Tuesday, January 17, 2006

  • Scripture.1 Inspiration

    Typically a person's view of how the Bible was written influences the way they read it.  For most people who grew up in a Christian home, there is little thought to how the Bible was written.  The inspiration and mode of how scripture was written has been a flash point for many Christians over the years.  I think it would be worth our time to just touch on these for a second.

    There are three main views on how scripture was written.  The first is the idea that God spoke and man wrote.  Heck... maybe man didn't even write.  Maybe scripture fell out of heaven.  But either way... every word of scripture is 100% God's and man had basically no influence or input into scripture.  Key point to remember here:  there are no mistakes or contradictions because God doesn't mess up.

    The second primary view of scriptures' formation is God divinely inspiring man to write.  There is a balance in relationship here between man and God.  God is ultimately in control, but the writing is done through man.  That means that God is not overpowering anyone, there's no dictation, but God is at the source of the writings.  Key point:  It's something like the prophets, they spoke God's message on behalf of God but in their own language and own words.  Still God's words though.

    Third view is that some guys wrote some stuff down and it made sense and seemed like it was from God.  Any talk of inspiration is comparable to inspiration of an artist or poet.  A key argument here is that the author didn't necessarily intend for what was being written down to be taken as scripture.  But the faith community used it on the same level as other scripture.  Key point:  Scripture is the work of man and affirmed by the community.

    There are several other views out there, but they typically seem to fall more or less in line with these three.

    So which one do you buy into and which one have you been taught?

Comments (12)

  • dmclayton

    i've been taught the first two, but i buy into the third. i see scripture sort of how i imagine you see the state of the church today. the church fucks everything up--including the possibility that they added proverbs of the 'biblical writers' and deemed it scripture, although i find it laughable that certain text is scripture and other text is heresy.

    innie minnie miny moe....
  • runningashy
    I've been taught number 2, and I suppose that's what I buy into.
  • CircularParade83
    I grew up being taught 1, but it seems like I go back and forth from 1 to 2.  The Bible fits together too well written over too many years for it to just be a neat book that people wrote and others threw together.  God's hand is definitely directly in it, but choice 1 and 2 are rather close, so I'm not sure which one I buy into. 
  • yankeeoregon1984
    As I did not grow up in any particular Christian tradition, I can only speak of the hermeneutics of my more current theolgical views...I probably fall more into the second explanation, yet in many instances this does not seem to fit in with my apparent belief in divine command...I say all of that not to be pedantic or pompous, but it really creates problems for me because to believe in the 2nd explanantion implies that the Bible has to potential to be fallible. If the Bible is fallible, then perhaps the things I believe so strongly to be sin by there inherent nature might not actually be sin. However, there are things that at this point in my life I am willing to "blindly" accept as sin because I interpret the Bible to delineate it as such. So, this puts me in a tough spot...
  • djeikyb
    Grew up with a mixture of the first and second views being taught (never directly) at church. I haven't bought into any position yet, though I'm currently considering a mixture of all three.

    What about you? What do you believe?
  • freethinker777
    This is multiple part series... we'll get to what i believe eventually (albeit indirectly.) :)
  • untitled_reverie
    you know mom/dad. but now i think its more 2 with a bit of 3. i have a hard time with the idea that the bible was written over so much time and place and fits together so well not to be "godbreathed"... bc the pieces were chosen to be fit together and so any "sameness" doesn't impress me. anything can fit together and sound good when your picking and choosing to make something. maybe there was justification for choosing all of the pieces... but still there is at least some possibility of error.? but i don't suppose to know much.
  • scuttlebutt7
    Mostly 2 with a little bit of 1 (you know, the 10 commandments and all). As for which books actually made it into what we know as the Bible today...this is where I believe faith comes in. Faith that God is in control of the final product, and faith that God will in the end, hold us responsible for the information we had available. I personally would rather err on the side of taking the Bible too seriously or literally than try to figure out what we're supposed to be doing on my own. Otherwise we run the risk of creating our own religion (although I would say that plenty of people who interpret the Bible literally dance around this risk all the time as well)
  • JesusRules1

    1...You didn't ask "why?" so I'm not going to explain myself...
  • samuelholder

    velvet elvis sucked. we wonder why people don't know anything about theology or scripture. its because we continue to put watered-down insights to the realm of theology. some points were good, but not near enough to merit a title of "repainting the christian faith"...what is it with have to start everything new and over. why not help the semi-functional reach its capacity. a house divided against itself won't stand.
  • Mountford_and_Mackville

    Well, I grew up Catholic, and back in those days, Bible reading wasn't exactly encouraged for the Catholic masses. Each kid had a big, fancy, gilt-edged KJV Catholic Bible - which stayed in its box on a closet shelf.

    I'm in the 1-2 category. I believe Scripture to be inspired by God and 100% true - although not all literally true. There are figurative truths, poetic truths, parables, examples (good and bad) for teaching... I believe that any "contradictions" we see in the Bible are due to our own lack of understanding, and I look forward to an afterlife when more (hopefully) will be made known to me. Or maybe I won't care at that point...

     I've  lately read Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development and it helped me clarify some "apparent contradictions" in the Bible. I like this quote from the above site: "It is apparent to some students of scripture, that God stooped to reach those people where they were."

  • outsideofnormal
    I'd have to say it's a combination of two and three. The first view can be ruled out for the most part, as the writers themselves did not write without error. Example: In 1 Corinthians 10:8 (by the way, can you please address these horrid, non-inspired chapter and verse numbers?) Paul mentions the plague in Numbers 25 as an example of the danger of sexual immorality. He says "and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died." Yet Numbers 25 lists the total dead as 24,000.
    Does this challenge the inspiration of the Bible? No. It does however question of how we view what God did in the lives of the authors.
    And while the authors were certainly divinely inspired in their writing, the community also has a role in it. God himself could have dictated to Paul, but if the community did not accept it as authentic, then it would not be canonized as Scripture.
    Oh, and I (beginning at age 18) was taught that number one was silly conservatism and number three was evil liberalism.
    Good post. I'll look forward to more.

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