Inerrancy and Apologetics

[liamconnor]

The question for debate is: Did the doctrine of Scriptural Inerrancy (a late doctrine) hinder Christian apologetics?

I myself did not grow up in a Christian environment that taught a specific doctrine of the Bible. "God's word" came up; but infallible and inerrant did not.

Hence when I first met questions of science and historicity, I was not fazed. The discrepancies of the various resurrection accounts (1 Cor. and the four gospels) seemed to me like obvious attempts to record something that was emotionally stunning.

When I got a little ancient historiography under my belt, I saw that the differences among the gospels were also largely due to historical practices of the time.

But none of this seems to be recognized by critics of the resurrection, or even fellow Christians.


So, again, do Scriptural doctrines like inerrancy and infallibility hurt Christian apologetics (by which, obviously, I do not mean defenses of Scripture's infallibility or inerrancy, but historical questions of the resurrection)?

[Divine Insight]

So, again, do Scriptural doctrines like inerrancy and infallibility hurt Christian apologetics (by which, obviously, I do not mean defenses of Scripture's infallibility or inerrancy, but historical questions of the resurrection)?

For me the religion depends on far more than just the resurrection. You appear to be totally focused on the resurrection like as if that alone will make or break Chrsitianity.

I see the religion having failed long before the stories of Jesus. Where inerrancy becomes important for me is way back in the Old Testament accounts of this God. It is important that the Old Testament be inerrant.

The reason why there is no room for errancy is because the stakes are too high. We're talking about the difference between being rewarded eternal life, or being condemned to death. There simply is no room for ambiguity there.

So form my perspective any religion that has a God demanding that we do what he says there is no room for errancy. Period.

So yes, the question of errancy becomes extremely important. Is the Bible inerrant or does it contain errors or anything that is not the instructions and commandments of this God. If it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from this God, then the entire Bible becomes untrustworthy and therefore useless in determining what this God might actually be demanding of us.

Therefore innarrancy become paramount. And I don't see it being inerrant.

I don't need to consider the resurrection or to even bother with the New Testament at all at this point because the Old Testament already fails the test of inerrancy.

[peterk]

Yes, the question of errancy becomes extremely important. Is the Bible inerrant or does it contain errors or anything that is not the instructions and commandments of this God. If it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from this God, then the entire Bible becomes untrustworthy and therefore useless in determining what this God might actually be demanding of us.

Can you please take a moment to explain your point here? I understand for instance that if you see mistakes in the Old Testament, that would be a rational reason to reject it. But I don't understand the other half. Why is it a problem if "it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from God"? I don't believe that everything in the Bible is "an instruction or commandment from God", but I also don't believe that's a problem. I'm wondering if it's because you and I have a different view of the nature of the Bible.

[FarWanderer]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

It depends on the audience, and what you intend to accomplish. Some people won't accept a religion based on a document that contains errors, especially if the point of the document is to relay a message from an omnipotent being. Why would God allow his message to be corrupted in any way?

If you simply want to convince your audience that a dead person came back to life, under the assumption that then your religion is proven, then probably claiming inerrancy isn't going to help.

If what you want is that the most people possible call themselves "Christians" then it's probably best if the inerrancy of Scripture be ambiguous. The price is that there will be disagreement within.

[Divine Insight]

Can you please take a moment to explain your point here? I understand for instance that if you see mistakes in the Old Testament, that would be a rational reason to reject it. But I don't understand the other half. Why is it a problem if "it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from God"? I don't believe that everything in the Bible is "an instruction or commandment from God", but I also don't believe that's a problem. I'm wondering if it's because you and I have a different view of the nature of the Bible.

Sure, I'll gladly explain.

When I speak of "errors" I certainly include anything in the Bible that claims to be directives or commandments from this God but wouldn't truly be directives and commandments from this God.

I think this should be an obvious reason to reject the Bible.

Why? Well, because the major theme of the Bible is that disobedience of God is 'sin'. And the wages of sin is death (or far worse if you believe in Jesus).

So why is this important? Well, if the Bible contains the instructions and commandments from God that we are supposed to follow, and we get it wrong, then this necessarily results in us committing a 'sin' and we'll be condemned to death. Therefore, that simple fact requires that there cannot be any errors at all when it comes to anything the Bible claims that God has commanded, directed, approved of, or proclaimed to be a sin.

In other words, any religious doctrine that claim that it's God will condemn people for not doing what the God says is simply in no position to be containing false claims about what this God expects of us.

Therefore every single claim in the Bible that proclaims that God himself is directing or commanding men to do must have come from God. It cannot be an error introduced by mere mortal men.

