Scripture verses.

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE]
**
Thanks for your replies, all. From them, I’ve decided that I’ve done a poor job phrasing my main question. I’ll try again at the end of this post.

[QUOTE]

I’m sorry if I missed the point of your last post. Thanks for the clarification.

I’ll try to answer your question the best I can.

First let me say that God is a merciful God. If not He would have never attempted to reach anyone. (But notice how He allows people to reject Him.)

Yes, the disciples did doubt. But they later changed their doubts into unquestionable loyalty to God. Their fears became zeal. Their uncertainty became the foundation of their existence. Why? It’s the same reason that we can be sure of Christ. The book of Hebrews tells us that we must have faith to connect with God. Faith made the disciples “try the spirits” as the Bible puts it and decide that Christ really was the Son of God. We can be just as sure as the disciples were by having a living faith in Him today.

Please keep in mind that our ways are not God’s ways. The human mind can’t comprehend God completely. (i.e. His always having been, His trinity, etc.) But God has a very simple solution for this-faith. The first verse of the Holy Bible may be the most important. Allow me to quote it:

In the beginnig God created the heaven and the earth.

From the very beginning God establishes that we must have faith. He does not say, “Based on carbon dating you will come to the conclusion that…” Nor does He say, “I will show you the greatest miracle you have ever seen so you will believe me.” No, He simply makes His point that He created all, and allows you to do with that info what you will. (Faith is also what separates God from the Devil. The Devil seeks to imitate God with cheap magic tricks, while God makes the claim, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1)

If I still have not answered your question let me know.

BTW, the fact that God chooses to punish evil doesn’t make him any more “bad” than the government who must do the same to keep society safe. God doesn’t enjoy punishing the wicked (see Micah 7:18, which is one of my favorite Bible passages) and it brakes His heart to have to judge anyone. This is why the Bible is full of warnings. God will gladly forgive anyone just by sincerely asking. (Read the Book of Jonah.)

God bless,
jenkinsfan

62

Well, I could agree with your point, but that would require me to believe that not all of the Bible is Holy Writ, and please … don’t make me go there.

63

I posted this originally in Esprix’s cheap knockoff of this thread (I had yet to scroll far enough down the page to see this one). andros brought it to my attention that I should post it here as well:

See, here’s the thing about the Bible:

  1. In it, you can find a passage to support any side of any issue known to man (it’s sort of like the Internet in that regard).

  2. That said, quoting passages from the Bible is rather trite and meaningless, since the true meaning can only be derived by taking the entire thing in context (it’s sort of like your average GD post in that way).

  3. If you really want to know what the Bible really says, learn an ancient language and get a hold of an ancient script. Shakespearean works don’t have the same meaning when they are translated into modern English (and hell, that’s essentially the same language).

  4. That not always being practical, it’s a good idea if you’re going to read the Bible to get help from a Bible scholar, since they know more than you (it’s sort of like Ulysses in that way).

  5. Not everyone who holds, shall we say, “anti-Christian” views is a Bible scholar (though many purport to be).

So, [insert the name of your lame Bible-quoting ass here], I’m assuming that you’re not a Bible scholar, that you haven’t sought the counsel of one (if you did, you obviously didn’t learn anything), that you don’t speak Arabic or Latin, and that the text you quote from was translated centuries after the Bible was originally written. So please, spare me.

To which andros replied: “Cuts both ways. Not all Christians are Bible scholars either.”

I never said they were. And those who carelessly sling around Bible passages like so many “your mother” jokes are no less foolish than their non-Christian counterparts.

64

Eutychus55,
The psalms are a book of people striping themselves down from their lies and telling God the truth. God Loves nothing more than the truth. This is not proof that the Bible is not Holy Writ. There is nothing wrong with expressing yourself to God by telling him all your true feelings. That’s what he wants. There is a difference between saying them to God, and acting them.

65

By the by, I posted another sort of similar thread in response to this one called “More Scripture Verses” if anybody wants to take a peek (and jenkinsfan’s comments are appreciated as well).

