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Notes -
Many Christians, including some of the more conservative ones, do not believe that every single word of the Bible is the literal word of God. On the contrary, the letters of Paul (for example) are the word of Paul — some of which Paul himself believes to have come from God, and some of which is explicitly given as “I didn’t get this from God but it seems like common sense.”
55% of American adults believe that the bible is inerrant, so that is the most common belief, and is usually taken as pretty important—Protestants tend to have a high view of scripture, and Catholics also affirm that the scriptures are infallible, I belief. (Officially speaking, of course. That doesn't mean every layman knows every thing.)
Ah, you're referring to 1 Corinthians 7:12.
Here's the passage:
I've seen some take this as talking about Jesus' own teachings on divorce, and still affirm that Paul is infallible. Some others think that Paul is fallible in that passages, since he recognizes it as from himself, even if he's infallible in general. In any case, Paul goes on to say at the end of the same chapter:
This reads to me as that it might be defending or affirming his authority, in some sense, at least. He does so more strongly in other places. Paul says in the same book (1 Cor 14:37),
In 2 Peter, it says
So there, at least, Paul's writings were considered to be scripture.
But 55% is barely better than half. And for those who consider it to have errors, I think you’d have to figure out what they don’t buy for the thing to make sense. 63% of Americans call themselves Christians, and 55% of Americans hold the Bible as inerrant. Which gives almost 10% who don’t. But “has errors can mean anything from very minor typographical errors to “oops we have the wrong books”.
I personally think the Jesus of history is best reflected by the Ebionites’ tradition, which would be a fairly strong “yes there are errors” thing. But then again, I don’t think anyone else would call Ebionites Christian in the modern sense.
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Thank you for your explanation of 1 Corinthians 7. I’d probably respect it more if it did make a distinction between inspiration and personal best judgment, but I can see how the text supports your interpretation. Agnostically speaking, I probably shouldn’t hold it against Paul in the event that he either truly always speaks with inspiration or honestly believes that he does.
I’m having trouble squaring some of the statistics in your link with broader statistics in the USA. In particular, their survey would have it that 71% of Americans, in 2021, believed that the Bible was the inspired word of God in some sense (even if it might contain errors). But in 2021, only 63% of Americans said they were Christian.
So is the discrepancy all made up of Jews and Muslims? Are there “unaffiliated” people who nevertheless believe the Bible to be inspired by God? It would be helpful to know how the responses in the American Bible Society survey split up by stated religious affiliation, honestly.
In any case, this certainly supports the idea that a large percentage of Christians think the Bible “has no errors” (even if many say some of it is “symbolic and not literal.”) Still, as an outsider, I think I’m still most inclined to define “Christian” to mean people who believe in the divinity of Christ. I don’t think that someone who believes that Paul believed in an imminent apocalypse and writes with reference to that view is somehow “not Christian” if they still think that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and will someday return to judge us all, for example.
To be clear, I gave two differing interpretations of 1 Corinthians 7 that could be consistent with asserting the infallibility of Paul in his letters.
As to the surveys, that's a good point. Here's another poll with a number higher than 63%, which is odd as well: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx
It's less clear in the options than the American Bible Society survey, but it does have a number higher.
I wonder if these have different sampling mechanisms, and ones unrepresentative of the general public?
Pew research appears to be depending on data from here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/religious-projections-appendix-a/ Gallup appears to be using telephone calls: https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/394616/220706ViewsofBible.pdf
American bible society also had theirs from online surveys, but its number was higher than Pew's, so it's not just surveys vs. telephone.
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