How flexible can you be with what constitutes an error?

[bskeptic]

Quote:

In 1982 he published Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art analyzing the Gospel of Matthew. Gundry used redaction criticism in his work. He thus argued that Matthew adapted the story of Jesus to appeal to the intended audience. Especially problematic was Gundry's assertion that Matthew made ahistorical additions to the infancy story in Matthew 1 and 2.

This sparked a major controversy in the Evangelical Theological Society. Gundry contended his work did not question the inerrancy of Matthew. Rather he argued that inerrancy must be considered in light of authorial intent. Matthew, Gundry claims, "treats us to history mixed with elements that cannot be called historical in a modern sense." Thus, the book of Matthew should not be measured against the standards of the genre of modern historical writing in order to be called inerrant. On the other hand, "Luke states a historical purpose along lines that run closer to modern history writing…" Gundry's view was supported by a significant portion of the ETS. The Society's executive looked into the matter and at first cleared Gundry. However a campaign against Gundry was launched, spearheaded by Norman Geisler. This campaign succeeded and in December 1983 Gundry resigned from the ETS.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... orman.html



Quote:

Mike Licona has been at the center of controversy in recent months, facing strident criticism from the likes of Al Mohler and Norman Geisler in particular. I’ll not rehash all the details here, but you can find informative posts on the matter here, here, and here. The criticism was enough to oust Licona from his positions at both Southern Evangelical Seminary and the North American Mission Board (an SBC organization).

The controversy centers on Licona’s understanding of Matthew 27:52-53, a passage he believes might have been intended by the biblical author to be taken as poetic imagery rather than an account of an actual historical event. This led critics to accuse Licona of denying biblical “inerrancy,” and the rest is, as they say, history (pun intended).

http://earliestchristianity.wordpress.c ... -brothers/

[bskeptic]

William Lane Craig:

"First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.


We can extend the point by considering the proposal that the Gospels should be understood as different performances, as it were, of orally transmitted tradition. The prominent New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn, prompted by the work of Ken Bailey on the transmission of oral tradition in Middle Eastern cultures, has sharply criticized what he calls the “stratigraphic model” of the Gospels, which views them as composed of different layers laid one upon another on top of a primitive tradition. (See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003].) On the stratigraphic model each tiny deviation from the previous layer occasions speculations about the reasons for the change, sometimes leading to quite fanciful hypotheses about the theology of some redactor. But Dunn insists that oral tradition works quite differently. What matters is that the central idea is conveyed, often in some key words and climaxing in some saying which is repeated verbatim; but the surrounding details are fluid and incidental to the story....

Now if Dunn is right, this has enormous implications for one’s doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for it means that the Evangelists had no intention that their stories should be taken like police reports, accurate in every detail. What we in a non-oral culture might regard as an error would not be taken by them to be erroneous at all."

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/what-pri ... al-errancy

[bskeptic]

My own opinion, is that I have some sympathy for what Craig is saying. I wouldn't outright dismiss this stuff.

However, how flexible can you be with what constitutes an error in the Bible?

Are you going to maybe "disappear" an error with this approach, but create other problems in the process?

It seems that you can get yourself in trouble with your fellow inerrantists for a start...


Quote:

Second, another noted SBC leader, Dr. Al Mohler, spoke out against Licona’s view on his web site, concluding, that in his treatment of the Matthew 27 text that “Licona has handed the enemies of the resurrection of Jesus Christ a powerful weapon — the concession that some of the material reported by Matthew in the very chapter in which he reports the resurrection of Christ simply did not happen and should be understood as merely ‘poetic device’ and ‘special effects’…. He needs to rethink the question he asked himself in his book — ‘If some or all of the phenomena reported at Jesus’ death are poetic devices, we may rightly ask whether Jesus’ resurrection is not more of the same?’…. He asked precisely the right question, but then he gave the wrong answer….” Mohler added, “It is not enough to affirm biblical inerrancy in principle. The devil, as they say, is in the details. That is what makes The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy so indispensable and this controversy over Licona’s book so urgent. It is not enough to affirm biblical inerrancy in general terms. The integrity of this affirmation depends upon the affirmation of inerrancy in every detailed sense”


Third, Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES), where Licona was recently listed as a professor, abolished his position after discovering his view and decided not to have him teach there any longer. After the faculty examined Licona directly, one source close to the event wrote that “He definitely denies inerrancy. He even said that if someone interpreted the resurrection accounts as metaphor and therefore denied the historicity of the Gospel accounts, that would not contradict inerrancy. That was unbelievable.” As a result, “SES formulated a statement formally dismissing him from any faculty appointment or position at SES, and that we believe he denies inerrancy as we understand it”

http://www.normgeisler.com/articles/Bib ... yWorse.htm

[Steven Avery]

There is a bit of inconsistency in the Geisler approach. He does not really believe in any type of tangible inerrancy anyway. He will support a Bible version that has errors like the daughter of Herod or the swine marathon from Gerasa. And dozens of other ultra-minority corruptions in the modern versions.

