Isn’t it true that the phrase “the word of God” in Scripture is used only in referring to Jesus Christ the Word Incarnate and not to the Bible itself? In that case the Bishop is correct.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16).
We come to know God’s Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, by studying God’s Word Written, the Bible, which points to Him in every book, from Genesis to Revelation. If we think we know a “Jesus Christ” that is anything other than the Jesus Christ we read of in the Bible, we deceive ourselves.
1. 1905. I’ve heard similar from contemporary TEC bishops – usually along the lines of: “…if this Old Testament account is objectionable, then the verse I find uncomfortable can also be called into question…”
2. Note the clear pitting of scripture against scripture, and the slippery mischaracterizations. Did Christ tear asunder Old Testament precepts, or did he fulfill the law? Note also the implication of the desirability of an open canon…
3. This is not a message that increases faith, but a message that shifts confidence to humanity. In his rush to reject an idiomatic perspective on authority, he arrogates that authority to himself. Consider the fruit of such a presentation, made in this way.
“2 Tim. 3
10(R) You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me(S) at Antioch,(T) at Iconium, and(U) at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet(V) from them all(W) the Lord rescued me. 12Indeed, all who desire to(X) live a godly life in Christ Jesus(Y) will be persecuted, 13while(Z) evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and(AA) being deceived. 14But as for you,(AB) continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom[a] you learned it 15and how(AC) from childhood you have been acquainted with(AD) the sacred writings,(AE) which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16(AF) All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that(AG) the man of God may be competent,(AH) equipped(AI) for every good work.”
(FYI – below are a few random examples of biblical references to the word of God.)
Matthew 4:4
But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone,but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
Luke 11:28
But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
1 Timothy 4:5
“…for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Hebrews 13:7
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”
Of course, when Paul wrote of “sacred writings” and “scripture,” he was referring strictly to the Hebrew Bible, right?
Later, a consensus seems to have evolved that the so-called apostolic writings merited the title as well (even though they were not entirely models of consistency with each other).
In other words, factions within the early, post-apostolic church felt that they had the power to add books to the previous canon, on the basis of a criterion (apostolic authorship) that they themselves selected; over time, the rest of the church went along.
Yet when factions within today’s church do much the same thing, we supposedly must deem it apostasy.
#2 Of course. It’s a theological affirmation made by the church – similar to the concept “Trinity”, or “of one substance” or the divinity of the Holy Spirit or any number of central Christian concepts that may be inferred or deduced from Scripture. (For Episcopalians it would seem not to be up for grabs as truth that the Bible is the Word of God is assumed and affirmed within the BCP, p332).
FWIW in fact Jesus never calls himself the Word of God in Scripture. Is this a truth you’d like to contest too?
The fact is that the Church of England has always had bishops who have a broader understanding of scripture, especially since Prince William of Orange became king. Some have argued that the British Isles really only became Christianized with the introduction of Methodism.
The rhetoric fits well with the late nineteenth/early twentieth century self-satisfied emphasis on progress and idealism (before von Harnack declared for the Kaiser). It’s so sad that Fundamentalism is used as a straw man to polarize the issue — [b]either[/b] fundamentalism [b]or[/b] idealism according to our measure. What’s even sadder is after Barth, the Niebuhrs, von Rad, and even Tillich; and (at least) Childs and Lindbeck more recently, the leadership of the church is singing a PC version of the same song as if none of these had ever been heard from.
This Bishop of Michigan was apparently a famous reappraiser, who narrowly escaped by buggy from a large wildfire a few years after this article.
Apparently, his brand of innovative faith was comfortable with eugenics:
Rev. Charles Williams, Protestant Epsicopal bishop of Michigan, leveled an “indictment against present-day Christianity” which accused the Church of dealing in “canned goods, stereotyped plans of salvation,” and “crystallized and petrified orthodoxies.” These methods had left the church ineffectual in the face a new social problems.”
Preaching Eugenics: religious leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, Christine Rosen, 2004
This indictment expanded church support for a eugenic marriage license. Odd how similar his criticisms sound to those from certain quarters of the church. Odd how even then, TEC vacated the field to the RCC for defense of marriage as a sacrament.
Ah, well, the rot in Michigan set in quite some time ago, eh? Big surprise, that! are we sure this chap wasn’t somewhere else advocating for a buddhist practice as buddhist as his christianity is christian?
Yoopers rejoice! The pedigree goes back over 103 years! It’s ancient.
I was reading some Bishop Charles Gore (one of the sainted founders of what has become liberal catholicism) and noticed how confidently and firmly he asserted the traditional faith and practice of the church. (Famously he was deeply critical of the Lambeth 1930 teaching concerning even the limited acceptable use contraception and rightly saw what it presaged). He was repeatedly critical of the kind of Latitudinarian views that were just beginning to regain traction in his lifetime (as we see above in Bishop Williams).
It’s terribly sad that the contemporary inheritors of the liberal catholic moniker in the USA repeat more or less wholesale the views of those with whom Gore disagreed. It is as if the entire twentieth century of theology and its critique of the catastrophic failings of some varieties of nineteenth century theological liberalism never occurred.
#16, I doubt that today’s liberal catholics would be recognized by Gore and his contemporaries. I’ve often read Gore, and my hero Henry Liddon on the issues surrounding the “Lux Mundi” essay on inspiration penned by the young Gore. Gore’s essay was seen by Liddon to be a betrayal of Dr Pusey (especially with reference to giving way to then current criticism related to the authorship of Daniel). Liddon considered Gore’s work to be a personal betrayal as well, because Liddon had promoted the appointment of Gore as the first librarian of Pusey House. Liddon’s reaction to Lux Mundi, and to Gore’s participation in it, almost certainly took Liddon to an early grave. Liddon’s famous sermon “The Worth of the Old Testament” may be of interest.
If you read the Lux Mundi essay “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” toward the end you’ll come across how Gore believed that recognizing certain “idealizing” in the Old Testament was probably admissible, but would lead to disaster for the Christian Creed, if such “idealizing” were admitted in the New. The early Lux Mundi “liberal catholics” drew a line of defense around the New Testament and its reliability considering the content of the New Testament as fact not idealization. For example:
[blockquote]”It is because the Old Testament is the record of how God produced a need, or anticipation, or ideal, while the New Testament records how in fact He satisfied it. The absolute coincidence of idea and fact is vital in the realization, not in the prepartion for it. It is equally obvious, too, that where fact is of supreme importance, as in the New Testament, the evidence has none of the ambiguity or remoteness which belongs to much of the record of the preparation [i.e. the Old Testament].”[/blockquote]
Gore’s vigorous defense of the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus in articles and notes he wrote in “A New Commentary on Holy Scripture” (published about thirty years after Lux Mundi) demonstrate his continued acceptance of the facts as presented in the Gospels. But, his later writing also evidences the battles of the 1920’s and 30’s that are familiar even today, as those who followed the early liberal catholics went further in the assault on Scripture than that first generation of Oxford cleric scholars ever imagined possible.
John Wilkins wrote:
[blockquote]The fact is that the Church of England has always had bishops who have a broader understanding of scripture, especially since Prince William of Orange became king.[/blockquote]
This statement implies there were (or are) no boundaries that constrain a “broader understanding” of Scripture in Anglicanism, which is, of course, hogwash. The burden of proof is on you, JW, to prove your point. Good luck with that.
John Wilkins wrote:
[blockquote]Some have argued that the British Isles really only became Christianized with the introduction of Methodism. [/blockquote]
Oh yeah. Wesley had a “broader understanding of scripture.” LOL! Care to elaborate, John?
Heh – Kevin, popular religion and “orthodoxy” are two separate things. Most people are naturally superstitious and have all sorts of believes. This is just empirically evident.
My point Kevin, is that those who think that TEC is particularly egregious about their view of scripture, don’t have a very long historical view. Of course, it was the evangelicals who got us into this mess when they started translating scripture, taking out all the catholic bits they thought were added.
#21, what bits did they remove? Do you mean the deuterocanonicals, or are you accusing unspecified “evangelicals” of producing Bibles aside from those books with items edited out? Or do you mean simply that you disagree with some of the translations in particular spots?
#23, #21 has gone away. Busy day, no doubt. He said they “started …taking out all the catholic bits they thought were added,” which sound like deliberate editing, not sola scriptura.
Thank you #24. A kneejerk reaction on my part whereupon I obviously misread translated as interpreted. Please forgive my RC-centricity showing. My mistake for whipping out the SS issue unnecessarily. Perhaps the hypothetical Council of Jamnia (which was nonbinding on Christians) and it’s rejection of the Septuagint was what I had in mind. Seems to have started the ball rolling as it were.
Perhaps Bishop Williams has a new bishopric now, in a somewhat lower station? I think C. S. Lewis wrote about that diocese…
John Wilkins, I hope that the “broader” view of scripture you seem to admire does not lead you and others down a “broad path”.
D. C., St. Peter did not wait until “later” to affirm that St. Paul’s epistles had equal standing and authority with the Hebrew Bible (though 1st century Christians used the same OT as 1st century Jews, the Septuagint):
2 Peter 3:15-16
15and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
16as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Since Paul’s letters make up 2/3 of the NT, you can have pretty good confidence the rest of it was intended by the Holy Spirit (remember Him?) to be included in the Canon, after which it was closed, God having spoken without having stuttered.
Also, it appears you’re willing to let Peter, and perhaps others in the early church, make the decision that particular writings should be added to the canon, but you’re not willing to let anyone else do so. I’m curious where you draw the line — and why.
Finally, you seem to have categorically rejected even the possibility that the Holy Spirit might have different things to say to us, at different times or in different circumstances, than what’s written in the NT. (An analogy I’ve used before is a sighted person guiding a blind person across a busy street, first saying “stop” when the light is red but then saying “go” when the light turns green.) To me, that sort of claim is way above my pay grade; you must be a braver man than I.
