Does the Bible need to be error free to be Gods inspired word?

[ancient warrior]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Either we have faith that Christ lives and His Holy Spirit is within and will guide us to what God has "written in our hearts" . . . or we don't. If we do . . . then we are able to discern what is God inspired and what is not wherever it may be. Otherwise what is the purpose of our learning to distinguish between good and evil in the first place.

RESPONSE:

How do you distinguish faith from gullibility?

Ah yes. The "discern" word. Isn't that where one takes what may be one's own self-deception and tries to give it a divine aspect?

[Pawporri]

One significant fact that becomes evident in reading the posts of this thread is not merely the erroneous idea of absolute perfection of the Scripture, but rather the confusing misinterpretations by the "scribes" to justify their efforts to withstand newer teachings of of the gospel of the kingdom. God the Father does not limit the revelation of truth to any one generation or any one people. Fallible humans speedily devolve into sundry groups of truth contenders as a result of the diversity of of their interpretations of God's truth - Does the "Tower of Babel" ring a bell ?
God's creatures may crave infallibility, but only the Creator possesses it. A false fear of sacredness has prevented religion from being safeguarded by common sense. Nothing that human nature has touched is infallible. The fear of the authority of the sacred writings of the past effectively prevents the honest souls of today from accepting the new light of revelations of the gospel, the very light which God -knowing men of the past generations so intensely longed to see.
The saddest feature of all is the fact that some of the teachers of the sanctity of Scripture perfectionism know that the writings are imperfect. They more or less fully fully understand the limitations of the Scriptures but they are moral cowards and intellectually dishonest. They prefer to withold these disturbing facts from todays generations by preaching slavish obedience to Scripture perfection and detail instead of appealing to the sacred writings as the repository of the moral wisdom, religious inspiration and spiritual teachings of the God-knowing men & women of todays generations. For whatever personal reasons that motivate them, their actions lead only to confusion rather than harmony.

[Pleroo]

Originally Posted by Pawporri

One significant fact that becomes evident in reading the posts of this thread is not merely the erroneous idea of absolute perfection of the Scripture, but rather the confusing misinterpretations by the "scribes" to justify their efforts to withstand newer teachings of of the gospel of the kingdom. God the Father does not limit the revelation of truth to any one generation or any one people. Fallible humans speedily devolve into sundry groups of truth contenders as a result of the diversity of of their interpretations of God's truth - Does the "Tower of Babel" ring a bell ?

I wanted to just rep you as to not interrupt the flow of the thread, but couldn't so I'll say it here ... Thank you for posting this. Personally, the Tower of Babel story has been niggling at the back of my mind lately but I couldn't quite put a finger on why, specifically. What you're saying here makes a great deal of sense and I thank you for sharing your insight as to it's meaning... It turned on a light for me.

[Phazelwood]

Originally Posted by ancient warrior

RESPONSE:

How do you distinguish faith from gullibility?

Ah yes. The "discern" word. Isn't that where one takes what may be one's own self-deception and tries to give it a divine aspect?

Faith to me is that the idea of God is something that I like to think about. Gullibility is when I foolishly thought another person had any concrete answers concerning that.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by ancient warrior

RESPONSE:
How do you distinguish faith from gullibility?

In my case . . . by personal experience. You will need to find your own path.

Ah yes. The "discern" word. Isn't that where one takes what may be one's own self-deception and tries to give it a divine aspect?

Our entire purpose is to discern Good from Evil and choose the Good in "love of God and each other." 1Cor 13 provides the necessary standard against which we can discern what is of God . . . because God IS love. Nothing that is NOT of love can be of God.

[Ironmaw1776]

Originally Posted by Phazelwood

I believe we have to understand the nature of the bible in order to see how much it contains.

Religious thought has crafted numerous doctrines from the bible, all claiming that their doctrine is supported by this inerrant book and great commentaries are often required to explain these discrepancies almost to the point of ridiculouness.

The main problem with this process is that the greater truth is missed.

I believe that the miracle is that some of us see the love of God being poured out of it's pages despite seeing that texually it is not perfect, trhat indeed man has had his hands in it, manipulating it, translating it differently and all the while we believe that the oldest remains of the scriptures are copies of copies.

The great thing about the spirit of God is that words do not have to be perfect to mean something great in our lives.

The problems that traditional organized religions have with doctrinal divergence and the separating of denominations and of various sub-factions is usually dependent on the ways that the fundamental and often literal interpretations of their holy writings can be applied and interpreted from differing perspectives ...

And then there is the FACT that humans corrupt the written traditions of all the "sacred" writings from every religion around the world. Christianity and the new testament are not exempt from this general fact. There are many early Christian writings from the first 3 centuries which testify to the fact that this did happen and it still is happening even today as new translations and paraphrased versions appear on the shelves of your local Christian bookstore.

It all reminds me of a Proverb i once heard ...

"There's many an error in an abundance of words."

I don't know where i heard that but it was a long time ago ... And i believe it was based on Proverbs 10:19 ...

"In the abundance of words transgression ceaseth not, And whoso is restraining his lips is wise."