5 kinds of Christians........

[TimmySmith]

How can the Bible be fallible? Interpretation, maybe, but the book itself, no.

[techboy]

If we have free will, that would imply that when faced with a choice, I am completely empowered to sway one way or the other. However, if God is all knowing, he must know which choice I will choose. Therefore, did I ever have free will in the first place? Sure, I could have made the other choice, but God already knew I wouldn't, so could I really have made it?

Foreknowledge doesn't preclude free will at all. I love chocolate doughnuts, and I hate Boston Cream doughnuts. If my wife presents me with a choice of a chocolate or Boston Cream doughnut, she can know with 100% certainty before I even speak what I will do. That doesn't mean that I don't have the freedom to choose the Boston Cream, it just means that I won't. Ever.

[HailGreen28]

A poll would be interesting. I'm mostly #3.

[Seabee1973]

As for me I'm the type of Christian that believes the bible loses tremendous value when taken literally. I prefer to just take Jesus seriously when he said, love God and love thy neighbor and the rest will work itself out.

Actually the bible loses tremendous value when not taken literally

[Seabee1973]

Not to encourage any loop-iness :pfft: either, but my sister's a born-again FC and she really can't get her head aorund that one. She gets stuck on how someone can actually advocate for, or even celebrate, a clearly identified sin as a basic part of a lifestyle and still call themslevs a Christian. Her point being that even with the understanding that everyone's a sinner, you're supposed to at least want to change and ask forgiveness for your falling short, even if you do so repeatedly. But you must at least sincerely regret your sinful actions and wish to atone. I have no important enough dog in the fight to challenge her over and over, I just leave it at her knowing we see things differently on any number of matters.

And it is an interesting way to set the OP and seems to be working well.

The answer is actually in the bible

[mardi gras skin]

Actually the bible loses tremendous value when not taken literally

Actually, the bible should be taken literally sometimes...and sometimes it shouldn't. :twitch:

[IHOPSkins]

Somewhere between 3 and 1......

......As long as translations/copies still project the correct distinct image.......

I am with TWA on this one (as with most things )

There are logical inconsistencies that cannot be explained due to Man's limited ability (choice/elect)

There are apparent logical fallacies that can be explained (The genealogy of Jesus)

There are logical inconsistencies that have not been explained that might be due to one of the above or error

BUT

Romans 14 (New American Standard)

5 One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.

And

10 But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

I am not saying that you cannot judge another's faith...it is clear there are certain beliefs that must be held in common (Deal Breakers like giving thanks to God)

But

It is clear that the Bible says there are certain beliefs that are open to intrepretation as long as you are honest in seeking the truth (Non-Deal Breakers like no meat on Good Friday)

God knew years (forever) before the Bible was written there would be lots of Bibles Now

But I have faith in this truth........God's plan is Just

[wysknz1]

One of the basic premises of Christianity is #1. So count me as that.

I do not think there are errors. I believe God's word is protected by him and written by him through people. To believe otherwise would be to believe God is not perfect, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.

[LaxBuddy21]

Actually the bible loses tremendous value when not taken literally

Actually the brain that God gave you loses tremendous value when you take the Bible literally all the time. Anyone with common sense can tell there are clear parts not meant to be taken literally (ie the creation story). Take the message away from the Bible. Basically, be a good person and help others as much as you can. If you do that, you will go to Heaven and will make the world a better place in the process.

[Zguy28]

Basically, be a good person and help others as much as you can. If you do that, you will go to Heaven and will make the world a better place in the process.

You are right, that is not the message of the Bible.

[Special K]

I'm curious to know what led Dr. Drunkenstein to confine us to only the 5 choices here?

It really is an interesting topic. Wish I had more energy to discuss it. But I'm pretty pooped out from an extensive discussion about Christianity with a coworker where we covered extremely important topics like: why American Christians "tolerate" women wearing skirts that reveal their knee, or why American and European Christians use birth control and don't leave it up to God to decide..."do we all hate children?"

Good times.

Take the message away from the Bible. Basically, be a good person and help others as much as you can. If you do that, you will go to Heaven and will make the world a better place in the process.

I think there are a lot of Christians who would disagree with you on your interpretation of the ultimate message of the Bible...

[Dr Drunkenstein]

I'm curious to know what led Dr. Drunkenstein to confine us to only the 5 choices here?

I don't think I confined anyone.

I think a lot of times when people discuss religion, the conversations become very amorphous because the two parties usually don't define up front what they believe.

Before I ever have a conversation with someone who is a Christian, I ask up front whether or not he/she believes that the Bible is infallible. These 5 choices are really the only 5 positions a Christian can take in terms of their opinion on the infallibility of the Bible.

