Tag: contradictions

Book Plunge: Jesus Contradicted

What do I think of Mike Licona’s latest book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Mike Licona sent me a publisher’s copy of this book. I want to say at the start that I value my relationship with him as my former father-in-law, but I also have a great relationship with Tim McGrew. Some people have asked me to give my thoughts on minimal vs maximal facts. My thoughts are I am not interested. I just want to see the kingdom spread. I can use the minimal facts, but I can also make a case for the Gospels as well. I also think everyone defending the resurrection should be able to defend the Gospels.

I say this at the front because I know there are feuds that take place on Facebook. I want no part of them. Whenever I have been asked publicly or privately what my stance is, I have said the same thing every time and that is not changing.

Also, some of you might be wondering why if I got an early copy, why am I just reviewing it now? Because I’m a seminary student and I have several other books I’m reading. As it stands, I’m just now going through volume 1 of Habermas’s resurrection series.

So looking at Licona’s book, if you have already read Why Are There Differences In The Gospels? not much here will strike you as new. That being said, there are some areas that are more covered here than there are in that one. What comes to mind immediately is a deeper look at inerrancy and a look at the subject of inspiration.

The book is certainly quite readable and that for many people will be a huge plus. Knowing Licona, it was easy to hear his voice throughout as I was reading it and it read more like a conversation to me than anything else. I understand this book was to be a popular level format of the former and with that, he did succeed.

A popular refrain throughout shows up in places like page 18. Sometimes when people are presented with differences in the Gospels, they can think the foundations of their faith are being shaken when really, it is their view of Scripture that is being shaken, and that could be a false one. As I write this, I think of a friend of mine who almost lost his faith. His doubts began when he found out that 1 John 5:7 was not authentic.

From here, Licona looks at views on what order the Gospels were written in, how biographies were written in the time of Jesus, and then to his subject of compositional devices. When it comes to my personal view on them, I think they can account for some differences. On the other hand, I think there are some times where harmonization by other means does make sense. I would not want to say compositional devices are the silver bullet that answers every problem. I also would not say they play no role whatsoever.

Then we get to the topic of inspiration and here, I find the insistence on this puzzling. In the long run, how does it help us? Let’s suppose all of Scripture is believed to be true. Okay. Good. Now we add in it’s inspired.

Alright.

And what have we gained exactly?

I understand that Paul does tell us all Scripture is inspired by God, but could that just be a way of saying it is all true? If we show it is all true, what have we gained? We have spilled much ink on a topic that won’t change how we read the text anyway?

The section on inerrancy was an interesting one. Here, I parted ways a bit more seeing as I much more prefer my own idea of contextualizing inerrancy. I didn’t really understand what Licona was meaning by flexible inerrancy. I also understand he has a lot of this depend on middle-knowledge. As a Thomist, I am somewhat skeptical of middle-knowledge claims to an extent. I also right now do not have the time to look at that topic much more, but if I am skeptical of middle-knowledge, does that mean I have to avoid flexible inerrancy? With contextualizing inerrancy, I don’t have that problem.

I also wish that while Licona does look at the ways ancient biographies were written, I would have liked to have seen a lot said about the social world of the Gospels and the New Testament, particularly how they rely on honor and shame. There were times I was surprised to see the way Licona seemed unaware of this. Consider when he refers to Psalm 137:9 and asks if the Psalmist was mirroring God’s heart when he wrote

Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

If you understand honor and shame, you realize that this was also the way the Israelites were speaking in their captivity. They were being mocked in the land they were in and so they were in essence saying “May what you did to us be done to you!” This is also the way ancient societies could often deal with anger. Trash talk was a way of letting out hostilities before they escalated to something greater. No view of middle-knowledge is needed for this. Also, if a scholar like Licona would look at honor and shame in the Gospels, maybe more people in the apologetics world on the lay level would notice.

