If intrinsic, then Scripture is the Word of God no matter whether anyone reads it or responds to it. If instrumental, then Scripture becomes the Word of God when God chooses to use it to generate an encounter with himself.
All holy books of humankind are working manuals to rectify our behavioral ethics, with our fellow human beings and with the resources of nature. The terminology of scriptures is differerent, thus misunderstanding can be pre-programmed. You have previously asked questions of the same root of inquiry; human religion and the scientitic method do not mix, like water and oil. Why? The scientific method can only work out repeating patterns (laws) of our world; the Hebrew Tanakh (Bible), the Greek Gospel (Evangelion) and the Arabic Qur'an (Hadith included) do all claim single events that are by no means accessible by scientific proof methods. Your pointing to intrinsics or instrumentality will be of no help for ethical behavior. Concerning the Greek Gospel: a meeting of early church fathers (~450) in a place that is today in Turkey has edited it. The valid edition claims that Jesus of Nazareth resurrected from the dead. You can only believe these reports or not.
It is difficult to answer this question. Personally if you consider it, but each person I guess will think in one or another way.
In reality, "inspired" word of other humans, is more truthful. And absolutely more verifiable!
I know that deeply religious people try to circumvent (or ignore, or excuse) the contradictions in their respective holy books, but many such contradictions exist. One of the sources of real evil, in this world, is from individuals who latch on tenaciously to one quote, or one concept, in isolation of the rest. I think it's very dangerous to be claiming "word of God," without careful qualification. Just stick with the word "inspired," and we're on more solid ground.
It is nothing but belief whether Quran or Bible or Bhagavad Gita or Ramayana or Mahabharatha or Bhagawata.
For me, my faith must determine the answer. If God is who and what He says He is then His Word must be taken in faith. The more I study the Bible the more I both understand and believe through faith in His word. I do not believe I can pick and choose the bits I should believe but accept God's word as His work. This is not 'blind faith' but conviction and an assurance of that conviction.
Sadly today many tend to use knowledge alone rather than allowing God to speak to us through His written word.
I therefore agree with Remi and Kelvin.
interesting question.... today seeing the interpretations of the sacred texts makes us see the clear difference between essence and instrumentalization.
I think it's worth watching this little social experiment that addresses this issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY4ahwE8l08
The continued reliance on old written texts to anchor spirituality in the 21st century is truly puzzling.
A brilliant cartoon from many years back springs to mind - the then apartheid South African government, led by Botha, was under pressure to let go of apartheid, and Botha gave a convoluted speech basically turning down reform.
The cartoon showed him with a speech bubble above his head containing his speech, but the speech text itself, inside the bubble, was shaped as the word 'NO' – an utterly brilliant illustration of the reality within the speech.
Once in a while, as in this cartoon, we catch glimpses of a higher-D language that would be far more capable, less limited and less limiting than all of our paltry one-dimensional languages.
If God ever wrote in a human language, it would be much like trying to depict our 3-D Earth in a lower dimensional 1-D line segment. Actually, according to religion itself, it would be far worse - the Earth is 3-D but God is unanimously depicted as infinite-D. Writing anything in 1-D would so totally degrade any godlike thoughts that there would be, in the end, precious little godly content left.
Whenever you’d try to use language to express objects or concepts or processes not grounded in human experience, such as features emergent within complex environments – let alone what a true Godhead would experience - human language inherently fails
To illustrate such environment-contingent limitations, imagine trying to describe the simple color changes of a 12-D hypercube (a 'dodekeract') whereby every inner and outer inner side would not only be of a different hue, but also would result from a combination of all the other sides' colors according to some pre-established scheme. Describing such simple changes cannot be done by a non-mathematical language. A matrix-like language is called for—a multi-dimensional, multi-channel descriptor of a complex, inter-dependent reality that features all kinds of inter-related dependencies with forward, backward, sideways, and hierarchical feedback loops.
Assuming that God speaks in human language is simply the usual mindless anthropomorphism, a sharp and petty downgrading of Godhood.
Dear Kirk, I think the differentiation makes no sense. All scriptures finally are "Gods Word" in "Human words", because there is no "Divine Language" or if there is such thing, to understand it we have to translate it into human language. To differentiate an instrumental from an intrinsic makes no sense, because all forms of communications finally want to come from a sender to an receiver with the end that the receiver understands something, if not, it is a senseless communication, and than even the question if it exists or not, if it is possible or not, is irrelevant. So talking about Gods Word always implies a sense and therefore never can be intrinsic. The other term "instrumental" or "funcional" is for me a missleading conception, because does not appreaciate sufficiently the human nature with it's liberty. We should conceive revelations more in dialogic model or structure.
