Bible Inerrancy stands against all objections

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We have an obligation to get it right.

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Trump’s idea of “getting it right” includes executing people for crimes they didn’t commit. You have called for show trials and executions of opposition politicians.

And what if the system is flawed so that we will get it wrong ? Are you really saying it is better for innocent people to be killed than to let the guilty serve long jail terms instead of being killed ?

Faith writes: Doing away with the death penalty because of human error is not the right solution.

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Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

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Which is why the Biblical standard is:

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John 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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Nobody is qualified to cast the stone.

Faith writes: ... I'm arguing from my years of learning God's judgments.

My father used to say of people who were particularly stupid that they, "learned nothing and forgot nothing."

I'm certainly sorry to discover how twisted your mind is.

Oh my sweetheart, you knew from the beginning. I never tried to keep it a secret from you.

Maybe it wasn't direct enough.

{arising}

M'lady, I am an atheist.

Oh, and yes...

you're friggin off your noodle.

It is the Bible that prescribes the death penalty for murder, as I quote above in Message 164, and it is the Bible that also affirms the high value of human life. If you all can't put those two facts together in one coherent philosophy there is something wrong with your heads. This is simply another example of disregarding Jesus in order to believe in an inerrant Bible.

Would you please explain where you get this kind of thinking? That is, where do you get this idea that Bible inerrancy is really "bibliolatry" and so on. Does N T Wright teach it? The pastor of your church?

I'm sure that your beliefs have all been described here but I don't think I could name them myself so I thought I'd ask. What do you believe about the following:

• Substitutionary Atonement: That Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins.

• That Jesus is God Himself incarnate.

• That He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born from the womb of a virgin?

• That God is a Trinity of One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all one God.

• Resurrection: That He rose from the dead on the third day and was seen by many of his disciples in a new sort of body.

• That his resurrection body could go through walls.

• Ascension: That he actually rose into the air into a cloud. (I think you've pretty clearly said you think this is metaphorical for his going to be with the Father? So you don't think the disciples actually saw him rise into the air?)

• That Jesus will return to judge the earth.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

GDR writes: This is simply another example of disregarding Jesus in order to believe in an inerrant Bible.

Faith writes: Would you please explain where you get this kind of thinking? That is, where do you get this idea that Bible inerrancy is really "bibliolatry" and so on. Does N T Wright teach it? The pastor of your church?

Essentially I get it from the Bible. If we actually respect what God has to say to us through the Scriptures instead of understanding it as if God essentially dictated it, then we understand a coherent narrative that IMHO makes sense of my life and the world. The ability to reason is a gift from God and I have no doubt that we are intended to use that gift in understanding the scriptures.

You cannot with reason square the idea of a loving god with a god that commands public stoning for any reason let alone trivial ones, or that commits and commands genocide with the a god that commands forgiveness, mercy and even love of enemies, but we have been over that. You cannot with reason explain away the contradictions in time and events.

Our basic difference lies in how we understand what is written in the 66 books that make up the Bible. With your inerrantist method of understanding Scripture you can come up and declare what you believe are absolute answers to various questions. My view does leave more grey areas. Unlike yourself, I can’t pick a verse out of the Scriptures and claim it as an absolute truth.
What I do claim as fundamentally true are that God is good with all that entails, and that God the Father resurrected Jesus into a renewed eternal bodily existence that is similar but different from what we currently experience. Those are my subjective beliefs with which I base the rest of my Christian understanding on.

One of the quotes of CS Lewis that resonates with me is this quote that is on his memorial tablet in Westminster Abbey –“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else”.

The three writers that have had the greatest impact on my understanding of Christian theology are all Brits. The three are CS Lewis as a Christian philosopher, NT Wright as a theologian and 1st century historian, and John Polkinghorne as a scientist and theologian.

Faith writes: I'm sure that your beliefs have all been described here but I don't think I could name them myself so I thought I'd ask. What do you believe about the following: Substitutionary Atonement: That Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins.

Jesus’ death and resurrection was used as a means for God to start a new Kingdom of God movement. It was not a death so that we could simply have our sins forgiven and go to heaven when we die. If meant that death, the ultimate evil did not have the final answer. It meant that God was renewing the covenant for the world. It was a Kingdom composed of Jesus followers who took on a renewed life which was based on the life of Christ and whose characteristics are based on the love, forgiveness, mercy etc of Jesus. Its adherents are called to embody and reflect that love to the world. We do keep letting Him down don’t we.

