Oakspear

Good point that fits well into what we are talking about One of the reasons that tradition became so important in the Catholic Church and its precursors (the proto-orthodox, as Ehrman calls them) was because there wasn't a BIBLE. There was an abundance of letters, gospels, "acts", and apocalypses, some of which made it into the Bible, and some are still available as the apocrypha. Some churches used this gospel and some the other, various epistles circulated, different areas had differing opinions regarding which writing were to be used in churches. Many of these writings carried the names of people who didn't write them - sometimes claimed explicitly in the writing itself, sometimes just attributed by tradition. Different groups were claiming different writings to bolster their claims of doctrinal legitimacy. The early Catholic Church had to bring some order to the divergent views and came up with the idea of Apostolic succession to determine what was "truth". With so many writings flying around and no clear written standard, it was reasoned that Jesus would have taught his apostles correctly, who would have taught their followers and successors correctly on down the line, therefore it was those who could claim an unbroken line of succession back to the apostles who had a lock on the "truth". This is one of the reasons why the Roman Church worked so hard to establish a link back to Peter. Eventually tradition trumped the written bible, because, after all, who is going to tell you what the bible means the successor of Peter or some barely literate ploughman? They had to decide what the Bible was. Naturally nuances and minutia of the written Bible wasn't foremost in their esteem. The Protestants had the luxury of a fully-assembled "Word of God" that they could refer to

Thanks Steve for the perspective I've read through this whole thread, but please excuse me if I bring up something that has already been addressed Aside from any possible definition of θέοπνέυστος, is there anywhere else where the claim is made that the bible is the result of revelation or inspiration or direction from God? I Cor 14:7 maybe? "If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment." What about the position that the Bible contains direction and revelation from God, but that not every word in it should be viewed as "The Word of God"?

It's a Beatles reference

I recall that's what it says in Acts, yes. Why would you think I might have forgotten?

Thanks for the clarificationSincerely, Paul

Your contention only makes sense if one assumes an inerrant (presumably one of the definitions of "god-breathed") bible, an assumption which is being discussed in this thread (hence the title). Just because someone says they're Paul, doesn't mean that they ARE Paul. Pseudonymous writings were not uncommon in the days that the bible was being put together. So-called? Sounds like a man who isn't unwilling to question his own assumptions. Sounds to me like an honest man who knows his stuff.

Would disputed authorship necessarily preclude something from being "God-breathed"?(if there is such a thing) Keep in mind that much of what was included in the canon of scripture was largely based on who wrote it (or who they thought wrote it) so there was definitely a motive for signing someone else's name to an epistle or gospel. There was also no self-evident test to determine what was canonical and what was not (of course content was considered, but if it was self-evident, there'd be no debate!); there were two centuries of debate among churchmen and even in the time of Luther there was disagreement over what should be included. If one believes something to be God-breathed, does it matter who wrote it? But the whole things seems circular: How do we know scripture is God-breathed? It says so in scripture; How do we know that's correct? Well, it's in scripture, so it must be God-breathed :evilshades:/>

Thought that you could slip sesquipedalian by us, huh WordWof?

True The PFAL class itself did not present Wierwille as a charismatic figure, at least to me, for several reasons: I found his often stiff performance and often poor delivery of his anecedotes to be more indicative of a sincere bumbler than someone posssessed of a magnetic personality. Somebody characterized him as "avuncular", which fits how I would describe his stage appearances (I only was at 5 ROAs when he was alive, and I honestly wasn't paying all that much attention to main stage teachings)

Thanks...I've got two of Ehrman's books on the bookshelf that I'll probably be getting back into soon.

I didn't have much in-person contact with the guy: saw him up close at the Advanced Class in Rome City 1980; shook his hand in the parking lot ROA 1978 and was part of a small after meeting with WOWs & WOWvets in 1981 or '82, and was never attracted to him or TWI due to his personality or supposed charisma. I followed his "ministry" because I thought that he had answers and at the time what he was peddling made sense to me. The PFAL Session Five and Session Twelve emotion didn't do much for me - the "research", however boring, was what hooked me.