So while I do disagree with a number of things said in that chapter, overall, the book is an enjoyable read. If you hesitated to understand his former book, get this one instead. It will be a much better read for you.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge Part 1: Politely Rejecting the Bible

What do I think of Dan Kapr’s open? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw this book while browsing through my Facebook feed and seeing as it was cheap on Kindle, and still is, I decided to get it. The book says it is by a former seminarian who came to see the Bible in a light that showed it was not a perfect revelation from God. Well, if the guy wants to invest in it, other people could be reading it, so I might as well give my own insights here.

First, thus far, I do not see any of the angry atheist diatribes. While that is refreshing, at the same time, the read is pretty boring. For one thing, the writing comes across as patronizing with the writer wanting to explain everything in detail. Of course, that could be a problem on my end since too many people today do need to have details about something like this explained in great detail.

Second, it’s not a shock to see that this is largely about inerrancy. With an update of Defining Inerrancy in the works, this is a topic I have written about and have great interest in. It’s not a shock that this comes out often as a cause for people abandoning Christianity. This is not to say inerrancy is false, but it is made too much of an emphasis such as some people walk away thinking if there is one contradiction in the Bible, then absolutely nothing in it is true. (Oddly, it seems an idea like “Do not murder” is still true.)

At the same time, Kapr does at least admit that fundamentalism exists on both sides of the spectrum so that there are fundamentalist atheists. These would be the people who say if there is one error, then everything is false. Of course, that’s just one example of fundamentalist atheism. One problem though is that Kapr seems to imply that fundamentalism is the same as anti-intellectual.

Say what you will about the fundamentalists, it doesn’t mean that they were anti-intellectual. They were simply wanting to return to the fundamentals. Kapr is also right when he points out that evolution wasn’t even seen as a defeater for Christianity and Scripture with someone such as B.B. Warfield (aka Mr. Inerrancy) not having a problem with evolution.

Kapr is also right that inerrancy is not a modern doctrine. Now certain understandings of it can be modern, but not the doctrine itself. It’s also true that you can be a Christian and reject biblical inerrancy. Talk is made of inspiration, which I agree it is not a well-defined term and I tend to not talk about it. After all, I want to emphasize the text is true. Suppose the text is true and also inspired. Does that mean it’s more true? No. It’s hard to say even what it does add.

I plan to go through this chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. For this first one, there isn’t much to say. In all honesty, it was a bit of a boring read for me as a lot of it was old hat stuff, but we’ll see if something interesting comes up ahead.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/29/2018: Ross Hickling

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Evidence. We all say we want it, but do we really? If we get evidence, do we know how to evaluate it? What are the standards of legal investigation that are to be used for a claim? Can we use these on historical claims?

And what of the skeptics of the faith? On the internet, Richard Carrier is one of the big ones that comes up. While he is indeed well-known on the internet, outside of the internet he’s not having the impact he would like to have. His big book on doubting the existence of the historical Jesus really didn’t get much notice.

That’s most scholars. Not all are like that. There is one who decided to look at this internet blogger and see what he was saying. He took the work of Carrier and subjected it to tests based on his life in law enforcement and evaluating evidence. He focused mainly on the resurrection of Jesus. Does Carrier’s case against it hold up? He concludes no. His name is Ross Hickling, but who is he?

According to his bio:

