Tim Troutman (formerly known as "The God Fearin' Fiddler") of The God Fearin' Forum has responded to my latest discussion of Eucharistic theology and Aristotle. Perhaps I have not been very clear. Whatever the case, Tim persistently misunderstands both my claim and my argument for it. I am going to try to make what I am claiming very clear here:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
Now that I've cleared that up (I hope), let me further explicate my claim and argue for it again. In case you've forgotten, here is my claim:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
Here it is, finally! Almost exactly 13 months after the last post, I am finally continuing my series. For those of you who have forgotten (probably most of you), in May of 2006 I outlined a proposed series providing an argument for belief in the Bible. I'm going to give a fairly detailed recap here because it has been so long since my last post. In Part 1: Plan of Attack I outlined the argument I intended to give. The basic claim of the argument is that historical investigation renders the idea that the canon of Scripture as we have it is divinely inspired a live option, and personal experience in the life of an individual can provide the kind of confirmation that will lead one to reasonably believe in inspiration. I have added to the plan of attack two proposed appendices: the first will deal with the question of what to believe about the Bible, and the second will deal with which Bible to believe in (i.e. with determining the canon). Because they will be dealt with later, I will skirt these issues as much as possible in the current post, though they will have to be addressed in some degree.
In Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth we assumed that a super-human conscious entity had created the world and wanted to live in community with other minds (we didn't assume the Christian God as such, but decided to call him God for convenience). We argued that, if such a being exists, he may well be trying to get our attention, and may perhaps choose to use human language to speak to us. Such a revelation would be validated by a 'signature,' which would be something easy for God but difficult or impossible to counterfeit. We argued that the historical evidence points to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as such an event, and therefore concluded that his life and teachings constituted such a revelation. (The whole argument, but this part especially, is indebted to Richard Swinburne and his book Revelation.)
In Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible we argued that certain New Testament texts (especially the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) could, without assuming inerrancy or inspiration, be treated as reliable historical sources about the life and teachings of Jesus and that these sources tell us that Jesus regarded the Hebrew Bible as a divine revelation to mankind. As a result, the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in God's revelation to mankind in the life and teachings of Jesus.
This post will assume all these things. If you find any of these claims questionable (and I hope some people who find these claims questionable are reading!) you are encouraged to go back and read the previous post and comment on it. For now, however, we've got the Hebrew Bible, and we've got the life and teachings of Jesus as far as we can determine them from the historical sources as a revelation of God (now that we've got the Hebrew Bible he can, without qualification, be called God) to mankind. The next step is the witness of the Church. What do I mean by this?
Our sources (which, recall, are primarily the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) are indisputably clear about one thing: Jesus had twelve particularly close followers, and he ultimately named these men as his "apostles." The Greek word apostolos means "emissary" or "ambassador." Now these guys were sent out, it is pretty clear, to continue Jesus' work of proclaiming the good news and so forth after he left. Furthermore, it is also pretty clear that they were to get others to join them in this task, and this was to continue until Jesus returned (for all of this, see Matthew 28:18-20; it's also stated in many other places). This group or organization or whatever it might be, is called the Church, and Jesus himself - whose teachings are the revelation of God to mankind - taught that this group was the divinely authorized and enabled proclaimer of God's revelation to mankind in himself. It is by the witness of the Church that we know a great many things about God, including the canon of Scripture and its status as divine revelation.
My fellow Protestants are getting nervous at this point, but never fear! My Protestant credentials are, on this issue, impeccable: the Westminster Confession is on my side. The beginng of 1.5 reads, "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture." Some will be quick to point to 1.4 which says, "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." This, however, is a different issue. This says (and, incidentally, Catholic and Orthodox believers generally agree) that the testimony of the Church does not efficaciously make Scripture Scripture. Rather, as 1.5 says, the testimony of the Church "moves" and "induces" us to believe that Scripture is Scripture (but it would be the Word of God whether we were moved to believe that it was or not). I hope to discuss some other parts of WCF chapter 1 in part 5 and appendix B.
Now, we don't yet know much about this Church, but we know that its first members were Jesus' twelve apostles, and we know that it was out telling the world about God's revelation as soon as Jesus ascended, and it's still at it today, and will be until Jesus returns. I recently listed four aspects of ecclesiology (theory of the Church): somatic, apostolic, evangelistic, and eucharistic. Jeremy pointed out a fourth aspect that I can't believe I initially missed: ecclesiastic ecclesiology! That is, the Church is also the assembly of the called, and, as such, one can say that it is most fully the Church when it is assembled.
Be that as it may, all of these accounts are developed with a lot of assumptions already on the table, and at this point in our argument we don't have many assumptions available to us (comparatively speaking). We do, however, know that the Church proclaims the revelation, and the book of Acts tells us a lot about what the Church was like. One passage stands out to me:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. Then fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and had everything in common. So they sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as anyone had need. And every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved. (2:42-47)
Suppose we begin our inquiry with the apostles themselves, then look to people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius whom the apostles recognized as members of the same Church as themselves, and then look to the next generation, and the next, and the next, until the present day. In other words, suppose we assume (1) that being recognized as a member of the Church by a known member of the Church is a sufficient condition for Church membership, and (2) that the "is a member of the same church as" relation is transitive. This could, but need not, take the form of the doctrine of apostolic succession as understood by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, in which we work with the process of ordination of bishops. If we could do this, then we would know where the Church was today and we could just go ask about the Scripture (of course, there are some ways the Church could conceivably be such that even once we identified it, it wouldn't be that easy to find out what it's official proclamations were - for instance, what if the Anglican Communion came out on top? or, what would be even more confusing, what if it was the American Baptist Church? - but leave that aside for now). This, however, will not work.
The first problem is that, in general, organizational membership is (1) vague and (2) not transitive. Consider Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton. Are they members of the same political party? Personally, I think not. But Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party is unproblematically historically continuous with the modern Democratic Party. Furthermore, no point of discontinuity can be identified at which the Democratic-Republican Party ceased and was replaced by the Democratic Party. Surely the name change is irrelevant here. But Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton are nevertheless not members of the same political party. Why? Because something more than historical continuity is required for the persistence of political parties through time. This requirement includes at least some kind of continuity of platform. There comes a point when the platform is so different that, totally regardless of history, it just can't be the same party, and this is the case with the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson as opposed to the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton. Vagueness enters, because there is no point, no single person or event, that can be singled out as the point where it was no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson. Non-transitivity enters here too: for any person in the Demcratic Party, we can, in principle, come up with a chain of recognition as members of the same party leading back to Thomas Jefferson.
As a political party can't survive a complete change of platform, so the Church could not survive a complete change of mission. Furthermore, a less than complete change could cast doubt on the persistence of the Church, and any change in doctrine will necessarily be a change in mission, since the Church's mission is the preaching of that doctrine. There are other essential characteristics that the Church, or a political party, would not persist through a change in, but these are certainly among the essential characteristics.
