How do we know that the Bible is inerent and ultimately authoritative?
Lucy, I'm counting primarily on you here. :-)
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- emily
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27 comments:
oh dear.
Lucy?
Actually, I think that believing in the Bible is a faith based thing. I mean, what ever anyone believes, no matter what religion, isn't the first step just kind of blind faith?
HA! Someone finally commented.
:)
drat. it's too late for me to leave a big fat comment now. maybe when I get back. hopefully someone else will do it before I get back *coughslucycoughs*.
but just really quickly, I think to some extent, it is faith-based. every religion is; you can't completely and totally prove everything.
but at the same time, I think the Bible has a lot more going for it than any other religion out there (from a logic base, not a feelings base). a ton of historical things from it have been found/proven, and it's very logical. the prophesies made about Jesus 800 years before He was born blow me away.
that's just a start....but I'm interested to see where this goes by the time I get back. :)
Haha! Funny how everybody is asking me. Sorry I didn't arrive earlier. Work and other things running through my mind.
The Bible in it's original form is inerrant. Though all through the copies there will be some error from man. But when it was originally written, it was infallible, flawless.
1. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse" Romans 1:20 Creation clearly declares there is a God. And that there is no excuse for ignoring it.
2. Every single prophecy told in the Bible, happened. Except those ones that haven't happened yet. How many religions can say every prophecy came true? The basis for a prophet was that every prophecy had to come true. They couldn't be wrong on even one. I think that is a really good point that it was God there doing it and not somebodies imagination or evil spirit.
3. The basis for the whole gospel is Christ. Like Paul said, " But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable." 1 Corinthians 15:13-19 There were thousands of witnesses to Christ resurrection, including all the apostles. Only somebody all powerful could bring a dead person to life again. "until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." Acts 1:2-3
Oh dear my mind is going at this late hour.
4. I also think that all the persecution and intolerance of Christianity is proof. Why is everybody so afraid and bitter towards it? You don't see people trying to take down other religious articles in public places. And Christianity is based on Christ and the Gospel. The Bible.
5. Where do we get our morals? I had a great discussion about this with an unbeliever once. First there is a written moral in our hearts. There from birth. Than there is also the written law. It goes back to Moses when God gave him the ten commandments. Exodus tells all about it. We got our morals from God. Otherwise I don't even want to imagine what this world would be like.
6. History proves the Bible. Again it comes back to prophecy and the course of history through time. But why do we go to other books to prove history? Why do we believe those more tattered and pieces of history more than the whole picture? I think we should look at it the other way around. The Bible proves history.
7. The Bible proves itself. It is complete and does not contradict itself. If it was not consistent, then how could it be trusted? But it is consistent from the beginning to the end. Yes I have read the whole thing. :-) Just because there is something we don't understand, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Paul even said it was God inspired. Bah! But I can't remember where that verse is. I will get back to that when I am not so tired. But here is a verse, "Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David" Acts 1:16a The Spirit was speaking through David to write the portion of Scripture that he did.
I disagree with you Kacy about not being able to completely and totally proving everything. If the Bible is not able to be proven and to prove, than how do we know that our faith is based on something that is true? That is the problem with other religions, they are based on lies and so cannot be proven. Perhaps it takes more faith to believe in that than in Christ.
Yes I do think a lot of it is faith based. But we have so much more to strengthen our faith and it is not so blind.
Everything about the Bible revolves around God and Christ. And since everything about it is true, than it has to be true that what He says in it is true. That He is the ultimate authority. "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” Revelations 22:13 Everything goes through Him. God Himself said that it is true, "Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” Revelations 21:5
There is so much more I would like to say! But sleep is calling to me. I hope this all helps. :-)
My goodness that was long!
Some good points their.
For sake of the argument Lucy, I would like to point out that of course the Bible is going to say it's true. Does that necessarily prove anything? I mean, for us, as Christians, that's enough for us to say "Okay, it's true."
Some of the other things you said, like how history lines up with the Bible, and how man has a basic "moral compass" and the fact that Christians are the ones that are so persecuted, seem a bit more compelling to someone who does not believe the Bible.
