I believe in the inerrant, authoritative and infallible Word of God and his name is Jesus (not any text on the page). I would say the bible is the tool we have that points reliably to Jesus, but think that hang-ups on the factual accuracy of every word, jot and tittle are a distraction. I don’t think “inspiration” means the Holy Spirit coerced the minds of the writers to write a perfect book in the way modern people think of “inerrant”. Not even in the original autographs.
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The Bible serves the purpose for which God intends it and He uses it to teach us about Jesus and mediate the sacred. It’s has its problems and it has its moments of grace and beauty.
It is not inerrant but I do believe it is normative for faith today. We are expected to read, wrestle, dialogue and learn from it. I think blind acceptance of all of it or wholesale dismissal are two extremes to be avoided. The Biblical authors themselves wrestled with other parts of scripture as a careful examination shows. Even Jesus flatly dismissed part of the OT which allowed men to get a certificate of divorce. My trust is in God, not a book or my intellectual ability to get it right. I’m a Christ-ian, not a Bible-ian.
Dale Martin wrote: “We may trust scripture to provide what we need for our salvation. We may trust that we can read scripture in prayerful hope that God will speak to us through our reading that text. But ultimately this belief-or, perhaps better put, this stance, attitude, or habitus-is actually an expression of our faith not in a text but in God and the holy spirit. We “leave it up to the holy spirit” to protect us from damnable error in our readings of scripture. We depend on God to keep us with God in our readings of scripture. Properly understood, the doctrine of the infallibility of scripture is a statement less about a text and more about God." [The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century]”
If we want scripture to be able to teach us we need to be willing to listen to it even if it might say something we don’t like. It should be given an honest and fair shake. But it’s not the only means of truth. God gave us brains, common sense, the world is ordered and comprehensible so we have science and we also have Church tradition. Plus the dwelling of the Holy Spirit if you believe that. I think we have to blend all of these together to figure out how to interpret scripture. I also put special emphasis on the things I think Jesus said and did. Sometimes they help us understand some ancient practices the Biblical authors took for granted as things we should reject today.
A good analogy I’ve seen is the Bible is a window to God. Through it we can glimpse Him on the other side and learn about him. We can start a relationship. But the mirror has smudges, a slight tint and even a few cracks. The view is not perfect. This doesn’t deter us from figuring things out though. Just as we can understand a message something intends even if there are a few problems in with the way it is formulated.
I’m guessing some people might try to argue both versions are correct. God is free to edit/compose a text over time however it serves his purposes just as He is allowed progressive revelation. I guess there would be two autographs, one in Hebrew, one in Greek. But they probably contradict in places so that is an issue.
To tack on a few examples of what Christy is referring to:
Hebrew Text or Septuagint?
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. It was translated into a Greek edition known as the Septuagint. Translations - especially of such a large work - are hardly perfect. Most of the Old Testament citations in the New Testament are clearly from the Septuagint. Even Paul, who could probably read the Hebrew text himself utilized this Greek translation. The problem within the New Testament usage of the Septuagint is immediate: the point made in a few of these passages appears to rely on a mistranslation of the Hebrew original! Paul J. Achtemeier wrote,
“For example, the point being made in Heb. 10.5-9 depends on the Septuagint reading of Ps. 40:6-8, which says: “A body you have prepared for me” rather than the Hebrew original, which reads: “you have given me an open ear.” The same is true of the quotation of Ps. 16:10 in Acts 2:26-28. Whereas the Hebrew speaks of God keeping the faithful servant from the “pit,” the Septuagint translation speaks of keeping the “Holy One” from “corruption,” a change that lies at the heart of the point Peter is making in this sermon. The prophecy of Jesus’ resurrection depends on the Septuagint translation, which is again different from the Hebrew original. When Paul quotes “Scripture” in Rom. 4:3, what he quotes is closer to the Septuagint than to the original Hebrew version of Gen. 15:6” [Biblical Inspiration, pg 64]
The same thing may have happened in Psalm 8:5 and Hebrews 2:7:
Psalm 8:5: Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. [NRSV]
Hebrews 2:7: You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, [NRSV]
Hebrews also appears to make humans temporarily lower than the angels as a parallel to Jesus’s temporary incarnation. But this lower nature is eternal in the Psalm because it used the word "Elohim " which should be translated “God.” We will always be ontologically lower than God. The Jewish study Bible writes:
“As in Gen. 1.26-30, humans are the climax of creation (contrast Job 17.17-18 and ch 26). “'Elohim” is properly translated as divine; this explains why people are adorned … with glory and majesty, typically divine qualities. The tradition that “'elohim” should be rendered here as angels (LXX, Tg., Radak) is the result of the discomfort of depicting humans as too God-like-a discomfort not shared by this psalmist.”
