How do you understand the Inspiration of Scripture.

Most Christians affirm that Scripture is inspired, but it seems there is quite a bit of difference in defining what it is. Some would say the writers wrote what the Holy Spirit dictated, while others would say the writers were inspired from faith and wrote for faith. I think the different understanding of the inspiration of Scriptures inform our understanding of the primacy of Holy Writ.
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  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    edited January 30
    I'm years from seminary, and admit that theology is very fudgey kind of thing for me, but my usual off the cuff is that Jesus is the incarnation. The Gospels are the closest report we have of his life, works, and teachings; the Epistles were the closest report we have of the establishment of the early church, and the Old Testament (as we call it) is the record of the God he is and culture he emerged from.

    In that sense, while I have great respect for it as an authority on Jesus Christ, especially for anyone who would call themselves Christian, I don't have a particularly high view of its divine inspiration.

    I also feel like expressing an opinion on a serious question of this sort is like binding a steel rod to your head during a thunderstorm. Such is faith.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited January 30
    I think there’s significant subjectivity in play. I’ve said for a long time that there are things in scripture that inspire me, and other things which repel me. The claim of universal inspiration for the texts doesn’t fit my experience of inspiration.

    An analogy for me is the harmony and discord of music. There I know and experience inspiration in listening. “Ode to Joy”, the sublime “Pearl Fishers” duet by Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill. That’s much more than an aesthetic appreciation. I’m uplifted. So it is with the most sublime scriptures. But definitely not with all scriptures.

    I think it’s perfectly possible to sit, as the Reformers say, under scripture, recognise and accept the challenges and also be honestly aware of what is going on in me at the same time.

    I’m a part of a Christian Community and that’s important. It’s a help in recognising inspiration in others. in the midst of our fallibilities. It’s important to recognise my, and their, fallibilities. It can also be inspiring. I’ve had some of that this week.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    Bullfrog wrote: »
    I'm years from seminary, and admit that theology is very fudgey kind of thing for me, but my usual off the cuff is that Jesus is the incarnation. The Gospels are the closest report we have of his life, works, and teachings; the Epistles were the closest report we have of the establishment of the early church, and the Old Testament (as we call it) is the record of the God he is and culture he emerged from.

    In that sense, while I have great respect for it as an authority on Jesus Christ, especially for anyone who would call themselves Christian, I don't have a particularly high view of its divine inspiration.

    I also feel like expressing an opinion on a serious question of this sort is like binding a steel rod to your head during a thunderstorm. Such is faith.

    Pretty well where I'm at, given that this is another of those things that are much discussed because none of us really knows.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    I think there’s significant subjectivity in play. I’ve said for a long time that there are things in scripture that inspire me, and other things which repel me. The claim of universal inspiration for the texts doesn’t fit my experience of inspiration.

    An analogy for me is the harmony and discord of music. There I know and experience inspiration in listening. “Ode to Joy”, the sublime “Pearl Fishers” duet by Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill. That’s much more than an aesthetic appreciation. I’m uplifted. So it is with the most sublime scriptures. But definitely not with all scriptures.

    I think it’s perfectly possible to sit, as the Reformers say, under scripture, recognise and accept the challenges and also be honestly aware of what is going on in me at the same time.

    I’m a part of a Christian Community and that’s important. It’s a help in recognising inspiration in others. in the midst of our fallibilities. It’s important to recognise my, and their, fallibilities. It can also be inspiring. I’ve had some of that this week.

    Forgive me, but that's about what scripture does to you, not about how it was done.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    To an extent, the question has little meaning. If the Holy Spirit dictated the words of a passage or if the words are the product of purely human intellect putting their understanding into words (or, some mode of "inspiration" between those extremes) doesn't make a lot of difference to what we have. All modes end up with words written in a language that the intended audience can understand, using concepts and ideas that could be understood by that audience, addressing particular issues and concerns relating to that audience.

