Hey, lets pick and choose!

[cableguy]

Okay, recent posts in other threads has made me decide to open a new thread regarding what we, the ELCA, believe are the ‘inspired’ word of God and what isn’t in the bible. I wasn’t joking before when I said that we in the ELCA pick and choose the word to fit our prospective. Sad but true.

That said, tell me…are the four gospels all we consider ‘inspired by god’? Act? Are the letters of Paul just good reading by some old guy? The Book of Revelation? Is the old Testament null and void?

[AngelusSax]

In all honesty, I tend to think of it all as Inspired by God, but not all of it Inspired in the proof-text-literalistic sense. Some things were inspired to get an overall point across, not to be a list of hard and fast rules. I used to just pick and choose, point blank, what was in and what was out, but I think it's probably more realistic to say it's all in, it only matters in what context it is in.

(Paul addressing women in the church... the point was that church needs to have order, not that women should always remain silent, but that those women should because they were being disruptive and disorderly).

[KagomeShuko]

The whole Bible is INSPIRED by God.

However, how can one deny things in books of the Bible where the WRITER says, "I" and not "God". It's not like Moses and the ten commandments, then, which were directly from God.

I can be inspired by God, can I not? However, it certainly isn't scripture. . .

Stein Auf!
Bridget

[AngelusSax]

Bridget,

That is indeed a good point you raise. Many people see "I" in there and automatically assume that it's God speaking in the first person through the writer... (I don't, but many do, as it allows them to say "I'm with God" from their perspective).

[soccerguy2594]

I think the whole "inspired" conversation is an interesting one. I mean we all - individually and collectively (no matter the denomination) - decide what's in and what's out. The whole notion is a subconscious (and also sometimes very overt) way of being able to sleep at night and live comfortably in our own theological worlds and mindset.

We all know that Bible says things that contradict each other. That's okay with me. The Bible is meant to challenge us, to shake us out of our reality, to cause us to see Christ in many different ways. It is this struggle that people (including myself at times) try to eliminate by deciding what's in and what's out. I actually find it refreshing to embrace the differences if in no other way than to admit that I might not have it all down.

Our lives are filled with tension, our Christian journey is filled with tension, the Bible is filled with tension...let's live in it. The struggle is not deciding what's in a what's out. The struggle is believing in a God that is multifacited and may not be like what we would like God to be like. I had a professor say, "in the beginning God created humanity in God's own image...ever since we have been trying to repay the favor." The struggle is to living in a world where all of the book is in.

[cshaeffer]

the bible does not contradict itself. the Bible is God breathed and is flawless. if you say that it has flaws that is because you are interepreting it wrong. it is our guide to life as christians....it is the story of our salvation, not just merely a story book that has no important. I seriously challenge you to rethink something like saying that the Bible has errors, because if you read it and truly understood it then you would know that it does not. We need to do more than just live good lives and confess.....sorry but if you took the Bible literally like you should and understood it i think that you would agree with me.

God Bless
Chris

[cableguy]

The whole Bible is INSPIRED by God.

However, how can one deny things in books of the Bible where the WRITER says, "I" and not "God". It's not like Moses and the ten commandments, then, which were directly from God.

I can be inspired by God, can I not? However, it certainly isn't scripture. . .

Stein Auf!
Bridget

Hmm. Interesting.

Romans 1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, seperated unto the gospel of God

So your we're supposed to take what you write, or what YOU think is inspired, as much credit as that of Paul?

[cableguy]

So...why do we have letters written by Paul and others in the Bible? If we think it is just "inspired" but not truly the word of God to be followed, why have them in there, why not get rid of them like we did 1 and 2 Maccabees and the book of Wisdom? Do we get rid of scripture we don't like? On that note, if we're just going by the gospels, why not trash Acts and Revelation too?

[KagomeShuko]

There are PLACES where the writer says "I." There are also places where it is definitely God's word - plus, to read about the miracles that happened that inspire our faith - to read about the people God used.

It's not JUST the gospels, but that's the BASIS of things.

Stein Auf!
Bridget

[AngelusSax]

Do we get rid of scripture we don't like? On that note, if we're just going by the gospels, why not trash Acts and Revelation too?

