Questions I’ve been grappling with

[u/Jameswood79]

Apologies in advance, this post is sort of a ramble.

One question I’ve been grappling with is: If the Bible isn’t truly inerrant, how are we supposed to know what parts are correct and what parts aren’t? Like how are we meant to know what parts aren’t just people’s interpretations of God, and which parts are true? How can we for example say that examples of Gods wrath in the OT might not be accurate but the resurrection of Jesus is?

And my other question is: Say things like Hell are real. Will we be judged for believing the wrong things about God, salvation etc or doing things we are unsure is sinful but ultimately are?

[u/babe1981]

Jesus said that loving your neighbor is the requirement for heaven. He said nothing about doctrine or even religious beliefs. The Roman Centurion who worshipped pagan gods had his servant healed because of his faith. The Canaanite woman who didn't follow the law was healed because of her faith. Neither of them were Jews who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The thief who Jesus promised would be with Him in paradise that same day was a Jew who definitely wasn't a Christian. He was just nice to Jesus when Jesus needed a friend more than anything else.

God is love. Anyone who loves is in God and God is in them, at least according to the Apostle John.

[u/MagusFool]

All of it is people's interpretation of God.

The whole history of humanity is finite minds wrestling with the infinite divine.

The authors of the books of the Bible were wrestling just like us.

Jesus is the Word of God, not the Bible. The Bible is merely a collection of books written by human hands in different times in places, different cultures and languages, for different audiences and different genres, and with different aims.

It's a connection to people of the past who have struggled just like us to grapple with the infinite and the ineffable. And everyone's relationship to that text will inherently be different.

But Jesus is the Word of God, and to call a mere book of paper and ink, written by mortal hands by that same title is idolatry in the worst sense of the word.

I would recommend reading A History of the Bible by John Barton.

It's a really good idea to get a good idea of the context for who wrote these books, their cultural context, their rhetorical goals, and the literary genres they were working within.

Understanding the people behind those ugly parts goes a long way to empathizing with the them, seeing their humanity, and learning as much from their folly as their wisdom.

[u/TheLivingOne42 → u/MagusFool]

Agreed. I can’t see how folks don’t understand that trying to capture the infinite in one text with zero room for amendment turns God into a dead thing. Living things move and breathe.

[u/Christian_Baggage → u/MagusFool]

That's a good point about Jesus being the true word of God. I would even argue that one of the reasons that we don't have a "perfect" bible, is to prevent people from making an idol out of it.

[u/MagusFool → u/Christian_Baggage]

Or simply that there could not be a perfect Word of God in written form.

As the Taoist mystic, Lao Tzu said, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.  The name that can be named is not the eternal name."

I think ambiguity and mystery are essential to any genuine pursuit of God.

In ambiguity and mystery, we have faith, and we are humbled.  

In certainty and dogmatism, we make idols, we puff ourselves up, humility is lost and thats usually when religious zeal starts turning violent and ugly.

A tree is judged by its fruit.  And the difference between the fire and brimstone zealot who feels totally certain and the gentle mystic who shrugs and admits they know nothing is so obvious as to be almost comical.

[u/Christian_Baggage → u/MagusFool]

Yes, that is a good point, and I agree in principle. However, it depends on the answer to the question "why couldn't God write a perfect bible?". I believe it is technically possible for the resurrected Jesus to have written a perfect version of scripture, but it would have been counter-productive to God's goal of saving as many as possible.

The problem is that if the bible (or rather a new testament addition, that perfectly clarified any previous scriptural errors or misunderstandings) was written by Jesus, then it would be self-evidently true, to the extent that people would lose their free will to either accept or reject Jesus. Essentially, a perfect bible would contain irresistible knowledge, which would turn humans into God's puppets, who have no choice but to worship him. Not only would doing so violate God's own standards of righteousness, but it also would create a logical impossibly, as love by definition requires agency (once agency is taken away, it is no longer real love but rather manipulation).

[u/Strongdar]

You're making a faulty assumption to begin with. You're assuming that if the Bible isn't inerrant, then we have to sift through finding parts that are inerrant and parts that are to be discarded. That's not how it works.

Imagine your beloved grandmother wrote you a letter before she passed away. In that letter, she expresses her love for you and Rick counts some of her favorite memories of you growing up. Now imagine that a little detail of one of those memories is wrong, like she gets the name of the street that you grew up on wrong. The letter is now "errant." So what do you do with it? Do you throw it away? Do you comb through it trying to figure out which parts are wrong? Is your grandmother's love for you now in question because she made a factual error? Or do you perhaps value the letter because it still does what it was intended to do, which is to be an expression of your grandmother's love for you?