D. C., of course you reject the authors of any books of Scripture as being who the text and tradition say they are, especially when they assert the authenticity and authority of God’s word or when they convey prophecy fulfilled accurately centuries later. Just because you have lots of company proves only that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil, and even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.
As for the Holy Spirit having different things to say in different times, the Bible as a whole shows a progressive revelation, but not a contradictory revelation. We are given greater and greater light that builds upon and fulfills earlier revelation, not greater confusion that tears down and contradicts earlier revelation.
Peter and others in the early church of the 1st century only began, but did not complete either the addition of some writings to nor the removal of some writings from the Canon. That was the Holy Spirit guided work of the church councils of the first 4 centuries. You seem to accept (or at least not reject in this thread) the choice made by the scribes of which books were included and excluded in the Hebrew Bible, the previous canon. Surely, according to your logic, that was the work of man also and not the Holy Spirit? Were the writings of GLBT advocates BC lost or suppressed by proto-Puritan-homophobic scribes and rabbis? Yet, at least for this particular argument, you seem to accept the Hebrew Bible without question. Some consistency would be nice!
Milton [#28], if the blind man didn’t know about traffic lights, he might well have the impression that the “stop” and “go” signals from his guide were contradictory. But they wouldn’t be — and the blind man would be pretty arrogant if he were to insist that they were.
As to the Hebrew Bible, I expressed no opinion in this thread about it; I’m simply delving into your own premises and reasoning about the NT canon, and asking why it was OK for the early church to decide that the canon should contain Documents A, B, C, etc., but it’s categorically impermissible (supposedly) for us to do the same today.
DC, you clearly do not understand the process by which the NT canon was recognized as authoritative and not declared to be authoritative by some fiat you imagine. To assist your understanding, try out Alister E. McGrath’s CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: An Introduction, Fourth Edition, pages 12-13. There are entire works devoted to the issue of the canon which I leave you find on your own should you actually be interested in what happened rather than fantasy suitable to Dan Brown novels.
dwstroudmd [#30], I submit that no one understands “the process by which the NT canon was recognized as authoritative,” because the surviving evidence on the point is pretty scant.
What astounds me is the lack of recognition that the office of “Bishop” was and is established by “The Word of God,” through which it also derives the respect and authority which accompanies it. If, indeed, the Bible is actually devoid of any real God given (God spoken) authority, then a Bishop would be little more than a fool asserting authority in an office that, at best, was born out of folly. After all, what Bishop in their right mind could even begin to assert that they possess any substantive authority and power, outside of that which has been commended to the Church and the world through “The Word of God?”
By example, I recall watching John Spong on “The Donahue Show” a couple of decades back, deriding the Bible’s authority and the Christian faith in his usual manner. Of course, he did this all while wearing his purple shirt and collar, with his pectoral cross neatly tucked into his shirt pocket. (Talk about playing out the stereotypical Bishop!) There was little question that he was overtly asserting his role as Bishop in order to be authoritative in front of the cameras. Sorry to say, to me Bishop Spong would be better addressed in a parody of an old “Trix Are For Kids” cereal commercial.
“Silly Bishop . . . the Bible is for believers”; Oh, and incidentally, you wouldn’t even be a Bishop without that same Bible you are so quick to deride.”
I’ve always wondered if Bishop Spong ever realized that, as viewed through the eyes of his own theological bent, he might be understood to be running around on a stage wearing the costume of a fictional character he was only portraying.
With respect to Bishop Williams, whether he knows it or not, such verbiage as exhibited here only undercuts the very office he claims to be speaking from. I would think it only fair to say that the world did not grant him either this pastoral/teaching office or the authority he possesses through it. It has biblical origins, and the authenticity of the claim to authority is time and again one of the highest callings put forth in the Bible, be it Old and New Testament.
As I see it, it’s really quite simple when it comes to the teachings and pronouncements by the bishops of the Church: No Biblical Authority . . . No Bishop authority!
Re the exchange between Mr. Toedt and Milton: I am always a bit startled that there are Christians who uncritically assume that because a particular Epistle or Gospel has a name attached to it, that it was written by one particular person of that name, as opposed to another, or is not a letter or work that has acquired the name simply as an identifier. I certainly do not take the authors of James and Jude to be Jesus’s brothers. And it seems facially implausible, even in English translation, that the authors of I Peter and II Peter are the same Peter (if Peter is intended to identify the author). I am particularly fond of the substance and style of I Peter, but not because I assume that Simon Peter, the disciple, is its author. As Mr. Toedt says, I don’t think anyone who has spent much time looking at this considers II Peter to be anything other than a later work composed after the death of St. Peter (I suppose it might have been written by someone who was named “Peter” or a derivative thereof, but not THAT Peter). To the extent that St. Peter (the disciple) and St. Paul overlapped, they were often in uneasy relationship. God found a way to use both their gifts and strengths by having them demographically and geographically compartmentalize their evangelism. Or at least that is my impression, an impression I will adhere to until persuaded to the contrary by scholarship superior to my own (of which there is a vast supply, no doubt).
1) Would you please lay out, concisely, at least the outline of the theses that either or both of the Petrine epistles were written by someone other than Peter, James and Jude were written by someone by another name, whether either was a brother of Jesus (neither explicitly claims that in their epistle, Jude only claims to be “brother of James”), and that 2 Peter was written after St. Peter’s death. 2 Peter self-identifies its author as “Simon Peter” and says he himself heard the Father acknowledge Jesus as His beloved Son on the mountain at the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-18). And if by someone other than the stated authors, does that decertify them as Scripture?
2) Do you agree with D. C. that the NT books and other Scripture were chosen by man alone and not by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that the canon is not closed, and that later “revelation” claimed for the Holy Spirit can contradict or supersede the canon settled upon in the first 4 centuries of the church?
James and Jude may well have been written by someone of those names, names that were not uncommon in that time (or now). I have no view on that. My point was that there seems to be an instinct to assume that they were a particular “James” or a particular “Jude”. Because we are told that Jesus had brothers of those names, I have encountered fellow Christians who assume that the authors of these letters were the brothers of Jesus Christ. I have never been inclined to assume that. As you say, Jude represents that he is the brother of James. He does not say that he is the brother of Jesus.
The two Peters show no evidence of being the same writer. The notion that II Peter was not written by the Disciple goes back centuries and is not original with me. I have never assumed that there is much dispute about the book being pseudonymous. I don’t think that compromises its value as an element of our spiritual education, but it needs to be understood for what it is and is not.
Of course all these items are “scripture” (writing) and are part of the canonical documents of the Christian church (although the canonical compilations differ to some degree among different Christian churches).
And, of course man compiled the writings included in our canon. Some writings were included, some excluded. That has been a long process that extended even beyond the first four centuries of Christendom. My hope and belief is that those choices were guided by divine influence. My opinions or beliefs cannot bind the future actions of God, so I have no view on what He will do to speak to us in the future. If He speaks to us, I will try to be in a position to listen. I cannot imagine that any Christian would take an adamantine position that God has nothing more to say to us. That seems tantamount to sacrilege.
I think Bp Charles Williams did a disservice to the cause of evangelism and mission of the Church by succumbing to the argument of lexis rather than logos.
The topic of the address he gave to the YMCA group was apparently of his own choosing, and he chose to rail rather than simply lay out the enticing reality: God likes to have his word(s) recorded.
The Bishop could have then gone on to witness to his group of eager listeners and both encourage and exhort them by sharing the vow he took regarding holy scriptures at his ordering as a bishop and as a priest.
For the bulk of this thread, I think it is also worth noting that God does like to speak his word and to have his word recorded, and except for creation itself, and the writing of the ten commandments, God allows that recording to be accomplished through men and women (and many times now in the new covenant through boys and girls).
I think it is a valid question to ask whether there is a measurable half-life once the word of God is given, until and after it is recorded. That is, in between the time when God’s word is spoken or inspired to be written and when it is actually recorded is there any dissipation in divine authority that takes place? As well, from when God’s word is spoken and recorded is there a shelf-life?
For a decent argument, the word dissipation will probably have to have a stipulated definition.
The following is just an interesting aside, and has nothing to do with my comment above:
Was Detroit Priest Murdered? Jazz Opera Tells the Story
By Bill Wylie-Kellermann, in The Witness
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
“One of five cousins, all pastors, Rev. Lewis Bradford, after the fashion of the worker-priests, went to work in the plant. As he wrote in his diary, the “real reason” for being in Detroit was that he should “make a guided approach toward meeting the spiritual need of Detroit. This should be done at present, through [my] work, not as an evangelist.”
“This was the 1930’s and the Depression (capital D) was taking peoples lives on the streets of Detroit and the Hoovervilles down by its tracks. Bradford began a radio show, called the Forgotten Man’s Radio Hour, innovatively interviewing people about their lives and the times as they waited in the soup kitchen line on Howard Street. These were the very people, two decades prior, which The Witness had been conceived to serve.
“Allen Brett, a social activist in Detroit was a close friend of Bradford’s and helped him with the show. Brett’s father-in-law was Bishop Charles D. Williams of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and family pastor to Henry and Clara Ford. Oddly, as the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, Williams was known as the “Red Bishop,” for his stance in favor of workers. Each in their own ways were friends of The Witness.”
My hope and belief is that those choices [of writings to include in the canon] were guided by divine influence. My opinions or beliefs cannot bind the future actions of God, so I have no view on what He will do to speak to us in the future. If He speaks to us, I will try to be in a position to listen. I cannot imagine that any Christian would take an adamantine position that God has nothing more to say to us. That seems tantamount to sacrilege.
D. C. and NoVA, if God has more to say to us, rest assured that if it really is from the LORD God that it will enrich, but not contradict prior revelation, or else that God is merely capricious and unreliable, not “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever” and in whom “there is no darkness at all, nor shadow of turning”.
