Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: CONS.ELF@AIDA.CSD.UU.SE (Ake Eldberg) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Is the Bible 100% correct? Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 91 03:59:29 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 72 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Some reflexions on the Bible: At the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, Luther and his co-reformers reacted against the decadent Catholic church of the renaissance. Without a doubt, the Bible was often trodden upon or ignored by those who used the Church for their own ends. It is therefore understandable that the reformers put forth the Bible as the sole corrective to all errors, the only reliable source of the Christian faith. "Sola scriptura" was a healthy contrast to the many man-invented falsehoods and superstitions which then riddled the church. But many of the later congregations and sects who have adopted the idea of biblical supremacy, have drawn this theme too far. It has become a worship of the letter of the Bible. They have made the Bible, including the New Testament, into a LAW instead of a GOSPEL. If you take a person who has never heard of Christianity or Jews, and let this person read the Bible, what do you think this person will think about it? Even given a vast intelligence, there is no way that he can come to know Christianity in any of its existing forms from this book. I am trying to say that the Bible is not enough. The bible does not interpret itself -- we do, with the help of tradition and Holy Spirit. All the churches and denominations I know of, no matter how Biblio- centric they are, do in fact depend a lot on the facts of historic Christianity. Just as Jesus did not appear in a cultural, historc vacuum where only God spoke and there were no human ideas around, we cannot separate human and divine into two distinct, crisp and clear entities. Human and divine are mixed in the Bible because it was written on Earth by Humans, with guidance from God. The most absurd example of bibliocentricism is Baptism (not the sacrament, but the denomination). Claiming that a child cannot be baptized because the Bible says faith must come first, logically means that almost every Christian in the world has been unbaptized since AD 300 or so... with the exception of pagans converted as adults. With the same kind of literal interpretation, you will reach the conclusion that these people cannot go to heaven because baptism is required for salvation. Thus, all those holy martyrs and saints, the devoted of over a thousand years, will be cast out because they weren't baptized as adults... So the Church, that Christ promised would never perish, was almost dead all that time, until someone re-discovered the proper way to get baptized... In my view, that cannot be true. Christianity is a historic fact. It has existed in many cultures and times. Errors have crept in through human weakness and evil spirits, but the core has remained -- through all these centuries there have been people who loved God and sought Him, using the best means they knew of. Christianity has developed through these people, it has gathered experience and knowledge. Where one generation goes wrong, the next seeks to set right and perhaps goes too far in the opposite direction. The Christian faith as defined by the Pope is one extreme, the Christian faith as defined by the Bible only, separated from the history of Christianity, is another and opposite. The Bible is our foremost source. It is to the Bible we should go to set human errors right. But the Bible doesn't give us all the answers. It needs interpretation. Part of this comes through the Holy Spirit. But there is also a part that comes through tradition. No existing congregation today has a faith that is identical to the faith of the Christian congregations of the first century. But we share the essential fact of being Christians. Ake Eldberg [In all fairness, I don't know of any Baptists who claim people baptized as infants are damned. --clh]