Alright. Completely at a loss for words, I'm going to play devil's advacate and take on Lucy here. Hope you don't mind, Lucy!
1. Creation clearly declares there is a God.
Yes, but how do we know that this God is the God of the Bible?
2. Every single prophecy told in the Bible came true.
Couldn't someone have easily made up the prophesies written in the Bible after Jesus did the things that he did? Or even made up the parts of the NT where Jesus fufills them? I know I'm going really far out there now, but for the sake of argument...
3. There were thousands of witnesses to Christ resurrection, including all the apostles.
But did any of them write about this anywhere but in the Bible? And even if Christ did raise from the dead, this doesn't prove to me that I can trust everything else in the Bible, does it?
4. All the persecution and intolerance of Christianity is proof. Why is everybody so afraid and bitter towards it?
...because it's so prevelent in our culture and people just adhere to it without really thinking- some might call it religious persecution to have Christanity be such a dominant religion.
5. Our morals come from God.
I'm not sure I understand this one... maybe you could explain what you mean a little more. How does this prove to me that the Bible is inspired by God and that it's completely inerrent?
6. History proves the Bible.
Yes, to an extent the things in the Bible match up with the things in history, but again man could have written it that way too.
7. The Bible doesn't contradict its self.
Again, not enough to convince me on it's own that it's infalable. I could write a book that doesn't contradict its self. And there are some hair-splitting verses that might contradict themselves or other portions of the Bible, depending how you choose to take them.
I guess, a while ago when I was challenged to really examine my own beleifs and decide for myself without looking to my parents, I had to stop and ask myself if I really beleived there was a God. And for a while I struggled with it, trying to allow myself to see both sides- but in the end there was no way around it, there HAD to be a God.
But it never, ever occured to me to question weather or not the fact of God's existence proved the truth of the Bible. And now I'm being challenged all over again. It's hard because I WANT to beleive in the inerency of the Bible so much, because it seems like without it things are vauge and uncertain and terribly frightening, but I refuse to allow myself to beleive in something because I want to. It's frusterating that I only ever get the conservative Christian perspective on things, it makes it harder to be objective.
"it's hard for me to say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this could not have been written by inteligent human beings and not really inspiried by God."
Compare God's living word to the works of Mark Twain, and then live your life according to each one individually, and tell me which one seems like God and which like a clever human.
I guess my point is just, if I really wanted to beleive that the Bible was just a bunch of made-up stories written down by people who wanted to form a religion to dominate the world, I could. The Bible wasn't even around until fairly recently in the history of the world. And it was put together by a council of fallible men trying to decide what documents should and should not be included. That scares me a little.
But I also know that if I wanted to beleive that the Bible was the inspired word of the living and true God, there would be nothing stopping me. It's really hard to argue either way, I think. Perhaps it's more faith based than we even realize.
I was commenting on a comment Em made but it's disappeared.
Um, YEAH! Faith is the basis of the whole thing! And how, as humans, do we think we can possibly understand the works of GOD! Don't you think his brain is a little bigger than ours????
Hahaha, Mark Twain. That would be ridiculos. But you might be on to something there... it's pretty easy to prove with the facts of reality that people are inately sinful, and a lot of the times when men try to write self-help books the solutions they offer are largely selfish and foolish and faulty.
But this one book offers advice that is completely good, even when it's not what you would expect, and when people follow it their lives go incredibly well. Maybe the purity and success of the message it preaches proves it's truth better than any point of logic could. That's a good one.
lol, sorry, I deleted it and replaced it with a new one... but it still says basically the same thing.
I'm not asking to understand the works of God, I'm asking how I, a faulty human, am supposed to come to the point of trusting that God is indeed what the scriptures say that he is. All for the sake of argument, mind you.
Oooooh, I was about to get really upset there. :-) This is a funny conversations based on comments that have been deleted. No one else is going to know what we're talking about.
Well, every other book is put together by fallible men. ;-)
AH! I can't write down all my thoughts fast enough before it is too late. In other words, the hour.
Yes I agree with you Beth. Of course Christians are going to believe the Bible is true if it says it is. But we need more than just that to present to non-believers.
Good point Lindy!
