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Getting Dr. Geisler right

Dr. Norman L. Geisler was one of the foremost defenders of the doctrine of inerrancy in the 20th and early 21st centuries. A tireless and prolific author, he was also an advocate of a rapprochement between evangelicalism and Thomistic philosophy. He passed away just this summer, on July 1, 2019.

One of the things that Dr. Geisler was known for in the years before his death was his set of serious objections to the literary device theories and genre criticism of evangelical apologist and scholar Michael Licona. Geisler held that Licona's views were incompatible with any doctrine of inerrancy worth the name and was alarmed by the redefinition of the term in a way that he believed rendered it meaningless. He wrote many articles on the subject and in fact got a bit of a name for himself as (allegedly) a witch hunter with a personal vendetta--a reputation that he (not surprisingly) disputed.

On Friday, October 11, Southern Evangelical Seminary hosted a dialogue between Michael Licona and Richard Howe (the latter being what one might call an old-fashioned inerrantist) on the question of what constitutes inerrancy. The video is available here. I make no claim whatsoever to have watched all of it, or even close.

At one point (about 23 minutes in), my name comes up in Dr. Licona's presentation, with a bit of snark about my not being an inerrantist--as, indeed, I am not and have made no secret of not being. Interestingly, this fact seems not to bother the inerrantist hard-liners nearly as much as it seems to bother Dr. Licona. The reference to my alleged "flat-footed literalism" is an unfortunately typical bit of rhetoric in lieu of answering my arguments. I've argued that Licona is wrong about the existence and the evangelists' use of fact-changing literary devices. Some of these arguments have existed for well over a year and a half in blog post form, but as a matter of public record, Licona refuses to engage with them. But I don't intend to talk about Licona's mention of me except extremely briefly. I'm more or less willing to regard it as free publicity. I will note further only that Licona continues to ignore my careful definition of the term "fictionalization." As I have said over and over again (see here and here), that term as I define it does not per se entail deceptiveness, though I do think that in fact the Gospel authors would have been deceptive if they had engaged in invisible factual change. That is because I also disagree (and have argued in detail for my position) with Licona's claim that the Gospel authors were writing in a genre like our biopics in which audiences expected invisible factual changes, though they couldn't tell where they arose. The term "fictionalization," however, is intended to include such movies, books, etc. See my many posts on this topic and read my forthcoming book, The Mirror or the Mask. And indeed we would unhesitatingly call such artistic productions in our own time "partially fictionalized," without necessarily intending any disparagement. I use the term "fictionalizing" as synonymous with "fact-changing." It refers to the fact that the alleged alterations in question are 1) invisible (the narratives appear realistic), 2) deliberate, 3) contrary to fact.

But that's not what this post is about. Instead, this post is about an eyebrow-raising representation of the views of Dr. Norman Geisler himself concerning chronology, which Licona uses to try to catch Dr. Howe. I'm glad to say that Howe patiently makes the relevant distinction and says that he would have to see the context of the quote from Dr. Geisler, thus avoiding any appearance of falling for a "gotcha."

Watch the video, beginning at about one hour and three minutes. Licona is talking about the narratives in Matthew and Mark of the cursing of the fig tree. He reads two sentences from this short "Bible Difficulties" article by Geisler, deliberately not saying who the author is. The two sentences are these:

Matthew, however, addresses the two trips of Christ to the temple as though they were one event. This gives the impression that the first day Christ entered the temple He drove out the buyers and sellers as well.

Howe pretty clearly does not recognize the author. As the dialogue continues, Licona eventually reveals that the author of the two sentences is Norman Geisler. Licona insists, and even explicitly repeats in the ensuing conversation, that these sentences mean that Dr. Geisler held that, in Matthew, Jesus cleansed the Temple on Sunday in Holy Week, contrary to fact and contrary to Mark, who implies that he cleansed the Temple on a later day.

In other words, Licona insists that Norman Geisler held that Matthew deliberately changed the chronology of Holy Week to something contrary to fact.

Now, to anyone who knows the history of the Geisler-Licona dispute, such a claim is simply astounding and highly implausible. Norman Geisler was adamantly, repeatedly, explicitly opposed to any notion that the Gospel authors deliberately changed the facts. The attempt to say that they wrote in a genre that permitted them to do so was the very basis of his objection to Licona's entire set of theories, and that such a view was incompatible with inerrancy (a doctrine for which Geisler would have cheerfully and unhesitatingly died) was a never-ending theme with him. On the face of it, such an interpretation of two sentences of Geisler's writing, sans context, is so improbable as to be incredible. Dr. Geisler would, I venture to say, have been as likely to be found standing on his head in the middle of Times Square whistling "I'll Fly Away" as to be found saying that Matthew or any other evangelist deliberately changed chronology in his Gospel to make it contrary to fact.

Here we must make a distinction that I have made over and over again, and that Licona persistently ignores. This is the distinction between achronological narration and dyschronological narration. In the former, an author narrates events out of order or briefly, leaving out details, and may accidentally give the impression that something happened in a way that it did not happen, but such a misunderstanding is a mere accident if it occurs. The author or speaker is not trying to give the impression that events happened in a way contrary to fact.

In the dialogue, Dr. Howe illustrates achronological narration (in this case achronological compression) by imagining himself phoning his mother to tell her about the conference and narrating briefly in a way that might accidentally make her think that several events all happened on the first day of the conference, when he was merely being inexplicit. If, on the other hand, he said explicitly that events happened on the first day of the conference when those events happened on the second day, that would be dyschronological narration. While Howe doesn't use that terminology (which is my invention), both he and Frank Turek (the moderator) point out this distinction to Licona.

With that in mind, here is the context of the two sentences from Geisler:

PROBLEM: Matthew places the cursing of the fig tree after the cleansing of the temple. But Mark places the cursing before the temple was cleansed. But, it cannot be both. Did one Gospel writer make a mistake?

SOLUTION: Jesus actually cursed the fig tree on His way to the temple as Mark said, but this does not mean that Matthew’s account is mistaken. Christ made two trips to the temple, and He cursed the fig tree on His second trip.

Mark 11:11 says that Christ entered the temple the day of His triumphal entry. When Christ enters the temple, Mark does not mention Christ making any proclamations against any wrongdoing. Verse 12 says “Now the next day,” referring to the trip to the fig tree on the way to the temple on the second day. On this day, Christ threw out those buying and selling in the temple. Matthew, however, addresses the two trips of Christ to the temple as though they were one event. This gives the impression that the first day Christ entered the temple He drove out the buyers and sellers as well. Mark’s account, however, gives more detail to the events, revealing that there were actually two trips to the temple. In view of this, we have no reason to believe that there is a discrepancy in the accounts.

One may fairly say that this is somewhat too brief and does not directly address Matthew's reversed order in narrating the cleansing and Jesus' first encounter with the fig tree. If someone other than Geisler had written it, one might say that the explanation is somewhat ambiguous as between achronological and dyschronological narration. This is why everyone should start being much, much more explicit about that crucial distinction when discussing such matters. But the reference to Mark's account as "giving more detail" and "revealing that there were actually two trips" indicates that Geisler is taking Matthew to be narrating achronologically and leaving out this additional detail. In any event, one certainly cannot and should not say with any confidence that this short article attributes dyschronological narration to Matthew.

Despite the greater context of the article, and even despite the fact that Howe and Turek emphasize the distinction between deliberately and accidentally giving a contrary-to-fact impression, Licona does not correct or even for a moment doubt his interpretation of Geisler. On the contrary, he literally says, of moving the event to a different day, "Norm did this with Matthew." He also says, "I think it's pretty clear in Matthew that the cleansing took place on Sunday, and this is something that Norm and his [Richard Howe's] brother Tom agree on and numerous evangelicals say the same thing."

Permit me to express some doubt. I'm hoping to get in touch with Thomas Howe, who is still alive, to put the achronological/dyschronological distinction to him and to ask him if he would attribute the former or the latter to Matthew in the cursing of the fig tree. (Thomas Howe's health is poor and may make it impossible to obtain a statement from him on this or related topics.) I can't say about "numerous evangelicals," since they are unnamed. Certainly the persistent refusal on the part of Licona and other literary device theorists to make the distinction, and their use of evidence for achronological narration as if it supported dyschronological narration, has influenced some to get confused on the matter. We can perhaps hope that this doesn't yet extend to "numerous evangelicals."

As for Dr. Geisler's views, here is further evidence from his other writings about what he thought concerning chronological matters:

In his book Defending Inerrancy, co-written with Bill Roach, Geisler wrote critically concerning Clark Pinnock's attenuated concept of inerrancy. Geisler and Roach quote Pinnock as saying,

What could truly falsify the Bible would have to be something that could falsify the gospel and Christianity as well. It would have to be a difficulty that would radically call into question the truth of Jesus and his message of good news. Discovering some point of chronology in Matthew that could not be reconciled with a parallel in Luke would certainly not be any such thing….Inerrancy is a metaphor for the determination to trust God’s Word completely.

Geisler and Roach are having none of this as a concept of inerrancy. They say,


Here one sees the very weak “general” sense in which the word “inerrancy” is employed by Pinnock. It would have been more forthright simply to deny the term.

This seems highly relevant to any attempt to attribute a dyschronological interpretation of Matthew to Geisler.

Elsewhere in the book, Geisler and Roach praise a stricter definition of inerrancy on the grounds that
it “meant that the Bible is free from errors in matters of fact, science, history, and chronology…”

In discussing alleged Bible discrepancies more generally, Geisler makes the achronological/dyschronological distinction himself, though not with that terminology, concerning the stories of the temptations in the wilderness:

Sometimes there is a topical rearrangement of the snapshots in order to fit the theme of the Gospel writer. For example, Luke gives a different order of the temptation events than is found in Matthew. Matthew lists them as the temptation (1) to turn stones into bread, (2) to jump from the pinnacle of the temple, and (3) to worship Satan. But Luke reverses the last two. This fits both the grammar of the text and the purpose of Luke. Matthew uses the words “then” and “again” (4:5, 8) which indicate a chronological order, while Luke uses only “and” (Lk. 4:5, 9) to connect the events. So, Matthew lists them chronologically but Luke puts them climactically or topically, possibly to end on the high note of Jesus’ victory over Satan.

