John Loftus has posted a response to my article on Jonah. I suggest that the reader take note of the many relevant issues in my article that Loftus ignored. His latest article repeats some of his previous errors, but he does address some issues he hadn't addressed previously.
On the subject of the alleged gullibility of ancient people, Loftus lists some ancient practices he disapproves of, such as the behavior of the prophets of Baal and astrology, and he compares those practices to modern advances in science, including everything from "dental technology" to "laser surgery". He then comments:
"Compare the above scientific disciplines with such things as divination, casting of lots, dreams, visions, trances, magic, exorcisms as healings, astrology, necromancy, sorcery, prophets for every religion, idol worship, gods and goddesses for every natural phenomena, human and animal sacrifices, priests, omens, temples, festivals, sacred writings, and the Pseudepigrapha. We live in a much different world than the ancients, primarily because of Newtonian science."
In other words, Loftus compares what he considers some of the worst elements of the ancient world to what he considers some of the best elements of the modern world. He doesn't mention the positive elements of the ancient world or the negative elements of the modern world. As I've said repeatedly in previous responses to Loftus, the large majority of the people in the world today are supernaturalists. I can produce a list of modern beliefs that Loftus would disapprove of that would be longer than his list of ancient beliefs he disapproves of in his latest article. Many modern people believe in God or gods, astrology, ghosts, psychics, etc. And while our technology is more advanced than ancient technology, people in the forty-first century surely will have more advanced technology than we have. Does it therefore follow that people of the forty-first century should consider John Loftus a gullible source, since he lived in a world in which many people held false beliefs, a world with less advanced technology?
Loftus mentions modern advances in geology, rocket science, laser surgery, etc., but what relevance do such advances have in judging whether people in the first century saw an empty tomb or whether the gospel of John was written by John, for example? It's not as if Peter needed the latest advances in dentistry in order to know whether he had seen Jesus risen from the dead. It's not as if advances in chemistry have explained how Jesus could naturalistically fulfill prophecy. John wouldn't need the latest developments in meteorology in order to reach a reliable conclusion about whether he had seen an empty tomb. Loftus keeps making misleading generalizations about how much better off we are than ancient people, but his generalizations don't explain the data relevant to Christianity.
Regarding the resurrection, Loftus makes a vague appeal to "visions" again:
"Speaking of visions Matthew has argued that there is a visionary basis to Christianity."
And:
"In the case of the disciple Thomas, John describes a risen Jesus who appeared to Thomas, even 'though the doors were locked,' indicating that Jesus either walked through the doors, or just appeared out of thin air. And then Jesus proceeds by asking Thomas to put his finger in his hands, and his hand in Jesus’ side. How can both of these descriptions of Jesus be of a flesh and blooded person? The way Jesus appeared to Thomas leads us think that this was nothing but a vision. How then can Thomas touch the flesh of Jesus, which still had open fatal wounds? Did the post-resurrected Jesus still have blood running in his veins? We now know that blood is necessary for the body to function, and that breathing gives the blood its oxygen, which is pumped though the body by the heart. Did he have a functioning heart and a set of lungs? Did the post-resurrected Jesus breathe? To speak, as it’s claimed Jesus did, demands a functioning set of lungs. John specifically said that he breathed (John 20:22). But didn’t Jesus lose all of his blood on the cross, and didn’t the post-resurrected body of Jesus still have open fatal wounds, according to John? These fatal wounds would cause him to lose any remaining blood out of his body. All of this leads me to suspect, at best, it was a vision."
And:
"There was no evidence. It was a story about Thomas. A vision. And it subsequently became a legend, which grew and grew as people passed it on, not unlike how the myth of Santa Claus grew up until the poem, '’twas the Night Before Christmas,' which revolutionized the way we thought about St. Nick."
The article Loftus links to, in the first quote above, doesn't give many details, but instead makes assertions about experiences various people have had and claims that the early Christians must have experienced something similar. The article is more assertion than it is argument. Loftus needs to be more specific. The term "vision" can refer to many different things. If he has hallucinations in mind, then he needs to address the problems with any hallucination theory (see here and here). The resurrection accounts give many details inconsistent with what we know about hallucinations. Men like Paul, his travel companions, and James wouldn't have had a mindset in which they were expecting to see the risen Jesus. Even Jesus' closest followers weren't expecting a resurrection of the sort we see described in the gospels. Rather, common Jewish expectation was that there would be a general resurrection in the future, not an individual resurrection beforehand. If Jesus' followers had hallucinated experiences with Jesus, they would have been more likely to have reported something like a resuscitation, an experience with Jesus' spirit, or an assumption. Since hallucinations involve prior expectations, the unexpected nature of the resurrection experiences (relative to the recipients) is inconsistent with a hallucination theory. Hallucinations wouldn't produce an empty tomb. Etc. Loftus doesn't seem to be aware of the many problems with the sort of theory he's proposing.
Concerning John 20, there's no good reason to doubt that the experience described is physical. Non-physical visions don't leave an empty tomb (John 20:2), involve an ability to touch (John 20:27), build a physical fire (John 21:9), etc. Jesus' body doesn't have to have the same characteristics as the pre-resurrection body. It wouldn't be a resurrection body if it wasn't transformed. A transformed body explains all of the data. Loftus' theory only explains some of it, and it's a theory he has no evidence for. He's just speculating.
Loftus refers to legends "growing and growing", but John's gospel contains fewer miracle accounts than previous gospels, and it mentions far fewer resurrection witnesses than Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15, for example. See here for David Wood's detailed refutation of the sort of argument Loftus is putting forward.
After a failed attempt to dismiss the resurrection with a hallucination theory, Loftus returns to the gullibility issue. He makes comments such as the following:
"Look at the book of Jude. He believed that Enoch, 'the 7th from Adam' prophesied something (v.14). Jude made it into the canon too. But it’s crystal clear Enoch’s book is pseudonymous and not written by Enoch."
Does a belief that Enoch prophesied prove gullibility on the part of Jude? No. Does Jude refer to any apocryphal work as scripture or as historically reliable? No. Similarly, Paul quotes pagan poetry without agreeing with everything it contains. Loftus would need more data to reach the conclusion he's reaching about Jude. He doesn't have that data.
He writes the following about Jonah and its canonicity:
"So if I’m right that there was no evidence for Jonah’s prophecy, then those who accepted Jonah into the canon didn’t have any either!"
Jonah made more than one prophecy. He accurately predicted what would happen when he was cast into the sea (Jonah 1:12). Loftus keeps referring to the prophecy of Jonah 3:4, but that wasn't Jonah's only prediction. Even if it had been, how could Loftus possibly know that the ancient Israelites had no evidence for the canonicity of Jonah outside of what's written in Jonah? Loftus is, again, assuming more than he can prove. We don't have the historical details surrounding the incorporation of Jonah into the canon.
On the subject of the creature that swallowed Jonah, Loftus makes another assertion without evidence:
"Well then, Jonah also describes himself as swallowed by a great fish; probably one of the mythical sea creatures of the deep, like Leviathan, Behemoth, or Rahab."
Later, Loftus misreads a series of Biblical passages in order to reach this ridiculous conclusion:
"Then whom was God fighting in order to create the universe? (cf. Isaiah 51:9-10; Ps. 74:13-14; 89:10-12; Job 26:7-13)."
Do any of those passages refer to God "fighting in order to create the universe"? No. There's some mention of God's work in creation, as well as His post-creation redemptive work and a lot of poetic language. Loftus seems to be combining things in the text that the text itself doesn't combine. If Loftus interprets the Bible this way, is it any wonder he arrives at such erroneous conclusions?
On the issue of New Testament authorship, Loftus writes:
"Besides, when it comes to John, Paul, and Luke, which ones can actually claim to be an eyewitness of Jesus’ miracles and resurrection? John? And where can we find his testimony? The book of John? Most scholars dispute he wrote it? And what makes you so sure that the book of John didn’t embellish the stories, since gospel scholars see him doing so with Jesus’ long discourses?"
Loftus mentions Paul and Luke, but gives us no reason to reject their testimony. Paul was an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ, and he was in contact with relatives and disciples of Jesus. Luke was an eyewitness of Paul's miracles, and he was in contact with other relevant early sources, such as James (Acts 21:18).
Loftus doesn't give us any reason to reject Johannine authorship of the gospel of John, but instead makes vague references to what some scholars believe. Since other scholars disagree with them, and since every manuscript names John as the author, the other internal evidence suggests John as the author, and the external evidence is heavily in support of John, why are we supposed to conclude that somebody else wrote the document? Does Loftus apply this same sort of reasoning to the writings of Josephus or Tacitus, for example? Do we disregard the weight of the internal and external evidence and speculate that somebody else might have written it? There's a difference between hard and soft evidence. The speculative theories of those who deny Johannine authorship are soft. Hard evidence such as we have for the gospel of John can't rationally be overturned on the basis of soft speculations that have long been answered by conservative scholarship. For some examples of the evidence we have for Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel, see here.
On the subject of Jonah's conditional prophecy in Jonah 3:4, Loftus writes:
"Then the conditional nature of prophecy is something added to the Mosaic tradition which originally didn’t provide for any exceptions or conditions…it must come to pass."
Where does Moses say that conditional prophecies are unacceptable? The writings of Moses themselves contain conditional prophecies. For example, God would bless the people in their land if they obeyed Him. A conditional prophecy includes the condition at the outset. It's predicting that an outcome will occur if a particular condition is met. The only way a conditional prophecy would be false would be if a condition were met without the predicted outcome following. If Jonah was giving a conditional prophecy in Jonah 3:4, as the context suggests, then he was predicting the destruction of the city only if the Ninevites didn't heed the warning. Since they did heed the warning, it would make no sense to expect the city to be destroyed. Does Loftus understand what a conditional prophecy is? Loftus should have made more of an effort to understand Christianity before he devoted a blog and his life to debunking it.
Monday, May 08, 2006
The Flemming-Turk Debate, A Quick Look Back
Winners do not, it seems, always write the history. I’m speaking, of course, of the debate between Centuri0n (notice I got the spelling correct) and Brian Flemming here:
http://q-and-a-blog.blogspot.com/
Now that the debate is over, Brian has claimed “victory.” He writes:
Let’s see if this is true, shall we?
This is actually one of my favorite bits from the debate:
Cent asked:
Brian first replies:
How is this an "incredible height?" The mythicists do claim cultic literature exists and they do name the myths. What are their sources? Let's see the specifics. The time period is the same period that mythcists allege too. So these two standards are the standards that the mythicists actually claim for their own argument. The last 3 are facets of the gospels themselves (if we go with the mythicists own criticism of the gospels by way of internal critique), and the fourth is also a claim made by standard comparative mythologists about these myths and the gospels.
No, the problem here is that Brian lets intellectual laziness pass for intellectual rigor.
Worth noting:
Not enough to sustain the argument. Based on this standard, we have to rule out any ancient biography written after the person lived.
Where is the supporting argument for this? Where is the historical evidence for it in particular?
This is an assertion bereft of an argument. Where and what are the allegories, what do the figures represent, and who gets to decide which parts are allegory and which are not?
This assumes a particular dating scheme without argument. It also assumes a dating scheme in which that which has the most miraculous and a great many details (place names, people, etc.) Not every story grows. On the typical liberal scheme Mark is first, John is last. Mark's alone names Bartimaeus, the disciples on the Mt. of Olives, Jesus' vocation, the young man who ran from the Garden. In addition, this theory includes the idea that more "miraculous" (i.e. supernatural) details accreted over time, but John, the latest in the scheme has the least, not the most details in that respect. Does Brian ever think about these basic details?
Doesn't this assume that there is a uniform "Hero Pattern?" I presume he is referring to Greek, Persian, Egyptian mythology. On the contrary, this imposes a particular literary theory on the text that the text does not recognize and assumes parallels exist without benefit of argument...classic comparative mythology. This is facile, even for Brian. Notice that Brian acknowledges that these have parallels in the OT, but those whom he cites as scholars (Carrier, et.al.) make a case in the opposite direction on a regular basis, so which are we to believe? In addition, as believers we affirm that there are obvious OT parallels. Indeed, there are direct, genetic parallels, so this hardly scores points against us.
In addition, he mentions “competing savior gods popular at the time.” Which ones? What time? He's making a claim about what existed at the time and claiming that a request for evidence from that time is an "extraordinary standard of evidence." Well, he made the claim about the time, so let's see him him substantiate the claim. What evidence do we have from the time of composition of the gospels for those cults? More on this later.
This assumes a particular theory of authorship and dating without argument. I’d add that, while it is true that we know the authors by way of tradition, it is also true that there is no evidence whatsoever that they attributions were added later and not attributable to who the authors named. In short, the evidence here isn’t merely by way of tradition, rather it is textual. It is therefore completely incumbent on the critic, Brian in this case, to give us an argument against the traditional authorship that has some evidence for it. This is particularly important for a skeptic who is claiming “there is no evidence” for our claims. Where is his evidence with respect to the authorship of these gospels? On the one hand, they demand evidence, evidence, evidence of us, then offer up theories of authorship with no textual evidence or historical evidence whatsoever.
Compared to the textual evidence, it is Plato that comes up far shorter. We have something like 7 copies of Plato on this dating from around 425 to 325 AD, but the original would have been written ca. 500 BC. Compare this to the NT.
At the end of this, Cent, rephrased the question for Brian and even made it easier by giving him a pass on the word limit. Cent, asked:
Brian still felt this was unreasonable.
He writes:
This is patently false. We want an argument that shows the links that are claimed. We want you to show us where the borrowing occurred. We aren’t asking for absolute certainty, we are asking for you to show us the links in the chain you allege exist.
Brian then tells us what he believes the argument from his side of the aisle amounts to:
Then he spends the rest of his answer mounting this argument, without actually answering Cent’s question. Furthermore, Brian just doesn’t get it at all. It is not enough to say x is similar to y, therefore y came from x, particularly if there is literary link and a chronological link.
To do that, Brian needs to do some legwork.
Here's his problem:
He can't produce the standard of evidence that his own mythicists allege. He's the one that doesn't understand the thesis. The parallels are alleged to be genetic. It's not enough to say "there is a parallel here." This line of argument simply creates an artificial generic "Savior motif" and then reads whatever it wishes into it, classic aprioristic methodology. On top of this, there are a number of mythopoetic theories, why choose Price and the one he favors?
For example, he argued:
A Jew would be highly offended by a pagan myth. Why would the gospel writers therefore include pagan myths? What myths? How are they parallel? Name them. Do the legwork. Brian substitutes descriptions for arguments.
He says:
So, to which gods in that genre is Jesus identical? Nobody has ever stated we believe them to be saying that Jesus is identical to every single one of them. Rather, we object to the pagan parallels they allege, because they don't fit the description offered. Which ones rose from the dead, were virgin born,crucified, etc?
Notice here:
Notice also that Brian is making a subtle category mistake. Earlier he states that the gospels "could just as well be allegory," but this would be typology, not allegory. They are not synonymous categories. On top of this the Bible has its own theology of myth, and it also admits to the typological imagery between the OT and gospels, so to make this "stick," Brian must assume the OT is also myth in order to say that the NT gospels are making a new myth out of the old. For example:
Moreover, what in Exodus is parallel to the slaughter of the innocents? Where is the literary trail from Exodus to Matt.? In Exodus, Pharaoh kills the children in order for the men to marry all the women and absorb the people (standard pagan practice), not prevent the rise of rival king, as Herod did. Christ is born a year or two or so prior to the order of Herod. Moses is born during the events Exodus describes. Moreover, Pharaoh demands the midwives kill the babies and then the people do it themselves; he does not send soldiers to do his dirty work. Later, the angel of death repays Egypt for this at the first Passover. The only text in Matt. even close to an Exodus parallel is 2:15, where Matt. calls on Ex. 4:22,23, where Israel is called out of Egypt as God's firstborn son, along with a promise to take vengeance on Egypt by way of the killing a Pharaoh's firstborn son. Brian substitutes assertion for argument yet again.
