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Originally posted by gkbarnes:
Have to disagree with you there.

What you say on the first 5 books of the Bible, sounds like the JepD theory. See here for reasons why it is wrong (in my opinion).

The early Church Farthers didn't doubt that the New Testenment was written by whoever (either Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Paul and Jude).

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I didn't say that I agreed with everything I posted... Personally I doubt the theory of Q, and like the idea that Luke worked from Matthew and Mark, but that's a minority view, mainly pushed in the UK by Michael Goulder. I specifically said I was posting the mainstream academic view.

I deliberately didn't put the full JEPD theory either, because that is under attack in academia as well, but not by those who think that the Pentateuch was written by Moses; rather by those who criticise the whole idea of analysing the books into tiny pieces. The idea of multiple sources is still the mainstream, AIUI.

The early fathers did indeed doubt the authorship of books like Revelation and (especially) 2 Peter, that's why they were not used in some churches, and don't appear on some of the lists of books of the Bible until quite close to the canon being decided.

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Originally posted by Mike Truman:
I didn't say that I agreed with everything I posted...

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You say that you can't find an answer to the question 'Why did God use the Hebrews to kill a bunch of Canaanites?'.

Then you say 'I am saying that there are also reasonable answers to support innerancy'.

You admit to a gap in your reasoning, a point which you just can't answer. Then you insist your argument is reasonable!

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I am SICK (repeat SICK) of your inability to debate my posts properly bonzo!

Your above quote again misrepresents what I was 'actually' saying. It is a straw man argument. STOP IT!

I did not say that I could not answer the question of why God killed the Canaanites through the Hebrew people, rather I said that I could not answer the question "completely". (Do you see the diference?)

There is no "gap" in logic or reason regarding what I said. I am merely admitting what is true for everyone else here: namely, that we are not omniscient.

But not being able to answer every aspect of a given question does not imply that one must be irrational.

Whether you agree with the answers I have given regarding God and the 'genocide' in the book of Joshua or not, at least you should agree that I have given reasoned and logical answers that makes sense. I'm not saying that there aren't other, equally logical answers to the question. Rather I'm saying that an 'innerrantist' can believe in innerrancy and live a valid and justified epistemology.

You claim that 'errantists' can merely point to the 'circular reasoning' (employed by many inerrantists) as proof that inerrantists argue in an unreasoned manner.

Well, despite the fact that I have 'already' answered that on a previous post, here goes:
Circular reasoning cannot be used to identify of confirm a "suspected" or "hypothesized" truth claim. But circular reasoning CAN validly represent a "known" truth claim.
In other words, I can't use circular reasoning to sway you to believe in inerrancy, but I can use it validly to confirm its truth for me. It is not illogical.

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By the way, can you prove that killing, in and of itself, is evil? It is the intent in the heart that turns 'killing' into 'murder'.

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Inerrancy has not been clearly defined on this thread. Most posters appear to be making their own assumptions about it. It is another of those words that mean different things to different people. Choose your own connotations to attach to it to support your personal prejudices against those people whom you perceive to be at the opposite extreme from you. Those of us that gravitate towards the centre will chat amongst ourselves.

A couple of points that are regularly mentioned on the Ship, but appear to be persistently ignored by those with an axe to grind:

• The most common definition of inerrancy would appear to be the belief that the Scriptures in their original text (which of course we do not have available to us) were without error. This view of inerrancy appears to be subscribed to by a majority of Evangelicals.
  
• Beliefs based on other definitions of inerrancy are held by smaller groupings of Evangelicals. One of the more exotic relates to the supposedly miraculous nature of the text of the Authorised Version, and is frequently held by Fundamentalists.
  
• Fundamendalist does not equate to Evangelical. Fundamentalists compose a minority subset of Evangelicals. (Think Fiats and cars.)
  
• Inerrancy is not a required belief of Evangelicalism. A substantial minority of Evangelicals (self included) do not hold to any variation of inerrant belief. You will observe several others aboard the Ship.
  
• Just because you used to believe something, and now you hate it with a vengance, does not automatically make it right to despise it, or those who still believe it.
  
• Liberals/Anglo-Catholics are not automatically heretics bound for the furnaces of Hell. They are generally people who are doing their utmost to engage with the reality of God, in spirit and in truth. If they are different from you, why not celebrate the fact?

