The People are In Darkness: They Just Don't See It

[@NathanielDowell]

Hey Edward, the issue I have with this concept of revelation by the Holy Spirit is that it only works at a high level, or maybe at a personal level. Once you look at how meaning in scripture has been 'revealed' to various people over time (often with those interpretations being subsequently used to create enforceable social structures) you'll find that there's been vast disagreement and multiple schools of thought on any given topic. So when there are two opposing interpretations, who got the correct revelation? How do we judge what's true and what's human fabrication? At the end of the day, I believe we're assigning the label of 'Truth' to whatever matches our preexisting, internal belief structure, which, while we'd all like to think otherwise, is very much a product of our time and culture, and that's all assuming that "The Bible" is intended to be a univocal document speaking with a single voice on all things life, which is itself an assumption not shared by all Christians.

[@NathanielDowell]

I really appreciate Dr. Peter Enns and his honest view on the Bible. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pnm4Z5h_oc2Khc0si=06e8rKSrxMfA7MEU

[@EdwardWigginsMusic]

@@NathanielDowell you may have misinterpreted what I was saying but I never said nor was it my intent to say that the Holy Spirit only reveals things at a high level. What I was meaning to say was that the carnal mind is at unity with God because it does not have the Holy Spirit and it is working against God. And so to fault people for not understanding spiritual things because they are unsaved does them a disservice because they do not have a faculty that only saved people have. I also don't believe that the Bible is of private interpretation however I do believe that we interpret the Bible based off of our pre-existing mindsets. I also believe that people make the Bible out to be more strict than what it is and more liberal than what it is based off of what they wanted to say and based off of what denomination that they come from. So simply put I believe you and I are saying the same things and we agree on the same things we are just saying it in a different way. And just to reiterate: no I don't believe the Bible is a private interpretation, no I don't believe that we should base what the Bible is saying off of what we think, but yes I believe that the unsaved are incapable of understanding the spiritual matters of the Bible, and yes I believe that some Christians are often times acting as though their fleshly even though they are spiritual and perhaps something hasn't been revealed to them so we should walk in patience towards them. Also I am one of those Christians that believe that the Bible speaks with a single voice on all things, however I also believe that the Bible addresses many different topics with concepts not everything is a the saith the Lord do this thing in this particular situation but some things there is a concept that the Lord is wanting someone to act upon that is in line with the character of God as outlined in Scripture. And sometimes those things have to be considered. For instance, some people still abide by the Jewish dietary laws believing that they are required by God to follow for righteousness. But if you go to the New Testament both in romans, galatians, and the book of Acts you see that those things were representations of a concept that God was trying to get across. Also many Christians feel as though secular music is bad in some feel that it's okay, well I say according to Hebrews chapter 12 some things are weights even though they may not be sins and so we have to decide by the leading of the Holy Spirit and the scriptures which things we have to put down as weights even though they themselves are not sin. We also have to consider how those things affect our heart because in Proverbs it talks about how we need to guard our heart with all diligence. And not everything that we are putting into ourselves is beneficial. And some things affect different Christians differently because of their life backgrounds so they're going to have to be more cautious based on who they are what things they can be participating in that are weights and not necessarily sins.

[@EdwardWigginsMusic]

@@NathanielDowell and I appreciate your feedback

[@EdwardWigginsMusic]

While I don't necessarily agree with the gentleman's overall premise, I do understand where he's coming from and where you're coming from and I have to say I disagree. Not on what the Bible is, because it is a book of people writing about their experiences but on the fact that it is simply that with no infallible authority. The very fact that the Bible was written by 40 authors and all of them are saying the same thing from different perspectives and they agree gives Credence to the fact that the holy spirit is in operation. Yes the Bible is a very natural tangible thing that could be prone to error if it was simply just a book but we also as Christians have to grab hold of the supernatural and trust in the fact that what is in the Bible is the word of God and it's in there for a reason and if there's something that we're misinterpreting or misunderstanding about it it is our fault and not the book itself. The problem with scholars is the fact that they do what is ill advised in 1st Timothy: they Bible along with disputations rather than seeing what's in there and allowing the scriptures themselves to prove themselves or to validate themselves. The other problem that Christians that are overly scholarly and over thinkers is that they use the failures of the past to determine the validity of the word of God versus recognizing that the problem isn't the tool the problem is the way that people are using it. I believe that there are exact protocols in the Bible just like there are exact concrete concepts in the Bible and many Christians confused the concepts for the protocols and the protocols for the concepts and develop doctrines based off of these confusions. And then when these misinterpretations are repeated over time by people that have some amount of influence it becomes a denomination and a movement and then it gets added to doctrine as though the word of God says that. And then those of us who are looking at history see their failures and then we blame the book rather than the people reading it. It doesn't matter if you have a whole bunch of people that look at the Bible and say five different things about a particular passage what matters is what the passage is actually saying in context to the rest of scripture. Something that may seem to contradict itself doesn't actually contradict itself if you look at the context in which it said and the rest of the context of scripture along with it. So while I understand that for every 100 Christians there's 100 different ways to see one thing, I also know that the 100 Christians do not determine what is actually being said. And I believe that as Christians we have to lean on the Holy Spirit and not our intellect nor the failures of those before us to determine how we should follow the Bible.