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John 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word of God became incarnate as a human being and walked among us. He is the Son of the Father.
The Bible is not an incarnate human being or the Son of God.
The Bible is authoritative and certainly useful to live the way God wants us to live. However, it is NOT the sole source of truth since the Bible can not interpret itself and so has ultimately authority within itself. That resides in the Magesterium of the Catholic Church.
Having said that, it is the Word of God and 100% inerrant.
Moderator cut: deleted/denominational bashing
The Bible is the absolute norm and standard of truth and is the ultimate authority because it is the word of God. God's message to man.
I'd like to get a better understanding from folks as to why they only believe certain parts of the bible. So, why? I don't get that.
Evidence. Scientific, archaeological, textual, etc.
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There are those that will trust what it says about Jesus in the NT and they will trust what is ascribed to Jesus, His actual words (the ones in red ) but then they waffle on other parts. How come?
Some parts are more reliable and accurate than others. The Bible is not one book, it's 40 books written at different times by different (sometimes questionable) authors. I mean, you ignore much of scripture that was written about God and Jesus, because the church didn't canonize it. How come? Why do you trust what the church decided should be in the Bible, and not what other apostles or prophets wrote?
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From my point of view, Jesus is God; right? So, does it not logically follow that where God is speaking in the OT, those are actually Jesus' words?
Why do you assume that what is claimed to be what God said, was actually said by God? Just because an author writes "The Lord said" doesn't mean he did. Many people have committed great attrocities in human history and claimed God said they should. I don't think God is in the business of ordering babies heads to be bashed on rocks, and yet the Bible authors describe it.
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Could they not also be put in red? I mean, no one has seen the Father, that's what the Bible teaches. But it also says Adam walked with God in Eden. So, wouldn't God in Eden really be Jesus? Jesus states if you have seen Him you have seen the Father. Seems plausible to me.
Well, I don't believe Eden is real. But you'd have to assume God became incarnate as a human being more than once. I see no biblical evidence of that.
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So what is it about the history in the OT that some don't trust to be divine, just as other scripture they do trust? Is it something within the bible that causes them pause? Is it something from outside the bible that causes them to doubt the veracity of specific items? And how do you discern the difference?
Outside evidence certainly contradicts much of the Bible (especially Genesis). But there are also many claims in the Bible that are illogical as well as downright evil (see above baby bashing comment).
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Just as the Bereans examined everything Paul told them against the scriptures (OT) to discern whether he was preaching truth, is that not what we should do to doctrines and theories expoused by others, believers or not? Should not the bible be the final authority as to whether something is true or not?
Well, Sola Scriptura (that the Bible is the one and only authority) is neither Biblical or historical. I don't like the idea of confining God's entire revelation and character to a book of paper. God and his revelation are far bigger than any book can hold. Why would we ignore the rest of his creation? God's physical creation cannot lie, meaning if it contradicts the Bible, it's our interpretation of the Bible that's wrong.
John 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word of God became incarnate as a human being and walked among us. He is the Son of the Father.
The Bible is not an incarnate human being or the Son of God.
No but the bible is still the word of God.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
John 12:47-48
47 If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
Last edited by june 7th; 06-09-2011 at 12:31 PM..
Reason: Please refrain from using "red" as it is reserved for mod cuts/mod actions. Any other color is okay. Thanks!
I am now a theologian and have been for some 40 years.
I look back at my so-called evolutionary development and try to understand my current understanding and thought.
For eight (8) years, I attended Lutheran school. I believe it is fair to say that I received a fundamentalist education. When I would question a passage or two or even an Old Testament story, I was (first) politely told to accept what was being taught and then (not-so-politely) to shut up and accept the "truth."
I attended (then) Concordia Teachers College, River Forest. By the time I entered this "august" institution, I had attended four different secular high schools in two different states. One might characterize my development as a sharp learning curve: from the concept of "holiness and purity" to the oh-my-God realities of the Real World.
