Biblical inerrancy? Why? (To Djangojava)

[Diane Vera]

On page 2 (http://www.soulforce.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2550&page=2) of the thread I'm Antony: Central Bible College, Covenant Theological Seminary (http://www.soulforce.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2550), Djangojava wrote:

Hello my name is Steve Glass. The issue at hand Antony is one called "inerrancy". Having attended Covenant Seminary you might be familiar with it but I'll state it's premise here so others know. Inerrancy says that the Bible is without error.
So my question to you is what do you do with a passage like Romans 1:18-27 where homosexuality is specifically addressed and clearly taught as sin? Clearly you do not hold to inerrancy.
The Bible is a most inconvenient book. So your issue isn't with Covenant College or Covenant Seminary your issue is with Scripture isn't it?
Is in not fair to say that it is you who are being intolerant of those who would hold to the inerrancy of God's word?

And then, in a subsequent message on that page:

The problem I have is when people start telling me I'm intolerant and that I have or believe a message of hate. Or that they know God and then they just make up crap. I've chosen to believe God and take Him at His Word.
Aren't you all just making up God? Aren't you just saying stuff? What is the basis of your belief?

Jesus Christ did exist and you have only 3 choices. 1) He was a well intended madman, a lunatic, and simply must be written off as such. 2) He was a cruel liar and led generatios to their death and his legacy continues to lead his followers in other countries to death. Christians are still persecuted and killed. 3) He was who he said he was.

I've chosen option 3 and I don't have the luxury of making up God out of my imagination. We really don't have a basis upon which to talk. I hold to Scripture and you don't. That's your right. But don't tell me that what Jesus Christ does and doesn't do. When is the last time you studied what he said? Do you hold your thoughts captive to Him or do you bend him to your convienance.

True Biblical Christianity is very inconvienant.

Believe what you want about Scripture, that it's just made up... that man is a poor conduit... I've chosen to believe that the God who could raise Lazarus from the dead, make a universe, and create man, the space & time... I've chosen to believe that God knows a few more things than I do and I don't have to understand what he says. I'm better off obeying those things that are clear in Scripture rather than re-writing scripture.

Just don't call yourself a Christian or claim you know Christ that's all.

The druidic buddhist... yeah whatever. It's like the old asian menus one from column A one from column B... what are the odds of that being true?

Truth by it's very nature is absolute and it may not be understood but it can be accepted by faith and even that faith is a gift of God. May He reveal Himself to you.

I'll reply below. Just starting a new thread to avoid hijacking Antony's intro thread.

[Diane Vera]

Hi! I'm not a Christian and not a Soulforcer, although I do feel that Soulforce is doing very valuable work, and I have found this board to be very informative and thought-provoking.

Anyhow, could you please tell us why you believe in Biblical inerrancy? To allege that any one particular collection of writings was infallibly inspired by the cosmic God is quite a claim.

[tdogg]

I claim that no one human can live the Bible completely and literally from cover to cover. Impossible. Just my claim tho....

One might really need to research Biblical writings in the original, various interpretations and translations over the year, in order to grasp the concept of not believing in Biblical inerrancy. Some are able to grasp it just by reading one more modern translation (say King James version) - the Bible has more confusing, contentious and contradictory statements than any other book I've read. Without much prayer and meditation, I wouldn't know what to make of it.

The Bible you read today is certainly not literally the original writings made centuries ago. Dash (a forum regular, although where ARE you Dash???) did some tremendous research and commented on another thread (no time to search for it now) regarding just two words. Imagine doing that for the entire Bible? There are so many different translations, well which one exactly is the true and exact word of God? Please tell me, so I can make that purchase, as I'm convinced none of the many translations I own are the exact word of God.

God blessed us with an amazing guide and reference book written centuries ago (mostly by men, although that's definitely another thread!) in the context of cultures we cannot possibly comprehend - and therefore, they could not possibly comprehend our current culture. I don't understand how anyone could believe in Biblical inerrancy.

