I am not going to clarify everything to the nth degree. The point was made. Exceptions do not disprove the rule they tend to prove it.
Richard
PS when David was making passionate lave to Bathsheba was he prophesying? Every word a prophet said is not a prophecy. (All or nothing?) In general, David was not the prophet of Israel. At the time of Bathsheba, Nathan was.
Perhaps his passionate washing showed how seriously he took the inerrant biblical truth that cleanliness is next to godliness.
shame he forgot about coveting his neighbourâs wife.
I wonder, can you live up to Paulâs demands for purity?
Are they for all?
Or maybe Paul was superimposing his pharisaic beliefs onto his Christianity. Not all are called to be holy, and holiness is not a pre-requisite of Christianity, almost the opposite.
I think if you tried to follow all of Paulâs demands you would find them taxing to say the least, yet Christ claimed that His yoke was easy and HIs burden light. If Paulâs view is light I would hate to see a heavy version.
Please do not try and impose your view of inerrancy on me. I am happy for you to believe it, but do not think that I have to. Romans 14 might claim otherwise.
Richard
Iâm guilty of painting with a broad brush in the service of the point.
Well - as you caught on, Iâm in the same net myself (or at least in some significant ways) and also aspire to always take context and background into consideration - hopefully for all the scriptures. So ⌠yes ⌠I canât point the finger about âpicking and choosingâ without myself being on the receiving end of my own judgment. Itâs an active question for me then - how do/should I differentiate between when one has âgone too farâ to defend some principle, and have become culpably selective with their project; and when is somebody simply embracing an overall narrative that they see as coming from scriptures as a whole, and thus will use that understanding as their lens through which to see specific passages, some of which may more obviously conform to that narrative and others of which might push back on it a bit?
Of course I want to be found doing it that latter way and not the former - itâs what I should aspire to.
Interesting point. For me, I guess Iâm seeing it as a limited (therefore fallible?) window through which I am given at least some access to an infallible God. Maybe âfallibleâ is the wrong way to put that. What I mean is that Iâm aware of my own fallibility as I filter what I read. And there is no such thing as reading without that filter. Thatâs what I think I react to more viscerally. My impression is that some people (not necessarily you) think they can engage in âfilterless readingâ. It isnât that I donât think I have access to absolutely true things. I certainly think and behave as if I do - maybe on too many occasions - but understandably, and necessarily on at least some occasions. But if itâs fallible me that itâs coming from (or through), then it matters little how pristinely âinfallibleâ any original source may have been. Whatâs coming from me is no longer underneath that cloak of perfection, and when I forget that - itâs probably the serpent having its way all over again.
For what itâs worth, thatâs me, including the tentativeness.
Yes, and I assume it was also intentional when earlier on you mentioned âlogical consequencesâ and those who âaffirm a Christian doctrine that logically depends on an inerrant Scripture to be held.â If you hadnât framed that discussion as a logical argument for inerrancy and had left it as some inconsistent things people say, I wouldnât have commented.
If someone believes we canât know what Jesus taught and yet holds one teaching dear as coming from him, I agree thatâs inconsistent. If they say we should love our enemies because Jesus says to but we donât have to worry that yelling âFoolâ earns us hellfire because his thinking was just a product of its time, I again agree that theyâre inconsistent.
But none of this has anything to do with inerrancy. One can affirm inerrancy while disagreeing that a particular phrasing in our Bible accurately preserves and translates what Jesus said (inerrancy is about the originals, not what we have today). To the extent that you have pointed out a logical contradiction, it is solved by affirming the Bible as trustworthy; going further and using the word inerrant adds nothing â except for how it feels more precise and rigorous and ready-made for logical syllogisms while actually being none of that.
Indeed, how does one know? Believing in an inerrant Bible doesnât help, since that wouldnât prevent our interpretations and doctrines from still being riddled with human error. Iâve seen inerrantists who hold that Jesus brings âjustification and life for all,â others who think some will face âthe second death,â and others who think some will face âeternal punishment,â yet all of them accept all three phrases as inerrant biblical truth.
In the quote above, you donât explicitly say that an inerrant Bible leads to inerrant doctrine, but the words give the feeling that inerrancy would put one on firmer ground. Thatâs the problem. Inerrancy is no logical or practical improvement over claiming the Bible is useful and trustworthy, but the language feels more robust. It obscures how we donât actually have the word-for-word and doctrine-for-doctrine certainty it teases.
And those who affirm inerrancy force-fit the Bible to teach their favorite doctrines, while discounting other interpretations and other passages which say other things. How many denominations has inerrancy and sola scripture created? Welcome to the party. 
No, it means stating falsehoods.
Or you are using a different definition of âevilâ.
Of course all are â to be holy is to be âset apartâ. It may involve being a goodie-two-shoes as seems to be the common understanding. Saints â us â are âset-apart onesâ.
Except that you claim to hold the exact truth. Truth is not the black and white picture that you paint, and for you to claim any of it is, dare I say, arrogant?
Yes, about that dictionary of yoursâŚ
I have no desire to be âset apartâ in the way you claim. And to suggest sainthood would be vanity. I always hoped your name here was accidental, but it would appear that you have aspirations for sainthood. Yes, good luck with that.
Paul was a Pharisee. His view of Christianity was pharisaic. If you want to subject yourself to such rigours and restrictions, knock yourself out. I am happy under Godâs grace. It is more than enough and it keeps me humbleâŚ
Just keep your high and mighty standards to yourself instead of trying to break the backs of everyone else, or even worse, judging those who see things differently.as false or non-Christian.
