Redefining history

I'm going to repost some comments I left at Michael Kruger's blog:

[James McGrath] “Well, people often assumed that it was how sin entered the world. But when they did so, they often took the story in directions that are at odds with what the story actually says – including most notably turning the serpent into a supernatural angelic being.”

Actually, people in the ancient world often viewed “snakes” as supernatural beings. They believed in snake-gods, fire-breathing cobras guarding the Netherworld, &c.

“But I am not persuaded that Paul understood the text as you claim. He focuses on Adam only because Christ was one man and it makes for a nice contrast. If he were a literalist, he would have said ‘Just as through two human beings sin entered the world.’”

Here’s what Joseph Fitzmyer has to say: 

“Paul treats Adam as a historical human being, humanity’s first parent, and contrasts him with the historical Jesus Christ…Some commentators on Romans have tried to interpret Adam in this symbolic sense here…but that reading does violence to the contrast that Paul uses in this paragraph between Adam as ‘one man’ and Christ as ‘one man,’ which implies that Adam was a historical individual much as was Jesus Christ,” Romans (Doubleday 1993), 407-08.

This is despite the fact that Fitzmyer rejects the historicity of Adam and disagrees with Paul’s interpretation of Genesis. But even though he’s just as liberal as McGrath, he’s honest enough to let Paul speak for himself.

"And the fact that the ancient authors of Genesis thought that living things came into existence either when God formed them with divine hands, or through spontaneous generation at God’s command, has no more bearing than the fact that they thought the sky was a solid dome."

To say they thought the sky was a solid dome says more about McGrath’s naivete than theirs.

"It has nothing to do with anyone’s naivete, and has only to do with the meaning of Hebrew words."

i) To begin with, words can used metaphorically.

ii) Even liberal scholars dispute the solid dome interpretation (e.g. Baruch Halpern). John Walton now rejects the solid dome interpretation.

iii) The OT contains various passages attesting the fact that ancient Israelites knew thay rain came from rainclouds.

iv) Ancient Near Easterners could see for themselves that rain came from rainclouds.

“But it is noteworthy that at these points the poetic hyperbole of the psalmists is taken literally, while other things that are problematic like the Earth’s immobility are treated as metaphors, when the ancient Israelite assumptions if anything seem to have been the reverse.”

McGrath is so confused. He acts as if Ptolemaic astronomy supplies the background for the Psalms. But that’s grossly anachronistic. In the Psalms, the “Earth’s immobility” has reference to God protecting his people from catastrophic earthquakes, not celestial mechanics.

“But it is noteworthy that at these points the poetic hyperbole of the psalmists is taken literally, while other things that are problematic like the Earth’s immobility are treated as metaphors, when the ancient Israelite assumptions if anything seem to have been the reverse.”

McGrath is so confused. He acts as if Ptolemaic astronomy supplies the background for the Psalms. But that’s grossly anachronistic. In the Psalms, the “Earth’s immobility” has reference to God protecting his people from catastrophic earthquakes, not celestial mechanics.

No, not “convenient.” I gave a reason. Notice that McGrath has no counterargument.

I understand that you don’t care to interact with people who call your bluff, forcing you to fold and head for the nearest exit.

Notice McGrath’s modus operandi. Because his claims are indefensible, he resorts to adjectives (“Liars!”) and self-serving characterizations.

“I don’t think that any view which misrepresents evidence the way young-earth creationism and Intelligent Design do is compatible with the moral teachings of Christianity. If you reject the clear teaching of Jesus about truth in order to defend that ancient human beings were somehow prescient in their knowledge of modern science, there is really no way you can seriously call yourself a Christian, or your views Christian."

In the name of truth, McGrath is dissembling:

i) Does McGrath believe the Gospels are historically accurate records of what Jesus taught? Seems highly unlikely.

ii) And even assuming he does grant their accuracy, does McGrath believe that Jesus was the infallible Son of God Incarnate? Does he believe what Jesus said about hell, Jonah, Noah’s flood, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, the creation account (Gen 1-2) in relation to marriage, &c.? Clearly not. He regards Jesus as a child of his times.

