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Importance of the Bible in the life of a Christian
Importance of the bible in christianity
Importance of the Bible in the life of a Christian
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Prashant Kumar
Hodge Essay
Protestants believe that the scriptures should be held above all else when it comes to Christianity. The “word” that is found in these scriptures is considered to be the rule of faith and practice. Hodge uses the example from the 39 articles in the Church of England that says scriptures contain everything necessary for salvation. This example is used by Hodge to add to his argument the importance of scripture. One of the major themes of Hodge’s work is that the Protestants believe that God is the inspiration for scriptures. The Protestants also believe that scripture tells us exactly what we need to know. The introduction to the text defines us three things that Protestants believes. The first is that they believe that Scriptures are the word of god and were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, secondly the scriptures contain supernatural revelations about God, and lastly the scriptures can be understood by the people without an interpreter or mediator.
The next part of the text focuses on the Protestant view on canonization. Romanists have a very different beliefs of what should be canonized compared to the Protestants. Protestants mainly recognize the books that involve Christ and the apostles. Protestants recognize these books as the word of God. Protestants also believe that many books in the Old Testament are known as the word of god according to the Holy Spirit. Protestants also canonize books that apostles viewed as sacred to Jews. Protestants also reject all of apocryphal books.
One of the major points stressed by Hodge in this essay is that the scriptures are infallible because they were written by the inspiration of God and the Holy Ghost. Hodge begins to describe the attri...
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...hat the inspiration of the inspiration of scriptures extends to its words. Christ says that scriptures cannot be broken. Christ and the apostles argued using the words of scriptures. The point of this argument that Hodge is making is that the scriptures need to be taken word for word.
The doctrine of Plenary Inspiration is a doctrine that says that all of a canon is inspired by the Holy Spirit not just certain parts like the Protestants believe. The church agrees with this doctrine saying that entire canons should be considered inspired by God and not just ones that are picked by the Protestants.
Hodge makes a great argument for the Protestants throughout this essay as he describes the importance and the origins of the scriptures. He backs up his argeuement by talking about how the Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures and communicates through the Apostles.
It is the reader and his or her interpretive community who attempts to impose a unified reading on a given text. Such readers may, and probably will, claim that the unity they find is in the text, but this claim is only a mask for the creative process actually going on. Even the most carefully designed text can not be unified; only the reader's attempted taming of it. Therefore, an attempt to use seams and shifts in the biblical text to discover its textual precursors is based on a fundamentally faulty assumption that one might recover a stage of the text that lacked such fractures (Carr 23-4).
At the beginning of this semester we focused on hermeneutics and the reader’s personal interpretations and biases when reading a text. The Protestant bias is one bias that anyone who grows up in a western culture is likely to have. A protestant bias is a bias one can have regardless if they are actually a protestant. A protestant bias is a bias comes from the fact that the majority of westerners are most familiar with and base their assumptions about scripture on one particular scripture -- the Christian Bible.
Davidson, Stibbs, and Kevan The New Bible Commentary W M B WM B Eerdmands publishing company Copyright June 1965
The history of Christianity throughout the world encompasses a significant number of differing theological interpretations. These theological differences gave way to many movements that are a part of the transcending history of the Christian Faith. A sector of these theologically driven movements is the Protestant reform. As a movement, Protestant Reform represents the protest of the traditionally widely practiced religion of the time which was Catholicism. There are four different movements that are a part of the Protestant reform. Each harbors its own identity in that they all seek to establish the church according to the New Testament. Lead by Martin Luther, the Lutheran movement unintentionally began the reformation. “The Reformation of Martin Luther was primarily a movement of doctrinal and theological reform.” (Steinmetz 1979) The impact that Martin Luther had on movements the protestant ideals that followed is prevalent. Although each of these four movements do not agree in their entirety they are interconnected by their yearning to reform the practice of Christianity. In an attempt to express the relevance of the protestant movement to the ascension of the Christian faith, particularly the Protestant church, the explication of each movement is imperative.
"EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 & 2." EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Church History in Plain Language is written by Bruce L. Shelley. This work focuses on the history of Christianity from 6 B.C. to the current period. It covers some of Christianity’s greatest events, theologians, and the various subsection of Christianity. Other than the events leading up to the death of Jesus, I had very little knowledge of Christianity’s history. After reading through the book, I have gained understanding on the Christian Councils, scholasticism, Christendom, and modern trends of Christianity.
The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1995. Print. (BS195 .C66 1995)
In this first chapter, I will trace what gave rise to Luther’s Small Catechism, with special attention to how it developed as
Similarly, in the 16thcentury the ‘Reformation in Europe’ led to more divisions. Hence, today there are five main Christian Variants, which include Anglican, closely linked to the Church of England, emphasises on scripture, reason and tradition in relation to beliefs and practices. The Catholic Church which follows several important Doctrines, including the Doctrine of Apostolic Succession, Doctrine of Immaculate Conception, and t...
Answering these questions is the purpose of this essay. I begin by arguing that the Bible cannot be adequately understood independent of its historical context. I concede later that historical context alone however is insufficient, for the Bible is a living-breathing document as relevant to us today as it was the day it was scribed. I conclude we need both testimonies of God at work to fully appreciate how the Bible speaks to us.
The troubles they had to face to save their faith or Christianity would have faced a serious decline were it not for their unselfish, greedy and spiritual hunger. The reformers were brilliant elite and deep spiritual men and through this reformation process another branch of Christianity sprout “Protestantism”. Reformation had its source background during the period of...
relevant to life, such as do not kill and do not steal. The bible also
Scripture holds a prominent role in the sermon. In 2 Timothy 4:2, it states to “preach the word in season and out of season”. The Greek word for preach is ‘Kerusso’. It means to be a herald (proclaim) and to preach (announce) a message publicly and with conviction (persuasion). In this verse, Paul gave Timothy and the others ministers a charge and a commission to preach the Word. In order to be an effective preacher, the Word of God must be the foundation. In 2 Timothy 3:16, it states that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. In other words, the Word of God was written by man, God-breathed and divinely inspired. The Scripture is important because it creates an argument or appeal that is persuading the audience to do something. The substance of our preaching must come from the Bible because the Bible comes from God. As messenger and ambassadors of God, we are obligated to speak the mind and thoughts of God.