Now, suppose a group of people in the Democratic Party today discovered (to their shock!) that the principles of the Democratic Party were not the principles of its founder (or, rather, the founder of its predecessor, the Democratic-Republican Party), and decided to break away into another group, the Jeffersonian Democrats, which would embrace his principles. (I use this example because I have heard friends of mine suggest this very thing - though I suppose they probably weren't shocked by their discovery.) They claim to be the real modern Democratic-Republican Party since, on the one hand, they have historical continuity (through the Democratic Party), and, on the other hand, they have continuity of platform with Thomas Jefferson. However, the Democratic Party leadership doesn't recognize them and this leadership has been passed on through generations according to by-laws. The by-laws weren't around in the time of Jefferson, but they were around in times when he would certainly have recognized the party as still his own, and since they were instituted they were changed only according to their own rules. These grant the leaders legitimacy, but if a party can't survive through too great a change in platform, and the leaders preside over a party whose change in platform was too great, then they don't preside over the party of Thomas Jefferson. Of course, the Jeffersonian Democrats also have a problem, that their historical continuity goes through a party that is not identical with the original, but at least they are an eligible candidate, since they have the original platform (or, at least, continuity with it).
Now, there was one group of Christians, the Reformers, who believed they were in the position of the modern Jeffersonian Democrats in our example. My point is not that they were right (though I think they were, more or less), but that the underlying ideas about the persistence of organizations through time are credible, so that this possibility must be examined. That is, the very nature of the Church, as far as we know it at this point in our argument, is not such as to render their claim absurd.
Furthermore, the history of the Church is much more complicated than the history of the Democratic Party (of course, there is a lot I don't know about the history of the Democratic Party, so perhaps it is more complicated than I think it is). We have a lot of splintering all over the place starting pretty early, and all sorts of rival groups claiming to be the Church. Furthermore, the identity of the Church is complicated by another factor: its spiritual nature. We have all kinds of strange statements in the New Testament like "you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). The deeply spiritual nature of the Church might be thought to cast doubt on the degree to which its continuity is of the same sort as the continuity of a purely human organization. After all, if the Church is a spiritual entity, mightn't it spring up on earth just wherever it pleases? Mightn't it just suddenly spring up at Azusa Street in 1906 or in Toronto in 1994? Well, I suppose so. That is, if the Church is supposed to be simply that group of people that Jesus has commissioned to continue his mission of announcing the divine revelation (which is all we've argued it is so far), then we can't really prove that it needs historical continuity and doesn't just spontaneously spring up wherever Jesus happens to commission people to preach the revelation. So, if we are to remain suitably general and not beg the question, we are going to have to, in looking for the modern Church, focus on the essential characteristics of the Church rather than on history. (This is not intended to assume that just any group that has these characteristics - or, in particular, the one characteristic already mentioned: announcing the revelation - is the Church, but only that, for all we know at this point in our argument, any of those groups might be.) Nevertheless, we can learn from the diachronic approach. The argument I've given only shows that the further away from the apostles we get, the more uncertain things become. We can, however, safely consider the first few generations of the Church and ask what it proclaimed.
To begin with, we can say that, like Jesus, the first few generations of the Church regarded the Hebrew Bible as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, they don't seem to take the traditional Jewish view which I worried in part 3 that Jesus may have taken. We can see this in Acts 4:24-25, where Peter and John are recorded introducing a quotation with the phrase, "Master, You are the One who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. You said..." The quotation which follows is from Psalm 2, part of the Ketuvim.
The most important person the original apostles recognize as a member of the Church is Paul (Galatians 2:9). Mark (Acts 12), Luke (Colossians 4:14), and James the brother of Jesus (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21; James the apostle, the brother of John had already died, in 12:2) are also recognized. This will get us most of the New Testament as the most important writings of the early Church. In terms of authorship by either an apostle or one of these people recognized by the apostles, and historical evidence of this authorship, we've now got all four gospels, Acts, the ten Pauline epistles (excluding the pastorals), James, 1 Peter, and 1 John. That's 18 out of 27 in the canon agreed upon by the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. We are missing due to disputed authorship 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation and due to authorship by someone not well attested as a Church member we are missing Jude.
Note something very important here: we have not established that the Church proclaims these books as inspired accounts of the revelation. Rather, we have established that these books are all written by people who were very clearly members of the Church. Now, the next thing we should say is that it is obvious that these books were treated as authoritative from a very early date. We can pretty safely say that these essentially undisputed books constitute at least the Church's proclamation of the revelation. That's enough to say that if any of these books says something about the revelation of God to mankind in Christ, the fact that it's written there is good reason to believe it, and this might reasonably be called "believing in the Bible." But it isn't enough to say that the books are inspired and absolutely inerrant.
So, what do these books say that is relevant to our question? Well, we don't have 2 Timothy 3:16 yet, because 2 Timothy's authorship is disputed (I know all my fellow believers were just dying to use that one - sorry!), nor do we have 2 Peter 1:20-21, which is also of disputed authorship. There is also 1 Timothy 5:18, where Paul says "the Scripture says," and then quotes Luke 10:7, and 2 Peter 3:15-16, where Peter speaks of Paul's letters and "the other Scriptures." However, if these weren't written by Paul and Peter - and we haven't established that they are - then they don't do us any good, so we're going to have to move on to the next generation. (Of course, if your historical investigations led you to believe that 1 Timothy and 2 Peter were genuine - as many scholars do, in fact, think - then you would already be most of the way to the end of the argument.)
Moving on to the second century already complicates things because by that time we already have the fairly well-attested view that the Septuagint (which includes the Deuterocanon) is the Old Testament, as opposed to the Hebrew Bible. We even have some people, including Justin Martyr, claiming that the Hebrew text has been corrupted and the Septuagint is the only reliable version. However, I will, as I said, be skirting this issue as much as possible for the present.
Writing in the mid-second century, Justin Martyr gives us a window into an early Christian worship service, which is quite relevant to the place of the New Testament:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. (First Apology chapter 67)
By the end of the second century, we have a number of writers (e.g., Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John) who are not far removed from the apostles who use the New Testament in their theological writings in much the same way they use the Old Testament, and treat them as absolutely authoritative in all theological disputes (see Bruce, The Canon, chapts. 13 and 14). What is relevant here is that by the second century the Church, in proclaiming the revelation, relied on the Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - as its principle source; it proclaims authoritatively, citing the Scripture as its authoritative source.
The synchronic approach, as has been said, involves examining the claims of various present-day groups claiming the be the Church. It is limited primarily in that there are so many claimants we cannot possibly examine them all. However, we have a bit of luck here: there is substantial agreement among nearly all of them, especially if we ignore for now, as we have resolved to do, disputes among the claimants about certain specific books, and only examine the broad general claim. (There are still disputed books, besides just the duetero-canon - the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, has a number of additional books; it is also worth considering how one should think about the Book of Mormon in this sort of discussion, seeing as the LDS church is also a claimant here.) All of the major Christian groups agree that Scripture is inspired, and that it includes both the Old and New Testaments. This means that, regardless of precisely what the Church is and how it is manifested in history just at present, we can know that it has indeed proclaimed that the Scriptures are inspired by God, and that we should believe what they say.
