sidewinder

I have what I think is a very simple question about the Holy Bible for all Christians who wish to respond.

It is claimed by Christians that the Holy Bible is a message from the God of the universe to all human beings. If this is true, why did this God inspire the kind of book that is the Holy Bible? Why not just simply inspire a book to be written that is perfectly clear, without error or contradiction, and with one consistent message. The message of the Holy Bible only seems to have inspired confusion among humans as it can interpreted in very different ways. There are thousands of Christian denominations and many have their own unique interpretations of the Holy Bible.

I know Christians would state there are no errors or contradictions in the Holy Bible but it's clear that there are many. I don't deny that some of them can be reconciled with some background information of some sort but many of them stand out clearly as errors and contradictions.

If the Christian God loves humans more than we can understand and desires more than anything that we spend eternity with Him, then why not a perfectly clear and error free message that all men could understand in any language, and one that clearly has only one interpretation, or at least a message that will significantly minimize the number of possible interpretations?

Go...

Sojourner553

Your post evokes the observation by Shelley:

"If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?"

C.S. Lewis admitted there was a problem with the Bible not being very clear. In the end though, he just sighs and looks the other way.

According to Lewis:

"We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is
imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic
fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have
only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped
to some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we
cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He
uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no
irreverence) the 'wisecrack'. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs,
if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching
therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be 'got up' as
if it were a 'subject'. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him
the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to
a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, 'pinned down'.
The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a
sunbeam.

"Descending lower, we find a somewhat similar difficulty with St. Paul.
I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him so
many gifts, withheld from him (what would to us seem so necessary for the
first Christian theologian) that of lucidity and orderly exposition.

"Thus on three levels, in appropriate degrees, we meet the same refusal
of what we might have thought best for us--in the Word Himself, in the
Apostle of the Gentiles, in Scripture as a whole. Since this is what
God has done, this we must conclude, was best. It may be that what we should
have liked would have been fatal to us if granted...

"But of course [any] conjectures as to why God does what He does are
probably of no more value than my dog's ideas of what I am up to when
I sit and read. But though we can only guess the reasons, we can at least
observe the consistency, of His ways. We read in GENESIS(2,7) that God
formed man of the dust and breathed life into him. For all the first
writer knew of it, this passage might merely illustrate the survival, even
in a truly creational story, of the Pagan inability to conceive true
Creation, the savage, pictorial tendency to imagine God making things
'out of' something as the potter or the carpenter does. Nevertheless,
whether by lucky accident or (as I think) by God's guidance, it embodies
a profound principle..." (CS Lewis, REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS taken from
THE INSPIRATIONAL WRITINGS OF CS LEWIS, Inspirational Press, 1984,pp 189-90

I do disagree with CS Lewis on the dog analogy. I think humans should be as up-front as possible with their pets -- treating them kindly, and not paying dirty tricks on them for example.

Sojourner

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

beachbum

sidewinder

You are only 100% correct. This whole bible concept never made a lot of sense to me.

Thanks

Stan

James AD

To me, the Bible looks like a message from the priesthood to the laity.

I am working on reading the Bible from cover to cover. In Leviticus, where I am now, Yahweh seems primarily concerned with having bulls, sheep, goats and turtle doves immolated and offered to him (with choice portions going to the sons of Aaron, of course). There are a number of good rules and customs, but an awfully high number of transgressions require the death of the offenders.

In short, the Bible does not appear to be anything so grand.

AIA

The statement at the beginning of this thread made a number of claims. First, it claimed that the Bible is not clear. Second, it claimed that it is not without error or contradiction. Finally, it claimed that it does not communicate a consistent message.

To the first claim I would reply that the Bible is perspicuous. Martin Luther stated the classic Protestant understanding of the perspicuity of Scripture in "The Bondage of the Will" (from tr. by Henry Cole, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976):

"This indeed I confess, that there are many places in the Scriptures obscure and abstruse; not from the majesty of the things, but from our ignorance of certain terms and grammatical particulars; but which do not prevent a knowledge of all the things in the Scriptures . . . All the things, therefore, contained in the Scriptures, are made manifest, although some places, from the words not being understood, are yet obscure . . .And, if the words are obscure in one place, yet they are clear in another . . . For Christ has opened our understanding to understand the Scriptures . . . Therefore come forward, you and all the Sophists together, and produce any one mystery which is still abstruse in the Scriptures. But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth . . . Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear scriptures of God . . . "

In other word, our finite minds may not be able to comprehend the message of the Scriptures but this is not due to the ineptness of the God who inspired the writings. It is due to our own ignorance or blindness to the message in the inspired texts. This is true even amongst Christians. They disagree over issues in the Bible and form various denominations which are polarized around their hermeneutic. However, you will find that all Christians agree on several central issues of the faith, such as : the deity of Christ, the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, the blood atonement, the existence of heaven and hell, etc....

