{"id":9587,"date":"2012-07-03T12:49:15","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T12:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/03\/protestants-catholics-purgatory-inerrancy-and-related-topics\/"},"modified":"2012-07-03T12:49:15","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T12:49:15","slug":"protestants-catholics-purgatory-inerrancy-and-related-topics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/03\/protestants-catholics-purgatory-inerrancy-and-related-topics\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestants, Catholics, Purgatory, Inerrancy and Related Topics"},"content":{"rendered":"
My last post<\/a> drew a number of e-mail responses.  Here is one, by Joshua Orsak.  Subheadings added.  The ComBox is open in case Professor Anderson, or anyone, cares to respond.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Purgatory<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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First I'd like to make a quick note on purgatory. Purgatory is found in the Apocrypha, the 10 or so books of the Bible found in the Septuagint, the Hellenized Jews' Scriptures and not in the Hebrew Scriptures. You find it in Tobit 12:9, 2 Maccabees 12:43-45 and Ecclesiasticus 3:30. Protestants don't <\/span>accept these scriptures as divinely inspired, but the Catholic faiths (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglo-Catholic, etc) do. I don't want to expound TOO much on arguments for including the Apocrypha, but I want to say this. The Jews did not canonize their scriptures until around 90 AD. They did this, in part, because the Septuagint, in particular the books we call the Apocrypha, were <\/span>being used against them by the Christians in debates over Jesus' place as messiah. Ironically, Protestants later excluded the books because they are not included in the Jewish' canon. Anderson's point about purgatory is confused. The issue is not whether purgatory is found in the Bible but which scriptures should be included in the Bible at all.<\/span><\/div>\n
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BV:  Perhaps the point could be put like this:  The question whether purgatory is to be found in the Bible is not a well-defined question, and is therefore unanswerable, until we decide which books are canonical. "You tell me which books make up the Bible, and I will tell whether there is Biblical support for a doctrine of purgatory."  <\/span><\/div>\n
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Inerrancy<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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As to whether the Bible supports plenary inerrancy, in my opinion it does not do this consistently. The Bible is a collection of books that take a variety of positions on various theological issues. They are more like conversations around the Revelation of God to the Israelite people (and later the church) than the Revelation itself. The Bible is not the Revelation, but the record of The Revelation. Just to give an example, Jeremiah 28:7-9 modifies the conditions by which we test whether a prophet is genuine from an earlier set of conditions laid down in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. In the latter case we are told that a prophet is only a true prophet if his prophecy comes true. Jeremiah says that this is <\/span>true only in the case of a prophet that prophecies peace. If a prophet gives you an oracle that you like, that is in line with what you want to hear, then his prophecy must come true or he was a false prophet. But Jeremiah insists that any prophet that challenges you or gives you a word of judgment, i.e., tells you what you do not want to hear, is a true prophet regardless of whether his prophecy comes true.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In the New Testament, the writers often quote passages out of context, and take them to mean something different than the original writers thought they meant. They take prophecies about the return from Babylon to Israel under Persian rule and talk about them as if they are messianic. This is not lying, from the writers' perspective. At the time the New Testament was written, it was believed that the truths behind scripture were hidden even to the original writers, and one needed the Spirit to guide one to dig into the hidden meaning behind the text. It is the Holy Spirit, and not scripture, that is primary in the New Testament, and it is guidance by the Spirit (rather than, say, the Pope) <\/span>that gives credence to one's understanding of scripture. Jesus does this all the time in Matthew. He quotes scripture "you have heard it said" and then replaces or modifies it "but I say unto you…". Jesus has the authority to 'bind and loose' the law (to bind the law is to make it more strict, to loose it is to <\/span>make it less strict, this was the pharisees' understanding of what a teacher was supposed to do). This authority derives from the Spirit. Just to give one example, think about Matthew 9:1-12. Jesus says that the allowance of divorce, found in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 did not derive from God but from Moses, clearly implying that not all of scripture comes from God alone. Jesus then goes to a rather ambiguous passage from Genesis to clarify what our attitude towards divorce should be.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The Danger of Bibliolatry<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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This is just the beginning of a sketch of a Biblical argument, but I'd say you are on firm BIBLICAL ground when you reject plenary inerrancy. There are certain passages that do seem to support that doctrine, but there are many, many more passages that indicate a vastly different way of approaching scripture. God should be the center of our theology, not a book. Experience and reason have to <\/span>play a role. The Bible is not a constitution that restricts our limits our relationship with the Divine, it is rather a long and storied history of one people's (or two peoples') relationship with God and how God revealed Himself to them over an extended period of time. It includes their reflections on that <\/span>revelation. It has a lot to say to us, and gives form and function to our own experience. Without it, we'd be starting pretty much from scratch. I love the Bible and it plays a central role in my relationship with God. But if it becomes the end-all be-all it becomes idolatrous in its own right. Bibliolatry is a subtle but I think very dangerous form of that terrible sin.<\/span><\/div>\n
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I find myself in broad agreement with Pastor Orsak.  Here is the slant on scripture I took in <\/span>Four Slants on Scripture<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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C. Scripture is a product of divine-human interaction. It exists contingently and does convey divine revelation. But it is not inerrant. It contains errors and defects that reflect the fact that it is a product of
divine-human interaction. God may be an impeccable transmitter, but we are surely not impeccable receivers.  There will be plenty of human 'noise' mixed in with the divine 'signal.'  God is not the author of the Bible, various human beings are the authors, but some of these at some times are writing under inspiration and thus are drawing truths from a transcendent source. Although the Book contains divine revelation, it is not the Last Word. Nor is it impossible that divine revelation is to be found in such writings as the Bhagavad-Gita<\/em> and the Dhammapada<\/em>, not to mention 'inspired' philosophers such as Plato and Plotinus.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last post drew a number of e-mail responses.  Here is one, by Joshua Orsak.  Subheadings added.  The ComBox is open in case Professor Anderson, or anyone, cares to respond.   Purgatory   First I'd like to make a quick note on purgatory. Purgatory is found in the Apocrypha, the 10 or so books of … Continue reading “Protestants, Catholics, Purgatory, Inerrancy and Related Topics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,139,426],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-religion","category-revelation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}