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June 22, 2012

The Bible is King (Part 2)

Is Sola Scriptura a self-defeating doctrine?

by Bill Kinnon

Even though “we” want to identify ourselves as evangelical, Evangelical Christianity has become a battle ground of proof texts. No matter what the particular battle is.

“I’ll see your 1 Tim. 2:12 — Paul not suffering a woman to teach, with Paul lauding the apostle Junia in Romans 16:7, greeting his co-laborers, Priscilla & Aquila in Romans 16:3–4 and 2 Timothy 4:19 and writing of their house church leadership in 1 Cor. 16:19. Winning!”

On this particular battle, Smith writes,

The Bible seems to say many things that can be reasonably read and theologized in various ways. In studying the various sides of this heated debate, one gets the distinct feeling that it is actually the divergent prebiblical interests of the many interpreters—both traditionalist and feminist—that drive their scriptural readings, as much as the texts themselves. That too presents problems for biblicism. But the more pertinent point here is this: apparently smart, well-intentioned scripture scholars in fact do read the same set of texts and come away making arguably compelling cases for opposing if not incompatible beliefs on a matter of significance for Christian personal and church practice. — Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, Loc. 780–85 (Kindle Edition)

But for those Biblicists in the inerrant camp — as Scot McKnight suggests — their understanding of the text is the one that is correct. If Paul says ‘women can’t teach’ then it’s obvious, WOMEN CAN’T TEACH. Some are so exacting in their understanding of the inerrant, perspicuous scriptures that they proudly proclaim that they won’t even let women read scripture in a church service — as it’s almost like teaching. (Which reminds me of the old joke about Baptists and dancing, but I won’t go there right now.) The logical extension of this is that since hymns and some worship tunes also teach, the soprano parts should be song by castrati, n’est-ce pas?

One of the prompts for this post was something that Michael Newnham at Phoenix Preacher pointed to earlier; the resignation letter of Jason Stellman, pastor of a Seattle PCA church. One of the stumbling blocks for Stellman that he felt forced his resignation was his changed position on the Reformed doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Stellman writes:

I have begun to doubt whether the Bible alone can be said to be our only infallible authority for faith and practice, and despite my efforts (and those of others) to dispel these doubts, they have only become more pronounced. In my own reading of the New Testament, the believer is never instructed to consult Scripture alone in order to adjudicate disputes or determine matters of doctrine (one obvious reason for this is that the early church existed at a time when the 27-book New Testament had either not been begun, completed, or recognized as canonical). The picture the New Testament paints is one in which the ordained leadership of the visible church gathers to bind and loose in Jesus’ Name and with his authority, with the Old Testament Scriptures being called upon as witnesses to the apostles’ and elders’ message (Matt. 18:18–19; Acts 15:6–29), with no indication in Scripture that such ecclesiastical authority was to cease and eventually give way to Sola Scriptura (meaning that the doctrine fails its own test). Moreover, unless the church’s interpretation of Scripture is divinely protected from error at least under certain conditions, then what we call the “orthodox” understanding of doctrines like the Trinity or the hypostatic union is reduced to mere fallible human opinion. I have searched long and hard, but have found no solution within the Sola Scriptura paradigm to this devastating conclusion.

Some suggest that Stellman is about to swim the Tiber. I find that as problematic as others find his rejection of Sola Scriptura and Sola Fida — but his rejection of the Reformed position on Scripture resonates with me.

Christian Smith (who has swum the Tiber) notes the vast numbers of Christians who have their faith ship-wrecked when their Sola Scriptura world view is shattered by reasoned inquisitors. He writes,

To argue that our only lifeline to God is the Bible is way off base. It also fails to recognize the many ways we know about and simply know Jesus Christ. It fails to explain how the Christian church for its first three hundred and fifty years—when it did not possess the defined biblical canon as we now know it—managed to know Christ. “The Christian faith,” Craig Allert rightly observes, “did not grow in response to a book but as a response to God’s interaction with the community of faith.”[53] — Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, Loc. 2457–61 (Kindle Edition)

And then later,

Scripture is not worshiped. It is not in scripture that we place our hope. It is not on scripture that we stake our lives. All of that is reserved for Jesus Christ alone. … Scripture is sometimes confusing, ambiguous, and incomplete—we have to admit and deal with that fact. Biblicism insists that the Bible as the word of God is clear, accessible, understandable, coherent, and complete as the revelation of God’s will and ways for humanity. But this is simply not true. Scripture can be very confusing. It can be indefinite. The Bible can lack information and answers that we want it to have. To say such things seems, from a biblicist perspective, to insult God, scripture’s divine author. But that is, again, because biblicism starts off with wrong presuppositions about how the Bible ought to work. — Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, Loc. 2546–47 & Loc. 2661–66 (Kindle Edition)

The Bible is not our King… King Jesus is our King. (And may I highly recommend you read Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel.)

Our understanding of Scripture must come first from our relationship with the Risen and Living Christ. To view the Bible as “all the truth” too often denies the reality of Jesus being very much alive and actively working through His Holy Spirit.

As Eugene Peterson interprets John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” He is alive and in our midst - something the Scriptures witness to.

Comments

"Some suggest that Stellman is about to swim the Tiber."

I have heard that phrase before, "swim the Tiber" but never attributed to conversion to Catholicism as I had always thought it to mean something akin to "crossing the Rubicon"...the things I learned.

I think we, as in the whole modern day church, has lost it's grasp on the contextual applications of much of the bible, and thus we've...adapted/adopted a lot of scripture as was translated from the Greek to Latin to English, and thus, along the way, context was lost.

The problem is that when current cultural norms define the scriptures rather than to what culture the scriptures were written too we lose that context, and thus application failure of scripture is imminent, and often occurs.

For example, the citing of "women shall not teach" if we look at the entire episode of Paul's dealings with women we could say the man was a wee bit misogynistic. And yet, further reading of Paul's letters reveals something else...a conflict of Paul's praise of women leading churches, or as prophets...and it begs the question..."But Paul says women are not to teach, and yet...they're leading churches?"
So either we jump through hoops to explain the discrepancy, stretching credibility to to the point of fallacious unbelievability, or we question our own interpretation of what the scriptures are telling us.
The thing is...and I've seen this so many times is that instead of questioning our reading/interpretation of the passages that conflict, hoops, three-ring circuses of explanations are bandied about, but never once is our reading of those passages of prohibition ever questioned.

I think that much of our literal reading goes unchallenged, and when it is challenged...the challenger is dismissed as a heathen and ignored...or shouted down. Or, as in my case, invited to leave that particular church.

I read through the whole article and ask myself the following question after I read each line describing problems with the Scritpure:
How does dumping inerrancy help resolve this issue?

All of my answers were: It does not resolve anything. It only makes the whole thing worse.

God's Word and our experience shows us that there are men who set themselves up as expert teachers of the Word, when in reality they are spiritual wolves eager to devour or make a lot of money. I can just hear it now..."Jesus spoke to me in a vision. It's meaning tells me that John 1:65 is in error. The correct message from God is ....".

This post is spot on! One only has to consider the fact that well-educated Bible scholars can suggest completely opposite views on the same scripture to come to the same conclusion as you have in this post. This is no different than many hundreds of different denominations who all read the same Bible and then say that their view is the correct one. The emphasis SHOULD be on Jesus, his words, his example, his life. Although I am a Christian mystic, our essential belief is the same. We must look to the Master who showed us the way, not to "doctrine" to determine what's right and wrong. Is God limited to an idea? No. The Master speaks to our hearts in different ways, but by making doctrine from it instead of letting it be a spiritual message we sacrifice much.

Thanks for this invigorating and informative post.

Josh - The Spirit of the Scripture

I see a difference between the Bible as "all the truth" and the Bible as "sufficient truth." What's e nough for me to know now isn't all there is; but it's what I need now. More of a problem to me is: Where's the Holy Spirit in all this? Didn't Jesus say something about the Spirit making Christ known to us? How can we discuss church authority and Scriptural authority and leave out the Spirit? "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" . . . .

Well, I had hoped there would be something more in the second post with which to work, but nothing. This has been nothing but an accusatory piece with nothing but a few quotes from others of the same mind...

Ok, I get you have some issues, but quoting two or three others who are also questioning is not a debate or a legitimate presentation of an idea. There are random illusions to issues, but nothing concrete enough to discuss. This has been like reading in print what divisive people in church say about a pastor they do not like. “Well, you know, there are just some things we should pray about.”

The fact that Evangelical Christianity has issues, many issues, is not sufficient reason to claim that inerrancy is wrong. The fact that someone takes texts of scripture out of context is also not reason enough to claim inerrancy a bad doctrine. The fact that the American church is more concerned with building bigger buildings and spending money on entertaining instead of discipling true followers does not mean the local church is a dead concept either.

Sola Scriptura was never meant to mean we refer to nothing else, it was to proclaim overriding authority to scripture and strip corrupt church leaders of their dominance over scripture.

