(Because the references are so integral to this article, I’m encouraging the reader to click here to have the references open in an additional window so you can cross-reference more easily.)
I write this article with hesitation, even apprehension. I’m concerned because of the gravitas, the high seriousness, that the Christians I know hold towards their faith, a faith I held once, too. Furthermore we all know that the radicals in any faith can cause harm to those who disagree with their beliefs. Radical Islamists are making this latter point very apparent in the news, but Christianity also has a history of killing those they hold as heretics, and it wasn’t the radicals doing it, but the church at large. The hate mail and emails sent to present day atheists (which I am not)1 can attest to the venom still within the current body of Christian believers.
Closer to home, I’ve had a wavering approach to writing this article because almost all of my extended family, along with some of my close friends, are devout, conservative Christians. Two brothers and two nephews have served as paid pastoral staff in churches, at least three other nieces or nephews have attended conservative Christian colleges, and I’m not even adding the in-laws to this equation. Likewise, my Christian friends are deeply committed to a life lived in the service of their belief. Almost without exception we all have been courteous toward one another regarding our different views, though I believe very few have actually read any of mine (i.e., that I have posted on this blog), let alone asked me face to face. I, of course, know their views well. I saw myself as a Christian at a very young age, and even taped a sermon with alter-call at age seven. I proselytized my peers and developed my own index of pertinent scripture verses while an early teen that I could, as needed, use to address any high-school student’s morality and eternal residence. I went to a conservative Christian college. I was an elementary teacher at a conservative Christian school for eight years. Thus my history and experiences with Christianity span most of my life and arguably grant me a deep understanding and perspective into Christianity.
Now when I look at what conservative Christians base their belief upon, I am somewhat embarrassed. Embarrassed by what I once held to be immutable truth. If I stay with this backward-looking gaze I become sad, for myself in the past, and for present day conservative Christians who spend so much energy framing and defending their lives on these “truths.” In all honesty, I am also angry. Some of my emotion could be called “righteous indignation,” though conservative Christians wouldn’t consider my use of the term valid. Another part of this emotion is resentment for the whole belief system that led me to trust and dedicate so much of my life to these “truths.”2 But I’m an adult now and need to let that go. Those who loved me and instructed me in their doctrines meant well. But here is the Catch-22 as often stated by ex-Christians: there is a difficultly in detaching from that which was once our spiritual home.3 I find growing up spiritually is cognitively easier than growing up psychologically. So maybe in some way this article is my therapy session. At the very least it is giving me voice. I’m not sure of what will be the cost to my relationships or the benefits, if any, to my psyche.
If I were to quit right here I probably will not have violated the truce my family and friends and I have established around our beliefs. However, because of the position conservative Christians hold regarding those who disagree with their beliefs, and because I’m about to unmask what I think of the foundation of their beliefs—namely inerrancy and the problems with such a foundation—I may now be framed as “the enemy.” My forthcoming arguments will need to be “defended against” within their approach to truth-seeking that is often called a “battle,” that they must be “soldiers for,” so that there may be “victory.” I very much understand this! Within a deeply-held and cherished faith there is a desire to safeguard the tenets of what you believe.4 Likewise, I understand the compassion that drives Christians’ evangelizing for their often life-changing, if not simply life-sustaining, beliefs. With regret I see that my own past need for justification and sharing at times became aggressive and, for some in the faith, even violent. A grim record of this history of Christian violence is listed at this website.5 Though I can’t verify the “author’s” or compiler’s credentials for this site, the data, even if were factual by half, is sobering. I challenge you to read it in its entirety. I truly believe that the justification often used by the perpetrators of such Christian behavior rests largely in the descriptions of, and writings about, God’s own justification (especially in the Old Testament) for similar acts toward those who were not “His own.”6 The irony is that most of the negative-to-violent behaviors brought about by sincere Christians were done in good faith.
