I was just reading someone who's moved to the left theologically. He used to be more conservative. Now he rejects inerrancy. He used differences between one canonical Gospel and another to prove his point.
There are different ways of responding to this objection. For now one content myself with one observation that ought to be obvious, but is routinely overlooked. He fails to consider the obvious fact that there really is more than one way to report the same event. Historical events have more than one aspect.
As a practical matter, human beings are used to screening out a lot of extraneous information, such as background noise. We disregard the density and complexity of experience.
Suppose I told a painter to paint a tree. The same tree. What would he paint?
Well, there are many variables. The time of day affects the lighting. If he paints in the morning or afternoon, the tree will present a different aspect.
It is clear, partly cloudy, or overcast? Sunny, rainy, misty, or snowy?
He can position himself closer to the tree or farther away. That will affect the appearance of the tree.
He can take up a wide range of different positions along the 360º perimeter of the tree. That will affect the appearance of the tree.
Maybe he can paint the tree from a hill, looking down–or paint the tree from below, looking up.
Whether he paints the tree in spring, summer, fall, or winter will affect the appearance of the tree.
He has to decide how much foreground and background to include in his painting.
Does the sky have clouds? What about the grass? Weeds and wildflowers? Squirrels? Birds?
He could produce hundreds of different paintings of the same tree i n just one year.
And even then he's only capturing the visual aspect of the tree. What it looks like on the outside. He's not even showing us what it looks like on the inside.
Moreover, his painting doesn't capture other sensory properties of the tree. The texture of the tree. What the bark fees like. Or the leaves. And the leaves feel different in spring or autumn.
What the tree sounds like when the wind blows. The fluttering leaves. The creaking boughs.
Or the fragrance of the tree. Or the fragrance of the meadow in which the tree is planted.
Or other ambient sounds which are part of the painter's experience. The sound of birds, cars, airplanes, radios, cellphones–in the background.
Or what the grass feels like under his feet. Or the air temperature.
Much of this we register at a subconscious level.
What if, instead of one painter, you asked two painters to paint the same tree.
In addition to all the variables I just mentioned, different painters have different styles.
They also find different aspects of the tree interesting to paint. Focus on different details. Amplify some details while ignoring others.
Are these contradictory depictions of the same tree? Are they erroneous?
Are these contradictory depictions of the same tree? Are they erroneous?
ReplyDeleteYes. Yes they are.
"I was just reading someone who's moved to the left theologically. He used to be more conservative. Now he rejects inerrancy."
ReplyDeleteWould that be Craig Blomberg?
No, Blomberg is a leading proponent of inerrancy. A good model of how to formulate inerrancy.
ReplyDeleteHe's problematic on some other issues, but that's a separate question.
I was alluding to a blogger by the name of Glen Peoples.
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI asked because I had heard that Denver Seminary is getting more liberal daily. With Blomberg's support of the NPP, I thought that he might have fully joined the non-conservative bandwagon.
To my knowledge, his NPP sympathies don't represent a shift in his theological outlook.
ReplyDeleteTwo painters paint the tree. Both include enough details from the landscape around it to communicate that they are painting from the same basic perspective.
ReplyDeleteOne painter depicts the tree's branches full of apples; another depicts it full of plums.
The inerrantist looks at the paintings and invents explanations.
"Those aren't plums; they are immature apples painted with dark colors."
"In ancient times, apples and plums were used interchangably by artists. They *look* different but they both *mean* 'handheld fruit.'"
"Nothing is impossible with God: by his power a tree may produce apples one day and plums the next."
A person who's not devoted to inerrancy feels no need for convoluted explanations. They simply acknowledge the differences in the paintings. One or both do not accurately represent the tree.
If you've staked your life on knowing the paintings are perfect, that's a problem. But fortunately, that's not necessary.
Despite their inaccuracies, both paintings contain enough detail about the landscape and the tree that you can go looking for that tree, the *real* Tree.
Then when you find Him and rest in His boughs you will always be grateful to the artists and their work -- they guided you, not perfectly, but well, very well.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteThe problem with your explanation is that you weren't there. You were not those people. How do you know that both people weren't accurately describing the same historical event except from different vantage points? How can you be sure that Steve's explanation isn't accurate?
Attempting to use Occam's Razor, here, won't work since there are many of historical examples where Steve's explanation is true.
Your 'errancy' explanation is just as much an invented explanation as Steve's.
ADAM SAID:
ReplyDelete“Two painters paint the tree. Both include enough details from the landscape around it to communicate that they are painting from the same basic perspective.”
