It has always amazed me how people can switch religious beliefs so easily and accept everything taught to them on the other side as absolute truth, when they once believed they were absolute lies!!! Why are we so fickle? Why is it that we are so desperate to belong that we have to buy everything we are told and drop our true convictions and our ability to reason?
I see it with all faiths, but I’m especially dumbfounded when I see it with Atheists, who insist upon evidence before they can proclaim anything to be true! Funny how there is absolutely NO evidence for the theory of evolution (hence it is still called a theory), but everyone who moves to the other side of faith in God adopts this theory as golden and goes to great lengths to defend and promote it.
As Christians, we do the same thing. I know why there’s a need to define statutes. Not least so that we can know those who believe exactly what we believe, and label those who don’t accept everything we believe as heretics to be avoided. We’ve been warned of the many false prophets and teachers teaching false doctrines, so we agreed on the truth, and are unable to tolerate alternative understanding of these beliefs or even new revelations! This is why there are so many denominations, sects and cults, because we switch off our spiritual gauge and depend on others to tell us what to believe.
One of those things we have been taught to accept without question is the infallibility of the Bible, as the Word of God. However, if the first Christians (Acts 11:26) didn’t have the Bible, and didn’t even have a holy Book, just the gospel that they received from the Apostles, do you think they would call what we now know to be the Bible as the complete inerrant word of God? Consider also that when the converted Jews were trying to impose circumcision and other Jewish laws on the Gentiles who had believed the Gospel (and were now just as Christian as the converted Jews), the Believers had their very first meeting on the matter of what every Christian should hold dear, and what we should not be burdened with. This meeting is recorded in Acts 15.
At this meeting, this was what they concluded as applicable to all Believers:
“For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well” (Acts 15:28-29).
It is reasonable to say that even this list was reconsidered by the Church, as they grew in understanding of what was clean and unclean. Consider Paul’s teaching in Romans 14 about strong and weak faith, and how we are free to eat anything (as long as we do not cause others, who believe they’ve been sacrificed to idols or are unclean, to stumble). But his teaching about sexual immortality should also show that that is not a weak or strong faith issue, but a fundamental principle to be upheld by all believers (1 Cor 6:18).
Christians were not compelled to abide by the Torah, as many of the converted Pharisees pushed for. Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles saw him continually fighting this battle of renewing the minds of his Jewish brothers and sisters (Read Galatians 3). But he did say to Timothy that all scriptures are inspired by God and profitable for instruction (2 Tim 3:16), so he wasn’t advocating that it be disregarded…just understood in light of the Gospel and teachings of Jesus. As you can imagine, Paul never dreamed that his writings would become part of a collection that would later be termed “the Word of God”.
Who does the Bible say the Word of God is? JESUS and no other (1 John 1:1). To say that the Bible is the infallible word of God is the heresy (but I won’t stone or reject you for believing that). The Bible compiles the testimonies of others who were inspired by God to write for the edification of Believers, and to carry on and protect the Jewish history and tradition. The Roman Catholic Church felt the need to seal the Bible’s authority to teach Christians our faith in Jesus by canonizing it (rejecting what they believed to be false testimonies). I see the wisdom in this, and uphold the Bible as sacred.
The Bible’s authority is built on the authority of the Church. But the Word of God is a living Being that once became flesh. This is the Biblically sound doctrine.
Believing that Jesus is the Word of God and not the Bible has never caused me to reject the Bible. It has only allowed me to better understand it and allow the Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth as Jesus said He would (John 16:13).
This teaching about the Bible and several other teachings that have been passed on by tradition (and do not even have Biblical support) are accepted by Christians, depending on their particular denomination as the Gospel Truth! The Gospel Truth is the message that Jesus preached, that His disciples were sent forth to preach, so that all who believe may be filled with the Spirit of God – and would need no man to teach them (I John 2:27).
To all who believe the Gospel, which is that God sent His beloved Son to die on a Cross to save them from eternal death, this is what Jesus says:
“If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:15).
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Théa
I say this.
Ufuomaee
Thanks for being the first to comment! @thetoolsman, please help us out with drinks… I don’t know the magic 🙁
thetoolsman
lol but I have empowered you.. Just go ahead and served your readers… Go on, you can do it…
Ufuomaee
I no sabi am abeg! elp me!
woyi_0c
AUNTY AUNTY!! http://getemoji.com/ Go to that link and copy the emoji from there 😀
Ufuomaee
Thanks Bro! And abeg, stop calling me aunty. I’m sure I’m not old enough to be your aunty 🙂
Od
You are quite wrong about a few things here, Ufuoma.
To begin with, the early Christians did have “holy books”. They did have literature that were recognized to be sacred and holy and inviolable. They were not bound together as the books we have today are bound into one called the Bible, but they were known. What I mean is that there was a canon. It existed before Jesus came into the world as our Savior. It was known to the apostles. It was known to the early Christians. And it was known to people who were either interested in or committed to the religion of the Temple then, for example, the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading Isaiah.
Jesus quoted out of it and so did his apostles and Paul in his writings. It was not unknown or optional. The canon was held sacred.
When Paul preached in Berea, the believers there were noted for being more noble than the ones at Thessalonica from where Paul came to them. Their nobility was illustrated in Acts 17:11 where they were said to “search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so”. In other words, the words of even the apostles needed to be verified and held up by the Canon they knew or else they would be rejected. This is what they were called ‘noble’ for. That is very significant.
Even Paul did know that he was writing Scripture. He was not the only one who treated his writings like they were Scripture, Peter spoke of them as Scripture as well when he said that some people mishandled the things Paul wrote the same way they mishandled “the rest of the Scriptures”. Again, that is very significant. Paul’s own perception of his writings was shown in his commands that the churches who received his letters should exchange them among themselves as they would other Scriptures to edify them all.
Furthermore, it is actually too simple to say that Christians were not required to abide by the Torah. Rather, the question that faced the Church in those days was what exactly was the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Old Covenant. How were they to deal with the Scriptures now that Christ had fulfilled the demands of the Law for us? That was the point of the New Testament.
Paul and his fellows labored to explain the Torah in the Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That was how they gained new understanding of the Bible as it existed then. Now that Jesus had died for our sins, for example, the demands of the Law for all manner of sacrifice and propitiation for our sins were no longer applicable. Our sins had been fully and finally paid for. Now that the Holy Spirit had been poured out into our lives as God’s Seal of Salvation and the New Covenant, there was no longer any need for circumcision as a testimony to our pact with God, for another example. And so on.
The Bible is completely and totally inerrant. But it is not to be read any which way a person pleases. Itself says that it does not lend itself to private interpretation, that is, the Bible does not submit to personal idiosyncrasy in interpretation. It immediately breaks out of any bonds put upon it. Which is why many people who wish it could say this but not that end up screaming about how it is so contradictory. It simply does not yield to human mastery. It forces the human intellect to yield to it instead.
To further explain, that part you mentioned about strong and weak faith is a common error. The reason it is common is that we humans know that, as Christ put it, “strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life”, and we have this compassion and need for one another that makes us take everything that resembles a concession to our weaknesses in the Bible as an oasis in the desert. But when you take what Paul said there with the rest of the letter to the Romans and the whole Bible, all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem very likely anymore that he was saying that you should accommodate weak faith in the sense we often see it.
In a sense, Paul was being sarcastic. He essentially said, “does having great faith mean that you can eat whatever you please without thought? Does it mean that you have risen high above any need for reason and compassion? Even though, for example, idols are nothing, do we not know that idols are devils, that the things sacrificed to them are things consecrated to devils? How can you because you have great faith find it comfortable to eat at the table of devils and still come to the table of Christ? Your great faith is mere foolishness.”
There are many other things to learn like that from the Bible. There is no error in it, just big puzzles which force us to stretch ourselves mentally. In this stretching, we grow to become more and more like Christ. Because it is as our thinking patterns, our philosophies and ideologies adapt to Christ that we ourselves become like him.
Let me stop at this point. At least, for now.
Ufuomaee
Dear Od,
Thanks for reading and commenting on my posts. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify my perspective. Your comment showed that you didn’t fully understand what I was saying. I want to try to address each point from your second paragraph.
You wrote:
“To begin with, the early Christians did have “holy books”. They did have literature that were recognized to be sacred and holy and inviolable. They were not bound together as the books we have today are bound into one called the Bible, but they were known. What I mean is that there was a canon. It existed before Jesus came into the world as our Savior. It was known to the apostles. It was known to the early Christians. And it was known to people who were either interested in or committed to the religion of the Temple then, for example, the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading Isaiah.”
I think you missed the point of my question. I asked “However, if the first Christians (Acts 11:26) didn’t have the Bible, and didn’t even have a holy Book, just the gospel that they received from the Apostles, do you think they would call what we now know to be the Bible as the complete inerrant word of God?”
I was not denying the existence of the Scriptures, of which there are repeated references in the Bible! I think we all know that all references to Scripture was regarding the Jewish Scriptures. It is also concerning these Scriptures that Paul wrote to Timothy that ALL SCRIPTURE is God-breathed, authouritative and profitable for teaching. The Jewish Scriptures have a significant purpose – in pointing us to Christ, who was the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
What I was saying was that, at the time the early Christians believed, they had no such compilation, bearing their history and teachings of Christianity. The New Testament did not exist, and even if they foresaw the existence of such a canon, they had no way of constructing or limiting its contents! It turns out that what was accepted as Scripture in compiling the New Testament, was out of their control, for it was first canonised centuries after them! That is what I meant by they didn’t have the Bible, as we know it, or a holy Book. What they had were the Jewish Scriptures, and they certainly did not declare them to be complete and infallible, as Christians now declare concerning the Bible.
You wrote:
“Jesus quoted out of it and so did his apostles and Paul in his writings. It was not unknown or optional. The canon was held sacred.”
I think you might have missed the part where I said that I too hold the Bible to be sacred. Here it is: “I see the wisdom in this, and uphold the Bible as sacred.”
