From: tim@mal-s1.gatech.edu (Tim Shelling)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Inerrancy _ Jere 36
Date: 21 Aug 92 04:26:38 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech Res. Inst./Modeling & Analysis Lab

In <Aug.18.01.47.08.1992.26576@aramis.rutgers.edu> dlhpfm!dlh@ncoast.org (daniel lance herrick) writes:

>The fact is, there is only one reason that Scripture is inerrant.

>The Church declared it the inerrant and inspired written Word of God around 425
>A.D.  The inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture is not based on the fact that
>it's "inspirational", or because "it says it's inspired" (because while it may
>say that Scripture is inspired, it does not reveal what books comprise
>Scripture, and you can't accept that Scripture is inspired by the testimony of
>scripture until deterimine that Scripture is accurate testimony), or for any of
>those various reasons.  The truth of the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture
>is based on the authority of the Church to declare them as such.  Without such
>an external authority, there is no way to validate the authority of Scripture.
>How do we trust the authority of the Church? Because Christ founded it and gave
>it the authority to make such decisions.  
And where is this authority given?

> Jude 3 says that the faith was "once
>for all entrusted to the saints", that is, the Church.
oh. And who is "the Church"?

>For me, there the argument ends.  Anything else, as clh says, is pulling
>rabbits out of thin air.
Ok, but you'ree still pulling rabbits out of thin air. After all, "we" 
Christians are a part of the Church, are we not? So the authority was given
to us, correct?

But even if you don't agree with that, then let me pursue this issue of the
Church declaring the Scriptures as authority. Do you know the three "Tests"
for determining whether a book or writing was to be considered Scripture?
In case you do not, here they are: First, was the book originated by an 
Apostle. Of the four gospels, John and possibly Matthew pass this test. 
Acts fails, as does Luke; Hebrews would certainly fail; James, of course, would fail; Paul's letters, under
scruitiny should fail, as he self-proclaimed his apostleship and cannot be
considered one of the 12. 
The second test was basically this: did the written works preach sound 
doctrine? What kind of test is this? It's asking if the document teaches
what is already believed. But what is believed is what came from those 
documents, no? This test does nothing but weed out what is already not
accepted. The third test is even worse: Was the book mentioned or referred
to by the early church leaders? This is inline with the circular reasoning
that was in the second test and is in agreement with clh's post-post:

>whole.  Thus they were recognizing the authority of the Bible, not
>creating it.  You can find the critical parts of Scripture being
>quoted as authoritative as far back as we can go in church history.

It comes back to the question, "yeah, but what *is* Scripture"?
-- 
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|Timothy J. Shelling, CmpE |"Paired opposites define your longings --
|  tim@mal-s2.gatech.edu   |  and those longings imprison you."
| gt2540b@prism.gatech.edu |				    -- Zensunni Whip