But the Old Testament has this God directing, and commanding men to do all manner of horrible things, including violating his own previous commandments. For example, this God commands men "Thou shalt not kill". But then he commands men to stone sinners to death. He also commands men to kill any heathens who come into the village preaching of other Gods. He commands, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". He commands armies to commit genocide and even keep the young girls they capture while at as their own personal concubines.

We can't start "picking and choosing" from all this stuff what we think a "Good God" might have instructed men to do versus what we think doesn't sound like it came from a "Good God".

For one thing, this would require that we are the ones who need to decide what seems like it might be moral or immoral. But far more importantly than this, this God himself would be totally irresponsible to have created a religious doctrine though supposed 'divine inspiration' that is so filled with contradictions and ambiguities.

In fact, think about it. Even in the New Testament Jesus proclaims that ignorance of the law is a valid excuse. "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".

After reading the Bible I can honestly say that I have absolutely NO CLUE what this God expects me to do. His so-called "Holy Book" is an absolute nightmare of contradictory directives and commandment, many of which I personally see as being totally ignorant, barbaric, and immoral.

This God even tells us that it's ok to own slaves and to beat them within an inch of their life as long as we don't kill them.

Give me a break.

There's simply no way I could follow the directives, commandments, and code of conduct demanded by this God as they are written in the Bible.

But like I say, the Bible cannot be wrong about any of these claims, because being wrong makes it an "Error".

Therefore if we aren't killing those who come into our towns preaching of other Gods, then we are disobeying Yahweh, or Jehovah, or whatever you might call him, and we will become "sinners" for not carrying out God's directives and commandments.

We can't just say, "Oh, I don't believe the part of the Bible that says that we're supposed to kill people who preach of other Gods", that must be an "Error".

Nope, we can't have that. We can't be having to guess what this God is commanding us to do.

And even in the New Testament things don't get any better. Jesus contradicts himself. In one breath he proclaims that he has not come to change the law, and in the next breath he claims that we are not to stone sinners to death.

Can't he make up his mind? He can't have it both ways.

We also know that Jesus lied about God feeding the birds too. So that was a crystal clear error. We know that birds need to forage for food just like all other animals and humans. And they are often killed in the process by God-Created predators. That hardly amounts to feeding the birds.

Let's face it, the Bible is filled with errors.

But that makes no sense if this God expects us to obey his directions lest he'll condemn us to death. The idea that he would give us directions that are clearly flawed and filled with falsehoods leaving us to have to try to figure out what we should do to avoid being condemned to death makes no sense.

And then Jesus destroys that entire thesis by offering sinners free amnesty from God's wrath anyway.

Christianity is a spin-off from the Biblical religion that literally got derailed. The original religion was supposedly all about morality and obeying God's directives and commandments, and now Christianity has twisted this religion into being all about believing in Jesus to escape the wrath of the original God. It's no longer about morality but rather it has become a religion that offers amnesty to immoral people.

I can't imagine a religion becoming more derailed from the original thesis than Christianity has become derailed from the original biblical foundations.

So this religion is riddled with obvious errors from cover to cover.

In short, we can't trust anything the Bible has to say. Even Jesus can be seen to have lied. Or to be fair, the 'rumors' we read about Jesus in the New Testament gospels have Jesus telling obvious lies.

Even if Liamconnor is correct that some guy named Jesus might have actually lived, he never wrote anything down. So all we have are hearsay rumors about what he 'might' have said. And since those rumors have Jesus contradicting himself and telling obvious lies, maybe the original Jesus never even said those things? Who would know?

We certainly wouldn't.

In short, it's my position that any God who threatens to condemn people to death (or worse) for not obeying his instructions had better make sure that his instructions are crystal clear with no room for ambiguity.

Just look around. Even the most devote "Christians" can't agree on what this God expects of them.

So any attempt to claim that the Bible is crystal clear, is necessarily going to fail.

Are all the Catholics and Jehavoh's Witnesses going to hell, whilst only the most hardcore fundamental Southern Baptists will please God and be granted eternal life?

It's anyone's GUESS.

And that clearly can't be right.

Whether we will be condemned to death depends on whether or not we GUESS correctly?

How does that fit in with any concept of morality?

Jesus is supposedly going to give immoral people amnesty anyway, so Jesus has already tossed morality out the window as being unimportant. At least in any version of Christianity where Jesus can freely forgive immoral sinners.

In short, this religion simply cannot be true.

If we want to believe in a God we'd do well to seek out a more realistic religion. And there actually do exist far superior religions. So it's not like we don't have better religions to choose from.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

While I did say I was going to stop debating recently, I'll do so here.