So, given all of these issues, why have I still chosen to write this article? Quite simply: when seeking the truth, I believe in a fair balance of voices. As a scientist on the radio the other day said, there are never two sides to an argument in science because the one side they are all on is the seeking of truth. Almost always those in power determine what is true, what is moral, who and what are valued. The victors write history. To keep this position of power, any possible challenge to the established truth is squelched.7 In Christianity’s past this was often done in overt and brutal ways; the church was a formidable force. But now that its tenets are so infused in other geo/political/commercial constructs, Christianity pushes its agenda less blatantly. Yet it still holds court in discussions of morality and maintains a continuous, almost demanded, social status merely because it claims to represent God and what God has “stated” must be done in the world.
I find Christianity, or any other religion that proclaims to know truth from on high, to be heavy-handed in its proclamations of truth. In fact, I find most Christian argumentation or reasoning to be “self-referential,” that is, filled with circular arguments that use oneself or one’s group as the authority. By mere fact of being self-referential regarding “truth” claims, Christians exclude the outsiders of the faith as just not believing. They categorize “non-believers,” or infidels, as mainly irrelevant in discussions of moral behavior, social actions, and cosmology, because how can an infidel’s understanding compare to what God has said regarding these matters? As a result, we must endure their statements of, “Well God says…” and “God wants us to…” during all manner of discussions that are needed in a pluralistic society and scientific pursuits. The self-referential dialogue goes something like this:
“Well, how do you know I don’t have the right redeeming and moral beliefs?”
“Because God says so!”
“Oh, where/how does God say so?”
“In the Holy Scriptures.”
“How do you know they are holy?
“Because God said so.”
“So if I understand you correctly, you are asking me to believe that the scriptures are God’s words and you know they are God’s words because they say they are God’s words?”
“Yes.”
“And the moral obligations outlined in scripture, even if they contradict one other, I must also abide?”
“Yes.”
“And this means that if I read something in the scriptures that have already been disproved by science, I still must believe them because they are God’s words?”
“Yes.”
“And in those instances when the reasoning in scripture is illogical I am supposed to believe it anyway?”
“Well yes, of course. In time unbelievers and their ideas or arguments will be revealed as folly.”
This brings me to my first and primary complaint: the origin and transmission of scripture and the fact that both are rarely examined by the common lay conservative Christian, let alone the general public, who is assailed by a supposed given that scripture is the “word of God”. This point is crucial because all else that has been (and will be) done in the name of conservative Christianity rests on the inerrancy of scripture.8,9
So, at the risk of further deepening the chasm between me and my friends/family, I must still write this article. I must do so because I take great issue with the spurious legitimacy I see conservative Christians giving toward the inerrancy issue. In addition I will address the authoritarian approach toward outsiders (including some of their own fellow Christians), for I find the inerrancy stance to be the impetus for this arrogance. Here is my outline as to how I will proceed: First I will address the obstacles of observation that are inherent to any vantage point, let alone an insider’s record of biblical occurrences. Then I will address the numerous roadblocks in the transcription, translation, and transmission of these observations. Next I will consider the “selection” of biblical books as being worthy of canonization. Last, I will discuss the rampant diversity of interpretations of said “holy” scriptures. Throughout this entire article I’ll be pointing to the use/abuse of power that conservative Christians employ. Ultimately, I wish to argue that, given all of the above impediments to God’s truth being conveyed through inerrant scripture, there may be other, more reliable methods for achieving truth. (Well not maybe, there are more reliable approaches to the big questions of life than conservative Christianity offers.)
Questionable Observations
If we were to look at the most accurate method of recording for any event, we could speak to any scientist and be instructed on what could skew the result. Scientists are all about accurate observation of events for the purpose of finding truth. Or we could speak candidly with any journalist or historian and most likely be cautioned about how our backgrounds and a certain time in history would influence what we conclude, let alone record, about an event. Much of what those in the above fields of study would inform us about observation will be a fairly contemporary understanding compared with the record keeping of biblical times.
