On what basis should the bible be taken literally?

[Uccisore]

I agree with the second part of your sentence but disagree with the first. I believe that the Holy Spirit inspired certain clergy to form the canon. But that doesn’t mean that ALL clergy are inspired by the Holy Spirit or that ANY personal interpretation of the bible is of less value than an institutional interpretation. If we agree that the canon is divinely inspired, we may still disagree over the issue of personal interpretation versus clerical instruction within that canon.

And what do we say about those who peels a dozen or so books back out again? I don’t think you’ll find the idea of forming the canon as a divine fiat in the writings of the Church Fathers, until the Reformers needed it to break from an organized Church and still be Christian. Or, are we only talking about the New Testament here?

True, but if we move beyond that issue, we can certainly have a personal or institutional answer to, “Did miracles actually happen in the book of Acts?” or “how does one do Christian evangelism?”.

Yes, true enough.

But it doesn’t necessarily follow from this, that personal interpretation (within certain agreed parameters) is completely invalid.

Oh, I’m not arguing against personal interpretation so much as I can interpretation outside the influence of a tradition to go along with it- the Church. That is, if you locked a man up in a room with a Bible and told him to read it with no input from other books or other people, I don’t think you’d produce a man with recognizably Christian beliefs.

I’m all for education, but I’m not convinced of the rationale for today’s clergy having greater likelihood of a correct interpretation of the canon. On what basis?

Well, ideally because they’re educated to have that correct interpretation, and the laity are butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

It seems to me that clergy as as prone to error as the laity. Do you believe in a succession of apostleship through individual institutions? It would seem that this is the only way to justify placing trust in certain institutional clergy.

What worries me is that a good church and a bad church could have the same outward appearence in terms of instutional authority.
Imagine that some denomination decided to ‘settle it all’. They answered all the tough questions, worked out the evolution thing, the trinity thing, Revelation, the meaning of the Eucharist, all of it. At least, to their own satisfaction. They decided their interpretation was THE interpretation, declared deviation to be apostasy, and basically wrote themselves into the definition of what it means to be an observant Christian. They exist for a couple hundred years and that brings us to the present.
Now, imagine 2,000 years ago, before there were denominations, you just had the people who wrote the Bible. They know what it means because they wrote it themselves, or they were the direct recipients of what was written, or etc. They teach all their followers what they meant by this and that, people are appointed to replace them as they die based on their understanding, and every once in a while a heresy springs up through misunderstanding or malice. Some of the heresies are extinguished, others go on to form other sects.
Now, here we are in 2008. Wouldn’t BOTH sects appear to be doing the same thing- demanding adherence to their way of reading the Scriptures, to the exclusion of all other understandings? Wouldn’t one of them obviously be wrong in so doing, and the other right? Worse yet, how else could it happen? Can you envision the second group I described endorsing ‘personal interpretation’, in light of what they’ve done to preseve the actual one?
It’s important to note that Luther did what he did because he thought original Christianity was gone, gone, gone, and what was left was rotten to the core. The idea of personal interpretation only makes sense if we take it as a foregone conclusion that we don’t have the actual interpretation available to us.

So in answer to your question, I believe in an apostolic succession through the act of actually maintaining the correct way to read these texts, yes. 

True, that’s why I say I’m left in limbo. I am confident in the value of personal interpretation inspired by the reformation,

 Well, personal interpretation is important [i]now[/i], either way. I'd say we need it because of problems caused by the Schism and the Reformation- it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that we have to read the Bible for ourselves to understand it, because people doing the same thing before us resulted in a bewildering variety of shysters, heretics, and the genuinely misinformed. We [i]have[/i] to teach people to interpret personally for the sake of those born into Unitarian or leftist Episcopal congregations and such. But I hesitate to give the reformers [i]credit[/i].

[Ned_Flanders]

@Uccisore

And what do we say about those who peels a dozen or so books back out again? I don’t think you’ll find the idea of forming the canon as a divine fiat in the writings of the Church Fathers, until the Reformers needed it to break from an organized Church and still be Christian. Or, are we only talking about the New Testament here?

I think that’s a little unfair on the reformers. The formation of the canon wasn’t a huge issue for the church fathers because they were so closely connected in time to the subject matter that there was less scope for baseless theological claims. I agree that formation of the canon becomes a much bigger issue when one contemplates rejecting church authority. But in many ways I think the reformation was inevitable. People are people, and placing undue trust in ecclesiastic authority inevitably leads to corruption of the same authority. The bible then becomes a useful independent mediator that pulls both the clergy and the laity back to the original truths.

