Defending Inerrancy in the Bible...

a reply to: the2ofusr1 yes very true

a reply to: BlueMule wow are you flexing your vocabulary? simplify.. GOD SIMPLY OFFERS YOU ,AND I salvation in ,and through the blood of HIS son JESUS on the cross at CALVARY, we YOU ,and I do not deserve HIS mercy but HE gives it, and GOD makes it so simple , just believe confess with your mouth that JESUS IS LORD THAT HE CAME TO THE EARTH DIED ON THE CROSS FOR OUR SINS ROSE AGAIN for our justification , and boom its done , I did it year s ago and I AM A DIFFRENT PERSON PLEASE understand none of us are perfect, but GOD IS DRAWING YOU TO HIM . because HE loves you and has chosen YOU .

a reply to: darylpriest
Five out of the nine he listed were NT vs NT and the others are OT vs NT. So what's your point, according to you it is all gods book. Way to dodge the question by saying it is a waste of time that means you can't refute them. Only ones blinded by faith ignore the glaring contradicts.

There are no contradictions in the Bible. God does not contradict Himself, and the Bible is one of God's ways of communicating with His people throughout time. Your "contradictions" arise from your misguided interpretations of scripture. It's that simple.

Are you lost? All roads lead to Rome.



a reply to: Akragon

a reply to: BlueMule

So the mystical function of religion and the esoteric layer of Biblical theology is buried under the social function, the exoteric layer, which is too thick. As a result Christianity is not as transparent to the transcendent as it should be. The esoteric can't shine through the ephemeral social functions, and so Christianity can't easily connect with the esoterica of world religion and myth. So you get a bunch of exoteric, alienated, warped, ignorant, myopic, self-righteous, judgmental, fundamentalist pricks instead of wise mystics who can build cross-cultural bridges.

One of the biggest things the modern day student of the bible has to factor in is the cultural context of the writers and the time in history they were writing in . Understanding firstly the Hebrew culture of the time and the vocabulary and world view of the day . It is true that it (bible) has many layers but understanding what it meant to the hearers of that day is first and foremost .

I guess for me ,I have to admit to imposing my modern day world view on the text ,or I seem to have that ability to do .Plus we sometimes have the ability to speed over common words without digging deeper into it . Throughout most of the bible the word chariot is just a 2 wheel machine but in revelation they use the word chariot ,but it is a 4 wheeled machine . A small difference but a difference none the less .

originally posted by: Akragon
The claim that the bible is inerrant is an argument that has been raging for millennia...

This is not what my sources are saying

There have been long periods in the history of the church when biblical inerrancy has not been a critical question. It has in fact been noted that only in the last two centuries can we legitimately speak of a formal doctrine of inerrancy. The arguments pro and con have filled many books, and almost anyone can join in the debate

Coleman, R. J. (1975). "Biblical Inerrancy: Are We Going Anywhere?". Theology Today 31


Also as far as I know, the only official claim of absolute Biblical inerrancy was American and Evangelical:

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was formulated in October 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders at a conference sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), held in Chicago. The statement was designed to defend the position of Biblical inerrancy against a perceived trend toward liberal conceptions of Scripture. The undersigners came from a variety of evangelical Christian denominations, and include Robert Preus, James Montgomery Boice, Kenneth Kantzer, J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul and John F. MacArthur.

The Catholic position on inerrancy depends whether you look prior or after the Vatican II council.

Prior:

For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the MS. is faulty or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it . . . I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine.

but Augustine also said that things like Genesis were not to be read literally so it has to be put back into context.


After:

the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.

So since Vatican II at least the official position is that the Bible is inerrant only regarding the way to salvation.

This is my favorite website to look at ALL the contradictions in the bible. It's interactive and shows you all the passages that agree and all the ones that contradict with whatever premise you are analyzing.

Bible contradictions

Here's an example that I clicked at random.
Has anyone ever ascended into heaven?

The bible was written by man and inspired by God, yes there are many issues in reading it.

The errors you claim can be read in context with other verse to clear them up.
I dont know too many Christians who would say the bible is faultless, though the faults are not issues that should divide people.

Storm in a teacup, just complaining for the sake of complaining. Believe dont believe the choice is yours.
I could answer the questions but you dont really care, search google if its a big drama for you

a reply to: the2ofusr1

It seems to me that what you're saying is that trading one cultural context (yours) for another (theirs) is the way to grok the Bible. But either way, you're still functioning on the level of mere tribal us vs them mentality.

There is a layer of the Bible that rises above that level. So the student must aspire to rise above it too, in order to see it clearly. Either that, or learn to see God from every cultural context. Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etc.

Because if you can't see God in them all, you can't see God at all.

👣

originally posted by: Ignatian
There are no contradictions in the Bible. God does not contradict Himself, and the Bible is one of God's ways of communicating with His people throughout time. Your "contradictions" arise from your misguided interpretations of scripture. It's that simple.

Are you lost? All roads lead to Rome.



a reply to: Akragon

Except all roads don't lead to rome... especially not the RCC, I assume that's what you're saying...

and this is just the tip of the ice burg...

