Archives for “Scripture”
Take the great 16th century reformer Martin Luther, for instance. Most would argue that Luther — who argued for “scripture alone” — had a high regard for the Bible. Yet, he was quite critical of some of it.
For instance, Luther argued …
(1) God’s prophets in the Old Testament were sometimes in error,
(2) the book of Kings is more reliable than the book of Chronicles,
(3) the book of Esther should have probably been left out of the Bible,
(4) not all the Gospels are of equal value,
(5) the writer of Hebrews erred when he said that there is no possibility of a second repentance,
(6) the author of James “mangles scripture” and the whole book should be burned like worthless straw,
- Brief question about inerrancy The question that must be asked of inerrantists is this: Is it Scripture or man’s wisdom that is the ultimate basis for Christians’ belief system? If you answer that Scripture...
- Inerrancy vs. Infallibility This is the fourth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. In the discussion of the mode of the Bible’s inspiration I pointed out that the Bible...
- Inerrancy: A Snowball’s Chance (A preliminary note to the reader: Different believers use different definitions of the term “inerrancy.” When I use that term below I am referring to the hypothesis that the Bible...
At the suggestion of a certain rather busy diplomat, I decided to treat this trending ditty as a Theologically Interesting Lyric. It is indeed theologically interesting, because it dovetails into my recent discussions about contrasts in the OT writers’ conceptions of God and those of some of the NT writers.
First the song: “Pray for You” by Jaron and the Long Road to Love. In order to avert the potential spambot activity they would attract I have elected not to reproduce the lyrics here, but here they are in case you don’t want to watch the video:
[Hard link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atBg9zLI2bA]
Potential humor aside, when I first saw this my first thoughts were of just how anti-Christian in spirit such sentiments were. Jesus told us to forgive, turn the other cheek, walk the other mile, etc. My mind searched for a Scripture that would point out how invoking the Lord’s name to do what is evil is condemned and an affront to God.
Related posts:- Finding God’s hand in Scripture All Christians generally agree that the Bible was written down by humans, and most agree that in some way their writings are reflective of their individuality; the question comes in...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
- Chaos in Genesis and Germanic mythology Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the...
Most of the hullaballoo surrounding Knapp-gate seems to have blown over for the time being, but its implications and the probability of similar future incidents continue to grow.
Undeniably, a crucial aspect of Christians’ discomfort with Jennifer Knapp’s stance is that she is “unrepentant” as a lesbian. That charge only works from outside, however, in that from her standpoint, homosexuality is not sin at all. This is considered to make her situation even worse — she’s living in denial! Surely she’s being selective in her use of Scripture, twisting it to make it mean what she thinks it should based upon her experience!
But is interpreting Scripture based upon prevailing sensibilities so unparalleled among her critics? Take, for example, the clear teaching in both the Old and the New Testaments, coming from the mouth of Jesus in fact, that charging interest on loans (called usury in Bible-ese) to fellow believers is a reprehensible, inexcusable practice. Lending money was considered a form of charity and as such undeniably played into Jesus’ fury at the “moneychangers” in the temple and in the social situation of the earliest believers in Acts who shared all possessions.
Related posts:- When disgust eclipses compassion: evangelicals and homosexuality In a recent post I defended believers whose genuine compassion causes them to show concern about homosexuality among believers. Unfortunately, there is another common response to homosexuality, often accompanying and...
- The authority of Scripture This is the sixth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. Preliminary Remarks The purpose of these next few posts is to examine my perspective of the...
- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
Daniel Kirk today expressed well my feelings about and disillusionment with theology (which I have written about here).
Reflecting over the course on The Cross in the New Testament that he just completed teaching, he writes:
Three big take-aways from both the lecture and the readings are these: (1) when the NT talks about the cross it is infinitely more concerned with how we live lives of faithful discipleship than it is with how the death of Jesus “works” to save us; (2) there are numerous models of “atonement” in the NT that address different facets of the problem of the human condition; and (3) penal substitution might be less pervasive than you think, and probably needs to be rethought in more biblical categories.
With one of my favorite lines in biblioblog history, Kirk notes, ”The problem with ‘knowing’ how the death of Jesus works is that it keeps us from being able to see how the NT writers talk about it.“ That hit me in the pit of the stomach: despite my railing against it, I recognize the lingering tendency on my own part to view various biblical texts from some unifying principle that may not apply to all the texts equally.
