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Desire to be a vessel of honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ?
Join For His Glory for a discussion on how
https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/
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Taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
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Depending upon the Holy Spirit for all you do?
Read through the following study by Tenchi for more on this topic
https://christianforums.net/threads/without-the-holy-spirit-we-can-do-nothing.109419/
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How are famous preachers sometimes effected by sin?
Join Sola Scriptura for a discussion on the subject
https://christianforums.net/threads/anointed-preaching-teaching.109331/#post-1912042
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Let's have another controversial post on inerrancy
- Thread starter Grazer
- Start date
SlickPen50
Member
tandemcpl, The issue here is over whether we rest in a belief in a belief, like the Mormons, JWs and religionists do. Or whether we are walking with a non-deistic God, one who is able to communicate (not special revelation) with us, where we actually have a relationship with God Himself rather than a book which is only about Him. There is a lot more to it but I cannot take the minutes here to articulate it all. I would like to pick it up later this evening... This truly is an important detail and there are many sincere people who take both sides of this detail, the inerrancy side is a weak and woeful path that sells people WAY short.
Emergents don't believe in absolutes rather professed ignorance is a virtue.
The heart of the emergent movement is the belief that absolute truth does not exist.
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SlickPen50
Member
P31W, Why do you refuse to answer questions about how you relate to God and God relates to you? You were rather expectant that anyone answer your direct question with direct answers.... So how about it?
SlickPen50
Member
tandemcpl, To resume my thoughts from earlier...
The inerrancy folks think, and have said as much here on this thread, that IF we don’t believe the inerrancy of scripture that we are at the same time saying it’s untrustworthy. This is an epic jump in simply logic on one hand and pejorative and unkind assumption on the other.
I hold the scriptures high, but God even higher. My relationship with Him does not depend on the Book, nor is it extra-biblical: what they derisively refer to as “special revelation.” God is personal to my life, but not my “buddy.” He shows me things; convicts, guides, warns, exhorts, confronts and comforts. He uses the scripture to do some of this and other people, my conscience and situations to speak into my life confirmation and direction. If that is less than what the Bible directs, SHOW ME!
The inerrancy folks are into “right.” What’s the right belief, what’s the right principle, what’s the right answer. This is not to say I am into sloppy agape and anything meaning whatever I want it to mean and especially something other than what it used to. You’ve seen P31W broadbrush of “emergents,” generalizing them in a disparaging way. This is the “rightness” attitude shining through in the total ugliness, which God condemns.
Another aspect of inerrancy is a lifeless apologetic. Apologetics is a way of removing philosophical obstacles to people coming to following relationship with God. But there is also faux apologetics that justify a static belief or “the right to believe” or even to make belief justifiable even to people who have no intention of following God (something you never can find Christ or Paul doing). “The church” is heavily invested in belonging to and appearing to be acceptable to the host culture of a non-believing world around it… And things like the constant drivel about inerrancy is evidence of this.
We have to ask a few questions here. If one is walking in relationship to God themselves, why is it important that they whip up everyone around them about an abstract belief that does not make them closer to God?
Why do the inerrancy folks demand on proving something which cannot be proven, when cultist do the EXACT same thing to try and justify their beliefs?
How inerrancy cannot be proven and why it does not matter:
We don’t have the original documents, only ones dated back to around 250A.D, which are copies of copies of copies of copies. The documents we do have available have many discrepencies, and we aren’t just talking a jot or tittle. There entire verses and passages missing between manuscripts… There have been provable suppressions of certain texts between generations of copies.
Few people today can read the language in copies of the original manuscript we have. Why is it then SO important that these be merely thought of as “inerrant?” Or worse yet, what is it important to believe that the REAL originals that we don’t have are supposedly “inerrant?” And besides, IF they have to be translated into a language we can read, WHO’s to say that the translation is correct, unbiased and not influenced by ideas and motives foreign to God’s direct will for a text to say nothing of the entire Book?
Why it doesn’t matter if any aspect of the bible is “inerrant”?
1. What God wanted to show us is inspired and states as much.
2. God is NOT dead, nor muzzled, and He gave His Holy Spirit to bring to mind and teach us all the things of Christ.
3. If God kept the early church on the straight and narrow, all with high illiteracy (they could not read), with the lack of personal copies of the manuscripts (they did not have access) and with perversion of Christ’s/Paul’s teachings even within the 1st Century, then He is able to keep, guide and bless each person in His way EVEN WITHOUT THE BIBLE.
