Catholic Apologetics Guidebook

Dialogue on the Reliability, Inspiration, and Inerrancy of Scripture – Page 4

Paul, "our modern copies and translations in fact do express the meaning of the originals to a very large extent."

Perhaps, but to a "very large extent" is not necessarily completely devoid of potential error either or a perfect endorsement for total inerrancy.

So...even one minor inconsistency or alteration negates the idea of inerrancy, because inerrancy implies perfection.

Essentially...even 99% is not 100%.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear in what I was trying to say about the inspiration (or lack thereof) of particular copies and translations of Scripture. (And I mean that seriously, not sarcastically.) I went through several iterations of editing my previous post, and I'm still not sure if I succeeded in making my point clearly. But I'll just say that I think that you are trying to hold Scripture to a higher standard than many, if not most, Christians would hold it to. I can at least speak for myself in saying that I think that one can recognize that individual copyists and translators sometimes may introduce minor biases or even errors into particular copies or translations of Scripture, and yet still believe that Scripture is divinely inspired.

Again...I never spoke to the degree to which the Bible might be accurate, I merely speak against the idea of inerrancy.

I understand that. But I think that your conception of what it means for the Bible to be inerrant is more strict than mine is.

And...even if I were to grant you Biblical inerrancy, I certainly wouldn't be able to grant you the same in regards to the human ability to actually read and intepret the Bible inerrantly.

And I wouldn't want you to grant the same in regard to human ability to interpret the Bible, because I wouldn't grant that either! :-) Humans are fallible, and as such, some of us are bound to interpret the Bible incorrectly sometimes. That's one reason why I disagree with extreme versions of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, which view Scripture alone as the final (and perhaps only) authority for Christians. I think that it's obvious that this is an unworkable idea in practice. Fortunately, Christ gave us not only Scripture, but also a living church, which Scripture itself calls "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15).

So...whether the text is without flaw is almost immaterial, if we lack the ability to completely understand it anyway.

Here I would disagree with you, and contend that you are taking the previous point (where I agreed with you) too far. To say that different people will at times interpret different parts of the Bible in different ways is one thing. But this doesn't mean that each person who reads the Bible will come away with an interpretation that is radically different from every other person's interpretation. It seems to me that common sense dictates that if several people all read the same text, then most of them will take away at least many of the same basic ideas, even if they don't agree entirely on what every detail of the text means. And even though Christianity is splintered into hundreds, if not thousands, of different denominations and churches all using the same Bible, still probably 95% or more of those denominations and churches have many more agreements than disagreements with each other regarding what the Bible means.

Also Paul, if we are discussing paths to God, what if we were to imagine someone, at whatever A.D. period of time, who grew up having never heard of Jesus Christ. Could that person not have had divine experiences that allowed them to feel the presence of the Lord?

Of course -- absolutely! I don't believe that God holds us accountable for knowledge that we don't have. To expect someone to explicitly profess faith in Jesus Christ, when that person (through no fault of their own) has never heard of Jesus Christ, would be absurd -- and I do not believe in an absurd God. (LOL) I completely recognize that many people may be saved without explicitly professing faith in Christ, if they never heard of Christ, or perhaps even if they rejected Christ but did not understand what they were rejecting. But I would say that if such people are saved, they are still saved through Christ, even if they never knew him explicitly in this life.

So...what I meant by different paths is precisely that, that we may each commune with the Lord in the manner in which we are best equipped to do so.

Well in a certain sense I agree with you, but I would still contend that all salvation comes through Christ. But can different people come to Christ in different ways, perhaps in some cases without even realizing that that is what they are doing? Yes, I think so.

Granted, the more resources we have and the more exposure to God's handiwork we are privy to, the more complete picture we might be able to possibly draw.

I agree, and I would also say that the more complete the picture we have, the more responsibility we have. As it says in the Bible, "Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required." (Luke 12:48 )

I think we have to remember that throughout history there have been numerous peoples who did not have much of a choice in what they were indoctrinated with or the access to the resources that would allow them a different choice.

Does it make sense that a God of infinite wisdom, love and forgiveness would punish a good-hearted person simply because they didn't believe in Jesus Christ...especially if they knew virtually or literally nothing about him?

