Arguably failure to recognize the Bible as both a product of human literature and a divinely inspired work is behind a lot of cultural issues surrounding the Bible, not whether Genesis 1 is literal. For example, I was with my brother recently playing a video game and a point came up in the game where we were uncertain when his character was going to get attacked by a monster. He hadn’t so far, but it seemed certain to happen eventually. This reminded me of Ecclesiastes 3, particularly that there is a time for everything, including to die, in his character’s case. I Facetiously referenced Ecclesiastes 3:1 and he balked that I was quoting the Bible at him (he is not a Christian and dislikes organized religion). To me, this is an example of someone only seeing the Bible as one or the other. When I quoted Ecclesiastes, I was quoting it the same way I might quote the Iliad or a Star Trek episode, but he was only thinking of it as a religious text used to preach at him. I think the Bible is too complex of a document to be in one category or another. It is human, it is divine, it is unified, and it is collection of literary works by dozens of different authors all at once.
Forgive me but you and Roymond are two peas in a pod, separate but almost identicle. You both think that there is only one view of Scripture, it just so happens that they are poles apart
Instead of listening and/or criticising each other and everyone else, perhaps ypu should concentrate on your own beliefs/ Admittedly yo seem to have more clarity about what you beleive and why, but it is still secondhand and indoctrinated. You cannot see past the specific view of Scripture on which everythiing is based.
You keep “testing” yourself but with no sincerity. You hear but do not undertstand let alone accept the answers given, unless they happen to coincide with your view. You ike it when my view coresponds or can be incorporatd into yours and then accuse me of God knows what when i include science or other non-scriptural considerations in my faith.
You are both obsessed with Scripture and your view of it. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Christ told Peter not t worry about the other disciple, because his faith and path was of no cconcern. If you weren;t so dogmatic about what constitutes “correct” fath, you would both be much better off.
I am just glad that it is not down to me what theology is required, but if the result refects the personal views you both have a problem. By your own judgement will you be judged and you both do not seem to care what that might mean,
Richard
Yes, the Bible is a compilation of human literature.
The canon of scripture is inspired by God, and scripture nowhere claims to be the words of God.
People wrote it, and people are imperfect.
We are never promised a perfect book, only a perfect Savior,
No, that is not the definition the Bible.
The Bible is the compilation of various documents accepted as the written record of the church.
The Bible never claims, to be in its entirety, to be the Word of God.
Just the opposite.
As Luke wrote, he investigated and decided to write.
And, as Paul wrote, he was the author of his letters.
There is no basis in scripture for claiming the Bible is, in its entirety, the Word of God.
A newspaper does not become the “Word of Trump” because some parts of the newsprint quote him.
I recall the Star Trek episode in which Worf was asked if the ancient writings were true.
His response: I find more truth in them every time I read them.
I had a good friend that once said during a carpool ride, “I think the Holy Spirit is leading me to buy a Volvo.”
I may be wrong, but I think the Holy Spirit leads in less mundane and more important matters.
Adam, you quoted Google to claim the Bible is the Word of God.
No, Google is wrong in claiming the Bible calls itself the Word of God.
Can you find such a claim the Bible?
A great question. But also a complex one. Just finished a course on Revelation — a book that insists it gets its thoughts and pronouncements directly from God, full stop. And yet, it definitely is communicating very serious and specific things to human beings!
You can maintain that a text comes from God and still need to understand its historical background, the genre of literature that it belongs to, the culture of the society to which the text refers, and to what earlier biblical text or scene another, later biblical book may be referring to. It also does not mean that a copyist here or there did not fall asleep on the job or accidentally skip over a word.
And the fact that a copyist may have dipped his pen in the wrong inkwell on occasion – or similar – does not mean knowing the nature of the original text itself is ultimately beyond human capability. There are plenty of manuscripts around for comparison.
Revelation was a disputed book in the early 300s. It never entered the canon of the Church of the East,
Nobody knows what the book of Revelation means, and it says in the first few verses of the book that those things would happen soon. Nothing in 2025 is “soon” in the first century.
And if it did, it wouldn’t be the Word of God. Just as Jesus never explicitly says He is the Son of God.
- Mat 16:17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
Jesus show up in various forms, in types all throughout scripture, not just a part of it.
I would concur, although sometimes the mundane can change in ways we did not predict, so that we end up in a situation whre the Holy Spirit has more domain.
To be honest I stopped trying to suss that one out years ago.
However, what I have found is that, although i gave my life to God He tends to let me be unless needed. It is when people claim the Slavery that Paul suggests that i i start to quesstion realities. I also would have less confidence in the notion of being lead to buy a specific car. On the other hand i have every belief that there was divine influence in the House we bought when moving to the Midlands. It was just one of those things, we were originally looking in one area but found that there was only properties offered in a different town. So it was not the specific building that mattered, only the genral area.