I want to note, in closing, the relationship I think this has to how actual converts to Christianity have come to believe in the Bible. I am of the opinion that many of the problems in philosophy (consider, for instance, the refutation of solipsism) are problems of attempting to formalize rational inferences which we draw on an almost instinctive level (solipsism strikes me as a case where our inference is almost indisputably rational, and yet philosophy has had enormous difficulty trying to formalize the inference to prove that it's rational). This, I think, is the case here. Most people who believe in the Bible have, I think, come to believe in it in much the same way: someone told them that they ought to believe in the Bible, for some reason they took that claim seriously and, upon looking closely at it for themselves, some sort of experience they had in connection with the Bible led them to accept the claim originally presented to them regarding its inspiration. Parts two through four have been an attempt to make more explicit some of the lines of reasoning that might lead someone to take a claim like that seriously. I don't think that most people have done these sorts of historical explorations. Rather, I think they have probably simply been told about the Bible by people who have some kind of credibility in spiritual matters due to intelligence, or insight, or, more likely, the kinds of lives they lead. (This, of course, applies to taking Christianity seriously in general, and not just the claim of the inspiration of Scripture.) I hold that this line of reasoning is rational, but I'm skeptical about it getting you much farther than taking the claim seriously. Actually believing it will likely require some personal experience, and that will be the subject of part 5, which I hope to write less than 13 months from now!
Just a couple quick links:
John Fraiser of Chaos and Old Night discusses the attitude Evangelical Protestants ought to take to Church tradition in his post, Sifting Through Church Tradition. Fraiser argues that we need to recognize the influence tradition has on us, and we ought not to try to escape from that influence, but, at the same time, we need to recognize that it is Scriputre and not tradition which is authoritative. I mostly agree with what Fraiser said (though I still think that the West is wrong to talk about Scripture and tradition as wholly distinct - instead we ought to consider Scripture as a sort of 'super-tradition,' as the Orthodox do; I have argued for this postion previously), but, unfortunately, he didn't present much in the way of argument. Or rather, in so far as he did argue for his position, he is arguing against Evangelicals who want to ignore tradition, not Catholic or Orthodox believers who give more authority to tradition than the position he argues for does.
On the other side, we have The God Fearin' Fiddler (with whom I have debated this issue before) presents a Catholic argument against sola scriptura. Unfortunately, the post is kind of long and focuses on debunking an argument that I've never heard any Protestant use, and that I certainly wouldn't use. However, he does make several good points, and I recommend taking at least a skim.
I've already sort of jumped into the fray by leaving a long comment for the Fiddler (Update 6/7/07, 1AM: the Fiddler has responded to my argument in a new and most interesting post), but I may jump in in a more substantial way some time soon. The best way to jump in would of course be to finish by Why Believe the Bible? series that has been sitting unfinished for a year. I'm considering, when I finish it, adding an appendix discussing what beliefs about the Bible the argument justifies. It will, I think, justify innerrancy without a problem, but it isn't clear to me what kind of a uniqueness claim that argument will justify.
Jeremy Pierce of Parableman has an excellent post refuting the claim that the doctrine of inerrancy was invented in the 19th century as a response to theological liberals. I intend someday to get back to my long-stalled Why Believe the Bible? series, and when I do some of what Jeremy says here will be important for the next post, which is supposed to be on the witness of the Church to the Scripture. My one complaint about this post is that, in a fashion that is unfortunately typical of my fellow Protestants, it jumps through Church history from the New Testament, to Augustine, to Luther and Calvin, as though there was nothing in between. To remedy that briefly, let me add a few additional quotations (these are from David W. Bercot's book, A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs):
"These were men who declared things about God and the things of God. They were guided by the Spirit of God ... It would be irrational for us to disbelieve the Spirit from God and to give heed to mere human opinions. For He moved the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments." - Athenagoras 2.132
"I could produce ten thousand Scriptures of which not 'one tittle will pass away' without being fulfilled. For the mouth of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has spoken these things." - Clement of Alexandria, 2.195
"These fathers were furnished with the Spirit, and they were largely honored by the Word Himself. They were similar to instruments of music. For they had the Word always in union with them ... When moved by Him, the prophets spoke what God willed. For they did not speak of their own power. Let there be no mistake about that. Nor did they speak the things that pleased themselves." - Hippolytus, 5.204
"Either [heretics] do not believe that the divine Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Spirit (and are thus infidels), or else they think that they themselves are wiser than the Holy Spirit (which makes them demoniacs)." - Eusebius, quoting Caius, 5.602 [An editorial note is in order on just how strong this claim is - Caius is claiming (1) that thinking anything in the Scripture does not record what God believes to be true is tantamount to denying the doctrine of inspiration, and (2) that anyone who denies the doctrine of inspiration is an 'infidel.']
Of course, these brief quotes don't prove that these are precisely the detailed, considered views of these people, but they certainly contribute usefully to the cumulative case that the doctrine of inerrancy has been around from a very early point in Church history.
At the new blog Metaphysical Frameworks, Johnny-Dee (also of Fides Quaerens Intellectum fame) discusses the meaning of sola scriptura in its application to the practical methodology of Protestant theology. His suggestion is that "protestants consider the Bible to be like the Constitution, and the theological tradition to be like legal precedents from the Supreme Court." In other words, the determinations made by previous generations of Christians as to the teaching of Scripture are to be given great weight and not overturned lightly, but, ultimately, they are interpretations of Scripture and it is Scripture that is ultimately authoritative. Therefore, as much weight as they may be give, there are indeed cases where such traditions can be overturned.
I think this is, overall, an excellent interpretation of the sola scripture principle. However, I would like to point out one thing that Western Christians frequently miss due to our fixation on the Catholic-Protestant Scripture vs. tradition debates: at least the canon of Scripture, and probably also the idea of its inerrancy, are themselves extra-Biblical traditions. Perhaps we would like to say that it is an interesting theoretical property of the system of Protestant theology that all of its views can be derived from Scripture - and, indeed, it does seem that at least inerrancy can be so derived - but these are postulates which we, in practice, take prior to our study of Scripture, on the authority of tradition. What I here mean by tradition is not the particular interpretation of Tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church which I have argued for, but simply the literal, etymological meaning of the word: that which is handed down from one generation to the next. Ultimately, we believe in the canon on the authority of the Church; we believe it because we were told by people we believe to be in a position to know. This is even acknowledged by the Westminster Confession which, after stating in 1.4 that Scripture does not depend on the Church's testimony for its authority, nevertheless goes on in 1.5 to list the testimony of the Church as the first of the several means by which we know the truth of the Scripture. I will discuss this and its relation to the other means listed at greater length if I ever get around to writing the fourth part of my Why Believe the Bible? series, but the point for me is that I think it is highly unlikely that any of the other means would be likely to provide rational ground for belief in precisely the canon we have with no more and no fewer books.
The real point that I'm trying to make here is that the strict disjunction of Scripture and tradition in the West is not actually an accurate way of speaking, but is a product of a particular historical (and continuing) debate. It would be more accurate, I think, to view Scripture as the Constitution and tradition as the total legal system (of course, there is no legislative process in this analogy; only judicial intepretation of the Constitution).
