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To: kosta50; Dr. Eckleburg; stfassisi; MarkBsnr; the_conscience; blue-duncan; HarleyD; wmfights
And what is the source of this "pure" word of God? The Bible? The same bible that exists in thousands (literally) of versions, in different text-types, of different length of chapters, with all the omissions or deletions or additions or errors?

You should remember that the people who officially stated the word of God was pure was the Church. Surely you don't disagree with them?

2,131 posted on 02/16/2008 12:55:46 AM PST by HarleyD
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To: HarleyD; Dr. Eckleburg; stfassisi; Kolokotronis; MarkBsnr; the_conscience; blue-duncan; wmfights
You should remember that the people who officially stated the word of God was pure was the Church. Surely you don't disagree with them?

The Church never stated that. The Church to this day does not state that, because it is all too well aware that too many fingers were involved in shaping the various bibles we have today.

The Church does teach and believe that God's full revelation (in Christ) is perfect, and its inerrant interpretation is maintained in the life and teachings of the Church, and not in the bible (the book) by itself, which has been corrupted throughout ages and subjected to outside influences.

So, the correct interpretation of God's revelation, as understood and taught by the Apostles, is maintained in the life of the Church, which doesn't change, despite errors introduced into the Bible by various individual authors, translators, editors, etc.

Our Divine Liturgy has not changed in at least 1,700 years, so we at least know that how we worship is how the Church knew the faith at the time when the Church canonized the Christian Bible. If the Bible is a reflection of that mindset, then our mindset is a reflection of the correct understanding that canonized it.

In other words, whatever the mindset of the Church was 1700 years ago, when the Bible was canonized, is what we believe and practice.

But if you want the official Orthodox teaching on the (in)errancy of the Bible itself, here it is:


2,136 posted on 02/16/2008 8:00:21 AM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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