The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Inspiration-What does it mean to you?

Greetings to all!
I was raised in a church that introduced
the Bible to children as being essentially a comprehensive,
dropped out of Heaven direct message from
God that had to be believed literally and
perfectly obeyed or face an eternity in
Hell. If God said it, it’s in the Bible. We were inoculated with many proof
texts to keep us safe from thinking for ourselves
on any religious topic. God was not as real
to me as his Bible was. But God is good
and he reached me in spite of this and
gave me a wonderful life in Christ.

I have a question for your input and
comment as I try to find a way to better way to
interact with the bible than my childhood
religious formation prepared me to do.

Does inspiration mean I am reading an
actual word from God? I have often heard
bible teachers say something like " God
says in Romans…(fill in your favorite bible happy
thought)" But if this is true,
then "God also says"in Deuteronomy that
women should be mutilated with no pity
as punishment for a particular infraction.
See Deut 25. It’s gross. We never studied
this passage in Sunday school. :smiley:

With such a mixture of darkness and light
In the bible, what’s a guy to do?
I have decided for the time being to believe
that the bible may contain a mixture of words
from God and from man and that I should
very carefully consider what to take away
from the bible. But, how to get there?
Please share your thoughts on this.

Peace!

Scott

I am conflicted on this topic, and I think, for good reason. The main reason why I don’t believe in inerrancy is because it seems an altogether overly simplistic viewpoint. Most of all, the fact that even though Bible believers who ascribe to inerrancy still argue with each other over translation and interpretation. In other words, even if the original language is 100% accurate, it still doesn’t solve the problem of translation and interpretation. How many people claim to be 'Bible believing Christians" and yet, hate each other and call each other false teachers and constantly mud-fling ‘HERETIC’. In fact, most protestants believe in inerrancy and guess what? They are wolves attacking each other.

I also have to remember that Jesus words doesn’t necessarily mean the Bible. George MacDonald covered this when he said people who believe in the Bible only do not believe in the Holy Spirit and that is offensive to God.

How many preachers have said “God told me this is what this verse means” and the man is respected and seemingly righteous. Then, another, who is in the same shoes as him, respected also, has a large church says “God told me this verse mean this” and guess what? They don’t match. One just has to really look around to see just how true this is. Look up any single preacher and in your Google search, type in ‘heretic’ after it. You will find many attacking… In fact, almost everyone is accused is being a ‘false teacher’. This whole ‘inerrancy’ idea solves NOTHING. The only thing it does is shrink the playground size. But they still fight dirty regardless.

I think, Scott, that we have to take the Bible as a whole, and not allow ourselves to be drawn away by “proof texts” that don’t in fact prove anything.

My own personal take is that the Pentateuch was compiled, perhaps partially written, and edited together from at least four sources, at some point toward the end of the Babylonian Captivity – possibly by Ezra with extensive assistance from Jeremiah (from what I’ve read). This makes sense to me. A compilation of family stories including creation myth (containing truths too great to convey in prose) and other myth, as well as period history (that is, written in a heroic – read hyperbolic – fashion), an adaptation of the Code of Hammurabi written by Moses, and an eking out of the religious and civic code of a new nation. Jesus did say, “Moses gave you this law because of your hardness of heart . . .” MOSES GAVE – not “My Father gave.” The laws of Moses are, I’m told, far more equitable and far more gentle :open_mouth: than other law codes of the day. Moses was probably worried that they would be rejected because they were too lenient concerning people whom the more powerful would think should be treated with greater harshness. In practice, it is, I’m told, doubtful that the many horrific penalties prescribed were carried out – rather, payments would customarily be made between parties to settle the matter. That’s the way it’s still done today in the Middle East. Remember, it is the land of “The mother of all battles!!!” It’s also the origin of the eastern European people (the Russians) so famed for their mad passion. :laughing:

The people needed the sacrificial system, btw, not God. Later in the OT, we read over and over that God did and does not desire sacrifice and offering, but rather obedience and mercy.

I guess by now you’re suspecting that I don’t believe in the every word (plenary) type of inspiration.

One thing that led me to this was my own experiences in learning to hear the voice of God. I will write down what I believe I “hear” from Him, and mostly it’s great stuff. I love reading back over it – it’s always a blessing to me, and frequently to others as well. It’s a funny thing though. You can tell it was me who wrote it. It’s in my style, using my vocabulary, my knowledge of the earth, nature, people, etc. When you read Ezekiel or Isaiah or Daniel or Jeremiah or David or Hezekiah, or John, etc., you can tell their styles, too. I could reword what I’ve written (and sometimes I do) to make it clearer, without doing any disservice to God, who inspired me. If I go through and I think, “This doesn’t really feel right to me,” I’ll give it closer scrutiny and often I’ll end up blacking it out because I just don’t believe that bit (though it might be good enough in its own right) is inspired.