You don’t have to paint a tree from the same perspective to paint the same tree. If I paint it sitting to the east of the tree, then paint it sitting to the west of the tree, each perspective is equally descriptive of what I see. That’s how the tree presents itself from that angle.
“One painter depicts the tree's branches full of apples; another depicts it full of plums.__The inerrantist looks at the paintings and invents explanations.__’Those aren't plums; they are immature apples painted with dark colors.’__’In ancient times, apples and plums were used interchangably by artists. They *look* different but they both *mean* 'handheld fruit.’__’Nothing is impossible with God: by his power a tree may produce apples one day and plums the next’."
Thus far you’ve given us a caricature of inerrancy. You need to explain what specifically your caricature corresponds to. What Scriptural phenomenon do you have in mind?
“A person who's not devoted to inerrancy feels no need for convoluted explanations.”
You haven’t shown anything convoluted in my explanation. My explanation was a factual statement about different ways to paint the same tree–as well as the range of experience which gives rise to a range of variant descriptions.
“They simply acknowledge the differences in the paintings.”
That’s exactly what I did.
“One or both do not accurately represent the tree.”
So if I do two paintings of the tree from the same position, but I paint one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, then one or both paintings are inaccurate since the lighting is different in each case? Is that how you define an inaccurate representation?
What would be an accurate representation. To combine the morning and afternoon lighting in the same painting? Wouldn’t that be less accurate? That would be to paint a tree under conditions I never saw, since I never saw the tree simultaneously lit by morning and afternoon sunlight.
“If you've staked your life on knowing the paintings are perfect, that's a problem. But fortunately, that's not necessary.”
I haven’t discussed what’s at stake. That’s extraneous to my argument. Deal with the argument.
“Despite their inaccuracies, both paintings contain enough detail about the landscape and the tree that you can go looking for that tree, the *real* Tree.”
You haven’t explained what makes two paintings inaccurate.
Are you defining accuracy as synonymous with exhaustive detail? Do you equate an accurate representation with a complete representation?
If that’s the case, then you have a problem on your hands. You can’t say a Biblical description is inaccurate unless you can compare it to an accurate description. And you can’t compare it to an accurate description unless you have an exhaustive description. So what’s your standard of comparison?
Sometimes two accounts or paintings are flatly contradictory. I'm not talking about depicting night and day; I'm talking about depicting the same tree bearing both apples and plums. Trees don't do that.
ReplyDeleteThe scripture that really drove this home to me was comparing Jesus's words in Mark 6:8-11 to the same account of his words in Luke 9:3-5.
Mark:
These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff--no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."
Luke:
He told them: "Take nothing for the journey--no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them."
I wasn't there. I don't know exactly what was said. But it can't be both "take nothing but a staff" and "take no staff." That isn't a difference of painting one picture at night and another in the day: that's apples and plums.
I've read attempts to explain away the difference, and they just sound like conspiracy theories to me: just as likely as NASA faking the moon landing or the Holocaust being a Jewish hoax. The explanations start with the conclusion they want and extrapolate backward, assembling some wildly unlikely (and utterly unverifiable) chain of events that reach their preferred conclusion.
Or: Mark or Luke (or both!) just got it wrong. It's an easily-demonstrated fact that human beings writing stuff down sometimes get things wrong. So Mark and/or Luke turn out to be subject to this tendency like the rest of us. Mystery solved.
Fortunately, I also found that being Christian doesn't seem to hinge upon belief in inerrancy. So I bet I will see you guys at the Tree. :)
"Mystery solved."
ReplyDeleteThe Mystery is solved in recognizing that Christ shatters the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction in a very certain way.
He is both finite and infinte. Life and Death. Vineyard and Vinedresser. Ancient of Days and Well Spring of Youth. He has reconciled in His singular hypostasis all warring opposites.
When you pray this prayer and understand then, and ONLY then, have you finally got out of your Hellenization:
http://energeticprocession.com/2009/05/14/prayer-poem-and-dialectic-to-god/
Do not try to reconcile all such paradoxes in Hegelian fashion into some new "synthesis" or to make things "simple and clear" when they are not about simple and clear things.
"Or: Mark or Luke (or both!) just got it wrong."
Or, rather, they both got it right. He is very man and very God.
Photios
energeticprocession said...
ReplyDelete“The Mystery is solved in recognizing that Christ shatters the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction in a very certain way.__He is both finite and infinte. Life and Death.”
Dan, as Peter Geach once said, you need to distinguish between contraries and contradictories. Finitude and infinitude are not contradictories. They can coexist. Life and death are not contradictories. They can coexist.
