The earliest Christians held a high view of the historicity of scripture and considered scripture inerrant. I've occasionally discussed these issues in the past and have provided documentation, such as here. I want to quote some relevant comments from Dionysius of Alexandria, since he's so often neglected in discussions of patristic issues:
"But by what you have written to me, you have quite soundly and with a good insight into the Divine Gospels established the fact that nothing definite appears in them about the hour at which He rose. For the Evangelists described those that came to the tomb diversely—that is, at different times…And we must not imagine that the evangelists are at variance and contradict one another: but even if there seem to be some small dispute upon the matter of your inquiry—that is, if though all agree that the Light of the world our Lord arose on that night, they differ about the hour, yet let us be anxious fairly and faithfully to harmonize what is said." (p. 77 here)
Showing posts with label Inerrancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inerrancy. Show all posts
Sunday, May 07, 2023
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
There Are Treasures In The Scripture Passages You've Neglected
Last week, I quoted a passage in John Chrysostom in which he comments on the significance of Paul's remarks in 1 Corinthians 16:9. People often neglect passages like 1 Corinthians 16, where there are references to the Biblical authors' travel plans, lists of names, farewells, etc. But there's a lot of valuable material in such passages, which we'll miss if we're not attentive enough.
In addition to the example of 1 Corinthians 16:9, think of what I wrote last Easter season about the implications of 1 Corinthians 16:20 for the objectivity and physicality of Jesus' resurrection appearances. Or the references to Mark and Luke close by each other near the close of some of Paul's letters (Colossians 4:10-14, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 24), with implications for the authorship of two of the gospels, their relationship with each other, and Paul's knowledge of the issues addressed in those gospels. Or think of how many undesigned coincidences involve material in such portions of scripture. These are just some examples among many others that could be cited.
"As in gold mines one skillful in what relates to them would not endure to overlook even the smallest vein as producing much wealth, so in the holy Scriptures it is impossible without loss to pass by one jot or one tittle, we must search into all. For they all are uttered by the Holy Spirit, and nothing useless is written in them." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 36:1)
In addition to the example of 1 Corinthians 16:9, think of what I wrote last Easter season about the implications of 1 Corinthians 16:20 for the objectivity and physicality of Jesus' resurrection appearances. Or the references to Mark and Luke close by each other near the close of some of Paul's letters (Colossians 4:10-14, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 24), with implications for the authorship of two of the gospels, their relationship with each other, and Paul's knowledge of the issues addressed in those gospels. Or think of how many undesigned coincidences involve material in such portions of scripture. These are just some examples among many others that could be cited.
"As in gold mines one skillful in what relates to them would not endure to overlook even the smallest vein as producing much wealth, so in the holy Scriptures it is impossible without loss to pass by one jot or one tittle, we must search into all. For they all are uttered by the Holy Spirit, and nothing useless is written in them." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 36:1)
Friday, February 12, 2021
A Good Discussion Of The Death Of Judas In Matthew And Acts
James Bejon recently wrote a Twitter thread on the subject, which I had seen linked by Peter Williams. And here's a PDF of the text in the thread, if you'd prefer that. However many of Bejon's points you take a position on or agree with, there's a lot of valuable material there to consider.
Monday, September 14, 2020
The Errors Of People Finding Errors In Scripture
Often, some of the best material in a book is found in its notes. Martin Hengel has a great line in a note in a book he wrote about the gospel of Mark. He's addressing modern critics who are overly dismissive of the author of the gospel of Mark because of alleged errors he made on matters like geography and Jewish customs:
"As many and as few mistakes are made in the Gospels as in monographs on the New Testament." (Studies In The Gospel Of Mark [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003], n. 51 on p. 148)
In the same note, he gives an example of a fellow New Testament scholar, apparently, who made a geographical error similar to the ones that are supposed to be in Mark:
"When I visited my distinguished colleague A. Kuschke (to whom I had dedicated the above article on his seventieth birthday) in Kusterdingen, south-east of Tübingen, we were able to admire Pfrondorf to the north, beyond the Neckar. A colleague who had lived for many years in Tübingen asked me, 'Is that beyond Wankheim?' 'No,' I had to tell him, 'it's in the opposite direction.'"