Ross retired as a Senior Inspector with the U.S. Marshals Service in 2014 after serving in federal and local law enforcement for 26 years.  During his career in law enforcement, Ross functioned in various investigative roles to include a narcotics detective, SWAT team operative, threat investigator, seized assets investigator, fugitive investigator, and sex offender investigations coordinator. Midway through his career with the U.S. Marshals Service, Ross began to prepare for a career in ministry after retirement when he began his seminary education.  Since that time, Ross has earned a BS in Religion (Liberty University), an MA in Religion (Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary), an MA in Christian apologetics (Biola University), and a PhD in Missiology/Christian apologetics from North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa. Ross worked under the supervision of prof. dr. Henk Stoker while completing his thesis at NWU Potch critiquing a skeptic’s challenge to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  During his time with the U.S. Marshals Service and while completing his studies, Ross realized the need to bring evidentiary principles to the study of Christian apologetics. Since retiring, Ross founded “Shield Your Faith,” an organization dedicated to sharing the great reasons for faith in Jesus Christ from an evidentiary perspective, took part in an international apologetics campaign in the Philippines (2016)/South Africa (2017, 2018), currently teaches apologetics on the seminary level (Charlotte Christian College and Theological Seminary), and is currently the chapter director at a Ratio Christi club at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Ross is married to Andrea, his lovely wife of 29 years, has two adult children, and resides in Kernersville, NC.
As one who has spent a lot of time arguing with mythicists, which gets more and more pointless, I have always been interested in excellent critiques of those proponents of it and while Hickling doesn’t really take those on, his insights are still great to have. We will be talking about such things as evidence for the resurrection, the appearances of Jesus the disciples claimed to experience, and pagan copycats. I hope you’ll be listening and please go on iTunes and leave a positive review of the Deeper Waters Podcast!
In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Rappers And The Resurrection

What does making a music video have to do with the resurrection? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A week or two ago I was driving through our town and heard a news story in the morning. Two rappers had been out on a public bridge for cars to drive across making a music video when they got hit by a driver. The driver was not charged with anything since the performers should not have been in the middle of the road. I do not think there were any deaths involved and the rappers were charged for creating a disturbance of sorts.

So I’m hearing this story and thinking in some ways it’s kind of amusing. There are a couple of people making fools of themselves out in the middle of the street and fate kind of happens to them. Hopefully, they have learned their lesson and they won’t do it anymore.

Later on still, I was driving and I heard more of the story. It turns out I was wrong about what was going on in my mind’s eye. I had pictured two guys out in the road making a disturbance when a car comes through and doesn’t have time to stop. Apparently, I had it wrong, but I think it was justifiable based on how the story was described.

As it turns out, there was a group of people in the middle of the road. I am not sure how many, but only two of them were hit. This wasn’t just a couple of guys then, but a whole entourage. Listening to the earlier story, I would have been sure it was a couple of guys only because that’s all that were mentioned.

What does this have to do with the resurrection? In the resurrection stories, we often hear differences on how many women or angels were present. The authors can mention different numbers. They can do this while knowing more were present. In John 20, Mary Magdalene is seen going alone to the tomb, but when she gets to the disciples to tell them about the body being gone, she uses the word we saying that “We don’t know where they put him.”

It’s my personal theory that each Gospel writer mentioned the women who were his sources for the story and/or were still alive to talk about the story. Of course, it could also be just at times highlighting the ones who did something, such as the case of the angels at the tomb. If only one speaks, that is the one focused on. In his research, Mike Licona calls this spotlighting.

We still do this today in many of our own accounts and I would contend that the original news story I heard was doing just that. The whole group didn’t need to be talked about because they weren’t relevant in the mind of the reporter to what took place. The two stories do not contradict, but rather they complement one another and one brings out fully what happened more.  The same goes for the resurrection accounts.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Book Plunge: Biographies and Jesus

What do I think of Keener and Wright’s book published by Emeth Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Richard Burridge caused a revolution of sorts in Gospel studies in the 20th century by making a thorough demonstration that the Gospels are Greco-Roman biographies. Today, most scholars would agree with that. Still, that is the start of the journey. We now have to ask what difference it makes. Is this just knowledge that will answer a question for us on a game show, or are there some ramifications for this?

In this volume, Keener and Wright have brought together several students doing graduate level research at Asbury to talk about the issue. There are some chapters by the editors of Keener and Wright and one by Licona, but for the most part, this is done by students, which I find refreshing. It’s good to see new faces rising up and taking on the task of serious scholarship.

The students look at what difference it makes to say that the Gospels are biogarphies. One at the start is that we have spent so much time trying to trace the communities that received the Gospels that we forgot the point of the Gospels. The point of the Gospels is to tell the story of the life of Jesus. An average person in the pew might not consider this much of a shock, but it does affect how we read the Gospels greatly. The Gospels don’t have a community and then they shape the story. The story is written in such a way about Jesus and telling about Him that hopefully it will shape the community.

