Toto

Oh that's all well and good. Perhaps when the next C+ Bible student shows up and tells us that the Bible is TRUE because of its amazing accuracy in prophesying the current state of international affairs, even more accurate than Nostradamus, you will try to set him straight?

Thanks in advance.

CJD

Not in front of a bunch of atheists I won't. I'll quietly be embarrassed, as usual.

CJD

See what happens when you force my hand!

Most prophecies, I think, are not geared at telling the future (i.e., singling out a specific, future event). They were designed to get people off their asses and repent (cf. Jonah). And they all, I think, if not explicitly, have tacit conditions attached to them. Thus, prophetic utterances should have never been treated as an 'apologetic'.

Alas.

The "inevitable" part is what the text (the very text inerrantists protect) does not support, and thus they set themselves up for a fall. A prophecy may be uttered about the future, but 'intervening historical contingencies' mean that the prophecy may not be fulfilled in the manner it was spoken. Take Isaiah, for example. Most of the text records the prophet's utterances about the forthcoming Babylonian destruction (he is, in effect, saying, "Look, I was right about Assyria; you had better believe with respect to Babylon.") Do you see how there is no difference between a "prophecy" and a "prediction" at this point?

I'd just emend the above "making people feel better" to "making people get off their asses and repent."

[quoteI also feel that confusing "predictions" with "prophecies" goes counter to ordinary definitions of either words and in no way helps with understanding either of these human pronouncements.[/QUOTE]

That's fine, but the prophetic literature does not make that distinction. As long we recognize this, and as long as you state it as such in your OP, then we have no problems. I will have a problem if you begin to say the pertinent texts do suppose that prophecies are "inevitably" fulfilled in the exact manner in which they are uttered.


CJD

ddd3dturner

Which prophecies are supposed to foretell the future?

Johnny Skeptic

Your problem is that your hand picked experts cannot reasonably verify what Christians need to verify the most, namely that the God of the Bible created the universe. You are a scholarly type, but no amount of scholarship can reasonably prove that the God of the Bible created the universe. Pending reasonable proof that the God of the Bible created the universe, and that there are not any other beings in the universe who can convert matter into energy, his authority is not any more credible than any other self-proclaimed dictator's authority. You have wasted a lot of your life reading a lot of books that have not brought you any closer at all to answering the ultimate question, from a religious minded person's perspective that is, namely "who created the universe"? It is plausible that Jesus was an advanced alien who simulated his death and lied about who he was because he wanted to be worshiped. If Jesus actually returns to earth, how do you intend to identify him? His identity doesn't really matter as long as he provides you with a comfortable eternity, right?

John A. Broussard

Bible inerrantists put a great deal of emphasis on the fulfilment of prophecies for the simple reason that those prophecies provide external evidence of the truth of the bible.

The argument is simple. "The bible is the word of god. We can be sure of this because the prophecies in the bible have all come true. Only god could make such prophecies, so that is proof that the bible is the word of god."

Such an argument gets around the circularity that inerrantists are usually (rightly) accused of. The problem is of course, as you point out, that the prophecies aren't fulfilled.

The only question is whether the inerrantists are right in that the prophecies were intended to be infallible pronouncements regarding future events or, as with more liberal Christians, that the prophecies are merely warnings or teachings.

Not being a bible scholar, I take no stand on that issue though I lean toward thinking that the writers and their contemporary readers were convinced that the prophecies were divinely inspired and that they would be fulfilled exactly as prohecied.