How did Peter hear about Jesus?

Discussion in 'Bible Chat' started by פNIʞƎƎS, May 10, 2017.

  1. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    Your mixing up Old Testament comparisons. God breathed into Adam the breath of life. Thropneustos isn't God breathing into or upon the words, it's God breathing out the words. Can God breath out erroneous words?
     
  2. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    It should have been at least 31 cubits (or whatever the measure was) to round to nearest whole measure.
     
  3. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    With all due respect, could it be you're taking that verse a bit too literal? I mean it's one verse, written by Paul.

    Plus Peter's references to prophecy, with their "thus sayeth the LORD", but that's another matter IMO. Those I can accept as literally being "God breathed" because God spoke those words verbatim and the prophets recorded them as such (and prefaced it when they did so). The same goes for Jesus being quoted.

    One statement by Paul that *might* be interpreted as the entire written record (supposedly) being spoken and then recorded verbatim is not enough for me personally to establish such a thing as absolute truth; but certainly, to each their own.

    I do love the Bible and do consider it sacred and certainly a living thing that can bring God's own life when put into action, but I'm not a strict literalist by any stretch when it comes to certain interpretations of certain verses. For something to be considered not only absolute truth but also doctrine (i.e. instructions for me to live my actual life by), there ought to be an over-arcing theme all throughout Scripture that it gives witness to time and again, that's easily accessible and easily tested by being put into action. Because everything is established by several witnesses, yes? Maybe I'm too pragmatic, but that's how I approach it. I hesitate to put a burden and demand on the Bible that I don't see it putting on itself, really.
     
  4. The Parson

    The Parson Your friendly neighborhood parson Staff Member

    Surely God had His hand on preserving His perfect word (the perfect Law of Liberty and that which is perfect) and made sure that what was said was what He meant, wouldn't He?

    Psalms 12:6 The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 12:7 Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. That is unless some other version doesn't say this... I guess I'm somewhat of a literalist when it comes to the word and so was the Psalmist.
     
  5. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    View attachment 247
    Here's a picture from a commentary...

    Brim to brim 10 cubits. But the circumference of the tub itself could easily be less as shown. Multiply 9.5 by 3.14159.
     

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  6. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Inerrant does not mean literal.

    Jesus is not a wooden moveable fence to keep livestock either in or out of an enclosure.

    Neither does he have a sharp piece of metal sticking out of his mouth.

    And I'm not a domesticated wool bearing mammal.

    That is all.
     
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  7. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    Sure, I could be taking it too literally. Could you be taking it to loosely? Sure. Onward.

    So we both agree those parts are theopneustos.

    Inerrantists don't believe in dictation. They believe God produced his word through the prophets' and apostles' personalities so that the writings were both truly human and truly divine (analogous to how Jesus was truly human and truly divine and that Jesus was birthed as an infallible God-man by a fallible human woman and an infallible God).

    Paul says "all Scripture". Dani, do we have different definitions of all? If all Scripture is God-breathed, which Scripture is not God-breathed? Sounds like the entire written record to me.

    Paul says all Scripture is God breathed.
    Peter calls Paul's writing Scripture.
    Paul's writing is God-breathed.

    Does God need another witness?

    I'm not sure what you're looking for.

    If Scripture is errant, how do you know Ephesians 2:8-9 isn't one of the errant parts?
     
  8. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    I agree completely.
     
  9. The Parson

    The Parson Your friendly neighborhood parson Staff Member

    Aw, you're just being sheepish! :)
     
  10. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    I was not being serious in any of those posts.
     
  11. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    According to Jesus, "Scripture" would have been the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Because they foreshadow Christ Himself.

    Jesus said "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life".

    So if that's how Jesus viewed the Scriptures and their entire purpose for existence, then that is seriously good enough for me.

    Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is a compilation of writings about the Word of God. I do not consider the Bible itself to be the Word of God (or even word of God, small w). The Bible points me to Jesus and helps me connect with Him. That's its job. The end. I ask nothing further of it. I study it to see how other people connected with my God, and what they experienced and what they took away from these encounters.

    I used to believe in biblical inerrancy. Now I don't. You know how changing my view on that affected my relationship with God, or my life? It didn't. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I seriously expected it to make like this earth-shaking difference, but it honestly didn't at all.

    So if you believe in biblical inerrancy, then fine. I don't. Also fine. You're my brother, and we're connected in Christ, not in the Bible. :)

    You may think that my view of the Bible is too low, or that I hold it too loosely. It's not, and I don't. I adore the Bible. There's no other book like it. It teaches me about my Jesus, and that's all I ask of it. I also think the Bible is still being written as people give witness to their own encounters with Jesus, and that God still inspires people to write today, with the same breath that He used to inspire the writers of what we now call the Old and New Testament.
     
  12. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    I'm too much like rain man. I'm terrible at detecting humor. Now in saying that, I'm not on the spectrum (that I know of) but I relate in some ways.
     
  13. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    Dani, just curious, any idea when it was that you changed your mind in regard to this?
     
  14. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    I thought the smiley in the first one was good enough. I'll bear it in mind though.

    That said, why did the instructions even bother giving the circumference when the diameter would do just fine? Smacking you with a fish.
     
  15. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    I frankly don't know why a lot of numbers and measurements and things like that are given to us.
     
