I agree!! Words like Submit are so loaded in English, and have negative emotional connotations, but perhaps hypotasso, or whatever in Greek, had a slightly different meaning and emotional connotations.

Loved your distinctions between believing in divine inspiration, and a literal reading of Scripture!

Please allow me to post my version of inerrancy that I wrote in a different blog when faced with that same dilemma:

I think that inerrancy for me is that the Bible is correct, IF read in the correct context. Please accept these as just my humble opinions and what I believe and not meant at all to offend in any way those that believe in a more literal interpretation of the Bible.

Say if someone were to say to you “that dog don’t hunt” to you after you’ve suggested an idea. If you’re not from the Southern US, you may read that as saying “that dog over there doesn’t do hunting well” and not be able to figure out why that person just said that complete non sequitor to you. If you are from the south, then you read that completely differently – it is a colloquial saying meaning “that’s never going to happen”…and you get exactly why they said that to you.

The Bible also has cultural context. If I say “One fish, two fish”…if you’re American between the ages of 5 and 70-ish, you will likely answer “Red fish, blue fish”. That is cultural context. If you were to say the same thing to a Russian or Chinese, they would stare at you blankly (or possibly say “three fish, four fish”) and not understand any context for those words. But we as Americans sometimes can’t imagine anyone not knowing about Dr. Seuss and would be amazed if the other person didn’t respond appropriately.

If we were to be writing the Bible, we would likely fill it with all sorts of colloquial sayings and cultural context that 2000 years from now, people would have to “interpret” in order to understand. I sometimes giggle to think about writing something about the camel getting through the eye of the needle as “that camel don’t hunt” and imagining someone 2000 years from now creating a schism over whether camels really ought not to be taken on hunting expeditions.

For me, it’s not errors as much as having to really read it with an eye for these kinds of cultural slip-ups. While the meaning behind the words is divinely inspired, a human being actually penned the words and we, for all our divine grace, are human after all.

We also must remember that the Bible is TRANSLATED. Not every word in the original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic has a direct and perfect translation into English. Unless you have a Greek expert in your back pocket (like my daughter is for me), it’s almost impossible to just read it on its face and know what the writer actually intended for us to understand from their words. While translators try to pick the “closest” or “best” word from a variety of possible meanings, the translators themselves are also Not-God and will have to eeny-meeny-miney-moe some things because there is just not always a simple/easy/direct translation.

All these things combined makes the Bible we read today impossible to be inerrant (IMHO) from our English, American cultural, 2000 years in the future point of view without study, interpretation and a lot of discernment. The truth is in the Scriptures and it is without error…period…but gleaning that out of the document is not always just a matter of reading “that dog don’t hunt”. For me, there is so much depth and meaning and culture that has to be sifted through in order to get to the “meat” of the passage.

Tanya, thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I am working out my feelings on this, in particular the fact that I find it almost impossible to believe that rude, dismissive sounding, offensive passages like 1 Cor 14 34-38 could have been inspired by God.

I hope whatever conclusion I come to in my wrestling with the version of inerrancy which I have been taught will be productive of joy, comfort, peace and blessing.

Those who believe in inerrancy have an easier time as Christians, I know. I guess I need to explore the Open Evangelical position, since I am moving beyond “the verbal dictation” position.

Compare Jesus' words:
'If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.' Matthew 18:6

For this and other reasons, I think the 'gentle Jesus' / 'harsh Paul' is a false dichotomy.

I agree with Ben… We need to be very careful. Just because people have used the words of Paul for abuse, does not mean that we can dismiss them so readily or write them off as homophobic or misogynistic. It sounds like that's what you are doing in this post, which is a real shame.

I was also going to reference Mark 7, where Jesus says that what makes someone 'unclean' is what's inside them, and lists 'porneia' as one of those things. The word 'porneia' shoudl be understood as including all the sexual sins listed in Leviticus 18 (prohibiting homosexual sex, adultery etc), which he then contrasts with the food laws which don't make someone unclean. He was overturning the food laws (which is reiterated in Acts with Peter's vision of the unclean foods) but not other laws. Jesus reaffirmed marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman (even though polygamy was widely accepted) in Matthew 19. He was not afraid to confront the norms of his culture and society – and yet he didn't overturn those laws that prohibit homosexual sex.

I think you've also misrepresented Paul somewhat. I think there's a good case for saying that Paul was actually more inclusive of women and their ministry than Jesus was – not less. Throughout his ministry he talks of women as his co-workers (euodia and syntiche for example); he is full of praise for Priscilla and Aquila, always referring to Priscilla first; praises Junia as outstanding among the apostles; tells Timothy that he owes his Christian understanding entirely to two women (his mother and grandmother). This is remarkable in a context where women were not treated as equals. Paul is actually incredibly feminist.

I know you were saying, 'the Jesus I know would have done xxx and not agreed with xxx'. I think it is tempting to say that, but we need to be careful of seeing through the lenses of our own personality and culture and projecting those onto Jesus. (Jesus talked a LOT about hell and judgement, for example!) The other reason I think we have to take Paul's words seriously – all of them – is because Peter did. (see 2 Peter, as Ben said). Peter was not hesitant in declaring Paul's words to be scripture – and Peter really DID know Jesus and had a very good chance of saying what Jesus would or would not have 'approved of'.

The liberal way of interpreting the Bible has been to presume that anything that we don't like the sound of must not have been inspired, and I hear a bit of that tendency in your analysis. I think this is unwise and unnecessary, since when we examine the texts fairly and in harmony we can see a great unity, though these issues are complex. I'd recommend 'The Gender Agenda' as an exploration of both sides of the women in ministry debate – particualrly as I think Lis Goddard makes an excellent case for egailtarianism!

I'm aware that I'm going quite strong here, but I thnk it is a real shame that so many evangelicals are saying things similar to you in terms of pitting Paul against Jesus. I think there is another way, and rather than the temptation to ignore or dismiss those hard scriptures, I would urge you to wrestle with them, read good commentaries, and books like Lis Goddard's, and come to a greater understanding of how it all fits together. This is what I have sought to do, and I've found it to be most rewarding.

Blessings – your friend, Tanya xx

Anyway, any twisted scripture is appalling & I can't blame you for being sensitive since authority has been abused in so many ways. I'd just be careful about babies and bathwater, because if you're reading Paul and Jesus correctly, they're both in harmony.

Thanks for posting sister!

DJV, thanks much for sharing your poem with me. What a rich and interesting wordplay on Bound–and then, finally unbound. I liked it 🙂

Thanks, Sandra. I actually like Paul a lot too, and enjoy reading him–but sometimes feel appalled at the hurt and harm caused by fanatical interpretation of some sentences in his letters!

Bound by my limits.
By my mind and by my body.
Bound to the mortgage,
And bound by my homelessness;

Bound by too much work,
Bound by unemployment;
Bound by my emotions,
Bound by my indifference;

Caught, snared, entangled, trapped.
Bound!
Bound to say………..
No!

No more to this and
No more to that;
No more to more and
No more to less.

No more expectations and
No more disappointments;
Bound.
Bound to lose!

Found bound and bought bound,
Freed by truth, let loose.
By compassion, by Blood.
By the Cross, by the grave;

Unbound by the unbounded,
Freedom heaven sent;
Life, Rich, Full Bodied;
Bound to be;
Homeward Bound.