For example, I wonder if the New Testament authors were acting more as impassioned witnesses (or, sometimes, as recorders of those impassioned witnesses several decades after the fact) rather than utilizing the objective record-keeping methods of the day. Still, to be generous, I will allow scripture writers may have conveyed the truth of these events at least some of the time. But, aside from these questions, I wish to look at the human capacity to remember anything, much less what happens in a specific event. This capacity to remember is now being studied by science. The results of these studies are for contemporary recorders of history, and biblical ones as well, for both will be/would have been hampered equally. Modern research is finding important tendencies that the brain follows with regard to memory; I will share these findings in the next sections.
We are hardwired to learn and we are dependent on memories to do this. We put new information together with old memories and form new insights. Upon doing this, the brain’s proteins need to be altered to store this newly laid down understanding, which has already become a memory. “Memory is a composition of our experience as well as prior facts.”10 Given this new finding we see that memory is very soluble. The interview10 I’ve pulled this information from was chiefly addressing the reliability of eyewitnesses to a crime and their testimony on the witness stand. The results are therefore a bit troubling for any judicial situation, not to mention the recounting of the biblical eyewitnesses. As you can hear in the interview (if you choose to listen to it, though it is not captioned), researchers found that when things didn’t seem to fit witnesses’ thinking, witnesses tended to disregard that part of an event. Additionally, when researchers suggested a memory that witnesses weren’t quite sure of, the witnesses started to imagine it anyway, especially if it offered some coherence. False memories then went into their “knowledge base” and additionally influenced how they would continue to perceive events. The results of these studies suggest that “memory is not a definite, constant thing.” 10 Unless witnesses were to “dictate” what God was saying regarding the facts of the matter, the concern for accuracy in Biblical authors’ accounts will be affected by these newly discovered scientific insights.
Often I’ve been told that part of the verifiability of the biblical witnesses was the collaboration of others, but this study suggests that witness collusion in biblical times may have had the opposite effect and verifiability may be less certain as a result of collaboration. I’ve also been told that members of Jesus’ close inner circle were especially reliable given their strong emotional ties to the events around Jesus’ life, but the interview also suggests that the more emotion one has around a memory, the less reliable it is.
In short, the brain constructs things that will bring us comfort and meaning, these thoughts become more solidified and believable the more we tell them. Yet while retelling we add and subtract so that the long-term memory is actually quite different from the original occurrence, to the point of almost becoming believable, even if it never occurred. This was disheartening not only for my confidence regarding my own recollections, but even more so from others’ gathered 2000 years ago and compiled into a tome called The Bible. The interviewees spoke to the fact that innocent people have been falsely accused of crimes that never happened; though in some cases the victim, along with the witnesses, truly believed the false memory occurred. One surprising suggestion that potentially could redeem others’ memory of events was offered. It is a constructive method, yet does not offer the conclusive closing argument we often desire in court (or in faith). The suggestion is this: we could treat memory as “trace evidence” at a crime scene. In this way we treat memory as any other evidence, so we should ask what happened to the evidence after it was found, was it taken out of context, was it contaminated, was it tainted by other evidence or the collection method itself, was it altered by the storage methods, etc. I wish to, in a fashion, do the same with the eyewitness accounts we have of the New Testament occurrences.11
