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Dutch Baker ~

DB: "Why do most christians believe that the bible has no errors?"

Mainly because of a belief that the Bible is inspired from God to the extent that God intended to convey His truth by guiding the thought-process of those who produced the Bible to the extent that they wrote what He wanted them to write. Since God is a God of truth, and not of error, this implies that a message proceeding from God would not contain error. (Notice that the "Bible" here = the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the books, not necessarily 100% of the extant text, and not translations.)

DB: "I've read the Gospels again recently and I don't think Jesus said anything to the effect that the apostles or those who wrote for them would make no errors in their records."

In John 14:26, Jesus assures His followers that He will send the Holy Spirit to teach them all things, and to bring to their remembrance the things that He said to them. And in Acts 1:8, Jesus tells them that they will be His witnesses -- "testimony-givers," one might say -- after the Holy Spirit comes upon them, which happened shortly thereafter.

DB: "Does the Bible have to be 100% error free for the good news of Christ to be spread?"

The Bible has to be 100% error-free to be 100% divinely inspired; to say otherwise is to charge God with inspiring an error. A text which is erroneous is not wholly inspired by an unerring God -- at least, not in any theologically meaningful way. (The theological term for the sort of 100% inspiration I'm describing is "plenary" inspiration.)

The good news can be spread using faulty translations. The apostles themselves used the Septuagint translation frequently, even though it detours away from the standard Hebrew text oodles of times.

DB: "Can't something be inspired without being inerrant?"

Can something that was 100% inspired by a 100% truthful Deity contain an untruth? I think the question answers itself.

DB: "I think I remember Jesus saying that he was the word, not necessarily the books written about him. Why don't christians believe that the gospels were the best honest account of those who wrote them rather than "the inerrant word of God"?"

I think you're recollecting the opening verses of the Gospel of John, in which the author describes Jesus as the pre-existent Word, co-eternal with the Father. And Jesus is indeed the living Word, the unique revelation of God who dwelled among us and perfectly displayed via His person the character of our Creator. But how is this revelation itself revealed? Through the texts. Without the Scriptures, the Word that is Christ is like a communication that is transmitted but not received. Trying to perceive the revelation of God through Christ without the Scriptures is like trying to perceive a portrait without your eyes.

DB: "Isn't the important thing that we believe that Jesus was Christ and the way to God?"

That's important, and it's right up there in the "hierarchy of truth." But I wouldn't say that all other truths are inherently less important. For instance, if someone says "I believe that Jesus is the Messiah," what is meant by "Jesus"? A Brazilian baseball player? And what is meant by "Messiah"? Without the text to frame concepts and denote the meanings of various names and terms, things can get awfully subjective awfully fast.

DB: ... "The only reason that I can see for "The Church" to perpetuate the belief that the bible is completely error free is for its own political stability. But I ask again, why do true Christians find it so inconcievable that the new testament was a good historical account of the teachings of Jesus, inspired by God but written by men?"

First, I'm not sure which church, or which part of Christ's church, you're talking about. I have a non-denominational Christian Church background, and in that fellowship, there's normally no "political" structure higher than a congregation's elders. We believe the Biblical text is completely error-free because we believe that God inspired the writers for the guidance of His people -- in other words, we consider the New Testament books to be no less Scripture than the books which Paul describes in Second Timothy 3:16 ~

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

That the Holy Spirit guided and oversaw the production of the text, and that He also guided and oversaw the early New Testament canonization-process, is something which Christians take on faith. Having granted that premise, it follows that an unerring God would not originate error.

Lesser degrees of inspiration can be posited without instantly making mincemeat of the Christian faith. For instance, one could adhere to the doctrine of infallibility while leaving the question of inerrancy unaddressed. What this basically means is that one accepts the Biblical text as an unfailing guide to faith and doctrine, but one does not treat it as a text intended to teach peripheral subjects such as cosmology, zoology, astronomy, and geography. The "Infallibility" approach essentially posits that the Biblical text is true in all that it advocates in matters of faith and doctrine, but not necessarily true in all that it assumes. The theological content conveyed in the text is the Word of God, God's revelation, while the stuff about peripheral topics is not affirmed to have originated with God, but is comparable to the canvas upon which an Artist has painted. Obviously you can't separate the canvas from the paint and have much of the picture left, but you can make interpretive distinctions between the two.

Some Christians adhere to the doctrine of infallibility and the doctrine of plenary inspiration. I'm one of them. But others Christians manage to live joyfully while endorsing only the doctrine of infallibility. I think there are two problems with that view: (1) why move away from the view that the original texts was inerrant when errors in the original text have not been shown to exist?, and (2) who gets to decide,and on what basis, which parts of the Bible doctrinal affirmations and which parts are peripheral? -- i.e., who gets to evaluate where the human canvas ends and the Divine painting begins?

