Do you believe that the scriptures are the inspired word of God? (It doesn't sound like it. That God isn't mighty enough to get a good copy of His word into your hands throughout the centuries? That His word will never pass away? ...) The way I figure it, if He can, then we should accept it all. If any of it is true, then it's all true. If any of it is false then all of it's false.
(1) Do you believe that the scriptures are the inspired word of God?
A: I think that God inspired the scriptures. He didn't inspire only the scriptures. He inspired a great many things, the scriptures included. When he inspired the men who wrote scriptures to write, they did not take dictation. When God wanted them to take dictation, he said so, as in Revelation, where he told John to write specific words. Most of scripture is not dictation. It's a man inspired by God to write something. The man wrote it. God did not. A similar case: when a man is inspired by the sunset to paint a painting. The man painted the painting, not the sunset that inspired him to do it.
Where God, in the Scriptures, wanted to be directly quoted, he made sure that happened, by talking to the man, so that the man wrote "God said". If it doesn't say "God said", then one cannot add the words "God said" and assert that God said it. Notably, when Paul writes his copious letters, that's Paul saying thus and so. It is not Paul taking dictation from God. It's the mind of Paul, inspired by God to write a letter, just as Paul Cezanne was inspired by the sunset to paint the evening sky.
When God wanted to speak directly, he did so, and the Bible always identifies it.
(1A) (It doesn't sound like it. That God isn't mighty enough to get a good copy of His word into your hands throughout the centuries? That His word will never pass away? ...)
A: It sounds to me as though you think that the Bible is an oracle, that every single word in it is a direct dictation from God. Thus, the Bible stands there and talks as God. That looks a whole lot like idolatry to me.
(2) The way I figure it, if He can, then we should accept it all.
A: I agree. "It all" includes the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Sirach, the long form of Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees. Judith, Tobit. Do you agree?
But I think that you probably mean something different by the word "accept" than I do. I accept that a letter written by Paul was written by Paul, that it is Paul's mind that is writing what is Paul's opinion, that Paul was inspired by God to write it, but that it is not dictated by God. I accept that God inspired to Church to choose certain ancient writings as Scripture. I don't accept that Scripture is an oracle above all other authority. And I do not accept the weird notion that every word in the Bible is of the same authority. The text itself TELLS YOU that is not so. The text makes a POINT of identifying when God is speaking directly, and those are the most authoritative part of the Bible.
SO, for example, where Jesus says that NOTHING a man eats makes him unclear, and where the Holy Spirit shows Peter theretofore unclean food three times, and three times admonishes Peter NOT TO call unclean what God has made clean, what that MEANS is that God made all foods clean.
So, when in Acts, the Council of Jerusalem, the Apostles, pronounce certain foods (blood products and food strangled or offered to idols) as off limits, that's those men making a human rule for the church of their time, which men can - and did - properly later change, because God's rule is directly stated: ALL food is clean for men. So it is. Men cannot undo that. And they DID not undo that at the Council of Jerusalem. It was not GOD ruling certain foods off limits, it was men - Apostles - doing it for political reasons pertaining to what men - mostly Jewish men - would or could accept.
Blood is a staple food of various parts of the world. And Blood Sausage is perfectly legitimate food, according to God - Jesus made ALL food clean, as in all - not all except what some Apostles said. Apostles do not have the authority to overrule God, and just because Apostles are recorded in the Bible, or wrote parts of the Bible, does NOT mean that what Apostles say in the Bible overrules the parts of the Bible where God says something directly that the Apostle later overrules. Apostles cannot overrule God.
Quick, what are men judged on, deeds or beliefs? Jesus said deeds. Paul seems to say beliefs. So, who trumps? Jesus, obviously, because he's God. "But Paul was inspired by God!" Yes, but neverthless God speaking directly is of higher authority than a man inspired by God. Where there is conflict and contradiction, which there is, then what God said out of his own mouth trumps what a man inspired by God wrote from his own inspired head. This is obvious.
(3) If any of it is true, then it's all true. If any of it is false then all of it's false.
A. If this were so, then it's all false. Jesus made all foods clean, and the Holy Spirit repeated that three times. But the Council of Jerusalem said some foods are not - blood-based foods being the most important (blood is the staple protein source in certain ancient cultures that live in difficult environments). There's a straight up conflict. By your standard, therefore, I may as well toss my Bible in the trash, because it's all false.
But I say "No, the Bible identifies within itself the lesser and greater authorities. It always identifies when God speaks, and it identifies to whom God speaks. When Jesus makes all foods clean, and the Holy Spirit shows a sheet full of unclean food and tells Peter to eat three times - that's God. The Council of Jerusalem is men. God trumps men. So the Bible contradicts itself, but it contains within it the key whereby the moral truths that God is seeking to impart are conveyed.
So, for example, when Genesis tells me that God makes men and animals nephesh - souls - that utterly wipes out all of the various arguments that anybody wants to raise to the contrary.
Summation: I've answered your questions. We do not see things the same way, and proceed from different fundamental beliefs about things. These beliefs are irreconcilable. You have spoken the truth when you have said that there is no point in going on. We cannot agree on anything important, because we use words differently and we define them differently, and we are both absolutely certain that we're right.
All we can do, then, is fight, and that is bothersome. So let's not.
