these - hopefully it's worthwhile! First of all, Aaron, I think you nailed a huge part of the problem as institutionalism. I could get way off on a tangent on that aspect alone but... Anyway, my thoughts go something like this - it's obvious, from talking with different people, that there is not even a common understanding around the word "inerrancy" itself, so entire arguments carry on and the people involved aren't even talking about the same thing, and it seems like that is at least part of the point of the author? But I think the bigger, more "core" issue is this whole obsession with being right. Maybe some of that is pride, maybe some of it is stubborness - but I think a lot of it is fear. God will condemn me or abandon me if I don't get it right. As in absolutely right. And plus the inherent idea that as Christians we have THE truth that no one else has access to and that we are responsible for - so we'd better get it right. As in absolutely right. Add to that the notion that "inerrancy" means the Bible says one thing and one thing only, then the pressure is on to determine what that "one thing" is and defend that view with all I've got. The idea that the Bible spells out every last little thing so I don't have to think, so I don't have to live with unanswered questions, and so I don't actually even have to have faith - because I have the "answers" instead. And I think that's the point where trusting and listening for God's spirit comes in - because I can never have it all completely right - so I have to trust in his grace, and that's an incredibly hard thing to learn, but the more I am able to do that, the more gracious I can be toward other people without being so obsessed about who is right. And I can actually, FINALLY, relax with the idea that I don't have to have it all right. Anyway, just my thoughts.

Angela, I think you confused Aaron with Tim. (It can be a bit confusing, but the commenter's name is at the bottom, not the top of their post. I know that, and I still got mixed up the last time I posted on another thread!)

I find merit in everything you said, except your agreement with Tim about the institutionalism. You have expressed some thoughtful insights, and I hope you'll share again. I think you are much closer to the mark than Tim with your observations about pride, the need to be right, the need for answers in place of grace, and its roots in a kind of insecurity before God and a lack of faith in His grace.

Bill, I see more elephants in this room than the unbiblical biblicism behind talk of the "inerrancy" (and even perspicuity) of Scripture. If Scripture is so clear to the reasonable reader (apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the Church), why did the two disciples on the road to Emmaus need Jesus to explain to them how the whole OT spoke of His incarnation, death and resurrection? Why did the Ethiopian Eunuch tell Philip he could not understand Isaiah 53 unless he had someone to explain it to him (Acts 8)? How would our current method of historical-criticism have arrived at the application and interpretation of so many OT prophecies about Christ given them by the Apostles in the NT (I don't see how any of them could have been recognized as such following such a method. Rather revelation by the Holy Spirit seems a more adequate explanation.)?

Only the Holy Spirit can properly interpret Scripture, and He does not disagree with Himself over time. Another elephant in the room, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, is proven to be a myth by its many, many feuding children. Maybe after that you can explore the faulty ecclesiology that sees the Church (which is the very Body of Christ) as fractured and divided. How can Christ be divided against Himself? Christian bodies claiming Christ yet not being in true dogmatic, doctrinal and sacramental communion with each other means all but one (or possibly all) have actually broken away from the Head. Since Christ promised that Hell would not prevail against His Church, I choose to believe all but one! Or how about the claim that the true universal Church is only invisible and can't be identified with any one ecclesial body on earth? The problem with that is that the Church Christ founded was never invisible, but was an identifiable community of people with a core of unified dogma and sacramental practice and understandings for the first 1,000 years of her existence, and He also promised to never leave nor forsake her earthly members.

Looking forward to Part 2 . . .

Amen, Bill!

Tim wrote: Why would God inspire erroneous text? "ALL scripture is inspired by God and profitable...." Please note the tense: is, not was. The Spirit now inspires, so inerrant text can be properly understood with the Spirit's guidance.

As for why Bill "does not like inerrancy" seems clear enough to me: He notices textual errors (or as some apologists like to say, apparent contradictions, meaning textual contradictions are not contradictions they only look that way!).

There is no King but Jesus, and the bible is not Jesus.