The house my mother is currently living in is the one where I spent most of my childhood. I lived there for a double-digit number of years, and I frequently go back there to visit. I can't name some of the streets closest to the house. There are many aspects of the topography, names of certain neighbors, etc. that I wouldn't be able to provide if asked. But critics often expect Mark to have a much higher level of knowledge about regions of Israel, like Galilee, where we have no reason to think he ever lived. As Hengel comments elsewhere in his book, "His 'deficient knowledge' of the geography of Galilee, which contemporary exegetes like to criticize, in fact simply shows up the [latter's] historical incomprehension: without a map it would be difficult even for a man of antiquity like Mark to establish his bearings in a strange area a good seventy miles from his home city" (46).
Hengel wasn't a conservative, and he wasn't an inerrantist, but he often agreed with conservatives and inerrantists on significant issues. And what he says above about the gospels is also relevant to criticisms that are often brought against the church fathers and other ancient sources. The evidence supports the inerrancy of scripture, and the supposed errors in Mark are often not seen as errors even by people who aren't inerrantists. But the points Hengel makes above should be kept in mind. Since inerrantists often argue for inerrancy by appealing to the general trustworthiness of the relevant documents, without yet appealing to their inerrancy, Hengel's points are relevant accordingly even for those wanting to persuade people to accept the inerrancy of scripture.
"As many and as few mistakes are made in the Gospels as in monographs on the New Testament." (Studies In The Gospel Of Mark [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003], n. 51 on p. 148)
In the same note, he gives an example of a fellow New Testament scholar, apparently, who made a geographical error similar to the ones that are supposed to be in Mark:
"When I visited my distinguished colleague A. Kuschke (to whom I had dedicated the above article on his seventieth birthday) in Kusterdingen, south-east of Tübingen, we were able to admire Pfrondorf to the north, beyond the Neckar. A colleague who had lived for many years in Tübingen asked me, 'Is that beyond Wankheim?' 'No,' I had to tell him, 'it's in the opposite direction.'"
The house my mother is currently living in is the one where I spent most of my childhood. I lived there for a double-digit number of years, and I frequently go back there to visit. I can't name some of the streets closest to the house. There are many aspects of the topography, names of certain neighbors, etc. that I wouldn't be able to provide if asked. But critics often expect Mark to have a much higher level of knowledge about regions of Israel, like Galilee, where we have no reason to think he ever lived. As Hengel comments elsewhere in his book, "His 'deficient knowledge' of the geography of Galilee, which contemporary exegetes like to criticize, in fact simply shows up the [latter's] historical incomprehension: without a map it would be difficult even for a man of antiquity like Mark to establish his bearings in a strange area a good seventy miles from his home city" (46).
Hengel wasn't a conservative, and he wasn't an inerrantist, but he often agreed with conservatives and inerrantists on significant issues. And what he says above about the gospels is also relevant to criticisms that are often brought against the church fathers and other ancient sources. The evidence supports the inerrancy of scripture, and the supposed errors in Mark are often not seen as errors even by people who aren't inerrantists. But the points Hengel makes above should be kept in mind. Since inerrantists often argue for inerrancy by appealing to the general trustworthiness of the relevant documents, without yet appealing to their inerrancy, Hengel's points are relevant accordingly even for those wanting to persuade people to accept the inerrancy of scripture.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
That's just your interpretation!
A highly agitated performance by apostate Randal Rauser
1. Throughout the video, Rauser plays his dogeared hand about how conservative Christians collapse their interpretation of scripture into scripture itself. Yet his application of that distinction is totally one-sided inasmuch as he exempts his progressive interpretation from the distinction he urges on conservative Christians. The conservative understanding is just their interpretation whereas his progressive interpretation is true.
