Anyone saying Paul was not the author of many of the writings of the New Testament shows NO sense whatsoever. I hope people at least try to show common sense here.
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.
That so called prof that you mention above Steve, sounds like the equivalent today of one of the scribes and pharisees of the 1st century church. Jesus used to devour dishonest people like this all the time in the first century in debates. These were the only people Jesus actually opposed after they first opposed Jesus Christ. And with my knowledge and very good biblical study software if a person like this was dishonest and bias biblically he would get devoured by me also today. As long as I had time from my busy as a bee worker schedule I might consider that recreation. :dance:/>
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.
You're using the salutation in a forged document to prove that it wasn't forged, because it was written in Paul's name?
And you think I'M the one without sense?
WTF do you expect a forger to write? "HI people! I'm not REALLY Paul, but I hope you think I am because I have some really cool ideas about how women should STFU even though the real Paul taught the opposite"? "Hi! I'm Paul! Pay no attention to the man holding the quill"?
Of COURSE a forger is going to pretend he's really Paul!
Steve and I are no longer assuming God-breathed = inerrant. I'm not sure about Mark.
[Deleting a portion of this post that was not necessary. While it is quoted in the next post, I apologize for including it originally. It was inappropriate].
That is a lot of scriptures that are being deliberately ignored here from the bible. It sounds like people here, especially Raf, want to try to get people to ignore the entire writings of the bible. The church epistles written by Paul are very well written. Yes, as Steve Lortz has explained here Paul may have dictated some of these writings to another person. However, with so many mentions of Paul in the book of Acts, it was well known that Paul and perhaps only Paul as a follower of Jesus Christ had the knowledge to explain what was written in the church epistles. Below are links to commentaries that I have written on 3 of the chapters.
And Oakspear, Paul CHANGED from one of the pharisees that opposed Jesus Christ to one of the followers of Jesus Christ. Do you remember that from the book of Acts? And this follower, Paul was one of the few people with enough knowledge to quote from the Old Testament as it relates to the content we see in the New Testament.
And Oakspear, Paul CHANGED from one of the pharisees that opposed Jesus Christ to one of the followers of Jesus Christ. Do you remember that from the book of Acts?
I recall that's what it says in Acts, yes. Why would you think I might have forgotten?
The epistles to Timothy and Titus were written AFTER Paul's death. He didn't dictate them. He never even READ them, much less wrote them.
And Acts was written after Paul's death, too.
By someone who disagreed with Paul about Paul's own biography. Which is not an alternative point of view or a different way of looking at things, but one Bible writer actively calling the other a liar.
[The remainder of the original post here has been adequately addressed and so is being deleted by me. Thanks].
I recall that's what it says in Acts, yes. Why would you think I might have forgotten?
Only asking you a question Oakspear. We all forget things from time to time. I am glad that you remember this that Paul changed from a hateful pharisee to a loving follower of Jesus Christ.
Now Waysider, do you remember that Paul changed from a hateful pharisee to a loving follower of Jesus Christ? Why do you want to bury a follower of Jesus Christ? Yes, he did die or was murdered. And previously Paul did work with the murderers, but he only was murdered himself after he changed and no longer participated with the murderers.
Misrepresenting what other posters say will be construed as against the house rules
Ad hominems are just poor, illogical arguments
Keep it on topic people!
Note the post at the top of this forum from a few years back: anyone may post here - Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists or anyone else who does not currently define themselves as Christian or as a bible literalist may post here
Misrepresenting what other posters say will be construed as against the house rules
Ad hominems are just poor, illogical arguments
Keep it on topic people!
Note the post at the top of this forum from a few years back: anyone may post here - Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists or anyone else who does not currently define themselves as Christian or as a bible literalist may post here
Thank you, Captain... er... Mod Kirk!
I intended this thread to go below the surface, and to question WHY we believe the things we believe, as well as WHAT. That's why I originally posted it on the "Questioning Faith" thread.
There are questions and statements on this thread that can trigger worry, anxiety, fear and anger. None of it is personal. I count you all, EACH and EVERY ONE of you as a friend, as a companion through the very difficult experience of being fooled by Wierwille, and as people who have each others' best interests at heart, even though we may from time to time misinterpret what those best interests are. EACH and EVERY ONE of us has unique reasons for believing what we believe, and none of those reasons are without value. I just got home from my Wednesday afternoon mood management group. I always enjoy being there because I know I am safe. It would be nice if everybody could feel safe here, and my intentions are to question deep things without being threatening. Questioning deep things is threatening enough in itself, without us resorting to the dysfunctional means of persuasion we learned in TWI!
As part of my effort, I have refrained from making knee-jerk reactions to posts. I spend some time reading or watching TV or playing with my toy soldiers before responding, in order to maintain some perspective. We are ALL going to say things that we later feel like fools for having said. We are all going to see people say things and think "What sort of fool is she (or he)?" But I assure you, nobody posting on this thread is a fool!
The particular article of faith this thread questions is the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant belief that "Since the Bible is God-breathed, it CANNOT contain any errors or contradictions. If there is even one single contradiction in the Bible, then the WHOLE thing falls apart."