At any rate, one must also understand while reading and posting here, that equality and civil rights are a totally separate issue from faith and Biblical scripture, interpretations or translations.

[andrewlittle]

I would like to ask some preliminary questions, if I may.

What version or interpretation do you consider "inerrant". The NIV? The KJV? (If the KJV, which one? The 1611 version, or the 1606 that had to be re-printed for typographical errors?) The NRSV? Or another of the hundreds of English translations that evolved (ooh, touchy word, perhaps) because someone didn't like something in the earlier translations?

How about those in the original languages. The Hebrew or Greek or Latin? Og course, we don't have original manuscripts, but some attestation that they did at one time exist.

Before I really get into a discussion about "inerrant scripture", I would need to know which of the myriad possibilities you believe to be inerrant.

Then the fun begins.

[Steven E. Webster]

Friends,

I am a student of the Bible and a Christian (of the progressive United Methodist variety). It seems to me, from my research into the history of the "inerrancy" idea, that it depends on a belief that there was some original manuscript of the scriptures at some time somewhere. I question that basic idea.

Simply reading the Bible closely it becomes apparent that most of the books of the Bible went through several stages of editing and development. They are based on earlier sources. Even the Book of Genesis seems to have a reliance on earlier "pagan" literature from Babylonia.

Even looking at a Gospel like Mark it appears to have gone through revisions (famously, it appears that we have several attempts at an ending of Mark's Gospel, and we can only guess what was it's original ending.) In fact, some would argue that Matthew and Luke ( but not John) were later editions of Mark.

The early Christians who put together the New Testament didn't seem to much care that they had four Gospels that didn't all agree with one another. They never insisted that one Gospel was the most correct or "true" and rejected the others.

I'm reading a fascinating book right now titled "Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel." It's all about what we call the "Old Testament" and all the evidences of the acceptance of homosexuality in many of the ancient narratives included in the Old Testament. The author (Theodore Jennings) suggests that the "anti-homosexual" law in Leviticus was a late and anomalous development probably borrowed from Zoroastrian religion during the time that the Persian Empire dominated the Middle East. Fascinating book!

The whole idea of "Biblical inerrancy" seems strange and even unChristian to me. It's a notion that developed mostly in reaction to modernism and is itself a modern phenomenon. Traditionally I don't believe Christians worried all that much about whether this or that in the Bible was "literally" true or not--they understood that the Scriptures were "oracles of God" (as St. Paul says somewhere), spiritually inspired writings that point us to God and truth, but that are strange and wonderful and beyond the full grasp our rational human understanding.

Far from being essential to Christianity, I think the belief in "inerrancy" is a kind of "heresy." (I don't like the word "heresy" because of the baggage of inquisitions and burnings-at-the-stake). Any idea can become a "heresy" if one puts too much emphasis on it to the exclusion of others.

Steven Webster

[u-dog]

Far from being essential to Christianity, I think the belief in "inerrancy" is a kind of "heresy." (I don't like the word "heresy" because of the baggage of inquisitions and burnings-at-the-stake). Any idea can become a "heresy" if one puts too much emphasis on it to the exclusion of others.

Steven Webster

PReach it brother! Don't back down! It IS a heresy. It is a form of idolatry and a rather recent form at that. JESUS CHRIST IS THE WORD OF GOD, Scripture is merely the first among witnesses to the Word made flesh.

I really wish that some of these Biblical Inerrantists would share with us the biblical mandate for considering Scripture to be the "word of God" . I believe that Scripture is a gift of God. I have no problem believing that the scriptures we have (in their oldest forms and original languages) are the scriptures as God wants us to have them... but where is the owners manual ... the instructions... that tell us to read them literally as though they were God speaking directly to us?
Steve? Michael? Speak for your servant listens!

[BrentRichards]

PReach it brother! Don't back down! It IS a heresy. It is a form of idolatry and a rather recent form at that. JESUS CHRIST IS THE WORD OF GOD, Scripture is merely the first among witnesses to the Word made flesh.