I can’t help thinking that I’m not all that different from the men who wrote the scriptures. Sure, I’ll easily allow they’re more mystical, more dedicated, closer to God, better at hearing His words (or they wouldn’t be in the scriptures), but at the foundation, we’re the same – just people who love God trying to hear what He’s got to say to us. Sometimes I get it wrong. I can tell because I don’t sense the Spirit there. But probably there’s stuff in my journals that I HAVEN’T detected as wrong, that I ought to have blacked out. Or maybe just stuff that doesn’t apply for anyone else but me. That’s okay. I know this is not the pure elixir of the words of God dropping like honey from my lips. It’s filtered through my mortality, my foolish heart, my oft-mistaken understanding. Take it with a very large helping of wisdom. We should do the same with the scriptures, IMO. Even those guys can get it wrong now and then, especially if their whole culture tells them a certain thing, and what they’re truly hearing is contrary to that.

Beyond the possibility of mistaken hearing, we have the culture gap, the time gap, the language gap. On top of that, we in the west want to read things literally that would cause any easterner (modern or ancient) to laugh at us. How silly. Locusts with the hair of women and the faces of men, wearing crowns on their heads, with the sting of a scorpion in their tails? Really? Don’t you know that symbolizes . . . . . . Well no – actually we don’t. And some of us don’t even believe it symbolizes ANYTHING. We’re looking to see those creepy locusts (biting the other guy, of course!)

Jesus sent us His Holy Spirit to help us and to teach us and remind us of all the things we need to know. Just as I need to rely on the HS to critique the things I write in my journals, I also need help to understand and apply the scriptures correctly. In addition, having an army of linguists, culture experts, historians, etc. at my fingertips is a WONDERFUL boon. Ultimately of course, I still need HS to help me weed through them, too. :laughing:

But scripture is a wonderful thing. We do need to use our God-given reason when reading it, but that doesn’t lessen its beauty or its value. IMO, it increases it as we are forced not just to consume and obey, but to interact and discuss and seek out the truth.

You might like to read this very short essay - just read section l, section ll is probably of no interest to you, but section 1 has been a help to a lot of people. Let me know what you think.
transcendentalists.com/unita … ianity.htm

Thanks for the great replies!

Gabe, I share your frustration at all the bible believers who are
at polar opposites from each other, reasoning from the same bible
and missing the most obvious command of Jesus to love each other.
So sad and sooooooo ugly

Cindy, Gmac talks about trusting the spirit our father has given us.
There was a time I listened better for those promptings. Think I need to work on that.
I have been in such a reactionary mode for a couple of years against fundamentalism
that I have thrown the baby out with the bath water. I have personally
opened my bible no more than twice in over 2 years. Maybe a little distance
and detachment, along with Gmac’s wonderful insights can return some of the
joy of bible reading to me now.

Dave- Who is Channing! What an awesome essay. I’ll have to read it several times in order
to really get it, but WOW! I can’t think of anybody talking on faith today with so much obvious intelligence
and common sense. I’ll be looking for more material by him.

Again thanks for the comments. This issue is very much alive for me right now.
I read MacDonald’s sermon “light” last Sunday and he was saying to push back against
darkness that masquerades as light. I had the distinct idea that I should do that
with any darkness I find in the scriptures that contradicts the known loving character
of our heavenly father. Maybe I was hearing the HS. Who knows……….