Now returning to my statement above, “… to be generous, I will allow they may have conveyed the truth of these events at least some of the time.” The fact that the eyewitnesses to the times that Jesus lived were followers of him should give us pause to the accuracy of their claims given the probable bias in their accounts. The truthfulness of their accounts maybe could be considered, but the literal accuracy is totally questionable. Non-biblical, non-follower accounts of Jesus are sparse. In addition people in those days had no means to literally record anything, unless they had tablet in hand. Therefore the words stated by Jesus, let alone the thoughts of Jesus that are given in the record, could not have been immediately notated. Nor were the Biblical recorders trained in any way close to the critical journalistic recording protocols we presently understand are required for accurately representing the “truth” of an event. But all of this need for accuracy, let alone literalness, would not be needed if the conservative Christian’s case for knowing the truth didn’t rest on the inerrancy of scripture. They use language such as God “superintended” the writers of scripture to circumvent both the human predilection to “goof up” as witnesses of events (if the writers were even the eyewitness in some cases) and as recorders of history. But having sat in college courses and having done more recent readings that address the above cautions, I know that conservative Christians offer many convoluted detailed explanations as to how the literalness of the record is still valid. “The way into God’s mind is through his penmen’s minds, precisely as expressed, under his guidance, in their own words as they wrote them.”12 So, if that’s true, then when Paul wrote to the various churches it was no ordinary letter writing! I wonder if he “switched” this style off when he wrote to, say, his brother (if he had one), or a past fellow persecutor of the Christians who he may have been trying to convert?13 Bottom line for the conservative Christian is that all of us just need to trust. We must trust that God has ensured that the human tendencies that we tend to bring to a situation have been abated, and that the authors were not doing automaton recording. “Belief in inerrancy involves an advance commitment to receive as from God all that the Bible, interpreting itself to us through the Holy Spirit in a natural and coherent way, teaches. Thus it shapes our understanding of biblical authority.” 12 [Italics are mine to highlight the circular thinking (or believing) that is required before you even start to consider the matter at hand, which is: can you know that scripture is an account of what God has said without a priori receiving it as from God? In essence, we are to believe that God guides scripture making before we consider if scripture is authored by God.
Ironically, conservative Christians rail14 against the contemporary author Neale Donald Walsch, who claims to have had “conversations with God.” But what if we were to believe that Walsch’s words are as from God the same way the scriptures writers were? Here too conservative Christians have a complicated explanation of why God “spoke” to the church immediately after the death and supposed resurrection of Jesus, but that the period ended, (they use the word “dispensation” for epochs of time when God acts in certain ways toward humanity). The chart on this link15 shows the issue can get quite complicated. With the conservative Christians’ view of when the legal time period of scriptures was given to humanity occurred, the claims of Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, and any other religion outside of the historical Protestant cannon of scripture is to be defended against. (I wonder what would transpire if a treasure-trove of “originals” were found.)
Arguments for Inerrancy
We’ll continue with more of conservative Christians’ inherent self-referential posturing. A couple prime examples for inerrancy specifically are two passages taken from the New Testament. First, in 2 Timothy 3:16, we read that, essentially, scripture is scripture. But the author of this passage is not writing about the New Testament, which doesn’t exist yet; rather, he is referring to the Old Testament. The second passage quotes Jesus who is said to have asserted that nothing in scripture will be altered: “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen” (Matthew 5:18 NIV) In my growing up I heard the King James version of this: not “one jot or one tittle” will be altered. But again this supposed recorder of Jesus’ words is referring to the Old Testament. Neither passage says anything about the New Testament being inerrant. They couldn’t because the cannon of the New Testament wouldn’t be established for hundreds of years. Supporters of these oft-quoted justifications don’t even entertain the fact that the Old Testament itself, which is being referenced in these justifications, may not be valid as Holy Scripture.16 Sure it had been used by Jews for hundreds of years as such, but who was there for the record when the creation of the earth took place, who survived the flood to keep the record going, etc.? Of course this all was passed down orally until the time in history that it was written. But this is a whole other controversy. This last of the two examples, Matthew 5:18, often is used to lie to rest any objections to inerrancy, because it has authoritative import, as self-referential as it is. Because Jesus said it, conservative Christians believe God said it, because they have scripture that says Jesus is God.
