Notice Where Canon Discussions Begin

What assumptions are being made at the start of the discussion? For example, when somebody like Cameron Bertuzzi is assuming the truthfulness of Christianity, that certain individuals of past generations were Christians, what writings attributed to those individuals are genuine, etc., did he get to those conclusions by a means he's criticizing Protestants for utilizing? Cameron has made a series of canonical judgments, about canons other than the canon of scripture, before he begins his criticisms of Protestantism on canonical matters. How does he know which documents attributed to Athanasius or Augustine, for instance, are genuine and which aren't? What's the canon of Athanasius' writings or Augustine's, Jerome's, Innocent I's, and so forth? Cameron probably frequently relies on Protestant scholarship on patristic issues, much as he relies on other sources who aren't conservative Catholics on patristic issues and issues pertaining to the Bible, church history, and so on. That includes scholars who are highly antagonistic toward Christianity, like Bart Ehrman, a source Cameron recently cited on canonical issues. Ehrman not only has been a scholar in the field of New Testament textual criticism, but also has done work in related areas. His doctoral thesis was on textual issues in Didymus the Blind, a church father. So, Cameron's conclusions on matters related to the Bible, church history, the church fathers, church councils, etc. depend on fallible, probabilistic judgments derived largely from scholarship that isn't part of conservative Catholicism (moderate Catholics, liberal Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, atheists, agnostics, etc.).

When conservative Protestants are faulted for depending on sources they have significant disagreements with, keep in mind that conservative Catholics do the same. When conservative Protestants are faulted for relying on fallible, probabilistic judgments about controversial and complicated issues, keep in mind that conservative Catholics do the same. Etc.

Interpretations Of Interpretations

We're often told that disagreements over how to interpret scripture suggest that we should look to extrabiblical sources to interpret scripture for us. There's some validity to that notion, as long as due weight is being assigned to the evidence scripture itself provides and the extrabiblical sources are being handled appropriately. But when you get to the extrabiblical sources, such as the church fathers, you find that they sometimes seem unclear, inconsistent, or problematic in some other way. Even where there isn't a problem, or much of a problem, with those extrabiblical sources, different people interpret them differently. It's similar to the situation with scripture. And if you look to other sources, such as scholarship, to clarify the extrabiblical sources in question, you find that there sometimes are ambiguities, disagreements, etc. among those sources as well.

Circumstances like these range across a spectrum. There's less disagreement on some issues than others. But the need for going to extrabiblical sources and how much help they provide are often overestimated.

Elsewhere, I've cited G.W.H. Lampe's comments on the many ambiguities, inconsistencies, and other problems among the patristic sources concerning baptism, the laying on of hands, and other rites. Here are some of Lampe's comments on problems in later sources commenting on the fathers:

"Many modern writers have adopted the unhappy course of trying to pick out from the vast mass of patristic literature on Baptism such texts as favour their own theories. Such methods ignore the confusion to which we have just referred. The Fathers did not try to resolve this confusion as long as the rite of initiation remained one whole, comprising both Baptism and Confirmation, for so long as that state of affairs was maintained the theological difficulties remained latent. It is not therefore surprising to find that, for example, Mason and Umberg were able to discover plenty of authority for the view that the gift of the indwelling Spirit is bestowed by means of the laying on of hands, and not by water-baptism, Wirgman was no less easily able to show that the Fathers taught that the indwelling presence of the Spirit was conferred by water-baptism and that an increase of grace was given for spiritual progress by the laying on of hands, while Thornton finds it equally possible to demonstrate that in the teaching of the Fathers the indwelling of the Spirit is regarded as being withheld until Confirmation, which he associates particularly with anointing. It is also unfortunate that some important books were written on this subject before the date and authorship of some of the relevant documents had been fairly established, and that, as a result, the picture which they present of the historical development of the doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation is distorted." (The Seal Of The Spirit [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004], 194-95)

Recent Claims About Evidence For Mary's Assumption

In an earlier post, I mentioned a debate on her assumption that TurretinFan and Dan Chapa participated in. They've been producing a lot of videos since then addressing the debate and some claims that have been circulating about alleged evidence for an assumption of Mary (what Jacob of Serug wrote on the subject, what modern scholars who specialize in the Assumption have said about the history of belief in Mary's assumption, etc.). There's a lot of valuable material in the videos. You can watch them here.