Inspiration is a way of saying a verse is spiritually convicting. The problem as Gabe brings up is that people think that people think each other’s inspiration is wrong because it doesn’t follow with their own or appears opposite of theirs. People need to understand that while the Bible points to the universal Truth (Jesus) that everyone is going to have their own conviction and all convictions help bring everyone closer in unity and in accordance with the fruit of the Spirit. Every body is facing a different battle so the convictions are going to be different. The Bible is a measuring stick not to beat other people over the head with but to compare all doctrines to God’s standard of righteousness. I think part of the problem is that evangelicals correctly understand that your understanding of God (AKA doctrine) does determine the kind of person you are. You imitate the God you worship just like a child imitates their parents. There is wrong doctrine and it does result in “incorrect” behavior. What evangelicals, unfortunately, don’t recognize is that “incorrect” behavior isn’t necessarily sinful behavior. It is ignorant for evangelicals to expect anyone, even as ‘devout’ as them to hold to the same personal, Biblical standards.
As to whether the Bible is inerrant. It is no doubt inerrant. How could we really trust it to be the Word of God if it was wrong? The catch is that like the game of Telephone the Bible has been mutilated for the personal interests of the medieval church over time and translation. The bigger problem is that people believe the lies rather than seeking out the original truth. As a result of the lies, fear abounds and restrains people from seeking out original truth. As to the problem of how we still analyze the original verses with our different viewpoints, there is a difficult solution (for theologians). To understand the message conveyed, one has to embrace the mindset and culture of the original writers and seek out key principles of the Word of God. Based on these principles everything can be understood. The difficult part is that theologians have to understand all of the writers of the Bible starting with Moses and ending with John the revelator.
By assembling the story and dissecting points of doctrine, one can start to see the translators’ idols and avoid them. For those of us who do not want to spend our time trying to piece together a massive puzzle that literally takes a lifetime to uncover, I suggest understanding the basic aspects of the Bible and questioning odd parts. We shouldn’t question the accuracy of God’s Word in text but the incongruent themes. Ask the Spirit to emphasize the biggest aspect of any given verse or chapter and to interpret everything else in terms of the key.
If the question asked here is a philosophical one, there is little to answer. If you are anxious about how all the interpretations could be so wildly different, ask yourself how can all them be reconciled? The answer lies in understanding that these interpretations are not the direct words of God but a limited view of them. Take the core idea of an interpretation and flesh it out with other views and see the big picture. If there are still major inconsistencies, then there are interpretations that are just flat out wrong.
The best example I can give is on the doctrine of Hell. There are three views of Hell: Eternal hell, annihilationism, and universalism/reconciliationism. Eternal Hell focuses too much on the sovereignty of God tends to forget about the wisdom of God in how he can save everyone if he wants to. The problem that these guys face is that they interpret the Bible such that God does not love everyone therefore most are doomed from the start. If I were to ask why these people never reconsider their theology, they would most likely say that God glories himself in fear. This is a classic mistake of culture change in the English language. Fear, in the Bible, can refer to awe and respect, not just a feeling of phobia that leads to anger. Annihilationists believe strongly in free-will and believe that in God’s love he allows everyone to choose downfall. Annihilationists disregard God’s sovereignty and say that free-will is unlimited. Ultimately, this interprets God’s wisdom to be a matter of bringing the few saints in with conviction while the rest apparently hate to be proven wrong and therefore their pride will cause them to lose eternal life. But if you ask any rational person at the end of the life where they would rather spend their life: in heaven or in hell, they would say heaven regardless of themselves. It may take a lot of judgement and conviction, but in the end they will see God’s mercy and wisdom.
I, as a reconciliationist, believe that there are good aspects to the above interpretations of hell as in eternal heller’s focus on God’s sovereignty and annihilationist’s focus on God’s love. Reconciliation can only be made manifest by God’s wisdom which is something that can only be garnered by spiritual maturity not religious elitism. Reconciliation says that all will be saved according to their level of faith but many will need to be disciplined until they repent of their carnal nature. Spiritual maturity is gained by victory over victory in faith and following the conviction of the Spirit.

Sorry for the long post. :blush: I hope somewhere your questions are answered.

Thanks Nick,
I enjoyed the long reply. You have done some thinking. I have been very impressed with
the good hearts and the in depth thinking of the people on this forum.

My question is not philosophical. It’s real time practical for me. I want to
re-engage with scripture after leaving it mostly alone for a couple
of years, but I’ve got to find a way to deal with the un-godly things attributed
to god in the bible. I am very sure that god did not advocate cutting women’s
hands off as a punishment. Maybe Moses had a bad experience with a woman and it got into the text
that way. The word of Moses, not the word of god. And I’m pretty sure that god would
not approve of Peter’s entrapping Saphira instead of reaching out to her in the loss of
her husband. Anyway, that’s where my problems lie. But I don’t want to beat up the bible
anymore. I have received so much good from it in the past.
I think I’m just going to have a love/hate relationship with it until I can become more
comfortable with questioning it and pushing back at the things that contradict what
I have experienced of god’s love in my life. And I have had soooo much of his love in
my life with him.

Thanks for replying

Peace

Hi, Scott

I think Moses did try to make his law more reasonable than the extant law codes. I’m told that previous to that, the punishment for that particular “crime” had been that the woman must be put to death. I used to tell myself that God could only do with these primitive tribesmen what they could receive, and so He would gradually ease them into more civilized ways. But now I really do think it was Moses. Moses inspired by God, yes, but ultimately, Moses.

Blessings, Cindy

As for the cutting off of the hand of a woman who holds onto her husband’s opponents genitals in a fight (since that’s what the verse says) in Deuteronomy 25, verse 11-12 “When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: 12Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.”, it is an incorrect translation. If you are interested in reading what the verse is actually saying, read here: gods-kingdom-ministries.net/teac … -covering/
Hint: The hand is not what is cut off, but a woman’s genitalia hair is shaved representing her “covering.”(that’s the most awkward thing I’ve ever typed :blush: ). Anyways, much of what you see in Deuteronomy is much fairer than depicted by the translators and for us is really meant to be understood symbolically. Everything in the Bible has meaning and relevancy. It will takes some research sometimes, but it’s worth if it you are really bothered.

Ananias and Saphira were united by marriage and both shared the blame for lying to God. They were both guilty in the eyes of God. For Sapphira, it was a matter of time before she would join her husband in death. There wasn’t wasting time but she needed to be told, as in a court of law, what she had done wrong by Peter before God struck her dead. Peter said in Acts 5:4 “You have not lied to men, but to God.” What appears as entrapment should be seen as a fair and speedy trial by God.

^^

I really love reading alternate interpretations, but that one is very difficult to believe… Can we have another source on that? Interesting though.

Interesting and pretty complicated.
Let me say that I have no training in translation and have no idea if this is
a reasonable possible interpretation or not. Which is also true
of all of the bible. I don’t understand Hebrew or Greek so I’m putting a lot faith in others abilities
without having much idea of what’s really going on in the process of
producing our English bibles.

Which leads to another question,
if God wants to reveal his heart and mind to us in a book, why does it need
to so darned difficult! :confused: And why are we so insistent that it is this collection
of writings anyway? I really don’t know, except that I received my beliefs about
the bible from my parents and church family as an impressionable child. I’m guessing
most life long church goers like myself do. There is much in our scriptures that is life giving and good,
but much that has been soul killing and unfair to people, at least as it been applied in real life church history.

I like what Cindy said earlier about the inspiration of her personal journals and relating that
to the authors of the various bible books. Sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes we get it right.
Same for the ancient authors. Maybe the inspiration lies in their loving hearts for god, and their
desire to pass on what they are learning, much like us. It’s just that they didn’t get to scratch anything
out before their words were “canonized”. Maybe we should feel free to do the mark outs ourselves based
on our understanding of the character of our Father and our elder brother, Jesus.

All of these replies are helping me a lot. I think I see a glimmer of hope for being able to
read my bible again on terms I set for myself as I pursue god. If I get it wrong, I am comforted by
GMac’s belief that god will ultimately make right what we do wrong trying to follow him.

Thanks and Blessings!

Hi Scott, :smiley:
I suppose I have views similar to yours.
You said:

I think the Bible is inspired in the sense that the biblical authors were expressing their thoughts as best they could in relation to their experiences and thoughts of God. To be honest, I am still not sure that “The Bible” and its current form was something that God shaped in some fashion, planned or desired. That being said, I think there **are **real experiences and insights from God in the writings of the Bible, and without it, how would we know about Jesus and his thoughts? The Gospels are the heart of the scripture and seeing the “golden thread” of his thought in the rest of the Bible is what’s most important (and most difficult). Not every opinion in the Bible is that of God and trying to discern what is from God is the hard part…

Thanks Steve!
It is so good to know that I am not alone in my pursuit of these questions.
And it good to have a forum to turn to that is so non-judgmental.
Don’t have a chance to talk about these things in my “real” life.
I live in the deep bible belt and I think we still burn heretics
in Texas! :laughing:

That’s nice to hear, Scott. :smiley:
I’ve had a soft spot for Texas since I was stationed at Ft Hood in the early 90’s (where my oldest daughter was born). I’m originally from the Denver area… The difference between Tex -Mex and Den-Mex (which is related to New Mexican Mexican food, is substantial, though :wink: )

Anyway, I think you’re understanding GMac very well and I think I understand many of your reservations with the standard Evangelical theology. I’m still working out my understanding of scripture, but I would suggest you might be interested in Peter Enn’s thoughts and his blog here:patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/

All the best,

Hey Gabe,
There is further defense here: mandm.org.nz/2011/07/guest-p … brook.html
A different scholar wrote the same view on it and was countered by an Atheist on debunkingchristianity.blogspot . This website shows the scholar giving his response to the counter. I don’t have the means to really investigate the root of the matter but I am confident that there is a clear solution. Read the law for the principle of the matter. The application does matter but is not as important as the principle. Dr. Stephen Jones, in my first link, connects a woman’s covering (her hair) to this issue of shaving off a woman’s pubic hair in public which paints a bigger picture of the point of this particular law: God is showing a prophetic metaphor of the church-bride in marriage to Christ who covers her. If a woman goes out of a way to shame a man in a fight by touching his testicles than she deserves to be equally shamed according to God’s law.
All of this exegetical stuff can be really tricky but I always trust that the original writing was the true inspiration from God and can be understood by knowing God’s character.

Here is my view:
Jesus revealed the Father to mankind as He really is! After the spirit of God and of Jesus was given to the body of Christ, as Jesus had promised, then through that spirit, the apostles as well as some others were inspired to write. This does not imply that their writings were infallible and that there are no contradictions, but they were inspired, and were therefore essentially true. The writings were not inspired, but rather the writers. I think Clement, Paul’s fellow labourer in the gospel, was inspired to write his letter to the Corinthians shortly after Paul and Peter’s death, urging the Corinthian church to restore the elders whom God had set in the church, and who had been deposed and replaced.

The writers of the Old Testament had a rather incomplete understanding of the character of God. They viewed God as a punishing God who administered penalties for breaking the Mosaic law. These penalties were often quite severe such as stoning to death rebellious sons, or cutting off women’s hands when they attempted to protect their husbands from assault by grabbing the aggressors’ genitals.

Jesus, on the other hand, depicted the Father as being kind to ungrateful people and evil people (Luke 6:35), so that if his followers would love their enemies, they would prove themselves to be sons of the Father.

So while the OT writers may have been inspired to write, their limited and sometimes false understanding of the character of God, coloured their writings throughout, so that their writings cannot be relied upon to depict the Father as He really is. However, we are blessed in that Jesus revealed the true character of the Father both by his words and by his life. He never killed anyone or imposed penalties on anyone, and He is the exact imprint of the Father’s essence (Heb 1:3). He shamed those who would have stoned to death the woman caught in adultery, and then told the woman that He didn’t condemn her, and also told her to sin no more.

Thanks Paidion,
I get what you’re saying about the writers being inspired, not the writings.

And thanks for the reminder that Jesus is the perfect imprint of the Father,
and that he shows us what the Father is really like. Reminds me of a passage from
GMac on when the man approached Jesus and address him as " good teacher"
and Jesus replied " why call me good, none is good except God". MacDonald
rephrased that reply from Jesus as " You think I’m good? You should meet my Father! "
Love that!

How could christians ever adopt ECT as the favored opinion in view of the
life of Jesus. And how did it ever happen that a Christ follower first desired to
murder a brother in Christ over a difference of opinion about God, if they
had thought about the life and teachings of Jesus. I’ll never get that one,
but that’s a thought for a different discussing, I think…

I like what Paidion said as well and agree that the NT authors after experiencing Jesus were far closer to showing us the character and desires of God the Father than those in the OT. That being said, the NT authors were human as well and the gospels we have show the humanness of these authors with, perhaps, their errors in memory, theologic agendas etc. Paul, as well, is human and has his own biases and theologic agenda. My point is that I don’t believe we can take even the NT scriptures as inerrant and need to recognize that. There is indeed the deepest of God’s truth in these inspired men’s writings, but not everything they wrote reflects that. The Bible is the mother-lode of “gold” regarding spiritual truth, but its got some base metal mixed in—even in the NT. :confused:

I go along with James Goetz’s take on this, in a post to Robin Parry:

Hi Robin,

I take a middle ground by holding to doctrinal innerrancy while objecting to hermeneutics that attempt to place modern standards of history and science on the ancient Mediterranean Bible writings. I strongly believe that all of the teachings in the Bible are true, but the ancient Mediterranean context can be far from modern standards of history and science.
I loosely hold to the “Chicago Statement” because it acknowledges the importance of the original context of the Bible manuscripts. "

I know he was writing about inerrancy, not inspiration as such, but I think they are correlated, so that the teachings of the Bible can be considered to be inspired and inerrant.
(of course, subject to the principles of interpretation from Channing)