Note that here, when Geisler thinks that Matthew is clear about chronology, he takes that as decisive. It is because Luke is inexplicit, using only the word "and," that Geisler takes it that Luke may be narrating in an achronological fashion. And in this same article on various possible solutions to Bible discrepancies, Geisler again takes aim at the "genre criticism" that he so strongly opposed.

More tellingly still, Geisler expressly stated that Licona's own view that John changed the day of Jesus' crucifixion is incompatible with inerrancy.

Licona even goes so far as to affirm there is an error in the Gospels regarding on which day Jesus was crucified. He said “[John] may have changed the day and time of Jesus’ crucifixion in order to make a theological point.” Earlier in a debate with Bart Ehrman at Southern Evangelical Seminary (Spring, 2009) he said, “I think that John probably altered the day [of Jesus’ crucifixion] in order for a theological—to make a theological point there.”

But this is clearly contrary to the ICBI view of inerrancy which demands “the unity and internal consistency of Scripture” (Article XIV). Also, “We deny that later revelations…ever contradict it” (Article 5). We affirm the unity, harmony, and consistency of Scripture…. We deny that Scripture may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that one passage corrects or militates against another” (Hermeneutics Article XVII). WE affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all t.ruths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and cohere…” (Hermeneutics Article XX).

If Geisler is adamant that it was contrary to inerrancy (and hence in his view false) to say that John changed the day of the crucifixion, it is extremely improbable that Geisler means to say that Matthew changed the day on which Jesus cleansed the Temple in Holy Week.

With all of this in hand, as well as the larger context of the two sentences Licona quotes, it is beyond doubt that Geisler meant to attribute achronological narration to Matthew, not dyschronological narration, as a solution to the difficulty of the fig tree.

One may, of course, find that solution unsatisfactory, but that's not the point here and now. The point here and now is that it is illegitimate to try to co-opt two sentences by one of the foremost defenders of unqualified inerrancy, even going so far as to say that he "agrees" that in Matthew the Temple cleansing takes place on Sunday, contrary to fact, when he does not say that at all.

What I find perhaps most disturbing is that Licona is so unequivocal and so insistent about this hugely improbable interpretation of Geisler. He never once stops and turns back and says, "Well, that's how those sentences read to me," acknowledging that this even could be a misunderstanding of Geisler, or "that's how I would interpret what Geisler says there, though I can see that you might interpret him as just saying that Matthew inadvertently gives a misimpression." Nothing of the kind. When Turek finally induces Licona even to acknowledge the distinction in question, Licona goes into his own reasons for not thinking that this was an accidental misimpression given by Matthew. That's certainly his prerogative to do. But that leaves uncorrected and unqualified his repeated claims that Geisler says that Matthew deliberately changed the day on which an event happened.

Norman Geisler has gone to be with the Lord, but I know that there are people who are very concerned, understandably, to preserve his legacy. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is only fair to represent his positions accurately. I find it a little surprising that Licona's new approach concerning Geisler, who opposed Licona's views to the last of his strength while he was alive, is to try now to interpret him as agreeing with Licona that Matthew used fact-changing literary devices. Such an interpretation should not be allowed to go unchallenged, in bare fairness to Geisler's memory.

Comments (42)

Dr. Licona is just employing a literary device in his portrayal of Geisler.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Sorta kinda related, my own "take" on inerrancy is that it never really seems to affect what I'm looking at. When I'm looking at a passage in the gospels, I want to know if that passage is describing events that actually took place in the manner described, e.g. when the text says that Jesus says "I am the good shepherd" it means that, in reality Jesus said something (in Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew) that reasonably translates well into "I am the good shepherd". Or, when the text describes Jesus healing a blind man, it means that (a) there was a man who was actually blind and (b) Jesus did something that allowed the man to see. This all sounds extremely pedantic as I write it, but I still am amazed at how our learned self-proclaimed intellectual superiors Gumby-ize themselves trying to deny this.

Whether I hold to inerrancy or am open to the possibility of errors really doesn't affect my passage-level understanding. The reasons why I think a passage to be true are varied, and none of them start with some beginning principle that the scriptures cannot make false statements or must necessarily make true statements. If I don't understand or have issues with the passage, I'm personally content to leave it at that. I cannot think of one hole or discrepancy that meaningfully affects the central premises of my faith.

In short, I strive to apply the same standards of reasoning to scripture that I apply to everything else: where I can't verify something, I ask if there is a general reliability in other things I can verify, and then I extend that to the situation at hand. It is the way I approach all general knowledge.

I see skeptics work so hard to demonstrate a discrepancy between (say) John's hours and the synoptic accounting of the hours, and while such a question is interesting to both sides, the skeptic's idea seems to be that if there is an error or a hole in the understanding, one must throw out the baby with the bathwater. My position is this: even if there is an error in (say) the accounting of the hours, does that really provide warrant for discarding the Passion account and/or the Resurrection? Do we really want to have an all-or-nothing approach to viewing historical data? If so, why is that standard not applied to everyday knowledge, where for the vast majority of things we claim to be true we are relying on the testimony of others? If that standard is consistently applied, we'd almost have to be historical nihilists.

In dealing with skeptics and such, I will for argument's sake grant them their assertion that there is an error. My next question is: "What exactly does this imply, and why so?". No good answer has ever been given in my experience.

Sorry for the minor hijack, but I felt like hearing myself talk. For the record, even though I'm not an inerrantist in the sense that I start with that position a priori, I also have never seen demonstrated to reasonable satisfaction that scripture has actually erred either. There are questions and some problems (hours in John vs Synoptics, census in Luke, say) but I am not aware of anything that decisively brokers the issue one way or the other.

I agree with your general approach. I take an inductive approach, and the reason I don't call myself an inerrantist is because there are some places where right now it seems to me the best explanation is that there is a minor error. I suspect there would be more of these if I did more study of the Old Testament, but right now I'm focused on NT and know of very few, and those quite minor. I figure the only way in that case for me to be straight with people is to not call myself an inerrantist.

It is interesting, though, and almost eerie to see how much and in what strange ways the inerrantist debate gets tangled up with the debate over whether these literary devices are correct or not. Here are two important entanglements where I find myself firmly on the side of the old-fashioned inerrantists:

1) Knowing what the literary device theories even are and being motivated to make that clear to everybody. The literary device theorists are *constantly* obscuring the nature of what they are really claiming. They do it *so much* that one really finds it hard to explain. After all, they are not stupid people. So when one finds them again and again and again making vague statements about "leaving out a few details" or obscuring the distinction between an author's deliberately and accidentally giving a false impression, even after it is pointed out, it becomes difficult to believe that it isn't deliberate. Now, the old-fashioned inerrantists are pretty lynx-eyed for this, because they want to be clear about whether there is an error or not. I also want to be clear about it, because I know where Licona & co. are really going with this--to many places, multiple places, where they think the Gospel authors *made things up* and *deliberately altered the facts*. And that's a big deal from the perspective of reliability and apologetics. So the old-fashioned inerrantists like Richard Howe and Norm Geisler and I have a common cause in wanting to clear away the obfuscation, while unfortunately the folks on the other side of the debate appear to be quite determined to obscure important matters and not be clear about *what they are saying*.

2) Knowing that inerrancy does not *support* the literary device theories. I'm really concerned about the number of people who are so confused that they literally believe that somehow they *should* adopt these fictionalizing literary device theories *because* they are inerrantists. To me it is quite bizarre. The old-fashioned inerrantists and I agree with each other in understanding that this is not the case. On the contrary, the literary device theories take one *much farther* from the whole goal of inerrancy (which presumably included normal reliability inter alia!) even than admitting some small errors. But too many people apparently can't handle the mental stress of *not* having a favorite traditional harmonization for a particular passage and just saying, "I don't know" and having that *be* their inerrantist response. They think they have to have something they can *say* with confidence when people start throwing, "What about this?" at them. So they jump over to the literary device theories because that always gives them something to say while still keeping the (greatly redefined) *label* of an "inerrantist." That's a very important, and very pernicious, kind of confusion and entanglement, and it's another place where the old-fashioned inerrantists and I are at one in our evaluation.

We both know that a lot is at stake in this and that these fictionalizing literary devices would be a Big Deal if they were real. What this leads to is a common appreciation of the burden of proof, and that is epistemically *very* important and something the literary device theorists are incredibly confused about.

I find that the old-fashioned inerrantists are often much more sensible, more capable of seeing commonsense explanations for what they are, more aware of Occam's Razor and of the sheer hyper-complexity and ponderousness of many of the redaction-critical and other higher critical theories that (in fact) form the basis for the literary device views. This may arise *causally* from their being motivated by their inerrancy, but the upshot is that they are generally more clear-headed. They are more inclined to say, "Why in the world would anyone say that?" and so forth. They are also used to resisting the fads of scholarship and not caring that they are in a minority, which is helpful.

I will add my two cents (well, depends on how many words to a cent), in no particular order.

First, it is my impression that Howe had the better of the debate overall, although Licona certainly scored some points in it. One has to listen and pay attention to the actual argument in order to be clear on this, but speaking argumentatively and not merely rhetorically, Howe had the better argument and better support for his theses. Rhetorically, Licona probably made a better impression if you weren't paying attention to the argument in its actual content. Licona is certainly a very good debater, and not to be taken lightly as an adversary in that kind of forum.

Ultimately, Licona's final say about the matter - that you like your device of metonymy because you are familiar with it, and you don't like my compositional devices because you aren't familiar with them - is pretty poor as an argument, and readily refuted. Any language device that would be recognized by virtually everybody, not only recognized as "gee, I guess that's a figure of speech", but also "what he really means, if stated literally, would be X", is completely different from using language to the effect that "I know this guy sometimes invents events and details, but I have no clue when and how to figure out what the REAL events and details were from his inventions". The reason is that a language is a social convention. People who speak a language recognize the conventions, because they ARE conventional - they are used all the time. When you call an office and the secretary says "the boss is not in" you know darn well that the only information she means to convey is "he is not available to you right now", and that's all convention allows you to understand from her statement. She isn't lying because the phrase is conventional for "not available to you" and thus it accurately and successfully conveys to the hearer the truth that is in the secretary's mind. Which is the definition of a true statement, given the convention. (I can accept that when this usage was first invented, it probably was a lie: language changes.)

Licona's compositional devices (some of them, at least, though not necessarily all) DO NOT have this characteristic. The hearer is unable to say (from Licona's reading of John) "well, clearly what John meant the hearer to realize is that Jesus was crucified on Thursday". The kinds of devices that Licona is relying on are devices that only subtract what one might be able to say is "really" being said, they do not ever convey something positive in their own right (at the literal level), and usually they are unable to make the hearer sure which 'facts' are not real. And this is NOT how language conventions work. Language conventions of the sort Howe is using provide content, whereas the devices Licona is employing only allow the author (supposedly) to construct some other layer of content through additional work; the "truth" being conveyed is never WITHIN and due to the device itself, it is always something separate from the device. This is because the truth that Licona wants the author to "really" intend is always more complex and far too elaborate to be the content of a standard, conventional figure of speech in general use.

I can wish that Howe's answer to Licona's repeated assertion than you just don't like my devices was more powerful, but in the hurly-burly of the debate, I thought that in addition to Howe sounding a little weak on it, Licona sounded like a broken record on it.

I have to really laugh at Licona's objection to Howe applying metonymy to the centurion, given that the centurion explicitly describes the conceptual basis for using metonymy. If you want to allow Matthew some compositional device, how about allowing Matthew to be telling the reader "pay attention, here, the centurion is SAYING that he didn't have to go to Jesus himself in order to ask for this favor of a healing."

As to Licona's use of Geisler's comment, I think that it was rhetorically very effective, and also argumentatively more than a little unfair: even if Licona was citing Geisler in context and being fair to Geisler's own intended meaning, nobody could be expected to hear 2 sentences taken from a large book and be able to respond with an accurate recounting of what the author meant, even to say something like "I know what the author meant here, and I simply disagree with him in his analysis." Any interlocutor should have been allowed to say "let me see the context and refresh my memory of what the overall argument was before I respond to this." This is, admittedly, completely implausible in a debate setting, and for this reason it is generally a bit not-kosher to bring in an obscure quote from some third party and just lay it out as if it were an admitted authority for this debate.

Dr. Licona makes a similar debate error in bringing in Lydia McGrew's name into the debate: while it is perfectly legitimate for him to recount the concept that some would say the Bible simply has a few errors, he should have either (a) been inexplicit about who holds such a view, or (b) referred to some other respected, published, professional biblical scholar whose work entails that point as a major thesis. That's what he should have done. What Dr. Licona did, though, in referring to Lydia, is to give her standing in the biblical analysis world, now; and furthermore, standing from which she has every right to now urge a right to meet him on the field of honor in equal combat to defend her honor (or at least, her position). Effectively, he has thrown the gauntlet at her feet, and cannot complain if she takes it up. A strategic error, unless he actually does plan to debate her.

I find Licona's use of Matthew and the timing of the cleansing of the Temple and the cursing of the fig tree rather lower in quality than you would think for someone preparing what should have been his best cases. Taking Lydia's achronistic versus dischronistic into account, Matthew's account is CLEARLY not well recorded with chronicity. For one thing, the only connector he uses in most of the passage is "And...", which certainly does not convey a strong sense of sequence or time. Secondly, and I think more tellingly, in the bit about the tree withering, Matt has the disciples wondering, and saying "How is it presently withered away?" Put yourself there: if you hear Jesus curse the tree, and right then and there you see the tree wither, why in the world would you ask "how is it presently withered away"? You right then and there saw the miracle happen, and you know that it happened because of what Jesus said. After seeing Jesus perform hundreds of miracles, this would not have you puzzled. No, what had them puzzled is that it did NOT happen while they were watching, it happened behind their backs (i.e. overnight). So, Matt is giving us a clue about the lack of explicit chronicity here. If Matt intended the hearer to infer quite distinctly that it all happened at once, then he would not have added the comment from the disciples wondering - that makes no sense. He could have just gone straight to Jesus saying "if you have faith..."

So, Late in the debate (about 1:46:00 and after) Dr. Licona gives what amounts to not 2 but 3 different possible options for chronicity. While he doesn't use the terms for achronistic and dischronistic, he gives other terms that are similar: "floating" chronology roughly comparable to achronistic, "explicit" chronology gives a positive, definite assertion about timing, and then there is "implicit" chronology, which "seems to imply" that it happened according to a timing but does not necessarily mean that, and is capable of degree in how strongly it implies. Without the text of Matthew in front of him, he is unable to refer exactly to why, but he claims that Matthew "strongly" implies that the Temple cleansing occurs on the first day. If anything, I would argue that he just plain misses the mark here, that it is actually _quite_ weak, and he needs to come up with a better example for this notion.

Objectively speaking, we do in fact admit that there are ways of speaking that do strongly or weakly imply something else that is not explicitly asserted. These sorts of language use CAN confuse the hearer, or lead the hearer to make a mistake. And in some cases, we would even allow that if a person used a strongly implied inference that he knows is incorrect, and uses it intentionally in order to lead the hearer to make a mistake and infer what is not true, we often would say this is an unfair use of language, and sometimes we might even call this a "lie". But in calling it a lie we would at best be using the term loosely, because properly speaking a lie occurs when WHAT IS SAID is not true, not when what can be inferred from what is said is not true. It is critical, in the "inerrancy" debate, to be clear on this: only stating a KNOWN anti-fact counts as a lie, not an implication (not even a strong one). And as for being a "misleading" statement that would tend to lead the hearer to misunderstand the truth, maybe a strong implication would do that, but this example is a weak one at best, so, no dice.

More later, this is it for tonight.

Ultimately, Licona's final say about the matter - that you like your device of metonymy because you are familiar with it, and you don't like my compositional devices because you aren't familiar with them - is pretty poor as an argument, and readily refuted. Any language device that would be recognized by virtually everybody, not only recognized as "gee, I guess that's a figure of speech", but also "what he really means, if stated literally, would be X", is completely different from using language to the effect that "I know this guy sometimes invents events and details, but I have no clue when and how to figure out what the REAL events and details were from his inventions".

Exactly. That is the distinction I am constantly making and Licona is constantly ignoring. Constantly.

His ignoring it has the effect of confusing people who hear it about what his views are. I think many of his followers think that there literally is some kind of "decoder" that he is handing us that the first-century person had that would have allowed him to recognize *in that passage* a figure of speech. But he isn't doing anything of the kind. In fact, he often says in his book that *it is impossible to tell* which author switched a fact or whether an author changed a fact, and there is nothing offered *whatsoever* that would have put a first-century hearer or reader in any better position than that "it is impossible to tell" position. This is not even remotely like being told, "Oh, here is what that phrase meant in the language"--e.g., that "my right hand" referred to my strong hand, that the bowels were used in approximately the same way we use "heart," or something of the kind.

His persistent use of examples like, "Pilate took Jesus and scourged him" creates a similar confusion. Obviously, no one was trying to *give the impression* that Pilate personally wielded the whip. Yet Licona himself says expressly that Matthew was *deliberately trying to give the impression* that Jesus cleansed the Temple on a Sunday in Holy Week. The disanalogy is blatant and obvious, yet he uses one as if it is the same type of thing as the other.

What this does functionally is to obscure the heaviness of the burden of proof that Licona has taken on. Licona & co. must argue that there was an entire genre that bore strong similarities to our modern bio-pics or "movies based on true events," or in some cases even to a highly fact-filled historical novel, that the Gospels are examples of this partially-factually-invented genre, and that 1st-century Christian readers would have recognized this.

There is so little evidence for such a multi-layered and complicated thesis and so much evidence against it (in the way that the early Christians obviously *did* read the Gospels for example and in the claims the evangelists made for themselves and in the importance of historicity to Christianity as a founding principle), that they do not come anywhere *close* to satisfying this heavy burden of proof. That is what I argue in The Mirror or the Mask and have argued in these blog posts.

But if Licona can present his view as merely telling us about some literary figures of speech that are similar to much less controversial things and that we just need him to help us "recognize," then that sounds like a much lesser burden of proof and like anyone who disagrees with him is just ignorant.

The sheer quantity of work that I have done involves taking his views with sufficient seriousness on their own terms to make it absolutely clear that I understand both what they are, how genre is functioning in his claims, and what his arguments are. And I have meticulously *responded* to those arguments for his strong thesis and have rebutted them.

But I do so for the fair-minded reader. At this point I have little hope that Dr. Licona will take that rebuttal into account on its scholarly merits and give it due consideration.

Indeed, I am told that he was standing around after the debate talking with a group of mostly supporters (though in public) and making repeated statements to the effect that I am simply not worthy so much as to address these issues because of a lack of (or wrong) credentials.

Bill Roach, the co-author of Defending Inerrancy (which I quote in the o.p.), has endorsed this post and added his own comments publicly on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/bill.roach.547/posts/10162392890555293

I thank him for the clarity of his remarks.

If anyone tries to brush that off on the grounds that the book Defending Inerrancy and even Geisler's writings expressly *rejecting* Licona's fact-changing literary devices were written later, I would point out that in the Big Book of Bible Difficulties (same book as the quotation Licona brought up) the authors put forward two possible solutions to the alleged contradiction concerning the day of Jesus' crucifixion and *neither* of them attributes dyschronologically *moving* the day of the crucifixion to John, though of course that was a known position. They prefer the option that Jesus chose to celebrate the Passover a day earlier with his disciples since he knew that he would die the next day. That isn't my preferred option (I prefer the other solution they give as a possibility). But the point is that if they were throwing around readily the idea that an evangelist moved a day, this would be a much more popular place for them to have done so, and instead they traditionally harmonized.

https://defendinginerrancy.com/bible-solutions/Mark_14.12ff.php

Indeed, I am told that he was standing around after the debate talking with a group of mostly supporters (though in public) and making repeated statements to the effect that I am simply not worthy so much as to address these issues because of a lack of (or wrong) credentials.

But you did stay at a Holiday Inn last night!

If this anecdote is true, that's pretty shameful and another example of decadent credentialism. Would Dr Licona want his statements about other subjects immediately disqualified merely on the basis that his degrees are not in those fields?

Glad I stayed in the sciences and avoided seminary. (And seminary is probably glad I stayed in the sciences too!)

Sad to see bluster and obfuscation from even purportedly conservative scholars.