If we subscribe to models of scripture with factual inerrancy and mechanical-plenary dictation, we will encounter difficulties in explaining these away. Are we now extending inerrancy and inspiration to translations of the Bible as well? Is the Hebrew and the Greek translation both inerrant? Which copies? Is only the source being used by the New Testament author, who sometimes makes use of the Hebrew text but more frequently the Septuagint, the inspired version?
Dale Allison wrote:
One possible way of accounting for the conflicting signals in the tradition involves thinking less about theology and more about rhetoric. Some of us are wont to think of ancient Jews, at least the pious ones, as though they were modern fundamentalists, so that they would never have sounded as revolutionary as Jesus sometimes does. But this is misperception. Some Jews not only felt free to rewrite Scripture - illustrative are Jubilees and the Life of Adam and Eve, both of which freely transform Genesis - but some also were further able, in the words of Michael Fishbane, to use “authoritative Torah-teaching as a didactic foil.” Indeed, “the Jewish device of twisting Scripture, of subjecting the earlier canon to radical reinterpretation by means of subtle reformulations, is now recognized as central to the Bible as a whole.” When Job gripes, “What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them?” (7:17), is not he recalling the famous Ps 8, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (v. 4) and thereby inverting and mocking the liturgy? Psalm 144, in rewriting Psalm 18, turns it from a thanksgiving into a complaint. Joel 3:9-10 (“Prepare war…Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears”) prophesies war in the language of a famous prophecy of peace (Isa 2:4 = Mic 4:3: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks… neither shall they learn war any more”). Joel makes similar rhetorical moves elsewhere, as when he transfers prophetic threats against Babylon (Isa 13:6) and Egypt (Ezek 30:2) into warnings against Jerusalem (Joel 1:15), and when the prophecy that the wilderness will be turned into Eden (Isa 51:3; Ezek 36:35) becomes a prophecy that Eden will be turned into a wilderness (Joel 2:3). Jonah seems to revise the narrow understanding of divine grace within Joel 2:1-17 - unless it is Joel 2:1-17 that is narrowing the more universal understanding of Jonah. Isa 40:28 declares that God needs no rest, 45:7 that God creates darkness – about-faces from the primeval history. “The oracular formula in Isa. 56.4 signals the announcement of a new word of YHWH, a word that annuls the legal stipulations of Deut. 23.2-9.” Daniel 12:4 foretells that at the end, “many will be running back and forth, and knowledge will increase.” This takes up Amos 8:12 - at the end 'pp, v. 2) “they will run back and forth, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it” - and so turns prophetic pessimism into words of hope. [Resurrecting Jesus]
Conservative models of inspiration do have trouble accounting for this. Personally, I approach scripture from a different angle not worrying about long lost autographs no one knows what they actually looked like. I think the woman caught in adultery is scripture despite knowing it was not in the earliest versions of John. We have no autographs and all our extensive manuscripts are largely 150+ years removed and have errors in them. He who could inspire inerrant autographs could also inspire inerrant copies. That didn’t happen though. I think the extant form of the New Testament in the third century is the final part of the inspiration process. That is when we can safely reconstruct it as becoming fixed and stable.The idea of autographs doesn’t sit well for me. For all we know, the author of Luke may have published different versions of his own work. We just have no data either way. What we have is scripture as it became accepted in the 4th century.
