You too are intransigent.

And I dare to suggest have copped out by refusing to use your intellect to even posit the proposition that the Bible is inerrant and run with that.

It's easy to run with errancy, we can make God in our liberal image.

But what if you were wrong? We are commanded to love God with all of our mind, all of our intellect, yours is obviously superior to mine, so would you do me the favour of running with at least the posit that it is reasonable to regard the Bible as inerrant?

Just try the proposition on for size? If you won't question our capacity to reason we won't question your capacity to submit to God as He appears to reveal Himself by His word.

So please do reason with us.

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We've been through this. I'm not going to argue with you on the subject anymore because you are not going to change your point of view no matter what I say.

IMO you have to abandon reason to believe the bible to be inerrant.

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I could be wrong, but I don't remember "having to change one's point of view" as a prerequisite for debating.
-Maybe I'll go look at the guidelines again.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
I'm pointing out that when your analogy is applied to the Bible that an inerrant Bible is like an inerrant Jesus. In the Bible's case it has demonstrable errors, in Jesus' case He hasn't.

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Whether the writers of the Bible were perfect is largely irrelevant; even if they were perfect they still wouldn't be writing inerrant Scripture because of the inherent limitations of language and how much humans can actually understand. That is why I say that since the evidence is that the Bible was written by apparently free acting human beings the Bible cannot be inerrant.

The main point from the analogy is, I think, that just as saying "Christ was human" is accurate and true it is also so inadequate a description of his nature that it is actually inaccurate and false; the same goes of saying "Christ is God". Likewise, although saying "the Bible is inerrant" is true and accurate it is also false and inaccurate; the same for "the Bible is not inerrant".

I'm still not sure if I'm making myself clear.

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the fact is that there are logically-consistent answers to the so-called errors that do enable a Christian to keep inerrancy intact.

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Sorry, no evidence has been supplied on this thread to back up this claim.

Bonzo:

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IMO you have to abandon reason to believe the bible to be inerrant.

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It seems that I have had to spend much of my time fighting 'opinions' and 'rhetoric' rather than actual arguments lately.

Your 'opinion' is plainly wrong. There 'have' been arguments and evidences put forth by the inerrantists on this thread - I suggest that you go back and read some.

You might agree with them or you might think that they are the worst arguments/evidences you have ever read, but to deny that they have been posted is simply foolish.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not

And I dare to suggest have copped out by refusing to use your intellect to even posit the proposition that the Bible is inerrant and run with that.

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I used to believe that the Bible was inerrant. I found it was a view that I could not support in many a debate such as this one.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell

Jesus was the perfect human being; evidence that Jesus sinned doesn't make him more human (infact, arguably it makes him less human). But as a human being, even perfect, there were things he couldn't do - eg: be in two places at once.

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Not sure you are making yourself clear on this point. How can Jesus sinning make him less human?

The point I was making is that Jesus sinning makes him less Godlike. If you believe in a perfect God it makes him not God.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The main point from the analogy is, I think, that just as saying "Christ was human" is accurate and true it is also so inadequate a description of his nature that it is actually inaccurate and false; the same goes of saying "Christ is God". Likewise, although saying "the Bible is inerrant" is true and accurate it is also false and inaccurate; the same for "the Bible is not inerrant".

---

This seems pretty clear to me, and in the main I agree.

But instead of saying that the Bible is fully human and fully divine, I would say that although it appears to be fully human it is actually fully divine. Or that it is human on the outside but divine on the inside. That is, that it is full of errors, inaccuracies, and appearances in its literal sense, but it holds God within it in a miraculous way.

So it is both full of errors and absolutely true at the same time.

So that we understand one another fully,
give me some non-slippery answers to these two questions before we go further. I think it would help me to understand better where you're coming from if I knew your position on these issues.

Do you believe that God created the world in six days (24hrs each)? Or do you believe the world has evolved over millions of years?

and

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There 'have' been arguments and evidences put forth by the inerrantists on this thread - I suggest that you go back and read some.

You might agree with them or you might think that they are the worst arguments/evidences you have ever read, but to deny that they have been posted is simply foolish.

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I wasn't denying that inerrantists have posted many things, it was the "logically consistent" description I was questioning.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
Do you believe that God created the world in six days (24hrs each)? Or do you believe the world has evolved over millions of years?

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Do you believe, that when the Bible says that God told Joshua to kill everyone in Jericho and Ai that that is what God actually did?