Well, Acts is really the second book of Luke, and a continuation of his Gospel... it's really a dis-service to Luke to have his works separated as if they're not meant to be read joined together (kinda like the Gospel of John is separated from the rest of John's works).

And Revelation almost didn't make it in, I hear... almost, of course, but it still did make it in.

[Willy]

Sadly, when we talk about "inspiration" we often think of it in a very Greek way, i.e., we ask questions about the "essence" of the Bible. I would suggest that the Hebrew approach would deal with this matter in a much more dynamic way. Not what is the essence of the Bible, but how does it address us. The Bible is "inspired" in that through it the Spirit continues to breathe life into the church. What matters is that it be read, studied, preached upon. Obvioulsy, the Bible reflects the diversity of opinions that were a part of the discussion of the early church or the people of Israel. Sometimes those opinions contradicted each other. A community of faith is never a monolithic reality. We wouldn't want it to be. It is in the dynamic coming together of a wide variety of perspectives that we discover the call and struggle of faith. It is in the tensions that we meet the dynamic of faith.

[ILoveYeshua]

how do you all react to these statements of Christ? esp. in bold. do you take that bold statement figuratively or literally, and if you take that statement literally, how should you take the rest of scripture?

John 10:34-38
(34) Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods
(35) If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken;
(36) Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
(37) If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
(38) But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

[ILoveYeshua]

and do you therefore believe that, in fact, "ye ARE gods"?

[KagomeShuko]

"gods" and not "Gods." Sons and daughters of God the Father, The Almighty. God's creations. . .

Psalm 82

Stein Auf!
Bridget

[KagomeShuko]

Psalm 82:6,


82:6 Have said - I have given you my name and power to rule your people in my stead. All - Not only the rulers of Israel, but of all other nations. Children - Representing my person, and bearing both my name and authority.


v. 6, 7. The dignity of their character is acknowledged (v. 6): I have said, You are gods. They have been honoured with the name and title of gods. God himself called them so in the statute against treasonable words Ex. 22:28, Thou shalt not revile the gods. And, if they have this style from the fountain of honour, who can dispute it? But what is man, that he should be thus magnified? He called them gods because unto them the word of God came, so our Saviour expounds it (Jn. 10:35); they had a commission from God, and were delegated and appointed by him to be the shields of the earth, the conservators of the public peace, and revengers to execute wrath upon those that disturb it, Rom. 13:4. All of them are in this sense children of the Most High. God has put some of his honour upon them, and employs them in his providential government of the world, as David made his sons chief rulers. Or, "Because I said, You are gods, you have carried the honour further than was intended and have imagined yourselves to be the children of the Most High,’’ as the king of Babylon (Isa. 14:14), I will be like the Most High, and the king of Tyre (Eze. 28:2), Thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God. It is a hard thing for men to have so much honour put upon them by the hand of God, and so much honour paid them, as ought to be by the children of men, and not to be proud of it and puffed up with it, and so to think of themselves above what is meet.


So, you see. . .as "sons and daughters" of God - we have God's honor, God's word. We are "gods." We are not "The Most High."

Stein Auf!
Bridget

[doulos_tou_kuriou]

From a Lutheran point I will say several things.
Luther himself did not believe the whole of the Bible was inspired by God, in fact he was very critical of books most of us would call God's True Word. This often came from his Christocentric, Christological view. He challenged books such as Ester, James, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revalation. So when you ask about scripture, Luther himself was very critical.
I personally don't agree with Luther, I think he was critical for several reasons that aren't just nor are they worth going into now. Scripture is God's word, I don't think its always simply "pick and choose" as you put it, but rather where the emphasis goes. It's not a matter of ignore passages as much as it is see it in light of different passages that are seen as more central. The ELCA is not the only tradition that does this.
I noticed a quote at the bottom of the post. Saying things like we souldn't have communion without confession, absolution without private confession, etc. Luther said that any who believe and hold these words "shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins" is ready to receive the sacrament. This means that you approach with a confessing heart, for here you receive the promise of Christ. Our Lord did not feed the disciples only after confession, but rather he fed them openly, even Judas who had already conspired against him. As to absolution without private confession, this is completely anti-Lutheran. Though Luther says individual confession should be kept since it is good for the concience, the fact is forgiveness comes not by the pastor but by God and in faith, not the confession. According to Luther and Melanchthon, confession consists of two things: contrition and faith. The absolution is grounded in the faith. Thus a pastor can pronounce forgiveness of sins not with the need of an individual confession to know if the sinner is truly sorry for each sin they committed, but can offer it more openly because to any who have faith in those words, they have forgiveness. I'm not sure if this is the area you were really trying to go into when discussing ELCA view on the BIble's authority or if you're alluding to a different issue. But since I was already rambling (on and on I apologize) I thought I'd bring it up.
Peace be with You!