Notice also that he assumes that the slaughter of the innocents is a "myth." How does he know that it is a myth? This is circular logic at its best...assume what you need to prove to make your point. A is myth, B is fiction, therefore A is also myth. Where is the argument for A and the argument for B independent of this linking argument? At a minimum, we need the self-understanding of the text itself. What genre is Exodus? What is the self-understanding of the texts of Exodus and Matt with relationship to these events?
What's more, Brian doesn't understand the theories of the men that he extols like Carrier, et.al. The theory isn't that the stories are similar and that pre-modern historians may have left out details and that is enough, as he said in his last post. The theory is that there was borrowing between those stories and the NT. In other words, the links alleged are direct, not indirect.
How do you handle the claim that all the relevant facts were left out?
One way is by examining the claim. If there are "relevant facts" that were left out, what were they? The copycat theory is a prime example of a theory that seeks to impeach the text of NT by making the allegation that "relevant facts" were excised. It's like saying "Nobody wrote about the secret meetings they held." Well, if that's really true, then, pray tell, how does the interlocutor know there were secret meetings.
We affirm what we affirm based on what we have in evidence. This is why is is not enough to say that a (mth)is similar to b, therefore b (the gospels) originated with a. This is fallacious, especially when the evidence describing a (the myth) comes from a time after b (the gospels).
For example, Brian cites the "dying and rising Savior gpd motif." Others will go with the "virgin birth motif."
Okay:
A. How many and which "Savior gods" were crucified?
B. How many and which actually rose from the dead?
C. How many and which were actually born of a virgin.
D. How many of those stories are about historical people, places, and events from a time contemporary to the original recipients?
To do that, Brian needed to provide the spatial and temporal coordinates for the myth story in relation to the NT and document the development of the myth story and show the parallel and where it exists. Then there is all the info you need to know where the parallels are disanalogous. It's not enough to say, "Aha" a happened on the Monday and b happened on Monday too. So what. Where is the evidence that b came from a and that they are linked, particularly if the evidence you have for a is from a period after b was composed, not before!
Just in case there is a question about whether or not the issue at hand is simply a is similar to b and that is enough as Brian says and whether or not actual borrowing occurred, here is Richard Carrier in his very own words (The Empty Tomb, 181):
--And there, I shall leave this brief critique of Brian’s proclamation of victory, for it doesn’t sound like he answered the questions put to him at all. I would, however, like to close with Cent’s concluding post on his blog, since it does ask a question for the skeptics that did not garner a response.
I have two texts that I’d like the readers of this blog to compare, just for their own peace of mind. The first comes from a fellow names Livy, who wrote this around 10 AD:
The reason I provide this comparison is that it is the assertion of Richard Carrier – one of Brian Flemming’s panel of experts – that:
I think it is interesting how this particular assertion fares when you compare the texts for yourself. Not only does Carrier’s description of, for example, Livy’s narrative leave something to be desired, the claim that the account of Romulus’ end and the “end” of Christ are “astonishingly alike” needs some fleshing out.
By anyone. Anyone who can make the generalization stick after viewing the two works side by side ought to do so here. These works are only alike in that they are literature at all..
So, those skeptics reading this, can you answer Cent's request? Here it is one more time:
I’m sure, with Archaya S. on your side, you can at least attempt an answer. I’ll be retiring from blogging for the next couple of weeks, as I have a journal article to write for the folks at Founders Ministries. It's for publication, so it has to be "just so." The less time I spend online, the more quickly I'll be able to finish it. It requires some research, so I'm going to post maybe one article over on Strange Baptistfire this week, plus I have text of a booklet on 19th century Baptist history to place on a webhost this week in preparation for the SBC meeting, so I'm kinda swamped. Until then, perhaps you all will come up with a response to which Steve, Jason, Evan, Paul, and I can examine that actually makes the connections requested.
http://q-and-a-blog.blogspot.com/
Now that the debate is over, Brian has claimed “victory.” He writes:
But I'm not leaving the DebateBlog bitter about the experience. I won the debate. I made claims and supported them. I heard your arguments for what they were and answered them as best I could. When you asked for evidence I could not provide, I clearly admitted that I could not provide it and explained why I thought my conclusions did not require that evidence.
Let’s see if this is true, shall we?
This is actually one of my favorite bits from the debate:
Cent asked:
" Can you demonstrate that any other cultic literature written (or formulated) between 300 BC and 100 AD attempted to imitate historical narrative for the purpose of expressing religious truths -- specifically, that the "savior" in question interacted with particular contemporary political figures that were known to the writers and readers of those works (for example, in Mark, Jesus plainly interacts with Pilate and Herod)?savior" in question interacted with particular contemporary political figures that were known to the writers and readers of those works (for example, in Mark, Jesus plainly interacts with Pilate and Herod)?
Brian first replies:
I was wondering when you would raise the standard of evidence to incredible heights.Then notes the following:
You want me to produce the following work:
--Cultic literature
--Written between 300 BC and 100 AD
--Imitated historical narrative
--To express religious truths
--Protagonist interacts with contemporary political figures
How is this an "incredible height?" The mythicists do claim cultic literature exists and they do name the myths. What are their sources? Let's see the specifics. The time period is the same period that mythcists allege too. So these two standards are the standards that the mythicists actually claim for their own argument. The last 3 are facets of the gospels themselves (if we go with the mythicists own criticism of the gospels by way of internal critique), and the fourth is also a claim made by standard comparative mythologists about these myths and the gospels.
No, the problem here is that Brian lets intellectual laziness pass for intellectual rigor.
Worth noting:
1. No accounts of Jesus from the time, despite the noteworthy actions attributed to him in the "biographies" that appeared later
Not enough to sustain the argument. Based on this standard, we have to rule out any ancient biography written after the person lived.
2. Christianity appears to have begun without a human/historical Jesus as part of the religion; it was a "savior cult" similar to other religions of the time.
Where is the supporting argument for this? Where is the historical evidence for it in particular?
3. The first "biography" of Jesus appears on the scene very late and in the most suspicious way--in material that could easily be allegory, written and circulated by fervent believers within a young cult.
This is an assertion bereft of an argument. Where and what are the allegories, what do the figures represent, and who gets to decide which parts are allegory and which are not?
4. New pieces of the biography are "remembered" over time (i.e., as of 70 CE Jesus still has not been born)
This assumes a particular dating scheme without argument. It also assumes a dating scheme in which that which has the most miraculous and a great many details (place names, people, etc.) Not every story grows. On the typical liberal scheme Mark is first, John is last. Mark's alone names Bartimaeus, the disciples on the Mt. of Olives, Jesus' vocation, the young man who ran from the Garden. In addition, this theory includes the idea that more "miraculous" (i.e. supernatural) details accreted over time, but John, the latest in the scheme has the least, not the most details in that respect. Does Brian ever think about these basic details?
5. These pieces of "biography" that trickle in over time just so happen to fit the Hero Pattern, and have parallels in the Old Testament as well as the stories of competing savior gods who were popular at the time.
Doesn't this assume that there is a uniform "Hero Pattern?" I presume he is referring to Greek, Persian, Egyptian mythology. On the contrary, this imposes a particular literary theory on the text that the text does not recognize and assumes parallels exist without benefit of argument...classic comparative mythology. This is facile, even for Brian. Notice that Brian acknowledges that these have parallels in the OT, but those whom he cites as scholars (Carrier, et.al.) make a case in the opposite direction on a regular basis, so which are we to believe? In addition, as believers we affirm that there are obvious OT parallels. Indeed, there are direct, genetic parallels, so this hardly scores points against us.
In addition, he mentions “competing savior gods popular at the time.” Which ones? What time? He's making a claim about what existed at the time and claiming that a request for evidence from that time is an "extraordinary standard of evidence." Well, he made the claim about the time, so let's see him him substantiate the claim. What evidence do we have from the time of composition of the gospels for those cults? More on this later.
With regard to Socrates, I think you make the case for a real Socrates over a real Jesus quite well in your question: From Plato, we have a detailed written account of Socrates from someone who actually knew him. There is nothing even approaching this kind of evidence in Christian literature.
This assumes a particular theory of authorship and dating without argument. I’d add that, while it is true that we know the authors by way of tradition, it is also true that there is no evidence whatsoever that they attributions were added later and not attributable to who the authors named. In short, the evidence here isn’t merely by way of tradition, rather it is textual. It is therefore completely incumbent on the critic, Brian in this case, to give us an argument against the traditional authorship that has some evidence for it. This is particularly important for a skeptic who is claiming “there is no evidence” for our claims. Where is his evidence with respect to the authorship of these gospels? On the one hand, they demand evidence, evidence, evidence of us, then offer up theories of authorship with no textual evidence or historical evidence whatsoever.
Compared to the textual evidence, it is Plato that comes up far shorter. We have something like 7 copies of Plato on this dating from around 425 to 325 AD, but the original would have been written ca. 500 BC. Compare this to the NT.
At the end of this, Cent, rephrased the question for Brian and even made it easier by giving him a pass on the word limit. Cent, asked:
It is interesting that the best example you could find of parallel in previous literature was from the Old Testament. But your complaint is that I have asked for too much – evidence too specific.
Fair enough. Let me ask the question a different way.
It is my opinion that Mithra (as one example) and Jesus are similar only in the broadest terms. However, if Jesus is the result of conflation of pre-existing religious stories, please produce any of those sources, without regard to genre or date – with the minor qualification that the sources predate the authorship of Mark as you have agreed to it in 70 AD. I’d be willing to give you a blank check in word count to cut-and-paste those stories here in translation, side-by-side with the passages of the NT you think use them for source material.
Brian still felt this was unreasonable.
He writes:
The Scientologist and the Christian, when confronted by challenges to the core dogmas of their religions, defensively and irrationally respond by raising the bar. They win the argument ahead of time by demanding that all challenges compete with certainty.
This is patently false. We want an argument that shows the links that are claimed. We want you to show us where the borrowing occurred. We aren’t asking for absolute certainty, we are asking for you to show us the links in the chain you allege exist.
Brian then tells us what he believes the argument from his side of the aisle amounts to:
For the disinterested nonbeliever, it is clearly enough to arouse suspicion that the Jesus story is similar to prior god stories.
Then he spends the rest of his answer mounting this argument, without actually answering Cent’s question. Furthermore, Brian just doesn’t get it at all. It is not enough to say x is similar to y, therefore y came from x, particularly if there is literary link and a chronological link.
To do that, Brian needs to do some legwork.
Here's his problem:
He can't produce the standard of evidence that his own mythicists allege. He's the one that doesn't understand the thesis. The parallels are alleged to be genetic. It's not enough to say "there is a parallel here." This line of argument simply creates an artificial generic "Savior motif" and then reads whatever it wishes into it, classic aprioristic methodology. On top of this, there are a number of mythopoetic theories, why choose Price and the one he favors?
For example, he argued:
I have made the claim that the Jesus story contains similarities to many sources, including the Old Testament, previous non-Jewish myths, and the competing religions that were present at the time that Christianity was conceived and developed.
A Jew would be highly offended by a pagan myth. Why would the gospel writers therefore include pagan myths? What myths? How are they parallel? Name them. Do the legwork. Brian substitutes descriptions for arguments.
He says:
Also, to claim that Jesus is a god in the "dying and rising savior" genre is not to claim that Jesus is identical to every single god in that genre.
So, to which gods in that genre is Jesus identical? Nobody has ever stated we believe them to be saying that Jesus is identical to every single one of them. Rather, we object to the pagan parallels they allege, because they don't fit the description offered. Which ones rose from the dead, were virgin born,crucified, etc?
Notice here:
It should be obvious that the Jesus story is a synthesis of previous myths. To take just one example, the slaughter of the innocents more likely is "derived right out of the book of Exodus" than it is an accurate account of an amazingly coincidental historical event.
Notice also that Brian is making a subtle category mistake. Earlier he states that the gospels "could just as well be allegory," but this would be typology, not allegory. They are not synonymous categories. On top of this the Bible has its own theology of myth, and it also admits to the typological imagery between the OT and gospels, so to make this "stick," Brian must assume the OT is also myth in order to say that the NT gospels are making a new myth out of the old. For example:
Moreover, what in Exodus is parallel to the slaughter of the innocents? Where is the literary trail from Exodus to Matt.? In Exodus, Pharaoh kills the children in order for the men to marry all the women and absorb the people (standard pagan practice), not prevent the rise of rival king, as Herod did. Christ is born a year or two or so prior to the order of Herod. Moses is born during the events Exodus describes. Moreover, Pharaoh demands the midwives kill the babies and then the people do it themselves; he does not send soldiers to do his dirty work. Later, the angel of death repays Egypt for this at the first Passover. The only text in Matt. even close to an Exodus parallel is 2:15, where Matt. calls on Ex. 4:22,23, where Israel is called out of Egypt as God's firstborn son, along with a promise to take vengeance on Egypt by way of the killing a Pharaoh's firstborn son. Brian substitutes assertion for argument yet again.
Notice also that he assumes that the slaughter of the innocents is a "myth." How does he know that it is a myth? This is circular logic at its best...assume what you need to prove to make your point. A is myth, B is fiction, therefore A is also myth. Where is the argument for A and the argument for B independent of this linking argument? At a minimum, we need the self-understanding of the text itself. What genre is Exodus? What is the self-understanding of the texts of Exodus and Matt with relationship to these events?
What's more, Brian doesn't understand the theories of the men that he extols like Carrier, et.al. The theory isn't that the stories are similar and that pre-modern historians may have left out details and that is enough, as he said in his last post. The theory is that there was borrowing between those stories and the NT. In other words, the links alleged are direct, not indirect.
How do you handle the claim that all the relevant facts were left out?
One way is by examining the claim. If there are "relevant facts" that were left out, what were they? The copycat theory is a prime example of a theory that seeks to impeach the text of NT by making the allegation that "relevant facts" were excised. It's like saying "Nobody wrote about the secret meetings they held." Well, if that's really true, then, pray tell, how does the interlocutor know there were secret meetings.
We affirm what we affirm based on what we have in evidence. This is why is is not enough to say that a (mth)is similar to b, therefore b (the gospels) originated with a. This is fallacious, especially when the evidence describing a (the myth) comes from a time after b (the gospels).
For example, Brian cites the "dying and rising Savior gpd motif." Others will go with the "virgin birth motif."
Okay:
A. How many and which "Savior gods" were crucified?
B. How many and which actually rose from the dead?
C. How many and which were actually born of a virgin.
D. How many of those stories are about historical people, places, and events from a time contemporary to the original recipients?
To do that, Brian needed to provide the spatial and temporal coordinates for the myth story in relation to the NT and document the development of the myth story and show the parallel and where it exists. Then there is all the info you need to know where the parallels are disanalogous. It's not enough to say, "Aha" a happened on the Monday and b happened on Monday too. So what. Where is the evidence that b came from a and that they are linked, particularly if the evidence you have for a is from a period after b was composed, not before!
Just in case there is a question about whether or not the issue at hand is simply a is similar to b and that is enough as Brian says and whether or not actual borrowing occurred, here is Richard Carrier in his very own words (The Empty Tomb, 181):
At the end of his life, amidst rumors he [Romulus] was murdered…and dismembered, just like the resurrected deities Osiris and Bacchus), a darkness covered the earth, thunder and wind struck, and Romulus vanished, leaving no part of his body or clothes behind; the people wanted to search for him but the Senate told them not to, “for he had been taken up to the gods”; most people then went away happy…but “some doubted”; later, Proculus…reported that he met him “on the road,” and asked him “Why have you abandoned us?” to which Romulus replied that he had been a god all along, but had come down to earth to establish a great kingdom and now had to return to his home in heaven…a scene so obviously a parallel to Mark’s ending of his Gospel that nearly anyone would have noticed —and gotten the point. Indeed, Livy’s account, just like Mark’s emphasizes that “fear and bereavement” kept the people “silent for a long time,” and only later did they proclaim Romulus “God, Son of God, King,and Father.”