The problem is with defining Sola Scriptura (which has created the subset of solo scriptura).

Sola Scriptura does not imply that the Bible is the King or that it is the volume of every bit of knowledge available. It doesn't even necessarily encourage proof texting. However, what it says is the Scripture is sufficient for describing "salvation history" and what it means for being for belonging to Christ.

The difference between that and the Catholic (Prima Scriptura) is the role of tradition and Sola Scriptura does not say throw tradition out or discount it.

The difference is: is tradition a chain to restrain me and keep me from venturing down certain paths or is tradition little light posts and markers to give wise instruction.

While I value the PCA very much, it is a bit hypocritical when it talks about sola scriptura and then goes about in extra-biblical forms to maintain its own church government by enforcing all sorts of rules and restrictions from its own tradition as authoritative. As much as I know, Stellman was inline with PCA opinions of Ecclesiastical authority but didn't see how he could maintain Sola Scriptura at the same time.

I'm no fundamentalist, nor am I even a Baptist, and I find help in many of my Christian brothers who've gone before me. Sola Scriptura does not lead to any of that and Scripture, while important, is the map and I only worship the King.

Cal

while i agree in principle that we should not worship the bible and that we must honor Jesus as the true king, i disagree that the problem is with viewing scripture as inerrant or even with sola scriptura, depending on how it's defined. one can hold both of those views while acknowledging that there are issues on which scripture is not entirely clear, allowing for open discussion of a better (yet admittedly fallible) interpretation of it. sola scriptura need not result in a denial of other authorities governing christian life -- only that other authorities be yielded to and corrected by scripture. finally, the appeal to Jesus' direct authority as king and/or to the ordained leadership of the church authorized to bind and loose in Jesus' name does not free us from competing views nor from error.

is it so hard to believe in God-inspired scriptures and trusting God's Spirit to lead us, while acknowledging our intrinsic limitations? why is it hard to admit that as long as fallen, sinful, finite human beings are a part of the discernment process, there is NO authority that will ever ensure that we are error free? that's not a problem with scripture. the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

If scripture is not inerrant then what parts do you trust. How do you worship or have a vital relationship with a living resurrected Jesus if you do not first have a reliable text that tells us He is living and resurrected? Would you know these things if God had never provided a written text?
How do you differentiate between who God is and what He says? Is this not Jesus who fleshed it out...became the living exegesis or Word become flesh? To separate God from His Word and say that honoring and reverencing scripture is idolatry is to misunderstand inspiration and the nature of God.
All the Truth-
The assertion also that the Bible is "all the truth" is much different than the correct statement the Bible is 'all truth'. The Bible of course does not contain all the truth (it does not tell me today's weather) but all that it contains is true in its original texts. (The fact that we do not have the originals is not an issue when you consider the huge amount of copies that ultimately reveal to us the original text via comparison).
Presuppositions and truth-
In regard to presuppositions of feminists or others, I agree that these can affect ones interpretation and we all have them. That is why the proof is in the text itself and not in the presuppositions. We must adjust our presuppositions to the whole of Scripture (scripture interpreting and defining scripture). Truth is not in our presuppositions or in the mind of the ancient human writer. We cannot get into the mind of its human authors to ever know what they meant but we do have the text they wrote under inspiration. The truth is in the text.

Excellent book on this topic with forward by JI Packer: "Defending Inerrancy" by Geisler and Roach.

"If scripture is not inerrant then what parts do you trust."

No where does the bible ever say "All scriptures are inerrant."

We added "inerrant."

And yet, to force the issue literalists will argue that Psalm's actually says,

"the words of the Lord are flawless."
and
"Every word of G-d is flawless."

Okay, but here is the thing...I trust all parts of scripture because I see scripture as inspired by G-d because G-d didn't write any of it down, men did...or so I assume men wrote bible.

Men wrote the bible. They wrote their encounter with G-d, and what they experienced with this being whom we call G-d. These men are the same men burdened with the same flaws we are all burdened with...our sinful nature.

When Psalms, taken context in it's entirety we see individual response to G-d who, shockingly, actually talks to us.every.day.

And so the reason why I don't, and will never say the bible is inerrant is because I have come to realize that though the truths are inerrant in the bible due to the inspirational story telling of both fact and analogy, too many people have equated inerrancy with literalism, forgetting that this is the inspired word of G-d.

Would I like to use inerrant?

Yes, I would, but the thing is that intellectual honesty in our current climate of fostered ignorance through literalism would force me to qualify the the term "inerrant" to such a degree that I would find myself spending more time explaining the terms and conditions of inerrant rather than focusing on the inspired truth revealed in scripture.

Now, if someone can help me explain in shorter hand how inspiration and inerrancy walk hand in hand without having to be literal, I am all ears.

Sheer, I definitely resonate with your description of the tensions of us Bible-believing Christians who are not pedantic literalists. Likely when I make appeals in my comments to the only infallibility and inerrancy being "the Holy Spirit in the Church" (of which the Holy Scriptures are the pre-eminent written witness, and the Saints the pre-eminent living witness), some suspect a version of the Roman Catholic doctrine of infallible authority residing solely in the the teaching "Magisterium" of the Roman Church and of a twofold source of spiritual authority, oral tradition and Scripture, and so tune me out.

Others perhaps assume I must mean what Protestants understand by the Holy Spirit's authority in the Church, which while I believe there are bound to be some intuitive understandings of what that means that overlap between some Protestants and my Orthodox view, the philosophical and conceptual arguments whereby the Protestant arrives at some version of "Sola Scriptura" even if the "Sola" (as opposed to the "solo") version of this is somewhat closer to the Orthodox understanding, still misses the mark in some practical, application-on-the-ground ways.

The Orthodox understanding of authority in the Church (and indeed of what constitutes "the Church"), though, is hard to comprehend for Christians trained in western theological ways of thinking, and even harder to explain in words accurately (especially for a relative newcomer to Orthodox faith, such as me). For the Orthodox, the fullness of the truth of Christ and the truth of the Scriptures is not arrived at through a mere external rational analysis of the text of the words of Scripture or even of the cultural, ecclesiological and doctrinal developments among those calling themselves Christian throughout history as viewed externally through archeological study, "Creeds" and "Ecumenical Councils" and such (though those provide some important information and demarkations). Rather this is only arrived at by taking the inner journey of a deep and penetrating personal repentance toward God with the help of the Holy Spirit and through obedience to the commands of Christ to the seat of the true self within (beneath and behind all the masks of our own egos) where the living Christ may be really and truly encountered experientially. As we pray in Psalm 51, "You desire truth in the inmost being, therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart." This is why what the Saints have to say about the proper interpretation and application of Scripture (i.e., our life in Christ) has the most weight, but this is often conveyed to us in pithy sayings and stories (like the parables of the Lord Himself), that open up only at the proper time for those who are on the same journey of repentance. They are words, like those of Scripture (and inspired by the same Spirit) that open up their full meaning only for those who through such a grace-given repentant posture toward Christ ("Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . ") have been given "ears to hear" and "eyes to see."

No Sheer, it says "Your word is truth." Since when does truth contain errors? It may report errors, but not be in error. God himself is truth meaning that only that which is true emanates from Him. If Scripture is inspired (God-breathed) then it follows logically that it is inerrant in its original autographs. The God I know, the One revealed in Scripture, is Truth and is immutable and able to keep and protect His Word. If we do not believe that the Bible in its original texts is inerrant this reflects back to our view of God. God who created man is able to use man as His instrument to write an inspired text that reflects the personalities and backgrounds of the writers He chose. This is one reason why the Bible is such an amazing book. So many writers that God used to send us one message supported by so many as truth. And although there are copyist errors we have so many copies that we are able to confirm the original. No other ancient book has so many copies to substantiate the original. All this just makes me worship our amazing God all the more!

N writes: No, Sheer, it says "Your word is truth."

Well, here is a case in point. What does the Scripture mean by God's "word" here? It surely is not limited to the letter of the texts of the written Scriptures (of which perhaps not even all of the OT canon was written by the time this verse was inspired, for one thing). Ultimately, what the Christian must proclaim is that this "word" is summed up entirely and revealed fully only in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, revealed in the Gospels and to our hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit.

N, I think your understanding is being influenced by Enlightenment philosophic rationalistic constructs of "truth" and "error," rather than inspired of the Holy Spirit. But, of course, being fallible myself, I could be wrong about that.

I could further add to my last comment, that I am personally convinced of (and prepared to attempt to defend) the Divine truth and inspiration of the Christian Scriptures, but I am not prepared to defend a word like "inerrant" (sympathetic as I may be with some of the reasons it was introduced--a very recent development in Christian theological history, I should add), burdened as it is with the presuppositions and assumptions of the philosophic Rationalism of the Enlightenment.

