I should have written that “Word of God” can never accurately refer to the Bible, as much of the Bible claims to be the word of people.
The first four verses of Luke provide an excellent example:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 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 clearly states that he decided to write this.
Anyone who calls it the Word of God disagrees with the Bible, denying what Bible says.
These are the words of Luke, not the Word of God. That is what the Bible says.
How does scripture cannot be broken lead to inerrancy? This does not follow
How you account for differences between synoptics, claim about size of the seed of mustard seed claim, etc?
As for the John 10:35 passage, how do you account then for context of the verse?
Why does error = lie? There are myriad of reasons for differences but you are super-imposing a modern idea of inerrancy on the text and then calling others chronological snobs. Why can there not be a dynamic tension within the spiritual words of the text?
Why does Ps 19:7 as perfect necessarily mean what you think that it means. Also what is Psalmist/Christ referring to as the law of the Lord?
Jesus taught the Scriptures of His time were inspired and He interpreted them very differently than literalists. What do you mean by bible in terms of content? John 5:39-47
It can’t be broken because it’s perfect.
The gospels have different points of view. That’s why we have 4 of them, not one compilation.
If the Bible is inspired by God so that He directed the words, then an error would mean that God directed that it say something false, hence a lie.
Perfect means perfect. It doesn’t mean to have errors.
Actually Jesus didn’t interpret scripture differently than “literalists”, whoever you mean by that.
Because Luke is dedicated to Theophilus therefore it can’t be the Word of God? That makes no sense whatsoever. You’re assuming that if human beings writing it, God couldn’t have inspired it. That’s like assuming that because Jesus is a man, He couldn’t have also been God.
“Word of God” is used Jesus to refer to scripture at least twice: Mt 15:6 and John 10:35.
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.
[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
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
49
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?
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
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
51
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…
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.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
57
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.
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.
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.
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.