Am I saying, there are more than one way to God? ABSOLUTELY NOT! What I am saying is that God is still active in His universe. God is still sovereign and drawing people to Himself. God is still infinite and what is written in a finite book was ONLY EVER purposed to bring us unto Him.
And much the same as the serpent on a pole in the Old Testament, which was to bring the people of Israel back to a focus on God, the bible has become an item of worship in what calls itself the New Testament “church.” IT is God to these inerrancy people.
What we should say about the Bible is that it is sufficient to admonish, to guide and to confirm truth that should bring us to Christ and serve as a point of reference. But without the Holy Spirit to interpret (and not theology), what God was once inspired is relegated mere words on a page. And words like these, used in the mouth of merely religious people; kills, destroys, divides and shuts down what God intended.
If I could describe what “church” has become in many ways, it also has becomes a channel of killing people (spiritually), dividing the body of Christ, destroying God’s purposes corporately and in people’s lives; ultimately shutting down what God intended… If you can’t see this to be axiomatically true, then you’re either drinking their coolaid or you are blind.
Inerrancy beliefs are to me a lack of trust in God and a trust of what He might do with people. It is also an easy default to parrot and autopilot on and mentally assent to while we do what we want and while we have NO relationship to God.
Jesus was markedly different than the religionists of the Pharisees around Him. Most of today’s church crowd, lack that contrast and are more akin to the Pharisees than they could be construed or mistaken as following Christ.
Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
How much more of an indictment do we need than that one?
One Chinese believer came to America in the 1950s to observe “church” in this country. His parting comment was, “its is amazing what you Christians can do without God.”
The people we think of as being protected and built up by what is called church are in grave danger, not from the outside, but from within. The notion of inerrancy is just one evidence of this… Christ NEVER required that we “believe” this belief in order to walk with Him. Beware of anyone else who does…
While these folks claim that the bible is perfect in the original language, many of them at many junctures depart from it to do what they call “church.” I do not see their love for one-another in their beliefs in a belief. I see, you have to conform to my belief or I will subject you to derision and nastiness, coming from these people… Where is their Christlikeness?
I want to be clear, I am not slamming anyone, nor shaming them, nor trying to manipulate in anything I've said here. I know what I've said is likely to upset some, much like Hosea's appearance around the realm of the Northern Kingdom upset people.
The inerrancy folks think, and have said as much here on this thread, that IF we don’t believe the inerrancy of scripture that we are at the same time saying it’s untrustworthy. This is an epic jump in simply logic on one hand and pejorative and unkind assumption on the other.
I hold the scriptures high, but God even higher. My relationship with Him does not depend on the Book, nor is it extra-biblical: what they derisively refer to as “special revelation.” God is personal to my life, but not my “buddy.” He shows me things; convicts, guides, warns, exhorts, confronts and comforts. He uses the scripture to do some of this and other people, my conscience and situations to speak into my life confirmation and direction. If that is less than what the Bible directs, SHOW ME!
The inerrancy folks are into “right.” What’s the right belief, what’s the right principle, what’s the right answer. This is not to say I am into sloppy agape and anything meaning whatever I want it to mean and especially something other than what it used to. You’ve seen P31W broadbrush of “emergents,” generalizing them in a disparaging way. This is the “rightness” attitude shining through in the total ugliness, which God condemns.
Another aspect of inerrancy is a lifeless apologetic. Apologetics is a way of removing philosophical obstacles to people coming to following relationship with God. But there is also faux apologetics that justify a static belief or “the right to believe” or even to make belief justifiable even to people who have no intention of following God (something you never can find Christ or Paul doing). “The church” is heavily invested in belonging to and appearing to be acceptable to the host culture of a non-believing world around it… And things like the constant drivel about inerrancy is evidence of this.
We have to ask a few questions here. If one is walking in relationship to God themselves, why is it important that they whip up everyone around them about an abstract belief that does not make them closer to God?
Why do the inerrancy folks demand on proving something which cannot be proven, when cultist do the EXACT same thing to try and justify their beliefs?