Already, the Romulan celebration looks astonishingly like a skeletal model of the passion narrative…It certainly looks like the Christian passion narrative is a deliberate transvaluation of the Roman Empire’s ceremony of their founding savior’s incarnation, death, and resurrection.
--And there, I shall leave this brief critique of Brian’s proclamation of victory, for it doesn’t sound like he answered the questions put to him at all. I would, however, like to close with Cent’s concluding post on his blog, since it does ask a question for the skeptics that did not garner a response.
I have two texts that I’d like the readers of this blog to compare, just for their own peace of mind. The first comes from a fellow names Livy, who wrote this around 10 AD:
After these immortal achievements, Romulus held a review of his army at the `Caprae Palus' in the Campus Martius. A violent thunder storm suddenly arose and enveloped the king in so dense a cloud that he was quite invisible to the assembly. From that hour Romulus was no longer seen on earth. When the fears of the Roman youth were allayed by the return of bright, calm sun-shine after such fearful weather, they saw that the royal seat was vacant. Whilst they fully believed the assertion of the Senators, who had been standing close to him, that he had been snatched away to heaven by a whirlwind, still, like men suddenly bereaved, fear and grief kept them for some time speechless. At length, after a few had taken the initiative, the whole of those present hailed Romulus as ` a god, the son of a god, the King and Father of the City of Rome.' They put up supplications for his grace and favour, and prayed that he would be propitious to his children and save and protect them.You can read the entire text of Livy’s work here.
I believe, however, that even then there were some who secretly hinted that he had been torn limb from limb by the senators-a tradition to this effect, though certainly a very dim one, has filtered down to us. The other, which I follow, has been the prevailing one, due, no doubt, to the admiration felt for the man and the apprehensions excited by his disappearance. This generally accepted belief was strengthened by one man's clever device. The tradition runs that Proculus Julius, a man whose authority had weight in matters of even the gravest importance, seeing how deeply the community felt the loss of the king, and how incensed they were against the senators, came forward into the assembly and said: `Quirites! at break of dawn, to-day, the Father of this City suddenly descended from heaven and appeared to me. Whilst, thrilled with awe, I stood rapt before him in deepest reverence, praying that I might be pardoned for gazing upon him, `Go,' said he, `tell the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand the arms of Rome.'' It is marvellous what credit was given to this man's story, and how the grief of the people and the army was soothed by the belief which had been created in the immortality of Romulus.
Now, in contrast to that story, here’s another by a fellow about 60 years later, give or take a few years. The writer is called “Mark” by history, and his composition looks like this:
[Mark 15] And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole Council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so." And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, "Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you." But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" And they cried out again, "Crucify him." And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him." So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.
And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Elijah." And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
[Mark 16] When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
The reason I provide this comparison is that it is the assertion of Richard Carrier – one of Brian Flemming’s panel of experts – that:
At the end of his life, amidst rumors he [Romulus] was murdered…and dismembered, just like the resurrected deities Osiris and Bacchus), a darkness covered the earth, thunder and wind struck, and Romulus vanished, leaving no part of his body or clothes behind; the people wanted to search for him but the Senate told them not to, “for he had been taken up to the gods”; most people then went away happy…but “some doubted”; later, Proculus…reported that he met him “on the road,” and asked him “Why have you abandoned us?” to which Romulus replied that he had been a god all along, but had come down to earth to establish a great kingdom and now had to return to his home in heaven…a scene so obviously a parallel to Mark’s ending of his Gospel that nearly anyone would have noticed —and gotten the point. Indeed, Livy’s account, just like Mark’s emphasizes that “fear and bereavement” kept the people “silent for a long time,” and only later did they proclaim Romulus “God, Son of God, King,and Father.”
Already, the Romulan celebration looks astonishingly like a skeletal model of the passion narrative…It certainly looks like the Christian passion narrative is a deliberate transvaluation of the Roman Empire’s ceremony of their founding savior’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. (Empty Tomb, 181)
I think it is interesting how this particular assertion fares when you compare the texts for yourself. Not only does Carrier’s description of, for example, Livy’s narrative leave something to be desired, the claim that the account of Romulus’ end and the “end” of Christ are “astonishingly alike” needs some fleshing out.
By anyone. Anyone who can make the generalization stick after viewing the two works side by side ought to do so here. These works are only alike in that they are literature at all..
So, those skeptics reading this, can you answer Cent's request? Here it is one more time:
It is my opinion that Mithra (as one example) and Jesus are similar only in the broadest terms. However, if Jesus is the result of conflation of pre-existing religious stories, please produce any of those sources, without regard to genre or date – with the minor qualification that the sources predate the authorship of Mark as you have agreed to it in 70 AD. I’d be willing to give you a blank check in word count to cut-and-paste those stories here in translation, side-by-side with the passages of the NT you think use them for source material.
I’m sure, with Archaya S. on your side, you can at least attempt an answer. I’ll be retiring from blogging for the next couple of weeks, as I have a journal article to write for the folks at Founders Ministries. It's for publication, so it has to be "just so." The less time I spend online, the more quickly I'll be able to finish it. It requires some research, so I'm going to post maybe one article over on Strange Baptistfire this week, plus I have text of a booklet on 19th century Baptist history to place on a webhost this week in preparation for the SBC meeting, so I'm kinda swamped. Until then, perhaps you all will come up with a response to which Steve, Jason, Evan, Paul, and I can examine that actually makes the connections requested.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
The Alleged Gullibility Of Jonah And His Contemporaries
John Loftus has made another attempt to justify his assertions about the alleged gullibility of ancient people. His latest attempt, like the ones before it, fails to prove anything significantly relevant to the issue at hand. I'm writing a response primarily for the benefit of other people. John Loftus has repeatedly demonstrated his unreasonableness, and his latest article gives many more examples. But I think others might benefit from a discussion of some of the issues Loftus raises, so I'm writing a response. I don't know how much more of Loftus' material I'll respond to in the future.
Loftus' latest article is centered around the book of Jonah. I'm going to respond to some of his comments throughout the article, in the order in which they appear, not in topical order. Notice the large number and variety of errors in Loftus' reasoning. If you read the Debunking Christianity blog in the future, or have discussions with people influenced by it, keep in mind their demonstrated lack of effort in being reasonable. The number of errors they make and the ease with which those errors could have been avoided are significant.
Loftus comments, near the beginning of the article:
"I have recently argued the Bible itself tells us ancient people were superstitious"
What Loftus means is that the Bible refers to people who are, by Loftus' definition, superstitious. The Bible also refers to people who weren't superstitious, whether by Loftus' definition or mine or the definitions of others. Earlier, Loftus cited some Ephesians in Acts 19 as examples of superstitious people, yet the rest of the book of Acts gives us examples of other people behaving in significantly different ways. As we see in today's world, different people have different characteristics. Citing people like the Ephesians in Acts 19 doesn't explain the beliefs of somebody like Thomas, Paul, or Luke. That's why no scholar arguing against Jesus' resurrection, for example, will just cite something like the book of Jonah or Acts 19, and refer to ancient people as gullible, without addressing the details surrounding the claims made by the early Christians. You can't sufficiently explain the testimony of somebody like Paul or Luke by arguing that some ancient Ninevites or some ancient Ephesians were gullible. Similarly, we can't dismiss what John Loftus says just because he lives in a world with militant Muslims and people who consult psychics.
Loftus continues:
"For what I consider a typical look at the evidence of a prophetic word, take a look at the prophetic story in Jonah."
Is Jonah typical of the Christian argument for prophecy? In some ways, but not in other ways. Christians would justify their acceptance of the book of Jonah on the basis of something like the evidence we have for the inclusion of Jonah in the canon of the ancient Jews and Jesus and the apostles. In other words, the evidence we have for the apostles' reliability, for example, would be applied to their comments relative to the canon. We would accept Jonah on the basis of apostolic authority. Do we accept the book of Jonah merely because Jonah is portrayed in that book as claiming to have received a revelation from God? No. And, as we'll see later in this article, the book of Jonah doesn't tell us that Jonah and his contemporaries accepted Jonah's claims without evidence. The fact that some ancient people were gullible to some degree doesn't change the fact that other ancient people were more discerning, nor does it change the fact that we can verify some of the supernatural elements of the Bible today, regardless of how gullible ancient people were.
Jonah is different from other prophetic books in some ways. Jonah doesn't make the sort of predictions we find in a book like Isaiah or Daniel, which pertain to events that can be demonstrated to have occurred long after the book was written. So, while we do have evidence for Jonah from something like the apostles' testimony about the canon, there's other evidence for other prophetic books that we don't have for Jonah. In an earlier response to Loftus, I gave some examples of verifiable prophecies made in books other than Jonah. Loftus never addressed the specifics of those passages. Why criticize a lack of verifiable prophecy in Jonah when there are verifiable prophecies in other Biblical books? The truthfulness of Christianity doesn't depend on every book of the Bible having an equal amount of verifiable evidence supporting it. I don't know of any Christian who cites Jonah as one of the primary pieces of evidence for Biblical prophecy. For Loftus to say so little about the other prophecies I mentioned, while making so much of the book of Jonah, doesn't make sense.
Loftus continues:
"I do not believe there is a shred of historical evidence for this story"
We don't have much direct evidence for the events of that era in history in general. Should we expect to have extra-Biblical accounts corroborating Jonah? No.
Loftus goes on:
"In the O.T. there were many prophets (I Sam. 10:10-13), and they sought guidance from God in dreams and visions. So how did any of them know for sure their prophecies were truly from God? They had a dream. They saw a vision (which probably is indistinguishable from a dream like state anyway). I take it that Jonah was upset at the corruption in Ninevah, much like Christians today are upset at the corruption in America, and had a dream about it, and just felt certain about it."
Do we know that all professing prophets in the ancient world were sincere? No, and it seems unlikely that all of them were. Surely many people in the ancient world, like many people in today's world, claimed prophetic status in order to attain influence, sex, money, or something else. There would be false prophets alongside true prophets.
But among the professing prophets who were sincere, are the reasons John Loftus mentions the only reasons we're given for believing their claims? No. One of the means of verifying prophetic claims is fulfilled prophecy. Another means is the performance of miracles, such as those performed by the prophet Elijah or the apostle (and prophet) John. Sometimes dreams would be involved, and sometimes a vision would be involved, but the means involved weren't limited to the subjective, such as what a prophet "felt".
It should also be noted that Loftus' assertion that a vision "probably is indistinguishable from a dream like state" is misleading and insufficient. How does Loftus know what these prophets experienced? He doesn't. And if a vision occurred when a prophet wasn't sleeping, then that prophet would have good reason to conclude that he hadn't been dreaming. Loftus' vague reference to a vision occurring in a "dream like state" does nothing to prove that these prophets were experiencing something natural. Loftus seems to think that he can dismiss something like a purported vision by applying a term such as "dream like" to it. But Loftus' unargued speculation that these visions were similar to a dream does nothing to prove that these prophets had insufficient reason for concluding that they had received a message from God. The problem here is with what Loftus unreasonably assumes, not what the ancient sources in question reported. Loftus gratuitously assumes that the prophets reached their conclusions without evidence, then criticizes them for reaching their conclusions without evidence. Later in the article, Loftus will acknowledge that there could be factors involved that he's ignorant of, but, then, what does such an acknowledgment do to Loftus' argument? The best Loftus can argue is that some prophets might not have had sufficient evidence to support their conclusions. None of the prophets in question give us sufficient reason to conclude that they had no evidence to go by. Loftus' assumption that they had no evidence is gratuitous.
He continues:
"There were lots of prophets in the land, false ones, and prophets for other gods. THEY ALL FELT CERTAIN THEIR PROPHECIES WERE OF DIVINE ORIGIN. ALL OF THEM. The tests of the prophet laid down in Deut 13, and 18 just demand that they spoke in God’s name, and the thing should come to pass."
Again, how does Loftus know that every professing prophet "felt certain"? He doesn't.
Does the Old Testament tell us that the predictions of a prophet must come to pass? Yes. And that's an objective standard that was applied in ancient times and, in some cases, can still be applied today to the Old Testament prophets. For example, we today can verify that books like Isaiah and Daniel were written prior to the birth of Jesus, and we can verify that Jesus fulfilled highly unusual, detailed prophecies contained in those books.
What Loftus seems to be suggesting, though his choice of words is unclear, is that people believed what the prophets said just because they spoke "in God's name". But that isn't the only standard we see in the Old Testament. The prophets also were evaluated on other grounds, such as whether their prophecies came to pass and whether other evidence supported their claims, like the miracles performed by Elijah. Neither the people of the Old Testament era nor Christians today have accepted the claims of the prophets just because they spoke in God's name.
Loftus writes:
"The captain didn’t care which god Jonah prayed to, so long as no god was left out of their prayers. This is a true polytheism."
The captain was desperate, and he was uncertain about which gods were true gods, so he was willing to accept an appeal to any god who might help. That tells us about the desperation and uncertainty of one man who lived in ancient times. It doesn't tell us that every relevant Biblical figure was gullible or that people today don't have any verifiable evidence for Christianity. You can't get from the ignorance and bad judgments of one man in the book of Jonah (or a group of people in Jonah) to the conclusions John Loftus wants us to reach. There is no logical connection.
Loftus continues:
"They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. This is a form of divination. Do you want to cast lots to see who’s to blame for any hurricanes that come our way? Jonah accepted the results too."
How does the historical fact that the people with Jonah cast lots lead to the conclusion that Christians should want to cast lots in order to blame people for modern hurricanes? Again, there's no logical connection between the evidence Loftus cites and the conclusion he reaches. The Bible doesn't approve of every action of Jonah's shipmates, it doesn't approve of every action taken by Jonah, it doesn't tell us that the storm in Jonah is representative of every storm, and it doesn't deny that God can use the bad judgments of men to accomplish His purposes. Rather, the Bible tells us that God does use crooked sticks to draw straight lines (Genesis 50:20). Nothing in the Jonah account logically leads to the conclusion that Christians should cast lots in order to blame people for modern hurricanes.
He goes on:
"These sailors would still respond in the exact same way, because the proof was in the casting of lots, and the storm, and the story. They didn’t need any other proof or evidence. Does this type of gullibility describe any thinking person today?"
How does Loftus know what evidence Jonah's shipmates had to go by? He doesn't. They would have had experiences traveling in the past, so they would have known which weather patterns were normal and which ones weren't. They would have seen the manner in which the storm emerged, whether it came about in a normal way. They would have had discussions with Jonah and would have made judgments about his credibility (Jonah 1:10). Once the storm began and they became desperate, they would have been willing to make an appeal to Jonah's God if no other way of escape seemed available. Jonah's shipmates, like any other humans, would be making judgments based on their circumstances and probabilities. The fact that they were willing to appeal to Jonah's God in a time of desperation doesn't prove that they were uninterested in evidence in those circumstances, much less in all circumstances of their lives.
If a mother in today's world decides to take her sick child to a faith healer out of desperation, we don't conclude that the mother therefore has no concern for evidence in any area of her life. Humans can't function for a single day of their lives if they don't have some concern for evidence at some points along the way. The fact that Jonah's shipmates appealed to Jonah's God out of desperation doesn't prove that the people who lived in Jesus' day, for example, would think that they had seen Him give sight to the blind or had seen Him risen from the dead when such events didn't actually occur. Jonah's shipmates appealed to an unseen God out of desperation. Men like the apostles John and Paul, on the other hand, reported events they witnessed, mentioned names and timeframes and places, cited other witnesses to corroborate their claims, etc. Loftus claims that Jonah's shipmates didn't look for any evidence to support their conclusions (a claim Loftus can't prove), but the New Testament repeatedly appeals to eyewitnesses and other evidence. How, then, can Loftus conclude that the New Testament authors were unconcerned about evidence? Citing some Ephesians in Acts 19 or Jonah's shipmates doesn't prove that men like John and Paul were unconcerned with evidence.