The best answer that I think an Infallibilist would/could have to problem #1 is that we don't have 100% of the original text, and rather than resort to conjecture to reconstruct the parts of the extant text that are erroneous, it is simpler and more practical to work with the available texts and translations. This levels the interpretive playing-field (so that non-scholars and scholars alike may expect to touch and be touched by God's Word), and reduces, if not altogether eliminates, the problematicness of having an extant text with manifest errors in it. While such extant errors (copyists' errors, that is) could be repaired, there's no strong impetus to do so; the copyists' errors can simply be categorized as features which God intended to be received as part of the textual canvas.

The best answer an Infallibilist could/would give to problem #2 is, I think, that the church has *always* depended on the Holy Spirit to guide her to the correct interpretation of Scripture, so no drastically new hermeneutic (= interpretive approach) is required. As long as God's people depend on the infallible Holy Spirit to guide them as they interpret Scripture, they will correctly discern what elements in the text constitute the human canvas, and what elements are the divine paint.

Neither of those answers is very satisfactory to me. The Infallibilist's first problem-resolution seems to value practicality above truth. (Yes, we *can* profit from reading a text that displays a copyists' error, but if we are capable of discerning what the inspired author wrote under the guidance of God, shouldn't we attempt to make that call? I say, of course we should.) And the second problem-resolution seems to underestimate Christians' talent for giving the Holy Spirit the credit for the journeys on which their unconscious desires and/or and irresponsible study-methods have taken them. Nevertheless, even though it's not my cup of tea, and even though I consider it unnecessary, and suspect that it will undermine scientific hermeneutics, I believe that a Christian can deny plenary inerrancy, advocate infallibility, and still be a Christian.

DB: "Apparently, a lot of christians are simply erring toward human nature (worshiping idols) which the Bible itself warns against."

I don't know of anybody in Christendom, except some highly animated KJV-Onlyists, who could seriously be charged with turning the Bible into an object of worship.

DB: (about II Tim. 3:16-17) ... "This verse says that the scriptures are inspired by God and are useful in teaching people. I agree 100%."

The particular term used for "inspired by God" is "theopneustos," which could be fairly translated as "God-breathed." There's a nifty nuance to the term, implying that the message of the Scriptures is congruent to a message from the mouth/breath of God, intended to animate the church as God's breath animated the body of Adam.

DB: "It doesn't however say anything about perfection in the scriptures or the fact that they are completely inerrant."

It would be extraneous to point out such a thing having stated that the Scriptures are the product of an unerring God.

DB: "In fact the choice of words here "useful" indicates that they aren't to be worshiped as infalible."

I think all level-headed Christians agree that the Bible should not be worshiped. But I disagree with the alleged "fact" that the statement that the Scriptures are "useful" (or "profitable") implied that they are less than inerrant or less than infallible. If one traveler told another one, "This map was made by a cartographer who was inspired by God; use it when you need to know the way to go; use it if you get lost; use it to refute false guides; use it to teach others the right path; study its instructions so that you will be a well-prepared guide," I think the default assumption should be that the traveler believes the map is inerrant or at least infallible. And II Tim. 3:16-17 says something a lot like that about the Scriptures.

DB: "John 16:13: This verse talks about the Holy Spirit coming and talking to the apostles. Again, the Holy Spirit is of course perfect. The apostles probably recorded what the Holy Spirit says to the best of their ability."

What do you think would the point be of sending the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles into all truth if this did not result in the deliverance of a truthful testimony on their part?

DB: Acts 1:8: This verse is very compelling. Jesus says that the apostles will be his witnesses to the ends of the earth with the help of the Holy Spirit."

Yup. And, again, why include the Holy Spirit in the equation if the resultant testimonies, which later were expressed in books of the New Testament, contained the same errors that would have been communicated without Him?

DB: "Couple this verse with 1 Corinthians 2:12-13 where the apostles explain their need to translate what the Holy Spirit reveals to them into language that the people can understand."

That's not what I Cor. 2:12-13 says or means. Paul did, at times, boil down complex ideas (as he says in I Cor. 3:1-3, he fed them with milk rather than solid food), but that doesn't mean that inspired, inerrant messages must be complex rather than simple, or simple rather than complex.

DB: "And we see that because people's understanding isn't perfect, neither can be the translation that they will understand."

Technically, that doesn't follow. But the matter of translations is secondary anyway. An incompetent translator or a sloppy copyist doesn't "uninspire" a Biblical author.

DB: ... "If the testimony of the apostles was inerrant 2000 years ago according to what the people could understand, the recorded account of it cannot be inerrant today because of what we understand."

If the apostles' statements contained no errors when they were written, then they were, by definition, inerrant. A shift in later readers' ability to appreciate all the nuances and immediate applications of the text which were appreciated by the original readers does not render the text suddenly errant; it says something about the quality of the reception of the text's message, not about the production of the text.

2Fleas ~

2F: "Of all that has been written about this god, does anyone ever wonder who decided just what was scripture?"

There are good resources available online that cover this. The "NTCanon" site might be a good place to start. As far as the New Testament canon is concerned, the books were affirmed on the basis of their apostolicity (written by an apostle or an apostle's associate), their acceptance in the area to which they were originally sent (this was a hurdle against pseudepigraphical texts, some of which circulated as early as the second century), their relevance (Paul's grocery-list would not be included, but his letter to Philemon was), and, to a lesser extent, their lack of evidence of non-inspiration.

