Saturday, January 22, 2005

An issue with Rick's Post on Brutally Honest

Rick of Brutally Honest has posted an interesting comment to his own article asking if he is an Evangelical. I can't help but respond to it.

Rick says

  • We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.1
I certainly used to. And I certainly desire to but I can't with sincerity and integrity say that I believe it anymore. Besides, the argument given by some that Christ is the only infallible and authoritative Word of God seems to hold much more water with me now. And I think this one leads much less to unity within the body of Christ and much more to petty squabbles.

This is a very tempting idea. The practical problem with this is that Scriptures are the only definitive way to know what Christ did say, so without infallable autographs we don't have infallable statements from Christ. Without these, there's really no room to argue with revisionists like the Jesus Seminar, or cults like the Jehovah's Witness or Mormon who says that the traditional channel is not fully aware of some critical "new fact".

Bill Rick, I suppose I have to ask: If we can't be sure that the Bible was inerrant (in the original autographs, at the very least), how can we be sure about anything of Christ's nature?



1This quote is from the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith

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