From: REXLEX@fnalf.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Into the highways and hedges
Date: 31 Jul 92 07:51:40 GMT
Organization: Fermilab

>In article <Jul.21.03.58.32.1992.12218@dumas.rutgers.edu> masimo@netcom.com
>(Michael Maas) writes:
>>In article <Jul.21.03.58.32.1992.12218@dumas.rutgers.edu> masimo@netcom.com
>>(clh) writes:

     Let me first and foremost, extend the hand of fellowship to Michael Maas. 
I said, "This comes very close to a test of fellowship I'm sorry to say.  Of
course it would involve further examination, but to set aside the didactic
teachings of the Scriptures as you have is the beginning of heresy."  Last nite
I gave some thought to this (and some study, wife & kids out of town).  I was
thinking along the lines of general rev.  I don't know of anyone who was
"saved" via gen rev, but it is possible I think.  With this being so, I had to
come to the conclusion that belief in the infallibility of Scripture is not
necessary to salvation, therefore I don't make it a point of fellowship.  My
apologies.  
     There is more to that quote however, and that has to do with heresy.  Here
I'll take my stand.  I'd like to take this from 2 directions.  One, the
historical perspective, and two, cause and effect.  Just as nihilism is the
natural child of naturalism, just so errancy leads to apostasy; the very thing
that we have talked about in our discussions on Heb 6.  The question now
becomes, "Is it possible for a denomination or a parachurch organization to
recover a belief in inerrancy in principle and practice once it has been lost?"
     From the historical perspective it can be said that for two thousand years
the Christian church has agreed that the Bible is completely trustworthy; it is
infallible or inerrant.  A single quotation from a liberal New Testament
scholar tells us what we need to know.  We must remember that the author of
this statement wrote at the height of the Liberal-Fundamentalist controversy
earlier this century.  While his statement makes specific reference to
fundamentalism, it goes far beyond that particular school of thought and
asserts that the view of the fundamentalist is indeed the historic view that
has been the view of the Christian church through the ages.  Kirsop Lake
eminent New Testament scholar and a professor at the University of Chicago,
said:

It is a mistake often made by educated persons who happen to have but little
knowledge of historical theology, to suppose that fundamentalism is a new and
strange form of thought. It is nothing of the kind; it is the partial and
uneducated survival of a theology which was once universally held by all
Christians.  How many were there, for instance, in Christian churches in the
eighteenth century who doubted the infallible inspiration of all Scripture?  A
few, perhaps, but very few.  No, the fundamentalist may be wrong; I think that
he is.  But it is we who have departed form the tradition, no he, and I am
sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a fundamentalist on the
basis of authority.  The Bible and the corpus theologica of the Church is on
the fundamentalist side." (Religion of Yesterday & Tomorrow, 1926)

     Actually, the dogma of biblical inerrancy never was an acute issue in the
church until the 19th & 20th centuries.  When I say that is wasn't until the
19th century, I mean to include the NT itself and particularly the life of
Jesus.  Kenneth Kantzer, dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has
written about the testimony of liberal scholars who themselves denied biblical
infallibility:
H.J Cadbury, Harvard professor and one of the more extreme NT critics of the
last generation, once declared that he was far more sure as a mere historical
fact that Jesus held to the common Jewish view of an infallible Bible than that
Jesus believed in His own messiahship.  Adolph Harnack, greatest church
historian of modern times, insists that Christ was one with His apostles, the
Jews, and the entire early Church, in complete commitment to the infallible
authority of the Bible.  John Knox, author of what is perhaps the most highly
regarded life of Christ, states that there can be no question that this view of
the Bible was taught by our Lord Himself."

     Rudolph Bultmann, truly a radical antisupernaturalist, but acknowledged by
many to be the greatest NT scholar of modern times, asserts that Jesus accepted
the common notion of His day regarding the infallibility of Scripture.  He
wrote:

Jesus agreed always with the scribes of his time in accepting without question
the authority of the (OT) Law.  When he was asked by the rich man, "What must I
do to inherit eternal life," he answered, "You know the commandments," and he
repeated the well know OT Decalogue. . . Jesus did not attack the Law but
assumed its authority and interpreted it. . . And from this time (After Jesus'
day when Paul and others preached) came the well known words, which Jesus
surely cannot have said: "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.  For truly I say to you,
until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass
away from the Law, until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the
least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in
the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches {them,} he shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:17-19)"

     F.C. Grant, Union Seminary prof and a liberal biblical critic, agrees that
the writers of Scripture, as well as Jesus, believed in biblical infallibility.
 He wrote:

The passage quoted from 2nd Tim is the most explicit statement of the doctrine
of biblical inspiration to be found in the NT.  But its view of inspiration is
not more advanced than that of any other part of the volume, as an examination
of the passages cited in a concordance will show.  Everywhere it is taken for
granted that what is written in Scripture is the work of divine inspiration,
and is therefore trustworthy, infallible, and inerrant.  The Scripture must be
"fulfilled" (Lk 22:37).  What was written there was "written for our
instruction" (Rom 15:4; I Cor 10:11).  What is described or related in the OT
is unquestionably true.  No NT writer would dream of questioning a statement
contained in the OT, though the exact manner or mode of its inspiration is
nowhere explicitly stated."

