Yours are the sort of views that i am trying to collate for a global overview on theology book.

I have set up a website for this purpose and requires nothing more than filling out a simple form.

Your views (and any of your readers views) would be massivley appreciated.

Andy

As far as I can tell from reading the Internet and not being a scholar of Judaism, the reason the Torah was considered to be inerrant was the extraordinarily careful techniques used for copying it, not divine intervention. The techniques recognize the potential for creating errors in the Torah – and that’s in the same language!

Considering the number of translations and versions of the Bible that have been created and discovered, I don’t think that Biblical reliance on the accuracy of the Torah is evidence for inerrancy.

Then we could all focus on living into passages like “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” What would our Christian community look like if we began to do this, and abandoned our theological in-fighting? We might even begin to demonstrate the unity in the body for which Jesus prayed in John 17, and which he identified as the means by which the world will ultimately recognize the truth of the gospel.

They will cut asunder the toughest argument
with as much ease as Alexander did the gordian
knot; they will thunder out so many rattling
terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction.
They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the
most intricate mysteries; they will tell you to a
tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence
in the creation of the universe; they will explain
the precise manner of original sin being derived
from our first parents. They will satisfy you in
what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a
time, our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s
womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer
how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay,
these are accounted trivial, easy questions; they
have yet far greater difficulties behind, which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition
as the former.

As namely, whether supernatural generation requires
any instant of time for its acting? Whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? Whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the_Trinity hated the second? Whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone? A nd were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel? Or how have been nailed to the cross? Whether if St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into the same body that remained on the tree? Whether in Christ’s corporal presence in the sacramental wafer his humanity be not abstracted from his Godhead? Whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life?

There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, hseccities, and such like abstrusities, as one would think no one could pry into,
except he had not only such cat’s eyes as to see best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty as to see through an inch-board, and spy out what really never had any being.

I like to say that i do not care if the bible is inerrant, it does not say so and it for the most part of it poetry and parables … and i would like somebody to explain inerrancy in poetry

Smooth move. If you have time to send letters to my friends castigating me and criticizing them, you have too much time. Go find a soup kitchen.

No, you’re not being in any way a stumbling block for me. In the way that you clarify your position, I don’t find much to disagree with. That is, I agree “that when you understood the factual content of the word you understood God, when you heard the words read you heard God, when you accepted the word of God you accepted God, and if you reject the word of God it is also a rejection of God.”

(I would add some qualifications, but they might just be quibbling over words. For instance, I wouldn’t quite say that you “understand” God just by understanding the factual content of the word, because I think that true understanding requires acceptance. And someone who understands what the word says about God might still reject God. For instance, it’s possible for an atheist to understand the message of the epistle to the Romans about God and man and sin and Jesus and salvation–but that atheist would reject the message. But then, maybe it would be more accurate to say that this atheist doesn’t understand. Like I said, this could just be quibbling over words.)

Please take this suggestion: Don’t say that Jesus and the Bible are one the same way that Jesus and the Father are one, unless you give the same kind of explanation you just gave me. If you don’t explain, a lot of people are going to read it as some kind of weird fourth person of the Trinity. As people here did.

If just say, “Jesus and the Bible are one”, I think you’re guaranteed to be misunderstood by many.

I hear everyone here saying that they believe Scripture reliably and faithfully teaches the truths of salvation. I also hear everyone saying that grammar, figures of speech, etc, don’t detract from this revealed meaning. So everyone agrees Scripture is inspired. Do I have it right that the argument is in regard to “verbal inspiration”? not only do the concepts have to be clearly expressed but the exact words used are critical.

So Paul by revelation understands unity in the church. He passionately writes, in his own language, idiom, and confusing personal style (Peter said it, not me) about these truths clearly enough that we who read it could understand. He writes that he baptized a few people. . .then parenthetically, “Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Besides, I do not know if I baptized any other.” Inspiration says that Paul is using an example to show how few people he baptized and how unimportant that number is compared to the headship of Christ in the church. It doesn’t really matter how he says it. Verbal inspiration says there is something Really Important about the fact that he mentions Crispus and Gaius first and then Stephanas later.

(Yes, Paul turned an argument on seed vs. seeds. Consider the possibility he was making an illustration and not a proof; at any rate, he’s Paul and I’m not exactly qualified to seek for hidden meaning in exact phrasing).

My outlook on verbal inspiration comes from my teaching experience. At my university we customarily give detailed handouts of our Powerpoints to students. (A whole ‘nother topic about the downfall of college education but I will say there is a lot of technical detail we would prefer they have down correctly). Anyway, there are those who take what may be described as a verbally inspired approach to my lecture notes, memorizing them word for word. This fairly impressive feat has several implications, all of which are true and not just made up for the point of illustration.

*These students focus on the exact wording rather than the meaning. I’ve had students rattle off an equation but not be able to describe to me what it means.

*They draw inferences from my phrasing I never meant them to draw.

*They memorize, regurgitate, and forget because they have missed the point that these are concepts I am trying to explain that live and have meaning outside my notes. (I wonder if they think this is all some ritual we invented, a hoop to jump to graduate).

*They are flustered if my notes “contradict” someone else’s. One example, if I understood the student correctly, involved a value being quoted as 34% by one professor and 37% by another (missing the point entirely that it was about a third).

Yes, I know perfectly well the Bible is nothing like my lecture notes. But the readers are the same.

That’s exactly what I mean.

How could it be otherwise?

Jesus and God were one in the sense that when you saw Him you saw the Father, when you heard Him you heard the Father, when you accepted Him you accepted the Father, and if you rejected Him it was also a rejection of the Father.

Watch how I can plug the word in there for Jesus and it works perfectly….

God and His word are one, so that when you understood the factual content of the word you understood God, when you heard the words read you heard God, when you accepted the word of God you accepted God, and if you reject the word of God it is also a rejection of God.

The written words are spoken by God.

But this does not mean I worship the word as a person in the trinity.

It does mean that I cannot worship God apart from the word, since I can’t know Him or hear Him or serve Him apart from it.

Having said that, if it is a stumbling block to you, I can only apologize and continue to assure you I’m not implying what the cheap shots assume that I am.