Inerrancy defined

Why all these pejorative comments? Why can't you answer a simple question like what the implications are if God allowed his inspired prophets to pen error as part of his revelation? You dodge questions and then question the salvation of people on this board, and such is one of the most pejorative things one could do on a Christian message board, and I personally hope the administrators take notice and not allow it to continue.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

Why all these pejorative comments? Why can't you answer a simple question like what the implications are if God allowed his inspired prophets to pen error as part of his revelation? You dodge questions and then question the salvation of people on this board, and such is one of the most pejorative things one could do on a Christian message board, and I personally hope the administrators take notice and not allow it to continue.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

BTW,

I'm not a conservative evangelical. I'm a fundamentalist Christian. Let anyone hurl on the insults....I really could care less.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

I always answer straightforward, non-loaded questions that I perceive to be honest questions without ulterior motives if answering them will not derail the thread in which they are asked. And I have NEVER questioned the salvation of anyone on this message board, either in my writing or in my heart. The particular question that you refer to as a “simple question” is, as you know, a very complex question the answers to which may not be profitably discussed on this particular message board, and especially in this particular thread. I have, in the past, in other threads, addressed this issue, but with poor results. And I suppose that you yourself are very much aware of many of the answers to this question since you obviously have made more than a perfunctory study of the Bible.

Perhaps rather than criticize me for the questions that I have not answered, you should consider more carefully the data that I have posted. If you have no data to refute my position, but only criticism of me as a brother in Christ, perhaps it would be good in the sight of God if you would refrain from replying.

 

I am MOST DEFINITELY NOT a fundamentalist. I am a conservative (Conservative Baptist) evangelical. I VERY strongly believe in academic excellence, honesty, objectivity, and thoroughness in the study of the Scriptures. The typical response that I get when I post a learned view and the data to support it is that my opponents in the debate have no data at all with which to refute my view and they respond by attacking me as a person. I have repeatedly been accused on this message board of being a Roman Catholic, a Seventh Day Adventist, a liberal, an evolutionist, an atheist, an impostor, and an apostate by those who have nothing at with which to refute my views. Never once have I seen anyone’s post be edited for accusing me of any of these things, but I have been edited for writing that my opponent in the debate (in another thread) lacked the necessary education to understand or appreciate the issues involved. If you feel that I have ever attacked you as an individual rather than post data that refutes your point of view, I offer to you my most sincere apology for my part in the misunderstanding.

 

It's great to say what you said in theory. Now prove your words.

Which Bible is 100 percent accurate? Could it be the Aramaic version that it appears Jesus referred to. Could it be the Hebrew and Aramaic OT? Could it be the MT which was written much later. Could it be the LXX which has many versions referred to as the LXX just like the KJV has many. Could it be the KJV 1611, NASU95, NAS, NIV, RSV, NLT, NKJV, UBS 4th Rev. UBS 4, UBS 3, Nestle Aland, TR, ot a number of others. Which one is the Bible?

It is possible all of them are wrong, but it is not possible for them to all be right if there is only one accurate one. </font>[/QUOTE]It would help if you guys were to at least read what I post. At the opening remark in my response to craig bythesea, I asked: "Are you saying that there could be errors in the original Old and New Testaments?" Do you understand what the "originals" are? They are what the auctors of each book wrote, whether in Hebrew or Greek. I refer to these as being 100% the infallable, inerrant Word of God, which are 100% trustworthy. NOT any translation. Get it?

 

I am MOST DEFINITELY NOT a fundamentalist. I am a conservative (Conservative Baptist) evangelical. I VERY strongly believe in academic excellence, honesty, objectivity, and thoroughness in the study of the Scriptures. The typical response that I get when I post a learned view and the data to support it is that my opponents in the debate have no data at all with which to refute my view and they respond by attacking me as a person. I have repeatedly been accused on this message board of being a Roman Catholic, a Seventh Day Adventist, a liberal, an evolutionist, an atheist, an impostor, and an apostate by those who have nothing at with which to refute my views. Never once have I seen anyone’s post be edited for accusing me of any of these things, but I have been edited for writing that my opponent in the debate (in another thread) lacked the necessary education to understand or appreciate the issues involved. If you feel that I have ever attacked you as an individual rather than post data that refutes your point of view, I offer to you my most sincere apology for my part in the misunderstanding.

