Jesus is also said to have believed mustard seed is the smallest seed, as well as treating demonic illnesses as something 'real.' The Bible says the world is standing on four pillars. Do you believe that too?
It is only in grammar books that the superlative is always the "most." In modern English, other meanings are more common in colloquial speech: "Isn't he the cutest thing!" Granted, I don't know Aramaic, but in Hebrew the superlative is expressed by definite article + adjective, which of course also occurs in mention of any adjective describing a definite noun. Then there's poetic usage: There's a line in a modern Hebrew song (by a songwriter steeped in Biblical Hebrew) to the effect that "I am smaller than the smallest of your sons."
The pillars you'll have to give me a reference for -- I can't find it my concordance. But in the usage of a pre-scientific community, I don't think it's important.
Do you believe our enemies' children are just as guilty as their fathers, etc., etc.
The Bible tells a story -- IMO, a true story, but it has an actual plot, with real characters and change and development, as, for example, from assuming that worldly prosperity is a sure sign that God is pleased to the understanding that knowledge of God is the true treasure. God takes a barbaric tribe and gradually, over a couple of thousand years, brings them to where the Christian message is possible. He inspired the writers of Scripture, but He didn't make them into something they weren't, i.e., they were men of their time and their culture, with the physical and mental limitations common to the human condition. (Again, I recommend C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms.) Naturally, this view probably won't go down with the frothier Biblical literalists, who seem to think that each verse of Scripture is of equal value to every other verse; some agree with you that the Bible should be read on the level of a science textbook, only they think it's correct on that level.
as well as treating demonic illnesses as something 'real.'
Science deals only with immediate causes (material cause, as I said before); it says nothing about why there should be disease, deformity, etc. For this, you have to look to final, formal and efficient causes (to use the traditional vocabulary, inadequate as it might be), which science excludes from its purview.
Kosta50, and anyone else that's interested:
1. I think we're agreed that Christ came to save sinners. His name, Jesus, after all, means God saves or God savior and the angel spelled out to Joseph that Mary would bring forth a son and "thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21). And Jesus himself, after eating with sinners, says, "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10)
St. Paul confirms this in many places. For example, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." (I Timothy 1:15).
2. But we are also told by the Gospel that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) so that we might become God's children: "as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13).
Once again, Paul corroborates in many places: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." (Ephesians 1:3-6) In this passage we see that God sends his son so that we may be his adopted children in Christ, so that we might receive every spiritual blessing in Christ, so that we might be holy and without blame in love in his sight, etc. As St. John says, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God" (I John 3:1).
3. And did not Christ come to be our mediator with God the Father? "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6).
St. Paul: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." (I Timothy 2:5). Through his mediation Jesus enriches and elevates us: "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9), or St. Peter: "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." (II Peter 1:4).
Conclusion: After the sin of Adam there is no question that Christ Jesus came to save man as Redeemer. However, seeing that there are many other reasons for the incarnation, one cannot rule out the fact that the primary "purpose" (to use Paul's terminology in Ephesians) of the coming of Christ might lie outside of man's need for redemption. In other words, as Philip Yancey puts it in the article posted, it is possible that Christmas (which presupposes the incarnation) would have occurred even if humanity had not sinned.
Aquinas maintains that this opinion is probable and even lists a host of reasons why the Incarnation would bring about a "furtherance in good" quite apart from remedying man's woe. (Summa III, Q 1, art. 2, "I answer that...").
St. Francis de Sales held this position.
As well as Fr. Frederick Faber (Anglican converted to Roman Catholicism).
As noted before, Fr. Florovsky (Orthodox) shows this as possible.
And more recently Fr. Gabriel Amorth (Roman Catholic), chief exorcist in Rome.
And Fr. Maximilian Dean (Roman Catholic) who, besides posting here at FR has a whole video series and a book on this very subject--very engaging. Actually, it was Fr. Maximilian's posts that sparked my interest in being a "FReeper".
And of course the author of the article at the head of this thread, Philip Yancey (Evangelical), who discusses how this is possible and seems to favor this few. Yancey concludes his article: Among Jesus' final words, in Revelation, are these: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." John Duns Scotus must be smiling.
All glory to Christ. Amen.
Unfortunately. It should say Lev 11:20. The problem is also with the KJV translation and choice of words (fowl). The Hebrew term refers to birds as well as insects . My question was what flying creature creeps?
Then why don't they include cats in that group of animals not to be eaten because they "chew their cud?"
The Greek text (Mat 13:32) reads:
"Which (ho) smaller than (microteron) indeed (men) is (estin) all (panton) of the seeds (spermaton)"
It couldn't be clearer or more definitive. It's not about English grammar. It's about English translations. The NIV actually adds a word—that's not in any of the manuscripts—in order to remove the conflict! The NIV reads:
"Though it is the smallest of all your seeds"
The length some people will go to remove any possible discrepancies form the Bible doesn't stop at falsifying the text, even Christ's own words! And the NIV is really good at that!