I think Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians can agree on this picture; where we will disagree is on the degree of authority of various interpretations (as I understand it, the Orthodox tradition holds the seven ecumenical councils to be totally infallible, and anything contained in the liturgy to be as good as infallible for practical purposes).
ALCIPHRON: ... But what apology can be made for nonsense, crude nonsense? ... Look here, said he, opening a Bible, in the forty-ninth Psalm : ... "Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the wickedness of my heels shall compass me about?" The iniquity of my heels! What nonsense after such a solemn introduction!
EUPHRANOR: For my own part, I have naturally weak eyes, and know there are many things that I cannot see, which are nevertheless distinctly seen by others. I do not therefore conclude a thing to be absolutely invisible, because it is so to me. And since it is possible it may be with my understanding as it is with my eyes, I dare not pronounce a thing to nonsense because I do not understand it. Of this passage many interpretations are given. The word rendered heels may signify fraud or supplantation: by some it is translated "past wickedness," the heel being the hinder part of the foot; by others "iniquity in the end of my days," the heel being one extremity of the body; by some "the iniquity of my enemies that may supplant me;" by others "my own faults or iniquities which I have passed over as light matters, and trampled under my feet." Some render it "the iniquity of my ways;" others, "my transgressions, which are like slips and slidings of the heel." And after all, might not this expression, so harsh and odd to English ears, have been very natural and obvious in the Hebrew tongue, which, as every other language, had its idioms? the force and propriety whereof may as easily be conceived lost in a long tract of time, as the signification of divers Hebrew words which are not now intelligible, though nobody doubts they had once a meaning as well as the other words of that langauge. Granting, therefore, that certain passages in the Holy Scripture may not be understood, it will not thence follow that its penman wrote nonsense; for I conceive nonsense to be one thing, and unintelligible another.
- George Berkeley, Alciphron 6.7
[Note: the verse in question is Psalm 49:5. Alciphron's quotation is one word different from the KJV in print today (which has "wickedness" instead of "iniquity"), but the KJV was edited a few times after the writing of this dialog in 1732. Of modern translations, NKJV has "the iniquity at my heels," and NASB and HCSB both read "the iniquity of my foes." LXX uses the Greek pterna meaning heel.]
Update (8/21/06, 10:15PM): I've now made the corrections described in the first update below. The differences were all too small to effect the interpretation, with the possible exception of (17): the probability of (7) increased by .002, (11) increased by .021, and (17) increased by .040.
Update (8/21/06, 2:33PM): Welcome Prosblogion readers! I've realized that there was a minor error in my math below. The numbers for (7), (11), and (17) should be marginally higher than they are. The numbers I have given are the probabilities that the Bible teaches the proposition in question AND that it is right. The numbers need to be corrected to add in the probability that the Bible doesn't teach the proposition and it is nonetheless true. I don't have time to correct the numbers right now, but in the meantime, for each one you can correct the numbers for yourselves by adding the product of P(Tx|~Bx) with P(~Bx) to the originally posted value. I think that should give the correct numbers, but hopefully will have a chance to look it over in more depth this evening (or maybe a reader would like to help me out).
A common argument levelled against Evangelicals (most recently by Neal in the comments to my post on Jesus' witness to the Hebrew Bible) is that if, as most Evangelicals believe, it is that autographs of the Biblical books that are inerrant, then the doctrine of inerrancy is irrelevant since the autographs no longer exist. (The 'autographs' are the original manuscripts handwritten by the original authors of the books.) If something other than the autographs is supposed to be inerrant, what would it be, since there is disagreement among the manuscripts, and no single manuscript seems uniquely priveleged over the others? What this amounts to is the claim that the inerrancy of the autographs is irrelevant because there is uncertainty about what the autographs in fact said. This is very similar to the claim that inerrancy is made irrelevant by the uncertainty in our interpretation. Both of these arguments are seriously flawed in precisely the same way. What I hope to do here is, by making some very simple applications of the Bayesian probability calculus (I haven't done this in a while - feel free to correct my math), to show just how deeply mistaken these arguments are, and how much impact the truth or falsity of the doctrine of inerrancy will still have on our reasoning, despite uncertainty about the teachings of the inerrant books.
There is uncertainty everywhere in this world. If we are (rationally, justifiably) certain about anything at all, it is only about very elementary logically necessary propositions like '2+2=4', and even here there is some question (uncertainty!) about whether we are, or ought to be, truly certain. However, human beings go through life, act, make decisions, and form beliefs despite all of this uncertainty, and acting and forming beliefs while still uncertain is not a violation of any rational principle - on the contrary it saves us from an extreme form of the Buridan's ass dilemma. The reasoning pattern a perfectly rational being goes through to make decisions and form beliefs under uncertainty is (thought to be) codified in the Bayesian probability calculus, which currently sees wide application in philosophy and artificial intelligence. I am not going to try to explain how the whole thing works here, but see Wikipedia on Bayesian inference.
So, first we must formulate the doctrine of inerrancy in the autographs more formally. We are going to be doing first order predicate logic on the universe of propositions here, which will be a little confusing. Just remember that the upper-case letters are predicates or functions and the lower-case letters are variables or constants.
Define:
(1) i = '∀xP(Tx|Bx) = 1'
That is, if we were to have absolute certainty that some book of the Bible taught x, we would have certainty that x was true. But, the critic replies, we never have certainty that the Bible teaches x, i.e.
