Biblical Inerrancy
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host, Epiphanies Host
Link to the thread on the old Ship
Feel free to continue use of this, or set up a new thread re a sub-topic on inerrancy.
Feel free to continue use of this, or set up a new thread re a sub-topic on inerrancy.
Comments
That's your theodicy is it?
Yes, I believe scripture is, in Chuck Missler’s phrase, ‘an integrated message system from outside our time domain.’ I think that the words of course are human words..that what is written in the 66 books is not woodenly dictated and the 44 authors not mere channels. ( I said mere) but that they are inspired and unique and that 2 Tim 3:16 is true.
If that causes you to chuckle so be it. One thing though, you probably cannot understand text you have prejudged.
I have told this story on the Ship before, but when I was leading Toddler Church and following the Old Testament in the autumn term, I found I became more and more reluctant to tell the usual Biblical stories told to young children as I went back and read them in context before leading the session. So my first year I blithely told the stories from the children's Bible box sets:
I could continue listing the stories I stopped telling*, but what concerned me was how many were followed by stories of genocide, murdering the tribes around. Now I've heard the argument that God had to do this to keep his chosen tribes pure and following him and these pagans had to be wiped out to allow God to get his message across, but that reads as a justification of the tribes of Israel.
* There are other Old Testament stories that I did continue to use in later years: the Creation story, Adam and Eve and the serpent, Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers, Jacob's ladder, but those stories allowed me to use them to teach things I wanted to teach. Also when chatting to the parents afterwards, who were often not from a church background, I could talk about the stories in more depth.
What's a "time domain"? It sounds mostly like "a sciencey phrase I'll use to sound impressive". If it means that the Protestant Bible predates the lifespans of anyone having this conversation that's true enough, but "time domain" seems an awkward and confusing way of expressing this. It also seems an unremarkable observation to make, since the Iliad and Shakespeare's sonnets also come from "outside our time domain" under that definition. If you mean something else, could you expand on what you do mean?
For that matter, what's "an integrated message system"? I get that "an integrated message" most likely means a coherent and non-contradictory message, but in what way is the Protestant Bible a "system"?
You are the greatest sceptic I know by that criterion.
Especially when, from a Christian perspective, all other gods are made up figments. All other gods' manifestations are random shite attributed by deluded people. And the real, Christian God can't just say "hello"?
I appreciate the tone of your post and your attempt to explain the liberal view. I do understand it but I do not buy into it. The bias is betrayed by the words ‘genocide’ and ‘wrong.’ Your post illustrates my former point which is that you cannot understand scripture if you see it in the light of political baggage.
It cannot be a source of truth if you place your sense of ‘right’ above it, if you assume for instance, Paul is a Misogynist or that Joshua committed genocide (as in the sense that Hitler did) or that Noah ruthlessly left screaming people to drown, you cannot ever see it as God’s word because God cannot then be good.
Yet God, by biblical definition IS always good. That leaves us with the conclusion that WE in our assessment of his actions are mistaken,wrong,or flawed. If we refuse to take off the spectacles of our ‘right’ judgement, then we are left with an interpretive stance that picks out the bits we want like the Good Samaritan story. We have to cherry pick rather than see it as a whole so whole swathes of scripture are ‘justifiably’ ignored. That is a stance that is a dead end in my view.
Joshua did commit genocide "in the sense that Hitler did", at least if the word "genocide" has any consistent meaning. Noah did leave people to drown, though scripture doesn't specify whether they were screaming or not. Paul was, arguably at least, a misogynist. These aren't things that are being "assume[d]", they're the what the actual text says. The main dispute is your contention that genocide, misogyny, and abandoning people to their deaths is a good thing, or at least can be in the right circumstances. In other words, that there is no consistent standard of good or right beyond the whims of God. If God tells someone to assassinate the President of the United States, for example, that act is "good" because God orders it, despite His previous inclusion of murder on his Big List of Dos and Don'ts.
noun
Definition: Read the Bible exactly like it says; except don't.
And murdering rape victims.
That's just so good.
It's a good life.
This is like Islam, not Christ.
Nothing God does [according to the text] is questionable.
An omniscient God who cannot figure out how to make himself clear to everyone.
An all-powerful God who doesn't have the ability to not be a fairly complete bastard for most of the written record about him.
Or, now I realise this is crazy talk, huge parts of the bible are self-justification by the people who recorded it.
You is on a roll. Oh faithless one. God's ways are mysterious.
Sometime around the seventeenth century, apparently. Since MPaul specifies that there are exactly 66 books in what he describes as "scripture" there apparently was no Bible (or at least not one that counted as "an integrated message system") prior to 1646. Fortunately the Westminster Assembly happened along to complete Jesus' unfinished work.
Can't be Luther, or at least it took Luther a while to decipher the memo, as he wanted to ditch Revelation, Hebrews, Jude and James too. Very important if you're going to go all Sola Scriptura that you first narrow down which Scriptura you're Sola-ing.
¹Or at least six thousand years old.
²Well, since the earth is the centre of the universeᵃ and the world is flatᵇ and the stars are set in a rigid shell surrounding the orbs(discs?) circling the earth and the Bible doesn't mention other beings so it's probably just us and angels. How many angels are there? numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousandᶜ (The later is 100 million but are the former included in that? And how many thousands upon how many other thousands?)
ᵃvarious, OT
ᵇRevelation* 7:1
ᶜRevelation 5:11
*OMG, dudes! Do you realise how batshit crazy Revelations is?
In ever decreasing Solas. Except excepting murdering rape victims. That's definitely in.
Let’s look at cutting the lawns. It does damage to the grass. This, though is not violence. Violence requires a malevolent motive. Another is disciplining of children. The politics of liberalism demand this is defined as violence. The Bible defines it as correction. I do not consider that truth requires the acceptance of liberal definitions. God is defined in the Bible in Jer 9:24 as “...exercising loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth for I delight in these things declares the Lord.”
You need to write a biblical DIctionary so that we mere mortals using the OED, and shite like it, may know the truth.
Here is a start:
love
noun
brutally killing people unnecessarily, but with a smile!
discipline
verb
correct someone to the death, preferably in a lovingly painful manner.
There are enough inaccuracies in this short post that I feel compelled to set the record straight. First, as is often the case, Wikipedia provides some good accessible facts here. The short form: His view of the deuts was adopted by Luther pretty much verbatim: The above is more descriptive than the usually-quoted "helmeted" preface to Samuel and Kings, and is to be found in the letter that became his preface to the books of Solomon.
The Catholic Church apparently did not either commission or endorse Jerome's translation at first, which is a long way from saying that they condemned it. As it became widely admired, it became officially endorsed -- although it was never solely a work of Jerome.
So murdering rape victims is an exercise in loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth for I delight in these things declares the Lord.
The other phrase you picked up on was that the order of creation of the universe in the Bible is now known to be in the wrong order scientifically. If science can describe the order of creation of the universe and that does not match the order as described in Genesis 1:1, what word is acceptable to use here?
You're merely showing up the utter inadequacy of inerrancy and the moral repugnancy and inherent contradictions of its conclusions.
And I find it hard to believe you're not well aware of that yourself.
The uncaring arrogance of posts dismissing genocide as lawn maintenance or harming and killing one’s children as “discipline” make it difficult to react with anything but disdain.
And the insult of “You’re just librulz” is patently ridiculous.
The loving, all-knowing, all powerful God is at direct odds with the rolling dumpster fire that is the Bible as a coherent, perfect tome.