From: hedrick@aramis.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Sola Scriptura (was Re: Perfect Prophets?)
Date: 18 Aug 92 07:34:53 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

bobsarv@microsoft.com (Bob Sarver) writes:

>Even if it is, the disturbing tendency among Christians is to
>base an entire belief or dogma on one or two scriptures, or even on 
>one WORD in their favorite scripture.  Look at the abortion storm over
>the phrase "before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you".

>Many Christians will try to extract volumes of information out of the
>placement of words, or even where a comma falls; i.e. Christ's words to
>the thief on the cross:

>"Verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
>vs,
>"Verily I say unto you today, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

There are areas where Christians realize and admit that there is
disagreement.  While a noisy channel can be used for communication,
there are going to be times when individual portions of the signal
can't be interpreted.  Implicit in the concept of using redundancy is
that the total amount of information is reduced.  You put in a noisy
signal, and you get out a smaller amount of information that you're
fairly sure about.  At the edges there are going to be things you're
less sure about.  Eschatology is generally understood to be one of
these areas.  (Not that Christians generally explain it in terms of
information theory, but there's a basic principle that disagreements
on eschatology are not matters on which to deny Christian fellowship.)
Fortunately, this is not an issue on which salvation depends.

However I would also say that this is only one of many passages
involved in the discussion.  You're right that people spend lots of
time looking at the implications of specific passages.  But that's
only the first stage.  Having reached what they think is an
understanding of a number of passages, they try to make sense out of
all of them.  It's sort of a spiral process, because passages that are
clearer are used as a basis to try and make sense out of those that
are not so clear.  At any rate, I guarantee you that no theologian
would decide the question of whether there's an intermediate state
between death and the second coming based on that passage alone.  Yes,
it's an important text, but there are others.

Discussions on the net can be misleading, because it's simply not
practical to present arguments in complete detail.  Most major
theological issues have many monographs written on them -- whole books
that deal with single issues like the intermediate state.  These books
review the evidence from the Bible as a whole.  They in turn quote
from journal articles and more specialized books, which will deal with
single passages or study a single word throughout the Bible or (more
commonly) as used by one Biblical author.  This approach is used by
everyone -- liberal and conservative.  In fact if there's any
tendency, the conservatives probably have more voluminous scholarship.
Obviously I'm talking about what I'd regard as "responsible"
conservatives -- which certainly includes many who believe in
inerrancy.  There are plenty of churches where one person receives a
"revelation" and sets himself up as an authority.  But most of the
views you see argued here have good scholarship behind them.
Unfortunately the people posting here (and I'm included) simply don't
have the background or time to present all of the scholarship.

Abortion is a similar issue.  It's natural that Christians would try
to find Biblical evidence on the subject.  But it's not a topic that
was ever dealt with specifically in the Bible, so we're trying to find
implications that are somewhat indirect.  This isn't an issue of
error, or of noise in the signal.  Rather, it's an issue of trying to
find information on questions that aren't dealt with at all, by
looking at related matters that may allow you to extrapolate a
conclusion.  In some cases, even though something isn't dealt with
explicitly it's clear what would be said.  But it's not surprising
that in others it is not.  At any rate, the point I'm trying to make
is that inerrancy is not at issue in abortion.

But again, no one that I know of justifies a position on abortion
based on a single passage.  The analyses that I've seen all look at
quite a range of passages.

There has been a debate recently on Num. 5.  The original posting
seemed "playful" to me.  That is, it seemed like a straightfaced
literalist argument being made by someone who didn't actually take the
approach seriously.  So the debate you've seen here may not show much
about how exegesis is done by people who actually affect churches'
decisions.  My guess (and it's just a guess -- I haven't seen very
much of the literature on abortion) is that Biblical scholars on both
sides would see the passage as not having any clear relevance.

The paradoxical fact is that the amount of noise you see on this group
about a subject is inversely proportional to how much it matters.  The
central points of the Bible are clear.  Thus there's not likely to be
much debate over them.  Endless discussions are over the matters where
things are not clear.  This can leave the impression that our
attention is focused on those matters.  It's not.
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