Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
And this continued after the canon of the Bible was finished. There are voluminous writings from the first centuries, not only Christian but also Jewish and Roman historians and so forth. All of these textual witnesses independently corroborate and strengthen the gospel story.
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After the canon of the Bible was completed the discussion continued. This non-canonical and extra-canonical discussion didn't supplement the scripture, so much as further illuminate it.
It is important to say here what we are doing, and what we are not doing. We are not adding to the scripture. Scripture is scripture and commentary is commentary. But to tackle the scripture on your own without the guidance of those who were there before you is to assume that they were wasting their time and have nothing to add to the discussion. Smacks of arrogance to me. As RK might say, "What have they accomplished? Absolutely nothing".
Also, we are not taking anything away from God's word. WL's dismissal of large sections of scripture as "natural" and "fallen" is arguably the equivalent of taking away the words of God. If you don't get something in the Bible, fine. If it doesn't speak much to you, fine. But does that mean it is not the inspired word of God but rather the natural word of fallen man? I really don't think I want to go there either.
WL seemed to circumvent his lack of scholarship by stressing "life". Like if he wrote it it was life, but if someone else said it then it was maybe just "dead knowledge". So for scriptural understanding you basically ended up with "WL said it; therefore it's true." And if WL didn't say it, then nobody said it. Why? Because that's what WL said: WN had read everything, and had told WL everything useful, so why bother read anything else?