Arguments for Biblical Inerrancy

[Mr. Sluagh]

Are you referring to any "history" outside of the Bible? Because some would make similar arguments about divine providence in history using the explosive early expansion and prosperity of the Muslim caliphate, which is much better documented than any of the Bible stories you mentioned.

Absolutely, I am referring to history outside of the Bible. If the Muslims are able to subdue the world and eradicate Christianity, would that not suggest Allah is the true god? it might not prove it but it would suggest it. I am not absolutely certain about Muslim eschatology and where Muhammad said history was going, but if his claims come to pass, wouldn't that validate him as the prophet of Allah? I think it would.

So then, is Christianity not sufficiently credible until it subdues all the other religions? (I think this might actually be what you're saying, but could you please clarify?)

The problem with this reasoning is that you have to determine what God wants before you go looking for His hand in history because the criteria "the hand of God in history" is essentially "an inexplicable event that conforms to God's will". And even if you could find significant historical validity in the miracles you mentioned (which I don't think you can, but that's a slightly different argument), you'd still have to determine that God was telling the truth.

Absolutely. The religions make claims about what their gods can do, and the religions are evaluated by whether or not their gods can do those things. For instance, if Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple beforehand, and it was actually destroyed in 70 CE, that gives Jesus some credibility. If he claimed he would raise from the dead, and he didn't raise from the dead, it would ruin his credibility.

Just because a being is capable of raising the dead doesn't mean it tells the truth about its other powers. Resurrection is one thing, omnipotence is an another. You might as well believe that some "magician" can summon fire and lightning just because he can conjure a coin from behind your ear.

As for historical validation of miracles, I suggest N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. He approaches the resurrection from a historian's perspective and concludes that the Resurrection is "good history." It is the most significant New Testament book to come out this century so far.

Yeah, I do need to read up on Biblical historicity more. So far, I've found none of the arguments I've heard convincing. They never seem to take into account how much the apostles had to lose from the morale loss that might've resulted from Jesus' death, and how much they had to gain from convincing people that he was somehow still alive.

What if YHVH is simply an ambitious tribal deity who subdued and conquered the other gods, rallying his mortal troops by succeeding where his enemies failed?

YHWH was viewed as a tribal deity by the other nations surrounding Israel. What set YHWH apart from the other gods was His claim to be the only true god. Later in history, YHWH made claims to be the god not only of Israel, but also of the whole world. So how do we know if YHWH is merely a tribal deity or the true God of the world? We know by whether or not He is able to accomplish what He said He could accomplish. Phase one of these accomplishments was the resurrection of Jesus.

There are many stories of gods performing miracles. Among them, Jesus' resurrection is relatively well-documented, but that doesn't make it any more plausible.

Phase 2 will be the return of Jesus, the resurrection of the righteous, and the consummation of the kingdom of God. When YHWH does those things in the future, he will be "proven" as the true god.

If he does, which he hasn't.

[Matt]

So then, is Christianity not sufficiently credible until it subdues all the other religions? (I think this might actually be what you're saying, but could you please clarify?)

I am not saying that Christianity is proven true when everyone converts to Christianity. A good marketing strategy or a holy war could probably accomplish this as well. Christianity will be "proven" when the dead are resurrected to eternal life.

Just because a being is capable of raising the dead doesn't mean it tells the truth about its other powers. Resurrection is one thing, omnipotence is an another. You might as well believe that some "magician" can summon fire and lightning just because he can conjure a coin from behind your ear.

True. But a god who can raise the dead is okay by me.

Yeah, I do need to read up on Biblical historicity more. So far, I've found none of the arguments I've heard convincing. They never seem to take into account how much the apostles had to lose from the morale loss that might've resulted from Jesus' death, and how much they had to gain from convincing people that he was somehow still alive.

Wright talks about this. The short form is that there were several other messianic movements contemporary with Christianity. The Romans crucified all of the would-be messiahs, and none of their followers, save those of Jesus, claimed that their leader had been raised from the dead. Typically, crucifixion of the leader ended the movement. With Christianity, something else happened.

There are many stories of gods performing miracles. Among them, Jesus' resurrection is relatively well-documented, but that doesn't make it any more plausible.

I have been arguing according to Wolfhart Pannenberg's train of thought. He says that we should be fair to all religions and evaluate their claims by their own criteria and not those that we have created. Thus, he would grant that miracle stories from other faiths are evidence that these other faiths are "true." (He doesn't say that Christianity has been proven true yet.)

If he does, which he hasn't.

Nope. So we don't know for sure.