I expect the range of on-topic subjects to be very broad, starting with "what does it mean for ANYTHING to be 'breathed'" and only expanding from there.
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 θÎοπνÎυστος, 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"?
I think exploring authorship, in and of itself, is off-topic. HOWEVER, it is on-topic if we relate it back to the thread question. So even if we don't come to agreement on who wrote which book, I may still raise points that try to establish the premise, from which we need to answer the question: Is it still God-breathed if it wasn't written by the person we think wrote it?
In the case of Matthew, Mark and John, I think the answer is a hypothetical yes. They don't CLAIM to be written by the men whose names they bear. So establishing that Matthew didn't write Matthew does not affect the question.
Paul and Luke are somewhat different.
If Paul didn't write II Timothy, then we have the problem of the only book of the Bible to posit a "God-breathed Word" being written by a demonstrable liar. So where do we get "God-breathed" from?
If Luke-Acts is not written by a companion of Paul (and I have listed some reasons I don't think it was), then can we say it's "God-breathed" even though it was written by someone who is actively misrepresenting himself?
You're free to reject my premises on the pastoral epistles and Luke. And you're (of course) free to argue those points.
But I don't believe citing a work as proof of itself is valuable. To say "Acts was written by Luke because of the 'we' passages" is to ignore the pervasiveness of forgery in the first century. It was RAMPANT. To say, "Look, the fist verse of this letter identifies its writer as Paul," as if a forger would say otherwise, is to utterly miss the point. The salutations in the pastoral epistles don't prove Paul actually wrote them! The fact that they disagree so radically with the known letters of Paul indicate that they were not written by him (or dictated at his behest). The fact that "Luke" says "we" does not prove he was a companion of Paul -- it only proves he was trying to pass himself off as one.
This side issue arose when I said scholars agree with Bart Ehrman that Luke did not write Luke. No, I haven't conducted polls. Neither has anyone else on this thread.
I do know that Ehrman has written two books on the subject of forgery in the Bible. One of them, Forged, is written for a lay audience. I've read that one. The other, Forgery and Counterforgery, is a scholarly work, not written for laypeople. I haven't read it. You, Steve, might come across it. It might persuade you. It might not. But you are being taught theology by committed Christians. That is an identifiable bias (as I've noted elsewhere), and I caution you to distinguish between the state of scholarship in the field as opposed to the motives of apologetics.
So I actually wrote to Ehrman and asked what the state of scholarly consensus was on the authorship of Luke.
His reply:
Conservative Christians almost entirely think Luke, Paul’s traveling companion, wrote Luke/Acts. Other scholars, not so much. I personally don’t think so at all, and have given the arguments in my book Forgery and Counterforgery.
This mirrors what I suspected: Christians, who have a vested interest in the answer, come to one answer. Others, who have no vested interest in the answer, come to a different conclusion. Sorry, it's not a situation where I get to monopolize the time of someone who doesn't know me from Adam, so I can't grill him much further (except at his pleasure).
We're not going to resolve it on this thread. I know "appeal to authority" is a fallacy, so take Ehrman's comment with a grain of salt, or a pound. My only question was the state of the scholarly consensus. To prove the case, I'd have to probably buy his book and compare it to others, which is not something I have the time or inclination to do.
If Luke wrote Luke, so be it. It doesn't explain why he's calling Paul a liar or why he thinks Herod was alive during the Quirinian census (or that the census required Joseph to leave his home, which is the opposite of what a census does). As many problems are raised by the gospel with Luke as the author as are raised by the gospel with anyone else.
But God-breathed?
Maybe on issues like what Jesus taught and how Paul's doctrine and practice evolved. But certainly not on history. On history, Luke is demonstrably unreliable.
Modern Christianity is based largely on "what Paul said". So, it comes down to determining what Paul actually said. Did he say that all scripture is God-Breathed? The consensus among scholars would be that he did not. (Based on the assumption he did not write II Tim. 3:16, the verse that states that to be the case.) So, it might be God-Breathed and it might not. What we can be reasonably certain of, assuming Paul did not write the verse in question, is that II Tim. 3:16 should not be cited as the determining factor.
I think we've extensively demonstrated on this and other threads that there are, indeed, contradictions in the scriptures. That much of it seems to be off the table. That leaves us with demonstrating that the scriptures are God-Breathed. The only indication we have that they are is a verse of scripture that appears to be a forgery.
Why is it so important that they be God-Breathed? Is it because various men have told us they need to be? Maybe they're wrong. Maybe this idea that "It would all fall apart." is just a hyped up phrase that has no basis in reality.
Steve, I don't think we're clear yet on why I moved this thread here from Questioning Faith.
From the "About this forum" thread on Questioning Faith:
This forum on Questioning Faith was started in order to isolate discussions on atheism from other discussions on doctrine.
I think you can see that this thread does not fit that description (not necessarily anyway).
Anyway, you never complained about it, but I wanted to make it a little more clear than I have.