Loftus asks "Does this type of gullibility describe any thinking person today?", but what's the relevance of his question? He's already acknowledged that some unreasonable people exist today. If unreasonable and reasonable people can co-exist in today's world, why not in the ancient world as well?
He goes on to write:
"Jonah believes the storm is his fault? Have you ever blamed yourself because of a storm? Does God or nature act that way?"
If you had reason to believe that God had called you as a prophet, and you were resisting what God called you to do, and a storm arose (perhaps in an unnatural way), yes, you would have some reason to think that God might be disciplining you. Does it therefore follow that every human should be able to think of a storm that he's blamed himself for? No. Again, there's no logical connection between Loftus' argument and the conclusion he asks us to draw.
He writes:
"These sailors should be tried for attempted murder. Surely they had a list of the people on board. And when they docked to a port someone would notice him missing. What would the police in Tarshish do then? Anything comparable to what our police would do? What would these men say to the police? Would their story hold up in today's courts? Absolutely not!"
Why should we think that there were "police" in Tarshish who checked ships for lists of passengers? How does Loftus know what happened when the ship did arrive at its destination? Why would ancient court systems have to operate as John Loftus describes in order for us to conclude that the Bible is credible?
But since Loftus has brought up the issue of courts, I'll repeat something I said earlier. Do our law courts (which Loftus here holds up as a standard) dismiss the testimony of all children, on the basis that children are gullible? No. Would a law court dismiss the testimony of a man who claims to have witnessed a murder just because he carries a good luck charm with him wherever he goes? Would the court refuse to accept the man's testimony, since he held a belief commonly considered superstitious? No. Our courts don't operate the way John Loftus operates. Our courts recognize, for example, that eyewitness testimony can be credible even when it comes from a source who's unreasonable in other areas of his life. Our courts are willing to accept testimony from people who live in today's world, despite the fact that so many gullible people live in that world. Our courts don't operate under the reasoning of John Loftus, because reasonable people don't think the way John Loftus does on these issues.
He writes:
"And if people were superstitious enough to believe God caused a storm to stop Jonah in his tracks without any evidence but nature and the story itself, then they would also believe he was swallowed by a fish simply because he told them it happened. If no evidence is required to believe the first part of the story, then no evidence is required to believe the last part."
Loftus doesn't know that Jonah and his shipmates had no evidence. And those of us who accept the historicity of the book of Jonah today do so for a variety of verifiable reasons, such as the testimony of the apostles related to the canonicity of the book.
Loftus continues:
"In the first place, what evidence did the king of Ninevah have for believing Jonah? We are simply not told. Presumably none was needed because of the supposed fame of the Hebrew God."
Notice that Loftus acknowledges that we "are simply not told", but then he goes on to assume that the Ninevites didn't want any evidence. His accusation against the Ninevites is based on an assumption he makes on an issue he's ignorant about by his own admission.
With regard to why the Ninevites believed Jonah, the issue is probability, not certainty. The Ninevites could have thought that Jonah's claims were probable, even though they had some doubts.
What evidence would the Ninevites have had? They would have had evidence for the existence of God in nature. They also would have had a conscience to tell them that their behavior was wrong. If a man from another land traveled to their city to tell them that God was going to punish them for their sin, the general theme of Jonah's message could have been plausible to them. They had reason to believe in a God or gods, and they would have had evidence that their behavior was destructive. It's unusual for a man from another nation to travel to a city to bring the sort of message Jonah was bringing, and Jonah did it by himself, which involved risk on his part. The Ninevites would have had good reason to believe that Jonah was sincere, and his message could have seemed plausible. We've seen the same sort of thing occur in other contexts. A city, nation, or family can be brought to shame by the rebuke of an outsider. In Jonah's case, the plausibility of his message would depend on factors such as the plausibility of the existence of God and the plausibility of that God's disapproving of the behavior of the Ninevites. Even without having evidence for Jonah's claim about when their city would be destroyed, the Ninevites would have had good reason for believing the general concept that God was going to punish them for their behavior.
But do we know that the Ninevites had no other evidence to go by? No, we don't. The text doesn't tell us about everything Jonah said or did. We also don't know the details of what happened in the hearts of the Ninevites. A common theme of both the Old and New Testaments is God's influence over the human heart (Proverbs 21:1, John 16:8). The conviction of God upon the hearts of the Ninevites isn't something that we today can verify as we would verify other historical events. But it is a potential factor in the process, and the Ninevites wouldn't have been unreasonable to have followed such a supernatural conviction of their hearts (or a conviction of their conscience) that was consistent with everything else they knew.
Let's assume, though, for the sake of argument, that the Ninevites did behave unreasonably. Does it therefore follow that all ancient people acted unreasonably in all situations? No. As I said before, the fact that Jonah's shipmates, the Ninevites, or other people (allegedly) made false judgments about their relationship with God doesn't logically lead to the conclusion that we should doubt what men like John and Paul reported about historical events they eyewitnessed. Making a judgment about whether God is going to punish the ship you're traveling on or the city you live in isn't in the same category as making a judgment about whether you saw a man perform miracles and heard that man speak with you after He had risen from the dead. Mental judgments about unseen and complex entities aren't in the same category as judgments about what you see with your eyes, touch with your hands, etc. Saying that the Ninevites believed Jonah too easily doesn't justify a rejection of the eyewitness testimony of a John, a Paul, or a Luke.
Loftus writes:
"I’m sure I read somewhere that the test of a prophet was that what he said was to come to pass. Didn’t he say Nineveh would be destroyed? Did he or didn't he? Answer the question."
Speaking of a conditional action as if it's something that's going to occur is common. It was common in the ancient world, and it's common today. The Ninevites thought that Jonah's prophecy might be conditional. That's why they repented, in order to prevent the predicted outcome (Jonah 3:10). And Jonah seems to have viewed the prophecy as conditional. When he was raising his objections to what God did (Jonah 4:1-2), he said nothing about God breaking His word. Jonah comments that what God did was what he expected God to do. Jonah comments that the conditional nature of the prophecy was the reason why he tried to avoid going to Nineveh. He suspected that the Ninevites would repent and that God would therefore not do what He had threatened. If both the Ninevites (Jonah 3:10) and Jonah (Jonah 4:1-2) thought that the prophecy was conditional, how can Loftus claim to know that it wasn't?
Loftus ignores the potential conditional nature of the prophecy, and he ignores the indicators within the narrative that point to a conditional nature. It seems that, again, he's going to the text with a desire to find error, and his desire leads him to wrong conclusions.
He continues:
"If what he prophesied didn't come to pass, then is there any evidence at all that he was really called to speak God's word?"
Yes, we have evidence from Jesus' acceptance of the Jewish canon of scripture, which included Jonah. We also have evidence from apostolic support for the Jewish canon and from other sources. Our evidence for the reliability of the book of Jonah is less direct, less diverse, and less strong than the evidence we have for other Biblical books, but why would every Biblical book need to have the same extent of supporting evidence?
Loftus writes:
"What's missing in this story is evidence. No evidence was offered for any claim, except that Jonah said it was true."
How does Loftus know what evidence was available to the ancient Jews? He doesn't. We don't know the details surrounding the incorporation of Jonah into the canon. For all Loftus knows, Jonah may have performed miracles not recorded in the book of Jonah, which led to the acceptance of the book of Jonah, or other prophets or authority figures may have testified to the book's status, accompanied by evidence. We don't know. The primary issue for us today is whether we have evidence for the Divine inspiration of Jonah. And we do. Loftus' speculations about a lack of evidence among ancient people (for Jonah the individual or for the book of Jonah) are unproveable.
Loftus goes on to say:
"If it was just about their moral behavior, then cities and countries all go through some cycle of 'revival' from time to time, so it might be that Jonah was taking credit for something that happened on its own anyway."
The people of Nineveh repented when Jonah came to them, and they mentioned Jonah's message as a reason. Jonah had evidence that would reasonably lead him to the conclusion that the Ninevites repented as a result of the message he brought. He also may have had other evidence that God had called him, such as hearing the voice of God in some sense. The book of Jonah itself records some examples of messages God communicated to Jonah. And Jonah may already be a prophet when the book opens. If so, then Jonah had experiences with God prior to the start of the book. How can Loftus claim to know that Jonah didn't have any evidence for his beliefs?
Loftus continues:
"And where's this fish? The ancients had the superstitious belief that mythical beasts and fish lived in the seas, likened to the Loch Ness Monster, like 'Rahab,' 'Behemoth,' and 'Leviathan.'"
How does Loftus know that Behemoth and Leviathan were "mythical"? He doesn't. How does he know that the creature mentioned in Jonah was mythical? He doesn't.
Loftus concludes:
"This is what I mean by superstition. Little or no evidence is required, just a good story, based in fear, along with the storms of life. The Bible Debunks itself."
John Loftus has now made yet another attempt to justify his argument about the alleged gullibility of ancient people, and his latest attempt is another failure. Jonah, his shipmates, and the people of Nineveh weren't as unreasonable as Loftus claims they were, but, even if they were, it doesn't therefore follow that we shouldn't trust what John said about the empty tomb, what Paul said about seeing the risen Christ, or what Luke said about the miracles performed by the apostles. You can't dismiss John's testimony on the basis of the alleged irrationality of the Ninevites, nor can you dismiss Paul's testimony on the basis of the irrationality of some Ephesians in Acts 19.
Maybe Loftus will eventually be shamed into writing a response that's more relevant. But, so far, he's rejected opportunities to discuss Jesus' prophecy fulfillments and Paul's credibility, for example, and has chosen instead to discuss the credibility of some ancient Ninevites and Ephesians. Why has Loftus repeatedly avoided discussions of more relevant issues while pursuing less relevant issues?
Loftus' latest article is centered around the book of Jonah. I'm going to respond to some of his comments throughout the article, in the order in which they appear, not in topical order. Notice the large number and variety of errors in Loftus' reasoning. If you read the Debunking Christianity blog in the future, or have discussions with people influenced by it, keep in mind their demonstrated lack of effort in being reasonable. The number of errors they make and the ease with which those errors could have been avoided are significant.
Loftus comments, near the beginning of the article:
"I have recently argued the Bible itself tells us ancient people were superstitious"
What Loftus means is that the Bible refers to people who are, by Loftus' definition, superstitious. The Bible also refers to people who weren't superstitious, whether by Loftus' definition or mine or the definitions of others. Earlier, Loftus cited some Ephesians in Acts 19 as examples of superstitious people, yet the rest of the book of Acts gives us examples of other people behaving in significantly different ways. As we see in today's world, different people have different characteristics. Citing people like the Ephesians in Acts 19 doesn't explain the beliefs of somebody like Thomas, Paul, or Luke. That's why no scholar arguing against Jesus' resurrection, for example, will just cite something like the book of Jonah or Acts 19, and refer to ancient people as gullible, without addressing the details surrounding the claims made by the early Christians. You can't sufficiently explain the testimony of somebody like Paul or Luke by arguing that some ancient Ninevites or some ancient Ephesians were gullible. Similarly, we can't dismiss what John Loftus says just because he lives in a world with militant Muslims and people who consult psychics.
Loftus continues:
"For what I consider a typical look at the evidence of a prophetic word, take a look at the prophetic story in Jonah."
Is Jonah typical of the Christian argument for prophecy? In some ways, but not in other ways. Christians would justify their acceptance of the book of Jonah on the basis of something like the evidence we have for the inclusion of Jonah in the canon of the ancient Jews and Jesus and the apostles. In other words, the evidence we have for the apostles' reliability, for example, would be applied to their comments relative to the canon. We would accept Jonah on the basis of apostolic authority. Do we accept the book of Jonah merely because Jonah is portrayed in that book as claiming to have received a revelation from God? No. And, as we'll see later in this article, the book of Jonah doesn't tell us that Jonah and his contemporaries accepted Jonah's claims without evidence. The fact that some ancient people were gullible to some degree doesn't change the fact that other ancient people were more discerning, nor does it change the fact that we can verify some of the supernatural elements of the Bible today, regardless of how gullible ancient people were.
Jonah is different from other prophetic books in some ways. Jonah doesn't make the sort of predictions we find in a book like Isaiah or Daniel, which pertain to events that can be demonstrated to have occurred long after the book was written. So, while we do have evidence for Jonah from something like the apostles' testimony about the canon, there's other evidence for other prophetic books that we don't have for Jonah. In an earlier response to Loftus, I gave some examples of verifiable prophecies made in books other than Jonah. Loftus never addressed the specifics of those passages. Why criticize a lack of verifiable prophecy in Jonah when there are verifiable prophecies in other Biblical books? The truthfulness of Christianity doesn't depend on every book of the Bible having an equal amount of verifiable evidence supporting it. I don't know of any Christian who cites Jonah as one of the primary pieces of evidence for Biblical prophecy. For Loftus to say so little about the other prophecies I mentioned, while making so much of the book of Jonah, doesn't make sense.
Loftus continues:
"I do not believe there is a shred of historical evidence for this story"
We don't have much direct evidence for the events of that era in history in general. Should we expect to have extra-Biblical accounts corroborating Jonah? No.
Loftus goes on:
"In the O.T. there were many prophets (I Sam. 10:10-13), and they sought guidance from God in dreams and visions. So how did any of them know for sure their prophecies were truly from God? They had a dream. They saw a vision (which probably is indistinguishable from a dream like state anyway). I take it that Jonah was upset at the corruption in Ninevah, much like Christians today are upset at the corruption in America, and had a dream about it, and just felt certain about it."
Do we know that all professing prophets in the ancient world were sincere? No, and it seems unlikely that all of them were. Surely many people in the ancient world, like many people in today's world, claimed prophetic status in order to attain influence, sex, money, or something else. There would be false prophets alongside true prophets.
But among the professing prophets who were sincere, are the reasons John Loftus mentions the only reasons we're given for believing their claims? No. One of the means of verifying prophetic claims is fulfilled prophecy. Another means is the performance of miracles, such as those performed by the prophet Elijah or the apostle (and prophet) John. Sometimes dreams would be involved, and sometimes a vision would be involved, but the means involved weren't limited to the subjective, such as what a prophet "felt".
It should also be noted that Loftus' assertion that a vision "probably is indistinguishable from a dream like state" is misleading and insufficient. How does Loftus know what these prophets experienced? He doesn't. And if a vision occurred when a prophet wasn't sleeping, then that prophet would have good reason to conclude that he hadn't been dreaming. Loftus' vague reference to a vision occurring in a "dream like state" does nothing to prove that these prophets were experiencing something natural. Loftus seems to think that he can dismiss something like a purported vision by applying a term such as "dream like" to it. But Loftus' unargued speculation that these visions were similar to a dream does nothing to prove that these prophets had insufficient reason for concluding that they had received a message from God. The problem here is with what Loftus unreasonably assumes, not what the ancient sources in question reported. Loftus gratuitously assumes that the prophets reached their conclusions without evidence, then criticizes them for reaching their conclusions without evidence. Later in the article, Loftus will acknowledge that there could be factors involved that he's ignorant of, but, then, what does such an acknowledgment do to Loftus' argument? The best Loftus can argue is that some prophets might not have had sufficient evidence to support their conclusions. None of the prophets in question give us sufficient reason to conclude that they had no evidence to go by. Loftus' assumption that they had no evidence is gratuitous.
He continues:
"There were lots of prophets in the land, false ones, and prophets for other gods. THEY ALL FELT CERTAIN THEIR PROPHECIES WERE OF DIVINE ORIGIN. ALL OF THEM. The tests of the prophet laid down in Deut 13, and 18 just demand that they spoke in God’s name, and the thing should come to pass."
Again, how does Loftus know that every professing prophet "felt certain"? He doesn't.
Does the Old Testament tell us that the predictions of a prophet must come to pass? Yes. And that's an objective standard that was applied in ancient times and, in some cases, can still be applied today to the Old Testament prophets. For example, we today can verify that books like Isaiah and Daniel were written prior to the birth of Jesus, and we can verify that Jesus fulfilled highly unusual, detailed prophecies contained in those books.