You wrote:
“When Paul preached in Berea, the believers there were noted for being more noble than the ones at Thessalonica from where Paul came to them. Their nobility was illustrated in Acts 17:11 where they were said to “search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so”. In other words, the words of even the apostles needed to be verified and held up by the Canon they knew or else they would be rejected. This is what they were called ‘noble’ for. That is very significant.”
Again, I am a student of the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian. I wouldn’t be able to teach my faith without it. The Bible is authouritative, built on the authourity of the Church that sealed it, with the power Christ gave them to seal any matter. However, as authouritative as the Church is…the Church leaders then and now were never infallible, and so the infallibility of the Bible is subject to the infallibility of those whose literature was approved, and those who approved the literature!
The point of my piece is that the Bible cannot be said to be the complete and infallible word of God, even if we were to use Scripture to make this argument, because those who wrote what was compiled as scripture did not determine or verify all the contents of the final document. Is the Bible inspired? Yes. Is it holy? Yes. Is it scripture? Yes. Is it infallible? No. Is it the COMPLETE Word of God? NO!!! Jesus is the only one that can be said to be the Complete, Infallible Word of God – and there’s no book version of Jesus!
You wrote:
“Even Paul did know that he was writing Scripture. He was not the only one who treated his writings like they were Scripture, Peter spoke of them as Scripture as well when he said that some people mishandled the things Paul wrote the same way they mishandled “the rest of the Scriptures”. Again, that is very significant. Paul’s own perception of his writings was shown in his commands that the churches who received his letters should exchange them among themselves as they would other Scriptures to edify them all.”
Again, the issue here is not about what is or is not Scripture, but on the claim to completeness and infallibility, which is ascribed to the Bible (or the version of the Bible that excludes the Apocrypha). I accept Paul’s writings as Scripture. But the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets. I wrote more along this in another post, called My Case for Jesus, the Word of God and the Ministry of the Holy Spirit. If you feel inclined, you may read it here: https://ufuomaee.com/2016/01/14/the-word-of-god/
You wrote:
“Furthermore, it is actually too simple to say that Christians were not required to abide by the Torah. Rather, the question that faced the Church in those days was what exactly was the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Old Covenant. How were they to deal with the Scriptures now that Christ had fulfilled the demands of the Law for us? That was the point of the New Testament.”
Whether it is too simple or not, this explanation from Paul settles the issue for me:
“Before this faith came, we were held in custody under the Law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the Law became our guardian to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian…” (Galatians 3:23-25).
You wrote:
“Paul and his fellows labored to explain the Torah in the Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That was how they gained new understanding of the Bible as it existed then. Now that Jesus had died for our sins, for example, the demands of the Law for all manner of sacrifice and propitiation for our sins were no longer applicable. Our sins had been fully and finally paid for. Now that the Holy Spirit had been poured out into our lives as God’s Seal of Salvation and the New Covenant, there was no longer any need for circumcision as a testimony to our pact with God, for another example. And so on.”
No argument here.
You wrote:
“The Bible is completely and totally inerrant. But it is not to be read any which way a person pleases. Itself says that it does not lend itself to private interpretation, that is, the Bible does not submit to personal idiosyncrasy in interpretation. It immediately breaks out of any bonds put upon it. Which is why many people who wish it could say this but not that end up screaming about how it is so contradictory. It simply does not yield to human mastery. It forces the human intellect to yield to it instead.”
This whole paragraph is the opinion that you have been taught to accept as true, and is what I am contesting as the classic conversion mistake. The Bible cannot tell you it is complete and inerrant. You believe that by faith, just as by faith, I believe the testimony of the Bible concerning Jesus, as the Word of God. My argument is that your faith is misplaced. This misplaced faith in the inerrancy of the Bible has been quite problematic for many sincere believers, when they should only place such faith in Jesus.
You wrote:
“To further explain, that part you mentioned about strong and weak faith is a common error. The reason it is common is that we humans know that, as Christ put it, “strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life”, and we have this compassion and need for one another that makes us take everything that resembles a concession to our weaknesses in the Bible as an oasis in the desert. But when you take what Paul said there with the rest of the letter to the Romans and the whole Bible, all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem very likely anymore that he was saying that you should accommodate weak faith in the sense we often see it.”
Jesus said “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed” signifying that any measure of faith is good. In fact, the mustard seed size is quite potent! By this and many other comments Jesus made, He recognises that we don’t all have the same measure of faith, but the faith that is required to become saved is a child-like, humble faith. We mature into adults, and we are expected to grow into stronger faith. So, of course, no one should be happy with grown-up Christians who behave like babies, still desiring milk, when they should have graduated to meat… But what has that to do with the infallibility of scripture?
You wrote:
“In a sense, Paul was being sarcastic. He essentially said, “does having great faith mean that you can eat whatever you please without thought? Does it mean that you have risen high above any need for reason and compassion? Even though, for example, idols are nothing, do we not know that idols are devils, that the things sacrificed to them are things consecrated to devils? How can you because you have great faith find it comfortable to eat at the table of devils and still come to the table of Christ? Your great faith is mere foolishness.””
Okay, this is another interpretation that you are allowed to. Perhaps in regards to eating unclean and clean foods, you are of the strong faith – or is it the weak faith? Do you eat pork? Because Paul was also addressing this in respect to the weak faith, strong faith discourse. I eat anything. I believe that is the strong faith. Paul said not to ask questions of conscience, because we validate their claim that their idols exist! But if they profess to you that it has been sacrificed, for their sake, reject the food. It’s quite basic. And it wasn’t only about foods, but about holy days too, and I believe there are some other doctrines that Christians squabble over that can be resolved with this mindset…so that rather than judging Christ’s servant, we can drop the matter and work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
You wrote:
“There are many other things to learn like that from the Bible. There is no error in it, just big puzzles which force us to stretch ourselves mentally. In this stretching, we grow to become more and more like Christ. Because it is as our thinking patterns, our philosophies and ideologies adapt to Christ that we ourselves become like him.”
I don’t claim that the Bible has one or two or more errors. I only do not go so far as to declare that it is inerrant! Only God is inerrant, and no holy Book is, unless He wrote it with His own hands, from top to bottom. And even that, you would have to accept by faith, that He did in fact write it with His own hands… So, you are allowed to your view by faith, and by faith, I proclaim that I only consider Jesus to be the inerrant Word of God.
Thanks again for the discussion.
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
Od
1. Again, you are quite wrong. As I already told you, Peter himself spoke of Paul’s writings as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16). So, in their days, they knew what the canon was and witnessed it materialize. Whereas a council was inaugurated in later years to ostensibly canonize the Scriptures, a canon already existed prior. That council became necessary when very deep controversies especially relating to the deity of Christ came into view and there arose much ado about who was to be believed and what authorities should be accepted in the church. But prior to that, including during the time of the apostles themselves, the Church knew exactly what literature was true and sacred. As a matter of fact, Paul labored hard to “close the canon” with his own writings. In one letter, he laid powerful curses on anyone who taught a gospel that contradicted what himself and the other apostles taught (Galatians 1:8-9). In another, he said that there was no other foundation that needed to be laid except the foundation the apostles among whom he was counted laid which is Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 3:10-11).
In other words, there is nothing to be added, no new revelation to be given about Christ. It was finished in the apostles. That is actually why there is no apostolic ministry surviving today. We are merely to walk in the revelation that has been given. Any new additions today carry a curse laid by the authority of the apostles through Paul, Peter and John, at least (Galatians 1:8-9; 2 Peter 3:1,3; Revelation 22:18).
Again, the first believers were aware and were fully deliberate in their creation and construction of the Canon that the Church later accepted in the midst of crises of doctrines.
2. How do you hold something both sacred and violable or susceptible to error?
3. The same argument for the inspired authorship of the Bible is the argument for the inspired compilation of it. The instant one is doubted, so is the other. If God could inspire fallible men to write inerrantly, he must be able to inspire fallible men to compile inerrantly as well.
As for there being a book version of Jesus, our Lord himself was the one who said that the Scriptures were written of him (John 5:39, Luke 24:44).
4. Here, I was countering what you said about Paul not knowing that he was writing Scripture. That was wrong. And I have shown you how. The subjection of the spirit of a prophet to himself only helps my case. It means that Paul was aware of what he was doing as he did it. God does not turn us into zombies in order to use us to do things we are ordinarily naturally incapable of.
5. That is one witness in the Scriptures and unless you are insistent on considering it your preferred witness, you must know that it is of one with others like Luke 24:44. The old testament teaches us of Christ. Alone, it is but a shadow without clear features. In the New testament, it is fleshed out. But both work together to give us a full, rounded view of Christ. That is why it is dangerous to hold such a belief as you do.
7. That is quite an interesting thing to say. Even if I did not have private correspondence with you, I would wonder why anyone would assume that with my online conversing behavior I simply say what I have been taught. I say what I say and believe what I believe because I have personally proved it. I would go even further to say that in my personal salvation experience, I have walked alone more than I have walked with companions because I would not rely on other people’s ideas.
Besides all that, I have shown you how your argument is wrong. It is very dangerous to think that you can believe in Christ and walk worthy of him while doubting the very Scriptures that reveal him to you.
8. First, what it has to do with the infallibility of Scriptures is to show you that there are no errors, rather there are puzzles that force us to expand our thinking to understand Christ.
Second, another way to take what Jesus said is this: faith is not measured in sizes. If tiny faith can do great things, then the question is not what size faith anyone has but whether one has faith at all?
9. Again, the point is that it isn’t what size or type of faith you have but whether you have faith at all. Faith in Christ leads us to behave in discernible ways. If we are not behaving like that, we cannot say it is because our faith is great or small, it is because our claim to faith is a lie.
10. Wrong again. Whether or not the Scriptures are infallible is a matter that is not subject to personal opinion. You either live under the authority of the Scriptures and please the God who is so magnanimous and so great as to communicate his thoughts perfectly and unhindered through ordinary men like us or else you do not and thus displease him.