Isn't the HS rational? Scripture even states that God says that we are to come and reason together. I would hate to think of the HS as irrational. So your implication that I am deceived because I am using rational constructs to define truth seems quite irrational to me.
Jesus said, "You are deceived because you don't know the scriptures or the power of God." (Matt 22:29)
In the beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word became (put on) flesh and lived among us. What Jesus did was flesh out Scripture and fulfill the law. He allowed certain select humans to see with their own eyes (1 John 1) and hear with their own ears. And then record with their own testimony that which they had seen and heard. Satan hates the word and seeks to destroy it. Without the written word all we have are subjective experiences that can twist and distort the message. This is how religious cults or deviant forms of christianity are formed. What is written in scripture is and cannot be denied. So I suggest it is not to the benefit of the church to trivialize the place of importance that scripture has in our lives. I would urge you to never trust the voices of your internal experience without being a Berean (Acts 17:11) about it. This can only lead to pride and the idea you have more insight than others or than the Scripture itself .

Word vs word: The passages in Psalm 119 speak of God's law, of His written word, something the people would weep to hear when it had been denied them in exile. But all Scripture points to Jesus the Word. The message of the word is the Word.

You are suggesting that because some do not have the written word, it is not necessary. However even Jesus invoked Scripture when tempted, when teaching, and even from the cross that prophecy might be fulfilled. Scripture was important to Jesus and He was filled with the Holy Spirit. If Jesus placed importance upon the Scriptures, shouldn't we?

God provided a written word because He wants us to have it, to read it, to cherish it, to protect it. They are His written revelation. One's view of God is small if one thinks He is incapable of utilizing a created being (man) to write down words in an inerrant way. God can do as He wills with that which He created. If it were the case that the Bible is with error, there would be far more examples than you can cite. Name me one other book that utilized so many human authors from so many different backgrounds, locations and even periods of time to write one cohesive message that does not contradict and constantly amend itself. Joseph Smith couldn't do it. Only the Bible can make this claim because it is from God Himself. And He is all truth, He cannot lie, and He cannot be untrue to Himself.

What do you hope to achieve by undermining the authority, reliability, and inerrancy of Scripture?

N asks: "Isn't the HS rational?"

Well, most certainly, but not in the imperfect way that we are. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts . . ." comes to mind. 1 Corinthians 2 also comes to mind.

Would you go look at that passage where God calls the Israelites to come and "reason" together? The next sentence reads, "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. . . . " This is not the introduction of God calling us to a modern rationalistic apologetic of propositional logic, but a promise and proclamation of our salvation in Christ! Clearly the HS has reasons we know not of and which can only be revealed by being plunged into the very heart of God Himself. How on earth are you coming to the conclusion I'm asserting the Scriptures are "irrational?" The Scriptures and the HS are not "irrational," but they *are* suprarational--that is, beyond human reason and merely rational constructs (otherwise they would not be Divine).

N asserts: "You are suggesting that because some do not have the written word, it is not necessary."

Boy, oh boy! Here is another glaring instance of adding 2 + 2 and coming up with 5, or 6, or even 7 or 8! That is clearly a misunderstanding of my comments, and I will take the opportunity to correct that impression by saying, I am suggesting that a rational analysis of the written word *alone* is insufficient for our understanding of God's revelation in Christ and in the Scriptures, which everywhere speak of Him.

N finishes by asking: "What do you hope to achieve by undermining the authority, reliability, and inerrancy of Scripture?"

Ai, yi, yi, yi, yi! I have not sought to undermine the authority nor the reliability of Holy Scripture. I believe it is God-breathed and the truth. I just believe that for it to be properly understood in its own context, one must be living the life of true repentance within the Church. To put it another way, I'm saying we need to understand the Scriptures in a genuinely Scriptural way. I believe the modern debates over "inerrancy," demonstrate that we have largely departed from a real spiritual understanding of how that works.

Thank you for clarifying your position, Karen.However, I am still confused by your waffling around the term inerrant.

1. Is Scripture in its original texts inerrant?

2. How can one understand the Scriptures in a genuinely Scriptural way if that Scripture is not reliable and inerrant?

3. Does your understanding of "real spiritual understanding" take place apart from Scripture?

I would go further and say that the deeper we go into our relationship with Christ the more He opens up His word to us and the Holy Spirit brings understanding (Luke 24:45). But we must start with a reliable text or we can have experiences that are esoteric and cultic. Ask anyone who has been involved in aberrant christian groups (cults) or Hindu based religions or false teachings of a crazy prophet and you will discover that they all make claims to spiritual experience. All will tell you of some sort of burning in their bosom that they have achieved the truth. That is why we MUST have a standard outside of ourselves to bring our experience to and ask if that experience is aligned with the whole of Scripture. And that is why the battle for the inerrancy of Scripture is important and not to be easily dismissed with post modern philosophies.

"1. Is Scripture in its original texts inerrant?"

Now that's interesting question...which part of inerrant are you asking about...the inspired truth reveal in the texts, or the factual history based on the texts?

"2. How can one understand the Scriptures in a genuinely Scriptural way if that Scripture is not reliable and inerrant?"

Again, inerrant, and reliable are two different subjects each requiring clarification as to what you perceive them to mean vs what I perceive them to mean.

I think that the problem is that when we discuss inerrancy we're bringing a lot of baggage to the table...or, if you will, unclarified terms. One postmodern philosophies that is pernicious and won't go away is the Literalists approach to the bible, of which I have mentioned, that throws a wrench into the discussion of inerrancy.

For example, and one I've cited this before, Ezekiels prophecy for the end of Tyre. He seriously thought Nebuchadnezzar was the instrument of G-d's wrath against Tyre, but he wasn't, and so Ezekiel was caught short with a "uh...oops!"

Now herein is the thing...was Ezekiel wrong in his prophecy against Tyre? No, he wasn't; BUT was he wrong in trying to interpret his prophecy by who was going to drop the "BOOYAH!" on Tyre? Yes, he was Oh so very wrong!

And there is a lesson for us in that, but we can never get to that point because the Literalists take over...and...man, this bugs me to remember this because it was so blatantly wrong...anyway, they hopped up and down swearing on a heap of hope that somehow I, and others will be just as credulous as they are in spite of the bible and the historical record.

Thus, as much as I love to say, "Yes, the bible is inerrant" I cannot due to my experience with Literalists (this also goes for non-Christians who also think in literal terms as well as the Christians)...therefore, I dare not use the word inerrant without the qualification of understanding that if and when I use the word "inerrant" it is understood that I have decoupled it from any and all Literal connotations.

N, thanks for the dialogue. I believe the Scriptures are inspired of God, true, and profitable for teaching, correction, etc., as it says the epistle to Timothy. I do not believe that this means that they are like the Qu'ran where the exact truth of the message is limited in some way to an "inerrant" original language text.

If you think about this carefully, what good does it really do us to believe that? We don't actually HAVE those original texts, anyway (for goodness sake!). What we have are copies of copies of copies that come centuries later. Furthermore, the English translations of OT mss. today are from Hebrew textual copies (complete with revisions/"corrections") made by the community of Jews who were descendants of the Pharisees (the only sect of Judaism from the time of Jesus that survived the destruction of the Temple and its sacrificial system) who had deliberately *rejected* Jesus Christ--and this centuries after they booted the believing Jews (i.e., the Christians) out of their synagogues. Are their copies of this Hebrew ms. more *inspired* than the Greek translation of the OT (the Septuagint) in use at the time of Jesus and quoted by the Apostles 75% of the time in the NT, which was translated from much earlier Hebrew mss. (and which agrees more closely with some older fragments of Hebrew mss. found amongst the Dead Seas Scrolls) than the Hebrew texts people like Jerome and later the Reformers were using with their classical Enlightenment philosophical assumptions?

It seems to me either the Holy Spirit Who inspired the Scriptures can preserve a right understanding of their message within the Church of believers who have come into a living relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ and passed that down to their spiritual children, and so on, and so on, or He cannot. If He cannot, then I fail to see how it helps us today that somewhere long ago there WERE some original texts that were "inerrant" in the original languages. It seems to me if the Holy Spirit isn't working in a continuous way within the Church to clarify and reveal the truth of the Scriptures and of Christ, the discussion is over.

The right understanding of the Scriptures is maintained within the Church only by the ongoing living activity of the Holy Spirit Who inspired them. We come to know the true and real depth of the Scriptures' meaning only to the extent that we come to a real, experiential and growing knowledge of the living Jesus Christ Himself, by the Holy Spirit, Who resides in His fullness in His Church (and has promised to lead His Church collectively into all truth--and by extension I believe that means keep it there, I might add). He doesn't disagree over time with Himself. Therefore, I don't believe numerous Christian bodies today who disagree with certain things that our Christian forebears understood from the very earliest periods of Church history as a right understanding of Scripture and essential to Christian faith and practice, can be properly understanding the Scriptures, nor properly and fully part of that same Church.