Related posts:- Cultivating good theology Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology has a great post up in which he’s critical of an article in the current Christianity Today theme this month by J. I. Packer and Gary A....
- The place of God’s providence in my theology I have been musing lately about how my stance on the creation/evolution controversy would impact other areas of theology if applied consistently. The stance I’m referring to is my conviction...
- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
He begins with a starkly stated proposition:
The factual contradictions within Scripture or between Scripture and extrabiblical sources cited in my previous blog are not, in my view, the most serious difficulties that Christians face in the Bible. More troublesome are those cases where a biblical text espouses ethical values that not only contradict other biblical texts but strike us as down-right sinister or evil.
He then goes on to highlight the clear incongruence between Mat 5.43-45 and Deu 20.16-18.
Says Sparks, “These words from the lips of Jesus and the Law of Moses are profoundly different. How can one biblical text admonish us to love our enemies and another command Israel to commit genocide against ethnic groups because they have a different religion?”
I am quite familiar with most of the involved justifications for the ritual act of consecration-by-destruction, or “ban” as it used to be called, known as ḥerem. In my undergraduate Apologetics class (or was it Deuteronomy?) I devoted a paper to arguing how truly ethical and even merciful it was for God to want those men, women, children, and babies murdered.
Related posts:- The lost art of humility: homosexuality and usury Most of the hullaballoo surrounding Knapp-gate seems to have blown over for the time being, but its implications and the probability of similar future incidents continue to grow. Undeniably, a...
- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
One of Calvinists’ staple arguments in favor of monergism is the inference that positing God as relying, in some sense, upon our decision to participate in salvation is actually a demotion of God, a heinous and (usually) heretical inversion of man’s sovereignty over that of God’s. On Facebook today, a Calvinist posted the following statement:
It is no less blasphemous to proclaim Allah to be god than to proclaim the one true God to be a slave of your own will and whim.
I’m pretty sure he meant to state it in reverse order: it was an attack on non-Calvinists rather than Muslims. I think his point was that those who “proclaim the one true God to be a slave…” are no better than Muslims.
Related posts:- The authority of Scripture This is the sixth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. Preliminary Remarks The purpose of these next few posts is to examine my perspective of the...
- Baptism: taking Scripture and tradition seriously Polycarp at The Church of Jesus Christ and I seem to be travelling the same paths lately (does this indicate that I’m finally a part of the Church of Jesus...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
Christians coming to terms with evolution, including many ID advocates who acknowledge common descent, will often arrive at a midpoint of sorts between denial of evolution and all-out theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that acknowledges that we are by-products of evolution and seeks to hold the line on the most theologically problematic aspect of evolutionary theory: the historicity of Adam and Eve. For many, this is a comfortable resting place and they remain content acknowledging the deafening scientific consensus of common descent on one hand and believing in a literal first human pair on the other.
This is often done by positing a bottleneck of the population down to two individuals, often misunderstanding the unfortunately ambiguous terms Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The more sophisticated (but odd) way of doing this is to allow there to have been more than two at the time of Adam and Eve, but to posit that the Fall event occurred to them uniquely, and that the effects have passed down to later humanity through descent from them.
Related posts:- The trouble with intramural accommodationism Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent? This question is something I struggle with when...
- Dembski on theodicy and a young earth William Dembski, a father of the Intelligent Design movement, has recently become comfortable calling himself an old earth creationist who, as a good Baptist, accepts the historicity of Adam and...
- The Bible and the need for proof In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual...
Related posts:“Just think of the natural sciences as they increasingly develop into a comprehensive knowledge of the world. A short time ago no one could have conceived of this development. What then do you suppose the future holds, not only for our theology, but for our evangelical Christianity? … There are those who can hack away at science with a sword, fence themselves in with weapons at hand to withstand the assaults of sound research and behind this fence establish as binding a church doctrine that appears to everyone outside as an unreal ghost to which they must pay homage if they want to receive a proper burial. Those persons might not allow themselves to be disturbed by the developments in the realm of science. But we cannot do that and do not want that. Therefore, we must make do with history as it develops.”
- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
- The return of the evolutionist — for real this time! My friend Mike Beidler‘s not busy enough being a military diplomat in the Middle East right now. You know, things going so swimmingly, he doesn’t have anything at all to...
Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology has a great post up in which he’s critical of an article in the current Christianity Today theme this month by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett in praise of catechism.
Now I must say, since we’re attending a Presbyterian church now (I’m actually serious), my kids have recently been learning the children’s version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for Sunday School. While I’ll certainly need to start shaking loose some of the stuff I have problems with in the WCF before it hardens permanently in their minds, it’s both a good exercise for their brains and a way of learning historical Protestant theology. What I’m just saying is that although I certainly have a problem with overly and artificially systematized theology, I’m not really necessarily anti-catechism.
Related posts:- The problem with knowing theology Daniel Kirk today expressed well my feelings about and disillusionment with theology (which I have written about here). Reflecting over the course on The Cross in the New Testament that...
- My love affair with theology I haven’t been posting much lately. To explain why, allow me give you a sketch of my relationship with theology, which has always formed the backbone of this site. First,...
- In Luther’s footsteps Last Sunday night, our church hosted a Reformation Party for the kids. It was sort of a Halloweenish deal, with lots of games and candy, and the kids were encouraged...
The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch.
Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his weekly viewing of The Truth Project. He just completed Lesson Five. More so than the previous lessons, Lesson 5 focused on a critique of mainstream science, and evolution in particular. Bear in mind that Mike is about as fair-minded as they come, but he is shocked by Del Tackett’s blatant misrepresentations of clear facts and doesn’t hold anything back in his detailed analysis. Make sure you check it out, especially if you’ve seen TTP and didn’t notice anything wrong!
(Thinking about what Mike has told us about Lesson 5 has really gotten my dander up. You’ve been warned.)
Related posts:- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- The return of the evolutionist — for real this time! My friend Mike Beidler‘s not busy enough being a military diplomat in the Middle East right now. You know, things going so swimmingly, he doesn’t have anything at all to...
- When Christianity undervalues truth Using an analogy especially interesting to me as an historical linguist, Sabio Lantz at Triangulations reminds us of the power of understanding that the Christian faith isn’t quite as unique...
This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship
Related posts:When the cosmos is understood in this way—as divine speech to humanity—then it is no longer possible to characterize Christian debates about science as a conflict that pits “God’s inerrant word in Scripture” against “errant human science.” Rather, any conflict between Scripture and science should be understood as a conflict between “human interpretations of God’s word in Scripture” and “human interpretations of God’s word in nature.”
When we understand the situation in this way, then in any apparent conflict between Scripture and science it is just as likely that we’ve misunderstood the biblical evidence as that we’ve misunderstood the science … in fact, one could make the theological argument that we’re more likely to misunderstand the Bible, as an instance of special revelation, than to misunderstand the general revelation available to everyone in creation.
- The nature of inspiration and the purpose of Scripture This is the third of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. We can summarize the previous discussion by saying that 2 Timothy 3:15-17 teaches that these writings...
- Finding God’s hand in Scripture All Christians generally agree that the Bible was written down by humans, and most agree that in some way their writings are reflective of their individuality; the question comes in...
- The place of fear in our bibliology The other night, a friend and I reiterated our independent observations that, despite all nuances, what ultimately stands behind most of American Christianity’s implacable dedication to inerrancy is fear. Dr. Jim...
I’d like to address a question to a group that is, on the whole, unlikely to frequent my blog: those who would characterize themselves as conservative Christians.
Whether you were brought up in Christianity or accepted it later in life, the chances are overwhelming that you weren’t just taught to accept Jesus as Lord: you were sold an entire package. Whether it was done prior to conversion or immediately subsequently, you adopted a body of teachings on many subjects, doctrine intended to ground you and detox you from the lies of the world. Typically, depending on your particular tradition, you were told that Jesus atones for us by satisfying God’s need to punish people for wrongdoing, hell for unbelievers, the Trinity, and that all our confidence for the preceding proceeds from the non-negotiable truth that the Bible is 100% accurate (with the unspoken presupposition that your tradition’s intepretation of it was correct).
Related posts:- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
- When disgust eclipses compassion: evangelicals and homosexuality In a recent post I defended believers whose genuine compassion causes them to show concern about homosexuality among believers. Unfortunately, there is another common response to homosexuality, often accompanying and...
- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the chaos of the natural world represented as an antagonist in the Genesis cosmogony. The forces of chaos are never quite given the dignity of a name, but the functionless void upon which the curtain opens in Genesis 1.2 and God’s actions of appropriating already existing material in that chapter clearly demonstrate that He is not tasked with creating a world from scratch but with the more typically king-like duty of bringing order out of disorder, as John Walton has been arguing.
But this “cosmic battle” between order and chaos is by no means a peculiarly ANE leitmotif. Although separated by hundreds of years from the ANE, Germanic mythology as it shows up in the Scandinavian stories is characterized by the same dualism. As fitting for a people thriving in a harsh environment, the mythology of the Scandinavians as represented in Old Icelandic (“Old Norse”) literature shows this motif in the form of the continuous struggle between the gods and the ancient, formidable, grotesque giants, the frost giants in particular for obvious reasons. The world itself was born of chaos: from the gap between the realm of fire and the realm of ice a mountainous frost giant Ymir was formed, the father of all giants from whose body the earth was made after being slain by the gods (there is good evidence that many of these motifs go back to common Indo-European mythology). The delicate balance of power between the cruel and pitiless forces of nature and the order maintained by the gods is evident in Snorri’s highly entertaining rendition of “Thor and Utgard -Loki” (also called “Thor’s visit to Jotunheim”): while the two gods and accompanying human are clearly somewhat at the mercy of the giants in Jotunheim (“Giantland”), the prospect of encountering the wrath of Thor’s hammer keeps the giants from exploiting their better position.
Related posts:- Why Genesis 1 was written Not that I have all the answers, of course. I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange...
- N.T. Wright on “unfaithful”, “flat” readings of Genesis The BioLogos Foundation hits another home run by soliciting and sharing this gem: Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, while no fundie, is generally regarded among scholars and many evangelicals as...
- Contextual interpretation in Genesis: Cain’s mark I suppose it goes without saying that approaching the Bible as contextually bound literature leaves you asking different questions and giving different answers. In the comments of one my posts...
A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote:
I don’t see why it would be logically necessary that [the Bible] is 100% true. However, if we allow that it isn’t, then how are we to determine which parts are true? There is no way of knowing, which is damning [for the whole book]. An empirical test would be nice, but as we all know there is no such thing.
How we “determine which parts are true” is especially important in regard to the Bible’s supernatural claims. Being natural and living in a natural world, we find these claims almost impossible to evaluate. Hence, we tend to allow the truth of the spiritual claims of Scripture to piggy-back on the verifiable claims: typically, as the verifiable claims fare, so confidence in the unverifiable fares. This is obviously inductive reasoning, and not a very robust form of it either: conceivably, one could read a set of verifiable events in a newspaper, create out of whole cloth any number of stories detailing supernatural events supposedly related to those newspaper events, and publish a book integrating both the newspaper and the manufactured fantasy stories. Obviously, no one need seriously entertain the bogus claims’ truthfulness simply because of the truthfulness of the verifiable claims.
Related posts:- The Bible and the need for proof In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual...
- The Bible’s text has a history Recently I mentioned to some friends the fact that Mark 16.9-20 should not be used as a proof text for anything given the near certainty that it was a later addition...
- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual raised the common IYCBIAYCTAOI objection (if-you-can’t-believe-it-all-you-can’t-trust-any-of-it), asking, “Why do you believe the Bible is true?”
I responded by asking, “What makes you think it’s necessary that the Bible (as in the entire thing cover-to-cover) be ‘true’ (by which I assume you mean perfectly conforming to and accurately depicting objective reality)?” It’s this question I want to explore in this post.
Among other things, he responded that unless the OT (for instance) is 100% accurate, we cannot bear witness to Jesus. But this is manifestly false: the first century apostles evangelized to Gentiles who had no reason to accept the OT’s reliability, which wouldn’t even have been available to them in print, since copies of Scripture were not carried around for distribution in the first century. Yet somehow, these Gentiles believed the witness of Jesus’ apostles anyway. Moreover, early believers didn’t even have a New Testament to witness to Jesus; hearsay and word of mouth were all they had to go on. I contend that we’re no better off — nor worse off — than they are. We too are dependent on the testimony of fallible humans who have experienced God in Christ, and by faith we trust Him to lead us through fellow believers’ human testimony.