I attempted to harmonize an inerrant concept of the Bible for many years (10+). The deeper I dove into the scriptures, the more difficult I found it was to make any sense of it. I don't have a problem with the historical discrepancies, such as, did Judus hang himself or did he fall and spill his guts? What disturbed me was the contradictions and incomprehensibility of some of the key concepts as I understood them at the time. Some of these are:
1. If we are predestined, how can we be held responsible for our actions?
2. How did Jesus save us?
3. Harmonization of the wrath of God and love.
4. Claims that Christians have peace and stop sinning.
5. That an intervening type of God allows evil.
6. That God answers all our prayers if we have the faith of a mustard seed.
7. Expectations for us to achieve perfection.
8. The apparent non-existence of the intervening kind of God.
9. And so on...

There's no need to discuss these topics here. There are other threads for that. Suffice to say, I think that some of these concepts are irreconcilable without driving a person's brain towards insanity. My brain felt thoroughly pickled while trying to maintain these paradoxes.

Whatever you do, please don't say that God intended the Israelites to go and kill the Mama's and the babies. If you are going to stick to inerrancy, say that you don't understand it and that it doesn't make sense. Say that something got messed up in the translation. Say that there is some key information left out. But don't say it's good for God to command people to wipe out entire nations including women, children and animals because they aren't good enough or because they needed to be killed to make way for Jesus.

If you are going to stick to the idea that God intended genocide, then admit that God is an imperfect lover. It's easy to bring up the original sin issue, but it doesn't solve anything. If we are sinful from birth, unable to avoid evil, how can God judge us for that? How can we be judged for something beyond our control? That would be like punishing a child for not being able to do calculus. That God is so obsessed about sin and judgment that his love is obliterated. It's possible that God is like that, but I don't trust him to take care of me, my wife or my kids.

The Bible is a collection of many books of varied levels of (in?)errancy. Don't force people to throw out the whole book for the sake of keeping one or two of the nastiest passages.

If I have misrepresented your arguments then I unresevedly apologise. Perhaps I should explain:

You say.

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I did not say that I could not answer the question of why God killed the Canaanites through the Hebrew people, rather I said that I could not answer the question "completely". (Do you see the diference?)

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I do see the difference. The same difference exists in the following statement.

I was not able to jump over the river.
I was not able to jump over the river completely.

To say that in both sentences the person was not able to jump over the river, is correct.

You have used some rational argument to arrive at the point you have reached but you now face an impass, a gap in logical reason which you cannot resolve. You put this down to not being able to fully understand the mind of God (maybe God somehow did it out of love, in God's way of thinking which we can't hope to understand) and say you need faith to bridge the gap.

But you are missing the obvious! What if your argument is wrong???

'Errantists' have conducted the same exercise of logic and not reached an impass.

I will continue to call genocide 'genocide', because that's what it is, no matter whether it's done by a creator or not.

If you say that it's God's right to do it, I will still call it genocide.

The fact is that even if you could have known the mind of God when (you say) he insighted these dreadful acts of genocide, it is impossible that any God could do this without being cruel. There isn't another explanation.

If God did it then God was cruel.

First off, thank-you for your apology bonzo (as far as I am concerned, all is forgiven. I hope you will forgive my impatience in the last post).

by freehand:

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Whatever you do, please don't say that God intended the Israelites to go and kill the Mama's and the babies. If you are going to stick to inerrancy, say that you don't understand it and that it doesn't make sense. Say that something got messed up in the translation. Say that there is some key information left out. But don't say it's good for God to command people to wipe out entire nations including women, children and animals because they aren't good enough or because they needed to be killed to make way for Jesus.

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Freehand, I know where you're coming from. It's not like the slaughter of women and children in Joshua is some kind of cold, historical fact to me. I wish to God that it didn't ever happen; just like I wish to God that the Holocaust and Sept.11 never happened. Of course, the diference here is that the 'genocide' in Joshua is attributed to God's will.

So what do I do with it? Well, I think that I have shown that to beleive that God enacted 'divine punishment' upon the Canaanite tribes is reasonable and justified for anyone who would believe it. But I still have to live this 'belief' out, right? Sure, it may protect my innerancy-doctrine, but what does it do to my relationship with GOd? Can I trust Him, who kills women and children?

These are real questions that I have had to work through. But I think that it would be wrong for me to extract one quality of God (i.e. love, or compassion) at the expense of the other qualities of God.

The same scriptures that say that "GOd is love" also say that "God is a consuming fire".

Now I believe that God is perfect. I also believe that God gave men free moral choice and reason. HUmans rebelled against the perfect God and I believe that humanity is responsible for humanities suferrings.

I gave the analogy before that goes like this:

Bob owes you ten dollars. If you demand that ten dollars back, you are justified to do so because it is Bob who owes you. But if you choose to forgive Bob's debt instead, then you are also justified.

I'm not trying to get 'preachy' here, but I want to show that to believe in a God of love, doesn't mean you have to 'sacrifice' God's justice. He is both love and justice.-That's what makes Him perfect.