Lest you misunderstand, I don't believe this means God cannot be working within sincere believers within Christian traditions other than the Eastern Orthodox Church, nor that everything they understand the Scriptures to teach is wrong. Nor do I believe it means that no-one who is not visibly part of the Orthodox Church can be saved (something only God knows for sure even about those WITHIN the Orthodox Church). There are undoubtedly many within the Orthodox Church that are in her, but not of her. By the same token, Christ is drawing many of His sheep, not currently part of the Orthodox fold. I also certainly do believe that despite what I have said varying degrees of true and Orthodox understandings remain in the various differing Christian traditions and that God uses that. I believe His ultimate intention; however, is that this draw every single Christian into a fullness and unity of the faith--a fullness and unity of faith and practice that I am convinced by my own experience has always resided within the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church (despite the fact that her members, including her leaders, are sinners like everyone else and always capable of not living up to the measure of the Orthodoxy they have been bequeathed).

Karen, I hope to think that your errors are not purposeful, but sometimes I really have to wonder. As you should well know, The Enlightenment in Europe was in the 18th century. Luther and Calvin lived in the early 1500's, 200 years earlier. Luther was born in 1483. Your facts on the early textual manuscripts are also incorrect, the earliest date much earlier than what you state. Please stick with the facts.

sheer-This is to explain that you're mistaken on Nebuchanezzar. Ezekiel never said that it was Nebuchanezzar who would bring ruin to Tyre, and the wording in the chapter makes that clear. But it gets rather frustrating when you are misleading others. Some of the verses are referring to Nebuchanezzar, and others are referring to other nations, and they are worded differently, depending upon which one is being referred to. This prophecy was indeed fulfilled, as have the great majority, with others waiting for fulfillment.

In verse 3, it says "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up."

You can read a very good explanation at this site:

http://www.tektonics.org/print.php

The language in the verses make it clear when God through Ezekiel is referring to when God is working through Nebuchadnezzar, and when God is working through "many nations".

Kelly, thanks for the corrections. I'm writing from memory of some things I have read and likely conflated together in my mind and am overgeneralizing and not speaking precisely enough. In speaking of the movement of Bible scholars and translators to try to go back to early mss. and original languages, etc., I think this was part of the philosophy of the Renaissance, not the Enlightenment. (I do sometimes get those two movements confused in terms of their specific contributions to contemporary western theological approaches, but they both represent movements in philosophy and an approach to the study of the Scriptures that did not characterize that of the Eastern Church (until inroads were made through people like Peter the Great and his attempted western reforms of the Orthodox Church in Russia, for example) and they are still not considered genuinely part of Eastern Orthodox theological tradition, which sources itself very much still in the theological approach and mindset characterized by the earlier patristic period.

I think it is fair to say both movements have contributed paradigms for academic study of the Scriptures used by modern Christians that did not exist as such during the early centuries of the Church's formation. The concept of "inerrancy," which is why I posted in the first place, certainly was not a term or concept that was invoked as an explanation of how the Scriptures were true or God-breathed before the modern period--i.e., Enlightenment, post-Enlightenment. Correct?

Can you specify what earlier ms. texts you are thinking of? I'm thinking in terms of the complete mss. of the OT (if I recall correctly), not early fragments of it. I am remembering the Jewish ratification of the canon of their OT about 300 A.D. at the Council of Jamnia, and I thought (perhaps erroneously) that the oldest complete Hebrew OT mss. dated from about this time as well. I have read that this Jewish community was descended from the sect of the Pharisees who preserved and developed the Judaism of the Synagogue after the Temple was destroyed. It is generally recognized by Bible scholars of various backgrounds, I believe, that many times the Messianic prophecies as worded in the LXX (which was the Bible of the Christians of the first two centuries A.D.) are more clear and obvious than translations from the Hebrew mss. we possess. I'm not a scholar (obviously), so I could be wrong about that, but I do remember hearing it from pastors and professors from my former Evangelical circles as well.

I confess I do often read things, come away with a general impression that satisfies some question of my own I have been exploring, and often forget important details. I'm not willfully trying to confuse things, so I appreciate contributions like yours to the discussion. I will try to take more time, and check facts next time before I try to give some kind of historical overview by way of explanation of some or other point I want to make, so I don't unintentionally mislead the unwary! (I hope, since this site is for Christian leaders, there won't be too many chances for that.)

Despite my mistakes in terms of details, I don't think it refutes my point that placing one's faith in the "inerrancy" of original autographs of Scripture (that we no longer possess) is not a reasonable or practical approach to authority in the Church. I do think it makes more biblical sense to understand such authority as residing rather in the Holy Spirit in His Church.

Looking at the first truly universally ratified and employed Creed of the Church of the first few centuries, the Nicene Creed--it is interesting, and perhaps instructive for us, to note that God, the Father, the only-begotten Son, the Holy Spirit, *one holy catholic and apostolic Church*, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come, are all made essential articles of the full and orthodox Christian faith of the era and no one was considered an orthodox Christian who did not understand, memorize and confess this Creed (at least at the point at which they became able--since infants and children of believers were baptized, but in this case their sponsors would confess this Creed on their behalf). Belief in the "inerrancy" of Scripture is not among these articles of faith, nor even, for that matter, is belief in the Scriptures (though they existed, and were largely recognized as such by this point in history, I believe). I assume faith in the truth of message of the Scriptures produced by the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church is assumed to be a subset of faith in the Church that produced them, but perhaps not a faith in quite the same sense.

Karen, I didn't mean to come across so harshly, you might say "it's been one of those days", so I'm sorry about how I worded that post. I often agree with a lot that you have to say. I was raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and I'm almost 57 now, so believe me, I grew up in a much more conservative time in society as well as the church, and the Missouri and Wisconsin Synods are totally 100% different from the ELCA. Probably many wish they would change their name. I don't know about your church service, but I have heard Catholic services online, and they sounded very much like the Lutheran service. There is an OT reading, a NT reading, a Gospel reading, a recitation of one of the creeds, communion, and the sermon. I never tired of the liturgy and my faith and love for the Lord and His Word only grew through time.

Everyone has to take a confirmation class, where those who didn't grow up attending the parochial school, were taught a little about Luther, like the 3 solas, and what he was mainly protesting about at the time, but a lot of the time was spent on the 3 creeds the church has, Nicene, Apostles, and Athanasian. I did go to a Lutheran parochial school, and we had to memorize the Nicene and Apostles creeds in about 3rd grade, as well as Bible verses every week. I received a very solid grounding in the basic doctrines of the holy catholic church, which I would never stray from. It wasn't just a matter of memorizing them, but understanding them, and also understanding the various doctrines such as the Trinity, justification, sanctification, and so on.

I would have to look it up, and tomorrow would be a better day, but yes, if you're talking about entire manuscripts, the dates you give are probably correct. But there are thousands of pieces (not all tiny, little shreds) of manuscripts, which have really substantiated how accurate and reliable the later in origin manuscripts are. We can be assured that we have every important teaching and doctrine that God intended us to have. We can be assured that God can, and did, definitely preserve His Word through the ages. He said the gates of hell would not prevail against His church. I believe in the churchhood of believers, so belonging to a particular denomination doesn't matter *as long as they are completely biblical*. With a solid grounding and the Holy Spirit, one can still find biblical churches, but in my area, it can take a little time, but well worth it. I don't belong to a Lutheran church right now, but the pastor of the church we attend is totally biblical, and says a lot of things that would probably shock a lot of the newer churches that don't want to talk about certain topics like God's wrath, the lake of fire, the fact that Christians do not divorce except in the case of adultary, homosexuality is a sin, etc, etc. Our church does remove membership of people who divorce for reasons that aren't biblical, and although it hasn't come up since we have belonged there, I believe they would do the same for homosexuals who are sinning. I know that they give a lot of counselling before taking that step, and that it is with sadness that people are removed. I have also seen someone welcomed back into fellowship, praise God. I should also mention that this is not a small church, thankfully, there are many people still seeking, and finding, biblical churches. Our pastor preaches from the Bible, taking a book at a time, and it can take a few months to go through a book, as he covers about 2-4 verses a week. He ties everything together from the Old and New Testaments so that we can all see how they are interwoven, and not 2 totally different books. God is unchanging. The way He may choose to do certain things can change, but He will always have the attributes that have been eternal. Thank you for clarifying, it really helped. Dominus Vobiscum

You're welcome, Kelly. No worries! You didn't come across to me as harsh. My best friend in high school was Lutheran (Wisconsin or Missouri Synod, not ECLA), and I (Methodist at the time) remember attending a service at her church. I was not allowed to commune there, and I remember thinking how very close to the Catholic liturgy it seemed. Orthodox, of course, have a lot of sympathy for Luther and the other Reformers in terms of what they were up against and trying to correct. We see the Holy Spirit evidenced in many of their thoughts and actions. Still, in terms of their understanding of the Scripture, and yes, those "Solas" too, we think they were off the mark in aspects of their understanding of the teaching and role of Scripture, faith, and the nature of grace and the nature of the Church, that they in varying degrees and ways, threw some of the "baby" of a genuine apostolic Christian tradition out with the "bathwater" of Medieval Roman Catholic accretions, and this is more true as the Reformation progressed to the Radical Reformation. Still there is, as you mention, much common ground between conservative Lutherans and other older more liturgical traditions and Eastern Orthodox tradition. (Not a few Orthodox priests in the U.S. are former Lutheran pastors). On the other hand, Orthodox don't have a problem with the Epistle of James, as Luther did. And that should tell us something about the difference between the Lutheran tradition (at least in its beginnings) and the understanding of Christian faith that prevailed at the time the NT canon was officially recognized as well.

