Life's a beach

I'm going to comment on this post, where Leon Brown a PCA pastor:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2014/01/an-interview-about-ethnicrace.php

The ethnic and socio-economic make-up of our congregation is 95+ white and 99% middle-upper middle class. 

I don't know why Leon fixates on the ethnic composition of predominantly white churches. He seems to think that reflects unconscious institutional racism.

(To be sure, this isn't Leon's statement. This is the answer given by his respondent. But the answers reflect Leon's questions. His agenda.) 

What about the ethnic composition of predominantly black churches like the A.M.E, Church, Missionary Baptist convention, and the Church of God in Christ? What about the ethnic composition of Korean-American churches or Spanish-speaking churches in the US? Is that racist?

BTW, I think multiethnic churches are great. 

During and following my college years the Lord began to convict me of my racism. I began to reflect more on my experience in church growing up and of racism and race issues in the church. I was writing a paper for ordination on the Image of God and was required to use some Presbyterian and Southern Presbyterian theologians. I was shocked to see some of the things that Dabney and others had written with respect to their views on slavery and the status of blacks compared to whites in the church. This seemed very inconsistent with their teaching on the Image of God in other places. I also was reading Anthony Bradley's blog which from time to time talked about his experience as a black man in the PCA and began to read more about Dabney, Thornwell, and others. I knew he wasn't making up his experiences because I knew quite personally that racism existed in Reformed Presbyterian circles.

i) To begin with, why would that be "shocking"? "Shocking" suggests this was a surprising discovery. Why did Leon's respondent find it surprising to learn that someone with Thornwell or Dabney's social conditioning would be racist? Isn't that fairly predictable? Wouldn't it be exceptional if they didn't suffer from that outlook? 

ii) More to the point, notice the historical guilt-by-association. Some 19C Presbyterian theologians were racist. Therefore, that taints 21C Presbyterians. That's logically and causally bogus. There's not the slightest reason to assume that Presbyterian who was born c. 2000 shares the views of someone (Thornwell) born in South Carolina in 1812 or some (Dabney) born Virginia in 1820. The sociological dynamics are drastically different.

iii) Let's take a comparison. I've lived in both the coastal southeast and coastal southwest. The coastal southeast where I reside was predominately black and white, while the coastal southwest where I resided was predominantly white and hispanic. 

I often went to the beach. I noticed that for some reason, most beachgoers were white. I don't know why that is. Nothing prevents blacks and Latinos from frequenting the same beaches in higher numbers. It's a self-selected result. 

I don't know how to account for the disparity in racial preferences in that regard. But it's not as if white beachgoers should feel guilty because they like go to the beach more often than blacks and hispanics in the same area. These are public beaches. Open to anyone regardless of race. Are white beachgoers somehow responsible for whether or not more blacks and Latinos want to frequent the beach? 

Christians Should Be Posting More At Amazon

As of late last year, every review of Raymond Brown's The Birth Of The Messiah at Amazon was highly positive. For more than a decade, everybody gave it four or five stars, and little negative was said about it. Here are some examples of what people were saying about the book:

Trust the math?

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6243

J. W. Montgomery on Reza Aslan

http://issuesetc.org/2014/01/14/1-responding-to-reza-aslan-author-of-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth-dr-john-warwick-montgomery-11414/

He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

"Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, 'These are the conditions, now what happens next?'" (Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law)

1. We often hear jokes about how the weather forecast is wrong. That's mainly because accurately predicting the weather is notoriously difficult if not impossible.

What is a species?

What is a species?

1. A standard definition provided by biologists including evolutionists is a species is a group of individuals that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

Deficient Roman [Catholic] Apologetics

The Roman Catholic apologetic often
relies on an anachronistic “reading-back” of later concepts
into earlier writings and events

I’m following up on some comments from down below.

In response to my comment (summarizing on the topic of Sola Scriptura) “You are projecting a number of later concepts anachronistically back into first- and second-century Christianity.... should we not be persuaded to ask, ‘what did they believe in the first, second, or third centuries?’ How will we know what was believed, except by the written documents that are attested at the different times and places to which we can locate the various early church documents?”, Erick said:

I understand where you are coming from, especially with the way the modern Catholic apologists address this. I think many Catholics today get a superficial upper-hand in the argument with philosophy and logic, but much of what is put on the table is not tenable when held under patient scrutiny.

