Instead of Burning A Qur'an, Why Not Actually Read It?

Article below taken from ABC news.

A Florida pastor ignites tensions among Muslims days before 9/11 anniversary.

The crowd in downtown Kabul reached nearly 500 today, with Afghan protesters chanting "Long live Islam " and "Long live the Quran," and burning an effigy of Terry Jones, senior pastor from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is planning the event.

The protesters were well aware of the pastor's inflammatory comments, such as the "Islam is an evil religion," since they have been spread wide on the Internet. Jones has also authored a book, "Islam Is of the Devil."

The protesters' anger wasn't limited to Jones, however. Chants of "Death to America" echoed through the crowd, and U.S. flags were set ablaze alongside the effigy of Jones.

"America cannot eliminate Muslims from the world," one Afghan man told ABC News.

The angry crowd pelted a passing U.S. military convoy with rocks.

Gen. David Petraeus said he is outraged by the pastor's decision to burn the Quran, which he said could "endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort here."

Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Jack Keane, an adviser to Petraeus, called it "outrageous" and "insulting to Muslims."

"It's also insulting to our soldiers in terms of what they stand for and what their commitment is to this country and to the Muslims in this country," Keane told ABC News.

But late today, Jones vowed he would go ahead with the Quran burning, even knowing the concerns of Petraeus and Keane for the safety of U.S. troops.

"What we are doing is long overdue. We are revealing the violence of Islam that is much, much deeper than we'd like to admit," Jones said in an interview with ABC News.

A Facebook page dedicated to the day, entitled "International Burn A Koran Day" has more than 8,000 fans.

"On September 11th, 2010, from 6pm - 9pm, we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!" the page declares.

Over a hundred other pages have sprung up for and against the event on Sept. 11, incidentally the same day as a Muslim holiday called Eid, celebrating the last day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.

Some Muslims fear that images of celebration could fuel further tensions with Americans that day. But in the meantime, in Kabul, there is word that a protest planned for Tuesday could be even larger than the one today.

Be reminded that even the apostle Paul had enough sense to know that disrespecting a false god in Ephesus wasn't the way to spread his message (Acts 19:37). So, shame on you Pastor Terry for unnecessarily putting our soldiers, our citizens, and Christians in other countries in harm's way by burning things that are meant to be studied and read for apologetics purposes rather than burned!

A Review Of James White's Debate With Robert Price (Part 2)

White makes another good point when he notes that so many of Price's examples of alleged errors in the Bible are easy to answer. (See, for example, their discussion of Jesus' references to taking up your cross and following Him, which Price claims the historical Jesus wouldn't have said.) Skeptics often appeal to the quantity of their objections, even though the quality of many of them is so poor.

Price repeatedly makes the point that there's "no evidence" in Paul's writings for things mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. But White explained why we shouldn't expect Paul to mention such things, and simply saying that Paul doesn't mention them doesn't give us reason to reject the claims of other sources who do mention them. Besides, much of what Price claims Paul didn't mention actually does seem to have been mentioned or alluded to in his writings. See, for example, here and here. 1 Timothy 5:18 seems to cite Luke's gospel as scripture (George Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000], pp. 233-235), which creates a series of problems for Price's view if 1 Timothy was written by Paul or even by an early follower of Paul.

Price has suggested that none of the writings attributed to Paul were written by him, not even the ones commonly accepted as Pauline by liberal scholarship. I've written against that theory at length in the past, such as in the comments section of the thread here. We have other posts on the subject in our archives. The issue came up in the White/Price debate, and Price said the following about early patristic references to Paul:

"Nobody knows a thing about Paul. Justin Martyr never mentions him."

Quotations of Paul's letters aren't the only issue that's relevant here. Allusions would be relevant as well. See, for example, the scripture index in Michael Slusser's edition of Justin's Dialogue With Trypho (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003). Oskar Skarsaune writes:

"There is no reason to doubt that Justin made extensive use of Paul's letters, especially Romans and Galatians....Justin can be shown to have borrowed many of Paul's quotations directly from him, as well as some of Paul's expositions." (in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, edd., Justin Martyr And His Worlds [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007], p. 74)

See, also, the notes for Skarsaune's comments on that page, which give examples and further documentation.

Justin refers to "the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them" (Dialogue With Trypho, 103). Notice the plural: "apostles" and "those who followed them". The use of the plural matches our four gospels: apostles (Matthew, John) and those who followed them (Mark, Luke). Justin doesn't cite the number four anywhere, but his comments are consistent with the collection of four gospels that sources living just after Justin's time refer to. Luke was a disciple of Paul, so Justin seems to be referring to Paul as an apostle. Price's claim that "nobody knows a thing about Paul" and his claim that "Justin Martyr never mentions him" are false.

And how does Price get around the references to Paul and his writings in earlier patristic sources? He dismisses First Clement and all seven Ignatian letters as forgeries.

How does he know that First Clement is a forgery? He mentions its length. Supposedly, nobody wrote letters that long. As if there was some rule in antiquity that prevented people from writing letters beyond a particular length. As if violation of such a rule couldn't have occurred if such a rule existed. As if we couldn't just assign First Clement to some other genre rather than assuming that it must be a forgery if it doesn't meet the alleged requirements of the letter genre Price has in mind. Michael Holmes comments that First Clement "closely conforms" to the ancient genre of "a symbouleutic or deliberative letter" (The Apostolic Fathers [Grand Rapdis, Michigan: Baker Books, 2005], p. 24).

Price also says that First Clement's comments about the deaths of Peter and Paul are reminiscent of comments made about their deaths in later sources. First Clement 5 mentions that they died because of the jealousy of their opponents. How does Price know that jealousy wasn't involved? That alleged parallel to later literature is far too vague to support Price's theory. What if the later literature borrowed from First Clement or both borrowed from some other source? Price's defense of his theory about First Clement is absurd. The theory itself is absurd.

What about Ignatius? See here. Price objects that Ignatius wouldn't have been writing letters in a context in which his Roman guards were treating him in the hostile manner described within those letters. They wouldn't have let their prisoner write letters while they were in the process of abusing that prisoner. But as Allen Brent explains, it was common for a prisoner in the Roman empire to be allowed access to visitors and thereby receive food, send letters, etc. Those who visited prisoners would give gifts to the guards, and would relieve the guards of the responsibility of providing food and other necessities for the prisoner, thus giving the guards incentive for allowing the visitors access to the person under their watch. Lucian, a second-century pagan critic of Christianity, confirms the historicity of such practices when he describes the behavior and treatment of Christian prisoners. Thus, there's nothing unlikely about the scenario presented in Ignatius' letters, in which he's in frequent contact with other Christians on his way to martyrdom (Ignatius Of Antioch [New York, New York: T & T Clark International, 2009], pp. 49-51, 110). The guards would abuse him at times, but would be open to giving him some freedom in exchange for gifts from visitors.

Regarding references to Paul and the use of his letters in other early sources, see Bruce Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Clayton Jefford's The Apostolic Fathers And The New Testament (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006). Price's theory is terribly implausible.

