Is the bible inerrant?

[Realspiritik (Jennifer Thomas)]

@St.Roymond

If words don’t contain meaning, then there’s no meaning to be had. That makes them meaning containers. Thy are more than just that, but if they’re less then there’s no meaning at all.

@St.Roymond

I don’t see what that has to do with inerrancy – it’s a reference to authority. We moderns have this notion that authority comes from being propositionally correct – which is actually an amusing conceit since it rests on the arrogant assumption that what we (think we) know about science and history are correct – but to the ancients authority derived from source; if a deity told a story, that story didn’t have to have actually happened in order to have its lessons be real.

@St.Roymond

No – it was an assertion of authority, indicating that the scripture’s authority can’t be gotten around.

The arguments about inerrancy have everything to do with authority. There is no reason to argue about inerrancy except to support various claims about who has the “real” authority – specifically, who has the authority to speak on God’s behalf to other human beings.

It’s easy to use words to claim that the words of the Bible can’t be gotten around. It’s the bread and butter, after all, of religious authority. And by religious authority, I mean any religion, not just Christianity in its many forms. As Dostoevsky pointed out in his parable of the Grand Inquisitor, human beings seem to need myth, magic, and authority, and they’re drawn to institutions that make a credible claim for providing all three.

So if you want to argue about the merits of inerrancy in the Bible, it’s better not to pretend you have no skin at all in the “authority game.” (See Quote #2 pasted above.)

The Bible is a collection of narratives that present to us various competing claims about whose “vision of God” has more authority. All these “visions of God” are constructed with words, but if you want to delve into these tangled threads and sort out which “skein of words” best reflects what God has been trying to say to us over the centuries, you need to put each “skein of words” into action and observe the results.

The words alone have never had the authority we’ve placed on them. Only the results of the words matter.

Who benefits most when theologians make claims for the inerrancy of words sitting in isolation from the rest of the Divine-human experience? Is a collection of words more important than the love of a parent for a child – specifically, the love of God for all God’s children? When the goals of words and the goals of love are in direct opposition to each other, which has authority? I know what many human beings would say, but what would God say in answer to this question? Can we even know the answer? Can we understand all the purposes that lie behind the many non-verbal things that God says to us each and every day?

The Bible is important because it offers us choices and respects our Free Will. Not every religious tradition or body of sacred texts is so generous. The flip side of this collection of choices is the problem of Free Will – so much harder to understand and exercise in the world than being told what to do and when to do it and how to do it.

The Bible starts out with two opposing visions of Creation and how to be in relationship with God, and it just keeps on going to the last page, so there are many different threads for us to examine and talk to God about. (I’ll stand back now to be out of the way of those who disagree vehemently with me about Genesis. But hey, I have Free Will, too!)

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Realspiritik

Who benefits most when theologians make claims for the inerrancy of words sitting in isolation from the rest of the Divine-human experience?

It is not so much about what has the authority but who.

Claiming th Bible as the ultimate authority means that the person can then inherit that authority. Their word(s) now becomes God. It makes them irrefutable as well. They have the authority of the Bible and therefore the ultimate authority to wield.

You cannot argue with Scripture? Therefore you cannot argue with anyone who is quoting Scripture. (Who cares if that is not what Scripture actually meant!)

It is a power play, but the power is second hand at best.

Richard

[St.Roymond]

@RichardG

@St.Roymond

The flip side is that though the text isn’t perfect, it is what we have, so we don’t get to dismiss parts we don’t like (or don’t understand?) and just work from what we do.

@St.Roymond

Language is a filter that limits concepts even while it is a medium that conveys concepts, so no communication in human language can ultimately be infallible because the filter inevitably restricts the concepts

You seem to have contradicted yourself.

Read again – there is no contradiction; the two statements are in complete agreement.

= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =

@heymike3

@St.Roymond

No – it was an assertion of authority, indicating that the scripture’s authority can’t be gotten around.

Authority is weakened when it’s fallible.

You’re drawing a conclusion and trying to import that back into the statement. The conclusion may be correct, but that doesn’t make it part of the meaning.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@heymike3

But it could have been precisely that. I appreciate your disagreement. But you are wrong within your own framework to make this determination.

