Really good stuff!!!

Question: “Do you believe that abortion as a result of rape is wrong?”

Paraphrase of Driscoll: “Yes. A life is a life. Although the woman is a victim, let’s not make the unborn child a victim. Rape is horrible. But God is good. I tend to err on giving God a chance.”

He gave a very good explanation of this one. It must be very tough for the person going through that situation.

I would love to have something like this at Sojourn - I guess this could be considered a journey group thing. Maybe a blog section entitaled something along the lines of “ask Dave/Sojourn anything?”

One topic I struggle with, and perhaps someone can offer some help, is the infallibility of scripture. I have no problem believing that God inspired men filled with the Holy Spirit to pen his words into what we call “The Bible.” If I could read Paul’s original letter to the Romans or Luke’s account of the life of Christ, I would have zero doubt that I was reading the actual words of God.

The problem I encounter is when I think about all the people those words have gone through before they reached me, and how some works were selected (by unknown criteria, sometimes by unknown men) for inclusion in Canon. (I will use Paul as a convenient example. I know that scripture is not limited to the work of Paul).

How many times were Paul’s letters copied before the versions that we know came to be? Were all of those men inspired by God during the process of translation, transcription, and transportation of the original and each subsequent copy? Did they all read and write Paul’s language as well as Paul did? It seems that for scripture to be infallible that everyone who modified scripture must have been God-inspired. The Bible doesn’t give me the impression that God inspires/controls the actions of hundreds of men throughout the ages in order to keep his words infallible, but it seems like that is exactly what would be necessary.

Furthermore, how can we know we have what God intended in our modern Canon? I did some reading on how the modern Bible was formed, and the process was far less than definitive. Essentially, we don’t know much about how the books were decided, but we know that the list slowly changed to include 4-5 books that were originally excluded (Revelation, James, and others) and by about 331 A.D. it seemed to be settled when Constantine placed an order for 50 Bibles to be used in the church at Constantinople. It just seems like a lot of people over hundreds of years had to be divinely inspired to preserve the infallibility of scripture.

There is also an issue of different accounts of the angel at the Tomb of Jesus when Mary finds the tomb empty. A non-believer once pointed that out to me and I still don’t have a satisfactory answer.

I hope nobody views this as heretical, because I really do desire to have a fuller knowledge of this issue. I don’t wish to turn anyone away from the Bible with my questions. In the end, Christ is real to me, and I believe that the Word of God is the divinely inspired words of Jehovah God. However, believing that every a/an/the/who/whom is still perfectly preserved from the original text is one of the few things I feel like I believe against my better judgment. I also believe that God and his Word can withstand our scrutiny. If it cannot then he is no god at all. The answer must be out there. Anyone have it?

@Jeff:

Here is a quick response. Let’s go further later.

Your questions about the bible’s reliability, authenticity and historicity are fair. I’d like to loan you a book that is hot off the press: The Reason for God, by Tim Keller. It covers much more than the reliability of the bible.

Peace,
David

David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
Thewblog

Thanks, Dave. I’ll take you up on that when you have it available.