The last question in the audience question segment of the debate was about the existence of souls and an afterlife. I would argue for both of those from the Bible. But there's a lot of extra-Biblical evidence as well. Price doesn't seem to know much about the subject. See, from a non-Christian perspective, Stephen Braude's Immortal Remains (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003).

A lot of other subjects came up during the debate, and Price was more reasonable on some issues than he was concerning the topics I've focused on here. But the general pattern was for him to try to plant seeds of doubt without making much of an effort to convert those seeds from possibilities into probabilities. He accuses Christians of "baptizing the improbable into the probable" (John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 289), but he spent most of the debate trying to baptize the probable into the improbable by raising unlikely doubts.

Passover chronology

From Craig Blomberg.

Accuracy or authority?

According to Orthodox epologist Michael Garten:

“Authority is the normative power to bind human consciences to believe and do certain things. Accuracy is the ability to correctly represent reality or truth, or the ability to make correct inferences. Those aren’t the same.”

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/i-love-the-orthodox-too-much-to-be-orthodox-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-bomb-of-holy-orders/#comment-10748

Actually, I don’t see how they’re the same given this rather eccentric definition. In general, it’s certainly possible to distinguish between accuracy and authority. An authority-figure can force you to do something even if it goes against your conscience. He has the power to compel conformity, even if his claims are erroneous or immoral.

If, however, we define “authority” in “normative” terms, to “bind the conscience,” then only what is right and true is binding in that respect.

But surely we’re obligated to believe and behave in accordance with what is true for the simple reason that it is true. In what sense does authority bind our conscience over and above our epistemic duties to the truth? (I’m speaking from a Christian standpoint. Atheism has no epistemic duties.)

And the relevance of Michael’s distinction is even less clear in relation to revealed truth, where one can’t drive a wedge between might and right.

“Private judgment, when correctly formulated (correcting the confusion about accuracy and authority), is not the idea that an individual must interpret divine teaching. It is the doctrine that denies there is any intrinsically authoritative doctrinal decision that the Church can make.”

Agreed. At most, the church’s doctrinal decisions have extrinsic authority. Such decisions are authoritative to the degree that they are right and true–according to the canons of revealed truth.

“Thus, there is no authoritative, much less infallible, interpretation of the Bible.”

Yes, but why do we need these lofty adjectives? Why does a true interpretation not suffice?

“And as such, any Credal formulation or recognition of the biblical canon is a human act with no intrinsic authority. So each interpretation of divine doctrine is therefore revisable in terms of its authority–some argument could in principle overturn the formulation, even if we have overwhelming reason to accept it as true.”

I don’t see how the second sentence follows from the first. As long as a credal formulation or recognition of the canon is correct, then why would it be revisable?

“Why? Because only infallible authority can make a doctrine conscience-binding in an unqualified way, and make a doctrinal formulation unrevisable in terms of its authority.”

Why should we cast the issue in terms of “authority” rather than truth and knowledge?

“Individual intellectual competency is the ability to correctly understand any data, including divinely authoritative teachings. An intellectually competent individual is still fallible; but that does not prevent a person from accurately recognizing infallible authorities, recognizing their decisions, or correctly interpreting their decisions. Our understanding of divine doctrine is subject to error, and is therefore a revisable understanding; but the doctrine itself is unrevisable.”

If you take divine doctrine as a given, then doctrine is unrevisable. But if the individual is fallible, then how can Michael take divine doctrine as a given? His stipulation is underdetermined by his admitted cognitive limitations.

Put another way, is he claiming that divine doctrine is binding on the conscience, or that divine doctrine is binding on the conscience insofar as the individual knows it to be divine doctrine? But given his fallibilism vis-à-vis the individual, then how can the individual be conscience-bound to believe divine doctrine unless he can know it to be divine doctrine? Are we duty-bound to believe something we don’t know to be true?

Conversely, if the individual can know that without being infallible, then how does that admission distinguish the Orthodox position from the Protestant position regarding the personal appropriation of Scripture?

“With normal human statements, when you correctly identify and interpret them, you aren’t bound to accept them. With divine doctrine, when you see it and understand it you must accept it.”

Michael doesn’t bother to explain what grounds that distinction. But the obvious candidate is truth. We aren’t necessarily bound to accept uninspired statements because uninspired statements are fallible. By contrast, we are necessarily bound to accept inspired statements because inspired statements are infallible.

At the same time, even uninspired statements can be (and often are) true. Don’t we have a standing duty to believe true statements?

“If I know x is divine teaching (or even just have better reason to think it is divine teaching than its alternatives) then I am conscience-bound to accept everything in x.”

How does his parenthetical concession distinguish the Orthodox position from what he finds deficient in the Protestant position?

Catholic cold reading

Reading this comment by Mike Liccione reminds me of a psychic who does cold readings. The psychic appears to have uncanny knowledge of the stranger in the audience, whom he’s never met before.

However, the psychic has a hidden earpiece which is patched into a geeky guy in a room offsite with a supercomputer. The computer has facial recognition technology, along with access to every database on earth.

Unfortunately, the psychic loses the satellite uplink at a crucial point in the cold reading. Suddenly he has to bluff his way through the reading.

It’s clear from Liccione’s comment that the church of Rome has no divine foresight. It is having to make things up after the fact, just like any other fallible, shortsighted, uninspired human institution–its pretensions to divine guidance notwithstanding.

The problem arises when the question is how to discern when the ordinary and universal magisterium (OUM) has taught infallibly.

It’s not surprising that the theologically untutored have difficulty with that question, because it wasn’t until Vatican II that the Magisterium itself explicitly addressed the matter at all, in Lumen Gentium §25, and it wasn’t until 1995 that any representative of the Roman Magisterium applied V2′s criteria to a particular case: that of women’s ordination. Theologians themselves disagree about the clarity and significance of such a recent development. But it’s not difficult to show how the issue must be resolved.

If the question which doctrines count as OUM-infallible were always a matter to be left to the individual discernment of the faithful, then the question would essentially be left to private opinion. If it were left at that level, the category itself would be effectively empty. For private opinions, even those of individual bishops and popes, are fallible; so if the question which doctrines are OUM-infallible were left to private opinion, then the doctrines themselves would remain a matter of opinion, which they couldn’t be if they are infallibly taught by the OUM as binding on the whole Church. So if there is such a thing as a doctrine that’s OUM-infallible, the Roman Magisterium has to have the last word about how to apply the criteria for identifying it as such.

As I’ve said, so far there’s been only one explicit statement from Rome to that effect. But there are other signs, such as Evangelium Vitae §57 (1995) and Ratzinger’s doctrinal commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998) that the way to apply the relevant criteria is taking shape.

Development of doctrine in general takes time. Development of doctrine about various doctrines’ level of authority has taken still more time. That frustrates a lot of people because not all questions get answered fast enough to please anybody, much less everybody. But perhaps that’s how prudence would have it.