If someone says the believe the Bible is perfect, I ask them how they can reconcile some obvious flaws. The Bible clearly states that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old when this has been proven to be wrong. Jesus promised, multiple times, that he would return to Earth with his final judgment and usher in everlasting peace within the lifetimes of some of the people listening to him. Obviously, this didn't happen. There are dozens of other issues that I am interested in Group 1 folks addressing.......

If someone acknowledges that the Bible has errors, I ask how they can believe the most extraordinary claims of the Bible (like the divinity of Jesus and his rising from the dead) when they admit that some less extraordinary elements of the Bible are incorrect.

It is interesting that someone accused me of being a fundamentalist when I am not a religious person. I got a kick out of that.

Sorry if I ticked anyone off, I am genuinely interested in what makes people believe certain things......

[Seabee1973]

I don't think I confined anyone.

I think a lot of times when people discuss religion, the conversations become very amorphous because the two parties usually don't define up front what they believe.

Before I ever have a conversation with someone who is a Christian, I ask up front whether or not he/she believes that the Bible is infallible. These 5 choices are really the only 5 positions a Christian can take in terms of their opinion on the infallibility of the Bible.

If someone says the believe the Bible is perfect, I ask them how they can reconcile some obvious flaws. The Bible clearly states that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old when this has been proven to be wrong. Jesus promised, multiple times, that he would return to Earth with his final judgment and usher in everlasting peace within the lifetimes of some of the people listening to him. Obviously, this didn't happen. There are dozens of other issues that I am interested in Group 1 folks addressing.......

If someone acknowledges that the Bible has errors, I ask how they can believe the most extraordinary claims of the Bible (like the divinity of Jesus and his rising from the dead) when they admit that some less extraordinary elements of the Bible are incorrect.

It is interesting that someone accused me of being a fundamentalist when I am not a religious person. I got a kick out of that.

Sorry if I ticked anyone off, I am genuinely interested in what makes people believe certain things......

The only problem is God says the earth is 6,000 years old man says its billions of years old hmm who to believe?

[Seabee1973]

Actually, the bible should be taken literally sometimes...and sometimes it shouldn't. :twitch:

I take the whole bible literally when you start not taking it literally thats where secular things become okay to do.

[Dr Drunkenstein]

The only problem is God says the earth is 6,000 years old man says its billions of years old hmm who to believe?

It isn't something that has to do with belief. The universe is exponentially older than 6,000 years. The Bible is provably wrong on this matter.

[Dr Drunkenstein]

I take the whole bible literally when you start not taking it literally thats where secular things become okay to do.

So.....do you kill every gay person you meet? Do you kill every never-married woman you meet who is not a virgin? Do you kill every person you meet who is wearing more than one kind of fabric at a time? The Bible commands you to do these things.

[Jumbo]

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[twa]

So.....do you kill every gay person you meet? Do you kill every never-married woman you meet who is not a virgin? Do you kill every person you meet who is wearing more than one kind of fabric at a time? The Bible commands you to do these things.

Only on Good Fridays that that are sanctioned by rabbi's:silly:

Context helps

[Special K]

Sorry if I ticked anyone off, I am genuinely interested in what makes people believe certain things......

Thanks for the explanation, I wanted to hear your rationale that led you to separate things the way you did. I wasn't ticked off, just genuinely curious, similar to you

My thoughts in a "nutshell":

- The books of the Bible were inspired by God, yet written by man....many different men....many years apart in most cases. The Bible has also been translated through several languages, years apart, during different politically-influenced environments. On top of this, man chose which books to include in the Bible and which books to leave out. Because of this, there do appear to be several inconsistencies in various historical accounts in books of the Bible.

- So, while inspired by God, I don't think Christians can deny "man's" influence is clearly present in the Bibles we own today.

- While I recognize this, I still believe that as a whole, the Bible is inspired by God and it was His hand that led "man" to include/exclude/translate/interpret/etc.

- While there are descrepencies, I believe that they are there to make us step back and look at the big picture, the overall message. In fact, I think it's very similar to how Jesus taught and spoke as He often spoke in parables to get listeners to think and apply reasoning and logic in order to understand His message. Sometimes Jesus spoke literally, sometimes He did not. This is how I see the Bible. Some passages should be taken literally, some not. To discern the difference between which passages to take literally and which passages to not take literally takes thought, reasoning, logic, and all that other good stuff God gave us the ability to do.

-When I read the Bible, I look at it from the angle of "what does this teach me about God's character?" To me, all the Books of the Bible fit together to tell us a bigger story which is the ultimate conflict between God and Satan, good and evil. They enable us to better understand the character of God and the character of Satan. Once we are able to understand their characters, then we have the knowledge needed to choose which one we want to follow. We are able to choose to follow or not to follow God based on the intelligence and ability to reason that God gave us, as well as our own free will.