In any event:
Protestant Christianity started with an exaltation of the Bible over church tradition. Never mind that we don't even HAVE a Bible if not for tradition. The early Protestant churches distinguished themselves from the Catholic Church by placing their doctrinal emphasis on scripture over tradition, and they distinguished themselves from each other by claiming to adhere more closely to scripture than the other guys.
Take away the inerrancy of scripture, and it's just a bunch of people wrangling over the words of men.
Wierwille asked "why division," answering that it's because of a wrong dividing of The Word. But that's not the case at all. We have division in the church precisely because the doctrine of inerrancy, the refusal to admit these gospels and letters and histories contradict each other worse than the DC Multiverse (yes, I'm exaggerating). Inerrancy breeds inflexibility. If the Bible is always right, and it says what I think it does here, then I'm right, no matter what you think it says somewhere else.
Without inerrancy, we can say, "hey, Paul seems to disagree with James. Fascinating. What can we learn from each of them?" WITH inerrancy, we can't stand the thought of Paul disagreeing with James, so we force them to agree with each other. (Yes, I recognize the irony of ME using this example. What can I say? Time has passed). And if I'm right, then YOU ARE WRONG. GET OUT OF MY CHURCH BEFORE YOU POISON EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING WITH YOUR HERESY.
I lose my claim to be right if you can be right too.
Anyway, that's my thought on Protestant Christianity's vested interest in the inerrancy of scripture. Just a hypothesis.
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 θÎοπνÎυστος, 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"?
There are a couple of verses that come close. If you take that particular verse from Corinthians you have to concede that it's only talking about the things Paul is writing in that particular section of that letter (elsewhere in the SAME letter he FLAT OUT TELLS US) that he's offering his opinion and not a commandment of the Lord.
There's the verse that talks about holy men of God speaking as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but that's not a blanket claim about scripture (and, alas, it's another forgery, a letter claiming to be written by Peter, though Peter didn't write it, dictate it, sign off on it, approve it, endorse it or read it).
So God-breathed is in a forged letter, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy ghost is in a forged letter, and, oh, "rightly-dividing the word of truth"? Yeah, that too.
Protestant Christianity started with an exaltation of the Bible over church tradition. Never mind that we don't even HAVE a Bible if not for tradition. The early Protestant churches distinguished themselves from the Catholic Church by placing their doctrinal emphasis on scripture over tradition, and they distinguished themselves from each other by claiming to adhere more closely to scripture than the other guys.
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
I am not a mental health care professional. I became interested in the subject of mental health care when my wife began having psychotic episodes during 2000. She was diagnosed primarily with bipolar mood disorder 1, and after a couple of years of fiddling around with different meds and doses, we (she, her docs and I) brought it under control. She's also been diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, mild OCD, PTSD from a dog attack when she was little, and she was sexually molested by a trusted "friend" of the family when she was a girl. In the process of coping with these things, I learned that I also suffer from bipolar mood disorder, but the milder version, not as extreme as hers.
Moods are controlled by the balances of several chemical neurotransmitters in the brain. The balances shift in accordance with circadian and other rhythms, and with external factors that can impinge. Moods can be plotted as swings between highs and lows, an oscillating flow of chemical balances and their results. The feedback systems designed into the body ordinarily maintain mood swings within a band regarded as normal. With bipolar 2, my mood swings can go beyond the normal band into categories designated as hypomania and depression. These swings are not psychotic. My wife's mood swings, if we don't keep proper maintenance of them, can go into full blown mania or clinical depression. I am currently on 40mg of Paxil per day. Paxil is a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. It dampens my mood swings and keeps me from getting too depressed.
The Biblical exhortation to mental health care is Proverbs 4:23, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Keeping our hearts doesn't just mean guarding or protecting them. It also means keeping in the sense of house-keeping... watch over and look out for what's going on in your heart... clean it out when it starts to look like you've been breeding cats in it (to quote the old Chief of the Boat). Heart-keeping requires regular maintenance.
Some time ago, Elizabeth and I became involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We both took their Peer-to-Peer and Family-to-Family classes together. For a number of years I facilitated a biweekly NAMI support group meeting, until my stamina failed with the potassium overdose two years ago. Since I came out of the hospital back in August, I've been attending a weekly mood management therapy group to work on avolition, the feeling of "I don't want to do this. I don't want to do anything." I've been diagnosed with anemia also since April, which makes me lethargic, which is very similar to depression. In order to do my heart-keeping, I've had to dive deep into it, identifying and considering the sources of feelings. Is my serotonin low? Do I need to deal with the symptoms of mood swings that still happen in spite of my meds? Is the oxygen to my brain low? Do I need to get my O2 concentration back up into the 90s? Have I been eating too much sugar? Am I angry with someone? Who might it be? And why? Am I angry with the author of the book I'm reading? Am I angry with Elizabeth? Am I angry with me? Am I angry with God? Am I afraid of something? If so, what? And what can I do to alleviate that fear?
Or am I suffering from cognitive distortions?
"Cognitive distortions are simply ways our mind convinces us of something that just isn't true." These are things I learned in my mood management group, but if you doubt me, google it...