Inerrancy as we understand it is a 20th century construct. It was definitely not how the Jewish tradition of scholarship of Jesus’ day approached Scriptures. Yes, they believed scriptures were sacred and enduring and authoritative, but they were definitely not using some historical grammatical method of hermeneutics like the Evangelical inerrantists of today. They freely “twisted” and appropriated and ignored authorial intent and recontextualized Scripture to fit their rhetorical aims. Eisigesis was applauded.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@St.Roymond

If words don’t contain meaning, then there’s no meaning to be had. That makes them meaning containers.

They don’t contain meaning, they trigger concepts, frames, and scripts. Meaning is constructed between people based on conventional associations and inferences about relevance to the shared context. You can rarely calculate the intended inferences from the “dictionary definitions” of the words and grammar alone.

Yes, it’s cognitive linguistics, functional grammar, and relevance theory/inference model, which are the dominant streams of thought in modern linguistics, and of course they concern themselves with actual languages. They just stopped treating language as idealized abstractions and started treating language as a social phenonema that requires a social context to explain. The code model and generative linguistics that says words are meaning units and language works by principles and parameters and comprehension is diciphering code based on a mental “language aquisition device” is obsolete.

@St.Roymond

If Koine Greek was spoken the same as it got written then it doesn’t “work like any other language”, definitely doesn’t work like English because it can stack concepts in a normal sentence such that any English speaker would have to take notes in order to figure out what was just said.

Yes, because English has different participant tracking rules. As do other languages. If the Greek is translated into English structure that follows our participant tracking rules, it would be totally comprehensible and as easy to follow as it was for the Greek speakers who had tools like case and subject marking on verbs for communicating their argument structure, whereas English doesn’t have those things has to rely solely on word order and explicit pronouns.

@St.Roymond

It’s an observation made by some of my professors who were fluent in at least six different languages and had taught in several of them: different languages package thoughts differently and those ways of packaging are not always compatible.

It is a known fact that most of the old white guys who taught biblical languages were very ethnocentric and the lexicons and grammars they created treat English as normative.

@St.Roymond

I wish I could remember the specifics, but one instructor set out how the concept of something that seems as simple as “time” varies between several languages, and given that variance there are just some things that cannot be transferred between languages. That’s a plain instance of language limiting our concepts.

Yes, because we now know that some languages are tense dominant and others are aspect dominant and that was not well-understood fifty years ago when Greek scholars were always trying to impose English tense systems on Greek and Hebrew which (Hebrew especially) tend to be more aspect dominant.

@St.Roymond

Then there was the Vietnamese guy who explained that his kids breezed through arithmetic because the operations of arithmetic were built into the way that Korean speaks about numbers

My kids used Singamore math, (the common way of teaching math in many Asian countries) and it was indeed conceptually very different than the American style of teaching kids to manipulate numbers, but it translated just fine to English because it was base ten, just like English’s number system. I am super skeptical that this had anything to do with Vietnamese. It probably had everything to do with how manipulating numerical concepts was taught. Common core “new math” was a way of introducing this way of teaching in the US. People weren’t limited by language as much as their bad attitudes toward a different approach than the one they learned as kids.

@St.Roymond

But it cannot be less than that, or there is no communication.

There is no way to “transfer” concepts from one brain to another. We can only make guesses about what other people are thinking and use our own experiences and concepts to try to understand one another.

[St.Roymond]

@Realspiritik

The arguments about inerrancy have everything to do with authority.

They have to do with a modern understanding of authority where authority arises from the content of a text. That’s not the ancient understanding of authority, and it’s thus misdirected: in the ancient view of the authority of the text, it isn’t the content that makes it authoritative, it’s the source, though “source” doesn’t necessarily mean the writer, it can mean someone ‘behind’ the writer who “commissioned” the work and gave it approval (think a Roman Catholic imprimatur). For second-Temple Judaism, YHWH both commissioned the scriptures and gave His approval – and it thus has authority; whether or not it was “inerrant” in a modern sense, as a measure of its authority, would have baffled them.

It occurs to me that the ancient understanding of authority would today be dismissed as “appeal to authority” – and that’s pretty much what it was!

@Realspiritik

There is no reason to argue about inerrancy except to support various claims

Or to shore up people’s faith that relies heavily on modern understandings of authority. Far too many Christians rest their faith on the Bible more than on Christ, and the idea that the content of the Bible doesn’t necessarily conform to a modern measure of what is truth is frightening.

@Realspiritik

So if you want to argue about the merits of inerrancy in the Bible, it’s better not to pretend you have no skin at all in the “authority game.” (See Quote #2 pasted above.)