Of course, I agree with you that the mss. we have of the Scriptures in the original languages are in all the most important ways faithful representations of what came earlier and that the Scriptures, like the Church, have been preserved in a rather remarkable way by the help of the Holy Spirit. As I said, the point I wanted to make with N above is not to dissuade anyone of the Divine origin, truth or the reliability of the Church's Scriptures, but rather to dissuade of what I believe is a misguided and misplaced faith in a rationalistic and modern theory of "inerrant" original autographs and (not with N, but in other comments) in aspects of our modern, historical-critical approach to the study of Scripture. It is also to point out that the Scriptures we have today are the Scriptures that were produced by and belong to the Church of the NT and which were recognized as such and also owned and bequeathed to their descendants by the Church of the ante-Nicene and Nicene periods of history and that we ought to understand and live these Scriptures in the same way as they did--to the extent that we do not, we should consider whether we are in fact, in spirit and in truth participating in and preaching a rather different Christian faith and even a different "Christ" (for all practical purposes) than they did.

"sheer-This is to explainthat you're mistaken on Nebuchanezzar. Ezekiel never said that it was Nebuchanezzar who would bring ruin to Tyre, and the wording in the chapter makes that clear"

Mmm....lets see how "mistaken" I am about this...

Ezekiel 26:1-21 A Prophecy Against Tyre

,i>therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. 5 Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, 6 and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Okay, so, we have doom of Tyre spelled out...but wait, there's more...

From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar[b] king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army.

Which is understandable that Ezekiel would refer to Nebuchadnezzar since he was leading what, to the local region would be considered army of many nations.

8 He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. 9 He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons. 10 His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. Your walls will tremble at the noise of the warhorses, wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city whose walls have been broken through. 11 The hooves of his horses will trample all your streets; he will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea.

And it is right here where Ezekiel says exactly what Nebuchadnezzar will do to "Tyre." and the mainland settlements.

Oops.

And, in chapter 29, Ezekiel all but admits he made a mistake, because if he didn't, G-d did.

17 In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month on the first day, the word of the Lord came to me: 18 “Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon drove his army in a hard campaign against Tyre; every head was rubbed bare and every shoulder made raw. Yet he and his army got no reward from the campaign he led against Tyre. 19 Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth. He will loot and plunder the land as pay for his army. 20 I have given him Egypt as a reward for his efforts because he and his army did it for me, declares the Sovereign Lord.

So, it would seem I'm not mistaken at all.

Well sheerahkahn, it would seem that you have adeptly demonstrated the inerrancy of scripture with your illustration. Well done.

Regarding the article: To view the Bible as “all the truth” too often denies the reality of Jesus being very much alive and actively working through His Holy Spirit.

Those of us who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture never say that the Bible is "all the truth". The insertion of the article "the" changes the meaning. We believe that the Bible is all truth, containing no error in the original text.

I disagree with Karen in her statement that the Bible does not claim to be inerrant. Many synonyms for inerrant are used in the Bible when it describes the written word. Psalm 12:6 says "And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a funace of clay, purified seven times." Proverbs 30:5 says "Every word of God is pure" These statements are absolute and argue for perfection of Scripture. No where does it claim to be only partially true.

If you were to read a history book where someone claimed that it was only partially true you would doubt the trustworthiness of the book. For the book to be reliable it must be factual.

All books reflect upon their author. If you doubt the credibility or inerrancy of Scripture then you cast doubt upon God Himself.

As to Karen's suggestion that having copies but not the original casts doubt on the inerrancy of Scripture, I will try to succinctly say that having many copies over many years is better than having one text that is claimed to be the original. Having so many copies (over 5700), some which come to within 100 years of the original writings, not only leads us to but clarifies and substantiates what was written in the autographs. There are more manuscripts of the New Testament than any book from the ancient world (5700 compared to 10-20 for others). All of these substantiate what was contained in the original and bear witness that we have the original word of God. God is faithful, He preserved and kept it. He said the grass withers and fades but the word of God abides forever.
2. Three are earlier manuscripts than for any other ancient book (100 years compared to 1000 years for others)
3. There are more accurately copied manuscripts than for any book from the ancient world (99.9% cf. to 90-95%).

If we had a Scripture engraved on a golden plate and kept under lock and key and never shown to anyone, we would have good reason to doubt. But we have a Scripture that was carefully meticulously copied, so that when you compare these copies you have confirmation of the original. No one can deny that this is amazing. No other book can make these claims.

Lastly, it is futile to suggest having a relationship that honors and worships God as He truly is while all the while casting doubt on what He has said and what He has written. To suggest that the Bible has errors in the autographs is to suggest that God can make mistakes.

I believe one reason that people buy into the lie that Scripture is not inerrant is because they want to twist the Scripture to support their own views. When Scripture is in opposition to those views they are comforted by the idea that Scripture is erroneous in some cases--obviously in their case.

I would amend this to also say that lies can be planted in the midst of intellectual jargon and we all as Bereans must check and recheck the words of those who make such claims as to cast doubt on the imutabile unchanging and inerrant character of God. My God is able to use fallible people to create an infallible inerrant text that keeps the literary flavor of the human author while cohesively confirming the same message for all.

N, perhaps my earlier statements were not clear enough. I do not dispute the Bible's Divine inspiration, nor its truth or reliability, nor do I doubt the basic reliability of the mss. we possess.

When you say that I believe having copies "casts doubt on inerrancy" of the originals, you totally missed my point. My point was, we don't actually *have* the "inerrant" autographs, so to make any assertions about them (other than that perhaps we have reason to believe they correspond closely to the mss. we possess, with which I agree) *serves no practical purpose* since it pretends to be a scientific theory (see my comment about the history of this term below), but cannot in any objective way be verified. The real issue is are the mss. basically reliable representatives of those original mss., and is their message true, and I have already said I believe they are, but I believe this can ultimately only be known and understood by faith in God and His people, not by scientific methods or unaided human reason.

I am specifically uncomfortable with the term "inerrant" and Fundamentalist literalist notions of exactly how the Bible is true. I also would dispute your interpretations and application of Psalm 12:6 and Proverbs 30:5. To read this as applying in a very literal word for word sense to all the narratives of Scripture would require one to believe that the entire Scriptures (not just quotations of God speaking through the prophets, for example) are basically automatic writing, dictated by God's Voice or an angel, in precisely the same way the Qu'ran claims to be. I do not believe this is a biblical way to understand the nature of God's inspiration of His people, in which the true humanity of the Scripture's human authors is in no way suppressed by God's inspiration of them. Men wrote what they did because they were "inspired by God," the NT informs us. They described many things from the human understandings of the time (for instance, in the descriptions of the "vault" of heaven, etc.) Examples of this have been given in comments above. Many aspects of Scripture's descriptions (if taken in the modern sense as "facts") would not correspond to what we now know to be factually true about the workings of the cosmos (but were true enough in terms of the subjective observations made from a human perspective in the language and understandings of the time), and such "inaccurate" descriptions of aspects of nature still convey to us a believing person's wonder at the beauty and grandeur of God's creation, for example. These do not cast doubt on the Scriptures veracity in terms of what they teach us about God--the writer's experiences with God and encounter with God are true--but not every detail, nor every word recorded in Scripture need be literally true in the modern scientific sense in order for a narrative to be considered inspired in the biblical sense.

The theory of the Bible's "inerrancy" is not trustworthy to me because demonstrably it was formed on the basis of the philosophy of scientific rationalism (study the history of its development by Hodge, Alexander and Warfield in the 1800s by Bible at Princeton Theological seminary), and I do not believe the Scriptures' truth can be discerned or approached merely on a scientific or rationalistic basis. My lack of faith is in the use of the scientific method or human reason, not in the real and abiding spiritual truth of the Scriptures. I believe it is the Holy Spirit's conviction in the heart of those who encounter the living Lord Jesus in His Church that makes clear what it is God is wanting us to understand through the Scriptures. I believe that God's truth is infallible. I do not believe the words of the Scripture need to be "inerrant" for the message of the OT Scriptures as understood by the Apostles and the Apostles message (i.e., in the NT) as understood by the Church throughout the ages to be wholly trustworthy and true and even infallible.

