How can we determine which parts of Scripture are true?

[Zelduck]

This is really a question for Christians, but since it doesn't assume the validity of the Bible, I think it belongs here rather than in the Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma section.

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history. Books have lied about their authorship. Passages have been added and removed. Books were written in different times and different places by different authors and for different reasons.

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

[Divine Insight]

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

The answer is simple.

Faith.

You supposedly need to place your faith in the "Holy Spirit" to guide you.

I was a Christian and this is what I was taught.

This is extremely ironic because I did just that. Yet I was "guided" to a final realization that the Biblical cannot cannot be true. That was where I was lead as I read the bible trying very hard to make it work.

Therefore faith lead me to discard the Bible as being totally undependable.

I don't see anything in it at all that even remotely inspires me to believe that any of it is a message, directive, or desire of any all-wise supreme being.

On the contrary my faith and the "Holy Spirit" have guided me to recognize that the Bible is nothing other than an attempt by a culture to use a God to support their unethical behaviors and to ultimately seal the patent rights to God via their claim of ownership of Jesus as The Christ.

I'm convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is a false mythology.

[Zelduck]

Thanks for the response Divine Insight!

The answer is simple.

Faith.

You supposedly need to place your faith in the "Holy Spirit" to guide you.

I was a Christian and this is what I was taught.

My problem with this method is that it leaves us unable to resolve the different answers given by those who claim to be led by the Holy Spirit. If this were truly the best method, then we're in a pickle. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity or faith of anyone making such a claim.

If I have faith, and my brother in Christ has faith, and we both are led by the Holy Spirit, we can disagree on matters of doctrine and canon. First of all, the Holy Spirit will still lead us via actual criteria as to what is and is not God's Word. That might be as simple as trusting that the 66 book collection in the living room is right on, but I think at least an apologist might give some more detailed reasons. At the very least, when the canon was decided historically, reasons were given and evaluated, so this had to be a reasoned discussion at some point. I'd like to better understand those reasons.

I suppose it's possible to say that not everyone giving an answer to the question is truly being led by the Holy Spirit or is truly a Christian (if not being led implies this), but then that shifts the problem from how to determine the reliability of Scripture to how to determine whether or not a person or religious body (such as a synod) is being led by the Holy Spirit. This seems like an even more intractable problem to me, but maybe someone can come along and resolve this for me.

This is extremely ironic because I did just that. Yet I was "guided" to a final realization that the Biblical cannot cannot be true. That was where I was lead as I read the bible trying very hard to make it work.

Therefore faith lead me to discard the Bible as being totally undependable.

I'm assuming there are some Christians in this forum who have come to a different conclusion, so hopefully they can help me sort this out.

[Divine Insight]

I'm assuming there are some Christians in this forum who have come to a different conclusion, so hopefully they can help me sort this out.

Well, if very many Christians reply to this thread you should end up with a wide diversity of views from which to begin sorting.

Surely you are aware by just looking at Christendom that the Christians themselves are very busing "sorting" these questions into a myriad of different denominations.

There are currently thousands of disagreeing denominations of Christianity. In fact, most people put that number in the tens of thousands. And more denominations are being created as we speak. It's a never-ending process.

In fact, some studies have suggesting that the largest growing sect of "Christianity" today is what some people call "Designer Christianity" others call it "Salad Bar Christianity", and some simply call it a "Personal Walk with Jesus".

It's where you basically renounce all denominations and churches and just claim to have a personal relationship with God. Usually the Biblical Doctrine becomes extremely unimportant at this stage. You may still use it, but you simply pick and choose what "Calls to you by the Holy Spirit" (the original idea taken to it's ultimate conclusion).

This is why it is often called "Salad Bar Christianity". However, the defenders of this view proclaim that it is the "Holy Spirit" who is filling their plate from the Salad Bar, not them.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck sorting it all out.

[Zelduck]

Well, if very many Christians reply to this thread you should end up with a wide diversity of views from which to begin sorting.
[...]
In any case, I wish you the best of luck sorting it all out.

