"What makes their words any more true than the Quran of the Bhagavad Gita, or the Adi Granth??? After all, if their words were not directly inspired and controlled by God then we have a work of human beings on our hands."
I doubt I ever said that the works of scripture were not directly inspired by the HS, B. If they weren't, we'd have a particularly sketchy history book on our hands.
"If your entire faith is based upon only what men have said (be they in the Scripture or throughout the ages as churchmen), how can you have the least bit confidence that God is even in it???? Experientialism? Hindus have that? Faith??? Muslims have that. What makes your faith any different from any other man-made religion if you believe that Scripture is merely man's word and not man's words as directly inspired by the Holy Spirit?"
If my Faith were based solely on what other men said, or if it were based solely on what other men wrote in scripture and none of that was inspired by the HS, then I suppose I would likely worship the old gods of Greece or Ireland. B, I never said the HS had nothing to do with the scriptures. Indeed, it seems evident to me that The Church always has believed, especially since say the 4th century, that what we have generally as the agreed upon and established canon of scripture is the product of men who had been graced with a level of "gnosis" (in the good sense)rather dramatically higher than that of the subsequent Fathers let alone the average Niko on the streets of Corinth. In them, the indwelling of the HS was built upon the indwelling of the HS until they were able to perceive, through a clearer eye of the soul than you or I or the Fathers, the uncreated energies of God and this is knowledge, and at the same time a sort of "unknowledge", or "knowledge transcending", of The Truth of God.
+Matthew, +Mark, +Luke, +John, +Paul +James, +Jude and +Peter all experienced in one way or the other, the uncreated Light which is an energy of God and were illuminated by it. All but +Paul had actual physical contact with Christ in the flesh. They knew as best as any man could, how to fulfill their own created purpose and bring others to that understanding. But they were men who needed the destruction of our bondage to death as much as the next fellow. They could no more come into a union with the Divine Essence than any of the rest of us. They were not God. And although they arrived at perhaps the highest level of theosis (and here I will add, without intending to create a side discussion, except for the Theotokos)of any writers of holy and inspired works, they neither knew all there was to know about God nor, in my opinion, did they perfectly express all there is to know about God. For example, it is clear from history that the scriptural descriptions of God did not, as a practical matter, perfectly explain the Most Holy Trinity. That was left to The Church to explain in a way that you and I know "understand". The divinity of Christ, His actual nature, was a source of centuries of controversy and error sincerely held by Arians and Nestorians. The resolution of those controversies and errors, all arising from the very words of scripture, was left to The Church. Now today you and I can look at scripture and Nestorianism or Arianism and quickly say that those beliefs are heretical and point to scripture to prove it. But we have the benefit of 1700 years of Church teaching that people in the year 400 didn't, though they did have the same scriptures we do. You know, I find it fascinating to contemplate a scene, in the year 400, when some bishop/missionary, arrives in a Teutonic, Odin worshipping village, preaches the NT, baptizes the whole place...and everyone there spends the next three or four generations as sincerely faithful Arians.
It is not at all necessary for my Faith to believe that the writers of scripture were in possession of a perfect knowledge of God or that their words are so clear and precise that the NT, for example, is the perfect expression of all of man's knowledge of God in and of itself. Like I said earlier, there is knowledge, natural knowledge if you will, and then there is the spiritual knowledge which comes from God's grace by the indwelling of the HS and which actually transcends natural knowledge and is perceived and understood as best it can be not by the mind, but by the eye of the soul which has been cleared.
"If we are illumined by divine power, and fix our eyes on the beauty of the image of the invisible God, and through the image are let up to the indescribably beauty of its source, it is because we have been inseparably joined to the Spirit of knowledge. He gives those who love the vision of truth the power which enables them to see the image, and this power is Himself. He does not reveal it to them from outside sources, but leads them to knowledge personally. `No one knows the Father except the Son.'" +Basil the Great
Not that I wish to add to your excellent answer, K, just a little houskeeping pedantry: +Luke didn't know Chirst in person either.
You had me concerned. It sounded as if you were saying Scripture was merely the writing of men.
Very well put, but I'd add that there is a real danger in such a hypothesis, because, as we see often, it leads to pride.