Gafcon IV

I do not accept dictation theories of inspiration, and in any case the rules of interpretation are the same regardless of a work’s origin. You seem really determined to argue over minutiae on the periphery rather than deal with the substance of what I’ve been saying. One can’t always reason from individual examples in Paul’s letters to more broadly applicable rules, and evidence for this is the fact that Paul’s counsel in 1 Cor. 5 directly contradicts a general principle he cites himself in the very next chapter, as I explained above.

 

Your argument (such as it is) is that the Bible is the work of men, not of God. I (and most Anglicans, and most other Christians in the world and througout history) disagree. You're not contending with my arguments at all -- you're just ignoring them or waving them off.

 

The conundrum noted earlier is there, regardless of how it got there. Disagreement over the nature of inspiration is thus irrelevant to the matter at hand. Thank you for making my point…

 

It seems, once again, that some people are talking at each other, just listening for a chance to say what is already on their mind, rather than weighing what was previously said and actually adressing the issue under discussion and the points that had just been made.

The Bible is quite literally the work of men, - (FACT, God did not write the entire Bible, most of it was written by men). The Bible is inspired by God, ( a BELIEF, based upon the exposition of scripture, held by the faithful people of God).

This does not mean all scripture was dictated to men by God, nor that scripture can have no other literal meaning than that which may be wrongly understood by any illiterate idiot.
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Using a "literal interpretation" of scripture does not mean we look at a verse or two in isolation, as you have done. To glean the correct meaning, proper hermeneutics will look first at the verse, then at the surrounding verses, then at the entirety of the writing (in this case 1 Corinthians as a whole), then the entirety of the Bible. This still gives us a literal interpretation, but a holistic one.

I will not attempt to totally rewrite what other good men have said about I Cor. 5. Instead I will reproduce just a couple, which are representative of the long-standing orthodox Christian understanding about this passage. First, from John Gill's commentary:

for the destruction of the flesh; that is, that his body might be shook, buffeted, afflicted, and tortured in a terrible manner; that by this means he might be brought to a sense of his sin, to repentance for it, and make an humble acknowledgment of it:

that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus; that he might be renewed in the spirit of his mind, be restored by repentance, and his soul be saved in the day of Christ; either at death, when soul and body would be separated, or at the day of the resurrection, when both should be reunited; for the flesh here means, not the corruption of nature, in opposition to the spirit, as a principle of grace, but the body, in distinction from the soul: nor was the soul of this man, only his body, delivered for a time unto Satan; the end of which was, that his soul might be saved, which could never be done by delivering it up to Satan...​

Second, from Albert Barnes' commentary:

For the destruction of the flesh - We may observe here:
(1) That this does not mean that the man was to die under the infliction of the censure, for the object was to recover him; and it is evident that, whatever he suffered as the consequence of this, he survived it, and Paul again instructed the Corinthians to admit him to their fellowship, 2Co_2:7.
(2) It was designed to punish him for licentiousness of life - often called in the Scriptures one of the sins, or works of the flesh Gal_5:19, and the design was that the punishment should follow “in the line of the offence,” or be a just retribution - as punishment often does. Many have supposed that by the “destruction of the flesh” Paul meant only the destruction of his fleshly appetites or carnal affections; and that he supposed that this would be effected by the act of excommunication. But it is very evident from the Scriptures that the apostles were imbued with the power of inflicting diseases or bodily calamities for crimes. See Act_13:11; 1Co_11:30. What this bodily malady was we have no means of knowing. It is evident that it was not of very long duration, since when the apostle exhorts them 2Co_2:7 again to receive him, there is no mention made of his suffering then under it - This was an extraordinary and miraculous power. It was designed for the government of the church in its infancy, when everything was suited to show the direct agency of God; and it ceased, doubtless, with the apostles. The church now has no such power. It cannot now work miracles; and all its discipline now is to be moral discipline, designed not to inflict bodily pain and penalties, but to work a moral reformation in the offender.
That the spirit may be saved - That his soul might be saved; that he might be corrected, humbled, and reformed by these sufferings, and recalled to the paths of piety and virtue. This expresses the true design of the discipline of the church, and it ought never to be inflicted but with a direct intention to benefit the offender, and to save the soul. Even when he is cut off and disowned, the design should not be vengeance, or punishment merely, but it should be to recover him and save him from ruin.​