If the author of 2 Peter is not the same Simon Peter who was one of the three who accompanied Jesus to the mount of Transfiguration, then is he not a liar for saying he is the same? And if so, does not the Bible contain a fraudulent letter? And if so, is that the Bible that you, NoVA Scout (D. C., surely you cannot claim the Bible as the basis or reference for your Christianity, such as it is) refer to as the reference and corrector for your faith, for Christianity, or that its compilation was the result of divine influence?
Milton [#40], please stop and think about my blind-man-at-the-stop-light analogy: Just because the blind man thinks his sighted guide’s Message A (“stop”) and Message B (“go”) are contradictory, that doesn’t mean they are; it means the blind man, through no fault of his own, doesn’t have enough data and/or insight to see the connecting link between the two messages.
Let’s explore the analogy:
1) let’s assume arguendo that Message A — no same-sex sexual activity — was indeed from God and not just a human cultural practice.
2) You and other reasserters insist that Message B — lifelong monogamous same-sex unions are OK — cannot possibly be from God, because it supposedly contradicts Message A.
Your insistence is like the blind man announcing that it was not OK for him to go, because that would contradict the stop message he got before.
And as NoVAScout says, your insistence is tantamount to sacrilege: you presume to impose your understanding as a limit on what God might or might not do or say.
This is not to say that “Message B” (about same-sex unions) definitely is from God. It’s to say only that when you reasserters categorically rule out the very idea — when you reject even the possibility that God might ever say anything that you think is contradictory to what he (putatively) said before — you blaspheme.
————
Responding to your parenthetical question, Milton about my “claim[ing] the Bible as the basis or reference for [my] Christianity, such as it is”: I think the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, eminent physicist turned Anglican priest, put it well:
Scripture is not an unchallengeable set of propositions demanding unquestioning assent, but it is evidence, the record of foundational spiritual experience, the laboratory notebooks of gifted observers of God’s ways with men and women.
[34] I concur – the bishop’s ignorance or willful misconstruction of the content of the word (e.g., denying its reference to the word of God) is sufficient grounds for questioning his metaphysical musings.
Orthodox Christianity on the big issues is not really a difficult thing to discern, given the history of the church, patristics, the canonical word, the councils, etc. Bishops and other clergy of Christian churches who choose to teach otherwise are better served pursuing a career in philosphy. At least they could preserve some integrity.
ISTM there will always be those who question the validity or authority of the canonical word. IMHO, the presenting problem is that they simply do not like what it says. What baffles me are those who insist that (or even desire that) they be allowed to teach their contrary musings from positions of leadership within a purportedly Christian church.
D. C. I have no problem with your analogy. I have a problem with the role you assign to yourself and other reappraisers in it. Certainly on my own I am blind and in ways I did not begin to realize until I was saved in spite of my awful self in mercy by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose spoken in heart signals and signals in the Word I obey as best as He graces me to.
How is it sacrilege to hold to God’s revelation and not change it for man’s insistence that it has changed? What signs do you offer in God’s affirmation that you do indeed speak for and from Him? The apostles did the works of Jesus and greater (in number) by the demonstrated power of the Holy Spirit. Where are your works and healings? Where is your fulfillment of the Law instead of violation of the few elements of it that the Gentile believers were to observe? “My understanding”? The “that’s your opinion” tack is false. I did not write Scripture. If I had, it would read rather more like your update of it in many places. You, D. C., being a mere man like myself, are declaring yourself to be sighted, enough to overturn the entire body of Scripture and the clear teaching of most of 2,000 years with no basis other than your desires and the limits imposed by political correctness on what evidence and views are allowed in the discussion. Who is being sacrilegious here and attempting to impose their understanding on God’s supposed change of mind or direction? Seems like a typical case of liberal projection on at least your part; perhaps NoVA Scout does not go as far there as you.
You reveal your true stance vis a vis God’s word and its authority in you subtle rephrasing of the serpent:
to what he (putatively) said before
You wish to say now again, “Hath God really said?” Who is blaspheming – literally speaking against God?
Take care how you characterize yourself as sighted, D. C.
John 9:39-41
39And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”
40Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” 41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
Certainly on my own I am blind and in ways I did not begin to realize until I was saved in spite of my awful self in mercy by the Lord Jesus Christ ….
I applaud your recognition of your fallibility, which of course we all share. I’m curious, though:
• what you define as “salvation” — at the risk of sounding like a reductionist, I’m going to guess that what most reasserters think of as “being saved” is, fundamentally, a pleasant, subjective mental state;
• why you suppose that this “salvation” is in fact due to Jesus and only Jesus, with zero involvement from other factor(s) such as the physiology and biochemistry of the brain — especially given that our knowledge of the mind and brain barely even scratch the surface;
• why many who hold other religious beliefs are equally convinced that they are (or will be) saved, without Jesus.
——————-
Milton writes:
What signs do you offer in God’s affirmation that you do indeed speak for and from Him?
I make no claim to speak for God. I offer only observations, mostly by others, of the reality God presumably wrought, along with their provisional explanations of why that reality seems to behave the way it does.
——————
Milton writes:
The apostles did the works of Jesus and greater (in number) by the demonstrated power of the Holy Spirit. Where are your works and healings?
That’s easy: The achievements of countless engineers, scientists, physicians, charity workers, Peace Corps volunteers, etc. — holding varied, or no, religious beliefs. It’s a very, very big stretch to claim that their “works and healings” are due to Jesus; I do, though, provisionally share your belief that, in some way, what we call the Holy Spirit may well play a role therein.
—————–
Milton writes:
You, D. C., being a mere man like myself, are declaring yourself to be sighted, enough to overturn the entire body of Scripture and the clear teaching of most of 2,000 years with no basis other than your desires and the limits imposed by political correctness on what evidence and views are allowed in the discussion.
I plead an emphatic not guilty to that charge. That’s something I find frustrating about these discussions:
• Many reappraisers are willing to face up to the evidence proffered by reasserters and to give it due weight. (Personally, I try pretty hard to be fair in assessing reasserters’ evidentiary claims.)
• Many reasserters, though, seem to squeeze their eyes tightly shut and put their fingers in their ears, rather than face up to evidence that doesn’t comport with their preconceived notions — “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.”
—————–
Milton writes:
You wish to say now again, “Hath God really said?†Who is blaspheming – literally speaking against God?
We’re human, and fallible. Prudence thus counsels us, it seems to me, to keep always in the back of our minds the possibility that we just might be wrong — including in concluding that God said X.
Besides if we were to privilege the NT writings against critical inquiry into their divine inspiration, then we’d have to come up with a convincing answer for Muslims when they claimed the same privilege for the Qur’an. (The brute fact is that “because we said so” isn’t going to cut it on that score.)
DWStroudMD [#46], this thread is about played out, but I do wonder what you define as “evidence.”
In law and science, the term “evidence” is generally reserved for phenomena that, in principle, are capable of being observed, confirmed, corroborated, by an arbitrary observer who possesses any necessary equipment, positioning, training, etc. Other phenomena are deemed wishful thinking at best, delusions at worst. I assume it’s more or less the same on your planet.
Using that definition, I’m aware of little “evidence” about the exact process by which canonization decisions were made, or by what warrant. The surviving evidence seems to indicate only that various personages in the early church took it upon themselves to declare that the criteria for canonization were X, which were or were not met by this or that writing.
(And yes I have read the Wikipedia article you kindly cited, among other things — you might try Bart Ehrman for a sober look.)
I forgot to add one point: To be sure, hundreds of years after Jesus’ death, church councils declared certain writings to be canonical. Thinking people are entitled to inquire about their premises and their reasoning, and need not accept their conclusions solely on their say-so.
DWS [#49], evidence is evidence, whether it’s legal or scientific or historical.
It may well be true that historical evidence is judged by more lax standards than legal or scientific evidence. That’s doubtless because historical errors seldom carry the kinds of real-world consequences that lawyers (and judges), scientists, physicians, engineers, etc., all have to worry about.
Fidelity to God would seem to imply dealing with the world as he actually wrought it, and not as we imagine it to be. That being the case, you’d think our teachers of religious doctrines would be concerned about the quality of the evidence supporting their doctrines — at least as concerned as, say, a judge is about whether the evidence really supports imposing a long prison sentence, or as a physician is about whether the diagnostic evidence really supports subjecting a patient to a dangerous and/or painful and/or expensive treatment.
As I say, evidence is evidence. It’s just that the more consequential the choice we’re asked to make, the more confident we like to be about the evidence supporting the diagnosis, the estimate of the situation, the findings of fact.
Reasserters ask us to radically reorder our lives on grounds that in Jerusalem, circa 30 AD, certain extraordinary events really did happen the way they’re described in the NT. That’s a pretty consequential choice. The supporting evidence should be correspondingly solid. It isn’t.
re Milton’s no. 40. I’m intrigued by your concept that even God is bound in future utterances to content that does not contradict presently accepted scripture. I am uncomfortable with arrogating to mortals that sort of control over His utterances. If God speaks in a way that appears to depart from existing scripture, I will not close my ears to His words. More to the point, I do not expect Him to repeat Himself. If He chooses to speak to us, it might well be on a point that He has not addressed previously. But that is pretentious speculation on my part and I am already uncomfortable suggesting, even obliquely, what God might or might not say at some point. I just pray that I am in a spiritual condition that enables me to understand.
RE your query on II Peter: I think you use the verb “to lie” much too loosely in this context. I have no doubt that the author of II Peter felt that he was in a position to accurately describe a view that Simon Peter, the Disciple who walked with the Lord, would have espoused. I do not find that it diminishes the value of that particular book to believe it not to have been written by Cephas (Simon Peter, the Disciple) any more than it detracts from the Synoptics or John not to believe they were written by disciples who share names with those particular Gospels. The value of these scriptures is their content, not their authorship. It is not central to doctrine that the authors are this person or that person. I would love to have writings of Jesus or of the Twelve. We don’t. That makes what we do have more, not less, valuable.