So it is a bit of a pot and kettle inerrancy matchup.

Steven

[ficino]

The Catholic Church has been through a version of the same debate since Divino Afflante in 1943. The Church affirms that the Bible is without error in the truth that it conveys for our salvation: ""Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.” (from Dei Verbum in Vatican II) Catholic teaching rules out any position that would deny that 1) scripture contains propositions, or 2) all the propositions in it are true.

so the rub is: which utterances in scripture express "propositions"; WHAT exactly is the proposition being asserted/expressed? The statement in Matthew that dead saints came to life and walked around and were seen by many, for the sophisticated interpreter, might be translated into the proposition "it is good to have faith in the resurrection." Etc.

Appeals to "authorial intention" run into many problems, which I won't even begin to set forth.

I think sophisticates like Raymond Brown, who support all the Church's magisterial teachings but read things like the Infancy Narratives as theological meditations and not as history, are like some of the chaps you mention above, bskeptic. My take, for what it's worth, is that they stand in danger of rendering their religious claims as all unfalsifiable. If what looks like a historical error can be reclassified as allegory or some other kind of non-literal device of language, then the Bible is in principle not falsifiable. But the same license would have to be given to scriptures of other faiths. Christian apologists--as opposed, perhaps, to mere theistic apologists--would seem, then, to have nothing to work from outside subjective experience.

Catholic exegetes could get into trouble in the old days, e.g. Albert Loisy and the "modernists." Today, Catholic scholars have the advantage that they do not appeal directly to the Bible for doctrine but rather to the Church's teaching magisterium. They are in less urgent need of this or that particular proof text than are Southern Baptists. Even they will face problems, though, if, say, they deny that Jesus instituted the eucharist as a sacrament.

[JoeWallack]

JW:
Below is from ErrancyWiki regarding the definition of "error" in the context of the Christian Bible:

Polemics has long been dominated by Bizstrawmantics, created by Christianity, which is fueled by the observation that the normal rules of logic and reason do not apply within the sphere of religious discussion. For most of its history publicly arguing against the christians was very bad for your health. It's only relatively recently that Skeptics have been able to publicly challenge Christianity and the skeptical presentation is still largely the defensive mindset inherited where Skeptics generally limit themselves to doubting Christian assertions rather than simply stating that Christianity is wrong (although the Prophet Bill Maher is testing the unholy water by starting to publicly criticize Christianity in the media).

We need to apply the same standards for determining error in the Bible that we would use to determine error outside of religion. Outside of religion, in a formal setting, we use Law to set standards for determination of error. We would find the legal definition of error in legal dictionaries (surprise):

Error

ERROR. A mistake in judgment or deviation from the truth, in matters of fact and from the law in matters of judgment.

In an informal setting, we use common sense to set standards for determination of error. We would find the common sense definition of error in dictionaries:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictiona ... 1415459522

Main Entry: er•ror Pronunciation: 'er-&r Function: noun Etymology: Middle English errour, from Middle French, from Latin error, from errare 1 a : an act or condition of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior b : an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy c : an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done:

The legal definition of "error" takes the common sense definition and applies it to the Law.

I see two main components in the definition"

• 1) Deviation from accuracy.
  
  2) Unintentional deviation.

Warning: For Chili only - The English, Latin, French connection gives a meaning of missing the Mark. Interestingly, this is also what the Hebrew word for "sin" means. Is the secret meaning of the title of the Gospel of "Mark" that "Mark" stands for Jesus' behavior which was right on the Mark and a standard for correct behavior and not for the name of some person? And, am I the first person to discover this because in order to properly understand what something means you have to not believe it's true?

Regarding 1) Deviation from accuracy, my definition of qualifying for error would be:

If the amount of the deviation would be considered significant by the average, unbiased person in a context outside of religion.


Regarding 2) Unintentional deviation:

The related question is what about statements in the Bible that deviate from literal accuracy,(exaggeration), but were intended to deviate from literal accuracy? Just as my definition of "Christian Bible" is the theoretical Bible used by current Christianity, my definition of the intent of the meaning of verses of the Christian Bible is the theoretical understanding by current Christianity. Therefore, my definition of qualifying for error would be:

If the deviation is unintentional based on current Christianity's literal or figurative understanding.



Joseph

WARNING - The Skeptical General has determined that ErrancyWiki contains dangerous amounts of Tarivial and Nitpicotine which could be harmful to your credibility when trying to convince a Fundamentalist to count to ten commandments before killing an abortion Doctor because according to the Christian Bible killing is always a sin.

ErrancyWiki

[outhouse]

Seems like a lot of apologetic fodder.

Nothing worth arguing over really, unless your an apologist.