“Hebrews 7 reflects an ancient understanding of procreation, not a modern one informed by genetics and biology.”

Once again, McGrath is hopelessly confused. The author of Hebrews indicates that he’s speaking hyperbolically. How did McGrath manage to miss the parenthetical disclaimer (hos epos eipein)?

Needless to say, there are creationists and intelligent design theorists who work in the relevant scientific fields. Notice that in the name of honesty, McGrath can’t bring himself to honestly represent the opposing side. And, of course, his definition of “Biblical scholars” is anyone who thinks like him.

“Young-earth creationists (I say this as someone who used to be one) are only liars and people who repeat what liars say uncritically. That is incompatible with Christianity at its most fundamental level.”

Since McGrath thinks the Bible is riddled with falsehoods, what’s his standard of comparison for true Christianity?

“So too is inerrancy, which treats ancient authors or a book as though they have an attribute which belongs to God alone.”

In that event, we can safely disregard everything McGrath says as errant. After all, he’s only human.

“It is a form of idolatry”

By whose definition? The Bible’s? Or McGrath’s?

“I think Chris Heard’s suggestion, that the word (not used elsewhere in the Greek Bible) recalls the story of Adam.”

That makes precious little sense. Far more likely is that “God-breathed” is a metaphor for divine speech. Breath=spoken word. Therefore, Scripture is divine speech committed to writing.

“Historical questions are answered using the tools of historical study. The fact that texts happen to be part of a collection that is given the status of Scripture by this or that religious body is irrelevant to the answering of historical questions. What matters is historical evidence.”

i) And McGrath has said in the past that methodological atheism is a guiding principle of historiography. So he will automatically discount a miraculous report as unhistorical.

ii) He also begs the question of whether Scripture is, itself, historical evidence.

iii) Notice, too, how he acts as though the Bible is no different than the Koran or Upanishads. It’s just a collection of ancient texts that happens to be given the status of Scripture by a religious community. Nothing inherent in the nature of the text itself to merit that status. Rather, that status is merely ascriptive and sociological. Something conferred on it from the outside. This just tells you that McGrath lacks a Christian view of Scripture.

“We have letters from someone who had met Jesus’ brother. We do not have something similar in the case of Adam.”

Notice how McGrath excludes revelation and inspiration. He has a purely secular outlook.

“What we do have is a story the genre of which is made clear by the presence of a talking animal.”

i) The genre of Gen 2-3 isn’t different from the genre of Pentateuchal narratives generally, many of which are characterized by supernatural incidents and agents.

ii) And why does he classify the “snake” as a talking animal? In the ancient Near East, “snakes” could be numinous beings. Supernatural beings.

“But alas, some Christians have been indoctrinated that they are supposed to ignore everythign that they have learned about reading and literary genres when it comes to the Bible.”

McGrath is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He is imposing his secular perspective on Gen 2-3. But that confuses what he is prepared to believe with what the narrator was prepared to believe. The narrator doesn’t share his naturalistic worldview.

To take the genre into account means viewing the narrative on its own terms. Assuming the viewpoint of the narrator. That’s the polar opposite of what McGrath is doing. He views the world as a closed system.

Notice that McGrath is tacitly rigging the definition of history, by tacitly defining the historical method naturalistically. Yet that prejudges what did happen as well as what can happen. McGrath talks about the “available evidence,” but his “rules” filter out any evidence that doesn’t slip through his secular sieve. So his approach to reality is artificial. He doesn’t begin with reality. He doesn’t take the world as it comes to us. Rather, he begins with his “rules.” Rules that dictate in advance what reality is permitted to be like.

“Although as I have already said, I have no interest in interacting with Steve Hays again given his behavior on a previous encounter…”

McGrath was hoping to get off a few free rounds attacking Christianity, then escape without a nick. He wants to be free to make tendentious assertions that go unchallenged. He resents having to defend his tendentious assertions.