Ufuomaee
Dear @Od,
As much as is possible, I would like this to be my last response on this issue, because I don’t know how I can possibly make myself clearer, and as I’ve said in another post (What Are You Afraid Of? – https://ufuomaee.com/2016/01/24/what-are-you-afraid-of/), where I was responding to the same arguments…the truth is plain for me to see, and such adamant denial of what is evidently true to all would have to be down to a serious delusion. God is the One who will settle the matter for all of us ultimately, and we just have to be true to what we believe until then.
So let me try again to respond to as many of your points as I can, in a way that can be easily followed. In order to do justice to your arguments, I am responding in two parts.
You wrote:
“1. Again, you are quite wrong. As I already told you, Peter himself spoke of Paul’s writings as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16). So, in their days, they knew what the canon was and witnessed it materialize. Whereas a council was inaugurated in later years to ostensibly canonize the Scriptures, a canon already existed prior. That council became necessary when very deep controversies especially relating to the deity of Christ came into view and there arose much ado about who was to be believed and what authorities should be accepted in the church. But prior to that, including during the time of the apostles themselves, the Church knew exactly what literature was true and sacred. As a matter of fact, Paul labored hard to “close the canon” with his own writings. In one letter, he laid powerful curses on anyone who taught a gospel that contradicted what himself and the other apostles taught (Galatians 1:8-9). In another, he said that there was no other foundation that needed to be laid except the foundation the apostles among whom he was counted laid which is Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 3:10-11).”
1. Yes, Peter aligned Paul’s writings as Scripture. This says more about the Ministry of the Holy Spirit in all Believers than it does about the sacredness of Paul’s writings. You see, Peter believed very much in the Priesthood of every believer, and he taught that ANYONE who speaks (as a Christian of course), ought to do so as an oracle of God. Paul also taught the Corinthians how they ought to conduct Church, and how they ought to give everyone a chance to minister and to prophesy. Now, I personally believe that just as Jesus said so many things that were not recorded in the Bible, there would also have been much more written and spoken by the Apostles and other believers at the time, that would have been profitable for us today – if they had been preserved, as the rest of the Scriptures… Note my reference to rest of the Scriptures, which includes the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, Revelation and the Four Gospels, being the New Testament.
At this junction, it is good to define Scripture. A basic definition is given in Google as: “the sacred writings of Christianity as contained in the Bible; the sacred writings of a religion other than Christianity.” The main thing here is that Scripture is simply what is considered sacred writing. When Christ referred to the Jewish Scriptures, He was basically referring to the writings the Jews regarded as sacred.
Now, what does sacred mean? Again, using Google’s simple definition, we get “connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration”. Synonyms include “holy”, “dedicated”, “revered” and “blessed” among others. Holiness simply means being set apart for God. If you are in Christ, you are holy. I am holy. The Church is holy. Holy doesn’t mean infallible. It doesn’t mean perfect. It doesn’t even mean righteous! The Israelites were set apart, and the Levites were set apart for a special ministry among them as Priests. But they were not righteous in themselves. In fact, they were very flawed, as the Church is today.
So let’s understand the meaning of Holy Scriptures. By these definitions, we know that it means “writings that are set apart to God”. Peter knew that Paul’s writings were worthy to be considered Scripture, because Paul was set apart to God (read holy), and thus his writings could be considered as such, especially those written for the purpose of teaching people about God.
So, you can see from Peter’s perspective, the collection of Scripture wouldn’t be limited to his and Paul’s writings, or what would later be adopted in the Bible, but even the writings of other Believers that may not have been widely read or shared among the Believers then! I would also reckon that Peter did not consider that Christian writings would cease being holy, or that God would cease to inspire His children to write and prophesy – for he believed we were all called to be Epistles!
Now, regarding Paul’s passion to close the canon as you say… Paul was not referring to any canon as you allege. What he said was simple: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
The key word here is GOSPEL. What is the Gospel? Is the Gospel that the Bible that had not yet been compiled would be the infallible word of God? Or was the Gospel that God so loved the world that He sent His only Begotten Son, that whosoever would believe would not perish but have eternal life? Do you not know that the meaning of Gospel is “Good News”? This is the good news that was preached and that we should preach! Anything more than that which was written by the Apostles is teaching about what it means to receive the Gospel, and what is expected of those who have been called into the family of God (aka doctrine).
For the record, the Gospel is not in contention here…what is in contention is the infallibility of the Bible as sacred Scripture! If I were to contend the Gospel, then I would be saying one of a few things; that Jesus was not the Son of God, or that Jesus did not die, or that there is no such thing as sin or eternal punishment, or that one can be saved apart from the sacrificial death of Christ! Those were the sort of things that Paul and Peter were contending against…not whether or not their writings should be canonised as Holy Scripture!
Talking about Foundations is simply common sense. Jesus is the Cornerstone, and everything we build must align with His Spirit and His teachings. I like what 1 Cor 3:11 says: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Christ is not only the cornerstone, but the foundation on which our faith is built. Paul was saying here that he has built upon the foundation that is Christ, and we each must be careful how we build upon it too.
For me, this is an expectation that 1. We too will build and 2. We are not infallible, and neither was he. If we are not careful how we build, what we build will not stand. This was not, nor was Ephesians 2:20, a proclamation of the infallibility of the Apostles’ Epistles, but basically an acknowledgement that they are a trusted foundation on which we can continue to build up the Body of Christ.
You wrote:
“In other words, there is nothing to be added, no new revelation to be given about Christ. It was finished in the apostles. That is actually why there is no apostolic ministry surviving today. We are merely to walk in the revelation that has been given. Any new additions today carry a curse laid by the authority of the apostles through Paul, Peter and John, at least (Galatians 1:8-9; 2 Peter 3:1,3; Revelation 22:18).
I think I have addressed the issue of the curse – which is on the teaching of false, Christless gospel, and not about us, as Spirit-filled Christians, ministring by the power of the Holy Spirit. If we truly share the Spirit of the Apostles, then what we build will stand firmly on the foundation of the Apostles and Christ.
I have addressed Gal 1:8-9. Let me address 2 Pet 3:1-3. Paul is talking about scoffers here…who will deny the Truth as revealed in Christ, and has declared unto them by the Apostles. He is not saying that true Believers will not still receive revelation from God! Will there be false revelations? Of course…Jesus already warned that tares would be sown among the wheat, and they must grow together. But the wheat remains! Instead of discarding revelations, this is what John tells us to do:
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God…”
We are to test them. He said believe not every spirit…yet it remains that we should believe the ones that are tested to be true! Now, Revelation 22:18 is the easiest to address. The curse laid at the end of the Book of Revelation was upon THE BOOK OF REVELATION and not the canon of Scripture we know as the Bible!!! It was not added after the Bible was canonised, but appended to the Book of Revelation that was prophetically strong about the Last Days! It is a common mistake made by Biblical inerranists.
You wrote:
“Again, the first believers were aware and were fully deliberate in their creation and construction of the Canon that the Church later accepted in the midst of crises of doctrines.”
If you say so. But I reckon that if Paul knew what we have done to his writings, and how we have adopted the spirit of the Pharisees, being obsessed with the letter and neglecting to be led by the Spirit of God, he would wish he had never written anything down! Was it not Paul who said: “Do not extinguish the Spirit. 20Do not treat prophecies with contempt, 21but test all things. Hold fast to what is good…” (1 Thess 5:19-21). But what do I know?
You wrote:
“2. How do you hold something both sacred and violable or susceptible to error?”
2. It is simple really. That’s why I went to the trouble of define what is sacred. Sacred doesn’t mean without error. And I don’t deny that the Holy Scriptures which have been bound are authouritative and thus inviolable (definition: “never to be broken, infringed, or dishonoured”) as such. If I may use the example of Marriage… Christian marriage is both sacred and inviolable…but it most certainly is not inerrant! Many people enter wrong marriages. Many people act in error in good marriages. Marriage is flawed by nature of the humans who are bound in the sacred contract. But even if you enter into marriage ill-advised, it doesn’t stop it from being sacred or inviolable!
You wrote:
“3. The same argument for the inspired authorship of the Bible is the argument for the inspired compilation of it. The instant one is doubted, so is the other. If God could inspire fallible men to write inerrantly, he must be able to inspire fallible men to compile inerrantly as well.”
3. Problem is, that is all it is, an argument! It doesn’t mean that the Bible was written by inspiration or compiled by inspiration. However, though I accept – by faith – that the Bible was written by inspiration, and even accept – by faith also – that God was very much involved in the process of its compilation, I do not declare that the inspired writings are without error, nor that the process of compilation was without error… Maybe in that respect, you have greater faith. I choose rather to accept the Bible as what it is; an authouritative, trustworthy, sacred Book that is profitable for teaching me and others about the faith I profess in Christ!
You wrote:
“As for there being a book version of Jesus, our Lord himself was the one who said that the Scriptures were written of him (John 5:39, Luke 24:44).”
I’m sorry Od, but this is the most unintelligent thing I have ever read from you. It is quite shocking. Because Jesus said the Jewish Scriptures attested to Him, it means that the Jewish Scriptures is the Book Version of Christ??? Or do you mean the Scriptures that include the New Testament is now the Book version of Christ? How far-fetched!
End of Part One.
Ufuomaee
@Od the continuation of my response.
You wrote:
“4. Here, I was countering what you said about Paul not knowing that he was writing Scripture. That was wrong. And I have shown you how. The subjection of the spirit of a prophet to himself only helps my case. It means that Paul was aware of what he was doing as he did it. God does not turn us into zombies in order to use us to do things we are ordinarily naturally incapable of.”
4. Again, I fail to see how this helps your case. That Paul was aware that his writings were fallible, being subject to his own spirit and discernment of the will of God? Can you even imagine for a moment that perhaps Paul was really just writing encouraging and educational letters to the Believers, to ensure that they kept to the Gospel and doctrine they had received? Do you think God told him, the way He told Moses when He gave him the Law, that he was to write so and so…because they would be bound? Why do you suppose Paul was led by the Spirit to write this: “The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.” (2 Tim 4:13).
It is really quite baffling the lengths Biblical inerranists would go to convince everyone else of the infallibility of Scripture, when the beauty of Scripture is in the fallibility of it!