D.A. Carson On Colin Hemer

I recently came across D.A. Carson's eulogy of Colin Hemer after seeing it linked by Lydia McGrew.

Did Jesus ride two donkeys?

Caleb Jore recently wrote a good post addressing a common objection to Matthew 21:7. He discusses some problems with a popular Christian alternative to the skeptical interpretation and offers another reading that avoids the problems with that Christian alternative and the skeptical view.

Another recent post on the same blog, by Lucas, discusses some recent trends in scholarship that are favorable to Christianity.

The whole blog is worth following. There's a lot of good material there.

How The Historicity Of The Bible Gets Obscured

R. Alan Culpepper just published a commentary on the gospel of Matthew (Matthew: A Commentary [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021]). (It was due out last year, but got delayed, so it has a publication date of 2021. It didn't come out until earlier this month.) I've read about 50 pages of it so far, including the introduction and his comments on Matthew's first two chapters. I was struck by some remarks Culpepper makes that are wrong and should easily be recognized as wrong. I'll discuss a few examples.

An Update On Gary Habermas' Magnum Opus On Jesus' Resurrection

Here are some comments Mike Licona recently made about the status of Habermas' upcoming (multi-volume) book.

Modern Scholars Who Accept The Traditional Gospel Authorship Attributions

Here are some recent comments by Mike Licona on Markan authorship. On Luke's authorship of Acts (and its implications for the authorship of the third gospel), see Craig Keener's comments here. Even though modern scholarship is so overly skeptical of Christianity, there's still such widespread acceptance of some of the gospels' authorship attributions. We should be more concerned about the evidence than we are about the views of modern scholars, and the evidence supports the traditional attributions of all four gospels. It's noteworthy, though, that skeptics often overestimate how much the traditional views are rejected by modern scholarship.

Confusing biblical studies with theological studies

https://domainthirtythree.com/2020/02/19/new-testament-scholarship-a-lament/

Atheist Philosophers Ignoring Their Opposition

This is from a recent edition of William Lane Craig's podcast. He's addressing the field of philosophy, but we see similar negligence in other fields as well:

I have had people who are Reasonable Faith listeners say that they just couldn't believe their ears when she trotted out the old Euthyphro Dilemma as though this were something new and devastating. It just shows the complete lack of engagement on the part of a very secular philosopher with Christian philosophy. The fact is that a lot of these people just don't read us. They don't read Christian philosophers. They are ignorant of what it says. So they rehearse these tired old objections over and over again. I recently had a debate with Erik Wielenberg on the best account for objective moral values and duties. Wielenberg is an atheist. He shared with me that one of the things that distinguishes his work is that he, unlike his colleagues, takes really seriously the work of Christian philosophers in this area – people like Robert Adams and William Alston and Steve Evans and others. According to Wielenberg, his secular colleagues just don't bother to read or interact with these Christian philosophers on these matters. That was so well illustrated by Rebecca Goldstein's ignorance of the response to the Euthyphro Dilemma.

The Excessive Skepticism Of Gospels Scholarship

"the kinds of differences we find between Plutarch and his sources are quite comparable with the differences between the Gospels, and nothing in the least like form criticism is postulated by experts on Plutarch." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 596)

For some other examples of excessive skepticism in gospels scholarship and New Testament research in general, see here and here.

"But generally - in everyday life, in law courts, and in historical research - the normal rule of thumb is to trust what people tell us. Ordinary life would be impossible if we did not….Many New Testament scholars seem to suppose that the more sceptical of the sources they are, the more rigorously historical is their method. But this is not how historians usually work. In good historical work it is no more an epistemic virtue to be sceptical than it is to be credulous. In everyday life, we do not systematically mistrust everything anyone tells us. When someone who is in a position to know what they tell us does so, we normally believe them. But we keep our critical faculties alert and raise questions if there is specific reason to doubt. There is no reason why historical work should be substantially different in its dialectic of trust and critical assessment. Sometimes excessive scepticism goes hand-in-hand with a misplaced desire for certainty….But in historical work the desire for certainty, for any sort of total accuracy, is as misplaced as systematic scepticism. In history we only deal with probabilities (as is also the case in much human knowledge). Historians are in the business of constantly making reasonable judgments of probabilities. To believe testimony, to trust it when we have no means of verifying its content in detail, is a risk, but it is the kind of risk we are constantly taking when we trust testimony in ordinary life." (ibid., 608, 613)

