No problem and thanks for your thoughtful response! It definitely gets the neurons firing.Thanks for the reply (hope this harkens to discussions boards from seminary).
I appreciate the clarity of your three options. It helps me see exactly where our paths diverge.
Regarding the Matthew and Mark contradiction, I actually see those as two sides of the same coin rather than a logical failure. In one, Jesus warns against false neutrality (Matthew), and in the other, he warns against religious gatekeeping (Mark). To me, a perfect revelation would include both of those nuances because life is nuanced.
As for the Amalekites, I agree that's a heavy and difficult text. Where you see a moral error, I see a difficult look at divine judgment. If I believe God is the author of life, I have to grapple with the fact that His justice might look different and more severe than my own, yet still perfect.
The reason I can’t land on your Option 1 is that if I believe humans introduced errors into the core teachings/narratives, I lose any objective way to know who God actually is. I'd be left picking and choosing based on my own modern biases.
My question for you is if we assume for a moment that a perfect God exists, wouldn't he be capable of ensuring his message remained inerrant despite the human hands involved? Or do you think the human element automatically guarantees error?
I can see where you are coming from with the Matthew and Mark passages, but I would posit that if we are viewing the passages exegetically, the conflict gets more pronounced, not less so. I am happy to discuss this, but I am more interested in your response to the 1 Samuel passage.
If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that that the genocide was divinely condoned and his instruction was accurately recorded with that statement, as sometimes divine judgement is severe. If you feel like this is an inaccurate summary, let me know.
In doing this, it opens up a pandora's box. Mass killing children is ok, if God instructs it. Mass killing of women is divinely inspired, as long as God has asked for it. Genocide is just, as long as it has God told you to do it. Does this make the Palestinian genocide ok? Israeli political leaders have called Palestinains the people of Amalek multiple times throughout it, a direct reference to this exact passage. What about the genocide of the Jews by the Nazi's? What about Native Americans at the hands of white settlers? One can see exactly where this goes.
In short, accepting biblical inerrancy & infalliblity turns morality into a subjective matter, completely dependent on the whims of God. In the quest to make the biblical text objective truth, it has made morality subjective. God says do not kill, unless he tells you to kill every man, woman, child of an entire ethnic group. Oh, and their animals too. What use is a subjective morality?
The result is predictable, as we can clearly see what this has done presently in our current political climate as most evangelicals today enthusiastically cheer Israel as they conduct their genocide, root for ICE as they rip families apart, ethnically cleansing our domestic population, not to mention to bully the trans population. We don't see that level of support with any of the other Christian denominations that reject biblical inerrancy. This is a product of how they view the bible and morality.
Theological frameworks aside, if one disregards the data points that allow us to test for the validity of a specific claim and instead point to the collection of claims and the narrative they create, illustrating how that initial claim fits in, are we really ever testing for the validity of that specific claim? Or any of the other claims? It seems to me that contorting each piece to fit a preconceived idea or narrative results in avoiding a serious consideration of any of the alternatives.
To answer your question on philosophy, assuming God exists, is perfect, original sin as a doctrine is true, and humans have free will then yes, God's communication would also be subject to those things as long has he communicated through people. As such, the people wrote the various books that comprised the Bible (many years after the original transmission) introduced their own biases, ideas and preconceived notions into it, just like people have done for all of human history in every other text written.
This allows us to acknowledge realities like the person who started the oral tradition of 1 Samuel had a bronze age concept of morality where genocide was occasionally permissible, or Paul who had a first century understanding of morality, giving instructions to slaveowners on how they should treat their slaves instead of instructing the slaveowners to emancipate them. By and large we understand morality better than them, we have historical lessons they never had access to. We know the immense suffering and injustice genocide and slavery cause and know not to subject others to that. If the bible is infallible, then these things would still be theologically permissible today. What value is a theological framework that cannot even get basic morality right?
Does this require one to parse scripture to determine what is applicable to modern life and what isn't? Yes, and nearly everyone does it to some extent anyway, which is why you don't see evangelical churches accepting polygamists. Does parsing scripture introduce uncertainty? Absolutely. Could this result in people losing the truth? Yes, but that happens anyway. I would argue that some doctrines contribute to that more than others.