Scornful, dismissive credentialism without taking the other person's evidence into account has a long, illustrious history:

45 The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, “Why did you not bring Him?” 46 The officers answered, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” 47 The Pharisees then answered them, “You have not also been led astray, have you? 48 No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he? 49 But this crowd which does not know the Law is accursed.” 50 Nicodemus (he who came to Him before, being one of them) said to them, 51 “Our Law does not judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?” 52 They answered him, “You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee.” (John 7:45-52)

One thing that struck me very strongly about Dr. Licona's initial comments (regarding his phone call to Dr. Habermas) - or perhaps it was about the argument that Dr. Habermas was making: it FAILS. That is, it's really not a sound argument at all. The central thesis is: If Christ rose from the dead, then Christianity is true, and therefore finding flaws in other parts of the Gospels doesn't disturb the truth of Christianity.

First off, he is relying on an ambiguity (implied, to be sure): "if Christ rose from the dead". Well, (goes the argument), if Christ rose from the dead, then Christ was truly God and therefore "Christianity is true". Unfortunately, what the argument needs here is "Can you still rely on the assertion that Christ rose from the dead?" Because, if some parts of the Gospel are no longer reliably relating what is true, that's the question that comes up: can we rely on the accounts saying Christ rose from the dead? And that, of course, is a horse of another feather.

If the Gospels as a whole are reliable because they are the word of God, then we can rely on the accounts that Christ rose from the dead. If they are unreliable in parts - can we rely on the other parts? Why? If Christ rose from the dead, but all of the accounts of his rising from the dead are (dead) wrong, can we rely on them for the belief that Christ rose from the dead? If Christ rose from the dead, but he is not God, can we rely on the accounts saying he rose from the dead because he is God?

Licona refers to "minimal facts", but that won't serve: there is no longer a coherent body of facts that ALL of the scholars admit are reliable facts. Each scholar that believes in one set of facts, has a slightly different set than each other scholar, and while many of sets overlaps to a degree, the intersection of the sets over the range of all the scholars is an empty set. There is no agreed upon list. No doubt Licona would be willing to limit his list of scholars, but that's just a circular self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, the body of scholars who are willing to grant a symbolic resurrection, or a figurative resurrection, or a psychological resurrection, or (gosh) a "spiritual" resurrection, is sizable, and cannot be discounted once you stoop to Licona's fictionalizing device theories.

Secondly, it is manifestly true that there are sects that DO believe that Christ rose from the dead, but are NOT Christians: Mormons are not Christians, though they agree Christ rose. The point is that "Christianity" is more than the sheer belief that Christ rose from the dead. It requires in a complex web of beliefs about the Trinity, about Christ having 2 natures, about sin and redemption, etc. If Christ rose from the dead, but A version of Christianity is true and B version of Christianity is not true, where do we find "Christianity is true"? Is it the version in the Gospels?

Thirdly, (following the trail of those experimenters who say that Christ only gradually came to realize his place in the world) what if Christ indeed rose from the dead, but the same way Lazarus did: by the power of God in Heaven, and that this implies nothing about Christ having that power himself. The mere assertion that Christ rose from the dead doesn't get you home free, if Christ Himself wasn't reliable because He wasn't God or didn't "understand" his own divinity sufficiently.

Ultimately, Licona's conception of the Bible and of inspiration leaves us with a Heisenberg black box: we know, with absolutely certainty, that something in that black box is true, but (a) we don't know which thing is, and (b) even if someone identifies which one(s), we still don't know which meaning it might bear is "true", it might be a figurative one, an allegorical one, it might be a "simplifying" one, or a "translating" one, or an indefinitely numerous other fictionalizing devices to make it true in some extended sense but not an obvious one. When you start down Licona's greased slope, you can't stop the slide in the middle just because you find that more appealing, As "scholars" have proven, once you kick the stuffing out of the primary sense of the text, you can get a christianity that approves of ANYTHING.

And that leads me to my last point: God says over and over in both Testaments: "my ways are not your ways", because He is holy and we (without aid) are not. The only thing that prevents us from contorting any (and all) texts into pretzels that confirm our own pet versions of morality and spirituality is a firm foundation in an objective revelation - a written text with specific words, sentences, verses and passages AND MEANINGS that don't change with the seasons. The only way God can impress on us a conception of holiness that is foreign to us in our sinful sight is to give us a concrete revelation that says things that sound odd to us. If, however, the text can be revised and relativized by an infinite number of fictionalizing devices, then effectively EVERY odd passage can be explained away: the "god" picture that appears now becomes one that is conformable to our own vision. Instead of revelation showing us something different - better - to aspire to, revelation becomes a self-confirming pat on the back.

However many difficulties it leaves us with, we have to wrestle with what God said, not what we would have said if we were making the story come out right. That's the only revelation worth the effort.

Yes, it's very interesting to see the minimalism and the interaction that it has with the epistemic undermining. I truly believe that everyone who takes such a minimalist stance would have been well-served by interacting closely with a Christian who also happens to be a good epistemologist, *way back* at the beginning when the minimalist case was first developed.

This didn't happen, and what crept in were various confusions. One was a confusion between sociology and epistemology. I have now found it in author after author: "Such-and-such is agreed upon by a majority of scholars across the theological spectrum" ends up equaling, "Such-and-such is well-justified" and, even worse, "If such-and-such is *not* agreed upon by a majority of scholars across the theological spectrum, it is *not* well-justified." Occasionally you can see the person himself throwing up some slight resistance to the latter, but that resistance usually falls because of an ambiguity between, "Such-and-such is not true" and "Such-and-such is not objectively well-justified." They tend to think that the former is a no-no but treat the latter as, in principle and in fact, a legitimate move.

Another confusion concerns things like the nature of the appearance claims to the disciples--a topic I've discussed in blog posts and in a webinar. There is a failure to realize just how far down they have watered the appearance claims (so that they are agreed upon by a majority of scholars across the theological spectrum) and how this weakens the case.

And the third confusion concerns doctrine and the dubiousness of the leap from, "I'm a Christian now because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus" to a robust creedal set of Christian doctrinal beliefs. There were groups of Arians who believed that Jesus rose from the dead (modern Unitarianism represents the victory of one side among the Unitarians themselves), and the Socinians actually produced some rather strong historical apologetics for the resurrection! One needs a more robust notion of Gospel reliability concerning what Christ taught about himself to get even "mere Christianity" out of the resurrection.

I can say here and now that when Tim and I wrote our Blackwell piece on the resurrection, published about ten years ago, we were under the false impression that a majority of scholars granted that the disciples claimed to have had the interactions with Jesus recorded in the Gospels. We conditionalized on that claim in the article. We also, of course, considered it objectively well-justified, but we stated in a single sentence that not only was it well-justified but widely granted. We were wrong about that. We misinterpreted, I think, the research of Dr. Habermas. Knowing that we wanted to do more work getting into the nitty-gritty of defending the historical reliability of the Gospels, we have spent the subsequent years doing that, and in so doing we have realized just how far the skepticism of the liberal scholars, and unfortunately of many scholars deemed "conservative" extends concerning the reliability of the resurrection accounts even as records of what the original putative eyewitnesses claimed.

But instead of backing down, we have just said, "Well, that's an unjustified skepticism. Here's why." Indeed, the willingness to defend the robust reliability of the Gospels was such an immediate reaction to the discovery of wider skepticism that I didn't even remember that that sentence about wide acceptance was in the older article until someone pointed it out to me about a year ago. Ever since we wrote that article we have been moving, quite quickly in fact, to recognizing that the minimalist approach is too minimal. Not that we thought at that time that we were making a "minimal facts" case. We knew that we weren't. But we thought that the "minimal facts" case was a nearer cousin to what we were doing than, it turns out, it is. But that didn't faze us when we gradually came to understand that sociological fact.

^ True story.

Knowing that we wanted to do more work getting into the nitty-gritty of defending the historical reliability of the Gospels, we have spent the subsequent years doing that, and in so doing we have realized just how far the skepticism of the liberal scholars, and unfortunately of many scholars deemed "conservative" extends concerning the reliability of the resurrection accounts even as records of what the original putative eyewitnesses claimed.

Are you saying that scholars are claiming that (for example) Matthew 28:17 is not really claiming that the disciples saw the risen Jesus and worshiped Him? That is, they would be claiming something like that passage is not part of the original text and was put there some time later as a fabrication? Am I understanding you correctly?

What I'm trying to get at is saying the much stronger (b) vs (a), where
(a) The Resurrection did not happen (skepticism about the event)
(b) Regardless of the truth or falsity of (a), the mere claim or assertion of a Resurrection by the disciples is also to be doubted. (skepticism about the claim concerning the event)

If I haven't badly misunderstood you, what pray tell is the basis of our religion if we doubt not only the claims of the text, but that the texts even make the claims to begin with.

This is like a make-your-own-religion game.

Apologies if I'm being dense here and have misunderstood. Looking at what I wrote, my question seems so silly that I can't believe I understand you.


There is an article at the Bible and Interpretation website by Bruce Chilton on the Resurrection, which promotes his recent book on the subject: Resurrection Logic. Now, I don’t know whether Chilton actually believes in the Resurrection. Judging by his article, I would assume that he doesn’t. At least, I would make that assumption if I knew nothing about the slipperiness of NT scholars. In reality it is quite possible that he does claim to believe. If that is the case, then his belief has no rational basis in the context of his other beliefs.

Chilton points out that Paul says nothing about an empty tomb and then declares that the story of the empty tomb is a “latecomer” to the tradition, as if the latter were a reasonable deduction from the former. He also takes Paul’s reference to a “spiritual body” as implying the non-physical nature of the Resurrection. If Chilton were actually right on those points, then we would have little basis for believing in the Resurrection. And it is not just about the empty tomb per se. We also need to know that we can trust the Gospel writers to tell us the truth about something as significant as the empty tomb.

Joe Lightfoot:


Are you saying that scholars are claiming that (for example) Matthew 28:17 is not really claiming that the disciples saw the risen Jesus and worshiped Him? That is, they would be claiming something like that passage is not part of the original text and was put there some time later as a fabrication? Am I understanding you correctly?
Regardless of the truth or falsity of (a), the mere claim or assertion of a Resurrection by the disciples is also to be doubted. (skepticism about the claim concerning the event)

I would say there is a lot of skepticism that they made claims as detailed, evidentially forceful, and specific as what we find in the Gospels. Generally, even among some evangelicals or evangelical fellow-travelers, the idea is that they made *some* sort of claim to have seen Jesus, to have had "resurrection experiences," but that we cannot know whether they made claims as extensive and specific as those found in the Gospel resurrection accounts.

Those accounts in their details, such as Jesus eating with the disciples, meeting with them on multiple occasions, or having long conversations with them, might be embellished by later additions.

