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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/6/2005 5:31 PM (GMT -6) |   | | So what gives you confidence in the Bible? We live in an incredibly skeptical age where there is much debate about so many topics related to the Bible, how does one maintain a confidence in it in the midst of all this doubt and uncertainty? | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/7/2005 9:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Common sense for the most part. I mean, I can't see how one can look at the New Testament documents, for example, and possibly think someone went about, consipiratorily, and made this stuff up. The New Testament and the writings of the early church on up all point to the simple common sense that the basis of the story (Jesus' life, death, and resurrection) is true. As to the Old Testament...if the New Testament is true, then common sense would say that God probably had a hand in putting the Old Testament together, and if He did, then the crux of the Old Testament is theological. I don't care if the flood was world wide. I don't care if the Exodus event is not archeologically provable. None of that matters to me, because my faith is not built on the foundation of the events as historical in the EXACT manner in which the Bible conveys them (namely, the Old Testament); my faith is built on the fact that the New Testament declares that a most important and significant event took place (the Christ event), and that's all with which I need to concern myself. Common sense highly suggests that the totality of the Christ event, as recorded in the New Testament and mentioned elsewhere in historical documents, did, in fact, happen. I don't HAVE to have all the details to work with this.
Man, I've been through the ringer with all the skepticism that's out there. I would say that the most tossed-out aspect of thinking when it comes to the skeptic's take is the loss of common sense. I mean, so what if there's a possible way out of the resurrection (e.g., Jesus never made it to the grave). Common sense says, after looking at everything, that there's more going on here than conspiracy, a community project to encourage the locals or what have you.
I don't think the same can be said about Islam. The Koran doesn't come across at all like the New Testament. The same applies to the writings in regard to Hinduism and Buddhism. You won't find an appeal to the authority of a religious leader in any fashion remotely close to what the New Testament claims about Jesus and His purpose.
For me, common sense, when all is said and done, has allowed me to say, "Hey, I'm sorry, but the issue of Jesus just being a good guy? No way, dude!" (Please recognize that I am very aware of the necessity of understanding something about the various fields of apologetics; these are needed. I am simply saying that when all is said and done, for me, the way I addressed the issue of skepticism is by looking at the lowest common denominator: common sense.)
Starkman
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 3/7/2005 11:57 AM (GMT -6) | | | This of course is of the most serious of subjects; whereas other topics on this board are "outer-wear" to me, this one is at the core.
I'm not the most learned person around here, so I'm sure others can do a better job with this. But for me, what I find compelling is this strongly intuitive idea that if Christianity is true, OF COURSE the Christian God would preserve his word in a reliable way. It strikes me as a pretty small miracle for him to do. If Christianity is NOT true, then it follows that the Bible is NOT reliable. So I think the answer to the question about the reliability of the Bible is entailed by answer to the question: is Christianity true?
Maybe it appears that I've reversed the cart and the horse here. But for me as an individual, this is the most compelling. Here I refer back to an earlier thread on theism as a "properly basic belief". Since I have encountered God in a basic way, it would be irrational for me to NOT believe that Christianity is true; the Holy Spirit bears internal witness that my faith is valid. This argument may be reversed, but it's not circular, and I actually think that it's more epistemically sound (for me as an individual) than classical apologetic approaches talking about manuscript evidence, etc.
P.S. I would hope that core topics like this one would be hotter than the more speculative ones that we usually talk about around here. This thread is a bit too quiet. Post Edited (Corey) : 3/7/2005 11:24:50 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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AtTheWell
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2004
Total Posts : 133
| Posted 3/7/2005 1:17 PM (GMT -6) | |
Corey said...(emphasis mine)
This of course is of the most serious of subjects; whereas other topics on this board are "outer-wear" to me, this one is at the core.