What Loftus seems to be suggesting, though his choice of words is unclear, is that people believed what the prophets said just because they spoke "in God's name". But that isn't the only standard we see in the Old Testament. The prophets also were evaluated on other grounds, such as whether their prophecies came to pass and whether other evidence supported their claims, like the miracles performed by Elijah. Neither the people of the Old Testament era nor Christians today have accepted the claims of the prophets just because they spoke in God's name.
Loftus writes:
"The captain didn’t care which god Jonah prayed to, so long as no god was left out of their prayers. This is a true polytheism."
The captain was desperate, and he was uncertain about which gods were true gods, so he was willing to accept an appeal to any god who might help. That tells us about the desperation and uncertainty of one man who lived in ancient times. It doesn't tell us that every relevant Biblical figure was gullible or that people today don't have any verifiable evidence for Christianity. You can't get from the ignorance and bad judgments of one man in the book of Jonah (or a group of people in Jonah) to the conclusions John Loftus wants us to reach. There is no logical connection.
Loftus continues:
"They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. This is a form of divination. Do you want to cast lots to see who’s to blame for any hurricanes that come our way? Jonah accepted the results too."
How does the historical fact that the people with Jonah cast lots lead to the conclusion that Christians should want to cast lots in order to blame people for modern hurricanes? Again, there's no logical connection between the evidence Loftus cites and the conclusion he reaches. The Bible doesn't approve of every action of Jonah's shipmates, it doesn't approve of every action taken by Jonah, it doesn't tell us that the storm in Jonah is representative of every storm, and it doesn't deny that God can use the bad judgments of men to accomplish His purposes. Rather, the Bible tells us that God does use crooked sticks to draw straight lines (Genesis 50:20). Nothing in the Jonah account logically leads to the conclusion that Christians should cast lots in order to blame people for modern hurricanes.
He goes on:
"These sailors would still respond in the exact same way, because the proof was in the casting of lots, and the storm, and the story. They didn’t need any other proof or evidence. Does this type of gullibility describe any thinking person today?"
How does Loftus know what evidence Jonah's shipmates had to go by? He doesn't. They would have had experiences traveling in the past, so they would have known which weather patterns were normal and which ones weren't. They would have seen the manner in which the storm emerged, whether it came about in a normal way. They would have had discussions with Jonah and would have made judgments about his credibility (Jonah 1:10). Once the storm began and they became desperate, they would have been willing to make an appeal to Jonah's God if no other way of escape seemed available. Jonah's shipmates, like any other humans, would be making judgments based on their circumstances and probabilities. The fact that they were willing to appeal to Jonah's God in a time of desperation doesn't prove that they were uninterested in evidence in those circumstances, much less in all circumstances of their lives.
If a mother in today's world decides to take her sick child to a faith healer out of desperation, we don't conclude that the mother therefore has no concern for evidence in any area of her life. Humans can't function for a single day of their lives if they don't have some concern for evidence at some points along the way. The fact that Jonah's shipmates appealed to Jonah's God out of desperation doesn't prove that the people who lived in Jesus' day, for example, would think that they had seen Him give sight to the blind or had seen Him risen from the dead when such events didn't actually occur. Jonah's shipmates appealed to an unseen God out of desperation. Men like the apostles John and Paul, on the other hand, reported events they witnessed, mentioned names and timeframes and places, cited other witnesses to corroborate their claims, etc. Loftus claims that Jonah's shipmates didn't look for any evidence to support their conclusions (a claim Loftus can't prove), but the New Testament repeatedly appeals to eyewitnesses and other evidence. How, then, can Loftus conclude that the New Testament authors were unconcerned about evidence? Citing some Ephesians in Acts 19 or Jonah's shipmates doesn't prove that men like John and Paul were unconcerned with evidence.
Loftus asks "Does this type of gullibility describe any thinking person today?", but what's the relevance of his question? He's already acknowledged that some unreasonable people exist today. If unreasonable and reasonable people can co-exist in today's world, why not in the ancient world as well?
He goes on to write:
"Jonah believes the storm is his fault? Have you ever blamed yourself because of a storm? Does God or nature act that way?"
If you had reason to believe that God had called you as a prophet, and you were resisting what God called you to do, and a storm arose (perhaps in an unnatural way), yes, you would have some reason to think that God might be disciplining you. Does it therefore follow that every human should be able to think of a storm that he's blamed himself for? No. Again, there's no logical connection between Loftus' argument and the conclusion he asks us to draw.
He writes:
"These sailors should be tried for attempted murder. Surely they had a list of the people on board. And when they docked to a port someone would notice him missing. What would the police in Tarshish do then? Anything comparable to what our police would do? What would these men say to the police? Would their story hold up in today's courts? Absolutely not!"
Why should we think that there were "police" in Tarshish who checked ships for lists of passengers? How does Loftus know what happened when the ship did arrive at its destination? Why would ancient court systems have to operate as John Loftus describes in order for us to conclude that the Bible is credible?
But since Loftus has brought up the issue of courts, I'll repeat something I said earlier. Do our law courts (which Loftus here holds up as a standard) dismiss the testimony of all children, on the basis that children are gullible? No. Would a law court dismiss the testimony of a man who claims to have witnessed a murder just because he carries a good luck charm with him wherever he goes? Would the court refuse to accept the man's testimony, since he held a belief commonly considered superstitious? No. Our courts don't operate the way John Loftus operates. Our courts recognize, for example, that eyewitness testimony can be credible even when it comes from a source who's unreasonable in other areas of his life. Our courts are willing to accept testimony from people who live in today's world, despite the fact that so many gullible people live in that world. Our courts don't operate under the reasoning of John Loftus, because reasonable people don't think the way John Loftus does on these issues.
He writes:
"And if people were superstitious enough to believe God caused a storm to stop Jonah in his tracks without any evidence but nature and the story itself, then they would also believe he was swallowed by a fish simply because he told them it happened. If no evidence is required to believe the first part of the story, then no evidence is required to believe the last part."
Loftus doesn't know that Jonah and his shipmates had no evidence. And those of us who accept the historicity of the book of Jonah today do so for a variety of verifiable reasons, such as the testimony of the apostles related to the canonicity of the book.
Loftus continues:
"In the first place, what evidence did the king of Ninevah have for believing Jonah? We are simply not told. Presumably none was needed because of the supposed fame of the Hebrew God."
Notice that Loftus acknowledges that we "are simply not told", but then he goes on to assume that the Ninevites didn't want any evidence. His accusation against the Ninevites is based on an assumption he makes on an issue he's ignorant about by his own admission.
With regard to why the Ninevites believed Jonah, the issue is probability, not certainty. The Ninevites could have thought that Jonah's claims were probable, even though they had some doubts.
What evidence would the Ninevites have had? They would have had evidence for the existence of God in nature. They also would have had a conscience to tell them that their behavior was wrong. If a man from another land traveled to their city to tell them that God was going to punish them for their sin, the general theme of Jonah's message could have been plausible to them. They had reason to believe in a God or gods, and they would have had evidence that their behavior was destructive. It's unusual for a man from another nation to travel to a city to bring the sort of message Jonah was bringing, and Jonah did it by himself, which involved risk on his part. The Ninevites would have had good reason to believe that Jonah was sincere, and his message could have seemed plausible. We've seen the same sort of thing occur in other contexts. A city, nation, or family can be brought to shame by the rebuke of an outsider. In Jonah's case, the plausibility of his message would depend on factors such as the plausibility of the existence of God and the plausibility of that God's disapproving of the behavior of the Ninevites. Even without having evidence for Jonah's claim about when their city would be destroyed, the Ninevites would have had good reason for believing the general concept that God was going to punish them for their behavior.
But do we know that the Ninevites had no other evidence to go by? No, we don't. The text doesn't tell us about everything Jonah said or did. We also don't know the details of what happened in the hearts of the Ninevites. A common theme of both the Old and New Testaments is God's influence over the human heart (Proverbs 21:1, John 16:8). The conviction of God upon the hearts of the Ninevites isn't something that we today can verify as we would verify other historical events. But it is a potential factor in the process, and the Ninevites wouldn't have been unreasonable to have followed such a supernatural conviction of their hearts (or a conviction of their conscience) that was consistent with everything else they knew.
Let's assume, though, for the sake of argument, that the Ninevites did behave unreasonably. Does it therefore follow that all ancient people acted unreasonably in all situations? No. As I said before, the fact that Jonah's shipmates, the Ninevites, or other people (allegedly) made false judgments about their relationship with God doesn't logically lead to the conclusion that we should doubt what men like John and Paul reported about historical events they eyewitnessed. Making a judgment about whether God is going to punish the ship you're traveling on or the city you live in isn't in the same category as making a judgment about whether you saw a man perform miracles and heard that man speak with you after He had risen from the dead. Mental judgments about unseen and complex entities aren't in the same category as judgments about what you see with your eyes, touch with your hands, etc. Saying that the Ninevites believed Jonah too easily doesn't justify a rejection of the eyewitness testimony of a John, a Paul, or a Luke.
Loftus writes:
"I’m sure I read somewhere that the test of a prophet was that what he said was to come to pass. Didn’t he say Nineveh would be destroyed? Did he or didn't he? Answer the question."
Speaking of a conditional action as if it's something that's going to occur is common. It was common in the ancient world, and it's common today. The Ninevites thought that Jonah's prophecy might be conditional. That's why they repented, in order to prevent the predicted outcome (Jonah 3:10). And Jonah seems to have viewed the prophecy as conditional. When he was raising his objections to what God did (Jonah 4:1-2), he said nothing about God breaking His word. Jonah comments that what God did was what he expected God to do. Jonah comments that the conditional nature of the prophecy was the reason why he tried to avoid going to Nineveh. He suspected that the Ninevites would repent and that God would therefore not do what He had threatened. If both the Ninevites (Jonah 3:10) and Jonah (Jonah 4:1-2) thought that the prophecy was conditional, how can Loftus claim to know that it wasn't?
Loftus ignores the potential conditional nature of the prophecy, and he ignores the indicators within the narrative that point to a conditional nature. It seems that, again, he's going to the text with a desire to find error, and his desire leads him to wrong conclusions.
He continues:
"If what he prophesied didn't come to pass, then is there any evidence at all that he was really called to speak God's word?"
Yes, we have evidence from Jesus' acceptance of the Jewish canon of scripture, which included Jonah. We also have evidence from apostolic support for the Jewish canon and from other sources. Our evidence for the reliability of the book of Jonah is less direct, less diverse, and less strong than the evidence we have for other Biblical books, but why would every Biblical book need to have the same extent of supporting evidence?
Loftus writes:
"What's missing in this story is evidence. No evidence was offered for any claim, except that Jonah said it was true."
How does Loftus know what evidence was available to the ancient Jews? He doesn't. We don't know the details surrounding the incorporation of Jonah into the canon. For all Loftus knows, Jonah may have performed miracles not recorded in the book of Jonah, which led to the acceptance of the book of Jonah, or other prophets or authority figures may have testified to the book's status, accompanied by evidence. We don't know. The primary issue for us today is whether we have evidence for the Divine inspiration of Jonah. And we do. Loftus' speculations about a lack of evidence among ancient people (for Jonah the individual or for the book of Jonah) are unproveable.
Loftus goes on to say:
"If it was just about their moral behavior, then cities and countries all go through some cycle of 'revival' from time to time, so it might be that Jonah was taking credit for something that happened on its own anyway."
The people of Nineveh repented when Jonah came to them, and they mentioned Jonah's message as a reason. Jonah had evidence that would reasonably lead him to the conclusion that the Ninevites repented as a result of the message he brought. He also may have had other evidence that God had called him, such as hearing the voice of God in some sense. The book of Jonah itself records some examples of messages God communicated to Jonah. And Jonah may already be a prophet when the book opens. If so, then Jonah had experiences with God prior to the start of the book. How can Loftus claim to know that Jonah didn't have any evidence for his beliefs?
Loftus continues:
"And where's this fish? The ancients had the superstitious belief that mythical beasts and fish lived in the seas, likened to the Loch Ness Monster, like 'Rahab,' 'Behemoth,' and 'Leviathan.'"
How does Loftus know that Behemoth and Leviathan were "mythical"? He doesn't. How does he know that the creature mentioned in Jonah was mythical? He doesn't.
Loftus concludes:
"This is what I mean by superstition. Little or no evidence is required, just a good story, based in fear, along with the storms of life. The Bible Debunks itself."
John Loftus has now made yet another attempt to justify his argument about the alleged gullibility of ancient people, and his latest attempt is another failure. Jonah, his shipmates, and the people of Nineveh weren't as unreasonable as Loftus claims they were, but, even if they were, it doesn't therefore follow that we shouldn't trust what John said about the empty tomb, what Paul said about seeing the risen Christ, or what Luke said about the miracles performed by the apostles. You can't dismiss John's testimony on the basis of the alleged irrationality of the Ninevites, nor can you dismiss Paul's testimony on the basis of the irrationality of some Ephesians in Acts 19.
Maybe Loftus will eventually be shamed into writing a response that's more relevant. But, so far, he's rejected opportunities to discuss Jesus' prophecy fulfillments and Paul's credibility, for example, and has chosen instead to discuss the credibility of some ancient Ninevites and Ephesians. Why has Loftus repeatedly avoided discussions of more relevant issues while pursuing less relevant issues?
The argument from silence
***QUOTE***
DagoodS said:
“Steve, thanks for the response.
A few days ago, Evan May posted some websites regarding this area here:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/05/bible-criticism-online-resources.html
If you don’t want to believe a skeptic as to the problems of Kitchen’s dating, perhaps another Christian? I recommend you start at the link entitle: “The Origins of Israel...”
***END-QUOTE***
I’ve read this material before. I was the one who asked Evan to hyperlink these online articles and reviews in the first place. He was kind enough to post the material I sent him.
ii) Bringing up the date of the Exodus/Conquest is a diversionary tactic. Your original post was an effort to shore up the argument from silence by alleging certain consequences which would leave their mark in the historical record.
Whether we favor the early date or late date is tangential to that issue.
iii) There are conservative scholars who favor the early date, conservatives who favor the late date, and conservatives who are noncommittal on the date.
iv) This is a red herring since Dagood doesn’t believe the Exodus ever happened, regardless of what century we assign it to.
“What I was looking for was a method by which we can determine fact from fiction in the Exodus account, and you seem to understand the difficulty in providing one.”
That’s a complete distortion of my position. I don’t have a method for distinguishing fact from fiction in the Exodus account because I don’t have the need for such a method, and I don’t need it because I don’t regard the Exodus account as an admixture of fact and fiction.
Rather, I regard it as factual in toto. So the burden is not on me to come up with a criterion on the prior assumption of an assumption I reject in the first place.
“Argument from Silence. Actually, the argument from silence is not as bad as you think. Let me give you two examples:
What I did in the original blog was presume there was no evidence for the contention, and demonstrate how the claim itself could not have happened. There would be ramifications (just like rats in refrigerators, or worlds blowing up) that could not be covered up, or disappear, no matter how much one tried.”
Yes, and I, for one, have rebutted that argument.
***QUOTE***
Literal reading of Exodus Now, every Christian that has addressed the original blog has informed me in some way, shape or form that we cannot take the account of the Plagues/Exodus/Invasion literally.
That it requires explanation, modification, or interpretive dance in order to align. Where it says “all the livestock” we must read “some of the livestock.” Where it says “600,00” it must mean a different number. All of Pharaoh’s army actually means a squadron of charioteers. All the water to blood means some of the water to blood. That there must have been frogs left from the first plague, because God requires some frogs to start to make millions of frogs.
Christians have been debating back and forth as the extent and specificity of these events. As I have continually pointed out, they disagree as to when it happens, placing the dates in ranges as different as 1000 years!
