Summary
The BibleDocs Open Community is a public (i.e., anyone can join) online community designed to give people comfortable with making certain presuppositions about inspiration, inerrancy, and sola scriptura a place to discuss exegesis and interpretation in depth. The BibleDocs Open Bible Study—one of the two BibleDocs Weekly Bible Studies that BibleDocs runs—is associated with this community.
For details on meeting dates and times, joining us in person, and joining us over Zoom, see the overview page for BibleDocs Weekly Bible Studies.
For details on how to join the BibleDocs Open Community group chats, see here.
Overview
The BibleDocs Open Community is a public (i.e., anyone can join) online community designed to give people comfortable with making certain presuppositions about inspiration, inerrancy, and sola scriptura a place to discuss exegesis and interpretation in depth. As a generalization, these things are the cornerstone assumptions of the BibleDocs Open Community, and compose the framework in which all discussion proceeds.
Now, agreeing on the fact that the Bible is wholly reliable and is the sole guide for our faith and practice as Christians is merely step one. Why? Because one then has to figure out what exactly it says and means! This, in essence, is what we try to focus on here. That is, the main perspective adopted is to:
- Take for granted that the Bible is the only source of truth for us as Christians (as opposed to tradition, central church authority, popularity, personal experience, emotion, etc.), and then
- Undertake proper exegesis to make sense of the biblical text’s full meaning
(1) is commented upon frequently here, but not really debated formally, because it is simply presupposed. This means (2) is where most of the action is. Proper exegesis is an involved and time-consuming process, and we often discuss topics related to “doing it right”:
- Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic: not just basic lexical analysis in word studies, but also grammar
- Textual criticism
- Systematic theology
- Historical theology (i.e., who believed what and when and why)
- Church history
- Ancient history and ancient culture (Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Babylonian, etc.)
- Etc.
Put simply, anyone who is fine accepting the upfront presuppositions (with respect to inspiration, inerrancy, and sola scriptura) ought to immediately feel at home in discussions here, because everything is always centered around exactly what the Bible says and means. Any time we might disagree about interpretation, we are still able to have a profitable conversation because both sides are arguing entirely based upon biblical evidence, and naught else. In this way, this community is designed to support productive dialogue across all sorts of different people who all hold similar baseline beliefs about the Bible’s ultimate authority.
Discussion related to Ichthys-specific topics is generally kept within the BibleDocs Ichthys Community, and this holds too for what things get covered in the weekly Bible studies (i.e., the BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study vs. the BibleDocs Open Bible Study). This is not to say I am always perfect in drawing lines about what is and is not “Ichthys-specific” (since it is a matter of some subjective judgement), but the general idea is to keep the BibleDocs Open Community and BibleDocs Open Bible Study focused upon teachings likely to be accepted by “most people” who hold to inspiration, inerrancy, and sola scriptura, and leave the Ichthys-specific doctrine to the BibleDocs Ichthys Community and BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study.
I should be clear that the BibleDocs Open Community is still quite narrow in focus, as far as online Christian communities go. While it is in fact public (meaning anyone can join, rather than it being invite-only), the mods do very actively keep discussion following the epistemological framework mentioned here, which has a couple important consequences:
- Conversations that fail to treat the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of God (thereby not giving it the respect it is due) will be adjusted or closed. Conversations of this sort flunk the inspiration and inerrancy presuppositions.
- Conversations that do not completely revolve around the Bible as the final authority (but instead appeal to tradition, central church authority, popularity, personal experience, emotion, etc.) will be adjusted or closed. Conversations of this sort flunk the sola scriptura presupposition.
In other words, this community is dedicated to hosting discussions only of a fairly specific type (namely, conversations that start and end with the Bible alone), and no others. This makes it great for people who want to have conversations along these lines, but definitely less than globally applicable, given that other Christians may follow different epistemologies that are incompatible with this way of doing things.
Joining the BibleDocs Open Community group chats
We support multiple platforms:
Since this community is public (rather than being invite-only), you can join directly via these invite links: