Chili

How can anybody be an eyewitness if it is a metaphysical event. The point there is that is what the uninformed non-Jew would see. The Gospel of Matthew is the Jewish account and is the religious perspective while Luke tells us how this would be perceived by the subconscious mind of the Gospeler.

Notice how the genealogy in Matt was recorded and in Luke it was perceived after the descend of the HS. How the birth of Jesus came to Joseph in a dream which clearly identifies his conscious mind while in Luke it was a revealed subconscious mind event that came across as a dream in Matthew. So the very Annunciation in Luke was the actual dream in Matthew. Same event different perspective.

Yes, this makes Mary the personified celestial sea of Joseph out of which Jesus was born to make Jesus the reborn Joseph who was pregnant with despair and therefore was forced to give an account of himself.

jbernier

Hardly. Consider, for example, Origen. He would have had no patience for "inerrancy." Indeed, he would have said that it was only the most spiritually immature Christians who would concern themselves with such matters. For him the scriptures had authority in that they contained allegorical truths about life, the world, etc. I am not necesssarily advocating Origen's method - I am just pointing out that there have been theologies which recognized the divine authority of scripture without being concerned with inerrancy.

You are thinking in terms of a zero-sum game which unequivocally equates historical truth with mythic and theological truth. However, there is a longstanding tradition of Christian thought (of which Origen, again, is a prime example) which says that these are not necessarily the same thing. For instance, does one need to believe that there was actually a worldwide flood to consider the theology within the story?

This question of inerrancy only becomes an issue if one understands the scriptures as a telegraph written by God giving a perfect record of human and extrahuman events and realities. However that really has not been the Christian perspective, at least not for the majority of Christian history. Generally speaking scripture is imagined as a product of the dialogic (and at times conflictual) relationship between human, human and God.

One must immediately ask "Where is authority located within Christian communities?" Is it the canon? If so, one faces an immediate problem: Where did canonical authority lie before the setting of the canon?

I would point out that prior to the Reformation there were at least three broad understandings of the ultimate source of Christian authority: The episcopal (from the bishops and, in the Western church, ultimately the Pope); the conciliar (authority coming from councils of the church); and the scriptures. During the Reformation the Catholic church developed a strong emphasis upon the episcopal and the Reformers on the scriptures; the conciliar was generally subordinated to the episcopal or the scriptural, depending upon which side of the fence you happened to be on.

This, I think, was unfortunate. The conciliar perspective saw the church as a place in which power was decentred - it was not centred in an all-powerful Pope or an all-powerful book but rather in a community of church leaders. This was not, a course, ideal or free from politicking; however, I think that there was a much better model here - a model which can be adapted for the contemporary context in a democratic fashion in which we locate authority primarily in the mutual dialogue within and between local assemblies (ekklesiav of Christians. The authority of scripture, the bishop, the priest, the pastor, etc. would have to be located in and subordinate to the authority of such local and translocal dialogues.

chapka

On a board like this one, and with fundamentalists so vocal in America generally, it's easy to lose perspective. However, fundamentalists are, and have always been, in the minority--although, certainly, large parts of the Bible were accepted as history in prescientific eras when there was no reason to doubt them.

Remember, at least a plurality of Christians, both in America and worldwide, are Catholics, and there are very few inerrantist Catholics. Most mainstream Protestant sects, and most sects which are established state churches in Europe (i.e., Lutheranism and Anglicanism/Episcopalianism) are also not inerrantist. It's really mostly the Pentecostals, the Mormons, and the Baptists making up the literalist camp.

This is one reason why the fundamentalist attack on church/state separation is so ironic. The fundamentalists see that most people are "Christian" and think they'll be in the majority. They don't realize that other people use the word "Christian" differently than they do.

blt to go

You CLEARLY do not know the "church leaders" in my community.
Politicking is an art form of the highest magnitude.

Seriously, jbernier, in reviewing the history of the councils, and being aware of human nature, is this not man creating god? Each community would have a different standard, different god, why, we would look like the various denominations we have today! Only more bifurcated.

Why is it we have a more concise picture and tradition of Santa Clause than we do of god?

Chili

Catholics may not be inerrantists but they do believe that the bible is inspired and therefore true but probably beyond their understanding if it does not make sense to them. A good reason for Catholics to take this position is that they have been warned about interpreting the bible wrong and we have the protestant churches to prove the final result of this.

Inspired does not exactly mean that God was 'pushing the pen' but it does mean that the presentation is without error. All that is required from us is to read it from the same point of view that the writer had in mind and then it becomes "as easy as eating and drinking" (William Golding). I might add here that the mythmakers were gnostics and as such were they resident of heaven.

Dr_Paine

Sure, the scriptures can illuminate truths allegorically, but Aesop's fables can do the same. They have meaning, relevance, and moral value, yet lack authority. Arguing that the Bible is useful or even truthful allegory does little to establish any authority above that of any other writings, regardless of the opinion of Origen.