To the second claim I would reply that all alleged errors and contradictions in Scripture have been answered. For example, it was once believed that St. Luke was in error in reporting the facts surrounding the birth of Christ. Critics argued that there was no census, that Quirinius was not governor of Syria at that time, and that everyone did not have to return to their ancestral home as Luke reported. Sir William Ramsay then made numerous archaeological discoveries that proved the critics wrong. He discovered that the Romans held a regular census that began under Augustus and first took place between 23 to 8 B.C. He also discovered that Quirinius was governor of Syria around 7 B.C. and also around 6 A.D. In another discovery he unearthed a papyrus in Egypt that directed all who lived away from their homelands to return to return in order to complete the family registration.

To the third claim I would reply that the Bible conveys many consistent messages such as : God's love for mankind, the sinful fallen state of man and his need for redemption, the provision of a Christ's sacrifice on the cross as sufficient to atone for all sin, etc, etc.... From Genesis to Revelation these and other prominent themes are consistently interwoven in the texts of Scripture.

Cutter

Does anyone else find it amusing/ironic that AIA claims the Bible is clear, and then promptly uses two words that probably sent most people scurrying for their dictionaries (perspicuous and hermeneutic)?

Vinnie

Answered yes, but to whose satisfaction? On what grounds would you make that reply? Have you seen all the alleged errors answered? Are you speaking of only internal errors (e.g. genealogy discrepancy etc) or of external contrdictions (earth is 6,000 years old etc.) as well?

From a recently composed Statement of Faith, my view on the Bible (altered from the original SOF):

I believe that God has been revealed through divinely-inspired writings over the course of history. Due to God's image in man's creativity it can be said that many human creations- including writings, art, and music- contain a measure of inspiration.

The Bible is not divine revelation itself, it is a recording of God's self-communication to us filtered through human lenses. We believe the Bible to be inspired by God in the same manner that a painting of a mountain is inspired by the mountain. The mountain doesn't actively and consciously work through the man and make the painting. The mountain doesn't draw it. Its state of being inspires it. I believe the same for God. Its simply a recording of a historical revelation. I do, however, view the Bible as the supreme channel of religious knowledge regarding Christian faith and doctrine. I believe that first and foremost among the writings of men, God has been revealed through the Bible. I accept that there is room for error based on human limitations in the Bible.

Vinnie

spin

On Vinnie's statement of faith:

1) Why should you believe that, Vinnie?

2) If you had been born in Saudi Arabia, would you have either become a Muslim at birth, or later because of the weight ofcultural influence?

3) What is your position regarding other people who make such similar statements of faith as yours but about the Quran or the Upanishads? Are they right as well in such statements of faith or are they just as liable as you to believe whatever they've been fed by their cultures?

The bible is a series of texts written by people, as are all religious works. You just happen to believe that they are different from all other works, not through the bible itself, but because other people want you (and anyone else) to believe it. It's a case of: the more the merrier.

The thinking believer has a type of buffer belt around his/her text of choice: things might not be consistent in the details as errors do creep in, but by and large it is the revelation of your god, so, while accepting some error margin, you merely render the text more acceptable to yourself and avoid the responsibility of analysing the text from an objective viewpoint. If you believe it and base personal principles on it, then you cannot perform a meaningful analysis of it. You just build a fence around it... to protect it.

Vorkosigan

Hi Vinnie. Nice to see you here. Good to see the board is back up.

Michael

[ April 14, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

AIA

Dear ilgwamh,

If we want to resolve an apparent contradiction in the Bible all we need to do is to present one other possibility. For example, if someone says he has never committed murder, we only need to prove that he murdered once to prove him wrong. It doesn't matter if he murdered once, twice, or ten times. Its still more than none. Likewise, the person who says the Bible is contradictory is claiming that no one can ever find a possible solution. As soon as we can bring up even one possibility, we have refuted his contradiction whether he agrees with the answer or not. Other possible resolutions to apparent contradictions only strengthen the apologists position. Sometimes there are five or more resolutions to one alleged discrepancy in the Bible and the believer is at liberty to choose the one that is best. Let's face it, some people will never be satisfied with an answer to an apparent contradiction simply because they have become so biased that they willfully choose not to accept an answer. In cases like this Aristotle's Dictum applies which, in essence, states : "the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself." In other words, the author of the document probably knows more about the event than the critic does, and so we should allow him the benefit of the doubt unless we have clear evidence to the contrary.


Cutter, the following definitions are for your benefit (By the way, these terms are commonly used in most entry level books on textual criticism).

Perspicuous
per·spic·u·ous (pr-spky-s) adj. -
Clearly expressed or presented; easy to understand. From Latin perspicuus, from perspicere, to see through.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.


Hermeneutic
\Her`me*neu"tic\, Hermeneutical \Her`me*neu"tic*al\, a. [Gr. ?, fr. ? to interpret: cf. F. herm['e]neutique.] Unfolding the signification; of or pertaining to interpretation; exegetical; explanatory; as, hermeneutic theology, or the art of expounding the Scriptures; a hermeneutic phrase.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc