Undeception

Another great post. Inerrantists often disobey Occam’s Razor with their obtuse, convoluted solutions. So much ink spilled on protecting something that doesn’t need protecting, where instead appreciating the opposite can yield a relational, incarnational God who responds to people at their level of maturity.

Yeah, that is great, Steve. Especially the clincher: At the very least, then, it behooves the inerrantist to be very, very humble in his stance that the Bible contains no errors. If only every man defending his position would take that humble stance.

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Guest blogger! I was wondering how Steve suddenly became so good knowledgeable of statistics and probability.

So what percentage of Jesus’ teachings are errant? Should I start giving more serious consideration of the Jesus Seminar? What I mean is, how is a person supposed to know when to say “Oh that’s absolute Biblical truth there” and when is he supposed to know when to say “Oh that’s more hogwash in the Bible”?

@Josh

Well that’s basically the problem with all this right there. The whole problem in fact.. how to educate believers and in what.. what is important?

Perhaps the damage being done to the reputation of Christianity is more about politics than it is about the level of education amongst believers. After all it’s not as though you need to pass an exam or write a dissertation to become a Christian (and thank God for that), all you need to do is believe in the resurrection, accept forgiveness and follow Chist (though the truth is it’s the last part which people find the most difficult and has the most interpretations).

If more teaching was devoted to questioning, reasoning, patience, discretion and kindness to ‘enemies’ then perhaps the education element would take care of itself.

Interpreting a book isn’t exactly comparable to flipping a coin, but you are on the right path. I once thought the Bible had a “big picture” that would become obvious if you just figured out the right theology. But I wound up losing just about all faith instead.

Why? Well, there are so many Christian ideas that can only be held together with some arcane explanation (ex: Trinity, pre-existence, all the differences between Jesus stories and quotes, Paul vs. Acts, end times theology and so on). It is not hard to justify a few of these in one’s head. However, trying to juggle dozens or hundreds of convoluted explanations is just about impossible, if one has any intellectual honesty.

Like Dan, I came to the Occam’s Razor conclusion. The only way to look at it is to understand that the books in the Bible are just a snapshot in time, the understanding of “God” by a person who lived in a different world.

@Josh H. – Just read this this morning which I think addresses some of the questions you have:

Gospel Contradictions and Orality Studies

Even thought the Gospel texts have “contradictions” according to modern standards, they still contain reliable history.

@Dan,

Brilliant! and it confirms one of the points I was making on another post here, looking at the bible in a historical context, not just through the eyes of science and literalism.

I’d argue that that the historical context is more important than the science aspect, since the purpose of it all is to communicate a message, and understanding the message can sometimes only be done looking at how things would be interpreted at that point in history.

Originally Posted By Josh H.Guest blogger! I was wondering how Steve suddenly became so good knowledgeable of statistics and probability.

The way any incompetent boob gets stuff done: by proxy, of course!

So what percentage of Jesus’ teachings are errant?

I don’t think GB was telling us that we should imagine every verse or passage on an arbitrary scale somewhere between 0 and 1. He’s saying that each identified Bible difficulty and each proposed explanation has a chance of being wrong. You’re talking more about what happens if we accept that the Bible has unexplainable difficulties (“errors” of one sort or another), which is a valid, but separate, question.

What I mean is, how is a person supposed to know when to say “Oh that’s absolute Biblical truth there” and when is he supposed to know when to say “Oh that’s more hogwash in the Bible”?

I believe that God ordained the Bible to convey His truth for the same reason you do: by faith. The inerrantist simply believes God ordained the Bible to convey more stuff than I do. This was a major point in the last few posts of my B&H series.

The Bible never refers to itself as a canonized whole (how could it?), so we can’t appeal to it for justification for a belief in inerrancy; the closest it comes to the latter is 2 Tim 3.16-17, which limits its claim for the usefulness of “all Scripture” very clearly to “doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness” for the purpose of moral behavior. In short, it’s “authoritative in matters of faith and practice,” as many confessions affirm. If it occasionally reflects an authorial misunderstanding in peripheral matters (science, history, etc.), all that would be called into question would be the notion of God dictating the whole thing verbally or in a plenary fashion; in no way would it impugn the Bible’s usefulness in the matters for which it makes some claim to be useful — the only matters that matter anyway!

For Pete’s sake, Christians don’t even think the “all Scripture” Paul was referring to (the Tanakh) is even quite as useful for matters of faith and practice as are Paul’s own writings; in other words, even Christians recognize a variable scale of authority within Scripture.