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/i-love-the-orthodox-too-much-to-be-orthodox-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-bomb-of-holy-orders/#comment-10643

Nothing-of-the-gaps

William Lane Craig has a youtube commentary on Hawking's new book. And some of the comments left by viewers are memorable in their own right:

coffinperson

Atheism – The belief that there was nothing and then nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything.

drcraigvideos

It's the "nothing of the gaps" argument. Nothingdidit.

http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=55UgLEKbz2s

A Review Of James White's Debate With Robert Price (Part 1)

I recently watched a DVD of James White's debate with Robert Price this past May. (You can order a copy of the debate here.) The topic was "Is The Bible True?", but it focused primarily on the gospels and secondarily on the writings of Paul, with an occasional reference to some other portion of scripture.

James White did well, and I won't repeat all of the many good points he made during the course of the debate. I'll repeat some of his points and make some of my own.

In his opening remarks, Price constructs a series of straw men to burn down. If the historical transmission of Jesus' teachings was reliable by normal historical standards, then why do Christians appeal to Divine protection of that transmission process in order to argue for its reliability? Were Jesus' disciples some sort of ancient equivalent to Snopes, tracking down and refuting false accounts that were circulating about Jesus? Doesn't Acts 6:1-4 suggest that they already had their hands full with other things? If Jesus couldn't stop people from saying things He didn't want them to say (e.g., Mark 1:44-45), why think that Jesus' disciples were able to prevent people from spreading false accounts about Jesus? Price suggests it's unlikely that "all early Christians" were "always careful" in what they reported about Jesus.

He uses similar argumentation later in the debate. He appeals to pagan influence among Jews in some pre-Christian literature and in some later sources, including some that postdate Christianity by hundreds of years. He says that there may have been an early standardizing of the New Testament text, much as later occurred with Islam. Since the text was standardized, we don't have manuscript evidence for some of the textual corruptions Price suggests. Christians collectively changed the text.

What Price is doing, again and again, is demanding too much of his opponent and too little of himself. A historical argument for the truthfulness of Christianity doesn't require that "all early Christians" were "always careful". It just requires that enough of them were sufficiently careful enough of the time. It's not as though the existence of some carelessness, some false accounts about Jesus, etc. inherently falsifies Christianity or inherently makes Price's theories probable. If some Christian scribes were dishonest or careless in transmitting the New Testament text, for example, we still have other scribes who weren't. Some people didn't do what Jesus asked them to do (e.g., Mark 1:44-45), but others did. The original Christians didn't need to be an ancient equivalent to Snopes in order to generally preserve some accurate historical information about Jesus. The acceptance of pagan religious concepts by some Jews in some contexts doesn't tell us what a Jew is likely to have believed in the context of early Christianity. Etc.

During White's first cross examination, Price refers to studies in which eyewitnesses can't remember "anything". He uses the example of a study in which a clown unexpectedly enters a classroom. Apparently, the students in that classroom disagreed with each other in what they reported about what had happened. But does it therefore follow that they didn't remember anything? Did one student think the incident happened in 1980, while the other thought it happened in 1994? Did one think it happened in Mexico, while another thought it happened in France? Did one think that a dog entered the classroom, whereas another thought a motorcycle rode through? Or did they agree for the most part while disagreeing on some details? Is one unexpected clown visit to a group of modern students in one room comparable to behavior by Jesus that He often repeated, involving issues of high significance, with thousands of witnesses in an oral culture? A surprise visit from a clown is hardly comparable, and Price even misrepresents his clown example as far as it goes. Why does Price trust the memories of the people who conducted the study and his own memory regarding what he read about it?

One way to appreciate the erroneous nature of Price's argumentation is to apply it to other contexts. Would we dismiss what Josephus or Tacitus reports on the basis of the existence of some false information in their day, what people remember when a clown unexpectedly enters a classroom, etc.? Sometimes skeptics will attempt to be more consistent if you press them about applying their standards consistently. But, in my experience, their initial approach is to be highly inconsistent. When they're so inconsistent, what does that suggest about their standards and what they actually believe about the subjects involved? If they keep trusting human testimony on issue after issue and in context after context, but then become far more skeptical of human testimony when the topic of Christianity comes up, what does that contrast suggest?

As White mentions during the debate, the textual corruptions suggested by Price should have shown up in our textual record if they had occurred. Appealing to the possibility that the corruptions occurred without being reflected in the textual record (and without being mentioned elsewhere) doesn't overturn the probability of the general principle White is appealing to.

As White mentions, Price's speculation about an early Christian standardization of the text, similar to what occurred in Islam, has a series of problems. The Islamic effort left traces in the historical record. Price's proposed scenario didn't. And the Islamic effort, though somewhat successful, wasn't entirely successful. Yet, Price wants us to believe that the early Christians (an often persecuted minority in the earliest centuries, without Islam's later cultural status) were able to entirely eliminate all of the relevant traces of Price's alleged textual corruptions, like the supposed alteration of 1 Corinthians 15. The appeal to Islam works against Price's theory instead of supporting it. We would expect such a Christian effort to standardize the text to leave many traces in the historical record. We don't find those traces. And think of just how many people would have to be involved in such a process and how difficult it would be to carry it out in Christianity's early context. The fact that Price and those who follow him in his argument suggest such a scenario reflects poorly on them. It suggests a major misjudgment of the nature of the claim they're making and the status of the evidence.

Are miracles implausible?

Is there a heavy presumption against the miraculous which an abundance of evidence must overcome to justify belief in a miracle? That’s what the atheist assures us.

But what does that claim involve? According to one objection, “anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

This objection defines a miracle as a breach in the uniformity of nature. By the same token, it defines a miracle as an unpredictable event. If the uniformity of nature can break down at any point, then anything can happen at any time. So goes the argument.

To flesh this out a bit, what distinguishes a miracle from a natural event is that you can’t extrapolate from past conditions to the occurrence of a miracle. For it lacks causal continuity. It doesn’t belong to the chain of events.

One potential objection to this definition is that it doesn’t cover coincidental miracles. Miracles of timing. These may involve natural factors, but the timing is opportune in a way that suggests personal prevision and provision. Natural events were coordinated to yield this unexpected, but fortuitous outcome.

Yet there’s a sense in which a miraculous coincidence is both predictable and unpredictable. In principle, it would be possible to anticipate that outcome if you knew the prior conditions.

On the other hand, what makes it a miracle is not merely the event itself, but the conjunction of that event with a human need. We couldn’t anticipate being in the situation where we need that particular event, and we couldn’t anticipate that event occurring just when we need it.

Be that as it may, is there a presumption against believing that some events are unpredictable? That you can’t extrapolate some events from past conditions?

That would only be implausible if you subscribe to a closed system. So the presumption is only as good as the metaphysical claim which underwrites it. And the past doesn’t create any such presumption, for the very question at issue is whether all future events are inferable from past events. Put another way, whether any particular event is antecedently inferable from past conditions.