“…I would point out for anyone else interested in discussing this that there is no movement, even on the part of ultra-conservative Christians, to redefine the judicial system to allow for miracles and the conclusion that God simply wanted someone dead.”

That’s McGrath’s canned example. But notice that although he pays lip-service to the “available evidence,” he has stimulative rules that preemptively exclude evidence of the miraculous. So even if all the evidence pointed to the fact that “God simply wanted someone dead,” McGrath would default a naturalistic explanation despite all the evidence to the contrary. His rules precommit him to a false naturalistic explanation over a true supernatural explanation every time.

“We set up methods that deal with the ordinary.”

“The ordinary” is a euphemism for McGrath’s ignorance or inexperience. What’s extraordinary for McGrath may be ordinary for a Christian exorcist (e.g. Kurt Koch, John Richards, Gabriele Amorth), or a paranormal researcher (e.g. Stephen Braude, Rupert Sheldrake, Mario Beauregard).

For instance, M. Scott Peck was a famous psychiatrist trained in secular medical science at Harvard University and Chase Western Reserve. But towards the end of his career he performed two exorcisms. He didn’t originally believe in demonic possession. It was the empirical evidence of two patients that forced him to make that diagnosis. That was the best explanation of the evidence. Cf. Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption.

“That they cannot reach verdicts about the truly extraordinary is simply part of the method.”

Notice how McGrath divorces methodology from truth. The method becomes an end in itself. It’s no longer about discovering the true explanation. For if the true explanation happens to be “extraordinary,” then the method discounts the true explanation out of hand.

McGrath uses methodology to mask his ulterior position. McGrath rejects Bible history, not on methodological grounds, but metaphysical grounds. He doesn’t think the world works in the way Scripture depicts. McGrath doesn’t believe those miracles happened. His metrology is based on his notion of reality.

“A Christian can obviously believe in miracles and also practice historical study. What they cannot do is claim that historical tools and methods, which assess probability, can judge an inherently improbable event (a parting sea, a resurrection) to be probable. This should not be controversial.”

That’s grossly simplistic and deeply confused. In what sense is a miracle like a resurrection or a parting sea “inherently improbable”?

i) It can be improbable in the sense that if nature is left to run its course unimpeded, then that event is highly unlikely (or even impossible).

ii) If, however, a personal agent (of sufficient power) deflects or redirects the course of nature, then that event is not improbable.

For instance, if Yahweh intends to part the sea, then that event is not improbable. To the contrary, the event is certain to happen under those conditions.

So is McGrath saying it’s “inherently improbable” that Yahweh intended to part the sea? How is McGrath in a position to know that?

McGrath’s definition of history is self-refuting. History is the past. History is whatever happened. If miracles occur, then historians had better make allowance for miracles. To say historians ought to disallow miracles is synonymous with saying historians ought to disallow the past.

Moreover, historical evidence for miraculous events isn’t in a class apart from historical evidence for other past events. Historians must rely on the same kinds of evidence.

It would only make sense for historians to exclude miracles from consideration if historians knew that miracles don’t happen. But that’s a metaphysical prejudgment. That can’t be settled by appeal to made-up rules.

McGrath needs to come clean. He lost his faith in Scripture. He’s moved from the far right end of the theological spectrum to the far left end of the theological spectrum. He disallows miracles, not because that commits some methodological faux pas, but because he doesn’t think they happen. So, if he were honest, that’s where he would engage the argument. But instead, he struggles to rationalize his apostasy by ad hoc definitions of history.

Notice McGrath’s bait-n-switch. The Bible doesn’t “show itself” to be errant. This isn’t “evidence from the Bible itself.” Rather, McGrath is imputing mistakes to Scripture based on his faith in some external sources of information, which he compares to Scripture. He applies criteria extrinsic to Scripture to Scripture. So he’s judging Scripture from the outside, not the inside. He disregards the self-witness of Scripture.

