More on the comments

OK, another response to one of my commenters. In a recent post I got on the case of the United Church of Christ for their sanctioning gay marriage and their statement that “God is still speaking,” meaning that the Bible is not the sole source of divine instruction, and that Scripture must be interpreted in today’s context.

I said that the statement borders on heresy.
My commenter said:

To say that the Bible is the ONLY source of divine instruction is not supportable. I would like to know where the Bible itself says that. Maybe the Bible is all truth but that doesn't mean there is no truth anywhere else.

OK, I’ll start out by saying that I was pretty peeved when I wrote that, so perhaps heresy was the wrong word. Perhaps it wasn’t. Let me clarify the position I was trying to make.

It is true that there is truth in the world apart from the Bible (Rom 1:20), as God created the world, and according to the Bible God is Truth, and so there must be truth in the world.

However we do not interpret the Bible through our experiences, but the opposite. As a Christian, one must believe God’s word to be true and infallible (and if you don’t believe that I can support that statement), and as God’s word is truth in and of itself, all that we see and experience must be subject to Scripture (1 Tim 3:16-17). For there is plenty of un-truth out in the world, and really, how do you know what is true and what is not?

(Note: there are also facts, which are scientifically proven. Which is different from Truth. But that’s also another discussion).

Also, it would be prudent to say that there cannot be any addition to Scripture at this time, as the writers are thought to almost all have had direct contact with Jesus (or God himself in the Old Testament). Also see Rev 22:18-19.

Otherwise I think I said it well enough in my post that

Again, the thinking is wrong here that we should interpret the Bible in today's context. When we interpret scripture, we must take it in the context in which it was given. This is why Christian scholarship is so important. We want leaders and pastors who have been instructed to read the original Greek and Hebrew and understand the times in which the Apostles and Prophets were living and what their messages meant to the people of the time. Only then, once you understand what they were trying to say, then you try to relate that to today's context.

You don’t translate something in Chinese into English and then say that you understand completely what they are talking about. Different languages say things in different ways, and from different contexts. Interpreting them using your own experience will often lead you astray.