Transcription
Hey everyone, this is Saion's channel, and I was even going to make the video here, but look at this craziness, I can't take it anymore. Hey production, what kind of craziness was this? It's a mess, chaos, everyone. Look at the confusion, everything is crooked here. Even the costume people, look, they put it on me, dressed me with things inside out, everything is wrong. I asked for things, but look, reading the wrong book, the book is upside down. What craziness. What is this here? At least you have a dictionary. A dictionary to show these people what is right, what is wrong. But look, for you to see, besides this mess this table is in, a craziness, for you to see like this, I say: "Look, everyone, for us to make videos correctly, we always have to see, right, consult good books, who is the best preacher." Can you give me a tip for a good preacher? Look what they brought me, look at the good preacher. Can you believe this? And then, what happens? I said: "Look, we have to do things right." And then, "right," people confused it and said it has to be "sertão" (backcountry). And then, if the preacher is this big, what do they bring me? A hat from the sertão. Look, look at the craziness, right? Then when I got angry and confused. So, where is the right thing? Then they brought what? The hat from the sertão. Can you believe this? I can't stand Saion's channel production anymore. Just today, when I was going to talk about what is right, about what inerrancy is. Ah, what is the difference between right and wrong, such a confusion, you know? And look, this is such a big mess that I don't even know if it can be fixed, but I think the only way is for us to maybe, look, fix it. Let me see. Like this. Hmm. Phew, everyone. I think a miracle happened here. Finally, things got sorted out. Now I've woken up here. I don't know if it was production, if something happened, but things got straightened out here. That's right. You saw clearly that when things are wrong, it's very different from what is right, right? And today we're going to discuss this issue. There's a whole conversation, right? When we talk about faith, about theology, about the Bible, right, there's an expression that appears for people who like to study a little more, right, an expression called inerrancy. What is inerrancy? Often along with the word infallibility, right, it concerns that thing, right, which in a theological context is often applied to the trust people have in the biblical text. That is, what are we talking about here? We're talking about a document free from errors. Then when we start talking about this, we think, but is that really how it is? So let's first talk about why we think about something with or without error? We first start from the premise of a minimum reference of objectivity, right? We start from a minimum reference of what has correspondence with reality, what is at least verifiable in some way. And then when we think about this, right, scholars will even talk about theories of truth, etc., but, putting this in a clearer and simpler way for anyone to understand, we say the following: what is reliable, what is a reference on which we base ourselves and that we can be sure is something trustworthy. It's even interesting, right? Because when we think about truth, we sometimes think about a formal correspondence, about something that has to do with verification, right, either empirical or abstract in nature, right, as happens in various scientific procedures. But it's interesting that in Hebrew, for example, the word emet, truth, has something very interesting, right? It's linked to a root, an ancient Hebrew root that has to do with where the word amen comes from, right? It has to do with something that is what I can rest on, I can put my feet, I can stand firm on, right? >> [snoring] >> So, uh, in other words, my reference is legitimate, reliable, substantial. So when we think about this, we see the multiplicity of discourses today, back and forth, trying to tell us what is reliable, what is not reliable, right? What should be legitimized or delegitimized. So sometimes you'll hear a video, a class, a lecture, or a book, sometimes you see that it's either on a collision course with a proposal or it's in a reference of affirmation of what is said. So when we think of inerrancy, that which corresponds to truth, that which is free from error, right? And it's even interesting, it's reminding me here of a word Jesus said, right, in Matthew 22, when he touches on this subject and confronts some religious people of his time, right, we see this happening many times in the Gospels. And he says a very strong phrase, right, when he confronts some religious people from Jerusalem here, specifically the Sadducees, he says to them, Jesus answered: "You are mistaken, you are deceived because you do not know the Scriptures, nor the power of God." So, the way Jesus speaks to them, you are in error, in deception. So the question is: how does this thing of something inerrant, reliable, infallible, on which I can place my trust, work out? Looking at people's reality, look at this interesting thing. What do I have, Saion, what have you seen in the lives of what certain people present in their journey, in their trajectory? Look, the first concept of infallible inerrancy that I've ever seen in my life is a subjective individual concept. There are people who are so far from any possibility of self-criticism that they don't care about any kind of argumentation, reference, or evidence, they are so closed in on themselves that I discovered that these people consider themselves inerrant. Moreover, all legitimacy depends exclusively on them. Their experience is absolute. They are not even shaken because someone presented a