Why do you believe the Bible to be inerrant?

[Monterrey]

Originally Posted by FlamingZword

I agree that God took it upon himself to ensure it remain preserved and intact, but we that hold the transcendental inerrancy view, speak that of the message not of the precise words.
I am quite sure that God foresaw that people would make errors in their copying in the scriptures so he made sure that the main message would come through despites those errors in the texts.

One of the ways he insured his word would be received properly is the rule about 2 or 3 witness for something to be established.

That is why all doctrines need to have at least 2 or 3 clear scriptures before that doctrine can be considered as valid.

Yep, what he said!

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Michael The Disciple

I believe in the Bible because at 20 years old when I started reading it and took its words PERSONALLY a power or influence came into my life that was not there before. It was so wonderful it kept me ravished to the point of reading it for hours a day.

I remember when I first read about the "higher criticism". It was so horrible of a feeling! Trying to destroy faith in the greatest thing I ever experienced!

The words of Christs literally come alive to those who believe.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Dichotomy Girl

I believe that the main purpose of the scriptures are to lead us to relationship with Jesus, and the infilling of His spirit. But I believe that they can do that without being inerrant.



I too believe that God wants to communicate with us, but I think He uses many different sources, that are ultimately "translated" through his spirit dwelling inside of us. i.e. He can speak through songs, books, a friend, a Pastor, Nature, a Movie, etc. However, we would never make the assumption that any of those sources are inerrant.

And I think that is my ultimate stumbling block. Many sources may claim to speak for God, and I treat them all with a healthy source of Skepticism.

I see what you're saying. And there are many places in the Bible where things have been mistranslated. Therefore, I'd say that the translations of the Bible that we have are "inspired" but not entirely inerrant.

God once spoke to me through a secular song once when I was backslidden. Is the song inerrant? Well... for me it was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvvJ7MYaK8o

It's funny... it still makes me cry after all these years. lol

[Aquila]

To elevate and magnify anything (other than God Himself) to absolute perfection is to create an equal to God. That equal can be a person, place, or thing. We must be cautious of this. So, I confess that I do believe that the translations of the Bible that we have today are inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, the translations themselves are not entirely inerrant.

[Dichotomy Girl]

Originally Posted by Aquila

To elevate and magnify anything (other than God Himself) to absolute perfection is to create an equal to God. That equal can be a person, place, or thing. We must be cautious of this. So, I confess that I do believe that the translations of the Bible that we have today are inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, the translations themselves are not entirely inerrant.

This. Exactly This.

There was a time when I realized that the devotion I had held for the Bible, approached idolatry. I realized that at times I ignored the promptings of the Holy Spirit because what I was hearing didn't match what I had been told the scriptures said.

When I had this Epiphany I was understandably horrified, and I never want to make that mistake again.

Christian Ministers talk so often about the importance of being led by the Holy Spirit, and yet, I feel they send a mixed message at the same time, that it can never be trusted, and only the Bible can be. So I reached a point where I needed to ask myself, Am I following God, or am I following a book claiming to speak for God?

I think it's scary to give up the idea of the Bible as a rule book or instruction manual. (for life, not necessarily salvation). Because we know how infallible, imperfect and easily led astray that we are. I think that was one of my biggest struggles, to trust God to allow and forgive my inevitable mistakes.

[Sean]

The fact of the matter is there are no "original" manuscripts of the N.T. left. The way we can know that the Lord has "preserved" His word is because there are over 5,000 hand written copies and copies of copies that say the exact same thing in various languages of the world. The Bible was very meticulously copied and preserved by various groups all over the world. The Catholic church only "canonized" the N.T. to make the books the "official" N.T. They did NOT control all of the loose copies that were everywhere in the world. They only controlled a small portion of them and "modified" them before and during the reformation. These are know as the "Latin Vulgate". They are not used as part of the "received text"(5000 plus copies) that was used to give us our KJV of the bible in 1611. The KJV was simple the 1st "legal" English language version to emerge from the reformation.

What I am saying is that the Lord has "preserved" his word to nearly all languages in the world with over 5000 "witnesses" (before the printing press). You and I can trust this "cloud" of witnesses with our very lives.

[Sean]

If you would like some "real" info on this. There is a website for Dr. Walter Vieth. He gave a lecture called "battle of the Bibles"...you can download this video for free. I highly recommend it if you want "validity" of the Bible.

You can also download for free a video called "The Forbidden Book"(Dr. Craig Lampe)...it is a documentary of how we got the KJV of our Bible....it is a "must" to help us understand how we finally ended up with a Bible in the English language(even through fierce opposition)

[FlamingZword]

Originally Posted by Dichotomy Girl

I think it's scary to give up the idea of the Bible as a rule book or instruction manual. (for life, not necessarily salvation). Because we know how infallible, imperfect and easily led astray that we are. I think that was one of my biggest struggles, to trust God to allow and forgive my inevitable mistakes.

There is no reason to give up the Bible as a rule book or instruction manual. There are plenty of misspellings in the written laws of the land, do we throw away the law because some of its books have misspellings (errors) I do not think so.

It is precisely because God knows how infallible, imperfect and easily led astray that he gave us the Bible as channel to keep us within the truth.

[FlamingZword]

Originally Posted by Sean

The fact of the matter is there are no "original" manuscripts of the N.T. left. The way we can know that the Lord has "preserved" His word is because there are over 5,000 hand written copies and copies of copies that say the exact same thing in various languages of the world. The Bible was very meticulously copied and preserved by various groups all over the world. The Catholic church only "canonized" the N.T. to make the books the "official" N.T. They did NOT control all of the loose copies that were everywhere in the world. They only controlled a small portion of them and "modified" them before and during the reformation. These are know as the "Latin Vulgate". They are not used as part of the "received text"(5000 plus copies) that was used to give us our KJV of the bible in 1611. The KJV was simple the 1st "legal" English language version to emerge from the reformation.

What I am saying is that the Lord has "preserved" his word to nearly all languages in the world with over 5000 "witnesses" (before the printing press). You and I can trust this "cloud" of witnesses with our very lives.

Yes there are over 5,000 manuscripts, but every single one of them has human errors of transmission, and that is the beauty of it, for by looking at the overall text, we can pretty much figure out where the scribes fell asleep and made mistakes.

If one text says
Zechariah son of Barachiah
and another says
Zechariah son of Jehoiada

which text are we going to believe?

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Dichotomy Girl

This. Exactly This.

There was a time when I realized that the devotion I had held for the Bible, approached idolatry. I realized that at times I ignored the promptings of the Holy Spirit because what I was hearing didn't match what I had been told the scriptures said.

When I had this Epiphany I was understandably horrified, and I never want to make that mistake again.

Christian Ministers talk so often about the importance of being led by the Holy Spirit, and yet, I feel they send a mixed message at the same time, that it can never be trusted, and only the Bible can be. So I reached a point where I needed to ask myself, Am I following God, or am I following a book claiming to speak for God?

I think it's scary to give up the idea of the Bible as a rule book or instruction manual. (for life, not necessarily salvation). Because we know how infallible, imperfect and easily led astray that we are. I think that was one of my biggest struggles, to trust God to allow and forgive my inevitable mistakes.

For me, the Bible is largely like "case law". It is a history and examples of the interactions between God and other men during those times and in those contexts. The Bible doesn't address everything. And Christ's teachings sum up everything God was trying to teach them this way:

1.) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
2.) Demonstrate your love for God by loving others as yourself.

For the most part, everything else is just filler; there are examples of God making this point over and over and over throughout the biblical narrative.