I would suggest that we decouple inspired from inerrant, and not conflate the two to be synonymous...many there is a well meaning Christian who got caught in the "inerrancy" trap when discussing the Old Testament, or does anyone still think there are large reservoirs of water high in the sky awaiting the moment to unleash the deluge?
Or Ezekiel's "Uh-oops!" when prophesying the end of Tyre...rats, wrong guy...ah well, but at least Tyre got it good and hard!

You see, when discussing inspired we can extrapolate deep spiritual meanings and truths, but when we say "inerrant" we are trapping ourselves into a literal textual commentary which...really...can set the stage for "are you kidding me!?!"

Or shall we say slaves are mandated by the bible?
How bout child sacrifice?
Or even rape, and the taking of a young maiden as a wife?
Oh, how bout murder and paying silver for the cost of the life?

You see, there are plenty of things discussed in the Old testament that G-d deals with that we can clearly have a devil of a time trying to explain because of the inerrancy trap.

Something to consider before reaching a conclusion.

I think, as the comments section demonstrates, this is far too large a subject to imagine it can reasonably fit into a couple of blog posts. I am actually surprised that the editing staff of “Out of Ur” let this article get this far. I felt like I was reading a piece of a conversation and no one let me know what came before the part they let me in on. This type of writing only further confuses the issues and dilutes the realities of honest and genuine interpretation. The magnitude of the issue is only as it is because those discussing it sometimes write about this subject using exaggerated and often inflammatory terms so the unlearned have their interest peaked. Bart Ehrman is notorious for this.

Better scholars like F.F. Bruce would never define ”inerrant” in such obviously wrong terms or definitions as have been used here; he knew that some areas of controversy existed. He addressed those in his writings, but you would have to do some reading. To write about this subject in this manner (blog post), you would believe that there is a huge section of scripture under scrutiny. This is simply not true. Bad interpretation is certainly a huge problem in the American Church, bad interpretation by people who simply do not do their homework before opening their mouths. Bad interpretation because of cultural biases or ethno-centric worldviews, often cause bad concepts to surface as well. This is not an inerrancy problem, it is a people problem.

Claiming Biblical inerrancy does not immediately equate to the various comments suggested in the blog. For most of us, it just means we must do our homework to be sure we say what God meant to say instead of what we would like to say. And it certainly does not mean that we claim the Bible as the fourth member of the Trinity, what an ugly statement to make. Oh, and if what you have a problem with how some folks treat the scriptures, perhaps you could deal with that issue rather than furthering and exaggerating the inerrancy discussion. There is a lot of bad preaching and teaching in American churches, but that has little to do with inerrancy…

I guess I will be reading the rest of the parts of the blog…

As far as the comment:

"There are old, and educated Christians who don't have a good working knowledge of the bible, either."

Shame on you for being an older believer and not having a working knowledge of the Bible in your hand...

- How to read the BIble for all its worth, Fee and Stuart
- An introduction to the New Testament, Carson and Moo

As I see it, the major problem in so many believer's understanding of the Bible and the question of "inerrancy" is in their confusion of the purpose of scripture. The Bible was given (inspired ) by God in order to teach us about Him and our proper relationship to Him in His trinitarian nature : Father, Son and Holy Spirit ; Creator, Savior, Teacher. In these areas its teachings are inerrant but still we need the discernment given by the Spirit for true comprehension of many things. However, the "confusion" arises when mankind seeks to see the Bible as a comprehensive text on history, physics, biology, etc, resulting in absolutist claims about a literal 6 day creation, a flood that covered the entire world with Noah somehow cramming animals from all over the world in the Ark, Adam & Eve being a real couple, dinosaurs & men existing together and so on. When people take this narrow-minded view of scripture they are in my opinion not using the brains God gave us when He created us "in His image", which does not mean He looks physically like us but rather that we have a spirit, intelligence and free will like Him. Far too many people want to drag God down to our level rather than seeking to follow Christ & the Spirit to become "like Him ". Unfortunately its a lot easier to obey a god as small as you instead of growing into someone like His Son, which is what Christ taught we should be doing.