“Or for that matter any Muslim or Mormon who views their sacred text as self-authenticating.”

That comparison is confused on multiple grounds:

i) A document “viewed” as self-authenticating is not equivalent to a self-authenticating document. To take a comparison, suppose two students ask to be excused from class due to headaches. One student actually has a headache. And her experience is self-authenticating. She feels pained in her head. That’s not something she can be mistaken about.

The other student feigns a headache to cut class. She falsely claims to have a headache.

These are both self-authenticating claims, but they are hardly equivalent. The fact that a claim to self-authentication may be bogus doesn’t negate genuine cases of self-authentication.

ii) By the same token, McGrath fails to distinguish between different levels of justification. If I have a headache, I’m justified in believing I have a headache. That may not be sufficient justification for you to believe that I have a headache, since you’re not privy to my experience. Likewise, the self-authenticating character of the Bible may be sufficient for defensive apologetics even if it’s insufficient for offensive apologetics. It can be adequate for Christians, even if it’s unpersuasive to an outsider.

iii) Muhammad falsified his own claims to be a prophet when he appealed to the Bible to validate his message.

iv) Joseph Smith falsified his own claims to be a prophet when he claimed to translate an Egyptian document into English, and cited an Egyptologist who supposedly vouched for his translation. Well, we have the Egyptian document, which we can compare with Smith’s alleged translation. We also have a letter from the Egyptologist disowning Smith.

What makes McGrath imagine that Hindus operate with a concept of plenary verbal inspiration?

Keep in mind that Islam and Mormonism are Judeo-Christian heresies. Naturally they’re imitative. So what?

"Some of us think that what fallible human beings need most is to become mature, responsible, discerning individuals, and that if God had given what fundamentalists claim God gave, that would have been crumbs rather than bread."

Of course, that raises the question of what God McGrath believes in. Clearly not the God of Biblical theism.

[Jeff] "It would be great if Christians would stop giving us reasons to leave the Faith (since, in this case, Adam is not historical), and instead focused on reasons why we ought to be a part of it."

i) If you don’t believe the Bible, then you ought to leave the faith. That’s a natural winnowing process.

ii) Christians give abundant reasons for why you ought to be a part of it. It’s called Christian apologetics.

[Gary] "Wow, what a depressing thread of comments. All I can say is that I don’t need Adam in order to need Jesus. I have enough sin of my own on my hands that I don’t require any of his to still need the redemption that only Christ can bring."

According to Luke’s gospel, you can’t have Jesus without Adam: “23 Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli…38 the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Lk 3:23,38). So, actually, you do need both.

And according to Paul (Rom 5, 1 Cor 15), Jesus and Adam go together.

Are you just making up your own theology out of thin air?

“Nor do I think that either Luke’s history or Paul’s rhetoric are invalidated in any way without Adam.”

So what are you saying? That the Lukan genealogy of Christ is fictitional? If so, how much else of his Gospel is fictional?

Since Paul’s “rhetoric” centers on an extensive comparison and contrast between Adam and Christ, how does reducing Adam to pious fiction not invalidate his argument?

Christianity is a revealed religion. If you reject the revelatory status of the Bible, then there’s no basis for you to believe Christianity is true.

You’re drawing an ad hoc distinction between an errant messenger and a partially inerrant message. Even then, you must further distinguish between the erroneous part of the message involving Adam, and the inerrant, timelessly true part of the message involving sinful man and Jesus Christ. Your distinction is arbitrary and unstable. Why think Paul was wrong about the historical Adam but right about the historical Christ? Adam is not “incidental” to the argument as Paul frames the argument.

You have a makeshift position isn’t consistently naturalistic, consistently supernaturalistic, or consistently exegetical. Your alternative is a logical mess. Either be a consistent secularist or be a consistent Christian.

“In other words, he was delivering an inerrant, timeless spiritual truth from the standpoint of an ancient phenomenological perspective.”

