Question for the heathens (j/k)

Originally posted by Coletti
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
(2Ti 3:16 NASB)

Of course, the Bible doesn't make any claim about what comprises
Scripture; that didn't happen until over 250-300 years after this
document was written.

Furthermore, there were substantial changes to the Universal Canon
of the Bible in the 16th century when the Protestants excised seven
books from the OT that were previously accepted by Christians as
being Scripture, which lends further claim to the notion that the
Bible's contents are subject to further revision.

Nemesio

Originally posted by Nemesio
The other only means the the Spiritual truths contained in the Bible
are without error; so, whether two angels or one angel or no angels
appeared to Mary (and whoever else, if anyone else) at the tomb is
correct, that there was a Resurrection is the main Spiritual truth.

A third view is that the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts. And this usually goes hand in hand with the understanding that we can be confident that we know what the vast majority of the original text contained (by various means and methods - but also by the fact that it has been preserved by God).

Originally posted by Darfius
If God truly did author the Bible, do you think He meant it to be read following literalism? Would a spiritual being trying to establish a spiritual relationship want you to find premises and use deductive reasoning while reading about Jonah in the belly of a whale?

[b]And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of ...[text shortened]... ritual message to you. Perhaps Jesus meant He would make Peter a man to spread His truth? Hmm.

This is one of the few sensible things I've heard you say, Dafius. Indeed the Bible is part of the Greater Word of God and is chock full of spiritual messages.

... --- ...

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
I assume your criterion requires all such propositions to be be true. That is, if one declaration expresses a falsehood, then the entirety of the collection of writings cannot be said to be "true".

For example, any book that contains logically inconsistent declarations could not be said to be "true."

Under this definition, I think it is trivial to demonstrate that the Bible is not "true."

Yep, that is what my criterion requires. The fundamental question is: what are the propositions expressed by the declarative sentences in the Bible? A declarative sentence may have more than one possible interpretation (e.g., literal or metaphorical).

Originally posted by Coletti
What I mean by the Bible is true means that it is reliable and profitable for the purpose God intended.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
(2Ti 3:16 NASB)

Some parts have more specific purposes - some for history, some for law, some for meditation, ( maybe some to argue about).

You can't really mean this by 'true', unless you use the term 'true' differently in different contexts. Suppose God intends me to sail to Europe. Suppose the most profitable and reliable way for me to sail to Europe is to assume that the following claim is true:

"The stars in the sky are stationary relative to the Earth"

Now, according to your understanding of 'true', the claim above would qualify as true. But this is surely wrong. The claim above is false in that it does not accurately correspond to reality. You can't merely conflate truth with usefulness in some domain. Pragmatic justification is not the same as epistemic justification.

Originally posted by bbarr
Yep, that is what my criterion requires. The fundamental question is: what are the propositions expressed by the declarative sentences in the Bible? A declarative sentence may have more than one possible interpretation (e.g., literal or metaphorical).

Let us works toward precsion then.

A collection of writings C is defined to be "true" only if:
for all declarative sentences S in C, there exists an interpretation I such that I(S) yields a true proposition.

Is this an accurate reflection of the notion of a "true" collection of writings, or must we further constrain the various I? Must the various I share some common property, or conform to some common rule? Can the I be degenerate interpretations, such as

Let I(S) yield "A implies A" for all S

or must we constrain them somehow to reflect the author's intended interpretation?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Let us works toward precsion then.


Is this an accurate reflection of the notion of a "true" collection of writings, or must we further constrain the various I? Must the various I share some common property, or conform to some common rule? Can the I be degenerate interpretations, such as

Let I(S) yield "A implies A" for all S

or must we constrain them somehow to reflect the author's intended interpretation?

A collection of writings C is defined to be "true" only if:
for all declarative sentences S in C, there exists an interpretation I such that I(S) yields a true proposition.

No, this can't be right. Without constraints on possible interpretations this definition will entail that any internally consistent set of declarative sentences is true. That is, this definition tells us merely when a set of declarative sentences is capable of being true. So, what should the constraints be on interpretation?

Originally posted by Darfius
If God truly did author the Bible, do you think He meant it to be read following literalism? Would a spiritual being trying to establish a spiritual relationship want you to find premises and use deductive reasoning while reading about Jonah in the belly of a whale?

[b]And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of ...[text shortened]... ritual message to you. Perhaps Jesus meant He would make Peter a man to spread His truth? Hmm.

I think normally when people talk about the literal truth of the bible they mean that the various creation and patriach myths and the miracles are all true. I think we all accept that being "fisher's of men" is a metaphor.
Anyway how do you interpret Job - God has a bet with the devil and lets him kill Job's entire family and generally mess him about for 10 years to see if he'll stay faithful - are you sure you want God to exist?

Originally posted by bbarr
[b]A collection of writings C is defined to be "true" only if:
for all declarative sentences S in C, there exists an interpretation I such that I(S) yields a true proposition.

No, this can't be right. Without constraints on possib ...[text shortened]... ing true. So, what should the constraints be on interpretation?
[/b]

As a first crack, we should attempt to devise constraints that capture the notion of transitions between various modes of narration, such modes to include things like strict and literal lecturing, telling abstract parables, poetic praise, and insane ramblings.