His statement has interesting implications in light of the fact that he himself
did not believe in biblical inerrancy.  Yet he here acknowledges that Christ
both taught and believed such!

     George Duncan Barry's book, "The Inspiration & Authority of Holy
Scripture, A Study in the Literature of the First Five Centuries,"  is an
excellent work that surveyed the early church fathers' (which some of you are
so fond in referring to) view on Scripture.  He wrote:

The fact that for 15 centuries no attempt was made to formulate a definition of
the doctrine of inspiration of the Bible, testifies to the universal belief of
the Church that the Scriptures were the handiwork of the Holy Ghost. . . It
was, to our modern judgment, a mechanical and erroneous view of inspiration
that was accepted and taught by the Church of the 1st centuries, seeing that it
ruled out all possibility of error in matters either of history or of doctrine.
 Men expressed their belief in the inspiration and authority of the Bible in
language which startles us by its strange want of reserve.  The Scriptures were
regarded as writings of the HS, no room at all being left for the play of the
human agent in the Divine Hands.  The writers were used by Him as a workman
uses his tools; in a word, the Books, the actual words, rather than the
writers, were inspired."

Did you catch that last ditty?  "WORDS rather than writers were inspired"  This
is a belief in verbal inspiration.  The Bible was looked upon as wholly without
error in its entirety.
     So who exactly are these men of the 1st 5 centuries.  They're just your
average nobody like, Josephus, Clement, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, and yes, even Origen.  There's
also, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil the Great; Chrysostom,
Theodoret, Jerome, and no less a personage as Augustine. (or do you say
Augustein)  Now hear this, we mustn't forget Martin Luther, John Calvin, and
how about the Westminister Confession of Faith.  As in my first quote, "The
Bible and the corpus theologica of the Church is on the fundamentalist side." 
And you say that we don't live in an era of Xian apostasy!  Look how far we
have fallen in so little of a time.   

I guess I'll have to leave the cause and effect argument till next time.  But
to give you fair warning it involves mainly 3 denominations, Unitarian,
Lutheran, and Presbyterian.  Also I might mention several seminaries and their
stance on the old creeds. 

Will you allow me just a minute more of your time.  I have gone back and looked
at my postings and their tangents.  If I didn't know better, I'd say that you
have very cleverly led me from the issues.  Most of the arguments I have made
have been answered by "but did you look at this" and never debating the
evidence that I have put forth.  You just wash it aside.  Is it that it is of
no interest to you, that you don't have the time, you don't have the knowledge
base (I know that not to be true), or as I have said, have you cleverly led me
down this tiresome path.  I've made a real effort to give real answers to your
questions.  Yet in doing so it has resulted in "bobbing for apples."  I can't
pin you down on anything.  Well I think you've made a mistake by bringing this
full circle to inerrancy/infallibility.  The burden of proof is on your side of
the court and  let serves have just been declared disqualification's.  I ask
you to give clear and intelligent argumentation against the history of the
church, begining with our Lord, Jesus THE Christ, THE Son, of THE living God.
     As it says in the NT, 
"Let not many {of you} become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we
shall incur a stricter judgment" 
and 
"But if you bear the name "Xian,"  and rely upon your Law-gic, and boast in
God, and know {His} will, and approve the things that are essential, being
instructed out of the Law-gic, and are confident that you yourself are a guide
to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish,
a teacher of the immature, having in the Law-gic the embodiment of knowledge
and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach
yourself?"

because He really did love me first,
Rex
 
[I'd have to say that I've become convinced that the historical
account is roughly as you say.  However I do think there's alway some
difference between a belief as it is held before there's a serious
alternative and as it is held after it is challenged.  If nothing
else, it tends to become more sharply defined.  I recently read a book
on the history inerrancy by people who believed in it.  ("Inerrancy
and the Church", ed. John D. Hannah) One thing I found interesting was
that several of the authorities quoted (Augustine particularly) held a
concept of inerrancy that did not seem to be deterred by the
acknowledgement of factual errors in the Bible.  I quote: "Augustine's
treament of Matthew 27:9 must again be referred to ... The
substitution of the name of Jeremiah for Zechariah, at first regarded
as the result of a lapse of memory on Matthew's part, is seen on
further reflection to be due to the infallible guidance of the Spirit.
He governed the mind of the evangelist in order, Augustine thought, to
lead the reader to a deeper truth because of the apparent mistake."  I
also note that many of the people quoted acknowledged that quotations
from Jesus are accurate in substance but are not necessarily his exact
words.  Similarly, Calvin combined a theoretical view that there are
no errors in Scripture with a willingness to aknowledge actual errors,
though the wording suggests to some people that he suspected problems
in transmission of the text.  (His actual intent is a matter of heated
controversy among scholars.)  --clh]