I think therefore that spiritual authority is important BUT it’s also important that the same spiritual authority should be held accountable to the traditional interpretations of the canon. The problem today is that people want to choose either/or because it’s simpler. Some people want to submit to authority, but have lost any personal connection to the canon, therefore they cannot hold their authority accountable if it starts dreaming up new theology or contradicting previous understanding. In contrast, some have elevated personal interpretation to a level that NO authority is recognized and they simply make up their own version of Christianity. I honestly think that BOTH the authority and personal use of the canon as a check on the same authority are possible. Lacking either leads to a weird version of Christianity. Although if I HAD to chose one or the other, I would chose authority over personal interpretation since the possibility of having a semi-decent theology increases just by virtue of time and numbers, if you know what I mean.

Oh, I’m not arguing against personal interpretation so much as I can interpretation outside the influence of a tradition to go along with it- the Church. That is, if you locked a man up in a room with a Bible and told him to read it with no input from other books or other people, I don’t think you’d produce a man with recognizably Christian beliefs.

I agree. But then the issues of “which authority do you chose”, and “how do you view competing authorities” arise. I think the first doesn’t really matter too much as long as the tradition maintains some connection to the traditional interpretations of the church fathers, and I don’t think, protestant, Catholic or Orthodox interpretations of the gospel are widely different. I find the second issue more problematic. I don’t understand the Catholic perspective that protestants are still heretics with the exception of a few denominations, it seems mighty uncharitable. As a protestant, some days I find catholicism OK. On other days, if I was satan himself trying to dream up a religion that would disconnect people from Christ, it might look awfully like Roman Catholicism.

Well, ideally because they’re educated to have that correct interpretation, and the laity are butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

If it’s just education than I think line between laity and clergy is blurred. I’ve met many clergy with a weak understanding of theology and almost no background in reading church fathers.

What worries me is that a good church and a bad church could have the same outward appearence in terms of instutional authority. Imagine that some denomination decided to ‘settle it all’. They answered all the tough questions, worked out the evolution thing, the trinity thing, Revelation, the meaning of the Eucharist, all of it. At least, to their own satisfaction. They decided their interpretation was THE interpretation, declared deviation to be apostasy, and basically wrote themselves into the definition of what it means to be an observant Christian. They exist for a couple hundred years and that brings us to the present. Now, imagine 2,000 years ago, before there were denominations, you just had the people who wrote the Bible. They know what it means because they wrote it themselves, or they were the direct recipients of what was written, or etc. They teach all their followers what they meant by this and that, people are appointed to replace them as they die based on their understanding, and every once in a while a heresy springs up through misunderstanding or malice. Some of the heresies are extinguished, others go on to form other sects. Now, here we are in 2008. Wouldn’t BOTH sects appear to be doing the same thing- demanding adherence to their way of reading the Scriptures, to the exclusion of all other understandings? Wouldn’t one of them obviously be wrong in so doing, and the other right? Worse yet, how else could it happen? Can you envision the second group I described endorsing ‘personal interpretation’, in light of what they’ve done to preseve the actual one?

Thats why I think there needs to be some education of the laity, so that the authority is held accountable to some external standard. If it deviates markedly, then it should be resisted from within and/or reformed.

It’s important to note that Luther did what he did because he thought original Christianity was gone, gone, gone, and what was left was rotten to the core. The idea of personal interpretation only makes sense if we take it as a foregone conclusion that we don’t have the actual interpretation available to us.

Exactly, and Luther reached this conclusion based on his personal understanding of the canon versus institutional doctrines.

So in answer to your question, I believe in an apostolic succession through the act of actually maintaining the correct way to read these texts, yes.

So, this must include some understanding of canon interpretation through personal study by the laity. No?

Well, personal interpretation is important now, either way. I’d say we need it because of problems caused by the Schism and the Reformation- it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that we have to read the Bible for ourselves to understand it, because people doing the same thing before us resulted in a bewildering variety of shysters, heretics, and the genuinely misinformed. We have to teach people to interpret personally for the sake of those born into Unitarian or leftist Episcopal congregations and such. But I hesitate to give the reformers credit.

I give them a little more credit then. Obviously Luther never intended the situation we have today BUT his idea that holding the authority to an outside standard was a good one, and it was inevitable, I think.

[Uccisore]

Sorry for the long delay!