You wrote:
“5. That is one witness in the Scriptures and unless you are insistent on considering it your preferred witness, you must know that it is of one with others like Luke 24:44. The old testament teaches us of Christ. Alone, it is but a shadow without clear features. In the New testament, it is fleshed out. But both work together to give us a full, rounded view of Christ. That is why it is dangerous to hold such a belief as you do.”
5. I am really quite baffled by the case you are making here. I simply quoted Paul telling us the purpose of the Scriptures, and you quoting Luke 24:44 back to me as if it contradicts it, is just confusing. I don’t know if you understand why you are arguing with me. The issue is not about the purpose of the Scriptures or even the authourity of the Scriptures. You can rest assured that we agree on that.
The disagreement is purely on whether or not by virtue of being called Scripture a writing can be infallible…and my case is that only Jesus is infallible. How can you argue against that? Is the Bible now the fourth God in your ‘Trinity’? Why then would you proclaim that it is dangerous for me to hold Jesus as the only infallible Word of God?
You wrote:
“7. That is quite an interesting thing to say. Even if I did not have private correspondence with you, I would wonder why anyone would assume that with my online conversing behavior I simply say what I have been taught. I say what I say and believe what I believe because I have personally proved it. I would go even further to say that in my personal salvation experience, I have walked alone more than I have walked with companions because I would not rely on other people’s ideas.”
Od, I won’t contest how you came to believe what you believe. But one thing I know…there is no original idea in this world, unless God has given NEW and direct revelation/inspiration. So however you came to believe what you believe about the Bible…you must have heard it somewhere or read it somewhere, and been convinced by what you heard or read. If you received the revelation that the Bible is the infallible word of God while reading it privately…then stand on that revelation. The Spirit of Truth assures me that it is not. And I think you skipped six, or maybe got the numbering wrong
You wrote:
“Besides all that, I have shown you how your argument is wrong. It is very dangerous to think that you can believe in Christ and walk worthy of him while doubting the very Scriptures that reveal him to you.”
Actually, you haven’t shown me how I am wrong… You have just argued your case…quite errantly I might add! You have also shown a lack of understanding of the real issue at hand. How many times have I said that I hold the Bible to be sacred, authouritative, trustworthy and profitable for teaching true doctrine? Your issue with me is simply that I do not idolise it as you do, and declare it to be as inerrant as my God! And so help me God, that will continue to be my profession. You are the one who needs to be careful about what you are idolising, and what may be preventing you from growing in your knowledge of God.
You wrote:
“8. First, what it has to do with the infallibility of Scriptures is to show you that there are no errors, rather there are puzzles that force us to expand our thinking to understand Christ.”
8. Actually, it doesn’t show that they are no errors, because the original argument made concerning that (clean and unclean food) was not an accusation of error, but an attestation to the development of inspiration as the Apostles grew in their faith and revelation of God. God knows how much more we would know if we had not begun to despise revelation, as the Apostles warned against!
“Second, another way to take what Jesus said is this: faith is not measured in sizes. If tiny faith can do great things, then the question is not what size faith anyone has but whether one has faith at all?”
Okay, I’m not going to start an argument about whether or not faith has sizes or categories… but will you deny the times Jesus marvelled and said “what great faith!” or “I have never seen such great faith!” or “oh you of little faith!”. It seems to me that Jesus did quite a bit of measuring…
You wrote:
“9. Again, the point is that it isn’t what size or type of faith you have but whether you have faith at all. Faith in Christ leads us to behave in discernible ways. If we are not behaving like that, we cannot say it is because our faith is great or small, it is because our claim to faith is a lie.”
9. Okay, I think we are moving away from the real issue here. Reminder: The issue is whether or not the Bible is the complete infallible word of God.
You wrote:
“10. Wrong again. Whether or not the Scriptures are infallible is a matter that is not subject to personal opinion. You either live under the authority of the Scriptures and please the God who is so magnanimous and so great as to communicate his thoughts perfectly and unhindered through ordinary men like us or else you do not and thus displease him.”
Ummm… again I submit to the authourity of Scripture, not because I believe it is infallible, but because it is sacred and trustworthy. The infallibility thing is just a headache I have to suffer, when I’m dealing with Biblical inerranists, who are unable to see the wood for the trees. I really don’t get why God, who demands that we live by faith would give us an instrument of absolute certainty, which you and others profess the Bible to be.
Infact…my understanding of God’s new covenant with His Church is for His Law to be inscribed in their hearts…and not in a Book. So no, I really do not believe God meant for the Bible to be taken as the infallible word of God as you so profess. I believe that the Apostles knew this too. It is a shame we have gone back to living like we are under the Old Covenant!
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them” (Hebrews 10:16).
The End.
Od
I’m going to read your response comprehensively after now but unless there is something in it that I have not made a substantial and clear response to already, I won’t be responding to it not least because you also wish to close the discussion yourself and, additionally, I do get tired of repeating myself sometimes. But before I go on to read it, there is something I must address:
“…the truth is plain for me to see, and such adamant denial of what is evidently true to all would have to be down to a serious delusion…”
The above is a quote from your latest response, Part One specifically. You have expressed this sentiment or something like it several times in the course of our acquaintance both in our private correspondence and in our public discussions, the latest of which have been in the thread where we discussed Double Standards and now here. I often hold back from calling people out on comments like this because I want to accommodate them and give them time to self-correct. It’s like what I said elsewhere about pulling my punches on this site and elsewhere. I choose not to do so because when I respond to it, I’m not reputed to be very kind about it.
Why do you think that you are the one who sees the truth here? That I – or really anybody else opposing your point of view – is really denying the truth? Why do you believe that you are on the side of the majority or that the majority is on your side? Or that it matters how many people agree with you?
Granted that I speak with great certainty about things myself, I do so because I have rigorously tested the ideas I hold. It is partly why I am never afraid of debate. I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. The proof of my confidence is in my readiness for testing. I am willing to be challenged. I am willing to be measured. I am not only ready for it, I deliberately provoke it when I can because I love the truth and want to make sure that I’m living in it at all times.
What is the proof of your own confidence? Why do you take issue with challenge? You once described my challenge as “trying to make it seem” something or other about you? It is not about you really, Ufuoma. It is not, I promise. The issue is what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong, and, because we are Christians, what is consistent with Christ and what is not.
Rather than see obstinacy in a counter-argument, why do you not see evidence of error or the lack thereof? Rather than see denial, why do you not see evidence of ignorance or the lack thereof? Otherwise, all you really see is something you dislike and don’t want to deal with. That is especially problematic if you are a teacher in the Church.
Remember those Church leaders you always take issue with? This behavior of yours is much like theirs. You get dogmatic about the things you believe and find it hard to brook disagreement and debate. Make peace with the fact that nobody has to agree with you and you’ll soon start to see where you yourself are getting it wrong and start to mend. When you do, your own confidence will be built and when you speak again, whether people love you or hate you, they will start to listen because there is truth in your words.
Again, as I said before, anyone may wish to turn these words around on me because I have gained a reputation here for holding my own views with unrepentant conviction and brooking no disagreement as well.
First, part of that reputation is only malicious. I am not unreceptive of contrary views. I accord each view due respect and examine them with all the respect I expect and hope mine will be too. So, I do not dismiss any view or project myself as being the only one who can see the truth. I expect others to be able to as well. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to interrogate their views properly.
Second, with each experience and debate I have had, I have grown in confidence in my knowledge of the truth. That makes me speak with conviction. I don’t know what I know merely from reading a lot but by interrogating every idea I come across and trying to practice what I believe is true. If any idea fails to hold up under the weight of debate and practical application, I eliminate it from my philosophy. I can’t therefore appear other than confident in debate.
If you believe these two to be the case with you, then ignore my words and forgive my presumption. If not, perhaps, accept the service I have done you even if you find it a tad distasteful.
Finally, your appeal to being in the majority is really a problem. When I got on this platform, I was treated like the Messiah for a little bit. It wasn’t long before people became dubious about me and now some are openly hostile toward me. What do you think changed? Me? I never did. I came on here to challenge immoral philosophies. I have kept right on doing that. The thing is that people love you when you are helping them beat something or someone they dislike even when they are just like the enemy you’re helping them against. If you fight for right, for truth and for Christ, then soon your own sword will turn on them and then they will want to kill you too and will soon be hailing anyone who “stands up to you”. This was why Jesus ran from people who wanted to take him by force and make him a king. You must remember that it wasn’t that long after that many of those same people were chanting “Crucify Him” and jeering at him on the Cross. Why on earth would anyone walking the path of the Cross with Christ care for popularity and appeal to majority at any point?
Looking to the Crowd for reassurance, counting the likes and the “hails” will almost always mislead you about what is right and what is wrong. In fact, in our days, the very same days of which Jesus said that the love of many will wax cold because iniquity will abound, this is the worst time to judge right and wrong by popularity. Not that the crowd will always be wrong but they can be and that is why you should never appeal to them.
I’m done. Going to read your response now.
Od
Wow. Ufuoma, I honestly thought I’d read you rehash everything you’d said before and go to bed. Now I’m glad you didn’t.
First, about the great and little faith, you did good, very good. Jesus did speak of great faith and little faith. However, in neither case did he make concessions for it (in the case of little faith) nor did he ignore other requirements for it (in the case of great faith). It’s in itself a big discussion, so I will leave it out in my response.
About the other things you have said, you are stretching yourself and that I can be part of. I can stretch too.
But your response is really long and you have demanded more from me than I was thinking I would have to give. So I won’t respond right now. That will probably be tomorrow.
Ufuomaee
Dear @Od,
Thanks for reading my response and taking the time to answer it. I look forward to reading from you. I wonder how much stretching you will be doing…
Regarding your first response, which addressed what I wrote about “strong delusion”, I would have to disagree with you on your implication that I have said such a thing to you before, either privately or publicly. Since you never addressed this issue with me privately, I don’t know what private correspondence you are talking about. What I know about you is that you would have made an issue of it, if it had been an issue. Now, concerning me saying “the truth is plain for me to see, and such adamant denial of what is evidently true to all”, that I have said to you, in different ways, and the example of our disagreement on the double-standard issue is one such occasion.