</font>[/QUOTE]Do you know why you are called all of these? It is because of your posts. When, for example you come out with such things as "good Muslim scholarship", you give the impression that you could be one of them in the guise of being a Christian. When you keep on attacking the Holy Bible, and have difficulties in accepting that it is God Who inspired the writers of the 66 books, and therefore CANNOT be without any error, then you are in imposter if you say that you are a conservative and evangelical. Whether or not someone quoted from the LXX OT, is no matter to you or I. You see, since the Bible is God's Word, it is God Who has the right to do as He pleases when He instructs the writers to use either the Hebrew or Greek of the OT. We have NO RIGHT to question God.

 

CBTS,

I wish to apologize for my antagonistic approach to your posts. On certain things I may actually be closer to your position than you realize. For instance, I actually believe in possible "redactions" to the NT and especially the OT Canon, but only by inspired apostles or prophets, due to what I believe is a scriptural view of biblical inspiration to which I hold tightly.

Your post about Jas. 4:5 (and also Jn. 7:38 for that matter) where the author says, "The Scripture says ...", but where there is no clear reference for what the author says the Scripture says, is a hard question I'm not sure how to answer. Does H GRAFH always mean "the Scripture" in the NT? BAGD seems to say so. But could it mean something other than the OT Scriptures? If not, did the NT writer quote something wrong, or quote something he thought was Scripture, or allegorize something that his readers might have understood as coming from a certain place in Scripture, but which we cannot in our present time ascertain? I really don't know the answer, but I'd be glad to hear your opinion based on any studies regarding these passages that you may have done.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

Icthus,

Regarding CBTS's "good Musclim scholarship" quote, well, I don't know the context in which he said it, but in the dark ages, I believe some if not most of the best scholarship of any field, including scientific and literary, was in Arabic, and may be referred to as "good Muslim scholarship" in the most honest sense.

Yours, Bluefalcon

 

Thank you for your apology. I have very much enjoyed and benefited from may of your posts on this board, and I was very much shocked by what appeared to me to be a very snide and inappropriate response on your part. I believe that both Christian and academic ethics demand that we avoid prejudgments of the Scriptures, including the prejudgment that they are necessarily error free. The Bible certainly does not tell us that it is error free, and therefore the doctrine that it is error free is a man-made doctrine.

You have asked some very good and honest questions here that I believe need to be addressed and I would enjoy looking at these questions with you. There are, of course, other some additional problem passages in both the Old and the New Testaments that deserve our attention. However, It now very late and I have a busy schedule tomorrow (actually, latter today) so I need to go to bed and get some rest. However, I am looking forward to further discussions with you. May God our Father richly bless you and your family through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

 

I agree that the scholarship in the Middle East at that time was advanced, but I don't know that it had anything to do with them being followers of Islam. Mohammed could not even read or write.

So I think 'Arabic scholarship' might be accurate. The term "Muslim scholarship" sounds like it's referring to Muslim scholars who are experts on Islam.

 

Prove it. You do this persistently. You appeal to "everybody" without citing anyone.

There is a human element in the preservation of the texts that led to copyist errors. But "conservatives" believe that God directly superintended the original writings in such a way that they were a divine act and therefore free from any imperfection.

A "conservative" should know that men recognized what was already canonical... they did not "decide".

The Bible tells us that God inspired the Scriptures. The Bible tells us that the Prophets and Apostles were the tools used to write the Scritpures. Do you believe that anything ever "breathed out" by God was less than perfect?

You can call yourself conservative all you want but you are not. You show respect and acceptance of higher criticism. I wonder if you have an adequate perspective on the spectrum of "Christianity" to really place yourself.

The fact that you persistently demean fundamentalists as a whole in the manner you do suggests to me that you actually know very few of us.

 

No. It is a simple question unless you want to evade the implications of your answer. It isn't a trick question but it is an identifying question.