I would love to see more people make this point over at “Catholic Answers” or at EWTN, for example.

That being said, I still think the apologetic of the reformed suffers even more.

I think the Reformed have an exceptional apologetic.

The truth is out there

(Source)

The sharks are circling

I'm going to comment on this exchange:

• Bud Jenness I'm glad you didn't discuss this stuff when I was one of your students back in the 90's, getting my M.Div. My brain would have exploded or I would have run out of the classroom crying like the dude who got all upset and had a breakdown over you asking us to consider the ramifications of a claim that the bones and DNA of Jesus had been uncovered indisputably. Do you remember that? He ran out crying "THIS IS BLASPHEMY! THIS IS BLASPHEMY!" and we all looked at each other with shock, and then resignation, and did as you instructed. You, however, had a hilarious and quizzical expression on your face, shrugged your shoulders, and let us talk amongst ourselves for a few minutes. 
• Jerry Walls The irony is that I was making a totally conservative, orthodox point, that without a real bodily resurrection, the Christian faith falls apart.
  
  Matt Douglass I use your "bones of Jesus" scenario in my Bible Survey class. Interestingly, the kids (mostly freshman) would require a lot of counter-evidence to doubt the resurrection, but the great majority of them would abandon the faith if they were convinced that Jesus was still dead. In contrast, I remember a rather large group at Asbury who would stick with it no matter what, whereupon you shouted, "Liberals! Liberals!" at them. One of my fondest memories of seminary.

i) Obviously, this isn't a realistic scenario. There are, however, many examples of professing Christians who lose their faith because they come across evidence which they imagine falsifies the Bible.

ii) Apropos (i), it's vitally important that we frame the issue correctly. Walls framework is misleading and potentially damaging.

iii) Why is it "liberal" to deny the physical resurrection of Christ? For two related reasons:

a) The Bible teaches the physical resurrection of Christ. For instance, Luke and John go out of their way to accentuate the physicality of the Resurrection. Hence, it's liberal to dismiss the explicit teaching of Scripture.

b) Liberals deny the Resurrection in particular because they deny miracles in general. They operate with a secular outlook. They deny that God is active in the world. Basically, they are churchgoing atheists. 

iii) However, within the terms of Walls' hypothetical, is it still liberal or heretical to deny the physical resurrection of Christ? Walls is posing a hypothetical dilemma which artificially restricts the options. The  respondent is left with two inferior alternatives to choose from. Within the confines of his dilemma, there is no good answer. 

In terms of how he cast the alternatives, you could either conclude that the Bible is wrong to teach the physical resurrection of Christ, or else conclude that you misinterpreted Scripture. It seems to teach the physical resurrection, but given incontrovertible evidence to the contrary (i.e. the tomb wasn't empty after all), you were mistaken–the evident teaching of Scripture notwithstanding.

His dilemma stipulates at the outset that "that the bones and DNA of Jesus had been uncovered indisputably." If that's a given, then how is it liberal or heretical to deny the physical resurrection of Christ? It's his dilemma which denies the physical resurrection of Christ. The question then is: how should Christians respond? Should they abandon their faith, or redefine the Resurrection?

iv) The dilemma seems to be a wedge tactic, where Walls is forcing the Christian respondent to be prepared to abandon the faith in the face of an indisputable defeater. Perhaps hovering in the background is 1 Cor 15:14,17. But, of course, Paul uses that as a contrary-to-fact scenario force Christians to accept the physical resurrection of Christ! 

v) Perhaps Walls is trying to make a point about intellectual and theological integrity. You can't fudge the Resurrection. 

There are probably liberal students at Asbury who labor under the illusion that Christianity doesn't require a physical Resurrection. So his dilemma may be directed at them. And that's fine as far as it goes.

vi) However, his dilemma is somewhat confused. Given the terms of the dilemma, you'd be justified in committing apostasy. Indeed, that would be an intellectual imperative.  

vii) A deeper problem with his dilemma is the implicit assumption that we have a fallback position in case the evidence turns against the Christian faith. If the Christian faith takes on water, there's a waiting lifeboat to take you to safety. Abandon ship! 

