Sue Sponte

You presume too much in thinking you've found a contradiction. I find all forms of christianity equally illogical as they all are based on the same flawed tenets.

Define accurate? Now I know you've lost it.

As for the remainder, you are inherently contradictory. In one sentence, the bible is "didactic historical fiction", in another it is the inspired work of god. Which is it?

And I said a bible with errors cannot be inspired, as it is inconsistent with the concept of an omnipresent being. Did god make those errors or are they human errors? If they are human errors, then at least part of the bible is necessarily not inspired. Because I have no reason to believe the remainder is inspired, then I can reasonably conclude that none of it is. Keep in mind, parts of the bible that have been repudiated as fiction were once accepted as inspired. In time, so will the remainder.

I also have no idea what you mean by "verbal plenary inspiration", but I must say I am impressed with the phraseology used to categorize those who believe all in the bible to be god's word.

Do you not see the contradictions in what you say? The bible is the foundation of christianity and has flaws, yet the foundation isn't flawed? The foundation is accepted even with known errors? The bible is god's word, yet erroneous?

I don't think you are getting my point: there is no "qualititative inspiration". That is simply another way of saying that one can be christian and not take the supposed word of god literally. I reject the concept of some "subjective" christianity, as it isn't christianity at all. It's deism, at most, but certainly not christianity, regardless of what anyone calls it. Christianity is the belief that the bible is the inspired word of god and objective truth. There can be no error in supposed objective truth.

How can something inspired need "harmonizing"? How can there be "diversity" among supposedly inspired work, unless god is schizophrenic? Sorry, but this makes no sense at all.

Christianity rests on the bible as the inspired word of god. No amount of rationalizing can logically equate erroneous human penmanship as "cannon".

No, that would make you a deist. "Natural inspiration" is not christianity.

Sue Sponte

This raises a question that has always stymied me. Why did god need a second draft on his inspired work? The whole concept of a "new testament" for a supposedly inspired work makes no sense to me.

Vinnie

Obviously you missed the point of that. Your very narrow understanding of Christianity largely forgets about one of the largest Christian groups I am aware of. The RCC does not require a verbal plenary inspired inerrancy to the best of my knowledge. If this is true, it is quite obvious that you and others who would argue along a similar route, are quite mistaken.

Again, the RCC may be mistaken or illogical but that does not validate your claim that all Christians must be bound by a wooden-literalism and accept a naive form of Biblical inspiration. This would seemingly be direct evidence that implies the opposite of what you state. Please do not dismiss it by simply reasserting your point all over again.

The point was that God could inspire didactic historical fiction. We don't even need to go this far though. At any rate, God is not required to inspire strict history.

Qualitative inspiration says that the Bible has what God wanted it to for the sake of our salvation. That qualitative affirmation does not state there are or are not errors in it. It leaves the issue open. God only restricted the evangelists from going too far outside of the lines as he saw them. With the light touch of the teacher he guided it so that it served his purpose (despite errors). That is what QI says.

That hasn't stopped people from viewing them metaphorically and mythically, which, IMO, is just as valid in a lot of cases.

Verbal plenary inspiration means God dictated the very words of scripture. Virtually every objection you have offered in your post has been against this model. Unfortunately it is precisely this model I deemed naive. Your assertion that it is the only true Christian model is false. Of course, many Christians may side with you (mostly those who hold to verbal plenary inspiration) but many would also disagree with you (strangely enough, mostly those who don't hold to VPI).



I can't see that which is invisible


It is only inconsistent if God chose the very words. That happens to be the definition of verbal plenary inspiration which was dismissed.

I did NOT say THE foundation. I am utterly opposed to that idea in every sense imaginable! I said a foundation. The Bible surely is a major and foundational element of the Christian life and the Christian faith. THE foundation itself is of course, the living and transforming Jesus. The Bible serves to mediate grace and has valid pastoral purposes.

You just don't get it do you? QI says that the Bible has objective truth. But since God did not inspire or dictate the very words, everything is not necessarily 100% accurate truthful.

You need to realize that there are significant numbers of professing Christians out there who reject chicago-type inerrancy but still affirm the Bible as God's word (functionally and ontologically).

So what is your argument? All us Christians are deists, deceived, liars or what?