(2)∀x~(P(Bx)=1)
This, however, does not mean that (1) tells us nothing. Let us consider some conditional probabilities on i. To take a simple example, suppose we are trying to determine whether such a person as King Saul ever lived. We know him as a legendary figure in Jewish and Christian traditions, but we haven't yet looked at the Bible. So:
(3) P(Bs)=.97
That is, there is a 97% probability that the Biblical books, in the autographs, teach the King Saul really lived (historically). The 3% doubt here is mostly because we have less early evidence of the Old Testament than the New Testament (there's a little more possibility of transmission error) - I don't think there is much doubt that that is what the Bible we have now teaches. 3% is still a very generous helping of doubt, given the evidence (we're being a little skeptical). Now, from (1) we have:
(4) P(Ts|Bs&Ti)=1
This means that P(Ti|~Ts)&le.03 - the probability of inerrancy cannot be greater than the probability that the Bible doesn't teach that King Saul lived, if King Saul did not in fact live. From this we can conclude by Bayes' theorem that:
(5) P(Ts|Ti)=.93
That is, if we know that the Bible is inerrant, there is a 93% chance that King Saul actually lived, but if we ignore the Bible, there is only a 30% chance. (We assume for simplicity that P(Ti|Ts) = 1 - that is, that we have no reason to doubt inerrancy as long as Saul actually lived.) This, clearly, makes a big difference! But what would happen if the Bible wasn't inerrant, if it was only right most of the time. Would the difference be significant? Suppose we say that there is a possibility that the Bible would say Saul lived even if he didn't, but it's fairly small. P(Bs|~Ts)=.2. However, since Saul was the first King of Israel, he is pretty important to the Bible's story, so if he did live, the Bible would probably tell us about it. P(Bs|Ts)=.85. On this account, we will conclude that:
(6) P(Ts|Bs)=.646
Now, this is the probability that Saul actually lived if the Bible says he did. The overall probability that he actually lived is P(Ts|Bs)*P(Bs)+P(Ts|~Bs)*P(~Bs) (the first addend is the probability that the Bible teaches that Saul lived AND Saul did in fact live, the second is the probability that the Bible does NOT teach that Saul lived, but he nevertheless did), so:
(7) P(Ts)=.629
So, if we take the Bible to be only generally accurate instead of inerrant, we have 62.9% probability that Saul lived, instead of 93%. This is still enough to base a belief on, but it is certainly (or at least probably) a significant difference! Furthermore, since probabilities are multiplicative, if we take something with higher uncertainty about the Bible's teaching, the difference will be larger. Suppose we take the statement:
(8) P(Ba)=.6
So P(Ti|~Ta)<e;.4. In order to make our calculation we need to determine the prior probability of Ta. We would really have no idea about this without the Bible, so the prior probability P(Ta)=.5. Making the same simplifying assumption as before, we can conclude that:
(9)P(Ta|Ti)=.71
This is not incredibly high, but enough to base our beliefs and actions on, at least tentatively. We often live and act on lesser probabilities than this! But what happens if we assume, as before, that the Bible is only generally reliable? Since this is a spiritual rather than historical matter, and the Bible is particularly trustworty on spiritual matters, let's use a somewhat higher probability than before; say, P(Ba|~Ta)=.1. Since this is an important spiritual statement for the life of the Church and we wouldn't know about it if the Bible didn't tell us, let's assign P(Ba|Ta)=.95. From Bayes' theorem we find:
(10) P(Ta|Ba)=.905
Which is pretty high. However, when we add in our uncertainty about Ba, we get:
(11) P(Ta)=.564
Which is barely better than even odds! When the uncertainty factor in the Bible's teaching is significant, even a small possibility that the Bible might be wrong will make a big difference in the justifications we can give for our beliefs. Note too that in this case we are trusting the Bible a lot more than we did in the Saul case (since we assume the Bible knows more about spirituality and how to run churches than about history). If we plugged in the same values we used for Saul with this much uncertainty (and the same prior probability for Ta), we would get:
(12) P(Ta)=.486
There is another interesting point that comes out of this type of analysis: if the prior probability of the proposition is lower than, or even on near equal footing with, the probability of errors in transmission or interpretation, the low prior probability can overwhelm the probability increase due to the Biblical teaching, even on inerrancy. For instance, consider:
(13) P(Te)=.07
That is, there is a 7% probability that evolution is entirely on the wrong track. However, the early chapters of Genesis seem to teach something contradictory to the theory. Still, there is room for doubt about the genre conventions and truth-conditions of the early chapters of Genesis, so P(Be) has a not insignificant uncertainty factor. Let's say:
(14) P(Be)=.75
That is, there is a 75% probability that the teaching of the early chapters of Genesis is that evolutionary theory is entirely on the wrong track. What we want to know is P(Te|Ti). As before, we assume that evolution is our only reason to doubt Ti, so P(Ti|Te)=1. This gives us:
(15) P(Te|Ti)=.231
The low prior probability P(Te) overwhelms the Scriptural evidence so that - much to the chagrin of most Evangelicals - we conclude with .779 probability that evolution is on the right track to the truth. The point I'm trying to make is not that we should believe in evolution (I don't know nearly enough for the probabilities I made up above to be meaningful), but that incorporating outside data into our search for Biblical truth, especially in cases where the Biblical teaching is unclear, is not a reasoning mistake, even if we have an absolute belief in inerrancy. This is in some sense not sound Biblical interpretation - that is, we shouldn't conclude from this that the Bible teaches evolution (though we will come to the conclusion that it doesn't teach against it), or ask other Christians to accept it as part of our common faith - but it is sound reasoning in light of our assumptions and the evidence. It is the conclusion someone who comes to the Bible already believing (a) in it's inerrancy, and (b) that the probability of evolution being false is fairly low ought to come to (provided he concludes that there is significant uncertainty as to the teaching of the early chapters of Genesis - if P(Be) was .95, P(Te|Ti) would be .601. The clear teaching of Scripture - where it is truly clear - still overwhelms everything else). Another point to note here is that in this type of case, if the Bible is merely generally reliable, then it's impact on P(Te) will be essentially negligable. Inerrancy brought P(Te) from .07 up to .231, which is quite significant. However, assuming the Bible is merely generally reliable, the means of creation is pretty well outside its scope, so it would be thought less reliable here than elsewhere. P(Be|~Te) might be around .2 (since the Bible would be considered unlikely to talk about it in the first place) and P(Be|Te) might be .4. This will give us
(16) P(Te|Be)=.131
When we add in our uncertainty factor and P(Te|~Be), we have:
(17) P(Te)=.138
That is, without the Bible the probability of evolution being wrong would be .07, and with the Bible it would be .138. In other words, if the Bible is merely 'generally accurate' it's barely worth considering it's view on an issue like evolution, but if it is inerrant then what it says will contribute quite significantly to our beliefs and our degree of uncertainty about them.
What I have tried to show here is not that inerrancy is true or false, but simply that it matters. In fact, what I think the application of Bayesian analysis here shows is that both inerrantists and more liberal Christians are reasoning correctly based on their beliefs about the place of the Bible. Of course, this discussion doesn't have too much to contribute to a discussion of whether inerrancy is true or false, but it certainly shows that it matters, and it matters a lot - even if there is a great deal of uncertainty in transmission and interpretation of the Bible. In fact, where there is uncertainty it matters more. However, I should point out that there are many cases where the uncertainty factor with regard to interpretation is pretty low (the uncertainty in transmission is almost always low, especially for the New Testament), and in these cases theological liberals and conservatives ought to be much more likely to agree, since the difference between the Bible being probably or absolutely right is not being multiplied across serious uncertainties of interpretation.
Over the course of this summer, I've been forming an argument for belief in the Bible. Part 2 of my argument was critically depndent on the claim that "if we accept ... [the] postulate ... that a very powerful being is trying to get our attention, then the most coherent ... [explanation] ... is that ... Jesus did in fact rise from the dead." This is, of course, a fairly modest claim, as it explicitly presupposes a pretty substantial chunk of theology (there is a God, he actually cares what we think/do, he wants us to know about him, etc.). However, some would still dispute it. Some time ago, after reading this post on The Prosblogion, I downloaded the transcript of the debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman on the historicity of the resurrection, and I've just now got around to reading it. Not all of the debate is that good or that interesting (I got irritated with Ehrman repeatedly, and I didn't think Craig always addressed my irritations in his responses - also, while it started out very friendly, the participants became noticeably irritated with each other later on and both got into some repetitive rhetorical attacks). However, Craig's first speech gives an excellent and concise outline of the type of argument needed to establish this claim (though, disappointingly, Craig is not as straightfoward about the presuppositions required for the argument to work as I would have liked). In short, if you found my argument unsatisfactory (or even if you were utterly convinced by my argument), I highly recommend that you read at least Craig's first speech in the debate, though I cannot unequivocally endorse everything he says throughout.