2. He says the OT prophets had a false understanding of God because they didn't believe in the Incarnation or the possibility of an Incarnation. But that fails to distinguish between lacking belief in something, due to ignorance, and denying something. For instance, they didn't know that Jesus would be the messiah. That doesn't mean they disaffirmed the messiahship of Jesus. They just had no idea who Jesus was. They didn't know who the messiah was going to be at that level of biographical detail. But that hardly implies that they'd be opposed to Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.
Notice how radical Rauser's position is. The messiahship of Jesus requires OT validation. Yet Rauser says OT prophets had a false concept of the messiah. Evidently he interprets the OT in unitarian terms.
The question at issue isn't whether OT prophets were consciously Trinitarian but whether OT theism is consistent with or open to the revelation of the Trinity and Incarnation.
In addition, while the OT witness of the Trinity is oblique, the OT contains many passages that dovetail with the more explicit witness to the Trinity. This isn't a reversal of OT theism.
A fundamental purpose of the OT is to correct false views of God. Pagan views. Not to substitute a different false view of God.
In addition, while the OT witness of the Trinity is oblique, the OT contains many passages that dovetail with the more explicit witness to the Trinity. This isn't a reversal of OT theism.
A fundamental purpose of the OT is to correct false views of God. Pagan views. Not to substitute a different false view of God.
3. He also attacks the imprecatory psalms as expressing false views of God. That's another hobby horse of his.
He says we should use Jesus as our standard of comparison to correct the OT. But that's duplicitous because, as he's expressed elsewhere, he regards Jesus as a fallible, timebound, culturally-conditioned teacher, based on Rauser's Kenotic Christology. Rauser's yardstick isn't Jesus but Rauser's moral intuitions.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Unearthing the Bible
Up-to-date documentation on how archeology corroborates the Bible:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Archaeology-Confirms-Bible-Discoveries/dp/0736979158
https://www.amazon.com/How-Archaeology-Confirms-Bible-Discoveries/dp/0736979158
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Is inerrancy a house of cards?
A fairly recent development in what passes for evangelicalism is the now-stock objection that inerrancy is a house of cards. There's more than one thing we could say in response, but for now I'll make one observation:
Given inerrancy, is far simpler to know what to believe as a Christian. There's a twofold criterion:
i) Your reason(s) for believing it's taught in Scripture
ii) Your reason(s) for believing Scripture
If, however, you reject inerrancy, then believing it's taught in Scripture is insufficient reason for believing it's true. That only makes it a candidate for belief. If you deny inerrancy, then the fact that something is taught in Scripture fails to ensure its truth and even fails to carry a presumption regarding its truth.
In addition, you must have an individual justification, independent of Scripture, for each and everything you believe. Separate extrabiblical justifications for everything
In addition, you must have an individual justification, independent of Scripture, for each and everything you believe. Separate extrabiblical justifications for everything
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Inerrancy and evidentialism
I hesitate to do another post on the evidentialist/presuppositionalist debate because I don't wish to belabor the issue, but when I happen to be thinking about something, I tend to do a series of posts on the same topic because that's what I have on my mind. So here's one more post.
I recently said I like the evidentialist menu. In addition, evidentialists produce a lot of firstrate apologetic material.
However, a fundamental problem with evidentialism is it's neutrality or noncommittal attitude about inerrancy. An evidentialist can affirm or deny inerrancy. Both positions are consistent with evidentialism.
But once you surrender inerrancy, you're free to surrender other biblical teachings. Anything that you feel is too awkward or inconvenient to defend. Anything that might be a stumbling block to people coming to the faith. Anything you yourself would like to get rid of.
The problem with that attitude is that evidentialism makes Christianity theologically unstable. It suffers from an identity crisis. There's no built-in limit on what biblical teachings you can jettison. It comes down to your personal assessment of what constitutes the core of Christianity. The underlying problem is that evidentialism fails to take seriously the nature of Christianity as a revealed religion.