Our constraints should dictate that the various interpretations must occur in chunks and not be interspersed with fine granularity. Perhaps something of this sort:

For a sequence of consecutive statements S_1, S_2, ..., Sn,
if a particular interpretation I is the only non-degenerate interpretation which applies to S_1 and S_n to yield true propositions from them,
then the sequence S_1 through S_n is defined to be "true" only if
I(s) yields true propositions for all s in the sequence, or n is larger than t,
where t is some threshold length that captures the coarseness of shifting interpretations.

The goal is to say, for example, that if only a poetic interpretation of the creation account yields true propositions, then literal interpretations about the talking snake in the middle of it are irrelevant when evaluating the truth of the Bible. Similarly, if the Levitical laws are only "true" under a literal interpretation, then one cannot find its views on slavery to be non-literal while still assserting the "truth" of the Bible.

Originally posted by bbarr
You can't really mean this by 'true', unless you use the term 'true' differently in different contexts. Suppose God intends me to sail to Europe. Suppose the most profitable and reliable way for me to sail to Europe is to assume that the following claim is true:

"The stars in the sky are stationary relative to the Earth"

Now, according to your u ...[text shortened]... usefulness in some domain. Pragmatic justification is not the same as epistemic justification.

I mean true does not mean the same thing when I say the Bible is true, and when I say the propositions of the Bible are true. I would not use both statements in a single argument because I would be using the term "true" ambiguously.

Consider the 10 commandments. These are not true or false, because they are not propositions. But I do not exclude them when I say the Bible is true, because I am using the true analogically.

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
(Joh 1:4 NASB)

This is a true statement, but light does not mean streams of photons.

So when I say the Bible is true, or God is truth or love or light, I am using the terms "truth", "love", and "light" analogically. And the commands of God, and the other words of God in scripture that do not form propostions are "true."

And the propositions of Scripture are true in that they are logically true propositions.

Does that make sense?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
The goal is to say, for example, that if only a poetic interpretation of the creation account yields true propositions, then literal interpretations about the talking snake are irrelevant when evaluating the truth of the Bible. Similarly, if the Levitical laws are only "true" under a literal interpreation, then onc cannot find its views on slavery to be non-literal while still assserting the "truth" of the Bible.

That's fair. You are saying it would be illogical to be arbitrary about what parts of scripture are analogical and what parts are literal. We can't just discount some parts of Scripture just because it makes one uncomfortable. (Yes?)

By saying the scripture is inerrant, I can not easily dismiss any texts that don't easily fit within my system. If I say that this verse does not mean what it seems to mean, I need a very good rational. (If I say the scripture holds error, I would still not be let off the hook, because I must still show a non-arbitrary method of determining which is correct and which is flawed.)

Originally posted by Coletti
A third view is that the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts. And this usually goes hand in hand with the understanding that we can be confident that we know what the vast majority of the original text contained (by various means and methods - but also by the fact that it has been preserved by God).

Such a stance is very problematic for inerrantists, though, because it very well might entail
the excising or switching around of passages in the Bible.

For example, the passage attributed to St John with the woman caught in adultery is almost
certainly not Johannine, but possibly Lucan. The passage is not found in early manuscripts and
the vocabulary and writing style is anomolous in St John's Gospel. This is well established by
the early source situation as well as a variety of Bible scholars (for example, the United Bible
Societies, which is a very Biblically conservative scholarly group, places this chapter at the
end of the entire St John Gospel, and attests to its dubious attribution).

This would suggest an 'error' in modern additions. A more authentic reading of St John's Gospel,
then, would be one which would exclude this passage; however, I have yet to hear of any Christian
demonination or sect which has removed this wonderful passage.

The 'infallible' understanding of the Bible suffers from no such consequence. It doesn't matter to
the person who feels the Bible is 'infallible' -- that is, the study and proper interpretation of which
cannot lead to error -- because this person does not care that it is an insertion. That its message
contains no error (one of forgiveness and non-judgment) is all that is of concern.

This third view either demands the excision of passages from the Bible (for example, that Jesus
never sweat blood in St Luke), or it becomes an arbitrary distinction between my first option
(wherein a person says that such a passage may not have been in the earlier versions, but it was
included in the later versions because it is a better reading).

Nemesio

Originally posted by Nemesio
Such a stance is very problematic for inerrantists, though, because it very well might entail
the excising or switching around of passages in the Bible.

For example, the passage attributed to St John with the woman caught in adultery ...[text shortened]... in the later versions because it is a better reading).

Nemesio

The main problem for the inerrant view of scripture is resolving contradictions (or claim to do the impossible - which is to believe a both sides of a contradiction).

I don't know how you resolve inerrant and infallible - if the scripture errors, it is fallible, if it is fallible then it must contain error. I don't claim that all translations or perfect, nor all manuscripts - but the original autographs are inerrant.

See the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=icbi.html

and

THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
http://www.etsjets.org/

However, if you'd provide a reference to the issue of the text in John. I found reference in John 4. What translation puts it at the end of John?