This is very good. Falsehoods and half-truths should, I think, be exposed and diligently refuted especially when the matter at hand is the veracity of God's Word.
Satan's foundational lie was, "Yea, hath God said?" and he continually dusts off and trots out this old, old deception to willing hearers.
But I also remember something about Lydia triggering my spidey-sense suspicion long ago that has never been resolved in my mind.
I'm sorry to say - ironically - but I can't remember the details. It seems like it may have been a combox discussion I read here on T-blog.
Does Lydia actually affirm the full veracity of written Scripture as we have it in our hands today? I seem to recall what triggered my original suspicion about her was something along the lines of her affirming her belief that there were "mistakes" in Scripture.
Maybe unintentional, maybe innocent, maybe seemingly small and insignificant, but errors nonetheless.
If my memory serves me correctly, and if that characterization is correct then Lydia's criticism of Licona (which I agree with completely), boomerangs back on her for how is a friend who constantly makes "innocent mistakes" when reporting key information (Scripture in this case!) significantly *more trustworthy* as a source than a liar?
If the only difference is that one set of falsehoods was made accidently on the one hand versus deliberately on the other hand it's hard to see how we benefit much from the mangled information we've received in either case, or how we can might discern how deep the errors (or lies) run when evaluating the entirety of the information transmitted (Scripture!).
The two slopes seem equally slippery.
But again - ironically - maybe I'm misremembering. :0)
No need for a spidey sense. I'm not an inerrantist. I'm pretty open about that.
I have written at length in various places about just how and why a good-faith error by one of the Gospel writers would be far less damaging to Gospel reliability than deliberate alteration. I would prefer not to type all of that out again here, as I've written about it repeatedly. Feel free to get hold of The Mirror or the Mask and read about it in Chapter IV.
But here are just a couple of super-quick points to think about:
a) All else being equal (e.g., access to the truth being equal), a person who is trying to get things right is more likely to get things right than a person who is *trying* to change the facts.
b) For a literary device theorist to say that the Gospel authors deliberately changed the facts (which is intrinsic to their theory) is not to say that they never made accidental errors. It merely adds an *additional*, and far less predictable and more plausibly wide-ranging, source of error.
Let me also add that I harmonize far more often than the literary device theorists, just as a traditional inerrantist would do, even though I am not an inerrantist. This is *precisely* because I think (based on evidence) the authors were trying to tell the literal truth and had good access to the truth. Hence my first line of approach is to see whether the accounts can be plausibly harmonized, because that's what we would expect with reliable sources. Those who accept literary device theories pretty much always say something deprecatory about harmonization. You can see it right in this very interview. Fradd brings up harmonization, and the first thing Licona does is to start talking about how strained harmonization can get, etc., etc.--to talk it down. Unfortunately, Bill Craig now does the same thing. He almost never refers to Gospel harmonization in an unequivocally positive way. He usually refers to it as strained or artificial. They will claim that they aren't closed to harmonization, but they are pretty negative about it. Contrast that with my discussion with Pat Flynn in this very interview. I even refer quite positively to works like the Big Book of Gospel Difficulties and so forth. That kind of ordinary historical harmonization ought to be a very important part of our toolkit. And quite frankly, I don't pass out scholarly medals when someone compasses land and sea and ponderously admits one harmonization in a case that shouldn't even have been in question in the first place. An example: In Why Are There Differences, Licona admits that perhaps when one Gospel says that the women were at a distance while another refers to women as standing near the cross, this refers to different time periods. I have seen one scholar make a big deal about how Licona is to be commended for admitting this (super-obvious) harmonization. Frankly, I find that a little annoying. When something is that obvious, you shouldn't get special credit for acknowledging it. Let's look instead at all the unforced errors that Licona and others make in equally obvious places where there *isn't even an apparent contradiction* (I give a bunch of these in The Mirror or the Mask) and they utterly gratuitously call Gospel historicity into question just out of scholarly whim.
So the reportage approach that I take, even while acknowledging the plausibility of some good-faith errors, has a far higher expectation of literal accuracy, justified by evidence. And this has very concrete methodological results.
I'd like to say a little bit about Matt Fradd in the interview. I don't think he set out to do a softball interview. I've seen softball interviews with Licona, and they're pretty blatant. (Thinking here of Tim Stratton's interviews a couple of years ago.)
I think the material was just new to Fradd. And Licona has a very confident manner. When someone goes into the interview assuming that whatever Licona says is no big deal, of course his manner encourages that assumption. Thus if this concept of "compositional devices" is new to the person and Licona states (what is, in fact, not accurate) that "this is what we all do all the time in ordinary conversation," I think people assume that if they find this odd or controversial they must just not be understanding. Because Licona is pushing on them the insistence that there is nothing odd or controversial about it. And they go into it assuming that he's probably right and that he's a conservative scholar and defending the reliability of the Gospels. Even when LIcona explains (as he did here) fairly clearly what his literary device view is of a certain passage, the person doesn't always stop the train fast enough or say, "Wait, what?" The interpersonal dynamic of the conversation and statements like, "This is what most of us do in ordinary conversation" just carry the interview forward past the point where they might have said, "Hold on a minute!"
Well that clears up my memory fog, so thanks for that. I certainly didn't expect a personal reply.
But at the risk of oversimplifying things, all I can really conclude from your response (without reading the detailed arguments you referenced that you've made elsewhere) is that you're *far less skeptical* about the veracity of the entirety of Scripture than literary device theorists like Licona, for example.
I guess I'm still not sure how such a position extracts you from the same slippery slope occupied by Licona because at the end of the day although the two of you may take markedly different approaches, and reach quite different conclusions, nevertheless both of you are in agreement about the perfectly acceptable practice of *personally deciding* which parts of Scripture are "true" and which aren't.
It seems too me too high a price to pay for such autonomy. But I'm a nobody so it doesn't much matter what I think anyway.
Well, no, it's not just a matter of degree ("far less skeptical") but a matter of kind. My view of the Gospel authors themselves is radically different.
And that makes a difference to probabilities. We actually have a pretty good idea how often people get things right or wrong, and what kinds of things they get right or wrong, when a) they are scrupulously honest and b) they are in quite a good position to know.
But when you remove yourself far from a (scrupulously honest) to such a point that they are invisibly changing things all over the place to make a "better story," then we're out into never-never land. We do *not* have any kind of good idea of how often they are likely to do that. Some people try to remove the worries about this with the literary device views by saying that we invoke them only when there are apparent discrepancies, but that doesn't really make much sense. Why? Because if they aren't even *trying* to get it right, and (this is central to Licona's view) these changes were "part and parcel of the genre," then we should actually expect them far more often than just the places where we find apparent discrepancies.
This is part of why you find Licona et. al. questioning things where there is not an apparent discrepancy. Why do they do that? Because they think the authors felt free to invent. So about the only place where they are less likely to question it is where something is "multiply attested." (Though I've even seen Licona question something that is multiply attested--namely, Jesus' appearance first in Jerusalem after his resurrection.)
Mmmhmm...okay, but at the end of the day aren't you both (you and Licona) personally deciding what's "true" or "probably true" or "false" or "probably false" in Scripture whether in degree or kind based on your respective approaches to the Bible?
I take the silence as either i.) Lydia is busy with things of actual import and this thread doesn't make the cut or ii.) as a tacit admission of the accuracy of my conclusion above.
Perhaps it would help for me to say that I'm an evidentialist, not a presuppositionalist. What makes an evaluation of something reliable or unreliable isn't whether or not "I decide." It's not as though my deciding on something makes it unreliable! After all, "I decide" whether or not to believe what my husband tells me, too, but that doesn't mean that I'm on a "slippery slope" to treating my husband as unreliable! I have ample, overwhelming evidence of both his truthfulness and his shrewdness. That doesn't mean that he and I agree all the time! But when it comes to something that he says he personally witnessed or that I say that I personally witnessed, he and I have a lot of justified confidence in each other.
The problem with Licona's views from the perspective of whether or not he's justified in regarding them as reliable isn't that he's "deciding" when to believe what is stated in a biblical book. He could have a particular view of an entirely secular source that would permit him to be consistently justified in treating it as highly reliable even though not regarding it as divine, above his own personal judgement, etc. The problem with his views from the perspective of whether or not he's justified in regarding the Gospels as reliable is that, in fact, the genre claims he's making would make them unreliable. He doesn't admit that. He denies it. But when you analyze his work, his practice, and the nature of his claims, it's the case. In fact, he claims that the Gospels are like movies based on true events. That speaks for itself. No rational historian treats movies based on true events as highly reliable primary historical sources!
I understand what you're saying, and I'm trying to read you charitably, but again one's justifications - whatever they may be - for believing, or disbelieving, or having confidence in, or not having confidence in one's spouse's trustworthiness, reliability, whatever ought to be of a wholly different order than one's posture towards God, specifically God's Word (the Bible) since that's the only revealed source of information we have from Him and about Him.
So while I agree with your assessment of Licona, which I stated in my very first comment and have continued to affirm, nevertheless it seems to me that your position puts you inside the very same sinking ship as he's in.
Maybe you're way up in the crow's nest and he's way down in the recesses of the hull, but one's position on a sinking ship is a distinction without a difference.
It seems to me like you're taking the same basic position as Eve took in the garden when presented with God's Word on the one hand vs. an alternative explanation, harmonization, whatever on the other hand.
Eve chose her own personal autonomous rationalization over what God had clearly and plainly said. It seems to be a simple case of unbelief not to trust God's Word fully and entirely as true, even if we can't fully and entirely understand it. It seems like in such cases faith and belief in God's character would cause us to assume if there were an apparent problem that the problem is with us and our limited nature and remaining sinfulness and not with God and His Word.
This is very good. Falsehoods and half-truths should, I think, be exposed and diligently refuted especially when the matter at hand is the veracity of God's Word.
ReplyDeleteSatan's foundational lie was, "Yea, hath God said?" and he continually dusts off and trots out this old, old deception to willing hearers.
But I also remember something about Lydia triggering my spidey-sense suspicion long ago that has never been resolved in my mind.
I'm sorry to say - ironically - but I can't remember the details. It seems like it may have been a combox discussion I read here on T-blog.
Does Lydia actually affirm the full veracity of written Scripture as we have it in our hands today? I seem to recall what triggered my original suspicion about her was something along the lines of her affirming her belief that there were "mistakes" in Scripture.
Maybe unintentional, maybe innocent, maybe seemingly small and insignificant, but errors nonetheless.
If my memory serves me correctly, and if that characterization is correct then Lydia's criticism of Licona (which I agree with completely), boomerangs back on her for how is a friend who constantly makes "innocent mistakes" when reporting key information (Scripture in this case!) significantly *more trustworthy* as a source than a liar?
If the only difference is that one set of falsehoods was made accidently on the one hand versus deliberately on the other hand it's hard to see how we benefit much from the mangled information we've received in either case, or how we can might discern how deep the errors (or lies) run when evaluating the entirety of the information transmitted (Scripture!).
The two slopes seem equally slippery.
But again - ironically - maybe I'm misremembering. :0)
No need for a spidey sense. I'm not an inerrantist. I'm pretty open about that.
ReplyDeleteI have written at length in various places about just how and why a good-faith error by one of the Gospel writers would be far less damaging to Gospel reliability than deliberate alteration. I would prefer not to type all of that out again here, as I've written about it repeatedly. Feel free to get hold of The Mirror or the Mask and read about it in Chapter IV.
But here are just a couple of super-quick points to think about:
a) All else being equal (e.g., access to the truth being equal), a person who is trying to get things right is more likely to get things right than a person who is *trying* to change the facts.
b) For a literary device theorist to say that the Gospel authors deliberately changed the facts (which is intrinsic to their theory) is not to say that they never made accidental errors. It merely adds an *additional*, and far less predictable and more plausibly wide-ranging, source of error.