- God does not want us to follow Him out of fear of going to hell, or fear that He's going to strike us down and gleefully watch our eternal torment. He wants the people that He saves to have chosen Him because they were given the chance to see the difference between good and evil, and based on their observations, made an informed decision that they WANTED to follow God.

So. Long story short, no, I don't believe all the stories of the Bible are to be taken literally. But I also think that's a side issue. A distraction a lot of people easily get caught up in that shifts their focus away from the primary message of the Bible, which is about God's character.

As for the little side discussion about different types of sins (greed vs. homosexuality vs. whatever). I think that unfortunately, since the dawn of time, politics gets too entangled with religion and religious messages. I think that is the reason certain issues get the spolight moreso than other issues.

IMO, we are all sinners and the Bible even says that a sin is a sin is a sin, etc. Therefore, who am I to judge a homosexual's lifestyle choice? Is it a sin, yeah, according to the Bible it is. But so too is just about half of what I think or do on a daily basis. I'm really only going to jump into action when a sin is blatantly injuring another human (murder, rape, stealing, torture...stuff like that). Otherwise, in regards to sins that really aren't infringing on others' rights, well, God's the one who knows each of our hearts...so I prefer to leave that judging stuff up to Him.

Wait, so what were the choices in the OP again?

[Dr Drunkenstein]

This is how I see the Bible. Some passages should be taken literally, some not.

What about some of the really extraordinary things like Jesus's divinity, his resurection, his miracles.......maybe these things were invented to teach a lesson. Should these things be taken literally when they are impossible?

[Special K]

I take the whole bible literally when you start not taking it literally thats where secular things become okay to do.

If God truly wanted us to take everything literally and completely disregard context, how come Jesus communicated most of his teachings through parables?

[gunslinger5]

So.....do you kill every gay person you meet? Do you kill every never-married woman you meet who is not a virgin? Do you kill every person you meet who is wearing more than one kind of fabric at a time? The Bible commands you to do these things.

context my friend.

Those laws and their penalties you mention were for the Israelites. A man was struck dead by God for picking up firewood on the sabbath also. What are you doing this friday thru saturday evening?

[mardi gras skin]

I take the whole bible literally when you start not taking it literally thats where secular things become okay to do.

Psalms 28:1

To you I call, O Lord my Rock...

No one takes the entire bible literally. Some passages are obviously metaphor like the passage above. Some passages are poetic, some are exaggeration for emphasis, some are "apocalyptic literature" written with political cartoon sensibilities, some are parables, etc.

And much of the bible is just story...meant to be taken literally.

[techboy]

If someone acknowledges that the Bible has errors, I ask how they can believe the most extraordinary claims of the Bible (like the divinity of Jesus and his rising from the dead) when they admit that some less extraordinary elements of the Bible are incorrect.

There are obviously errors in at least the majority of the current manuscripts, because there are slight discrepancies between them, though the vast majority are ridiculously minor and of interest only to scholars. As a quick example, one raging controversy is in Romans 5:1, whether Paul says "We have peace" or "Let us have peace".

Earth-shattering, I know, but when we consider that roughly 99% of the wording of the New Testament has been established, with the remaining 1% pretty minor, I'm not terribly worried about it.

I think the position that the originals are the inerrant word of God is defensible, if not provable (since sometimes we have to retreat to a possibility no historian would call even close to probable).

Either way, your suggestion that the central claims of the New Testament (the divinity of Jesus, and his Ressurection) can be called into question by peripheral errors (should they exist, and I'm not interested in debating that, as I find the issue largely irrelevant, for reasons I shall explain) is the kind of fallacious thinking fundamentalists (of both the Christian and skeptical variety) fall into, so I wonder if perhaps your denial of being a fundamentalist are, in fact, correct.

Your suggestion, for instance, that the Bible says the earth is 6,000 years old smacks of fundamentalism. It says no such thing, and the only way to come to that conclusion is to engage in a hyperliteral reading of Genesis. This is a method generally reserved for fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist atheists alike. There are several other reasonable ways to read the text that have no such result.

In any case, let's turn to what I do think is important, and which you mentioned as possibly being in doubt.

1. Jesus claimed to be God- This statement can be verified historically, independently of any other possible errors in the text.

2. The earliest Christians believed that they had encountered what they believed to be the risen Jesus- This statement can also be verified historically, independently of any other possible errors in the text.

The significance of points 1 and 2 vis a vis your question is that 1 is a genuine claim of Jesus and 2 is a real belief of the earliest Christians. It is therefore not the case that this was a parable or story that was created to teach. They really believed it.

Moreover, I argue that a strong case (using an inductive reasoning method known as inference to the best explanation, working only with facts accepted by the vast majority of critical scholars derived from the strictest historical methods) can be made that Jesus really did rise from the dead, verifying his claim to divinity.