I'm not the most learned person around here, so I'm sure others can do a better job with this. But for me, what I find compelling is this strongly intuitive idea that if Christianity is true, OF COURSE the Christian God would preserve his word in a reliable way. It strikes me as a pretty small miracle for him to do. If Christianity is NOT true, then it follows that the Bible is NOT reliable. So I think the answer to the question about the reliability of the Bible is entailed by answer to the question: is Christianity true?
Maybe it appears that I've reversed the cart and the horse here. But for me as an individual, this is the most compelling. Here I refer back to an earlier thread on theism as a "properly basic belief". Since I have encountered God in a basic way, it would be irrational for me to NOT believe that Christianity is true; the Holy Spirit bears internal witness that my faith is valid. This argument may be reversed, but it's not circular, and I actually think that it's more epistemically sound (for me as an individual) than classical apologetic approaches talking about manuscript evidence, etc.
P.S. I would hope that core topics like this one would be hotter than the more speculative ones that we usually talk about around here. This thread is a bit too quiet.
Well said! We get very caught up in the fact that we as humans do know how easily things get preverted when they are passed on.... just play telephone with 4 or 5 people and you have evidence enough. But, I'm thinking God pretty much knows this from the get go, so I don't see him having a problem dealing with it so that he ensures HE is truly revealed to us in scripture either.
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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/8/2005 4:08 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey said...
This of course is of the most serious of subjects; whereas other topics on this board are "outer-wear" to me, this one is at the core.
I'm not the most learned person around here, so I'm sure others can do a better job with this. But for me, what I find compelling is this strongly intuitive idea that if Christianity is true, OF COURSE the Christian God would preserve his word in a reliable way. It strikes me as a pretty small miracle for him to do. If Christianity is NOT true, then it follows that the Bible is NOT reliable. So I think the answer to the question about the reliability of the Bible is entailed by answer to the question: is Christianity true?
Maybe it appears that I've reversed the cart and the horse here. But for me as an individual, this is the most compelling. Here I refer back to an earlier thread on theism as a "properly basic belief". Since I have encountered God in a basic way, it would be irrational for me to NOT believe that Christianity is true; the Holy Spirit bears internal witness that my faith is valid. This argument may be reversed, but it's not circular, and I actually think that it's more epistemically sound (for me as an individual) than classical apologetic approaches talking about manuscript evidence, etc.
P.S. I would hope that core topics like this one would be hotter than the more speculative ones that we usually talk about around here. This thread is a bit too quiet.
Yes, it's a pretty small miracle in comparison to the rez, most of the arguments I see against the Bible being perfect are not that it's something couldn't do, but something that he wouldn't - that it would serve no particular purpose and that indeed his purposes are better served by allowing fallible humans to introduce their own understandings/error (a freedom thing) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2005 4:51 PM (GMT -6) | | | Quite interesting.
My questions would be simple:
1) What do we mean when we say that the scripture are "reliable"? This seems to beg a question about WHAT they are reliable for?
2) Upon what is biblical reliability based? Is it a deduced corrolary to some attribute of God or it this reliability induced from experience?
3) How does the truth of Christianity form a necessary link to reliability of the scriptures?
4) What is the DEGREE of reliability of the scriptures? TOTALLY reliable? Mainly reliable? what?
5) Is there any methodology of distinguishing the reliability of the Christian scriptures by which a Muslim, Bahai, or Hindu couldn't use to assert the "realiablity" of their own scriptures.
Let's see just how modernistic we are here.
:devil:
PS: For the record, I'm don't hold to infallibility (of the evangelical type) OR inerrancy. Perhaps more neo-orthodox...maybe...
PSS: I'm wondering if anyone here has a priori views about what divine revelation "should" look like or how it "should" be preserved. Hmm...
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary." --Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God | | Back to Top | | |
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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/8/2005 5:25 PM (GMT -6) | | Well, I suppose I had better answer this...
MephEternal said...
1) What do we mean when we say that the scripture are "reliable"? This seems to beg a question about WHAT they are reliable for?