Now, as you point out, I am informed that there is no other evidence for these events. No outside vector to determine what is true and what is not. I am now further informed that the only recording of these events is also wrong, in some way.
In light of all this, all I am asking for is a method by which we can determine what is true and what is not in the recounting of Exodus. The best I have seen so far, is “Believe it because I say so.” Now if only all the “I” ‘s could get together and agree among themselves as to what it is saying.
***END-QUOTE***
Dagood is deliberately beclouding the issue by conflating my position with the position of theological moderates and liberals.
i) From a conservative perspective, the question at issue is not whether we interpret the narrative literally, but which literal interpretation is correct.
To do this you need to be conversant with narrative criticism and the poetics of biblical narrative.
For example, one narrative technique is to temporarily withhold information from the reader. In the narrative cycle, not everything is stated at the outset. Certain matters are foreshadowed, revisited, and refined in the course of the historical exposition.
ii) Dagood’s problem, aside from his ignorance of the craft, is he total lack of critical sympathy and detachment.
He has an ax to grind. He is not attempting to understand the narrative from the inside out—to “inhabit” the world of the narrative.
Rather, he’s attempting to discredit the narrative.
iii) You don’t have to believe in Scripture to rightly construe it. But correct interpretation does demand a measure of critical detachment and disinterested sympathy—an ability to bracket your own preconceptions and identify with the viewpoint of the text.
Dagood’s aim is not exegesis, but disproof. So he goes out of his way to pick it apart, rip certain verses out of context, and reposition them.
This is, of course, contrary to the very nature of a narrative, where the individual verses and sections are designed to function in a part/whole, means/ends relation.
iv) I don’t have a problem with the figure of 600,000 refugees.
v) This is not a case of making the word “all” mean “some.”
Rather, this is a case of allowing the literary unit (the narrative) to supply the unit of meaning. The question at issue is not what the word means, but what the narrative means.
Once again, this is simply a matter of assuming the viewpoint of the narrator. It is not the narrator’s intent to contradict himself from one verse to the next.
The narrator knows where he’s going with this account. He has orchestrated the account with a view to the denouement.
The account is narrated from start to finish, but it is mentally composed in reverse order. And the words exist in a state of mutual adjustment. Each word has a small, but calculated and cumulative contribution to make to the net effect.
vi) And I never said that God needed to make millions of frogs out of some preexisting frogs.
I reserve judgment on where the frogs come from, because the text is silent on that point.
If need be, God could make them all from scratch. At the same time, the text never says this.
I’m committed to whatever the text may say, but I don’t commit the text to what it never says.
My interpretation is analogous with the other cycles, in which some fauna and flora are preserved on the first round, to survive for a second round.
But I have no a priori problem with a miraculous multiplication of frogs from scratch.
DagoodS said:
“Steve, thanks for the response.
A few days ago, Evan May posted some websites regarding this area here:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/05/bible-criticism-online-resources.html
If you don’t want to believe a skeptic as to the problems of Kitchen’s dating, perhaps another Christian? I recommend you start at the link entitle: “The Origins of Israel...”
***END-QUOTE***
I’ve read this material before. I was the one who asked Evan to hyperlink these online articles and reviews in the first place. He was kind enough to post the material I sent him.
ii) Bringing up the date of the Exodus/Conquest is a diversionary tactic. Your original post was an effort to shore up the argument from silence by alleging certain consequences which would leave their mark in the historical record.
Whether we favor the early date or late date is tangential to that issue.
iii) There are conservative scholars who favor the early date, conservatives who favor the late date, and conservatives who are noncommittal on the date.
iv) This is a red herring since Dagood doesn’t believe the Exodus ever happened, regardless of what century we assign it to.
“What I was looking for was a method by which we can determine fact from fiction in the Exodus account, and you seem to understand the difficulty in providing one.”
That’s a complete distortion of my position. I don’t have a method for distinguishing fact from fiction in the Exodus account because I don’t have the need for such a method, and I don’t need it because I don’t regard the Exodus account as an admixture of fact and fiction.
Rather, I regard it as factual in toto. So the burden is not on me to come up with a criterion on the prior assumption of an assumption I reject in the first place.
“Argument from Silence. Actually, the argument from silence is not as bad as you think. Let me give you two examples:
What I did in the original blog was presume there was no evidence for the contention, and demonstrate how the claim itself could not have happened. There would be ramifications (just like rats in refrigerators, or worlds blowing up) that could not be covered up, or disappear, no matter how much one tried.”
Yes, and I, for one, have rebutted that argument.
***QUOTE***
Literal reading of Exodus Now, every Christian that has addressed the original blog has informed me in some way, shape or form that we cannot take the account of the Plagues/Exodus/Invasion literally.
That it requires explanation, modification, or interpretive dance in order to align. Where it says “all the livestock” we must read “some of the livestock.” Where it says “600,00” it must mean a different number. All of Pharaoh’s army actually means a squadron of charioteers. All the water to blood means some of the water to blood. That there must have been frogs left from the first plague, because God requires some frogs to start to make millions of frogs.
Christians have been debating back and forth as the extent and specificity of these events. As I have continually pointed out, they disagree as to when it happens, placing the dates in ranges as different as 1000 years!
Now, as you point out, I am informed that there is no other evidence for these events. No outside vector to determine what is true and what is not. I am now further informed that the only recording of these events is also wrong, in some way.
In light of all this, all I am asking for is a method by which we can determine what is true and what is not in the recounting of Exodus. The best I have seen so far, is “Believe it because I say so.” Now if only all the “I” ‘s could get together and agree among themselves as to what it is saying.
***END-QUOTE***
Dagood is deliberately beclouding the issue by conflating my position with the position of theological moderates and liberals.
i) From a conservative perspective, the question at issue is not whether we interpret the narrative literally, but which literal interpretation is correct.
To do this you need to be conversant with narrative criticism and the poetics of biblical narrative.
For example, one narrative technique is to temporarily withhold information from the reader. In the narrative cycle, not everything is stated at the outset. Certain matters are foreshadowed, revisited, and refined in the course of the historical exposition.
ii) Dagood’s problem, aside from his ignorance of the craft, is he total lack of critical sympathy and detachment.
He has an ax to grind. He is not attempting to understand the narrative from the inside out—to “inhabit” the world of the narrative.
Rather, he’s attempting to discredit the narrative.
iii) You don’t have to believe in Scripture to rightly construe it. But correct interpretation does demand a measure of critical detachment and disinterested sympathy—an ability to bracket your own preconceptions and identify with the viewpoint of the text.
Dagood’s aim is not exegesis, but disproof. So he goes out of his way to pick it apart, rip certain verses out of context, and reposition them.
This is, of course, contrary to the very nature of a narrative, where the individual verses and sections are designed to function in a part/whole, means/ends relation.
iv) I don’t have a problem with the figure of 600,000 refugees.
v) This is not a case of making the word “all” mean “some.”
Rather, this is a case of allowing the literary unit (the narrative) to supply the unit of meaning. The question at issue is not what the word means, but what the narrative means.
Once again, this is simply a matter of assuming the viewpoint of the narrator. It is not the narrator’s intent to contradict himself from one verse to the next.
The narrator knows where he’s going with this account. He has orchestrated the account with a view to the denouement.
The account is narrated from start to finish, but it is mentally composed in reverse order. And the words exist in a state of mutual adjustment. Each word has a small, but calculated and cumulative contribution to make to the net effect.
vi) And I never said that God needed to make millions of frogs out of some preexisting frogs.
I reserve judgment on where the frogs come from, because the text is silent on that point.
If need be, God could make them all from scratch. At the same time, the text never says this.
I’m committed to whatever the text may say, but I don’t commit the text to what it never says.
My interpretation is analogous with the other cycles, in which some fauna and flora are preserved on the first round, to survive for a second round.
But I have no a priori problem with a miraculous multiplication of frogs from scratch.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
They're Creeping In! Pt. 3
We are continuing our series of responses to this article from BaptistFire. The first two posts can be read here and here. Hopefully today we’ll be able to cover more ground than a sentence (woohoo!). Again, I’ll provide the immediate context:
“Crept in Unawares …”
Calvinists want to take over your Southern Baptist church
a BaptistFire special report
(Updated: Sept. 26, 2005)What Calvinists Believe
Calvinists do not believe that God loves everyone (contrary to John 3:16). They do not believe that God wants to save everyone (contrary to 1 Tim. 2:4). Most do not believe that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. (contrary to 1 John 2:2). Not only are these doctrines contrary to the Bible they are contrary to what the vast majority of Southern Baptists believe.
I noted in my first response that the entire purpose of this section of the article is to cast Calvinism in the negative light. Each one of these statements is made in the negative (”Calvinists do not believe…”). This anonymous contributor doesn’t want to tell us what Calvinists do believe. All he (or she) wants to tell us is what they supposedly don’t believe and then contrast that with a favorite prooftext. We’ve already looked at the first two assertions coupled with the Scripture citations of 1 Tim 2:4 and John 3:16. Today we’ll look at the next point:
Most do not believe that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. (contrary to 1 John 2:2).
If by this it is meant that consistent Reformed theologians deny that Christ’s atonement has universal extent, lacking efficacious intent, then this is correct. In other words, on the cross Christ actually saved people. He didn’t merely potentially save them; he actually saved them. But this anonymous author chooses to place the discussion in Scriptural terminology (for instance, using the term world. We don’t deny that Christ died for the “world,” but that the “world” is defined by the context) with the sole purpose of contrasting it with an oft-cited prooftext. But is particular redemption “contrary to 1 John 2:2″? Let’s take a look at this text:
1 John 2:1-2 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
It never ceases to amaze me how synergists are so practiced in the art of taking any random non-soteriological text and making it relevant to the discussion. If it has the words “all,” “world,” or “whosoever” in it, it’s fair game, apparently. In any case, the synergist exegesis hinges on two assumptions: 1) the assumption that the only definition of “world” is “every single person without differentiation,” and, 2) the eisegesis of the word “potential” into the text. We’ll look at both assumptions separately:
1. The first assumption was already refuted in the my first article. The word “world” has varying meanings throughout John’s writings, as well as the rest of the New Testament. When John tells us “do not love the world” (1 John 2:15) does he mean “do not love every single person”? Or when he states that Jesus came “into the world” (John 1:9), or that the Father sent the Son “into the world” (John 3:17), did he mean that Christ was literally sent into “every single person”? Or when Jesus stated, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), did he mean “I am the light of every single person”? Or when Jesus states to his disciples, “You are of this world” (John 8:23) do you think he meant “You are of every single person”? Of course not. Rather, the word “world” has varying meanings in his writings. Therefore, we should not dogmatically assume its meaning. It must be determined from the context.
2. When it comes to the atonement, we must determine intent before we determine extent. But advocates of universal redemption are always quick to cite prooftexts that concern extent while altogether ignoring the intent of the atonement: that Christ died on the cross with the intent of actually saving people. He redeems them, satisfies God’s wrath, and intercedes on their behalf (see my response to Elmer Towns concerning the atonement for more information).
It takes eisegesis, therefore, in order to apply the atonement with universal extent, for its specific intent must be altogether ignored. So here the word “potential” must be eisegeted into this text, defying intent in order to avoid universalism but remain with universal extent. Christ can’t be the actual propitiation for the sins of every single person in the world (the assumed meaning of the word “world), for if he actually satisfied the wrath of God against their sin, God is unable to justly condemn them. Christ, therefore, can only be a potential propitiation. He can only potentially satisfy the wrath of God.
But is there a reading of this verse that does not require either an assumed meaning of the word “world” or eisegesis of the word “potential” into the text? Certainly there is! Can we not recognize John’s audience? Can we not recognize geographical, ethnical, and time-age-related distinctions? In fact, the linguistic parallel here with John 11:51-52 is terribly close, so much so that is simply dishonest to avoid the conviction that this is John’s meaning here:
John 11:51-52 Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
Notice the parallel:
1 John 2:2
And
He Himself
is the propitiation for
our sins
and not for ours only
but also
for
the world
John 11:51-52
he prophesied that
Jesus
would die for
the nation
and not for the nation only
but also
that He would gather together in one
the children of God scattered abroad
Who, then, is the world? The children of God scattered abroad. Jesus didn’t just die for Jews but Gentiles as well (ethical distinction), not just for those in Asia Minor but from every nation (geographical distinction), not just for those who lived in the 1st century but for all ages to come (time-age-related distinction). In short, with his blood he redeemed a church “from every tongue and tribe and people and nation” (Rev 5:9).
Now that we’ve gotten past the first paragraph of Scripture prooftext citations, we should be able to move quickly in future posts to come!
The God who says and does
I recently had a very civilized exchange with Evan Tomlin and a fellow commenter over at:
http://evantomlin.wordpress.com/2006/04/17/nt-wright-on-living-by-the-authority-of-scripture/#comments
Here’s my side of the dialogue:
steve hays Says:
April 18th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Hi Evan,
How do you (or do you?) distinguish between rationality and rationalism? Between a rational defense of the Bible (or the faith generally) and a rationalistic defense of the faith?
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Hi Evan,
I’m not trying to beat you over the head with my rhetorical club. Over at Triablogue I bonk a lot of folks on the noggin, but the reason I went into your combox was to avoid a bloody confrontation since that is not at all my aim in this exchange.
I appreciate your effort to think through these issues for yourself.
i) My question wasn’t concerned with Van Tilian apologetics in particular, but rational apologetics in general.
You seem to be rejecting rational apologetics in favor of some nuanced form of fideism.
ii) One of my problems with fideism is when the fideist makes an argument for fideism. What’s the point of defending your right not to defend the Christian faith?
If you’re going to go to the intellectual effort of defending fideism, which strikes me as a rather self-contradictory exercise, why not redirect that intellectual firepower into actually defending the faith?
Why argue for the proposition that you don’t have to argue for your faith?
iii) I have a very different take on Wright. Wright is trying to stake out a mediating position on Scripture. On the one hand, he doesn’t take the liberal view of a Spong or Bultmann, according to which the Bible is both uninspired and historically worthless. On the other hand, he doesn’t take the traditional view that Scripture is both inspired and historically inerrant.
Put another way, the traditional view says that the Bible is a supernatural record of supernatural events, whereas the liberal view says that the Bible is a natural record of nonevents.
His position, by contrast, treats the Bible as a natural record of supernatural events. He doesn’t approach the Bible as divinely inspired. Rather, he approaches the Bible as a historian who regards the Bible as a historically respectable primary source of information about the past.
He wants a Bible that is authoritative in some measure without begin infallible or inerrant.
iv) He latches on to the faddish Pomo critique of modernism, represented by the strawman of the Enlightenment. However, using the Bible as a warehouse of abstract theological propositions has been around since Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas, to name a few. It has nothing to do with the Enlightenment.
v) I’ll grant you that there is still, in contemporary exegesis, an affectation of disinterested and dispassionate detachment from the emotional tone as well as the ethical and alethic claims of the text upon the reader. This affectation is an exercise in self-deception.
vi) I’ll also grant you that the attempt to formalize our tacit knowledge will inevitably involve some loss of information, for not everything in our spontaneous experience is quantifiable, and in the effort to give rigorous expression to our prereflective apprehension, the output will be less than the input. We know more than we can say.
So, yes, there is a sizable existential component which, feeding into the process, is lost in the course of its transmission and transmutation into logically interlocking propositions.
There—I assume that Bro. Steb won’t be needing to take you to the ER for head trauma inflicted by my baseball bat!
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
“Namely, the individual agent often “finds himself believing” (nod to Plantinga) the propositions of Scripture and acts accordingly without formulating this “encounter” (nod to Wright) in a logically dependent manner. ”
Agreed. Most Christians are not intellectuals, and even among Christian intellectuals, many of them are not competent to do apologetics because their area of specialization lies outside the fields of knowledge most relevant to apologetics.
A Christian is justified in what he believes as a simple matter of religious experience.
And, in that sense, you could say that fideism is the default position for most believers.
However, it’s important to have some Christians who are able to speak up for those who can’t: to give voice to their otherwise inarticulate grounds for faith.