    As Christians coming to those same words two thousand years or more later then regardless of the mode of inspiration we still need to do our due diligence to understand those words - using the skills of translators to give us the words in English (as most don't read Greek or Hebrew), ideally multiple translators taking particular care where they may disagree, and commentators. We still need to know the culture that these words were written in and to, how people in that time and place would have understood those words, what issues and concerns were being addressed. And, after all that we still need to work through how those words would apply to our lives today.
  • I have taken the view for a long time that the Bible writing is human writing of their exploration of the nature and person of God.

    This is inspired because it is also the gradual revelation of God to people as much as they can handle and accept.

    And they can then inspire us in our seeking of the divine. We are on the same journey, so they can teach us.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    The question assumes a supernatural, divine influence on, in nature. Where does that begin and end? For moderns it is as minimal as possible, with the divine being a magnetic pole at the very most, in hindsight, up until the incarnation. Without that, the scriptures look entirely natural. Non-teleological. The incarnation is an extrapolation of teleology beyond them. For which there is no unnatural evidence whatsoever. The inspiration of scripture is in our search for meaning.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    It’s a dynamic, Martin54. My individual experience of inspiration interacts with what inspiration us, or others claim it to be, so far as scripture is concerned. Of course I know, in an intellectual level, what those various “God-breathed” claims are. They are interesting, challenging, and challengeable. Does that process really get to the heart of what inspiration is, or might be? Not for me. Heart, mind and soul are all involved.

    I like the music analogy, because my experience is that music “speaks” directly, touching the heart and the mind.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    So, Barnabas62, you are the inspiration of scripture. And I'm not being funny. I mean that. It's entirely, and rightly, about what you bring to the party. Which one posits has a transpersonal element. Or you project inspiration.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    The Bible is not the same as the Koran. Some Christians seem to think it is.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited January 30
    I’m in community. My personal view of inspiration is my responsibility. I also accept. as a matter of community responsibility, the more general view of the community I belong to.

    To quote myself, I do sit under Scripture, but that doesn’t stop me having questions and provisional opinions. And to quote the Northumbria Community, to which I also belong, the ‘heretical imperative’, (the freedom to question) is a good thing.

    I’m not the measure of anything! But it’s probably better to say that scripture inspires me, rather than the other way round.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    I function quite well in a Christian working community, which I value highly, to say the least. Not as highly as I need; familiarity and contempt and all that. My life would be much more desperate without it. I sit under common humanity, highly privileged, struggling late for enlightened self interest, but we do create each other, yes. Others create us. We write our stories best - and worst - with others. We are hard wired, biased in the the neuron, for hope. Inspiration. We inspire ourselves. We feel what we feel, We think what we think. It's all about what nature brings to the party. Inspiration,
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    The Bible is not the same as the Koran. Some Christians seem to think it is.

    Do you mean the Quran is 'expired' rather than 'inspired'?
  • I think the Orthodox idea of 'synergia' is helpful here.

    'Men (people) moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.'

    The Incarnation is the key to all of this.

    If Christ can be God and human at one and the same time so the Bible can also be divinely inspired and humanly constructed at one and the same time and the Church can both be a 'divine' and also very human institution at one and the same time.

    Most debates about 'inerrancy' and 'infallibility' in relation to inspiration etc leave me cold. Not because I don't think they are important but because they almost inevitably, in my view, lead to a form of brittle reductionism.

    It all becomes very 'Scholastic' in the negative sense.
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    Eirenist wrote: »
    The Bible is not the same as the Koran. Some Christians seem to think it is.

    It really isn't. The Quran is the final revelation of God to humanity. The Bible is an earlier revelation. Unless you're a Mormon. Or a Scientologist. Then, you have other, newer books.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    No, I understand the Qu'ran is believed by Muslimsto have been dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, and so literally the words of Allah. On the other hand, I take the Bible to be writings of various kinds and times, which have been thought by believers to exemplify God's dealings with humanity.Some are folk tales, some chronicles, some poetry, some stories, letters, anecdotes, maxims, meditations. The Gospels are anecdotes about Jesus and his teachings, assembled and presented to is 'that we may believe'. The writer of John is explicit about this. So I do not understand why Martin54 gets so worked up about the 'Pericope Adulterae' (I'm sorry to be dragging him in here). It's an anecdote about Jesus, and a good one teaching about attitudes to sin and the sinner, and is useful for teaching. Historical accuracy and derivation are beside the point. We worship a living God who will lead us ino all truth, not one locked immutably into a book.
  • I'd take a 'higher' view of scripture than that, @Eirenist but agree in broad terms about the 'pericope adulterae' and such.

