Quote:By "Word of God", I mean revelation from God.
Since I don't have a belief that the Bible is the Word of God, it's not up to me to define it any more clearer than that. I'm not the one making the assertion. It is up to the one making the assertion to define and prove.
Now Chad has an even more difficult task ahead of him. He must not only define and prove that the Bible is the Word of God, but also explain his magical powers he uses to determine which parts are divine, which parts are human and which parts are divine parable that he uses his awesome divination powers to decode.
You cannot reason either:
1. the Bible is the Word of God
2. the Bible is not the Word of God
If the words do not refer to anything. What if the Bible is neither your concept of the Word of God nor its negation, it is just a different concept?
The category of the "Word of God" has been understood by many different things. So when you say:
It is either a or not a - If necessarily it is a or not a (necessarily the Bible is the Word of God or not the Word of God)
What if it is like this: There is a dialectic between divine inspiration and human authorship. It is a scale
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|Word of God concept -a | | Word of God / human -b | Word of God - c
Now you look at this and you say, necessarily, the Bible is the Word of God or it isn't. Well, what do these word actually refer to? There are many ways in which the Bibles description and supernatural testimony of itself could be fullfilled. All scripture IS God breathed and is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness. 2 Ti 3:16
If all scripture is God breathed, does this mean that Word of God concept a is correct? Scripture makes a truth claim that the Bible is the Word of God (which is does, see above), does that mean that it supports your concept of what God should speak like?
No, your argument fails, necessarily, the Bible is the Word of God or it isn't, but this obscures the dialectical relationship between God's sovereignty and free will, which exists in the text of the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God, but it is also human. So the categories of "The Word of God" and "Not the Word of God" must reflect this dialectical reality in which the Bible clearly has parts that are certainly the Word of God and are human at the same time.
Biblical interpretation follows this model:
1. Thesis - Human beings sinned and created a need for God to speak to them
2. Antithesis - God speaks to His servants the prophets
3. Synthesis - The prophets reveal the counsel of God for sinful people, and express the personality of God in the culture, morality to some degree, language and personality of the prophets that speak specific words to specific people that makes God seem tied to some culture but which is related to the way in which the thesis and antithesis work together
Quote:I'll agree to pay a special teach-science-in-science-class tax if you agree to pay the dumb-ass-who-voted-for-Bush-in-04-after-it-was-obvious-he-lied-us-into-a-war-in-Iraq tax.
Your tab comes to about $3 trillion.
Fair enough. I think the War in Iraq was a huge mistake. I am a pro-peace Republican.