Here is Michael Licona on this subject:

What may we conclude about the appearances to the disciples? A similarity exists with the miracles of Jesus. Bracketing the issue of the nature of the event itself—that is, was it a divine act, magic, psychological delusion or trickery—a paucity of evidence should deter us from affirming the historicity of particular miracles of Jesus. Historians may conclude that Jesus performed acts that he and others interpreted as miracles and exorcisms and that these acts caused many onlookers to drop their jaws in amazement. However, it is difficult to award historicity with a great deal of certainty to any particular miracle or exorcism reported in the Gospels. In a similar manner, historians may conclude that, subsequent to Jesus’ death by crucifixion, a number of his followers had experiences in individual and group settings that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them. We may affirm with great confidence that Peter had such an experience in an individual setting, and we will see that the same may be said of an adversary of the church named Paul. We may likewise affirm that there was at least one occasion when a group of Jesus’ followers including ‘the Twelve’ had such an experience. Did other experiences reported by the Gospels occur as well, such as the appearances to the women, Thomas, the Emmaus disciples, and the multiple group appearances reported by the tradition in I Corinthians 15:3–7 and John? Where did these experiences occur? Historians may be going beyond what the data warrants in assigning a verdict with much confidence to these questions.

This is in his large book on the resurrection of Jesus (!!), pp. 371-372

"Such experiences" here simply means some sort of experience that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them. Its precise nature is left vague. Notice the analogy to Paul's vision on the road to Damascus. But Paul, of course, never even claimed to have sat and conversed and eaten with Jesus. So the analogy is very interesting in and of itself.

Here is Dale Allison on the same subject:


As for the accounts of Jesus being touched and eating food—again, can we really establish the origin of those stories, even if they did in fact happen? Many scholars...regard the texts as legendary, and I cannot see how [Christians] can argue anything much from them without making a case to the contrary. But how can it be done?

“Response to Gary Habermas,” Philosophi Christi 10:2 (2008), pp. 331–332

Allison has also said,

While it may be an “emotional necessity to exalt the problem to which one wants to devote a lifetime,” and while I am proudly an historian, I must confess that history is not what matters most. If my deathbed finds me alert and not overly racked with pain, I will then be preoccupied with how I have witnessed and embodied faith, hope and charity. I will not be fretting over the historicity of this or that part of the Bible. (Constructing Jesus, p. 462)

In a debate with Bart Ehrman about a year and a half ago, Michael Licona expressly cited Dale Allison as an example of a scholar who has been convinced of the resurrection by evidence. This was particularly bizarre given that Licona literally quoted (this was in his closing statement) this last *very passage* from Allison, which has a strongly fideistic sound to it.

In a recent podcast or post (I forget which), William Lane Craig cited Allison in a similar way--as a person evidentially convinced of the resurrection who is not swayed by skeptical doubts of it. Dr. Craig sent me a copy of that post ahead of time because it referred to Tim and me, and I was able to clarify something about our estimate of the probability of the resurrection before it was published, which he duly corrected. At the same time I attempted to point out that a) Dale Allison explicitly does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which Dr. Craig knows, because he has debated with him on the subject, and b) Dale Allison denies the reliability of the resurrection accounts and hence does not believe in the resurrection on the basis of strong evidence. I urged Dr. Craig not to include Allison as an example of a scholar who believes in the resurrection, much less a scholar who believes in it because of the strength of the evidence. I pointed out that such a claim was likely to confuse readers about the nature of Allison's position. As far as I know (though I don't have the URL in front of me right now, but I believe I found it and checked after the post went up), that advice was not heeded, and that reference to Allison was left in.

The *exact* degree of fabrication that Licona (for example) thinks an historian is warranted in conjecturing in the Easter accounts is not clear. He himself gives various specific examples of things he thinks may have been fabricated--the doubting Thomas sequence, the appearances in Jerusalem (as opposed to Galilee, where he thinks the first appearance actually took place), the one-on-one interview with Mary Magdalene. He even says that these possibilities show how much freedom the authors felt they had to "craft their narrative." Since he is on record as saying that Jesus first appeared in Galilee, presumably he thinks that the disciples did make the claim contained in Matthew 28:17.

Allison's skepticism is even more widespread. Based on what I've read, I would say Allison thinks that large portions of the resurrection narratives may well, for all we can tell, be fabricated. Allison is particularly enamored of "grief hallucinations" as a possible explanation of whatever appearances did take place, so he may make the "cut" between those portions of the narratives that he thinks could be explained by grief hallucinations and those that can't. E.g. He may think that the disciples had a vivid visual experience, and claimed that they did, but that they never even claimed that Jesus could eat or that he invited them to touch his wounds or that they had long theological conversations with him in a group. He expressly conjectures that the eating part may have been added by Luke for apologetic reasons.

Joe L., here is a very interesting passage from William Lane Craig on the need to switch to a new approach to apologetics in the wake of 19th-century higher criticism. He has just spent several pages laying out the Paley-style trilemma concerning the disciples--either they were deceivers, they were deceived, or they were telling the truth. (I myself think this is an excellent argumentative structure; refuting each of the first two options, of course, requires time and effort and, crucially, reference to the *details* of what they claimed.)

Craig then comments:

Strauss's work completely altered the tone and course of German theology. Gone forever was the central dilemma of the eighteenth-century apologetic for the resurrection. Now the evangelists were neither deceivers nor deceived, but stood at the end of a long process in which the original events were completely reshaped through mythological an dlegendary influences....This is the challenge that Strauss has left to Christian apologetics. Reasonable Faith, p. 347

On the same page he refers to "the dissolution of the apologists' dilemma."

This whole passage conflates sociology with epistemology rather seriously. The dilemma was perfectly good. Poorly supported *assertions* that these were not the things that the disciples claimed at all do not "dissolve" the dilemma. We should meet Strauss and his ideological descendants head-to-head and refute the claims about legendary accretions.

But that is not *at all* what Craig says. Instead, he explicitly says that we *should not* be "saddled with" arguing for the reliability of the Gospels. Instead, we should use the tools of modern "critical scholarship" to try to find various facts that fulfill the criteria of being multiply attested, etc., and then use this more minimal basis which we have mined out of the Gospels (even if they are unreliable) to argue for the resurrection. He even says that the "overriding lesson of two centuries of biblical criticism" is that it is *not necessary* to argue for the reliability of the Gospels in order to show that Jesus rose from the dead and that Jesus had a "radical self-understanding." (Reasonable Faith, p. 11)

So basically, Craig is saying that so many scholars deny that the Gospel resurrection accounts even represent an accurate account of the claims of the original putative witnesses that we should abandon the Paleyan approach altogether, switch to a criteriological, minimalist approach, and (allegedly) beat the critical scholars at their own game.

I think this is a disastrous capitulation. But it does show how influential the widespread skeptical denial of the authenticity of the resurrection accounts, even as records of the detailed claims of the apostles, has been.

Is there any indication of what Licona, Allison, et al., believe about the acceptance of the Apostles' narrative in the immediate sub-apostolic age? I mean, the second and third generation Christians obviously believed that what the first generation had witnessed and taught was true, if the writings of the apostolic fathers are any indicator. Recall the passage from Clement of Rome that I quoted here once before, which dates from about A.D. 95:

“The apostles, having received their orders and filled with certainty through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and entrusted with the Word of God, went forth with the certainty of the Holy Spirit, preaching the good news that God’s Kingdom was to come” (Ad Corinthios 42.3).

What would these fellows say about a strong attestation like that, seeing that it's within one generation of the writing of the Gospels themselves?

Well, they tend to cherry-pick a fair bit in ancient writings and even engage in eisegesis, sometimes taking out of context. Here's an example: Papias has a passage in which he strongly defends the veracity of Mark. He says that Mark did not falsify anything that Peter told him. Now, in the course of that famous passage, Papias uses the word "chreia," which just means "anecdotes" for the way that Peter taught. Peter taught about what he remembered "in the form of anecdotes." An older translation is, "According to need," since the word "chreia" can mean "need." But even if one takes the less literal translation, the word "anecdote" or "story" is a good one.

Craig Evans takes that word "chreia" and pretty violently rips it out of context. He then interprets it to mean "special rhetorical exercise as taught in Greek exercise books," despite the immense improbability that either Mark or Peter had received a Greek education! He then goes farther and relies probably on the highly flawed work of very liberal scholar Burton Mack (though he does not cite Mack and may just be doing it himself) to say that the Greek exercise books were teaching students that it was okay to change history somewhat when they wrote it down. This is also incorrect, so this whole structure of inference is badly wrong at multiple points.

He then also translates the passage in Papias very idiosyncratically to say that *Mark* wrote down Peter's teaching in the form of chreia, when the far more probable interpretation (and this is not just me saying this but pretty much every other translator) is that Peter taught in the form of chreia/anecdotes.

He then concludes that Papias is saying that it was okay for Mark to change some facts in his narrative, because this "chreia" thing was a technical, ancient-y term that meant that changing facts was somehow okay.

Which is exactly the opposite of what Papias is saying in the passage.

I swear I am not making this up.

And then a prominent, inerrantist, evangelical apologist and his co-host go on their show and uncritically cite the famous Dr. Craig Evans telling us about how we need to have more flexibility in interpreting the Gospels, because Papias used the word "chreia," so isn't that helpful?

This sort of thing comes up more than once, though I don't think the misinterpretation is always deliberate.

Oh, also, there is a tendency to say that any reference to the word "truth" or its cognates doesn't mean what we mean and that higher, spiritual truth is what is aimed at, with historical truth being less important, and that it is anachronistic of us to assume that they mean historical truth.

Craig Keener cites St. Augustine as saying that the Gospel authors narrated as the Holy Spirit brought things to mind, which may not have been in chronological order.

This is true, but it doesn't mean what Keener thinks it means. Keener uses this to argue for the vague thesis that the first readers of the Gospels didn't always expect the narratives to be in chronological order, which is beautifully ambiguous as between the narratives *changing* the chronological order and *making* it be something different and their merely *narrating* in some other order *without* implying chronology. Then when it comes to the Temple cleansing he uses the argument he's made earlier to say that it would have been okay with ancient authors and audiences for John to change (by over three years) the day on which Jesus cleansed the Temple.

So you go and look up the Augustine in the original context.