For one thing, the average believer is intellectually vulerable. He is easily stumped. And he can become unsettled or impaired if objections pile up which generate cumulative doubts.
He doesn’t necessarily cease to be a believer, but he loses his confidence.
It is also true that we have a doctrine of the church as well as a doctrine of Scripture. These work in tandem, although there is, as you know, more than one model of their interrelationship, and it’s important to sort these out.
Once again, I appreciate your spiritual and intellectual explorations. Keep up the conscientious efforts.
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
“I appreciate your care in not furthering a bludgeoning exchange”
I trust you not to spread any malicious rumors about how I might actually have a warm and fuzzy side to me. I have a reputation to protect, you know! I’ve spent a lot of time carefully cultivating my hardnosed image, and any evidence to the contrary would be devastating to my public image and my personal reputation!
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
As to Loftus and Robbins, couldn’t we lock them in a room with cutlery and remove the bodies the next day? I think that would be a win/win situation, don’t you?
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Hi Steb,
I don’t see how Van Tilian apologetics ends up with a subjective epistemology. Yes, Christian theism is “selected” as the worldview with the most explanatory power (VT would say, the only explanatory power), but how does this differ from any choice of one explanation over another because one enjoys—or is seen to enjoy—more explanatory power than its actual or hypothetical rivals? It seems to me that a “problem” for everyone is a problem for no one.
A weakness with much of the current debate over the justification of belief is that it frequently assumes that knowledge is unobtainable, so we must settle for well-warranted belief. Given that I can’t know for a fact where the truth lies, the next best option is to probabilify my beliefs so that I at least choose the most likely belief. I may be wrong, but given my epistemic limitations, that’s the best I can do, so I’m justified in what I believe even if I turn out to be wrong.
This assumes a certain epistemology, and, in religious matters, assumes a certain religious epistemology.
I don’t regard this as an adequate model of saving faith.
The need for rational justification is person-variable. However, fideism, even of the soft variety, is something of a misnomer.
Generally, Christian intellectuals who are attracted to fideism find it appealing, not so much because they regard human reason as so very limited, but, to the contrary, because they think that philosophy or science or Bible criticism has rendered the innocence of precritical faith in Scripture hopelessly jejune.
So their fideism is really a rearguard action after surrendering to reason. They admit defeat and retreat to a bunker which is immune to conventional weaponry.
Bultmann is a good example. Given his form criticism, with its assumption of orality, his closed-system worldview, and his attachment to loose comparative mythology, existentialism becomes a makeweight for the loss of historicity and miraculosity.
As to your ultimate question: “Does the Bible have to be inspired and inerrant to be authoritative? If so, why? If not, why not?”
This is the wrong question to lead with.
The first question we need to ask is what does the Bible claim to be? What does it say about itself?
Now, we may reject the account it gives for itself, but if we reject that answer, then to salvage faith in Scripture by substituting a different set of truth-conditions is an artificial exercise; for if the Bible is unbelievable on its own terms, then it is hardly more credible when we try to retrofit Scripture with some wholly extraneous rationale.
My point is that we need to begin by posing a factual question rather than a pragmatic question.
The salient question is not, in the first instance, what is the practical value of inerrancy, and can that be secured by some alternative route, by something short of inspiration.
The salient question is what God has actually done. Has God spoken? Has God spoken to us in the Bible?
Inspiration is the efficient cause and logical implication of the identity between Scripture and God’s word, while inerrancy is the necessary outcome of that identity.
If God is the speaker—even though he employs a mundane intermediary—then what is said is inerrant—even infallible.
If it is errant, then God is not speaking. Error is only possible if or when there ceases to be a point of identity in the continuum between Scripture and the word of God.
Different things can be authoritative. A judicial ruling is legally binding even though it may be badly mistaken.
Truth is authoritative. And there is, hypothetically speaking, a sense in which Scripture could be authoritative insofar as it is true, even though it is not entirely true.
However, the question would then be how you could detect just when it is that Scripture happens to be true.
At that juncture you become your own authority. You adduce and apply your own, extrabiblical criteria to the Bible.
And, in that respect, you must already know where the true lies in order to retreive the truth from the falsehood when you come to Scripture.
If so, why bother with the Bible in the first place if you enjoy independent access to the truth?
steve hays Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 1:03 am
The debates over justification and warrant are, in part, concerned with what conditions must be met in order to convert mere belief into knowledge. But they are also concerned with beliefs that enjoy prima facie warrant even if they are false. The conditions that must be met for a belief to be justified even if it falls short of knowledge.
steve hays Says:
April 26th, 2006 at 12:49 am
“I find the idea of accepting the self attestation of scripture to be a fideistic argument itself. You stated that “if the Bible is unbelievable on its own terms, then it is hardly more credible when we try to retrofit Scripture with some wholly extraneous rationale.” Isn’t that the idea of fideism, to accept claims without any verification, warrant, proof, testing or whatever you want to call it? On what grounds would we claim that the “gut feeling” of the Mormons is wrong? Why is the Quran not actually the word of God? The claims of the Bible are just that, claims. Why does anyone believe any claim of any religious system?”
I wasn’t appealing to the self-witness of Scripture as an argument from authority. My point is simply that we need to judge the Bible by its own claims, by what it claims for itself. The state claim is the object of belief or disbelief.
There is a distinction between believing that the Bible teaches X, and believing what the Bible teaches regarding X. It is quite possible to believe that the Bible teaches something without believing what it teaches.
Now the immediate point of this distinction is not that you should believe the Bible, but that if you are going to believe the Bible, then you need to believe what the Bible teaches about itself—the self-referential statements, as well as whatever else it teaches.
If, say, the Bible lays claim to plenary, verbal inspiration, and I substitute a theory of partial inspiration, that’s an ad hoc theory.
Whether you believe the Bible, and why you should believe it is a separate and subsequent question. But before we can get to that state, we need to be clear on the nature of the claim to b e believed or disbelieved.
As to rival revelatory claimants, that counterexample was keyed to your apparent assumption that I was appealing to the self-attesting authority of Scripture. I was not. I was merely appealing to the self-witness of Scripture. Whether or not that self-witness is authoritative is, as I say, a separate and subsequent question.
But as long as you bring it up, it also depends on whether you’re asking for some general, uniform, multipurpose criterion or criteria that would be equally applicable to every revelatory claimant.
That’s an interesting question.
But it isn’t necessary for our immediate purposes to come up with an abstract, external test.
It is sufficient to judge these two particular claimants on internal grounds.
On the one hand, there is no positive evidence of any kind that either the Koran or the Mormon “scriptures” are inspired while, on the other hand, there is positive evidence that they are uninspired and errant. And that, too, is a case of judging them by their own claims. I could go into the details, but I’ll pass on that for now since it may be too much of a digression from the main point at issue.
“Is the use of historical analysis, logical deduction/induction and philosophical analysis the equivalent of “substituting a different set of truth-conditions [as] an artificial exercise”? I’ve honestly never understood this claim from the presuppositionalist camp. Can you explain how we show or prove the existence of God or the validity of scripture without retrofitting scripture?”
Van Tilians don’t oppose the verification or falsification of Scripture by scriptural criteria; what they oppose is the verification or falsification of Scripture by unscriptural criteria.
There is also, apropos the above, a difference between what we defend and how we defend it.
Once again, my point is that if we’re going to defend the Bible at all, then we need to defend a Scriptural doctrine of Scripture, a Biblical doctrine of Biblical inspiration.
It would be self-defeating to propose a theory of inspiration at odds with the self-witness of Scripture, and defend that theory as if you were thereby defending the Bible.
So there’s a distinction between the theory we are defending, and the arguments we deploy to defend that theory.
When I spoke against “retrofitting” Scripture, that had reference, not to how we defend the Bible, but what doctrine of Scripture we are defending in the first place.
“The whole argument depends upon the ‘identity between Scripture and God’s word’”.
My argument is both an argument from Scripture and an argument for Scripture. We have to take our doctrine of Scripture from Scripture itself. That is the object of belief or unbelief. If it’s an object of belief, then that’s what we are committed to defending.
At this stage of the discussion I’m not mounting an argument for the Bible. I just want us to be clear on what we need to argue for were we to mount such an argument. What are we defending? That’s the preliminary question.
“I think that evangelicalism ends up believing the Bible is authoritative for the same reason Muslims believe the Quran or Mormons believe the Last Testament, because of a theory of transmission. We believe that the living God “spoke” his word to prophets, evangelists, apostles, etc. They believe the only true god “spoke” his word to the only true prophet. We distinguish ourselves by resorting to “artificial exercises”. Something seems terribly wrong with this scenario, and I fully accept that it may be my perception and/or lack of understanding of things, in fact I hope it is, but I’m afraid it may not be. In the end, I don’t want a theory of authority that is dependent upon a theory of transmission.”
But what if there is, in fact, an internal relation between a theory of authority and a theory of transmission? Indeed, the relation is pretty straightforward.
God is the paradigmatic authority-figure. If God can inspire to communicate his will, then the end-result is authoritative due to the process of inspiration. I don’t know why you find that objectionable.
The fact that not every claimant successfully meets the condition doesn’t render the relation unsound. The inner logic of the relation is one thing, and evidence for what that relation does or does not obtain is another thing.
“My last problem with the logical dependency way of thinking is the seeming inability to avoid a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration. The Muslims seem to come by it honestly, they freely claim that Allah spoke to Mohammed directly. As a matter of a fact that’s one point they criticize us on, the idea of textual corruption and untrustworthiness of the Bible. But evangelicals of the moderate type avoid such a claim by alleviating it with phrases like “the personality of the authors was not overridden by the HS”, or “God used human authors in spite of their imperfections”, or “even though he employs a mundane(?) intermediary”. On the one hand, the higher degree of ontological identity we can assert between scripture and God’s actual words, the higher degree of inerrancy and subsequent authority we can assert. But on the other hand, the higher degree of ontological identity we assert between the two the closer we come to a statement of mechanical dictation, which nobody today is willing to assert anymore, and rightfully so. In the end we seem to be left in a realm of the middle ground which can’t logically assert anything as bold as the Muslims and won’t dare assert anything as “liberal” as the “errantist” positions of Crossan, Funk, Schweitzer, Wright(?) or especially the terrible Bultmann (I still disagree with your assessment of him, but that’s another diablog for another day).”
One needs no resort to a mechanical or dictation theory. Rather, one only needs to things:
i) In context, identity between God’s word and man’s word (God’s spokesman, the prophet, apostles, &c.) consists in the divine spokesman saying exactly what God intended him to say, nothing more and nothing less. He says just what God intended him to say, the way God intended him to say it.
ii) We also need a doctrine of providence. God is not merely the (primary) author of the Biblical writing; he is also the author if the Biblical writer.
He is responsible for the existence, personality, and socialization of the agent.
So it isn’t a case of taken possession of a human being, and playing him like a flute to channel the message, while the spokesman is a mere mouthpiece or dummy, while God is the flutist or ventriloquist.
God doesn’t simply play the instrument; he designed the instrument in the first place. He is, as it were, Stradivari and Heifetz in one: both violinist and violinmaker.
He is not, however, the violin. The violin, the secondary agent, is still a person in his own right.
“What is this elusive point of identity in the continuum, and how do we know it apart from artificial exercises? Do we just believe as fideists?”
i) I think I’ve explained the point of identity, which I don’t find elusive.
ii) Once again, my remark about “artificial exercises” had reference, not to how we defend Scripture, but what we defend, viz., a theory of partial inspiration.
But an artificial doctrine of Scripture can also give rise to an artificial argument for the doctrine in question.
Let’s illustrate this point with some smaller examples. There are men who will defend the miracles of Scripture, but they will rationalize the miracle by substituting a naturalistic mechanism contrary to the cause attributed to that event by Scripture itself. Velikosvksy was a well-known example. Ericc von Daniken is another.
iii) As to why we believe, what counts as convincing evidence is person-variable. Some folks are more impressed by existential evidence, others by empirical evidence, still others by abstract reasoning. There’s no uniform line of evidence that everyone finds equally convincing.
“When you said that truth is authoritative and that in a hypothetical sense scripture “could” be authoritative because it is true, my heart leapt. This is what I’m looking for! A theory of authority based upon truth value itself and not upon a secondary means such as transmission.”
Two problems with this:
i) It’s an inspired mode of transmission which secures the truth of the document.
ii) It’s an inspired mode of transmission, which renders the truth accessible.
Partial inspiration would be self-defeating. The point of inspiration is to distinguish when God is speaking from when he is not.
If this distinction is not preserved, then he might as well not be speaking at all, for God’s voice is lost in the cacophony of all the human voices. Somehow we have to retrieve the signal from the surrounding static. This amounts to a denial of the very possibility of divine self-revelation.
God can never be heard above the static. He can never cut through the static. His voice is just one more voice.
At that point it’s up to man to strain to hear if he can dimly make out the voice of God. That’ isn’t a serious doctrine of revelation.
“If Joshua was “wrong” about the earth and sun’s rotation, does this mean the Bible is errant and untrustworthy? Surely we’re not this pedantic in our reasoning.”
This lead to a makeshift doctrine of Scripture, in which we begin by compiling a list of problem passages, then we device a theory of inspiration which just manages to skirt our problem passages.
That is a made-up theory of inspiration. A stopgap.
The problem way to approach this is:
i) To take the self-witness of Scripture as a paradigm;
ii) To confess that to be a Christian is involves a precommitment to certain things;
iii) To be clear on the rational grounds for our faith;
iv) Carefully interpret problem passages on their own terms, guarding against the tendency to unconsciously import extrascriptural assumptions into the text.
For example, a modern reader almost automatically sees Joshua’s long day through the lens of Apollo 11 and the Galileo affair.
But that involves an explicit comparison between a heliocentric system and a geocentric system. To extrapolate back in time from that debate to Josh 10:12-14 runs the risk of blatant anachronism. We’re reading extraneous concerns and controversies into a text innocent of those later debates. There’s no reason to assume the author was operating with a developed cosmological system like Ptolemy or Copernicus.
“But granting your line of thinking, if I try to disprove the “errantists” and prove the truthfulness of the Bible, do I not likewise set myself up as my own authority?”
No, because you’re taking Scripture as your standard of comparison.
http://evantomlin.wordpress.com/2006/04/17/nt-wright-on-living-by-the-authority-of-scripture/#comments
Here’s my side of the dialogue:
steve hays Says:
April 18th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Hi Evan,
How do you (or do you?) distinguish between rationality and rationalism? Between a rational defense of the Bible (or the faith generally) and a rationalistic defense of the faith?
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Hi Evan,
I’m not trying to beat you over the head with my rhetorical club. Over at Triablogue I bonk a lot of folks on the noggin, but the reason I went into your combox was to avoid a bloody confrontation since that is not at all my aim in this exchange.
I appreciate your effort to think through these issues for yourself.
i) My question wasn’t concerned with Van Tilian apologetics in particular, but rational apologetics in general.
You seem to be rejecting rational apologetics in favor of some nuanced form of fideism.
ii) One of my problems with fideism is when the fideist makes an argument for fideism. What’s the point of defending your right not to defend the Christian faith?
If you’re going to go to the intellectual effort of defending fideism, which strikes me as a rather self-contradictory exercise, why not redirect that intellectual firepower into actually defending the faith?
Why argue for the proposition that you don’t have to argue for your faith?
iii) I have a very different take on Wright. Wright is trying to stake out a mediating position on Scripture. On the one hand, he doesn’t take the liberal view of a Spong or Bultmann, according to which the Bible is both uninspired and historically worthless. On the other hand, he doesn’t take the traditional view that Scripture is both inspired and historically inerrant.
Put another way, the traditional view says that the Bible is a supernatural record of supernatural events, whereas the liberal view says that the Bible is a natural record of nonevents.
His position, by contrast, treats the Bible as a natural record of supernatural events. He doesn’t approach the Bible as divinely inspired. Rather, he approaches the Bible as a historian who regards the Bible as a historically respectable primary source of information about the past.