Helpful also are notes about the dating of the Gospels. We can accept testimony about historical figures on far weaker grounds than we do the Gospels. Too often, it’s easy to dismiss all the evidence that is there for one position and then say that there is no evidence of the position. It needs to be realized that bias cuts both ways and we must all make sure prior worldview assumptions aren’t changing the way we view the data.

One helpful source in here are the comparisons across other biographies. Those who say the Gospels are unreliable because of differences in the accounts should see differences in other accounts of the same event. Very rarely would we reject the primary event because the secondary details are disputed. Sadly, this is done with the Gospels constantly.

Also helpful to readers will be Keener’s section on oral tradition. He points out problems with the idea of telephone and shows how memorization was taken extremely seriously in the past. Again, this is often a case of a double standard. The Gospels are looked at through one set of lenses and all other ancient history is looked at through another set.

Keener and Wright have put together excellent material that will be helpful for any student of the Gospels. To have new minds going through the material and presenting their thoughts is an excellent treat and as far as I’m concerned, they certainly wrote like professional scholars. I look forward to more research like this being done.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 3/11/2017: Mike Licona

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“It depends on which Gospel you read!” Many of us have heard Bart Ehrman talk about this in describing Gospel differences. It is a kind of unavoidable problem. Why are there differences in the Gospels? Shouldn’t we expect them to agree, especially on major events like the resurrection?

If you want to know why there are differences in the Gospels, you should talk to someone who has written on this. In fact, the very name of his book is Why Are There Differences In The Gospels? That someone is Mike Licona, a friend, a scholar, a great apologist, and my father-in-law, and he will be my guest. So who is he?

MikeLicona

According to his bio:

Mike Licona has a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies (University of Pretoria), which he completed with distinction. He serves as associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University. Mike was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his book The Case for the Real Jesus and appeared in Strobel’s video The Case for Christ. He is the author of numerous books including Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn From Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic, 2010), Paul Meets Muhammad (Baker, 2006), co-author with Gary Habermas of the award-winning book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel, 2004) and co-editor with William Dembski of Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science (Baker, 2010). Mike is a member of the Evangelical Theological and Philosophical Societies, the Institute for Biblical Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. He has spoken on more than 90 university campuses, and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs.

We’ll be talking about Plutarch in comparison with the Gospels, including not just parallel accounts, but how does the writing of Plutarch compare even with anonymity, dating, and miraculous activity? We’ll then be looking at some scenes in Plutarch that appear in more than one life that he has written, but at the same time are vastly different. We’ll be discussing how these work when carried over to the Gospels and if there are similarities in treatment.

We’ll then go to the Gospels. What are we to make of the idea of Ehrman that “It depends on which Gospel you read?” How does this research affect the doctrine of inerrancy if it does at all? What are we to do when we read the same story in different Gospels and see great differences between them? Do the differences outweigh the similarities?

I hope you’ll be listening. Mike Licona is an excellent scholar and this work is one that has been published by Oxford Press and so one can’t say it’s your regular evangelical press. I also hope you’ll be willing to go to ITunes and leave a positive review of the Deeper Waters Podcast. I always love to see how much you like the show.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

 

Book Plunge: Why Are There Differences In The Gospels?

What do I think of Mike Licona’s book published by Oxford University Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Go to any debate online about the New Testament and one idea you’ll see pop up regularly will be “It contradicts itself over and over.” Go listen to Bart Ehrman and hear him speak about these and what will he say? “Depends on which Gospel you read?” Gospel differences are something that is a cause of concern to many a skeptic and of course, many a Christian as well. Especially if you hold a high view of inerrancy, you want to know why there are so many differences in the Gospel accounts.

This question isn’t anything new. It goes back to the church fathers. This is in fact why there was even an attempt to turn the four Gospels into one Gospel, but the church didn’t really go for it. As it stands, we have four today and they do contain obvious differences, so do we just have sloppy historians or what? Should we call into question the reliability of the Gospels because of this?

Mike Licona has chosen to answer this question and has done so by doing something that many in our world could consider cheating, but hey, he did it. He actually went back and compared differences in accounts of the same event by an author close to the time of Jesus. His choice was Plutarch and he looked at some of his lives that described figures who lived at about the same time and were quite likely written close to each other chronologically.

Of course, everyone should be warned of possible bias on my part. As many know, Mike Licona is my father-in-law, but at the same time when we have our discussions, if I think he is wrong on something, I do not hesitate to tell him. He got a blunt son-in-law when I married Allie.

Mike’s approach is unique and something that had not been done before. If there is any difficulty I encounter when I am engaging with skeptics of the faith is that they assume the way we do things today is superior simply because that is the way we do them. If we do history this way, well that is the right way to do history. If we want this kind of precision in an account, well that has to be superior and that is what the ancients would want. The greatest error we often make is we impose our own time and culture and society on the ancient world and then misread them.

This is why I say Mike cheated, though in a loose sense of course. He actually went back and saw how they did history and what do you see? You see that the differences that you see in the Gospels that are so problematic are the same kinds of differences you see in Plutarch. Some will no doubt complain and say that surely the Gospel writers would not write Holy Scripture in a style that was known to the pagan world. (Yeah. The second person of the Trinity can condescend to become a human being and die on a cross, but using a certain literary style? God forbid!) Such an opinion is going against the overwhelming majority of Biblical scholarship and ignores how God has often met people where they were and if the writers wanted to write a biography of Jesus to tell about His life and teachings, there weren’t many other options.

Mike goes through the accounts and shows that Plutarch used many different techniques when writing and that the Gospel writers did the same. He has a number of pericopes in Plutarch and a number in the Gospels that give a cross comparison. If one wants to throw out the Gospels as unreliable then, one will have to do the same with Plutarch. This indeed raises the debate to a whole new level. Is the modern skeptic willing to throw out one of the most prolific writers in ancient history just to avoid the Gospels?

What does this say for we moderns as well? It tells us what I said at the beginning. We can too often assume our own standards of accuracy and throw those onto the text not bothering to ask if the ancients followed them. If they did not, then we are being anachronistic with the writers and in fact, being unfair with them. They were not moderns and we should not treat them like moderns.

This should also be taken into account when considering our modern idea of inerrancy. For instance, many of us might think inerrancy means we have to have the exact words of Jesus. What if the Gospel writers did not think that but wanted the exact voice instead? In other words, they wanted the gist of what Jesus said even if it wasn’t exact wordage? That’s okay. We just have to accept that. The ancient works were not modern works and if we impose on them what they aren’t, we will get the wrong message and also miss the true message of them.

Mike’s work has really raised the bar of debate and pushed it beyond just simple harmonization. It is harmonization based on how the ancients did it and not how we moderns do it. I fully hope that other scholars will come alongside and critique the work, both positively and negatively and that we can, in turn, come to a greater understanding of the Gospel texts.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Gospel Fictions

What do I think of Randel Helms’s book published by Prometheus books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have heard numerous skeptics recommend reading this book. That alone could have told me enough about it, but I’m always one up for reading a disagreeing book so I ordered it at my local library. It was a rather quick read, thank goodness, but one that had I took a note of every item that I thought was just hideously wrong, the notes would have been the size of an average blog post.

I was also seeing Gary Habermas at the time who happened to tell me in emphatic terms about how bad a book this one is. He was right. The book is very badly researched and like many others, gives the sound of one-hand clapping. Helms doesn’t show interaction with modern scholarship and has a standard of historicity for the Bible that would not be applied to any other ancient text.

So what are these fictions? Well let’s look at some categories here.

If two texts disagree on something seemingly, then the texts are a fiction. If the text has any parallel in the Old Testament, then the text is a fiction. If the text has any parallel in pagan literature at the time, then the text is a fiction. If the text just seems strange and bizarre, then the text is a fiction.

The whole of the book could be summarized that way.