But there is no coherent alternative to fall back on. Even if you imagine that the Christian ship is sinking, don't delude yourself into thinking there's a lifeboat to save you. You will be swallowed whole in the whirlpool of naturalism. 

viii) How would we respond to his dilemma?

a) To begin with, we could refuse to respond. It's really a trick question. I'm under no obligation to play with your loaded dice. The game is rigged. 

b) Or we could reply that even if there seemed to be incontrovertible evidence to disprove the Resurrection, Biblical evidence is superior to empirical evidence. The alternative to Biblical faith is nihilism. It's the atheist who commits intellectual suicide. Dive into a shark-filled sea. 

Mad at unicorns

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/01/13/when-atheists-are-angry-at-god/

Reformed Forum John Frame interview

Reformed Forum interviews John Frame about his new book Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief.

Dealing with physical ailment

"Dealing with Physical Ailment" by William Lane Craig.

Does God know the past?

I'm going to post a recent email exchange I had, beginning with my initial statement:

Debates about freedom and omniscience typically focus on whether God's knowledge of the future is compatible with libertarian freedom. However, even freewill theists who deny God's knowledge of the future usually grant God's knowledge of the past. But does that follow? How would God automatically be cognizant of what all free agents chose in the past? 

If God can't know future choices before they happen, how do they suddenly become known after they happen? On libertarian grounds, I can see how past free choices would be knowable in a way that future free choices are not, but how would their passing into the past make them known? Is there something that causes God to know a free choice the instant it becomes a past fact? What would that be? 

God knows everything it is logically possible to know.

Given freewill theism, I think that's up for grabs. 

In the case of an actualized past, there is something there for God to know, and so God knows it.

That shows the past is knowable, not that it's known. It shows that God can know the past, not that God ipso facto knows the past. 

If it's knowable, then why wouldn't God, who is omniscient, not know it? Isn't the burden of proof on anyone who would deny that God knows some things that are in fact knowable?

Why are freewill theists entitled to the assumption that God is omniscient? How is that an implication of their metaphysical system?

You seem to be taking the position that even in freewill theism, divine omniscience is the default setting unless there's some special impediment to divine knowledge. I don't see that that follows.

To take a comparison, how does God know the past (i.e. past human volitions) in Calvinism? He knows the past by planning the past and by causing the past through a chain reaction he initiates. He knows the past the same way he knows the future. He knows human volitions because he planned them and he brings them about. 

Obviously, that explanation isn't available to the freewill theist. So the freewill theist must reverse the transaction. The past itself somehow causes God to know the past. 

But what does that mean? What's the causal process by which a past human volition informs God? Even in freewill theism, God doesn't learn about the past through sensory perception. 

You're going to have to specify the kind of 'freewill theism' you have in mind. Taking William Hasker as a surely representative example, Hasker would affirm that God does know everything it is logically possible to know.

The question at issue isn't what open theists claim to be the case, but whether their claim is justified. 

How does God know what a possible person would do? Because, on that scheme, God is the source of abstracta. They are mental entities that inhere in God's mind. Indeed, they are constituted by God's mind. God knows what they would do by knowing his own mind. God knows what they would do because what they would do is a reflection of God's imaginative resources. They are like fictional characters in the mind of a novelist. 

But freewill theists don't think possible human agents bear that relation to God. Even as bare possibilities, they require a measure of independence in relation to which God is responsive. Which imposes limits on what God can instantiate. 

It's a different ontological, which results in a different epistemology. 

I don't think that omniscience needs to be an 'implication' of their 'system'. They can just stipulate this about God, and then move on to defending it against any principled counterarguments they find. And in this respect, is the 'how' question really a principled argument? OK, on Calvinism God knows the past, present, and future by 'knowing his decree'. And how does he know that? Why do I as an immaterial soul know any of my choices? I just know, correct? I know it by self-reflection and not by memory. But if "I just know..." is acceptable, well, at that point, why can't the freewill theist just say, "Part of being divine is being such that, necessarily, you just know everything that it is logically possible to know. And I'm not positing a mechanism for that..."

i) There are different potential explanatory levels. For instance, in intelligent design theory, you can rightly conclude that something was designed without having to account for the designer. I can say a painting was the product of a painter. That's not an ultimate explanation. For the painter was the product of his parents. The paint was the product of natural ingredients. But my answer is an adequate explanation for the painting. 

