"Inspired errors"

I'm posting my side of a recent email exchange:

I remember him [Stephen Young].

I don't comment at Green Baggins anymore. Reed, Lane, et al. are on their own now.

He's being ham-handed about OT law. OT case laws deal with typical situations. General conditions.

But take the case of Rahab and her family. There was no explicit provision for her particular situation. Still, she's an exception to the rule–precisely because the rule was never meant to rule out relevant exceptions. Case law doesn't address every conceivable contingency. It lays down broad guidelines.

He's also wooden about idiomatic or hyperbolic expressions like "forever." These are stock linguistic conventions, not unconditional oracles. 

[Young] Hays’ reply to my example of the staff still doesn’t address the issue. Here I focus on Mark 6.7-9 and Luke 9.1-4, both of which the texts represent as referring to the same incident. Thus explanations of them talking about different instructions or “narrative compressions” are not relevant.

That misses the point. Maybe he's too dense to get the point. The claim is not that these represent two different events. Rather, the claim is the Matthew or Luke are combining speeches from two different events, which they apply to the same event. So, yes, that's narrative compression.

Another reason I don't comment at GB anymore. Inept, gullible moderators. Doesn't GB have a theology of sin? Shouldn't GB apply its theology of sin to infidels like Young?

[Young] This brings back memories of the exchange Hays and I had a while back. Perhaps one of you would care to articulate what kind of evidence it takes to show that the Bible is in error at some point.

 

As it stands Hays just selectively pulls whatever tool out of the tool-box works for making it seem like any potential problem isn’t, in fact, one. Do Jesus’ words contradict between two accounts? Does Deuteronomy explicitly forbid something that Ruth represents as a legitimate thing? Oh, that’s narrative compression, or that’s talking about different events, or he’s taking “forever” too woodenly (would you say that about statements where the Bible makes claims that help your theology?), or the law deals with “typical situations,” or that’s authorial license (I actually have no problem with the last option; though it then becomes relevant to be clear that one author is consciously changing what another reports of Jesus’ words).

Notice that he isn't actually showing what's wrong with any of my explanations. He just complains.

And, yes, one gospel writer edits another gospel writer. So what?

[Young] That’s not an acceptable exegetical argument unless you’ve already decided that the Bible just isn’t allowed to be in error and thus interpretations and analyses keeping the Bible from error are inherently more plausible than analyses that would involve the Bible in an error. Yet again, this kind of exegetical methodology vitiates any semblance of historical reading of the Bible that lets the Bible itself criticize our views.

What's wrong with "already deciding that the Bible just isn't allowed to be in error?"

This has nothing to do with letting the Bible criticize our views. Just the opposite. This has everything to do with letting Young criticize the Bible.

It only vitiates a historical reading of the Bible under Young's tendentious assumption that the Bible isn't inspired.

[Young] So I ask you again, what kind of evidence would it take to show that the Bible has errors in it?

Well, that's a loaded question. What kind of evidence would it take to show that God is in error? The question is nonsensical.

Why should I approach the Bible with the assumption that the Bible ought to be disprovable?

Here's a better question: what kind of evidence would it take to show that Stephen Young is in error rather than the word of God?

[Young] Obviously the premise of this interaction is that we’re all willing to engage in a discussion by the rules, if you will.

Since GB pretends to be a Confessional blog, the rules should stipulate an intramural discussion in which all parties operate from Christian assumptions regarding the inspiration of Scripture.

If that's not an operating assumption, then this ceases to be an intramural discussion among Christians. At that point it is now a debate between believers and unbelievers. There's a place for that, two, but the rules are different. And the rules don't require, as a precondition of such debate, that the Christian side surrender the inspiration of Scripture as an operating premise, and instead treat the Bible was a defeasible, uninspired, timebound, culturebound document.

[Young] My question is not loaded unless you presume that your views just have to be right.

 

We should also be clear on something else. I am not “approach[ing] the Bible with the assumption that the Bible ought to be disprovable.” I am approaching our discussion about the Bible with the assumption that our views about the Bible ought to be disprovable.

 

Work a bit more on not equating your views about the Bible with the Bible itself when it comes to framing the field of legitimate discussion. As Paige and others here seem to have grasped, my approach here is decidedly not about “disproving the Bible,” but presupposing the inspiration of Scripture (that everything in the Bible is doing exactly what God wants it to be doing) and trying to follow Scripture faithfully to learn precisely what God actually says in it and how he behaved while inspiring it.