I guess I'm wondering what the best answers available even are. To me, this is a very fundamental question which every Christian ought to ask herself and give a serious answer to, but I really don't have an idea what the answer could be.

I think that most Christians who take their beliefs/denominations seriously would probably feel confident that Scripture supports their particular brand and rules out others. However, I can't see how you can debate doctrine by quoting bible verses until you have settled this question first so that you know what verses are even quotable. There's a lot of doctrinal debate on this forum, so I feel like there has to be an answer, but I guess time will tell if I'm just banging my head against a wall.

Thanks

[historia]

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history.

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

This question -- or ones very much like it -- comes up occasionally on this forum, and I have to confess that I find it quite odd. It seems to me that the answer is obvious and, in this case, hidden only by the use of the passive voice in your second sentence above.

Who has accepted and rejected various books? The answer is the Christian community has made that decision. A canon is defined by a community of believers; it is not up to an individual to determine what texts are authoritative or not for the community. Rather, if you are part of a religious community, you in turn accept the texts as authoritative.

I don't mean to belittle the question, but it seems to me that this query can only arise from a kind of hyper-Protestant view of scripture that assumes that the Bible somehow exists independent of any community of believers, and therefore can in some way be "objectively" measured for it's "inspiration." The books of the Bible were written by Christians, to Christians, for use within the Christian community, and they are authoritative for Christians because the community has, through a long period of consensus building, deemed them to be so.

[Divine Insight]

There's a lot of doctrinal debate on this forum, so I feel like there has to be an answer

Well, if there were an answer that was convincing to everyone, then that would pretty much put an end to the debate wouldn't it?

I think it's pretty safe to suggest that there is no resolution to the problem.

But for whatever it's worth I'm in agreement with you on this point. I hold the following stance.

Hardcore fundamentalists demand that every word of the Bible is the literal truth and the infallible word of God. (not necessarily literal truth in the sense that everything described in the Bible had to have literally happened as described, but literal truth in that the basic message behind these stories must be truth in terms of what the literal messages are)

I am in agreement with the hardcore fundamentalists on this issue. If we are to believe that the Bible is an inspired or directed message from God, then surely the whole thing must be literal truth in terms of the messages it has to offer, and it must be infallible and inerrant in terms of these messages.

Otherwise we would be stuck with precisely the dilemma that you suggest. We would have no way of deciding which parts came from God, and which parts were corrupt impurities that got into the Biblical canon against God's will.

Since I am convinced that the Bible as a whole cannot be made to make sense as it is literally written. I hold that it contains far too many obvious immoral stories as well as inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Thus remaining in agreement with the Fundamentalists I must conclude that the Bible cannot be the word of any God.

So it's a done deal. Many people do not like this "all-or-nothing" approach. But I feel that it is actually necessary.

In the meantime you seem to be accepting that a piecemeal approach could be worked out, but only if we can determine which pieces to accept and which pieces to reject.

In other words, you are asking if we can find a dependable "salad-bar-disher-outer".

My answer to that is no. We can't.

The Catholic Church has tried this approach with their Pope. The Pope is supposed to be the ultimate interpreter of Scriptures supposedly being guided by the Holy Spirit or God or whatever.

However, throughout history even Popes were not in agreement on various issues. And of course the Protestants protested that a central Pope should do the interpreting for them.

So it seems to me that this has already been tried by the Catholic Church and has clearly failed.

In other words, what you are asking for has already been tried, and has failed to pan out.

So anyway, that's my evaluation of this problem.

Like I say, I hope you get some actual Christian feedback so that you can evaluate that as well. I imagine you will get some Christian feedback eventually so hang in there.

But I would like to just follow up by saying that I was a Christian at one time, and I almost became a preacher. So in a very real sense, my feedback has been "Christian Feedback". It's just feedback from a Christians who has concluded that Christianity has no merit. That's all.

[Zelduck]

Who has accepted and rejected various books? The answer is the Christian community has made that decision. A canon is defined by a community of believers; it is not up to an individual to determine what texts are authoritative or not for the community. Rather, if you are part of a religious community, you in turn accept the texts as authoritative.