And it says (sound familiar?) exactly the opposite from the statement that it was okay to change chronological order. Augustine explicitly states that sometimes the authors *do not indicate* a chronology and that in that case they may be narrating out of chronological order but without trying to imply one. He *explicitly* says that when they do indicate a chronological order they *must be harmonized*. Keener just missed this.

In fact, it's pretty common to use ancient achronological narration as if it implied an approval of dyscrhonological narration. This then allows a pretty major reinterpretation of church father references to truth, etc.

Nice Marmot

The Case for the Resurrection, co-written by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona quotes that very passage from 1 Clement. They appear to raise some doubt as to whether the author would have been in a position to know exactly what the Apostles taught, but they present the letter as evidence worthy of consideration. They also say the following about Ignatius:

Since the apostles trained Polycarp, Ignatius is certain to have been well acquainted with apostolic teachings. Ignatius recorded the willingness of the disciples to suffer for their beliefs. In his letter to the church in Smyrna where Polycarp was Bishop he wrote, "And when Jesus came to those with Peter, he said to them: 'Take, handle me and see that I am not a bodiless phantom.' And immediately they handled him and believed, having known his flesh and blood. Because of this they also despised death; but beyond death they were found."

And Ignatius himself was on his way to being martyred when he wrote the letter. I wonder whether Ignatius would have been so confident in the face of death, if he'd been relying on a minimal facts argument.

Right, so that quotation from Habermas and Licona concerning Ignatius would give the impression that they are willing to rely on those details of the accounts. In practice, I find that Habermas (somewhat more so than LIcona) *does* go in that direction when confronted with someone like Allison who doubts the bodily resurrection. I have, however, never seen Habermas fully confront the fact that this takes him outside of and beyond his own minimal facts method, since those details are not acknowledged by a majority of scholars across the ideological spectrum. That is to say, that majority does not even acknowledge that those details were part of what the apostles originally claimed, as opposed to a later embellishment. This is precisely what Allison points out, which is why it's interesting that the quotation I gave above from Allison is in his response *to Habermas* in a symposium. He's more or less trying to skewer Habermas for going beyond what a majority of NT scholars would acknowledge. I'd like to think Habermas would say, "Then the heck with the majority of NT scholars," but in other places he has not left himself that option. For example, Habermas has said,

When establishing a consensus of views, it is important to show that such a near-unanimity is “composed of scholars from all interested camps." We are not guessing about where researchers stand, and neither are we basing the case on a small, sectarian element within the academic community. Rather, the scholars should hold a variety of religious and philosophical positions..... When discussing the Minimal Facts, I have always purposely included notes at each juncture that list representative numbers of skeptics of various stripes who still affirm the data in question. This is a significant methodological procedure that serves more than one purpose. Among others, it assures the readers that they are not being asked to accept something that only conservatives believe, or that is only recognized by those who believe in the veracity of the New Testament text, and so on. After all, this sort of widespread recognition and approval is the very thing that our stated method requires.

So relying on the sort of details mentioned in the Ignatius quotation is inconsistent with his own stated methodology.

Sometimes what one will find is a strange and roundabout argument that goes something like this:

1) The Apostle Paul evidently thought that Jesus' resurrection was bodily. (Cite NT Wright) 2) Luke's inclusion of details like Jesus eating with the disciples and being tangible shows that Luke *believed* that Jesus' resurrection was bodily. (LM: I point out at this point that Luke himself never claimed to be an eyewitness.) 3) These points probably mean that the disciples themselves believed that the resurrection was bodily and taught that it was bodily. 4) Therefore, we have some reason to believe that the resurrection was bodily, *even if* the details included in Luke do not represent what, specifically, the disciples actually claimed.

The roundabout nature of this is pretty astonishing. We are supposed to entertain seriously the hypothesis that the disciples believed and taught non-eyewitness catechumens (such as Luke and Paul) that Jesus' resurrection was bodily, but that we *cannot be sure* what *details* they actually taught or witnessed to that led them to conclude this. We have to remain "iffy" on this, because we have to leave very open the possibility that the *actual* details given in Luke are a later embellishment. (By whom?? Unclear.)

So, on the basis of *something or other* the disciples believed that Jesus' resurrection was bodily, and we use this as some (now significantly weakened) evidence that his resurrection *was* bodily.

But what we don't base our argument on is that they actually testified to the *very things* found in Luke's resurrection account.

This is more or less the way that Licona argues on this question of physicality in his big resurrection book. I note, however, that R in his big resurrection book *does not* entail the bodily resurrection. Very few people who read the book know this. R in that book is the disjunction of the bodily resurrection *or* the objective vision theory. He has a short argument (relatively) in the book that Jesus did rise bodily from the dead, but that is not the central argument of his book.

I've been slow to appreciate your objection to the minimal facts approach. It now seems to me as if the only benefit of the approach is that it may cause some discomfort for sceptics. I don't know whether there is any advantage in that, but if there is it then it must be weighed against the potential disadvantage that people may regard the minimal facts argument as the only that *could* be made for the Resurrection.

So Habermas's "significant methodological procedure" has a remarkably narrow aim and potentially undesirable side-effects. Perhaps the real problem is a capitulation to arguments from silence. In other words, if Paul doesn't go into detail about the Resurrection appearances, then we can't make any assumptions about the nature of the appearances. Allegedly, the Gospels can't help because in view of the "flexibility" of the genre, the details can't be taken at face value. But Ignatius is an early witness who clearly had no doubt about the details and was prepared to face death because of it.

Lydia, somewhat off-topic, but do you have an opinion on William Lane Craig’s argument for the classification of Genesis 1-11 as “mytho-history?” And I do your criticisms of Licona’s reading of the Gospels carry over to Craig’s work on Genesis?

Thank you very much Lydia for the helpful responses. Especially of interest is what you said:

But that is not *at all* what Craig says. Instead, he explicitly says that we *should not* be "saddled with" arguing for the reliability of the Gospels. Instead, we should use the tools of modern "critical scholarship" to try to find various facts that fulfill the criteria of being multiply attested, etc., and then use this more minimal basis which we have mined out of the Gospels (even if they are unreliable) to argue for the resurrection. He even says that the "overriding lesson of two centuries of biblical criticism" is that it is *not necessary* to argue for the reliability of the Gospels in order to show that Jesus rose from the dead and that Jesus had a "radical self-understanding." (Reasonable Faith, p. 11)

So basically, Craig is saying that so many scholars deny that the Gospel resurrection accounts even represent an accurate account of the claims of the original putative witnesses that we should abandon the Paleyan approach altogether, switch to a criteriological, minimalist approach, and (allegedly) beat the critical scholars at their own game.

I think this is a disastrous capitulation. But it does show how influential the widespread skeptical denial of the authenticity of the resurrection accounts, even as records of the detailed claims of the apostles, has been.

I agree that that is a disastrous capitulation. First, it makes (without so much of an argument as I can see) critical scholarship the standard. Second, this seems to be directly related to a truth-by-majority approach, which I also reject. Third, at a high level, the approach seems so "acidic" that it could dissolve just about any historical claim whatsoever.

At a pastoral level, when somebody is in the process of making the ultimate commitment or seeing that an ultimate commitment must be made (perhaps while the business end of a gun is pointed at them or at the threat of loss of friends, family, wealth, etc), what will the arid "minimal facts" approach really mean? Sitting at my desk in the comfort of my life, it is interesting to discuss, but in the "real world" where there is a penalty for being Christian in many places, what does it all mean?

Based on my readings of him, my pennamesake would've resisted this modern approach; he argued forcefully and confidently in a way that would make him today a laughingstock among modern theology departments.

Also, I think of Morris' quote in his volume of studies on the fourth gospel that we don't really have new facts today that the Victorian scholars of a century ago didn't have; we just have a change in the worldview of the scholars. I still look at the stuff you and Tim recommended to me form the 17th-19th centuries and I find it solid, even though hopelessly dated. But the arguments and marshaling of the evidence still strike me as solid.

Again, I feel for anybody with truly conservative views who is trying to do modern Biblical scholarhips!

Thanks again for the replies.

At a pastoral level, when somebody is in the process of making the ultimate commitment or seeing that an ultimate commitment must be made (perhaps while the business end of a gun is pointed at them or at the threat of loss of friends, family, wealth, etc), what will the arid "minimal facts" approach really mean? Sitting at my desk in the comfort of my life, it is interesting to discuss, but in the "real world" where there is a penalty for being Christian in many places, what does it all mean?

To be as fair as possible, Mike Licona claims in a story he likes to tell that a more minimalist approach saved his faith. I haven't listened to the whole story recently, but as I understand the gist of it, he was feeling overwhelmed by all the alleged contradictions in the Gospels and called up his mentor, Gary Habermas, on the telephone. As he tells it, he kept bringing these various things up, and Habermas just kept saying, "But Mike, did Jesus rise from the dead?" And as long as Mike kept saying, "Yes," Habermas basically was communicating to him that none of these other details mattered.

The problem with that is that it is epistemically entangled. There are certain ways of ditching the importance of the details that undermine, seriously undermine, the evidential basis for the resurrection itself. And Licona does not recognize that that is what he is doing. So he believes that his approach has enormous pastoral importance.

These ways of brushing off everything but the resurrection and greatly weakening our evidential base for the deity of Jesus would also make it more difficult to get robust evidence for the theological implications of the resurrection. Bill Craig will talk about "mere Christianity" but mere Christianity is actually quite theologically robust. Especially given the downplaying of the historicity of Jesus' teachings in the Gospel of John, we'd have a lot less data directly from the mouth of Jesus on both his own deity and the Holy Spirit if we were as quick to make concessions as the minimalist strategy would dictate. What theological type of "Christianity" would that leave us with? Socinians and even Arians used to believe in the resurrection!

In his recent debate/dialogue with Richard Howe, Richard used an additive harmonization at a certain point concerning the voice from heaven at Jesus' baptism. I myself would not take that approach. I would say that "this is my beloved son" vs. "you are my beloved son" is just the sort of casual variation in normal witness reportage of words that we get all the time. Richard said, "Maybe he said both." Licona just *jumped* on that and began almost ranting to the effect that this is how you lose people, this sets people off on the road to becoming Bart Ehrman, this is what gives inerrancy a bad name, etc. The problem is that I very much fear that Licona would do that for other additive harmonizations that are far more reasonable. He is certainly impatient with them in Why Are There Differences.

So he thinks he's saving people's faith by telling them that most of the alleged contradictions in the Gospels are due to fact-changing literary devices, and then trying to save the core message by multiple attestation, etc.