Granted, I don't know Aramaic, but in Hebrew the superlative is expressed by definite article + adjective
We have no record in Aramaic and retro-translating is a dangerous business (we know that from Textus Receptus!). The Gospels were written in koine Greek. That is the original language, regardless of what language Jesus spoke. Matthew, an eyewitness, says in Greek what Jesus said.
Job 9:6, Ps 75:3
But in the usage of a pre-scientific community, I don't think it's important.
Agree, but then how do you determine what is true and what is not? I guess we have to shed parts of the Bible as the scientific community lifts the haze off of some of the ancient concepts of geography, astronomy, and disease!
This is why the literalists insist that every word in the Bible "must" be true or else God is a liar. If we presume, however, that the authors of biblical books are merely men who were moved (inspired) to write about their faith, and wrote in an imperfect manner and language, with human errancy, and prejudices, then we agree more than I thought, but it also makes the Bible rather unreliable.
I am assuming you are using "true" as in "factual." Why does the story have to be factual to be true? The moral of the message can be true even if the story is not factually true.
However, we must also realize that factual corroboration of names and places does not prove the story to be factually true.
The discovery of Troy does not prove that Iliad is a historical account of a Trojan War (which never took place).
Just because there are cities and places mentioned in the Bible that exist to this day doesn't mean the biblical stories regarding those places are true, even if their (moral) message may be.
But God didn't do that! Don't you see? God spent an inordinate amount of time cuddling "his" people and they still rejected his message (from our point of view).
Even if all Jews had nothing to do with Jesus being "convicted," just about all rejected Jesus as the Christ. If God was really trying to make them 'his" children, he didn't do such a good job!
We should also not forget here that Jesus fails the Jewish test of a messiah (having only one of the seven biblical requirements in their view), and that the Christian idea of a messiah is something that was unknown to Judaism.
Well, hallelujah! Your view certainly agrees with the Orthodox teaching on the Bible:
From the Dogmatic Tradition of the Orthodox Church posted on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOARCH). It starts with
The Holy Bible (or Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments) is the most authoritative part of the Sacred Tradition of the Church...
As for the authorship, it goes on to say that the Bible is a product of cooperation of man and the Holy Spirit. This represents the so-called "synergistic theory."
The Church rejects Philo's so-called "mechanical theory" which states that the biblical authors were "possessed" by the Holy Spirit, but they don't offer any proof or any reason even why that theory is wrong.
The Bible itself certainly often speaks of "trances" of various biblical personalities (i.e. Abraham, Peter,etc) .
Combine this with the Hebrew belief that spirits (or gods, idols, demons, devils) exert control (this comes from a Hebrew root of the word demon/god/spirit) to rule, and that in Judaism the Spirit of God is not a Person, but the power of God, and Philo's view (being Jewish) is perfectly legitimate and there is every reason to believe that the early Christians subscribed to the same view, as they did to the demonic etiology of so many physical and mental diseases.
After establishing that God leads and men follow, the articles states
God leads, and man follows; God works, and man accepts God's work in him, as God's coworker in subordination to Him. So it is with divine inspiration in the case of the Bible: the Holy Spirit inspires, and the sacred author follows the Holy Spirit's injunctions, utilizing his own human and imperfect ways to express the perfect message and doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
In this sense, we can understand possible imperfections in the books of the Bible, since they are the result of the cooperation between the all-perfect and perfecting Divine Author, the Spirit, and the imperfect human author. Biblical textual criticism is completely normal and acceptable by the Orthodox, since they see the Bible in this light. Nothing human is perfect, including the Bible, which is the end product of human cooperation with the divine Spirit.
There are some problems with this view, however.
If God leads, and the authors are willing sub-ordained co-workers with God, God is still in charge of the project and the author of it, and if the product contains errors, then it's the author's fault, unless God wants us to have faulty scriptures, and I don't believe there is any evidence of that (alhtough OT God does send "deceiving spritis" to confuse people, and the disicples believed in it)
And if the Bible contains (human) errors, then it is neither authoritative—except by fiat—nor inherently reliable!
Naturally, this view probably won't go down with the frothier Biblical literalists, who seem to think that each verse of Scripture is of equal value to every other verse; some agree with you that the Bible should be read on the level of a science textbook, only they think it's correct on that level.
If you allow one error in the Bible, who is to say what is correct? Of course, that's why we have the Holy Tradition, which "fills in the gaps" as unwritten authority, and something that was known to the Church form the beginning, everywhere and always, as they say.
The 300-year old struggle to form a canon agreeable to the whole Church shows that this is not the case. For one, books such as 2 Peter were hotly debated and contested as for several centuries.
In Constantinople, the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, seocnd in honor to the Pope, as late as the 9th century AD, the Book of Revelation, for example, was listed as "questionable" alongside Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas (both of which appear as canon in the oldest extant complete Christian Bible, the mid 4th century AD Codex Sinaitucus)!
It may be of interest here to mention that Revelation is the only book of the Bible the orthodox Church never reads from in public.
The scriptures cannot be the most authoritative and yet full of errors. There is an inherent contradiction in this view.
I think God would have done a much better job at communicating.