    I heard the other day about someone who lost their faith because they found out that the Petrine epistles may not have been written by the Apostle Peter himself.
  • TwangistTwangist Shipmate
    I'd take a 'higher' view of scripture than that, @Eirenist but agree in broad terms about the 'pericope adulterae' and such.

    I heard the other day about someone who lost their faith because they found out that the Petrine epistles may not have been written by the Apostle Peter himself.

    Babies and bathwater...
    All or nothing thinking can be very dangerous.
    I've read that a lot of the impetus behind terms such as inerrant and infallible is to do with Scottish common sense philosophy whatever that is/was.
  • I take a very similar view to @Eirenist, but if anything lower. The biblical texts are full of human tribal hatreds, interspersed occasionally by shots of divine love. The latter mostly strike me as happy accidents, which might be an account of divine inspiration.

    If there is inspiration, then it happens through the ongoing miracle of the Incarnation - human beings with the Holy Spirit within them - which at least can be all of us - understanding themselves and life in the light of that spirit.
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    Eirenist wrote: »
    No, I understand the Qu'ran is believed by Muslimsto have been dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, and so literally the words of Allah. On the other hand, I take the Bible to be writings of various kinds and times, which have been thought by believers to exemplify God's dealings with humanity.Some are folk tales, some chronicles, some poetry, some stories, letters, anecdotes, maxims, meditations. The Gospels are anecdotes about Jesus and his teachings, assembled and presented to is 'that we may believe'. The writer of John is explicit about this. So I do not understand why Martin54 gets so worked up about the 'Pericope Adulterae' (I'm sorry to be dragging him in here). It's an anecdote about Jesus, and a good one teaching about attitudes to sin and the sinner, and is useful for teaching. Historical accuracy and derivation are beside the point. We worship a living God who will lead us ino all truth, not one locked immutably into a book.

    I'd say that your understanding of what Muslims believe about it doesn't not make it the last revelation of God/Allah/YHWH. The Bible is an amazing anthology. The Quran is an amazing testament. "All truth" would seem to include them both. And others.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I consider them human creations reflective of the time in which they lived.
  • Twangist wrote: »
    I'd take a 'higher' view of scripture than that, @Eirenist but agree in broad terms about the 'pericope adulterae' and such.

    I heard the other day about someone who lost their faith because they found out that the Petrine epistles may not have been written by the Apostle Peter himself.

    Babies and bathwater...
    All or nothing thinking can be very dangerous.
    I've read that a lot of the impetus behind terms such as inerrant and infallible is to do with Scottish common sense philosophy whatever that is/was.

    I suspect it's a reference to the Scottish Enlightenment.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited January 30
    The_Riv wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    The Bible is not the same as the Koran. Some Christians seem to think it is.

    It really isn't. The Quran is the final revelation of God to humanity. The Bible is an earlier revelation. Unless you're a Mormon. Or a Scientologist. Then, you have other, newer books.

    There is a bigger difference. Christians believe that God's last revelation to humanity was in the person of Jesus Christ, and the Bible is how humans learn about him. Muslims believe that God's last revelation to humanity was the Quran, and the Prophet Muhammad is how humans learned about it.

    Or at least that's my understanding as both a non-Christian and a non-Muslim.
  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    The_Riv wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    The Bible is not the same as the Koran. Some Christians seem to think it is.

    It really isn't. The Quran is the final revelation of God to humanity. The Bible is an earlier revelation. Unless you're a Mormon. Or a Scientologist. Then, you have other, newer books.