Thanks for responding Historia!

So this confuses me a little. Let me break it out for my wee brain to handle. The community has made the decision. The individual doesn't decide for the community. If you're a part of the community, you accept what has been decided by the community. But this leaves out the explanation as to how the community made this decision, which is what I am trying to discover, the actual process of decision.

If the Christian community decided, was it in a democratic fashion, or was it a subset of the community who decided for the rest, or some other way I'm not thinking of? You seem to be saying that an individual can't decide, but then say that the community did, which as far as I can tell, has to include individuals on some level.

I don't mean to belittle the question, but it seems to me that this query can only arise from a kind of hyper-Protestant view of scripture that assumes that the Bible somehow exists independent of any community of believers, and therefore can in some way be "objectively" measured for it's "inspiration." The books of the Bible were written by Christians, to Christians, for use within the Christian community, and they are authoritative for Christians because the community has, through a long period of consensus building, deemed them to be so.

Maybe the answer is in this long period of consensus building you mentioned. How did that work? For example, how did I get the Gospel of Luke in my Bible but not Clement I? And how did the community accomplish this without individuals using some kind of criteria?

[Zelduck]

Well, if there were an answer that was convincing to everyone, then that would pretty much put an end to the debate wouldn't it?

I think it's pretty safe to suggest that there is no resolution to the problem.

[...]
So anyway, that's my evaluation of this problem.

I can see your point, and maybe there is no resolution, but I don't see how a Christian can maintain this position.

Somewhat off-topic: regarding obvious immoral stories, that's partially how this question came up for me. Someone was wondering how God could have done certain immoral things in the OT, and I was wondering, is it more likely that God is immoral, yet somehow still moral/just on opaque reasoning that doesn't even satisfy the person using it, or that the story never actually happened?

Considering we don't know the author of some OT texts and it's not unreasonable to think editing occurred, I think it's the less blasphemous position, yet I rarely hear it even considered. Instead, the canon is rarely questioned, and countless hours are spent wrestling with how to justify an apparently unjust God.

Full disclosure: I'm an ex-Christian atheist. I think the most likely explanation for the immoral stories is that God doesn't exist at all, but I think you have to include a lot more than the above dilemma to get there.

However, I'm still curious to hear from those of us who came to a different conclusion than Divine Insight and I did. Maybe I was wrong to deconvert, and there is a good God. The question is how do we know what his Word is? How do we separate the wheat from the chaff when going through these ancient documents?

[Divine Insight]

Full disclosure: I'm an ex-Christian atheist. I think the most likely explanation for the immoral stories is that God doesn't exist at all, but I think you have to include a lot more than the above dilemma to get there.

Just to add insight to these questions I would like to suggest other possible alternatives. The actual path which I have personally taken.

In your statement above it appears that you are thinking in strict dichotomy: Either the Biblical stories of God are true, or there is no God. This is a very common dichotomy that very many people consider.

Christian theologians and evangelists love this dichotomy. They love it when people believe that either the Christian God is true or there is no God at all. This allows them to make arguments for the potential existence of a God in general with the ultimately conclusion being that if they can make a case for that, then this supports the Biblical picture of God.

One thing I realized very early on is that it may be possible that a God exists and simply doesn't have anything at all to do with Hebrew mythology, just as we all already believe that God doesn't have anything to do with Greek mythology.

What then would God be like? Well for me personally this is where I looked within. I followed my innate intuition and simply looked around for other religious philosophies to see if there are any out there that might actually be describing the type of God that feels intuitive and correct for me. I found this in various forms of Eastern Mysticism, specifically some forms of Taoism and Buddhism. And certainly not even all forms of those.

I still confess to being ultimately agnostic. But I refuse to take on the label of "atheist" in general, because deep down inside I do believe that something mystical is going on. I'm not convinced that reality is a purely mechanistic accident. For me that is just not intuitive.

So I remain agnostic in general (i.e. without sufficient knowledge to answer this question in general).

However I can say that I am a very strong atheist with respect to Hebrew mythology, the Bible, the Qur'an, etc. I reject the entire Abrahamic mythology with the same confidence that I reject Greek Mythology as having anything to do with any actual personified God named Zeus.