Faith writes: That Jesus is God Himself incarnate.

Jesus prayed to God the Father. At the same time Jesus embodied Yahweh’s return to Israel. As John 1 says, the Word became flesh. I’d add that John didn’t say that the word became a book. God enthroned Jesus as metaphorically described in Daniel 7 where Jesus is given dominion over all nations.

Faith writes: That He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born from the womb of a virgin?

I can accept the virgin conception as truth but it wouldn’t bother me if it could be shown to be a metaphor. It is only mentioned in 2 of the Gospels and not at all in the Epistles. It does have a legendary sense about it. In ways that I don’t understand but accept, God through the Holy Spirit endowed Jesus with the perfect understanding of His nature and the strength and wisdom to fulfill His God given mission on Earth.

Faith writes: That God is a Trinity of One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all one God.

I believe that God the Father brought life into existence and I leave to science to figure out how. I believe that Jesus the Son was born into our world at a particular time and place and that God the Father enthroned Him as Lord and gave Him dominion over the nations. I see the Holy Spirit as the still small voice of God that reaches out to all of us as our conscience.

Faith writes: Resurrection: That He rose from the dead on the third day and was seen by many of his disciples in a new sort of body.

Yes.

Faith writes: That his resurrection body could go through walls.

It was a renewed life form and a resurrection that foreshadows the ultimate resurrection of all of creation. He metaphorically seems to have had one foot in our earthly dimension and one foot in God’s heavenly dimension. I have no problem with the idea that walls wouldn’t contain Him.

Faith writes: Ascension: That he actually rose into the air into a cloud. (I think you've pretty clearly said you think this is metaphorical for his going to be with the Father? So you don't think the disciples actually saw him rise into the air?)

I have no idea of what the disciples saw, and frankly it doesn’t matter anyway. The point is that Jesus went to be with the Father.

Faith writes: That Jesus will return to judge the earth.

Yes, but not in the way that you envision. The scriptures are a lot more ambiguous than you think. Ultimately it is about new creation with a renewed heaven and earth that become one. Christ’s return is part of that. Whether it happens for all of creation at once or whether it happens individually as we shuffle off from our earthly existence I don’t pretend to know. I do know that in the next life I’m going to all the lectures.

Would you please explain where you get this kind of thinking? That is, where do you get this idea that Bible inerrancy is really "bibliolatry" and so on. Does N T Wright teach it? The pastor of your church? Essentially I get it from the Bible.

I wasn't clear. I would like to know what authorities you are acquainted with who believe as you do about the Bible. Is Wright one? Your pastor? Any others?

If we actually respect what God has to say to us through the Scriptures instead of understanding it as if God essentially dictated it, then we understand a coherent narrative that IMHO makes sense of my life and the world.

Only the inerrant Bible can do that.

The ability to reason is a gift from God and I have no doubt that we are intended to use that gift in understanding the scriptures.

Certainly we are to use our reasoning ability but the scriptures are unique in being authored by God so using our reasoning ability to reject what he says is a misuse of our reasoning ability.

• I don't think you answered my question about substitutionary atonement: Did Jesus' death on the cross pay for the sins of those who believe in Him so that we no longer have to suffer for them ourselves beyond this life, or not? A simple yes or no is all I ask. All the rest may be true or not, all I want is a yes or no to my question. Thanks.

• that Jesus is God himself incarnate. Please give me a simple yes or no to this one too. thank you.

• Please also answer whether you believe the man Jesus was born a human being of a virgin mother through the power of God.

• You appear to be saying "no" to the question of the Trinity but let me be more specific: Is Jesus the Son of the same stuff or "substance" as the Father? What a son would be if begotten by a father? I think what you said about the Holy Spirit is clear enough that you don't even believe he is a person, is that true?

• Resurrection: check.

• You SEEM TO be saying you agree that Jesus in his resurrected body did walk through walls. Would you please say yes or no to this. Thank you.

• Seems to be a "no" to the disciples seeing Jesus bodily rise into a cloud since you say you have no idea what they saw.