Esprix

66

You may want to look up “The Atheist Religion - Part II”. Several posters covered their views there, including myself. I denote the only god of interest to me as “The Divine Me”, which is to say take the good parts of myself and magnify them to perfection and viola a god that I would find worthy of worship. The rub is that such a god would be decidedly unhappy with any kind of worship, so go figure.

You can also see an expansion of this discussion in the thread “Could You Believe?” (which could be called “Could Glitch Believe?”) around page 4 to page … well, whatever the last page is (8 or so).

BTW, I find the claim that God cares for my soul … ironically amusing.

67

Glitch, I’m not going to pretend to understand where you’re coming from. If you honestly want to know how God feels about you I suggest that you read Max Lucado’s book, In the Grip of Grace. It’s slightly more in depth than it is “amusing”.

68

See, now I had always assumed that the traditional, fundamentalist view of the Bible was that it was pretty much written by God. Verbal inspiration and all that. But I think I’m beginning to get it now. So, for example, the apostle Paul saying that homosexuality is evil may just be Paul speaking for himself rather than speaking for God, right?

69

Gee, what are the chances?

70

Manny, you can read the Bible over and over. Every time you read it you will see something you missed in the previous reading. Every time you read it, your interpretation will be different.

I daresay that anyone can take a Bible verse, and find one that will contradict it. I’ve seen it happen over and over, even on this board. Even previously where someone said be prepared to defend your beliefs, the Bible also says ‘cast not your pearls before the swine’, now how’s that for confusing?

My beliefs are deeply instilled, since childhood. It seems that those who were not brought up in a Christian atmosphere (not just the motion of being taken to church) find it harder to believe in the Christian God. Each man is instructed to work out his own salvation with much trembling and fear. It is a constant, daily, task that is not easily understood. But I can tell you, it is more than worth the effort to me.

I guess that probably the hardest thing for me to understand, is not that people don’t beleive, but the fact that they would make jokes and poke fun at the ones that do. Making jokes about God and Jesus. While those that don’t believe don’t care, what if we are right?

71

Some atheists make fun of Christians.
Some Christians call atheists devil-worshippers and condemn them to an eternity in Hell.
Which would you rather face?

72

Neither. And I cannot believe there’s no third option.

73

here ya go jackel- from the holy Qu’Ran. Just looking online. I’m actually buddist, but could not find any relavent material. If anyone wants to fill me in, go ahead.

from Chapter One- When they feel a flash of light, they walk a little further in it and when darkness covers them, they stand still Allâh intended, HE could have
totally taken away their hearing and sight, certainly, Allâh has power over all things.

How do you take up an attitude of unbelief with Allâh? Though you were lifeless, Allâh gave you life, then HE will take your life back, then
again HE will give you life, so you have to return to HIM. HE is the one WHO has created for you all that is in the earth

Chapter 7- 158. But Allâh raised him to HIMSELF; Allâh is All Powerful and All Wise.
There ya go. Whitness that!

74

Euty,

You’ve pretty much summed up the debate between fundamentalists and modernists (and those terms are not meant to be a slam; they’re the terms used in this type of debate.)

To quote from the entry for the Bible in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (which I seem to be relying on a lot today, in various threads; I do read other books, really!):

"Further, apart from the latitude afforded by allegoricaal methods of interpretation, the Divine inspiration of Scripture was generally held to require belief in the truth of all its assertions on matters not only of history, doctrine and ethics, but also on cosmology and natural sciences. [In short, the whole shebang.] In the earlier phases of the modern scientific movement (16th and 17th cents.), this view of inspiration was held by Protestants and Catholics alike.

"In the 19th cent., however, the critical study of the Bible was seriously undertaken, and at first met with much opposition. It sets out from the belief that an ancient writing must be interpreted in its historical perspective and related to the circumstances of its composition and its meaning and purpose for its author and first readers. As a result the Pentateuch is no longer attributed to the personal authorship of Moses, and in the NT differences in historical value between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics are recognized.