How New Testament Scholarship Has Changed Over Time

Scholarship is important, and there's a danger in underestimating it, as many people do. But there's also a danger in overestimating it:

"It also worth thinking about how different the world of New Testament scholarship was in Bultmann's time from what it has become. There were comparatively few scholars working in the field and relatively few significant books published. It was possible for Bultmann and a few others to exercise a dominance over the development of the subject that is scarcely conceivable today for any scholar or small group of scholars, however brilliant. In the overcrowded and methodologically pluralist world of Gospels scholarship today form criticism, were it a new approach now, would be unlikely to achieve the wide-ranging and long-lasting influence it has actually had. Realising this implies that less weight should be given to the feeling, which I am sure many scholars have, that form criticism must have got at least some essential things right because it has been so very widely accepted by scholars." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 592)

The Behavior Of Richard C. Miller, Author Of Resurrection And Reception In Early Christianity

Richard C. Miller has recently written a book arguing against a traditional Christian view of Jesus' resurrection. Miller has significant credentials, which you can read about at the Amazon page just linked. The book has been getting some attention in skeptical circles, such as in John Loftus' post here. Steve Hays recently wrote a response to it. On one of his Facebook accounts, Miller writes about his upcoming role at an International Society of Biblical Literature meeting later this year:

Responding To Andrew Lincoln On The Virgin Birth

Last year, a New Testament scholar, Andrew Lincoln, published a book arguing against the virgin birth. Some New Testament scholars have responded to him since then, but every one of their responses to Lincoln's book that I've seen so far hasn't gone into much depth. For anybody who's interested in a lengthy review that argues for the historicity of the virgin birth, here's a response to Lincoln's book that I wrote last year.

A Very Good DVD About The Evidence For Jesus

I recently watched a DVD that I want to recommend, titled Jesus Of Testimony. At the time I'm writing, you can watch a large portion of the DVD, the main segment of it, for free here. The DVD includes some extra segments that apparently aren't available online.

The Tide of Scholarship favors Christ and the New Testament, but challenges historical Roman Catholic views

The charge has been made of me by a writer who goes by the handle “Cletus Van Damme”, that goes something like this (paraphrasing):

When liberal scholars suggest that the Resurrection didn’t happen or that the OT is not historically accurate, you dismiss them and their methodology. But when those same liberal methodologies help your case against Rome, then its jump onto the bandwagon. Hence your claim of “essentially by the same method of historical investigation” is disingenuous.

I have responded to it in this comment, and a slightly edited response appears below.

Denver Seminary's 2014 Bibliographies

Each year, some of Denver Seminary's scholars put together a list of recommended Biblical commentaries, books on textual criticism, reference works, etc. Their Old Testament and New Testament bibliographies for the year were just posted.

Maybe The Gospels Weren't Anonymous After All

Here's a thread in which James McGrath, a liberal New Testament scholar, and some commenters question the widespread claim that the gospels originally circulated as anonymous documents. There are many reasons to reject the notion that the gospels were initially anonymous. Anybody who's interested can search this blog's archives for my posts on the subject. When people like McGrath and his commenters are so critical of the anonymity of the gospels, that's significant.

The issue of why Matthew would use Mark's material repeatedly comes up in McGrath's thread. I've written on the subject elsewhere, like here. The theory that the fourth gospel was written by some John other than the apostle also comes up. I've addressed that argument many times, such as here.

Do Non-Christians Need To Cite Christians Who Agree With Them?

I was recently involved in a discussion with a non-Christian at another web site. He told me that I can't cite Biblical sources in support of my view of Christianity, apparently because of the bias of those sources. They're believers. I was told that I can't cite Christian scholars either. Even if a Christian scholar argues for his position and cites supporting evidence, the arguments and evidence don't matter. He's a Christian scholar, so he can't be cited. He's biased.