“Quote #2 pasted above” shows why the arguments for inerrancy are pointless in and of themselves totally apart from authority: it rests on the conceit that what we think we know about science and history are correct, and that this conceit is a measure that can be imposed on ancient literature.

Inerrancy is a modern idea based on faulty premises and has nothing to do with the authority of scripture, which is after all ancient literature. Merely the fact that inerrancy is a concept from a worldview that is alien to the Bible is sufficient to oppose it; that it misdirects the question of authority is another.
To an ancient Israelite, including into the first century CE, if a typical young-Earth type tried peddling the notion that if there is an error in any of the Bible then none of the Bible can be trusted they would have been regarded as a child who hadn’t learned the basics. Inerrancy demands that the Holy Spirit must conform to their ideas of what constitutes truth rather than asking what the Bible considers to be truth.

@Realspiritik

The Bible is a collection of narratives that present to us various competing claims about whose “vision of God” has more authority.

“Competing claims”? No; there is no competition; all the scriptures expound just one “claim”.

@Realspiritik

The words alone have never had the authority we’ve placed on them. Only the results of the words matter.

The message has the authority the Holy Spirit placed in it through inspiration and canonization. If you’re measuring by “the results of the words”, then you’re lost, since those words have been used to commit a freighter-load of atrocities.

@Realspiritik

Is a collection of words more important than the love of a parent for a child – specifically, the love of God for all God’s children?

I don’t know the name, but this uses a common fallacy.

@Realspiritik

When the goals of words and the goals of love are in direct opposition to each other, which has authority?

If someone thinks they have encountered such “direct opposition”, then they have understood neither love nor the scriptures.
It’s an even worse situation than when people try to force the scriptures to talk science; science, at least, has definite parameters, but a definition of love is entirely subjective.

@Realspiritik

The Bible starts out with two opposing visions of Creation and how to be in relationship with God

How are they “opposing”? The only way to reach that conclusion is through the fallacious approach of trying to force a modern worldview onto ancient literature. Regardless of which particular set of ancient literature is being addressed, that’s a guaranteed way to get things wrong. As Michael Heiser put it, when reading Genesis you have to think like an ancient Israelite (as one wit quipped, “Walk like an Egyptian, think like an Israelite”).

Specifically, the first Creation story says little about our relationship with God except the vocation we were assigned, to stand in His temple we call Creation as the image that both represents Him and through which He works. The second Creation story doesn’t change or oppose that in the least, it merely adds an aspect, what some contemporaries have called “being in God’s (earthly) family”. Those aspects are in fact complementary; the first is showing us in relation to Creation, the second shows our relationship with God – and together they illustrate that we face two ways at the same time, one standing with God and facing Creation, the other standing with God facing Him (very much like the Logos in John 1:1, “the Word was with/facing God”).

[St.Roymond]

@RichardG

Claiming th Bible as the ultimate authority means that the person can then inherit that authority.

Only if said person claims to be the only authoritative interpreter of the Bible, a case that ironically is contrary to the Bible.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@St.Roymond

The message has the authority the Holy Spirit placed in it through inspiration and canonization.

You still do not understand how the Holy Spirit works. it neither controls nor verifies any words written. It can give spoken words but that is a different occurrence.

Richard

[Christopher_Michael1 (Christopher Michael Jake)]

People seem to get lost in all this questioning about inerrancy which is been going on and on and for what reason? Explain “define” please

[Terry_Sampson]

[Christopher_Michael1 (Christopher Michael Jake)]

I know what the word define means the dictionary meaning-not where I was going with this. Perhaps I should explain what I meant. It’s all about inerrancy of scripture. People in their comments were trying to break it down. So, is what is said in the bible really accurate led by the holy spirit through man or is it not?
“You still do not understand how the Holy Spirit works. it neither controls nor verifies any words written. It can give spoken words but that is a different occurrence.”

Richard
That’s a quote from Richard for instance is there a Holy Spirit and can it be proven? BTW I’m not an atheist I’m a believer but just overwhelmed by all this talk about inerrancy. There are so may conflicts in the bible it’s bewildering.

[T_aquaticus]

@St.Roymond

Only if said person claims to be the only authoritative interpreter of the Bible, a case that ironically is contrary to the Bible.