Once we conclude that Jesus was God and did rise from the dead, I'd argue that the rest falls into place, and we can proceed under the reasonable belief that even should some errors have crept in, the Bible contains what we need to know.

Biblical inerrancy is a defensible doctrine, but it should not be a central doctrine. It is not an essential to be a Christian.

While we're on the subject of inerrancy, though, there's another important aspect to this that your 5 categories ignore: It is possible to hold to Biblical inerrancy without being a hyperliteralist. Consider What Price Biblical Errancy?, a short Q&A answer by the Christian philosopher and scholar William Lane Craig. An excerpt:

Now the question raised by your letter is what our reaction should be if we become convinced that there really is an error in the Bible. Won’t such a conclusion have a kind of reverse effect along our chain of deductive reasoning, leading us to deny Jesus’ resurrection and deity? This was apparently the conclusion of Bart Ehrman, who says he lost his faith in Christ because he discovered one minor error in the Gospels.

Such a conclusion is unnecessary for two reasons. First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.

We can extend the point by considering the proposal that the Gospels should be understood as different performances, as it were, of orally transmitted tradition. The prominent New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn, prompted by the work of Ken Bailey on the transmission of oral tradition in Middle Eastern cultures, has sharply criticized what he calls the “stratigraphic model” of the Gospels, which views them as composed of different layers laid one upon another on top of a primitive tradition. (See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003].) On the stratigraphic model each tiny deviation from the previous layer occasions speculations about the reasons for the change, sometimes leading to quite fanciful hypotheses about the theology of some redactor. But Dunn insists that oral tradition works quite differently. What matters is that the central idea is conveyed, often in some key words and climaxing in some saying which is repeated verbatim; but the surrounding details are fluid and incidental to the story.

Probably the closest example to this in our non-oral, Western culture is the telling of a joke. It’s important that you get the structure and punch line right, but the rest is incidental. For example, many years ago I heard the following joke:

“What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the elevator shaft?”

“I don’t know.”

“He got up, dusted himself off, and said, ‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Now just recently someone else told me what was clearly the same joke. Only she told it as follows:

“Do you know what the Calvinist said when he fell down the stairs?”

“No.”

“‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Notice the differences in the telling of this joke; but observe how the central idea and especially the punch line are the same. Well, when you compare many of the stories told about Jesus in the Gospels and identify the words they have in common, you find a pattern like this. There is variation in the secondary details, but very often the central saying is almost verbatim the same. And remember, this is in a culture where they didn’t even have the device of quotation marks! (Those are added in translation to indicate direct speech; to get an idea of how difficult it can be to determine exactly where direct speech ends, just read Paul’s account of his argument with Peter in Galatians 2 or of Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus in John 3.) So the stories in the Gospels should not be understood as evolutions of some prior primitive tradition but as different performances of the same oral story.

Now if Dunn is right, this has enormous implications for one’s doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for it means that the Evangelists had no intention that their stories should be taken like police reports, accurate in every detail. What we in a non-oral culture might regard as an error would not be taken by them to be erroneous at all.

I was struck by your comment that you feel “a certain bitterness against God for allowing the biblical writers to play fast-and-loose with his words and for not providing a clarity that brings more certainty about what is from him and what isn't.” Joshua, you are imposing upon God what you think ought to be the standards of inerrancy rather than coming to the Scriptures and learning from them what inerrancy means. The biblical writers aren’t playing fast and loose with His words if God never intended His words to be taken in the way you suggest. A Bible that employs a rich variety of genres should not be treated like a flat, monotone book. We need to come to God’s Word with humility and learn from it what it intends to teach and affirm.

Take a look at my article “‘Men Moved by the Holy Spirit Spoke from God’ (2 Peter 1.21): A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration,” under Scholarly Articles: Omniscience for a proposal on how to conceive of verbal, plenary, congruent inspiration of Scripture.

So if we are confronted with what appears to be an error in Scripture, we should first ask whether we’re not imposing on Scripture a standard of inerrancy which is foreign to the genre of the writing and the intent of its author. I remember Dr. Kantzer once remarking that many of his constituents would be shocked if they knew what he was willing to allow in Scripture and not call it an error. He understood that we must put ourselves within the horizon of the original authors before we ask if they have erred.

Emphasis is the author's. Dr. Craig also goes into the non-centrality of inerrancy in the piece, for those who are interested.

[techboy]

Psalms 28:1

To you I call, O Lord my Rock...

God is literally a rock. Check.

Jesus is literally a door.

Jesus is also literally a piece of bread (pipe down, Catholics... )

But wait... Jesus is literally God.

Contradiction?

No... God is a door made of rocky bread.

Ah.... :pfft: