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Inerrancy
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Theistic Evolution

“This paper will carefully examine the relevant affirmations and denials in those documents [1978-99 Council on Biblical Inerrancy] to expose the ambiguous wording that opened the door for these old-earth views. I will then document a number of examples to show how leading inerrantists unknowingly and unintentionally have violated the principles that they endorsed in those two documents.” - AiG

Discussion

Mon, 09/21/20

….about how a lot of people who deny inerrancy in fact will never deny it straightforwardly in words. I remember learning this in no uncertain terms when discussing an ELCA document about human sexuality in the 1990s that was dispensing, really, with most Biblical positions on sexuality. Even a straightforward contradiction was not enough to get my friend to admit that he really didn’t believe the Bible in these matters—there is somewhere a “workaround” based in the torture of literary devices by which they think they can rescue what they’re saying.

So while some do actually deny Scripture, it’s far more common, in my experience, to see people torturing the text out of relevance.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Mon, 09/21/20

Bert wrote:

So while some do actually deny Scripture, it’s far more common, in my experience, to see people torturing the text out of relevance.

Yes, Bert, you are right. In my experience, people outside the evangelical church will do that, but then eventually say something really dumb, like “we follow Jesus, not Paul.”

Within evangelicalism, they will feign that their strained “interpretations” are completely valid, but sometimes it is hard to believe that they really believe that they are being fair with the text, down deep. The evangelical world has a lot of adherents who really do not like the teachings of evangelical churches, IMO. They want to fix and change things. Strange mix.

"The Midrash Detective"

Wed, 09/23/20

….”This type only comes out with prayer and fasting.” Put a bit more seriously, there is a fine line between a legitimate difference of opinion and the torturing of a text until it confesses something it never wanted to say. I would dare say that I also pray that I do not fall into this trap.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.