So with your interpretation of the Bible, you are saying you don’t believe the Bible to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God? What do you believe about it, then, and do you hold to the other fundamental beliefs of Christianity, like the virgin birth of Christ, His death to atone for our sins, the historical reality of His miracles, and His bodily resurrection from the dead?
Up to encountering your posts, it’s been either very clear to me, or else very easy to discover, what the individual posters here believe. I know I frequently feel there’s a need to state that I’m an evangelical Christian, and I know others do the same as needed. So, then, how do you describe yourself?
I pinged metmom and eagleone to a post addressed to BeauBo as they were also involved in the discussion, but the actual post is addressed just to BeauBo. Sorry for any confusion.
“you are saying you don’t believe the Bible to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God?”
I believe the Bible to be full of inspiration and wisdom and the most important things for human lives - but not to be inerrant.
For the many reasons that I mentioned earlier, such as different versions, multiple translations, the many different people involved in writing and editing, with their different cultural outlooks and agendas.
If it were inerrant, no conflicts or discrepancies could be found - but hundreds can be. If inerrant, there would be only one version - magically kept inerrant. And so on. That is why I argue that people are ultimately responsible to use their heads and exercise judgement, rather than wish it away by waving a doctrine of inerrancy to relieve them from complexity and ambiguity.
The claim of inerrancy is the sound of a mind snapping shut.