How inerrancy cannot be proven and why it does not matter:
We don’t have the original documents, only ones dated back to around 250A.D, which are copies of copies of copies of copies. The documents we do have available have many discrepencies, and we aren’t just talking a jot or tittle. There entire verses and passages missing between manuscripts… There have been provable suppressions of certain texts between generations of copies.
Few people today can read the language in copies of the original manuscript we have. Why is it then SO important that these be merely thought of as “inerrant?” Or worse yet, what is it important to believe that the REAL originals that we don’t have are supposedly “inerrant?” And besides, IF they have to be translated into a language we can read, WHO’s to say that the translation is correct, unbiased and not influenced by ideas and motives foreign to God’s direct will for a text to say nothing of the entire Book?
Why it doesn’t matter if any aspect of the bible is “inerrant”?
1. What God wanted to show us is inspired and states as much.
2. God is NOT dead, nor muzzled, and He gave His Holy Spirit to bring to mind and teach us all the things of Christ.
3. If God kept the early church on the straight and narrow, all with high illiteracy (they could not read), with the lack of personal copies of the manuscripts (they did not have access) and with perversion of Christ’s/Paul’s teachings even within the 1st Century, then He is able to keep, guide and bless each person in His way EVEN WITHOUT THE BIBLE.
Am I saying, there are more than one way to God? ABSOLUTELY NOT! What I am saying is that God is still active in His universe. God is still sovereign and drawing people to Himself. God is still infinite and what is written in a finite book was ONLY EVER purposed to bring us unto Him.
And much the same as the serpent on a pole in the Old Testament, which was to bring the people of Israel back to a focus on God, the bible has become an item of worship in what calls itself the New Testament “church.” IT is God to these inerrancy people.
What we should say about the Bible is that it is sufficient to admonish, to guide and to confirm truth that should bring us to Christ and serve as a point of reference. But without the Holy Spirit to interpret (and not theology), what God was once inspired is relegated mere words on a page. And words like these, used in the mouth of merely religious people; kills, destroys, divides and shuts down what God intended.
If I could describe what “church” has become in many ways, it also has becomes a channel of killing people (spiritually), dividing the body of Christ, destroying God’s purposes corporately and in people’s lives; ultimately shutting down what God intended… If you can’t see this to be axiomatically true, then you’re either drinking their coolaid or you are blind.
Inerrancy beliefs are to me a lack of trust in God and a trust of what He might do with people. It is also an easy default to parrot and autopilot on and mentally assent to while we do what we want and while we have NO relationship to God.
Jesus was markedly different than the religionists of the Pharisees around Him. Most of today’s church crowd, lack that contrast and are more akin to the Pharisees than they could be construed or mistaken as following Christ.
Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
How much more of an indictment do we need than that one?
One Chinese believer came to America in the 1950s to observe “church” in this country. His parting comment was, “its is amazing what you Christians can do without God.”
The people we think of as being protected and built up by what is called church are in grave danger, not from the outside, but from within. The notion of inerrancy is just one evidence of this… Christ NEVER required that we “believe” this belief in order to walk with Him. Beware of anyone else who does…
While these folks claim that the bible is perfect in the original language, many of them at many junctures depart from it to do what they call “church.” I do not see their love for one-another in their beliefs in a belief. I see, you have to conform to my belief or I will subject you to derision and nastiness, coming from these people… Where is their Christlikeness?
I want to be clear, I am not slamming anyone, nor shaming them, nor trying to manipulate in anything I've said here. I know what I've said is likely to upset some, much like Hosea's appearance around the realm of the Northern Kingdom upset people.
Last edited by a moderator:
Off topic
I began studying this movement in 2006. I can go into great detail but that's too would take this thead off topic.
Pointing out false doctrine is one of the things Chrisitans are called to do.
That quote has been worn out by those who hate Christians. (yawn)
Ghandhi, at the time he made the above quote, rejected Christ as his Lord and Savior. I would not expect him to embrase Christ's followers.
Proof? I probably know close to a hundred people who know BOTH greek and hebrew.
Why don't you take up greek or hebrew. Go study yourself and see if the translations we have today are trustworthy. No one is going to stop you from getting an education. I think that would be a great thing for you to do.
Prove your statement.
---------
Matthew 22:29
(HCSB)
29 Jesus answered them, “You are deceived, because you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God
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SlickPen50
Member
Thanks all, I cannot contribute to this thread any further... Its been an interesting thought process and its helped solidify my understanding and given me further exposure to the other side.