Such a question should not be asked on a forum that is called RESEARCH Gate.
You should ask a priest, a pastor, a minister, a rabbi ,ior an imam, but not scholars.
In the real world of research there is no way to find an answer to it, in either empirical way or in rationalistic thinking.
The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way:
"The Bible is more than the word of God: it is the word of God and man; a record of both revelation and response..."
(God in Search of Man, p. 260)
The Quran is the word of God, but it is not the only word of God in the universal history of man.
How dare you to compare the demonic quran with the Words of the Living God, the Bible. They have nothing in common except the material stolen by someone in the 7th century from the Bible.
About „Torah“ (not: thora !) and the „Bible“:
Both terms are not clear-cut: „Torah“ has at least three meanings:
1. The first part of the „Bible“ (Christian Term) that the Jews call „Tanakh“, the latter being an acrostych word combining the first letters of the names of those three parts of which the Jewish Bible consists of: Tora (the teaching, the Law), Nebhi’im (pronounce: Nevi’im; Prophets, i.e. the prophetic books), Ketubhim (pronounce: Ketuvim; Writings, i.e. the rest of the holy books of the Jewish Bible); the first letters of these three terms: T, N, K were used to create a mnemotechnical words „Tanakh“ (in Hebrew and Aramaic K after a vowel is pronounced kh (like CH in German, or J – in Spanish); in this meaning the Christian term for „Torah“ is „Pentateuch“;
2. The second meaning of „Torah“ – according to the rule „pars pro toto“ – is the entire Jewish „Bible“ that is the entire Tanakh;
3. The third meaning of „Torah“ is – as a metaphor – the religious gist of the whole Tanakh, the contents of the Jewish faith; in this sense it can be translated as the „Law“ – as for the Jews the Tanakh has mainly haggadic (legal) importance.
The common (Christian) term „Bible“, anglicized from the Greek „ta biblia“ – the „books, scriptures“ (in plural), via Latin „Biblia“ (which is singular) refers to the Christian holy books, i.e., the „Old Testament" (= Tanakh, the Jewish Bible), and the „New Testament“; of course there is no counterpart to it within the Jewish religious literature, notwithstandiong the fact that the Jewish Mishna was composed in the same time as the New Test. (see below).
The Torah in its second meaning (= the Christian Old Testament) had a long time of gestation - between the 10th and the 2nd centuries BEFORE Christ, in Hebrew (most of it) and Aramaic (some fragments only), whereas the „New Testament“ was composed in the 1st and 2nd cent. AFTER Christ (or A.D., as it is most often put). All the 39 books of the NT were put down - for all we know - in Greek, even though by people whose mother tongue was Aramaic (Judean Aramaic, or Galiliean Aramaic – the latter being the language of Jesus, Peter and of other apostles). There was some discussion about a possible Aramaic original of the Gospel of Mark, but no material evidence exists.
What I said about the languages of the Old Testament refers to the Protestant Old Test., but the Orthodox and the Catholics regard as the inspired (holy) books also a few that were written in Greek, the so-called Deuterocanonical. Luther, however, removed them from the canon of the holy books of the Protestant Bible; they are called by the Protestants Apocrypha.
It may sound like a mystery but Jesus was not a half God, he was God in the flesh, so his testimony is of absolute value, while mohammed claimed he had a angelic visitor, but that claim was never accepted by anyone else than he. (there are more stories of angelic visitors writing socalled words of god). So you can't compare the Bible and the koran.
The Bible is intrinsic the Word of God, proven by the prophets, the apostles, the Jewish Religious esthablishment and the early church. The prophecies of old being fulfilled in the 1st century and even today fulfillment is ongoing. That is a proof of Word of God being intrinsic. To the smallest detail the prophecies come and came through.
For me, the Bible is the inspired as stated in Second Timothy Chapter 3 verse 16 - All scripture (Bible) is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
If God is who and what He says He is then His book must be vital in all aspects of life. As stated by Bruno van de Vliet, you can not compare the koran and the Bible.
The Bible holds the key to salvation through The Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on Calvery's cross for the sin, salvation and redemption ps all people.
Those who come to God do so believing in simple faith and accept His word as His word.
Why do we confuse things so?
Qur'an is not stolen from anywhere,you can compare and contrast. Qur'an is the last revelation from almighty one: there is no deity of worship except Allah and Muhammad is his last messenger.
If anyone is curious or inquisitive about God you can read Qur'an and it will lead you to the right path.
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