Even if you aren’t a Lutheran, and I am not, you might enjoy this:
The Holy Scripture is God’s Word, written and, so to speak, lettered and put into the form of letters (gebuchstabet und in Buchstaben gebildet), just as Christ, the eternal Word of God, is clothed in humanity. And men regard and treat the written Word of God in this world just as they do Christ. It is a worm and no book compared with other books. (Martin Luther, WA 48, 31 [1541]; quoted in What Luther Says [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959], p. 71)
Read the rest here:
CyberBrethren-A Lutheran Blog » The Scriptures are Like Christ: Truly Divine and Truly Human.
Tags: infallibility, scriptures
Every written word of Scripture is literally “God-breathed” (II Tim. 3:16, John 10:35, Matt. 5:18, Rev. 22:18-19), and for our edification, not to confuse or mislead us, so it is not possible for God to breathe out a falsehood or even a possibly misleading statement based on limitations of human perspective. However, how far does inspiration go? See an interesting discussion here.
Tags: bible, inspiration
Thanks to Daniel for this insight. After a marvelous post, he concludes:
I would suggest that retrojecting modern concepts of canonicity and inerrancy into our investigations of the translation of the Septuagint is a bit presentistic. Those concepts have their roots in that time period, but in its infancy I think the idea of reverencing the text of the Bible was quite distinct.
He has a point, one which I believe we see repeated in the KJVO movement. Read the rest here:
Reverencing the Text of the Bible « Daniel O. McClellan.
Tags: textual criticism
Long ages are a recent phenomenon to justify evolutionary philosophy. I used to believe the day-age and/or gap models were credible, until I realized they had a number of linguistic and logical problems, and that my view was not based on the Bible’s language or historical views, but simply to accommodate long age concepts. These models were constructed in the nineteenth century in an attempt to harmonize evolutionary dogma with the Biblical text. Long ages were touted as ‘proven’ by science, and therefore it seemed necessary to force the Bible’s language to conform to this supposed scientific fact even if this created linguistic, logical and historical inconsistencies.
See how this came about at Young and Old Earth Creation Beliefs and Origins.
Tags: bible, Christianity, church history, creation, day age theory, evolution, gap theory, old earth, young earth
The author makes good sense, for those with an ear to hear. No one is disparaging the bible or holy Scriptures, but he is making a point that we have to understand our audience. Hat tip to Europe bound Ken and from Pastoralia:
Continue reading “The Place of the Bible in a Post-Christian World”
Tags: bible, missionaries, post modern, post-Christianity
I am Inerrantist, but not a Literalist, and here are some rambling thoughts on the matter.
Continue reading “The Pitfalls of Literalism”
Tags: biblical literalism
Jeremy has a ‘pondering‘ -
And, reflecting on that experience later, it seems to me that inerrancy was often a distraction.
Well, yeah. The problem is that too often, we add to the inerrancy issue with ‘If it’s not ALL true, then none of it is true.’ What we really mean is, if our interpretation is not all correct, then the bible is false. It is a distraction when people focus so much time on proving the bible ‘true’ that they forget Christ who is the Logos Incarnate who has given the Spirit which testifies in Scripture to the Truth. Often times, we forget that the bible is meant to be lived and is living, and yet, we box it in and forget the writers who wrote or assembled it. By denying the whole of Christianity because we have found an ‘error’ we become our own divine inspiration.
Yes, Jeremy, it is a distraction from the Gospel which we teach, preach, and I hope someday to live.
“The Lord can’t make a mistake: fair enough; but we can. Our grasp of what the Lord proposes to teach us can be faulty and flawed in a thousand ways. This is obvious, if only because of the widespread disagreement among serious Christians as to just what it is the Lord does propose for our belief in one or another portion of Scripture. Scripture is indeed perspicuous: what it teaches with respect to the way of salvation is indeed such that she who runs may read. It is also clear, however, that serious, well-intentioned Christians can disagree as to what the teaching of Scripture, at one point or another, really is. Scripture is inerrant: the Lord makes no mistakes; what he proposes for our belief is what we ought to believe. Sadly enough, however, our grasp of what he proposes to teach is fallible. Hence we cannot simply identify the teaching of Scripture with our grasp of that teaching; we must ruefully bear in mind the possibility that we are mistaken. ”
Its from ” When Faith and Reason Clash:Evolution and the Bible” Christian Scholar’s Review XXI:1 (September 1991): 8-33 which is available online. http://www.asa3.org/aSA/dialogues/Faith-reason/CRS9-91Plantinga1.html
HT.
Henry posted something the other day which is a continuing conversation which I have not only with others, but with the Scriptures.
Continue reading “Is Inerrancy an Essential Christian Doctrine?”
Tags: bible, bibliocentric, christocentric, scriptures