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Sure, but I am talking about usage, not what the dictionary says. Infallible is typically used in the context of doctrines of Scripture to mean something like (2) completely trustworthy and effective for its purpose. And sure, some people’s concept of a trustworthy text includes something related to “no errors,” but inerrancy and infallibility aren’t the same construct for many people, myself included.
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Sproul said the Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books. Using infallible in this sense is different from the sense you mean when you say you prefer infallible as a descriptive term for the Bible. That’s fair, but it’s not simply a matter of the terms being used.
This is Keller speaking about inerrancy
Just for the record: I have no problem at all talking about inerrancy. As a pastor if I actually say to someone, any layperson–if I believe in the authority of the Bible but not the inerrancy of the Bible, they’re going to say, “what’s the difference?” And as soon as I begin to explain it, their eyes glaze over. And they’re going to think of it as a distinction without a difference. If I say it’s not authoritative in all its parts and it’s not inerrant, they understand that. And if I say it’s authoritative and inerrant, they understand that. But to say it’s authoritative and not inerrant, I’ve never in 35 years of working with people been able to get that.
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Mentioned this before but interesting in how they differ on Goliath’s height, and also interesting how the usual Sunday School version uses the higher figure, perhaps to make it more impressive, though may actually make it less believable.
“The oldest manuscripts, namely the Dead Sea Scrollstext of Samuel from the late 1st century BCE, the 1st-century CE historian Josephus, and the major Septuagint manuscripts, all give Goliath’s height as “four cubits and a span” (6 feet 9 inches or 2.06 metres), whereas the Masoretic Text has “six cubits and a span” (9 feet 9 inches or 2.97 metres).[13][1]”
Yeah a lot of people really get confused with definitions.
So we have established people use words differently. I personally have a problem with ascribing “infallibility” to texts anyway (as opposed to the message). When I assent to “The Bible is God’s authroritiative infallible word” it’s the revelation/message/meaning (God’s word) that’s infallible and authoritiative, not the text. The meaning (God’s infallible word) is something intended by God, but communicated in the text and interpreted by fallible humans in fallible ways.
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Why would you think the “long lost autographs” would be any different to any of the examples you cite above?
We can pretty much guarentee, the original autographs will be the same!
The differences you cite above are the writings of different authors…why would you expect them to be identical?
These are not biblical inerrancies…differences in word usage and or spellig mistakes by scribes are irrelevant to the issue of inerrancy.
People on this forum get so bogged down with Bart Erhman type arguments.
The erros being spoken of here account for less than 1% of the entire bible. Statistically even by your own flaming mathematical standards that proves inerrancy!
Bart Erhman may be a great scholar. But hes been conclusively proven wrong on his claims textual errors prove biblical inerrancy is a myth. There a some big names in the scholarly world who comprehensively debunct Barts arguments.
The only reason for the general position here is because you must to support a non literal reading of any biblical statement that dissagrees with science. This is nothing more than playing games.
It would be far better to find evidence to support the Christian bible philosophical belief. The bible cant be re writen (or changed) to suit whatever we want it to be. It says what it says…period. We either believe it, or convert to mormonism.
Our earliest manuscripts of these Gospel texts all have the title attached to them. So as far back as we can see, these Gospels had the titles with them. Moreover, one has to ask the question, ‘if these titles were a late addition, how is it that we have such uniformity in what these documents recall?’ For example, if Matthew’s gospel was not called ‘Matthew’s Gospel’ until late in the 2nd century, then why do we not have a number of copies of Matthew’s gospels with different titles and different names? And the fact is, this is not the case…
…Irenaeus, tells us that these four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
We are told in other early Christian writings that Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp. Polycarp was a disciple of John the apostle
Exactly! When we further clarify what you mean, we can say your belief is the Bible is a fallible text with an infallible meaning. I’m not sure how a canon is supposed to function at this point, as this is an area where I lack fluency. If only I could do a mental download of Kruger’s scholarship.
Or the Bible is an errant text, with an inerrant meaning. But surely this would be true for you with numerous books outside the canon. Or with a good sermon.