Freehand/bonzo, if you guys are struggling with a God who claims to be love and yet does things that can seem so cold sometimes, I recommned that you read Habukkuk. He is known as the "doubting prophet". He questions God's goodness. Also I highly recommend Psalm 73. It is a beautiful description of a believer who struggles with God's love and justice.
Also, I encourage you to look to Jesus' death in the gospels. In Jesus, we see a God who (because of His holiness and perfection must set right the wrongs we have made) but He doesn't stay in His 'ivory tower', rather He comes down to suffer "for" us.

let me know what you think......

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Freehand, I know where you're coming from. It's not like the slaughter of women and children in Joshua is some kind of cold, historical fact to me. I wish to God that it didn't ever happen.

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Well, I think that I have shown that to believe that God enacted 'divine punishment' upon the Canaanite tribes is reasonable and justified for anyone who would believe it.

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Your conclusions are based upon the presupposition that the Bible is inerrant. If that assumption results in something ridiculous (God sanctioned baby killing), then perhaps it is time to revisit those assumptions.

What would happen if the Bible is not perfect? Would the world fall apart? Would God be offended? Would we go to hell? I recommend that you pursue the opposite side of the argument. God can take the heat. God is big enough to bear the scrutiny. He won't be intimidated or offended. If God corresponds to the truth, then the truth will be shown wherever we search honestly. The arms of Grace can reach us all, even agnostics like me. Thank God I'm agnostic!

Take care and have fun,
God be with you (if He exists),

Ekalb, thanks for your personal sharing. It does help. May God be with you in your search to understand the love and justice of God. Meanwhile, I will be on my search for the possible existence of the God. I am glad that our paths have crossed.

Many thanks for your forgiveness.

I totally agree with Freehand's posts and I too will check out the passages you mentioned.

May I suggest that if Bob owes you ten dollars and you know that by demanding it back it will put him in dire financial need, that it is wrong to demand it back.

I would like to point out my real concern, the real reason why I find the position you have taken up such a problem.

It seems to me that over the centuries people have justified horrendous acts of violence, and cruelty, by using the argument that it was God's will. No, I'm not saying that you do this, but if your ideas prevail, it allows such people to get away with using those ideas as a legitimate explanation of their evil deeds.

Furthermore if your ideas prevail, and are generally understood by people to be the standard views of Christians, it allows people to justifiably call us a crackpot religion. It stands in the way of those people ever coming to God.

Now I'm not saying that just because ideas can be misused it makes those ideas wrong. What I am saying is that there are some very good reasons why you should want to accept that the Bible contains errors. There is much to be gained for the furtherance of the Kingdom, if the Bible is understood to contain truth, but not be inerrant.

Once, many years ago now, like Freehand, I held the view that the Bible was inerrant. I was the only one in my Biology class at school who spoke out against the theory of evolution. I'm afraid I wasn't a very good advert for Christ. I changed my views for the same reasons as Freehand changed his.

So where am I now? In a word: liberated. Free to get on with God's work. Free to understand God in whatever way I can. Free to believe in a God of love who never stops loving. Free to tell warmongers that they are wrong. etc.

Come on in. The water's lovely!

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Bob owes you ten dollars. If you demand that ten dollars back, you are justified to do so because it is Bob who owes you. But if you choose to forgive Bob's debt instead, then you are also justified.

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The most common definition of inerrancy would appear to be the belief that the Scriptures in their original text (which of course we do not have available to us) were without error. This view of inerrancy appears to be subscribed to by a majority of Evangelicals.

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Part of the problem with the way that God's justice is portrayed is that the punishments are out of all proportion to the crime.

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And that was my problem with the concept of hell as eternal punishment by God for finite sins. I lived in fear every day. Agnosticism was my salvation.

The only way eternal punishment can be justified is if people are born infinitely bad but that is problematic too. Why would a loving God punish something that people have no control over?

The Bible is quite vague on hell in that the concept of hell is buried within parables and symbolic visions. No need to pursue that tangent here unless we want to discuss the literalistic + inerrant view of scripture.

sorry guys. I've been rather busy these last few days and just now am able to respond.

I was just about to talk about something when I saw that jasonc has already touched on it.

I, myself, am appalled at the slaughters in the bible. Even though I think GOd is justified in them. It's a tension in my faith. But I don't think that I can 'overstate' the very real diference in 'quality' between God as 'Creator' and us as 'creation'. My emotions aside (not that they are unimportant), I cannot judge GOd as if He were a human. It would be wrong for a human to kill someone just because they have been wronged by them - WHY? because only GOd as "MAKER" has the unique perogative to "UN-MAKE" anything.