So to summarize I don't buy into inerrancy, not only because it serves no practical purpose because it cannot be proven, but also because I believe it subtly tempts us to place our trust in human reason and in human theories of how the Bible is to be interpreted and understood (and even to misinterpret the real intent of the narratives of Scripture), rather than in the Holy Spirit's witness through the Church throughout the ages.

"Well sheerahkahn, it would seem that you have adeptly demonstrated the inerrancy of scripture with your illustration. Well done."

Huh...so...you saw what I did...to be honest...well...I'll confess I'm surprised that you picked up on it as I expected either Karen, or Bill to see what I did, but not you.

Anyway...I'm not against inerrancy, I'm just against inerrancy buttressing the Literalist's insane idea that everything is to be taken literally...at face value without any consideration for context, history, or the people who the author was writing too.

As I said, I'm not against inerrancy, I'm just very careful in how I use the word inerrant around Literalists.

"...not every detail, nor every word recorded in Scripture need be literally true in the modern scientific sense in order for a narrative to be considered inspired in the biblical sense."

It's funny how we can accept something to be "...literally true in the modern scientific sense..." with far less evidence than we accept the Bible to be "inerrant". The same Evangelicals who have brought us the 'Evangelical Climate Initiative', claiming that the science of global warming is closed and cannot be further debated would also tend to fall in the 'inspired but not inerrant' camp. It might prove an interesting blog post to research where the inspired vs. inerrant debate began and why.

Good Grief!

Scripture that is "inspired but not inerrant" is worthless!

How can you believe in Jesus if the scriptures that tell you about Jesus are not inerrant?

All you have is the spirit of this age in which you yourself are the arbiter of all truth. Now you can stand in judgment of the Bible, but the Bible cannot stand in judgment of you.

Thank you for standing for Truth Dave. Who else stands for the inerrancy of Scripture? Speak out!
In the battle, we do not run but stand firm on His unshifting unchanging inerrant word. To cast doubt on it, casts doubt on the character of God. I applaud your statement "Now you can stand in judgement of the Bible, but the Bible cannot stand in judgment of you." Indeed it is the spirit of the age that causes one to laugh and scoff at the truth of inerrancy.

I believe in Jesus because I felt His hand.

The same scriptures that tell us about Christ were also used to justify slavery and other evils by those who considered the Bible inerrant. Today, we find an inerrant Bible used to deny health care to children in poverty because all taxation is theft, to justify occupations of other nations because we are bound to Israel, and to execute people (many innocent) because that's the way they did it 2000 years ago.

I truly do feel sorry for those whose only reason for believing in Christ is because of the Bible. The Bible is inspired by God but written by men. To place Paul's words on the same level as the words of Christ is, at least to me, blasphemy and total disrespect of the God who was sent from heaven to save us.

Only one thought at this point:

I hope we all question our doubts as much as we question our faith.

Dave, you equate "inerrancy" with Divine inspiration and Truth. I do not. I equate "inerrancy" (as is manifest if you research the history of the term) with a modern scientific, rationalist definition of "truth." This latter theory, I do not accept. I respect the intentions of those who think that one must accept this theory in order to uphold the "Truth" of the Scriptures. I don't believe it is necessary. What IS necessary, as I have said before, is the ongoing inspiration and witness of the Holy Spirit in His Church.

In fact, my concern is that we are subtly enticed by "inerrancy" to trust someone's rationalistic and scientific theory of how to understand the Scriptures, rather than the very direct and clear promise of Christ Himself, recorded in the Gospels. Since I trust the word of Christ that the Church He founded on the Apostles would withstand the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18), all I have to do is look for that Church which is in continuity with the Apostolic teaching, and has been throughout the ages, to know what the Spirit is saying through the Scriptures to us today (a message which has been unchanged in 2000 years). That, plus a little teachability and humility of heart and, above all, a willingness to do the will of God (John 7:16-17), are the real issues, as I understand it, of how one learns to understand truth of God in the Scriptures.

Sorry that I haven't commented but I've been away at the wedding of one of my adult children in the UK and am now rather jet-lagged — having returned 16 hours ago. Interesting discussion(s).

"How can you believe in Jesus if the scriptures that tell you about Jesus are not inerrant?"
... the answer to it is no, you don't need the bible to believe in Y'shua.

The bible certainly didn't bring me to faith/belief in Y'shua, but rather people did...a whole bunch of smelly, foul mouth, inconsistent nincompoops who couldn't articulate a cogent argument for or against the veracity of the bible without spouting something crazy/idiotic, or just plain wrong.

And yet, through them Y'shua got to me.

And no bible.

Not even a scriptural verse.

Just good old fashion emprical observation, and some questions like, "Dude, how are you keeping yourself stable when your dad has died, and your mom is a flaming wreck?"

And the answer, "I really don't know, I just hope that God keeps his hold on me because I think he's the one who is getting me through all this." And the interesting thing in all this is that is the refrain pretty much all those people I asked used...I hope that God keeps his hold on me.

So, I got interested in G-d...and note...not the bible, but G-d.

So here it is in black and white as to me coming to faith: G-d first, Y'shua second, bible last. Because I had this ravishing encounter with G-d, and then the equation hit when I was told G-d=Y'shua.

I asked that question because I knew a forehand that it would upend worldviews, and most people...well, most people just don't want their worldview upended like that when they've invested so much effort in the construction of their particular world view.

Karen - when the Bible says Scripture is inspired, it also says it is profitable. The doctrine of inerrancy, despite your understanding, has to do with the scriptures being correct in what they say. It is hard to see how they can be profitable for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, etc. if they are not correct in what they say.

If you don't believe inerrancy you don't know if Christ did, in fact, say anything remotely like Matthew 16:18. Without inerrancy that portion of scripture might be just plain wrong. Without inerrancy you don't know what Jesus said or if what he said was correct or incorrect. Without inerrancy you cannot find a church in continuity with the Apostle's teaching because you don't know what the apostle's teaching was, much less whether it was errant or true.

You are left with how you feel about any given teaching. "This feels right to me - it must be true" is an inadequate foundation. The fact is there are things in the scriptures that are hard to understand that "people who are untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures." 2Peter 3:16.

The fact that people misunderstand, misapply or misuse scripture has nothing to do with whether the scripture is true. "Indeed, let God be true and every man a liar." Romans 3:4.

Dave, I believe what we have here is a failure to communicate! I'll give it one more try.

I don't believe the truth and reliability of Scriptures (which I do trust) are something that can be attributed in a purely rationalistic sense to the "inerrancy" of the words (i.e., the letter) of the Scriptures, but is to be found at the level of the *full meaning* of the Scriptures (which we know to have been revealed, corroborated in the testimony of the Scriptures themselves, only in the Person of the God-Man Jesus Christ, and Who, in a living way, indwells the Church He founded). It is a revelation that is of a living, spiritual and personal nature, not of an objective, empirical nature in the classic scientific sense. In other words, it is not a "thing" we can put under a microscope outside of ourselves and rationally comprehend and explain in this manner (as we can aspects of God's Creation in nature, for instance).

You put trust in the documented witness of the written words of the Scriptures, and I recognize as necessary and implicit to our mutual faith in the Scriptures a faith in an even more foundational sense in the *Church* indwelt by Christ's Holy Spirit, which gave birth to and witnessed to those same Scriptures. I believe the Scriptures (and I only come to understand them fully) because of the way their truth in its fullness (the very life of Christ) has been and continues to be embodied in a very real and living way throughout the centuries in the lives of its members--most fully in those recognized as Saints (see 2 Cor. 3:3). I believe both the words of Christ and the Apostles themselves (see for instance John 5:39-40 and 1 Corinthians 2) attest to the necessity of the ongoing power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit and of Christ's Presence (post-Pentecost, within His Church) as being the more foundational and prior necessary elements for knowing and trusting God and His will. The written testimony or even our faith in the "inerrancy" of the Scriptures will never get us there on its own. This is attested to in the Scriptures themselves, and as I stated before, I believe it is our Christian forebearers' recognition of this that led them in the apostolic Creeds to make the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" an object of true orthodox Christian faith (and not the written words, or the "letter," of the Scriptures).

This is not to say there are not some very reasonable, and even rational, data that give meaningful testimony to the truth and reliability (and even the Divine origin) of the written Scriptures. I'm a big fan, for instance, of the work of Lee Strobel in his "The Case for . . . " series.

Even so, I have found that ultimately the truth and full meaning of the Scriptures cannot be found through a scientific human analysis of the letter of its words (though I believe it does verify itself at the level of our personal and spiritual experience through the activity of the conviction of the Holy Spirit within our hearts through personal trust in the truth of its full meaning--that is, in the living Person of Jesus Christ as He continues to be fully present by His Spirit as He promised in His Church. To clarify, that is in His *whole* Church--not in one bishop, or in an "official" Council of bishops (in and of itself), or one member (all of which can err), but rather in the ongoing testimony to the fullness of Christ found in the whole Church (which I understand as the Eastern Orthodox Church)--in her living consensus of dogma and faith and especially clearly seen in those understood to be (through their contemporaries' personal experience of them) her holiest members.