“The more important critical conclusions are now widely accepted, though the Fundamentalists still resist this apporach. In the ‘post-critical’ period attention has shifted to the theology of the Bible and the interrelationship of different parts of the OT and NT.”
Compare this to the entry for “Fundamentalism”

“A movement in various Protestant bodies. Apparently in reaction against the evolutionary theories and Biblical criticism of the 19th cent., a series of Biblical Conferences of Conservative Protestants were held in various parts of America; that of Niagara in 1895 issued a statement containing what came to be known as the ‘five points of fundamentalism’, viz. the verbal inerrancy of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Birth, a substitutionary theory of the Atonement, and the physical resurrection and bodily return of Christ. In the first half of the 20th cent. nearly all Protestant Churches in the U.S.A. were divided into Fundamentalist and Modernist groups. In a wider sense the term is applied to all profession of strict adherence to (esp. Protestant) orthodoxy in the matter of Biblical inspiration.”

Which approach a particular Christian may take to questions of the authority of the Bible is a matter of personal choice and interpretation. For example, I’ve heard an Anglican priest express the view that putting the words “Holy Bible” on the cover of the book is a form of blasphemy, because only God is holy, not the things that humans write about God.

A good example of the different approaches came out in Arnold’s thread on the passage from Timothy about women keeping silent in churches. A fundamentalist view may be that Paul in that case was setting down a universal rule of conduct.

A modernist view, as someone commented in Arnold’s thread, may be that Paul was trying to find a middle way between the traditional Jewish worship, where men and women were separated, and the eastern Mediterranean cults with temple prostitutes, where the only way a woman could participate in worship was by offering her body. The modernist, taking into account the cultural situation, may conclude that Paul was setting out a new way for women to worship that was not too disruptive for the culture of the day, but that does not mean that Paul’s approach is set in stone for all Christian women in all cultures.

75

Oh, and to reply to the subject of the thread, I offer one of my favourite Scripture verses, which my dear Welsh grandmother used to quote:

“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” [ I Timothy 5:23.]

76

FAITH: The opposite of dogmatism…

[T]he maintenance of faith in any system requires an enormous and constant individual effort. It can’t help but be conscious, existential, and subject to anguishing doubt…

Dogmatism replaces faith with the power of structure. We are spared the effort of consciousness and the strain of living with doubt. We can relax in the certainty of a church structure, a corporate interest or an ideological package, each with its fixed dogma.

The defenders of dogmatism, in an approach which has not varied over the centuries - from the Jesuits through to the technocrats - have made great use of scepticism and cynicism. They attempt to assimilate this with Socrates’ examined life, but its purpose is the exact opposite. While Socrates sought to provoke every individual into believing that it was worth questioning everything, the sceptics seek to silence the individual by denigrating her faith in inquiry.

-John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion

77

Since when? I’ve often heard this argued, but in my experience it simply doesn’t hold. Faith is the source of an unfathomable freedom, not anguishing doubt.

78

I believe that the book does contain God’s word that He revealed, but–as with anything communicated through a human conduit–it is subject to all the vagaries (deliberate or otherwise) our imperfection subjects us to. So, yes, in my mind Paul could have just been presenting his own philosophy as divine, even if he didn’t believe that’s what he was doing.

If this is not the case, how do fundamentalists reconcile the outright inconsistencies contained in the Bible–e.g., the verses that appear to flatly contradict each other? Doesn’t this immediately move us off the notion that literal interpretation is even possible? Can someone shed some light on this?

79

In my experience, many literalists simply say, “if you have no faith, it cannot be explained to you. Once you embrace God you’ll learn how to really read the bible and you’ll realize that there really aren’t any contradictions at all.”

Needless to say, I find this dissatisfying.

-andros-

80

My problem with the whole argument here is why we have to lok at the Bible as A book to begin with? Why can’t we just accept it for what it is? A collection of 66 books written over the course of probably 2000 years, whose authors didn’t necessarily agree with each other and who may not have had God’s best interests in mind in their writing?