Christ is not both finite and infinite in the same respect.
“Vineyard and Vinedresser. Ancient of Days and Well Spring of Youth.”
These are figures of speech. Figures of speech don’t have to be mutually consistent since they’re not literally true in the first place. And they’re analogically consistent because metaphors and similes are selective comparisons.
If, however, you want to say that Christ shatters the law of non-contradiction, then I both affirm and disaffirm the Filioque. Mystery solved!
ADAM SAID:
ReplyDelete“The scripture that really drove this home to me was comparing Jesus's words in Mark 6:8-11 to the same account of his words in Luke 9:3-5…Or: Mark or Luke (or both!) just got it wrong. It's an easily-demonstrated fact that human beings writing stuff down sometimes get things wrong. So Mark and/or Luke turn out to be subject to this tendency like the rest of us. Mystery solved.”
i) The only reason you can even compare Synoptic variants in the first place is because Matthew and Luke made use of Mark (assuming Markan priority). Therefore, to say that Matthew or Luke “just got it wrong” is a rather obtuse way to explain Synoptic variants. The variants are deliberate, witting variants. This is not some inadvertent mistake. Matthew and Luke are consciously redacting a written exemplar (Mark).
ii) The most plausible explanation is that Luke’s account is a composite summary of two different speeches, one addressed to the Twelve, and the other addressed to the Seventy. Different things were said to different groups. And he edited two speeches into one.
This is, however, a good illustration of how nominal Christians jettison their faith in Scripture based on superficial, ill-considered objections.
Adam wrote:
ReplyDelete"I've read attempts to explain away the difference, and they just sound like conspiracy theories to me: just as likely as NASA faking the moon landing or the Holocaust being a Jewish hoax. The explanations start with the conclusion they want and extrapolate backward, assembling some wildly unlikely (and utterly unverifiable) chain of events that reach their preferred conclusion. Or: Mark or Luke (or both!) just got it wrong. It's an easily-demonstrated fact that human beings writing stuff down sometimes get things wrong. So Mark and/or Luke turn out to be subject to this tendency like the rest of us. Mystery solved."
Your solution ignores a large amount of relevant evidence. Mark and Luke weren't just "human beings writing stuff down". You have to also take into account the evidence we have for the Holy Spirit's guidance of the apostles and the scriptural status of what such authors wrote, for example. You would also have to take into account other factors, such as how likely it is that Luke would want to contradict Mark on such a point, in light of the nature of the issue under consideration and in light of his treatment of Mark in other contexts. You'd have to take into account how the earliest interpreters of Mark and Luke viewed the relationship between the two documents. For example, Papias gives us some indication of the high view of Mark held by the earliest Christians when he quotes what "the elder", probably the apostle John, said about that gospel. Etc.
What you're doing would be like dismissing a statement of Jesus as an error on the grounds that "human beings speaking sometimes get things wrong", as if it's sufficient to make such an observation while ignoring all of the evidence we have for Jesus' reliability in His healings, His exorcisms, His resurrection, His fulfillment of prophecy, etc. You have to explain the entirety of the evidence, including the evidence we have for the reliability of the sources in question.
And your comparisons to "NASA faking the moon landing or the Holocaust being a Jewish hoax" are ridiculous. You've claimed that three words in Mark contradict two words in Luke. We don't have as much evidence for your reading of those two passages as we have for something like the moon landing or the Holocaust.
You don't have to believe in inerrancy to be a Christian. It's not the most important issue in life. But it is an important issue. And you're misrepresenting the many millions of Christians who have believed in the concept from the earliest days of church history.
Steve:
ReplyDeleteThe most plausible explanation is that Luke’s account is a composite summary of two different speeches...
You say that it's "most plausible," but I'd say the evidence that human beings occasionally write inaccurate things is far more plentiful than any evidence (which you fail to cite) supporting your conclusion.
Either Luke was inaccurate, or he corrected an inaccuracy in Mark. I can't imagine a more plausible explanation as long as you don't presuppose inerrancy.
But because I don't buy inerrancy, you label me a nominal Christian and assume I've jettisoned my faith. Huh. I'll have to let my pastor know!
Jason:
Thank *you*, at least, for acknowledging my Christianity. Maybe I'm getting it wrong on this detail, but I still strive to live by the greatest commandment, and the second one like it. I trust in Christ to be saved.
But I think the evidence of His grace doesn't come from an inerrant text -- it comes through the Holy Spirit, who speaks through flawed human beings and flawed texts alike. He *leads* us *into* truth; he doesn't deliver it leather-bound to our bookshelves.