 

If your analysis is that I am attacking or rejecting the Bible, engage in a discussion about the data and show it without theological strong-arming (this means, among other things, without recourse to special rules that presume you are right from the outset). Otherwise please cease framing the discussion as me trying to attack or disprove the Bible. I am not attacking or trying to disprove the Bible; I am ‘attacking’ and trying to disprove your views about the Bible :).

i) That's pure prevarication. As I recall, Young, like Art Boulet, is just a toady of Peter Enns. We could add Paul Seely to the mix. Sure, they're not going to tip their hand when they come to a "Confessional" blog like GB. But we've seen how this plays out at BioLogos, where contributors don't have to keep up appearances.

Carlos Bovell moves in the same circle. These are impressionable WTS grads whose faith was fatally compromised by the infidel teaching they received from the likes of Peter Enns.

They have an agenda. To liberalize the Reformed community and the evangelical community. Move it to the left, where they are.

ii) What Young is doing here is just a rehash of the old "inductive/phenomena" of Scripture over against the allegedly deductive/a priori approach, as if that hasn't been debated since the 19C.

iii) He then pretends that this is not an issue of what makes Scripture disprovable, but what makes our view of Scripture disprovable.

But that's just another ruse since, as he already admitted, he wants to say what evidence would prove Scripture (and not just our view of Scripture) to be in error.

iv) And Young doesn't really care about the "data," because as soon as we push back on the data, he shifts the discussion away from the "data" to the "rules."

(v) And as far as that goes, yes, it is a "rule" in Christian theology that the Bible is the word of God. That's an axiom of Christian identity.

Young can, of course, repudiate the self-witness of Scripture, and demand that we defend the self-witness of Scripture, but at that juncture it ceases to be an intramural debate between fellow believers. Rather, it's no different than debating Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins on the Bible.

[Young] Let’s review your positions and assertions here.

(A) The Bible is inerrant and is necessarily so.

(B) The most accurate historical readings uphold this.

(C) Before tolerating discussion about what we should do IF the Bible in fact behaves errantly you want me to give you some concrete examples.

(D) You “shoot down” my examples by recourse to interpretive methodologies that presume the greater inherent plausibility of readings of the Bible that accord with your own views. Let’s just be clear, this is the essence of circular arguments gone wild.

(E) Doing D (above) is somehow consonant with you claiming that accurate historical readings uphold your views.

(F) You are happy to acknowledge that, functionally, the whole discussion about whether or not valid examples can be adduced showing the Bible to be in error is a farce anyway…because apparently it’s unreasonable for me to ask you to articulate the conditions of your views’ falsification. Put differently: it’s impossible for you to be wrong.

(G) Though the above establishes a purely circular methodology that makes sure the Bible cannot ever be read in a way that challenges your views, I am somehow still the one who is “attacking Scripture” and denying its inspiration or trying to “disprove” it.

Let me sum this up in a way that any intro student to logic or sociology would: you guys are right because…wait for it…you are right. I am wrong because…wait for it again…I am wrong. Just to anticipate the classic Van Tilian rationalization of such reveling in begging-the-question, see my comments 254 and 255 above.

 

TFan, I’ll be sure to file this all away under new definitions of what it means to have one’s hypotheses “shot down.” Also, I am not asking you “what evidence [you] would accept that God errs.” I am asking you to articulate why you equate your views of the Bible’s inerrancy with the view that the Bible is inspired and to make your view something possible to discuss by articulating what constitutes valid evidence both for and against it.

i) One wonders if Young is really that ignorant of the issues. Or does he just feign ignorance because it’s polemically useful to burn a straw man.

ii) To begin with, every debate involves some operating assumptions which are taken for granted. Assumptions that are not open to debate within the confines of the debate. You can’t debate everything all at once.

For instance, if we’ve having a debate over fiscal policy, we don’t ordinarily demand that an economist first establish the reality of time, the existence of other minds, or the existence of the external world.

One can have philosophical debates over idealism, the nature of time, &c., but that’s not something we need to justify when we debate fiscal policy. Every debate must operate within certain parameters which frame the debate. You can challenge the framework, but that’s a different debate.

iii) We can discuss hypothetical defeaters to the claims of Scripture. St. Paul famously raises a hypothetical defeater in 1 Cor 15:14,17. However, that’s a counterfactual. He doesn’t float that hypothetical as a live possibility. To the contrary, he’s mounting an argument ad impossibile. He is, in fact, using the Resurrection as an unquestionable dataum to leverage the discussion with some of the Corinthians.

