Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Predestination and Judgement Message-ID: Date: 19 Jul 89 06:28:43 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 64 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) writes: >The Bible is a document that has been written by God Himself; He may >have used imperfect people to do the physical work of putting the >Scriptures together, but I can believe no less than that God would have >insured that His message to us which we are to live by would say no >more and no less than exactly what He intended to say to us. Surely a >God who is capable of putting together this whole universe is capable >of insuring that what He has told us is what He meant. Please do not take for granted this belief that the Bible was "written by God Himself," as there are many Christians who would take serious issue with this statement. I cannot believe that he could insure that the Bible was inerrant --- because if He could do that, He could also make sure that no one could ever do any evil. I cannot see at all how you can reconcile your statement with my belief that God gave us a free will. This means that if one of the Biblical authors really wanted to include a particular point of dogma, God could not have stopped him. For example, suppose that Paul was wrong about homosexuality; that one of his human failings was the fact that he was extremely homophobic. Even if his views were completely uncharitable and exetremely distasteful to God, what could He have done? Well, the Holy Spirit would have moved within Paul to omit those passages. But unless the Holy Spirit is really a Holy Brainwasher, the final choice _must_ lie with Paul alone, or he would have no free choice in the matter. I'm using homosexuality as an extreme example, but the principle holds no matter what the issue is. So we see that God could not possibly have influenced the Authors of the individual books. Again, his Holy Spirit could have moved within the hearts of those that chose which books were to be canonized. But again, even if there were books that were spiritually and theologically perfect, if the early Church Fathers decided to include an imperfect book into the Canon, it would not be possible for God to stop them without violating their free choice. In the end, it boils down to whether or not you think the (human, physical) authors of the books of the Bible and the Church Fathers who chose which books belonged in the canon are human or not. In order to believe that the Bible is inerrant, you either have to believe that they were infallible --- in which case you are doing the same thing which most non-catholics abhor: believing that human, finite persons could be infallible --- or, you have to believe that God raped those peoples' minds and forced them to write something which was spritually perfect and without error, in spite of the finitude and human failings. Unfortunately, I cannot believe either. (I wish I could! It would mean that I could turn off my brain and just blindly follow printed words. Unfortunately, this means that while the words of the Bible invaluable --- possibly more valuable than any other spiritual work --- they still require reason and intelligence to read and filter and apply them.) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Theodore Ts'o bloom-beacon!mit-athena!tytso 3 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139 tytso@athena.mit.edu Everybody's playing the game, but nobody's rules are the same! [Alternatively, it may be that he *could* have assured that the Bible was inerrant, just as he *could* have assured that no one would sin, but for reasons of his own decided not to. Those who deny inerrancy don't always do so because they think God was incapable of making the Bible inerrant. --clh]