Is God capable of using men He created to provide us with a Message that is without error in its original text? Is He capable of giving a Message that is true for all people in all places at any given period of time? This debate seems to cast doubt upon a God who is sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable and truth. A lot of the problem does not lie in our view of Scripture, but in our view of God and His ability to use His chosen instruments to write a remarkable text that contained no errors. How do you answer the question: Is God able?
Do you resort to saying, "But man can falsely translate and interpret"? or do you blame the original text and ultimately blame God?

I'd like to read a blog by Mark Gomez. He seems to have very good insight into this as well as good recommendations for a solid foundation on Biblical interpretation.

Mr. Gomez,
Two things caught my eye, the first of which is...

"I think, as the comments section demonstrates, this is far too large a subject to imagine it can reasonably fit into a couple of blog posts."

that I completely agree with you...much of this begs details, which, oddly enough, brings me to the second part...

"The magnitude of the issue is only as it is because those discussing it sometimes write about this subject using exaggerated and often inflammatory terms so the unlearned have their interest peaked. Bart Ehrman is notorious for this...[followed by the bolded text of which I deal in toto]"

You see, I can only assume due to the the fact you reference two aspects of my posts to indicate that I had something to do with inspiring the two observational statements.

Herein is the thing...what you stated as inflammatory is actually what sticks in the craw of people who are literalists of strict interpretation. And yet, when confronted with the items I randomly selected out...they choke, throw up some lame excuse "Faith in God" and walk away. Inerrancy is a straw man when it comes to actual discussion of the historicity and contexuality of scriptures.

But herein is the thing that really should grab your craw...people are leaving the church because of those literalists who refuse to budge even an iota about the possibility that much of what they take to be literal statements were often considered allegorical even then.

But we can never get to that point of discussing that issue without the fingerpointing, the dimissals, and the refusal to even THINK that perhaps, just maybe that the bible is a story about G-d's dealings with mankind, and that all methods of teaching are employed in it even, up to using fables, much like Aesop's fables, to emphasize spiritual truths. Ergo, that whole "inspired" thing we talk about, but runs into conflict with inerrancy.

But like I said...we can never get that point of discussion because a majority of the Christians will, and I'm being quite literal here because I've experienced it myself, stuff their fingers in their ears and scream "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! IT'S ALL TRUE!"

Now, I'm all ears/eyes if you have a suggestion on how to further this discussion which hopefully people are willing to think first before replying, but from my point, and I'm not sure if this is what you are conveying, but to me you seem to be saying, "shut up, and just go with it."
So, if that is not what you are saying, please clarify for me exactly your point.

Adam
"Neither Tim or elegance address why then we might not agree on the teachings of scripture. If it is as clear as elegance seems to indicate, why do we have 35000 denominations?"

You need to read my diagnosis again. I gave a very precise reason that holds far more water than holding to an errant scripture.

Of course, Karen believes in ultimate, total, singular institutionalism - the Orthodox Church. Unity must be institutional unity. Same stuff as held by the Roman Catholic Church, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.

"The problem with that is that the Church Christ founded was never invisible, but was an identifiable community of people with a core of unified dogma and sacramental practice and understandings for the first 1,000 years of her existence, and He also promised to never leave nor forsake her earthly members."

You set up a straw man that evangelicals believe in an invisible universal church. Who believes that? The people, and only the people are visibility enough. Institution adds nothing. Buildings add nothing because God does not dwell in buildings made with hands. In other words He rejects anything made by man has having any significance in demonstrating to the lost who and what He is. Even the institutional structure of the Orthodox church is made by man.

Tim, as I see it, wherever you have a group of people gathered around a core understanding of God (or any mutual understanding or cause), you will have institutional forms to express that. Some institutional forms, including that as basic as the nuclear family, are a reality given by God in virtue of our embodied existence, to express something of His own Truth and allow us to connect with Him in an embodied way. (How else are embodied creatures supposed to express worship?)