Let me also add that I harmonize far more often than the literary device theorists, just as a traditional inerrantist would do, even though I am not an inerrantist. This is *precisely* because I think (based on evidence) the authors were trying to tell the literal truth and had good access to the truth. Hence my first line of approach is to see whether the accounts can be plausibly harmonized, because that's what we would expect with reliable sources. Those who accept literary device theories pretty much always say something deprecatory about harmonization. You can see it right in this very interview. Fradd brings up harmonization, and the first thing Licona does is to start talking about how strained harmonization can get, etc., etc.--to talk it down. Unfortunately, Bill Craig now does the same thing. He almost never refers to Gospel harmonization in an unequivocally positive way. He usually refers to it as strained or artificial. They will claim that they aren't closed to harmonization, but they are pretty negative about it. Contrast that with my discussion with Pat Flynn in this very interview. I even refer quite positively to works like the Big Book of Gospel Difficulties and so forth. That kind of ordinary historical harmonization ought to be a very important part of our toolkit. And quite frankly, I don't pass out scholarly medals when someone compasses land and sea and ponderously admits one harmonization in a case that shouldn't even have been in question in the first place. An example: In Why Are There Differences, Licona admits that perhaps when one Gospel says that the women were at a distance while another refers to women as standing near the cross, this refers to different time periods. I have seen one scholar make a big deal about how Licona is to be commended for admitting this (super-obvious) harmonization. Frankly, I find that a little annoying. When something is that obvious, you shouldn't get special credit for acknowledging it. Let's look instead at all the unforced errors that Licona and others make in equally obvious places where there *isn't even an apparent contradiction* (I give a bunch of these in The Mirror or the Mask) and they utterly gratuitously call Gospel historicity into question just out of scholarly whim.
ReplyDeleteSo the reportage approach that I take, even while acknowledging the plausibility of some good-faith errors, has a far higher expectation of literal accuracy, justified by evidence. And this has very concrete methodological results.
I'd like to say a little bit about Matt Fradd in the interview. I don't think he set out to do a softball interview. I've seen softball interviews with Licona, and they're pretty blatant. (Thinking here of Tim Stratton's interviews a couple of years ago.)
ReplyDeleteI think the material was just new to Fradd. And Licona has a very confident manner. When someone goes into the interview assuming that whatever Licona says is no big deal, of course his manner encourages that assumption. Thus if this concept of "compositional devices" is new to the person and Licona states (what is, in fact, not accurate) that "this is what we all do all the time in ordinary conversation," I think people assume that if they find this odd or controversial they must just not be understanding. Because Licona is pushing on them the insistence that there is nothing odd or controversial about it. And they go into it assuming that he's probably right and that he's a conservative scholar and defending the reliability of the Gospels. Even when LIcona explains (as he did here) fairly clearly what his literary device view is of a certain passage, the person doesn't always stop the train fast enough or say, "Wait, what?" The interpersonal dynamic of the conversation and statements like, "This is what most of us do in ordinary conversation" just carry the interview forward past the point where they might have said, "Hold on a minute!"
Well that clears up my memory fog, so thanks for that. I certainly didn't expect a personal reply.
DeleteBut at the risk of oversimplifying things, all I can really conclude from your response (without reading the detailed arguments you referenced that you've made elsewhere) is that you're *far less skeptical* about the veracity of the entirety of Scripture than literary device theorists like Licona, for example.
I guess I'm still not sure how such a position extracts you from the same slippery slope occupied by Licona because at the end of the day although the two of you may take markedly different approaches, and reach quite different conclusions, nevertheless both of you are in agreement about the perfectly acceptable practice of *personally deciding* which parts of Scripture are "true" and which aren't.
It seems too me too high a price to pay for such autonomy. But I'm a nobody so it doesn't much matter what I think anyway.
"to me", not "too me", ugh!
