ax

This is from Niclas Berggren.
Again, I put this question out to all xians.

seebs

This isn't much of an argument; it falls down if you assume any kind of interest in making us *think*, which many of us assume. So... if the Bible could be used as a recipe book, there would be no room for humans to strive for righteousness, and it wouldn't *mean* anything.

ax

I'm not sure I follow?, are you saying that to be righteous or even to just strive for it-there needs to be things that set us off? and in this case its faulty translations? maybe I should read your response again...

seebs

Okay, here's the thing.

If I hand you a book labeled "The Way Out Of Hell", and it has "Item 1: Help old ladies across the street", and you help an old lady across the street, no moral choice has been made; you're just trying to do the thing that minimizes your punishment.

So... we have to make the rules a little vague, and abstract enough that you can't just follow them by rote.

Beyond that, I just don't think the *goal* was to make the book "perfect" - merely to make it such that the truth could be approached by anyone who wanted to approach it.

In the end, the Bible could be *totally* inerrant, and people would still misunderstand it... I don't see any point in trying to "fix" this, I think it's a quality of humans. I don't know exactly *why* we're like that, but I have faith that it's for good reasons.

ax

I see your point, but I do not think God works like that, the only biblical support is that it is the inspired word on God and without errors.And even then its reffering to the old testement)

seebs

I think there's a lot of room for what constitutes "inspiration". The Bible says Moses wrote the pentateuch, but it includes his funeral... I generally take the whole thing as men attempting to explain what God told them, or write down things they saw.

Tercel

What question?
There were only two questions actually asked in your post, both of which appear to be rhetorical ones.

Anyway, I'll give you some answers to the questions that weren't asked but might have been, and some replies to some of the statements that were actually made.

How would you feel if I said "First, the Fundamentalist is correct in believing the Christian God to exist..." and continued from there? You probably would not be impressed. Similarly I am not impressed by the quoted statement. The Fundamentalist is not correct because:
1. By the Fundamentalist's own claims God is beyond full understanding. Hence absolute statements about what God would or would not do are impossible. Hence the Fundamentalist cannot consistently claim that an inerrant revelation would certainly be produced.
2. I can think of plenty of reasons why a a "perfect, omnipotent god" would produce something other than an "inerrant revelation". It doesn't take much imagination either. Seebs has already provided one possible reason, do you need more?

What does "produc[ing] an inerrant revelation" mean anyway? Does it mean that everything God does reveals is inerrant? Or is the writer (as I believe he is) equivicating revelation by God with the contents of the Bible? This seems to be making a rather huge assumption. Even if God revealed lots of inerrant truth, and much of it got put in the Bible, it still wouldn't mean the entirity of the Bible contained God's inerrant revelation.

I don't think that's the logic behind it at all. Rather the logic seems to run something like this:
1. God "inspired" the writers of the Bible. (Which all Christians have generally always accepted)
2. Since the Bible's "inspired" by God we can call the Bible the "Word of God" and pretend they're exactly the same concept. (Let's ignore the fact that Jesus is the "Word of God" and Jesus isn't the Bible)
3. If the Bible is the "Word of God" it's contents must have been "spoken" by God in some way or another. (Notice we've now turned the subtle word "inspired" [the same word we use to say "a mountain inspires a poet" or "the painter was inspired by the sunset"] into a more direct and narrow meaning of God doing something)
4. God must have dictated the Bible via the Holy Spirit working in the writers. (Q: God really over-rode the free-will of the writers? A: Uh... God is Omnipotent... so, uh, he was able to sort of do it without doing it... if you see what I mean...)
5. Anything God says must be true.
6. Therefore the Bible is inerrant!

As you can probably see, I don't think much of inerrancy for numerous reasons. (That's it's blatently and obviously false is also rather an important point )

Yes, lets note that.
Q: What do humans do?
A: Make mistakes sometimes. Have political and selfish motivations. In general, aren't the best sort for writing inerrant things.
Q: Can this be avoided?
A: Only if you stop them being human.
Q: Wouldn't dedicated believers who knew the truth and wanted to pass it on accurately be able to do so?
A: Yes. So as far as it can be discerned that the writers had motive an ability to write accurately, then their writing can be trusted.

Which raises the interesting question of is God interested in conveying his "divine information" (whatever that might consist of) to humans? Because, an intelligent person should be able to recognise: an Omnipotent God could devise hugely better methods for conveying information to people than to write a book and let humans distribute it at their own slow pace. An Omnipotent God could speak his will over all the earth, or place his commands inside the heart (metaphorically speaking) of every person. That an Omnipotent God should be limited to the finite revelation of one book, however "inerrant", would seem blasphemy indeed. But, even that book points to other forms of revelation than itself:
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19:1)
"Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clear seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made." (Romans 1:20)
"[The Gentiles consciences' show] that what the Law commands is written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15)
God has, and uses better ways than the Bible to convey information he finds it necessary to impart. If God has information he desperately needs to give, he wouldn't use the Bible to do it, would he? Rather, I would say the Bible represents some of what man has discovered about God. The Bible is written by men who have seen God's work and been inspired by it and written about it for others. (This being a gross generalisation of course, I don't naively assume all the writer's motives were that simple or transparent!)