Here, finally, is part 3 of my series on divine revelation. The story so far: part 2 argued that the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth constitute a self-revelation of God to mankind, and that the New Testament documents, and especially the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), constitute generally reliably historical sources as to the content of that revelation. These points will be assumed to have been established (but feel free to comment on the previous post if you want to contest them), and I will now argue that the entirety of the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in this revelation. I will also briefly touch on the question of the basis for belief in the Hebrew Bible before the time of Christ. Further, I will argue that the Bible in question is in fact the Hebrew canon in use by the Pharisees in the first century (i.e., the Bible still in use by Jews today, which contains the same content as the protocanonical Old Testament of the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches, but divides up the books differently and puts them in a different order). The claims of the Septuagint in Eastern Orthodoxy do not stem from the witness of Christ, but from Tradition, and will therefore be dealt with in part three, on the witness of the Church. I'm not clear on the place of the Vulgate in Catholicism, but will probably also look into that for part three. And now: Jesus' witness to the Hebrew Bible.
First, some statistics to show just how central this issue is to the synoptic gospels' presentation of Jesus:
That's a lot of data to sift through! The most obvious passages to begin our search with are the six times Jesus uses the term ai graphai, "the Scriptures," which, in a Jewish context in the first century, refers to the entirety of the Hebrew Bible. Here are the relevant passages from the HCSB:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This came from the Lord
and is wonderful to our eyes?
At that time Jesus said to the crowds, "Have you come out with swords and clubs, as if I were a criminal, to capture Me? Every day I used to sit, teaching in the temple complex, and you didn't arrest Me. But all this has happened so that the prophetic Scriptures would be fulfilled." Then all the disciples deserted Him and ran away.
Also of interest are the three occurences in Luke 24, all of which have Jesus interpreting or explaining the Scriptures.
What 'Scriptures' are we talking about?
Jesus is speaking primarily to Pharisees and Jews of the Pharisaic tradition. (He was barely on speaking terms with the Sadducees, but in Matthew 23 he recognizes the legitimacy of the Pharisees as "sitting in the seat of Moses," i.e. having authority to interpret the Law. In general, his criticism of the Pharisees seems to be not that what they are doing is wrong, but that they have missed the point. See Matt. 23:23-24.) One could take this as sufficient to prove that when Jesus speaks of "the Scriptures," or "the Law" without specifying he is referring to the same Scriptures accepted by the Pharisees: i.e. the 24 books of the modern Jewish Tanakh, which have the same content as the 39 books of the protocanonical Christian Old Testament. However, we needn't be satisfied with this, as there is a wealth of additional information.
First, Jesus quotes from the following books in the synoptic Gospels (using the Jewish order and book divisions): Genesis (Matthew 19:4-5, Mark 10:6-8), Exodus (Matthew 5:27, 5:38, 15:4, 22:32, Mark 7:10, Luke 20:37), Leviticus (Matthew 5:33, 5:38, 5:43, 15:4, 22:39, Mark 7:10, 12:31), Numbers (Matthew 5:33, 5:38), Deuteronomy (Matthew 4:4, 4:7, 4:10, 5:27, 5:31, 5:33, 15:4, 18:16, 22:37, Mark 7:10, 12:29-30, Luke 4:4, 4:8, 4:12), Joshua (Mark 12:29-30), Isaiah (Mathew 13:14-15, 15:8-9, 21:13, Mark 4:12, 7:6-7, 9:44-48, 11:17, Luke 4:18-19, 8:10, 19:46, 22:37), Jeremiah (Matthew 21:13, Mark 8:18, 11:17, Luke 19:46), Ezekiel (Mark 8:18), Minor Prophets (Matthew 9:13, 10:35-36, 11:10, 26:31, Mark 14:27, Luke 7:27, 12:53, 23:30), Psalms (Matthew 7:23, 21:16, 21:42, 22:44, 23:39, 26:64, 27:46, Mark 12:36, 14:62, 15:34, Luke 20:17, 20:42-43), Daniel (Matthew 23:39, 26:64, Mark 13:14, 14:62).
This leaves the following books of the Tanakh unquoted: Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. Jesus does not quote as Scripture any book outside the Jewish canon.
Of course, every book quoted is uncontested, and also included in the Septuagint, and the Gospel writers (who are writing in Greek, whereas Jesus was almost certainly speaking Aramaic, and therefore probably quoting the Bible in Hebrew) sometimes quote from the Septuagint. However, there is another indication, and this I owe to the John Piper teachings available for download here: in Matthew 23:35, Jesus refers to "all the righteous blood shed on teh earth ... from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah." However, Zecheriah was not chronologically the last prophet to be martyred: he was last in the canonical order of the Hebrew Tanakh. In the Septuagint, Jeremiah is last. So for these three reasons (he was speaking to Palestinian Jews and didn't correct them on what constituted 'Scripture,' he never quotes as Scripture a book outside the Hebrew canon, and he relies on the canonical Hebrew book order), we can conclude that the Scripture Jesus bore witness to was the Hebrew Tanakh.
What does Jesus have to say about them?
Jesus clearly sees himself as the fulfillment of the writings of the Hebrew prophets (see, e.g., Luke 4:18-21), and even of the Law (Matthew 5:17). In John's gospel, Jesus even tells the Pharisees "you pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about Me" (5:39). In short, Jesus sees himself as the subject of the Hebrew Scriptures.
But where do these Scriptures come from, and what is the source of their authority? John Piper gives a very useful observation on this as well. Matthew 19:4-5 reads,"'Haven't you read," [Jesus] replied, 'that He who created them in the beginning "made them male and female," and He also said: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh?"'" This is a quotation of Genesis 2:24. However, if you look back at Genesis, you will notice that this is not marked as a quotation of God by the author of Genesis. Thus it would seem that Jesus thinks it is correct to say "God said" and cite the Torah, even if it is not marked in the original text as a quotation of God.
Does this apply to the whole Tanakh, or only the Torah proper? I understand (and I am explaining this from memory of a class I took a few years ago, and couldn't find a web reference for it, so feel free to correct me) that in traditional/Orthodox Judaism the Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings) are considered to be on three different levels of inspiration: in the case of the Torah, even the decorations on the page and ornaments of the letters are considered to be inspired and significant (Jesus seems to hold this view of the Law as well; see Matthew 5:18). In the Nevi'im, the idea is that when it says "thus says the Lord," it is really reporting what God really said to the prophet. In the case of the Ketuvim, at the lowest level of inspiration, God has insured that these are generally accurate records of what he really did with his people.