On one hand are those who hold doubts or questions about Christian teaching, and earnestly seek knowledge and instruction in a personal way.
On the other hand, there are those who have drawn conclusions in contradiction to Christian teaching – their innovative musings – and seek to to teach or convince others in a public way from within the church.
The teaching of Jesus Christ is clear on the second category.
As a footnote, I am not convinced by the stop and go analogy – I don’t think that it is accurate for the presenting problem. There are biblical accounts of otherwise neutral activities in which God as provided direction – such as directing someone to go to a particular place at a particular time – in which disobedience is recognized as sin, but the underlying activity (e.g., staying or going in general) is not a categorical moral sin. Jesus Christ did not treat the moral law in a stop-go manner.
… I do not find that it diminishes the value of that particular book to believe it not to have been written by Cephas (Simon Peter, the Disciple) any more than it detracts from the Synoptics or John not to believe they were written by disciples who share names with those particular Gospels. The value of these scriptures is their content, not their authorship. It is not central to doctrine that the authors are this person or that person. … [Emphasis added.]
What is central to doctrine, though, is the claim that certain events supposedly happened in the way the authors describe (not always consistently). Without knowing who those authors were —
• we can’t say with any confidence whether the authors were first-hand witnesses, or whether instead they were passing along stories they’d heard from others. It’s beyond peradventure that passed-along stories often get subtly distorted and even grossly mangled as they’re retold — especially if a jump from one language to another is involved;
• with anonymous authors, neither can we examine the possibility of author bias. It’s also beyond peradventure that spin happens; that’s why we like to know whether the author might have an agenda to advance, a reputation to promote (or defend), a score to settle, etc. For example, the Fourth Gospel is not without its hints of this sort of thing, in its protestations of the dominical favor supposedly enjoyed by the (anonymous) Beloved Disciple.
So NoVAScout, I must respectfully disagree in part with your assertion that “[t]he value of these scriptures is their content, not their authorship,” at least insofar as doctrine is grounded on claims of historical accuracy, not just on ethical values that can be evaluated independent of particular events.
Sorrr, DC, but you seem to be claiming one standard of evidence when there are courts for legal evidence, determinants of scientific evidence, and standards for historical evidence. All evidence is not the same. This is a standard real world POV.
But if you would like to prove that all evidence is empirical and repeatable, please provide evidence of where you were Grownd Hogs Day, 2009.
If you believe all evidence is scientific, publish a paper on the fact that you existed at 7:30 AM on 7/7/07.
On the other hand, if you would like to establish those things legally or historically, exactly how would you go about it?
[Edited by Elf – please address the argument without personalising the comments]
DWStroudMD [#54, and #46 before that], I’m sorry my views seem to provoke you into making uncharitable remarks.
Please go back and reread what I’ve written. Possibly I’ve done a bad job of explaining my views. I don’t think that’s the case, though. I think you’ve repeatedly missed the point. (In which case, res ipse loquitur.)
I don’t claim that there’s only one standard of evidence. Just the opposite: The supporting evidence to be required will vary with the seriousness of the decision to be made on the basis of that evidence.
I assume from your user name that you’re a physician. Presumably you’ve made diagnoses that called for the patient to undergo a dangerous- or disfiguring treatment. You’ve no doubt made other diagnoses for which the treatment was something like, get some rest and call me if you don’t feel better in a few days. Surely you’d want to see more-compelling evidence to support a diagnosis in the first category than you would for the second? (If not, I can assure you I’d never be your patient.)
Or see the heightened evidentiary standard of Deut. 17.6: “… No one is to be executed on the testimony of a single witness.”
To reiterate what I said before: The choice to reorder one’s life and one’s view of God, based on the purported truth of the Creeds, is about as serious as a decision they come. The evidence supporting such a decision should be compelling. The extant evidence is anything but.
Mr. Toedt: You invite a good discussion and I thank you for it. The problem about historical accuracy is that, at this remove, it is unlikely that we can know much about the fine points of historical fact as they apply to the time of Jesus. Too little documentation outside the Roman sources and what little there was of that kind of documentation is lost. Palestine was something of a backwater, even for the Romans, so we have a dearth of materials.
But if you think about Christian faith and doctrine, there very few key elements that turn on independently provable historical facts. Most of Paul (even it you and I agree that his direct writings are probably confined to half the books attributed to him in the Canon) is exegesis and instruction, not fact-based. Paul is patently uninterested in the historical facts of Jesus, His birth, His ministry. Paul wasn’t writing a Bible, he was building a community of faith. So he instructed, chastised, argued, cajoled and did whatever he needed to do to hold the community together and to expand it. We have some fragments of what he wrote, have lost a lot of it, and have other writings that were peripheral to Paul, either through followers or other early Christians. The first four gospels overlap, diverge, make errors (we know Quirinius was not Governor at the reported time of Jesus’s birth) and contradict, but they put forth concepts and ideas about Man’s relationship with God that resonate with human experience and carry with them, for Christians, a sense of internal validity.
So, as a historian, I admire your intellectual desire for proofs and facts. It would be so nice to have more of a record. But I am comfortable with the idea that Christianity can live with some uncertainty, contradiction, and confusion about the daily facts.
Of course the nature of the decision requires evidence proportional to the importance of the decision to the decider. It’s simply observable fact that if you require evidence that cannot by its nature be given (such as repeatable experimental evidence of where you were on Ground’s Hog Day), you are using a legitimate concern as a dodge.
In the case of the Creeds, there is maximal evidence in the historical sense. Which, in the absence of a time machine and video recording device and your return with the proceedings on file, is all you get to decide upon.
And, if you are ever pregnant, please do come by for an opinion, or perhaps for a hysterectomy. I’ll be happy to apply the appropriate criteria.
DWStroudMD [#57], let’s talk about the reliability of eyewitnesses after you’ve spent a few years litigating complex cases, or as an investigative reporter or a police detective. I haven’t read this Bauckman book, but from what I’ve read about its thesis, the author seems to live in some kind of panglossian academic fantasy world, where decades-old hearsay can be deemed reliable if it says what the listener thinks it should say. Give me Bart Ehrman any day.
———————
NoVAScout [#56] writes:
The first four gospels … put forth concepts and ideas about Man’s relationship with God that resonate with human experience and carry with them, for Christians, a sense of internal validity.
That much I can agree with, albeit on other grounds, namely that “seek the best for others” (my paraphrase of love-your-neighbor, given that we can’t control towards whom we feel agape but we can control our conduct) seems to be a general algorithm for overall human progress.
On purely historical grounds, though, suppose that the available evidence concerning Christianity’s central narrative isn’t compelling enough to support taking a serious action such as internalizing the last 2/3 of the Nicene Creed. We could always lower the bar, dumb down the standard. Our rationalization could be, well, it’s true the evidence doesn’t pass muster, but it’s the best we’ll ever get, so let’s proceed anyway. (Like the punch line of the old economist joke: No problem, we’ll just assume we have a can opener.)
Sure, we could do that. Many Christians have.
But that, I submit, amounts to their doing what seems good to them in their own eyes.
And then we’d have to ask ourselves: how is it OK for Christians to do that, but not for Mormons or Muslims?
————
It’s been enjoyable, guys, but I think this thread is about exhausted.
DC, it is clear that no one can influence your pre-judged opinion about the nature of evidence to suit your own pre-conceived conclusions about the nature of witness and particularly the Creeds.
I have two further suggestions: THE TRINITARIAN FAITH by T F Torrance to break through [Edited] and the recognition of the work that Bauckman is doing by the Archbishop of Canterbury – http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2433
Evidence there is aplenty when you get ready, if ever, to evaluate it.
[Edited by Elf – please do not ignore our instructions – next time your comment will be deleted in its entirety. Btw it is Richard Bauckham and well worth reading]
DWStroudMD, I ordered the Bauckham book you cited from Amazon; it should be here next week. Thanks for the link.
I hope you check back here to read this. I thought of an analogy this morning that might resonate with your professional background.
Suppose that I, having only basic first-aid training, were to insist that it didn’t matter whether first-century Jewish midwives washed their hands before delivering babies. According to me (let’s suppose), the extant religious standards called for all devout Jews to wash regularly. Surely that would have plenty good enough for midwives, right?
You, an experienced modern-day obstetrician, would smile tolerantly, or even laugh. And rightly so: If I’d had the benefit of your training, I’d have known that your profession has established (not without controversy) that mother- and baby-killing infections can sneak in via even the cleanest-looking unwashed hands. We can’t mock first-century midwives for not knowing this, though; they lacked the necessary underlying knowledge about infectious microbes and their transmission.
Now let’s reverse the roles. Certain theologians make the claim that it doesn’t matter whether the NT accounts are hearsay, or if they were in fact eyewitness accounts, whether they were first written down decades after the witnesses’ observations. The claimants’ rationale is that various first-century storytelling practices would have guaranteed the reliability of the NT tales, even the most extraordinary ones.
It turns out, though, that these claimants have little or no training in interviewing actual, fallible human witnesses (let alone in cases having real-world consequences). They know little or nothing of the advances made in journalism, law enforcement, the legal profession, and related fields such as psychology, concerning the vicissitudes of human perception and memory.
That might give you an idea why I react the way I do when reasserters make such grandiose claims about the supposed reliability of their dogmas. To me, what you guys say about first-century gospel authors sounds just like a non-physician’s claiming that first-century midwives didn’t need to wash their hands.
I posted a cleaned-up version of #60 at my own blog. Its thesis is that ancient storytelling practices weren’t necessarily a sufficient guard against distortion of the NT accounts, just as ancient midwives’ sanitary practices weren’t necessarily a sufficient guard against potentially-fatal infections.
DC, I’m glad you ordered the book. When you have examined the criteria for historical evidence, you might find that the data for the creeds is very reliable. Until then, we seem to be blowing past one another.
