I see no reason why some English users with some particular theological bent could not decide that God’s word is expressed through writers such as Luke.
4 Likes
[content removed by moderator]. Reading meaning into capitalization is a feature of English translation. The originals do not capitalize, or sometimes every word is capitalized.
In Mt. 15:6 and John 10:35, Jesus calls scripture “the Word of God.”
these sayings and ideas do not follow from each other.
If the Law (which was the Torah and friends) was perfect, why Christ? Why a change in priesthood? Why did Moses permit divorce, how did Jesus approach this situation?
Why are you assuming its God-dictated in a word for word situation? 1 cor 2:13. Why does God accommodating, uses types, or many genre/ANE perspectives to convey truth = falsehood.
As for the last point, how can you even make a point if I was referring to “whoever you mean by that”? In regards to Jesus and the NT authors use of the OT, what interpretative framework and strategy did they use?
2 Likes
It’s meaningless isn’t it? Black is white (which linguistically it is of course), but white isn’t black. And the other way round. Humpty Dumpty’s meaning of words comes to mind. And having your cake and eat it too. The fallible, errant Bible is infallibly inerrant, inerrantly infallible. In what categories might one ask? Can it be inerrantly fallible and/or errantly infallible and/or infallibly errant and/or fallibly inerrant too?
The con-char-lib evo… fragmenting empire is swathed, bedecked in its schizophrene emperor’s cascading nakedness: Evangelicalism is intellectually bankrupt.
I understand the difficulty, it’s the same one BioLogos faces. How do you stay inside the tent and minister to those in the corners?
1 Like
The entire thing is written by man in a specific time and place, in the language, culture and idiom of the day. Since it’s an anthology in specific times and specific places far apart chronologically and geographically! It reflects the concerns and general knowledge of that time. That doesn’t mean God could not have moved over the authors and urged them to write or the Holy Spirit pushed things to go in certain directions. The Bible serves God’s intended purposes which are to make us wise for salvation and equip us to do every good deed (his will). In that sense the Bible could be considered the word of God. But treating it like a modern work or as if it were inerrant or verbal plenary inspired are all manmade doctrines some confuse with scripture itself. I try to avoid the term word of God because I reserve that for Jesus. I venerate him over a book a bazillion times. But one does not need to equate the Bible and Jesus by calling it the word of God. Some of course go way too far and are guilty of bibliolatry. The trinity turns into a divine quartet. And yes, the idea that God picked the very words is of course problematic unless God chose to deceptively imitate human authors and assume and use patently false background knowledge about the world. To be inspired doesn’t mean God had to force their hand on everything. The Bible contains revelation of God. It could also be inspired simply because the Holy Spirit uses preaching from this, above all else, to help move people to faith and a relationship with God. I believe it’s a mix of this and God moving over the authors as they wrote.
Vinnie
1 Like
If Jesus is for real, was God incarnate and is now God incarnate dead and resurrected, then the Holy Ghost will have had a hand in that throughout, from proposal and conception on. Despite the 100% human fallibility and errancy of all involved. All the stuff they all made up built on thousands of years of worse. We can point to nothing as direct, as goddidit. There is no intelligent design in scripture. The closest we get are the seven consensual letters of Paul testifying to the mystery of the Church. We see Paul yearning in his ignorance better than any man at the time, due to his personally testified relationship with the risen Christ in three of the letters. His faith cannot be doubted except by extreme rationalism, lacking good will. That doesn’t mean that his faith was founded on the absolute, true reality of Christ. It was his reality. Which may be absolutely real. True. We can but hope. By the Spirit. An expression I really like as it explains nothing and everything.
I’ve never even encountered this particular niche argument. Outside of right now and those disagreeing I’ve never heard anyone try to argue word of God versus Word of God or that when someone writes their own account of events that it’s not the word of God. The rest of the books are all written similarly. None of them was written , as far as we can tell, by some dude in a possessed state by the Holy Spirit in some kind of automatic writing state that awakens after the event surprised to see what was written.
It’s all people writing down events and words either inspired in others or within and going through editing stages and ect…
Vinnie, we’ll said.
1 Like
logon tou Theou in the NT
2 Corinthians 4:2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God
Luke 5:1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.
Acts 13:5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues
What is meant by Paul and Luke here?
The “word of God” in those passages is the message of God for the people.
They told of Jesus Christ.
There are lots of instances of the term “word of God” in the scriptures. Replacing the term “word of God” with Bible in those passages almost always yields nonsense.
You know this how?
I’m not aware of any more in the NT. I can’t find דבר האל ‘deber halle’ in the O.
The two gentile Lucan usages deconstruct to Jesus, Barnabas and Paul preaching from the same hymn sheet. I can see that Paul’s usage to the Greeks is too.
As Christy implies, usage is correct. I find it impossible to believe that any Jewish Christian didn’t believe that the OT was the word of God. Or any Greek one with a Septuagint or Roman with a Vulgate.
@Relates, @Klax, @03Cobra, @JohnCarpenter and anyone else I missed.
Let’s not rehash the word of God vs Word of God debate again. Anyone interested in this topic can read about it here:
If, after reading 614 posts, you think you have something new to add to the discussion let me know and you can post there.
Thanks for your cooperation everyone.
3 Likes
Michael Bird’s piece showed how inerrancy is often a boundary marker for American evangelicals. Typically, anything used to define who’s in or out is going to be contested. That’s what we see with inerrancy. Based on the situation at hand, it means what it needs to mean to show the person in question is “us” or “them.”
One case may stress how we’re not talking about wooden literalism and of course it’s fine for the Bible to use round or symbolic numbers and figurative expressions and loose citations and accurately report a speaker’s inaccurate words. In another case not taking some ages as strictly literal or allowing for symbolism in Eden or taking attributions of Genesis to Moses loosely means that someone is outside the fold. Inerrancy can shape-shift. For the wrong person it’s a straitjacket. For the right it’s a cozy robe of many colours that sets the wearer above their kin.
2 Likes
I don’t see why anyone back then would have to be possessed or coerced in order to turn out a bit of writing deserving of inclusion in the Bible. Presumably those who believe in EC believe that evolution working as it does brought about effects pleasing to God. The holy sprit did not have to possess each particular male to cause him to mount particular females so as to force the desired outcome. In other words God is not using animals as sock puppets to yield a pleasing performance. So why should he have to use the writers of the Bible as sock puppets to turn out the Bible just the way He wanted it?
If I seem tone deaf here, remember I don’t myself have any investment in the Bible.
I think @SkovandOfMitaze is referencing an idea of inspiration held by some in which God basically dictated the Bible and the verse that says the writers were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” means that they weren’t really writing their own words in an “inspired” way, but that God was literally making them write his words and they were just instruments.
1 Like
Yes I think I was agreeing with him. But admittedly I’m a little confused here about what exactly sets the Bible apart from other books in the minds of those who value it very highly - as seemingly all Christians do.
That isn’t anything new (or at least not on the scale of decades). I think it is newish since the reformation and proliferation of literacy / printed Bibles. Ever since then, there have been the intramural “food fights” mostly among Protestants about who is “in” and who is “out”. And much of that tribalism has come to feature the Bible, and how it’s treated, as the centerpiece Shibboleth. Ever since German higher criticism (to hear Mike Bird describe it), “inerrancy” became part of that contest too as each denomination rushes to demonstrate that it esteems and reverences the Bible even higher than everyone else. All the virtue signaling is nearly deafening and blinding by now - in more ways than one.
1 Like
The verse has been misrepresented so often that people misremember it as being about writings.
2 Peter 1:20-21
King James Version
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The men SPOKE as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
There is not a statement in this passage that writers were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Episode 57 of Recovering Evangelicals Podcast has Dr. Peter Enns being interviewed about the development of the Tanakh.
It seems to be the first episode in this new series.
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.