I assert that what was admitted for inclusion in scripture, what was seen as valid as a piece of scripture, and what is the correct interpretation of scripture is argued by conservative Christians, needed/needs to be internally consistent. Though self-referential, this argument certainly builds confidence. Yet, as many authors have pointed out, even the text that’s survived scriptural gatekeeper purging has inconsistencies. I won’t belabor the many instances of these inconsistencies; the Internet and seminary libraries are full of them. But having sat in numerous theology courses, countless Bible studies, and instructive sermons, I have witnessed that conservative Christians offer many convoluted, detailed explanations to counteract their inconsistencies.
I know that the above paragraphs seem like a sweeping dismissal of sincere and justifiable (to many) reasoning regarding the validity of scriptures upon which Christianity is based. To tackle this legitimately would take a book’s worth of dialogue and referencing people who are way more credible than I am in these areas. For these reasons, and the purposes of this blog post, I am staying more with thumbnail sketches of my objections to the viability of scripture being God’s word. Likewise the addressing of my three “T’s”, transcription, translation, and transmission of scripture, will be in less detail than it probably should be. Even IF we were to give a pass on the fallibility of observation being suitably reliable for truth transmission, we have to look at the recording itself. As referenced above, conservatives love to cite a statement purportedly made by Jesus that no passage of the Old Testament would be altered by the minutest detail, “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, Matthew 5:18.” Let’s look at the reliability involved in transcribing this amount of detail.
Transcription
The first of my three T’s, transcription, tackles my issues with reliability and scriptural inerrancy. To further the argument, I offer the following. I find these comments refreshingly forthcoming given their source, a Christian magazine:
“Manuscripts first. The New Testament books first circulated in hand-copied form, and hand-copying by monks went on till Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. Anyone who has copied by hand knows how easily letters, words, and even whole lines get dropped out or repeated. The New Testament manuscript tradition was not exempt from this.
Also, it is clear that some copyists facing what they thought were miscopyings made what they thought were corrections. Some of these copyists added in the margin amplifying words and sentences that the next copyist put into the text itself, thinking that was where they belonged.”12
Given the above admissions that copying and transcribing generate margins of error, the conservative faithful still rely on God's superintendence and God-honoring believers to keep the scriptures infallible (a word we will explore shortly.) This frame of mind is the one of many instances of magical thinking on the part of conservative Christians that I will highlight in this writing.
Bruce Metzger (a heavyweight scholar regarding Old and New Testament writings) notes:
Even within the pale of the Church one party often accused another of altering the text of the scriptures … The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, or those which introduce into thee Scriptures “proof” for a favorite theological tenet or practice (p. 201).17
Metzger adds that we should have little concern, because biblical scholarship of the past centuries has quelled these and other discrepancies. But in Biblical scholarship that self-confidence is still debatable. I actually concur that honest, sincere, intelligent, competent people are and have been overseeing this whole process of bringing the scriptures to us. I just object to the imploring of us to magically trust in the literal truth of what we read that is so often used by believers of inerrancy.
The question still is, can we trust what we have; that scripture tells it like it really happened and accurately recorded what really was said? Rather than using magical thinking, can we look deeper? Currently what seems to happen is similar to when a child asks, “Why?” and is told, “’Cause, that’s why,” or “Because I said so.” Instead, I argue we must go further. We need to deeply examine the viability of the “trace evidence” of God’s conversation with humanity. Exactitude is important to many, as this quote taken from a conservative Christian web site attests:
A related term to inerrancy is the word infallibility. This term describes the trustworthiness of Scripture, indicating that it can in no way lead us astray from true doctrine or practice. If we deny inerrancy, a serious moral problem confronts us: If inerrancy is denied, we begin to wonder if we can really trust God in anything He says. If we deny inerrancy, we essentially make our own human minds a higher standard of truth than God’s Word itself. If we deny inerrancy, then we must also say that the Bible is wrong not only in minor details but in some of its doctrines as well.”18 [Italics mine.]
Here again is the magical thinking enforced with the parental tone, “Because God said so.” We need our human mind to see if God really did “say so” when questioning the inerrancy criteria. Otherwise we need to suspend this God given gift of mind no matter who implores us to believe that their written words are God’s words.
