Honest question

Yes, I will. Please remember though, it is you that made these things germane to this thread and I still don't know why. Is it out of bounds to refer back to your claims about yourself?

I have taken similar tests on at least 6 occasions during my career. The results would maybe impress many and probably surprise quite a few others .

Earlier you accused me and others of missing the forest for the trees. My testing indicates that this would be completely out of character for me.

 

Scott,

Thank you. I have no doubt you are very intelligent, under scriptural authority in your actions, and probably a pretty nice guy. My desire is to debate forcefully with you, without crossing the line and making personal attacks.

I brought up the big picture stuff to allow some expansion away from using only finite detail in argumentation. My personal story was presented to help you to understand my point of view. I did not mean it in the sense of bragging. That's why I threw in the verse about vanity after my statement. I know all to well that our strengths can be made weaknesses if their not surrendered to the Lord. I will also try to abstain from using personal information from your prior posts to insult your character and intelligence.

Judging from what you have said, we agree on most Bible doctrines and the literal accuracy of biblical accounts. That's pretty huge. I look forward to further debate (as my time permits) around the issue of Bible versions.

 

Very agreeable to me.

 

Yes we could and you are half way to my point. It is a common practice amongst many KJVO's to distort and twist MV texts in order to show them corrupt or less doctrinally sound... GA Riplinger comes to mind as a major offender in this regard. If one were predisposed to treat the KJV with a similar negative bias, we could literally do whole threads on each verse.

Most KJVO's I encounter nitpick MV's while explaining away even legitimate problems with the KJV... like calling the Holy Spirit an "it". I know that the pronoun is neutered but if I understand correctly by the rules of Greek grammar it can, and in this case should, be rendered masculine in English. In any event, I would argue as long as anyone wanted that calling the 3rd Person of the Trinity an "it" is improper.

 

I beg to differ. If you are going to make the blanket statement that they lack spiritual discernment and use that as a basis for condemning their work, it is encumbent upon you to research what their spiritual fruit really is. What doctrines do they hold outside of this disagreement on translations? What have they done for the cause of Christ? What have they written? What is the evidence of their study and love of the scriptures? These are requisite questions to answer before speaking to someone's spiritual discernment.

 

No. And the ones I was referring to were the "old order reformers", not the modern scientific response to evolution.

But I was thinking... My disagreement with evolution starts and effectively ends with their philosophical premise. Namely, that everything must have a naturalistic/materialistic explaination- "God cannot be the answer because He cannot be measured." From that premise, no explaination no matter how unlikely, unprovable, or bizarre rates exclusive consideration in the absence of other naturalistic possibilities. In other words, if they can't hold the proof in their hands then it does not exist or at least is not scientifically relevant. Your on-going contention has been that non-KJVO's lack spiritual discernment.

I think that KJVOnlyism very closely parallels the evolutionists' philosophical assumption. KJVO's demand one book- a single set of words that can be measured- this is the premise: The Word of God cannot exist absent this perfectly measurable proof. After the premise is accepted and the KJV is determined to be that one finite set of human words, any explaination or behavior no matter how unlikely, unprovable, or bizarre rates not only consideration but primary bias.

I reject the naturalistic premise in both cases. I believe that the Word of God is more than the sum of a finite set of human words just like I reject the philosophical notion that spiritual things have no impact on physical things. The Bible is the written revelation of God's Word. It is God's written Word- perfectly worded in the originals and perfectly preserved as to its message, and even to a large extent its words, to us.

 

I believe my point is still very valid. Evolutionists argue that biblical accounts of miraculous events are myth because of the facts of evolutionary science. Textual critics argue that divine biblical preservation is a myth because of the facts of church history and textual studies. The parallel is striking.

[Edited only to remove lengthy quote of above post]

Note to all: It is not necessary to quote a post if you are replying directly beneath that post unless you are replying to a specific phrase or portion of the post. This makes for easier reading and saves space.

[ February 25, 2003, 03:01 PM: Message edited by: Pastor Bob 63 ]

 

I beg to differ. If you are going to make the blanket statement that they lack spiritual discernment and use that as a basis for condemning their work, it is encumbent upon you to research what their spiritual fruit really is. What doctrines do they hold outside of this disagreement on translations? What have they done for the cause of Christ? What have they written? What is the evidence of their study and love of the scriptures? These are requisite questions to answer before speaking to someone's spiritual discernment. </font>[/QUOTE]Look at it like this Scott. If you spoke with a mechanic and he assured you his work is top notch and recommended some references. You spoke with the references and they recommended the mechanic highly. Then you took your car in to be worked on and the mechanic overcharges you for his work, and then you later find he did not correct the problem. Now, how much weight would you put in his words and the words of his references. I have seen the work of these scholars. Their work speaks for itself. The fruits are much more important that the words of men, because men lie. That's why God said He magnified His word "above" all His name, because He keeps His word always(Psalms 138:2 KJV Only).