Richard
It has nothing to do with anything I say is truth, it has to do with you stating falsehoods about me.
And you just did it again.
To not be set apart is to be of the world, not of Christ, to follow the worldâs values.rather than those of Jesus.
Why? According to the New Testament, especially Paulâs letters, sainthood is what we all have as believers.
These are New Testament basics!
No, these are Pauline ideals.
They are not synonymous. nor oppositesâŚ
Christâs values are basic decency, and love for your neighbour. You have entered the realm of
âthose who would be first must take the form of a servantâ, except you are making it a place of honour.
I have no desire to be first, or followed, or given honour. If you seek those things then follow the guidelines to the letter. I will just
âlove the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and mind and my neighbour as myselfâ
Anything else is superfluous
Richard
Try again â theyâre Paulâs, Peterâs, Matthewâs, Lukeâs, Johnâs, and of whoever wrote Hebrews.
And Paul doesnât treat every believer being a saint as an âidealâ, he treats it as a fact; in Paulâs usage, being a saint has nothing to do with anything we do and everything to do with what Jesus has done.
Where did I mention honor? All I did was given the New Testament definition of a saint, which is the proper definition; the later meaning of someone being some sort of super-Christian is a deviation.
But of course being a saint is an honor â Christ dying for us is an honor, and thatâs what makes us saints; we are set apart by His blood.
I really need a copy of your dictionary. It seems every word you use gets a new or specific meaning be it âsaintâ, or inerrancy, or just: "Christian "
Like I said, you can submit to whatever you discern, and understand whatever, but I do not have to âcomplyâ. Resistance is neither futile nor forbidden.
What matters is that we abide by the guidelines we believe in. And, do not judge or criticise any other views.
And before you claim any high ground my beliefs are grounded in Scripture.
Richard
You seem to be saying that it is illogical to believe anything found in scripture unless scripture is inerrant.
But that view is illogicalâas nearly or completely everything we know in the secular world comes from sources that have some errors. Yet we still have confidence in these matters.
God has always used imperfect people to do His work. Why not an imperfect set of documents?
That passage is about spoken prophecy. To extend it to Lukeâs writings, for example, is an extension not justified by the passage.
Occasionally a New Testament writer claims to be speaking or writing for God, but those claims only reinforce that they are not always speaking or writing for God.
Consider Luke again:
1 Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us,
2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,
3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.
Luke says he decided to write his gospel.
things we know from the secular world can be double checked, fact checked, re-examined, cross examined, etc., etc.
Iâm speaking about things that we can only know from strict revelation from God⌠e.g., whether there will be a future resurrection, for instance.
there are different levels and perspectives about inspiration, inerrancy, etc⌠But my point is that when someone denies inerrancy to a significant extent, but maintains firm belief in certain doctrines such as this future resurrection⌠my basic question would be:
How do we know, exactly, whether or not these claims about a future resurrection arenât one of these erroneous accretions, one of the various errors that imperfect people erroneously included in this imperfect set of dociments?
Hence, I maintain that it is indeed logically inconsistent to embrace these kinds of doctrrines from Scripture unless one also maintains some kind of process by which God ensured that these doctrines would be communicated without error.
maybe the logic of the point would make more sense if I relayed this experience: One time I had an extensive discussion with someone online who denied Christâs inerrancyâŚ
he was happy to affirm various teachings of Christ, with which he resonated, and which he liked: Godâs forgiveness of sinners, eternal life, etc.
but when we would discuss certain teachings of Christ that he did not particularly like, he would brush them aside with the observation that Jesus was a man, prone to error like any other man, a product of his time, and certainly he would have absorbed various erroneous religious concepts from his own culture.
I tried to point out the logical inconsistency. When we are talking about those doctrines that we have absolutely no independent way of verifying, which we could only possibly know if in someway directly revealed by God himselfâŚ
once he claimed that Jesus was prone to error, a product of his time, and it was possible for him to blindly or erroneously absorb false doctrines from his culture, then how could my friend possibly have confidence that God would forgive sins, or grant eternal life, or any of the other doctrines that he did choose to hold? why could Christ not have been erroneous when he talked about those things as well?
In the same way we know that George Washington was the first president of the United States but we donât know the accuracy of other details commonly attributed to him. (Did he really throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River?)
The promised resurrection is attested to by multiple witnesses: Matthew, Mark (writing for Peter), Luke, John, and Paul. It is not the Bible that tells us about the resurrection. It is men who walked with Jesus who tell us about the resurrection.
Some of those same witnesses could not remember perfectly some details that are undeniable errors in the scriptures (e.g, on the missionary journey was carrying a staff allowed or forbidden? or was Joseph a descendant of Nathan or Solomon? or did the centurion seeking healing for his servant really come to Jesus or just speak through messengers? did Jesus ride on one animal or two in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem?)
So we have the preponderance of the evidence that George Washington was the first president. Minor details could be wrong.
All the witnesses agree there will be a resurrection. The details arenât clear.
It is too bad that the person denied the perfection of Jesus. That is not a reason to attribute to the Bible something the Bible never claims for itself.
When you declare the Bible is inerrant, even though that claim is nowhere in scripture, then you are adding a doctrine that has not foundation.
âLet your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.â -Colossians 4:6
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