God has a design for marriage and family. He has a design for the Church. He did not leave His OT covenant people to figure out willy-nilly how to worship Him. Neither did He do so to the Apostles and their successors in the Church. Rather, He gave instructions about every aspect of this order of worship to Moses down to the finest details of the Tabernacle's construction and the vestments and orders of the OT Priesthood, all of which, as shadows and types, pointed to the One Reality of the sacrificial worship presented on our behalf by Christ in Heaven and to Christ's High Priesthood there (as Hebrews teaches). And He promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide the Apostles and their coworkers and successors in the Church into all the truth. We see an example of how this occurred in Acts 15.

There is only One Priesthood in Orthodoxy--that is Christ's. That One Priesthood is imaged and pointed to also in the priesthood of all believers (as believers carry out Christ's mission in the world, and yes, with one another, too) and also in the presbyters and bishops of the local congregation (as they become ministers--literally in Greek "liturgists"--and images of Christ within the local congregation as it gathers together to worship). The Orthodox Christian, and I believe apostolic, understanding of our local corporate gathering for worship, is as a liturgical offering of worship that both images and enters into in space/time that eternally offered by Christ in Heaven.

If there were not from the get-go a discernible body of Christians with a discernible institutional form and appointed apostolic leadership, it is very hard to understand how Ignatius of Antioch, born in the middle of the 1st century and who was himself a disciple of the Apostle John, could say immediately on the heels of the apostolic era something like this:

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful to baptize or give communion without the consent of the bishop. On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. Thus, whatever is done will be safe and valid." — Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8, J.R. Willis translation.

The Didache (written during the 1st or very early 2nd century) describes the normative practices of the early Church and is attributed to apostolic teaching. It is clearly modeled on the earlier Jewish liturgical forms (with instructions for baptism, communion and fasting, etc.) adapted for Gentiles. Here we see a basic order of worship and life followed to this day within the Orthodox Church.

You can read more about this apostolic Father of the Church here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch
and about the Didache here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didache

God is expressed in His material Creation, which everywhere speaks of Him. Yet, of course, because of mankind's fall into sin, this has become darkened and corrupted, nature itself as well as institutions created by God, such as the family and the Church, sometimes reflect the this fallenness, rather than God's original intention. But this is not a valid reason to refute the original design or intention, or try to resurrect "the Church" after it has supposedly fallen away completely into corruption and paganism (contrary to Christ's promise in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it). To suggest there is not a discernible design or intention for the Church (which is what I meant to infer in my previous comment--not sure it was understood that way), and that there is therefore no institution that can be traced throughout history as a distinct and discernible form and body of Christ's apostolic Church with continuity to the present day is I believe a tragic falsehood that has led to a lot of confusion about what really constitutes Christian faith and worship (and hence Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, etc.). To say that this discernible institutional body exists is not to deny that in its essence it is organic, living, and spiritual, (so that, for instance, we may expect also to see some change in terms of maturing of forms and practices and some adaptation to differing cultural situations over time). Nor does it mean that those within it are not capable of disobeying God and expressing sin, rather than Christ's intention in some rather horrendous ways! It means the core understandings of Christ's atoning work, the sacraments, the sacrificial nature of our (i.e., Christ's) offering of worship, and of the Christian life, etc., do not change.

I have no problem insisting, as often as you will try to deny it and contrary to your obviously very strong opinion, that having institutions is not, in and of itself, the problem. These are a necessary part of our embodied corporate human existence. The problem is sin, pride, etc., which corrupts those institutions (and the individuals within them). That is true whether you have a magnificent permanent structure in which to meet and detailed ordered liturgical worship with a centuries long precedent and tradition, or whether you meet in someone's house claiming to follow the supposedly free and spontaneous, "organic" model of "the NT Church," (that, not infrequently, results in groups spinning off all kinds of strange practices and doctrines! I have heard horrors of abusive dysfunctional and sinful relationships between members in such house churches as well. And in a certain sense, this is what all protestant denominations and non-denominations have started out to be, i.e. someone's or some group's idea of what the NT Church is supposed to be. We are back to square one. This approach has obviously never solved the problem that our institutions can become corrupted (or contain corrupted leaders or members), because the problem isn't the institution per se. It is our sin.

