Can you be a Christian & not accept that the Bible is COMPLETELY INFALLIBLE?

Some works by Martin Hengel, NT Wright, John Shelby Spong among others.

There seems to be a strong Pauline influence on the writings that followed. Of course, there is even debate on how much of Paul's writings were actually done by Paul.

It's been around ten years since I've done any serious readings on the Early Church and the origins of the NT. I tend to seek out authors like Spong, who while a devout Christian, aren't tied to the presuppostions of Orthodox and traditional attributions. His works led me to Hengel and Wright which are much more of an academic bent.

 

sorry for not being more clear

 

Thanks. I'll check into those. Sounds like interesting reading.

 

Johnny Cash wrote a song called "The man in white" about the conversion of Paul. You guys ought to look it up.

 

Spong is a bit of a maverick and that is an understatement. His works are much more general and there are certainly some major holes in some of his views. He is, at the least, thought provoking.

He is a great jumping off point for exploration of other works, however.

 

I found a tasty looking one on Amazon by Hengel about the origins of the four gospels I'd like to check out.

 

Absolutely it does.

 

Hmm...there's alot of different things in this thread to respond to, but I'll try to stick to the original question for now.

First, in the United Methodist Church, we believe that revelation from God and/or truth are found through four different elements: Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason (Science). Scripture is primary, but the other three are a part of the conversation. For example, the issue that stimulated this thread originally was a conversation on Christianity and Homosexuality. The experience of homosexual individuals and the (albeit limited) scientific knowledge on human sexuality are a part of my theological understanding of the intersection of those two topics. Within scripture there are two conflicting messages - Paul ascribes homosexuality in a list of moral no-nos, while the Gospel, significant portions of the OT, and even Paul describe God first and foremost as a God of love. With all those thrown together, I have to come down to the belief that Paul got it wrong, and that there is no way a loving God would create someone with a homosexual orientation and then expect them not to fulfill it.

Second, on a personal level, I find that parts of scripture conflict with each other, and not just OT vs NT. If Jesus is, as the first chapter of the gospel of John says, the living Word of God, then the best chance we have at understanding God's Word to/for us is through the stories of Jesus. It also means to me that when there is tension or flat-out conflict between what's said in the gospels and what is said elsewhere in the Bible, then what is said in the gospels takes primacy. For me this largely takes the form of Jesus' teaching of the greatest two commandments - loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself - as the measure of reliability of all other scripture. Jesus said that if you keep those two commandments you will by default keep all other commandments.

Third, it goes back to the providence and free will. Clearly, we see that God allows people to do very evil, atrocious things. We have seen recently where God has not intervened to protect children abused by priests/ministers in while they serve in His name. God has not intervened while televangelists use His name to cajole people into sending "$100 seeds of faith" to the televangelists so they can get rich. God did sent the prophets and Jesus, but He did not stop Pharisees and other Jewish religious leaders from turning the Jewish faith into a shallow creed of purity/cleanliness rules. So why is it hard to accept the thought that God would not intervene when people writing letters (that later became scripture) inserted more of their own values, culturally based or otherwise, and ascribed them to God?

Almost all of us, even inadvertently, engage in selective use of the scriptures. Even if we say that the entire Bible is the infallible word of God, we tend to emphasize some stories and teachings over others.

Fourth, though I think it is an important topic, I think the topic of the infallibility/reliability of the scriptures is potentiallly a trap that can take one away from living ministry. I left the Southern Baptist Convention in the mid-ninties because I got tired of watching the left and the right in the denomination spend 90% of their time arguing and almost no time ministering to "the least of these."

 

Someone once said . .

'Everything in the Bible is truly stated, B-U-T everything in the Bible isn't a statement of fact'

Soooooooo, what parts of the Bible do some people think is the latter? I think many liberal Bible scholars are trying to disprove most events (i.e. Virgin Birth). But again I say, isn't that the whole point of faith? You and I just have to take the Bible at its word that some time thousands of years ago, an angle told a 15 year old single woman that she is going to be carrying the Son of God? That many years before that, God told a guy named Noah to build a big boat and put 2 of every creature on there? And that sometime in the future (some think the time is right around the corner) that those who are born-again are going to leave this Earth and go to heaven in the Rapture? Those who are left behind will have to somehow survive the Great Tribulation period ?

 

I agree with the first part that I bolded and there in makes the second part difficult to agree with. I'm still trying to reconcile my observation and scripture and for now that I'm thinking that God gave man the power to reproduce and that once sin entered into the picture it was man reproducing sinners and not God creating homosexuals.

I'm guilty

So, you went from dunkin' to sprinklin' - you've plumb backslid boy