Summations Only

And yet when I point that out, you claim that it is every bit as relevant to our society today and we need to understand it through a plain, simple reading. Really?? God could have said "Thou shalt not own slaves, neither male nor female owneth thou them. Instead, you must pay those that work for you a fair and equitable wage so that no human being, who were made in my image, would suffer the indecency of being held as the property of another." How about punish the husband who lied, who falsely accused a fellow Israelite of sin? How about society treating women who have been abandoned by their ungrateful husband with respect and compassion? Is that too much to ask for God's holy people?Honestly, the lengths you will go to justify your nonsense is unbelievable.HBD

I attend a Church of the Nazarene, in the Wesleyan, holiness tradition, and our statement of faith regarding this issue is

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We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith.

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The key is "all things necessary to our salvation," so it doesn't matter if the stories are 100% accurate, but the point is that the truth or the message they communicate is what is complete and reliable. In other words, the Bible does not mislead us in how we relate to God and how he relates to us.HBD

Actually I would say it falls somewhere in between partial inerrancy and total inerrancy. The point is that God inspired ALL of it but that he did not necessarily give them the exact words to say. They wrote from their own personal perspective and in the context of their understanding and the society they lived in. That is why they wrote things that are just plain wrong - like "fountains of the deep," "windows of heaven," " pillars of the earth," etc.But in matters of faith necessary to salvation, they were inerrant. Is it necessary to salvation to know that 600,000 men, plus women and children left Egypt? If that detail was in error and there was really only 20,000 people who left Egypt, would that affect your salvation? You say Yes, it would. The Nazarene doctrine says No, it would not. You are not. Orthodox Christianity refers to the Eastern Orthodox Church or Oriental Orthodoxy. These churches claim an unbroken line that traces back to the apostles and the church at Ephesus in particular. What you adhere to is Calvinism (at least that is what I can best determine your doctrinal stance to be associated with). I do not consider Calvin to be orthodox, he was an extremist. In fact, very few churches actually hold to a strict Calvinistic view, instead they have a watered down version of his theology.I brought this up before, the Reformation was a reactionary movement; its proponents were reacting to the abuses of the Catholic Church and in doing so, over compensated. They took an extreme swing in the opposite direction. I was raised in a Baptist Church, in the Calvinist tradition (although like I said, a watered down version). I now find some Calvinistic doctrines to be reprehensible and even dangerous to people's understanding of God. Wesley came a couple hundred years after Calvin and this allowed the pendulum to swing back, more towards the middle. I find that middle ground much more palpable; it makes much more sense. We could all produce sermons that support our particular point of view. So what? What you need to come to grips with Faith, is that doctrine is a human construct, intended to explain some aspect of God's character. And because of this, NONE of them are infallible. NO doctrine has everything right. I would assert that every single doctrinal or theological system has a significant flaw of one type or another. Every single one. Do you assert that Calvin was infallible, or Wesley, or any of the theologians throughout history, or the preachers you cite? Are any of them infallible? NO.Theology is simply our best attempt at understanding God. We choose a theology by what we believe to be the best representation of reality. There is no ONE perfect doctrine or theological system. I reject Calvinism and its watered down versions because I don't believe it matches reality. I don't care if you think it is "orthodox" or "traditional," or that it represents "one huge body," it is wrong in my estimation. Yes, I am probably wrong in some of my beliefs... but so are you. That is what you need to come to grips with. It doesn't matter how many preachers agree with you (because certainly just as many disagree).HBD

Personally, I really appreciate this attitude, which is all I have ever hoped Faith could express, but alas... But I see this as at the heart the of inerrancy issue; inerrancy must be absolute, so that not only is the Bible itself inerrant, but one's personal understanding of it must also be inerrant since the position is supposedly so clearly spelled out in Scripture.HBD

Yes, I admit that I know you were using the word in this way. The problem is that there is no clear definition of what "orthodox" or "correct" or "true" actually mean. Or in other words, you determine what is correct and then refer to that as orthodox. If any group or doctrinal system should have the right to claim orthodoxy it should be those whose roots, whose origins go back to the earliest days of Christianity. The two main groups that do are Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, which, of course, you would not consider orthodox.There are groups that I would consider orthodox that differ in doctrine from what you consider to be orthodox doctrine. Examples would include Church of God, Church of the Nazarene, Methodist, Wesleyan and others of the Armenian / Wesleyan tradition as opposed to the Calvinistic tradition. So your use of orthodox to mean "correct" or "true" is rather subjective. Rather than declaring your tradition to be correct, you could simply state the tradition that agrees with you. So for example, you could say "Here are some sermons by Baptist preachers that agree with me." or whatever particular group you associate your doctrine. I did some reading related to this idea and it seems the commonly used term for this position is infallible, which is actually unfortunate because the word actually implies that it cannot be wrong, which is even more stringent than inerrant. However, the word has been slightly redefined when used in this circumstance and it means just what I said, that the Bible contains everything necessary to our salvation and does not mislead in those matters. You have stated that you don't hold the KJV to be inerrant, which using your reasoning means that some of the Bible is wrong, at least some of the Bible you use. So it becomes a matter of magnitude, right? I hold that more of the Bible is wrong than you do? So what percentage of the KJV is erroneous? Do you have any idea, and how would you even know?Some suggest that the Bible was inerrant as originally written, but none of those original documents are extant, so what is the point of making that claim? The problem with inerrancy arguments is that they require absolute inerrancy, otherwise, they are not inerrant, they are with error. This would have to include subsequent translations as well as the originals, otherwise there is no reason to argue for inerrancy. To one that holds an absolute inerrant view, there can be no minutiae. There is only right and wrong, no shades of grey. If MacArthur is wrong about the smallest thing he says that the Bible says then he is wrong and he is making the Bible out to be in error. No its not. You make it out to be a purely religious experience. It was not. It was also political and personal.HBD

That's probably what he actually said. Other translations quote that verse as (1 Tim 6:10):

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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. - NASB

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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. - NKJV

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Most modern translations use wording of that type.HBD

Now ringo, don't be guilty of thinking about this in only 1 dimension. The Reformation came about because of a complex mix of reasons; some of the spiritual, some political, some social, some natural consequences of humanism that began taking shape in Europe a couple hundred years earlier. Spirituality DID play a major role in the Reformation. It is just not a simple set of reasons. Much like all major world events such as WWI, WWII, the Renaissance, etc.HBD