Related posts:- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
- The Bible made flesh I have read summaries of the incarnational model of Scripture as developed by Peter Enns, late of Westminster Theological Seminary, but too little of Enns himself. I think this recent...
My friend Mike Beidler‘s not busy enough being a military diplomat in the Middle East right now. You know, things going so swimmingly, he doesn’t have anything at all to do. Since he’s been over there, he’s joined a group that is watching Focus on the Family’s film series The Truth Project that seeks to reinforce the predominant American evangelical worldview — you know, the Truth.
An important component of this project, of course, includes a critique of evolution, which, also of course, has bugged Mike a bit. I saw him writing up his thoughts in brief form on Facebook and decided to twist his prompt him to channel these interesting thoughts toward his recently inactive blog.
Your assignment? Go read it, and give him enough responses so that he feels pressured to continue.
Related posts:- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
- The place of God’s providence in my theology I have been musing lately about how my stance on the creation/evolution controversy would impact other areas of theology if applied consistently. The stance I’m referring to is my conviction...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
Using an analogy especially interesting to me as an historical linguist, Sabio Lantz at Triangulations reminds us of the power of understanding that the Christian faith isn’t quite as unique as we all like to think:
We often see that naive mono-linguists think their language is unique in its ability to express deep thoughts. Well of course they do — they have never mastered another language. A good way to cure this parochial blindness is to do comparative studies. Using comparative linguistics researchers have learned more about the very nature of language than by studying any one language in depth.
He draws a correlation (the same one I drew a while back) between comparative linguistics, which shows that the Indo-European languages are related by a common source language, and comparative biology, which shows us that all life is related by a common ancestor. He goes on:
Related posts:- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
- Proving Christianity with inerrancy In a discussion involving my rejection of inerrancy, a frequent commenter mentioned the inerrantist objection, ”Without [our Bible] can we confidently walk up to a non-believer and ask him to believe our own...
- The place of fear in our bibliology The other night, a friend and I reiterated our independent observations that, despite all nuances, what ultimately stands behind most of American Christianity’s implacable dedication to inerrancy is fear. Dr. Jim...
I think Paul gives us a somewhat unexpected answer in 2 Corinthians.
I’ll return to the subject of this post after a (possibly irrelevant) discursus here. This morning in Sunday School we went over a passage in the last chapter of 2 Corinthians. Throughout the epistle, Paul makes repeated references to the fact that some of the Corinthians are challenging his authority as apostle. Although some of his critics apparently been questioning his courage and boldness to resolve problems (10.1), here near the end of the letter he warns that when he comes, they’ll see that he can be severe in person.
Something struck me as I looked at chapter 13 verses 2 through 5, displayed in PowerPoint on the screen this morning. It occurred to me that there was a slightly disjointed thought between verses 2 and 3. Read those verses as I saw them this morning (in the NIV):
Related posts:- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
- The Bible and the need for proof In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual...
- An (ancient) introduction to “faith in Christ” vs. “Christ’s faith” Originally inspired by this recent post by Doug Chaplin, I exhumed a paper I wrote in third year Greek while an undergrad (I estimate this to be c. 2000-2001). As...
Ok, I promised to write stuff I find interesting as I go through my diss research, so here’s a couple thoughts I had tonight as I was researching. These will doubtless seem somewhat stream-of-consciousness, so I apologize in advance for any seasickness that results from an attempt on your part to read through the meandering thoughts of this Synoptic explorer.
(Please bear in mind that although I had a good class on the Synoptics over ten years ago, I’m not really conversant in the literature. My subject is primarily linguistic and related to early translations of the Synoptics from Greek, so I’m having to approach these biblical studies questions as a rank amateur.)
It strikes me once again that explaining the parallels between the Synoptics isn’t as difficult as explaining the differences. These are so perplexing because it appears at times that whole swaths of shared material are meticulously reworded so as not to be verbatim; tenses in verbs, number in nouns, virtually interchangeable lexical items, etc. are switched seemingly to avoid being word-for-word the same. Yet these will frequently occur amid whole phrases and sentences that are virtually identical between two or more of the Gospels, above and beyond the obvious identity of the general narrative enclosing them. The question arises, why is there this fluctuation between trivial differences in wording that don’t seem to play into authorial thematic emphases and entire sentences showing verbatim agreement?