    There is a bigger difference. Christians believe that God's last revelation to humanity was in the person of Jesus Christ, and the Bible is how humans learn about him. Muslims believe that God's last revelation to humanity was the Quran, and the Prophet Muhammad is how humans learned about it.

    Or at least that's my understanding as both a non-Christian and a non-Muslim.

    I think there's variance as to the degree of "Divine Dictaphone" thinking from Christian to Christian, but your sense matches mine. Jesus was the incarnation and the Bible was the record of his life, by degrees divinely directed.

    Mohamed's text, by contrast, was supposed to be God's verbatim transcription, which is why it's really important for followers of Islam to learn the text in its original language.

    I had a friend who was a professor of modern Arabic who complained about Muslims who'd come to her class expecting to learn classical Arabic, which they wanted to learn exclusively to read the Quran. It was awkward.
  • Twangist wrote: »
    I've read that a lot of the impetus behind terms such as inerrant and infallible is to do with Scottish common sense philosophy whatever that is/was.
    For a long time I've found that the concepts of "inerrant" and "infallible" by themselves overlook the history of disagreement over the interpretation of texts, from which I conclude that the concepts are less important than frequently imagined. And that doesn't include how to decide what of the texts apply to our particular community's situation.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    edited January 31
    Eirenist wrote: »
    No, I understand the Qu'ran is believed by Muslimsto have been dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, and so literally the words of Allah. On the other hand, I take the Bible to be writings of various kinds and times, which have been thought by believers to exemplify God's dealings with humanity.Some are folk tales, some chronicles, some poetry, some stories, letters, anecdotes, maxims, meditations. The Gospels are anecdotes about Jesus and his teachings, assembled and presented to is 'that we may believe'. The writer of John is explicit about this. So I do not understand why Martin54 gets so worked up about the 'Pericope Adulterae' (I'm sorry to be dragging him in here). It's an anecdote about Jesus, and a good one teaching about attitudes to sin and the sinner, and is useful for teaching. Historical accuracy and derivation are beside the point. We worship a living God who will lead us ino all truth, not one locked immutably into a book.

    It's a pseudepigraphical anecdote written 500 years after it was set, and it shows. It's too good.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    No, I understand the Qu'ran is believed by Muslimsto have been dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, and so literally the words of Allah. On the other hand, I take the Bible to be writings of various kinds and times, which have been thought by believers to exemplify God's dealings with humanity.Some are folk tales, some chronicles, some poetry, some stories, letters, anecdotes, maxims, meditations. The Gospels are anecdotes about Jesus and his teachings, assembled and presented to is 'that we may believe'. The writer of John is explicit about this. So I do not understand why Martin54 gets so worked up about the 'Pericope Adulterae' (I'm sorry to be dragging him in here). It's an anecdote about Jesus, and a good one teaching about attitudes to sin and the sinner, and is useful for teaching. Historical accuracy and derivation are beside the point. We worship a living God who will lead us ino all truth, not one locked immutably into a book.

    It's a pseudepigraphical anecdote written 500 years after it was set, and it shows. It's too good.
    Textual evidence shows that the story was widely known within the Church in the third century, and almost certainly before then. Whether that was known solely through oral tradition or if it was written in now lost documents (it has been suggested, with what seems to me to be decent support, that it was within the Gospel to the Hebrews which would appear to have been written only a decade or two after John). It's not included in the earliest copies of John that we have, but was being included by the 5th century. To me, it seems like a well known story that the Christian community (at least, the community in one location) considered needed to be recorded and so inserted it into John at a suitable location - and the rest of the Christian community considered it important enough to keep it in John when they had copies of the Gospel made. There are suggestions that some parts of the letters to the Corinthians were originally in other letters from Paul, and rather than being intact single letters these are composites gathered as one for convenience. The book of Isaiah is another example of multiple bits of source material gathered together into one document. It's not an unusual thing to happen. It's a problem for anyone who insists on the Bible being dictated by the Spirit as originally written. It's not an issue for the majority who consider the writing, collection, preservation and transmission of Scripture to be a combination of human writers and the human communities of Jews and Christians and the Spirit working together to both write what they considered to be important for their communities and to select from what had been written those documents that needed to be preserved as useful. A process where the Gospel to the Hebrews isn't chosen for preservation (which could be a combination of the stories being recorded in the other Gospels which had already been recognised, stories not accepted as useful for understanding Christ, even stories that were understood to be false and heretical, or simply an unknown author when it was considered that the testimony of known early Church leaders was more important to be preserved and read) but there was one story recorded there which was considered to be so important it needed to be preserved somewhere and so is inserted into one of the other Gospels is entirely consistent with the Spirit lead community of Christians sieving the mass of documents and oral histories to select the best.