If we’re having an intramural debate between Christians, then certain assumptions are taken for granted which would not be granted on all sides in a debate between a believer and an unbeliever. For instance, in an intramural debate between two Christians, the deity of Christ is a given. That’s not up for debate between Christians. The deity of Christ is axiomatic in an intramural debate between Christians.

iv) At the same time, this doesn’t mean, when debating an unbeliever, that a believer suspends his Christian presuppositions. He can still argue for them, and he can also argue for them to show the internal logic of the faith.

a) According to the self-witness of Scripture, the Bible is the word of God.

b) To be a Christian is to accept the self-witness of Scripture. That’s an axiomatic feature of Christian identity. A Christian is a believer, not an unbeliever. To disbelieve the self-witness of Scripture makes you an unbeliever.

c) So one thing we need to clarify at the outset is what both sides of the debate take for granted. If a disputant denies the self-witness of Scripture, then we have to go back several steps. At that point it’s not merely a debate over the “phenomena” of Scripture. It’s a debate over epistemology. The rules of evidence. Truth-conditions.

d) You can coherently debate how we know the Bible is the word of God. Why we believe the self-witness of Scripture. But you can’t coherently debate the presence of error in the word of God. That’s inconsistent with the divine identity of Scripture as the word of God. You can deny the inspiration of Scripture, but you can’t coherently affirm the Bible as the word of God, then proceed to impute error to the word of God. Not unless you think God is equivalent to Zeus or Thor or some other fallible, shortsighted deity.

v) Needless to say, the Bible itself never claims to be “behaving errantly” (in Young’s odd little personification). So this is not deciding “ahead of time” that the Bible must be inerrant. Rather, this is a case of hearing and heeding the self-witness of Scripture. This is not a case of disallowing the “Bible itself” to challenge our presuppositions. For our presuppositions about the Bible are themselves a Biblical deliverance. Where does the Bible say the Bible is errant? It doesn’t. That’s not something the Bible tells us about itself. Just the opposite.

vi) Or consider his doubletalk: “I believe in the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and affirm that everything in it is fully God’s Word as well as human…it remains patently obvious to me (I do not mean that polemically) that the Bible is FULL of errors in the classic sense (inaccuracies where a claim about history or science is meant; ‘contradictions;’ and so on).”

vii) So God inspires error? What distinguishes an inspired errant writing from an uninspired errant writing? It’s not as if we need inspiration to secure error. Lack of inspiration will secure error quite nicely. What does inspiration contribute to the end-product? What difference does it make? 

Does the Bible say God inspired error? No. Does the Bible “define” itself as errant? No.

That’s just a pathetic, unstable intellectual compromise.

viii) And it has nothing to do with “prejudging” what God can say or do. Accepting the self-witness of Scripture is not prejudicial. Rather, that’s beginning where God has told us to begin.

Of course, you can deny that God is speaking to us in Scripture. But in that case you’re approaching the Bible as an outsider. As an unbeliever.

ix) Despite his disclaimers about not "prejudging" or "deciding ahead of time" how the Bible must "behave," Young is the one who is imposing his preconception of how the Bible must behave for the Bible to be true.

Based on his preconception of truth and falsehood, based on his preconception of how a truthful record must behave, he deems the Bible to be "full of errors."

So he's the one with the extrabiblical, aprioristic yardstick.

x) In what sense should we “submit” to error? Does Young submit to error? No. To believe the Bible is “full of errors” is to disbelieve the Bible. If he thinks Bible history is erroneous, then he doesn’t believe Bible history. He doesn’t believe it happened that way, if at all.

[Young] For me, when it comes to historical readings of the Bible, I think biblical writings should be interpreted with the exact same historical methodologies and "rules" that we use for any other source when studies historically. No special rules for the Bible, such as "an interpretive option involving the Bible in an error must be wrong."

If the Bible is the word of God, then the Bible is special. The Bible is not equivalent to the word of Zeus, or the word of Hemingway.

And a “historical methodology” ought to take into consideration the self-understanding of the document in question.

[Young] So I ask you again, what kind of evidence would it take to show that the Bible has errors in it? If you cannot or will not answer this, then the whole discussion is basically a farce.

 

Obviously the premise of this interaction is that we’re all willing to engage in a discussion by the rules, if you will. Thus I do not assume that the whole discussion is actually a farce…and I welcome your articulation of the conditions of falsification of the Bible’s inerrancy.

Actually, for Young to say that God verbally plenarily inspires error is farcical.

[Young] You are happy to acknowledge that, functionally, the whole discussion about whether or not valid examples can be adduced showing the Bible to be in error is a farce anyway…because apparently it’s unreasonable for me to ask you to articulate the conditions of your views’ falsification. Put differently: it’s impossible for you to be wrong.

He keeps doing this bait-n-switch. He pretends the issue is whether our views of the Bible are falsifiable. But when he imputes error to Scripture, and demands that we tell him what type of evidence would impugn the veracity of Scripture, then the real issue is whether the Bible is falsifiable. Not whether our view of Scripture is errant, but whether Scripture itself is errant.