By contrast, presuppositionalists don't treat biblical teachings as negotiable and expendable. Now we might ask if that's an implication of presuppositionalism or just a reflection of the religious culture in which presuppositionalists operate.
I'd say it's an implication of presuppositionalism. Basically, evidentialists approach the Bible as historians while presuppositionalists approach the Bible as theologians. And presuppositionalists are right about that. Of course, that's not deny the historicity of Scripture. But Christianity is a religion. It's about God and God's relation to the world he made.
And it's not as if the Bible is a secular record of sacred history. Bible writers are agents of sacred history. They have a divine vocation in redemptive history. They aren't just spectators of divine activity in redemptive history; rather, God acts in them and through them as divine spokesmen and witnesses. In that regard, presuppositionalism has a more holistic and integrated viewpoint.
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
The church and social distancing
As I noted in another post, the ancient church didn't practice social distancing:
Of course it didn’t. It couldn’t refrain from meeting in the same physical geographical area and be obedient. There was no other way to meet or minister to the sick. Likewise, they likely didn’t take more precautions with the sick because they had no concept that illness was spread through viruses and bacteria. This is simply an “is-ought” fallacy. Because people in church history didn’t do X, we ought not to do X. According to what? The authority of a tradition that had no alternative means available to them. If there is only one means to be obedient, then there is no choice to between options. There are no options.
1. That's a very revealing response. This isn't simply about the practice of ancient Christians in general or ecclesiastical tradition but the NT church. This is a divine command. So Hodge is saying the command is predicated on a faulty, prescientific understanding of disease transmission.
2. In addition, he misses the point. Prayer doesn't require physical compresence. You can pray for someone without praying with them or over them. You can pray by remote control. The efficacy of prayer is normally independent of time and place in that regard. You don't have to be there to pray about it.
Yet the command enjoins elders to go to the sick and pray for them on site. Indeed, make physical contact by anointing their skin with oil. skin on skin contact. A hands-on ministry.
That's the polar opposite of the social distancing measures that Hodges thinks we have a duty to practice. Evidently, Hodge thinks this is a command that elders ought to defy. Indeed, if they knew then what we know now, this is a command that should never have been obeyed. It was a fallible, misbegotten command from the outset.
Strategic priorities in apologetics
These can each be resolved by simply setting aside Biblical inerrancy.1 A saved liberal Christian is better than nothing, so reserve the above sub-topics for later.Let me add that you have a virtual responsibility to ensure that your interlocutor knows that one can be a Christian while accepting evolution.
1. This reflects an unfortunate trend among some younger generation apologists. They don't think like theologians. Yet Christianity is a religion, so it's necessary to think like a theologian.
2. Although the Bible contains many historical narratives, the Bible is divine revelation. It's not just a historical record of events, but theologically interpreted events. God raises up prophets and apostles to speak to and through them. A supernatural process. Consider the altered conscious states of seers like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and John the Revelator. Or consider the theological interpretations of Paul, the author of Hebrews, &c. Or how the Gospels integrate history with theological interpretation.
3. Is there such a thing as "saved liberal Christian"? Or is that someone with a fundamentally unmodified secular outlook who's tacked on some Christian sentiments?
How is that better than nothing rather than worse than nothing? If he's satisfied with a bad answer, a wrong answer, he has no incentive to seek a better answer. He took a wrong turn and keeps going in the wrong direction. It's not as if a "saved liberal Christian" is doing God a favor.
4. Many unbelievers will rightly see it as intellectually evasive when Christian apologists duck objections to the inerrancy of Scripture. That doesn't mean a Christian apologist is obligated to individually run through every objection to the Bible. There are lots of good resources we can point a critic to, viz., Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (B&H Academic, 2016); D. A. Carson, ed. The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016); James Hoffmeier & Dennis MaGary, eds., Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? (Crossway 2012); Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans 2003); John Oswalt, The Bible Among the Myths (Zondervan 2009); Vern Poythress, Inerrancy and the Gospels (Crossway 2012); Peter Williams, Can we Trust the Gospels? (Crossway 2018). If the critic is one of those frivolous people who recycles canned objections but is too apathetic to examine the answers, that's not the responsibility of a Christian apologist.