Rule of thumb: find what message the passage teaches, whether it couches it in questionable scientific or historical terms, and believe that. God used fallible people to deliver His infallible message, who in turn delivered that infallible message by means of fallible vessels.

Originally Posted By Alex FearIf more teaching was devoted to questioning, reasoning, patience, discretion and kindness to ‘enemies’ then perhaps the education element would take care of itself.

I agree that we need to teach Christians how to fish rather than to depend on fishmongers of wildly varying reliability. But I am also firmly against the “just me and my Bible” idea. So I fall in the middle: we need Christians to learn to think, trust, and live out the faith, but part of living out the faith is providing resources and testimonies for Christians to learn by.

Originally Posted By paulThe only way to look at it is to understand that the books in the Bible are just a snapshot in time, the understanding of “God” by a person who lived in a different world.

I’ve come to the same conclusion, Paul. Well said. However, I would take the quotation marks off God because I think the Bible, when viewed as a gradually unfolding chronicle of revelation, does present a sufficient if incomplete view of who God is: that is why Jesus came.

@Dan – Thanks for dropping in, my friend. And thanks for that link. Although we all know that the news, weather, and traffic reports we hear in the car on the way to work are not inerrant or infallible, we can (and generally do) depend on their overall trustworthiness all the same.

Woops – missed your comment, Damian.

Originally Posted By DamianIf only every man defending his position would take that humble stance.

And this, I think, was one of GB’s main points. I think Alex would agree: humility in our interpretation, especially if we came by it without due personal effort, is one of the things we most need to teach Christians. But now I’m sounding Emergent!

Interesting perspective, Steve. I like your use of statistics here.

If the Bible contains errors, then as paul commented, one has to formulate an interpretation of the scripture, and interpretations will have a much higher error rate than things not subject to interpretation. The scripture is supposed to contain absolute capital “T” Truth. Is such truth only found between the 800+ errors? No. The problem is not so much “errors” but lack of clarity in the scriptures.

The errantist might say that the Bible is not God’s explicit communication with us, but rather he gave us an art piece to discuss from several different angles. One’s theology needs to ask how/why God would operate in this manner instead of being more explicit and not leaving room for interpretation. The inerrantist is obviously uncomfortable with the idea of God operating like this.

How is the inerrantist’s theology lacking and how/why is the errantist’s theology richer? Furthermore, how can you say your interpretation has a lower error rate?

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Steve, there are too many problems for me to conclude that if God exists he would structure his revelation to people like our “Bible.” Why in all those books is there not a single reference to his nature as believed by Christians? Why is there so much confusion about basic issues? Why did Jesus not tell people about the Trinity and the plan for salvation? He told people God would forgive them if they forgave others and other such things, but “Christians” don’t believe that at all.

Progressive revelation is totally absurd from any logical point of view. If it is true, it says bad things about “God” because he actively misled the earlier people he “spoke” to, such as Moses and Abraham.

Primitive people believed crazy things, like nations conquered other nations based on the relative strength of their backing deity. Or that a god/heavenly being (Genesis 6 and Jesus) could impregnate a human. Truly, those are nutty things that can only be believed if one takes his or her rational hat off.

When an Inerrantist claims that all that is necessary is to show that it is possible it is not a contradiction, I think they are totally missing the point. The point is if there are so many different confusions, contradictions, etc, why would we think it was inerrant in the first place? If “possible”, however contrived the resolution, were sufficient you could probably claim most books ever written were inerrant, including the religious texts of others. When I present the Bible to non-believers of the more critical skeptical sort, I would just as well present the obvious truthfulness of what is written within, not assume the case and then get defensive that the skeptic would point out the hundreds of problems with that assumption.

And then there is me, who, unfortunately, am also a bit of a skeptic. Actually I was a raging skeptic most of my life, just not against my own beliefs. But most of piers (who are mostly online since I keep this silent from my real life friends) can’t understand why I would began to question whether the Bible was innerant. The more the read/research/pray about all of this, the more I realize that the Bible Innerancy is itself one of the most stringent presuppositions a conservative believer has. You’re allowed a little doubt, but “mature” Christians are expected to fall quickly in line when presented with Geisler and Howe. And why not, since it is a presupposition held so firmly then just making things “possible” would do it for most who WANT to believe it so firmly.

And why do they WANT to? Because we have to have some standard of Truth. Because God DOES NOT talk to us in animals, dreams, visions, bushes, cloudy tabernacles, so we have no where else to go but the old written book. And once we start questioning that, we start asking the questions Josh H. asks above. And unfortunately, many who do start questioning that arrive at where Paul (comment 11) has appeared to arrive. How do we decide? That is a entirely valid question.

