Reacting to reactionaries

I'm continuing my interaction with Mike Licona's latest response to the Geisler faction. It's a sequel to my previous analysis:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/06/is-inerrancy-at-best-secondary-doctrine.html

Unfortunately, there almost seems to be a self-fulling prophecy at work. In the past, Geisler has leveled criticisms of Blomberg and Licona (among others) that are out of all proportion to the offense. Yet in reaction to Geisler, Blomberg and Licona are now making concessions which, to some extent, confirm the original allegation after the fact. It's as if they are moving to the left in reaction to the Geisler faction. Geisler is a reactionary, but there's a danger that some of his targets or opponents will respond by becoming reactionaries in the opposite direction. 

The bottom line appears to be that Geisler and the New Fundamentalists do not like the historical-critical approach I employ and that is employed by the majority of today’s leading evangelical biblical scholars. He and those in his camp do not grasp the different tasks of theologians and biblical historians. Conservative theologians can approach the biblical texts with their presuppositions and conclude that such-and-such events occurred. So, Geisler, who is a philosopher and theologian, can come to the Gospels and say (a) The Bible is God’s Word. (b) The Bible says these events occurred. (c) Therefore, these events occurred. Case closed.

Of course, that's a caricature. A Christian commitment to the veracity of Scripture doesn't mean there is nothing further to be said. Although the fact that Scripture vouches for an event is sufficient reason to believe it occurred, that doesn't preclude corroborative evidence. Likewise, one can furnish supporting arguments for the veracity of Scripture. 

The doctrines of the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Gospels are faith doctrines that cannot be proven. That does not mean they are false. It means they cannot be proven. In order to prove the Gospels are inerrant, one would have to start by proving there are no errors (this means adequately resolving all discrepancies), and then corroborating everything reported in the Gospels as being true. Good luck with that task! But one can still believe the Gospels are divinely inspired and without error just as they can believe Jesus’s death can atone for one’s sins. Neither can be proven and both must be accepted on faith.

i) It isn't clear what Licona is denying. Is he saying there can be no evidence for the inspiration of Scripture? Or is he saying there is only so much we can show by means of argument?

ii) Moreover, Licona's invidious comparison is self-defeating. If "faith-doctrines" are unprovable, so are the reconstructions and conclusions of the critical-historical method–which, at best, only yields probabilities rather than certainties. 

Historians of the Bible do not have such a luxury. Historical investigation does not allow us to presuppose the inerrancy of the Bible in the course of a historical investigation. Otherwise, historians would just use the above argument, close shop and go home.  However, when approaching the Gospels historically and making no theological assumptions pertaining to whether they are divinely inspired or inerrant, historians can apply the tools of historical investigation in order to see if a reported event can be confirmed. History and theology are not contradictory practices. But they are different.

This posits a false dichotomy between history and theology. Yet the Gospels are theological history. The Gospels bear witness to God's intimate involvement in human history. 

How can a historian of the Bible leave God's activity in the world out of account when Biblical narratives report what God has done with, to, or for the human participants?

Of course, an unbeliever can simply deny the reality of that theological representation, but he must take the representation fully into account even to deem it false. 

Perhaps Licona is distinguishing between the nature of the record (inspiration) and the nature of what it records (divine action). If so, that's an artificial distinction. It would be arbitrary to make allowance for divine revelation within the historical narrative (e.g. prophecies, revelatory dreams, angelic apparitions), but disallow divine inspiration or revelation in reference to the production of the record itself. If the Gospels can be a record of divine agency, they can also be a product of divine agency.

Licona's latest statement is especially odd because it seems to mark a regression from the position he took in The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.  

We may still ask what it means to say, “The Bible is God’s Word.” Does it mean God must always speak with legal precision and describe events with photographic accuracy rather than within the bounds of the various genres in which the biblical literature is written?

Short answer: no. Vern Poythress has a good discussion of photographic realism in his Inerrancy and the Gospels:

http://www.frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/PoythressVernInerrancyAndTheGospels.pdf

Would it be possible for God to ensure that certain messages He regarded as having great importance were preserved accurately while He allowed the biblical authors freedom to write in their own words and style, even tolerating a lapse of memory on their part, their need to fill in the blanks, or even a deliberate altering of data for theological reasons resulting in a portrayal of events in ways not reflective of what we would have seen had we been there?

i) Licona seems to be proposing a denial of verbal inspiration. Was that his intention?

Verbal inspiration isn't a "New Fundamentalist" distinctive or innovation. That's the classic Protestant doctrine of Scripture. And it reflects the self-witness of Scripture–as Warfield has documented. 

ii) "Tolerating a memory lapse" would clearly be incompatible with the inerrancy of the record. 

I offer a few thoughts: First: CSBI and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy are not the same. CSBI is neither Scripture nor is it the product of a Church council. It is not authoritative. And with the exception of the faculty members at a few seminaries, evangelicals are not bound by it. One can hold to the inerrancy of Scripture without embracing CSBI. In fact, it’s worth observing that it may very well be the case that more evangelicals worldwide define biblical inerrancy as it’s articulated in the Lausanne Covenant than by CSBI. 

It's true that the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy has no inherent authority. However, unless Licona thinks there's something wrong with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (or the companion document on hermeneutics), why does he bridle at that standard? If he thinks it's a defective formulation, he should explain why.

Perhaps, though, that's implicit in his contrast with Walton's new book:

In their new book The Lost World of Scripture, biblical scholars John Walton and Brent Sandy discuss ancient literary culture, its focus on orality, and biblical authority. Both authors teach at Wheaton College where all faculty members must affirm the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It’s a wonderful book worth reading in its entirety. Consider the following statements made by Walton and Sandy:

Common definitions of inerrancy do not fit scenarios understood in light of orality (though some responsible constructive theological accounts come close). Yet orality was the way God chose, which must mean it was the right way. Evidently, we need to adjust our understanding of inerrancy to the evidence we find in Scripture.[20]
The point of this book is not to deconstruct inerrancy but to put it on surer footing by carefully accounting for the worldview of the biblical world, which is different from the worldview of modern Western culture. If Christians conceive of inerrancy from the vantage point of print culture and expect sacrosanct wording for the transmission of truth, then they may rightly conclude that understanding orality threatens inerrancy. The alternative is to recognize that inerrancy needs to be redefined in light of the literary culture of the Bible. Hopefully, this book is a step in the right direction.[21]

i) By itself, this fails to specify how inerrancy needs to be redefined. What does Licona think is the takeaway lesson from that book, which he recommends?

ii) One problem with Walton's book is neglecting evidence for literacy and textuality in the 1C. It was never just an oral culture. That's grossly simplistic. For instance:

http://www.denverseminary.edu/article/reading-and-writing-in-the-time-of-jesus/

http://web.archive.org/web/20070824082814/http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=29&Issue=4&ArticleID=4

iii) Consider how often in Scripture a prophet is commanded to write down his oracles. 

iv) Walton seems to be assuming that the sayings of Jesus were transmitted by word-of-mouth long before they were committed to writing. Hence, the Gospels reflect a loose recollection of what he said. If that's Walton's contention, it disregards the role of inspiration, as if the record of Christ's sayings was solely dependent on the vicissitudes of unaided memory.

Jesus gave no indication that the [oral] culture was deficient or that his followers should move beyond orality and record his message in written form. Nothing in the Gospels suggests that the oral texts of Jesus' words and deeds would be inadequate for the Christian movement (144).

Walton's claim is self-refuting. The very fact that he appeals to written Gospels as his source of information directly belies his contention to the contrary.