There are different lists of of cognitive distortions, some of them going up in number as high as 50, but this is a common list, and it's the one we use in our group:
"Cognitive distortions that lead to anxiety and worry [and I include fear and anger]
1. All-or-nothing thinking - looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground
2. Overgeneralization - generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever
3. The mental filter - focusing on the negatives while filtering out all the positives, noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right
4. Diminishing the positive - coming up with reasons why positive events don't count
5. Jumping to conclusions - making negative interpretations without actual evidence, acting like a mind-reader or fortune-teller
6. Catastrophizing - expecting the worst case scenario to happen
7. Emotional reasoning - believing that the way you feel reflects reality
8. 'Shoulds' and 'should-nots' - Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn't do - and beating yourself up if you break any of the rules
9. Labeling - Labeling yourself or others based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings
10. Personalization - Assuming responsibility for things that are outside of your control
These cognitive distortions are not simply passing thoughts. They are things we repeat over and over again to ourselves until they become unthinking habit. They become embedded in our attitudes of heart. They are the heart's deceitfulness above all things that the diligent heart-keeper needs to be aware of.
-----
"Since the Bible is God-breathed, it CANNOT contain any errors or contradictions. If there is even one single contradiction in the Bible, then the WHOLE thing falls apart."
Here we have two cognitive distortions, all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization, from the very get-go of fundamentalist/evangelical protestant theology (mid-to late-1800s). First, that there are no errors or contradictions in the Bible, and that a single one would destroy the value of the whole. Neither of these things is true.
Next... our experience of Wierwille...
Wierwille was a man who talked about Jesus and the Bible. He was also a fraud and a liar. And he fooled us... or at least I can honestly say he fooled me.
The cognitive distortions of our experience with Wierwille...
Since Wierwille was a fraud and a liar who talked about Jesus and the Bible, ALL people who talk about Jesus and the Bible are frauds and liars... or just fools. Including all the people who originally wrote the books that became the Bible... they were ALL frauds and liars. Here we have overgeneralization and labeling.
There is plenty of evidence that the Bible is full of contradictions and errors. There is also evidence that many of the contradictions are purposeful. But instead of exploring what those purposes might be, we are going to ignore that evidence. These are the cognitive distortions of the mental filter and minimizing the positive.
All the scholars who agree with my position are serious and unbiased. Any scholar who disagrees with me is frivolous and biased, especially those Christian scholars! How can they be serious and unbiased? They are ALL frauds and liars or fools. How do I know that these things are true? I feel it. These are examples of emotional reasoning, believing that the way you feel reflects reality. Not to mention the mental filter and minimizing the positive.
I SHOULDN'T have been fooled by Wierwille. I will guarantee that I am never fooled again, by rejecting anything that anybody who is talking about Jesus or the Bible says!
The Way Ministry regarding what they taught from the bible was above average. They spent time, especially Victor Wierwille copying the writings of other authors, for example E.W. Bullinger, or perhaps also doing some of their own research. The main problem with the Way Ministry was and perhaps still is not applying and living God's word. Some examples of not applying God's word for the religiously high Way ministry people was their adultery while perhaps also being married, while being critical of lower people in the way ministry regarding who they could even date. I experienced this while in the Way minstry in my late teens to early to later 20s. Of course, we also had to pay a non-biblical equivalent of a minimum 10% tax on our income to the Way ministry to even be involved with them.
In contrast, I am glad that Steve Lortz is applying God's word and is a true follower of Jesus Christ. As an example after teaching he says "I love you all". Yes, Steve like everyone else does not know everything. As Paul explains in his 1 Corinthians letter, we know only in part and none of us knows everything. We would have to be God the creator of life to know all things.
There is plenty of evidence that the Bible is full of contradictions and errors. There is also evidence that many of the contradictions are purposeful.
Could you expand upon that statement? Are you suggesting that the contradictions were a design feature of the Bible? I know one way we dealt with Biblical contradictions in TWI was to call them apparent contradictions and contort ourselves to harmonize the conflicting sections or verses. This does not seem like waht you are saying. (Other groups do the contorting as well, it wasn't unique to TWI)
Intentional contradiction does not equate with something being God-Breathed. We find this technique being used frequently in modern writing, as well. We call it irony.
Actually, Steve, you've got my position backwards. It's not that scholars who agree with me are unbiased and those who disagree are biased. It's the other way around: I take bias into account when assessing whether to trust a scholar on a particular subject. That is, I agree with scholars who are not connected to a vested interest in whatever conclusions they draw.
Thus, when 90 percent of climate scientists say global warming has significant man-made causes, while 90 percent of scientists who work for ExxonMobil say human activity has nothing to do with climate change, I am inclined to trust those scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome.
Conservative Christian scholars have a vested interest in certain positions, and the authorship of Luke appears to be one of them. I do not trust their judgment on this issue, not because they're Chtistian, but because the evidence shouts against it from the rooftops. So I have repeatedly cited evidence in my explanations about Luke. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly cited conservative Christian scholars.
Feel free, but I have made a case for their bias that has nothing to do with whether they agree with me.