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Though I can see, and accept, the clear theological teaching about the need to completely irradicate that which is sinful in our old lives when we come to Christ. And I also see that God may be acting in judgement on them, though I don't recall anywhere in the account in Joshua to state that God was judging them. However, God acting in this way is at odds with much of the rest of Scripture. The obvious explanation, especially given as the instructions to destroy Jericho are in Joshuas words not "the Lord said...", is that Joshua didn't understand God perfectly and got a bit carried away. Thus, the account is accurate but God didn't actually order it. I accept there's spiritual truth there that doesn't depend on the inerrancy or otherwise of the account; but I wouldn't let this (or similar) passage dictate my view of God or Scripture.

These two examples show the human origins of the Bible; they contain description of events from the perspective of the background and knowledge of the original authors. They still do, however, contain words that speak a message relevant to us today showing their divine origin.

But, as I said earlier in this thread (about 2/3 of the way down p3) I don't actually accept the Bible is inerrant, indeed I said

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I think that the books we have actually suit Gods purpose pretty well. Whereas, a set of divinely dictated totally inerrant writings wouldn't be as suitable.

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It's a shame that the length of the argument on the Joshua story in this thread has caused so many to cry 'dead horse'. It's one of many examples which I could have chosen which rather than being 'dead horses' should make clear that a literal interpretation on the Bible is unfounded in logic.

We need to get this literalist view out of the way before we can make progress on the issue of whether, and why the Bible is a specially inspired book.

IMO the 'inerrancy issue' which causes the most problem, for believers and would be believers, is the high profile literalist, creationist view which does damage to the message of Christianity.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
Do you believe that God created the world in six days (24hrs each)? Or do you believe the world has evolved over millions of years??

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I am with Alan. God guides the evolutionary process in completely invisible ways, so that all changes proceed according to the phsical laws known to science.

The Bible is not about physical creation but about the spiritual recreation of the human race. So these early stories are an allegroy describing in general terms the spiritual history of humanity, as it was understood by those who created the stories that were later written down in the early part of Genesis.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
Do you believe, that when the Bible says that God told Joshua to kill everyone in Jericho and Ai that that is what God actually did?

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No. The purpose of these stories is to reinforce the concept that obedience to God brings blessings.

The entire concept of God promising Abraham and his descendents a particular piece of land, which they are to wrest from the inhabitants, is wrong from beginning to end. The Bible is about spiritual things, not real estate. "Canaan" stands for heaven, and "casting out the uncircumcized" means to get rid of the things in your life that stand between you and heaven.

But this does not mean that the stories are simply mistaken. As Abraham, Joshua and other Old Testament characters understood it, God was telling them to do these things. In these centuries before the incarnation, there simply were not people who could be led and taught more directly, or who were able to transmit a clearer divine message.

Intellectually and morally inferior 'Literalism' is only positable by people with nasty, illiberal skeletons in the cupboard?

God is Love therefore He didn't order the genocide of the Amorites?

That deals with literalism?

That makes it intellectually impossible to pursue the proposition that God is Love and He DID order the genocide of the Amorites?

Or just dispositionally impossible?

By the way are there literary forms which combine the mythic and the literal? So that Genesis 1-2 is easily reconciled as perfectly historically precise about named individuals and mythic, allegorical about Days of Creation. Or literal about recreation?

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Originally posted by Martin PC not:
By the way are there literary forms which combine the mythic and the literal?

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A beautiful idea. The metaphoric aspect of the events of the Bible do not necessarily negate their literal reality.

Although I believe that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are pure allegory, with no literal basis in the events as described, I believe that the entire rest of the Bible happened as described.

It was important that these events actually take place.

The reason is that just as these events had to be described as they were in order to fill the requirements of the divine metaphor, they also needed to TAKE PLACE as described in order fulfil those same requirements. They pre-figured Jesus and His wor. If they had not happened then Jesus would have needed to come the moment Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden.

As a non-literalist I apply more or less the same principles to the whole text - I know empirically that God speaks to me through it, but my view on whether it literally happened is more or less a 'balance of probabilities' test, though I can't ignore the baggage I bring with me.

What I can't see is how Martin can look at the 7 days as mythic, but not to apply the same principle to the rest of Genesis, which certainly READS like myth to me - it has the story forms and conventions of myth. Where is the dividing line?

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Originally posted by Ham 'n' Eggs

Bonzo - do you have any non-selfjustifying basis for believing that the use of reason is pre-eminent? Or have you assumed it, or been taught it and accepted it without question?

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I have no basis to believe that the use of reason is pre-eminent other than reason is the thing God has given us to decide what is right or wrong.