It has been my experience that Protestants, especially the truly Reformed (as opposed to the simply not-Catholic variety), tend to be very troubled by the possibility of multiple 'levels' of inspiration. This, I take it, is one reason Protestants are so hostile to the idea of the existence of a deuterocanon, even though the Orthodox (I don't know about Catholics) do not place it on the same level as the protocanonical books. The idea of multiple levels of inspiration within Scripture properly so-called would be even more troubling. It needn't, however, be taken to indicate that some books of the Bible are imperfect: it need only be indicative of a slightly different relationship between the divine and the human in different parts of the Scripture. There are, in principle, infinitely many ways that the divine and the human might be related. Many Christian theologians, such as Donald Bloesch, want to say that just as Jesus is fully human and fully divine, so the Bible is completely the word of man and completely the Word of God. Even if this is true of the entire Bible, it doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility of different levels, or at least different modes, of inspiration from one part of the Bible to the next.
So does Jesus believe in the traditional Jewish account of multiple levels of inspiration? As a Protestant (though perhaps not one of "the truly Reformed"), I would be much more comfortable categorically denying that this is the case. However, there is significant reason to believe that it is.
We have already seen that Jesus seems, based on Matthew 5:18 and 19:4-5 to hold the Jewish view of the Torah discussed above. I am unaware of anywhere else where he quotes a book outside the Torah and says "God says" in a place that is not marked as a direct quotation of God in the original. He certainly doesn't make statements about "one jot or tittle" with regard to the whole Tanakh, but only with regard to the Torah, which is a very traditionally Jewish perspective. The closest he comes, as far as I know (and this is due to John Piper as well), is at Matthew 22:43 where he says that David composed Psalm 110 "in the Spirit" which is again very consistent with the Jewish view (Psalms belonging to the Ketuvim).
Nevertheless, Jesus clearly treats the entire Tanakh as inspired and authoritative. In fact, the reason he points out that the Psalm in question was inspired is in order to use it as an authoritative source as to the identity of the Messiah.
The evidence for Jesus' exact view of inspiration is very sparse and it will be noted that all the verses cited are from Matthew (of course, this is because Jesus relationship to traditional Judaism is a particular interest of Matthew, whereas Luke, for instance, is concerned simply with setting out the historical events accurately and in order - see Luke 1:3). As such, although there is some reason to suppose that Jesus took this traditional Jewish view, we must at this point remain agnostice on the question of an exact theory of inspiration and say simply that Jesus testified to the following claims about the Hebrew Bible:
Appendix: why did people belive in the Hebrew Bible before Jesus?
I have argued, following Richard Swinburne, that, for those of us alive today and investigating this issue, the best reason to believe in the Hebrew Bible is on the basis of the testimony of the New Testament, and especially of Jesus himself. If this is so, why did people already believe in it when Jesus came? Wouldn't God have provided a rational foundation for their belief as well?
Recall from part 2 that Jesus' resurrection is God's 'signature' on the revelation that is the life and teachings of Jesus. Compare this with the circumstances surrounding the books of the Hebrew Bible. Throughout the Torah we are continually reminded of one thing as evidence of God's involvement in the production of this book: "the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders" (Deuteronomy 26:8). This is the reason we are to believe Moses. However, these "signs and wonders" have fallen into the mists of time in our own day. We are not in a position to effectively investigate the question of whether the Red Sea actually parted, and so forth. Thus the prophets came, generation by generation, and each of them was validated by divine miracles, and each of them testified to the authenticity of the Torah, and thus those who witnessed their miracles, or at least were able to examine the evidence and be convinced that God had really validated this prophet, had reason to believe in both the prophet and the Torah. We, however, are unable to investigate these signs, and are therefore reliant on the one sign that is historically well-documented: the resurrection of Christ. On this basis we accept his testimony to the Hebrew Bible, and it is on account of this that we believe.
Welcome to part 2 of my promised series on divine revelation! My apologies for the long delay (it's been over a month since I first posted my plan of attack), but I've been very busy moving here there and everywhere, and I still don't have all my books and stuff unpacked (nor do I have a desk).
According to the plan of attack, this part of the argument "will argue in a manner based heavily on Swinburne that there is good reason to suppose that the life and teachings of the historical person Jesus of Nazareth represent a revelation of God to mankind." The chief source here is Richard Swinburne's book Revelation, but the general form of the argument is not an uncommon one. The idea is that the central revelation of God is to be found in the life and teachings of the historical person Jesus of Nazareth (Hebrews 1:1-4), which were attested to by miracles, primarily his own resurrection from the dead (see Matthew 12:39-40). Swinburne has, however, presented the clearest version I have seen (not that I have seen that many different versions of the argument), and so my argument will be based chiefly on his.
We must begin by stating our initial premises, which will be as follows: a Being exists who is far more intelligent and far more powerful than I am. The limits, if any, of his power are beyond my knowledge. He is the ontological source of the world I experience, and the purpose of this world is in part to be community of minds with whom he desires to have meaningful interaction. These premises will not be argued for here. They are assumed. If there is great interest I may post and argue for them elsewhere.
Note that the argument does not assume the existence of a God like that of the Judeo-Christian tradition in advance, but merely a super-human mind. I've phrased the problem this way because I'm not convinced that 'natural theology' is able to establish the existence of the tri-omni God. I think we may need to appeal to Scripture for that, which means that we must not assume it in advance. I will nevertheless refer to the Being described as 'God' for the sake of convenience, but ask the reader to keep in mind that this Being's identity with the traditional monotheistic deity is not yet established.
Now, it has been posited that God desires to have 'meaningful interaction' with a 'community of minds' (i.e., us). He does this in part simply in the design of the world: he creates stimuli around us, and we respond to them (this ties into George Berkeley's theory of sense perception as language on which I plan to write my honors thesis next semester, but that's another story). Would God be satisfied with this level of interaction? Is it 'meaningful'? Well, perhaps, but perhaps not. We can interact with him in this way without even knowing it, and that might make the interaction less meaningful. Also, human beings (and, presumably, God) are capable of abstraction, but our actions are very concrete. Our interactions with the physical world may well be the most important of our interactions with God, but there is at least some reason to suppose that he would desire another type of interaction: interaction on a more 'human' level, possibly through human language. Therefore, if we accept the initial conditions of the argument, it seems that we ought to be on the lookout for a 'divine revelation' on the human level, perhaps in verbal form (although we haven't yet proven that such a thing exists).
What would the divine revelation look like, and how would we be expected to recognize it? Swinburne asks how we solve the question of authorship in general: if I want you to know that I am the author of a text, I affix to it my signature. The point of my signature is that it is very easy for me to make it, but very difficult for anyone else, and so if you see it, there is a high probability that I did indeed write it myself. What would God's 'signature' look like? Well, it would be something that was very easy for God to do, but difficult or impossible for anyone else to counterfeit: a miracle. Furthermore, if the revelation was intended for all of the successive ages (it might not be), then it would be well-attested and more or less verifiable, even across centuries.
Now, it may be a bias because of my growing up and being educated in the West, but I can see only one place and time that really might fit the bill: Jerusalem, c. 33 AD.
(Note: the historical arguments below will be familiar to many readers, who may want to skip to the end - for the record, Swinburne's book skips over this part of the argument, referring readers to the historians.)