God isn't sinning when He slaughters people who have sinned against Him. If GOd did not punish them (which would violate His MANY promises to judge humanity) then God could be called 'unjustified' in His actions.
The old 'Well, GOd is love, right?' answer just is too shallow to fit reality. I suggest that if your definition of love is to allow the loved one to get away with wrongs just because you wouldn't want to 'upset' them, then maybe you should try to redefine love. I think love involves discipline and punishment. My parents disciplined and punished me when I was younger. Not because it 'felt right', but because their love for me (a true love) desired my "long-time" good over my "short-time" pain of punishment.
Love compels us to want the loved one to be the best they can be. In GOd's case, God wants us to be the morally best that we can be. If that means that He will cause us pain (in the short-term) for a long-term gain then I see His love all the more. (read 1Cor.13 again- "love delights in the truth...delights in righteouseness, but hates sin")
Now if your like me, you are wondering how a slaughter of a particular Canaanite tribe could discipline them? Well, I can't give an answer that fully satisfies that, but I do know that God does everything out of His desire to see good in His creation. The bible, on a side note, doesn't deny the apparant paradox between God's love and the apparantly 'ruthless' acts of God. (Job, Jeremiah, etc.) ANd again, He has the final say in who, how, and when humans die. God doesn't have to 'clear' things with us if He will do something. He does ask us to 'trust' HIm and His goodness though.- the theme of Habukukk and ps.73 for two recent examples.
For some (like me), this is enough. For others (whoever you are), the answer doesn't 'cut it'.

It is not like there is an easy answer to any of this, but I might say that I have 'weathered' the storms of doubts and problems that go along with being an inerrantist and I don't feel hindered or constrained by the doctrine at all. Rather, I feel very liberated by it. Sure, I can't "completely" answer all the 'hard passages' in scripture, but I see God's love in HIs 'gift' of an inerrant 'book'. I'm not naive enough to think that the bible is 'perfect' in its description of scientific matters or in every historical variable.- THat wasn't its purpose.
My view is that God inspired certain humans to write "revealed" knowledge regarding GOd or His will. I don't think GOd used "human typewriters". He didn't control every letter, instead He used the level of knowledge that the individual had, along with the individual personality to communicate inerrant truths.

Circularly reasoned as it is, inerrancy is far more faithful to the overall teaching on scripture/revealed knowledge within the bible. I'm glad that I know that the scriptures are God's truth (not 'this part' or 'that part' of it). I am guided by its completetly authoritative teachings and continually (and this may be the most important part) challenged and 'pierced' by it. The scriptures hit me on a very real level that I have never experienced elsewhere.

I can be accused of being closeminded, but I 'know' this to be true.

May God correct me if I am wrong.

I think your last post comes the closest we are going to get to your admitting that there is a logical gap in your argument.

Your premise that it is wrong for us to 'judge God' is IMO an illogical statement for reasons which I have outlined previously and to which you still have provided no conradicting response. Furthermore I fail to see how the people who chose which books should comprise the canon, could have excluded any texts, if they didn't 'judge God' in exactly the way you are saying men should not.

Do you consider the apocrypha to be inerrant?

Cruelty is cruelty because of the suffering it causes, not because of the nature of the perpetrator. If it can be shown that sufferring could be avioded, as is clearly the case in the passages from Joshua, then to inflict that suffering is cruel.

You say that 'inerrancy is far more faithful to the overall teaching on scripture/revealed knowledge within the bible.', but IMO the picture of a developing understanding of God, by man, leaps out of the pages of the Bible. As the theology emerges through the OT to the NT, the Bible becomes more consistent with the picture of God we know today because mankind's understanding of God has developed.

This has to be a more consistent picture because it doesn't encounter the problems that, you admit, inerrancy does.

I question your wisdom in weathering 'the storms of doubt and problems that go along with the problems of being an inerrantist'. I would, once again, invite you to ask yourself why you have started with the premise of inerrancy in the first place? What does it gain you? What will you lose if you choose a different premise?

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Circularly reasoned as it is, inerrancy is far more faithful to the overall teaching on scripture/revealed knowledge within the bible. I'm glad that I know that the scriptures are God's truth (not 'this part' or 'that part' of it). I am guided by its completely authoritative teachings and continually (and this may be the most important part) challenged and 'pierced' by it. The scriptures hit me on a very real level that I have never experienced elsewhere.

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Let's say the Bible is internally consistent in every respect (not that I think it is). It's not difficult to come up with hundreds of different internally consistent religious systems. Internal consistency does not at all guarantee that a system is correct. On what basis do you believe that the Bible is inerrant?

Is it because a bunch of guys got together in a room and argued about which books should be in the Bible? Some books barely made it in while other books barely slipped out. These many pieces of manuscript are thrown together in one binding and it is assumed that it is one book that is 100% inspired. Everything else is less than inspired. It just seems so unlikely to me that there aren't a few glitches with such a huge compendium of books written by so many people over such a long time, translated several times from ancient languages.

So, why do you believe that the Bible is inerrant? Is it an assumption? If the assumption results in some weird ideas, then perhaps it is time to revisit the assumption.

I'm not saying that you have to see it my way. I'm just suggesting that you get both sides of the story. You've given a lot of energy to the inerrant side of the issue. Why not look at the inspired-but-not-perfect side of the spectrum? Then, after giving both sides a fair shake, you can decide on the truth without being biased by presuppositions.

Like I said before, God won't wack you. He loves you and is happy for you to look into things. He's not afraid of questions. He's big enough to take it. It isn't doubting God to doubt the Bible (unless the Bible=God). When you search for the truth openly and honestly, you will find it. If God corresponds to the truth, then you will find Him. Look in new places and find Him smiling in places that you never expected. I just can't believe that God is uptight about everyone believing in the Bible word-for-word without error.

It's comforting (and disturbing) to know exactly that the Bible is perfect and that there won't be some weird thing that's going to mess stuff up. However, I don't think life is that simple. If you aren't ready for this approach, that's fine. You will get into it sooner or later (or not). Just keep on loving people and don't tell them that God likes to kill babies.

Have a good day,

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Originally posted by Freehand:
It's comforting (and disturbing) to know exactly that the Bible is perfect and that there won't be some weird thing that's going to mess stuff up. However, I don't think life is that simple. If you aren't ready for this approach, that's fine.

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I would think, in this day and age, that the more difficult thing would be to believe that there is actually such a thing as divine revelation.

Not that divine revelation would produce a Bible that is literally accurate in all its details, but that God would give, and miraculously preserve, a Bible that faithfully communicates what He wishes to communicate.

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Originally posted by Gauk:
To believe that, you have to answer to yourself why God would choose to make His message so obscure, ambiguous, and padded out with extraneous material.

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This isn't that hard. God always operates as though He doesn't exist. People are completely free to believe in Him or not.

There is nothing wrong with examining the evidence and drawing your own conclusions. It just seems reasonable to me to postulate the existence of a supernatural God who is able to make the Bible happen - by apparently natural means (except, of course, for the miracles, revelations, etc.).

As for the message being obscure, ambiguous, and padded out with extraneous material, I see this as a device which allows a very sophisticated and divine message to be imparted to, and by means of, a primitive, unsophisticated, and even wicked population.

To my mind the symbolic and obscure nature of the Bible is an absolutely brilliant device, enabling God to reach into a spiritually dark world, and pull it into the light.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
There is much to be gained for the furtherance of the Kingdom, if the Bible is understood to contain truth, but not be inerrant.

[/QB]

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Sorry to single you out Bonzo - I don't mean to in particular but it's just that the little segment above which I have brutally prised out of it's original context points towards a problem and a question I would direct to all those who would espouse an 'errantist' position:if the Bible is merely a book which 'contains truth', then who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not, and by what right? If you are arguing that it all comes down to individual conscience or something similar(which bits are truth and which are not), then to my mind
this is a recipe for anarchic relativism in interpreting scripture.

I think that the problem a lot of us who espouse an inerrantist (as opposed to literalist - there is a difference) position have with accommodating varying degrees of 'errancy'is that once you call into question the inerrancy point, that begs a whole load of other questions - is scripture divinely inspired (and if so, to what extent), can we trust God, which bits of scripture can we trust and how/why (see above) etc. So, those of you who don't like the nasty parts of scripture (and FWIW I don't like them either!)and how they affect your image of God, please remember also that we have a whole host of problems and 'issues' with an 'errantist' position likewise.

Sorry, don't know whether that takes the discussion forward at all - just thought I'd stick my oar in!

Yours in Christ

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
a problem and a question I would direct to all those who would espouse an 'errantist' position:if the Bible is merely a book which 'contains truth', then who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not, and by what right? If you are arguing that it all comes down to individual conscience or something similar(which bits are truth and which are not), then to my mind
this is a recipe for anarchic relativism in interpreting scripture.

I think that the problem a lot of us who espouse an inerrantist (as opposed to literalist - there is a difference) position have with accommodating varying degrees of 'errancy'is that once you call into question the inerrancy point, that begs a whole load of other questions - is scripture divinely inspired (and if so, to what extent), can we trust God, which bits of scripture can we trust and how/why (see above) etc. So, those of you who don't like the nasty parts of scripture (and FWIW I don't like them either!)and how they affect your image of God, please remember also that we have a whole host of problems and 'issues' with an 'errantist' position likewise.

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Sorry, Matt, but your proposed inerrant but not literal position inherently faces the same challenge - which parts are literal and which parts are not?

Any position, whether you wish to label it errant or inerrant faces the same challenge - if not all parts are of the same nature, how do you determine which nature a given part is.

Some points are easy - Song of Solomon being poetry for instance, rather than history.

Some points are hard - for instance, the Gospels disagree on the exact form of a given teaching. We clearly have to take one version, and we can't just take the one that seems "right" or is more liberal/less liberal - I think that any of these end up being personal judgements. One may have one's own consistent frame of reference, put to prove it is more correct than another is, frankly, close to impossible.

Positing errant versus inerrant is merely a smoke-screen. Indeed, where does one become the other? Simply the adoption of a self-defined label of "I believe the Bible to be Spiritually without error", which seems to be the difference, doesn't fill me with much confidence as to either being anything other than badge-wearing. What is "spiritual" and what is not? What is the hallmark of "spiritually inspired" even? If you don't have a definition, it's meaningless.

I'd rather (perhaps being cussedly contrary) take the view the other way about. Anything short of literalism seems to in fact rather resonate with Henry James's oft quoted phrase "Excellence does not require perfection.". If the Bible isn't simply a literal handbook, then that doesn't stop it being a lodestone, and whether you project onto that property "errancy" or "inerrancy" seems irrelevant.

FWIW, I don't see myself as errantist or inerrantist; whatever label you happen to be in love with, you still need to interpret the Bible, you still have to determine and live out your response to it, and you're still going to have to take responsibility to God and his people as to the course of your discipleship.

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
a problem and a question I would direct to all those who would espouse an 'errantist' position:if the Bible is merely a book which 'contains truth', then who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not[?]

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The Church.

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and by what right?

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Because the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15). Because the keys to the kingdom were given to the Apostles and their spiritual heirs, the bishops. Because it is the body of Christ on earth.

This, anyway, is what the Orthodox might reply to such questions.

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
The Church...
This, anyway, is what the Orthodox might reply to such questions.

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Good answer. Although I might disagree with individual interpretations, this at least imposes some kind of order on the understanding of Scripture.

As a Swedenborgian I would say that "who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not" are the voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, which Swedenborgians take to be divine revelation - and therefore inerrant themselves.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
As a Swedenborgian I would say that "who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not" are the voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, which Swedenborgians take to be divine revelation - and therefore inerrant themselves.

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Are there ever disagreements about what some particular statement of Swedenborg means? If so how are THESE decided?

Not meaning to be divisive, but nonetheless inquisitive.

Reader Alexis
a far from infallible Orthodox guy

Yes, I am an 'inerrantist'. No, I don't believe that the Bible is to be interpreted in a 'word-for-word-literal-approach'.

I acknowledge that the Bible was written in specific cultures and times and genres which makes necessary the skill of hermenutics.

Is there any special 'aura' that surrounds the Bible? -No Does being a Christian automatically make you able to rightly interpret scripture? -No

For freehand and Bonzo (and whoever else), I would like to say that I am not as naive regarding the complexities and problems of inerrancy as maybe you think. I have studied the 'history' of the Bible. I realize that it wasn't just 'zapped' into the hands of believers. Rather it was written over a period of 1500 years, with over 40 authors, being scrutinized and questioned before acceptance into the cannon which we now know. -Not very pretty is it? But for those who because of the above realities find it hard to believe, I want to suggest that God is not 'efficient'. quickness or neatness aren't described as necessary properties of perfection. Maybe this helps, maybe it doesn't; regardless, there it is.

I don't think that I will try to defend the Joshua 'genocide' again. It seems that both sides of the debate have said their due. I will just say that I do believe in a GOd who loves and (for freehand) a GOd who doesn't like to kill babies (I hope you realize that I never tried to justify a God who 'likes' to kill babies. Rather I attempted to justify a God who, because of the perogatives of being God, can take the lives of sinful humans without being a sadistic or malevolant being.) By the way, YOu are absolutely Right-On about God 'wanting' us to seek the Truth even if it means doubting the bible or His goodness. I couldn't agree more!

I do accept inerrancy on many assumptions. I have tested those assumptions and feel satisfied in their validity (I'm not denying the reality of lingering problems, though).

I think that I have been very reasonable and logical in attempting to defend inerrancy. I am honest about the reality that I take inerrancy 'primarily' on faith (I think that some 'errantists' have yet to realize that they base their arguments on many 'beliefs' as well).

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...and (for freehand) a God who doesn't like to kill babies (I hope you realize that I never tried to justify a God who 'likes' to kill babies.

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I think that I have been very reasonable and logical in attempting to defend inerrancy.

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
Are there ever disagreements about what some particular statement of Swedenborg means? If so how are THESE decided?

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There are. But fortunately Swedenborg is remarkably consistent and systematic. Most disagreements are solved fairly easily by competent scholars. There are inevitably some issues that remain points of disagreement, but they are few and minor. There is no particular means for deciding them, other than scholarship. The church hierarchy does not make pronouncements.

I don't know how many other religious systems work this way - relying on some defined body of doctrine that is seen as authoritative. Unfortunately their systems are only useful within their own body of believers.

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Originally posted by Matt Black

if the Bible is merely a book which 'contains truth', then who arbitrates which bits are truth and which are not, and by what right?

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I don't think it's necessary or desirable for any human to arbitrate which bits are truth or not. We should think for ourselves, because that provides the most fertile ground for the furtherance of the Kingdom.

As to a definition of inerrancy THE CHICAGO STATEMENT ON BIBLICAL INERRANCY can be found at this site just go to Bible and you'll find it: Center for reformed theology and apologetics I think people like Packer and John Wenham et al were involded in this.

I've briefly scanned this site. On the face of it, it seems to be doing what inerrantists throughout the ages have done, which is to state that the Bible is inerrant, without offering one reasoned argument for why it should be so.

It then goes on to say that if you question the inerrancy of scripture that you are being disloyal to God!

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
I've briefly scanned this site. On the face of it, it seems to be doing what inerrantists throughout the ages have done, which is to state that the Bible is inerrant, without offering one reasoned argument for why it should be so.

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Reasons? You need stinking REASONS?! What kind of Christian are you?!

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God always operates as though He doesn't exist. People are completely free to believe in Him or not.

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Nice one! Except they go to Hell if they exercise their freedom of choice not to believe in Him.

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Originally posted by Gauk:
Nice one! Except they go to Hell if they exercise their freedom of choice not to believe in Him. ?

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Except that hell in this system is not divinely imposed eternal punishment, but merely the intrinsic happiness or unhappiness associated with various loves and behaviors.

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Originally posted by Gauk:
What you are saying, as I understand it, is that the Bible is deliberately obscure so that people can ignore it if they like. Even, in fact, to encourage people to ignore it, so that only a few dedicated souls will take the time and trouble to search and find all the helpful material contained therein. This is teasing behaviour. Einstein famously remarked that God does not play dice. Perhaps crossword puzzles are more His style?

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I have never heard this described as teasing behavior. That's good. Good point! A picture of God emerges as the player of a giant game with humanity, fooling and fiddling with us at every turn. I agree that this seems a little on the devious side and would be inconsistent with what we know of God. Maybe not quite on the order of killing babies...

Let's review the alternatives:
1. There is no God.
2. There is a God, but He is unable to communicate with humanity.
3. There is a God, and He is able to communicate with humanity, but He does it obscurely, and it is received differently by people according to various factors.
4. There is a God, and He communicates clearly with humanity.

I vote for 4! But if the Bible doesn't match your definition of "clear," then which would you go for?

Many Bible statements refer to the obscurity of the divine message - notably repeated references to Isaiah 6.9 in response to the disciples' question about Jesus' use of parables (Matthew 13.14, Mark 4.12, Luke 8.10). Is this teasing behavior? It does sound like it.

My thought is that it is like the answers that people give to the questions of children, when they know that the children aren't old enough or in the right frame of mind to understand the answer.

Fortunately, we have the promise in John 16 that this kind of information will not always be presented so obscurely. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you in figurative language. But the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father." John 16.25

Gbuchanan - re: inerrant vs literalist - I agree with you that similar dilemmas of 'sifting' apply...up to a point: I think that the main difference is that with determining which parts are literal and which are poetry, metaphorical, symbolic etc we have a wealth of Biblical scholarship, commentaries, teaching sources etc from which to draw, whereas with determining which parts are inerrant, it seems to boil down to a matter of personal opinion eg: "I don't like this bit so it must be a mistake/ God didn't mean it to be there or if He did then He got it wrong" (at least that's the way it seems from some of the posts on this thread); I accept that archaeology and historical research should also assist but they are in part evolving sciences. I don't accept that personal opinion alone is a valid criterion upon which to judge scripture
- IMHO it should be the opinion of the Church....which brings me on to...