(For those who don't know what pre-eminent is the dictionary says 'excelling others; distinguished beyond others in some quality' I didn't know either)

You can say 'I think therefore I am'. But that isn't necessarily true since you might be mad and therefore your logic might be twisted.

What I question is people who say they use reason and clearly do not. I'm quite happy to accept a literalist who says (on a regular basis) that their idea has no basis in reason.

Does that make sense?

Martin PC not

I'm sorry, I've rather ignored your posts so far. The reason is that up until the penultimate one, I hadn't understood a single one (on any thread!).

Your last post I think I fully understood about half of. My intellect is not as great as you imagine! Could you re-phrase it in plainer English? Are your question marks rhetorical or are you expecting an answer. What does dispositionally impossible mean. And what are nasty, illiberal skeletons in the cupboard?

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Originally posted by Mike Truman:
Where I get confused is with those who want not to take 7 day creation literally as Martin does, or to take the first 11 chapters of Genesis non-literally as Freddy does, but then to say that the rest did happen as literally written. Where do you draw the line?

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I can certainly understand the question. As I see it there is no way of escaping the need to draw a line somewhere.

No one disputes that at least some of the biblical characters are genuine historical figures, and that at least some of the events actually took place. It is certainly reasonable to accept the historicity of those things in the Bible that can be independently confirmed, and to see the rest of it as "history metaphorized," as Marcus Borg puts it. I happen to believe that more of it actually happened - for the reason explained above in my last post.

To my mind, however, the first eleven chapters are clearly set apart, along with Job, and actually can't have happened as written. But the rest is all within the realm of possibility, assuming miracles are possible.

I realize that it is far-fetched to think that actual conversations could have been preserved over centuries before they were written down, or that Jonah was eaten by a fish and lived. But the acceptance of the possibility of miracles is pretty much a given in Christianity.

What I don't see is why they need to draw a hard and fast line.

Ask me about most of the Bible and I'll say things like:

'There's a fair chance this is what happened'

or:

'I think that it's unlikely that this is true'

There are only a few parts where I have to say:

'To believe this then you've got to abandon reason'

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
What I don't see is why they need to draw a hard and fast line.
If it could be true why not say so? If you've got good reason to believe it not to be true then argue your point.

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Can't argue with the logic there.

The only question is what is riding on the belief. Jesus said many times that various things happened for the purpose of "fulfilling the Scriptures." If you accept any of the line of reasoning about various biblical events being somehow imperative, then this opens the door to seeing some kind of imperative in the Old Testament as well.

But, IMO, it doesn't present itself as a cohesive whole.

Take Isiah chapter 53 as the best example of scripture being fulfilled (there are many others).

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
But is the story of Samson as cohesive?

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It depends how you interpret it. My belief is that every detail of the Samson story has parallels in the life of Jesus. For example:

1. Samson's physical strength pre-figured the spiritual strength of Jesus.
2. The source of Samson's strength being his hair is reflected in the source of Jesus' stength being the literal Word of God.
3. Samson being a Nazarite has possible linguistic connection to Jesus being a Nazarene.
4. Samson's weakness for women pre-figures the ardent love that Jesus felt for Jerusalem or the church, the "daughter of Zion."
5. Samson killed more of the enemy with his death than in his lifetime, as is also true of Jesus.

The honey is like the reward in heaven.
The bees are like the sins which prevent us from getting there.
The tree is like the cross, the honey is only obtainable by coming to the cross.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
But you can approach Winnie the Pooh and the Honey tree in the same way.

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That's right. So it may be totally meaningless.

The compelling reason for me to believe in something like this is a feeling that there must be some sense to all this somewhere. If there is a God in heaven then He must have some kind of plan and system that is somehow graspable.

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How about the logic that without religious knowledge that is believed to be accurate there can be no belief, and therefore no religion.

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Originally posted by Gauk:
I don't think anyone has advanced the proposition that nothing in the Bible is accurate.

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Sorry. I didn't mean that anyone had. What I meant was to comment on the reliability of the knowledge. If the account in general is not considered to be reliable then it is hard to base a religion on it.

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Originally posted by Freddy:

Probably the biggest question is whether the Bible is in any sense a book specially written and preserved by God, or if it is simply another ancient book - that has just happened to be central to the belief system of a third of the people on this planet.

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Ah, an example of my favourite bit from 'Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Wehn confronted with the horns of a dilemma there are many better things to do than be impaled on either of them, of which the best is to grab hold of the horns and vault onto the bull's back...

I don't accept the dichotomy. I don't belive that the Bible is 'just another ancient book', empirically God speaks to me through it like no other, and I respect the weight of tradition that says the church has found God in it. What I question is whether it is necessary to believe it is literally true in order for God to speak through it.

