Seven Problems With Inerrancy - Kyle Roberts

[★ Citsonga ★]

Am I right in guessing that most of us who have discussed inerrancy on here in the last month or so are ex-fundamentalists?

 

I wasn't quite a fundamentalist, but I was a mostly conservative evangelical who believed in biblical inerrancy, so I wasn't too far removed from a fundy.

 

Or do we go further to claim that Christianity as a whole is falsified by the Bible's discrepancies and historical/scientific inaccuracies?

 

Well, the Bible is clearly falsifiable, and it definitely fails the test. Since it is the source text for the religion, then it logically follows that the the religion is at best seriously flawed.

 

I can't quite say that that makes the religion itself falsifiable, since one can (and many do) hold to the religion as true without a necessity for the source text being accurate. However, all that we have purporting to be first-hand accounts of the supposed events that the religion allegedly started with are in the ancient texts that comprise the New Testament and other extra-biblical texts from that era. Since those source texts are so rife with problems, to me that renders the religion null and void. It's simply common sense in my mind that the circumstances here leave Christianity as completely unbelievable.

 

So, Christianity may not be completely falsifiable in terms of absolute proof, but then again neither are fairies. For those of us familiar with the real and serious problems with Christianity's source text, the religion is on the same footing as fairies, and I would be considered insane if I said I believe in fairies.

[★ Citsonga ★]

If we don't know what parts of the Bible, if any, are true then why would we embrace as factual its most outrageous claims of Heaven and Hell or the Jesus miracles and resurrection?

 

To expand on that, once we know that the Bible is clearly wrong on things that we can test, then why in the world would we trust it to be accurate on things that we cannot test?

[♦ ficino ♦]

If you don't accept inerrancy, even beyond the miracle stories, how could you know what Jesus actually said as opposed to what people added or changed from his words in constructing the gospels with whatever agenda they had? What if the part about having to believe in Jesus for salvation is just an interpolation? Once you let go of innerancy, you don't have much of a religion anymore and any doctrine is up for grabs it seems. At least thats my opinion

Bleed, I think it's pretty clear that gospel texts added to and changed Jesus' words. 

 

For example, he gives a blanket condemnation of divorce in Mark, but in Matthew 19:9, he adds the exception for cases where the wife commits "porneia," which can be prostitution or just more general sexual immorality.  A fundy may hold that Jesus actually spoke the fuller version in Matthew, and Mark shortens it for simplicity;  or that Jesus made two separate statements, one fuller than the earlier one. The need for such ad hoc hypotheses is a sign of a bad theory.  The result is also bad, since Christians need to know how to manage divorce, and a biblical discrepancy muddies the waters.  So, a Holy Spirit fail.  The simple explanation is that some church man/men added the exception later on.  This means adding to Jesus' words.

 

An even more extensive example is the whole book of Acts, especially the controversy over whether the gospel should be preached to the Gentiles and whether the Gentiles had to adopt the law of Moses.  In Acts, the church shows a growing awareness of the need to evangelize the gentiles. They all seem, then, to have forgotten the risen Jesus' command to go and makes disciples of all nations, baptizing them etc. (Matt. 28:19-20).  That's the fucking Great Commission, and it seems to have left no memory already in Acts when Jesus has just ascended and just breathed the HS.  Otherwise, why the controversies etc.?  The simple answer is that Jesus' words at the end of Matthew were either put in his mouth later by one or more people or were added to.  [i leave out the question, did Jesus exist at all.]

 

The Great Commission/Acts discrepancy is pointed out by Raymond Brown, the leading American Catholic scripture scholar of the last generation, who always held to Church doctrine.  Brown just limits inerrancy to matters of faith and morals.  He never displayed much anxiety about the evangelists' adding to Jesus' words because the Catholic view of revelation relies on more than the Bible alone.  But I think even Brown agrees that we don't have Jesus' words just as he spoke them.

 

So it seems to me that Catholics in the end rely on the Church as the mouthpiece of revelation.  Protestants have nothing.  But the Catholic view collapses into nothing once you ask, on what basis do we think the Church is correct?  Even Brown admitted that "of God" in the claim, "the Bible is the Word of God," is a faith commitment, not a conclusion based on evidence.