Dave Lankshear - 29 July 2008 01:38 AM

Perspicuity bites the dust.

Hi Dave,

I’m sure that you’ve used that phrase before -it sounds like a great title for your forth coming biography - and rings so true for many of us ;)

Actually, I just wanted to thank you for subtly encouraging me to constantly look up words in my thesaurus. Maybe I should go back to checking out the ‘20 new words’ in each month’s edition of “Reader’s Digest “ to try and keep up.

Cheers, kevin

It’s definitely not prone to error, but human interpretation and understanding most definitely is.

Dannii, What a wonderfully constructed self-refuting statement!  :bug:

Genesis is a great band

Dannii, What a wonderfully constructed self-refuting statement!  :bug:

What do you mean? Just because we’re prone to error, doesn’t mean God’s word is.
Now our misunderstandings may lead us to think the Bible is inerrant when it isn’t, but in this case I think our understand of the Bible and trust in it is fully justified.

Dannii

The problem with the idea of the word of God being intricately linked to the written word as posited in the Bible is that human beings must always be involved in the task of discerning what the word of God is.  Spirit-breather, inspired, whatever, there is always opportunity for the human being to get it wrong as they write it down, not to mention the opportunities in the transmission of the text down through the centuries for the original words, at least as written, to be corrupted.

This is why some Christians have a little difficulty with references to the Bible as inerrant and infallible.

The most important thing in my view is the issue of the reception of the word of God.  This is a task that involves great discenment and as much ministry from the Holy Spirit as was needed to write the words in the first place.

Cheers,
JOHN

Genesis is a great band

LOL.. and Amen!

I think a good point has been raised; Does the actual Bible claim anywhere within itself to be without fault?

It says that God’s word is perfect, so the question is whether it claims to be God’s word. I think it is.

However another question might be whether it says it will be preserved perfectly. I don’t think it does, but some have said it does, especially the KJV-only crowd.

Correct, Craig.
My somewhat cheeky (forgive me) comment to Dannii means that even a plain statement in Scripture to the effect of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (and “Chicago” has gone AWOL from my bible concordance) - even a plain statement, must still require “understanding” (and even, to a lesser degree, “interpretation"). Yet to whatever extent human understanding is flawed then so is my access to doctrine (including the rather Platonic notion of an inerrant original text).
Which brings us back to an earlier post somewhere on perspicuity and me wondering how we keep getting sidetracked so easily into hermeneutics on the subject of Genesis.
For example. The doctrine of salvation is perspicuous in Scripture - we assert(!) - because otherwise God cannot, or will not, communicate something very important: not just to us, but to the whole framework of Christian theology. (If, due to the flaws of human understanding and interpretation, salvation wasn’t “clear”, ie. accessible knowledge, then it suggests that either God is not able - or not willing - to get through humanity’s fog.)
I have now waded into very murky epistemic waters. What is perspicuous to Dannii (eg. inerrancy) is not to others. So, due to flawed human understanding and interpretation (which I agree wholeheartedly with Dannii about), what do people think of these points?
1/ the less agreement by the church through the ages and across cultures, the higher the risk of error and the greater the need for caution
2/ the stronger and “plainer” the Scriptural traditions, the stronger assurance of the doctrine
3/ the stronger the consistency a) within Scripture and b) between Scripture and the created world, the higher the confidence

1/ the less agreement by the church through the ages and across cultures, the higher the risk of error and the greater the need for caution
2/ the stronger and “plainer” the Scriptural traditions, the stronger assurance of the doctrine
3/ the stronger the consistency a) within Scripture and b) between Scripture and the created world, the higher the confidence

I agree, as long as we don’t make the past the only measure of truth, for it’s very possible that those in the past were wrong for a thousand years or more.

Are there not many forms of the Word of God that we are to discern and listen to? 

We seem most to be fixated on the Written Word, the Bible, but the Word of God can be and is much more.

I am sure that we understand the idea of Jesus being the Living Word of God, and that most of us at some stage in our Christian journeys will have experienced the Spoken Word of God in the words of some preacher or song, words that cut to the quick of our being as unmistakably God’s Word for us, not to mention the times we have found in the words of books other than the Bible the Word of God for us that speaks into our lives.

While the written text of the Bible is a static thing, my experience of the Word of God is much more dynamic. 

In all of this we must always hold a view that the Word of God is something that is ultimately discerned in the lived moment, and that that discernment must always be tested.  We are encouraged to “test the Spirits” to ensure they are from God, and we must equally test our understanding of the Word of God within the Community.  angus’ comments above represnt part of that discernment process.

Preachers, songs, books and friends are only speaking the Word of God when they are speaking the Bible to us. If they’re speaking anything else, they’re speaking human wisdom, which might be very close and is definitely still very valuable. But it’s not the Word of God. It’s only through the Bible that we hear the Words of God and know the Word of God, Jesus.

I am sorry, Dannii, but I think you God is too small, if you limit his Word to the words of Scripture.

I should say that I do believe God can speak to people in other ways, but that we should have absolutely no expectation that he will, and should be very careful when deciding whether he has in a specific situation.

John, I think you are dangerous position of potentially accepting human words as God’s words. I think it’s better to possibly miss out on a few of God’s words (words which won’t have added anything to the Bible in any case) than to attribute to God what it’s his.

Dannii
Were you typing very quickly?  I think you’ve made a few typos in that last post.
Bob