Thank you for the link to the article “Is Evolutionary Creation Compatible with Biblical Inerrancy?” I found it very informative.
As usual, people use the term “inerrancy” to mean different things, and that results in a lot of misunderstanding. At least now I know more about what people might mean when they use the term. I think I too like the phrase “authoritative according to its purpose”.
As someone who has embraced Evolutionary Creation as the best way to harmonize the Bible with science, I can see the difficulty in affirming the Chicago Statement. But even that can be accepted if one considers “the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood” to mean that God created the heavens and the earth from nothing, and the flood to mean that God judges sin and to point to His ultimate grace in Jesus Christ. There are a lot of deep theological truths in the accounts of creation and the flood. This is “authoritative according to its purpose”.
Finally, I would say that humility is essential in thinking about Biblical trustworthiness. This is knowing who God is, and knowing who we are, in our weakness and extremely limited understanding. There have been many Bible scholars and Church fathers/mothers over the millenia that we can look to for guidance in dealing with teachings in the Bible. Similarly, there have been many scientists and philosophers that have distinguished themselves in the pursuit of truths that have stood the test of time, after extensive analysis by other scientists of various religious beliefs, including of course Christian.
Humility is further needed to accept that there may be ambiguities in some areas of Biblical interpretation, and it often is just not possible to completely understand a particular topic of any depth. A Christian must be able to live with that in faith, hope and love.
Hi Mike,
First let me say that the interpretation of the bible as being historical in detail is an interpretation that I was taught through my early years, through parochial elementary school, parochial high school, and the first two years of pre-ministerial college. I still believe that this is a belief that can be acceptable to God, if this interpretation of the bible is not used in conflict with basic Christian principles. In this discussion context, the principle that is most critical is a simple application and generalization of what Paul said about making a big deal out of things that are not essential. Believing as I once did, and as you seem to beieve, concerning the absolute historical truth of some things we were told by other people that the bible meant, this belief is for certain not essential for salvation.
This only seems nonsensical if someone does not understand what it means that God, as the Creator of this entire universe, also created the time dimension as we experience it, and that He exists outside of that time dimension that we experience. Yes, it is more certainly true that God, including Jesus, does exist right now before Noah’s flood, and does right now exist before the exodus from Egypt, than that God created the universe somewhere around 6000 years ago. God does not experience time in this universe in the same way that we who live here experience time. You know many biblical passages where this is unmistakably stated.
And many women today are still being “put in their place” by mysogynists, many of whom misinterpret and misuse scripture. I for sure do not believe that God is either male or female, in the same sense as we humans are men and women. And just because God allowed His prophets and apostles, in a male dominated social culture, to use the male pronoun, that does not suggest to me that I am superior to my wife by virtue of me being male.
I agree it’s not in the OT or the NT. I agree it arose later - and not from apostles or disciples of Jesus or any of their writings. It is completely unscriptural. I don’t understand your last sentence, or how “out of Egypt I called my son” would lead anyone to a Trinity belief. Could you explain that?
Yes, a “monotheistic trinity Godhead” is completely irrational, and leads many rational thinking people away from Yahweh and Jesus. That’s why I think it is important.
Yes, there is God. And the Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit. As for Jesus…
Jesus was begotten BY God. (Psalm 2:7, John 3:16)
Jesus is a creation OF God. (Col 1:15, Rev 3:14)
Jesus is the Son OF God. (Matt 16:16)
Jesus is the Word/Spokesman OF God. (John 1:1, Rev 19:13)
Jesus is the Messiah/Christ/Anointed One OF God. (Luke 2:11, Acts 2:36)
Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb OF God. (John 1:29, Rev 7:10)
Jesus is the Holy one OF God. (Mark 1:24, John 6:69)
Jesus is a prophet OF God. (Luke 4:24, Acts 3:22)
Jesus is an angel/messenger OF God. (John 8:28, 12:49, Galatians 4:14, Revelation 22:16)
Jesus is the mediator BETWEEN God and men. (1 Tim 2:5)
Jesus is a Priest OF God. (Heb 5:10)
Jesus is a Servant OF God. (Acts 4:30)
Jesus OBEYS God. (John 8:29, 12:49)
Jesus WORSHIPS God. (John 4:22)
Jesus says his God is greater than him, and all. (John 14:28, 10:29)
Jesus says that our God is also his own God. (John 20:17, Rev 3:12)
Jesus distinguishes himself as someone OTHER THAN his God. (John 10:36, 17:3)
Jesus was sent BY God. (Gal 4:4)
Jesus sits at the right hand OF God. (Mark 16:19, Acts 2:33)
Jesus rules in the power, authority, and name OF God. (Micah 5:4, Matt 28:18)
Jesus will hand the reign of the Kingdom back to his own God. (1 Cor 15:24, 28)
“You will know them by their fruits.” It is a very large subject, and one I don’t have time to get into right now. But thanks for your very thoughtful response.