Someone said something concerning you in one of the comments that rang true to me, because it is something I had been thinking myself… They said “I do not know you but you do seem like someone who would choose to have a different opinion not cos it’s right but cos it’s arguable.” (Buzz Lightcentury in Nkechi and Eric). And sometimes, I think it isn’t just because it is arguable, but because you feel superior in your intellect, and that you know better, and even if someone makes a good point, you always feel a need to add to it…and tell them they didn’t quite get it quite right or complete. That is an issue of pride, and it comes off very badly.
Consider some of your responses on this same post to others:
“That’s the wrong way to think about this, A.”
“You are not paying attention, A.”
“I’m not sure why everyone keeps missing the point.”
These are just some examples of things you say to signify that you know better, and that other people are missing it. Now, you may be right in some or many cases, but you are not right all the time! In regards to the double standards debate, you are definitely wrong. Your responses to me did not even address the valid points I made, but you simply re-iterated what you’d said before, as though you were not even listening or trying to understand from a different perspective.
Now, consider how you responded to my post here. Other people who thought to challenge my perspective were tactful enough to begin with questions…which I went to the trouble of addressing. You, however, begin with the proclamation that I am wrong, and proceed to tell me how I am wrong…while missing the whole focus of my post and assuming that I reject the authourity of the Bible. It is as though you didn’t understand my post, or even appreciate that I am writing it as a believer of the Gospel. Your second response continues with you threatening me with a curse, meant for those who deny the true gospel and preach a Christless gospel – simply to support your case that the Bible is infallible! It doesn’t fit!
I give it to you, you can argue…and as with many good debaters, you make some good points…but you adamantly refuse to bend or consider someone else’s opinion. I have never once read you concede on an issue. So, for you to take issue with me for saying that I’m can’t see why you can’t admit the truth is really hypocritical. You have strong opinions, I have strong opinions. On this issue you think you are right, and on this issue, I believe I am right. The question is, is either or us listening to what is being said to come to the truth, or is this just an opportunity to win, and show ourselves more knowledgeable in the Scriptures.
I hope by reading my response, you can see that I hold my views by conviction, and from study and personal faith in God, just as you do. So I make no apologies, unless and until you are able to truly prove me wrong in this particular debate.
You wrote:
“Finally, your appeal to being in the majority is really a problem. When I got on this platform, I was treated like the Messiah for a little bit. It wasn’t long before people became dubious about me and now some are openly hostile toward me. What do you think changed? Me? I never did. I came on here to challenge immoral philosophies. I have kept right on doing that. The thing is that people love you when you are helping them beat something or someone they dislike even when they are just like the enemy you’re helping them against. If you fight for right, for truth and for Christ, then soon your own sword will turn on them and then they will want to kill you too and will soon be hailing anyone who “stands up to you”. This was why Jesus ran from people who wanted to take him by force and make him a king. You must remember that it wasn’t that long after that many of those same people were chanting “Crucify Him” and jeering at him on the Cross. Why on earth would anyone walking the path of the Cross with Christ care for popularity and appeal to majority at any point?”
I love this paragraph. It was the redeeming part of your comment, and I agree with you. But I think you are still misunderstanding me. Because I say something is plain for all to see is not to say everyone is on my side. The truth is I am in the minority – even though the truth is plain for all to see!!! In regards to popularity, considering I stand as Christian in this our world, I am already unpopular. As a Christian that preaches obedience to Christ, I am even hated. Now, as a Christian who doesn’t profess the Bible to be the infallible word of God, I am in the minority of minorities! It doesn’t mean that that truth is not plain for all to see!
For me, it means that those who are denying what has been proven to the true are deceived…the same ways Christians profess that atheists are willfully deceived, because God has made His presence unarguable evident to ALL! By saying so, Christians are not appealing to popularity but to common sense and discernment. That’s all I was saying regarding the issue of Biblical inerrancy and the issue of double standards. They are both common sense, and an argument against those things is really like the atheist arguing against God – such a one is deceived.
It is easy to prove that the Bible is errant, all you have to do is find one error. Atheists and many Christians who accept that the Bible is not infallible have found many! Yet, Biblical inerranists stand on “faith” that the Bible is not inerrant, quite like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes! They believed the lie of the tailor, because to accept what is plain for all to see is to not “have enough faith!”. Yet, it only took a child to point out what was obvious to all! So, that it is basis on my statement right there. There is no basis for your claim to Biblical inerrancy except for sentimentality!
Still, I await your response to my post.
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
Od
I said nothing about “strong delusion”. My post did not address anything referring to it.
I did not take it up privately with you because this is a matter like Peter’s behavior of which Paul spoke in Galatians 2. Other people are listening to you, Ufuoma. If it was merely a private failing, it would be dealt with privately.
Even were it true what Buzz Lightcentury said about me, does pointing out a failing of my own eliminate yours? Is it not better practice to learn if you do have a failing and correct it? Still, it was false. But I told him so on the same thread so its ringing true to you means nothing to me if you did not account for my response to him as well.
In connection, I hardly ever say things without offering proof of them. If I told A that she was not paying attention, did I fail to demonstrate how she was not? That would have been a failure then. The same applies to your other counter-accusations.
Managing people’s feelings is something I have indicated several times, especially to you, that I have no intention of doing. On Nnanyielugo’s thread about What Kind Of Christians we have today, I said that I chose to be offensive for a reason. It was a deliberate choice, not a lack of social etiquette. In other words, I simply chose not to care about tact. If that upsets you, more’s the pity.
Again, you fall for the very thing I warned you about. I said it was not about you but you couldn’t help reading a curse directed at you into my response to your post. That is actually the third time you did such a thing and right after a warning not to make yourself the focus of these discussions.
Again, not about me and not about you. It’s always going to be just about Christ and what is consistent with him. You will never find me bending the knee to any idea that is inconsistent with him regardless who champions it or how it is offered. On the contrary, I will always be up in arms against every idea that stands against the knowledge of Christ.
I’m not sure that there is anything I can say to the idea that an argument you have labored to make to persuade people to believe that the Bible is not 100% reliable and trustworthy (still wondering how you can trust something that can be erroneous) is actually common sense. I’m certain, at least, that if you truly believed that the unreliability of the Bible is easy to prove, you would already have done so and not resorted to kind of appeals you’re making. As a matter of fact, when I respond to your latest arguments on the matter, it will be my last on the issue. I have no interest in red herrings and straw man arguments. And I really don’t care to have anything further read into things I say.
I think that the best anyone can do is present an argument. People may listen and buy it. Or they may not. In the end, that it is heard should be the only goal a person has. Or else we will turn into monsters like Adolf Hitler Stalin, Chairman Mao, Nero and every other person out there who cannot abide being challenged. This is what I stand by. I urge you to consider standing by the same.
I will make no further response on any of this besides the one I will make to your numbered arguments.
Od
1. (a) There is no question of the privileged position of the believer. But Jesus himself who established the Church had very many disciples (the number ran as high as 500 at his death, according to Paul; and we know that there were 120 gathered together at the upper room in Jerusalem on the Pentecost) but of them he chose only twelve to be apostles. As time went on, more apostles were added in that generation by the Holy Spirit including Paul, Barnabas, Andronicus and a woman named Junia, at least.
The work of the apostles was not just to take the gospel to new places. They also structured the Faith. Nobody else had that authority. That is why they called the foundation of the Church the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. The prophets. That is why Paul had his apostleship attacked and had to defend it too. We may all of us be God’s oracles but he selected some people specially for the duty of filling up the canon, of clearly structuring the revelation of Jesus Christ by which the Church was to live and walk.
The sense in which we are all oracles is the sense in which we are all responsible to carry this revelation to the unbelieving world, to those still unsaved. We are not conduits of new revelation.
(b) The Bible itself answers this. The fact that we do not have Junia’s apostolic writings if she did produce any, the fact that there may truly have been a gospel of Philip, the fact that we may have lost perhaps as much as half of Paul’s writings does not mean that we lost the fullness of the revelation of Christ in whole or in part. Look at 2 Peter 2 and Jude. At least one commentator thinks they copied each other or copied from the same source because of the great similarity of the text.
That is not all. How many things were duplicated in the gospels? Again, in many of Paul’s letters he replicated the same teaching. To put together the sacred literature that we have, we didn’t need the same repeated over and over ad infinitum ad nauseum. We needed representative samples that were similar enough to overlap and different enough to each give us new information that would enrich us in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is why one scholar thought that the so-called contradictions in the four gospels are actually proof that they are accurate rather than erroneous. Interestingly, the man shares sentiments that can easily be thought to be like yours. He says that he does not consider the Bible literally inerrant.
(c) We will talk about sacred etc in #2. For now, we will address whether Paul was talking about John 3:16 or he was talking about the body of knowledge about Jesus Christ that he and others taught.
Paul and his fellows taught a particular message. That message was Jesus Christ. That means that it was a big gospel, not something narrow at all. Even if all they said was Jesus Christ died for you and me to be saved, they would immediately have to tell an ignorant man who Jesus Christ is and why his death should mean anything to him and again what he is being saved from and why he needs to be saved from it and…. That is proof that the body of knowledge called the Gospel or the Good News is vast. It was what, as I said before, the apostles labored to document before they passed. That is why what he said applies to the whole Scriptures. One addition to everything that has been written, any so-called new revelation apart from what they had received is under a curse.
If anyone contends the Gospel at all, they would necessarily be contradicting something that Paul and the others wrote and by extension something in the Torah.
(d) There is no question whether other Christians will build on the foundation that is Jesus Christ. There is only one whether there is any more foundation-laying going on. There is none. Only the apostles had the divine task to lay a foundation upon which everybody (including themselves) may build.
What may be built on that foundation may be fallible, there is clear revelation regarding what will happen to such structures. But the foundation itself cannot be fallible. If it was, no matter how perfect and infallible what is built on it is, it will be lost wherever the foundation fails in perfection.
Needless to say, if the apostles’ work of laying that foundation in their epistles had been less than perfect, our whole Christianity would be shot to hell. Thank God that it was not. There is no error in the apostolic writings that makes our footing in the Faith of Jesus Christ unsure.