And could someone please tell me what your supposed to tell your children, age 7 and 5?

Hi, Tom! Fact is, I can’t claim any credit for the statistics.

Originally Posted By TomThe scripture is supposed to contain absolute capital “T” Truth.

Supposed by many, but not all. Capital “T” Truth is much too large for any document. You’re still claiming more for the Bible than it does for itself. You think God is logically required to provide an infallible, completely clear guide to all Truth; I do not. You apparently require God to keep people from having misconceptions; I do not.

One’s theology needs to ask how/why God would operate in this manner instead of being more explicit and not leaving room for interpretation.

I suppose you mean you think we should ask that question because you did and couldn’t find an answer to it, from which you concluded that the whole shebang was phony. Some of us see enough value in the religion to make sure we don’t argue from ignorance to the effect that, “I don’t know exactly how a god could have done it to my satisfaction; therefore that god does not exist.” The differences in interpretation are not substantive as matters of faith and practice, and it’s far overreaching to say that a few inaccuracies present in the text mean that the whole thing’s up for grabs. In other words, it’s the same simplistic response of “all or nothing” that the inerrantists use.

Those who insist on having all the answers right now will hardly make it through the third season of the TV show LOST, much less a lifelong belief in God. I am content to do both.

Furthermore, how can you say your interpretation has a lower error rate?

I can’t prove, if that’s what you mean, that my interpretation has an overall lower error rate (nor is doing so even necessary), although I can demonstrate that it has some advantages in certain areas – in the same areas, I daresay, that skeptics like yourself would agree upon. Knowing something crystal-clearly is a requirement for neither science nor faith.

Originally Posted By paulWhy did Jesus not tell people about the Trinity and the plan for salvation? He told people God would forgive them if they forgave others and other such things, but “Christians” don’t believe that at all.

I have come to the conclusion that belief in esoteric doctrines like the Trinity is not essential; anyone pursuing truth will encounter and have to evaluate those doctrines, but no one need ever have known those things.

I think there’s plenty in the Bible telling us about God’s nature: Jesus’ character was said to exemplify God’s (“If you have seen me, you’ve seen the Father”), and even most unbelievers of today recognize Jesus’ moral teachings to be clear and admirable.

As far as Jesus laying out the “plan for salvation”, remember that he said he was sent specifically to Israel, to whom he had already revealed the plan of salvation in the Prophets (chiefly deutero-Isaiah). Israel was to be an example of how God dealt with everyone.

Progressive revelation is totally absurd from any logical point of view. If it is true, it says bad things about “God” because he actively misled the earlier people he “spoke” to, such as Moses and Abraham.

You mean something different by “progressive revelation” than Christians do: it doesn’t mean that He changed up the message over time, but that He only revealed the relevant data at the time and allowed harmless misconceptions to remain. When He “spoke” to Moses, He didn’t say anything that wasn’t so, but He didn’t lay down any more cards than necessary. There’s nothing illogical or immoral about that.

Truly, those are nutty things that can only be believed if one takes his or her rational hat off.

Do you have any rational basis for ruling those things out as irrational a priori? Or might this be a good time to exercise some of that statistical humility?

Originally Posted By Pete
And could someone please tell me what your supposed to tell your children, age 7 and 5?

Wonderful question, Pete. I’m in the same boat with an inquisitive 6-year-old. My wife and I teach the children the stories in the Bible as we do the stories from any other book; the stories have innate value as stories and as ancient literature, and the embedded/underlying doctrine will be distilled at much older ages. The important thing with our kids is to get Jesus right: if I thought the Gospels were too unreliable to teach as (broadly) historical, I probably wouldn’t be a believer at all, but as it is I don’t see any reason to throw out the teachings of Jesus or the events of his life as described in the Gospels. At the same time, I don’t expect 100% accuracy from anything or anybody in the world, and I still trust people, news media, and my own fallible senses and reason enough to function quite contently – so why should it be different with this?

We’ve got to be careful not to overreact, as well: just because the Patriarchal stories are largely saga and not historiographical doesn’t mean that none of the characters or stories have a basis in reality, and much less does it mean that they have absolutely no value for teaching as stories about men who were faithful to God and His ways. Are all the stories about David or the prophets true in fine detail? Likely not, but why should anyone then presume them all to be unhistorical characters? Historians don’t believe that any historical accounts (even much more modern ones) are 100% accurate, but they don’t throw them out, either. As adults, we’ve got to avoid the childish “all or nothing” approach. Kids see things as all or nothing, and so at the earliest stages, I’m not sure how we can do other than err on the “all” side until they get older.