Minds preconvinced that the state of the hands has nothing to do with bad childbirth outcomes continued to kill quite effectively even after Sammelweiss demonstrate the effectiveness of carbolic acid handwashing between the dissection room and the birthing wing. Preconceptions cut both ways, it seems.
Similarly, preconceived ideas about the nature of evidence do not render the evidence ineffective.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Isn’t it true that the phrase “the word of God” in Scripture is used only in referring to Jesus Christ the Word Incarnate and not to the Bible itself? In that case the Bishop is correct.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16).
We come to know God’s Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, by studying God’s Word Written, the Bible, which points to Him in every book, from Genesis to Revelation. If we think we know a “Jesus Christ” that is anything other than the Jesus Christ we read of in the Bible, we deceive ourselves.
Sad.
1. 1905. I’ve heard similar from contemporary TEC bishops – usually along the lines of: “…if this Old Testament account is objectionable, then the verse I find uncomfortable can also be called into question…”
2. Note the clear pitting of scripture against scripture, and the slippery mischaracterizations. Did Christ tear asunder Old Testament precepts, or did he fulfill the law? Note also the implication of the desirability of an open canon…
3. This is not a message that increases faith, but a message that shifts confidence to humanity. In his rush to reject an idiomatic perspective on authority, he arrogates that authority to himself. Consider the fruit of such a presentation, made in this way.
(FYI – below are a few random examples of biblical references to the word of God.)
Matthew 4:4
But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone,but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
Luke 11:28
But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
1 Timothy 4:5
“…for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Hebrews 13:7
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”
I believe it was Jerome who said that to be ignorant of scripture is to be ignorant of Christ Himself. Of course, this is just one person’s opinion.
Of course, when Paul wrote of “sacred writings” and “scripture,” he was referring strictly to the Hebrew Bible, right?
Later, a consensus seems to have evolved that the so-called apostolic writings merited the title as well (even though they were not entirely models of consistency with each other).
In other words, factions within the early, post-apostolic church felt that they had the power to add books to the previous canon, on the basis of a criterion (apostolic authorship) that they themselves selected; over time, the rest of the church went along.
Yet when factions within today’s church do much the same thing, we supposedly must deem it apostasy.
Sheesh.
#6 To your first paragraph, not entirely.
1 Tim 5:18
#2 Of course. It’s a theological affirmation made by the church – similar to the concept “Trinity”, or “of one substance” or the divinity of the Holy Spirit or any number of central Christian concepts that may be inferred or deduced from Scripture. (For Episcopalians it would seem not to be up for grabs as truth that the Bible is the Word of God is assumed and affirmed within the BCP, p332).
FWIW in fact Jesus never calls himself the Word of God in Scripture. Is this a truth you’d like to contest too?
The fact is that the Church of England has always had bishops who have a broader understanding of scripture, especially since Prince William of Orange became king. Some have argued that the British Isles really only became Christianized with the introduction of Methodism.
Just a tired old kabuki dance never seems to end…
Sorry, should have been: that never seems to end…
The rhetoric fits well with the late nineteenth/early twentieth century self-satisfied emphasis on progress and idealism (before von Harnack declared for the Kaiser). It’s so sad that Fundamentalism is used as a straw man to polarize the issue — [b]either[/b] fundamentalism [b]or[/b] idealism according to our measure. What’s even sadder is after Barth, the Niebuhrs, von Rad, and even Tillich; and (at least) Childs and Lindbeck more recently, the leadership of the church is singing a PC version of the same song as if none of these had ever been heard from.
Who? Would be surprising given that the British Isles had an, in part, religious civil war in the 1640s.
This Bishop of Michigan was apparently a famous reappraiser, who narrowly escaped by buggy from a large wildfire a few years after this article.
Apparently, his brand of innovative faith was comfortable with eugenics:
Preaching Eugenics: religious leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, Christine Rosen, 2004
This indictment expanded church support for a eugenic marriage license. Odd how similar his criticisms sound to those from certain quarters of the church. Odd how even then, TEC vacated the field to the RCC for defense of marriage as a sacrament.
😉
Ah, well, the rot in Michigan set in quite some time ago, eh? Big surprise, that! are we sure this chap wasn’t somewhere else advocating for a buddhist practice as buddhist as his christianity is christian?
Yoopers rejoice! The pedigree goes back over 103 years! It’s ancient.
I was reading some Bishop Charles Gore (one of the sainted founders of what has become liberal catholicism) and noticed how confidently and firmly he asserted the traditional faith and practice of the church. (Famously he was deeply critical of the Lambeth 1930 teaching concerning even the limited acceptable use contraception and rightly saw what it presaged). He was repeatedly critical of the kind of Latitudinarian views that were just beginning to regain traction in his lifetime (as we see above in Bishop Williams).
It’s terribly sad that the contemporary inheritors of the liberal catholic moniker in the USA repeat more or less wholesale the views of those with whom Gore disagreed. It is as if the entire twentieth century of theology and its critique of the catastrophic failings of some varieties of nineteenth century theological liberalism never occurred.
#16, I doubt that today’s liberal catholics would be recognized by Gore and his contemporaries. I’ve often read Gore, and my hero Henry Liddon on the issues surrounding the “Lux Mundi” essay on inspiration penned by the young Gore. Gore’s essay was seen by Liddon to be a betrayal of Dr Pusey (especially with reference to giving way to then current criticism related to the authorship of Daniel). Liddon considered Gore’s work to be a personal betrayal as well, because Liddon had promoted the appointment of Gore as the first librarian of Pusey House. Liddon’s reaction to Lux Mundi, and to Gore’s participation in it, almost certainly took Liddon to an early grave. Liddon’s famous sermon “The Worth of the Old Testament” may be of interest.
If you read the Lux Mundi essay “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” toward the end you’ll come across how Gore believed that recognizing certain “idealizing” in the Old Testament was probably admissible, but would lead to disaster for the Christian Creed, if such “idealizing” were admitted in the New. The early Lux Mundi “liberal catholics” drew a line of defense around the New Testament and its reliability considering the content of the New Testament as fact not idealization. For example:
[blockquote]”It is because the Old Testament is the record of how God produced a need, or anticipation, or ideal, while the New Testament records how in fact He satisfied it. The absolute coincidence of idea and fact is vital in the realization, not in the prepartion for it. It is equally obvious, too, that where fact is of supreme importance, as in the New Testament, the evidence has none of the ambiguity or remoteness which belongs to much of the record of the preparation [i.e. the Old Testament].”[/blockquote]
Gore’s vigorous defense of the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus in articles and notes he wrote in “A New Commentary on Holy Scripture” (published about thirty years after Lux Mundi) demonstrate his continued acceptance of the facts as presented in the Gospels. But, his later writing also evidences the battles of the 1920’s and 30’s that are familiar even today, as those who followed the early liberal catholics went further in the assault on Scripture than that first generation of Oxford cleric scholars ever imagined possible.
John Wilkins wrote:
[blockquote]The fact is that the Church of England has always had bishops who have a broader understanding of scripture, especially since Prince William of Orange became king.[/blockquote]
This statement implies there were (or are) no boundaries that constrain a “broader understanding” of Scripture in Anglicanism, which is, of course, hogwash. The burden of proof is on you, JW, to prove your point. Good luck with that.
John Wilkins wrote:
[blockquote]Some have argued that the British Isles really only became Christianized with the introduction of Methodism. [/blockquote]
Oh yeah. Wesley had a “broader understanding of scripture.” LOL! Care to elaborate, John?
Hmmm, could it be that this is where KJS finds her words of inspiration?
Heh – Kevin, popular religion and “orthodoxy” are two separate things. Most people are naturally superstitious and have all sorts of believes. This is just empirically evident.
My point Kevin, is that those who think that TEC is particularly egregious about their view of scripture, don’t have a very long historical view. Of course, it was the evangelicals who got us into this mess when they started translating scripture, taking out all the catholic bits they thought were added.
#21, what bits did they remove? Do you mean the deuterocanonicals, or are you accusing unspecified “evangelicals” of producing Bibles aside from those books with items edited out? Or do you mean simply that you disagree with some of the translations in particular spots?
#22 Maybe #21 is referring to the natural result of Sola Scriptura. The last word belongs to the reader. I’m just guessing.
Peace.
#23, #21 has gone away. Busy day, no doubt. He said they “started …taking out all the catholic bits they thought were added,” which sound like deliberate editing, not sola scriptura.
Thank you #24. A kneejerk reaction on my part whereupon I obviously misread translated as interpreted. Please forgive my RC-centricity showing. My mistake for whipping out the SS issue unnecessarily. Perhaps the hypothetical Council of Jamnia (which was nonbinding on Christians) and it’s rejection of the Septuagint was what I had in mind. Seems to have started the ball rolling as it were.
Peace.
Perhaps Bishop Williams has a new bishopric now, in a somewhat lower station? I think C. S. Lewis wrote about that diocese…
John Wilkins, I hope that the “broader” view of scripture you seem to admire does not lead you and others down a “broad path”.
D. C., St. Peter did not wait until “later” to affirm that St. Paul’s epistles had equal standing and authority with the Hebrew Bible (though 1st century Christians used the same OT as 1st century Jews, the Septuagint):
Since Paul’s letters make up 2/3 of the NT, you can have pretty good confidence the rest of it was intended by the Holy Spirit (remember Him?) to be included in the Canon, after which it was closed, God having spoken without having stuttered.
Milton [#26], it sounds as if, unlike the majority of scholars, you accept Petrine authorship of 2 Peter.
Also, it appears you’re willing to let Peter, and perhaps others in the early church, make the decision that particular writings should be added to the canon, but you’re not willing to let anyone else do so. I’m curious where you draw the line — and why.