  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    It’s a key point Alan. The story of the adulterous woman is quite a good key about the formation and collection of New Testament documents. Decisions were made by human beings about what to put where and why.

    That process, best described as part of the process of lower criticism (the collection and assembly of the texts) is well documented, generally accepted, certainly by Protestant scholars. But it mostly postdates the writings of the Reform theologians (e.g Luther, Calvin).

    And that does produce tension.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    No, I understand the Qu'ran is believed by Muslimsto have been dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, and so literally the words of Allah. On the other hand, I take the Bible to be writings of various kinds and times, which have been thought by believers to exemplify God's dealings with humanity.Some are folk tales, some chronicles, some poetry, some stories, letters, anecdotes, maxims, meditations. The Gospels are anecdotes about Jesus and his teachings, assembled and presented to is 'that we may believe'. The writer of John is explicit about this. So I do not understand why Martin54 gets so worked up about the 'Pericope Adulterae' (I'm sorry to be dragging him in here). It's an anecdote about Jesus, and a good one teaching about attitudes to sin and the sinner, and is useful for teaching. Historical accuracy and derivation are beside the point. We worship a living God who will lead us ino all truth, not one locked immutably into a book.

    It's a pseudepigraphical anecdote written 500 years after it was set, and it shows. It's too good.
    Textual evidence shows that the story was widely known within the Church in the third century, and almost certainly before then. Whether that was known solely through oral tradition or if it was written in now lost documents (it has been suggested, with what seems to me to be decent support, that it was within the Gospel to the Hebrews which would appear to have been written only a decade or two after John). It's not included in the earliest copies of John that we have, but was being included by the 5th century. To me, it seems like a well known story that the Christian community (at least, the community in one location) considered needed to be recorded and so inserted it into John at a suitable location - and the rest of the Christian community considered it important enough to keep it in John when they had copies of the Gospel made. There are suggestions that some parts of the letters to the Corinthians were originally in other letters from Paul, and rather than being intact single letters these are composites gathered as one for convenience. The book of Isaiah is another example of multiple bits of source material gathered together into one document. It's not an unusual thing to happen. It's a problem for anyone who insists on the Bible being dictated by the Spirit as originally written. It's not an issue for the majority who consider the writing, collection, preservation and transmission of Scripture to be a combination of human writers and the human communities of Jews and Christians and the Spirit working together to both write what they considered to be important for their communities and to select from what had been written those documents that needed to be preserved as useful. A process where the Gospel to the Hebrews isn't chosen for preservation (which could be a combination of the stories being recorded in the other Gospels which had already been recognised, stories not accepted as useful for understanding Christ, even stories that were understood to be false and heretical, or simply an unknown author when it was considered that the testimony of known early Church leaders was more important to be preserved and read) but there was one story recorded there which was considered to be so important it needed to be preserved somewhere and so is inserted into one of the other Gospels is entirely consistent with the Spirit lead community of Christians sieving the mass of documents and oral histories to select the best.

    All very, as in completely, 110%, natural Alan. I'm fully aware of the oral tradition, of the story. It all fits in the story, and the history, of Judeo-Christian belief, of belief.

    The PA is the most sublimely beautiful story in the story. That and Mary Magdalene at the tomb. Jesus saying her name. Also only Johannine. Late C1st at best.

