[sword-devel] clean bible or bad phantasy?

[Daniel Russell]

John Gardner wrote:

>I too believe in an in errant scripture.  And that I truly have the word of
>God.  At the same time, I don't think we can know which "original" text is
>the absolute correct one ( 1:1 word correspondence with the original letter
>penned by by the original authors). Or the translation. I don't believe that
>I must have the perfect original text or the perfect translation.  And what
>I am reacting against is this sort of fear that unless I have all those
>things I can't function as Christian.  No, I feel more a need for an
>obedient perfect heart than I do for perfect texts and translation.  In my
>way of thinking, people who have to have everything completely "untainted"
>by man really reveal unbelief in the all sufficiency of God. This God who is
>able to sovereignly bring the promised Messiah via the lineage of a harlot!
>
>I am not a language scholar.  I guess what I meant by Christ using the
>septuagint is that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John quote Christ and I believe
>those quotes are from the septuagint.
>  
>
Well as far as *i* am concerned, this issue has nothing to do with fear. 
For future reference: when you are discussing and issue with someone, 
try not to color the argument with emotionally manipulative words like 
"fear" when no one has expressed such an emotion. This is a way to make 
the other argument sound bad, but it is neither fair nor logical nor 
honest. ;)

Christians often use their concept of "faith" as a license to discount 
anything that might shed doubt on their beliefs, right or wrong. The 
issue is about scholastic freedom and completeness, and not about how 
much faith has someone who wants the original text. The argument against 
someone who seeks that, on whatever basis, sounds a lot more like fear: 
fear that there could be dissent about the traditional text (not 
original) or some other issue that has, comfortably, not been stirred.

Well, techincally this thread is a dead issue :). There really are more 
important issues out there, and i am OK with just having a filter to 
turn off the vowels. I think that is enough. Also: i know that 
compromises must be made, so even if this issue was not "settled" for 
me, i would move on anyway. I only wanted to take this time to encourage 
Christians to not act like all other religions which defend themselves 
against the wrong things in the wrong ways. Muslims would make all of 
the same claims you just made, and should i then accept them? Basing the 
correctness of any modern text, institution, or doctrine on the concept 
that "God is sufficient to make sure everything works right, therefore, 
i know that this is right, because God would have made it so" is a very 
fallacious line of reasoning which must be rejected because it is 
neither logical nor unique in all the religions of the world (who is an 
unbeliever to believe? they all attribute their "holy" things to their 
gods!). Furthermore, there is plenty of proof that the system has failed 
time and time again, and proof even in Jesus' words themselves that we 
continue to fail God and mess things up ("shall I find faith?", "few 
there be"), and we are not His "Kingdom", for that has not yet come. 
God's Kingdom would not be so divided, so corrupt, or so murderous (in 
reference to The "Church" as it once existed for hundreds of years -- 
the only major institution of Christianity, and certainly the official 
one -- the early to present Catholic Church). I don't put my trust in 
man as having gotten everything or even MOST things correct; not even 
those men that claim so, especially since they are all from different 
religions with different gods! But this is not a fear. This is just 
facing the facts as i see them. The truth is to be found by a careful 
study of Jesus' words and the prophet's words, with fresh eyes, assuming 
NO doctrines to be true.

I just thought i would clear that up.