Yet you can still claim there are no contradictions eh...

what a joke

a reply to: Akragon

Many time's it is down to later editing and mistranslation, often those translating tried to correct what they saw as inconsistencies such as Jesus saying,

Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath.

This was a misunderstanding on the part of the translators for a nation of slaves has of course many origins and not only the sons of Jacob and so Moses a descendant of the patriarchs did indeed give them circumcision and so bring them into the house of Israel, another reason so many of them were intent on worshiping Apis bull's and Golden calf despite what they had seen.

The errors arise not from God but from man and many time's the corrections of scholars who did not see the context of the original text that they were copying, often many dating mistranslations may also arise due to different periods and calendars and cultural references being in use when the later translation may have tried to back date and provide what the scholar in question believed to be a more accurate date.

As for Satan well Azazel, Semiaza and others of the Fallen watchers are bound face down in a dark pit of sharp stones until the day of judgement, Satan is not one of them despite demon worshipers with there invented later texts trying to make Semiaza or Azazel into him, indeed Satan the father of Lies has more in common with CAIN whom tried to lie to god and was outcast to wonder the earth when he was cast out of paradise though he is obviously not him and is a former prince of heaven whom was cast out of the first heaven in a war with the angel's of Michael along with many of his follower's, Satan managed to rouse a third of the angels but two thirds stood against him.

As for evil spirits many though pledged to Satan are in fact the abominations, neither man nor watcher whose spirits were outcast unlike there bound and chained fathers whom had conceived them (with the mysteriously compatible human woman - remember - in the resurrection you shall neither be given nor taken in marriage but shall be like the angels - does this mean the angels who committed this crime had once been a previous race of man?) into the earth at the time of there destruction or the great flood.

Many of the story's you are drawing on are taken out of context or are indeed the result of translation error compounded by time.

Very sadly indeed some of the most accurate records have now been desecrated by ISIS in the destruction of a fourth century Assyriac Monastery.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It is possible other now lost Hebrew and Aremaic text's may still exist in the Vatican's extensive historical vault's.

Still we can only hope.

One point, no one can give you faith you have to believe for yourself or you will simply seek to poke hole's in other's belief, this does not make you a bad person and maybe simply mean's you are seeking the truth but then what is the truth in a quantum universe or diverging and converging reality's in which the past may actually not be the fixed concrete thing you think it is and even accepted scientific paradigm may shift as the nature of the law's of physics themselves may be in flux due to superspace membrane fluctuations and by that measure what is time?.

a reply to: BlueMule

I was talking about understanding the context of the culture it was written in . Like any document you want to understand ,you need to recognize the type .Much like being able to distinguish the gendre in which it was created . The fact that the bible is a collection of different writers spanning 2 thousand years has to be factored in . A road today is not like a Roman road and is something quite different in some ways to others that preceded it .

Understanding the context in which time it was first given sheds light on what it may or not be about . Some people see UFO's in ancient scripture but the text and the culture at the time never understood it as such . The scripture had a specific message for the people it was written to at the time ,other wise it would have had no utility for them .

ETA ...A good example is comparing or imagining a wedding today and compare it to a ancient Hebrew wedding . The culture has specific things ,symbols that ,without the other culture understanding has no meaning . The meaning may be in the symbols and may be out of place and insignificant to a outsider .

Friend, you are reading your own cited source incorrectly.

"...that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."

This is saying basically what I said in my post. The bible is one way God instructs us in our current time. Instructs us in what? The way of salvation.

There is no pre or post Vatican II ideas on inerrancy. Both of the sources you cited say the bible is without error.


a reply to: Develo

A year and a half later...

a reply to: Akragon

There are two lineages of the current Bibles we have today.

I believe that God kept his word to preserve it to every generation as found in Ps 12:6.7. believing that there is only one Bible that has all the Bible verses in it.



only one Bible defines all the words in it by the words context, and has its own built in cross reference system.

Once you eliminate all others only one remains once you have it then there is no argument bout inerrancy. Many a Christian says they believe in the inerrency of the Bible but read a Bible that does not have all the verses in it and question the rest of it. Showing they do not really believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Once you eliminate all others only one remains once you have it then there is no argument bout inerrancy.

that is incorrect....

Regardless of the translation there are still abundant contradictions throughout said book

Believe what you will though

a reply to: Akragon

yes I will because I trust in Jesus Christ, the fullness of the godhead bodily.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

And you're completely free to do so...

that doesn't change the fact that said book is not without error...

the doctrine of Infallibility has no merit what so ever

a reply to: Akragon

Usually when people go to the Bible the preserved one or one of the plethora of those RC dominated ones. They find error at every page, especially in the later.

Those who find it in the preserved word of God, is because they don't believe God could preserve his words as promised, even if those words seem different from OT to NT. They forget the Holy Ghost (God) has the right to preserve his words any way he likes.

And they also do not believe any part of his preserved words any way. Hence are bible unbelievers. Unbelieving being a sin unto itself.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Usually when people go to the Bible the preserved one or one of the plethora of those RC dominated ones. They find error at every page, especially in the later.

My friend, we have already established that i read the same bible as you...