You don’t seem to grasp the concepts your using. To classify the existence of Adam as a “phenomenological” perspective is a category mistake. The phenomenological perspective is used to denote how the world appears to an earthbound observer. Descriptions using observational language. It has nothing to do with existential claims like the historicity of Adam.

“I thought the phenomenological perspective was clear, pardon me if I didn’t explain it well enough. Paul would have had an ancient cosmology, ancient geology, an ancient view of biology, and associated with those he would have had ancient views on the origins of both life and death.”

And the Bible has a designation for folks like you: “unbelievers”. You’ve given candid expression to your naked infidelity.

“This provides the phenomenological perspective that explains Paul’s belief in a literal Adam.”

You’re using “phenomenological” idiosyncratically, but I suppose that’s the least of your problems.

“You say that Christianity is a ‘revealed religion’, fine, but I object to your assertion that I reject the revelatory status of the bible, I do not.”

You openly rejected the revelatory status of Scripture when you said “Paul would have had an ancient cosmology, ancient geology, an ancient view of biology, and associated with those he would have had ancient views on the origins of both life and death.” Thanks for corroborating my allegation.

“Also, it’s an entirely orthodox position to claim that God has provided two books of revelation – the bible as special revelation and creation itself as general revelation.”

That hoary comparison is equivocal. The Bible is literally bookish. By contrast, nature is, at best, figuratively bookish. Nature is nonverbal communication. Nonpropositional revelation. So it’s quite disanalogous to the verbal revelation of Scripture.

“But since they are both God’s revelation, they both contain truth that leads us to God, and they should not be in conflict with one another. You claim that I make arbitrary distinctions, when in fact you are the one implying the false dichotomy between the way we treat these two books.”

Your position is self-contradictory since you assert that Scripture contradicts the natural record, as interpreted by science–which you accept unquestioningly.

“No, if you re-read his comment you’ll see he clearly accepts the historical portions of scripture as history.”

He only accepts the “historical portions” of Scripture to the extent that critics have sterilized the accounts of their miraculous contaminants. He only accepts secularized editions of Bible history.

“However he is able to distinguish between genres, unlike you.”

His genre distinction is artificially imposed from the outside. He determines genre by whether the account contains supernatural elements. That mirrors his modernism.

And the “genre” of Gen 2-3 isn’t essentially different from the genre of the Gospels and Acts. These contain the same offending elements that he disdains in Gen 2-3. They narrate angels, demons, demoniacs, ghosts, nature miracles, telepathy, levitation, premonitory dreams, &c.

“No again, it only tells me that he lacks your view of scripture, and who are you to decide what is the correct ‘Christian view’ of scripture.”

No, it’s a choice between accepting or rejecting the Scriptural view of Scripture.

“Wrong again, his views on these things may differ from yours, but I didn’t see him reject them anywhere.”

You’re naive and easily duped.

“Steve, would it kill you to at least try grasp the concept that there may be other ways to read and interpret various portions of the bible other than your own simplistic way of doing it, and yet still remain within the pale of orthodox Christianity?”

You’re dissembling. By your own admission, the question at issue isn’t the interpretation of Scripture, but the veracity of Scripture.

Your position is outside the pale of orthodox Christianity. Your position (as well as McGrath’s) is squarely in the historic tradition of infidelity, viz. Anthony Collins, Jean LeClerc, Samuel Clarke.

Throughout the Bible, disbelieving God’s spokesmen is the acid test of apostasy and infidelity. You’d been excommunicated from the NT church. Your attitude repristinates the attitude of the Exodus generation, which was condemned to pine away in the wilderness through persistent disbelief in anything too far out of the ordinary to comport with their reflexive naturalism.

“I don’t expect you to agree with them, but are you able to even acknowledge the fact?”

I acknowledge that you’re self-deceived.

“I think we need to have a bit more humility when we approach scripture.”