different argument. They will never read anything, hear anything different from what they think. It's generally that monolithic thinking, right? The person is self-sufficient and places themselves in this condition, meaning, ultimately, the reference on which the person bases themselves is only themselves. We also have other possibilities for people to deal with what is indisputable for them. There are people, for example, who do the following, they are hostages of the system. It's like a hummingbird that is always, right, buzzing around, kissing here and there what's around. So when a trend emerges, when a way of being, of thinking emerges, the person simply doesn't question it, they'll say: "This is how it's done today, it's this way." So they are kind of hostages, right? German scholars liked to call something "zeitgeist," the spirit of the times. And you go and say: "Look, I think what they're doing today isn't very good. Look, this trend that emerged doesn't seem very good. It's going to be a difficult conversation, because the person understands that the social order, the aquarium in which they are inserted, is an indisputable reference. Now, look at this interesting thing, there are people who go in another direction. They understand that the indisputable, infallible, unquestionable reference, which deserves all consideration, is only tradition. Tradition is that collection we have accumulated of references from a certain cultural and religious environment. And the person says: "No, look, in my tradition, we understand it this way. You've never investigated, you haven't gone after the sources, you haven't thought for yourself, you haven't compared slightly different ideas, you haven't seen why tradition was established, if it has a basis, if it's mistaken, if it's..." So in many religious environments, this happens. The person does something because it's always been done that way. Tradition is the ultimate word, the final word. Look at this interesting thing. Not always individually, not always socially, not always traditionally, there is another concept that exists, and that is the institutional concept. That is, it's not even tradition. The person belongs to a religious environment, whatever it may be. And there are various elements in this direction, where it is affirmed that the institution itself, it, properly speaking, cannot be questioned. And it is even affirmed that that institution, especially in the case of a religious institution, is unquestionable and cannot fail, meaning, in practice, it is inerrant. So, we will ask who is truly without error, trustworthy, absolutely reliable, and on which we can place all our conviction, hope, and, let's say, base ourselves on it. You can choose the individual, society, tradition, the institution. And more modernly, look, in the last 200 years, especially in the Western world, we have a final reference considered by many as unquestionable, which is the power of reason. Right, from the emergence of rationalism, more specifically in the Enlightenment era, the idea is that all reality corresponds to the rational and that our reason, our capacity, let's say, to harmonize, concatenate, and establish the exercise of reason's free will in reading reality, is sufficient and absolute. So, for a certain time, many philosophical schools said: "What reason cannot explain and encompass, is not even worth discussing." And then what happens? Contemporary philosophy begins to say: "Wait a minute, it's not possible. There's a lot in human experience that surpasses reason, that goes beyond it, right? There are many elements, right? From Blaise Pascal, right? That the heart has reasons that reason does not know, but there are many people who work with a concept of dogmatic reason. Nothing outside the rational element can be considered a reference on which we can truly base ourselves and take seriously for our lives. So, how does this story work out? Well, you see that there are several types of inerrancy. The proposal we find in the first reference of the journey of Jesus' first disciples, let's say, of the root faith community, is a curious reference that we can more or less get an idea of when we read some texts, for example, which I will share with you. Second Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16, Paul writing to his disciple Timothy, he says, referring to the scriptures they knew, which was exactly the Old Testament, he says: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." And further on, we will read the text from the second letter of Peter, chapter one. When we read verse 20, the Bible says: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." See? So we look at, let's say, the word that scripture itself gives about itself, saying, look, from the Old Testament, thus says the Lord, this word is faithful and worthy of all acceptance. All scripture is inspired, the prophecies were not given by human will. This is the self-testimony that scripture presents to us. And Jesus himself, when he does anything, when he explains, he bases himself by saying "what is written" (hegraphtai), right? That is, what is written, referring to sacred scripture. So, the whole context suggests to us, leads us in the direction that the other possibility of an alternative to define, organize, and ground life is Sacred Scripture with its infallible, inerrant, reliable, trustworthy proposal, on which we place our expectation in its writings that ground our faith. Then someone says: "But Saion, doesn't the Bible have a lot of strange things in it?" So I was even looking here, right? We'll see, for example, you read Exodus, chapter 12, right? And see what is written there when the Israelites leave Egypt. Just to show an example, there are several that we could comment on quite a bit here, right? And the text says there in Exodus 12:40, now, the period that the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years, okay? 430. When we open Acts, chapter 7, verse 6, what do we discover? We discover that the text of Acts of the Apostles brings us the following information, right? It says that God had told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land and be mistreated for 400 years. 