That's all I've got, Dave. Whatever you do with that, I bid you peace!

Karen -

Peace to you as well.
Your argument is beautiful and I'm sure your heart is beautiful as well.

But your definition of "inerrant" (which I believe is the topic that is being discussed) is not the historical theological definition.

I would say that most of the time through the past 2000 years much of "Christendom" (a mixed multitude) has been way off track regarding adherence to the Scriptures - which makes sorting out its witness to the truth of Scripture something of a challenge.

Besides that, Jesus' approach (attested in the gospels) seems to be quite different. He appeals to the scripture as authoritative.

He certainly criticizes those who claim to hold to the letter of the law, but who don't have a heart for God. But he doesn't criticize them for their trust that the "scriptures cannot be broken." Rather he affirms that view and says that they should recognize him because he is the fulfillment of those scriptures. (e.g., John 5:39, 46-47; Luke 24:44-47). He puts the truth of the scriptures as the basic assumption - then tests peoples' actions by their conformity to scripture. Not the other way around.

I'll stand with Jesus - I believe the scriptures are inerrant. And I'm glad to find people who are trying to live in accord with the truth as it has been revealed. But whether anyone obeys or not, the scripture is true.

From Wikipedia:

"Some literalist or conservative Christians teach that the Bible is without error in every way in all matters: chronology, history, biology, sociology, psychology, politics, physics, math, art, and so on.[12] Other Christians believe that the Scriptures are always right (do not err) only in fulfilling their primary purpose: revealing God, God's vision, God's purposes, and God's good news to humanity.[13]"

Dave, I checked out the Wikipedia definition of inerrancy. I can say I might be considered an inerrantist in the latter sense of the above quote.

I don't disagree that as regards to obedience to the Scriptures often those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ (and, this, true throughout the ages and even in local churches described in the NT) don't to a very good job of adhering to the way of Christ. We are a sinful people in need of repentance. Thank God for the gifts of confession and forgiveness. Not only the written words of the Scriptures, but also their truth as impressed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit and demonstrated in the lives of the Saints calls us continually back to a life of repentance.

More than anything else, what I sometimes react to in the mindset of some within my former conservative Evangelical circles, is what I perceive as a tacitly-held assumption that "inerrancy" somehow means the individual and the written word of the Scriptures alone somehow may form an infallible source of doctrine and practice. Because of the deceitfulness of the human heart and the necessarily communal and sacramental nature of genuine Christian faith and practice, I don't believe this is true. Christ promised to lead into all the fullness of the truth by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost His disciples and those they received into their communion by faith and baptism, commissioned to lead and teach others, and who then continued in that same faith and practice. We cannot know the fullness of the meaning of Scripture apart from being united with this Church and submitting to what the Holy Spirit has revealed over the centuries to be truly consistent faith and practice with the Scriptures. What has been revealed as the fulness of life in Christ is seen most clearly in the heroes of our faith down through the ages.

It has been my experience since my reception into the Eastern Orthodox communion (where this basic understanding I am describing has always prevailed since the earliest centuries of the Church's history), that the Scriptures have opened up to me with a greater coherence and depth than ever before. I have never been more aware of either of the unspeakable breadth and depth of the Lord's mercy and grace or of my own limitations and sinfulness and need of others.

Thanks for your kind words and for the dialogue.

Just for the record here is the link to the damned document that this discussion hovers around.

The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html

and this is also the document that convinced me that I now need qualify the word "inerrant" whenever it comes up because though the authors of the bible may not have known the full truth (history is served 20/20), they did get things wrong...and to deny that is to deny the truth that the story that they wrote about and for us to learn form.
This document also deny's the authors of the bible their humanity, their fallibility, their ability to fail, and yet find rapprochement with G-d; and this document also seeks to squelch by either omission of inquest, or commission of active suppression the discovery of truth that is found within the scriptures.

Anyway, I figured if you guys are going to talk about inerrancy you might want to check out the document itself instead of Wikipedia which is a nice place to start an investigation, but not a good one to cite as proof.

Sheer, now, how do you really feel about that document? :-)

Thanks for the link. I tend to start with Wikipedia because it is a broad summary, but yes, that has it's limitations, too. Your link tells us what Puritan-leaning Reformed in Chicago think inerrancy means and implies. Do you know what the date of that document is? Here's another historical overview of the development of our contemporary doctrine of the Scripture's inerrancy:

http://jamespaulgaard.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/biblical-inerrancy-history-analysis/

Two paragraphs stand out as pertinent to my concerns and previous comments. Gaard writes:

'The Scriptures have always been important to Christianity, but the manner in which they were important has changed over time. Their importance to the Early Church Fathers is without a doubt, but since there were heresies, such as Gnosticism and Marcionism that used the Christian Scriptures to further their own cause, an additional source of authority, inaccessible to the heretics, had to be used as a defence against the heresies. Thus the doctrine of apostolic succession was developed by Irenaeus and used to combat the heresy of Gnosticism.[1] As a result of the authority vested in the church through the doctrine of apostolic succession, the tradition of the church became equally as authoritative as the authority of the Scriptures. During the Reformation, the Protestants denied the authority of the church and its tradition and placed sole authority for determining church doctrine on the Scriptures, thus the phrase sola Scriptura from Martin Luther. However, in time, even the authority of the Scriptures was challenged. . . .

'. . . The challenges to Biblical authority and the denials of supernatural events such as Creation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Ascension led to a reaction by more conservative factions within Christianity. In America, in the nineteenth century, Presbyterians such as Charles Hodge, his son A. A. Hodge, Francis L. Patton and Benjamin B. Warfield, along with Baptists such as John A. Broadus and Asahel Kendrick, responded with thorough defences of traditional Christianity based upon the inerrancy of the Scriptures. In 1895, the Niagara Bible Conference developed its famous “five points of fundamentalism.” These five points were considered, by the Conference, to be essential elements of Christianity. There were the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, his Atonement for human sins, his physical Resurrection, his imminent return to earth, and the inerrancy of Scripture. These five points became the basis for what came to be known as Fundamentalism, or fundamentalist Christianity.[10]'

Based on what I have read in this article, I would have to amend my earlier comments and place my self in much greater overall agreement and sympathy with the "inerrancy" camp.

From an Eastern Orthodox perspective, I would have to qualify what Gaard says in that first excerpted paragraph by saying that what we believe is that there is only one apostolic Christian Tradition, all of which Christians are obligated to keep, and of which the Scriptures are the written portion. Here I would reference 2 Thess. 2:14-15 where the Apostle Paul exhorts the congregation to keep both the oral and written apostolic traditions handed down within the practices of the Church. We should realize that the NT Church was able to keep the requirements of the gospel intact long before the full NT existed as such. And, in fact, we recognize that this is the very reality that enabled them to recognize the written Scriptures as inspired of the Holy Spirit (both because they knew their sources to be Apostolic, and also because their message was in harmony with the preaching and exposition of the gospel they had received through the liturgy and practices of the apostically-founded local churches (i.e., the "Kerygma"). Orthodox do not subscribe to a two-source Tradition where oral tradition in the Church can trump or change the Scriptures. It understands one source of Tradition, the Holy Spirit within His Church, where Church dogma, faith and practice are understood simply as "Scripture, rightly interpreted."

It should be noted here that there are significant differences between the Eastern Orthodox tradition of biblical interpretation and Roman Catholic, especially as Roman Catholic interpretive tradition developed with the advent of Scholasticism, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment philosophies. In many ways, Reformation Protestant and post-Schism (AD 1054) Roman Catholic are just two sides of the same Scholastic-inflenced interpretive coin. Eastern Orthodox theology is quite distinct from these and reflects an earlier period in Church history much closer in culture and mindset to the NT Church (and identical in language, i.e., primarily Greek and Aramaic).

Explaining Hermeneutics:
A Commentary on The Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
Articles of Affirmation and Denial

http://normangeisler.net/Articles/Bible/Hermeneutics/ExplainingHermeuticsCommentaryOnCSBH.htm

"A Commentary on The Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
Articles of Affirmation and Denial"

N,
Yep, those were the same conclusions I came too, and those conclusions are what damned that document by it's morbid inflexibility of inquest, and shallowness to allow investigation to scriptural content of meaning and context.

In short, the authors of Chicago accord should be ashamed of themselves.

"All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work"

Karen,
That is some good reading...and I do have sympathies for inerrancy, but the quote I pulled from his document, which is also from the bible, is something we should look at.

Good for teaching.
Good for rebuking.
Good for correcting.
Good for Training in righteousness.
Good for equipping us to work with G-d in this world.