There's a difference between having an explanation for the painting by attributing the painting to a painter, and having no explanation for the painting. Treating the painting as a brute fact. Or postulating conditions which militate against any rational explanation for the painting. 

ii) Apropos (i), Calvinism has a straightforward explanation for how God knows past, present, and future events, including human volitions. Freewill theism doesn't even have an explanation at that level. 

Now, a freewill theist might challenge the Calvinist to dig deeper. But the Calvinist still has an advantage the freewill theist does not. It won't do to say they are in the same boat. 

iii) Likewise, as I'm sure you'd agree, explanations come to an end. It's like village atheist objection to the cosmological argument. "Well, if the universe requires an explanation, why doesn't God require an explanation"? 

There's a difference between an ultimate explanation that's arbitrarily ultimate, because it artificially cuts off further legitimate inquires or prior conditions, and an explanation that properly terminates at that point. 

iv) Apropos (iii), "how" questions tend to be process questions. By what means or mechanism is something the case? Indeed, that's how you just unpacked it.  

But in the case of knowing one's own thoughts, those are self-presenting states. There is no medium. That's direct self-awareness.

This is one of the objections to eliminative materialism. Consciousness is not an inference, but an immediate deliverance. That's nothing that intervenes to facilitate knowledge of our own mental states.

So, no, I don't think a freewill theist can turn tables on a Calvinist in that respect. 

v) We need to distinguish between an explanation and supporting arguments for an explanation. An explanation may demand layers of supporting arguments over and above the explanation itself. However, that's not the same thing as a deeper explanation. That doesn't mean the explanation can't be ultimate, that there's must be something behind or below the explanation. 

vi) In human affairs, there are generally two ways of knowing an event. One is if the event itself causes my knowledge of the event, like an external stimulus. The exploding firecracker triggers my perception of an exploding firecracker. 

Another way is if a human agent deliberately causes the outcome. I can know a future event if I know that by doing something in the present, my action will effect that outcome.

And in Calvinism, God knows past and future by causing past and future–usually through a series of second causes. And that includes human volitions.

That explanation is not available to a freewill theist. So he's at a disadvantage. 

guess your argument that God, lacking sense organs, therefore can't learn about history by observing history would also preclude disembodied Cartesian egos from learning anything by observation. Maybe you'd be happy with that.

Depends on what your'e alluding to. Angels? Ghosts? ESP? 

One question is whether that non-empirical mode of acquiring knowledge is even analogous to divine knowledge. 

Omnibenevolence and middle knowledge

I'm going to discuss a comment on this post:

http://www.rightreason.org/2014/jerry-walls-and-the-unequable-distribution-of-grace/

Bill’s solution in a way just bites the bullet: Yes there is definitely an unequal distribution of opportunity. But that’s acceptable, he says, because everyone who did not get the opportunity would have rejected the opportunity anyway. They would not have repented, even if they had the chance to do so. 

Consider the irony of Craig's position. As I recall, Craig takes the position that even though some people in this world will go to hell, they are hellbound in every possible world that includes them. There is no situation under which they'd freely (in the libertarian sense) accept the Gospel. 

But if there is no possible world in which they freely accept Christ, then in what respect are they free in the libertarian sense? Doesn't that mean their salvation is impossible? It's not even possible for them to freely believe the Gospel? 

There’s also an interesting passage of Scripture which, if read through Arminian eyes, presents a significant problem for Bill’s solution, I think. In Luke 10:13, Jesus laments how reluctant people in his time were to believe, in spite of the evidence of who he was. Then he makes a comparison to a people who lived long ago: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” The meaning seems pretty clear: You people aren’t repenting even though I’m right here, working miracles, giving you the opportunity to do so – but these people from long ago, if they had this sort of opportunity, they would have repented.But they didn’t have the opportunity and they did not repent. So it sounds like Jesus thought that there were some people who never had the opportunity to repent, but who would have done so under different circumstances.