No, certainly it doesn't mean that, as I mentioned above. I apologize if I gave the impression that I believe otherwise.

In the same way we may call a prostitute a sinner, many prostitutes in impoverished countries are forced against their will into being prostitutes. They had no choice or say in the matter, except maybe the choice of being murdered for not complying and they probably know nothing at all about the salvation of Jesus Christ.

So...is that person a true sinner?

In the situation you have described, the person probably is not truly a sinner, however that judgment is between the person and God. According to Catholic theology, in order for a person to commit a grave sin, three conditions must be fulfilled:

(1) grave matter (i.e., an act that by its nature is gravely wrong, such as murder, theft, prostitution, etc.),
(2) full knowledge (i.e., knowledge that the act being committed is gravely wrong), and
(3) complete consent of the will (i.e., the person freely chooses to commit this act).

In your example of a woman being forced into prostitution, it is probable that the third condition would not be fulfilled, and it is possible that the second condition would not be fulfilled either. So while the act of prostitution is itself gravely sinful (thus fulfilling the first condition), a particular instance of prostitution may or may not be gravely sinful (or sinful at all), depending on the other two conditions. (Non-Catholic Christians might express this theology with different terms, but I doubt that many of them would have a radical disagreement with these basic ideas.)

Would the kingdom of Heaven be closed to such a person?

That is between God and the person in question. Only God knows what is in the person's heart, what their motivations are, what their level of culpability is. I am not in a position to judge those things.

So again, even if the Bible is inerrant, I don't trust any of you people to read it inerrantly, regardless of how well-intentioned you may be.

You are humans and you have flaws, biases and agendas.

Language and human understanding contain limits, thus making the prospect of inerrant interpretation impossible.

I wouldn't trust anyone to read the Bible completely inerrantly either. But there is a big difference between saying that no one person could interpret every nuance of the Bible with 100% accuracy (which I would agree with), and saying that because the first point is true, there is no value in trying to interpret the Bible at all (which you seem to be saying, and which I would not agree with). If the second point is true, then why do people even talk to one another, since we will inevitably just misinterpret each other's words anyway? :-)

[The following two quotes were directed at another board member rather than at me, but I responded, as shown below.]

Well...I don't particularly buy into the idea of talking snakes, a woman being turned into a pillar of salt, Noah rounding up a male and female of EVERY species of animal and floating around for 40 days and nights with them. I don't believe the world is 6,000 years old or that a man lived for over 900 of those years by himself, etc...

Get the picture, or should I continue?

I think that most of these objections at least potentially fall under the umbrella of interpreting the Bible more literally than the human (or divine) authors ever meant for it to be interpreted. For example, suppose that the ancient Jews had a phrase equivalent to our phrase, "it was raining cats and dogs" (meaning that it was raining very hard). Then suppose that that phrase found its way into the Old Testament, to describe a huge downpour. We would probably hear people today complaining that the Bible can't be accurate, because dogs and cats can't fall from the sky! But it's just an expression -- it doesn't literally mean that dogs and cats are falling from the sky.

My point is that sometimes we need some knowledge of ancient languages, customs, literary styles, religious practices, etc., in order to figure out exactly what the Biblical author was likely to have meant in a certain passage. For a specific example of how this approach applies to interpreting the Old Testament, please see the blog posts about how to interpret the "six days" of creation, that I linked in the first post of the "How to Interpret the Creation Account in Genesis?" topic.

[The blog posts mentioned above were from Jimmy Akin's blog, and can be found consolidated on a single page here:  Jimmy Akin on Genesis One]

You want to believe a 2,000+ year old book holds all the definitive answers and I see that same book as holding only some of the answers.

I'm glad that we at least agree that it holds some of the answers -- at least that's a good start! :-)

In conclusion, I sympathize with many of your objections. Some of the issues you have raised here and in other posts are issues that I have struggled with myself. However, it appears to me that many of your objections are not really objections to Christian beliefs -- but rather they are objections to a slightly inaccurate perception of Christian beliefs, or objections to beliefs held by certain groups of Christians but not by all Christians. So I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you may not have quite as much disagreement with Christianity as you think you do. ;-)

In Christ,

Paul