Posted on 03/21/2022 8:37:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The recent now-deleted tweet by Andy Stanley, son of famed pastor emeritus Charles Stanley of the First Baptist Church, Atlanta, reads:
“The Christian faith doesn’t rise and fall on the accuracy of 66 ancient documents. It rises and falls on the identity of a single individual: Jesus of Nazareth.”
Stanley’s tweet was taken from a sermon he preached on March 6 at Browns Bridge Church in Cumming, Georgia.
When first reading the tweet on social media, I was saddened and sickened. This kind of statement was all too familiar to me. I had often heard it made by the moderates and liberals who were in control of the Southern Baptist Convention back in the '80s. I had defended the faith against this kind of approach to the Scriptures in the Baptist Associations where I had served — a time when my support for the Bible as divine and totally without error was in the minority and marginalized.
This kind of doctrinal error is what conservatives worked and sacrificed to save the Southern Baptist Convention from and succeeded. Moreover, other denominations that embraced what Stanley was teaching ended up on the trash heap of spiritual impotence or blatant apostasy.
It was, therefore, quite painful for me to hear a prominent preacher with the considerable influence of Stanley, one who has affirmed his own belief in inerrancy, declare something so contrary to that affirmation.
Unfortunately, Andy Stanley’s view of the Bible is not uncommon today in many seminaries and various mainline denominations that were once faithful. It holds if one argues for the highest view of Scripture as the Church did in the past, then one is in danger of a form of idolatry, elevating the Bible above Jesus, and therefore, guilty of the sin of Bible worship. In other words, you can make the Bible even more important than Jesus. You can give the Bible a prominence the Lord himself didn’t give it.
This is a seductive and harmful argument for those who may not know any better. It’s really a departure from the doctrine handed down by the Church, which has always maintained Christ, the Living Word, so identified himself with the Written Word, the Holy Scriptures, that no teacher can diminish the authority of one without also equally diminishing the authority of the other.
No one ever held a higher view of Scripture than Jesus did. In fact, over and again, Jesus encouraged everyone to judge his entire person and work by what the Scriptures said. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared he didn’t come to oppose or supersede the Scriptures, but to fulfill them exactly — completely — to fulfill every “jot and tittle” (Mt. 5:17-20).
Years ago, after leaving the pastorate to become the Christian Action League’s executive director, I joined a church where a man came before the congregation as a pastoral candidate. First, the candidate made a general statement about his doctrinal beliefs and church polity and then fielded questions from the audience.
One statement the candidate made was a red flag for me. He said he believed Southern Baptists had elevated the Bible above Jesus. So, before the entire church, I asked him to please explain what he meant.
To the point of embarrassment, the candidate kept avoiding a direct answer to the question by talking about things that weren’t pertinent. When he finally got around to addressing it, he did so in vague generalities, which essentially amounted to no answer at all.
At last, I sought to pin him down and asked: “Please tell us plainly. Do you believe the Bible is the infallible and inerrant Word of God? Yes or No?” His response was honest, but revealing when he replied, “No, I don’t.”
At this point, the candidate became very angry and began to attack my person with insults, declaring he believed the Bible as much as me. I responded that not only did he not believe the Bible as much as me, but he didn’t believe it as much as the people in that church. I then said to him, “You believe the Bible contains the Word of God, but you don’t believe it’s all the Word of God. Correct?” He acknowledged my assessment of his beliefs was accurate.
“Well, I agree with the candidate,” one lady said as she jumped to her feet to defend him. “He’s right! I think our denomination has wrongly given more prominence to the Scriptures than to Jesus.” To which I replied to her, “Please tell me how any of us can know anything authoritative about Jesus outside of the Bible?”
The candidate then replied, “I know! By experience!”
“Experience?” I responded. “And by what standard shall we measure the reality or truth of one’s experience without a Bible that does not err, and is authoritative in everything?” I asked. “How can we tell whether our experience is from God or the devil? Are we to believe our experience can never lead us astray — that our experience will never lead us to a counterfeit Christ?”
No one said anything further and the candidate withdrew his name for consideration, saying he could never be in a church with someone like me. Others, however, argued that I had just saved the church from many troubles and possible failure.
The crux of the matter is abundantly clear for those willing to think and look to the Scriptures. What Andy Stanley espouses is not what Jesus believed and taught about Scriptural authority. Let’s not forget Jesus Himself submitted to the Scriptures. Our Lord so identified Himself and his ministry with Scripture that he affirmed to the degree that one accepts the Scriptures is the degree to which one may know Him.
It should trouble us greatly anytime someone holds a different view of the Written Word than the one held by the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. It ultimately leads to making our own opinions, beliefs and experiences the authority rather than God’s revelation. Such only leads to error, compromise, and a falling away from the faith.
Give the poor girl a break!
She DOES have 4 things mentioned in the Book Rome assembled so long ago.
All the Words of Mary...
...as recorded in the Bible....To the angelAnd Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man?And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. (St Luke 1:34, 38 D-RC 1752)...To ElizabethAnd Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” (Luke 1:46-55)...To JesusHis mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” (Luke 2:48-50)... at CanaAnd when the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:3-5).
Preach in Greek or shut up.
Well, on the serious side Luther wrote that, "ancient fathers did not include this one among the books of sacred Scripture, but simply regarded it as the fine work of a wise man. And we shall let it go at that...That the book must be a compilation is suggested also by the fact that in it one part is not fitted neatly to the next, as in the work of a single author. Instead it draws on many books and authors and mixes them together, much as a bee sucks juices out of all sorts of flowers and mixes them. Moreover, as one may deduce from Philo, it appears that Jesus Sirach was descended from the royal line of David, and was either a nephew or grandson of Amos Sirach, the foremost prince in the house of Judah, living some two centuries before the birth of Christ, about the time of the Maccabees.
This is a useful book for the ordinary man. The author concentrates all his effort on helping a citizen or housefather to be Godfearing, devout, and wise; and on showing what the relationship of such a man should be to God, the Word of God, priests, parents, wife, children, his own body, his servants, possessions, neighbors, friends, enemies, government, and anyone else...
Should anyone like to know what labor it cost us to translate this book, let him compare our German with all the other versions, be they Greek, Latin, or German, old or new—the product will bear sufficient testimony concerning those who produced it. In all languages so many wiseacres have gone at this book that—quite apart from its inherent lack of order from the very outset—one should not be surprised if it turned out completely unrecognizable, unintelligible, and in every respect worthless. But we have put it together again like a torn, trampled, and scattered letter, and washed off the mud; we have brought it into shape as anyone can see for himself. God be praised and thanked. Amen. Christians will not criticize us for this, but the world will; in keeping with its virtues, it will manage to thank us as it has always done. [LW 35:347-348] - https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/11/luther-and-book-of-sirach.html
Of course, Catholics often parrot propaganda that Luther excluded these books from the Prot. Bible (though he actually included apocryphal books separately in his translation, while not setting the larger canon of Protestantism) - since they challenged his doctrine (usually just citing 2 Mac. 12 yet which does not teach Purgatory and challenges RC doctrine), Yet while Luther could be very blunt, caustic and prone to hyperbole in his fallible opinions (though RCs imagine him being some pope to us), and did not judge all books the same, in his translation apocryphal books "are grouped together at the end of the Old Testament under the title: ‘Apocrypha, i.e., books not to be regarded as equal to Holy Writ, but which are useful and good to read."
For this subject Luther’s View of the Canon of Scripture is a must read.
Then we have the book of which is clearly manifest as a fable, though some Catholics are offended by that classification. Which is about a women, Sarah, who has lost seven husbands because Asmodeus, the demon of lust, and "the worst of demons," abducts and kills every man she marries on their wedding night before the marriage can be consummated!
And about a man, Tobias, who was sleeping with his eyes open while birds dropped dung into in his eyes (sound sleeper!) and blinded him. And who later is attacked by a fish leaping out of the river to devour him! But Raphael has him capture it and later he burns the fish’s liver and heart to drive away the demon Asmodeus away to Upper Egypt [let the Coptics deal with him?], enabling Tobias and Sarah to finally consummate his marriage.
Many years ago an elder in my church asked me where something was in the Bible. I told him Hezekiah 4:3. He thanked me and scurried off to look it up.
He came back laughing and kind of sheepish. He actually was quite the Bible scholar.
Thank you for that time invested. Always like learning new things.
Simply ancient documents, Andy? For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Heb 4:12 NIV
The Hezekiah gag works because it sounds just so darned natural as an OT book. I never fell for it because I learned in school what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Never believe everything you read on the internet, especially when it comes to the Bible.”
You mean the “visions” so many priests had over the years are null?
Non-sense, while it is your metaphysical Eucharistic christ whose appearance under the form of non-existent bread and wine which - in stark contrast to the incarnated Christ of Scripture whose manifest physicality is emphasized in contrast to one whose appearance did not conform to what he materially was - is essentially Gnostic.
Are you denying then that you NOT siding with, and promoting conspiratorial theories while being irrational again, since it is not the LXX that is being denied, nor the eclectic use of the Masoretic text (which you cannot exclude), but the size of the 1st century LXX versus the non-uniform copies of much later? What is there in the apocrypha that uniquely supports Christian faith anyway? And indeed "remember the caves" in which it was shown that merely being found in the company of some writings of Scripture does not make such of that class, lest many other writings would be also.
Be back later. Spring is here, glory to God!
Hear here!
“If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” That is not a metaphor. Seeing Jesus one sees The Father, for the ONLY place one can see The Father Almighty is where HE is in thier limits well ... as Jesus, The Son of God.
Yes. For Stanley to call the words of Christ and God “metaphors” is blatant blasphemy.
He’s trying, though. We’ll could save him before kicking him into the abyss. It’s plain that our conception of God falls short of the infinite being that God is. The name of God is not all we know. Never to forget God is love.
As Malcolm Muggeridge observed, one sees through the lens.
One of the main beefs that Jesus had with the Pharisees was that they had elevated the written word to an object of worship in and of itself, forgetting the written word was a signpost pointing to God and not the road itself nor the destination. ‘Straining out gnats and swallowing camels’. Or not seeing the forest for the trees.
It is sad to see that Charles is not stepping into the mix to chasten his son, as his son serves the spirit of antiChrist.
Actually, they had made their traditions superior to the word of God.
Mark 7:5-13
5And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
6And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
7in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8¶You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
9¶And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
11But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—
12then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother,
13thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
Affirmative sir. 🙃
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.