5. If evolution is contrary to the Biblical revelation of organic origins, a Christian has no duty to say one can be an inconsistent Christian. While it's possible to be an inconsistent Christian, there's no obligation to commend or recommend intellectual or theological inconsistency. It's not as if a "saved liberal Christian" is doing God a favor.
A Christian apologist lacks the authority to tell people what biblical teachings they must believe and which they are free to disregard. There can be debates about what Scripture teaches, but the principle is to accept all of divine revelation.
Monday, May 04, 2020
Friday, May 01, 2020
Thursday, April 23, 2020
I double-dare ya!
@RandalRauserChristians often defend the offering of Isaac in Genesis 22 by noting that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Fair enough, but the text still presents a massive moral problem. Imagine, by analogy, that you order Smith to rape his own daughter or be executed.You never intend for Smith to carry out the action. You only want to test him to see if he is willing. It turns out that he is, and you stop the act from occurring. No harm no foul? Not at all.We cannot begin to envision the unimaginable, destructive emotional impact on both Jones and his daughter as they carry the knowledge that he was preparing to rape her. Imagine the impact on Isaac of his father's willingness to sacrifice him.
1. To the extent that this poses a dilemma, the dilemma is whether to be an atheist or a Christian. Apostate Randal Rauser constantly straddles the fence, attacking the Bible like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, while pretending to be a Christian. His position isn't consistently Christian or secular, but just a willful mishmash.
2. It's revealing that Rauser is unable to attack the binding of Isaac directly. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with drawing analogies, it betrays a weakness of his position that he can't show what's wrong with the binding of Isaac on its own grounds, so he must swap it out for a supposedly comparable situation. But why should we shift focus on his bait-n-switch? It's just a diversionary tactic. The onus lies on him to show that that his comparison is relevantly analogous. Why take the bait?
3. He got the names confused, but presumably Smith/Jones are the same individual (father) in the illustration.
4. In Gen 22, Isaac has no advance knowledge that he's the designated sacrificial victims. He only finds out at the very last minute. So there's no brooding emotional buildup or escalating psychological tension on his part.
5. As as often been noted, Abraham is an old man while Isaac is a teenager. So Isaac voluntarily submits to the sacrifice even though it's within his ability to overpower his elderly father and flee the scene. He's a willing victim.
6. Unless Rauser is an open theist, the point of the ordeal is not for Yahweh to find out the limits of Abraham's faith. If anything, it's Abraham who learns something about Yahweh when Yahweh calls it off at the last minute. And it's ultimately for the benefit of the unseen reader.
7. One problem with Rauser's comparison is his failure to appreciate stereotypical differences between male and female psychology. As a feminist, Rauser can't make allowance for the fact that in some crucial respects, male and female are wired differently. What is unbearably traumatic for a female may not be for a male. This issue crops up in debates over women in combat, where many women wash out because they can't cope with the inhuman stress.
To take another example, consider a sleepover where the 5th-grade boys watch Aliens. The boys take it in stride:
Imagine showing Aliens to a group of 5th-grade girls. Boys and girls naturally have a different psychological makeup for scary things. There are exceptions on both sides, but that's the norm. Many boys go out of their way to seek out scary things to see and do. They double-dare each other.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Sunday, April 19, 2020
The Nile in Bible prophecy
Jonathan McLatchieHow should we as Christian evidentialists frame the argument from predictive prophecy? One potential vulnerability of the argument from predictive prophecy is that we take one passage rigidly literally and interpret other prophetic texts as symbolic. For example, we take Ezekiel 26 literally when it talks about the rubble of Tyre being dumped into the sea (fulfilled in 332 BC by Alexander the Great). But then when Isaiah 19 speaks about the waters of the Nile being dried up, that is interpreted symbolically (e.g. Egyptian economy takes such a hit that it's as though the Nile itself had dried up). One objection then could be that we are cherry picking what to take literally (when it fits) and what not to (when a literal interpretation doesn't fit). If the Ezekiel 26 prophecy against Tyre hadn't been literally fulfilled, we might then say that the dumping into the sea is symbolic imagery. How can a Christian assert the argument from predictive prophecy while accounting for this vulnerability?
Here's the relevant section of Isa 19:
5 And the waters of the sea will be dried up,and the river will be dry and parched,6 and its canals will become foul,and the branches of Egypt's Nile will diminish and dry up,reeds and rushes will rot away.7 There will be bare places by the Nile,on the brink of the Nile,and all that is sown by the Nile will be parched,will be driven away, and will be no more.8 The fishermen will mourn and lament,all who cast a hook in the Nile;and they will languishwho spread nets on the water.9 The workers in combed flax will be in despair,and the weavers of white cotton.
While the figurative/economic interpretation of Isa 19 may be correct, there are those who think this was literally fulfilled when the Aswan high dam was built, which had disastrous ecological side-effects. In fact, the Aswan dam was the first thing that occurred to me when I read Jonathan's post. Jonathan probably doesn't make that association because he's half my age; the dam was built in my lifetime, whereas construction was before Jonathan's time, so it's part of my sense of recent history, just through osmosis, by living through that period and seeing news coverage.
I'm not saying that's necessarily a fulfillment of Isa 19, but it's something to consider:
The Aswan High Dam has produced several negative side effects. Most costly is the gradual decrease in the fertility of agricultural lands in the Nile delta, which used to benefit from the millions of tons of silt deposited annually by the Nile floods. Another detriment to humans has been the spread of the disease schistosomiasis by snails that live in the irrigation system created by the dam. The reduction of waterborne nutrients flowing into the Mediterranean is suspected to be the cause of a decline in anchovy populations in the eastern Mediterranean. The end of flooding has sharply reduced the number of fish in the Nile, many of which were migratory.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Midianite virgins
@RandalRauserKing David didn't have an affair with Bathsheba. He raped her. There is no willing consent when the king orders that a civilian wife be brought into his presence.
True. Of course, that's a narrative description, not a divine command.
Numbers 31 describes God commanding that all Midianite men, boys, and nonvirgin women be killed. That's genocide.
i) In context, I assume this wasn't a campaign to eradicate the Midianites as a people-group from the face of the earth, but at most the Midianite adults who are captured at this particular locality. Indeed, the virgins were exempted and there are further historical references to the Midianites in the OT. As one OT scholar has noted (in private email):
ii) There is some ambiguity as to who the Midianites were, and it has been suggested that they might not have been so much a distinct ethnicity as people who could either be associated or intermingled with various peoples, such as the Moabites, Amalekites, etc. It may be that they should be regarded as a confederation of different peoples as opposed to a single ethnicity.
iii) It is particularly directed against the Midianites on account of their attempt to corrupt the Israelites, as recounted in Numbers 25. Notice the association with the Moabites in this episode. Indeed, we can might well understand that this was not a matter of “ethnics,” but a matter of “ethics.”
iv) Because the concern in Numbers 31 is particularly against those Midianites who were involved in the Midianite/Moabite incident in Numbers 25, we cannot say the action was directed against all Midianites.
v) As well, we have to take into account what is certainly to be understood as the hyperbolic character of both the language and the narrative. Indeed, after this account, there are still Midianites who have to be contended with, as evidenced by the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Isaiah.