Undoubtedly many events are the end-result of past conditions. But that’s not something you can know in advance. That’s only something you can know after the fact. Which is also true of miracles. Subsequent validation or falsification.

Of course, there’s a sense in which miracles are predictable. But not because we can infer a miracle from past conditions. Rather, a miracle is predicable in case God predicts a miracle, or promises a miracle. Predicable because the agent who ultimately performs the miracle has advance knowledge of his future actions. (“Future” in relation to us, if not to himself.) He knows what he will do.

Roger Penrose reviews The Grand Design

From Roger Penrose.

When an argument from silence becomes utterly meaningless

From Craig Blomberg.

The Dual Authorship of Scripture

One of my opponents claimed in the debate on 9-2-2010 that since the "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius presents a consistent message and style throughout thus proving singular authorship yet because the Bible differs from "Testament to Testament", this shows that it can't possibly be the work of a singular author, namely, God.

First, not only does this show how ignorant our critic is of the traditional orthodox view of inspiration and authorship (i.e., dual authorship), but this also demonstrates that our critic's standards for inspiration are higher than God's! Dual authorship teaches that both God and man are responsible for producing the original writings of the Bible. 2 Peter 1:19-21 sums it up quite well,

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. 20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Second, the reason why the Scripture uses different stylistic elements, different language, and reflects different cultural understandings and time periods is because "men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." Those "men" were the product of a variety of cultures, times, and languages and they were the God-ordained secondary cause, or the earthly means that God used to produce Scripture. Thus, a human influence on Scripture is expected and appreciated.

Third, Notice that v. 21 tells us that "no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will" meaning, that the first cause of Scripture doesn't originate from man's will but from God's mind. As noted above, the secondary cause is man; i.e., God carries the man along with his individual talents, abilities, and characteristics to put a pen to the page to write God's word; nevertheless, the end product is the God-breathed text. Dr. Robert Reymond explains this quite well when commenting on 2 Peter 1:20-21,

In this remarkable statement Peter first asserts two negatives about the production of prophecy: first, that no prophecy of Scripture originated in ("arose, came from," ginetai) the prophet's estimate of the current state of affairs or or in his prognosis about the future, that is, no prophecy of Scripture emerged from his own understanding, and second, that no prophecy of Scripture was motivated by man's will, that is, no prophecy of Scripture came from mere human impulse. By these negatives Peter totally excludes the human element as the ultimate originating cause of Scripture. [Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed., (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 38.]

Fourth, here's a few Scriptural examples:

So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. 10 Then Moses commanded them, saying, "At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. 12 "Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the LORD your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. (Deut. 31:9-12 NAU)

Moses wrote God's law, but they weren't to fear Moses, they were to fear God if they failed to heed what Moses wrote down. This show that the authority for the writing didn't rest with Moses, but with God. Thus, God inspired Moses, Moses wrote what God wanted him to using Moses' own writing style and characteristics, but God gets the credit and the authority. This is what 2 Peter 1:21 is talking about.

God also commanded Isaiah,

And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. (Isa 30:8 ESV)

God told Jeremiah,

"Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book. (Jer 30:2 NAU)

Fifth, in the New Testament, Jesus promised His disciples that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance the teachings which Jesus Himself had spoken to them (John 14:26; cf. 16:12-13). These teachings could be expressed in different ways by the different gospel writers in such a way that the exact words Jesus spoke were not necessarily repeated verbatim in every context (esp. since He more than likely preached in Aramaic and the gospels were written in Greek), but that the essential content of Christ's teachings are transmitted without error in the original texts. Thus, there's room for the human writer to use his style, gifts, and characteristics while the Holy Spirit carries him along to put on the page what God wants on the page without making the human author an automaton. As Grudem is quick to note,

Once again it must be noted that these word are still considered to be God's own words, even though they are written down mostly by human beings and always in human language. Still, they are absolutely authoritative and absolutely true: to disobey them or disbelieve them is a serious sin and brings judgment from God (1 Cor. 14:37; Jer. 36:29-31). [Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 50.

In conclusion, we don't expect a consistent style throughout since the Bible doesn't expect it. However, contrary to the claims of our critic, we do see a consistent overall message throughout; at least those who have eyes to see and ears to hear can see it.

Textual Criticism Done Dan Brown Style

In our recent debate with the UNCG Atheists, Agnostics, and Skeptics, one of our opponents made this grandiose claim,

The Torah, the gospels, the Psalms of the Bible have never reached us. . . . What we have today is a copy of a copy of a mistranslation of a copy of a copy of something that was an account by someone who wasn't an eyewitness to the events.

Now that's a mackerel of a claim. Let's tackle them one at a time:

"The Torah, the gospels, the Psalms of the Bible have never reached us."

This is a bare-naked assertion. No evidence was offered to substantiate this claim. It was simply asserted without any hard evidence whatsoever.

. . . What we have today is a copy of a copy of a mistranslation of a copy of a copy . . .

No. The fact that our opponent would say such shows his ignorance of a basic knowledge of textual criticism, especially NT textual criticism. What we have today are Bibles that are directly translated from the original language texts (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic) of the OT/NT. The current editions of the NA27/UBS4th Greek text and the BHS-W4 are representative of the work of textual critics based upon thousands of copies of said texts in the original language. This does not equate to Bible translations that are the result of mere "copies, of copies, of copies" and "a mistranslation of a copy"; as if the copying process that took place in the ancient Scriptoriums consisted of the 5th grader telephone game. When speaking to the reliability of the text of the NT, the popular modern representative of this view is Dr. Bart Ehrman. Ehrman said in Misquoting Jesus,

In particular . . . I began seeing the New Testament as as very human book. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I had regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minted "born-again" Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As I realized already in graduate school, even if God had inspired the original words, we don't have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant to the Bible as we have it, since the words God reputedly inspired had been changed and, in some cases, lost. Moreover, I came to think that my earlier views of inspiration were not only irrelevant, they were probably wrong. For the only reason (I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that he didn't preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn't gone to the trouble of inspiring them. [Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 211.]

Take note of Ehrman's critical presupposition, for it's the same one that our opponents assumed the night of 9-2-2010: textual variation precludes inspiration. To define our terms, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace defines a textual variant as ". . . any difference from a standard text (e.g., a printed text, a particular manuscript, etc.) that involves spelling, word order, omission, addition, substitution, or a total rewrite of the text." [http://bible.org/article/number-textual-variants-evangelical-miscalculation] With that definition in mind, let's move on to more of Ehrman's comments.

In answering the question of a reporter to the Washington Post as to whether the Bible has been changed over 2,000+ years of copying and recopying, Ehrman answers, "Yes, significantly." The idea is that the massive number of alterations in the copies make it near impossible to have any confidence for reconstructing the original autographs. Of course, without the original readings, what good is an inspired text? Without inspired Scripture, there is no orthodox Christianity, but only a mix of widely diverse ideas about Jesus expressed in a body of conflicting texts that have come down to us over time through a "copy of a copy of a mistranslation of a copy of a copy . . .".