 

The validity of the comparison fails on the fact that the evolutionists denies the miraculous wholesale while conservative textual critics let scripture validate that which can be rightly called miraculous and what is to be called providential.

The only way this is a parallel is if textual critics uniformly deny the miraculous- and they don't even with regard to the scriptures. Direct inspiration is a miracle.

 

I do not agree that the analogy fits the issue at hand but just one point. If this scenario occurred, I would not automatically assume that every other mechanic that I had not tried was defective. Nor would I automatically assume that those recommending this mechanic were always wrong in their referrals. I would be careful though. As I am with Bible translations.

The reason the analogy does not fit is that MV's do and have corrected the problem for millions of sinners.

What work? Their translations or their spiritual life? This is truly an area of marginal importance to our topic but you have brought us here with these blanket statements and if you are going to use it as proof against MV's then you should really substantiate it.

Here is Lockman's doctrinal statement. Erasmus most certainly would have rejected it and the KJV translators would have probably taken issue with the implications if not the statements themselves. At least some of them associated baptism and the eucharist with salvation.

Agreement with this statement was required to work on the NASB. This is good doctrine and the NASB is a good fruit from these spiritually discerning translators.

 

The first bullet item on their statement says: "We believe that the entire Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God; the only infallible rule of faith and practice". How do they define the word "Bible"?

 

The validity of the comparison fails on the fact that the evolutionists denies the miraculous wholesale while conservative textual critics let scripture validate that which can be rightly called miraculous and what is to be called providential.

The only way this is a parallel is if textual critics uniformly deny the miraculous- and they don't even with regard to the scriptures. Direct inspiration is a miracle. </font>[/QUOTE]And of course, my original point was that preservation is a miracle they deny in the sense that God's words are preserved verbatim as He would have it, probably in the language of the end times, which is quite possibly English.

 

Faith, Fact & Feeling said:

The first bullet item on their statement says

FFF, all your attempts to cast doubt on any Bible you personally believe to be inferior, and cause it to die the death of a thousand qualifications, haven't worked so far. Neither will this one.

 

The Harvest said:

i think that was a valid question.

So why invalidate it by asking the wrong people? I don't recall anyone here ever saying they were a member of the Lockman Foundation; do you?

 

I don't know for certain but I doubt it would deviate greatly from this statement that I got from the BBFI website:

Pretty much the historic fundamentalist position.

 

From the evidence of biblical transmission, it is inaccurate to say that the Bible was preserved miraculously (by a direct act of God). It is instead accurate to say that it was preserved providentially (through the acts of fallible men within the purpose of God).

I don't say these things to be argumentative. But if preservation means what KJVOnlyism demands then there should be a clear supernatural path of divine actions to validate the KJV. I am not aware of a single instance of anyone involved in its production claiming to have been visited by God or of having received a divine revelation. There is no recording of anything occurring beyond the realm of normal events to prove your claim.

When Christ healed the sick or raised the dead, it was miraculous because He overruled nature. When God parted the Red Sea, it was a miraculous rebuke of the laws of physics.

There is simply nothing to support your claim that the Bible came to us by means other than what history records.

 

First, I disagree with this interpretation. It is neither explicit nor implicit. No scripture is of private interpretation. This view is forced onto the scripture to fit a preconceived model. Reading into the text is not equivalent to spiritual discernment.

Second, the normal interpretation is the best one here. Exemplars of all these churches exist and have existed since the first century. Interestingly, the "persecuting" church is not mentioned which to me establishes that corporately the RCC and all of the protestant denominations are disqualified as Christian institutions. I am not referring to individual believers or congregations but instead to the unholy union of Church and State that persecuted our kind since the days of Christ or before.

Lastly, this response really doesn't fit with the course of our dialogue. You stated that the Reformation and Great Awakening were the greatest events of history. I questioned that analysis by citing the early church growth... and you seemingly answered an entirely different question.

 

Jesus was speaking to His disciples not scholars. Even so, I am not judging them by my own judgment. These men left history and writings to testify of them. They used the force of State to persecute those who believed close to what we do because of what they believed.

They didn't put Baptists in jail for refusing doctrinal error. If they had, I would be willing to point it out. Their sins are their own... and documented for anyone to see.

Where?

If fruit is the proof then many MV's are also good trees with the only difference being the number of bearing years.

Purely prejudicial without foundation in fact.

I know this is a couple of pages back but your more recent posts took priority until now.

 

So the Lockman foundation said:
[We believe that the entire Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God; the only infallible rule of faith and practice.]

And clarified their meaning of Bible by saying:
[By "The Holy Bible" we mean that collection of sixty-six books, from Genesis to Revelation, which, as originally written does not only contain and convey the Word of God, but IS the very Word of God.]

By these definitions it is fair to say they believe the Bible is a mythological book that never existed between two covers. All original manuscripts were never in one book ever. If they define the Bible as inerrant and infallible, but then say it was only that way as originally written, they have closed themselves up very tight in a logic-type compartment of reasoning. They have no Bible, and certainly are unfit to say anything they created is a Bible, based on their own definition of the word Bible.