I would suggest that you yourself would answer 'no' to that - you surely find God speaking to you in the story of creation, the story of the fall, the story of Noah. Why then can God not be speaking through a story of Moses, a story of the wandering in the wilderness, a story of Jonah?

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Originally posted by Mike Truman:
What I question is whether it is necessary to believe it is literally true in order for God to speak through it.

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You correctly guess my answer. It might all be made up. But if it is made up by God it is different than if people just made it up. God in a sense speaks through everything, so I understand that no one is denying His ability to speak through Scripture. I think the question is whether and how the Bible is different than other books. But of course all books are different from each other.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike Truman:
Jonah is as much a mythical tale in its form as Noah, and I don't understand how one would draw a line between them.

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Good point. Daniel also has that feel. I draw the line where I do only because this is what my religion teaches and it makes sense to me. It would make perhaps equal sense to draw it any number of other ways - including not to draw it at all.

Some parts of the Bible seem like fact, others like fiction, some are possibly verifiable, others not. But the more I am able to distinguish the true and literal from the untrue and metaphorical, the more help it is in deciding life questions like whether anything happens to you after death and whether it is OK to get a divorce.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike Truman

I don't accept the dichotomy. I don't belive that the Bible is 'just another ancient book', empirically God speaks to me through it like no other, and I respect the weight of tradition that says the church has found God in it. What I question is whether it is necessary to believe it is literally true in order for God to speak through it.

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1) God decides the Bible is necessary and picks someone to reveal his message to, who then acts as a sort of celestial scribe.

2) Various people attempt to put down in words what they perceive of God. Some have a very clear vision of God's nature, others have a less clear vision.

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Originally posted by Gauk:
IMO position 2 is much to be preferred.

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I agree, except that where does that leave God? He is powerless to produce a written revelation?

Certainly in one sense position 2 is the way the process seems to take place. Although the descriptions themselves often speak of a quite clear revelation, more like position 1. But anyone can claim anything, and if I were to claim that God speaks to you through me you would be justified in doubting the validity of what I was saying - and my sanity.

The objections to position 1 are all valid. The solution that appeals to me is that God works within the parameters of position 2 to create a written revelation that is interiorly perfect despite being exteriorly flawed. The idea being that people will eventually discover the real meaning - but only when they are ready and willing to find it.

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I agree, except that where does that leave God? He is powerless to produce a written revelation?

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I agree, except that where does that leave God? He is powerless to produce a written revelation?
...
I admit to being unable to accept a world in which God is not ultimately in charge. I will therefore do anythng to rationalize my way into that world.

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There are so many things which point to a world where God is not in charge. Look around and you wil see good people suffer horrible ilnesses, natural disasters occur and bad people amass huge wealth.

The big question is not whether, but why God doesn't take charge?

So why should the Bible be any different?

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Originally posted by Freddy:
I draw the line where I do only because this is what my religion teaches and it makes sense to me. It would make perhaps equal sense to draw it any number of other ways - including not to draw it at all.

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Fair enough. As a matter of interest, do you take that as a final position ('I can't go further than this or important bits of my faith start to drop off') or as your position for the time being?

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But the more I am able to distinguish the true and literal from the untrue and metaphorical, the more help it is in deciding life questions

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To my own surprise, as I went through the process of doubting more and more of the literal truth, I haven't found it changes the value of the Bible texts. In fact if anything I've found it makes them deeper.

It depends, I suppose, on how you use them in the first place, and I agree that if I don't believe the 'red letter' passages were all said by Jesus then I don't have the same 'the Bible says, so I will do...' reaction. But on the whole it is what the STORY says that matters most to me. The fact that I think exile was historical but exodus was mostly not doesn't actually change the meaning of either, or indeed the meaning of the two combined.

Gauk: I must be feeling really contrary.. Again, I won't take either of those two positions. I'm nearest to 2 - it's the record of how people saw their encounter with God, BUT EVEN SO God speaks through it to us in a very special way. For me, God has not controlled the words or the contents, but uses them to speak to us.

[fixed UBB]

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
There are so many things which point to a world where God is not in charge.

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It's not that He is not in charge, but that He doesn't seem to be in charge.

God allows unhappy and evil things to happen for the sake of a greater long-run good, which is the freedom of the human race. But all the time He is guiding the human race so that in the long run people will, of their own free will, choose to move away from the things that cause pain and towards those that bring happiness.

The Bible is the same way, as you say. The Lord's influence is often hard to see, or apparently absent, but is there nevertheless. This makes sense to me, as Bible interpretation seems legitimate to me, but I understand that not everyone would go for this approach.

These two elements, God's guidance of the writing of the Word and His guidance of the human race, coincide in the idea that He guides the human race primarily through the Word - which people can take or leave as they wish.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
and you're recognising that it may not be the most obvious explanation, then I've got no problem with that stance.

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I'm sorry for being unclear and will happily expand, especially on the most excellent question of drawing the line between the Biblically historic (but otherwise NOT historic, i.e. non-substantiated by other documents and archaeology) and the allegorical.

I'm afraid I can do it right here, right now, because I'm so simplistic: If a geneology, with lifespans is given, it is absolute.

(Both of Jesus' can be reconciled by BOTH being Joseph's: one his bloodline and one his adopting Father's bloodline IF his blood-father had died and his mother remarried. That, I believe, but will have to research to confirm, was the Jewish tradition at the time.)

So I have NO reason to doubt the creation of Adam and Eve by fiat, the former from river-bank mud, either at the end of a literal week of the RE-creation of life on Earth.

I certainly don't accept the evolutionary explanation, why on Earth, as a non-materialist due to its utter failure to explain the major transitions of creation, should I?

I similarly have no reason to doubt Noah's flood, particularly as the counter current into the Black Sea with its ancient, splash drowned sites, is its echo.

So why should I doubt any specific miracle? The Red Sea parting? Joshua's long day? Hezekiah's 20 minute rewinding of the sundial? Jonah? Etc, etc.

If I can swallow the incarnation, I can swallow the Heilesgeschicht that validates it and is validated by it.

So I have NO reason to doubt the creation of Adam and Eve by fiat, the former from river-bank mud, either at the end of a literal week of the RE-creation of life on Earth OR as the pinnacle of a timelessly mythically portrayed 12-15 billion year old creation process.

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ToO simplistic, I'm sure

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Yes.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not:
The volume of water in the Earth's crust and mantle - the fountains of the deep - far outweighs the volume in the Oceans.

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Source?

I'm just the guy on the bus trying to get home and respect intellectuality in Christians but start to lose it when all they - some Christians - can do is embrace every materialistic fad when materialism and 'scientism' - my term - is so woefully intellectualy inadequate, it seems to me (and Brian Appleyard, an agnostic), it just suits liberal rationalism.

It also smacks of elitism, esotericism.

But what do I know?

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Originally posted by Atticus:
Incidentally, a question for our resident doctor (AC) is it even possible for the waters of the earth to cover the whole earth? (I personally hold that "whole earth" is referring to the exploredland mass of the time, and might have a very small area)

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The size of the known world at the time is irrelevent; there's no barrier around it to prevent the flood draining away so the flood would either have to be very local (ie: the filling of the Black Sea basin) or global. Having said that, Mesopotamia is generally low lying compared to the surrounding territory so to flood this area (but not cover the mountain chains to the north and east and the highground of Saudia Arabia to the south west) a depth of only 100-200m would be needed - that would still need 44750000 km3 of water (a mere 3%) of the volume of the oceans. The melting of all the earths ice caps coupled with thermal expansion of water would result in such a rise in sea water. There is, however, a problem with this: it would need a very rapid melting of ice and global warming, normally such a change in sea level would take centuries, even accelerated by industrial CO2 emissions we are currently seeing sea level changes that will be a few metres in the time scale of decades. From the Biblical account such a sea level change would need to happen over a few months - and, of course, all freeze up again on a similar time scale. I can see no way such a major climatical catastrophy could physically occur.

Of course, if you wanted a truely global flood you'd need a couple of km of water (and you'd still have the highest mountains above water) almost doubling the volume of the oceans. Absolutely no way.

What's that sound I hear, my friends? What's that sound? I believe it's a faint, croaking sort of neighing! Yes, my friends, this horse has been dying for quite some time. I declare it DEAD.

You all can keep on, of course, over at the board where we keep this sort of thing.

Miserere Dominum horsie mortuus est.

<ebullient bubble starts here> I am only on page 5 of this thread...I tried to stop myself after page 2 but could not...it is so refreshing to read such deep, intelligent quotes from everyone. Do you all realise how RARE that is in the Christian World of the Internet?

I have my views (which are obvious by my label of myself in my profile) but I will keep them to myself...until I am done reading all 8 (gasp!) pages of this mis-mash of theological banging of head.

I just had to drop in and say this, you all ROCK MY WORLD (yes, even you whom I thouroughly disagree with you).

<ebullient bubble ends here>