He wants a Bible that is authoritative in some measure without begin infallible or inerrant.
iv) He latches on to the faddish Pomo critique of modernism, represented by the strawman of the Enlightenment. However, using the Bible as a warehouse of abstract theological propositions has been around since Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas, to name a few. It has nothing to do with the Enlightenment.
v) I’ll grant you that there is still, in contemporary exegesis, an affectation of disinterested and dispassionate detachment from the emotional tone as well as the ethical and alethic claims of the text upon the reader. This affectation is an exercise in self-deception.
vi) I’ll also grant you that the attempt to formalize our tacit knowledge will inevitably involve some loss of information, for not everything in our spontaneous experience is quantifiable, and in the effort to give rigorous expression to our prereflective apprehension, the output will be less than the input. We know more than we can say.
So, yes, there is a sizable existential component which, feeding into the process, is lost in the course of its transmission and transmutation into logically interlocking propositions.
There—I assume that Bro. Steb won’t be needing to take you to the ER for head trauma inflicted by my baseball bat!
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
“Namely, the individual agent often “finds himself believing” (nod to Plantinga) the propositions of Scripture and acts accordingly without formulating this “encounter” (nod to Wright) in a logically dependent manner. ”
Agreed. Most Christians are not intellectuals, and even among Christian intellectuals, many of them are not competent to do apologetics because their area of specialization lies outside the fields of knowledge most relevant to apologetics.
A Christian is justified in what he believes as a simple matter of religious experience.
And, in that sense, you could say that fideism is the default position for most believers.
However, it’s important to have some Christians who are able to speak up for those who can’t: to give voice to their otherwise inarticulate grounds for faith.
For one thing, the average believer is intellectually vulerable. He is easily stumped. And he can become unsettled or impaired if objections pile up which generate cumulative doubts.
He doesn’t necessarily cease to be a believer, but he loses his confidence.
It is also true that we have a doctrine of the church as well as a doctrine of Scripture. These work in tandem, although there is, as you know, more than one model of their interrelationship, and it’s important to sort these out.
Once again, I appreciate your spiritual and intellectual explorations. Keep up the conscientious efforts.
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
“I appreciate your care in not furthering a bludgeoning exchange”
I trust you not to spread any malicious rumors about how I might actually have a warm and fuzzy side to me. I have a reputation to protect, you know! I’ve spent a lot of time carefully cultivating my hardnosed image, and any evidence to the contrary would be devastating to my public image and my personal reputation!
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
As to Loftus and Robbins, couldn’t we lock them in a room with cutlery and remove the bodies the next day? I think that would be a win/win situation, don’t you?
steve hays Says:
April 19th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Hi Steb,
I don’t see how Van Tilian apologetics ends up with a subjective epistemology. Yes, Christian theism is “selected” as the worldview with the most explanatory power (VT would say, the only explanatory power), but how does this differ from any choice of one explanation over another because one enjoys—or is seen to enjoy—more explanatory power than its actual or hypothetical rivals? It seems to me that a “problem” for everyone is a problem for no one.
A weakness with much of the current debate over the justification of belief is that it frequently assumes that knowledge is unobtainable, so we must settle for well-warranted belief. Given that I can’t know for a fact where the truth lies, the next best option is to probabilify my beliefs so that I at least choose the most likely belief. I may be wrong, but given my epistemic limitations, that’s the best I can do, so I’m justified in what I believe even if I turn out to be wrong.
This assumes a certain epistemology, and, in religious matters, assumes a certain religious epistemology.
I don’t regard this as an adequate model of saving faith.
The need for rational justification is person-variable. However, fideism, even of the soft variety, is something of a misnomer.
Generally, Christian intellectuals who are attracted to fideism find it appealing, not so much because they regard human reason as so very limited, but, to the contrary, because they think that philosophy or science or Bible criticism has rendered the innocence of precritical faith in Scripture hopelessly jejune.
So their fideism is really a rearguard action after surrendering to reason. They admit defeat and retreat to a bunker which is immune to conventional weaponry.
Bultmann is a good example. Given his form criticism, with its assumption of orality, his closed-system worldview, and his attachment to loose comparative mythology, existentialism becomes a makeweight for the loss of historicity and miraculosity.
As to your ultimate question: “Does the Bible have to be inspired and inerrant to be authoritative? If so, why? If not, why not?”
This is the wrong question to lead with.
The first question we need to ask is what does the Bible claim to be? What does it say about itself?
Now, we may reject the account it gives for itself, but if we reject that answer, then to salvage faith in Scripture by substituting a different set of truth-conditions is an artificial exercise; for if the Bible is unbelievable on its own terms, then it is hardly more credible when we try to retrofit Scripture with some wholly extraneous rationale.
My point is that we need to begin by posing a factual question rather than a pragmatic question.
The salient question is not, in the first instance, what is the practical value of inerrancy, and can that be secured by some alternative route, by something short of inspiration.
The salient question is what God has actually done. Has God spoken? Has God spoken to us in the Bible?
Inspiration is the efficient cause and logical implication of the identity between Scripture and God’s word, while inerrancy is the necessary outcome of that identity.
If God is the speaker—even though he employs a mundane intermediary—then what is said is inerrant—even infallible.
If it is errant, then God is not speaking. Error is only possible if or when there ceases to be a point of identity in the continuum between Scripture and the word of God.
Different things can be authoritative. A judicial ruling is legally binding even though it may be badly mistaken.
Truth is authoritative. And there is, hypothetically speaking, a sense in which Scripture could be authoritative insofar as it is true, even though it is not entirely true.
However, the question would then be how you could detect just when it is that Scripture happens to be true.
At that juncture you become your own authority. You adduce and apply your own, extrabiblical criteria to the Bible.
And, in that respect, you must already know where the true lies in order to retreive the truth from the falsehood when you come to Scripture.
If so, why bother with the Bible in the first place if you enjoy independent access to the truth?
steve hays Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 1:03 am
The debates over justification and warrant are, in part, concerned with what conditions must be met in order to convert mere belief into knowledge. But they are also concerned with beliefs that enjoy prima facie warrant even if they are false. The conditions that must be met for a belief to be justified even if it falls short of knowledge.
steve hays Says:
April 26th, 2006 at 12:49 am
“I find the idea of accepting the self attestation of scripture to be a fideistic argument itself. You stated that “if the Bible is unbelievable on its own terms, then it is hardly more credible when we try to retrofit Scripture with some wholly extraneous rationale.” Isn’t that the idea of fideism, to accept claims without any verification, warrant, proof, testing or whatever you want to call it? On what grounds would we claim that the “gut feeling” of the Mormons is wrong? Why is the Quran not actually the word of God? The claims of the Bible are just that, claims. Why does anyone believe any claim of any religious system?”
I wasn’t appealing to the self-witness of Scripture as an argument from authority. My point is simply that we need to judge the Bible by its own claims, by what it claims for itself. The state claim is the object of belief or disbelief.
There is a distinction between believing that the Bible teaches X, and believing what the Bible teaches regarding X. It is quite possible to believe that the Bible teaches something without believing what it teaches.
Now the immediate point of this distinction is not that you should believe the Bible, but that if you are going to believe the Bible, then you need to believe what the Bible teaches about itself—the self-referential statements, as well as whatever else it teaches.
If, say, the Bible lays claim to plenary, verbal inspiration, and I substitute a theory of partial inspiration, that’s an ad hoc theory.
Whether you believe the Bible, and why you should believe it is a separate and subsequent question. But before we can get to that state, we need to be clear on the nature of the claim to b e believed or disbelieved.
As to rival revelatory claimants, that counterexample was keyed to your apparent assumption that I was appealing to the self-attesting authority of Scripture. I was not. I was merely appealing to the self-witness of Scripture. Whether or not that self-witness is authoritative is, as I say, a separate and subsequent question.
But as long as you bring it up, it also depends on whether you’re asking for some general, uniform, multipurpose criterion or criteria that would be equally applicable to every revelatory claimant.
That’s an interesting question.
But it isn’t necessary for our immediate purposes to come up with an abstract, external test.
It is sufficient to judge these two particular claimants on internal grounds.
On the one hand, there is no positive evidence of any kind that either the Koran or the Mormon “scriptures” are inspired while, on the other hand, there is positive evidence that they are uninspired and errant. And that, too, is a case of judging them by their own claims. I could go into the details, but I’ll pass on that for now since it may be too much of a digression from the main point at issue.
“Is the use of historical analysis, logical deduction/induction and philosophical analysis the equivalent of “substituting a different set of truth-conditions [as] an artificial exercise”? I’ve honestly never understood this claim from the presuppositionalist camp. Can you explain how we show or prove the existence of God or the validity of scripture without retrofitting scripture?”
Van Tilians don’t oppose the verification or falsification of Scripture by scriptural criteria; what they oppose is the verification or falsification of Scripture by unscriptural criteria.
There is also, apropos the above, a difference between what we defend and how we defend it.
Once again, my point is that if we’re going to defend the Bible at all, then we need to defend a Scriptural doctrine of Scripture, a Biblical doctrine of Biblical inspiration.
It would be self-defeating to propose a theory of inspiration at odds with the self-witness of Scripture, and defend that theory as if you were thereby defending the Bible.
So there’s a distinction between the theory we are defending, and the arguments we deploy to defend that theory.
When I spoke against “retrofitting” Scripture, that had reference, not to how we defend the Bible, but what doctrine of Scripture we are defending in the first place.
“The whole argument depends upon the ‘identity between Scripture and God’s word’”.
My argument is both an argument from Scripture and an argument for Scripture. We have to take our doctrine of Scripture from Scripture itself. That is the object of belief or unbelief. If it’s an object of belief, then that’s what we are committed to defending.
At this stage of the discussion I’m not mounting an argument for the Bible. I just want us to be clear on what we need to argue for were we to mount such an argument. What are we defending? That’s the preliminary question.
“I think that evangelicalism ends up believing the Bible is authoritative for the same reason Muslims believe the Quran or Mormons believe the Last Testament, because of a theory of transmission. We believe that the living God “spoke” his word to prophets, evangelists, apostles, etc. They believe the only true god “spoke” his word to the only true prophet. We distinguish ourselves by resorting to “artificial exercises”. Something seems terribly wrong with this scenario, and I fully accept that it may be my perception and/or lack of understanding of things, in fact I hope it is, but I’m afraid it may not be. In the end, I don’t want a theory of authority that is dependent upon a theory of transmission.”
But what if there is, in fact, an internal relation between a theory of authority and a theory of transmission? Indeed, the relation is pretty straightforward.
God is the paradigmatic authority-figure. If God can inspire to communicate his will, then the end-result is authoritative due to the process of inspiration. I don’t know why you find that objectionable.
The fact that not every claimant successfully meets the condition doesn’t render the relation unsound. The inner logic of the relation is one thing, and evidence for what that relation does or does not obtain is another thing.
“My last problem with the logical dependency way of thinking is the seeming inability to avoid a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration. The Muslims seem to come by it honestly, they freely claim that Allah spoke to Mohammed directly. As a matter of a fact that’s one point they criticize us on, the idea of textual corruption and untrustworthiness of the Bible. But evangelicals of the moderate type avoid such a claim by alleviating it with phrases like “the personality of the authors was not overridden by the HS”, or “God used human authors in spite of their imperfections”, or “even though he employs a mundane(?) intermediary”. On the one hand, the higher degree of ontological identity we can assert between scripture and God’s actual words, the higher degree of inerrancy and subsequent authority we can assert. But on the other hand, the higher degree of ontological identity we assert between the two the closer we come to a statement of mechanical dictation, which nobody today is willing to assert anymore, and rightfully so. In the end we seem to be left in a realm of the middle ground which can’t logically assert anything as bold as the Muslims and won’t dare assert anything as “liberal” as the “errantist” positions of Crossan, Funk, Schweitzer, Wright(?) or especially the terrible Bultmann (I still disagree with your assessment of him, but that’s another diablog for another day).”
One needs no resort to a mechanical or dictation theory. Rather, one only needs to things:
i) In context, identity between God’s word and man’s word (God’s spokesman, the prophet, apostles, &c.) consists in the divine spokesman saying exactly what God intended him to say, nothing more and nothing less. He says just what God intended him to say, the way God intended him to say it.
ii) We also need a doctrine of providence. God is not merely the (primary) author of the Biblical writing; he is also the author if the Biblical writer.
He is responsible for the existence, personality, and socialization of the agent.
So it isn’t a case of taken possession of a human being, and playing him like a flute to channel the message, while the spokesman is a mere mouthpiece or dummy, while God is the flutist or ventriloquist.
God doesn’t simply play the instrument; he designed the instrument in the first place. He is, as it were, Stradivari and Heifetz in one: both violinist and violinmaker.
He is not, however, the violin. The violin, the secondary agent, is still a person in his own right.
“What is this elusive point of identity in the continuum, and how do we know it apart from artificial exercises? Do we just believe as fideists?”
i) I think I’ve explained the point of identity, which I don’t find elusive.
ii) Once again, my remark about “artificial exercises” had reference, not to how we defend Scripture, but what we defend, viz., a theory of partial inspiration.
But an artificial doctrine of Scripture can also give rise to an artificial argument for the doctrine in question.
Let’s illustrate this point with some smaller examples. There are men who will defend the miracles of Scripture, but they will rationalize the miracle by substituting a naturalistic mechanism contrary to the cause attributed to that event by Scripture itself. Velikosvksy was a well-known example. Ericc von Daniken is another.
iii) As to why we believe, what counts as convincing evidence is person-variable. Some folks are more impressed by existential evidence, others by empirical evidence, still others by abstract reasoning. There’s no uniform line of evidence that everyone finds equally convincing.
“When you said that truth is authoritative and that in a hypothetical sense scripture “could” be authoritative because it is true, my heart leapt. This is what I’m looking for! A theory of authority based upon truth value itself and not upon a secondary means such as transmission.”
Two problems with this:
i) It’s an inspired mode of transmission which secures the truth of the document.
ii) It’s an inspired mode of transmission, which renders the truth accessible.
Partial inspiration would be self-defeating. The point of inspiration is to distinguish when God is speaking from when he is not.
If this distinction is not preserved, then he might as well not be speaking at all, for God’s voice is lost in the cacophony of all the human voices. Somehow we have to retrieve the signal from the surrounding static. This amounts to a denial of the very possibility of divine self-revelation.
God can never be heard above the static. He can never cut through the static. His voice is just one more voice.
At that point it’s up to man to strain to hear if he can dimly make out the voice of God. That’ isn’t a serious doctrine of revelation.
“If Joshua was “wrong” about the earth and sun’s rotation, does this mean the Bible is errant and untrustworthy? Surely we’re not this pedantic in our reasoning.”
This lead to a makeshift doctrine of Scripture, in which we begin by compiling a list of problem passages, then we device a theory of inspiration which just manages to skirt our problem passages.
That is a made-up theory of inspiration. A stopgap.
The problem way to approach this is:
i) To take the self-witness of Scripture as a paradigm;
ii) To confess that to be a Christian is involves a precommitment to certain things;
iii) To be clear on the rational grounds for our faith;
iv) Carefully interpret problem passages on their own terms, guarding against the tendency to unconsciously import extrascriptural assumptions into the text.
For example, a modern reader almost automatically sees Joshua’s long day through the lens of Apollo 11 and the Galileo affair.
But that involves an explicit comparison between a heliocentric system and a geocentric system. To extrapolate back in time from that debate to Josh 10:12-14 runs the risk of blatant anachronism. We’re reading extraneous concerns and controversies into a text innocent of those later debates. There’s no reason to assume the author was operating with a developed cosmological system like Ptolemy or Copernicus.
“But granting your line of thinking, if I try to disprove the “errantists” and prove the truthfulness of the Bible, do I not likewise set myself up as my own authority?”
No, because you’re taking Scripture as your standard of comparison.
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