Related posts:- Editorial fatigue : author :: progressive latitude : translator The so-called Synoptic Problem in biblical studies results from the search for an explanation of the similarities in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that even in a cursory...
- Dialectology and the Gospels Since starting my research of the Gospels for my dissertation, I have repeatedly wondered (as I idly mused earlier) if there have been any attempts to identify where the Gospels...
- Help wanted: critical editions of the Gospels Ok, I’ll give this a try, although I didn’t get any bites with my last attempt at soliciting information from the learned… I need to find the best references for...
William Dembski, a father of the Intelligent Design movement, has recently become comfortable calling himself an old earth creationist who, as a good Baptist, accepts the historicity of Adam and Eve. This comes as no surprise really, but it’s interesting to see how his gears turn as he systematically lays all his cards on the table for why he’s personally invested in pursuing a critique of common descent.
Discussing his book The End of Christianity with the host of the UK radio show Unbelieveable and an atheist guest, Dembski describes how he thinks that the chief difficulty for old earth as opposed to young earth creationism is the exceptionally long time for evil having existed prior to the event that was supposed to have caused it: the Fall of Man.
Related posts:- Theodicy and evolution Cliff Martin continues his interesting discussion of the apparently conflicting ideas of the loving Christian God and the God who ordained the sometimes brutal processes needed for evolution. I see...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
The other night, a friend and I reiterated our independent observations that, despite all nuances, what ultimately stands behind most of American Christianity’s implacable dedication to inerrancy is fear. Dr. Jim Kidder, in so many words, makes the same point. The following quote certainly rings familiar.
For many people, this is not a scientific issue, it is a moral one. Even when having conversations with my wife, it is not uncommon for her to say that she understands the evidence and accepts it but that the ramifications make her uncomfortable. Indeed, both the ID side and the new atheists write that “Darwinism” is dangerous. The reasons are similar but the motives are different. Both argue that it leads one away from faith.
This is where I’m so baffled. Have these people not encountered the risen Christ in a dynamic way? I assure you as one who’s come through this process, letting go of inerrancy is an act of faith in the One who should be standing behind our beliefs, whom we have encountered in some meaningful way. Why should acknowledging that even the ancient believers whose testaments to God’s work became our Bible might not have been omniscient nullify what most evangelicals claim as the heart of our faith, our relationship with God? From where I stand, slavish, ritualistic belief in a set of rigid propositions strikes me as much more a “religion” than a “relationship” (to evoke a phrase I have always despised).
Related posts:- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
- History and faith A commenter on the previous post raised an interesting point that leads me into something I’ve been wanting to explore here. He wrote: I don’t see why it would be logically...
- When Christianity undervalues truth Using an analogy especially interesting to me as an historical linguist, Sabio Lantz at Triangulations reminds us of the power of understanding that the Christian faith isn’t quite as unique...
All Christians generally agree that the Bible was written down by humans, and most agree that in some way their writings are reflective of their individuality; the question comes in with the nature of divine influence. Where do we draw the line between the human and the divine in Scripture?
Proponents of inerrancy posit that all information in Scripture was directly contributed by God; the specific form of the information as presented is normally regarded as reflective of the personalities and writing styles. A softened version of this view, which I myself held until fairly recently, was of theological concordism, the belief that despite errors in the authors’ understanding of peripheral matters, all pertinent information in Scripture was (directly or indirectly) contributed by God.
Related posts:- The Bible made flesh I have read summaries of the incarnational model of Scripture as developed by Peter Enns, late of Westminster Theological Seminary, but too little of Enns himself. I think this recent...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
- On judging Scripture (and finding it wanting) — TIL #4: “Pray for You” At the suggestion of a certain rather busy diplomat, I decided to treat this trending ditty as a Theologically Interesting Lyric. It is indeed theologically interesting, because it dovetails into...
