“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” - 2 Timothy 3:16
This is a fun question I like to ask Christians in the churches I visit as well as my own: What scripture was he talking about?
I also like to say this, “The bible is not the word of God. It is the word of men inspired by God and it CONTAINS the word of God.”
Then I add, “The pastor’s sermons are supposedly inspired by God, so why don’t we staple them to the end of our bible.
And “because it says in revelation you are not to add to it” is not the right answer. Revelation, like the rest of the bible, is it’s own book. That verse is talking about adding or subtracting from johns account of his vision.
The bible is a collection of books and letters. So, I ask again, why do we not staple our pastor’s sermons to the end of the bible?
I confess that the only answer I have is that all the books and letters in the NT are written by folks who had direct experience with Jesus as he walked the earth. Paul’s was as an adversary at first, but that was cleared up on the road...
Anyway, thoughts?
Because they are inspired by God's word, not directly by God. If they were truly inspired directly by God they wouldn't need to prepare a sermon. They could just climb into the pulpit and start preaching.
That is like TV preachers and authors who say God gave them a revelation. If that is the case we should have the Book of Beth Moore added to the canon.
If I may speak as a non-scholar, layman with absolutely no authority or special insight I have a thought on this.
We know the Bible as a series of select books was not always the same collection of Books we use now whether we be Protestant or Catholic. The OT as used by Jews before Christ was not one book either just as you pointed out about the entire “Christian” Bible. They had a bunch of scrolls, the law, the prophets, histories all in separate parts like our “Books” of the Bible.
We as Christians are specifically responsible for our own relationship with Christ. While sermons are divine teachings they may be influenced by that Pastor’s specific relationship with Christ. While, like the Bible, it is good for teaching, each of us as believers are responsible for maintaining our own personal relationship. We are responsible for spending time with Jesus, in prayer, in the Word and in meditative quiet time.
Maybe, just throwing this out there, adding sermons to the Bible text would take away some of that responsibility to seek God for oneself.
Other than that 2 boilerplate arguments would be the amount of paper, printing and sheer volume of the work.
And we would be forever at war as to which pastors had the true word.
Ok, I’m not articulate enough. My previous response is muddled.
As Christians we are the faith which relies on personal relationship. Other faiths are based on laws. While we have *teachings* which contain rules to live by, Jesus fulfilled our law. So adding pastor’s sermons would equate to how Judaism kept adding to their laws. Islam created more law with sharia. We as Christians aren’t adding laws, we should be developing relationship.
Does that make sense?
I have no answer, just a thought.
“The bible is not the word of God. It is the word of men inspired by God and it CONTAINS the word of God.”
The Bible “contains the word of God” is the precise phraseology of the self-styled “moderate” Southern Baptists who rejected Biblical authority and denied the Bible was fully inerrant and inspired in it’s original autographs. The denomination fought over the Bible for decades before the moderates finally left the SBC to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship 25-26 years ago. The moderates were actually liberals on the road to neo-orthodoxy.
I have a relative who was a leader among those moderates, a seminary professor. I remember a sermon I heard him preach one time. He prefaced his Scripture-reading with “the Psalms contain the Word of God, listen and see if you can find it.” His belief was that only some portions of the Bible were inspired by God. He worked hard to explain away the rest of it. In the end he didn’t find enough of the Bible inspired to fool with it because he has abandoned all vestiges of his former faith.
“Pastors’ sermons” are NOT “inspired” by God. The apostles received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to “guide [them} into all truth.” The apostles, and only the apostles, could pass on the Holy Spirit by laying on hands. This was to give early believers miraculous gifts of prophecy, interpretation, and other things to promote teaching God’s word at a time the gospels and letter had not all been written down and disseminated. When that which was perfect (the written word word) had come, that which was imperfect (individual inspiration confirmed by miraculous signs) passed away. I Cor. 13:10. Once the apostles died, there was no one to pass on the Holy Spirit by laying on hands. And that was no longer necessary, just as Paul had said.
The Bible is the word of God. God inspired through the Holy Spirit men to write the word.
If we say it contains the word of God that opens up the door for additional revelation outside of the Bible to be accepted. If we allow this we have to allow the Mormon the Book of Mormon and the Muslim the Koran and so on.