I call what these guys are doing the "Yugo" approach to arguing for apologetics. It's like you have a Yugo, and you say, "Look how streamlined this thing is. Isn't that great! That actually makes it *stronger*, because it doesn't have to use up so much energy carrying around all that extra weight!"

Epistemically, of course, that's wrong. But I think they sincerely believe it.

Lydia, somewhat off-topic, but do you have an opinion on William Lane Craig’s argument for the classification of Genesis 1-11 as “mytho-history?” And I do your criticisms of Licona’s reading of the Gospels carry over to Craig’s work on Genesis?

Andrew, I have so far not studied in detail what Craig says on that. I would say there is not a *direct* application but may be an *indirect* one. The reason there isn't a direct application is that one has to evaluate these sorts of genre claims on their own merits, and obviously the cultural reference points in the case of Genesis 1-11 are different from those in the case of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If it took me as much time and effort as it did to rebut the assertions being made about the influence of "Greco-Roman literary conventions" that permitted factual change on the Gospels, it would take a different research project to investigate whatever Bill Craig is claiming about the genre of Genesis 1-11.

I think there may be an indirect connection, though. But this is tentative. The indirect connection is that Dr. Craig has made it pretty clear that he's out-sourcing the question of what the *science* says to Joshua Swamidass. This is a very, very bad idea, since Swamidass is a self-proclaimed methodological naturalist in science!! Swamidass is quite contemptuous of intelligent design theory, even though ID is not even a young earth enterprise (in fact, most ID-ers are old earthers). He's pretty much devoted to a theistic evolutionary model for the evolution of the human body. I'm really disappointed in Craig's choice of a "science mentor" here.

Now, with the science side guided by a self-proclaimed methodological naturalist who is hostile to ID, that is going to put *enormous* pressure on Genesis 1-11. The temptation to come up with some kind of claim that these are not historical has to be pretty strong at that point.

Also, I did a lot of research several years ago into John Walton's claims about "ancient people" and the alleged real meaning of Genesis 1-2, and they were ridiculous, evidentially. (Bill Craig also criticized Walton, interestingly.) So I'm pretty skeptical of vast, sweeping claims about the ahistoricity of the genre of Genesis 1-11, all the more so since that's so many chapters that go into so many names and so forth. What I mean there is that it is not just a matter of Genesis 1-2, which seem to have at least some sort of metaphors and so forth going on, but of a much larger sweep of what appears to be at least in some sense a record of human history. So I have some antecedent doubts about how good the arguments are going to be here.

And the connection of course is just an analogy: The alleged contradictions in the Gospels and the anti-standards of skeptical biblical scholarship have put this pressure on evangelicals to use the term "genre" to save themselves from either a) harmonizing, which gets a bad rap or b) agreeing that there is a minor error.

Could something similar be going on with Dr. Craig and Genesis? It certainly could. I just am not in a strong position to say that it is.

Thank you for the response Lydia! My worry is that this concept of “mytho-history” as a biblical genre is borderline incoherent insofar as our ordinary concept of what’s mythical conflicts with our concept of what it means for something to be historical. It seems like a contrived halfway-house category that allows one to say that something is either mythical or historical as a matter of interpretive convenience. I recognize the relevant issues aren’t the same, but I suspect there’s a similarity with the wax nose that Licona makes of ancient biography.

It strikes me that way as well. Is the phrase new with Dr. Craig? This post is interesting. Steve often has good insights.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-genesis-mytho-history.html