• So I'll put you down for a "no" about the traditional view of Jesus' returning bodily to this earth to judge it all and bring it to an end.

  Actually I find the scriptures to be very ambiguous, requiring a lot of knowledge to understand them.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: I wasn't clear. I would like to know what authorities you are acquainted with who believe as you do about the Bible. Is Wright one? Your pastor? Any others?

Wright is an NT scholar so I'm not sure how he views all of the OT. As far as I can tell Polkinghorne and I are about on the smae page and I think I'm pretty close to Lewis.

Faith writes: Only the inerrant Bible can do that.

That is flat out wrong and gives you a greatly distorted view of the God whose Word is embodied by Jesus.

I answered the rest of your questions already. You want everything put in nice tidy boxes with bumper sticker labels. Christianity isn't like that. It is a faith of the heart. It isn't a religion of dos and don'ts. God is the great heart changer. and He calls us to use our renewed hearts to fulfill our vocation of reflecting His love into the world.

That's a pretty weasely way of getting out of giving the simple yes or no answers my questions ask for. They do happen to be standard orthodox beliefs that can be answered that simply. "Let your yes be yes and your no be no. All else is of the devil" said Jesus.

Oh, and why does Wright have to know the OT better than the average bear in order to answer my simple questions?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: "Let your yes be yes and your no be no. All else is of the devil" said Jesus.

I couldn't resist:

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Matthew 5:37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

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The context is (verses 34-36) about swearing oaths, so you'd better throw out your Oath of Allegiance.

And the VERY next verse is:

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Matthew 5:38-39 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

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which you're comfortable ignoring.

Faith writes: They do happen to be standard orthodox beliefs that can be answered that simply.

Are you aware that EVERY religion on earth has orthodox beliefs? So almost all orthodoxy is wrong.

ringo writes: Becoming more like God is not a fall.

Its not even remotely possible. Satans whole error, in reality, was imagining that he could.

You are forever like a smart alec 14-year-old challenging the status quo. Nowadays, you think you have grown up and have science and evidence on your side, but all you have proven is that your opponents have no evidence to bring to the table. This does not mean that you are somehow "right" by default.

It just means that you have exercised your right to be a rebel and have an opinion apart from the one you grew up in for 1/3 of your life.

You and I took different paths. I took the road marked Belief.
You took the road marked Evidence. Neither of us have finished our journey.

Just a remainder, Phat. We can't be like God the way Satan wanted to be, of course, meaning with His powers, but we ARE told in scripture "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect..." so MORALLY we are to work to be like Him. I know you know this, but in ringo's context it would easily get lost.

Phat writes: ringo writes: Becoming more like God is not a fall. Satans whole error, in reality, was imagining that he could.

You work hard at forgetting, don't you? It Was GOD who said that Adam and Eve DID become more like Him. Satan has nothing to do with it.

Phat writes: You are forever like a smart alec 14-year-old challenging the status quo.

But I'm not the one who is challenging the Bible. You are.

Phat writes: Nowadays, you think you have grown up and have science and evidence on your side, but all you have proven is that your opponents have no evidence to bring to the table.

Evidence has nothing to do with this case. You are flatly denying what the Bible plainly says: Adam and Eve DID become more like God. That can not be a "fall".

Phat writes: You and I took different paths. I took the road marked Belief. You took the road marked Evidence.

In this case, the evidence is the Bible itself. You're denying the Book on which your belief is based. You're breaking your own circle.

We can agree that the evidence is expressed in words. We just don't agree with what evidence we are talking about, the source of such evidence, and the implications of modern evidence, primitive superstition, and the wisdom spoken in the words expressed.

Phat writes: We can agree that the evidence is expressed in words. We just don't agree with what evidence we are talking about, the source of such evidence, and the implications of modern evidence, primitive superstition, and the wisdom spoken in the words expressed.

You don't get your own private evidence. Evidence is what everybody agrees on.

If we have a dead body with a hole in the chest, it is evident that it is dead: there are no vital signs, it is at room temperature, etc. The hole in the chest is also evident to everybody. What is NOT evident is: what caused the hole, whether the hole was the cause of death, etc.

In the case that you're trying to weasel out of, it is evident that the Bible says, "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us...."

GOD SAID IT. Do you deny that? Is that not evident to you?