    No wonder they selected them.

    Mass of documents? From the C1st?

    I'm sorry, but his own words come back to me, not as he meant, '“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.".

    In all of infinite 99.99..99% unknowable, ineffable physics and that which emerges from it, show me why it's more than belief. Show me the Spirit. Show me Love. Apart from that which emerges in us. That we breathe. Show me impossible, unnatural Love. The story of transcendent Judaism as a whole is far, far from it. Inspiration.R.Us, from the the neuron up.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    I would ask why divine love has to be unnatural, if it wouldn't derail this thread.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    In image of God terms, the best examples of loving human behaviour say something about Divine Love. (I’m not a TULIP total depravity person.)

    Of course if you don’t believe that human beings are in some sense, made in the image of God you will believe it’s just natural.

    (“Total depravity” is often misunderstood to mean human beings can’t do anything good. It certainly means all human behaviour is affected by pervasive sinfulness. For example, unselfish kindness, certainly an act of love, may also connect with a selfish desire to be well thought of. That doesn’t mean the unselfish act is not good.)
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Eirenist wrote: »
    I would ask why divine love has to be unnatural, if it wouldn't derail this thread.

    Well, I'm skirting close to the wind, trying to orbit close to inspiration. If divine love(=inspiration) looks natural, then it's not behaving un/super/naturally. If everything that occurs occurs as if the supernatural didn't inspire it. do it, create it, why invoke that infinite superfluity? Apart from as a bias?
  • But that is the meaning of the Incarnation, to my mind anyway. I interpret everything in metaphorical terms, I will admit, but the Incarnation - a task in which Jesus is a type, not a unique exception - means precisely that being God does look natural. This is exactly what it means that the disciples received the Holy Spirit after the Resurrection, and that we are made in the likeness of God.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Ockham’s Razor, Martin54?



  • Again, the Orthodox understanding of 'synergia' helps here, I think.

    To borrow an analogy from Fr Gregory who used to frequent these boards, divine inspiration/intervention isn't to be seen like Terry Gilliam's Monty Python animation of a giant foot descending from the clouds and splattering whatever it treads on.

    Rather, it is a process of God working in and through all things, often imperceptibly.

    That's my both/and take, I'm afraid. Human beings writing, compiling, editing and canonising scripture but with God the Holy Spirit working in and through that process.

    Modern scholarship can help us see the development of scriptural texts, doctrines and creedal formularies. Just as modern science can help us see how life on earth developed.

    These things are only a 'threat' if we take a somewhat woodenly fundamentalist line in our understanding of these processes.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    I would ask why divine love has to be unnatural, if it wouldn't derail this thread.

    Well, I'm skirting close to the wind, trying to orbit close to inspiration. If divine love(=inspiration) looks natural, then it's not behaving un/super/naturally. If everything that occurs occurs as if the supernatural didn't inspire it. do it, create it, why invoke that infinite superfluity? Apart from as a bias?
    Faith.

    If presented with irrefutable evidence of the existence of the divine then believing isn't having faith, it's just following the evidence.

    Faith is to believe, to trust, to follow when there isn't irrefutable evidence.

    As @ThunderBunk helpfully put it, in this world God is present Incarnationally. To any measure that could be applied, Jesus was fully human, yet he was also God. To any measure that can be applied, the Church is a group of human beings, yet also the Body of Christ. To any measure that can be applied, Scripture is the work of human beings, yet God breathes through it.

    Faith is to see that beyond what can be seen there's the unseen God.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    edited January 31
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    Ockham’s Razor, Martin54?

    Absolutely. In the absence of anything miraculous in the text, i.e. something that cannot be there naturally, a six+ sigma wossname, anachronism, or anywhere in nature; nature, phusis, physics, the 0.00..001% of it that we can ever possibly understand and the 99.99..99% that we never can, explains everything.
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Eirenist wrote: »
    I would ask why divine love has to be unnatural, if it wouldn't derail this thread.