But you raise a different question in your post. How do we know that Christianity is sufficiently credible to believe? Well, "sufficiently credible" means different things to different people. I would say that people will follow the religion that best coheres to their experience of reality. To me, this is Christianity. First, Christianity teaches that the world was created good but that it has gone horribly wrong. To me this best explains why I see so much beauty and goodness in the world, but also such pain and evil. Second, Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God portrays to me the world as it should be. Finally, Paul's teaching on justification by faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the keys to personal transformation best describe to me how people really change.

Do I know for sure that YHWH is the true god? No. Do I think there is enough evidence to make Christianity's claims sufficiently credible? Yes.

[ScottBarger]

Back to the original topic.

What is interesting to me is how often Christians who staunchly advocate the inerrancy of the text actually believe the bible we have is errant. For example, the following is a fairly common and conservative statement on the issue (taken front the statement of faith for my denomination):

THE BIBLE. The Word of God, the sixty-six Books of the Old and New Testaments, verbally inspired in all parts, and therefore wholly without error as originally given of God (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21).

When confronted with undeniable textual variants/errors they appended the caveat "as originally given of God." In other words, they acknowledge the Bible we now possess is errant to some degree but make the theologically necessary assertion that it wasn't when men "inspired by God" first put pen to paper. As per Matt's previous post, this assertion is theologically necessary given their own theological system which concludes, among other things, that God cannot be party to or the cause of untruth. Of course this conclusion directly contradicts the text (see: 1 Kings 22) and does not resolve any questions regarding the reliability of the text or God's culpability in the whole thing. Either God inspired a problematic text, or he inspired a totally inerrant text that he subsequently allowed us to mess up. Either way, he's to blame.

Personally I think the truthfulness and divine power of the text is found in the meaning intended by the human writer. For example, the intended meaning of the story "The Boy who Cried Wolf" was not instruction on shepherding techniques, or even the dangerous nature of wolves, but to communicate the importance of telling the truth. Given this intended meaning, it doesn't really bother me if incidentals about shepherding, wolves, angry towns people, etc. are askew within the story. The meaning of the text is clear, intact, and..in a very real way...inerrant.

[Matt]

Personally I think the truthfulness and divine power of the text is found in the meaning intended by the human writer. For example, the intended meaning of the story "The Boy who Cried Wolf" was not instruction on shepherding techniques, or even the dangerous nature of wolves, but to communicate the importance of telling the truth. Given this intended meaning, it doesn't really bother me if incidentals about shepherding, wolves, angry towns people, etc. are askew within the story. The meaning of the text is clear, intact, and..in a very real way...inerrant.

Brent Sandy would be proud.

[ScottBarger]

He is.

[Mr. Sluagh]

So then, is Christianity not sufficiently credible until it subdues all the other religions? (I think this might actually be what you're saying, but could you please clarify?)

I am not saying that Christianity is proven true when everyone converts to Christianity. A good marketing strategy or a holy war could probably accomplish this as well. Christianity will be "proven" when the dead are resurrected to eternal life.

Agreed.

Just because a being is capable of raising the dead doesn't mean it tells the truth about its other powers. Resurrection is one thing, omnipotence is an another. You might as well believe that some "magician" can summon fire and lightning just because he can conjure a coin from behind your ear.

True. But a god who can raise the dead is okay by me.

So we have someone who brags about slaughtering babies and razing cities and threatens to subject billions of people to unimaginable torture (sure, he has his excuses, but that stuff still puts him off on the wrong foot) and you're willing to trust him absolutely just because him can raise someone from the dead?

Yeah, I do need to read up on Biblical historicity more. So far, I've found none of the arguments I've heard convincing. They never seem to take into account how much the apostles had to lose from the morale loss that might've resulted from Jesus' death, and how much they had to gain from convincing people that he was somehow still alive.

Wright talks about this. The short form is that there were several other messianic movements contemporary with Christianity. The Romans crucified all of the would-be messiahs, and none of their followers, save those of Jesus, claimed that their leader had been raised from the dead. Typically, crucifixion of the leader ended the movement. With Christianity, something else happened.

So the apostles had a bright idea that no one else had. Or the story of the resurrection developed organically among Jesus' followers because for some reason he struck a chord that the others missed and people couldn't let him go, and the apostles decided not to argue and ran with it. It goes without saying that Jesus was a uniquely inspiring figure, who succeeded in many places where his contemporaries didn't. As with most of these arguments, this seems like a clever, speculative interpretation of insufficient information that Wright dresses up as hard deduction by relentlessly ignoring alternate hypotheses.

