God breathes out his word; we breathe it in. Men cannot speak words without exhaling, and while God is spirit and thus unbound by needing a physical voicebox and lungs, the meaning of the word is quite clear. The OT uses the phrases "God said" or "The LORD said" all the time. Nobody thinks this means that God has a mouth, tongue, and lips. Paul is also making a distinction between God speaking and men hearing the Word. Inspiration is from the Latin inspirare, which means to "breathe in". Therefore an inspired person breathes in the Word God has breathed out. You need to contend with the dozens of prophetic passages in the OT which begin with words like: "Thus says the LORD" or "The LORD says". Or all the times where God commands a prophet or scribe to write something down (Ex. 17:14, Ex. 32:15, Deut. 10:1, Jer. 30:2, Acts 4:24-26, Rev. 1:11, etc.). Hebrews 4:12: This is partly a callback to the Hebrew word ruach which is roughly analogous to pneumos in Greek: a breath, a wind, a Spirit that blows outward. It was common to refer to death as giving up one's spirit, or the "breath" of God going out of us and back to the Father. To take in the out-breathed word of God is to take in Life (not just physical but also spiritual). Theopneustos is a hapax legomena, but Paul (as always) coined the term for a reason: to bring a biblical Hebrew concept to a Greek-reading audience. For the letters to Timothy and Titus were not personal letters only, but were meant to be read out to Christian congregations.
I understand those points, but the fact remains that “inspiration” is a metaphor and doesn’t support the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration. There are indeed plenty of instances of “Thus says the Lord” but there are also passages that record the narrator’s voice, the words of God’s/Israel’s/Jesus’ enemies, as well as commands and interrogatories (to the latter of which the logical categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’ do not apply). I also do not see this applies to the subject of the thread…
It matters very little what we or any previous generation believe about anything at all really as far as the method God used to physically create us may be concerned, except that God loves us, rewards those who seek him and Jesus Christ has restored us to etrnal life, from the prospect of eternal anihilation, if we will just believe in Him, and in what he has done for the whole of creation, then consequently live our lives in accordance to his teaching. .
And yet I have received ridicule and 'correction' for believing as I do concerning "the method God used" to create us. I hope a certain someone else is reading your comment as well... But actually it does matter a great deal whether one believes what God caused to be written for our edification. The Bible is our guidebook to life and faith.
There are some things we are perfectly at liberty to think which should not always perhaps be put into words, for the sake of the feelings of others. It matters not how ignorant we may be of the written word. There were many illiterate believers in THE WORD who never read a single word of the bible, no matter how much you might think it might matter. The Bible didn't exist in its entirity until well after the Apostolic Age and the New Testament was entirely produced by 'believers' before the bible was compiled into the bible. A guide book, but not a science book, and only partially a history book. .
This is only partly true. Yes, we did not receive the full revelation of God until the Apostles had completed their earthly work. However, it is incorrect to say that the Bible didn't exist before then. Christians always have had Scripture. The Bible for early Christians was what we now call the Old Testament. The ancient Hebrews always had the Law (the books of Moses). Even during the time of Abraham, there was some form of Scripture (the priestly order of Melchizedek had to be founded on some sort of Godly revelation, whether oral or written).
Yikes! Can't be much more wrong than that! Oh, sure, illiterate people didn't read the Bible, but they depended on their literate church leaders to verbally teach them. And those church leaders, if they were worth anything, absolutely understood the importance of communicating Bible truths to their flocks. Those priests, deacons, etc. did not want the parishioners to be ignorant of the written word.
There was a time when the church forbade the people to read The Bible. Now it seems some sections of it insist upon it being read by the people, but only in the entirely LITERAL interpretation dictated by those sections of the church insisting it. Sections of the church still hankering after full control over doctrine and beliefs of the people. "Believe exactly what we say, or you are wrong". .
You wrote that in response to @Tiffy, who said "The Bible is 'inspired' by God, not written by God." Obviously, we do have meaningful conversations, and though we may not always agree, that does not mean that the conversation was without meaning. I do not consider myself a liberal, however, I think that @Tiffy is entirely correct on this point. There are several reasons why I pause to argue this point. Firstly because we are not Muslim. The Islamic stance on the Noble Koran is that it was the verbatim record of the divine utterance of Allah to the Last Prophet Muhammed. Accordingly, the Koran is of limited use in any language other than Arabic, and of course, the study of it and the interpretation of it is significantly regulated, and there is no room for comparable fields of endeavour as we know them such as Biblical, Historical, Literary, Criticism. Secondly, because my experience of Christians who defend this position with some vehemence has often left me wondering how they differed from the Pharisees of Jesus time, where heartless involcation of endless regulation, left little room for compassion and mercy. We were called Christians because we were the followers of the way, the people who sought to be like Christ. Thirdly a great deal of time is waisted defending doctines of Scripture which could be spent promoting the message of Scriture and the Lord of Scripture. Scripture actually holds its own quite well, and is in a great deal of trouble if it needs to be defended by the like of me. Salvation does not depend on my attitude to Scripture, but on my relationship to Christ. The bedrock doctrine of the Christian Faith is clearly enunciated in the Creed of the First Council of Constantinople (381) and often referred to as the Nicene Creed. Clearly the Scritures are referrence in the Creed. This is about the Scriptures testify to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. This is a great passage and affirms my understanding, that scripture bears witness as the record of the revelation of God's enduriung love and patience with humaity ultimately expressed the the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Scripture is not simply some work of personal fiction or literary endeavour. Scripture, the Canon of Scripture is received as authorative. It is the inspired Word, not the Exhaled Word, and it is not the Expired word of God. I really like your last sentence, and it shows that there really is room for considerable dialogue.
More like, the sections of the church which still hanker for people to trust the plain words of the Bible, rather than defer to the authority of, and sometimes absurd interpretations taught by, the church hierarchy (which, as you point out, once forbade Bible reading among the laity).
It remains the case that the work of interpretation is not done in a vacuum. If it assumed that an ancient Hebrew word had meaning “A” but subsequent archaeological discovery shows that it actually had meaning “B” in the time it was written, interpretation must adapt to that new knowledge. The same goes for science, history, anatomy, etc. There is no point in burying one’s head in the sand. Otherwise what one is interpreting turns out to be no more than what one expected to find in the first place. And if that is the case, why have recourse to any scriptural texts at all, if you already know what you want it to say? The proliferation of sects within Christianity since the Reformation has been astronomical. Clearly, sola Scriptura has not been the source of unity the Reformers thought and hoped it would be. More is needed to make consensus possible than mere appeal to the words of Scripture. The meaning of Scripture is what matters, and historically, it was Ecclesiastical Tradition that provided that meaning. It is with Ecclesiastical Tradition, not the Bible, that modern thought is in conflict. To reject Tradition is to be completely at the mercy of the shifts of modern thinking when it comes to biblical interpretation, and to reject modern thought and Tradition is to make the Bible mean whatever one wants it to mean. If one wants to uphold the Church’s message without sacrificing the pursuit of truth for its own sake, one must embrace both Tradition and modern thought in one’s interpretation and application of the message of the Scriptures.
The fact that you of all people can write this without spontaneously bursting into flames out of pure cognitive dissonance is amazing to me.
Tradition means nothing to me. God's word is my source. I come from no church background at all. I was saved at 28 years old. I came out of the "heathen pool".
I guess it's never occurred to you that the Bible is itself a product of Tradition and could not have been preserved and maintained without it...
The New Testament did not even exist on the Day of Pentecost when MORE THAN 5000 souls were added to the church of Jesus Christ. Surely we should not assume that their 'faith' was somehow deficient or ill informed through lack of any knowledge whatever of the contents of the whole New Testament, all of which had yet to come into existence over the next 100 years or more. Any believer in Jesus Christ, who has the same degree of knowledge of Him and his achievement, as that original 5000 did who heard Peter preach 'the word' that morning, was just as saved as you or I, who may have read, (though almost certainly not entirely understood), the entire Bible. This effectively means that, as far as your and my salvation is concerned, MOST of the New Testament you are calling 'God's Word', is not essential knowledge required to secure your salvation. If it in fact WAS, then THEY didn't hear it all or read it all and the salvation of that original 5000 is inevitably being called into question by those who think that a complete understanding of New Testament scriptures is essential to obtaining a 'saving faith' in God's Messiah. Cleary, logically, it is not. Even the Creeds did not exist at the time more than 5000 'believed'. Acts 4:1-4. There were no heresies at that time, just belief in 'The WORD'. .
It is my hope, @Tom Barrial that you might at least find common ground with @Ananias on this point. I am of the view that the point at @Invictus makes is not without merit.
So, you have been unaware all this time that individual books and letters were written at various times and places, separately copied by hand for generations, gradually grouped together into collections, and only after several centuries, organized into a unified canon, and that the basis for each step of this process was the authority and tradition passed on orally from one generation to the next? We even have the finished product - the New Testament in the original Koine Greek - today because Byzantine monks who prayed to the Virgin Mary eight times a day copied it by hand for nearly a thousand years. No Tradition, no Bible.