I agree with those scholars who do not have a vested interest in the answer. Among those scholars, the consensus is that Luke did not write Luke, just like the consensus among scientists who do not work for fossil fuel companies is that human activity contributes to global warming, just like the consensus among doctors who don't work for Phillip Morris is that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
In every other field, you take bias into account when assessing claims and conclusions. Somehow, when the subject is the Bible, that flies out the window.
Here's the key: scholars who don't believe Luke wrote Luke lose absolutely nothing I'd they're wtong. Those who DO believe Luke wrote Luke have as lot riding on that conclusion, because so much of the reliability of the gospel is supposedly tied to it.
What do I lose if Luke wrote Luke? Nothing. He's still woefully unreliable as a historian.
What do you lose if he didn't? A crucial claim to historical accuracy.
Tell me, who is more likely to allow bias to affect judgment here?
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waysider
I buried Paul. Sincerely, The Walrus
Steve Lortz
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
Steve Lortz
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious
Oakspear
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Raf
Let me get this straight, Mark.
You're using the salutation in a forged document to prove that it wasn't forged, because it was written in Paul's name?
And you think I'M the one without sense?
WTF do you expect a forger to write? "HI people! I'm not REALLY Paul, but I hope you think I am because I have some really cool ideas about how women should STFU even though the real Paul taught the opposite"? "Hi! I'm Paul! Pay no attention to the man holding the quill"?
Of COURSE a forger is going to pretend he's really Paul!
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Raf
Oakspear,
Steve and I are no longer assuming God-breathed = inerrant. I'm not sure about Mark.
[Deleting a portion of this post that was not necessary. While it is quoted in the next post, I apologize for including it originally. It was inappropriate].
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Oakspear
Sincerely,
Paul
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waysider
I buried Paul.
Sincerely,
The Walrus
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Mark Sanguinetti
That is a lot of scriptures that are being deliberately ignored here from the bible. It sounds like people here, especially Raf, want to try to get people to ignore the entire writings of the bible. The church epistles written by Paul are very well written. Yes, as Steve Lortz has explained here Paul may have dictated some of these writings to another person. However, with so many mentions of Paul in the book of Acts, it was well known that Paul and perhaps only Paul as a follower of Jesus Christ had the knowledge to explain what was written in the church epistles. Below are links to commentaries that I have written on 3 of the chapters.
And Oakspear, Paul CHANGED from one of the pharisees that opposed Jesus Christ to one of the followers of Jesus Christ. Do you remember that from the book of Acts? And this follower, Paul was one of the few people with enough knowledge to quote from the Old Testament as it relates to the content we see in the New Testament.
1 Corinthians chapter 12
1 Corinthians chapter 13
1 Corinthians chapter 14
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Oakspear
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Raf
The epistles to Timothy and Titus were written AFTER Paul's death. He didn't dictate them. He never even READ them, much less wrote them.
And Acts was written after Paul's death, too.
By someone who disagreed with Paul about Paul's own biography. Which is not an alternative point of view or a different way of looking at things, but one Bible writer actively calling the other a liar.
[The remainder of the original post here has been adequately addressed and so is being deleted by me. Thanks].
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Mark Sanguinetti
Only asking you a question Oakspear. We all forget things from time to time. I am glad that you remember this that Paul changed from a hateful pharisee to a loving follower of Jesus Christ.
Now Waysider, do you remember that Paul changed from a hateful pharisee to a loving follower of Jesus Christ? Why do you want to bury a follower of Jesus Christ? Yes, he did die or was murdered. And previously Paul did work with the murderers, but he only was murdered himself after he changed and no longer participated with the murderers.
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Oakspear
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Mod Kirk
Misrepresenting what other posters say will be construed as against the house rules
Ad hominems are just poor, illogical arguments
Keep it on topic people!
Note the post at the top of this forum from a few years back: anyone may post here - Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists or anyone else who does not currently define themselves as Christian or as a bible literalist may post here
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Steve Lortz
Thank you, Captain... er... Mod Kirk!
I intended this thread to go below the surface, and to question WHY we believe the things we believe, as well as WHAT. That's why I originally posted it on the "Questioning Faith" thread.
There are questions and statements on this thread that can trigger worry, anxiety, fear and anger. None of it is personal. I count you all, EACH and EVERY ONE of you as a friend, as a companion through the very difficult experience of being fooled by Wierwille, and as people who have each others' best interests at heart, even though we may from time to time misinterpret what those best interests are. EACH and EVERY ONE of us has unique reasons for believing what we believe, and none of those reasons are without value. I just got home from my Wednesday afternoon mood management group. I always enjoy being there because I know I am safe. It would be nice if everybody could feel safe here, and my intentions are to question deep things without being threatening. Questioning deep things is threatening enough in itself, without us resorting to the dysfunctional means of persuasion we learned in TWI!
As part of my effort, I have refrained from making knee-jerk reactions to posts. I spend some time reading or watching TV or playing with my toy soldiers before responding, in order to maintain some perspective. We are ALL going to say things that we later feel like fools for having said. We are all going to see people say things and think "What sort of fool is she (or he)?" But I assure you, nobody posting on this thread is a fool!
The particular article of faith this thread questions is the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant belief that "Since the Bible is God-breathed, it CANNOT contain any errors or contradictions. If there is even one single contradiction in the Bible, then the WHOLE thing falls apart."