DeleteWell, no, it's not just a matter of degree ("far less skeptical") but a matter of kind. My view of the Gospel authors themselves is radically different.
ReplyDeleteAnd that makes a difference to probabilities. We actually have a pretty good idea how often people get things right or wrong, and what kinds of things they get right or wrong, when a) they are scrupulously honest and b) they are in quite a good position to know.
But when you remove yourself far from a (scrupulously honest) to such a point that they are invisibly changing things all over the place to make a "better story," then we're out into never-never land. We do *not* have any kind of good idea of how often they are likely to do that. Some people try to remove the worries about this with the literary device views by saying that we invoke them only when there are apparent discrepancies, but that doesn't really make much sense. Why? Because if they aren't even *trying* to get it right, and (this is central to Licona's view) these changes were "part and parcel of the genre," then we should actually expect them far more often than just the places where we find apparent discrepancies.
This is part of why you find Licona et. al. questioning things where there is not an apparent discrepancy. Why do they do that? Because they think the authors felt free to invent. So about the only place where they are less likely to question it is where something is "multiply attested." (Though I've even seen Licona question something that is multiply attested--namely, Jesus' appearance first in Jerusalem after his resurrection.)
Mmmhmm...okay, but at the end of the day aren't you both (you and Licona) personally deciding what's "true" or "probably true" or "false" or "probably false" in Scripture whether in degree or kind based on your respective approaches to the Bible?
ReplyDeleteI take the silence as either i.) Lydia is busy with things of actual import and this thread doesn't make the cut or ii.) as a tacit admission of the accuracy of my conclusion above.
DeleteThere may also be other alternatives.
Perhaps it would help for me to say that I'm an evidentialist, not a presuppositionalist. What makes an evaluation of something reliable or unreliable isn't whether or not "I decide." It's not as though my deciding on something makes it unreliable! After all, "I decide" whether or not to believe what my husband tells me, too, but that doesn't mean that I'm on a "slippery slope" to treating my husband as unreliable! I have ample, overwhelming evidence of both his truthfulness and his shrewdness. That doesn't mean that he and I agree all the time! But when it comes to something that he says he personally witnessed or that I say that I personally witnessed, he and I have a lot of justified confidence in each other.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Licona's views from the perspective of whether or not he's justified in regarding them as reliable isn't that he's "deciding" when to believe what is stated in a biblical book. He could have a particular view of an entirely secular source that would permit him to be consistently justified in treating it as highly reliable even though not regarding it as divine, above his own personal judgement, etc. The problem with his views from the perspective of whether or not he's justified in regarding the Gospels as reliable is that, in fact, the genre claims he's making would make them unreliable. He doesn't admit that. He denies it. But when you analyze his work, his practice, and the nature of his claims, it's the case. In fact, he claims that the Gospels are like movies based on true events. That speaks for itself. No rational historian treats movies based on true events as highly reliable primary historical sources!
I understand what you're saying, and I'm trying to read you charitably, but again one's justifications - whatever they may be - for believing, or disbelieving, or having confidence in, or not having confidence in one's spouse's trustworthiness, reliability, whatever ought to be of a wholly different order than one's posture towards God, specifically God's Word (the Bible) since that's the only revealed source of information we have from Him and about Him.
DeleteSo while I agree with your assessment of Licona, which I stated in my very first comment and have continued to affirm, nevertheless it seems to me that your position puts you inside the very same sinking ship as he's in.
Maybe you're way up in the crow's nest and he's way down in the recesses of the hull, but one's position on a sinking ship is a distinction without a difference.
It seems to me like you're taking the same basic position as Eve took in the garden when presented with God's Word on the one hand vs. an alternative explanation, harmonization, whatever on the other hand.
Eve chose her own personal autonomous rationalization over what God had clearly and plainly said. It seems to be a simple case of unbelief not to trust God's Word fully and entirely as true, even if we can't fully and entirely understand it. It seems like in such cases faith and belief in God's character would cause us to assume if there were an apparent problem that the problem is with us and our limited nature and remaining sinfulness and not with God and His Word.