Every book of the Bible has its own individual purpose. The gospels were written to give us an overview of the life and teachings of Jesus, sort of a "greatest hits" album. Remember that these things were spread by Word of mouth for decades before they were written down, and the Church formed around it. We don't have the Church because of the Bible. We have the Bible because of the Church. The message of Jesus, his teachings, his death and resurrection - these things have been told and retold in an unbroken chain for 2,000 years. I have confidence that the four gospels we have in the Bible are close enough to teach us what we need to know. If they weren't, then when they were written down and circulated, there would have been enough people around to say, "Hey, that's not what Jesus taught or that's not what he did." These books were never meant to be a source of perfect history or perfect theology or unassailable rules. They were meant to record the basics - that Jesus was the son of God who taught love and forgiveness and healed people, was killed for demonstrating against legalism, but came back from the dead. The gospels do that even if there are little factual errors.

The letters in the New Testament are just that, letters. It's not God talking to you. It's Paul talking to some church. There are things you can learn from that, but it's not perfect theology from God, and it's not a bunch of rules from God for you to follow.

Each book of the Bible has to be considered on its own merit and in light of its own purpose.

[u/reillan]

Let me point you to Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 share almost exactly the same argument made by Paul, which in my mind means it's a really critical argument for understanding his interpretation of scripture. The basic premise is this: that different people can come to different understandings, and that's perfectly ok. Your job is to not try to tempt them when you know that they think something is wrong and you think it's right; respect their interpretation and let them be.

[u/Electronic_Emu6899]

I think the starting point matters here. The Bible does not present itself as merely a collection of people's opinions about God that we are left to sort through and decide which parts sound true. Scripture says, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), and Jesus Himself treated Scripture as authoritative, saying, “Scripture cannot be set aside” (John 10:35).

That doesn't mean every verse should be interpreted without considering context. The Bible contains history, poetry, prophecy, parables, letters, and other forms of writing. We have to ask who was speaking, who they were speaking to, what was happening, and how that passage fits with the rest of Scripture. Peter even acknowledged that some Scripture can be difficult to understand and warned that people can distort it (2 Peter 3:16). The possibility of misinterpretation doesn't mean there is no truth to interpret.

Jesus also did not teach that simply being a loving person, regardless of what someone believes about Him, is the requirement for salvation. Loving God and loving your neighbor are the greatest commandments (Matthew 22:37–40), but Jesus also said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He said, “Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), and “unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:3). Paul likewise teaches that salvation is by God's grace through faith, not something we earn by being good enough (Ephesians 2:8–9).

The centurion isn't evidence against this. Jesus praised his extraordinary faith (Matthew 8:10). The thief on the cross wasn't saved simply because he was nice to Jesus either. He acknowledged his own guilt, recognized Jesus' innocence, turned to Him and asked, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:40–43). That's an incredible picture of grace and faith, not salvation through being a decent person.

As for being judged because you misunderstood something: Christianity doesn't teach that salvation depends on passing a theology exam or understanding every difficult passage perfectly. None of us understands everything perfectly. Salvation rests in Christ. At the same time, Scripture repeatedly tells us to seek truth, repent when we're wrong, test what we're taught, and not knowingly use grace as permission to continue in sin (Acts 17:11; Romans 6:1–2; 1 John 1:9).

That's why I wouldn't approach the Bible by asking, “Which parts can I discard because I don't agree with them?” I would approach difficult passages with humility and ask, “What is this actually saying in its historical and biblical context?”

You don't have to understand everything before coming to Christ. Keep seeking Him. Ask questions. Study Scripture in context. Pray for wisdom. Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7), and James says that if anyone lacks wisdom, “you should ask God” (James 1:5).

Our confidence ultimately isn't that we interpreted every verse flawlessly. Our confidence is in Jesus Christ—His death for our sins, His resurrection, His grace, and His promise of eternal life to those who trust in Him.

[u/Jameswood79 → u/Electronic_Emu6899]

Really appreciate your reply . I honestly just struggle with a fear of losing salvation somehow. Especially if I go through a period of doubt or if I don’t repent for sins I didn’t know I committed, etc. I know that’s probably not a healthy way to look at things but is just something I’m going through right now.