John Walton points out that often in the Ancient Near East, a temple dedication ceremony would take place over seven days’ time; for six days, the temple would be furnished and the priests would take up their posts, and finally on the seventh day the deity would come in to take residence and begin to exercise his/her authority. Walton argues that when the Hebrews heard the priests read the creation week of Genesis 1 to them, they would probably not have taken it (primarily, anyway) as a treatise on history or a scientific origins account but as a comosgony framed in terms of an analogy with the construction and resulting importance of the temple as God’s headquarters for the universe. Walton refers to Genesis 1 as a “temple text”: it is a literary form of analogy to the establishment of the sanctuary. His “rest” was not about sleep, but about settling in at the control booth and taking command of the cosmos He had set in place. Six days you shall work, rest on the Sabbath. In fact (and this is not from Walton), that’s why the Sabbath was not made for man, but man for the Sabbath: it became a day of doing nothing (even healing!), when, as Jesus demonstrated with the healing of the man with the withered hand, it was intended to be a day of doing the Lord’s work, a day set aside to remember God’s intention for the heavens and the earth (the implementation of His purposes).
Related posts:- Chaos in Genesis and Germanic mythology Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the...
- Why Genesis 1 was written Not that I have all the answers, of course. I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange...
- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
The question that must be asked of inerrantists is this: Is it Scripture or man’s wisdom that is the ultimate basis for Christians’ belief system?
If you answer that Scripture is the foundation of our beliefs, you must also believe that even our beliefs about the Bible should be scriptural, free from the impositions of man’s so-called wisdom. Please tell me then, inerrantists, where you can find in Scripture that the Bible, meaning the canon as canonized by the Catholic Church, is inerrant.
Experience tells me that I will be directed to 2 Timothy 3.16-17. But this won’t work for multiple reasons. Number one, it’s only talking about the OT at best, since there was no “all Scripture” apart from the OT at the time it was written. Do you want to argue (as someone I know has) that this applies to the NT because 2 Peter apparently calls Paul’s writings “scripture” (Gk. graphe)? Laying aside the fact that graphe is the typical word for “writing” in Greek and not Scripture with a capital “s”, we have the significant issue of 2 Tim. not actually saying “inerrant”, “no errors”, “perfect”, “the very words of God” or anything approaching it; therefore, “inerrancy” is man’s imposition on the actual text of Scripture. What will happen here is that the inerrantist will claim that “inspired”/”God-breathed” means “error-free”, because God cannot lie. But this is where man’s wisdom comes in: the Bible nowhere says that “God-breathed” means “God dictated”, and no one except for an unhinged Fundamentalist claims the Bible is actually divine dictation, so they then must come up with the idea that God insured the accuracy of the perceptions of those to whom He revealed truth in Scripture. This is pure human speculation. It is not in Scripture. It is an extrapolation based upon man’s wisdom that has no biblical support. Therefore, the inerrantists’ belief system is based not upon Scripture, but upon the human philosophical proposition that God wouldn’t let authors of Scripture misinterpret any truth pertaining to science, history, or theology. Sure, it’d make sense for that to be the case, but it’s just not there in the Bible, and it violates no Scripture to believe that God’s inspiration entailed something a little less extravagant.
Related posts:- Proving Christianity with inerrancy In a discussion involving my rejection of inerrancy, a frequent commenter mentioned the inerrantist objection, ”Without [our Bible] can we confidently walk up to a non-believer and ask him to believe our own...
- Mr. Sola Scriptura weighs in on inerrancy Take the great 16th century reformer Martin Luther, for instance. Most would argue that Luther — who argued for “scripture alone” — had a high regard for the Bible. Yet,...
- The Bible and the need for proof In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual...
My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading. He also makes some interesting remarks about the usefulness and validity of orthodoxy, something I’ve discussed here and there on this blog.
I strongly suggest that you go over to Outside the Box and read it. But in case you’re too lazy, and because it so well expresses my own current thoughts, I’m going to reproduce a substantial part of it right here.
Related posts:My friends who read the Bible as if it were the very inspired words of God see themselves as standing on the solid high ground of Fundamentalism, and see me as skidding down the slippery slope of that dreaded disease of Liberalism.
- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
- Brief question about inerrancy The question that must be asked of inerrantists is this: Is it Scripture or man’s wisdom that is the ultimate basis for Christians’ belief system? If you answer that Scripture...
- The Bible as literature and what that means to us Mike Beidler pointed me to an article entitled “The Bible as Human Literature” that culminates in the provocative question, “If Jesus is really raised from the dead, what do we...