[doulos_tou_kuriou]

just a quick thing to build on what I said about our tendancies to take emphasis of one scripture over another to undestand the Bible, where is the balance? I think we will find (as Luther did in many cases) in order to possess scripture in about as pure and literal sense as we can we will find faith to be very paradoxical. Today's world likes to step away from paradoxes and find black and white, and perhaps that's half the battle. We try to be over-intellectual. I think in order to avoid our problem of "picking and choosing" we need to be able to let go of our desire to rationalize God and faith. Johanes Climactus said that the very paradox of Christ (whom he called the "absolute paradox") will lead reason to offense, and that to embrace such a person reason must step aside for faith. He looked to it in regards to the heart of faith (Jesus) but maybe this method would be of some benefit to other "paradoxes" in the bible too. Lay out all the relavant parts, use Ohkam's Razor to cut to the heart of the issue, and then learn to embrace what we see. It's not an easy thing to do in such a "critical" world we live in. O boy, here I am rambling again!

[paladin_carvin]

Well, the idea of all of scripture being inspired by God is of course from Timothy. (Someone can look up the verse, but seriously, we all know it.). But who said the book of Timothy was flawless? And the concept of defining scripture as flawless in scripture is kinda like defining a word with the word in the definition. But more to the point, what is scripture? We today look at the whole Bible as scripture, but you have to remember- the New Testement as we know it was not put together at that time. No one was trying to make a new set of scripture, though it can be said that the Gospel writers were trying to write new scripture, but they weren't making a new set of them. There really is no proof that any writer of any book in the Bible ever met Jesus (Luke even admits this in the begining of his book- he only gathered accounts together). Though, Paul met Jesus, but not during his Jesus' ministry, just in a vision.

This is why I value God inspired works of today more than that of back then. But that is getting on a completely other subject.

[doulos_tou_kuriou]

Well, the idea of all of scripture being inspired by God is of course from Timothy. (Someone can look up the verse, but seriously, we all know it.). But who said the book of Timothy was flawless? And the concept of defining scripture as flawless in scripture is kinda like defining a word with the word in the definition. But more to the point, what is scripture? We today look at the whole Bible as scripture, but you have to remember- the New Testement as we know it was not put together at that time. No one was trying to make a new set of scripture, though it can be said that the Gospel writers were trying to write new scripture, but they weren't making a new set of them. There really is no proof that any writer of any book in the Bible ever met Jesus (Luke even admits this in the begining of his book- he only gathered accounts together). Though, Paul met Jesus, but not during his Jesus' ministry, just in a vision.