2F: "Have you ever encountered a contradiction in the Bible then discovered that there is an explanation for it, but not just one explanation but several competing explanations? How does one decide which explanation was supplied by the Holy Spirit?"

I don't think it's always necessary to make such a call.

2F: "Often times it seems that just about any doctrine you want to support can be pulled from the pages of the Bible."

Eh? Let me see here: suppose someone said, "I believe that there are many Gods, who have been made by the heavens and the earth, and that there are many Sons of God, but Jesus is not one of them. He is not our Lord. He was not conceived of the Holy Spirit; he was not born of the virgin Mary; he did not suffer under Pontius Pilate; he was not crucified; he did not die; he was not buried. He did not rise from the dead, and he will not return to judge the living and the dead. There is nothing special about Jesus' followers. The Holy Spirit does not exist. There will be no resurrection and no judgment day." I don't think anyone who says such things can then say "And I base my beliefs on the New Testament" with a straight face.

Various denominations, no doubt, have special emphases and/or doctrines that others don't, while all claim to be guided by the Bible and the Spirit. But while Christianity has outer layers beyond its doctrinal core, it also has a perimeter.

2F: ... "if the book can be made to say whatever anyone wants it to say it really says nothing at all."

So what you're really saying is that if the book can be made to say whatever anyone wants it to say, it really says one specific thing, right? . . . Wrong. Does the fact that I can misunderstand, or misrepresent, your statement, really say something about the quality and precision of what you said?

Back to DB:

DB: ... "I look forward to hearing from those who believe that the bible is 100% literal and those that believe it is 100% inerrant."

You're in for a llooonnggg wait. Nobody believes the Bible is 100% literal. Nobody believes that Jesus was literally a lamb, or a door. Nobody reads Second Timothy 4:13 and hops on a plane to Troas. Our hermeneutical goal should be to interpret literally what was intended to be understood literally, while interpreting non-literally what was intended to be understood non-literally.

DB: ... "Would-be believers might be swayed by the logic that if Christians believe that the Bible is inerrant, yet error can be shown with great evidence, then the beliefs of Christians must be flawed."

Theoretically, sure, if such "great evidence" existed, then at least one Christian belief -- that the Scriptures are inerrant -- must be flawed.

DB: "If we take away that problem by admitting that the Bible's logical symantics isn't the important part of Christianity, then I think we would have many more people believing whole heartedly in Christ."

It's possible that fewer people who have been ambushed by objections for which they were unprepared, or who were overwhelmed by objections and superficial (or not-so-superficial) problems that appeared to refute the idea of Biblical Inerrancy, would opt for unbelief, if they had carefully seriously considered Infallibility as another option.

To me, though, that's a shortcut. However practical it may seem to settle for infallibility (and to limit one's reception of written revelation to the extant text), I think it's more logical to defend inerrancy, on the premise that the handiwork of a 100% truthful God will also be 100% truthful, regardless of the medium of expression, and regardless of human beings' ability to misinterpret it. If, as II Tim. 3:16 says, "All Scripture" -- not just the explicitly theologically didactic parts -- is inspired by God, then we ought to treat it all as such. This 100% level of accuracy is impossible to prove, and inerrantists face some problems for which currently there is no compelling resolution, but that is, to me, just another aspect of walking by faith rather than by sight -- not that we ought to close our eyes to scientific evidence, but that we should keep our eyes open to the limits of scientific evidence, remembering that some objections now thoroughly resolved were once viewed as fatal to the doctrine of inerrancy.

(Plus, I think settling for Infallibility is like settling for "enough" truth when there's more truth that's there for the finding. The affirmation of the Biblical teachings about faith and practice may be all the guidance that most Christians need, but I have found spiritual illumination in decidedly undoctrinal-looking details of the text -- passages which at first glance would seem to say very little about Christian faith and practice. In other words, the adoption of Infallibility may risk the inculcation of a shallow approach to Bible-study -- an approach in which /some/ parts of Scripture, rather than all, are treated as material that is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, to make the man of God well-equipped for every good work. Sooner or later, I think some good work will come along which an Inerrantist will be equipped for, thanks to the thoroughness with which he was willing to explore the text, but which an Infallibilist won't be, because he ignored a part of the text which he mistook for canvas but which was actually a beautiful part of the picture.

DB: ... "If the Bible is completely perfect, then it follows that each, individual verse in the bible must be perfect."

Sort of. The original verbage in each verse was perfectly inspired, but that doesn't mean that the meaning of each verse is self-contained. Otherwise verses quoting statements made by pagans, or even the devil himself, would be perfect when separated from their contextual frame; clearly this is not the case. You seemed to acknowledge the importance of context, so I'll just emphasize, again, that an interpreter's misinterpretation of a text makes the interpreter, not the author, a mistake-maker.

Must sleep now. I hope this wasn't too heavy.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock