Bob Thune 2004-03-26 2
From Summa Bergania
From : Bob Thune, Jr
Sent : Friday, March 26, 2004 10:35 PM
To : David Bergan
Subject : Re: God and His big lungs
David,
In response to your first disagreement, can't you and I just agree to use common sense when we read Scripture? Your examples press the limits of credulity. Of course Jesus didn't have chlorophyll running through his veins... when any halfway reasonable person reads the parables, he recognizes them as parables and interprets them in a way that honors the genre. Let's agree that we'll do the same. (I prefer the term "plain meaning" to the term "literal interpretation." In other words, we're not looking to take everything literally... we're looking for the plain meaning of the text, the meaning which the author/speaker intended. Which means we recognize that illustrations are illustrations and word-pictures are word-pictures and the seven-headed dragon in Revelation is probably a metaphor for something besides a seven-headed dragon.)
And no, I do not agree that inspiration is a "thing of degrees." The distinctions you are trying to make are totally arbitrary. If you want, I can amass for you all the times that Jesus and the NT writers refer to some historical event and treat it as utterly reliable and truthful. The history is not "less inspired" than the prophecy. Moreover, you must remember that when a first-century Jew spoke of "the Prophets" or "prophecy" (as in 2 Peter 1:20-21), he had in mind the whole category of the OT called "The Prophets" - everything from Isaiah through Malachi. He would not separate out the "prophetic" parts of Isaiah from the "historical" parts. The Jews knew no such distinction. And, by the way, they considered Moses to be the greatest prophet of all, which means that the Pentateuch falls into the category of "prophecy." So if you buy Peter's claim that "prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit," then the only parts of the OT still in question for you would be the Wisdom books and Samuel/Kings/Chronicles.
In regard to "the rest": notice that I did not say that being ethical means writing inerrant letters. I said that the ethical-ness of the apostles means they are trustworthy; and both of them claimed that the OT was inspired by God. And you have not yet proposed a good reason for distrusting them on this matter. Neither Ghandhi nor your mom ever wrote anything about the OT inspiration, so the comparison there is moot.
Let me know where you want to go from here. My goal is to show you that it's deductively reasonable and valid to consider the Bible's own internal claims to divine inspiration; then to use those claims to deductively demonstrate the inspiration of Scripture.
Bob
PS - The Osama argument is easily solvable, also. Just ask around and you'll find a multitude of Muslims who would disagree with Osama's claim to "divine inspiration." Those within his own religion would disagree with him. But in the history of the Christian church, the divine expiration of Scripture - and therefore its reliability - have always been agreed upon across wide spectrums of tradition.
You read me right: "Anything that claims the authenticity hologram automatically has it, unless we can bring enough evidence against it to make a reasonable doubt." Which is exactly the same thing Microsoft would have to do in court to prove piracy.