Finally, you seem to have categorically rejected even the possibility that the Holy Spirit might have different things to say to us, at different times or in different circumstances, than what’s written in the NT. (An analogy I’ve used before is a sighted person guiding a blind person across a busy street, first saying “stop” when the light is red but then saying “go” when the light turns green.) To me, that sort of claim is way above my pay grade; you must be a braver man than I.
D. C., of course you reject the authors of any books of Scripture as being who the text and tradition say they are, especially when they assert the authenticity and authority of God’s word or when they convey prophecy fulfilled accurately centuries later. Just because you have lots of company proves only that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil, and even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.
As for the Holy Spirit having different things to say in different times, the Bible as a whole shows a progressive revelation, but not a contradictory revelation. We are given greater and greater light that builds upon and fulfills earlier revelation, not greater confusion that tears down and contradicts earlier revelation.
Peter and others in the early church of the 1st century only began, but did not complete either the addition of some writings to nor the removal of some writings from the Canon. That was the Holy Spirit guided work of the church councils of the first 4 centuries. You seem to accept (or at least not reject in this thread) the choice made by the scribes of which books were included and excluded in the Hebrew Bible, the previous canon. Surely, according to your logic, that was the work of man also and not the Holy Spirit? Were the writings of GLBT advocates BC lost or suppressed by proto-Puritan-homophobic scribes and rabbis? Yet, at least for this particular argument, you seem to accept the Hebrew Bible without question. Some consistency would be nice!
Milton [#28], if the blind man didn’t know about traffic lights, he might well have the impression that the “stop” and “go” signals from his guide were contradictory. But they wouldn’t be — and the blind man would be pretty arrogant if he were to insist that they were.
As to the Hebrew Bible, I expressed no opinion in this thread about it; I’m simply delving into your own premises and reasoning about the NT canon, and asking why it was OK for the early church to decide that the canon should contain Documents A, B, C, etc., but it’s categorically impermissible (supposedly) for us to do the same today.
DC, you clearly do not understand the process by which the NT canon was recognized as authoritative and not declared to be authoritative by some fiat you imagine. To assist your understanding, try out Alister E. McGrath’s CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: An Introduction, Fourth Edition, pages 12-13. There are entire works devoted to the issue of the canon which I leave you find on your own should you actually be interested in what happened rather than fantasy suitable to Dan Brown novels.
dwstroudmd [#30], I submit that no one understands “the process by which the NT canon was recognized as authoritative,” because the surviving evidence on the point is pretty scant.
Well, DC, never let evidence stand in the way of your fantasies. Ciao!
DWS [#32], I hope you don’t diagnose patients the way you do theology.
What astounds me is the lack of recognition that the office of “Bishop” was and is established by “The Word of God,” through which it also derives the respect and authority which accompanies it. If, indeed, the Bible is actually devoid of any real God given (God spoken) authority, then a Bishop would be little more than a fool asserting authority in an office that, at best, was born out of folly. After all, what Bishop in their right mind could even begin to assert that they possess any substantive authority and power, outside of that which has been commended to the Church and the world through “The Word of God?”
By example, I recall watching John Spong on “The Donahue Show” a couple of decades back, deriding the Bible’s authority and the Christian faith in his usual manner. Of course, he did this all while wearing his purple shirt and collar, with his pectoral cross neatly tucked into his shirt pocket. (Talk about playing out the stereotypical Bishop!) There was little question that he was overtly asserting his role as Bishop in order to be authoritative in front of the cameras. Sorry to say, to me Bishop Spong would be better addressed in a parody of an old “Trix Are For Kids” cereal commercial.
“Silly Bishop . . . the Bible is for believers”; Oh, and incidentally, you wouldn’t even be a Bishop without that same Bible you are so quick to deride.”
I’ve always wondered if Bishop Spong ever realized that, as viewed through the eyes of his own theological bent, he might be understood to be running around on a stage wearing the costume of a fictional character he was only portraying.
With respect to Bishop Williams, whether he knows it or not, such verbiage as exhibited here only undercuts the very office he claims to be speaking from. I would think it only fair to say that the world did not grant him either this pastoral/teaching office or the authority he possesses through it. It has biblical origins, and the authenticity of the claim to authority is time and again one of the highest callings put forth in the Bible, be it Old and New Testament.
As I see it, it’s really quite simple when it comes to the teachings and pronouncements by the bishops of the Church: No Biblical Authority . . . No Bishop authority!
Re the exchange between Mr. Toedt and Milton: I am always a bit startled that there are Christians who uncritically assume that because a particular Epistle or Gospel has a name attached to it, that it was written by one particular person of that name, as opposed to another, or is not a letter or work that has acquired the name simply as an identifier. I certainly do not take the authors of James and Jude to be Jesus’s brothers. And it seems facially implausible, even in English translation, that the authors of I Peter and II Peter are the same Peter (if Peter is intended to identify the author). I am particularly fond of the substance and style of I Peter, but not because I assume that Simon Peter, the disciple, is its author. As Mr. Toedt says, I don’t think anyone who has spent much time looking at this considers II Peter to be anything other than a later work composed after the death of St. Peter (I suppose it might have been written by someone who was named “Peter” or a derivative thereof, but not THAT Peter). To the extent that St. Peter (the disciple) and St. Paul overlapped, they were often in uneasy relationship. God found a way to use both their gifts and strengths by having them demographically and geographically compartmentalize their evangelism. Or at least that is my impression, an impression I will adhere to until persuaded to the contrary by scholarship superior to my own (of which there is a vast supply, no doubt).
NoVA Scout I have 2 questions for you.
1) Would you please lay out, concisely, at least the outline of the theses that either or both of the Petrine epistles were written by someone other than Peter, James and Jude were written by someone by another name, whether either was a brother of Jesus (neither explicitly claims that in their epistle, Jude only claims to be “brother of James”), and that 2 Peter was written after St. Peter’s death. 2 Peter self-identifies its author as “Simon Peter” and says he himself heard the Father acknowledge Jesus as His beloved Son on the mountain at the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-18). And if by someone other than the stated authors, does that decertify them as Scripture?
2) Do you agree with D. C. that the NT books and other Scripture were chosen by man alone and not by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that the canon is not closed, and that later “revelation” claimed for the Holy Spirit can contradict or supersede the canon settled upon in the first 4 centuries of the church?
James and Jude may well have been written by someone of those names, names that were not uncommon in that time (or now). I have no view on that. My point was that there seems to be an instinct to assume that they were a particular “James” or a particular “Jude”. Because we are told that Jesus had brothers of those names, I have encountered fellow Christians who assume that the authors of these letters were the brothers of Jesus Christ. I have never been inclined to assume that. As you say, Jude represents that he is the brother of James. He does not say that he is the brother of Jesus.
The two Peters show no evidence of being the same writer. The notion that II Peter was not written by the Disciple goes back centuries and is not original with me. I have never assumed that there is much dispute about the book being pseudonymous. I don’t think that compromises its value as an element of our spiritual education, but it needs to be understood for what it is and is not.
Of course all these items are “scripture” (writing) and are part of the canonical documents of the Christian church (although the canonical compilations differ to some degree among different Christian churches).
And, of course man compiled the writings included in our canon. Some writings were included, some excluded. That has been a long process that extended even beyond the first four centuries of Christendom. My hope and belief is that those choices were guided by divine influence. My opinions or beliefs cannot bind the future actions of God, so I have no view on what He will do to speak to us in the future. If He speaks to us, I will try to be in a position to listen. I cannot imagine that any Christian would take an adamantine position that God has nothing more to say to us. That seems tantamount to sacrilege.
I think Bp Charles Williams did a disservice to the cause of evangelism and mission of the Church by succumbing to the argument of lexis rather than logos.
The topic of the address he gave to the YMCA group was apparently of his own choosing, and he chose to rail rather than simply lay out the enticing reality:
God likes to have his word(s) recorded.
The Bishop could have then gone on to witness to his group of eager listeners and both encourage and exhort them by sharing the vow he took regarding holy scriptures at his ordering as a bishop and as a priest.
For the bulk of this thread, I think it is also worth noting that God does like to speak his word and to have his word recorded, and except for creation itself, and the writing of the ten commandments, God allows that recording to be accomplished through men and women (and many times now in the new covenant through boys and girls).
I think it is a valid question to ask whether there is a measurable half-life once the word of God is given, until and after it is recorded. That is, in between the time when God’s word is spoken or inspired to be written and when it is actually recorded is there any dissipation in divine authority that takes place? As well, from when God’s word is spoken and recorded is there a shelf-life?
For a decent argument, the word dissipation will probably have to have a stipulated definition.
The following is just an interesting aside, and has nothing to do with my comment above:
Was Detroit Priest Murdered? Jazz Opera Tells the Story
By Bill Wylie-Kellermann, in The Witness
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
“One of five cousins, all pastors, Rev. Lewis Bradford, after the fashion of the worker-priests, went to work in the plant. As he wrote in his diary, the “real reason” for being in Detroit was that he should “make a guided approach toward meeting the spiritual need of Detroit. This should be done at present, through [my] work, not as an evangelist.”
“This was the 1930’s and the Depression (capital D) was taking peoples lives on the streets of Detroit and the Hoovervilles down by its tracks. Bradford began a radio show, called the Forgotten Man’s Radio Hour, innovatively interviewing people about their lives and the times as they waited in the soup kitchen line on Howard Street. These were the very people, two decades prior, which The Witness had been conceived to serve.
“Allen Brett, a social activist in Detroit was a close friend of Bradford’s and helped him with the show. Brett’s father-in-law was Bishop Charles D. Williams of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and family pastor to Henry and Clara Ford. Oddly, as the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, Williams was known as the “Red Bishop,” for his stance in favor of workers. Each in their own ways were friends of The Witness.”
NoVA Scout [#37] writes:
Very well said.
D. C. and NoVA, if God has more to say to us, rest assured that if it really is from the LORD God that it will enrich, but not contradict prior revelation, or else that God is merely capricious and unreliable, not “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever” and in whom “there is no darkness at all, nor shadow of turning”.