"There have been theologies" asserting many things - irrelevant. Still fails to demonstrate authority.

Not so. However, if one asserts a special or privileged authority particular to the "Bible,� one must assert more than its allegorical truths. Any book can do that, i.e. Aesop's Fables.

Also, the use of the word "truth" in referring to allegory and history is a bit equivocal. Of course, just because a creative author illustrates an axiom through myth (less likely, in the case of myth, as these usually reference origins, and are mere retrojections about how things came to be) or allegory does not mean that the particular myth or allegory is "true" in any honest sense of the word. Do we believe the factuality of the Boy Who Cried Wolf? No. Does it illustrate a lesson for life? Sure! Is it authoritative? No! Anyone could make up a story that teaches the same lesson.

Once again, this is rather evasive. To infer allegorical truths from the Bible, one must interpret certain things to be representative of actual events, others symbolic representations, and yet others poetic expressions. This requires subjective inference and judgment. It is a selective process and a slippery slope. Having a little authority is like being a little pregnant.

If the question is "Can the Bible be authoritative - in that it is claimed to be The Word of God - yet be errant?" NO

However, if one asks, "Can the Bible be useful, and inspiring, yet errant?� The answer would be YES. This holds true for much poetry and prose. I see no need to distinguish the Bible based upon its allegorical truths. It also possesses many asinine inanities.

Dr_Paine

I agree. While I thoroughly reject the "inerrantist" viewpoint, I find it more honest than the "inerrantist/yet authoritative" viewpoint.

The "inerrantist" position simply ignores empirical evidence, and textual criticism. This may be a bit deluded, but it is a straight forward epistemology - "I stand alone on the Word of God - The B-I-B-L-E"

The "inerrantist/yet authoritative" tolerates an incredible cognitive dissonance, which necessitates rather acrobatic equivocations. This is the more educated/ intelligent Christian who acknowledges "inaccuracies/ contradictions" yet needs to retain some spiritual nourishment from the Bible. How one reconciles error and authority within an intellectually honest mind, I do not know.

When I refer to "intellectual honesty" I am not attacking the character of such a person. I am merely offering that such a one is befuddled with cognitive blind spots, which prevent the person from clearly reasoning on certain issues that have emotive force.

chapka

I don't see the problem, exactly. The usual teaching is something along the lines of: God gave revelations to man. Man thought about them, put them into words, wrote them down. Other men copied and collected them. The original revelations were True, but they were expressed in ways limited by the understanding of the people who received them, and reflecting their cultural understanding (which didn't include, in most cases, a concept of "literal history.")

Also, I don't see the problem with privileging the moral precepts of the Bible over those of Aesop, or Homer, or any other moral text. Look at Jesus and look at Odysseus, for example. They teach us different lessons about how to behave. Neither is perfectly consistent, but if you want to you can pull a rough code of conduct out of either one. Homer clearly values loyalty to family, strength in battle, wit, and bravery; Jesus doesn't put much stock in any of these, but pushes charity, forgiveness, asceticism, and sacrifice. If you believe that one writer was inspired by god or by the gods (filtered through however much error) and the other wasn't, you aren't going to consider both equally useful, and if you're faced with a choice between showing bravery and strength in battle or showing charity and forgiveness, that's certainly going to influence your choice.

I also strongly disagree that the fundamentalist position is somehow "straight forward epistemology." The fact is, the fundamentalist position, the idea that any text can have a single, objective, culturally-independent meaning, conflicts with everything we know about epistemology. It makes much more sense to try to get a broad meaning out of the text than it does to deconstruct every word and phrase in search of objectivity. And there's no reason a flawed text can't be privileged for extratextual reasons--look at the Magna Charta, or the Constitution, for an example.

Dr_Paine

I somewhat agree chapka. Still how can one attribute divine authority simply because of the presence of allegorical truths? As I stated, such "truths" need not be divinely inspired.

Your choice between Jesus and Odysseus is more one of aesthetics and personal values than any indication of moral superiority. You may choose Jesus because he epitomizes your concept of beauty and the moral paragon; yet you have not demonstrated why I should attribute heavenly authority to the imperfect, skewed, contradictory, and often ludicrous writings of men, however wise.

What truths are found in the Bible, are not true because they are found in the Bible. Rather, they are found in the Bible because a wise man observed them to be truths. This insight is not unique to biblical authors. Consider the writings of sages throughout the ages and throughout the world. Are they all inspired of God. If so, then whence comes this privileged status of the most tenacious sacred cow - The Bible?

Dr_Paine

Of course, in both of these cases, no divine authority is inferred. These are simply imperfect social contracts. Both were created by men in order to -ostensibly - better society. At least in the case of the Constitution, it was the result of vitriolic debate, and eventual compromise. By the time it passed, the Constitution was still not terribly popular.

If you wish to treat the Bible as a human document created by men in order to preserve a culture, "history", and order, then I will accept your comparison with the secular texts to which you referred.