If you are going to accept that the original writings are inerrant, I don't really know how you would set about defending the lack of inerrancy in the translations and copies. But it's not a defense I spend my timing considering how to make... for obvious reasons.

Grrrr. We aren't all of us silly fundamentalists you know! There might be lots of fundamentalists where you live, but inerrancy isn't accepted by any of the major Churches such as Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican etc as far as I am aware.

Also, to speak of Inerrancy, you surely need a fixed set of books which are supposed to be Inerrant, right? No doubt most fundamentalists naively use the standard Protestant canon as Inerrant, without even being aware that not all Christian in the world have the same books in their bibles. Are the Catholics supposed to accept the Protestant canon as Inerrant... is that supposed to happen before or after the Catholics drop the extra books they've got in their bibles? There have always been differences between branches of the Church as to which books are considered scripture, with many of these differences still existing to this day. To take one list and declare the books in it Inerrant seems to be arbitrary - not to mention arrogant.

Your title was:
"age old question for the xians"
Hardly: Inerrancy seems to be pretty much a recent issue.

Tercel

[ June 18, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Perchance

Tercel:

While I applaud your scorn of Inerrancy (sommething I have myself), I wonder: how do you regard the Bible, then? Is it still better than other moral books to listen to- that is, does it provide better moral instruction? Or is it not a moral book, but something else? Is it still of value in a society that has changed so much from the society it was written for?

I ask simply because it would seem that, if the Bible is acknowledged to be the product of humans, some of whom might not have had the best motives, there doesn't really seem to be any compelling motive to listen to it over other things. Also, humans are capable of drawing up their own reasons for obeying moral laws, of taking different observations from nature than "the glory of God,"
and so on (as I am sure you realize). Does that make the Bible of less value, or even valueless?

Just curious as to your views on this.

-Perchance.

Tercel

For starters I am less inclined to regard the Bible as some great entity in itself, but rather as a collection of books of varying importance.
The main importance I see in the Bible is its preservation of the teachings of the Apostles and the beliefs of the early Church.

"Better" in what way? It certainly provides what is, IMO, some of the best moral instruction the world has ever seen and it also provides some rather questionable moral instruction too.

It's certainly not just a moral book. I think the diversity of the Bible defies classification.

Yes. It doesn't dictate answers to all our societies questions, but what it does give is still worthwhile IMO.

Again you're treating "the Bible" as a whole. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "over other things" either. The Genesis creation story vs Science for example? I go with Science and regard the Genesis story as a creation myth.

I'm not really sure what you're wanting here. The Bible is still valuable as it records the Good News for mankind.

Perchance

I regard "the Bible" as a collection of books, as well, but since most people tend to claim that they discuss a great number of the same things, they get lumped together. I think of them as teaching some interesting theological things, providing a record of observations in certain philosophical and moral sectors, and doing little to no accurate science.

I do think that they are valuable as a record. However, I think this record has much less value for a living society than it does for the society in which it was born, now dead. It performs valuable service, in the same way that Latin, a dead language, continues to serve science, but I don't think it should be granted superiority over the society's own moral guides, any more than Latin should be declared superior to living languages.

[QUOTE<strong>
"Better" in what way? It certainly provides what is, IMO, some of the best moral instruction the world has ever seen and it also provides some rather questionable moral instruction too.
</strong>[/QUOTE]

That's the part that gets me wary when people start claiming it as a moral guide (or as the ultimate moral guide, or as an objective moral guide, or as their primary moral guide). Everyone seems to disagree on which parts are "best" and which parts "questionable," and even the parts that get near-universal approval are (for me) questionable. For example, "love thy neighbor" sounds good. Does it still apply if your neighbor is coming after you with a machete? Or is "love God" applicable to people who are not Christian?

I think the Bible needs to be carefully evaluated, and even its "best" moral grounds tested in the light of other systems of observation.

I said above that I don't think this is true, but I am willing to look at it and say: All right, so it defies classification.

I think this means we should be even more careful about how we handle and approach it, then, if we don't really know what it's about or what it is.

Again, I suppose I would need to know which parts are valuable, and why- and everyone has a different opinion on this, which makes it even harder to follow. In my opinion, of course.

Ah. I see what you mean. But then, why should someone treat the Bible as a moral guide over:

-Holy books of other religions?
-His or her own experience?
-Philosophy?
-Science and its conclusions?
-Any self-formed moral system?
-A work of fiction?

I think people should be free to pick and choose what they wish from the Bible- but that also means that it's impossible to declare that it is inferior or superior to anything else. That's what I mean by "over other things." The Bible is part of the moral system of part of our society as it currently stands, but a great many people seem to think that it should be the foundation, or treated as somehow sacred and inviolable and granted a position above anything else.

Not that I am accusing you of this .

Okay, I think I see the foundation of our disagreement now. I don't see "the Good News" as superior to any other kind of news, or even "Good" all the time. Some people who accepted it achieved peace because of it. Others didn't. It doesn't seem to be of value for "mankind," only those individuals who freely choose it as their path.

The Bible may have value for some people, partial value for some people, staggering importance for some, and be worth less than toenail clippings for others. (I suspect I am one of the "toenail clippings" people). I was just curious to see if this varied view was the way that you saw it, as well, or in a different way.

-Perchance.