Saturday, May 31, 2008

Introducing the Issue: Some Scripture is God-breathed?


This is the introduction to the following two-part response to "red-letter Christians" (RLCs). The first part is called "Why I Believe the Apostles' Teaching," while the second is titled "Just Want to Follow Jesus?"

Allow me just a minute to specify what it is I'm addressing. I am not addressing the political movement led by men such as Tony Campolo or Brian McLaren. Instead, these are two essays discussing a hermeneutic (method of Biblical interpretation) that views Jesus' words (the red words in some Bibles) as authoritative and without error while the rest of Scripture is interpreted as having less authority, being the opinions of ordinary men, or being the production of various unsophsticated cultures that, when compared to the advancements made today, are thought to be obsolete.

This is not a complete defense of the inerrancy of Scripture, but instead a pair of brief essays that I hope will show 1. the reliability and authority of the apostles' teaching in the New Testament, which therefore means we should submit ourselves to their teaching, and 2. how often RLCs apply their selective hermeneutic on the red words they claim to fully believe.

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