With regard to the appeal to the "invisible Church." No one says that there are no visible members of the Church within Protestantism, true. I don't disagree with that. What I mean by this is that whenever you point out that the institutions of modern Christian churches vary rather widely in their understanding of how to properly worship God, things as central and basic to Christian worship as the meaning and nature of the sacraments, the meaning of many Scriptures, to the extent that the bottom line is they often present wildly differing understandings of Who Jesus Christ is and Who God the Father of Jesus Christ is in terms of how they actually see Him interacting with man, within us as persons, and working in the world (e.g., Calvinistic determinism vs. Wesleyan Arminianism), Protestants will always protest that this is because "the Church catholic and universal" cannot be identified with any one of these ecclesial bodies. All of these bodies will have some error, and the true catholic and universal Church is the "invisible Church."

I hope at least this clarifies some of what I am saying vs. what I'm not saying. And, of course, as always feel free to disagree!

Karen

The statements you give from Ignatius are in direct contradiction to the NT. It matters nothing how far back he goes or who claims he was a disciple of whoever. Does he follow the NT is the issue and nothing else.

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

There is no such thing in the NT as "the bishop" as being a solo power structure for a fellowship. It is always multiple and non-Lording, or non hierarchical. It is merely oversight, not over bossing or over anything else. It is not "ruling" as translators have corrupted the text to pander to transitions of men. There is no such thing as a bishops presence determineing whether a gathering of believers has Christ present or legitimate church or not. That includes all sacerdotal titles and functions, specially that of "Father". This is all corruption from the N.T. This statement puts the bishop as the Christ figure in a gathering. This is horrendously sacerdotal and false.

"It is not lawful to baptize or give communion without the consent of the bishop."

Here we go with the sacerdotal corruptions. There is nothing in the NT that represents this. Jesus must have failed to give us the great commission by failing to state "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them if you get a bishops permission, in the name of the Father...." and "as long as the bishops are there, lo I am with you always..." You are an intelligent person and read the same Bible I do, yet you choose to filter EVERYTHING through a lens of long ago writers assuming them to be more accurate than any man today, and there must be a long term power structure for accuracy to be present. The Holy Spirit did not illuminate men back then more than he tries today. He is not on vacation now. Error was just as rampant on day one as it is now. Ignatius does not get a pass on Acts 17:11 instructions to re-examine it with the scriptures to see if it's true.

"On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. Thus, whatever is done will be safe and valid."

Another bogus guarantee of "pleasing God" and "safe and valid". Any man is fully capable of being a man pleaser no matter his schooling, experience, degrees, or the number of books or letters he has written. The NT is the touch stone and nothing else, certainly not a given power structure that defies the organism structure God has given us. We can all go straight to the head. All the other parts play part in building. All the pedestalizing and celebrity orientation done in spiritual style is corrupt. Does this mean I worship the NT? Not at all. That would just be a bogus accusation by someone who wants to argue from emotion or slander.

"... they often present wildly differing understandings of Who Jesus Christ is and Who God the Father of Jesus Christ is in terms of how they actually see Him interacting with man, within us as persons, and working in the world (e.g., Calvinistic determinism vs. Wesleyan Arminianism),..."

Wildly? Not even close. The differences are minimal yet claimed to be major by some. This is merely arrogance of king pin players staking out claims for their team. Orthodoxy plays the same game. We're the true team. There is a lot of money riding on all these teams - institutions. I say forget the power structure, branding, sacerdotalism, etc. It nullifies commands in the NT from Jesus and the apostles. Ignatius is no different than a brand pusher today.