I have to conclude that your definition of Christianity is extremely narrow and restricts the membership of a large number of actual, professing Christians

Did you actually read the article I linked to above? It should help if you did.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Did God "need" a second draft or was it "good" to produce one? Backing up, who said the NT is a second draft? Most writings of the NT were penned before the FULL canonization of the OT occured in the second century AD. Of course, a sense of sacred scripture was clearly fixed by then. Of course, that scripture itself occured over time. Many would consider the NT as a second draft in the sense of being a progressive revelation.

And Given that Christians believe God revealed himself to us historically and at different times and in different places and through different prophets, writings at different times and places are not problematic in the least.

If it was God's goal for the Bible to be read by every single person who ever lived then yes we would expect Adam to have received a full copy which was to be passed on to all people.

But there was no historical Adam and I have a hunch that the Bible was not meant for such a thing. Since you find the view problematic feel free to explain why you think it was.

Vinnie

Sue Sponte

Because the christian god is fictitional, you can give any characterization you want to these things, as you just did. God inspired historical fiction? I know you hold these views passionately, Vinnie, but please understand that I find these kinds of statements ludicrous. You are free to believe otherwise.

This definition simply attempts to explain error in the bible by presuming that "god" wanted error. Because the whole concept is fiction, one can make up any assumption one wishes. In doing so, you simply convince me that there is no logic or reason involved in the process.

I get it just fine. We simply have different views of whether it is rationale to presume that there is "objective truth" in an admittedly flawed text. This text is supposed to provide the "objective truth", yet over time, much of the text has been rejected as such. I reject that a flawed text can reasonably be seen as inspired. You don't. There is nothing else to get.

It seems you are the one not getting it.

I realize there are people who profess to be christians and believe the bible to be the word of a supreme being, while at the same time believing that not all of the bible is accurate. With full realization that many such people exist, I find their positions logically incongruent.

That's a good start.

Humor aside, I don't believe you are a liar, Vinnie. You subjectively believe what you say to be true. As for deceived, that term may apply to any christian, in my view, although it wouldn't be my first choice. My point is that I personally find illogical someone who claims to be christian yet concedes the bible is flawed.

You assert that the bible is a foundation, not the foundation, of christianity, then state that "THE foundation itself is of course, the living and transforming Jesus." Of course, your belief that there was this "living and transforming Jesus" is founded in the bible, creating a nifty circle for the mind to travel. Or perhaps you can point me to the evidence other than the bible which establishes that Jesus was something other than merely a human.

I'm not defining christianity, but merely expressing my opinion that a person who purports to be christian but rejects parts of the bible is something of a different species. As noted above, I await being enlightened as to the foundation of christianity apart from the bible.

Yes. What was supposed to be helpful? That you believe god can be "experienced" through multiple religions? This explains nothing to me, other than that you believe in god and appear to be tolerant of other religious views. I had garnered that much already.

I mean no offense to you, but your article is meaningless to one who does not share your belief in a god. The article does not advance why one should believe in god, but merely lays out the manner in which you have chosen to do so.

Asha'man

You have misunderstood my phrasing. I mean that every time a Christian tells me about God, loving me is part of the description of God. The “supposed to” refers to the supposed definition of God as all-loving, not that God is somehow constrained.

You must have a rather odd definition of a “clear message.” If the message was really clear, than any person with average intelligence and reading skills would be unable to misunderstand it. I’m pretty sure I am somewhat above average in both, but the message is not at all clear to me.

Tell me, if you see any contradictions and inaccuracies in the Bible, wouldn’t it be clearer to fix those? If the Bible can be improved, then didn’t God do a substandard job?

Vinnie

I said God "could" not that God did IIRC. A parable is "kind of like" didactic historical fiction. Think of parts of the Bible as parables set in history if it helps. I am not saying that the entire Bible is didactic historical fiction inspired by God down to the very words. Not at all!

I believe the creativity was limited and that there was a solid historical core, or history remembered, but still think a good portion of the synoptic Gospels themselves can be considered "didactic historical fiction".

God can inpire myth, God can inspire history, God can inspire poetry ,God can inspire DHF, God can inspire etc. Though I am not saying the Bible is verbal plenary inspired DHF or VPI DHF.

I don't think the inaccuracies in the Bible like luke's blunder on the census was God inspiring DHF. i think it was Luke making a mistake. I of course, read that as DHF. But my point was that God is in the business of salvation, not chronicling history. The Bible is meant to be read and interacted with. Its not meant to simply tell us brute facts just so we can know them "Yeah, Hesekiah begat John and John begat Joe and blah blah blah". Who cares? The genealogies must have been important to some ancient authors who included them at the time but...