So for this reason, I am no longer troubled by having to try to make sense out of bits and pieces of Hebrew mythology in an effort to potentially "save a God".

Considering we don't know the author of some OT texts and it's not unreasonable to think editing occurred, I think it's the less blasphemous position, yet I rarely hear it even considered. Instead, the canon is rarely questioned, and countless hours are spent wrestling with how to justify an apparently unjust God.

I think you need to realize that, for most Christians it truly is a dichotomy. Either the Bible is true, or there is no God.

This is why the Christians themselves fight tooth and nail to try to salvage the Bible. For them it's either the Bible or pure secular materialism. They can't even begin to handle the latter, therefore they reason that the forum must be true, and therefore there must be some way to make it work.

In a very real way for many Christians "saving the Bible" is an act of extreme desperation because without it, they loose all possible hope for a mystical reality. And that's simply not an option for them.

In some ways I can understand this. Because as I have already shared, I'm not prepared to accept the totally mechanistic picture of a random materialistic accidental universe that came from nowhere for no good reason. I'm not saying that this is impossible, but I have many reasons to reject this view of reality.

I might also add that I have a very deep understanding of secular science. I accept pretty much everything that science has discovered thus far. I totally accept evolution, I believe in the Big Bang, I'm convinced that the universe is 14.7 billion years old, etc. I have no problem with any concepts of science. Yet I'm still convinced that there is something mystical going on behind the scenes. And I even have my own scientific reasons to believe that this may very well be the case.

But once again, this doesn't send me rushing off to believe in Greek mythology verbatim, so why should it send me rushing off to believe in Hebrew mythology verbatim?

So Christian theologians, apologists, evangelists, and even the bulk of the individual followers or flock of Christianity are desperate to keep the Bible afloat at all cost, because for them, the only alternative is pure secular materialism. I potentially false dichotomy to begin with.

However, I'm still curious to hear from those of us who came to a different conclusion than Divine Insight and I did. Maybe I was wrong to deconvert, and there is a good God. The question is how do we know what his Word is? How do we separate the wheat from the chaff when going through these ancient documents?

Well, again, I point out. Why the Hebrew mythology? Why try to salvage that particular God myth?

Maybe any actual God that might exist is quite different in nature and isn't associated with Greek mythology at all?

Or, if the real God can be found in various bits and pieces of Hebrew Mythology but not all of it, then why can't that same God be found in bits and pieces of other God myths as well? Why would this God be tied down to Hebrew mythology only?

I would suggest that if you are willing to believe that only parts of Hebrew mythology might actually reflect truths about God, then don't stop there but continue to look over all of human history and exam all possible God myths for potential truths.

One thing about the Christian Picture is that they want to renounce all other descriptions of God as being "False Gods". Even the Abrahamic religions themselves renounce each other.

We see Judaism, Christianity and Islam all renouncing each other even though they are all offshoots of these same myths.

We even see multiple factions within all of these renouncing each other. In Christianity the disagreements between Catholicism and Protestantism are quite profound. And the Protestants are in extreme disagreement with each other.

And all of these people are attempting, quite unsuccessfully, to create a version of the ancient Hebrew mythology that they can claim makes sense, thus vindicating their belief in a God.

From my perspective this is just the epitome of desperation.

If you want to believe in a God, why not seek out a more rational picture of God and go with that?

That's what I did. I confess to still being ultimately agnostic. But let's face it, even Christians are necessarily agnostic because none of them "know" there is a God. In fact, their whole religious paradigm is based entirely on FAITH.

The one's who claim to "Know" there is a God are just those few who have deluded themselves into believing that. No doubt pressured by an extreme fear of having to face a possible secular materialistic existence.

They fear it so much that they have convinced themselves that they know there is a God beyond any shadow of a doubt. But let's face it. Even the most passionate of these people often exhibit extreme doubt and problems with keeping their faith when they are having problems.

It's all based on faith. Nobody knows whether reality is mystical or materialistic.

It's up for grabs.