Second, yes, I agree the core tenet of Christianity is belief. But if you notice, none of the people whom Christ converted just believed without evidence. First, he showed them a miracle, or explained the ways in which he fulfilled the Messiah-ship. AFTER he did that, they believed. And followed him loyally to the end, believing in whatever he said after that. So really, there has to be some inducement to make that leap of faith.

Thirdly, with all your talk about the final effect of my argument, you have actually sidestepped the whole thing. From what logical evidence are you suggesting that the Scripture could be infallible? Yes, I believe that Scripture is fallible. But when we talk about Thucydides being fallible, we do not really mean we disbelieve him. We sure do believe him.

Fourthly — a quick reminder about what Paul referred to would be appropriate. Scripture may be God-breathed. However, at that time, as you will recall, the New Testament was not considered precisely Scripture. Go figure.

Erin — Yes, he could control the canon’s formation. Could, however, is so different from “Did” that it’s not funny.

Second, who says that God says that it’s infallible? The press? Scripture? If so, I’ve explained already: a man cannot bear witness about itself; Scripture cannot bear witness about itself.

Thirdly, I admit — bad people will use this the way they want, just like bad people already do. That doesn’t prevent good, honest people from puzzling out God’s will for them.

Finally, I define fallibility, briefly, simply as “non inerrancy”, or, “the possibility of erring”.

Philip, If God is in control as the Bible says, then of course he could arrange the men determining the canon. The men were not deciding the canon based on their own, they were considering the Word of God by the Holy Spirit, so of Course God would lead them to decide the true canon. It was not Augustine of hippo, it was God guiding Augustine and Athanasius to pick the right choice. It was God leading redemptive history.

If Scripture is fallible, God is not in control, because God says it’s infallible so the only way for it to be fallible is for God to not be in control of the events of history to make Canon and the translators not translate the Bible in truth.

Besides, once you start going down that path, where do you draw the line? Homosexuality is ok, because Paul was just writing in reaction the Roman emperors. Women isn’t inferior to man because after all, Moses wasn’t there when man was created and there are two different stories about it and one is more right then the other. Christ wasn’t human because the translators didn’t translate this one passage the way the Greek could be translated.
Yeah. If you say that the scriptures are in fallible, everything comes up to question.

And, basically, I agree with everything Nate and Vick said. Bravi!

Philip, my mom says you’re defining terms differently. I assume she meant fallibility. How do you define it. The same way we seem to be?

You say: “Logically, however, the rightness of something must come from outside it.”

How is that? Can you explain this? You’ve got the assertion but no identifiable support. How do you know you’re alive? Because you pinch yourself and feel it? But you can’t trust your senses — they’re your own (potentially fallible) system of perception. Get someone else to pinch you, then. Ah, but it’s still your senses seeing them pinch you and feeling them pinch you. What if your senses are wrong? What if you’re not reading this? What if I’m not writing this?

Prove to me that logic exists — without using logic.

The core tenet of Christianity is Belief. Not proof. God could have designed a logically provable religion, but He did not. Believe in Jesus, and you will be saved.

Christianity is not “If premise #1, and also if premise #2, then — WHAMMO! — I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

More importantly, you call upon rational argument to make your claim of Scriptural fallibility — but retain adherence to the principles of the Gospel. On what grounds? John 3:16 came out unscathed? That part these human writers got right? Well, at the end of the day, we can at least celebrate that the good parts of the Bible (the part about Jesus dying for us and the parts about God’s Grace) are true, and that’s what counts, right?

Wrong.

If you honestly believe the Scriptures are fallible, then you have no basis on which to claim any Scriptural authority — even the core of the Gospel.

A syllogism might do well here:
Premise #1 (yours): Scripture is fallible.
Premise #2: The Gospel (John 3:16) is Scripture.
Conclusion: The Gospel is fallible.

So much for Christianity.

As non-tidy as it is, you have to believe in Jesus. You have to believe in the Bible. You have to believe in Scriptural infallibility. Yes, these are beliefs, from an outside perspective. But these are necessary beliefs; in other words, the entire viability of the Gospel hinges on these beliefs.

Scripture is indeed “God-breathed.” Subsequent translations are prone to error, most certainly. Not the original, though. “God-breathed” means God wrote it. God. A few blokes penciled it down (in the physical sense), but the Words were God’s.

So this is not a question of what is logically provable. This is rather a question of what is logically necessary, given belief in Christ. And Scriptural infallibility is a logical necessity.

Oh, and Vicki, if us philosophers ever did get a grip on rationality, we quite patently wouldn’t become atheists.

1.1 — How do you propose that the canon become inspired? Somebody fallible made it, you know. So are you saying that, say, St. Augustine’s authority makes it infallible? or that the council of Hippo’s authority does that? or that its general popularity proves that it is inspired?

1.2 — So do you think that the Nestle New Testament Greek text is perfect by a special act of God’s grace? Or should I switch back to the Textus Receptus?

1.3 — Fwiw, Vicki, I didn’t say we discredited the Bible. I just said, I don’t think there is any reason to simply assume that the Biblical writers are always right.

Finally, who indeed am I to contend with God? But who said in the first place that the idea of the inerrancy of the Scripture was God’s? To me, it seems stupid to keep believing in a doctrine that is obviously wrong.

1.1) If the Scriptures themselves were divinely inspired, why can’t the canon be inspired?
As for Wisdom, suppose it does belong. If we took out another book from the Bible, would that automatically discredit the ones we leave in?

1.2) I think you, in a lot of your writings, actually, forget about a very important thing: God’s grace.

1.3) This point simply does not matter. The Bible is history. Do we discredit any other history book if it tells about people believing in a faulty practice? Genesis never actually says that Jacob’s bizarre method caused the sheep to have speckled kids. It says that God was gracious to Jacob.
I’ve heard people complain about the definition of pi in the temple (or was it tabernacle?) instructions too. But they are forgetting that the Bible is not a mathematical handbook, it is telling what the people of the time did.
I have also heard people complain about somewhere in Leviticus some non-insectian bug being classified as an insect. Well, apparently according to the naming system of that day, they were. ^_^

I hate to say this, but all you philosopher types strike me as nothing but sad and terribly arrogant. Who are you, oh man, to contend with God? And what’s so special about YOUR reason? You say “Logically, however, evidence must come from something outside of it.” That is a very dangerous thing to say, and I pray for you guys (I’m sorry, I really do) that one day you don’t go off the deep end and become rationalist atheists.

In essence I agree with that you say. The problem is that once one begins walking down the road of “The Scriptures Are Not Infallible” it almost inevitably leads to an extreme, and very soon heresies are born.

I agree that the Scriptures cannot be absolutely infallible because of the various reasons you presented. However, I do not believe it is our place to say which parts are correct and which are erred. Therefore, we should accept it as if it were infallible and inerrant and not worry about the small possible discrepancies, because they are not essential to one’s salvation, and arguing over them is futile and in vain.