The "conspiracy theory" comparison isn't meant to refer exclusively to the staff/no staff issue. It refers to the vast body of harmonizations that I once had to do to make everything fit.
...but I think I'll stop here. I feel too much like I'm part of this comic now (http://xkcd.com/386/). Thank you all for listening and God bless.
So basically what Adam is saying is that differences between two texts that are supposedly about the same topic imply there is a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteI daresay everyone reading along would agree with the above sentence (i.e., that Adam said that).
But he didn't say that.
Stinkin' contradictions everywhere!!!
Adam said:
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You say that it's "most plausible," but I'd say the evidence that human beings occasionally write inaccurate things is far more plentiful than any evidence (which you fail to cite) supporting your conclusion.
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That presupposes that there was no divine influence on the Scriptures at all. It also presupposes that the early church was too stupid to realize there was a "contradiction" there, continued to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture despite what the Scripture said (presumably because everyone was illiterate before the Nineteenth Century), and furthermore that there were no skeptics who ever bothered to point this out to believers before.
You said:
---
Either Luke was inaccurate, or he corrected an inaccuracy in Mark. I can't imagine a more plausible explanation as long as you don't presuppose inerrancy.
---
But why shouldn't we presuppose inerrancy? If you're going to move this to presuppositions, you've got to argue for yours too.
Adam wrote:
ReplyDelete"But I think the evidence of His grace doesn't come from an inerrant text -- it comes through the Holy Spirit"
Why not both?
You write:
"He *leads* us *into* truth; he doesn't deliver it leather-bound to our bookshelves."
The passage you seem to be referring to, John 16:13, was addressed to Jesus' disciples in a context that distinguishes them from Christians in general. John seems to apply the passage, as well as some of Jesus' other comments in the surrounding context, to his own writing of the fourth gospel, which he and the earliest Christians seem to have viewed as scripture. See here.
You write:
"The 'conspiracy theory' comparison isn't meant to refer exclusively to the staff/no staff issue. It refers to the vast body of harmonizations that I once had to do to make everything fit."
Those who reject Biblical inerrancy often overlook the fact that they still have to engage in harmonization, even though it's harmonization of a different sort. All of us attempt to harmonize all of the data. You have to try to reconcile the errors you now believe to be in scripture with the evidence for the trustworthiness of those documents, such as what Jesus and other Christian sources said about the nature of scripture. You still harmonize, and what you harmonize is still a "vast body". I judge the inerrantist's burden to be lighter.
You write:
"Either Luke was inaccurate, or he corrected an inaccuracy in Mark. I can't imagine a more plausible explanation as long as you don't presuppose inerrancy."
Inerrancy wouldn't have to be presupposed in order to be accepted. Christians held a high view of Mark early on, and scholars commonly date gospel harmonizations even earlier than Tatian's gospel harmony in the middle of the second century. Mark was viewed as scripture, and the gospels were considered consistent with one another and were harmonized, at least when disciples of the apostles were still alive, probably earlier. It's doubtful that Luke would have thought he was correcting an inaccuracy in Mark. And our evidence for the reliability of Luke is similar.
ADAM SAID:
ReplyDelete“You say that it's ‘most plausible,’ but I'd say the evidence that human beings occasionally write inaccurate things is far more plentiful than any evidence (which you fail to cite) supporting your conclusion.”
i) That’s such a dumb thing to say. The plentiful evidence that human beings occasionally write inaccurate things is hardly an argument against the plenary inspiration of Scripture–since the rationale for plenary inspiration is to guard against the errors to which uninspired humans are prone.
ii) If you want to see the supporting evidence for my conclusion, start with Blomberg’s book on The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (2nd ed., 2007), 187-88–where he argues for that conclusion in reference to the parallel passage in Matthew (which is equally applicable to Luke).
“Either Luke was inaccurate, or he corrected an inaccuracy in Mark. I can't imagine a more plausible explanation as long as you don't presuppose inerrancy.”
i) What you say you “can’t imagine” is not an argument. Rather, it’s the primal crouch of someone who’s too scared to think through the problems he raises since he’s already convinced himself that the problems are insoluble.
ii) The fact that Luke combined two different speeches is not a correction or inaccuracy. It’s simply an example of narrative compression.
“But because I don't buy inerrancy, you label me a nominal Christian and assume I've jettisoned my faith.”
What you have is a make-believe faith. A reactionary faith. Revelation isn’t the source of your faith. Rather, your intellectual fears and insecurities determine the scope of your faith.
What you’ve done is to stake out the stereotypical compromise position which many waning believers resort to when they’re seeking refuge in a halfway house. A classic defense mechanism.