(e) So how are we to know which revelations are true? Against what shall we test them for reliability? According to the same verse in John, it is against the Gospel of Jesus Christ which the apostles captured in writing that we are to test them. If they fail to agree with that Gospel then, of course, they are false. And if they agree with it, then, of course, they are not new for it would still be the same Gospel the apostles preached. As the Inerrant Bible says, the Spirit is one. He will not lead the apostles one way and us another. One Spirit means one message, one Gospel, one Revelation, the perfection and inerrancy of unity.
(f) Let us grant then that the curses were limited to the book of Revelation. What then does the book reveal to which any addition attracts a curse? Does anyone with any learning in the book of Revelation fail to appreciate that that was the whole story of the Bible, of the message of Jesus Christ, of the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the apostles and the hope of the saints, pressed into one book? What applies to the book of Revelation applies to the whole Bible for one reason to which there is really no need to add another: The Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ as given to the apostle John is a microcosm of the whole Bible.
Therefore, common to inerrantists or not, it is no error to say that any additions to the revelation of Jesus Christ already given through the prophets and apostles by whose hands God penned the Bible would bring in full all the curses applied in John’s book of the Revelation.
(g) Let us consider then what Paul said to see if it is good grounds to believe that if Paul were here today he would be aghast that we put so much confidence in his writings.
He said to test everything. I have shown that what must be tested must have a standard against which it must be tested. I have shown that in Paul’s days the apostles’ message had to have the backing of the Scriptures as they were known then to be acceptable. And where they stretched that canon, there was the power they had from God to confirm their words with unmatched signs and wonders and miracles.
The apostles passed all the tests in their person and in their writings. Nobody else did. Therefore, their testimony is accepted inviolate and inviolable. This is why we have confidence in his writings and others.
2. It is hardly simple if you had to go to lengths to show it.
I honestly find it really hard to see how I can work this one out. The words themselves have done all the work. You consider something impossible to violate but errant. The mind boggles. Then you use marriage as an illustration. I agree that marriage as a principle is both inviolable and inerrant. The Bible says as much. It is people who treat it as though it were not. Things that cannot marry are forced to marry but God essentially says, no, that doesn’t work. Things that can marry are forced apart. Again, God says, no, that doesn’t work either.
But because we insist, we break ourselves and other people trying to force things. Marriage is still not violated or shown erroneous in any way. Rather, we violate ourselves and damage ourselves trying to make it serve us as we wish.
To make this clearer: marriage is not wrong in being meant for one man and one woman, for being the context in which kids are raised, for being the means of preserving the sanctity and productivity of society, for being the most effective way that two sexually-enabled adults can serve God and live fruitful lives. There is no error in any of that. If marriage fails, it does not really, we fail at it. We are the ones who refuse to respect it as it should be. So, sex outside of marriage causes damage to the people having it and other people around them; kids raised outside a sacred home of mother and father are damaged; people without the love and tender care, compassion and commitment of a partner of opposite gender go about emotionally crippled and psychologically exhausted. Etc etc. Marriage is the perfect, inviolate, inviolable, inerrant answer to all that. That we fail to handle it properly does not make marriage wrong or erroneous. It makes us foolish.
3. (a) The Bible itself says that it was God-inspired or God-breathed. That is the basis of those arguments. To somehow imply that God would inspire something erroneous to guide the steps of his people in a confused and confusing world is incredible, to put it mildly. As I said to you before, the appeal to size of Faith is rather foolish. Faith is as faith does. Little or great, faith is always recognizable in people who have it. So, that appeal is counter-intuitive.
And why should we agree that the Bible is what you say it is? Because you make no arguments? Or because YOU are infallible? Don’t you find your particular confidence in the infallibility of your position ironic?
Again, “trustworthy”, “sacred” and “authoritative” are all words that I’m sure linguists other than my amateur self would be quite puzzled to find put on the other side from “inerrant”. Why would anyone trust something that might be erroneous? Why would they hold it sacred or trust to its authority? The mind boggles.
(b) I cannot speak for your appreciation of intelligence, Ufuoma. So, I don’t know what you expect me to do with it when you throw it into an argument. It does not in any way show that your arguments are logical and sensible or that mine are not. I can no more make sense of it than I can make sense of how the color blue must look to your eyes or feel to your mind.
Regarding the argument in question here, it is up to you to make of Jesus’s statement what you will. I certainly offered it for you to do precisely that. However, I know that he said many times that the Scriptures were written about him. It would seem then that if you wanted to get to know him as a person, the Scriptures are a good way to go. In so far as a book can be a version of a person, that means the Bible is unequalled in that regard.
But…believe what you please, Ufuoma. You are welcome to your beliefs.
END OF PART ONE RESPONSE.
Od
4. Really, why should I believe that he was oblivious? Because you prefer that I do? If you fail to see how Paul was not oblivious of his role in writing the Scriptures, the fault is not necessarily with me. Have I been unclear in my arguments? Have I failed in any way to provide examinable evidence? It is up to you to do what you can with the arguments and proofs I have offered. What you choose to see is not necessarily something I can help.
And why exactly would the Spirit of God not lead Paul to write about a cloak he wanted brought to him? Why is it far-fetched to believe that he was in total agreement with the Holy Spirit to write every single thing he did? Is it all just because you don’t like it? Why should I care about your preferences, Ufuoma?
The beauty of the Scriptures is in their fallibility? Pray tell how. Or are we talking about the kind of beauty where I thought that the weird way my ex’s ankle turned was so cute to me at the time? The mind boggles.
5. Good. Then, you noticed that there was at least a seeming contradiction between the two, didn’t you? THAT, Ufuoma, was the point. I told you of puzzles in the Scriptures, did I not?
Remember, you’re the one who said you’re confused here. Of course, I know what we’re discussing. We do? You and I agree on the authority of the Scriptures?
That is what we call a straw man argument, only this one is ingenious. Now you insinuate that my arguments are attacking the argument that only Jesus is infallible. That is pretty amazing. All you had to do was completely ignore that all this time you had been arguing that the only source of information we have on Infallible Jesus is not reliable. Then you create a whole new argument that you claim you have been making that Jesus is the only one who is infallible and then accuse me of attacking it. It’s incredible.
Jesus was never going to be on earth indefinitely. He wasn’t around before he came in the flesh to tell the world about himself. He wasn’t here after. He needed and prepared and used men both before and after to preserve a reliable testimony about himself for a light to guide the world. Therefore, the media he used had to be completely reliable and infallible, just like himself, I might add.
So, how exactly am I arguing against his infallibility now? Is he incapable, in his infallibility, of making a testimony of himself infallible as well? And you accuse “inerrantists” of going to lengths to prove the unproveable!
7. (a) So, you’re no longer attributing my arguments to something I mindlessly adopted from my teachers? 🙂 You made a hasty statement and a very ill-advised one just to prove a point. As a matter of fact, you’ve made a lot of them in this discussion. You cannot dismiss my arguments on the claim that I just repeated what I had heard from my teachers. You have to do the actual work of discrediting the arguments, if at all possible, on their own merit.
Needless to say, I don’t believe the spirit that told you such a thing. So far, it is failing to prove that it is of God because it asks us to doubt the one source we have for information on Jesus Christ and rely on things or ideas or something that we cannot hold to any standard. If you are comfortable living that way, while I’m grieved that you should be, I really cannot take it away from you. I just worry about where it will take you in the end. But, it is all your choice and not mine to make for you.
Yes, I skipped #6. For that one, you had said “no argument here”, so there was nothing more to say.
(b) Of course I have argued, that is what it means to show something. I used my arguments to show you how you were wrong. It was up to you to show me that I was wrong too. Did you expect me to show you some other way? And, as I told you before, that you say it does not make it so. I have no reason to believe that I have argued “errantly”. You need to use better arguments to demonstrate to me how I have and then I will either be reasonable enough to accept correction or else I will be too obtuse to listen but at least the witness will be in the quality of the arguments you make.
Oh my! Wow! Lol! That’s quite a mouthful! Not only have I argued my case – and that was apparently the wrong thing to do – and argued it “errantly, I have also shown a lack of understanding of the real issues at hand, I idolize the Bible and I’m somehow stagnated in my growth in the knowledge of God too as a result. And all of this is true because Infallible You said it and you cannot stoop so low as to prove a single thing you say. Just the fact that you say it makes it true. I hope you understand that that is precisely the meaning of arrogance. It isn’t the buzzword people use when they feel intimidated by someone else. It actually has a meaning and you just typified it.
8. (a) I confess that I don’t know how this attestation is not the same as the claim that there was an error. When you said that they grew in inspiration, were you not suggesting that what the said at earlier stages of growth may have been erroneous and they learned better later? Was that not the point you were making?
And how are we to know which things they said were said or written when? The Bible was not arranged chronologically. Are we merely to rely on this nebulous “ministry of the Holy Spirit” as a separate agency from the Bible? Why should we trust it either?
(b) Not addressing this as I earlier said.
9. Not addressing this either as I earlier said.
10. Again, “sacred” and “trustworthy” but still susceptible to error. The mind boggles.
So, now, Faith requires instruments of uncertainty. That is interesting. Jesus himself said, “if you will not believe my words, believe them for my works’ sake.” It seems to me that God wants us to walk by faith in things we cannot see drawing confidence from things which we have seen so far. Or else how would we even believe in Jesus Christ at all? He never should have come to earth at all. It is unreasonable, after all, to demand that a person believe something that he cannot even begin to imagine or to relate to something in his experience.
God did say that he would write his laws upon our heart. That much I know. That much the Scriptures themselves (which, according to you should not be completely trusted) say. But that he would not write them in a book is entirely of your own fabrication. There is not one single place in the Scriptures where God said that he would not write his laws in a book in the New Covenant.
However, the meaning of his words in the place you quoted is significant. God said essentially that he would put his laws inside us. This is true. We received the Holy Spirit who is responsible to make us like Christ. But we were also told in the Bible (which, according to you, we should not trust completely for accuracy) that we become like Christ as we look into the Word of God, which Peter said that we should desire earnestly so that we can grow by it.