This generates a dilemma for Craig. This is one of his prooftexts for Molinism. Mind you, even he admits that, at most, this only proves God's counterfactual knowledge, not God's middle knowledge. (Middle knowledge is a theory of God's prevolitional knowledge of what possible agents with libertarian freedom would do or choose in every situation.)

However, Craig is also a proponent of divine omnibenevolence. He believes that God gives everyone who is receptive to salvation an opportunity to be saved. But this verse forces Craig to choose between middle knowledge and omnibenevolence. If it supports middle knowledge, it opposes omnibenevolence. 

Monergism & providence

Glenn January 12, 2014, 8:17 PM“Isn’t this what Jesus does in Luke 10:13?”No I don’t see that happening, Blair. In Luke 10:13 Jesus didn’t say “everyone who did not get the opportunity would have rejected the opportunity anyway.” In fact he seems to be saying the opposite: That some people who didn’t get a chance to hear are actually people who would have accepted the opportunity, and repented. So if we think about grace and our response to it in Arminian terms (as Bill does), it would appear that the contention that everyone who would have repented gets the chance to do before they die is not a biblical contention.“Sounds to me like the Calvanist would say, “well, that’s just the way it is”, where as the Arminian would as you point out, look for another opportunity for a response to grace.”Some Arminians would do that, yes. Jerry, for example, does. But most Arminians do not believe in Jerry’s purgatory, so they don’t have that resource. Some Arminians might take Bill Craig’s stance and claim that the fact that some people never got the chance is acceptable – since they would not have repented anyway. But as for the remaining Arminians, I’m all ears.I think this is a problem text for Bill’s position and also a very curious text from a monergist (Calvinist / Augustinian) position as well. From a monergist point of view, the only thing that really makes a person repent is the work of the Holy Spirit working efficaciously to bring repentance about. So it’s strange to see Jesus say that these people would have repented under different circumstances. 

http://www.rightreason.org/2014/jerry-walls-and-the-unequable-distribution-of-grace/

I largely agree with Glenn's statement. However, I disagree with the last part. He's confusing Calvinism with fatalism. In Calvinism, favorable or unfavorable circumstances can be a differential factor. The quality of evidence available to us can make a difference between faith and disbelief. Evidence alone doesn't convert anyone. Circumstances alone are insufficient to induce faith. But as a rule, monergistic regeneration is coordinated with favorable circumstances. We don't just repent in a vacuum or believe in a vacuum. God places the elect in a situation providentially favorable to conversion. 

The question “where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?" is fundamentally dishonest

Luther’s Bible (1534: from Wikipedia)
“Nothing else compares with this standard”

Turretinfan recently commented on a question that Roman Catholics frequently ask Protestants in polemical discussions: “where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?

Often this question is asked in a mindless way, and it is asked for the purpose of making the statement that Sola Scriptura is somehow self-contradictory. But that’s not the case at all. Turretinfan’s response to this question is simple and elegant, and I’d like to share it here with some minor edits and some comments of my own:

Where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?

Short Answer: John 20:31 says, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

Brief Explanation: John’s statement implies that a person could pick up John’s gospel, read it, believe it, and receive eternal life in that way. Moreover, John’s statement at least hints at the fact that the other gospels have a similar purpose - they are written for us to read, believe, and have eternal life. There are many other verses that suggest that this is the case.

This certainly is an excellent example of the statement from the Westminster Confession of Faith: “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture”.

Continuing from Turretinfan:

An atheist on the state of the humanities

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/cura-te-ipsum/

Jerry Walls and the Unequable Distribution of Grace

http://www.rightreason.org/2014/jerry-walls-and-the-unequable-distribution-of-grace/

Seraphim Falls

I recently saw Seraphim Falls. In terms of genre, the film combines elements of the Western, revenge drama, and a chase film. Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson play the two leads. Both actors are terrific in their respective roles, although they struggle with American accents. Both actors play Civil War veterans. Gideon was a Union officer while Carver was a Confederate officer. After the war, Gideon comes to arrest Carver. In the course of the arrest, he inadvertently kills Carver's wife and sons. As a result, Carver is bent on revenge.