Like any intellectual compromise, it’s unstable. A holding pattern for someone who doesn’t know where to land. Such people usually run out of gas and crash land.
“I'll have to let my pastor know!”
You and your pastor are like two drug addicts who share the same dirty needle.
I want to add to Peter's comments above about the early Christians' view of the New Testament documents.
ReplyDeleteCraig Allert cites a few gospel harmonies prior to and shortly after Tatian's (A High View Of Scripture? [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007], pp. 115-116). Even those who aren't known to have written a gospel harmony sometimes show a high level of knowledge of the details of the gospels and how the details in one gospel compare to the details in another. See, for example, Irenaeus' comments in Against Heresies 3:14:3 and 4:6:1.
Clement of Rome wrote, "Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them." (First Clement, 45) Justin Martyr commented that "I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another" (Dialogue With Trypho, 65). Irenaeus thought that "all Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent" (Against Heresies, 2:28:3). Tertullian commented, "The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth." (A Treatise On The Soul, 21) J.N.D. Kelly summarized:
"This attitude was fairly widespread, and although some of the fathers elaborated it more than others, their general view was that Scripture was not only exempt from error but contained nothing that was superfluous." (Early Christian Doctrines [New York: Continuum, 2003], p. 61)
They held such views while frequently interacting with many heretics and pagan and Jewish critics of the faith. Those critics often argued that scripture is erroneous and inconsistent, and some of the passages I've cited above were written in a context, partly, of interacting with such people.
Steve: "You and your pastor are like two drug addicts who share the same dirty needle."
ReplyDeleteWow. A rather vivid image.
Jason Engwer: "And you're misrepresenting the many millions of Christians who have believed in the concept from the earliest days of church history."
Is there a Triablogue post on that so that I can use it to refute those errantists who argue that inerrancy is a modern development in Church history?
ADAM SAID:
ReplyDelete“I trust in Christ to be saved.”
In that case you should adopt the same high view of Scripture that Jesus did.
“But I think the evidence of His grace doesn't come from an inerrant text -- it comes through the Holy Spirit, who speaks through flawed human beings and flawed texts alike. He *leads* us *into* truth; he doesn't deliver it leather-bound to our bookshelves.”
False dichotomy. The Holy Spirit is the agent of inspiration and inscripturation. There is no disjunction between the Spirit and the Word.
“It refers to the vast body of harmonizations that I once had to do to make everything fit.”
i) There no pressing need to harmonize Scripture unless you think that variant narratives pose a problem for the plenary inspiration.
And that’s only a problem if you come to Scripture with a false preconception of what an inerrant text would look like.
ii) If someone suffers from that misconception, he still doesn’t need to actually harmonize variant narratives. Rather, all he needs is a basic understanding of what general factors would give rise to variant narratives–consistent with the inspiration of Scripture. Factors like topical arrangement, composite quotations, narrative compression, round numbers, numerology, literary allusions, paraphrasis, &c.
iii) He doesn’t have to actually decide which explanation is the correct explanation in any given case. It’s sufficient to know that these phenomena are entirely consonant with the inspiration of Scripture.
Truth Unites... and Divides wrote:
ReplyDelete"Is there a Triablogue post on that so that I can use it to refute those errantists who argue that inerrancy is a modern development in Church history?"
See the comments section of the thread here.
Truth Unites... and Divides said...
ReplyDelete"Is there a Triablogue post on that so that I can use it to refute those errantists who argue that inerrancy is a modern development in Church history?"
i) Christians already fought this battle back in the 70s-80s. Scholars like John Warwick Montgomery, Roger Nicole, Robert Preus, and John Woodbridge documented the high view of Scripture in historic Christianity.
ii) And even if, for the sake of argument, this were a modern development, so what? It's not as if critics of inerrancy are traditionalists.
There's a great book called Biblical Authority by John Woodbridge that traces how Christians throughout history have always maintained inerrancy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Woodbridge edited a book called Scripture and Truth. It includes articles on inerrancy by Woodbridge, Carson, Nicole, Helm, and others.
Truth Unites... and Divides,
ReplyDeleteYou may also be interested in my book review here.
Thanks T-blog team for the links and references!
ReplyDeleteI'll be doing some cutting-and-pasting in my arguments to refute blithering errantists.
I clicked on the link Jason provided about "The less conservative side of Eastern Orthodoxy"... wow, Wow! Just totally dismantled the poor arguments gushed out by "Orthodox". Frosting on the cake was all the quotes that Jason posted by the Early Church Fathers about the "inerrancy" of Scripture.
Thanks again.