I don't think it really begs the question, if I say totally reliable then maybe that makes it clearer - what they say is true in all that it affirms.
MephEternal said...
2) Upon what is biblical reliability based? Is it a deduced corrolary to some attribute of God or it this reliability induced from experience?
Experience of what?
MephEternal said...
3) How does the truth of Christianity form a necessary link to reliability of the scriptures?
Through Christ and how he positioned himself in relation to them
MephEternal said...
4) What is the DEGREE of reliability of the scriptures? TOTALLY reliable? Mainly reliable? what?
I'm going for totally reliable right now
MephEternal said...
5) Is there any methodology of distinguishing the reliability of the Christian scriptures by which a Muslim, Bahai, or Hindu couldn't use to assert the "realiablity" of their own scriptures.
Good question
Hindu - if we're working for Jesus as the starting point then this is obviously ruled out
Muslim - again ruled out as they don't conform to the testimony of Jesus
Bahai - don't ask me, I know nothing about them, I'm guessing the same
MephEternal said...
Let's see just how modernistic we are here.
I'm guessing from what I've said so far that I probably come over as pretty modernistic
MephEternal said...
PS: For the record, I'm don't hold to infallibility (of the evangelical type) OR inerrancy. Perhaps more neo-orthodox...maybe...
No, I realised that
MephEternal said...
PSS: I'm wondering if anyone here has a priori views about what divine revelation "should" look like or how it "should" be preserved. Hmm...
Most probably, don't ask me to be able to tell you what they are though | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 3/9/2005 12:34 AM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
Corey:
Quite interesting, indeed. Ironically, although allegedly rejecting “modernistic” thinking, the questions posited here still make heavy use of modernistic assumptions. We are asked to lay an unshakable foundation and build a scaffolding of propositions linked by complex deductions that will lift us finally, we hope, to beliefs about scripture that have warrant. Is this not classical foundationalism?
Hmmm...my questions aren't necessarily bolstering classical foundationalism at all. Actually, I'm much more of a contextualist myself. Who, indeed, could lay an "unshakable foundation"? I just want to ask questions dealing with that idea of scripture being "reliable". I hear that word said a lot...and I'm trying to get an understanding of what is meant and what implications that meaning has. Nothin' more. Okay, cool. Perhaps Plantinga does a better job describing what I'm trying to say about scripture, while avoiding the word reliable (emphasis mine):
Another part of God's response to our condition, however, is scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. God speaks to us in scripture, teaching us his response to our fallen condition and the way in which this response is to be appropriated by us. By virtue of the inward instigation of the Holy Spirit we see that the teachings of scripture are true. This work of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is a very special kind of cognitive instrument or agency; it is a belief-producing process, all right, but one that is very much out of the ordinary. It is not part of our original noetic equipment (not part of our constitution as we came from the hand of the Maker), but instead part of a special divine response to our (unnatural) sinful condition. | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/13/2005 11:33 AM (GMT -6) | |
Meph said...Quite interesting.
My questions would be simple:
1) What do we mean when we say that the scripture are "reliable"? This seems to beg a question about WHAT they are reliable for? Meph, I'm interested in your answer to your question and the evidence that convinces you of it.
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Lee Merrill
booted
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 723
| Posted 3/13/2005 4:38 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi everyone,
I think we have to consider the positive evidence (does scripture have supernatural characteristics, that support such a claim?), and negative evidence (are there examples of contradictions in scripture?).
For positive evidence, I would point first to prophecy:
Babylon will never be rebuilt, or reinhabited (Isa. 13:19, Jer. 25:12, Jer. 51:26).
Edom will never be rebuilt or reinhabited (Isa. 34:9-10, Jer. 49:18).
The Edomites would disappear as a nation (Oba. 1:18).
The Caananites would disappear, most notably the nation of the Philistines, which lasted the longest (Ex. 15:15, Isa. 14:31, Amos 1:8, Zeph. 2:5).