During college, in my theology courses, we were required to do something very unique (at least to me). We had to reject all that we were taught. Then, we took the Doctrines of the Church and rebuilt them, proving their validity through research and painful--yes, painful--essays that supported the Doctrines of the Lutheran Church.
We tore open the Bible and examined the stories of the Old Testament one-by-one. Unfortunately, our Professors operated on the concept that these stories had or held historical validity. There were moments in class where one of the Professors whom I admired explained how the ancient Jews were inserting a joke about their non-Jewish neighbors or insulting them. It would be years later when I was able to find information that not only began to fill in the "gaps" as I perceived them but also to provide a great deal of background information that helped understand the exegesis of Old Testament stories as well as their relationships to other non-Biblical literature.
The New Testament is a bit different from the Old Testament. One large difference is that we have different authors who are more concentrated on the subject at hand: the Christ. We have three Gospels that were talking to three different peoples and backgrounds. We have John, which is purportedly a Gospel, but it is written with a specific purpose in mind, modelled after the Jewish pattern and concepts of Atonement. We also have a number of letters allegedly written by Paul, which fashioned--some state lamentedly--the direction and organization the Christian church eventually took and still takes.
The Old Testament was redacted (meaning collated and packaged together) beginning in the 8th Century b.c. However, by the 2nd Century b.c., more books were added to this Torah. We know that almost every Jewish household had some scripture; only the most affluent would have a large collection of scripture writings. We also know that Jewish mothers took it upon themselves to teach the children about their religion.
The Old Testament was never regarded by the Jews as some kind of historical document or collection. In fact, history for the ancients played little importance in their lives--quiet the opposite from our perspective. It strikes me odd that many Christian sects come close to committing hari-kari in their insistence that the Old Testament is historical.
The Old Testament was never regarded by the Jews as being the "voice" or "handwriting" of God. It was recognized that certain inspired people wrote down their thoughts about man's relationship to and with God, as well as how God-fearing people ought to behave, especially with their fellow brothers and sisters. These scriptures actually were placed second in importance to the Midrashes that were written, which were "church" sanctioned laws and by-laws of how people should live their lives in order to be sanctioned before the Lord of Holies.
One motif, however, that runs rampant through the Old Testament is the blatant fact that no one understands or knows God. God appears in many forms and in many attitudes in the Old Testament. In most cases, God is simply a bystander or acts as a deus ex machina.
It amazes me that many Christian sects will maintain an attitude or belief that God can be described through the Old Testament. It is simply a non-understanding of what the writers of the Old Testament were trying to convey for a certain occasion or situation at a certain and limited time. And the conventions of the literature style that were used thousands of years ago are misunderstood by today's standards.
I would clearly and strongly point out that because a set of scriptures is not the Word of God does NOT mean that God plays a less significant role in one's life or even suggest that God does not exist.
Religion is an individual choice. As much as some people would love to make it a group activity, whereby everyone plays the same game by the same rules or sings from the same sheet of music in the same key and rhythm, religion just t'ain't so.
For a person wanting to believe in a real Moses or Noah or Abraham is fine. If it supports one's faith and is a psychological crutch during life's difficult times, then I am all "hat's off" in support of that person.
To insist that Moses was a real live person, when all the evidence in the world suggests differently, and strenously require that I believe it as well is 1) an invasion of my liberties and 2) an attempt to enslave my right to think.
Besides, I feel the bottom line should be this: upon which "rock" do you base your faith? A book? Or, your concept of God?
I would hope that one would look at his/her own life and see where and how God has "carried" him/her through life (using the footprints poem as an example). Then look to see how the reading of a book (in this case, the Bible) "carried" him/her through life. It is reasonable to state that the reaching for the "Good Book" may have given inspiration or hope to recognize God acting in a person's life. But few, if any, have reached for the scriptures in every single "emergency" that has pimpled life with excitement. They have, however, leaped towards the unknown deity, hoping that something there will catch them.