If there were a true demonstration of the things Cardinal Bellarmine mentioned, then the Bible would indeed be demonstrably false… and no amount of pretending that our minds aren’t able to understand what God meant in Genesis 1 - which is written as an easy to understand straightforward factual account of the timing and order of the creation of our world, and is supported by many other scriptures - would change the fact that the Bible would be wrong, at least about those things.
I don’t believe the Bible is wrong about those things. And I don’t believe there has ever existed a “true demonstration” that it is.
There have been … from Galileo, from Newton, and from scientists ever since all the way up to space agencies today actually sending crafts out into it all according to those established principles! You’ll be in for quite a ride if you ever catch up to the breakthrough understandings discovered several centuries ago now - by people then who understood basic things that gradeschool students understand well today.
So - if you don’t believe the earth moves, what is your view about how the apparent motions of the sun and stars are explained, Mike?
Yes, add all that in with verses like the following and you end up with the divinity of Christ.
Philippians 2:6-8: 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with
God as something to be exploited,7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born
in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became
obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a]and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own,[c] and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,[d] full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,[e] who is close to the Father’s heart,[f]who has made him known.
We believe God lowered himself and became like us in every way.
Every statement about Jesus and by Jesus in the Bible must be read through the lens of accommodation.
As the Gospels are memories and second-hand facts, surely it is the meanings not the minutia that need to be addressed? Claiming Jesus was full of HImself seems to me to be blasphemous, but equally, to claim precision on any exact statement He made would be equally false. John clearly re-orders events and sayings to make his points. Luke is the only one who claims some sort of dispassion with an “orderly account”, but even he makes certain assumptions about the existence of God that much of the world does not accept.
The Bible has to be taken in the context it was written, which is writings of faith and belief. To try and impose any scientific or even social accuracy is to impose truths that are not part of its remit. In truth, the Bible’s primary function is to imbue faith in God and to try and disseminate what (that version of) God wants, demands, or requires and what responses we might expect from Him (Her or it). All the rest is padding and context.
20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—23I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
How do you accept Jesus’ statement that the believers will also share the same “I in you and you in me” relationship with Jesus and the Father?
Paul talks about us being adopted. and traditionally the church is considered the bride of Christ. Both show relationships that mirror without precisely matching the family relationship of Christ and God.
That one is curious, and even claimed by some scholars to be spurious. I tend to agree for the simple reason that not one disciple of Jesus, after receiving this final commission from him directly, baptized a single person by that formula in the scriptures. Everyone was baptized in the name of Jesus alone. It’s interesting to say the least, but most certainly not a Trinity proof-text even if original.
Hi Jerry. Thanks for your response. I hear and understand all you are saying here, but it doesn’t change anything. No matter how God does or doesn’t experience time, saying, “Before Abe came into existence, YHWH!” makes zero sense. Nor would it be any kind of a sensible response to the Jews who claimed Jesus was less than 50 years old.
The context makes it unmistakably clear that the accusation was Jesus was less than 50, and the answer was that he existed before Abe was born. There is no rational way to get, “Before Abe came into existence, I am the Most High God” out of the text. Nor would such a statement make any sense.
What crime was Jesus charged with when they arrested him, Jerry? It wasn’t that he claimed to be the Most High God, right? Don’t you suppose that certainly would have been the charge if Jesus had made such a claim, since that claim would be the highest possible form of blasphemy in their eyes - and much more egregious than the “blasphemous” claim that he was the messiah and son of God that they did charge him with?
I too learned all of those things throughout my school years, and am bombarded with all the new discoveries to this very day. So I am very well caught up with the official story.
As much as I’d love to talk about the world that God and His inspired writers described in the Bible, I have unfortunately been forbidden from doing so on this forum. Sorry.
But I think it’s okay to talk about in the private thread, so maybe it’ll come up there.
“though being in the form of God (or a god - as either is possible from the text and context), did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped…”
That is what the Greek word means, and the teaching is that although Jesus existed in the form of God (or a god) - meaning that he existed as a glorious spirit entity like God and the other angels of God - he didn’t strive to be equal to his own God (as Satan and his followers did), but instead humbled himself and took on a much lower form to do the will of his and our God, Yahweh.
This is the big one. To understand this (and many other verses) you must first forget the age old false teaching that the Bible and the Hebrew culture is strictly monotheistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible is loaded with many different gods - and one Most High God of all the other gods. These other gods are the spirit sons of Yahweh, and include Jesus, Satan, Michael, Gabriel, Dagon, Molech, Ashteroth, and many others. That in itself is a deep subject, and I’m happy to delve into it if you or anyone else is interested.