God is not a respecter of persons for any reason other than that they obey Him. That is what I am pursuing. I throw off anything that is bogus. I am fine with being outside any brand name or following any pedestalized expert. The men who hold the most respect from me are simple brothers - no title. They offer amazing correction and instruction consistent with the NT. Robes, funky collars, dangling sashes, long beards, power suits, oak pulpits, plexiglass pulpits, and endless sorts of ceremonial junk do not match up with any of God's instructions. It's all posturing. If they don't model "one another" life in all of it's breadth and intimacy, they are not a leader in my book. If what they do is out of bounds for me to do, they are not a leader but a dependency enabler.

Everything God asks of us is reproducible. That is what shows it is living. That is what shows it is the work of God, not men. All living things reproduce their kind. Men are great at perpetual dependency, just like Ignatius pushes in that one statement.

@Tim, I totally agree with you. Everything must be tested and compared to New Testament teachings. And calvinism vs arminianism is not an essential of the faith. The essentials regarding Jesus are the virgin birth, the Trinity with all 3 having existed for eternity, Jesus death on the cross, His resurrection 3 days later, and that He will return again to judge and believers will spend all of eternity with God. Faith that His death on the cross atoned for our sins and that we cannot do works that help save ourselves is also essential. Any "good works" that we do are because we have the Holy Spirit in us, they are not a way to work "up the ladder". Corruption did start from day 1, and Paul's letters to the churches in Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, etc were written to correct errors in those particular churches, and have been used throughout the ages to show us correct and incorrect actions and doctrine. Most, if not all, of the early church fathers that came later, after the NT was completed, had particular errors associated with them.

Tim, I think there are a lot of assumptions (incorrect) that you are reading into the St. Ignatius quote. Namely, that the authority here residing in the "Bishop" (NT GK in some of our Protestant-influenced English translations uses "overseer"--bishop means the same thing), is that of a unilateral rulership (rather than the bishop also being a part of and representing that entire community and faith from which he comes and therefore also responsible *to* it (which is the Orthodox and Ignatian understanding), and of a "Lording it over" kind of authority, which is not the Orthodox understanding. It does not have to be read that way. This quote also comes in the context of St. Ignatius providing the means for inquirers into the Christian faith and of believers of the day to distinguish the genuine orthodox and apostolic Christian teaching from that of the various Gnostic "Christian" sects and heretical variations that were cropping up at the time and appointing their own leadership in independence of the full apostolic NT Christian faith (though the full NT did not exist as such at this time, its message certainly did).

The Orthodox bishop is invested with teaching and holding to the true orthodox Christian faith as handed down from the Apostles from spiritual father to spiritual son (as the Apostle Paul with Timothy). It is a trust he is given *on the part of the whole Church.* In Orthodox Christianity, if a bishop (or presbyter for that matter) apostasizes, and if he does not repent, he is no longer considered a bishop of the Church and is formally removed. Even if an official council of bishops of the Church meets and makes a decision regarding dogma or practice in the Church that the people do not recognize as legitimately led of the Holy Spirit, that Council's authority is rejected as bogus (see for instance, the Orthodox Christian people's response to the so-called "Ecumenical Council" of Florence in the 1400s). Also, unlike in the Roman Catholic Church, there is no one bishop within the Orthodox Church that has authority over everyone in the Church. Each bishop's service within that regional expression of the Church over which he has been appointed is legitimate only insofar as it truly reflects Orthodox Christian faith and practice, that is, it is being exercised genuinely in the Spirit of and on behalf of Christ. The only *ultimate* authority in the Orthodox Church is God, Himself, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit in the *whole* Church. These are just some of many differences between western (e.g., Roman Catholic and Anglican) understandings of the bishop's authority and that in the Eastern Church.