I have had no reason to doubt such a belief, but from an outside perspective it could be reasoned otherwsie. (But that is just how God seems to work with personal faith)
It is the difference between theoretic (Biblical) Christianity, and living it.
Richard
We disagree on that point.
The passage you quote is Jesus explicitly saying that He is the son of God.
And this passage is confirmation.
John 8:58
58 Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”
And, of course, we know the prophets of the Old Testament were clear that they were speaking for God with their introductory words “Thus saith the Lord…”. This did not invalidate their message.
I could infer from your post that you think the Holy Spirit revealed to you that the Bible, in its entirety, is the Word of God. Would that inference be accurate?
If so, which canon (of the at least four canons in use) was revealed to you as the complete Bible?
I guess that depends on how explicit you want it to be.
In reality, if Jesus had stated in unequivocally then His mission would have failed. The paradox of Him being both fully human and fully God is a barrier to understanding even now. If there was any notion at all of Him being God then trying to kill Him would have seemed futile. The reality is that his divine Nature is only really understood after the event. Even John’s Gospel only alludes to it rather than stating it outright.
The word became flesh is about as explicit as we get.
The point being the theology needs Jesus to be the actual son of God, but th practicalities need Him to die as a human.
We are reading after the event. You have to distinguish between what people saw and understood, then, and what we need to understand now. They are not the same. Scripture repeatedly tells us that the disciples were not fully in the loop until after the resurrection. As a Narrative we are learning with them, rather than knowing the answer all the way through.
Just as a detective story does not reveal the answer until the final chapter, so Jeus’ nature is not fully understood until after the resurrection. The exception being the prologue of John’s Gospel that gives the game away if you let it.
Richard
Interesting response, Richard. I have read the commentaries or reviews (call them what you will) of various Jewish writers who—given the moment — see explicit claims of divinity in the words or actions of Jesus–sometimes in passages that non-Jewish commentators might miss or overlook. “Before Abraham was, I am” and so forth.
Polly want a cracker?
That is the whole point of Matthews Gospel. It claims that
The clues are there
to quote a certain reality quiz
IOW the Jews should have recognised Him, yet, in truth, if they had then they would not have killed him and the whole thing goes belly up.
Richard
Thanks for the input, Vance. I suppose this fits somehow the question of whether or not the Bible is “human literature” or not…Revelation is/was a disputed book and probably for many various reasons. It’s my understanding that in the era of the first centuries BCE/CE — there was much expectation that a Messianic figure would soon come. But there evidently was little agreement on what He might be like—besides Jewish and God–or whether there would be one or even two messiahs at the same time.
Lots of reasons for that…one being that people read their era’s own political insecurities – or their own hopes – into the biblical text and go from there. And no doubt other reasons. It’s easy to say that no one in that era conceived, seriously, that someone needed to come pay the penalty for our sins. Seriously–who thinks they are that bad? So we get human analysis plus the political aggravations of the era…and this was – in that era as in ours – the lens through which prophecy was read.
If the Bible were just “human literature,” I wonder how much any of this would matter.
But it has never been entirely thought of as human literature–not in essence. So these things — that is, interpretation and how to live its precepts–have always mattered. How much of this accounts for the controversy over the book of Revelation —for the past 2000 years (!!!) – is something we will only know at some future time (!!! ) and we will look to those in the future no different than those in the era of the first century CE.
This is probably a large part of why Revelation is “a disputed book” --not only in the Church of the East (or some of them) but in the church of the West.
My instructor fortunately offered a different view from the old Lindsey/LaHaye brand of things, and I was happy to get that.
There are various interpretive methods for the book of Revelation and I was happy to get them. But they all generally (not specifically) look for a radical change in world order in the future–no telling how soon.
As for what is “soon”? Most biblical versions translate Revelation 1:3 as “…the time is near” or, lesser, " …the time is at hand."
The SBL Greek New Testament translated it “…for the time is near”…and so did the Complete Jewish Bible etc.
Tyndale’s “For the tyme is at honde” is a nice reminder of how spelling has changed!
Metzger, in his book The Canon of the New Testament addressed “attempts at the time of the Reformation to set aside certain books” for reasons related to controversies of their era, and noted “Zwingli’s denial of the Biblical character of the Book of Revelations was the result of contemporary controversies…” etc. He also cited Eusebius’ objections, based on what Metzger described as the “excesses” of some with regard to interpretation.
That situation has not changed (that is, the tendency toward “excesses”) and likely will not change. The Oxford Handbook of the Book of Revelation continues that line of thinking—e.g., “the ambiguity of its imagery does not allow one to derive clear assertions and instructions from it, which was one of the main reasons Martin Luther initially…” etc. read chapter 4 of the Oxford book.