It’s not easy, and I do feel for your confusion and insecurity.

You’re still claiming more for the Bible than it does for itself.

I’m not really claiming anything. I’m just asking. But non-fundamentalists still revere it as a substantial document — something to wage wars over, swear an oath over, etc. And as Pete says, God doesn’t speak to us in dreams, through animals, and other ways. This document is really it.

You think God is logically required to provide an infallible, completely clear guide to all Truth; I do not. You apparently require God to keep people from having misconceptions; I do not.

Given that this document is it, I’m not saying that it has to be infallible and clear. I’m asking why it is not. What was God’s masterful purpose in making a document that was open to an infinite number of interpretations? Is it just so things are more interesting — much like if we knew the end of LOST, we would not sit it out?

I suppose you mean you think we should ask that question because you did and couldn’t find an answer to it, from which you concluded that the whole shebang was phony.

Don’t presume to know my path to apostasy. Several factors weighed in on that decision that are not so simplistic and binary. That being said, yes, I did ask the question of errancy in the Bible. This pointed me to historical accounts as well. Obviously, I saw a book of errors, which I already knew existed when I had faith. If you imagine a universe without God, you can make other interpretations of the Bible — what was meant by these men writing it, what they thought about their God, how it was used in the culture. When I began reading the Bible with an atheist hat on, I found it made much more sense, and probably like you (if I shall make my own presumption), I read it as people’s culture at the time and interpretations of their God.

After years of struggling, and in a nutshell, I could not make an image of God from even scraps of my own picking and choosing from God-images in the Bible that I could believe in. I can’t make an image of any God, Biblically or not. What it boils down to for me is the choice to not live in a world containing supernatural powers.

The acceptance of a supernatural requires many hoops that simply can’t add up — Justice, the problem of evil, the bodiless spirit, etc. This is the reason the Bible contains errors, has holes, and is unclear. It’s a square peg and round hole. It’s why theologians will always argue.

Originally Posted By TomBut non-fundamentalists still revere it as a substantial document — something to wage wars over, swear an oath over, etc. And as Pete says, God doesn’t speak to us in dreams, through animals, and other ways. This document is really it.

To a large extent, this is true, but “this document” is still sufficient if all it gives is spiritual truth.

Given that this document is it, I’m not saying that it has to be infallible and clear. I’m asking why it is not. What was God’s masterful purpose in making a document that was open to an infinite number of interpretations?

I wouldn’t say that God “made” the Bible at all – only that, much like creation itself, He ordained that it would be here for us. It’s really not all that confusing, is it? We need a savior because we fall short of God’s glory; Jesus is that savior; we confess him as Lord and live by his principles and teachings. Maybe it’s really that simple. It wouldn’t matter how clear it was, people would find a way to obfuscate it.

Is it just so things are more interesting — much like if we knew the end of LOST, we would not sit it out?
Interesting speculation, and it may not be far from the truth. But like LOST, we can’t even guess what’s going on because we’re not the writers. It’s this mystery that, given the premise of a supreme and transcendent deity, I’m willing to accept.

Don’t presume to know my path to apostasy.

I apologize; I thought it was a reasonable speculation due to the recurrence of this question from you in all the blogs I’ve seen you frequent.

The acceptance of a supernatural requires many hoops that simply can’t add up — Justice, the problem of evil, the bodiless spirit, etc.

Would it be fair to say, then, that you got tired of asking “why” without receiving satisfactory answers? In my case, I have come to the conclusion that what is adequate need not always be wholly satisfactory, that what is unsatisfactory is not necessarily dispensable, and that incompleteness should not automatically be reckoned false.

As always, I appreciate your thoughts, Tom, in case I haven’t told you before.

I have come to the conclusion that what is adequate need not always be wholly satisfactory, that what is unsatisfactory is not necessarily dispensable, and that incompleteness should not automatically be reckoned false.

Good quote. I like that. May steal it

BTW adding your blog to my feed.

@Steve –

Would it be fair to say, then, that you got tired of asking “why” without receiving satisfactory answers?

Not really. While I also have incomplete answers, I have found materialism allows me something I can piece together better than a theology can. Yours and the blogs I frequent illuminate that I haven’t performed some of the possible hermeneutics, which is why I frequent those blogs. I’m curious about the discussion and want to be well-informed and rounded with my stance.

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