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The copies we have all show songs of editing. Many are simple errands but there are some intentional changes. I tend to view a text as more fluid and unstable before it becomes popular and fixed in the tradition. There are plenty of indications the texts were somewhat fluid before the manuscript evidence. I layout some evidence here:
If you do some research you would see there is a dark period of well over 100 years with minimal information about what the New Testament looked like. Sure, there are thousands of copies but most are from a millennium later. How much of each of the NT works can you actually reconstruct from manuscripts the first 50 years? The first 100 years? The first 150 years?
Some scholars are more favorable to tradition 100 years after the fact. Some are more skeptical.
- The Bible is inspired by God, a true revelation of God to humankind, and authoritative for Christian faith and practice.
If the faith commitment for Biologos refers to the text, and leaves the door open for errant writings, as it appears to do, it would be open to Keller’s criticism
But to say it’s authoritative and not inerrant, I’ve never in 35 years of working with people been able to get that.
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You probably have no problem finding errors in sections where the Bible teaches on faith and practice. Wouldn’t these errors invalidate the Bible’s authority in these specific sections?
Does this man, as we were taught in Greek classes, that Paul didn’t freely translate on occasion?
I recall the first time we opened our Novum Testamentum Graece for the first time. Much of the class was dismayed by the textual variants; I was fascinated. They were thinking, “How could God let this happen?”, I was thinking, “God let this happen – what’s the lesson?” It didn’t take long to conclude it’s a way of saying we neither have nor need a perfect Book, we have and need a perfect Savior.
Since this could have been a bit radical for many in the class I shared it with our prof during office hours. His response was like, “Very good – you’'ll share that with the class at the right time, of course.” He waved my next words silent with his pipe and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll know when”.
Elohim in Psalm 8:5 could well be translated “gods”, an idea that by the time the Septuagint was set down was not something the Jews were comfortable with, which is likely why it was changed to “angels”.
Not to an ancient Jew it wouldn’t be! ESV handles it well by rendering it “heavenly beings”, which misses the point in part but doesn’t cave to making it “angels”.
That’s more in keeping with the Hebrew and Greek use of “word” anyway – note that the “Ten Commandments” are not called that, they’re called the “Ten Words”.
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No, but they prove that God doesn’t care that we got it handed down perfectly. Ehrman’s problem is that the strict YECism he was raised in said that if there are any errors then nothing in the Bible can be trusted, instead of asking why God would allow such deviations.
No, it isn’t – I object to literal readings when they don’t fit the text itself. And don’t whine again about how you can read it in English and know what kind of literature it is; that’s not true of any ancient literature, period, or for that matter most literature before the last few hundred years.
But YEC doesn’t believe it, they insist on changing it by forcing it to be what it isn’t – something written in a modern worldview.
On the other hand, when I explain to people what kind of literature the first Creation story actually is and how powerful a message that delivers, they tend to understand that reading it as though it was their grandfather’s journal of events he witnessed just throws away the power of the account.
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My position is that it is infallible, but also that there isn’t a single valid reading of it. I hold that it’s not abstract ideas that matter, but how we make use of them. Provided we’re reading scripture in a way consistent with faith, hope and charity, it doesn’t matter.
So you feel you’re in a position to know there isn’t a single valid reading of it? I’m curious to know why you’re so certain of this. Also, you must believe that an actual valid reading of it exists somewhere in the universe (a pure Platonic form, perhaps?), or it would be difficult to make the leap to the Bible’s being infallible.
I’m content with the idea that I’m a human being who’ll never fully understand everything God is saying to us, no matter what the Bible says or doesn’t say. The love in our lives is what matters. The love I feel from God’s Heart trumps any words I’ve seen written anywhere, and if the Bible can help individuals begin to bridge the gap between who they think they are and who God knows they are, then hey, it’s a start.
Some days, after I’ve watched CNN for too long, I just sit with God and cry. I don’t think the Bible mentions CNN, but it’s the reality I live with in the here and now. Fortunately, God doesn’t seem to mind.
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Perhaps there is a single most valid way for an individual to read a given passage at any given time?
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That would align you with the notion that the Bible speaks on many levels. The appropriateness of the words would depend on the context of the reader as much as the context when it was written.
Richard