Granted that we have urges inside of us to behave like Christ now that we are born anew, we also still have the urges of the flesh and the struggle can become very difficult to discern sometimes. How do we know which pull is which in the middle of a moral battle or, as we call it, a temptation? Shall we just miraculously know? Where does the Scripture say we shall? And should we trust the Bible if it does say so…or doesn’t…if it is not inerrant?
The Bible was given to teach us, to admonish us, to correct us and to encourage us. When we are confused on any point, the Spirit of God in us uses what is written to clarify to us what we must do. Without the Bible, we live at risk of delusion and insanity. Anybody could get up and say anything about God and Life and we would have no way of knowing if it was true. How would you trust the inner knowledge or voices that you yourself would hear then? How would you know which visions and revelations come from God? We would all be “freestyling” Christianity and life, so to speak. There are many today who want it that way so they talk about how there are many legitimate truths and everyone should walk in their own truth and judge nobody else. But the end of that road is summary destruction for all who follow it.
As I said before, I say again, you are at liberty to believe whatever you please, Ufuoma. But be extremely careful what you claim to be the position of the Spirit of God on any matter.
END OF ALL RESPONSES.
Chiebuka
I think that the Abrahamaic religions are quite similar, that might explain the conversion from one to the other.
Great post, and as usual @od; thanks for the thought provoking comment.
Ufuomaee
Thanks for reading and commenting @chiebuka
Ramatu
Wow! First off Ufuoma, when I saw the title, I almost skipped over because I thought this was going to be something that would be unintelligently written and would leave me angry at how many people just don’t let the HOLY SPIRIT teach them. Suffice to say, I bless GOD for making me click that button! This is so beautifully written that I just want to lie down and worship GOD for such wisdom.
Thank you for writing what I have always felt GOD was showing me. It shows that the SPIRIT is one!
Thank you!
I am going to share this everywhere I can! Proud to have taken a glimpse into your mind; and thus, the SPIRIT of our KING!
Ufuomaee
Thanks Ramatu! If only you knew how encouraging your words are 🙂 I thank God for leading you to click and to read, and to learn that there are more of us who depend on the Spirit of God to lead us into all truth.
Glad to meet you x Thanks also for sharing!
Tj
In ruminating over this topic, some questions came to my mind, which I would like to share.
1.)
If the Bible is not infallible, who determines what part is wrong? You? Me? Your general overseer? Or maybe even the Pope? Or the Holy Spirit(who by the way, may be fake)?
2.)
If the Bible is not error -free, how can we trust anything it says? How are we sure the whole Bible isn’t a con?
I think this post questions the very essence and foundation of Christianity and must be urgently addressed.
I don’t the answers to any of these questions, but I’ll do some studying.
Ufuomaee
Hi Tj,
I have responded to your questions below, in case you didn’t get notification of my response. Please scroll down.
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
Tj
*don’t have
Omali
It will be very helpful if you explain certain terms. What do you mean by “the Bible’s authority is built on the authority of the Church”? Yet you said that it inspired by God, it the scriptures and holy, yet its authority is from men?
What do you mean by “word of God”? Jesus as the Word of God, meaning that by means of him all things were created and came to be and that by means of Jesus, God communicates his instructions and information to angels and humans, his spokesperson. If theses are your
thoughts, then I agree.
COMPLETE word of God? Do you mean there something more that has to be said outside of the bible that is only revealed by Christ and the holy spirit? If it is the holy spirit that speaks to us, and leads us to the truth.
What validates that “truth”? How can we assume that it is the holy spirit that is revealing to us and not something else? Demons are spirits too. So I ask what is that “truth”? How do you know that “truth” is valid? There has to be a basis or a foundation to which we validate the “truth” with ourselves. I am sure that you reference to the things God’s have said or done which is all found in the bible. So if the bible is not inerrant, but you reference that to validate your beliefs. Then can your “truth” or belief system be inerrant? The reason why there are so many churches, sect, and religion is that many are left to their own interpretation of what the will or spirit of God is or what “truth” has been revealed to them. That how we have many false doctrines like Trinity (story for another day) and many others. The bible provides the guidelines (by means of God of course) and written within it is what God desire of us. The holy spirit helps us increase our understanding of God’s wisdom, so that we can follow him closely. It also helps to retain and recall information that we have already learn in the bible when we have doubt or questions.
Ufuomaee
Hi Omali,
I have responded to your questions below, in case you didn’t get notification of my response. Please scroll down.
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
Jude
@ufuomaee …i do not have problem with your beliefs as a Christian…but your understanding of certain things begs some questions……1…if you as. Christian do not see the Bible as the infallible word of God….who then should..2…what is the gospel truth as your article reads …
Ufuomaee
Dear Jude,
I have responded to your questions below, in case you didn’t get notification of my response. Please scroll down.
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
Ufuomaee
Dear @Tj, @omali, @jude, @od and others who may be interested or have similar questions.
I thought it best to address you all, since you seem to share the same concerns (but I’m afraid it’s a long one and I’m sending it in two batches). I already wrote a long post earlier this year, in an attempt to try to explain my point of view to other Believers. It is called My Case for Jesus, the Word of God and the Ministry of the Holy Spirit. I invite you to read it here, if you are interested in a deeper study (https://ufuomaee.com/2016/01/14/the-word-of-god/).
You have asked me:
1. If the Bible is not infallible, who determines what part is wrong?
2. You? Me? Your general overseer? Or maybe even the Pope? Or the Holy Spirit(who by the way, may be fake)?
3. If the Bible is not error-free, how can we trust anything it says?
4. How are we sure the whole Bible isn’t a con?
5. What do you mean by “the Bible’s authority is built on the authority of the Church”?
6. What do you mean by “word of God”?
7. COMPLETE word of God?
8. Do you mean there something more that has to be said outside of the bible that is only revealed by Christ and the holy spirit?
9. What validates that “truth”?
10. How can we assume that it is the holy spirit that is revealing to us and not something else?
11. So I ask what is that “truth”?
12. How do you know that “truth” is valid?
13. So if the bible is not inerrant, but you reference that to validate your beliefs. Then can your “truth” or belief system be inerrant?
14. If you as. Christian do not see the Bible as the infallible word of God….who then should?
15. What is the gospel truth as your article reads?
Okay, that’s a lot of questions, and some answers will answer several of them. However, before I begin to answer your questions, please help me take off any religious hang-ups you might have, and put on your thinking caps. Because like I said, there are too many things we accept without thinking…and the true worship of God requires the use of our minds too.
I want to ask you some questions too. The first and most obvious question for me is: “Why the need for infallibility?” By that, I am asking, why do you or anyone need to believe that the Bible is infallible in order to receive its account by faith and trust it? Your parents, teachers or doctors do not claim infallibility – but in their areas of responsibility over you, they claim to be trustworthy, authouritative and profitable! The Bible doesn’t demand more than this.
Now, Paul said concerning the Jewish Scriptures (as you will remember that there were no other acceptable Scriptures that Paul could have been talking about) as being “given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”. Paul did not once say that the Scriptures are without error! Neither did Jesus or any other gospel writer. Here is a quote from my long post on the matter of Scripture being inviolable:
“I’ve also contemplated on Jesus’s statement that “scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). I understand that to mean that once bound, scripture cannot be loosed; its authourity is honored also in Heaven. We are taught in scripture that our words have power (Pro 18:21) and we must be careful what we say, because Jesus said we will give an account of every careless word (Matt 12:36-37).”
Neither did Paul or Jesus or anybody else claim that the Scriptures were finite or complete in anyway. If they had attested to the completeness of Scripture within the accounts of the Bible, then they would have exempted their own words from being canonised as Scripture in the Bible, because ALL references to Scripture in the Bible was concerning the Jewish Scriptures only.
So, my second question to you is “How would you determine or prove infallibility?”. For an infallible claim to take hold, you must be able to prove that there isn’t a single error in the whole of Scripture. It isn’t simply about being able to explain every contentious or contradictory statement, or throwing it into the “God alone knows” or “the Spirit will reveal the truth to you” pile, when you are faced with real discrepancies in the Bible. However, the Church thought it would be sufficient to stick a label of inerrancy on Scripture to end all arguments…but it has only made those who are desperately seeking answers to reject the Bible as a pack of lies!
I don’t reject the Bible as a pack of lies. I don’t need the Bible to be infallible, and I actually see the flaws in it as testimony of its authenticity! The power of God in using a diverse number of witnesses and writers to bring the Book together is more evident. If it was flawless, read the same way throughout, I might actually suspect foul-play. That perhaps one person or a group of people connived to bring it about.
In case you are wondering what errors or inconsistencies I may be referring to, let us consider when Christ was risen. There are two different testimonies on this… One is “on the third day”, and another is “after three days”. You can see that after three days is actually going to be on the fourth day. Another discrepancy that someone brought my attention to, through his post, just yesterday, is that of Jesus’ robe – what colour was it? You can read the post here: https://jamesbishopblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/jesus-robe-disproves-classical-biblical-inerrancy/. As you can imagine, there are a few others, that looking for such inconsistencies in the Bible has become a sport for Atheists! It is better not to put such a burden on the Bible, that can only be laid on God.
My third question is, “Do you really believe the Bible?” If you really believe the Bible, then you will read it as one who does believe that it is an authentic literature written to edify the true believers in God and His Christ! You will also believe it when it says that Jesus is in fact The Word of God. And when you read the record, that God said concerning Jesus, “this is My beloved Son with Whom I am well-pleased, hear Him”, you would turn to Jesus for the words of life!!! When you turn to Jesus for the words of life, you will receive wisdom that is greater than Solomon (Matt 12:42)! And if you truly believe in Jesus, and obey Him, you will receive the indwelling Holy Spirit as promised…who Jesus has told us to trust Him to lead us into ALL TRUTH, because He is the Spirit of Truth.