Notice that Barnes lends a measure of credence to your contention that the church's response to a congregant's publicly-known lifestyle of sexual improprieties is a matter of church discipline. However, the disciplinary response specified in I Corinthians is based upon an unchangeable moral standard, and such moral standards are a matter of Christian doctrine because they were set down by God for man. Since the word of God through Paul's hand makes clear that this is the correct type of disciplinary response to that non-negotiable moral standard, we have a solid reason to trust that the disciplinary response itself is not subject to re-negotiation or change. We are shown by example that the church, when faced with attendees who display their sinful lifestyle openly and pridefully (LGBs don't call it "gay pride" for nothing!), should neither celebrate, nor encourage, nor tolerate the person's wrongful practice and attitude; the church should instead pray that God's physical and emotional protection be removed from the individual in the hope that his subsequent afflictions from Satan might turn his heart back toward God in sincere repentance and his soul might then be saved. To do the opposite places that individual in greater spiritual peril (because he will continue to think that both the church and God sanction homosexual lusts and practices), and IMO any church which purposes to take a course of action which endangers souls is acting contrary to the Great Commission.

What I have just shown is the church's long-held interpretation of scripture on the subject of 1 Cor. 5, arrived at by utilizing sound hermeneutical methods that do not take the single verse in isolation but instead harmonize it with all that is known of God's word and will for mankind. The opposing view, being counterproductive to the saving of men's souls, must therefore be scripturally untenable.

 

The commentaries you’ve cited unfortunately commit the same error of trying to read repentance into the text when it simply isn’t there. The proof of this is that the “saving” Paul refers to is explicitly in “the day of the Lord,” i.e., not during the man’s lifetime, as the ‘repentance’ interpretation presupposes. It is a strange passage. I do not claim to fully understand it. Certainly the Church in later generations understood excommunication very differently. But given that this is concrete advice regarding a specific (i.e., real) situation, if St. Paul is not to be accused of flatly contradicting himself, I am forced to agree with the bulk of modern scholars in reading more general passages such as the “vice lists” (e.g., 1 Cor. 6 and elsewhere), as having been intended for a different rhetorical purpose and would likely have had a different effect on the intended audience than the way we read it today.

 

I'm afraid there will never be consensus so long as some of us take a high view of scripture while others (such as you and @Invictus ) take a relatively low view of scripture.

Think about this: without a high view of scripture, would Christianity even exist today in a form we would recognize? The Bible is the standard text by which we possess the recorded words and truths upon which our religion is based; it is the foundational text which informs us of (among other things) the means of salvation, the Way of faith in, adherence to, and obedience to Christ our Master, and the expectations God has for the conduct of our lives. The Bible provides our "road map" by which we navigate (or should navigate) throughout our beliefs and practices.

If the early church had taken such a broad, liberal view of scripture as modern church elements counsel us to take, would anyone have bothered to take exception to Arianism or to any of the other heresies? Might Athanasius have written (instead of Against Heresies) that the copies of gospels and epistles being circulated were little more than opinion pieces based upon individuals' fallible perceptions, and therefore no one had any basis to say whether any given view of Jesus' divinity, of gnosticism, of two opposite-minded Gods (Marcionism), or of any given interpretation was just as good as the next? Without a good map, people get lost. Without the Bible as a solid standard to tell us the differences between right and wrong and between truth and falsehood, every man would just go his own way based on his own understanding. If you think there are too many denominations now, imagine ten thousand times as many under that scenario! The church would have nothing to point to (unless it were the Papacy?) as a bright-line authority in all matters spiritual.

 

I'm afraid there will never be consensus so long as some of us take a view of scripture which accords with scripture itself while others (such as you and @Annias) take a literalist view of scripture and claim it to be a 'higher' view than those of us who have studied to shew ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Rather than trying to present the truths of The Bible as coming from a book delineating infallibly who is and who is not 'saved'. Only God knows that and God has not comprehensively revealed that to US, in the scriptures, concerning any individual. God has however told us that "He no longer holds the world accountable for their trespasses" and "has entrusted His message of reconciliation to us believers". I think OUR view of scripture is even 'higher' than yours, if you really want to argue that you've got a blacker cat than we have.
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We 'liberals' are often accused of capitulating to the spirit of the age, but the reading and exposition of biblical texts, WITHOUT at least an awareness of our, very different 21st century mindset, than that of those 1st century Christian readers, writers and believers, is ITSELF exposing ourselves to the possibility of misunderstanding the intentions of the authors of those texts, be it either Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, St Paul or God himself.

Having said that though, I do not believe The Bible is 'dated', it's truths are eternal, as long as it is properly understood.
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It is hardly indicative of a “low” view of the Bible to endeavor to interpret it correctly. A truly low view would be tantamount to indifference. The difference is rather the presuppositions one brings to the table in the act of interpretation. No one here is denying that it is canon, with all that implies.

 

This is equivalent to saying that the rule book for baseball exists, but you do not agree with the actual rules written in it. So you don't actually believe in the rules at all -- you're just acknowledging the (manifestly obvious to all involved) existence of the rulebook.

You are engaging in deliberate pedantry, in other words. The Bible is the written message within the book, not the physical printed volume. It is also the author of said volume, which is God, through his Divinely-inspired servants.

 

The Scriptures are canon, in that they are at the very least the material source of faith and practice. To affirm that is in no way equivalent to your baseball metaphor above. We are playing the "game" right now and disagree among ourselves what some of the "rules" actually are in the process of playing it. Funnily enough, there are controversial rules in baseball itself, as fans of the sport can attest.

No, the Bible is neither God nor the author of our salvation. The highest standard of our belief and practice is the person of Jesus, not a book written about him.

 

Well, this is the root of our difference, isn't it? I've said it many times and will say it again: you believe the Bible is a book about God written by men; we believe the Bible was written by God to men. Ours is the historical Anglican position (Articles VI and VII of the 39 Articles, sermon #1 of the First Book of Homilies, and the normative 1662 BCP).

 

Articles 6 and 7 do not address the subject of authorship or inspiration at all, let alone mandate a specific view such as plenary verbal inspiration. It is your schismatic view that is an innovation, both for reading a modern doctrine into these Articles that isn’t there, and for treating the Articles as a whole as some sort of “Anglican Confession,” which is a function they have never fulfilled. The plain sense of Article 6 is actually negative: the English Reformers did not want Christians in England looking outside the Scriptures for authoritative information concerning salvation. This does not mean that everything in the Scriptures is of equal value for that purpose. This understanding is no different than that held by highly regarded Anglicans like C.S. Lewis or N.T. Wright.

 

Disagree on Lewis but fully concur on Wright -- his view of Biblical authority is just as warped as yours. Unsurprisingly, given that both of you have drunk deeply of the modernist Kool Aid.

 

Fortunately, I do not require your agreement on Lewis. His plain statements on the subject in Reflections on the Psalms speak for themselves:

“Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature—chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of God’s word. Not all, I suppose, in the same way. There are prophets who write with the clearest awareness that Divine compulsion is upon them. There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record. There are poets like those in the Song of Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed. There is (and it is no less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonising just these books. There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them. On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious. The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.”

— Reflections on the Psalms (Harvest Book) by C. S. Lewis
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In other words, not plenary verbal inspiration, but Scripture, tradition, and reason. It sounds quite Anglican to me.

 

Thankyou, excellent post.

 

Also relevant is this quotation by Francis Hall:

"The verbal theory has been widely held; and has often been thought to be essential to a belief in the plenary inspiration of the Bible. This is not the case. Plenary inspiration means the divine authority of the whole Bible. We can accept this, and the Church teaches it, without being committed to any view touching the method of God in inspiring the sacred writers."
Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2​

 

Episcopalian. I read both volumes of the re-issue of his Systematic Theology and came away deeply unimpressed -- Hall suffers from the same tunnel-vision and parochialism as his modern Episcopal counterparts. Hall's work just shows that theology in the Episcopal church has been in bad shape for a long, long time.

As for C. S. Lewis: he was certainly no Reformed fire-breather, but he certainly took Scripture more seriously than modern-day Episcopalians or CofE Bishops seem to do. Lewis would be aghast at what the Episcopal Church and the CofE have become. Even a cursory reading of Mere Christianity tells you where C. S. Lewis was spiritually, and it was not anywhere close to where the modern liberals are.