If the author of 2 Peter is not the same Simon Peter who was one of the three who accompanied Jesus to the mount of Transfiguration, then is he not a liar for saying he is the same? And if so, does not the Bible contain a fraudulent letter? And if so, is that the Bible that you, NoVA Scout (D. C., surely you cannot claim the Bible as the basis or reference for your Christianity, such as it is) refer to as the reference and corrector for your faith, for Christianity, or that its compilation was the result of divine influence?
Milton [#40], please stop and think about my blind-man-at-the-stop-light analogy: Just because the blind man thinks his sighted guide’s Message A (“stop”) and Message B (“go”) are contradictory, that doesn’t mean they are; it means the blind man, through no fault of his own, doesn’t have enough data and/or insight to see the connecting link between the two messages.
Let’s explore the analogy:
1) let’s assume arguendo that Message A — no same-sex sexual activity — was indeed from God and not just a human cultural practice.
2) You and other reasserters insist that Message B — lifelong monogamous same-sex unions are OK — cannot possibly be from God, because it supposedly contradicts Message A.
Your insistence is like the blind man announcing that it was not OK for him to go, because that would contradict the stop message he got before.
And as NoVAScout says, your insistence is tantamount to sacrilege: you presume to impose your understanding as a limit on what God might or might not do or say.
This is not to say that “Message B” (about same-sex unions) definitely is from God. It’s to say only that when you reasserters categorically rule out the very idea — when you reject even the possibility that God might ever say anything that you think is contradictory to what he (putatively) said before — you blaspheme.
————
Responding to your parenthetical question, Milton about my “claim[ing] the Bible as the basis or reference for [my] Christianity, such as it is”: I think the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, eminent physicist turned Anglican priest, put it well:
J.C. Polkinghorne, Faith, Science, and Understanding, Yale Nota Bene edition 2001, ch. 2, p. 37 (emphasis in original).
I Peter is rejected because of its lack of apostolic witness and the apostolic witness in II Peter is evidence of a forgery. Go figure.
[34] I concur – the bishop’s ignorance or willful misconstruction of the content of the word (e.g., denying its reference to the word of God) is sufficient grounds for questioning his metaphysical musings.
Orthodox Christianity on the big issues is not really a difficult thing to discern, given the history of the church, patristics, the canonical word, the councils, etc. Bishops and other clergy of Christian churches who choose to teach otherwise are better served pursuing a career in philosphy. At least they could preserve some integrity.
ISTM there will always be those who question the validity or authority of the canonical word. IMHO, the presenting problem is that they simply do not like what it says. What baffles me are those who insist that (or even desire that) they be allowed to teach their contrary musings from positions of leadership within a purportedly Christian church.
🙄
D. C. I have no problem with your analogy. I have a problem with the role you assign to yourself and other reappraisers in it. Certainly on my own I am blind and in ways I did not begin to realize until I was saved in spite of my awful self in mercy by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose spoken in heart signals and signals in the Word I obey as best as He graces me to.
How is it sacrilege to hold to God’s revelation and not change it for man’s insistence that it has changed? What signs do you offer in God’s affirmation that you do indeed speak for and from Him? The apostles did the works of Jesus and greater (in number) by the demonstrated power of the Holy Spirit. Where are your works and healings? Where is your fulfillment of the Law instead of violation of the few elements of it that the Gentile believers were to observe? “My understanding”? The “that’s your opinion” tack is false. I did not write Scripture. If I had, it would read rather more like your update of it in many places. You, D. C., being a mere man like myself, are declaring yourself to be sighted, enough to overturn the entire body of Scripture and the clear teaching of most of 2,000 years with no basis other than your desires and the limits imposed by political correctness on what evidence and views are allowed in the discussion. Who is being sacrilegious here and attempting to impose their understanding on God’s supposed change of mind or direction? Seems like a typical case of liberal projection on at least your part; perhaps NoVA Scout does not go as far there as you.
You reveal your true stance vis a vis God’s word and its authority in you subtle rephrasing of the serpent:
You wish to say now again, “Hath God really said?” Who is blaspheming – literally speaking against God?
Take care how you characterize yourself as sighted, D. C.
Milton [#44] writes:
I applaud your recognition of your fallibility, which of course we all share. I’m curious, though:
• what you define as “salvation” — at the risk of sounding like a reductionist, I’m going to guess that what most reasserters think of as “being saved” is, fundamentally, a pleasant, subjective mental state;
• why you suppose that this “salvation” is in fact due to Jesus and only Jesus, with zero involvement from other factor(s) such as the physiology and biochemistry of the brain — especially given that our knowledge of the mind and brain barely even scratch the surface;
• why many who hold other religious beliefs are equally convinced that they are (or will be) saved, without Jesus.
——————-
Milton writes:
I make no claim to speak for God. I offer only observations, mostly by others, of the reality God presumably wrought, along with their provisional explanations of why that reality seems to behave the way it does.
——————
Milton writes:
That’s easy: The achievements of countless engineers, scientists, physicians, charity workers, Peace Corps volunteers, etc. — holding varied, or no, religious beliefs. It’s a very, very big stretch to claim that their “works and healings” are due to Jesus; I do, though, provisionally share your belief that, in some way, what we call the Holy Spirit may well play a role therein.
—————–
Milton writes:
I plead an emphatic not guilty to that charge. That’s something I find frustrating about these discussions:
• Many reappraisers are willing to face up to the evidence proffered by reasserters and to give it due weight. (Personally, I try pretty hard to be fair in assessing reasserters’ evidentiary claims.)
• Many reasserters, though, seem to squeeze their eyes tightly shut and put their fingers in their ears, rather than face up to evidence that doesn’t comport with their preconceived notions — “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.”
—————–
Milton writes:
We’re human, and fallible. Prudence thus counsels us, it seems to me, to keep always in the back of our minds the possibility that we just might be wrong — including in concluding that God said X.
Besides if we were to privilege the NT writings against critical inquiry into their divine inspiration, then we’d have to come up with a convincing answer for Muslims when they claimed the same privilege for the Qur’an. (The brute fact is that “because we said so” isn’t going to cut it on that score.)
DC, [edited]. At least go here and read about what the canon is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
a lightweight Wikipedia reference might get you interested in the real study of the subject of the canon.
[Edited by Elf]
DWStroudMD [#46], this thread is about played out, but I do wonder what you define as “evidence.”
In law and science, the term “evidence” is generally reserved for phenomena that, in principle, are capable of being observed, confirmed, corroborated, by an arbitrary observer who possesses any necessary equipment, positioning, training, etc. Other phenomena are deemed wishful thinking at best, delusions at worst. I assume it’s more or less the same on your planet.
Using that definition, I’m aware of little “evidence” about the exact process by which canonization decisions were made, or by what warrant. The surviving evidence seems to indicate only that various personages in the early church took it upon themselves to declare that the criteria for canonization were X, which were or were not met by this or that writing.
(And yes I have read the Wikipedia article you kindly cited, among other things — you might try Bart Ehrman for a sober look.)
I forgot to add one point: To be sure, hundreds of years after Jesus’ death, church councils declared certain writings to be canonical. Thinking people are entitled to inquire about their premises and their reasoning, and need not accept their conclusions solely on their say-so.
DC, you confuse legal and scientific evidence.
you might look into historical evidence.
Just sayin’.
DWS [#49], evidence is evidence, whether it’s legal or scientific or historical.
It may well be true that historical evidence is judged by more lax standards than legal or scientific evidence. That’s doubtless because historical errors seldom carry the kinds of real-world consequences that lawyers (and judges), scientists, physicians, engineers, etc., all have to worry about.
Fidelity to God would seem to imply dealing with the world as he actually wrought it, and not as we imagine it to be. That being the case, you’d think our teachers of religious doctrines would be concerned about the quality of the evidence supporting their doctrines — at least as concerned as, say, a judge is about whether the evidence really supports imposing a long prison sentence, or as a physician is about whether the diagnostic evidence really supports subjecting a patient to a dangerous and/or painful and/or expensive treatment.
As I say, evidence is evidence. It’s just that the more consequential the choice we’re asked to make, the more confident we like to be about the evidence supporting the diagnosis, the estimate of the situation, the findings of fact.
Reasserters ask us to radically reorder our lives on grounds that in Jerusalem, circa 30 AD, certain extraordinary events really did happen the way they’re described in the NT. That’s a pretty consequential choice. The supporting evidence should be correspondingly solid. It isn’t.
re Milton’s no. 40. I’m intrigued by your concept that even God is bound in future utterances to content that does not contradict presently accepted scripture. I am uncomfortable with arrogating to mortals that sort of control over His utterances. If God speaks in a way that appears to depart from existing scripture, I will not close my ears to His words. More to the point, I do not expect Him to repeat Himself. If He chooses to speak to us, it might well be on a point that He has not addressed previously. But that is pretentious speculation on my part and I am already uncomfortable suggesting, even obliquely, what God might or might not say at some point. I just pray that I am in a spiritual condition that enables me to understand.
RE your query on II Peter: I think you use the verb “to lie” much too loosely in this context. I have no doubt that the author of II Peter felt that he was in a position to accurately describe a view that Simon Peter, the Disciple who walked with the Lord, would have espoused. I do not find that it diminishes the value of that particular book to believe it not to have been written by Cephas (Simon Peter, the Disciple) any more than it detracts from the Synoptics or John not to believe they were written by disciples who share names with those particular Gospels. The value of these scriptures is their content, not their authorship. It is not central to doctrine that the authors are this person or that person. I would love to have writings of Jesus or of the Twelve. We don’t. That makes what we do have more, not less, valuable.
On one hand are those who hold doubts or questions about Christian teaching, and earnestly seek knowledge and instruction in a personal way.