I would guess that to those who credit the traditional cast of characters as the authors of the various books of the bible it makes a big difference whether The Gospel and Epistles of John as well as Revelation were written by the Apostle John, or just some otyer dude named John, or whether the Epistle of James was penned by James, Jesus' bro, or by one of the countless men with that name in that time and place. If they're saying that John wrote John, they don't mean somebody who happened to share the name, they mean THE John. According to Ehrman in Lost Christianities tacking on a famous or well-respected name in order to give a gospel or letter some heft or impressive credentials was not unheard of - who cares if it was John the janitor? Everybody cares if it's John the Apostle. If a gospel or epistle is attributed to somebody, whether in the body of the work or by tradition, I can't imagine that the intent was for us to believe anything other than it was the famous guy, not the anonymous guy. I think that's what Ehrman's point is when he won't say that James was written by James...he means that it wasn't written by THE James, not A James

I just skimmed I, II & III John, and the name "John" does not appear in any of them; I believe that they are attributed to the person who wrote the Gospel of John due to stylistic similarities. II & III John are claimed to be from "the elder"...I forgot to check Revelation

Yeah, me too. They always spun it that you could be family, but estranged, which was true, but didn't really look at the implications of using the term "household". But then again, Wierwille and Martindale were great for making words mean what they wanted them to mean.

You mentioned in the article how people think that cults are a thing of the past and articulately disabuse us of that thinking! The internet is really no help, although one might think it would be. Look at all the nonsense that gets posted that people believe without doing their own research. Things that a few seconds of head scratching and rational thought, let alone a peak at snopes.com, would reveal as just plain wrong. People aren't any more likely to do the hard work of thinking for themselves now than when we were ensnared.

Thanks DWBH for the background and to WordWolf for providing the links

As much as we were fed the company line about TWI being the revival of the Book of Acts, and how it was a world-wide ministry, blah, blah, blah... The Way as a functioning organization was just a flash in the pan Even though in two years they'll likely be celebrating what they claim is their 75th Anniversary, how long did The Way really exist as anything other than a shell? 1941-1942 Wierwille was a church pastor who wasn't even sure that he believed the Bible 1942-1953 Wierwille was a church pastor in a small town dreaming of bigger things and running a small-time radio broadcast 1953-1957 Wierwille was STILL a small-time pastor, running a plagiarized class on the side 1957-1967 Wierwille was driving around the country, running his plagiarized class, but attracting only a couple of handfuls of regular followers 1967-1970 Wierwille finally finds someone who will listen to him AND who can attract others to the fold 1970-1985 Wierwille starts WOW program, Way Corps etc and takes advantage of the youthful enthusiasm of his new followers to build a national and international organization this is really the only time that TWI even came close to matching its big vision 1985-1990 Wierwille's dead - chaos reigns 1990- 2000 Martindale presides over steadily shrinking and increasingly irrelevant rump ministry 2000-2015 Rivenbark hunkers down with an even smaller and more irrelevent skeleton of the Way

You know, I heard that too, but never from anyone at the top

Fortunately for me I had some mentors at my company who helped me get past the Way model of leadership

The biggest way that my identity changed was the tendency to be arrogantly sure of my own opinion (even if "my" opinion was really a second-hand opinion gotten from someone else). When I left The Way I thought I left behind this "I know that I know that I know" crap, but it took me a while to shed that mindset. I also had absorbed some of the Way model of how to be a leader, i.e. yelling and humiliating people. As a middle manager, I was pretty ineffectual applying this method in the real world. This also took a while to change.

Good one

Time I will never get back I still have my Way bible, all marked up with holy spirit usages, dechomai & lambano, notes from this and that. I'd be glad to sell it to an active Wayfer or spin-off follower! Still have my Companion Bible too!

Interestingly, after the WOW program was scrapped and replaced with Way Disciples, there were Way Disciples groups that were assigned to HQ

I posted this 10 years ago on that full time corps thread: As someone who has been a manager for several companies in several different industries over the course of my life, I found it insulting that someone who lacked any skills other than mindlessly obeying orders and parroting the company line could even consider being a manager in any field