There are many stories of gods performing miracles. Among them, Jesus' resurrection is relatively well-documented, but that doesn't make it any more plausible.

I have been arguing according to Wolfhart Pannenberg's train of thought. He says that we should be fair to all religions and evaluate their claims by their own criteria and not those that we have created. Thus, he would grant that miracle stories from other faiths are evidence that these other faiths are "true." (He doesn't say that Christianity has been proven true yet.)

I'm confused. This seems like the kind of relativism that Christians usually rail against. "Everything is true if you want it to be, rational analysis of observable evidence is just another perspective, everyone is right and therefore no one is. Discourse is useless because opinions don't just lack rational foundations, they don't even need them." It reminds me of a comic strip I saw once. It showed a high school teacher wrapping up a critical thinking class, while a stereotypical rowdy-looking kid with a mowhawk heckled her. It went something like this:

TEACHER: So you see class, categorical logic is an inescapable part of our language and how we--

KID: That's bullshit! Categorical logic is just another stupid rule designed to oppress people!

TEACHER writes on the board:
1. Categorical logic is a rule.
2. All rules are oppressive.
=
3. Categorical logic is oppressive.

KID: Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about.

If he does, which he hasn't.

Nope. So we don't know for sure.

But you raise a different question in your post. How do we know that Christianity is sufficiently credible to believe? Well, "sufficiently credible" means different things to different people. I would say that people will follow the religion that best coheres to their experience of reality. To me, this is Christianity. First, Christianity teaches that the world was created good but that it has gone horribly wrong. To me this best explains why I see so much beauty and goodness in the world, but also such pain and evil. Second, Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God portrays to me the world as it should be. Finally, Paul's teaching on justification by faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the keys to personal transformation best describe to me how people really change.

Do I know for sure that YHWH is the true god? No. Do I think there is enough evidence to make Christianity's claims sufficiently credible? Yes.

Once again, I can't argue with anti-argument. It just seems downright nihilistic to think that beliefs are only personal preferences that exist in a vacuum and there's no point in trying to make them conform to a reality that people can agree upon.

[JustJim]

I think the Deist god is impossible to know in the way you describe.

EXACTLY my point! We can't "know" God. We are horses. God isn't. We can only guess and speculate about the nature of God from what we can see from our horse perspectives. When Rian insists her horse "knew" her, for example, she's correct if she means her horse knew her in the ways horses can "know" - which is as horses, not as humans. As I've said before, I think we have the same level of ability to know God as a lump of clay has to know us. Horses are much closer to us than we are to God.

First, there is the assumption that the world is as it ought to be. This is a huge assumption.

It's also a faulty assumption. "Ought to be" implies intention, purpose, will, etc. The world is not as it ought to be. It's as it IS.

Is there an appropriate method for discerning what our observations teach us about God? I might look at a flower and say, "God is a god of beauty." Someone else might look at cancer and say, 'God is a god of destruction." How do we discern what nature teaches us about God?

You're presupposing God is a is a God with a "personality" - a "God of..." kind of God. So your questions make sense to you from that position. I don't see God that way, and I wish there were words to describe the difference. But I'm at a loss. For me, we can sometimes learn some things about what God is not like from what we observe, and one major thing I've learned is that God is not a "God of" mercy, love, destruction, beauty, etc. Those are human characteristics. They don't fit God. If they did, then there would have been no such thing as a Holocaust, for example, which doesn't fit a "God of" mercy who is also omnipotent and omniscient. But things like Holocausts fit just fine in human characteristics, as we've seen over and over again throughout history.

Essentially, you would be creating God in your own image, like you said.

My God doesn't have an image. That's your God....

Jim

[JustJim]

TEACHER: So you see class, categorical logic is an inescapable part of our language and how we--

KID: That's bullshit! Categorical logic is just another stupid rule designed to oppress people!

TEACHER writes on the board:
1. Categorical logic is a rule.
2. All rules are oppressive.
=
3. Categorical logic is oppressive.

KID: Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about.

I love it! (Shouldn't 1 & 2 be in reverse order? Major premise, minor premise, conclusion... all that stuff....)

Jim

[Matt]

Just because a being is capable of raising the dead doesn't mean it tells the truth about its other powers. Resurrection is one thing, omnipotence is an another. You might as well believe that some "magician" can summon fire and lightning just because he can conjure a coin from behind your ear.

True. But a god who can raise the dead is okay by me.