Here is a thought, has the Bible ever been proven false?
Just because one thing may not convince somebody, it is the whole that should. If enough of it is true, and nothing is false, wouldn't that prove that the rest we can't exactly explain be true as well?
Oh yes the apostles wrote about it other than the books of the Bible. There are letters that Paul wrote to churches that are not in the bible. The theme of his letters are of Christ. If the ones we see are about Him, than others ones probably were as well. They just were not needed to make the Bible whole and so were not added.
Morals are from God. First they are written on our hearts where man has no control over what is imprinted there or not. Which means it has to be God. Second the only way we would have written law and morals would be from Moses. Which God was the one to give it to him in the first place. And in turn Moses wrote it down on stone tablets and in the Bible. If God was not the author of morals, than why would it be wrong to kill somebody?
The Bible has many authors. It is easy to write a book and make it have no contradictions and be consistent. But it is hard for people over hundreds of years to write about the same thing and it still be completely consistent and not contradict one another. There were parts of the Bible that was written hundreds of years before Christ foretelling of His coming and resurrection and all that good stuff. If you think about it, all the miracles that Christ did, it was never behind closed doors. Sure there were time he may have asked some people to leave. But there were always several people there to witness it. And how can you explain many different people writing about all the same miracles and fulfilling of the prophecies unless it was true?
Also, a Christian's life is proof. I will expand more on that later when my thoughts are more together.
The wisdom of the Bible is God's wisdom which is foolishness to men. The only way to understand God's foolishness is to become a fool.
Oh yeah, what about all those other countries where Christians are persecuted and it is not a prevalent religion? There is a particular hate for Christianity.
I just lost another thought and point I had. Oh! I just found it again. The Bible and gospel it preaches is unique to all the other religions out there. It doesn't preach to man having to do something to be saved. It doesn't say there are many ways to heaven. It doesn't preach to the goodness of man. Just the opposite. Salvation is not by works, there is only one Way to heaven and it says "As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” Romans 3:10-12 Nobody is good. That is a major blow to anybodies ego. People don't like to hear it.
Well that is all my mind can take right now. More will come later when I have time.
I remembered something else! The Bible is not a "Ooh, that means one thing to you and another thing to me" book. It doesn't matter what any of us believe. There is only one meaning to all of Scripture. I might word that better later.
Faith. Faith. Faith.
You are right, Em, that you could easily believe one way or the other.
It comes down to faith, not the logistics of the Bible.
okay Lucy,
I really like your last point. It's a good one.
And speaking of historically, a lot of the old versions of the Bible, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, are very very old. Perhaps as old as the prophesies themselves. As in what was prophesied had not yet come to pass, when those versions were written.
I'm on cold medication so I'm not gonna make a long comment right now...maybe a little bit later. but I just thought of something pertaining to the whole consistency thing.
I'm reading the Count of Monte Cristo right now, and it's really funny when you read books that were originally published as a serial in a newspaper. you will occasionally see something that says "we forgot to mention" or something along those lines. basically, it means they didn't give you all the information you needed earlier to understand what they're writing now, so they're forcing the consistency.
and in CoMC, there's a bunch of notes by the editor. I've come across two so far that point out a flaw in something Hugo wrote elsewhere in the book (like a date or number or something similar). If one man couldn't keep the consistency over a few months in a newspaper, it's pretty (divinely) amazing that so many different authors could do it over hundreds and hundreds of years!
just my thoughts...I'll write more later. when I don't feel like going to sleep and never waking up.....
Thank you Kacy. You worded it better in your medicated state than I could have. Or did.
I set my tote on the floor of my mom's truck and there was melted snow down there.
That's horrible Lindy!! Did you have any books in there? Your journal??? Oh no. :-(
That is a really really good point Kacy. I'm mulling all of this over. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.
Thankfully I had the absence of reason to bring my journal that day, and the books I had were sitting on top of my big sunglass case, so the world didn't end on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 as a validated fear suspected.
Well, I'm off to escape life threatening disasters by the skin of my teeth again.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...
HAHA I love you Lindy <3
I was hoping you had more to say about this subject Em. It has been a very interesting discussion. :-)
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