Translation
When we come to translating (the second of my three Ts) scripture from the original language, we are faced with the multiple possibilities of factual and precise language errors, let alone conveying of the meaning required. Anyone who has tried to learn another language knows there are often numerous words that approximate the idea you wish to convey, but an insufficient knowledge of social/historical context and situational relationships make communication difficult. We can communicate adequately, but often far from explicitly, especially if a word in one language doesn’t have a correlate word in the other language. In this case we are left with our “best guess” and that moves us off the “one jot or one tittle” (Matthew 5:18) trustworthiness required for inerrancy
To illustrate these points, note how the following records would have to be altered to God- conveying accuracy, especially in a translation:
They paid the fair entry or fare entry, to alter the homophone. She will offer up a scream or she screamed up an offer to alter word order. He hated Bill’s or he hated bills to alter the placement of punctuation and even capitalization along with another homophone. With blue reddened eyes he wept (which might get us purple!) or with blue, reddened eyes he wept to alter word meaning and punctuation.
The examples are endless. Or consider the following:
Confessions of a Bible Translator19
October 27, 1997As a stylist on a new translation of the Bible financed by Tyndale House Publishers, I worry over the effectiveness of the language into which the text is translated. In general, Bible scholars worry first about accuracy; stylists worry first about effectiveness.
It is said that people should not see how either their sausage or their laws are made. Perhaps the same could be said of their Bible translations. I am greatly impressed by the scholarship, hard work, good will, and genuine devoutness of my colleagues on this project. I am also keenly aware how human we are.
Daniel Taylor
Maybe God was able to guide these processes by God-honoring believers? But who do we know that has a clear enough motive and/or principles to do this unless they were god-incarnate? As Taylor notes, we are all human. I’m sincerely puzzled as to this God/human mixture of truthfulness that is required in all these steps of scripture making and understanding. This mixture is employed by conservative Christians in so many instances, so many time periods, by so many people. We are admonished to trust God’s intervention while maintaining the human element in all the constituents mentioned so far, not to speak of the socio/political ones that follow. But even then we have a product, which if God guided to the final destination, isn’t very precise in the message it delivers. Why isn’t God more “capable” to superintend the people Jesus died for to understand the theology of the text?
We’ll address theological interpretation later, but first…
Transmission
Finally we arrive at my third T, transmission. Let us now consider the transmission of scripture through these two thousand years. In my growing up years there was a bit of a tizzy over newer versions of scripture than the King James translation. Since then more updated and improved versions have come to the fore, supposedly more akin to the jot and tittle truth of the original scripture. These newer translations have combed through the literally thousands of scraps and segments of papyrus or parchment (thin material made from leather) of the past records and have given us the “best yet” copy of unalterable “truth”. With the insistence that scripture is inerrant there are almost heretical accusations whenever a newer version is produced. I would argue that we should be concerned that there are so many translations, which one does God want us to have, exactly? The answer to my question goes something like this: “Well the originals [autographs] were inerrant, and we hold to that truth, as well as in all our sincere and devote approaches to represent them in our current time (sure some little details that are fairly irrelevant are in there).” However, hardcore inerrancy people won’t have the parenthetical add-on, precisely because of what I’m going to ask next, which is: Where is the line of what may, or may not, be irrelevant? The same goes for the theological interpretation of scripture. At what time period of Biblical interpretation (it has changed substantially over the centuries) can we trust the interpretation of scripture without it being watered down by cultural tendencies?
Kenton L. Sparks, who is a professor of biblical studies at Eastern University, offers an answer for my last question when he argues that,
It is nothing less than intellectually disastrous for evangelicals to claim that the Bible is without error.