Even though Gideon follows orders, he does have a conscience, and there are moral limits to what he's prepared to do. Ironically, although Carver has a legitimate grievance, he's more ruthless than Gideon. Gideon only kills in self-defense, and he preserves a streak of kindness. By contrast, Carver has lost his humanity in his single-minded quest for vengeance. 

In the outset of the film, Gideon is being pursued by a posse, led by Carver. At this stage, Carver seems to be bounty hunter. But as the narrative progresses, we learn from flashbacks his true motives. At first, Gideon doesn't know why or by whom he's being hunted. Only later does he come to realize that his haunted past has caught up with him. As one character says, quoting Scripture, "your sins will find you out" (Num 32:23).

Out of curiosity, I skimmed some movie reviews. Most critics panned the film, and even those who gave it passing grade don't really understand it. The problem is that most contemporary movie critics lack the Classical and Biblical literacy to catch the allusions. And to the extent that they sense a Christian allegory, they are reflexively hostile. In addition, too many movie critics have no patience for subtextual subtleties.  

The title of the film is a double entendre. There is a waterfall where Carver is living, but in the symbolism of the film, it also evokes the angelic fall–not because the film is about fallen angels, but because it is about a fallen world. Sin and redemption. 

At one point, Carver says "Ain't no God out here!" That turns out to be a half-truth. God is outwardly absent, but providentially present in the unfolding narrative. 

On the face of it, the plot has some cliches. You have a fugitive who's outnumbered, yet one by one he beats the odds because the posse underestimates him. By process of elimination, it comes down to a head-to-head conflict with the two principals.

We've seen this before. But in the symbolism of the film, this isn't just a cliche. Rather, it's divinely providential that Gideon is a survivor.  

Critics were confused by the ending. Most of the film is fairly prosaic, but towards the end it veers into religious allegory. 

There's a scene that seems to depict an American Indian shaman guarding a watering hole. He spouts some fortune cookie mumbo jumbo:

Go as you wish.

That which is yours will always return to you.

That which you take will always be taken from you.

That seems like another cliche about the folk wisdom of the shaman. But the symbolism runs deeper. In the credits, the character's name is Charon. That's a clue. In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman who conducts the dead to the netherworld. And he's Christianized in Dante's Inferno. That also explains the watering hole–analogous to the rivers of the netherworld. 

I take this to mean that when Gideon and Carver drink from the watering hole and pass beyond that juncture, they are crossing the threshold from life into death and the afterlife. A borderland between two worlds. 

And in the overall context of the film, the Indian's trite-sounding platitude is actually a redemptive promise. Both Carver and Gideon have lost everything that made their life worthwhile. Now they have an opportunity to be restored. 

When Gideon approaches a vast dry lakebed, he prayers Ps 144:1:

Blessed be the Lord my strength,
Who teaches my fingers to fight,
And my hands to war.

And he is followed by Carver.

In the desert, they both meet meet a woman peddling her cure-all–expertly played by Anjelica Huston. She's named Madame Louise C. Fair. A pun on Lucifer. The devil's a snake-oil salesman. This scene trades on literary associations with the temptation of Christ in the wilderness.   

She offers to sell each man a bullet in exchange for something else they need to cross the desert. By trading his horse for a bullet, Gideon has given up trying to elude his avenger. By trading his water for a bullet, Carver forfeits his chance at life for a chance to exact revenge on Gideon. 

When Carver catches up with Gideon, Gideon shoots him, but refuses to finish him off. He hands Carver his gun, giving Carver the chance to execute him. Gideon's action causes Carver to relent. 

Now that they are reconciled, they start off into the distance, only to vanish. That's because, at this point, they are both ghosts. 