Is this skepticism justified? Not at all. The majority report of NT textual critics today is that the NT is hands-down the best preserved document from antiquity. Even Ehrman's Ph.D mentor, Bruce Metzger, who was perhaps the greatest NT textual critic of the 20th century had full confidence that the NT text that we possess today is substantially the same as the NT documents that circulated amongst first century Christians. So, how do NT textual scholars have confidence that what we have now is what they had then? It revolves around three factors (1) How many copies? (2) How old are the copies? (3) What is the nature of the differences between them [i.e., the variant readings].

1. How Many Copies?

Presently, there are in existence over 5,700 copies of the Greek NT. If the gap of time between the oldest copy and the time of the original is wide, then the original is harder to reconstruct. However, if there are many copies and the oldest ones are closer in time to the original copy, the scholar can be more certain that he has essentially achieved the original wording of the autographs. To get a comparison, consider non-biblical ancient texts. These are the secular writings historians rely on to get all their data from antiquity. In general, historians have no problem believing that these secular documents have been restored with a high level of confidence based on available manuscript evidence. So what is the evidence of these secular documents? Consider the following:

• Josephus' The Jewish War (1st cent. A.D.) - only 9 complete manuscripts survive, all dating no earlier than the 5th century.
• Tacitus' Annals (1st cent. A.D.) - only two manuscripts survive dating from the Middle Ages. This is one of the chief historical sources for the Roman world for NT times.
• Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) - survives in eight copies dated over a thousand years after the original.
• Ceasar's Gallic Wars (1st cent. B.C.) - survives in ten copies dated over a thousand years after the original.
• Herodotus' History (440 B.C.) - survives in eight copies dated over a thousand years after the original.
• Homer's Illiad (@800 B.C.) - 647 existing copies survive with earliest copy dated 800 years after original.
  

Most ancient documents such as those listed above are based upon only a handful of existing ancient manuscripts with some having a time gap between the original and the first extant copy anywhere from 800-1000+ years. Yet scholars are confident that they have reconstructed the originals with a high degree of accuracy, and in fact, virtually all of our knowledge of ancient history depends on these types of documents. If you can't trust them, you can't know anything about ancient history! If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity [Full credit is given to carm.org for the following charts].

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Approximate Time Span between original & copy	Number of Copies	Accuracy of Copies
Lucretius	died 55 or 53 B.C.		1100 yrs	2	----
Pliny	61-113 A.D.	850 A.D.	750 yrs	7	----
Plato	427-347 B.C.	900 A.D.	1200 yrs	7	----
Demosthenes	4th Cent. B.C.	1100 A.D.	800 yrs	8	----
Herodotus	480-425 B.C.	900 A.D.	1300 yrs	8	----
Suetonius	75-160 A.D.	950 A.D.	800 yrs	8	----
Thucydides	460-400 B.C.	900 A.D.	1300 yrs	8	----
Euripides	480-406 B.C.	1100 A.D.	1300 yrs	9	----
Aristophanes	450-385 B.C.	900 A.D.	1200	10	----
Caesar	100-44 B.C.	900 A.D.	1000	10	----
Livy	59 BC-AD 17	----	???	20	----
Tacitus	circa 100 A.D.	1100 A.D.	1000 yrs	20	----
Aristotle	384-322 B.C.	1100 A.D.	1400	49	----
Sophocles	496-406 B.C.	1000 A.D.	1400 yrs	193	----
Homer (Iliad)	8-900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 yrs	643	95%
New Testament	1st Cent. A.D. (50-95 A.D.	2nd Cent. A.D. (c. 130 A.D. f.)	less than 100 years	5700	99.5%

2. How Old are the Copies?

As you can see from the chart above, there are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing. Out of these NT manuscripts, some of them are represented by early fragments, uncial codices (mss. bound in book form in capital Greek letters), and what are known as miniscules (lowercase Greek letters in cursive style). Out of the 2,795 miniscules dating from the 9th to 15th centuries, there are 34 complete New Testaments. The Uncial manuscripts containing nearly the entire complete New Testaments and half the Old Testament are contained in Codex Sinaiticus (@ 340 A.D.) and then Codex Vaticanus (@ 325-350 A.D.). Codex Alexandrinus contains the entire Old Testament and nearly the entire New Testament and dates from @ 450 A.D.

Our oldest evidence comes from the papyri fragments. The Chester-Beatty papyrii is dated to @ 250 A.D. and is commonly known as P46. The Bodmer II Papyrii collection (P66) dates from @ 200 A.D. It's discovery was announced in 1956 and it contains most all of the first 14 chapters of John's gospel and most of the last seven chapters. However, the most amazing fragmentary evidence is found in what is known as P52, also called the John Rylands Papyri. It is a 3 inch square portion of John 18:31-33 that was discovered in Egypt. It represents the earliest known copy of any portion of the NT and has been dated between 115-138 A.D., though some scholars have dated it earlier. This shows that the gospel of John was being circulated in Egypt within 40 years from the original autograph! Most papyri are fragmentary, and only about 50 manuscripts contain the entire NT text. Nevertheless, as Dr. Dan Wallace has so aptly stated, "We have an embarrassment of riches." When the textual evidence for the NT is compared to other works of antiquity, we have nothing to be concerned about.

Important Manuscript Papyri	Contents	Date Original Written	MSS Date	Approx. Time Span	Location
p52 (John Rylands Fragment)3	John 18:31-33,37-38	circa 96 A.D.	circa 125 A.D.	29 yrs	John Rylands Library, Manchester, England
P46 (Chester Beatty Papyrus)	Rom. 5:17-6:3,5-14; 8:15-25, 27-35; 10:1-11,22,24-33,35; 16:1-23, 25-27; Heb.; 1 & 2 Cor., Eph., Gal., Phil., Col.; 1 Thess. 1:1,9-10; 2:1-3; 5:5-9, 23-28	50's-70's	circa 200 A.D.	Approx. 150 yrs	Chester Beatty Museum, Dublin & Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan library
P66 (Bodmer Papyrus)	John 1:1-6:11,35-14:26; fragment of 14:29-21:9	70's	circa 200 A.D.	Approx. 130 yrs	Cologne, Geneva
P67	Matt. 3:9,15; 5:20-22, 25-28		circa 200 A.D.	Approx. 130 yrs	Barcelona, Fundacion San Lucas Evangelista, P. Barc.1

We also have the ancient commentaries of the church fathers, known as "patristic quotations", which would reproduce nearly the entire NT even if we burned all of our existing manuscripts. This is because they quoted the NT over one million times in their writings! Outside of our Greek manuscripts, we also have ancient versions of the Bible that have been translated into Syriac, Coptic, Latin, and then later into Armenian and Georgian. These manuscript translations sometimes come in great quantities, with Latin copies measuring up to 10,000 copies! These old versions were used by Christian missionaries to spread the gospel into the non-Greek speaking nations and modern scholars use the extant copies of them to do research on the underlying Greek manuscripts that they were translated from.