    Well, I'm skirting close to the wind, trying to orbit close to inspiration. If divine love(=inspiration) looks natural, then it's not behaving un/super/naturally. If everything that occurs occurs as if the supernatural didn't inspire it. do it, create it, why invoke that infinite superfluity? Apart from as a bias?
    Faith.

    If presented with irrefutable evidence of the existence of the divine then believing isn't having faith, it's just following the evidence.

    Faith is to believe, to trust, to follow when there isn't irrefutable evidence.

    As @ThunderBunk helpfully put it, in this world God is present Incarnationally. To any measure that could be applied, Jesus was fully human, yet he was also God. To any measure that can be applied, the Church is a group of human beings, yet also the Body of Christ. To any measure that can be applied, Scripture is the work of human beings, yet God breathes through it.

    Faith is to see that beyond what can be seen there's the unseen God.
    They're synonymous. Faith, inspiration - it's all one monist thing - emerges in biased neurons.

    God can breathe any time He likes that we might know it.
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    Your "just following the evidence" reads as if it's some kind of cop out, @Alan Cresswell, though I'm confident it isn't. You haven't enumerated your (or @ThunderBunk's measures, but one that is pretty important, I'd think, is the naturally empirical. The older I get, the less I understand a seeming determination to disregard that one. I'm very aware that for many, the exact opposite is true, but I don't get it, and increasingly so.
  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    Twangist wrote: »
    I've read that a lot of the impetus behind terms such as inerrant and infallible is to do with Scottish common sense philosophy whatever that is/was.
    For a long time I've found that the concepts of "inerrant" and "infallible" by themselves overlook the history of disagreement over the interpretation of texts, from which I conclude that the concepts are less important than frequently imagined. And that doesn't include how to decide what of the texts apply to our particular community's situation.

    I think there's a paradox here.

    For a lot of conservative thinking - and I don't necessarily mean to use the label as an epithet - there needs to be a corral. There are rules, you follow them. The rules tell you how to act, and we all must agree to the rules for the sake of getting along together.

    You can attach this kind of thinking to big name thinkers across cultures. Thomas Hobbes and Kung Fu Tzu (latinized Confucius) come to mind as big examples.

    And deep down, you can't really trust people to do that, so you..as I would put it snarkily...outsource your conscience to a document. The Constitution, the Magna Carta, The Analects, the Bible, the Decalogue, etc. You often know these texts because people insist that they be written with Capital Letters. They are Important.

    If we can't trust each other, we can't trust ourselves, we can trust...the text! Even better if the text has a veneer of divine gloss to is, a divine grace given by God!

    And across the board, you get an entire school of scholars who study these texts and understand them because, truthfully,, the truth is rather tricky to implement. This si why texts like the Talmud exist. And I think every school of law has a version of that, let's not pick on any particular ethnic group.

    Trouble is that you can't really do that. You can't erase yourself from your interpretive act, whether you're a pew-warming fundamentalist or a highfalutin biblical scholar. It's all the same. And I did have an African American professor warn us about the hazards of treating "the consensus of biblical scholarship" as if it were some kind of objective read. There is no objective read. It's always a dialog with a text.

    The paradox is that - I suspect - if you are irresponsible in your need for textual authority, you will project your own ego onto the text and instead of using the text to do what you say you're trying to do - to restrain your selfish wants and desires - you'll end up using it to magnify and even deify them.

    And lest conservatives think I've got a target in mind, liberals do that too. We all do.

    Let's just try to be honest about it. I do, as a Christian, feel forced to accept Scriptural authority because I can't realistically say I know anything of Christ that wasn't learned through the Church, and in the end, all of that goes back to the Gospel. But I don't think it's appropriate - for me - to use the Bible like it's an all-encompassing everything-explainer. I think that's an abuse of the text that ultimately leads to the abuse of people.