"but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (v. 18) A terrified 13-year-old who saw her family killed doesn't consent. That's rape.
i) The statement in Num 31:18 is notably terse. Probably because it takes for granted the more detailed war bride context of Deut 21:10-14. In other words, they're not sex slaves. Rather, it was meant to be understood within the kind of framework envisioned in Deut 21:10-14.
ii) Likewise, isn't the tacit implication that Midianite virgins can be distinguished from Midianite wives because the virgins haven't reached sexual maturity, and so they're not yet eligible for marriage, but will be married off when they hit the age at which Jewish females usually got married?
iii) Is that an enviable situation for females to be in? Certainly not. But as I've mentioned before, these were warrior cultures. If the men are killed, the females are totally vulnerable. They can starve or turn to prostitution. Rauser fails to consider the plight of unattached females in the ancient Near East.
The commands doesn't represent an ideal. Rather, they address a situation in which some things have already gone terribly wrong. So this is damage control. I've discussed the dilemma in more detail elsewhere:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-bible-rubs-us-wrong-way.html
iv) What does Rauser think it was like to be a woman in a heathen culture like the Midianites? They were much better off becoming Jewish wives.
For a modern comparison, consider the forcible taking of young Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014. They didn't consent either.
Which piggybacks on his dubious interpretation of Num 31:18.
Christians need an honest conversation about biblical atrocities.
Rauser needs to have an honest conversion about why he pretends to be a Christian when he repudiates biblical revelation. He suffers from a makeshift position that isn't consistently Christian or secular. He abodes fanatical confidence in his moral intuitions, even though the Bible writers don't share his intuitions. So what makes his intuitions true?
Rauser suffers from a Messiah complex. His self-appointed calling in life is to single-handedly redefine Christianity along progressive lines. That's doomed to fail. It will never replace biblical Christianity. And his alternative is just a hodgepodge of secular humanism with some residual Christian motifs and paranormal anecdotes.
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Nonlinear memory
A prima facie problem with the Olivet Discourse is that Jesus appears to make the fall of Jerusalem, the Parousia, and the end of the world roughly simultaneous. One explanation is that this is composite discourse, so it reflects an editorial, thematic sequence rather than the original sequence. The Olivet Discourse may be a composite discourse, parts of which were delivered at different times, then spliced together.
Nowadays, many commentators regard the Gospels as very artfully crafted works with a narrative theological strategy. But as Lydia McGrew and I have discussed, it's preferable to view them as oral histories.
Between about the 1:21-25 min mark of this panel discussion:
Lydia has a different explanation for the Olivet Discourse. Before commenting on that I'd like to take a step back to draw a distinction between misremembering and not remembering. I'm sure we've all had long conversations which we then recount to a friend. We don't remember the exact flow of the conversation. We don't remember the sequence in which things were said. Certain things stick out in our minds, and that's what we recount.
That's different from misremembering. In misremembering, we mistakenly think we're reproducing the original sequence.
Now Lydia's point is that the disciples may not recall the original sequence of what Jesus said. So when the discourse is retold by the Synoptics, there may be an unconscious rearrangement of the order in which things were said. As a result, some things are put together as if they go together, in a way that doesn't match the flow of what Jesus said.
That can foster the misimpression that Jesus synchronized certain events when in fact these are different, chronologically separate, spaced out events. The discourse doesn't reflect historical continuity, but memorable highlights. In recounting them they appear to be concurrent or overlapping events, when in fact that's selective, nonlinear recall.
Friday, March 27, 2020
Don't sacrifice your prejudice to defend the Bible
https://randalrauser.com/2020/03/dont-sacrifice-your-conscience-to-defend-your-reading-of-the-bible/
Your visceral response is telling you that that kind of action is wrong, intrinsically wrong.
That's hardly a reliable guide. Amputating a gangrenous limb evokes a visceral response, but it's not telling me that this kind of action is intrinsically wrong. To the contrary, it's intrinsically right.
It just means an observer can imagine what it would be like to have that done to him. That's a basis for compassion.
If you agree with Pickett that capital punishment is a brutalizing practice…
There's nothing essentially brutalizing about the practice, although it can be conducted in gratuitously brutal ways.
…and if you agree with that daughter that it just gives you one more dead person
That equivalence is amoral. It obliterates the distinction between innocent death and just deserts.
Rauser then inveighs about stoning, juvenile delinquents, concluding that:
That suggestion offends me to my core. I hope it does for you as well.
What passes for Rauser's moral core isn't my arbiter for right and wrong. Rauser is oblivious to his progressive social conditioning.
Mr. Merrill is here defending honor killing. It’s the same logic by which a Muslim father will kill his daughter after she defies him by going out with her western boyfriend. In short, it’s the same twisted logic to which blood-spattered murderers appeal when they are led away in handcuffs.
That's a malicious and scurrilous misrepresentation of Merrill's position. An honor killing is where a relative is executed because, in the eyes of the community, what happened to them brought shame on the family or clan. It's not based on anything the relative did wrong. To the contrary, they may be the innocent party. They were wronged. A classic example in Islam is the treatment of rape victims.
The OT doesn't have honor killings in that sense. Rauser's antipathy towards Biblical revelation is so truculent that he can't bring himself to honestly represent what it says.
Don’t be like Mr. Merrill. Don’t sacrifice your conscience in your reading of the Bible. Instead, recognize the gift of your God-given moral intuitions and let them offer chastening guides as you wrestle with the Biblical text.
Rauser never allows biblical revelation to form or inform his conscience. Problem is, he has no criterion to distinguish his conscience from social conditioning and cultural relativism.
As I've said on more than one occasion, it's possible to be both a moral realist and a moral skeptic. We can believe in moral facts, objective moral norms, but be skeptical about our ability to isolate these from the power of social conditioning and cultural relativism. For Christians, divine revelation helps to sort them out. But Rauser doesn't have that winnowing process. It's just his seat-of-the-pants reaction, which just so happens to echo his education and peer group.
He sacrifices divine revelation to his prejudice rather than sacrificing his prejudice to divine revelation. Rauser constantly labors to strike a balance between atheism and Christianity, and his center of gravity is secular humanism. His position is an unstable compromise between secularism and residual Christianity. It isn't consistently one or the other, which is why it's so hard for him to get others to take his position seriously. He's the atheist's favorite "Christian" because he's a useful tool. His position is no threat to atheism, but he can be counted on to attack evangelical theology. The contrast between his sympathy for atheism and antipathy towards evangelicalism is striking and stark.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
"Biblical violence and moral/cultural relativism
@RandalRauserMany Christian apologists are strident defenders of objective moral knowledge. And yet, they defend readings of biblical violence that suggest moral relativism. For example, genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel. That's a problem.
1. Rauser says Christians should steelman the opposing position. Improve on the argument for the position you oppose, then knock it down. But Rauser routinely does the opposite when attacking evangelical theology. He picks the weakest arguments. He resorts to caricatures.
2. One tactic is to manipulate definitions. He tries to use a rubbery definition of genocide that covers both OT holy war and modern examples. Of course, if you invent a definition that's sufficiently indiscriminate, that makes the comparison easier. But that's just verbal sleight-of-hand.
3. The argument is not that "genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel." Sure, he quote some Christian layman somewhere who will say that, but that's the tactic of an intellectual bully.
4. The consistent, defensible argument is what God commanded ("biblical violence") ancient Israel to do wasn't objectively wrong, and if he commanded an analogous action under analogous circumstances today, that wouldn't be objectively wrong, either.
5. Finally, these aren't just particular "readings" of sacred text. Rather, that's what it says and what it means. Rauser understands that, which is why thinks the texts are false when they attribute such commands to God. In reality, he interprets the texts on "biblical violence" the same way his opponents do. He doesn't think the interpretation is wrong; instead, he thinks the message is wrong. If he were more honest and forthcoming, he'd admit from his perspective that the original text is morally relativistic.
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