While Bart Ehrman says that we can't trust our modern Bibles because we can't know what the original manuscripts said, most other scholars consider the plethora of evidence for the NT manuscript tradition a virtue and not a vice. Massive numbers of variants only come from massive numbers of manuscripts. The condition causing the problem is the very condition providing the solution. The earlier the manuscripts are, and the more we have for comparison, the more accurately we can determine what the original text said. As Dr. Daniel Wallace is wont to say, we have 110% of the text of the NT, not 90%! [http://bible.org/article/majority-text-and-original-text-are-they-identical] This brings us to our third question.

3. What is the nature of the differences between them? [i.e., the variant readings]

Note again that Dan Wallace defines a textual variant as "any difference from a standard text" with the standard text being understood as the original writing of any document. A textual variant would present itself as spelling changes, word order changes, omission of words, addition of letters/words/phrases, or a complete rewrite of the text. Again, any change in the text would constitute a textual variant. These differences can be divided up into two basic categories (a) insignificant, and (b) significant.

a. An insignificant variant has absolutely no bearing on our ability to reconstruct the original text. The meaning remains the same, regardless of which reading in the manuscripts is the original one. Of the 400,000 textual variants, 50% are spelling errors, 49% are inconsequential, and only 1% are meaningful and viable. There are a few theologically significant variants, such as 1 John 5:7-8 as it appears in the KJV/NKJV translations (i.e., the comma Johanneum). Regarding this famous variant, current evidence shows that this variant first appeared in a 16th century Greek manuscript now known as Codex 61. The Comma is almost universally acknowledged by NT textual critics as a corruption of the original text of 1st John. Nevertheless, many generations of Christians were able to exegete the Scriptures in defense of the Trinity by appealing to many NT passages that are well attested in the Greek manuscript tradition. Thus, the fact that this passage is spurious and wasn't in the original autograph of 1st John poses no doctrinal concern whatsoever for those who want to defend historic Trinitarian orthodoxy. There are variants like the Comma that only appear in one manuscript, but they are easily corrected because they stick out like a sore thumb when compared to the rest of the manuscripts. In his "Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?", Wallace sums up the variants like this:

1. Spelling differences or nonsense readings (i.e., skipped lines).
2. Insignificant word order differences (i.e., "Jesus Christ" vs. "Christ Jesus") and synonyms.
3. Theologically meaningful, though non-viable variants (i.e., The Comma Johanneum).
4. Variants that are both meaningful and viable.

b. Significant variants

Wallace says this about the significant variants,

But when one looks at the actual details of the textual problems, the vast majority are so trivial as to not even be translatable, while the meaningful and viable variants constitute only about 1% of the text. And even for this category, most scholars would say that 1% is being awfully generous as to our uncertainties! (The majority of NT scholars would say that what is uncertain is a small fraction of 1% of the text.) [Italics mine for emphasis - DSS]

This means that more than 396,000 of the variants in the Greek manuscript tradition have no bearing whatsoever on our ability to reconstruct the autograph.

Even with the remaining textual differences that remain, the vast majority of them are so theologically insignificant that none of them affects Christian orthodoxy. Even Bart Ehrman admits as much when he says,

Most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure, and simple - slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another. Misquoting Jesus, 55.

Only those remaining differences listed in Wallace's fourth category above (variants that are meaningful and viable), require serious textual critical work. These differences don't affect doctrine at all, but are instances where there are two or more possible readings where the textual evidence is fairly equal either way. For instance, text critics are divided on whether the original reading for John 1:18 was "the only God" or "the only Son" since the textual evidence is somewhat divided. However, neither affects doctrine since both are true and text critics use the accepted canons of text critical research in such instances to determine what the original reading was. Here’s what Ehrman says in an interview found in the appendix of Misquoting Jesus on p. 252,

Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions - he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not - we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement - maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. [bold and italics mine for emphasis - DSS]

Out of the 400,000 variants, virtually all of them are completely inconsequential to the task of reconstructing the original text. Of the remaining differences, nearly all of them give way to the original reading by applying the accepted canons of NT textual criticism.

So what does this mean? Answer: The New Testament is over 99% textually pure. As noted NT scholar Craig Evans said in a June 20, 2010 radio discussion on The White Horse Inn, out of the 20,000 lines of the NT, only 40 lines are in serious doubt. This equals about 400 words and none of them affects orthodoxy.

The final part of the atheist claim was that the Bible was copied from,

"something that was an account by someone who wasn't an eyewitness to the events."

This is just a flat out lie. The apostles John, James, and Peter were all eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Christ (2 Peter 1:16ff). Not to mention that Jude was the half-brother of Jesus whose epistle bears his name. All of these men lived and preached the gospel throughout most of the first generation of Christians and if any doctrinal alteration occurred, they quickly quelled it as is evident in the NT epistles. Also, as Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace point out in chapter 2 of Reinventing Jesus, oral tradition supported by significant memory devices utilized to pass on important information by ancient collectivist societies in the first century would have prevented mythical accretions from developing in the oral traditions of first generation Christianity. This fact combined with the fact that there were many eyewitnesses still alive throughout most of that first generation ensured that important information was passed on accurately via oral tradition before the truth about Jesus was committed to paper and ink.

Being Careful What You Wish For: Historical Skepticism Cuts Both Ways

In conclusion, if skeptics dismiss the NT as an unreliable historical document, then to be consistent they should dismiss the reliability of the writings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and any other author that wrote before the invention of the printing press and perhaps even the modern photocopier. However, if skeptics accept their writings, but dismiss the NT writings as spurious, then they are revealing that their disdain for the NT has nothing to do with a paucity of ancient historical evidence as documented above, but instead it has to do with antisupernatural bias that adamantly insists that God could not have miraculously entered into history and revealed Himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

ADDENDUM: The following additional and excellent information was added in the combox of this article after it was posted on 9-6-10 by Jason Engwer:

Several other points:

• We can also judge the reliability of Christian scribes by how they preserved other documents, not just the New Testament. As the Josephan scholar Steve Mason notes, "in general, Christian copyists were quite conservative in transmitting texts" (Josephus And The New Testament [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005], p. 232).
• Not only are patristic quotations of the New Testament relevant, but so are patristic (and other) descriptions. If a skeptic wants to raise textual issues to cast doubt on Jesus' resurrection, for example, then it's significant if a patristic source describes a New Testament document as making reference to the resurrection, even if he doesn't quote the document.
• It was common for documents in antiquity to exist in two or more copies before being sent out to circulate more widely. Authors often kept a copy of their document before sending out another copy (Stanley Porter, in Craig Evans and Emanuel Tov, edd., Exploring The Origins Of The Bible [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008], pp. 189-190, 195, n. 106 on p. 195). Thus, an author didn't entirely give up control of the transmission of his text to other people. He kept a copy himself and could restart the copying process anytime he wanted with his own edition of the original.
• Authors often took steps to ensure the preservation of their text and to monitor the status of the text's circulation. Thus, ancient authors often commented on subjects like what titles were being applied to their works in libraries, how some people were interpreting their work inaccurately, how some people were altering their text, etc. Their concern over the text didn't end once the first copy was sent out.
• Documents were read publicly (1 Thessalonians 5:27). Thus, even those who were illiterate could become witnesses to the original text by means of hearing it read publicly. That increases the number of witnesses involved.
• Ancient non-Christian sources corroborated the reliability of the New Testament text.
• Many of the objections non-Christians raise against Christianity in modern times depend on the textual accuracy of ancient extra-Biblical sources. For example, when a critic appeals to an alleged contradiction between Luke and Josephus, suggesting that we have a reliable text for Josephus, he's accepting the Josephan text on the basis of less evidence than we have for the New Testament text.

Pascal's Wager affirmed

Tobin has posted a final reply to me. (We’ll see how final that really is.) For now I’ll focus my attention on one section of his reply: “On Biblical Scholarship and Evangelical Apologetics.”

Perhaps this would be a good time to explain why the word ‘scholarship’ cannot be used when referring to evangelical literature[9] and why people like Hays are mistaken in placing their trust in such works.

The mark of scholarship is its dependence of evidence and reason regardless of where it leads.

Yet we find that many evangelical institutes have very strict rules about what their “scholars” are supposed to accept. Many evangelical theological seminaries, such as the Dallas Theological Seminary,[10] Denver Seminary[11] and Fuller Theological Seminary[12] require its faculty to sign a strict statement of adherence to biblical inerrancy before they are allowed to teach there. Some institutions even require the faculty member to recommit to this statement annually, just in case they have changed their mind on inerrancy after signing the statement.

Not adhering to these statements could mean loss of one’s tenure and may even result in sacking or forced resignation. The recent case of Bruce Waltke, an evangelical professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, is one such example. He had to resign his post from the Reformed Theological Seminary in circumstances still unclear – but it clearly had to do with his advocating the compatibility of evolution and biblical creation, something clearly anathema to many, if not most, evangelicals.

How can honest scholarship be done when one is already adhering to a position of inerrancy? Imagine physicists being required to sign a statement affirming the “inerrancy” of quantum mechanics before they can get a teaching position in any university! One would not believe any “research” on the fundamentals of physics that comes out from such an institution.

It is the same with evangelicals. When they are already committed to an unalterable belief, then that very position cannot but produce “scholarship” which agrees with such a belief. Thus, it should come as no surprise that any book by Craig Blomberg on the reliability of the gospels will conclude that the gospels are “reliable.”[13] And if Ben Witherington III were to write a book about the Acts of the Apostles, you can bet your bottom dollar he is going to “find” the book historically reliable and that Luke is its author.[14]

Studies where the end results are known beforehand are not works of scholarship but of pure apologetics. As Robert M. Price noted in his recent book, “The Case Against the Case for Christ,” such “scholarship” has only one main goal – to “turn back the clock” to a time when the Bible made is safe from historical criticism.[15]

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/09/paul-tobin-responds-to-infidel-delusion.html

This raises a nest of issues:

1. Tobin’s objection is textbook case of the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. He tries to preemptively discredit the arguments of evangelical scholars by impugning their motives. But that’s irrelevant to the quality of their arguments.

For instance, suppose a disgruntled employee gets back at the company that fired him by going to the authorities with evidence that his company is guilty of racketeering. Should the authorities not even bother to study the evidence because the former employee is motivated by revenge?

2. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that evangelicals don’t “follow the evidence wherever it leads” (whatever that means). In that case, it should be easy for Tobin to show how unreasonable their arguments are.

3. To say that we should “follow the evidence wherever it leads” is a catchy slogan to put on your bumper, but what does that even mean?

Suppose I have a lifelong friend who, in my experience, is a man of unimpeachable integrity. He is honest even when his honesty puts him at a disadvantage. Moreover, he has a very good memory.

Suppose we’re having lunch, and in the course of our conversation he mentions his whereabouts the day before. And suppose I later come into some information which appears to be inconsistent with his account of his whereabouts that day.

Given that apparent contradiction, what would it mean for me to follow the evidence wherever it leads? That’s not a simple question to answer since there’s more than one set of evidence, and each set of evidence doesn’t point in the same direction:

i) There’s the general evidence that he’s a reliable witness. He has a track-record of honesty. And he has a good memory.

ii) There’s his firsthand account of his whereabouts on that day. That’s prima facie evidence for his whereabouts on that day.

iii) But there’s also some prima facie counterevidence concerning his whereabouts that day.

So where does the evidence lead? Well, it doesn’t point in any particular direction. Rather, I have conflicting lines of evidence.

What should we do in a situation like that? (a) We could suspend judgment. (b) Or we could go with the best overall explanation.

4. What evidence does a Christian bring to bear when he reads the Bible? There are many potential lines of evidence. Prophecy. The Resurrection. Archeological corroboration. Undesigned coincidences. The criterion of embarrassment. Early patristic testimony. Concessions by early enemies of the faith. The argument from religious experience. And so on and so forth.

There are many potential lines of evidence. Moreover, this is person-variable. Some people find some types of evidence more compelling than others. Each individual is unique, with a distinctive personality and life-story.

So when a Christian comes to a “problem passage” in Scripture, he evaluates that passage against a larger body of evidence. The total evidence of his belief-system. As Quine put it, the web of belief. Or as Newman put it, “the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and various for such conversion, even were they convertible.”

So where does the “evidence” lead? Depends on how broadly or narrowly you construe the relevant evidence.

5. Do so-called “mainstream/critical” scholars just follow the evidence wherever it leads? Tobin likes to cite Robert Price. But when Price invokes “methodological atheism” (TCD, 275), is he “following” the evidence? No. Just the opposite. He is prejudging the evidence.

Tobin also likes to cite Bart Ehrman. But when Ehrman says that, as a “historian,” he cannot affirm or deny the occurrence of a miracle, is he “following” the evidence? No. Just the opposite. He is prejudging the evidence.

When John Collins says “historical knowledge is possible because all events are similar in principle. We must assume that the laws of nature in biblical times were the same as now. Troeltsch referred to this as ‘the almighty power of analogy.’” (Encounters with Biblical Theology, 12), is he merely following the evidence? No. Just the opposite. That prejudges the evidence.

The historical method of “critical” scholars like Price, Ehrman, and Collins isn’t the a posteriori pursuit of the evidence wherever that leads, but the a priori commitment to naturalistic explanations. Far from following the evidence, they install a filter to screen out supernatural factors regardless of the evidence. They only follow the evidence if it goes where they want to go.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that any book reflecting a presuppositional commitment to methodological naturalism will arrive at naturalistic conclusions.

6. As usual, Tobin is unable to think outside his own box. He imputes his obsequious attitude to me. But I don’t “trust” evangelical scholars. I don’t take what they say on faith. Rather, I evaluate their arguments.

That’s a foreign concept to Tobin, for his submits his conscience to the authority of his favorite liberals.

7. Inerrantists, per se, don’t have an “unalterable” commitment to inerrancy. Not every inerrantist operates with the same epistemology. Anyone who’s conversant with debates over evidentialism, presuppositionalism, and natural theology would be aware of that. (Not that I object to having such a commitment.)

Tobin is guilty of gross overgeneralizations, based on his self-reinforcing ignorance. Many scholars who defend the credibility of Scripture do not subscribe to the inerrancy of Scripture. And not all those who affirm the inerrancy of Scripture have a presuppositional commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture. Likewise, not all of those who defend the inerrancy or credibility of Scripture teach at institutions which require them to do so.

But Tobin begins with his theory, then turns a blind eye to all of the evidence that runs counter to his theory.

8. To think that Fuller Seminary seriously adheres to inerrancy evinces complete ignorance of the highly publicized history of that checkered institution, viz. George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism.

9. Secular institutions also have their unwritten doctrinal oaths. Look at what happens to biology profs. who betray any public sympathy or intelligent design theory. Likewise, what would happen if Kurt Wise, Jonathan Sarfati, or even William Dembski applied for job at Cornell?

10. Tobin labors under the illusion that Asbury Seminary adheres to the inerrancy of scripture. But, of course, Asbury is closely associated with the United Methodist Church. Moreover, anyone who’s read Bill Arnold’s commentary on Genesis (to take one example) can see that this represents standard historical-critical methodology.

Ben Witherington has been in a position to write his own ticket for years. He’d have no difficulty finding employment if he lost his job at Asbury. Just look at his speaking itinerary.

Bruce Waltke is already collecting Social Security and a pension. He’s 79 years old! After he changed his mind about Dispensationalism, he left Dallas Theological Seminary and taught for many years at Regent College. Then he retired to RTS. He's also been a visiting prof. at WTS. So he's never been at a lost for gainful employment.

11. Seminary profs. teach at confessional seminaries because they share theological outlook of the institution. No one is putting a gun to their head. They don’t swear by inerrancy because they teach at inerrantist seminaries; rather, they teach at inerrantist seminaries because they swear by inerrancy.

12. Finally, Tobin’s distinction has precisely nothing to do with “modern scholarship.” Following the evidence wherever it leads (whatever that means) isn’t something unique to modernity.

We do not find this in mainstream biblical scholarship, where debates and differing positions are taken based on how each scholar marshals the evidence. When a consensus is reached by such a boisterous group of scholars–it tends to mean that the evidence for such a consensus is strong. Thus when we say that 80% to 90% of such scholars agree that the pastorals were not written by Paul, we can be certain that the reason for such a consensus must be compelling.

i) Academia is notoriously faddish. Subject to peer pressure and groupthink.

ii) “Mainstream” consensus mirrors a precommitment to naturalistic historiography. Likewise, if they abuse the argument from silence, then their conclusions will reflect their fallacious assumptions.

iii) Despite his intellectual affectations as a free thinker, notice Tobin’s essentially anti-intellectual posture. Not only doesn’t he evaluate the arguments of evangelical scholars, he doesn’t evaluate the arguments of “critical” scholars. Instead, he has a faith-commitment to the reliability of their reasoning. If they agree on something, then it must be true!

Tobin can’t think for himself. He doesn’t even try. He simply defaults to his liberal authority-figures. “Tell me what to believe!” He’s abdicated reason.

A “Consensus” among evangelicals however, comes not from the result of arguments and evidence but from their “statements of faith.” In other words, such “consensuses” among evangelicals come from the unquestioned presuppositional biases.

So when Hays cites his “authorities” on the reliability of the Bible, all he is saying to the skeptic is, ‘Hey, see how all these apologists with PhD’s are using ingenious methods to defend beliefs which cannot be held without a presuppositionary belief in Biblical inerrancy!”

i) Once again, Tobin can only see the opposing position through his own tinted glasses. I didn’t appeal to an evangelical “consensus.” I didn’t appeal to evangelical “authorities.”

ii) And Tobin is blind to the presuppositional beliefs of “critical” scholars, viz. the principle of analogy. Tobin is a classic case of somebody who’s oblivious to his own controlling presuppositions.

iii) As Jason and I have both documented, repeatedly, Tobin is a hypocrite about “mainstream” scholarship. He cites fringe scholarship whenever it suits his purpose, and he does so frequently.

Running in place

(Posted on Steve's behalf.)



According to Catholic apologist and philosopher Michael Liccione:

[B]efore we can determine the truth of any given doctrine–be it the Catholic doctrine of the papacy or any other–we must consider the question by what means theological claims are to be evaluated so that we can distinguish the propositional content of divine revelation from mere human opinions about the data taken as sources. Academic research, on the Bible or anything else, is never going to answer that question definitively. All it can do is clarify what data there are to be interpreted–and even that matter is often more speculative than partisans are willing to admit.

When the question is what I’ve said it is, the answer must appeal to a final authority as one divinely empowered to settle disputes about applying the distinction in question.

Notice the direction of the argument: Before we can determine the truth of the papacy, we must appeal to the final authority of the papacy.

Stephen Hawking vs God

James Anderson offers some preliminary, tentative thoughts on Stephen Hawking's recent claim that it's possible the universe created itself from nothing thereby precluding the need to appeal to God as creator.

(BTW, Hawking's claim reminds me of Alan Guth's similar claim in The Inflationary Universe.)

Nulla Scriptura

According to Catholic apologist and philosopher Michael Liccione:

As a Catholic, I’d say that of course the Catholic doctrine of the papacy cannot be “demonstrated and sustained” just by “Scripture itself,” even though it is supported by Scripture when Scripture is interpreted in a certain way. Indeed, from what Vatican II said, we may infer that no article of faith can simply be “demonstrated” by Scripture; for “Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church are so linked…that none can stand without the others” (Dei Verbum §10).

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/09/modern-scholarship-rome-and-a-challenge/#comment-11147

So, by Liccione’s admission, not a single Catholic dogma can be demonstrated by Scripture alone.

Good Morning, Mr. Phelps

"It is ironic that this post mostly applies to Steve Hays and Paul Manata, but Jason Engwer (i.e. the only author of TID worth reading) is the one sent over here? Smooth move on their part..."

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/09/infidel-delusion.html?showComment=1283696281217#c6884640065205409885

I see that WOE is on to us. Yes, we sent Jason over to Carrier's blog.

Jason receives his orders on a hidden iPad, along with photos and other info which explain the nature of his off-book mission. You know how it goes: “Good Morning, Mr. Phelps [Jason’s international spy name]…As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions”–after which the iPad self-destructs in a puff of smoke. Jason then proceeds to an IMF-sponsored safe house, where he retrieves an oversized, leather-bound dossier folder from a locked drawer, containing glossies of available IMF agents, from which he selects his team.

Jason doesn't know from one day to the next where we will send him. He goes wherever we tell him to go. Just last week we reassigned him to our station in Herzegovina to monitor Russian troop movements. And the week before that we had him assassinate a Swiss chocolatier in Tangiers (a trafficker for Al Qaida).