I expect the range of on-topic subjects to be very broad, starting with "what does it mean for ANYTHING to be 'breathed'" and only expanding from there.
All for now... and thanks again, Mod Kirk!
Love,
Steve
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Oakspear
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 θÎοπνÎυστος, 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"?
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Raf
I think exploring authorship, in and of itself, is off-topic. HOWEVER, it is on-topic if we relate it back to the thread question. So even if we don't come to agreement on who wrote which book, I may still raise points that try to establish the premise, from which we need to answer the question: Is it still God-breathed if it wasn't written by the person we think wrote it?
In the case of Matthew, Mark and John, I think the answer is a hypothetical yes. They don't CLAIM to be written by the men whose names they bear. So establishing that Matthew didn't write Matthew does not affect the question.
Paul and Luke are somewhat different.
If Paul didn't write II Timothy, then we have the problem of the only book of the Bible to posit a "God-breathed Word" being written by a demonstrable liar. So where do we get "God-breathed" from?
If Luke-Acts is not written by a companion of Paul (and I have listed some reasons I don't think it was), then can we say it's "God-breathed" even though it was written by someone who is actively misrepresenting himself?
You're free to reject my premises on the pastoral epistles and Luke. And you're (of course) free to argue those points.
But I don't believe citing a work as proof of itself is valuable. To say "Acts was written by Luke because of the 'we' passages" is to ignore the pervasiveness of forgery in the first century. It was RAMPANT. To say, "Look, the fist verse of this letter identifies its writer as Paul," as if a forger would say otherwise, is to utterly miss the point. The salutations in the pastoral epistles don't prove Paul actually wrote them! The fact that they disagree so radically with the known letters of Paul indicate that they were not written by him (or dictated at his behest). The fact that "Luke" says "we" does not prove he was a companion of Paul -- it only proves he was trying to pass himself off as one.
This side issue arose when I said scholars agree with Bart Ehrman that Luke did not write Luke. No, I haven't conducted polls. Neither has anyone else on this thread.
I do know that Ehrman has written two books on the subject of forgery in the Bible. One of them, Forged, is written for a lay audience. I've read that one. The other, Forgery and Counterforgery, is a scholarly work, not written for laypeople. I haven't read it. You, Steve, might come across it. It might persuade you. It might not. But you are being taught theology by committed Christians. That is an identifiable bias (as I've noted elsewhere), and I caution you to distinguish between the state of scholarship in the field as opposed to the motives of apologetics.
So I actually wrote to Ehrman and asked what the state of scholarly consensus was on the authorship of Luke.
His reply:
This mirrors what I suspected: Christians, who have a vested interest in the answer, come to one answer. Others, who have no vested interest in the answer, come to a different conclusion. Sorry, it's not a situation where I get to monopolize the time of someone who doesn't know me from Adam, so I can't grill him much further (except at his pleasure).
We're not going to resolve it on this thread. I know "appeal to authority" is a fallacy, so take Ehrman's comment with a grain of salt, or a pound. My only question was the state of the scholarly consensus. To prove the case, I'd have to probably buy his book and compare it to others, which is not something I have the time or inclination to do.
If Luke wrote Luke, so be it. It doesn't explain why he's calling Paul a liar or why he thinks Herod was alive during the Quirinian census (or that the census required Joseph to leave his home, which is the opposite of what a census does). As many problems are raised by the gospel with Luke as the author as are raised by the gospel with anyone else.
But God-breathed?
Maybe on issues like what Jesus taught and how Paul's doctrine and practice evolved. But certainly not on history. On history, Luke is demonstrably unreliable.
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waysider
Modern Christianity is based largely on "what Paul said". So, it comes down to determining what Paul actually said. Did he say that all scripture is God-Breathed? The consensus among scholars would be that he did not. (Based on the assumption he did not write II Tim. 3:16, the verse that states that to be the case.) So, it might be God-Breathed and it might not. What we can be reasonably certain of, assuming Paul did not write the verse in question, is that II Tim. 3:16 should not be cited as the determining factor.
I think we've extensively demonstrated on this and other threads that there are, indeed, contradictions in the scriptures. That much of it seems to be off the table. That leaves us with demonstrating that the scriptures are God-Breathed. The only indication we have that they are is a verse of scripture that appears to be a forgery.
Why is it so important that they be God-Breathed? Is it because various men have told us they need to be? Maybe they're wrong. Maybe this idea that "It would all fall apart." is just a hyped up phrase that has no basis in reality.
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Raf
I have a hypothesis about that.
But before I get to that...
Steve, I don't think we're clear yet on why I moved this thread here from Questioning Faith.
From the "About this forum" thread on Questioning Faith:
I think you can see that this thread does not fit that description (not necessarily anyway).
Anyway, you never complained about it, but I wanted to make it a little more clear than I have.
In any event:
Protestant Christianity started with an exaltation of the Bible over church tradition. Never mind that we don't even HAVE a Bible if not for tradition. The early Protestant churches distinguished themselves from the Catholic Church by placing their doctrinal emphasis on scripture over tradition, and they distinguished themselves from each other by claiming to adhere more closely to scripture than the other guys.