Metzger notes that Tertullian and Irenaeus both referred to the Apocalypse of John and that it is in the Muratorian Canon. Yes, I know, it was and is controversial and some (but not all) Eastern churches do not accept it…But Irenaeus is “very early on” in church history. And see below from some anabaptist.wiki online site
In A.D. 170, the Muratorian Canon says that the Apocalypse of John was universally recognized in Rome (Swete, 1908:cx). Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.11.1; 4.20.11; 5.35.2), Tertullian (Against Marcion 3.14.3), Hippolytus (de Ant. 36), Clement of Alexandria (Who Is the Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved? 42; Miscellanies 6.106-7), and Origen (Commentary on John 5.3) accept Revelation as scripture. In the fourth century, Eusebius says that some accept it as canonical, but he and others refer to it as a questioned book (Eccl. Hist. 4.26). His attitude may have been influenced by the use of the book by millenarians, who believed in
See AI overlook for more on the varied reception of Revelation in Eastern churches.
I enjoyed the class that I took…and while interpretations vary there is a definite theme to the book–which is that God will one day intervene in a more graphic way than just the humble robed character who once wandered the roads of Galilee and Judea saying “He who has seen me has seen the Father” --and then ended up dying a gruesome death.
I don’t think the books of the Bible are just “human literature.”
However, there are books that exist in some canons and not in others.
To what extent do you think setting the canon was “human decision-making?”
If setting the canon was divinely inspired, in your opinion, which one of multiple canons is the one that was inspired? Or all versions of the canon divinely inspired, with different lists of books for different people?
Now I’m trying to dredge up a memory . . . . Some writer once spoke of three books of God: scripture, nature, and history, and then added a fourth: Christians. He noted that the last should be the most reliable but in practice is the least.
That’s a different section.
Who called it private? Why wouldn’t John want the church to know of such a promise given to the Eleven?
If it was a general promise to all believers, it has been extremely undependable. If it was just to the Eleven, we see it played out in Acts. It’s worthy noting that it can be found referenced in discussions of the extent of the canon, making the point that writings with an apostolic backing have that promise but writings beyond that don’t.
I think it’s at least a promise to the Eleven, perhaps to their successors (as it has been taken frequently) – though if to their successors I would maintain that it applies to them collegiately, not excluding any, i.e. those successors have to speak with one voice (the passage has been applied thus to Nicea and thus the Creed).
Different topic.
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How about you stop trying to do theology with a source that admits it is not accurate and is not capable of distinguishing between what is and isn’t valid? and that is biased towards “louder” voices on the internet and other publishing?
Funny then that a large reason that scroll made it into the canon was that Christians back in the second century read it and saw what they observed happening around them.
The problem is that many emphasize the divine in a way that sets aside the human. I love how one of my professors put it (quoting one of his own at Oxford): “The Bible is more than human literature, but it is never less than that”.
Nope – I work at not having a view; what I strive for is what the writers, and thus the Spirit, intended.
Or as Dr. Michael Heiser has put it, no inspired writer ever suddenly woke up and found that he had written something!
It intrigued me that some of my grad school professors insisted vehemently that there is just one canon (despite there being among them different views as to what is included!). I just applied the question “Why did God do things that way?”, though my only conclusion has been that the West has a warped view of what “canon” means, making it a legalistic thing rather than the fluid one that God allowing multiple differing lists suggests.
One of my favorites is “One greater than the Temple is here”. One of the rabbis I knew in grad school was continually amused that Westerners didn’t see that as an obvious claim to being YHWH-Elohim. Another is when Jesus told the storm to be still, which to the rabbis was an obvious reference to Psalm 107 and thus a claim to be YHWH.
Compared to those, “Before Abraham was, I AM” is in-your-face.
It suggest to me, evaluating the relative contribution to these from God and man.
nature: 99% from God? (there is our perception and interpretation after all)
scripture: 0-100% from God? (opinions vary wildly, for me this would be 90% I suppose)
Christians: 5-90% from God? (that people identify themselves as such doesn’t tell us how much of a foothold they have allowed God to have in their life)
history: 40-60% from God? (how do you define history?)
I wonder if perhaps, the different ways people give a rating to things like I have done, tells us something about them.
Or they would have killed Him early, in the wrong way.
Or Satan would have figured things out and not aimed to get Jesus crucified.
Or three – some expected a Moses-Messiah, a prophet; a Melchizedek-Messiah, a priest; and a David-Messiah, a king.
An error going strong after three millennia!
But read as human literature, it is plainly saying these things!
Only as truly human literature is the message available to all – if it is less than human literature, it needs an official interpreter.
I agree with those who say that we would have been better off without that book, given all the troubles it has bred.
Since we have it, I hold to the Lutheran point that it counts as antilegommena, “spoken against”, and must be read in accordance with the Gospels and other universally-accepted books.
Or, as it tended to be read in Rome in Eusebius’ time, that God was busy intervening right then.
I say 100%, but keep in mind that Jesus certainly had zits and body odor . . . . i.e. it wasn’t dictated and has “blemishes”.