    Calling the text inerrant or infallible is dangerously, dangerously close to calling yourself inerrant and infallible if you're careless. I know I'm too fallible to know what infallible looks like. It's enough work trying to clean up my own folly.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    If tue Divine Love were presente as ineffable and unnatural etc. , would it be in a form which human beings, with their limited understanding, would rcognise as love. I fear you may be crying for the moon, Martyn
    54. Be very, very careful what you wish for, and be thankfuul for small merctes.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    That’s a profound post, Bullfrog. Hits a number of nails on the head. For me at least.Thanks.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Eirenist wrote: »
    If tue Divine Love were presente as ineffable and unnatural etc. , would it be in a form which human beings, with their limited understanding, would rcognise as love. I fear you may be crying for the moon, Martyn
    54. Be very, very careful what you wish for, and be thankfuul for small merctes.

    Nope squared. We'd understand our dead coming back instantly. Or some lesser demonstration that all is well for all. Why should I be careful? If the Love that isn't there were, it would be obvious. And it could not harm me.
  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    That’s a profound post, Bullfrog. Hits a number of nails on the head. For me at least.Thanks.

    Shucks, you're welcome. I think some of those notions have been rattling around in my brain for years, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity to write them down.
  • They are interesting observations.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Bullfrog wrote: »
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    That’s a profound post, Bullfrog. Hits a number of nails on the head. For me at least.Thanks.

    Shucks, you're welcome. I think some of those notions have been rattling around in my brain for years, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity to write them down.

    Genius is often often in going to the next step that nobody else has: belief in infallibility and inerrancy is self belief. By analogy, when we read we feel subconsciously as smart as the writer. I worked that out decades ago, and hey presto, some man of letters said it on BBC Radio 4. Damn I consciously felt smart!

    And it's all so pathetically obvious in hindsight...
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    I think Bullfrog has, for me, said everything that is to be said. I would only add that when reading classical and other ancient texts, we need to bear in mind that until comparatvely recently, the terms 'history' and 'story ' were synonymous. Herodotus' 'Histories' were mostly things he had been told. And Philo of Alexandria pointed out that the Biblical account of Creation was not a scientific treatise.
  • As indeed did St Augustine of Hippo.
  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    edited February 1
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Bullfrog wrote: »
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    That’s a profound post, Bullfrog. Hits a number of nails on the head. For me at least.Thanks.

    Shucks, you're welcome. I think some of those notions have been rattling around in my brain for years, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity to write them down.

    Genius is often often in going to the next step that nobody else has: belief in infallibility and inerrancy is self belief. By analogy, when we read we feel subconsciously as smart as the writer. I worked that out decades ago, and hey presto, some man of letters said it on BBC Radio 4. Damn I consciously felt smart!

    And it's all so pathetically obvious in hindsight...

    I do get a kick out of it when I read an insight in an editorial that I thought of myself. That happens sometimes.

    But then, prophecy is often just seeing what's happening around you. I remember in seminary, folks would be like "Hey! Jesus was written in the gospels as having predicted the downfall of Jerusalem! That means someone wrote those bits in after the fall of Jerusalem!"

    And I'm like "Or...maybe he was just savvy enough to realize that going toe to toe with the Roman Empire wouldn't end well for his compatriots and tried to gently warn them that they were all going to die for their arrogance?

    There's a comment on divinity there somewhere.
  • I find there is a tension between the prophets and the sages.
    As a simplification, the prophets are inspired to declare a message as in "The Word of God came to XXXX". Then the sages come to own, or even control the message.
    Then along comes another prophet that challenges the control of the sages. E.g The Story of Ruth challenges the Deuteronomic law against Moabites, Isaiah and Acts challenge the law against eunuchs.

    This repeats, though a certain group may say inspiration has ended. E.g Torah, Tanakh, Christian Canons.

    (There seems to be some similarity with the five kingdoms of the ancient world, with the current kingdom being the one without end.)
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    I don't think you can generalise about prophets and sages as types like that - for every Amos among the prophets there's an Obadiah proclaiming that Israel's enemies have got what's coming to them.
    Ruth seems to me as much a product of the sage-tendency as of the prophetic tendency, and while Jonah is about a prophet it's not by a prophet.
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