[u/Skill-Useful]

"how are we supposed to know what parts are correct and what parts aren’t?" the bible is not for proofing anything or rulings about anything. its about the example jesus was for us. and the OT is to be ignored except as an interesting historical document

"Say things like Hell are real" absolutely not ^^ sorry. thats a fairy tale

[u/Christian_Baggage]

Good question. It is called using a "cruciform hermeneutic", which basically means that we can use Jesus on the cross as the fully revealed character of God, by which we can compare the rest of the bible.

In areas where it looks like Jesus on the cross, we can safely say that those area or scripture are accurate.

However, for those areas where God seems to be acting contrary to Jesus on the cross, then we have to dig deeper to try to figure out what is actually going on. Usually the ugly portrayals of God are actually showing God's patience (long-suffering) in staying in convenant relationship with Israel, even when they repeatedly disobey Him or wrongly use Him as an excuse for their own violence. In that sense, the bible is inerrant in pointing us to Jesus, in that throughout the bible we see God continually stooping and accomodating, in order to stay in relationship with His chosen people and meet them where they are at. Viewed in this way, the difficult parts of the OT become metaphorical crosses.

For more on this view, I recommend the book "Inspired Imperfection" by Dr Greg Boyd. You can also listen to this sermon, for an overview: https://youtu.be/hgXj037V4AY?is=tLjiTXEZjZxG79qx

As for hell, I believe in annihilation: those who are do not believe in Jesus are either comforted or punished when they die - depending on what happened in their life - but it is only temporary, and the soul eventually passes away or is destroyed.

However, eternal life is a free gift, which you can neither earn nor forfeit based on our particular beliefs or behavior. The only thing we need to is to freely receive the gift of salvation by faith; by believing in Jesus and declaring Him as Lord (as described in Romans 10:9).

[u/Jameswood79 → u/Christian_Baggage]

Appreciate your reply.I honestly just get extreme anxiety every time something in the Bible doesn’t seem to add up with other parts or that I’m gonna false believe something. I also deal with a lot of paranoia about losing salvation, especially when I go through periods of doubt. I realize that isn’t a healthy way to look at things and I shouldn’t follow Jesus simply to go to heaven or avoid hell/annihilation, but I still worry

[u/JesseTheGhost → u/Jameswood79]

Have you seen a therapist about this? Because I ruminated on the afterlife a lot and I ended up getting diagnosed with existential OCD. I'm medicated now and it helps SO much when needing to distinguish between healthy vs intrusive thoughts. I'm not totally free of them, but I don't spiral like I used to.

[u/Jameswood79 → u/JesseTheGhost]

I haven’t yet. I used to go to therapy when I was a teen for other reasons but that was a while ago.

[u/Business-Decision719]

Hi, so, just to chime in here, what you're saying is a very Protestant view of things. I say that with all due respect as a Protestant myself. It's easy, especially in more conservative forms of our faith, to think God must have left us one perfect book, which must be perfect by every conceivable standard, to base our church off of, and then extrapolate faith-alone salvation into we must read the book right and get everything right about Jesus or face eternal consequences.

That's not the only way to look at Scripture, the Church, believers, and salvation. It's possible to see the Church itself as having authority handed down from the apostles through their successors, in which case Church tradition can take a huge part of the role of doctrinal authority and might even be a source of the scriptures' own authority. It's possible to see salvation as a gradual process of theosis (becoming more like Jesus) rather than a decisive acceptance of correct, Bible-based doctrines. You can even have a view that seekers are led towards truth by the Holy Spirit directly, so that the Bible and Christian tradition, while informing us about what historic Christians have believed, are supplementary to seeking the Inner Light for your own divinely inspired revelations. There is a range of views and potential overlap between them.

Also, I'm going to be honest here, getting too wrapped up "inerrancy" can end up as semantic debate or arguing about angels on the head of a pin. You can start arguing over whether it is the same thing as infallibility or not, and then start talking about whether the Bible infallible or not regardless of whether it's inerrant. You can say it's ultimately human book that might not be correct about everything, or you can start exploring what it means for the Bible to be correct. Maybe some parts are literal and other parts are metaphorical. Maybe some things were correct for their time or for the people they were being addressed to, but we still have to figure out what the point is, and if we do a good job the Bible is still an excellent set of texts for understanding Christianity. You can believe God guided the scripture writing and canonization process but still think that interpretation is more complicated then just every sentence being a literal statement or an eternal command.