Take away the inerrancy of scripture, and it's just a bunch of people wrangling over the words of men.
Wierwille asked "why division," answering that it's because of a wrong dividing of The Word. But that's not the case at all. We have division in the church precisely because the doctrine of inerrancy, the refusal to admit these gospels and letters and histories contradict each other worse than the DC Multiverse (yes, I'm exaggerating). Inerrancy breeds inflexibility. If the Bible is always right, and it says what I think it does here, then I'm right, no matter what you think it says somewhere else.
Without inerrancy, we can say, "hey, Paul seems to disagree with James. Fascinating. What can we learn from each of them?" WITH inerrancy, we can't stand the thought of Paul disagreeing with James, so we force them to agree with each other. (Yes, I recognize the irony of ME using this example. What can I say? Time has passed). And if I'm right, then YOU ARE WRONG. GET OUT OF MY CHURCH BEFORE YOU POISON EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING WITH YOUR HERESY.
I lose my claim to be right if you can be right too.
Anyway, that's my thought on Protestant Christianity's vested interest in the inerrancy of scripture. Just a hypothesis.
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Raf
There are a couple of verses that come close. If you take that particular verse from Corinthians you have to concede that it's only talking about the things Paul is writing in that particular section of that letter (elsewhere in the SAME letter he FLAT OUT TELLS US) that he's offering his opinion and not a commandment of the Lord.
There's the verse that talks about holy men of God speaking as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but that's not a blanket claim about scripture (and, alas, it's another forgery, a letter claiming to be written by Peter, though Peter didn't write it, dictate it, sign off on it, approve it, endorse it or read it).
So God-breathed is in a forged letter, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy ghost is in a forged letter, and, oh, "rightly-dividing the word of truth"? Yeah, that too.
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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
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Steve Lortz
I am not a mental health care professional. I became interested in the subject of mental health care when my wife began having psychotic episodes during 2000. She was diagnosed primarily with bipolar mood disorder 1, and after a couple of years of fiddling around with different meds and doses, we (she, her docs and I) brought it under control. She's also been diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, mild OCD, PTSD from a dog attack when she was little, and she was sexually molested by a trusted "friend" of the family when she was a girl. In the process of coping with these things, I learned that I also suffer from bipolar mood disorder, but the milder version, not as extreme as hers.
Moods are controlled by the balances of several chemical neurotransmitters in the brain. The balances shift in accordance with circadian and other rhythms, and with external factors that can impinge. Moods can be plotted as swings between highs and lows, an oscillating flow of chemical balances and their results. The feedback systems designed into the body ordinarily maintain mood swings within a band regarded as normal. With bipolar 2, my mood swings can go beyond the normal band into categories designated as hypomania and depression. These swings are not psychotic. My wife's mood swings, if we don't keep proper maintenance of them, can go into full blown mania or clinical depression. I am currently on 40mg of Paxil per day. Paxil is a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. It dampens my mood swings and keeps me from getting too depressed.
The Biblical exhortation to mental health care is Proverbs 4:23, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Keeping our hearts doesn't just mean guarding or protecting them. It also means keeping in the sense of house-keeping... watch over and look out for what's going on in your heart... clean it out when it starts to look like you've been breeding cats in it (to quote the old Chief of the Boat). Heart-keeping requires regular maintenance.
Some time ago, Elizabeth and I became involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We both took their Peer-to-Peer and Family-to-Family classes together. For a number of years I facilitated a biweekly NAMI support group meeting, until my stamina failed with the potassium overdose two years ago. Since I came out of the hospital back in August, I've been attending a weekly mood management therapy group to work on avolition, the feeling of "I don't want to do this. I don't want to do anything." I've been diagnosed with anemia also since April, which makes me lethargic, which is very similar to depression. In order to do my heart-keeping, I've had to dive deep into it, identifying and considering the sources of feelings. Is my serotonin low? Do I need to deal with the symptoms of mood swings that still happen in spite of my meds? Is the oxygen to my brain low? Do I need to get my O2 concentration back up into the 90s? Have I been eating too much sugar? Am I angry with someone? Who might it be? And why? Am I angry with the author of the book I'm reading? Am I angry with Elizabeth? Am I angry with me? Am I angry with God? Am I afraid of something? If so, what? And what can I do to alleviate that fear?
Or am I suffering from cognitive distortions?
"Cognitive distortions are simply ways our mind convinces us of something that just isn't true." These are things I learned in my mood management group, but if you doubt me, google it...