Mousethief - I agree wholeheartedly with you that it is the Church that should interpret scripture - BUT - that then leads us onto the sticky problem of defining the Church. (We've had that out on the ecumenism and deciding doctrine threads, passim, and I guess you would say that it's the Orthodox Church, by and large, and I guess I'd disagree with you on that point, by and large!)

What I was trying to say is that just as you guys who to a greater or lesser extent subscribe to some form of errancy have problems with and require us to defend an inerrantist stance, so equally does your position create problems for us re trustworthiness, divine input etc. So far I have not seen those concerns adequately addressed...over to you!

Yours in Christ

Well said that no matter which way you slice it, it's fraught with difficulties. There is no easy solution to any of the problems life poses: and finding (and hewing to) the "right" solution requires both shrewdness of thought and childlike innocence.

You probably don't want to know my definition of "Church."

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Originally posted by Our Saviour Tortoise:
I don't know about the rest of you, but if to believe the Bible I have to believe that God really told Joshua to kill all the men, women and children, and hamstring the animals too, then I'm outta here!

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I'm sure that almost everyone here agrees with that.

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Originally posted by Freddy:

Let's review the alternatives:
1. There is no God.
2. There is a God, but He is unable to communicate with humanity.
3. There is a God, and He is able to communicate with humanity, but He does it obscurely, and it is received differently by people according to various factors.
4. There is a God, and He communicates clearly with humanity.

I vote for 4!

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I vote for 3. If God REALLY wanted to communicate with us clearly, we would have no doubt about his meaning. Rather like Terry Pratchett's gods on Dunmanifestin', to say 'God wants to kill babies' would result in the clouds above us forming the message 'Oh no he doesn't, sunshine'.

In fact I'd go so far as to say that IMHO 4 can't logically be correct. Since there is so much confusion amongst Christians as to what the Bible DOES mean, and since even those who support a literal or inerrant view tend to agree that there are difficult passages in it, surely it follows that for one reason or another God has not chosen to communicate with us clearly?

If God had chosen a clear and 'inerrant' method of communication:
- there would only have been one version of the Bible preserved
- there would only be one gospel
- there would be no peculiar doublets in the Pentateuch
- there would be instructions that meant nothing to the writers but which were perfectly clear to us: eg 'when a world leader rises some 1900 years after my Son's death and tries to persecute my people the Jews, you are to prevent him from gaining power'. And no, strange interpretations of Daniel and Revelation don't count...

If you say the Bible is the complete authority, completely inerrant, you elevate the writers and compilers up to the status of God. Which is wrong.

If you then say that the church is the complete authority on the Bible, deciding which bits are wrong and which bits are right you elevate the Church to the status of God. Which is wrong.

If you say that an individual's conscience is the authority then you elevate the conscience of the individual to the status of God. Which is wrong.

The reason I have a real problem with inerrancy is because I am disillusioned with the churches that assume inerrancy. I grew up in the assumption of inerrancy and it was drilled into me from a young age. However, I always felt that something was missing. The church made claims that Jesus was amazing and that everything should be better, but it never seemed that people really believed that God was real. I tried a variety of different churches, but I couldn't find anything that filled that missing hole.

I examine the scriptures more deeply and the harder it looked the less it made sense. I tried harder and harder to make it work, but the paradoxes grew in proportion to the attention to the book. Eventually, it was requiring extraordinary mental energy to hold it together.

About the same time, I came to the realization that the God that I believed in was threatening me with hell to try to get me to love him. When I realized that the underlying foundation of the relationship was fear, my belief in God melted away. It was truly a release.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to be agnostic. I just think that it's very clear, as has been well stated above, that there is no solid basis for the assumption of inerrancy. I find the scriptures to be internally inconsistent when the assumption of inerrancy is in place. I like Bonzo's three pronged approach that he mentions above. The truth comes from the church, the bible and the individual in concert. Perhaps it comes from other places.

It will take a terrible lot of convincing before I fully trust any religious system that does not have an objective basis of belief. This doesn't mean that I can't have fun looking.

Freehand, what can one ever mean by "objective"? "Objective" itself tends to require some base assumptions - it then comes down to whether you accept those or not.

e.g. Science starts out with a belief you can systematically explain natural physical processes - if you don't happen to believe that, then it's just bunkum. (NB as a scientist, I happen to go along with the assumption there).

Once one discounts, e.g. the appeal to authority or appeal to nature, very little in the human order of things is actually provably objective. Though, again, I happen to think that most things are "objective" at a "working definition" level, which is good enough for me.

Anyhow, objective requires a context - what's yours? From that, what is objective about errancy?