It is for a lack of genuine faith and belief in the Bible, that Christians today rely on the letter and not the Spirit! They did not truly believe that God’s Spirit of Truth could lead them into all truth. So what did they do? They sealed off the Scriptures to that of the accounts contained in the Bible, and declared that GOD HAS STOPPED SPEAKING! Now, you can no longer be led by the Spirit of Truth into all truth. If it’s not in the Bible, then it’s not God speaking! Yet, the Bible itself testifies that in the last days, God will pour out His Spirit on all flesh, and they will prophesy! Do you think they will be reciting old prophecies from the Bible? Will the Spirit of God not give them old things as well as new (Matt 13:52)?
I’ll continue my response in another comment…
Ufuomaee
Now that I have asked what I think are the real pertinent questions, let me try my best to answer your genuine concerns @tj, @omali, @od, @jude:
1. “If the Bible is not infallible, who determines what part is wrong?”
If God’s Spirit is in you, then you will be able to discern truth from error, for the Spirit He has given to those who believe is the Spirit of Truth. If you do not exercise this ability, like all other abilities, you will lose the ability to discern. But if you are truly born of the Spirit – you have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16).
2. “You? Me? Your general overseer? Or maybe even the Pope? Or the Holy Spirit(who by the way, may be fake)?”
I’m concerned with your comment that the Holy Spirit may be fake. Are you saying that you think you received a fake spirit? Or you think I received a fake spirit? Jesus said we should ask for the Spirit by faith, believing that God will not give us anything contrary (Luke 11:11-13)). As with all things godly, we walk by faith and not by sight. If you have a relationship with God, you really won’t need anyone to teach you (1 John 2:27)…because the Spirit will do that. The Spirit uses not only the Bible in teaching us wisdom, but life experiences and counsel from trusted (and even untrusted sources… God can speak through someone who doesn’t even know He is speaking through them to get to a Believer… If you have the spirit of discernment, you will hear His voice).
3. “If the Bible is not error-free, how can we trust anything it says?”
Again, I must ask… Do you trust your doctor? Why? Because he studied long and hard for his degree, has years of experience, and has been entrusted with the responsibility of treating people like you… Yet, he or she is not inerrant!!! We can and should trust the Bible because it is best record we have of historical facts concerning the Jews and the Early Christians, we believe that God inspired those whose writings are contained within, and the wisdom contained within has been tested and tried to be above all other wisdom. We can trust it because it is trustworthy and good. And if we stumble on a contradiction, we consult the Spirit of God, who inspired it…maybe something was lost in translation. We would only discard it as untrue if we do not have the Spirit of the God who inspired it.
4. “How are we sure the whole Bible isn’t a con?”
Again, this is back to the question of why you need the Bible to be infallible! It’s an issue of faith. Faith exists because there is no absolute certainty. We are not God. Our interaction with God is immaterial, unless we are one of the few fortunate ones, like Paul, who can testify to a spiritual encounter. But even Paul applied faith that it was Jesus he saw, and not a false Spirit. How did he know for certain…? The Spirit in him must have witnessed that THIS IS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. By the same way, we accept the Bible as a true testament of God and His Christ.
5. “What do you mean by “the Bible’s authority is built on the authority of the Church”?”
The Church, which was still united at the time, compiled the Scriptures and bound them as two Testaments. They acted with the authourity Christ gave them to bind any matter. So the Bible is also recognised as a Canon of Scripture in Heaven. No other Scripture can be added to the Biblical canon. However, though the Bible is sealed as the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God has not been sealed off. The same Spirit that inspired Paul, Peter, James, John and others to write, is the same Spirit that is in every true Believer. We give special honour to the Bible which has been SET APART as sacred – Holy and trusted, but it would be wrong to say it is either the complete or inerrant Word of God.
6. “What do you mean by “word of God”?”
The best way I can answer this is by quoting from the long article I wrote previously:
“ “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11).
“The expression “the word of the Lord” was used in the Old Testament, whenever God brought a message through His prophets (255 occurrences in KJV). The term “the word of God” was rarely used in the Old Testament (appearing only four times in KJV). However, it was popularly used in the New Testament (44 times), often by Jesus, but mostly by His Apostles. It was mostly used in reference to the teaching of the Gospel of Christ (Acts 11:1), and rarely in relation to the revelations of old (Mark 7:11), which were often referred to as ‘the Scriptures’.
“In a number of places, there is a reference to the word of God increasing (Acts 6:7), which could mean the preaching of the gospel or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit being more common. Peter believed this was a fulfilment of prophecy when he quoted the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).
“I also see this happening among Christians, who through the Internet, share the gospel message to any that will hear. Through Christian hymns, music, film and literature, the word of God – the Gospel message – is abounding through the work of the Holy Spirit.”
The Word of God is simply God’s message to us, whether timely or eternal. Also:
“It is important to make a distinction between the enduring Word of God (as revealed in Christ) and the timely word of God (as revealed to men). One is whole and infallible, while the other is neither.”
7. “COMPLETE word of God?”
This means that Jesus is the FULLNESS of God’s revelation to man. He is the full expression of God’s love, wisdom and power. He is the entire message that God wants us to receive. When we believe in Jesus and receive His Spirit within us, we have the indwelling Word of God, and can literally speak as the oracles of God (1 Pet 4:11, Col 3:16).
8. “Do you mean there something more that has to be said outside of the bible that is only revealed by Christ and the holy spirit?”
Unless it has been preserved, I cannot tell you for certain that “more has been said” that is not contained in the Bible. Hence the wisdom of binding the Bible. This has ensured its survival over the centuries.
Jesus said He had many more things to say to His disciples apart from what He said while present with them. We are even told that if there was a record of everything the Lord said, there would not be space in the world to contain the books that would be written… So why did the Church arbitrarily decide that there would be no more revelations after John’s Revelation and the Apostle’s epistles? Was it from fear of men or faith in God?
Has irreplaceable as the Bible is to our faith, we cannot idolise it as God, which is what we do, when we declare it the infallible word of God, and replace our ability to hear directly from God. Has God spoken to me apart from the Bible? Yes. But mostly, He has used the Bible, and what He has revealed has given me a richer understanding of the Scriptures.
9. “What validates that “truth”?”
The Bible is the only trustworthy, authouritative standard we have for the teaching of our Faith in Christianity. This is because the Church is now divided, and it is basically the only thing we agree on (as much as we are able to agree on it!!!). It remains that if we must validate any truth as revealed by the Holy Spirit, we should seek to find alignment with Scripture. You will note that many of my pieces, and even my response now has been supported by Scripture. Again, being a standard, doesn’t make it infallible.
10. “How can we assume that it is the holy spirit that is revealing to us and not something else?”
This is an issue of the sincerity of your relationship with God. The Bible is approved…we can trust it in areas of uncertainty about any revelations we have received from God.
11. “So I ask what is that “truth”?”
You ask this as though you have all truth and there is none other. God is Truth. How unsearchable is He? How long will it take you to know the entirety of God? Do you think you have figured Him out, or He is limited to what has already been revealed and written about Him? Are you sure you will not be surprised when you do meet Him face to face and realise that much of what was given as revelation was like a blurred vision of the Truth? I can’t tell you what the whole Truth is, but I know the One who is revealing the Truth to me, and He is greater than the Bible, and is not limited by the Bible.
12. “How do you know that “truth” is valid?”
I know the Spirit of God. I know the Message of Christ. I have quite a lot already, gained from the Bible. If God was to reveal something else to me, I need only see how it fits in with what I already know. If it absolutely doesn’t fit, I have reason to question it, by taking it back to God. Maybe it is my perspective that is lacking… But as long as I am open to being taught by God, I will grow in wisdom. But if I think I know it all, I will not even understand the truth that is before me…quite like much of the Church doesn’t understand the truth that is before them as written in the Bible, because they have rejected the Wisdom of Christ!
13. “So if the bible is not inerrant, but you reference that to validate your beliefs. Then can your “truth” or belief system be inerrant?”
Absolutely not. I hope that has been clear. No one is infallible but Jesus. Not Paul or Peter or Moses or Isaiah… Only Jesus’ words should be received as the infallible word of God. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet (1 Cor 14:32).
14. “If you as. Christian do not see the Bible as the infallible word of God….who then should?”
No one should see the Bible as infallible. It is a misplaced faith. It is enough that it is authouritative.
15. “What is the gospel truth as your article reads?”
I made mention of it in my post. Let me quote it: “God sent His beloved Son to die on a Cross to save them from eternal death”. It is a mere paraphrase of the Gospel message. This is what Jesus told His disciples to go into all the world preaching…and of course, He also said for them to teach others the wisdom He had taught them.
I hope I have done justice to your questions and the issue at hand. Thanks for engaging me.
Curious
Thanks to author for this timely piece on the Bible.
Jesus is the Word that became flesh. He is the secret to victorious Christian living.
A year or so ago, I came across an image of a Bible on Facebook. It was a beautifully designed picture with a gigantic door that led a number of people on to a path, and behind the door was a picture of what the author portrayed as heaven. The caption on the image reads: “The Bible is the only way to heaven.” And as expected of believers with a herd mentality, many of the respondents typed “Amen.” Some others responded with a “yes.”
After a few seconds of reading comments, I simply typed, “No, Bible is not the way to heaven or God; Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life…no man comes to the Father but by Him.”
Some months later, the same picture made its way into my news feed, but with a caption: “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life…”
The holy Bible has been idolized by many Christians, especially in Africa.
Ufuomaee
Thank you for appreciating my piece and praise God for the understanding He has given you. Not all can see the truth, but only those that God wills to see will see..
Sincerely, Ufuoma.
woyi_0c
EWOOOOOOOO ???????????? @ufuomaee @od Una just turn comment section to bible study an dissection class. Pesin fit use am do handout for Bible school sef
Reminds me of the 10-20 minute devotions I’d have with popsi…..that would end up going on for 3-4 hours because dissection no fit finish.
Ufuomaee
LOL! You’re funny 🙂
woyi_0c
@ufuomaee Aunty!! As always, something to think about yiu have given unto me, yes. Mhmm. Also you try oh. See as you dissect all the inquiries people had.
Ufuomaee
Thank you 🙂
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