Wednesday, January 18, 2006

  • Scriptures.2 Verbal Plenary

    All three views have some pitfalls.  But I feel view number one, God speaks and man writes, may be the most dangerous to hold to.  Many hold views two and three and yet hold scripture as authoritative.  Verbal plenary, view number one, seems to go against scripture and create something that is simply not in the text.

    It is hard for me to understand how some people can hold to the view that God spoke and man wrote down scripture.  It just seems these people are not familiar with the Bible at all, but rather some sort of cultural Christianity.  They typically are trying to give scripture a high view, but I believe they are in fact mishandling scripture.

    First, it is hard to hold to the view that God spoke and man wrote and take all of scripture seriously.  Luke begins his gospel by saying that it seemed good to him to sit down and write.  Paul even points out that certain parts are not of God but of him.  Therefore a person has to approach scripture with an agenda and an end in mind in order to hold to such a view because the text does not warrant it.  A person has to go against scripture to believe in the verbal plenary view.

    The typical argument is the whole "god breathed" verse.  Yet this is in reference to the Torah and not New Testament scriptures.  In fact, there is no reference to inspiration in the New Testament outside of maybe Revelation's implication of inspiration.  Peter refers to Paul's writings but not to them being "inspired."  I say that all to simply say that we have to be careful not to make scripture say something it doesn't say.

    Secondly, if scripture is all divine, we have just created another part to add to the Trinity.  This is idolatry.  Scripture cannot be elevated to this level without it being worshipped.  Yet many people do worship scripture, and this is sad and sinful.  The view that scripture was written without man lines up more with cults and other religions than with Christian orthodoxy.  Humanity's participation in the creation of scripture does not defile scripture anymore than Christ being fully human.  If humanities involvement means automatic failure, we have bigger problems with the incarnation than with the Bible.

    Radical conservatives attempt to elevate scripture only to find that they have in fact abused scripture.  Fear is at the heart of this stance.  Fear that man will mess things up.  Fear that holes will be punched in their hard box they call Christianity.  It's fine to hold scripture high, just don't bow down to it.

Comments (8)

  • por_la_cruz
    (Sorry I haven't been by lately.)
    I agree with the second view. God didn't audibly dictate the scripture to them (not counting some of the things in Revelation ) but He did move them to write what they did. I do believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God. God's word and His way of directly communicating with man. But not God.
  • freethinker777
    "inerrant," eh?  Next post is for you then. :)
  • yankeeoregon1984
    "I say that all to simply say that we have to be careful not to make scripture say something it doesn't say."

    Hear hear. I have recently struggled with knowing just how much "interpretive license" we are given. This has been relevant in my life recently because I lost a relationship over whether or not the Scriptures condemn homosexuality (or whether such a thing is more of a cultural issue that should no longer be considered a sin if done in a monagamous context.) I guess the reason I am sharing that is because I am so frustrated and confused; where is the line where we say something is sin, and something else is no longer applicable to our society (and is therefore not a sin)? Why do churches that accept homosexuality still reject things like pornography, rape, lust, incest, and spousal abuse? Why do they accept those things to be inherently sinful and not the other? I wonder what you think of all of this.
  • uniqu3username
    concerning the above, it's telling that there's never a positive example of homosexual interaction given in the scriptures; churches that accept one out of said list but reject others are just stupid. I don't think a detailed explination is necessary.

    Peter does refer to Paul's writings as Scripture-
    2 peter 3:16- as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, AS THEY DO ALSO THE REST OF THE SCRIPTURES, to their own destruction.
    He's putting Paul's writings on par with the revered OT.
  • freethinker777
    The argument was not whether Paul's writing is "scripture."  I granted that.  It's whether it was "inspired."  "Inspiration" is not addressed.
  • outsideofnormal
    Nice post. I especially resonated with the last paragraph. Most evangelicals say that they have a "high view of Scripture" and generally mean something like "we base our life off of it, or at least the parts that we like. Its got some really great stuff and we have done a good job of pulling those parts out, organizing them by topic and making God more accessible (read controllable) to everyone so that they will believe, as we do, that you shouldn't play cards or believe in evolution."

    The problem with this view (which could easily be called versejacking) is that by it's very nature it holds a low view of the Bible. It essentially says that God, for whatever reason, gave us the wrong sort of book and we have to make it the right sort by separating the good stuff from the boring or hard to explain (read control). At best, this is an inappropriate reading of the Bible. Without the context of world history and the biblical narrative, virtually every verse loses at least some of it’s meaning—and sometimes is filled in with a new one that fits our worldview.
  • ragamuffin_vagabond
    This is merely in reference to 2nd Timothy 3:16 and the language issue many people miss that I think is quite beautiful. The verse is heavy in imagery, particularly "God-breathed." The greater passage contains a theme of equipping as well as continual reference regarding beginnings ("infancy") and endings ("last days") and the span of life. It seems that the writer is seeking to use the imagery similar to the Creation account, where God is described as breathing into man, placing a kind of life-breath in what is nothing more than well-fashioned earth. When we follow this symbolism to where it leads, we recognize the description of "Scripture" (which, yes, most likely only represents OT writings) to be much the same. It is a work in itself, that of poetry, prose, proverb, historical documents, etc. Certainly not "inerrant" especially when lined up next to modern-day scholarship that has gotten rather efficient at finding the alledged contraditions and holes. Yet just as man is from dust and has no eternal worth on his (or her) own, God breathes into that which is of earth and blesses it with eternal significance. I like to think the writer is envisioning the same thing when he uses the term "God-breathed." It gives Scripture much more depth, as well as intimacy.

    "If you look at a window, you see dust, fly specks, the crack where Junior's Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window you see the world beyond. Something like this is the difference between people who see the Bible as a holy bore and people who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves." - Frederick Buechner
  • uniqu3username
    You didn't mention paul's writings being considered as scripture in your post, only that peter mentions them. It seems then that you're just taking issue that the term "inspired" is being used, as opposed to "God-breathed". I really don't see a difference. Furthermore, if your issue was the term "inspired", why not clearly say just that, instead of giving the impression that the shortcoming of the GB verse was that it merely referred to the OT. Laying out a quick syllogism would really clear things up in the future so the reader doesn't have to intuit your argument. Here's mine to what I thought to be your point.
    claim- NT not explicitly GB/inspired

    All Scripture is God-breathed
    Paul's writings are Scripture
    TF, Paul's writings are God-breathed

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