As the cannon of Scripture was not decided until after this was written you are jumping the gun at lest. Peter endorses Paul’s writing as Scripture, but that was his specific opinion. It is unlikely that would have been a universal view at the time. (There is no citation that makes Peter’s writing Scripture so…)
Furthermore, we have no certainty as to what “books” Peter would consider Scripture other than the Torah.
The whole notion of the bible as being some sort of coherent and complete work has no foundation at all.
Even 2 Tim 3 does not necessarily include everything that we now call scripture and may actually include material that is not part of the book we now call the Bible.
You have made your views about Scripture abundantly clear, but, it is not the view of all Christianity or even orthodoxy.
It is relevant because your objection to my posts was that the Bible was originally individual documents, so expecting the Bible to claim to be, in its entirety, the Word of God was not relevant.
The fact that individual books do not make the claim either removes that objection.
We are also talking about the Old Testament, “the law and the prophets.” Jesus was obviously talking about something established as a unit when he referred to it!
Okay, this just seems like semantics to me. The Constitution “contains” and “includes” and “documents” the highest laws of the U.S. The preamble to the Constitution is not a law. But that does not mean you can’t accurately refer to the whole Constitution as “law.”
It is entirely words of humans. The percentage of direct quotes from God in the Bible is relatively tiny. And even then, God speaks human language, as reported by humans in their own words. Do you not believe human words can be God’s revelation?
Any of these passages where they are talking about “the word of God” and are not talking about the person of Christ, and where, if they were, would have said so instead, as ‘Jesus’, ‘the Christ’ or ‘Jesus Christ’.
Was he presenting them the person of Jesus? No, he was presenting them words, aka “the word of God”, words about Jesus and about how we are to live and think.
I think you will find that the consensus is that Scripture is Man’s understanding of God’s revelations rather that some sort of specific wording from God. There is so much variation from one “translation” to another that it would be impossible to get any sort of definitive script. The nearest would be the Vulgate and that is in Latin!
If God had bee so precise in the first place He would not have stopped at the translation process. It makes a mockery of the whole thing. Logic (and Scripture itself) dictates that Scripture is to be taken under advisement… of the Holy Spirit!
Its inspiration and reliability as ‘the word of God’ may be a test of faith and humility, to subject ourselves to it and not to set ourselves up in hubris to pick and choose what we want to believe is inspired and what is not.
Touche, Dale! When I reread your reply to @03Cobra, I see that my response was misleading. I guess, in a way, I was disagreeing with Jesus–or at least disagreeing with what He is reported as saying to the apostles after his resurrection: “blessed are those who have NOT seen, yet have believed.” If we interpret the word “blessed” as “fortunate”, then it makes sense, as you say, to think that to have seen Jesus ‘in the flesh’ would be about as fortunate as one can imagine–hearing first hand the message His Father sent Him to deliver.
The point I was trying to make (very clumsily) was that ‘second-hand’ reporting, even though inspired, adds the human element of misunderstanding. I believe the two quotations from John’s gospel illustrate the likelihood that Jesus’ message could be remembered ambivalently– both as supporting ‘exclusivity’ and supporting ‘universalism’. I am naive enough to think that if I had heard it from Jesus’ lips and in context, I might have had no doubt of what message He intended to impart to those of us two millennia later who are trying to follow His footsteps.
Sorry I cause additional confusion.
Al Leo
Jesus lips told the disciples directly about his death and resurrection, so I’m dubious that any of us minus what we know now would be any more astute. (So yeah, I think you’re being naive. )
Jesus talked more about final punishment in the Gospels than anywhere else it is dealt with in scripture. The children of promise will have been adopted and the children of wrath will still be rebellious delinquents in the slums or in prison, so to speak, having rejected the grace of our Father. (I do believe that there are degrees of punishment just as there are degrees of reward.)
You guys seem to exclude one problem . If bible is not the word of God( i think it is because the writings of what Jesus said its there,so jesus=word of God ,bible=word of God)then we dont really know what God said. If those theology statments are not complete in the bible or as a comment claimed they are manmade then we dont really know God. So that leaves us with the only thing the crucifixion as it is mentioned by other historians . Saying that things are manmade is adding to"we cant know whats manmade" . So saying that youre basically giving a pass to sceptics who dont believe in the bible
And then there’s the unpardonable sin, namely, rejecting Jesus as Savior and Lord (that constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), and it is for eternity.
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