Subject: Re: Why do you believe the bible?
Date: 25 Oct 1999 23:47:21 GMT
From:  (Ken Smith)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

I wonder if I can put the present differences of opinion in 
a nutshell, by asking a short question, which could get us 
far afield into a discussion of interpretation.

 (Nigel B. Mitchell) writes:
>Do you have a name, J.P.H.? It is ever so much easier to conduct a
>conversation with a person, rather than a set of initials.

>In <940 >, “J.P.H.” < >
>wrote:

>>... I cannot fathom how you can believe God inspired the Bible without
>>also believing Him to be it’s Author.  Men put the pen to paper. God put it
>>in their hearts and minds.

>Your first sentence contradicts the second and third.

>The “Author” is the person who writes a text. In the case of the
>Bible, even if you follow the most conservative opinions in biblical
>scholarship, there are at least 32 different authors whose work is
>recorded in the Bible, and they lived and wrote over a period of some
>1500 years. Many biblical scholars would increase the number of
>authors and decrease the time span, but let’s take the most
>conservative view for the sake of this discussion. 

>Those 32 authors were inspired by God to write what they did, and the
>Jewish and Christian religious communities which preserved their work
>and authorised it were also inspired by God. I suspect that you and I
>would agree on all that. Where we seem to disagree is that I believe
>that the authors and copyists of the texts, those who authorised them,
>and those who interpret them, are _inspired_ but _fallible_. You seem
>to think that they are _inspired_ and _infallible_, and I wonder what
>justification - from within or outside the Bible - you can give to
>support your view over against mine. Remember, the issue is not “were
>they inspired?” - we agree on that, but “were they inspired AND
>infallible?”.

My question:
Can we have an infallible Bible without an infallible interpreter?
If the answer is “no”, who is the interpreter?
If the answer is “yes”, then what is wrong with adopting the 
post-modernist position of “my interpretation is as true as yours” ?
>cheers

>N+

Ken Smith
--
Dr Ken Smith < >