I cannot support “theological reliability” any more than “inerrancy” (without qualifications). Theology is too much of a human invention and I don’t think it is the divine purpose of the Bible let alone the work of God.
My new church uses the words “inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation.” Those are some good qualifications on the word “inerrant.” Does this have 100% of my support? I guess not. The only requirement for salvation is God. And no, God is not confined to the Bible. So I guess I would add a further qualification such as “in the Christian religion.” For me the point is that the religion of Christianity is defined in part by accepting the authority of the Bible with regards to what Christians believe.
I suppose that I owe you an additional clarification. In the context of my post, “to be theologically reliable” doesn’t mean “to be authorized by the community of professional theologians” or anything like this. It means “to be reliable as a description of God” (certainly, reliability doesn’t equal fullness - any description of God that humans may comprehend would be inevitably incomplete). In other words, the Gospels have reliably represented the image of God - hence they are theologically reliable.
The post-apostolic leadership in churches is an interesting topic that is connected to changes in the relative role of biblical scriptures vs. other tradition and the decisions of church councils.
Historical information suggests that local churches had originally two types of chosen leaders, ‘episcopos-presbyteros’ and deacons. That developed fairly rapidly (less than a century) to a three-level system where the leader of the local church was called ‘episcopos’ (overseer or bishop), the group of other leaders ‘presbyteros’ (elders, many churches call them ‘priests’) and ‘diakonos’ (deacon). Later in the Roman-catholic church, the group of bishops got internal divisions, including cardinals and the pope. As the role of these groups strengthened, the priesthood of all believers was put aside and there developed a division to clergy and laypersons. The clergy largely monopolized the service of God and the interpretation of biblical scriptures, adopting the role of the tribe of Levi in the Jewish priesthood.
What were the reasons that lead to this development is a matter of educated guesses. My guess is that the changes in leadership were initially caused by practical needs, with the continuous battle against ‘heresies’ and the fear of church divisions being among the key drivers, and it became a process that strengthened itself, until clergy monopolized the spritual matters, including the interpretation of biblical scriptures. In the context of this thread, ‘inerrancy’ and ‘theological reliability’ became something that was defined by the leaders. Although there were opposing opinions during the history [these were usually persecuted and killed if they did not ‘repent’], the major countermove happened after the reformation.
This explains why there are differing interpretations about this matter between the ‘traditional’ churches and ‘free’ Christianity. Later, the liberal theologies formed a third major viewpoint (or rather a group of viewpoints) to this matter.
Certainly, “why” is the most complicated question in the field of historical research (like in many other fields); nonetheless, I quite agree with how you summed up this historical process
It is difficult for me to attach much meaning to the word “reliable” in reference to a description of God except in the sense you can rely on other Christians agreeing to some degree when your description accurately reflects what is in the Bible. What else will you compare your description to? After all… I don’t see how such a thing is measurable in any way.
When those references include instructions, yes one can.
?? Which has nothing to do with anything – besides which–
The Torah specified a hierarchy of priests, the Apostles had a hierarchy of bishops and elders, bishops being those with the authority to appoint new elders.
Which has nothing to do with there being elders and bishops: the “priesthood of all believers” comes from the Old Testament, and it did not preclude there being different tanks of priests, or there being prophets.
There were times in the first five or six centuries where if someone turned out to be good at theology the bishops would automatically have them ordained. Mostly this corresponded to the period when the clergy weren’t all the same but had liturgists, visitors (ministered to people in their homes, prisons, and such), preachers, readers (read the scriptures in worship), and even exorcists. What’s interesting is that these were all considered to be expressions of the one office, “the office of Christ in the church”. Somewhere along the line it all got merged into a single office, that of priest.
Certainly, the Bible can be used as the benchmark for any post-biblical theological assertions. But how can we know that the Bible itself deserves to be this benchmark? That’s the question. Either we are able to answer it or our faith is groundless. My answer, to put it simple, comprises the following two aspects.
First of all, a Christian gets impressed (fascinated, captivated) by the image of Jesus Christ. Thus the Gospel narratives are directly convincing a believer of Jesus’ divinity and of their own reliability. But, of course, that’s not the end of the story.
One could (and probably should) match the Gospels with what it’s possible to understand about the divine creative action in nature - and to discern that it makes perfect sense: Jesus epitomizes the manner of divine creativity.
I’ve recently proposed to discuss this issue in the other thread , which is already closed. So, here I’ll just quote again Emil Brunner who has given a succinct and lucid presentation of the kenotic creation perspective: “He limits Himself by the fact that the world over against Himself is a real existence. … Now we begin to see what a large measure of self-limitation He has imposed upon Himself, and how far He has emptied Himself, in order to realize this aim, to achieve it, indeed, in a creature which has misused its creaturely freedom to such an extent as to defy God. The κένωσις, which reaches its paradoxical climax in the Cross of Christ, began with the Creation of the world.” (Brunner, Emil. 1952. Dogmatics, Vol. 2, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1952. P. 20).
