Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave
From my standpoint I wonder why we have to hold fast that the Bible is inerrant. Would we have fewer denominations, less arguments, less faith, more uncertainty etc. When you believe, really believe you have the truth as those who wrote those articles did, where does it take you?
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Dave,
Despite having a different opinion about the meaning of a lot of this than you seem to, you are digging in the right places from what I can see.
Now I have remained a pretty good evangelical, being in a couple of different Bible churches for the past 27 years, both of which are pastored by DTS graduates and including several of the DTS professors.
But while it would not be my first choice, I could do OK in a Lutheran church, or back at the Assemblies of God (my childhood and youth). Maybe even down the street at teh Episcopal or RCC, although I might need it to be really, really too far to travel to any other.
I am probably one of the trouble-makers because I will ask the questions that the dreaded "emerging" people ask. Not the way they ask them, but still ask them. Do you need to have any understanding of substitutionary atonement to be saved? Or even have any idea that it exists (assuming it actually does)?
And what is inerrant? If it merely means that it is telling us what God wants to tell us, then I am OK with it. But if it means that the sentence structure and every particular word is seriously important to it, and I have to buy into your (a generic "your") version of what it means, I have no use for it. I am convinced that we are too engrossed in getting all the doctrines right and almost ignoring getting the life right. Too much Orthodoxy at the expense of Orthopraxy. Surely we have to believe. But I thought the idea was to believe in Jesus, not 5-point Calvinism, believer baptism, pre-tribulation rapture (whatever that means), etc. Just suggest that you don't really care about one of those and you risk excommunication.
Too many hoops. Nothing that would commend it to the faith of "little children."