Pity the fool who tampers with God’s word. In addition to Prov. 30 and Rev. 22, see the warning of Moses to Israel in Deut. 4:2, which give us the idea.

The bible is narrative. It’s the story of god renewing annrestoring creation through his live of man and his coming to earth in the flesh to suffer with us. We could talk about the contradictions in the two creation stories in genesis 1 and 2, we can talk about the fact that Moses didn’t write the first five books of the bible, even though the bible says he did, (or really how there are multiple authors of sections of those books). We could discuss the glaring mathmatical and scientific errors in the bible (in one book in the old testament, the measurements of a circle are defined where pi equals 3… If it was “inerrant” why would go do poor math) or how each of te four gospels tells stories in different chronological orders.

But that’s not the point. I don’t trust in the bible. I trust in god and use the bible as his tool to immerse me in his story, to let te spirit guide me through my reading to shape me and my community into the image of Christ. The bible isn’t a science book, it isn’t a fantasy novel, it’s the story of the people of god, given so that those that desire to be faithful can see what god has done and envision what he’s doing.

And don’t fall into the trap of reading every verse that talks about the “word” as meaning the bible or scripture. There’s a really nice section of the gospel of John… The introduction actually, that talks about the word in a much broader sense.

Paul’s epistles were already being circulated as inspired guidelines by the time 2 Timothy, his last work, was written (Col. 4:16; 1 Thes. 5:27). Peter even went so far as to call his writing “Scripture” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). If Peter regarded Paul’s work as inspired, I think we should too.

Regarding your quibble over Revelation 22, see Proverbs 30:5-6.

Your position that the Bible cannot be understood basically shakes the entire principle of biblical authority. Many people–not just those in the Restoration Movement–would take issue with what you are implying.

Paul expected believers to follow his “ways” the same way in “every church” (1 Cor. 4:16-17).

Also, why would Paul call curses down upon those who would bring “another gospel” if his gospel was impossible to understand? (Gal. 1:8-10).

But I’m repeating myself. If you had taken the time to study the references I listed before with an open heart, you would not be making these points.

And the revelation passage that you cited (WhiCh I can only assume is the “not adding or taking away anything from this book” passage) is not referring to the entire bible. It’s referring to the individual book of revelation, not the entire cannonized bible (which, again didn’t exist wen revelation was written).

That’s part of the problem with many churches of Christ, and the reason this article was written. ANYONE can pull a scripture to prooftext their worldview. In fact, many dis it to justify slavery, segregation, and many other forms of oppression. The command, example, necessary inference hermenuetic as well as the “speak where the bible speaks” hermenuetic are faulty. They lead to division rather than unity, and the underlying premise behind them, that any one can read the bible without bias and come to the same exact conclusions is ridiculous. Scripture, since the beginning of Jewish faith, is intended to be read and discerned in community. And it must be interpreted, because it’s been translated multiple times and was written 2000+ years ago. Humanity has changed and has a completely different understandig of words and concepts, and when we try to read an ancient document with modem eyes, without any concept as to the worldview and cultural context of those in the first century, were bound to get some stuff really badly wrong.

That being said, the restoration movement wasn’t always fundamentalist in the sense that thy are unwilling to conceed they could e wrong about their (nonbiblical) understanding of inerrancy. And putting all their emphasis on scriptural knowledge about corporate worship than being shaped into disciples.

When I first read the headline, I thought it was going to be a story of the Church working with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Jews because I foolishly thought that “Christians” basically were of the same faith. Don’t we all believe that salvation is through Jesus, hence the term Christian? So really we aren’t working with other faiths just other believers.

Kind od silly I know, but nobody said anything about that point.