His arguments, also serialized and summarized in a series of articles, are amazingly candid. He asserts that Evangelicalism has ‘painted itself into an intellectual corner’ by claiming the inerrancy of Scripture. The movement is now in an “intellectual cul-de-sac,” he laments, because we have “crossed an evidential threshold that makes it intellectually unsuitable to defend some of the standard dogmas of the conservative evangelical tradition.” And, make no mistake, inerrancy is the central dogma he would have us let go. …
But, even in its shocking audacity it (his book) serves to reveal the clear logic of the new battle-lines over biblical inerrancy. We now confront open calls to accept and affirm that there are indeed errors in the Bible. It is demanded that we accept the fact that the human authors of the Bible often erred because of their limited knowledge and erroneous assumptions about reality. We must, it is argued, abandon the claim that the Bible is a consistent whole. Rather, we are told to accept the claims that the human authors of Scripture were just plain wrong in some texts – even in texts that define God and his ways. We are told that some texts are just “down-right sinister or evil” …
Of course, accepting this demand amounts to a theological disaster of incalculable magnitude. Rarely has this been more apparent and undeniable. The rejection of the Bible’s inerrancy will please the evangelical revisionists, but it will rob the church of its secure knowledge that the Bible is indeed true, trustworthy and fully authoritative.20
What Becomes Scripture & Canonization
The additional points I want to address in this post are the challenges posed to inerrancy given when books of the New Testament were written and when said books of the bible were officially accepted as God’s word. Much of the Bible itself was written anywhere from 50 to 150 years (to be conservative) after the death of Christ. By other estimates, such as the website for The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, that timeline is different. As the website states,
Though some say that the New Testament was written 100-300 years after Christ died, the truth is that it was written before the close of the first century by those who either knew Christ personally, had encountered him, or were under the direction of those who were His disciples.21
Regardless of the exact dates of the Bible’s composition, I challenge anyone to listen to a conversation with which you have even a riveted attention to obtain detail and then go home and record this verbatim, no recording device allowed. What if your original intent was to just listen because all this was new to you, or you just happened upon it? But add to this difficulty a year (or five or fifty!) before you do write things down. Further, given the following scenario, you would derail the ability to literally record events and conversations even more if it happened that you were under the direction of someone else who had been there, or even more so, having that person unavailable to verify your recording of their recollections (because they are now deceased). All you can do now is try to recall a discussion they overheard. No matter how grave the subject matter (itself a complication for skewing facts), you will be very hard pressed to get it “right” enough for people to go to their deaths regarding the truth of what you have written. But how would you know that what you wrote was true? Would you have some inner glow, some sense that God was guiding you? Would it always be there or would it come and go like the creative impulse of which contemporary authors speak? Would you second-guess what you wrote? Or write a second draft? How would you know (or how did the original scripture authors know) when God’s superintendence was at play?
Given that this process of God’s superintendence is the crux of the whole edifice on which inerrancy rest, I want to tease out the possibilities of how superintendence could or could not have happened. If there was anything short of literal word for word transcribing, the author’s bias would enter. They could write the “bright” object even though God had said the “shiny” object. Or they could interpret that Jesus either literally said (or probably meant to say) “I am a way,” rather than, “I am the way.” How much did the author deliberate on such details and, when they did, how did God superintend? Was God superintending the literal words and/or the meaning in the context of which they were written? Were the transcriptions crafted for how they might be understood, or to avoid how they might be misunderstood, through time? Did God “speak” directly to the writers of scripture in the author’s mind; did the author hear a voice in their head? Or did God speak within the actual space the author was writing in so that anyone else in the room would hear God’s words, too? If God were to literally speak to people I have no trouble that the original autographs seem to be in each author’s voice and style, because if God were to ever “speak” to humanity, God would already need to speak in a unique cultural language to be understood. To then alter the actual wording and style to a particular author’s isn’t that big of a stretch for God, I would guess.