So we have someone who brags about slaughtering babies and razing cities and threatens to subject billions of people to unimaginable torture (sure, he has his excuses, but that stuff still puts him off on the wrong foot) and you're willing to trust him absolutely just because him can raise someone from the dead?

Ha! So I chose my words poorly. Touche.

My point is that Christianity provides the best answers to the questions that I am asking--Why is there something rather than nothing? What is wrong with us? What should life be like?

I like Jesus' answers to those questions, and the fact that he rose from the dead gives him serious street cred IMO.

So the apostles had a bright idea that no one else had. Or the story of the resurrection developed organically among Jesus' followers because for some reason he struck a chord that the others missed and people couldn't let him go, and the apostles decided not to argue and ran with it. It goes without saying that Jesus was a uniquely inspiring figure, who succeeded in many places where his contemporaries didn't. As with most of these arguments, this seems like a clever, speculative interpretation of insufficient information that Wright dresses up as hard deduction by relentlessly ignoring alternate hypotheses

If you read Wright, you won't say this. He grants that this is an alternate explanation of the data, but then examines it to see which is the most likely scenario based on how people respond in similar scenarios. The book is 700 pages long--he hardly "ignores alternate hypotheses."

Sure, you can speculate a million reasons why the apostles reponded to Jesus' death the way they did, but do you have any evidence that this is the case? Among the myriads of possibilities, how do historians discern what is the most likely explanation? Wright has evidence that the scenario you are describing is not typically what happened. That's not how people typically work. Sure, it's within the realm of possibility, but so is that Jesus really rose from the dead. Wright shows that the latter scenario is far more likely than the former.

I'm confused. This seems like the kind of relativism that Christians usually rail against.

Maybe I'm not the typical Christian.

Everything is true if you want it to be

The word "truth" implies a judgment. People judge things to be "true" or "false."

rational analysis of observable evidence is just another perspective

All "truth" is necessarily perspectival truth. There is no such thing as a neutral observer.

everyone is right and therefore no one is

I didn't say that. Some people are right and some people are wrong. We just don't always know who is who.

Discourse is useless because opinions don't just lack rational foundations, they don't even need them

Again, I didn't say this. Discourse is tricky, but not useless.

TEACHER: So you see class, categorical logic is an inescapable part of our language and how we--

KID: That's bullshit! Categorical logic is just another stupid rule designed to oppress people!

TEACHER writes on the board:
1. Categorical logic is a rule.
2. All rules are oppressive.
=
3. Categorical logic is oppressive.

KID: Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Ha! Excellent critique of hard postmodernism. But there are few hard postmodernists left in the world. Most have realized their folly.

But the legacy that postmodernism left us is humility. Nobody has a slam dunk, error-free, unbiased answer to the world's ills. There is a real world out there, and we are doing our best to understand it. But we all approach the task blindfolded with one arm tied behind our back.

Once again, I can't argue with anti-argument. It just seems downright nihilistic to think that beliefs are only personal preferences that exist in a vacuum and there's no point in trying to make them conform to a reality that people can agree upon.

I agree that it is nihilistic to say that beliefs are only personal preferences, but I didn't go that far (maybe halfway).

I see no other basis for making these kinds of decisions. Ultimately, people believe what they want to believe based on what seems right to them. Some are right, some are wrong. We do our best to make sense of the world, but no one has all of the facts, no one has the ability to make sense of all the facts, and no one is free from bias. That's frustrating to some, but it's reality.

[Matt]

EXACTLY my point! We can't "know" God. We are horses. God isn't. We can only guess and speculate about the nature of God from what we can see from our horse perspectives. When Rian insists her horse "knew" her, for example, she's correct if she means her horse knew her in the ways horses can "know" - which is as horses, not as humans. As I've said before, I think we have the same level of ability to know God as a lump of clay has to know us. Horses are much closer to us than we are to God.

True. But, the Incarnation would change that. God became a horse.

It's also a faulty assumption. "Ought to be" implies intention, purpose, will, etc. The world is not as it ought to be. It's as it IS.

Good point. An essential part of my belief system is this nagging sensation that something is wrong with this picture.

You're presupposing God is a is a God with a "personality" - a "God of..." kind of God. So your questions make sense to you from that position. I don't see God that way, and I wish there were words to describe the difference. But I'm at a loss. For me, we can sometimes learn some things about what God is not like from what we observe, and one major thing I've learned is that God is not a "God of" mercy, love, destruction, beauty, etc. Those are human characteristics. They don't fit God. If they did, then there would have been no such thing as a Holocaust, for example, which doesn't fit a "God of" mercy who is also omnipotent and omniscient. But things like Holocausts fit just fine in human characteristics, as we've seen over and over again throughout history.