Liam, I'd like to ask you a few questions

1) Do you have a soul? Yes/No

2) Assuming yes to the above, does the God you believe in/worship teach that you obey him? Yes/No

3) Assuming yes to the first two, does the ultimate fate of your immortal soul depend on whether or not you have obeyed this God correctly i.e. followed the real/correct commands/teachings from this God? Yes/No?

4) Assuming yes to the first three, wouldn't it make sense that God's commands/teachings be absolutely clear, with no chance for misunderstanding or mistranslation?

5) Am I correct in my understanding of your OP, in that you yourself follow (what you think are) God's teachings/commands...but that since you yourself do not demand inerrancy/infallibility, it almost seems to me like you honestly don't care as to whether or not the teachings you follow really are from God.

Here's an example of a problem: the resurrection of Jesus. What exactly does that mean? Are us humans supposed to believe Jesus resurrected into a physical body? Or into a spiritual body? There's arguments for both, but no clarity. If you yourself go through life believing the "physical body resurrection" for example, only it turns out you were mistaken and at the Pearly Gates you're denied access for not believing a spiritual resurrection...?

The difference between yourself Liam, and myself & DI, seems to be that us two demand clarity, while seemingly you yourself are not.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

"Innerancy" if it means "taking the Bible literally" does indeed needessly hinder apologetics, because it causes people to get bogged down in details, some of which are contradictory and irreconcialbe.

And this getting bogged down in literal detail is a snare for the believer and the skeptic alike.

For the believer, it causes them to deny obvious contradictions and compromises their credibility. For the skeptic, it becomes nit-picking, and they tend to dismiss deeper meanings or the value of Scripture as a whole.

In other words, a literal minded skeptic buys into the fundamentalist"s "facile caracature of belief" (as one former user put it) and dismisses that caracature, that strawman, wihout acknowleding any underlying truth of the passage or in the most extreme cases, the Bible as a whole.

[peterk]

Can you please take a moment to explain your point here? I understand for instance that if you see mistakes in the Old Testament, that would be a rational reason to reject it. But I don't understand the other half. Why is it a problem if "it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from God"? I don't believe that everything in the Bible is "an instruction or commandment from God", but I also don't believe that's a problem. I'm wondering if it's because you and I have a different view of the nature of the Bible.

Sure, I'll gladly explain.
When I speak of "errors" I certainly include anything in the Bible that claims to be directives or commandments from this God but wouldn't truly be directives and commandments from this God.
I think this should be an obvious reason to reject the Bible...

Well I was right about one thing. We certainly have very different views of the Bible!

Thanks for being so honest. If I may be permitted to be honest in turn, your answer comes across to me as being emotional far more than rational. I'm not doubting that you have reasons for your position, it's just that they sound to me like very angry reasons. Have I heard you correctly?

I'm happy to discuss further, but I'm not sure if you want to discuss anything or just state your position. But if you do want to hear from a Christian who tries to take seriously and thoughtfully issues such as these, let me know.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

Inerrancy doesn't mean much when the Scripture itself is open for interpretation, if an error is found (the creation story for example,) it's always the interpretation that is wrong, never the scripture.

[rikuoamero]

Can you please take a moment to explain your point here? I understand for instance that if you see mistakes in the Old Testament, that would be a rational reason to reject it. But I don't understand the other half. Why is it a problem if "it contains anything that is not an instruction or commandment from God"? I don't believe that everything in the Bible is "an instruction or commandment from God", but I also don't believe that's a problem. I'm wondering if it's because you and I have a different view of the nature of the Bible.

Sure, I'll gladly explain.
When I speak of "errors" I certainly include anything in the Bible that claims to be directives or commandments from this God but wouldn't truly be directives and commandments from this God.
I think this should be an obvious reason to reject the Bible...

Well I was right about one thing. We certainly have very different views of the Bible!

Thanks for being so honest. If I may be permitted to be honest in turn, your answer comes across to me as being emotional far more than rational. I'm not doubting that you have reasons for your position, it's just that they sound to me like very angry reasons. Have I heard you correctly?

I'm happy to discuss further, but I'm not sure if you want to discuss anything or just state your position. But if you do want to hear from a Christian who tries to take seriously and thoughtfully issues such as these, let me know.

Peterk...how is what you quoted from DI angry/emotional? What you have from him there is pure logic.

Imagine if this situation were not about God...but about his boss at work.

Supervisor: DI, here are your orders, straight from the top.
DI: Hmm...I'm reading through them and they don't seem to be clear. I honestly don't think they really are from the top. What you're showing me here doesn't look like anything I'd think comes from the boss.
Supervisor: ...you're just being angry! Don't get so emotional!