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

For the first, we chose Joshua 6, since current archaeological and historiographical evidence calls into question the details of the text’s account. Obviously, those who maintain a strictly factual account of inerrancy must defend the Bible’s factuality. But for those who have a broader or different understanding of truth, or for those whose under- standing of inspiration does not extend to factual accuracy, we wanted to see how Joshua 6 could still function as Scripture without being factually correct. For the second, we chose the discrepancy between Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9. Both texts describe Saul’s conversion. The former says that his travel companions “heard the voice but saw no one,” while the latter says that they “saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking” (NRSV).21 For questions of theological coherence, we asked authors to consider Deuteronomy 20 in relation to Matthew 5. Deuteronomy is of course a portion of the Law of Israel, while many scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 is Jesus acting as a new Moses bringing the new Law of God. Jesus himself claims that his instructions constitute the fulfillment of the Law (Matt. 5:17–20). But this is where the question of theological coherence is pressing. How is it that Deuteronomy 20 instructs Israel that the complete extermination of Yahweh’s enemies is a matter of Israel’s purity before and obedience to Yahweh, while Jesus subsequently says that faithfulness to God requires nonretaliation and sacrificial love of enemies (Matt. 5:38–48)? If, as in some views of inerrancy, new revelation cannot be seen to correct or alter previous revelation, then how can these passages be understood? While all of our choices raise the issue of truth and inspiration, this one particularly raises the extent of inspiration. How could our knowledge of God be said to be accurate if the human relationship to God varies over time? J. Merrick, ed. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Zondervan 2013), 22-23. 

I'll briefly comment on this:

I. Jericho

We need to have realistic expectations regarding what physical evidence survives the passage of some 3500 years (give or take). There are two explanations consistent with the Biblical account:

i) Brant Wood thinks the surviving evidence corresponds in striking ways with the biblical description of the event:

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/05/Did-the-Israelites-Conquer-Jericho-A-New-Look-at-the-Archaeological-Evidence.aspx

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2012/03/28/Dating-Jerichos-Destruction-Bienkowski-is-Wrong-on-All-Counts.aspx

ii) Conversely, Kenneth Kitchen thinks the lack of evidence is due to the predictable effects of erosion. Cf. On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 187f. 

Last time I checked, you can read Kitchen's analysis online in the Google book edition of his monograph.

http://books.google.com/books/about/On_the_Reliability_of_the_Old_Testament.html?id=Kw6U05qBiXcC

Just input jericho and click on page 187.

II. Acts

i) The fact that there are verbal variations in Paul's account of the Christophany is realistic. If these are real speeches which he gave on three different occasions, then we'd expect him to vary the wording somewhat. That's what people do in real life when they repeatedly recount some incident from their past. They aren't reading from a script. If, by contrast, Luke gave three identical verbatim speeches, it would be natural to conclude that these were set speeches which he put into Paul's mouth, rather than transcriptions or summaries of what Paul actually said at different times and places. 

ii) The terminology is somewhat ambiguous. But there's a consistent distinction: on the one hand, this was an objective event, perceptible to all parties. On the other hand, the level of perception varied.

Paul's traveling companions saw and heard something, without seeing Jesus or hearing his words. By contrast, Paul's perception went deeper. He saw Jesus in the light, and he heard what Jesus said. God controlled the specificity of the perception. It was an eyewitnessed event, but Paul was enabled to perceive more given his superior mission.

III. The Sermon on the Mount

Liberals like Peter Enns and Roger Olson relieve the imagined tension by rejecting the inspiration of Deut 20. They pit Jesus against Deuteronomy.

i) But there's a fundamental problem with that tactic. Just a chapter before, during the Temptation, Jesus approvingly quotes the OT three times to reprove Satan. Each time he quotes from the same OT book: Deuteronomy (6:13,16; 8:3). He identifies Deuteronomy as God's word. And he clearly regards Deuteronomy as trustworthy. 

ii) At the Last Judgment, Jesus will be the eschatological Judge (Mt 25). The historical judgment which the Canaanites underwent is just a shadow of the eschatological judgment which unbelievers will experience. Matthew doesn't soften OT judgement. If anything, Matthew intensifies OT judgment. OT historical judgments pale compared to the Final Judgment. 

Divine mercy typically precedes divine judgment. Mercy is extended to save a remnant, after which God exacts judgment on unbelievers. The relationship between the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse is consistent with that divine modus operandi. Mercy before judgment.

Some people think the Sermon on the Mount represents the norm, whereas Deut 20 is a temporary concession. The truth is nearly the reverse: the Sermon on the Mount is a temporary concession whereas divine judgment is normative. And that's a good thing. Injustice should not be allowed to continue indefinitely.