There are different lists of of cognitive distortions, some of them going up in number as high as 50, but this is a common list, and it's the one we use in our group:
"Cognitive distortions that lead to anxiety and worry [and I include fear and anger]
1. All-or-nothing thinking - looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground
2. Overgeneralization - generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever
3. The mental filter - focusing on the negatives while filtering out all the positives, noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right
4. Diminishing the positive - coming up with reasons why positive events don't count
5. Jumping to conclusions - making negative interpretations without actual evidence, acting like a mind-reader or fortune-teller
6. Catastrophizing - expecting the worst case scenario to happen
7. Emotional reasoning - believing that the way you feel reflects reality
8. 'Shoulds' and 'should-nots' - Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn't do - and beating yourself up if you break any of the rules
9. Labeling - Labeling yourself or others based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings
10. Personalization - Assuming responsibility for things that are outside of your control
These cognitive distortions are not simply passing thoughts. They are things we repeat over and over again to ourselves until they become unthinking habit. They become embedded in our attitudes of heart. They are the heart's deceitfulness above all things that the diligent heart-keeper needs to be aware of.
-----
"Since the Bible is God-breathed, it CANNOT contain any errors or contradictions. If there is even one single contradiction in the Bible, then the WHOLE thing falls apart."
Here we have two cognitive distortions, all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization, from the very get-go of fundamentalist/evangelical protestant theology (mid-to late-1800s). First, that there are no errors or contradictions in the Bible, and that a single one would destroy the value of the whole. Neither of these things is true.
Next... our experience of Wierwille...
Wierwille was a man who talked about Jesus and the Bible. He was also a fraud and a liar. And he fooled us... or at least I can honestly say he fooled me.
The cognitive distortions of our experience with Wierwille...
Since Wierwille was a fraud and a liar who talked about Jesus and the Bible, ALL people who talk about Jesus and the Bible are frauds and liars... or just fools. Including all the people who originally wrote the books that became the Bible... they were ALL frauds and liars. Here we have overgeneralization and labeling.
There is plenty of evidence that the Bible is full of contradictions and errors. There is also evidence that many of the contradictions are purposeful. But instead of exploring what those purposes might be, we are going to ignore that evidence. These are the cognitive distortions of the mental filter and minimizing the positive.
All the scholars who agree with my position are serious and unbiased. Any scholar who disagrees with me is frivolous and biased, especially those Christian scholars! How can they be serious and unbiased? They are ALL frauds and liars or fools. How do I know that these things are true? I feel it. These are examples of emotional reasoning, believing that the way you feel reflects reality. Not to mention the mental filter and minimizing the positive.
I SHOULDN'T have been fooled by Wierwille. I will guarantee that I am never fooled again, by rejecting anything that anybody who is talking about Jesus or the Bible says!
I love you all. Each and every one!
Steve
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Mark Sanguinetti
The Way Ministry regarding what they taught from the bible was above average. They spent time, especially Victor Wierwille copying the writings of other authors, for example E.W. Bullinger, or perhaps also doing some of their own research. The main problem with the Way Ministry was and perhaps still is not applying and living God's word. Some examples of not applying God's word for the religiously high Way ministry people was their adultery while perhaps also being married, while being critical of lower people in the way ministry regarding who they could even date. I experienced this while in the Way minstry in my late teens to early to later 20s. Of course, we also had to pay a non-biblical equivalent of a minimum 10% tax on our income to the Way ministry to even be involved with them.
In contrast, I am glad that Steve Lortz is applying God's word and is a true follower of Jesus Christ. As an example after teaching he says "I love you all". Yes, Steve like everyone else does not know everything. As Paul explains in his 1 Corinthians letter, we know only in part and none of us knows everything. We would have to be God the creator of life to know all things.
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waysider
:blink:
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Oakspear
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waysider
Intentional contradiction does not equate with something being God-Breathed. We find this technique being used frequently in modern writing, as well. We call it irony.
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Raf
Actually, Steve, you've got my position backwards. It's not that scholars who agree with me are unbiased and those who disagree are biased. It's the other way around: I take bias into account when assessing whether to trust a scholar on a particular subject. That is, I agree with scholars who are not connected to a vested interest in whatever conclusions they draw.
Thus, when 90 percent of climate scientists say global warming has significant man-made causes, while 90 percent of scientists who work for ExxonMobil say human activity has nothing to do with climate change, I am inclined to trust those scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome.
Conservative Christian scholars have a vested interest in certain positions, and the authorship of Luke appears to be one of them. I do not trust their judgment on this issue, not because they're Chtistian, but because the evidence shouts against it from the rooftops. So I have repeatedly cited evidence in my explanations about Luke. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly cited conservative Christian scholars.
Feel free, but I have made a case for their bias that has nothing to do with whether they agree with me.
I agree with those scholars who do not have a vested interest in the answer. Among those scholars, the consensus is that Luke did not write Luke, just like the consensus among scientists who do not work for fossil fuel companies is that human activity contributes to global warming, just like the consensus among doctors who don't work for Phillip Morris is that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
In every other field, you take bias into account when assessing claims and conclusions. Somehow, when the subject is the Bible, that flies out the window.
Here's the key: scholars who don't believe Luke wrote Luke lose absolutely nothing I'd they're wtong. Those who DO believe Luke wrote Luke have as lot riding on that conclusion, because so much of the reliability of the gospel is supposedly tied to it.
What do I lose if Luke wrote Luke? Nothing. He's still woefully unreliable as a historian.
What do you lose if he didn't? A crucial claim to historical accuracy.
Tell me, who is more likely to allow bias to affect judgment here?
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