You are not good with concepts. I guess it’s the scientific method. Everything has to be proven. If it is a complex argument it goes in stages, each ne confirmed. The idea of a honeycomb does not compute. There is not always a clincher. Not everything can be satisfied with a quotation or citation.
God is only interested in faith. He rewards it. He uses it. He respects it. He only instigated a monarchy to satisfy the people. But the Monarch was not the prophet. When Saul fell out of favour, he was still king but God had moved on. When David made a gross error it was Nathan who put him right.
The Bible is not a load of proofs or citations. It is a complete work. Yes there is a hierarchy of priests, for the benefit of Moses. They are a necessity for organisation. They are not a reflection of God,or how He reacts to people.
The Bible never claims inerrancy. It does claim inspired. As long as errors are made, which they very likely given that the writers were capable of as anyone. My analysis is that there are no irrencies in regard to the Gospel per Romans 5. Adam brought sin into the world and Christ paid the price for man’s sin, propitiation.
Several events of the book of Genesis such as creation, the origin of man, the flood and the Tower of Babel story are out of complete alignment with scientific evidence. Is Genesis in error in this respect. Technically. it is but remember the evidence we have today was unavailble to the writers of Genesis and for that matter all Biblical writers including scholarly interpreters until the 19th century. The fact that the evidence alters the interpretation of the above mentioned events is a matter that the church must decide how to use. The bottom line is none of this changes the Gospel message or even comes close to having a influence.
It is a good topic you brought up and one needing consideration by believers. I try and adress this topic in my upcoming book Reflections on Genesis 1-11: The Aligment of Scientific Evidence with Scripture.
True, unless by “inerrancy” you mean it gets the message right.
Without giving us a hint of what that means! I recall an assignment given by one professor to write a brief paper of what “God-breathed” meant using only primary sources. The point was to show just how little we have to go on.
Accounts not intended to be scientific cannot be “out of complete alignment with scientific evidence” because they don’t set forth anything scientific. To single out two, neither the Deluge nor the Tower of Babel intended to provide any science, even though both are mythologized history (though the events in the Tower story actually happened; it’s the interpretation that is unique).
Given that nothing in Genesis 1 - 11 was meant to convey any science, that should be a very short book!
Indeed. That is the one thing you can say of all Christians (if by “image” you include the whole gospel story and everything Jesus said). But the rest of what you say is not how all Christians think let alone the sort of thing they would say… it is only what you say reflecting how you (and the people you have read) think of these things.
As for me… having been captivated as you say by this story, I have considered what the Bible says and found a coherent meaning for its content in agreement with what I see of the world. But the attitude that something must be true just because the Bible says so remains just as absurd as it was before. It has proven itself a worthy “benchmark” in the experience of those who have chosen to take it as such, but I see no reasonable basis for expecting anyone who has not made choice Christians have made to agree on this.
Conversing in English and American where the words are similar but the meaning and understanding are oceons apart.
it is not about specific evidence… it is not about building evidence. It is not about citing a specific section.
Just because there is hierarchy in the Bible does not mean it refelcts God’s nature…
You have to understand why the hierarchy exists.
And at this point I have to say that I have run out of explanations for what I am talking about.
Why we should care? I do not know. And, having looked about it is the most convoluted and irrelevant piece of so called scholarship I have ever come across.
What matters is our relationship with God, which is primarily one to one and therefore there is no hierarchy. And Christ specifically says that at the end of John’s Gospel
v22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain until I return, what is that to you? You follow Me!”
The inference is clear. We do not concern ourselves with the status, blessing, (or curse) of anyone else. We just concentrate on our own relationship.
There is no hierarchy in our relationship with God.
The Bible claims no such thing. The church canonized a bunch of discrete works written over a thousand years. The Church proclaims what works are inspired and make up the Bible.
“Proclaimed” – past tense – would be accurate – there is no authority to change what the Spirit led the churches to decide (that the decision arose from the bottom up is why the canon is truly catholic: the Spirit didn’t speak through a few, He spoke through the whole).
The pointt is that Paul spent a great deal of effort composing and writing letters and one small verse is elevated to encompass everything. It is almost a throw away line: “if in doubt don’t forget the Scriptures”. That is all it really is!.
I agree the canon is largely fixed but it differs from group to group (outside the NT) and I’m not sure it can’t grow or shrink ( e.g., if we really think the pastorals are frauds, should we remove them?). Should we add the Shepherd of Hermas?
If God didn’t inspire the writers to compose inerrant texts, I’m not sure why we have to suppose canonization was done inerrantly. I believe the composition of scripture was spirit-led as well and it has errors. I suspect canonization to be good enough to serve God’s purposes, same as individual scripture itself.
Why not perfect? Because humans are involved and God didn’t take away their free will or make them mindless puppets during the process.
Well, I don’t think the prophets or any of us will ever “participate in divine omniscience”… in either this life or the next… omniscience being considered an incommunicable attribute of God, both now and forever… But I’m assuming you probably didn’t mean they would actually ever possess literal divine omniscience.
More to the point… may I ask - based on what you said, why could someone not just as accurately claim:
“Therefore, a prophet may well make a mistake while speaking about an issue which is material to his or her God-inspired mission.”