I want to open this post up for a discussion on how you view the scriptures. Here are some starter questions.
- Which books do you allow and why?
- Were the authors trying to write scripture?
- Do you think the scriptures are infallible?
- Do you think the scriptures are inspired?
- Do you think the scriptures are inerrant?
- Is there a difference between inerrant/inspired/infallible?
- Are all seemingly historical accounts supposed to be taken at literally as possible?
- Can some of the seeminly historical accounts be figurative in some fashion and the scripture still be inerrant, inspired, and infallible?
Here are my short answers to get the conversation started.
- Protestant Bible
- Some were, some weren’t - but they all did.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- No. See the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s arrest and trial and see John’s narrative vs the Synoptics.
- Not entierly.
- Yes.
2 Comments
Which books do you allow and why? The Protestant Bible. The Deuterocanonicals don’t fit the requirements for canonicity that the rest of the Hebrew Bible does (i.e. the Apocrypha is written in Greek, not Hebrew/Aramaic).
Were the authors trying to write scripture? I don’t know if, say Paul, was trying to write something like Moses or Isaiah did i.e. Scripture. But all of them did view their writings as of divine origin. Peter actually equates Paul’s writings with Scripture.
Do you think the scriptures are infallible? Yes.
Do you think the scriptures are inspired? Yes.
Do you think the scriptures are inerrant? Yes.
Is there a difference between inerrant/inspired/infallible? In a technical sense yes. Inspiration speaks of the Bible’s origins; inerrancy speaks of the parts of the Bible; infallibility speaks of the whole message of the Bible. But I think they all are communicating the same idea.
Are all seemingly historical accounts supposed to be taken at literally as possible? The events that occurred in books like the Gospels, Acts, the Penteteuch, the historical books of Joshua-Ezra/Nehemiah yes. Prophetic and poetic books are using literary devices to communicate a message, thus the events in Revelation and the Olivet Discourse are not literal history but rather descriptions of history in metaphorical terms. The epistles should be read as a didactic that also uses literary elements to communicate a message. All Scripture should be read in their intended and literary sense.
Can some of the seeminly historical accounts be figurative in some fashion and the scripture still be inerrant, inspired, and infallible? Depends on if the author intended his audience to read the events as literal events or metaphors. As stated before, all Scripture must be read in its intended or literary sense, not in a wooden literal sense.
I have tried to explain myself on Biblical inerrancy here.