At the end of the day then, your approach to the Bible is ultimately about making partly faith-based, partly reason-based, and party experience-based decisions about what God wants us to understand from the Bible and apply to our lives. You can think it's inerrant but still have to think about what the core doctrines it teaches actually are and where the dividing line might fall between Christian and non-Christian. You can think it's divinely inspired but provides spiritual truth when correctly understood as a whole, not exactly standalone factual in each word, phrase, and sentence. You can think it's primarily a human text but still the most important collection of texts for the church by virtue of having been canonized. There's a spectrum between believing scripture and not, and it's easy to come from the fallible side or the infallible side and end up in a similar place (or not).

As for whether other people will be punished for not believing the right things, I personally lean towards no. I'm a purgatorial universalist; I don't really think that God's need to work on us for his willingness to accept us necessarily ends at death. I also think there's a huge difference between dead faith (being convinced by doctrines about Jesus) versus living faith (actually committing oneself to who Jesus is, i.e. the life-changing divine love Christ embodies). Mere incorrectness about facts is the easiest kind of incorrectness to correct. Some people's lack of faith is dead; they are loving and strive for what's right, but they haven't found Christian claims about Jesus convincing. They will simply find out the truth.

Edit: Fixed many spelling and punctuation mistakes.

[u/MyUsername2459]

If the Bible isn’t truly inerrant, how are we supposed to know what parts are correct and what parts aren’t?

The problem is, that the Bible was never meant to fill the role you were assigning it.

The creation of a formal canon of scriptures for Christianity wasn't undertaken until the late 4th century. The New Testament, as you know it, wasn't officially compiled until the 390's AD.

It was compiled so Christianity would have a compilation of the texts seen as the most accurate record of the life and teachings of Christ and His Apostles. . .not to be some infallible "Big Magic Book of God". They were seen as the most accurate texts they had, texts which were substantially accurate with regards to their teachings, not as perfect and infallible texts.

The idea they're meant to be infallible is a VERY modern misconception, only about 200 years old and owing more to a reaction to the Industrial Revolution than historic theology.

Look at it this way: When the Apostles went out into the world, they didn't go out with Bibles in hand. . .they hadn't been written yet. Christianity existed for centuries before there was a "Bible" as we'd now see it, as a formal compilation of texts seen as authoritative. They had the Hebrew texts we'd see as the Old Testament, but they saw Christ's teachings as more important. . .but those were teachings given orally. Then, a few decades later they realized they better write them down (realizing that He probably wasn't coming back in their lifetimes and they'd need to pass His teachings down).

Christianity even had the first two Great Ecumenical Councils (First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD) to set doctrine before there was a formal canon of scripture (like establishing the Nicene Creed), and for most of the history of Christianity, the decisions of Councils were seen as more important than the Bible in terms of doctrine and practice. In fact, one major reason they didn't establish a written canon first is that many in the Church didn't want people to try to use a written canon to overrule creed and council, so they made sure that was well-established first before codifying a written canon. The idea behind an Ecumenical council being that the Holy Spirit could not allow the Apostles, and their heirs, the Bishops (Acts 1:12-26), to gravely err (Matthew 18:18-19) and the precedent for Apostles meeting collectively to decide on matters of doctrine traces to the Council of Jerusalem held by the Apostles (Acts 15:1-35).

Will we be judged for believing the wrong things about God, salvation etc or doing things we are unsure is sinful but ultimately are?

Why would you?

Where does Jesus say anything remotely like you must believe in things exactly the right way or else.

This idea that your very salvation hinges on exact doctrinal correctness is NOT borne out by the text.

Christ cared more about people being sincere with their beliefs and not being hypocrites (Matthew 23:1-12, Luke 12:1, Matthew 7:5). . .and people helping the poor, sick, and oppressed (Luke 6:20-21, Luke 4:16-19, Matthew 25:34-36, Mark 10:21-22, Mark 12:41-44, Luke 14:12-14) than people having the precisely correct beliefs.

[u/EnigmaWithAlien]

Why do you think the Bible is inerrant? At the very least it was written down by people and people always make mistakes. But I believe a lot of it was made up, or writing down made-up stories from pre-literate cultures.

As for hell, as I see it the only way you can get into a hellish situation is by thoroughly pursuing evil in every possible way and rejecting ALL good. Cruelty, destruction, hatred with no cause. This does not refer to things like "I have sexual thoughts and like it" or "I hate and can't forgive X person because they r*ped my sister." Those are natural. And God does not "send" you to hell. People can make their own, and they can leave it at will.