Why did John write? to record strict history? Or so that we may believe Jesus is the Son of God and have eternal life in his name? The Bible is seen as an exact history and that has clouded how I feel it should actually be seen.

QI does not say God "wanted" errors. It says that God wanted in the Bible a basic salvational message and basic record or certain things. And the whole concept is not fiction.

So if any text outside of the bible was flawed in one element you would a priori dismiss the rest of its contents as untrustworthy and incapable of providing objective truth?

The Bible is not the only means of learning about such things. But since its full canonization it has become a major foundation. We don't all hold to sola scripture.

Raymond Brown, in his Introduction to the New Testament Forward (p. 8) has said, Before the completion and general acceptance of the Christian canon the Church lived and spread with no Bible.

A citation from Marcus Borg:

History 101 with Mr Gutenberg and his printing press. Do you think every Christian had a Bible or was even literate in the history of Christianity? Christianity was spread largely through word of mouth by the "scriptures".

Even Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in their joint Handbook of Christian Apologetics which is very conservative are on record as saying that “for many years early Christian apologists and church fathers argued quite effectively for Christianity without even having the New Testament scriptures as authoritatively defined, since the canon was not established until generations later.”

I didn't know you think the bible is valid evidence which substantiate the "super-humanness of Jesus". If you write an article explaining why I'll post it on my website

That was the wider-hope one. The other one on inspiration.

That is not offensive LOL. I was writing from within the Christian tradition on pluralism there. That was written for those struggling with Christian exclusivism--not to provide skeptics with the proof of God's existence. Now if you said I did a bad job discussing pluralism in that context I might be offended and my feelings would be hurt

Vinnie

Vinnie

[QUOTE]You must have a rather odd definition of a “clear message.” If the message was really clear, than any person with average intelligence and reading skills would be unable to misunderstand it. I’m pretty sure I am somewhat above average in both, but the message is not at all clear to me.[/qquote]

Actually, its not that God's presence around us is not clear or lacking on his part, its the wounds of existence which are deep and hard to overcome. Those pesky critters cloud the issue clear issue.

Again, under QI the Bible was not meant to be perfectly clear on all things or even to be read by all people. My understanding of the Bible is based solely on its functional qualities. It is only from there that I would dare to make ontological claims about its nature. But as I sad above, when I start on a functional level, natural inspiratio nand qualititative inspiration are very similar. But there are a few key differences.

We must also understand that any revelation in the Bible is historical. It occured in space time and that open up a whole new ball game.


Three cites from Brown's intro to the NT:


And I am still working on the wounds of existence thing. I added to it last night and a little today. Its not written specifically for your question but elements of it touch on them.

Tercel

NO! That is not at "the entire point of Christianity" at all.
You need to study some history of Christianity!

You are making a fundamentalist assumption and then you are finding flaws in standard Christianity based on that: Bad logic.
Your assumption is that the Bible is the "foundation" of Christianity - this doctrine, known as Sola Scriptura, was a rather silly Protestant invention during the Reformation. Since the Reformers rejected Church authority (as their main source of complaint was that the Church had abused this authority), they needed a new source of authority so they used the Bible. This (according to you) central pillar of Christian doctrine has only existed for a few hundred years. Reminder: Christianity is almost 2000 years old.

Secondly, it is the fundamentalists who are inconsistent - as Sola Scriptura is self-defeating. Things like Sola Scriptura, inerrancy and the contents of the Bible are church teaching as none of these things are found in the Bible -the closest is a statement that the scripture (by which the writer means something close to the Old Testament) is "inspired" (which doesn't at all equate to inerrancy necessarily)- and according to Sola Scriptura, church teaching is valueless: hence it self-defeats.

The only foundation not subject to this self-defeat is church doctrine - the church teaching that church teaching is true does not self-contradict. The Bible provides a record of the early Church's beliefs and hence it's value to "liberals". And this is how the Reformers should have used it - to correct the heretical errors to their day's Church based on the information of the beliefs of the early Church as recorded in the Bible. Any suggestion of Inerrancy or anything similar is entirely beside the point and to be evaluated on its own (non-existent) merits.

Liberals do not conceed "that the foundation for their beliefs in lacking": they have a different foundation.

Vorkosigan

Things like Sola Scriptura, inerrancy and the contents of the Bible are church teaching as none of these things are found in the Bible

<slaps forehead> Duh! Gods, the things I've never seen. That's why I hang out on discussion boards. Thanks.

Vorkosigan