That advice is always a one-way street. You think the opposing side needs to be more humble.

“The idea of incarnation is very important. God became flesh and walked among us. One thing He is saying to us in doing so is that who we are and how we live is important to Him, and He wants to work all things within and through His creation in that incarnational model. The scriptures bear this out as well.”

i) The Bible never uses an incarnational analogy for inspiration. You’re substituting an artificial analogy (which you cribbed from Enns) for the self-witness of Scripture.

ii) And even if we play along with that analogy, unless you subscribe to the Kenotic heresy, Jesus was an infallible teacher. So, by parity of argument, Scripture is infallible.

“They did not drop out of the sky fully formed and written in God’s own hand, He moved men to write, but to do so within their own cultural and historical context and understanding of God.”

i) You’re burning a straw man. You seem to be ignorant of the organic theory of inspiration, championed by Warfield, which is entirely consonant with inerrancy. Inspiration has a providential dimension.

ii) You also act as though God has to play the hand that history dealt him. But God is behind the cultural conditioning of the Bible writers. He made them what they are. He prepared them for the task.

iii) Moreover, Scripture is often countercultural. Have you never noticed that?

“So the bible itself is a very human book containing a progressive understanding of God, to the point that we even see Jesus reshaping people’s views of God that they had developed from Hebrew scripture.”

i) Progressive revelation doesn’t mean progression from error to truth.

ii) Jesus never corrected OT history or OT theism.

iii) The veracity of the OT is foundational to the Messianic claims of Jesus.

“The bible should point us to God, but should not be equated with Him.”

Once again, you’re burning a straw man. That said:

i) Systematic theology has a category of communicable attributes. The Bible exemplifies some of God’s communicable attributes.

ii) In addition, just as apostles wrote letters in lieu of their personal presence, the Bible is God’s stand-in for his personal presence. The written word takes the place of the spoken word. But it carries the full authority of the original speaker.

“So the bible itself is a very human book containing a progressive understanding of God, to the point that we even see Jesus reshaping people’s views of God that they had developed from Hebrew scripture.”

i) If you’re alluding to Christ’s position on divorce, remarriage, and the Sabbath, he appeals to other parts of the OT to warrant his position. So there’s no progression. Indeed, he often appeals to the Pentateuch. So he ends where Scripture begins.

If you’re alluding to the six antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:21-48), many commentators think he’s alluding to the oral Torah rather than the Mosaic law. If so, there’s no progression. That interpretation would also be consistent with his programatic reaffirmation of OT ethics (Mt 5:17-19).

ii) In some respects the new covenant supersedes the Mosaic covenant, but that doesn’t involve an altered view of God.

“I consider that pretty good company and do admit to being a casual follower of some of his stuff, but I haven’t read any of his books and don’t know that I’ve ever seen this from him, it’s actually come from some conversations I had with my pastor a couple of years ago.”

Let’s see: you told me, in a 9/8/13 comment, that:

“The idea of incarnation is very important. God became flesh and walked among us. One thing He is saying to us in doing so is that who we are and how we live is important to Him, and He wants to work all things within and through His creation in that incarnational model. The scriptures bear this out as well. They did not drop out of the sky fully formed and written in God’s own hand, He moved men to write, but to do so within their own cultural and historical context and understanding of God. So the bible itself is a very human book containing a progressive understanding of God, to the point that we even see Jesus reshaping people’s views of God that they had developed from Hebrew scripture.”

And Peter Enns, in a 9/5/13 post, just happened to say:

“…the Bible–even where it talks about God–is not a heavenly tablet dropped from heaven, but a relentlessly contextual collection of ancient literature that takes wisdom and patience to handle well.God is bigger than the Bible–and frankly, I see Jesus in the Gospels already sounding that note when he began reshaping common views of God based on Israel’s traditions, but I digress” (“God is bigger than the Bible”).

What an amazing coincidence! If I didn’t know better, I’d almost suspect you are more than a casual follower of his stuff.