Okay. This is true--I assume God has a personality. But I think you're more vulnerable to the atheist critique of "What is the point of a god who is unknowable?" than a theist is.

You're essentially reducing God to the forces of nature, almost like a pantheism, panentheism, or Hinduism. (Or Jediism.)

Perhaps you don't go that far.

If it were not for the acts of God in history (i.e. the Exodus and the resurrection of Jesus), I think your approach to theology would be most appropriate. However, I believe that God has acted in history, so that He is knowable. He is wholly other, but He chooses to reveal himself in ways that horses can understand. I can know that He has a personality, and that this personality resembles that of Jesus.

My God doesn't have an image. That's your God....

Touche. Sorry for the faulty assumption.

[JustJim]

Okay. This is true--I assume God has a personality. But I think you're more vulnerable to the atheist critique of "What is the point of a god who is unknowable?" than a theist is.

I don't know that there is a "point". That's why I can identify better with atheists than theists, I suppose. Theists believe there is a point to God's existence (assigning a reason or purpose or intention to God, something akin to our own human ways of thinking) - even if they can't agree on what that point is. I don't. And for atheists it's a moot question, since there would be no "point" to a God that doesn't even exist.

You're essentially reducing God to the forces of nature, almost like a pantheism, panentheism, or Hinduism.

Actually, I'm extremely close to "pandeism" (see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism) in many respects - probably much closer than I am to traditional Deism. But I'm still in the earliest stages of ironing out all the problems I still have with both.

Jim

[whoosanightowl]

Matt wrote:

Sure, you can speculate a million reasons why the apostles reponded to Jesus' death the way they did, but do you have any evidence that this is the case? Among the myriads of possibilities, how do historians discern what is the most likely explanation? Wright has evidence that the scenario you are describing is not typically what happened. That's not how people typically work. Sure, it's within the realm of possibility, but so is that Jesus really rose from the dead. Wright shows that the latter scenario is far more likely than the former.

Huh?? It's as much within the realm of possibility that Jesus rose from the dead as it is that people exaggerated or lied about such an event?? So in your view it's more plausible to believe a dead man came back to life after about a day and a half (counting by 24 hour days -roughly 3pm Friday till the very early morning hours Sunday) or 3 days (counting any portion of a day as a day, like the bible does), something that literally NEVER happens in the real world and is considered scientifically impossible, rather than to believe human beings fabricated the story?
Yeah, right. It's just so unlike human beings to contrive tales of supernatural beings performing supernatural feats.

[Tim-the-Hermit]

But the legacy that postmodernism left us is humility. Nobody has a slam dunk, error-free, unbiased answer to the world's ills. There is a real world out there, and we are doing our best to understand it. But we all approach the task blindfolded with one arm tied behind our back.

__________

I see no other basis for making these kinds of decisions. Ultimately, people believe what they want to believe based on what seems right to them. Some are right, some are wrong. We do our best to make sense of the world, but no one has all of the facts, no one has the ability to make sense of all the facts, and no one is free from bias. That's frustrating to some, but it's reality.

Hi Matt,

I agree with those two statements. Do you think it's fair that people go to hell for making the "wrong" choice under those circumstances?

[whoosanightowl]

Matt wrote:

If it were not for the acts of God in history (

i.e. the Exodus and the resurrection of Jesus

), I think your approach to theology would be most appropriate. However, I believe that God has acted in history, so that He is knowable. He is wholly other, but He chooses to reveal himself in ways that horses can understand. I can know that He has a personality, and that this personality resembles that of Jesus.

I don't believe there is any verifiable evidence to support either of these claims, so it's more logical for me to believe that if there is a "God", it has not acted in this world, that it has not revealed itself, and that it does not have a personality, etc.

[Matt]

Huh?? It's as much within the realm of possibility that Jesus rose from the dead as it is that people exaggerated or lied about such an event?? So in your view it's more plausible to believe a dead man came back to life after about a day and a half (counting by 24 hour days -roughly 3pm Friday till the very early morning hours Sunday) or 3 days (counting any portion of a day as a day, like the bible does), something that literally NEVER happens in the real world and is considered scientifically impossible, rather than to believe human beings fabricated the story?
Yeah, right. It's just so unlike human beings to contrive tales of supernatural beings performing supernatural feats.

It's not scientifically possible. If you don't have a category for miracle, then it is impossible for the resurrection to be an explanation for Christianity. But you've also cut yourself off from any meaningful dialogue with Christians about the veracity of their claims.