I really wish that some of these Biblical Inerrantists would share with us the biblical mandate for considering Scripture to be the "word of God" . I believe that Scripture is a gift of God. I have no problem believing that the scriptures we have (in their oldest forms and original languages) are the scriptures as God wants us to have them... but where is the owners manual ... the instructions... that tell us to read them literally as though they were God speaking directly to us?
Steve? Michael? Speak for your servant listens!

As a few have already observed, there are a lot of different issues going on here... definitions can be problematic ...

Inerrancy can mean a range of different views, ranging from the idea that Scripture is incapable of error because it was, in effect, dictated from the mouth of God ("verbal plenary inspiration") to the more moderate view that Scripture is a reliable account of God's redemptive history which contains "everything neccessary for salvation."

Other people use the term infallibility to differentiate their position from inerrancy ... again, suggesting that the Bible is reliable for the purpose for which God intended it, though it is not a science text, or a history book, or ...

Most who believe in inerrancy or infallibility, of whatever stripe, at least qualify it by saying "in the original," allowing the possibility of some error or vaguery having been introduced in transmission and translation. However, in the more extreme views this allowance has little practical effect on their certainty.

I agree that more extreme views here can become "bibliolatry" ... a form of idol worship ... putting God's word above God.

Also, there is a tremendous difference between holding a high view of inerrancy/infallibility, and the insistence that that infallible text is all to be INTERPRETED literally, as if it were a manual for programming your VCR. Theologians sometimes call this "propositionalizing" ... taking the various forms of literature in the Bible and treating them all as if they were commandments, for example. A propositional 23rd Psalm might say "Don't worry. Trust God." Loses something, huh?

I say all this because I still take the Bible VERY seriously ... too seriously, in fact to arrogantly assert that it means whatever it "obviously" sounds like to my modern 20th century American mind ... it takes, and deserves, more work than that!

If you're interested in the topic, specifically as it relates to our topic, a very good book is Jack Rodgers' "Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality" which opens with a fairly extended discussion of the meaning of inerrancy/infallibility in this context.

[ladyinred]

I don't know if I would call the bible infallible or inerrant.. I think as the mind has evolved through the centuries we may have different understandings than what was originally meant.. But I've read that the bible had been altered historically and much was taken out of it and things were change around... Can we say God's revelation can be ongoing. Yes. But we are not the ancient Hebrews and from what I've read about Moses he tried to give them a more enlightened doctrine, but they were too savage and too primitive to understand it so he had to work with them on their level of understanding so to speak.

This may have been true of many ancient civilizations , they were too primitive to really understand the word of God or his intentions in purity because their primitive minds could not comprehend it... I guess throughout history God's revelations do get mixed in with human error and misunderstanding... Here again I'm not trying to undermine or attack people who read the bible because I do as well. There are many,many passages that are inspiring, beautiful.

But I will not attribute malevolent tendacies to God. And there is scripture in the old testament that say God condoned the slaughter of people , even of women and children.. I will take a firm stand that this can't be God and I also consider that blasphemous to attribute such things to God.. I call it heresy to say that cruelty is one of God's attributes. I find it heresy to say that God willfully condoned barbaric practices that have been written in the old testament... God was dealing with civilizations back then that were pretty barbaric and warlike and perhaps through human error these were attributed to God... or justified in the name of God..

But even Jesus said that when Moses was trying to teach his own people they were stiff necked and hard to teach...

[ladyinred]

Let's compare some of the old scriptures that depict God as wrathful and vengeful to what Jesus said in the beautitudes.. Blessed are the merciful for they shall see God.. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God (Depending on what bible you read, the words may be worded differently)
You had heard in the days of old an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth but I say unto you do good to those who persecute you........etc...Some of the teachings of the old testament taught similar things. Be kind to the stranger for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt....... in 1 John 4 , God is love and all who live in love live in God and God lives in him. On fear: perfect love cast out fear, because fear involves torment, he who fears is not made perfect in love.. So tell me is there an ongoing , evolving revelation of God?