There will always be Jewish people (Jer. 31:35-37; 33:24-26).
There will be Egyptian and Assyrian people up until the fulfillment of Isa. 19:16-25.
Egypt will never again rule the other nations (Eze. 29:14-15).
There will only be one kingdom to rule the area where Babylon once ruled, following the Roman Empire, there will be a time of divided kingdoms, followed by one last overall kingdom (Dan. 2, Dan. 7).
Then I would ask if the other statements in scripture hold up, such as the promises, have we tested them, are they true?
As far as the negative evidence, we can consider the various places that people do point out as contradictions, and ask if there are explanations in each instance, is the Bible accurate history, can the creation account be reconciled with what we see in the universe, are the authors just making up some of their points?
If scripture gets through this gauntlet, then I think we may consider it reliable, in the "infallible and inerrant" sense.
And by way of personal testimony, what holds me up, what I turn to almost invariably, is the prophecy, when the doubts arise, as doubts will do, from time to time...
Blessings,
Lee
==================================================
"Even now we seem to have dim glimpses into regions
from which we receive no word to bring away" (George MacDonald)Post Edited (Lee Merrill) : 3/13/2005 3:42:34 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/13/2005 5:44 PM (GMT -6) | | | Thanks for that Lee (*seems to recall seeing some of that post somewhere else a couple of minutes ago* :-p) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/14/2005 4:45 PM (GMT -6) | | Jefscott:
Meph, I'm interested in your answer to your question and the evidence that convinces you of it.
The question:
1) What do we mean when we say that the scripture are "reliable"? This seems to beg a question about WHAT they are reliable for?
Tom and I are on the same page on at least one part, it seems. When we are talking about what scripture is "reliable" for, it's about "teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness", as the author of 2 Timothy states. To me, what this means is that scripture reliably provides the content of our religious and moral instruction. Faith and practice, they say. By faith, we believe that scripture gives us a look into God's purposes and dialogical interaction with human beings. I believe that the scriptures (and divine revelation in general) was INSPIRED by God for just this purpose. Does this necessarily entail inerrancy? I sure don't think so. Heck, naw.
So...what's my confidence in the Christian scriptures being inspired by God grounded? Simple. Like Doc, it's pretty much tied to my belief in the Jesus being the historically Resurrected Lord and Son of God. Insofar as Jesus' person and work is based in the his understanding of the Hebrew scriptures and testified to in the New Testament, those scriptures are useful and authoritative for Jesus' disciples.
That's about it.
Now, I could say that the Bible will not fail in whatever God intends for it to do. And God intends for it to convey divine truth about God's purposes and character. The scriptures never fail to convey to humanity the God character and purposes that God has for human beings and Creation. Some infallibilists say this. I suppose that's as far as I could go. So maybe I'm a semi-infallibilist.
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/14/2005 7:28 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: Paul says, "ALL of scripture is usefull for...." I don't think that means (I think it cannot mean!) every single verse of the Bible must perform ALL that Paul says scripture is useful for, as if you can get salvation by faith from Gen. 1.1. Paul didn't say "Here are the teachable parts, and here are the correcting parts, and here's a part useful for training in righteousness." I don't find that this "doens't take me very far." I'm quite happy with it. Don't know what else to say!
Jeff: Do you take the minimalist position like Meph ("Insofar as Jesus' person and work is based in the his understanding of the Hebrew scriptures and testified to in the New Testament, those scriptures are useful and authoritative for Jesus' disciples.") and require proof for the rest, or do we give the benefit of the doubt to "every jot and tittle" (also Christ's words) and question as we find necessary for logical reasons. I take it that Meph is claiming Jesus did NOT take the whole of Hebrew scriptures as true history. Scott Jorgenson, on the other hand, says Christ may very well HAVE taken the whole OT historically, but that it doesn't matter what we believe about the historicity of the OT as long as we get the right moral teaching from the text. Which, if either, of these positions do you agree with.
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