Direct attacks on the Word of God

This question could possibly be another post but I will ask it here anyway.

Open questions to all:
Do you believe in divine dictation or divine inspiration? Why?

 

Craig... yes or no, Do you believe that the original writings as ichtus has laid out for you.. do you believe they were without error.. Yes or No.
If you answer no, then you and Hunter are in agreement. It's a simple statement, not a personal attack. People are shocked when someone says this kind of thing, but it's what we were taught in the seminary. I was acknowledging the shock that such ideas produce and was simply saying that its nothing new.

 

I cannot for one minute accept, that ANY person who has been born-again by the Holy Spirit, Who is the Author of the entire Holy Bible in the original, Who is also known in Scripture, as the Spirit of Truth, and we are told that He will lead us into the Truth, would have allowed even one "dot" in the original to be in the wrong place.

What do you guys think of these views?

His information is wrong. His "spirit" gave him some bad information. There is no punctuation in the Bible. In fact it is in all capital letters with no punctuation and no spaces in between words.

Kind of like WOMANWITHOUTHERMANISLOST. Is it "Woman without her man, is lost?" Is it "Woman without her, man is lost?" Is it "Woman with out Herman, is lost?" Which is it?

There were no punctuation marks in the Bible. So a spirit was wrong and it wasn't the Holy Spirit.

"I cannot for one minute accept, that ANY person who has been born-again by the Holy Spirit, Who is the Author of the entire Holy Bible in the original, Who is also known in Scripture, as the Spirit of Truth, and we are told that He will lead us into the Truth, would have allowed even one "dot" in the original to be in the wrong place." According to the writer of that quote he must not have the Holy Spirit because there are no punctuation marks in the Bible as inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were added later by man.

 

"Inspired" and "without error" are not linguistically synonymous.

 

Dr. Cranford taught for many years at SWBTS and for many years received criticism from the administration for not making his classes easier so more students would pack in the room and they could fill more seats.

I remember early on that one of the students mentioned to me at how he was told Cranford was a liberal. After about six months in class the same student made a comment to me that indicated quite the opposite.

One of the requirements in elementary Greek was to do a word study from a list he gave us. We were to trace the meaning of a word from the beginning of the OT, through the intertestamental period, and as far as we could go past the NT. Amazing what all of us saw. We began to recognize much of the shallowness of what we had heard over the years.

Too many Christians are content to read what someone else writes and count it as true. They are content to listen to someone on Sunday and even quote the preacher. While at the same time not even consider the possibility that the preacher could be wrong. They do not apply Acts 17:11, "Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so."

 

Dragon, linguistic synonomity is not the issue here. We are trying to find out exactly what Craig means, trying to get a profane statement from him.

 

"Inspired" and "without error" are not linguistically synonymous. </font>[/QUOTE]Stop trying to split hairs, as there is no problem in using both terms for the Scriptures. </font>[/QUOTE]Definitely, both terms can be used to describe the bible. But Craig can disagree with the Hunter fellow about the word "inspired" and also disagree with Dr. Tim's use of the words "without error". It isn't an either or situation.

 

Sounds like a tactic some folks in the bible used.

 

The problem is in a real sense there were errors in places in the manuscripts that were later corrected by Paul. Paul just as many others had an amanuensis.

As I asked earlier, prove that the Bible is without error. You cannot prove it any more than you can prove an event from history.

Is the message of scripture accurate? I believe it is. But were the original manuscripts free from any error. I don't believe they were. Often they were dictated to an amanuensis or even written by the amanuensis and corrected by the author. It is obvious when someone like Paul writes, "I Paul am writing this with my own hand."

The standard they would have applied to accuracy is not the same standard we would apply to it living in the jet age.

Do you believe there were exactly five thousand men in Mt. 6:44 or is it there best estimate?

Mt. 6:44, "There were five thousand men who ate the loaves."

If there were more or less then, it is an inaccurate statement by today's standards.

 

Sounds like a tactic some folks in the bible used. </font>[/QUOTE]Actually, Christ also used leading questions to get people to face their error.

 

Obviously one must interpret every statement in light of the literary characteristics of the time in which it was written. If rounding numbers or guessing the approximate number was the accepted or only practice of the day, should we expect them to have used practices of 2 millennia later, with ticket counters such? If 5000 men was an accurate statement then, it can only be interpretated today as an accurate statement by the standards of that time.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

The problem is in a real sense there were errors in places in the manuscripts that were later corrected by Paul. Paul just as many others had an amanuensis. </font>[/QUOTE] Let's discuss an example to see if the scripture bears this out or if you are interpretting.

Men were moved by the Holy Spirit... God cannot make an error... Scripture had no errors in the original autographs... proof given.

None of this proves an error in the original mss... not even the use of amanuensis.

I don't know.... the Jews seemed to have had a pretty meticulous process for handling scripture and insuring accuracy. BTW, God's standard for accuracy didn't change before or after the printing press or xerography or the computer.

Oranges and apples. Estimates are not errors.

The actual text is Mark 6:44 and it includes a variant "about" before 5000.

No. Virtually every measurement we use is an approximation.

 

I could just as easily state that:

Men were moved by the Holy Spirit... Men can make errors... Scripture has errors in the original autographs... proof given.

I'm not saying that this is true. Just that your "proof" isn't proof of anything.

As for inerrancy, I will make a few statements:

1) I believe the bible is God's inspired scriptures to humans that is completely authoritative and trustworthy.

2) God did not choose to give us his scriptures by perfectly dropping them from the sky (or the way Mormons and Muslims believe they recieved their scriptures), but He chose to intimately involve fallible and errant human beings every step of the way, from authorship to canonization to transmission to translation.

3) If the original autographs were inerrant, our interpretations of it are not.

 

I could just as easily state that:

Men were moved by the Holy Spirit... Men can make errors... Scripture has errors in the original autographs... proof given.

I'm not saying that this is true. Just that your "proof" isn't proof of anything.</font>[/QUOTE] What? Men were moved by the Holy Spirit but overcame him with their fallibility thus introducing error into the words of God-breathed scripture? No. Your rebuttal is without merit.

 

Who is the most Holy Spirit filled person you know? Can they overcome the infallibility of the Holy Spirit with their fallibility? Does the Holy Spirit make them infallible or everything they write infallible?

As I said in my first statement, the bible is completely authoritative and trustworthy.