I’ve always viewed Biblical inerrancy in the same light as the ages old marital advice that your wife is always right. Mom is always right, too.

[Realspiritik (Jennifer Thomas)]

@Christopher_Michael1

BTW I’m not an atheist I’m a believer but just overwhelmed by all this talk about inerrancy. There are so may conflicts in the bible it’s bewildering.

Yes, there are many conflicts. And yes, it’s bewildering. One solution that has been adopted over the centuries is to try to harmonize all the conflicts so that there really aren’t any conflicts, just stupid people who don’t understand what all those unloving passages TRULY mean if you turn them upside down and shake them as hard as you can till your common sense falls out.

I’m one of the stupid people. There are passages and teachings in the Bible that, from my perspective, can’t be redeemed no matter how complicated the mental gymnastics are. On the other hand, I see many bits and pieces that make perfect sense if you believe in a loving, forgiving God. So I stick with the parts that lift me up and give me courage and hope for a loving relationship with God.

[Realspiritik (Jennifer Thomas)]

Yes, Mom’s are definitely always right!

[Vinnie]

@RichardG

@Realspiritik

Who benefits most when theologians make claims for the inerrancy of words sitting in isolation from the rest of the Divine-human experience?

It is not so much about what has the authority but who.

Claiming th Bible as the ultimate authority means that the person can then inherit that authority. Their word(s) now becomes God. It makes them irrefutable as well. They have the authority of the Bible and therefore the ultimate authority to wield.

You cannot argue with Scripture? Therefore you cannot argue with anyone who is quoting Scripture. (Who cares if that is not what Scripture actually meant!)

It is a power play, but the power is second hand at best.

Richard

Or maybe they are just happy to have found a guide to follow in this frightening and diverse world?

[Realspiritik (Jennifer Thomas)]

@Vinnie

Or maybe they are just happy to have found a guide to follow in this frightening and diverse world?

Do you feel the Bible is a guide, with signposts and suggestions and only a few laws that are foundational? Or do you feel Bible is more like an inerrant set of codes that have to be accepted in their entirety?

I think the Bible has been used in both ways, and probably everything in between, too .And probably a single individual can go through a long process of starting with one understanding of the Bible and ending up at an entirely different understanding. I think the Bible makes this kind of journey possible.

[Terry_Sampson]

• I’m going on 76, married, child-free, and don’t get out often, and nobody visits us. That doesn’t make me an authority on anything, but it does encourage me to opine more often than not.
• One of my opinions is that Biologos’ forum is like a “Bumper Car Court” without time limits. The Moderators here catch you violating some rules, they’ll give you a “time-out”.
• Heads Up! Wear a helmet and make sure your seat belt is fastened. You can never be sure who’s going to come out of nowhere and intentionally bump you. The elderly around here can be particularly rambunctious.
• I hang around here when I’m not napping, eating, grocery-shopping, googling, or watching Youtubes. Nobody visits, which limits distractions from my “druthers”.
• Hang around for a while, and you’ll figure out who’s interesting, who’s informative, and who’s neither.
• And learn how to put non-interesting, non-informative, rambunctious curmudgeons on your “Ignore List”. Also, how to start a private thread with someone that enables you to exchange posts or carry on an extended conversation.
• And finally, if a non-moderator posts a public message to you, you may respond, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

[Terry_Sampson]

P.S.

@Christopher_Michael1

is there a Holy Spirit and can it be proven?

• I’m told and believe that there is, but anyone who claims to be full of it, is going to have a heck of a time proving. The strongest indication of it is recorded in John 15:26;

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@T_aquaticus

I’ve always viewed Biblical inerrancy in the same light as the ages old marital advice that your wife is always right. Mom is always right, too.

So the solution to everything about inerrancy is … if you’re wondering how to understand some scriptural passage, ask your wife (or mom) about it. And then … boom! You have infallibility intersectionality!

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@Vinnie

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.

that is true…for example, we know that the masoretic text most likely was written in response to the influx of Christianity…it is claimed that it is a biased and heavily edited version of the original autgraph because of the intentions of it writers to combat Christianity.

The difference in the bible is that there are too many different versions dating back to those times which are very similar and yet were developed in a completely disconnected way…so the chance of corruption since that time through biase is practically impossible.

The bible really cannot be affected by Chinese whispers as is claimed here on these forums in order to support a non literal reading of anything that is contrary to naturalisms scientific interpretations.