This is why I value God inspired works of today more than that of back then. But that is getting on a completely other subject.
Paladin,
I think you missed several things:
1) along with Timothy, 2 Peter for example also tells about God inspiring Scripture.
2) It seems to me that the Apostles did intend to write new scripture, since Peter again, for example says that Paul's letters is scripture. He says: Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the OTHER scriptures, to their own distruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16). So although you're correct their was no official cannon until the 4th century, there cleary appears to be an attempt to begin to establish one. And the cannon itself existed long before it was official, but there was discrepincy among them.
3) I don't think anyone denies that Peter and John new Jesus, since scripture itself testifies to Jesus knowing them. John also writes in his gospel, "This is the disciple (the one whom Jesus loved) that testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true." (John 21:24). Also keep in mind that Matthew is beleived to be the Disciple Matthew who was a tax collector.
4) I'd be careful in relying more on God inspired works today rather than during apostolic times. Though the Spirit still certainly works, it is very easy for us to allow our opinions, life, society influence what we write and say. I'm not saying we can't or aren't ever moved and guided by God, but the fact that there is something deemed God-breathed by the apostles offers a comfort of something to rely in. Otherwise, how do we trust anything about God, the gospel mesage, salvation? The very fact that if God's word did not exist through the ages what would church be today? What would we possibly believe. The Lutheran church never would've been, since Luther made his objections of the Catholic Church based on how he saw them acting contrary to scripture. If it is not God's word, Lutheran theology is crippled under its ideas of saved by faith, and the promise within the Gospel and the sacraments. Even more than that, if you deny that it is God's word, how does it weigh any heavier than anything else. When that happens, majority rules and tradition commands the church. No basis for disaggreement can exist that outweighs another unless it is more appealing to others.

[AngelusSax]

2) It seems to me that the Apostles did intend to write new scripture, since Peter again, for example says that Paul's letters is scripture. He says: Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters.

So why weren't ALL of Paul's letters canonized? Seems the early Church decided that not all Paul's letters were written to be Scripture, and yet this passage says otherwise.

[doulos_tou_kuriou]

So why weren't ALL of Paul's letters canonized? Seems the early Church decided that not all Paul's letters were written to be Scripture, and yet this passage says otherwise.
I must say I'm not aware of any of Paul's epistles that weren't cannonized. The only thing I know of that isn't in is the gnostic texts that are claimed as Pauline authorship, and those wouldn't have been admitted because they weren't considered genuinely Paul's writings. But perhaps I'm ignorant to the topic, please offer some more info if there is some. To my knowledge every epistle believed to genuinely be written by Paul was cannonized. Now some of those books have been challenged as Paul's authorship by some scholars today (including Hebrews, Ephesians, 1/2 Timothy, and Titus). Although many also say the otherwise (that he did write them). Hebrews is probably the biggest question as to whether or not it was actually Pauline. How you understand that could influence whether you want to call them God breathed though.

[RayJGentry]

i guess the one main thing i have to say is in regards to a statement in the original post. lutherans are accused of "picking and choosing." i think it's honestly very hard to look at any denomination and say they haven't picked and chosen. every denomination has scripture and law that they place in priority over others, sometimes rather arbitrarily. i'll get back with some specifics, but i'm sure most will agree.

also, by the ELCA taking a stance on the inspired word of God, they by defnition admit that some things need to be taken in a differnt context rather than literally. this obviously leads to a controversy about how to decide that. but i think it's a valid point. many denominations say that every word of the bible is literal and ought to be followed. however we rarely see churches expecting people to give up all their material possessions and travel and preach the word. instead they typically hold to the old testament law/teaching of tithing. so it gets interesting there.

if you were to ask them why they don't do it if all the bible is literal and should be followed exactly, they'll say that Jesus was proving a point with the young man who wouldn't give up everything/anything to follow Christ. well, right there is an example of them deciding that example is a figurative one. most christians would say that it's about the willingness to follow Christ, whatever He asks of us. regardless, they're choosing to accept that those instructions are not to us individually, but as an example.

so there's my example, more on this later.

[doulos_tou_kuriou]

So why weren't ALL of Paul's letters canonized? Seems the early Church decided that not all Paul's letters were written to be Scripture, and yet this passage says otherwise.
It seems to me and my study that all the texts that were believed to be authored by Paul were cannonized, though some have been challenged recently towards whether some like 1 & 2 Timothy and Hebrews was really written by Paul. The only documents I know of that are claimed to be written by Paul but not included were gnostic documents and they would've arisen after te death of Paul and been taken as false authorship by the 4th century when the cannon was made official. Keep in mind it wasn't uncommon for people to sign these documents under other people's names so that it would be taken "seriously". Some can debate how good the priests and bishops were at deciphering which was and wasn't Paul's letters (or the other apostles' works) but that was clearly the intent.