Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
I also have a hesitation on that too. All Scripture is God-breathed. Can God breathe errors?
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What was inspired? To write from what was seen or heard? Or to write specific words that were not otherwise already in the head of the writer? Was the inspiration dictation, or just the nudging to put to writing what was there in front of them or in their minds already? Probably some combinations given the diversity of content. And I'm sure that when someone said "thus saith the Lord," that there was probably some amount of dictation involved because it was God speaking. But do you think that the scribes that chronicled the events of the times of the kings wrote down only what was dictated to them by God? Or did they chronicle the major events of those kings? Was the inspiration in the words used, or in the fact that they wrote at all?
And if it was not all "breathed" (dictated) then any errors (as we now understand them) would not be God's. So your incredulity that God might be credited with speaking an error is solely founded in the insistence that every word is dictated through the inspiration of God. That is something that even Paul did not say. He did not specify what is scripture other than to identify it with being a sound base for teaching, etc.
And if you are needing to read every fortune cookie (what you get when you rip a verse from its context) and find "truth" in it, then you need an inerrant Bible. But if the whole of the subject being written on is the point, then the specific words become less important. For example, in 1 Cor 15, Paul talks for many verses about the kind of body we will receive at the resurrection. During that discussion, he says something about the last Adam that, in context, has nothing to do with the trinity, but as a fortune cookie, was thought to be (by Lee) a declaration that Jesus became the Holy Spirit. Ignoring Lee's error, if God dictated it, why didn't he just give them a precise definition instead of talking all around it and coming to no absolute conclusion?
And why isn't the debate over Calvinism v Arminianism settled clearly? That has been a problem in the church for centuries. Surely God saw that coming. Yet there remain verses that, when viewed under either microscope, are problematic. Might it be that the parts that everyone thinks are so important are more like filler in the narrative that was really talking about something else? In other words, the particular words were not the point. Rather the thrust of the whole was it and the words used were not really that important.