A couple of things I notice: The immediate jump from, "A talking snake, seriously?" to "Hey, this whole thing could be mytho-history." And the hope that there is a "floor" to the category that will fall at a convenient location before it chops off something the genre theorist really wants to keep. The question is, is that objective and principled, or arbitrary and ad hoc?

~~~he was feeling overwhelmed by all the alleged contradictions in the Gospels and called up his mentor, Gary Habermas, on the telephone. As he tells it, he kept bringing these various things up, and Habermas just kept saying, "But Mike, did Jesus rise from the dead?" And as long as Mike kept saying, "Yes," Habermas basically was communicating to him that none of these other details mattered. The problem with that is that it is epistemically entangled.~~~

Seems to me that this entanglement is automatic if one combines a "hard" sola scriptura approach with strict inerrancy. If I remember correctly even Luther said somewhere that the infallibility of Scripture need not apply to "things mentioned in passing." It takes a considerable level of idiocy to argue against the authority of Scripture (or of Christ) based on the fact that the mustard seed isn't actually the smallest of all seeds.

About 30 years ago I went through a similar "crisis" to that of Licona, although I can't say that my faith was in jeopardy, only my epistemological commitment to evangelicalism (I was a religion major at a fairly liberal Catholic college at the time, and the liberalism was making me rethink certain things). What helped me out immensely was this Touchstone piece by Steve Hutchens, and the subsequent discussion between Hutchens and Carl Henry in that same journal.

https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=04-02-003-f

My surmise is that scholars like Licona and Habermas would tend to wave off what Hutchens is getting at here due to its non-Protestant root, but then so did Ehrman, apparently, and look where it got him. It should be noted that at the time of the writing of his piece Hutchens was a Congregationalist of some sort, I believe, although he's a Lutheran-trained theologian (hence not an Eastern Orthodox homer).

I consider the dismissal of pretty much everything but the big events in the Gospels as strongly epistemically entangled with the defense of the resurrection even though I am *not* an inerrantist. I'm not Roman Catholic either, but my affirmation of sola scriptura probably wouldn't satisfy a strong Calvinist. But I am an evidentialist. (Very much unlike Karl Barth, whom the author of the article you link refers to in fairly glowing terms, as I interpret him.)

That's me affirming the entanglement. Here's the thing: No, one small error does not undermine our whole faith. (I'm not an inerrantist.) But if the Gospels are, or might be for all we know, riddled with later embellishments, especially things that have been deliberately invented or altered, then that does undermine the epistemic basis for the faith. We've just been discussing in this very thread the way this works concerning the resurrection accounts and the way that minimalism doesn't cut it. I've written and talked about this at length elsewhere. The same is true of Jesus' teaching. If Jesus' teaching in, say, John's Gospel is just the product of the "Johannine community" reflecting on some *other* teaching of Jesus and putting words into his mouth, our data set for doctrine is seriously harmed.

And I think a Catholic should say this as well (Tony, my co-blogger here, would I'm sure agree with this). Because even Catholic teaching is supposed to be expounding the deposit of faith. To put it bluntly, if Jesus didn't historically teach that he was God in a way that a reasonable person could discern, then that raises the odds that the church is making up that doctrine and imposing it on him.

And I think a Catholic should say this as well (Tony, my co-blogger here, would I'm sure agree with this). Because even Catholic teaching is supposed to be expounding the deposit of faith.

Quite right. Roman Catholic advertence to Tradition (with a capital T) is always in coordination with Scripture, and never against it. The written Scriptures are a critical touchstone to the work of understanding the ongoing light of the Holy Spirit to enlighten us.

I don't think all that much of Hutchins' specific arguments against the value of the inerrancy of the autographs, but then I don't live in a millieu of Protestant inerrancy. Catholicism has (and has always had) a very hearty, very strong version of inerrancy of its own, but it does not depend on Protestant sources for it (naturally). The basic principle, though, is that Scripture is inspired of God, and this Richard Howe accurately referred to in the debate. The Catholic sense of inspiration is that it is vastly stronger than the providential influence God has on ALL matters, and which interjects in specific matters more directly (such as the election of a pope), and that it is also stronger than the control and influence God exerts in infallible pronouncements of the Church - these latter are free from outright error, but can be crabbed and poorly worded and otherwise unhelpful: the protection from error is negative, and is not promise of wisdom, fullness of truth, elegance, and perfect enlightenment; whereas Scripture is God-breathed with wisdom, fullness of truth (as needed for salvation), etc. Scripture has what God intended to be there, and has nothing of what God intended not to be there: the human authors were so moved by grace that they willingly wrote what God wanted there, intentionally wrote what they themselves grasped as true which they saw on account of aid by the Holy Spirit.

"No, one small error does not undermine our whole faith. (I'm not an inerrantist.) But if the Gospels are, or might be for all we know, riddled with later embellishments, especially things that have been deliberately invented or altered, then that does undermine the epistemic basis for the faith. We've just been discussing in this very thread the way this works concerning the resurrection accounts and the way that minimalism doesn't cut it."

Agreed. But if Hutchens, and by extension the Catholic and Orthodox hermeneutical traditions, are onto something, this dilemma gets moved to the side, as it were. One is no longer stuck with just the hard choice between inerrancy and minimalism, or inerrancy and liberalism. In other words, if certain aspects of the Evangelical Protestant hermeneutic method are giving you grief, it's not necessary to call into question the reliability of all traditional Biblical interpretation. I mean, the very first question I asked myself when I started having concerns about the Evangelical approach to Scriptural reliability and interpretation was, "What has the church said historically about all this?"

But if Hutchens, and by extension the Catholic and Orthodox hermeneutical traditions, are onto something, this dilemma gets moved to the side, as it were. One is no longer stuck with just the hard choice between inerrancy and minimalism, or inerrancy and liberalism.

I get this odd feeling, NM, that maybe you haven't been reading my New Testament posts for the past two and a half years, or something? I mean, that's fine. You don't have to.

But I've always pretty loudly affirmed that we are not stuck with that hard choice. Of course, it's possible you'd designate my position "liberalism," though according to my opponents I'm a hidebound conservative. :-) Theologically, I'm certainly very conservative (if Protestants can qualify), and on objective, historical grounds.

We have never been stuck with a choice between a simplistic, wooden inerrancy, and the moorless wild imaginings of un-Christian liberals. The flat reality is that the Fathers of the first centuries were perfectly capable of perceiving most of the difficulties we see, and it didn't send them into despondency / despair over the Gospels. Their response, then, should also work for us: we will work for resolution and solution, and where we cannot find one, we will leave it open for later workers and/or later help by the Holy Spirit to give us a clue. A faithful willingness to be left unable to explain, to say "I don't know how to resolve them" is sufficient. Being driven to doubt the Gospels because of a lack of clear resolution in a couple passages is both a flaw in one's intellectual capacity to accept a state of unrest, and a deficiency in faith itself, because "a thousand difficulties does not make one doubt". It reminds me of people who run off to form hard, firm opinions on flimsy evidence, and when you point out the weakness of the evidence and how easy it could be that some other conclusion is true, they respond in ways that make it (somewhat) clear that they would rather feel at rest in an opinion that is wrong than be in a state of unrest between several options.

One of the surest pointers to the foundational problems of the fictionalizers (as I see it, anyway) is how ready they end up to accept fictionalizing on passages for which there is no pressure to invent a device, there is no problem that needs solving. E.G. that Jesus's saying "I thirst" was a replacement for, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" I mean, why would anyone insist that Christ could not have said both things (just as one option)? It's quite idiotic, and illustrates how easy it is to switch from using the fiction to "solve" a problem, and using one to push an agenda. Or rather, that there is actually no possible way to AVOID pushing an agenda as soon as you invent these things you run toward some invention that also pushes an agenda.

"we are not stuck with that hard choice."

Which is my point, as should be apparent from my sentence immediately following what you block-quoted.

I know that we are not stuck with that choice. But some people who should know it don't, apparently.

"The flat reality is that the Fathers of the first centuries were perfectly capable of perceiving most of the difficulties we see, and it didn't send them into despondency / despair over the Gospels."

Precisely! So if the Fathers could manage that without "fictionalizing," Licona, Habermas, et al., should be able to do so as well, and perhaps they ought to look for guidance historically before attempting modernist solutions that risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I was just reading an article by Michael Bird today and this came up in regards to the question of myth and history in the gospels;

"It is worth remembering that the topic of Christianity vis-à-vis myth is not a new problem. Justin Martyr, the second century Christian apologist, knew about the similarities between the virgin conception of Jesus and that of Perseus, he didn’t deny them. Justin oscillated between theoretically having no problem with Jesus being born of normal procreation, to regarding the stories as the same while insisting that Jesus was simply superior to Perseus, to considering the Perseus birth story as a serpentine counterfeit to divine work. In any case, Justin wrestled with the category of myth in relation to the gospels. For others, like Origen of Alexandria, finding myth it the gospels was no problem, it was a great opportunity to engage in some allegorical exegesis and to uncover the deeper sense of Scripture."

That's interesting. Lydia do you cover people like Augustine in your new book in how they viewed history? Letting ancients speak for themselves.

Callum, I do discuss Augustine's harmonization of the Gospels, and I also quote Augustine on the subject of truth. I also point out a simple blunder that Craig Keener makes about interpreting a passage of Augustine. (I have tried to alert Dr. Keener to this error by e-mail, but I couldn't tell if read that part of the e-mail.) Augustine was amazingly literal, and the fact that he harmonized all the time shows that he was taking the Gospels to be literally historical. Origen's claim that the Gospels could not be harmonized and that some of them occurred "in the spiritual realm" (whatever the heck that meant) was definitely an outlier, and even Origen didn't claim some kind of known literary devices. He just made up his own hand-wavy claims about a spiritual realm out of whole cloth.

Bird's word "wrestled" concerning Justin and myth seems to me dubious, and the phrase "the category of myth in relation to the gospels" is nicely vague. As though Justin was worried that maybe some parts of the Gospels were myth. I don't think there is any evidence that that was the case.

Augustine called it "evident" (not in English, of course :-)) that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. Recently on Facebook an aggressive FB commentator (whom I didn't know from Adam) was ridiculing the view that there were two Temple cleansings, calling it anachronistic and modern and literally telling me, "Shame on you!" for implying that the early church harmonized in the way that I (and other "fundamentalists") do. When I pointed out that Augustine thought it evident that there were two Temple cleansings, he had of course no response to that. (Though as is the way of aggressive social media commentators, that didn't shut him up.)

NM,

My point was just that I'm not forced to that dichotomy even though I'm a Protestant. Hutches seems to be relying heavily on the authority of the teaching Catholic church and even refers to Barth positively. I don't do either of those, and don't need to.

I would say that Justin was confused about the alleged parallels between the birth of Jesus and something like the birth of Perseus. He says the following about the pagan myths in chapter 21 of his First Apology:

But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions.

In other words, Justin is saying that no one could believe anything as crude as the pagan myths. But that is because the myths are not really analogous to the Gospels. Jupiter (Zeus) is a humanoid character who himself has humanoid parents and who fathers children with a variety of female partners. So you really can't compare Zeus with Yahweh. And Justin should really have left it at that.

Instead, he went on to offer a bizarre explanation for the "similarities" between the pagan myths and the Gospels, even though he had already pointed out that the similarities were not really similarities. And Justin's explanation for the "similarities" is also an "explanation" for why they aren't really similarities. Justin says in chapter 54 that the demons who supposedly inspired the counterfeit stories of miraculous births had misunderstood the prophecy of Isaiah. And that is why the stories don't really match.

Yeah, that's weird and implausible, but it doesn't amount to a doubt about the historicity or historical intention of the Gospels

No, Justin has no doubt about the historicity of the Gospels. He goes on to say this:

And that this may now become evident to you — (firstly ) that whatever we assert in conformity with what has been taught us by Christ, and by the prophets who preceded Him, are alone true, and are older than all the writers who have existed; that we claim to be acknowledged, not because we say the same things as these writers said, but because we say true things.

So whatever "similarities" there might be, the difference is that the stories about Jesus are true.

We have never been stuck with a choice between a simplistic, wooden inerrancy, and the moorless wild imaginings of un-Christian liberals. The flat reality is that the Fathers of the first centuries were perfectly capable of perceiving most of the difficulties we see, and it didn't send them into despondency / despair over the Gospels. Their response, then, should also work for us: we will work for resolution and solution, and where we cannot find one, we will leave it open for later workers and/or later help by the Holy Spirit to give us a clue. A faithful willingness to be left unable to explain, to say "I don't know how to resolve them" is sufficient. Being driven to doubt the Gospels because of a lack of clear resolution in a couple passages is both a flaw in one's intellectual capacity to accept a state of unrest, and a deficiency in faith itself, because "a thousand difficulties does not make one doubt". It reminds me of people who run off to form hard, firm opinions on flimsy evidence, and when you point out the weakness of the evidence and how easy it could be that some other conclusion is true, they respond in ways that make it (somewhat) clear that they would rather feel at rest in an opinion that is wrong than be in a state of unrest between several options.

One of the surest pointers to the foundational problems of the fictionalizers (as I see it, anyway) is how ready they end up to accept fictionalizing on passages for which there is no pressure to invent a device, there is no problem that needs solving. E.G. that Jesus's saying "I thirst" was a replacement for, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" I mean, why would anyone insist that Christ could not have said both things (just as one option)? It's quite idiotic, and illustrates how easy it is to switch from using the fiction to "solve" a problem, and using one to push an agenda. Or rather, that there is actually no possible way to AVOID pushing an agenda as soon as you invent these things you run toward some invention that also pushes an agenda.

I love this.

If only we could fit this much text in a Mcgrew-esque "Successories" poster like the one here a while back.

"My point was just that I'm not forced to that dichotomy even though I'm a Protestant. Hutchens seems to be relying heavily on the authority of the teaching Catholic church and even refers to Barth positively. I don't do either of those, and don't need to."

Right, but you're neither a strict inerrantist nor a "hard" sola scripturist. The dilemma would seem to become more pronounced the closer one is that particular pole of the thing.

By the way, I don't think Hutchens is invoking "the authority of the teaching Catholic church" (he is, after all, referring mostly to Eastern Orthodox Christianity), but rather the methodology/authority of the patristic interpretative tradition, which is not the same thing.

My point was just that I'm not forced to that dichotomy even though I'm a Protestant.

Lydia, if you don’t mind my asking, how do you understand the doctrine of Inspiration? For a conservative Protestant theologian like D. A. Carson, biblical inerrancy is a consequence of Inspiration on the grounds that the Scriptures are literally “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16) combined with the fact that God cannot speak other than the truth. However, since you do not hold to Inerrancy, I suspect that your understanding of what Inspiration means cannot be the same as that of someone who argues for Inerrancy as a natural corollary of Inspiration (a la Carson).

I always tell people who ask that that's a perfectly good and legitimate question and that I have no great answer to it. I suppose the best thing I can say is something like this: The inerrantist will grant that the Holy Spirit evidently allowed there to be some places in Scripture where an *accidentally* erroneous impression might be given--places that are ambiguous, for example, on some factual matter and that one could read incorrectly without being stupid. Or places that appear to be in tension with other passages and where, at present, no satisfactory harmonization can be found. (Inerrantists allow that there can be places of apparent discrepancy to which they do not know of a satisfactory harmonization, but they are convinced that there is one.) Those seem like, in some ways, unsatisfactory things for the Holy Spirit to allow. One might think it better, if the Holy Spirit is overseeing the writing in such a way as to prevent actual error, for him to oversee the writing in such a way that he also prevents such ambiguities and appearances of tension that, as yet, we don't know the resolution to.

On the other hand, what we gain from those is the appearance, the texture, as I like to say, of real witness testimony, which *often* has apparent discrepancies. And surprisingly enough, at least in the case of the Gospels, that actually gives us confidence in the reliability of the sources, since they come to us through means that we understand and can see to be highly reliable.

Now, if inspiration allows that in the inerrantist's view, I'm not sure it's a *large* stretch to envisage that inspiration could allow some places where there was an actual minor error, and for the same reason.

(Where things get much, much more difficult is with the accounts of the killings of the innocent in the OT, which is not just a minor thing in those passages. I would say that's probably my most controversial concern from an inerrantist point of view and also from the perspective of inspiration. (I have a post about it on my personal blog).)

*At a minimum*, any kind of high view of Scripture at all based on any kind of inspiration has to mean that the moral and doctrinal teaching of Scripture is correct, comes from God. And history is extremely important, because it is the vehicle through which God teaches much of his doctrine--a point that I often emphasize. So that doesn't mean that historical teaching in Scripture is disposable. It can't be. And look at how the authoritative *people* who founded Christianity use history to defend their doctrine. Jesus, for example, uses Adam and Eve to defend his teaching on marriage. Peter uses the historical David. Paul uses the time ordering of the law vs. the promise to Abraham. So those things have to be true. Is that compatible with thinking that the Holy Spirit allowed some errors on historical matters as well? At the moment I'm inclined to think so, because historically it's my best guess that there are some. But I'd certainly be glad to be wrong about that, and I don't make any claim to have a well-worked-out theory of inspiration.

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