Either you believe that God directly inspired and superintended the original writing of scripture or you don't. The question you were asked would have revealed your position.

That is because people disagree with your position and opinions about scripture and scriptural subjects... and when they do you have a habit of treating them as inferiors.

You say people haven't refuted your answers. I have seen it done many times. You don't accept their answers because you think they aren't as smart/educated/enlightened as you are... but you have been rebutted.

 

I did not evade the question in order to avoid stating my position on the inerrancy of the Bible. I have previously stated my position, indeed, in this very thread, and I shall state it again. The Bible does not tell us that it is inerrant. That is a man-made doctrine held by most fundamentalists and many ultraconservatives. Because I am a conservative in my theology and my approach to the Bible, I do not hold to it with the same vigor that I hold to those doctrines that are expressly Biblical. In faith I believe it, but in practice I question it because I believe that, as a Christian, I am obligated to fairly, honestly, objectively, and prayerfully study the Bible to the best of my ability.

I have also written in this very thread that the New Testament writers quoted more often from the Septuagint than they did from the Masoretic text even where the two texts give us different readings. Both readings can Not be the correct reading. At least one of them is necessarily incorrect. If the Septuagint version of the Old Testament is the correct version, the Old Testament that we mostly study from is necessarily very far from inerrant. If the Masoretic text is the correct text, our New Testament is very far from inerrant because it includes very many quotes from an inaccurate translation of the Old Testament.

I also referenced James 4:5,

James 4:5. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"? (NASB, 1995)

Apparently James held to a different Canon than most of us do today. Which Canon is really the inspired word of God? His Canon or ours? Or was James in error in calling the text he quoted from Scripture? Are we in error for excluding from the Canon the very words that James expressly said were Scripture? For anyone to think that all conservative Bible scholars have had their head buried in the sand for so long that it is no longer functional demonstrates that that individual has a VERY faulty perception of current conservative Biblical scholarship. “Conservative” does not equal “fundamentalist.” And if you think that I am a liberal, you probably have never studied liberal theology, exegesis, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, or anything else that is liberal.

Personally, I find it to be amazing that so very many individuals on this board write that they believe that the original Biblical documents were inerrant but that the copies that we have today are not. We do not have the originals so we have no means to evaluate them, but whether or not they were inerrant is irrelevant. What we do have, by all admission, is not inerrant. Therefore, whether or not the originals were or were not inerrant is merely philosophical and is of no practical importance whatsoever.

What is of practical importance, however, is establishing as best as we can, using all fruitful methods of Biblical research, the most accurate possible Old and New Testaments—and that is the very thing that I am about (as well as the most accurate possible translation of them into English).

 

I see. “Roman Catholic,” “Seventh Day Adventist,” “Muslim,” and “atheist” are just four different terms to describe the same religious faith. I wonder why I couldn’t figure that out for myself . But that was not my point—my point was that I was called all of these things, all of which were personal attacks, and hence a violation of the posting rules.

I have never attacked the Holy Bible, but I have found a whole lot wrong with your interpretation of these things.

 

Actually, the context was very different. I had been reviewing some textual criticism sites and I found one that was very learned and very technical but extremely critical of the New Testament text. Upon clicking the tab to go to their homepage, I learned that it was a Muslim site. I was very surprised to learn that some Muslims had gone to the effort to become very knowledgeable scholars of New Testament textual criticism and that they were teaching very technical New Testament textual criticism to other Muslims so that they could present to Christians highly technical and informed arguments that the New Testament documents are unreliable witnesses to the truth.

I did not post a link to this site because I did not want anyone on this board to go there and be deceived by their fine scholarship. I did, however, expressly make the point that more Christians need to study New Testament textual criticism so that they will not fall prey to Muslim scholars.

Icthus appears to be of the opinion that to be a fine scholar and very knowledgeable that it is necessary to be a born-again Christian, but that is simply not the case. All over the world there are fine Muslims scholars teaching in the finest universities. In another thread Icthus totally dismissed the exceptionally fine scholarship of Raymond E. Brown on a point of textual criticism exclusively on the basis that Raymond Brown was a Roman Catholic, not knowing anything at all about this particular Roman Catholic man.