Okay, but no where in that does it mention, "AND, the scriptures are without error."

Which brings me to the aforementioned issues of Ezekiel...Ezekiel tried to fit his square interpretation of the end of Tyre into the Triangle slot that G-d said would happen.
That is error.
That is error on Ezekiel s part, but the Literalist's say, "Nope, Ezekiel got it right because the use of "they" was not limited to the space/time that Ezekiel was in, and thus incorporated future events that hadn't occurred. In other words, he was seeing a timeline of Tyre."
But when pressed about chapter 29...oh well, nothing but deafening silence, or more nonsense that begs the sanity of their thinking.

Or, Genesis...look, I could go on, but the fact of the matter is that the authors of the books of the bible were working with their perceptions, their biases, their world-view, and the beauty of the book, the beauty of the bible in it's entirety is that G-d uses all that, ALL OF IT to pull together a concise biography of his relationship with mankind in toto. Hence the reason why the scriptures are good for teaching, rebuking, training, etc...because it's all there for us to learn from...some to imitate, and some to avoid like the plague.

But those who hold dear with "inerrancy" have an agenda that protects their weak faith, their weak thinking, their inability to allow G-d to be G-d by shoving G-d, the things written in the bible, and anything the Spirit does into a tiny little box called "Inerrancy."

And imo, the purpose of that box is two-fold:

1) To rationalize their vapid, inexcusable ignorance by rote obedience to a single subject of inerrancy when the truth of the matter is that the Universe is wide open to discovery of truths only hinted at in the bible. But we can't get to there because...hey, no questions allowed. No discovery allowed. No rational exploration allowed. Nada, now sit there, and do as you are told.

2) To protect their positions of "biblical authority" which, if inerrancy weren't enforced through mandated suppression of inquest and investigation by rigid denial of any form of inquiry into "what did the author intend/mean", would lead to a formation of questions beginning with the entire structure of the operational institutions we now call "The Church." Be they Roman Catholic, or any of the Protestant denominations, or non-denominations.

And this is all done by rigid adherence to "inerrancy."

I cannot be party to that, but if this becomes a point of "are you with us, or against us" I'll be the first to stand up, say, "I'm with G-d, and to all of you I say 'good luck and good bye!'"

I've been out in the wilderness with G-d...yeah it sucks, but better a hard life out in the wilderness with G-d than a simple life of a mindless drone in a heavily populated pew listening to whatever splashes on the floor from the toothless maw of "inerrancy."

Sheer, you make a good argument with your Ezekiel example, and it would perhaps be safe to say because I, too, believe profoundly in the God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, I also believe that the Scripture inerrantly/infallibly records exactly what God wants to be recorded there (including the human gaffs of His people). I guess a corollary to God being able to work through a text that is not inerrant in a modern hyper-literalist scientific and rationalist sense (not necessarily what N is advocating perhaps?), is to note that He has always also worked through manifestly imperfect people (including the Apostles), and we have granted that He has kept them without error in what they have passed on to us within the NT, and EO would add in the Church as liturgy and essential practice in keeping with the true Kerygma, all of which is also attested to in the NT Scriptures as well (though not necessarily noticed as such by Protestants, which begs the question of interpretation and the fact that Scripture is manifestly NOT completely self-interpreting and perspicuous, which is perhaps a subject for another post).

To believe that real spiritual authority rests in a more foundational sense than even the authority of the Scriptures (which is not thereby denied) in "the Holy Spirit within the Church" is not to confess that its individual members and even presbyters and bishops, (and yes, even its "Saints") are not capable of error, but simply to confess that despite this, the fullness of gospel truth and a right understanding and application of the Scriptures, by the grace of the Holy Spirit and according to Christ's promise, has always been preserved within her fold.

This is also not to say that there is not always also a process of discernment involving the whole Church (involving both prayerful heart and Scripture-searching) necessary to figure out what that deposit of truth and right practice really is. I am stating that while also a responsibility of the individual Christian, it is necessarily a communal process to arrive at that correct discernment. From an Eastern Orthodox perspective, the 7 "Ecumenical Councils" accepted in her communion have passed that test of discernment, while the "Robber Council of Ephesus" in 449 AD and what is known in the Roman Catholic Church as the "Ecumenical Council of Florence" of 1439, would be examples of supposedly "Ecumenical" Councils that did not pass that test of true orthodoxy within the Orthodox Church, which still considers the Roman Catholic Church to be in schism and heresy (which explains why Bp. Mark of Ephesus is held to be a Saint in the Orthodox Church). That would also make all Protestants, by Orthodox definition, members of schismatic groups from a schismatic group, but this is intended merely as an objectively honest description and not pejorative of any such Christian's intentions, nor as a limitation of God's capacity to save such Christians despite what may be some misunderstandings about Him and the nature of His Church.

Like you, Sheer, I am more concerned about an idolatrous sort of use this term to allow folks to then employ their interpretation or application of the Scriptures as a sort of "paper Pope" they can use to invalidate or discredit those who differ with them in its interpretation or application or as an excuse for not dealing in an intellectually honest, penetrating and genuinely faithful way with the witness of our forebearers in the faith as to what constitutes right faith and practice and correct interpretation of the Scriptures.

As I've mentioned on other threads, this raises what I see as the "elephant in the room" of the inadequacy of the Reformed doctrine of "Sola Scriptura," which in my experience far too easily for most Evangelicals and Fundamentalist-leaning Christians seems to devolve into "SolO Scriptura," i.e., some version of "just me (or my group) and my Bible" makes for a virtually infallible source of faith and doctrine. The resulting cacophony of voices claiming to proclaim "correct doctrine" from the Scriptures presents a real and observable obstacle to a truly meaningful (i.e., full doctrinal and sacramental) Christian unity as well as obscuring and confusing the issue of what constitutes the proper interpretive matrix for Scripture handed on by the Apostles within the Church. I believe this is a felt problem for every sincere and pious modern Christian today, for all who genuinely long to be faithful to Christ and His word in the Scriptures. That obviously describes many outside the Eastern Orthodox fold.

Those who would deny that this presents an obstacle to a fully meaningful unity among those claiming to follow Christ, I believe have (perhaps unwittingly) merely succumbed (at least in a relative way) to the relativistic and nominalistic understandings of "truth" that characterize our age.

(I find it humorous that my captcha code reads: sllymen together.!)

"...this raises what I see as the "elephant in the room" of the inadequacy of the Reformed doctrine of "Sola Scriptura," which in my experience far too easily for most Evangelicals and Fundamentalist-leaning Christians seems to devolve into "SolO Scriptura," i.e., some version of "just me (or my group) and my Bible" makes for a virtually infallible source of faith and doctrine. The resulting cacophony of voices claiming to proclaim "correct doctrine" from the Scriptures presents a real and observable obstacle to a truly meaningful (i.e., full doctrinal and sacramental) Christian unity as well as obscuring and confusing the issue of what constitutes the proper interpretive matrix for Scripture handed on by the Apostles within the Church."

I wish I was as articulate as you...I saw this, and it was as if G-d was taking the highlighter and saying to me, "You were looking for that answer, and here it is."

Solo scriptura, the genius of that statement echoes a very damning account of what American Christianity has devolved too, and the paper pope...wow...as I said, I wish I was as articulate, but what you wrote is what I've been thinking about with regards to where have we gone wrong as a church...less of course the concise articulation you've employed of which I am admirably envious.

Thank you Karen.

Sheer, you're welcome, but if you have been genuinely helped, the glory, as always, belongs completely to God! I'm just passing on what I've received.

"Paper Pope" is not original to me, and there is what is becoming somewhat of a well-beaten path these days from various other quarters of Christendom into the Eastern Orthodox Church, including many priests and pastors of various denominations, whose much greater breadth and depth of study of Scripture, theological development, and Church history have benefitted me greatly.

Absolutely nothing I share here is original with me. I have also learned a great deal by listening in to these conversations, and seeking to understand the concerns and views of all who comment here. I respect and appreciate them all, even if I have to disagree with some of them. Their challenges help me to hone my own thinking and articulation of what I have discovered. And, obviously, I'm still learning.

Sheerakahn,

I am not comfortable or happy with your reference to the Chicago Statement as that "damned document" and find it in violation of the terms of use found at:

http://www.christianitytoday.org/help/permissionsandprivacy/termsofuse.html

However, I am leaving it up to give you the benefit of expressing your opinion. In the future, please choose your words carefully and in agreement with these terms of use. Referring to the document which some CT writers and board members (such as J.I. Packer) contributed to as "damnable" is in my opinion harsh and in very poor taste.

Community Manager (BJ)

God Word is not errant only mans interpertation. Therefore there will always be disagreement. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, love God and love others as yourself. Become a true Disciple of Jesus and you won't go wrong, stay connected to him as in John, ask for the Holy Spirit to guide you. Read your Word and HE will reveal the truth.

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