On the other hand, there are those who have drawn conclusions in contradiction to Christian teaching – their innovative musings – and seek to to teach or convince others in a public way from within the church.
The teaching of Jesus Christ is clear on the second category.
As a footnote, I am not convinced by the stop and go analogy – I don’t think that it is accurate for the presenting problem. There are biblical accounts of otherwise neutral activities in which God as provided direction – such as directing someone to go to a particular place at a particular time – in which disobedience is recognized as sin, but the underlying activity (e.g., staying or going in general) is not a categorical moral sin. Jesus Christ did not treat the moral law in a stop-go manner.
NoVAScout [#51] writes:
What is central to doctrine, though, is the claim that certain events supposedly happened in the way the authors describe (not always consistently). Without knowing who those authors were —
• we can’t say with any confidence whether the authors were first-hand witnesses, or whether instead they were passing along stories they’d heard from others. It’s beyond peradventure that passed-along stories often get subtly distorted and even grossly mangled as they’re retold — especially if a jump from one language to another is involved;
• with anonymous authors, neither can we examine the possibility of author bias. It’s also beyond peradventure that spin happens; that’s why we like to know whether the author might have an agenda to advance, a reputation to promote (or defend), a score to settle, etc. For example, the Fourth Gospel is not without its hints of this sort of thing, in its protestations of the dominical favor supposedly enjoyed by the (anonymous) Beloved Disciple.
So NoVAScout, I must respectfully disagree in part with your assertion that “[t]he value of these scriptures is their content, not their authorship,” at least insofar as doctrine is grounded on claims of historical accuracy, not just on ethical values that can be evaluated independent of particular events.
Sorrr, DC, but you seem to be claiming one standard of evidence when there are courts for legal evidence, determinants of scientific evidence, and standards for historical evidence. All evidence is not the same. This is a standard real world POV.
But if you would like to prove that all evidence is empirical and repeatable, please provide evidence of where you were Grownd Hogs Day, 2009.
If you believe all evidence is scientific, publish a paper on the fact that you existed at 7:30 AM on 7/7/07.
On the other hand, if you would like to establish those things legally or historically, exactly how would you go about it?
[Edited by Elf – please address the argument without personalising the comments]
DWStroudMD [#54, and #46 before that], I’m sorry my views seem to provoke you into making uncharitable remarks.
Please go back and reread what I’ve written. Possibly I’ve done a bad job of explaining my views. I don’t think that’s the case, though. I think you’ve repeatedly missed the point. (In which case, res ipse loquitur.)
I don’t claim that there’s only one standard of evidence. Just the opposite: The supporting evidence to be required will vary with the seriousness of the decision to be made on the basis of that evidence.
I assume from your user name that you’re a physician. Presumably you’ve made diagnoses that called for the patient to undergo a dangerous- or disfiguring treatment. You’ve no doubt made other diagnoses for which the treatment was something like, get some rest and call me if you don’t feel better in a few days. Surely you’d want to see more-compelling evidence to support a diagnosis in the first category than you would for the second? (If not, I can assure you I’d never be your patient.)
Or see the heightened evidentiary standard of Deut. 17.6: “… No one is to be executed on the testimony of a single witness.”
To reiterate what I said before: The choice to reorder one’s life and one’s view of God, based on the purported truth of the Creeds, is about as serious as a decision they come. The evidence supporting such a decision should be compelling. The extant evidence is anything but.
Mr. Toedt: You invite a good discussion and I thank you for it. The problem about historical accuracy is that, at this remove, it is unlikely that we can know much about the fine points of historical fact as they apply to the time of Jesus. Too little documentation outside the Roman sources and what little there was of that kind of documentation is lost. Palestine was something of a backwater, even for the Romans, so we have a dearth of materials.
But if you think about Christian faith and doctrine, there very few key elements that turn on independently provable historical facts. Most of Paul (even it you and I agree that his direct writings are probably confined to half the books attributed to him in the Canon) is exegesis and instruction, not fact-based. Paul is patently uninterested in the historical facts of Jesus, His birth, His ministry. Paul wasn’t writing a Bible, he was building a community of faith. So he instructed, chastised, argued, cajoled and did whatever he needed to do to hold the community together and to expand it. We have some fragments of what he wrote, have lost a lot of it, and have other writings that were peripheral to Paul, either through followers or other early Christians. The first four gospels overlap, diverge, make errors (we know Quirinius was not Governor at the reported time of Jesus’s birth) and contradict, but they put forth concepts and ideas about Man’s relationship with God that resonate with human experience and carry with them, for Christians, a sense of internal validity.
So, as a historian, I admire your intellectual desire for proofs and facts. It would be so nice to have more of a record. But I am comfortable with the idea that Christianity can live with some uncertainty, contradiction, and confusion about the daily facts.
Perhaps, DC, you would like to admit that there are varying levels of evidence appropriate to what can be determined?
As to eyewitness testimony, I’d suggest Richard Bauckham’s JESUS AND THE EYEWITNESSES (see here: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802831621 ) for a discussion of the nature of historical evidence.
Of course the nature of the decision requires evidence proportional to the importance of the decision to the decider. It’s simply observable fact that if you require evidence that cannot by its nature be given (such as repeatable experimental evidence of where you were on Ground’s Hog Day), you are using a legitimate concern as a dodge.
In the case of the Creeds, there is maximal evidence in the historical sense. Which, in the absence of a time machine and video recording device and your return with the proceedings on file, is all you get to decide upon.
And, if you are ever pregnant, please do come by for an opinion, or perhaps for a hysterectomy. I’ll be happy to apply the appropriate criteria.
DWStroudMD [#57], let’s talk about the reliability of eyewitnesses after you’ve spent a few years litigating complex cases, or as an investigative reporter or a police detective. I haven’t read this Bauckman book, but from what I’ve read about its thesis, the author seems to live in some kind of panglossian academic fantasy world, where decades-old hearsay can be deemed reliable if it says what the listener thinks it should say. Give me Bart Ehrman any day.
———————
NoVAScout [#56] writes:
That much I can agree with, albeit on other grounds, namely that “seek the best for others” (my paraphrase of love-your-neighbor, given that we can’t control towards whom we feel agape but we can control our conduct) seems to be a general algorithm for overall human progress.
On purely historical grounds, though, suppose that the available evidence concerning Christianity’s central narrative isn’t compelling enough to support taking a serious action such as internalizing the last 2/3 of the Nicene Creed. We could always lower the bar, dumb down the standard. Our rationalization could be, well, it’s true the evidence doesn’t pass muster, but it’s the best we’ll ever get, so let’s proceed anyway. (Like the punch line of the old economist joke: No problem, we’ll just assume we have a can opener.)
Sure, we could do that. Many Christians have.
But that, I submit, amounts to their doing what seems good to them in their own eyes.
And then we’d have to ask ourselves: how is it OK for Christians to do that, but not for Mormons or Muslims?
————
It’s been enjoyable, guys, but I think this thread is about exhausted.
DC, it is clear that no one can influence your pre-judged opinion about the nature of evidence to suit your own pre-conceived conclusions about the nature of witness and particularly the Creeds.
I have two further suggestions: THE TRINITARIAN FAITH by T F Torrance to break through [Edited] and the recognition of the work that Bauckman is doing by the Archbishop of Canterbury – http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2433
Evidence there is aplenty when you get ready, if ever, to evaluate it.
[Edited by Elf – please do not ignore our instructions – next time your comment will be deleted in its entirety. Btw it is Richard Bauckham and well worth reading]
DWStroudMD, I ordered the Bauckham book you cited from Amazon; it should be here next week. Thanks for the link.
I hope you check back here to read this. I thought of an analogy this morning that might resonate with your professional background.
Suppose that I, having only basic first-aid training, were to insist that it didn’t matter whether first-century Jewish midwives washed their hands before delivering babies. According to me (let’s suppose), the extant religious standards called for all devout Jews to wash regularly. Surely that would have plenty good enough for midwives, right?
You, an experienced modern-day obstetrician, would smile tolerantly, or even laugh. And rightly so: If I’d had the benefit of your training, I’d have known that your profession has established (not without controversy) that mother- and baby-killing infections can sneak in via even the cleanest-looking unwashed hands. We can’t mock first-century midwives for not knowing this, though; they lacked the necessary underlying knowledge about infectious microbes and their transmission.
Now let’s reverse the roles. Certain theologians make the claim that it doesn’t matter whether the NT accounts are hearsay, or if they were in fact eyewitness accounts, whether they were first written down decades after the witnesses’ observations. The claimants’ rationale is that various first-century storytelling practices would have guaranteed the reliability of the NT tales, even the most extraordinary ones.
It turns out, though, that these claimants have little or no training in interviewing actual, fallible human witnesses (let alone in cases having real-world consequences). They know little or nothing of the advances made in journalism, law enforcement, the legal profession, and related fields such as psychology, concerning the vicissitudes of human perception and memory.
That might give you an idea why I react the way I do when reasserters make such grandiose claims about the supposed reliability of their dogmas. To me, what you guys say about first-century gospel authors sounds just like a non-physician’s claiming that first-century midwives didn’t need to wash their hands.
I posted a cleaned-up version of #60 at my own blog. Its thesis is that ancient storytelling practices weren’t necessarily a sufficient guard against distortion of the NT accounts, just as ancient midwives’ sanitary practices weren’t necessarily a sufficient guard against potentially-fatal infections.
DC, I’m glad you ordered the book. When you have examined the criteria for historical evidence, you might find that the data for the creeds is very reliable. Until then, we seem to be blowing past one another.
Minds preconvinced that the state of the hands has nothing to do with bad childbirth outcomes continued to kill quite effectively even after Sammelweiss demonstrate the effectiveness of carbolic acid handwashing between the dissection room and the birthing wing. Preconceptions cut both ways, it seems.
Similarly, preconceived ideas about the nature of evidence do not render the evidence ineffective.