It baffles me to talk to a person who will profess their faith in the Bible, yet would claim it to not be infallible; that it is not completely inerrant because of translation, or merely a good book with good things to live by, neither do they respect its authority.
It makes me think about the armor of God...
"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people."
Ephesians 6:13-18
...especially the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Continuing with the war time thought process, if you think it is possible to believe in a Bible that is not completely trust worthy, that is merely suggestive, that is without error? If you are going into battle, a heated deadly battle...what would you choose to attack your enemy and to block his attacks; a strong sword that is long and perfectly balanced, a sword that has been faithful in previous battles, a sharp sword that fits your hand perfectly? Or would you choose a small pocket knife, dull and brittle, with a blade that is nearly useless; a pocket knife with a short blade and a handle that merely fits in your fingers.
NO DUH!
But this is what you have done when you undermine the authority of God; when you take His word and say it has errors or that is not completely trust worthy. What a foolish little pocket knife with which to defend yourself. Your faith is at risk when your measly knife is too weak to block the blows of a stronger and more skilled enemy. You might as well turn the blade on yourself for being such a fool.
2 comments:
I suppose I can't change your mind, but I'll take a shot at explaining how I can not subscribe to inerrancy and still consider the bible authoritative :)
The first point that comes to mind is that inerrancy is not a prerequisite to trustworthiness. I have a lot of books that aren't inerrant. And I happen to trust a lot of them regardless of this fact. If the Bible were to be shown false on a bit of history, it wouldn't be grounds to toss the whole thing; it's not an all-or-nothing deal.
Secondly, we should remember that the bible is a collection of writings written by different people over a long period of time. The historicity of Chronicles doesn't really affect the truth of Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
Third, the New Testament writers used manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures that are demonstrably different than more earlier ones discovered by archaeologists. In other words, they differ from older manuscripts in ways that made them errant. Yet Paul is willing to call these writings "scripture"! This to me shows that inerrancy is not a category used by the New Testament writers in their analysis of what constitutes scripture.
Fourth, inerrancy is only made in reference to the original manuscripts, which we don't have. Inerrantists and non-inerrantists like myself have to use the same fallible, errant bible. If we both look to it as authoritative for Christian doctrine and life, why should we care whether the original manuscripts were inerrant?
Fifth, I prefer to couch my language about scripture in positive terms: "trustworthy", for example, tells me something positive about scripture. Negative terms like "inerrant" tend to die the death of a thousand qualifications and easily fall prey to disproof (under popular definitions of inerrancy, one little pip of a mistake makes the whole thing come crashing down; unnecessarily risky, to my mind).
The most important reason I don't subscribe to inerrancy is that I don't see a hint of it anywhere in scripture, and its history in the church can largely be traced to fundamentalist reactionary movements in the late eighteenth century.
Hope that made some kind of sense. Good to see you blogging again. Wish I could get myself to start it as well.
Ahh, but the kicker for me is that the Bible is like no other book; one of a kind in the fact that the Author is perfect. The Holy Spirit is perfect. I think you would agree.
To me that means He is perfect in everything He does, especially in the inspiration of His Word. God's perfection is beyond our explanation and reasoning; including our disbelief in the possibility that the perfection of scripture is untainted and without error in spite of it being translated numerous times and as you would claim, "...Hebrew scriptures that are demonstrably different than more earlier ones discovered by archaeologists."
I believe a criticism of something written is a criticism of the author, the one who conceived it.
But I wonder, do you believe that even the very first transcript of the Bible, whether we have found it or not or if it still exists, to be perfect; The original Torah, the original Pauline letters, untranslated? Or would you consider those still fallible because they were transcribed by a human?
I can at least sympathize with what you are saying in regards to some translations we have today. For example, one of the latest translations of the TNIV has been recalled because of poor interpretation of the original language. In that case I do not believe it can be considered scripture, and therefore does not qualify as evidence that the Bible has errors.
I hope that doesn't seem like back pedaling and maybe it's splitting hairs. Maybe I have been misunderstanding you all along, but what are the chances of that? : ] I just never, never, never want to question God's authority and perfection. I feel like suggesting the Bible has errors is a very dangerous thing to question, nor do I find any benefit to making that claim.
I think it's simply self destructive, neither is it edifying.
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