It is absolutely indisputable that something highly unusual occurred in or around Jerusalem in the first century and as a result the world is a different place. Furthermore, I would argue that none of the commonly proposed explanations are prima facie plausible: some people claim that Jesus of Nazareth never lived. Others claim that he wasn't really dead (but how did he manage to get out of the tomb, if it was sealed with a big rock, and he had passed out from blood loss three days earlier, during which time he had eaten nothing?). Still others claim that his disciples (the same disciples who ran away and hid during his execution) stole his body in order to claim that he rose from the dead (and that ten out of twelve were martyred for what they all knew to be a hoax). Finally, there is the mother of all improbable claims: he was in fact quite dead, and even "descended into Hades" ("The Apostles' Creed" - see also Ephesians 4:9-10), and on the third day after his death simply decided to 'get up' (the Greek word used in Matthew 28:6 ordinarily means simply to get out of bed in the morning; on the ease of Jesus' supposed resurrection, cf. John 10:18).
So what evidence do we have, some 2000 years later, regarding this bizarre event? Well, some hundred years or more after the fact, once the story of Jesus become central to the lives of many people, a huge body of literature sprang up. However, most of the authors had little if any knowledge of the events that took place, and were simply using an influential story to teach their theology. Are there any sources recording the resurrection of Jesus that might have been written by people who did actually have knowledge of what happened? The answer is yes.
First, there are indeed a handful of sources by non-Christians which make brief reference to the existence of Jesus and are close to the time, but there are, in general difficulties with these sources and they tell us very little about Jesus (a brief list of them is to be found here).
The reason for these 'objective' sources being so sparse is simple: for people who didn't believe Jesus' claims, there was little that was noteworthy about him until at least the mid-second century when Christianity began to be a large enough movement to attract imperial attention. Thus it is unsurprising that only those sympathetic to Jesus give us any detail about him close to the time of his life (incidentally, the same is true of Socrates, about whom we have much less evidence). Most of the sources that might plausibly have been based on direct knowledge have been included in the New Testament canon simply because that's what Christians were looking for when canonization was being discussed beginning in the third century.
Some have doubted whether these sympathetic accounts are even legitimate: that is, some people have thought they weren't actually written by the people they claim to be written by, or close to the time of the events at all. As to the former claim, let me simply state, as a classicist, that there is no more reason for doubt as to authorship in the case of the New Testament books than there is with regard to classical Greek texts. That said, there is some room for doubt with the classical texts, but no one seems to think it is significant enough to be a source of doubt as to, e.g., the reliability of Herodotus' Histories. Furthermore, it is almost certain that the majority of the New Testament books were written in the first century. While secular scholars have some doubt about the legitimacy of the First Epistle of Clement, which was traditionally believed to have been written c. 95AD and quotes several NT books, it is clear that several books of the NT were available to early Christians writing in diverse parts of the Roman Empire in the early second century. Manuscripts of pieces of NT books have also been found dating to the mid-second century. It can be assumed that the books were written substantially before this, in order to have acheived such wide circulation. (See here for a brief listing of the evidence, but note that the list is somewhat biased). The books which are critical for our purposes are the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Acts, and 1 Corinthians. All of these are quoted in 1 Clement (if legitimate), and the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, c. 120. Matthew and 1 Corinthians are also quoted by Ignatius, c. 115.
What do these sources say? Well, they all claim that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. Matthew accounts for one of the other explanations at 28:11-15, where he claims that the Jewish priests bribed the Roman soldiers to claim that the body had been stolen. Furthermore, Luke and Paul both give accounts of the evidence in favor of the resurrection: "He also presented Himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3); "He was seen by Cephas [i.e. Peter], then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Last of all He was seen by me also" (1 Cor. 15:5-8). Elsewhere in Acts we have Paul claiming that Herod Agrippa must already know the story of Christ's death and resurrection which Paul has just told him: "I am convinced that none of these things escape his attention, since this thing was not done in a corner" (Acts 26:26). What is significant here is that there are appeals to evidence which was available to the readers, and enough readers found the account credible that the account was preserved. This is one of the chief ways that historical books are judged for their reliability. A book that appeals to no evidence, or a book that had no real evidence available to the readers, is not necessarily reliable, but one which appeals to evidence that admits of independent verification, it is probably fairly reliable. When Paul says that "this thing was not done in a corner" and that most of the 500 people who saw Jesus at once are still alive ("go ask them!"), he makes a strong case for the credibility of his account.
The point as far as our overall argument is concerned is this: I claim that, based on the above evidence, if we accept our postulate from the beginning of the post that a very powerful being is trying to get our attention, then the most coherent of these explanations is that the texts are true, and Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. Of course, the evidence is not sufficient that an individual whose worldview precludes the possibility of a resurrection should change his entire worldview, but such an individual should certainly be deeply troubled by the facts of this bizarre incident.
So suppose the resurrection did occur, as now seems likely, and that this was God's 'signature' pointing us to his revelation, as also seems likely. What exactly was God signing and validating? Well, Jesus made some very peculiar claims about himself, and he further claimed that his resurrection from the dead would serve as evidence of those claims (Matthew 12:39-40). Thus we can claim, even granting the New Testament texts only the status of fallible historical sources, that God has validated the claims of Jesus of Nazareth as his own self-revelation (the content of these claims is, of course, beyond the scope of this series - go read it!). Stay tuned for the next part of the series, which will discuss Jesus' claims about the Old Testament Scriptures, and argue that the entirety of the Hebrew Bible is 'included by reference' in the revelation of God in the life and teachings of Jesus.
There has been a lot floating around about the doctrine of inerrancy recently. I posted on this subject not long ago, responding to a post at World of Sven and a lengthy series at Chrisendom. Since then, there has been a second World of Sven post, and also a post from the No Kool-Aid Zone about just how important inerrancy is.
This is a problem that I've been thinking seriously about for some time. Actually, I started by asking the question "just why do I believe in the Bible?" then realized that the answer to that question would have a big effect on exactly what I should believe ABOUT the Bible. I do believe that there is good reason to accept Scripture as an authoritative source of divinely revealed truth. I haven't got all the kinks out of the arguments, so I'm hoping for a little help along the way, but what I propose to do is a five (or more?) part series laying out an argument for the authoritative nature of the canonical Christian Scriptures (we'll get into what counts as 'canonical' along the way). This may take me quite a while to get through, as I'm about to start finals, and still have one more term paper to write here in Athens, then will be moving back to the States on the 19th, but by breaking it into so many pieces, I hope to have manageable chunks and be able to keep working on it. Major influences on the arguments I'm going to make are Richard Swinburne's book Revelation (I posted my first response immediately after finishing it here) and a series of teachings on the subject by John Piper, which I downloaded from the Theopedia article on the inerrancy of the Bible. I hope to accumulate more sources along the way. In particular I'm planning on reading Calvin, the Westminster Confession, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy on this subject.
My plan for this series is outlined below. If I change my plan, I will update this post to reflect it. I will also link each post from here.
And that's the argument. If you have any suggestions of issues to deal with, directions to take, or sources to read along the way, please let me know. I expect to write part 2 some time in the next two weeks (before I leave Greece), but no promises.