430 or 400. Because of passages like these, many people have said: "Look, I don't think the Bible is that reliable. It seems to have many errors indeed. And how do we understand this?" So let's go to understand some fundamental things. First, when we say that the Bible is error-free, it doesn't mean that there are no technical issues, certain elements that are, for example, out of the question regarding a text that is reliable. For example, if a biblical author is a simple person, as you have some letters in the New Testament, and he writes in a somewhat rudimentary way and the grammar isn't always perfect, that doesn't mean the text is compromised. It simply means that you have to understand the context in which it appears. This is understood within the literary relevance of that text. So, what we are trying to say when we speak of this reliability is that the biblical text was not written with the intention, with the disposition to deceive, to mislead people, as if it were a kind of project to, let's say, manipulate people, as happens in many environments, including religious ones. So, first of all, we will say the following: that the teaching regarding our relationship with God, with our neighbor, about redemption, about salvation, about what we essentially call theology, of course, the Bible deserves all trust. It is considered by all Christian tradition, even with its variations, the greatest revelation of God to us. The Judeo-Christian revelation, we can say. Now someone says: "But then S, does that mean that everything we look at in the Bible, in other matters concerning history, geography, can we consider this text to be inerrant, right?" So, certainly the authors did not write with the intention of deceiving. It's just that sometimes we read a text and we get confused because a place is called one name in the Bible, and then at another time it has another name. A historical description X doesn't meet, let's say, the modern view of putting the chronology the way we expect. There is a contextual element, there is a cultural element. So when people approach the Bible with today's mindset, without understanding the historical, linguistic, cultural context, they get confused. So they see errors where there are none. And the other issue is that you need to understand the nature of the literature and the author's purpose. For example, we didn't cite the text here, one says 430, another says 400. Why are they different? Because the text of Exodus is presenting a narrative that intends to give details, right? So it says: "Look, the period the people stayed was 430 years." The other text in Acts 7 is giving a general reference, saying: "Look, the people stayed in Egypt for about 400 years." We do this, right? Sometimes when you talk to a friend, they say: "Ah, did you live in that city? How long did you live there?" "I lived there for about 5 years." You don't say: "I lived there for 5 years, 1 month, 15 days, 2 hours, and 20 minutes." Nobody says that. So it depends on the purpose of the text itself. [snoring] And of course, right, we won't expect the biblical text to provide. For example, once an individual was arguing with me, saying that if pi, right, the mathematical pi, the relationship between the circumference's length and the radius, right, and the circumference, if it's not exactly 3.14, then it means the Bible is not the word of God. I mean, that makes no sense at all, right? These are absolutely irrelevant, unnecessary things. And when you understand the context, understand the literary element, know who is speaking and you have a perspective that allows you to understand what seems to be an insoluble discrepancy, which is sometimes even distinct from the other by the author's intention, which goes beyond a mere superficial analysis. So in this sense, the clear conviction is that the scriptures are reliable, they are inerrant in the sense of being the divine word, of being a reference for the community of faith, and of being the basis on which we can confidently rely for the direction of our lives. A very big difficulty that exists is not exactly in scripture, but in knowing and understanding the text and especially knowing how to interpret this text, sometimes looking at what the text is saying, when it happened, what was the reason, who said it, why they said it, and how this applies to what is the teaching of God for our lives in general. And to do this, a more in-depth, adequate study is necessary, because otherwise, yes, you will see worse than what you saw here, right? Of all sorts of things done from one side to the other in the name of the Bible, which is indeed a trustworthy book, which deserves trust and deserves the reference [clears throat] that it has. Because what are the other options? Let's remember. Is our reason capable of answering everything, or does society define it? Or am I capable of looking at all reality, or do I need to transfer this inerrancy to tradition, or do I prefer to place it in an institution? In your opinion, in your mind, in your studies, in your reflection, what is the reference on which you place your life, your faith, and your heart? Put it in the comments, and let's always talk, moving away from so much that is wrong, so much confusion, always in a good conversation with your friend Saon. M.