The representative authority of bishops and presbyters also certainly doesn't preclude all believers from professing and upholding and witnessing to that same faith in whatever capacity they are able (i.e., as God has given them understanding). In the Orthodox Church any baptized Orthodox Christian can baptize in an emergency situation, but otherwise it is performed by the representative of the local congregation on behalf of all, i.e., the presbyter or sometimes the bishop. The initiate is then also anointed with chrism (oil blessed by the local presiding bishop), representing the Holy Spirit that each Christian receives and also symbolizing the unity of the whole Church under one Spirit and one Faith. Formerly, this was done by the laying on of hands by the bishop, but as the Church grew, this became impractical so chrism provides this physical connection with the local bishop as a symbol of the Church's unity (around Christ as Head) instead and its fulfillment in Eucharistic communion celebrated with the same understandings and in the same way by all Orthodox bishops and presbyters symbolizes this same unity of the Church ranging over all regions in the whole world. Ordination still takes place (as it did in the NT) through the laying on of hands by the leaders of the Church. The bishops and presbyters and deacons are there to serve the whole Church and to bring order to her work and facilitate her ministry in the world.

Always, historically, when there was persecution or when heretical faith was allied with state power, the bishops and presbyters were the first to suffer and be martyred for their faithfulness to what they considered to be the full truth of Christ and of our salvation in Him. (We still see that happening in similar situations among believers today--it is the pastors of the flock who are the first to suffer. This is true for all groups of Christians, including the Orthodox who have historically suffered terribly at the hands of Muslim rulers and Communist alike).

Finally, there is no genuine submission to God without submission to others (Ephesians 5:21, Hebrews 3:17), just as there is no genuine love for Christ without love for others (Matthew 25). Sadly, what many modern Protestants see in Church history as "man-pleasing," when actually understood fully and properly in its own context (and not through the polemics I mention below) was actually an expression of and a result of an uncompromising commitment to pleasing Jesus Christ above all else.

I understand where you are coming from, but truly from where I sit (after years in Protestant circles where people too often cannot escape the polemics that characterized the birth of the Reformation with its Medieval Roman Catholic version of "Catholic,"), you have a terrible blind spot in your understanding in many respects of the fullness of what the NT really means to teach and regarding the faithfulness to those Scriptures of all our earliest forebearers in the faith. It makes no logical sense to me whatsoever to reject as apostates (essentially what you seem to be saying about St. Ignatius), those who were actually responsible for preserving and bequeathing to us all that is considered "orthodox" Christian faith today. It is the spiritual descendants of St. Ignatius (who considered him a significant "Father" and teacher and "Saint" in the Church) *who with the help of the Holy Spirit recognized, preserved and bequeathed to all of us who call ourselves orthodox Christians today the canon of the Christian Scriptures, our understanding of God as Triune, and of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully Man.* As I see it you are speaking from a position of extreme bias and great ignorance. But I will not argue further.

I hope others who are not so ignorant of our early Christian history, the historical development of Christian faith and doctrine, etc., will not so arrogantly and cavalierly dismiss these early expositors and applications of the NT's teachings in favor of what are manifestly anachronistic readings and interpretation of the Scriptures (and history) believed by many modern Christians.

Regarding Calvinist determinism vs. Arminian freedom of the will not being "wildly differing" understandings of God, I beg to differ. But most have not thought deeply enough about this perhaps to consider the implications for our faith. It seems to me many Christians simply tend to think if you call something by the same name (even if from one perspective it behaves quite differently than the other is willing to allow), you mean the same thing. Again, I beg to differ. We don't do this in math or chemistry. Is the real God not as real and as totally Himself (and not something else) as these revelations of aspects of His nature within Creation?

All I can say is shame on Bill Kinnon and shame on Leadership Journal for printing something like this. I will no longer read Leadership Journal or anything attached to it. Certainly, interpretations, wrongly assessed, are not inerrant but that is much different than the Scriptures being inerrant. I realize the article is pointing toward that but it leaves the reader with the idea that Scripture cannot be trusted. It does it as an authority and as being scholarly but it is neither. It is just one more of the voices out there that tries to bring questions to the validity of the Scriptures. I will now remove Leadership Journal from my e-mail and I will no longer purchase Leadership Journal, which I buy from a Lifeway Store close to us. This saddens me very much because I see this movement away from the Scriptures every single day. Leadership Journal used to be a magazine of quality and substance. Now, I hate to say, it is following the culture when it publishes something like this.