Bottom line: Believing whether or not the scriptures are holy, as important and dear as one wants, are just a nice collection of stories: all this is relatively moot in one's orientation in one's chosen religion. What really counts is the relationship between people (person to person) and between people and God.
When God has taken down so many barriers between Itself and people and those barriers that separate people from each other, I feel it is time to ask the question why we people keep putting them back up.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy only applies to the Tanakh (primarily the Torah). That is what was used to teach the righteousness under the law. There was no such thing as the New Testament when that verse was written. Jesus went to the temple since he was a child and read from the Torah. He did not read a non-existent New Testament.
God breathed and useful also do not mean perfect, inerrant, or God dictated.
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John 12:47-48
47 If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
Jesus did not speak the entire Bible. You can't arbitrarily apply 37,000 verses as statements made by Jesus.
So God wanted men to write that it's appropriate to bash babies heads on rocks and slaughter women, children, and infants?
God ordered his people to take the land he promised them. Yes, He did tell them to destory all as they occupied that promised land. This was, in essence, God using his people to carry out his judgement against a people who had 400 years to turn from their sin and did not. They committed such attrocities that God's perfect judgement called for their destruction. However, Rahab was spared as was her family as they helped Israel and turned toward God.
Also, Israel did not completely listen to God and suffered from the repercussions of that choice as well.
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Originally Posted by Fiyero
Sure Jesus would teach based on stories. Most of his ministry was done in parables.
Parables are different than a completely false story. If God permitted the stories of Jonah or Adam and Eve to be spread as truth, knowing they weren't, then that would make God a liar, which he is not.
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Originally Posted by Fiyero
Why do you ignore that fact that all the early church fathers personally witnessed the early manuscripts being altered? Why do you ignore the evidence from Oxford scholars proving the Bible has been corrected 10s of thousands of times. Why do you ignore the entire process that went into the Canonization of the modern day Bible, and that much of it was completely arbitrarily decided by councils of men? Not all sects of Christianity agree on the Biblical canon. Why is your Bible more accurate than anyone elses? And what about translations. The NIV completely omits several verses that can be found in the KJV, and vice versa. You call that inerrant? Why do some verses not exist in the originals (for example, when Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"). That doesn't exist in the earliest manuscripts, meaning it was added later. To believe the modern day Bible is 100% perfect and dropped from heaven by God takes an absurd amount of cognitive dissonance.
I believe the 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority in everything it teaches. However, the modern bible we have today is, IMO, statistically ~98% exactly the same as the earliest manuscripts. I concede that there are extremely minor translation/transcription errors that have crept in over the past 2000 years. However, none of these have any bearing on any doctrinal issues. There are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament and is the most supported ancient writing which strongly validates its reliability.
There might be a reversal of word order (Christ Jesus / Jesus Christ) or a conjunction omitted but the assertion that entire chapters, accounts, or books of the bible are false (i.e. global flood was only local or did not happen; Adam is not literal only representative; Jonah could not have been swallowed by a great fish, etc.) I reject.
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Originally Posted by Fiyero
Let's look at this logically.
A. God did not personally handwrite the Bible or dictate it word for word. Humans physically wrote the Bible.
B. Humans are not perfect. An imperfect being cannot create something perfect.
C. The only way for God to make sure the human hands that wrote, translated, corrected, and canonized the Bible didn't screw up, is to personally force them to not make mistakes or add their own text/remove text.
D. God gave us free will, meaning God allowed humans to alter the Bible through that free will. He will not force men to not make mistakes or to not alter the scripture.
Ergo,
God inspired man to write their personal experiences about his revelation, but he also didn't stop them from corrupting it to some degree.
If God wanted a 100% perfect Bible, he would have NEVER let human hands or minds get anywhere near it.
Your logic fails you on your presupposition that God would allow man to corrupt His special revelation to His creation. You're basically stating man, even under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, corrupted His word. My God is bigger than that, to allow mere man to invalidate the main avenue humans have to come to understand Him, His will for us and the salvation we can have through Him.
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) but then they waffle on other parts. How come?