  16. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    It all happened over a period of time when I was reevaluating some of my other beliefs and came to certain realizations about what I thought I believed that I thought I was supposed to believe, vs what I actually believed.

    I decided to just focus on Jesus, to let Him be all in all, and to let everything else be secondary and sort itself out. So it has. Now I feel a lot less pressured and I'm no longer afraid of "believing wrong" because it's honestly not as black & white as I used to think. I found that God isn't overly concerned about certain things, and taking a step back and holding those things a lot more loosely has in no way hurt my relationship with Him. If anything, it's made it better because I can live and let live, rather than forcing myself or other people to fit into a certain "belief box" that I was taught as absolute. Which has also opened up dialogue and has allowed me to witness in ways that have proven very fruitful, without all that unnecessary pressure.

    Just a few months ago I was looking at holiness in light of how the early Church lived and the apostles, and what I thought God required of me, and I became despondent and thought "my God, if this is the standard, then I'm seriously done", to which He replied "how about you give Me more credit?". I know that when He speaks to me, He's so very capable, and I can rest in His grace, because all pressure is on Him, and not on me at all. His yoke is truly easy and His burden is truly light. Jesus has done it all, and He can get us all there, and He is truly capable of accomplishing what He set out to accomplish, and there's nothing we or anyone can do to stop it at all. God is Salvation. It's all God and it's all grace, all the time. Our personal beliefs can certainly hurt or hinder us in this life with certain things, but in the end, it's all on God and He doesn't have a problem with shouldering all of it. I'm just human, you know? I get a split second on earth, with death always right there at any moment. Who am I to think that the ultimate fate of anyone or anything depends on me at all? It doesn't.
     
  17. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    So you changed from inerrancy over a period of time (most changes take time. Ones I've made took time).

    I know roughly when I changed views on several things:

    Changed my mind about the Textus Receptus around 1995.
    Changed my mind about the age of the earth/universe around 2000.
    Changed my mind about the Left Behind view around 2010.
    Changed my mind about charismatic gifts in 2013.
    Changed my mind about Reformed Theology in February 2014.

    Is this change of mind of yours recent (months) or years ago, unsure?
     
  18. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    Evidently I have more of a spaghetti brain than you, and my memories are more tied to "where" than they are to "when".

    (My background is that I was raised German Catholic & Protestant, and then left churchy things behind for a time until I was finally born again in 1992 and immediately became immersed into American fundamentalist evangelicalism. With all of its trappings and pitfalls, but also good and sound things. I wholeheartedly embraced fundamentalism because it was not at all Catholic or Protestant --- which started in form of a Pentecostal church, then went to Charismatic, then got interspersed with Baptist, and some Reformed stuff and etc from there.)

    I changed my belief about the absolute necessity of Jesus somewhere in the early/mid '90s, at my old church in Delaware, when I can specifically remember God confronting me about that during a church service (to clarify, I held to the belief that I "might have made it" without Christ, because I was raised in a works-based environment where it was all on me; evidently God disagreed).

    I started reconsidering my pretrib views at some point in the mid/late '90s after I left Delaware and moved to Florida and had to make new church connections and started engaging with people of denominations other than "my own." There was also a trip to Los Angeles where a bunch of Baptists taught me that there was actually life outside Pentecostal/Charismatic persuasions.

    I acknowledged my lack of actual belief about the traditional heaven/hell dichotomy and finally came to grips with acknowledging it in my bathroom at my house, sometime around 2012/13. I didn't change my mind; I just acknowledged that I never really believed it to begin with. I tried very hard for many years to embrace that belief, but ... as it turns out, once I got really honest with myself about it ... nope.

    I don't like second-hand beliefs. They're like itchy sweaters or too-tight shoes. They can be very burdensome and set you at odds with your own self. I'd rather believe nothing at all than something second-handy these days.

    I fully agree that these changes can take a long time. It can also take a long time from discarding a belief, to arriving at a new belief. Discarding is easy and can happen very, very quickly. Deconstructing is easy. The struggle (for me) usually lies in "what then do I believe? do I need to believe anything about this? how important is this anyway? what does this say about God? what do I know to be true about Him already? where does this even fit?" etc.

    Anyway, the last 5 or so years have definitely included a circling backwards to my German upbringing and the beliefs of my youth and of "my people." Which have caused me to look at my American fundy beliefs more closely, and that's when inerrancy also gradually went bye-bye as again being something I never truly believed, deep down, but thought I needed to in order to be a "real Christian" or what-have-you.
     
  19. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    Thanks for sharing. I don't recall a time in my life where I did not believe it. I've held it since before the Chicago Statment on Biblical Inerrancy was written.
     
  20. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    You're a lot more deliberately and structurally studious than I am. I admire that about you. For the record.

    Being open minded is good; being too open minded has its pitfalls. I went from being very closed minded, to being very open minded, to establishing greater clarity and boundaries and discarding a bunch of extraneous fluff that I had allowed in. I can be very all-or-nothing, and it can take me some time to find my equilibrium. As I'm sure you've all witnessed over the years of hanging around fora with me. :)

    Although when it comes to the character and person of Christ my Savior and of God my Father, I'm very unyielding. I'm quite willing to consider a lot of things about a lot of things. But not that. Never that.
     

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