Right, so I'm re-reading a book called "Chapter and Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity". It's written by an agnostic who spends a year hanging out at a Southern Baptist bible college in Texas, and it's good reading. Anyhow, he sums up a lot of Fundamentalist/Evangelical thinking on this in Chapter 3, which I just finished, and has a lot of info I'll skip over.
There *are* a couple verses in the NT that assert scriptural inerrancy, and perhaps the best-known is 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (King James translation, natch.)
And of course you can argue about self-assertions like this, but the point for F/E Christians is that Scripture came from God, it *says* it came from God, and that settles it...because also, once you start arguing about whether this bit is true or that bit is false, the door is opened to every kind of speculation and you end up with no faith at all.
Anyhow, the book is worth looking up. Also, you never sent me that second email so GUILT.
no subject
There *are* a couple verses in the NT that assert scriptural inerrancy, and perhaps the best-known is 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (King James translation, natch.)
And of course you can argue about self-assertions like this, but the point for F/E Christians is that Scripture came from God, it *says* it came from God, and that settles it...because also, once you start arguing about whether this bit is true or that bit is false, the door
is opened to every kind of speculation and you end up with no faith at all.
Anyhow, the book is worth looking up. Also, you never sent me that second email so GUILT.
Saint Aardvark/Hugh