I think that’s a little unfair on the reformers. The formation of the canon wasn’t a huge issue for the church fathers because they were so closely connected in time to the subject matter that there was less scope for baseless theological claims. I agree that formation of the canon becomes a much bigger issue when one contemplates rejecting church authority. But in many ways I think the reformation was inevitable. People are people, and placing undue trust in ecclesiastic authority inevitably leads to corruption of the same authority. The bible then becomes a useful independent mediator that pulls both the clergy and the laity back to the original truths.

Well, keep in mind though that there’s three major sects, and not two. Luther could and should have come back to Orthodoxy after he realized the errors of the Catholics. I mean, what I’m really saying is, the Reformation apparently wasn’t inevitable because it didn’t happen in the east.
I think you missed my major point though. You say the Church fathers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to develop the canon. You need that divine fiat to get around a submission to Church authority, that’s half the problem. The other, worse half is that even if I grant that the canonization was an act of special divine revelation, the Protestants aren’t going by that canon anyway so what difference does it make? Are you prepared to argue that the choice to move a bunch of Old Testament books into an appendix, and then eventually decide not to put them in at all was a new divine revelation that sort of contradicted the first one?
Protestants have to ackowledge that their choice to have a different canon than the original was a human choice. That means they have to acknowledge that the original canon was a human choice too, or else they just made themselves heretics.

I think therefore that spiritual authority is important BUT it’s also important that the same spiritual authority should be held accountable to the traditional interpretations of the canon.

Yeah, it’s interesting, I got into this with someone else in private messages a few days ago. One of the biggest differences between Catholics and the Orthodoxy is that the Orthodox Church spiritual authority IS the traditional interpretation of the canon. It’s not “They’re in charge so they interpret the Scriptures” it’s “They understand the Scriptures, so they’re in charge”. For someone that has neither authority nor knowledge they amount to the same thing, I grant it.

I honestly think that BOTH the authority and personal use of the canon as a check on the same authority are possible. Lacking either leads to a weird version of Christianity. Although if I HAD to chose one or the other, I would chose authority over personal interpretation since the possibility of having a semi-decent theology increases just by virtue of time and numbers, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know what you mean, and I basically agree. One of the main reasons why we need authority is that Christianity has to be for people that aren’t theologians. If someone just wants to believe what he’s told because he knows he’s kind of slow or just has other things to worry about in his life, we have to be able to provide for that, and not fault them. I think Protestant individualism has a sort of elitism about it that makes it to know what to do with the layman that has no interest in studying this stuff. I think that’s where today’s atheists learned their condescending, impossible-to-talk-to attitude.

I agree. But then the issues of “which authority do you chose”, and “how do you view competing authorities” arise.

Yeah, and that’s why I called so much of this a self-fullfilling prophecy. Prostestanism essentially gets to say “See, individual interpretation IS important, because of the giant mess of 20,000 denominations we’ve created!” It’s truth, but it’s not the kind of truth you can respect. How important was personal interpretation of the Gospel message in the year 400 or whatever? Seems to me then it would have been more of a liability.

and I don’t think, protestant, Catholic or Orthodox interpretations of the gospel are widely different

They aren’t widely different compared to like, Buddism, no. But if you look at the grace thread, you’ll see that you and I have some pretty serious differences. Not ones that endanger salvation, to be sure, but certainly big enough to affect how an outsider would recieve the Christian message hearing it from you vs. from me.

Check this out:

ancientfaith.com/podcasts/pilgrims

The four sections on Christian pluralism seem terribly important to me in light of this discussion. I think I’ll listen to them again tonight.

If it’s just education than I think line between laity and clergy is blurred. I’ve met many clergy with a weak understanding of theology and almost no background in reading church fathers.

Well, if you stress individual interpretation of the Scriptures TOO much, then a minister really just needs to be someone with a good speaking voice, eh?

Exactly, and Luther reached this conclusion based on his personal understanding of the canon versus institutional doctrines.

The ones he was exposed to, anyway.

So, this must include some understanding of canon interpretation through personal study by the laity. No?

Absolutely- but the laity are studying to learn the Scriptures alongside how they are properly interpreted as defined by tradition. They aren’t reading the Bible and figuring out what it means ‘to them’ or anything like that. I’m sure we agree there.

[Ned_Flanders]

@Uccisore

Sorry for the long delay!

Seems like I’m guilty too.

Well, keep in mind though that there’s three major sects, and not two. Luther could and should have come back to Orthodoxy after he realized the errors of the Catholics. I mean, what I’m really saying is, the Reformation apparently wasn’t inevitable because it didn’t happen in the east.

To be honest, I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about the eastern church, so I’ll hold up my hands and say my comments are framed by the typical western Christianity (protestant/Catholic) ideas. You may be right that Luther should have gone to the Orthodox church, I don’t know.

I think little “reformations” happen all the time in the established churches. Look at the Anglican church that is splitting apart because some want to hold more to scripture and others just want to go with the times. I think these are inevitable because people in power get it wrong, eventually they get it so wrong that the lower down schmucks complain and stage a mini-revolution.

I think you missed my major point though.

It has been known to happen…

You say the Church fathers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to develop the canon. You need that divine fiat to get around a submission to Church authority, that’s half the problem.

Why? I don’t restrict my view of inspiration to the formation of the canon. I think almost anything the Church fathers said or did is more likely to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. I see submission to church history as more important than submission to present day authority. Just as submission to scripture is more important than the latest Christian best-seller. I’m not sure why this requires a divine fiat. But maybe I’m misunderstanding you.

The other, worse half is that even if I grant that the canonization was an act of special divine revelation, the Protestants aren’t going by that canon anyway so what difference does it make?

Again, my argument is not specific to the canon. And I realize that there are disagreements about the canon but the truth is the majority of books are agreed upon by everyone. The other books I’ve read many, many times (hint, always buy a Catholic bible since you get more books for your money!!) and I’m not really sure the arguments about where we all draw the line are very important. Indeed, the early church fathers disagreed on this issue. But there’s a big difference between allowing Tobit or the Shepherd of Hermas into my devotional reading versus allowing the Nag Hammadi library into my devotional reading.

Protestants have to ackowledge that their choice to have a different canon than the original was a human choice. That means they have to acknowledge that the original canon was a human choice too, or else they just made themselves heretics.

I guess I don’t see the issue as hugely important. The only real theological issues that would be different are things like whether we should pray for the dead or not. The majority of the differences in theology between Catholic and Protestant don’t come from having a slightly different bible, they come from someplace else.

Yeah, it’s interesting, I got into this with someone else in private messages a few days ago. One of the biggest differences between Catholics and the Orthodoxy is that the Orthodox Church spiritual authority IS the traditional interpretation of the canon. It’s not “They’re in charge so they interpret the Scriptures” it’s “They understand the Scriptures, so they’re in charge”. For someone that has neither authority nor knowledge they amount to the same thing, I grant it.

Maybe you can explain more about how authority could be “the traditional interpretation”? I think that’s pretty much what I would say, so it must be right, right??!!

Yeah, I know what you mean, and I basically agree. One of the main reasons why we need authority is that Christianity has to be for people that aren’t theologians.

Preach it brother! Honestly, this might be THE most important issue in protestantism, yet nobody even talks about it.

I think Protestant individualism has a sort of elitism about it that makes it to know what to do with the layman that has no interest in studying this stuff. I think that’s where today’s atheists learned their condescending, impossible-to-talk-to attitude.

I know exactly what you mean. Protestantism does encourage an elite individualism. But I predict a backlash against it sometime soon.

Yeah, and that’s why I called so much of this a self-fullfilling prophecy. Prostestanism essentially gets to say “See, individual interpretation IS important, because of the giant mess of 20,000 denominations we’ve created!” It’s truth, but it’s not the kind of truth you can respect. How important was personal interpretation of the Gospel message in the year 400 or whatever? Seems to me then it would have been more of a liability.

I’ve heard that argument many times but I just don’t buy it. I think the other side of the fence (Catholicism) is no less divided theologically. You can visit a Catholic priest someplace and he’ll be more evangelical than the evangelicals. Then you’ll pop down the road and find a priest who’ll be more liberal than the liberals. They just pretend it isn’t so. Protestantism is more honest in that respect.

They aren’t widely different compared to like, Buddism, no. But if you look at the grace thread, you’ll see that you and I have some pretty serious differences. Not ones that endanger salvation, to be sure, but certainly big enough to affect how an outsider would recieve the Christian message hearing it from you vs. from me.

Sure, but it’s like 2 die-hard Red Sox fans arguing over their favorite pitcher. At the end of the day, the both hate the Yankees.

Check this out:

ancientfaith.com/podcasts/pilgrims

I’ll do that and get back to you.

Well, if you stress individual interpretation of the Scriptures TOO much, then a minister really just needs to be someone with a good speaking voice, eh?

Yup, that’s the downside to protestantism right there. All flash and no substance.

Absolutely- but the laity are studying to learn the Scriptures alongside how they are properly interpreted as defined by tradition. They aren’t reading the Bible and figuring out what it means ‘to them’ or anything like that. I’m sure we agree there.

Yes. That’s the right balance in my opinion.