But if you already know about the many gods in the Bible, then understanding John 1 is fairly simple. Let me start with the NET Bible, which was produced by 25 Trinitarian scholars and contains some of the best and informative footnotes you can find anywhere. This is how they render John 1:1…
NET Bible
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God.
You and I know that the word “fully” isn’t in the Greek text, but their addition of it should be enough to show you that these guys are 100% in the Trinitarian camp.
3 tn Or “and what God was the Word was.” Colwell’s Rule is often invoked to support the translation of θεός (qeos) as definite (“God”) rather than indefinite (“a god”) here. However, Colwell’s Rule merely permits , but does not demand, that a predicate nominative ahead of an equative verb be translated as definite rather than indefinite. Furthermore, Colwell’s Rule did not deal with a third possibility, that the anarthrous predicate noun may have more of a qualitative nuance when placed ahead of the verb. A definite meaning for the term is reflected in the traditional rendering “the word was God.” From a technical standpoint, though, it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to anarthrous θεός in John 1:1c (ExSyn 266-69).
The first thing to understand is that “a god” is a perfectly honest possible translation of 1:1c, and that Trinitarians invoke Colwell’s Rule in an attempt to force a definite (the god) translation instead of the more natural indefinite (a god) translation.
Maybe I should point out for those who may not know that the Greek language doesn’t use indefinite articles (a, an) like we do in English. And so any time you see “a” or “an” in the NT, it was added by an English translator so that the statement makes sense to us who speak English.
The Greek language does use definite articles (the). So it is no accident that John used the definite article with god in part b (“the word was with the god”) but omitted it in part c (“and the word was god”). He could have easily said “and the word was the god” if that was what he intended to teach us. He specifically did not do that. And in almost every case in the Bible, anarthrous nouns (ones not preceded by a definite article) are supplied an indefinite article by the translator so that it makes sense to us.
I’ll stop here for now, but my point is that even Trinitarian scholars acknowledge that adding indefinite articles to the Greek text is commonplace throughout the NT, and that “the word was a god” is a perfectly acceptable literal translation of John 1:1c.
You suggest that the relationships “mirror without precisely matching” - but it is the same exact wording in both cases. We can all agree that Jesus has a closer relationship with the Father than any one of us, but Jesus also gave us the right to become actual sons of God and joint heirs along with our brother Jesus to all the good things God wishes to bestow upon us.
Is it possible that Jesus being “in” the Father and vice versa has nothing to do with Jesus being God Almighty, but signifies that they are one in purpose and desire? And therefore the disciples being “in” them just signifies the same?
You are confusing the necessary mechanics of being on earth, with the underlying reality. If Jesus was just a man then our salvation comes from man and not God.
Jesus has to be divine for our salvation to be divine. Otherwise he becomes a scapegoat or human sacrifice.
It does seem to me that the bible was written originally in a particualr context. However, I do not use only the bible to tell me about God. I follow something that I think is written somewhere in the bible, that the universe that God created tells me something about the Creator. So I try to use both the ancient records of what people believed thousands of years ago and the knowledge about the universe, how wonderfully it was put together, and some of the idiosyncracies of how it works, to find God. I am very greatly impressed, not that God tried to teach quantum mechanics or general relativity to the ancient Jews, but that He inspired writers of that time to write to their audience, in a manner that is still consistent with what we know about the universe today. In a manner where what we know can lead to a deeper understanding of God.
This strikes me as yet another example of how God (including especially Jesus) does come to us humans where we are, presents very many slightly different (and some even more different) views of Himself, with different details of things that are not claimed in the bible to be essential for salvation. It finally is soaking in to me that God didn’t create anything about this world accidently, that this world, as it is, is leading to the results for each of us who love Him that He wants for us. I believe, based on my understanding of the nature of a God who exists outside of the universe He created and a modern understanding of that universe (infinite, without limits; outside of time; and the laws of physics) that He is guiding my path, not so the details of every little thing that I think I want or need, and certainly not preventing any and all problems, trials, or tribulations. I believe His guiding has put together all the good, bad, and indifferent millions of details of my life and my interactions with everyone with whom I come into contact, such that the whole of my life is meeting His purposes for putting me into this world.
The point relevant to your comments above is that I am not using modern science to try to say what the bible meant to ancient people. I am using my understanding of modern science to help me understand what God is trying to tell me today. And there are some aspects of the details of what I am hearing that could not have been known by the ancient Jews; I would claim that these aspects are interesting, and really do help me understand God better, but the very fact that these aspects could not have been known at all times is a clear indication to me that these aspects are not essential for salvation.