Do you find any indication that the Gospels are actually Greco-Roman biographies? Nope. Not a bit. Do you find any interaction with the fact that the events took place in an honor-shame culture? Don’t count on it. Do you have interaction with great archaeological findings that have confirmed some details in the New Testament? You already know the answer to that.

It seems as if Helms never considers with events that have Old Testament parallels that these could be purposeful. If Jesus is showing that He is the greatest prophet of all and the Messiah and Lord, He will show Himself in ways that are superior to the greatest of the Old Testament. If God is behind the story as well, as we believe, then God Himself could be involved to show Jesus is greater by contrast.

Of course, the best critics of his position will not be argued with. Instead, Helms takes more of a shotgun approach with showing as many supposed problems as he thinks he can with a text and then moving on. Nothing is treated in-depth. Certainly, no better explanation for the resurrection event is given to explain the data agreed to by critical scholars without having to say Jesus actually rose from the dead.

There are works by actual scholars that you can read that will actually engage with the material well and still be non-Christian. Sure, I disagree with their conclusions, but they are much better books. A skeptic wanting to learn about the New Testament would be better served by reading books by people like Ludemann, Crossan, Ehrman, Casey, Vermes, and others.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/17/2016: Tyler Vela

What’s coming up Saturday? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There have been throughout history numerous opponents of Christianity. Saul of course sought to undermine the faith, and then became its greatest proclaimer. Then you have Celsus who was refuted by Origen, Porphyry who came later, and then people who sought to change the faith like Arius and others. As we moved into more recent history, more and more people have risen up seeking to do away with the faith. People like Nietzsche, Hume, Hobbes, and others. Atheistic writers like Mackie and Flew have also been popular. Many times, Christianity has had decent opponents.

And then, there’s David McAfee.

Many of you might have never heard of him. Somehow, he has over 159,000 likes on Facebook at the time of writing and has traveled to speak about the problems of Christianity. Unfortunately, he has this strange idea that he can do this without even mentioning the resurrection and thinks that if you disprove Inerrancy, then you disprove Christianity. Still, he is out there and there is someone who has chosen to focus in on him and deal with his objections.

My ministry partner has reviewed the book as have I. I have even challenged him to debate if he thinks he can disprove Christianity and it was ignored. Many others have done the same thing. No one has done as thorough a job as Tyler Vela. In fact, Tyler Vela goes through McAfee’s book with a fine tooth comb and actually interacts with the scholarly literature. Of course, as far as I know, there has been no response from McAfee. If you want to know about the response, Tyler Vela is my guest again this Saturday.

Who is that?

tylervela

(Just to be clear, my sources indicate that Tyler is the one on the right.)

Tyler Vela studied Philosophy and English at California State University, Sonoma, graduated with a Preseminary B.A. (Biblical and Theological Studies) from Moody Bible Institute (Chicago), and is currently studying toward his Masters of Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He is the host of The Freed Thinker Podcast and blog and is a frequent guest on many Christian and skeptical podcasts and forums.

We’ll be talking about the book Measuring McAfee that Tyler wrote in response. We’ll be going through some of the contradictions and discussing what has really happened to atheism especially on the internet where there seems to be a strong fundamentalist mindset and contrary to what many atheists might think, an anti-intellectual one. Why is it that someone like McAfee has such a following when he doesn’t really have a clue what he’s talking about? What can Christians learn from this and what impact does this mindset have for the future of the church and the future of debates between Christians and atheists and others?

I hope you’ll be tuning in. For those wondering, we had a problem with last week’s show. We had to cancel in the middle, but we only have to do about fifteen minutes more. I hope to have that up soon. Please also consider leaving a review on ITunes of the show.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why Inerrancy Should Not Be Your Focus

Is your worldview centered on the wrong thing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As many of you know, Inerrancy is a topic that is an important one for discussion with me as it has had a great impact on my family. I describe myself as someone who upholds Biblical Inerrancy, but by this, I simply mean that I believe that in the end, when we find what the Bible teaches, that it will be true. Inerrancy is something that we should talk about and I think we should be clear what we mean by it, but at the same time, I think that if you make Inerrancy your focus, then you are playing a very dangerous game and jeopardizing your own faith as well as the faith of others.

I say this because recently i have seen some discussions of Inerrancy. I get concerned when people marry their faith to Inerrancy or when people think that if you disprove Inerrancy, then you disprove Christianity. I reviewed David McAfee’s book awhile back and found it to be extremely lacking, and the biggest weakness really is that McAfee makes no arguments against the resurrection but merely makes arguments about contradictions in the Bible as if when you find these contradictions, then Christianity is disproven. I could grant every one of his contradictions is a legitimate contradiction and still keep Christianity. Would I have to change my doctrine of Scripture? Absolutely. That does not mean I would throw out Christianity.

But if you don’t have Inerrancy, how will you know what’s true in the Bible and what isn’t? We’d use historiography. We’d treat the Bible the way we treat any other ancient document. This is normally the charge we always make to our opponents. We tell them that if you treat the Bible the way you treat any other ancient document, that you will find that it passes the test. We cannot do that if we are not willing to accept the standards ourselves. Too often it sounds like we’re saying we believe in the resurrection because we believe in the Bible. Instead, it should be that we believe in the Bible because we believe in the resurrection.

If your Christianity is built on anything other than the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then your worldview will have a weak foundation. We could add many other doctrines to this. One of the greatest ones today to consider for that is young-earth creationism. The danger with each of these is that if you disprove young-earth creationism, then that will mean that you will be convinced Jesus did not rise from the dead. If you do this with Inerrancy, then that will mean that if anyone shows you any contradiction that you cannot answer, then you will have to believe Jesus did not rise. I often wonder how far this will go. Mythicism for instance is an absolute foolish position, but will a lot of these people become mythicists when they see contradictions in the Bible? The sad reality is that many of them do.

The Bible is a complex book whether you think it is or not and too many of us expect it to be simple. One of the greatest claims I receive from non-Christians is that the Bible should be clear. Clear to whom? This is always a difficulty. We are in a narcissist culture if we live in the modern west and assume that it must be us and our time. It does not have to be. The Bible requires a lot of study and people who want to ignore the scholarship on the issue are frankly not really worth wasting time on. People who are sure of their position are not afraid to read the best the other side has to offer and interact with it.

If you make Inerrancy your focus, you will have it that you have to be able to give an answer to every contradiction at every moment. That is a ridiculous standard to have. I happen to think I have a good memory when it comes to Biblical matters, which makes it really fun for my friends when they play Bible trivia against me as it gives them a real challenge, but I would not dare attempt to be able to say I will keep in my mind every answer to every Biblical contradiction that is out there. It is far too difficult. Do you really want your faith to hang on that? Sure, it takes a lot to defend the resurrection and that requires effort, but the differences are vast.

There are times I think it is important to address contradictions and those are only two. The first is if you are dealing with a Christian who is wrestling with doubt. You can deal with the contradiction they present at that point. If it does not help them, then you know the real focus of the problem is elsewhere. The same applies to the person who is a non-Christian and you think is seriously considering Christianity. If the person is not there, I do not do it. Otherwise, a person can go to a website and get a list of 101 Bible Contradictions and post them all in a thread. Let’s suppose you answer all of them which will require much time and effort. What will be the response? It will not be “Wow. I hadn’t considered these. Thanks!” It will be going to another web site and getting 101 more Bible contradictions. You don’t need to play “Stump the Bible Scholar.”

Keep in mind I am not saying any of this to downplay Scripture. I have a robust and deep doctrine of Scripture and I’m quite conservative, but I will not bow down at the altar of Inerrancy. Jesus is the greatest revelation of God. The Bible is the greatest revelation we have of who He was and what He did and I hold to it being Inerrant, but that is not the focus. The only question I really want to know is if Jesus walked out of that tomb or not. If He did, then I have Christianity. If He did not, then all we are talking about is indeed nothing but trivia.

In Christ,
Nick Peters