Now here is where the particulars come into play, and the particulars are of utmost importance to those who claim inerrancy. When Paul, for instance, was writing to a church, did he write the letter to get it off his chest only to have God “show up” and request Paul reword some part of the letter? Or did Paul wake up with some recognizable God-angst that he needed to edit things himself? Or did Paul wait to write anything until some sense that God was available to “guide,” in whatever fashion, what was to be literally accurate and what one day was going to be called scripture? Paul wrote to specific churches, sometimes regarding specific people, over details according to each situation. Did God really want certain letters Paul wrote to be composed with inerrancy in mind? And did He want this for every letter written by Paul (and other authors), or for just some writings, or some parts of some letters? And for which copy of said correspondence or record keeping did He want this? These questions are what we will look at next.
Briefly we’ll cover the final decision of what would be considered the authoritative cannon of the New Testament scripture, which wasn’t done until The Council of Trent in the 16th century. Not that it was totally up for grabs before then, but it was negotiable. Even Martin Luther advocated a sizable change. For a less academic discussion of this whole process see WikipediA under the topics of: biblical cannon, Christian biblical cannon, and Council of Trent.22 Here again we are entrusting the transmission of truth via personal and now possibly political agendas, with God needing to not supersede the process while “guiding” all players in the decision-making process. This is simply too magical for my tastes.
Biblical Interpretation
For my last criticism of inerrancy I turn to the biblical interpretations through time.
“After the New Testament period, there was a lot of quarreling over exactly how to formulate what Jesus taught, who he was, and how to lead the Christian life. So, early Christians began forming creeds. By the year 325 there was so much division among Christians about how to understand Jesus — his work and his person — that it was actually breaking up the Roman Empire and forcing the emperor Constantine, who was a very recent Christian convert, to call a conference in the small city of Nicea. In effect, he ordered all the bishops and leaders of the church to settle these issues once and for all. The result, the Nicene Creed, is basically a negative document.”13
I wonder if there was any “back-room” politics at play here?
When it comes to Biblical or theological interpretation, the following quote contains pretty much what conservative Christians would say, namely: we accept what we think fits what we already believe, otherwise it is heresy.
“So what is it that holds together a belief system?
A belief system is meant to be a comprehensive network of ideas about what one thinks is absolutely real and true. Within that system, everything is adequately explained and perfectly reasonable. You know exactly how far to go with your beliefs and when to stop your thinking. A belief system is defined by an absolute authority. The authority can be a text or an institution or a person.” 13
Fact is that there are 20,000 – 30,000 Christian denominations, give or take a few, each with their unique system of belief based on slight to quite sizably different interpretations of scripture. It begs the question which one has the true theological interpretation? Based on which authority? True they all probably point at one key figure, Jesus, and name him the “Christ,” or God incarnate (though the conservatives are more and more the only ones who call Jesus the incarnate God). These denominations all most likely make Jesus, and the salvation he can offer, worthy of following.
In Christian theological discussions the God/human combo trumps the mere infidel’s opinion and even the less faithful. So we are admonished to trust that God is “acting” through this or that particular person who is making the theological interpretation, for then they are speaking the truth. So I only ask that we be honest about the truth here. The statements made by Christianity, or any religion, which claims divine blessing and understanding, are only as probable as what its biblical interpretation is based upon. In the case of biblical interpretation I need to trust the relationship the person has with God in addition to the scripture itself.
So many steps need so much trust in the symbiotic dance of the human and the Divine, from the observations of the Biblical witnesses to the interpretations of what has been passed down. With inerrancy I need to have many blind leaps of faith prior to what the scriptures seem to intend; my final leap into a Divine relationship. Many of the Christians I know are reasonable and they may fault me for being too much so, but for me there are too many chasms to negotiate in my need for truth.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, what do I wish in all of this? I don’t wish to be sardonic toward conservative Christians as they are fellow seekers. But I am irreverent regarding the compliance required in the self-referential, and sometime magical, way they claim truth. I wish they would soften up, what I find the incredulousness of their stance concerning the ground they stand forth from, namely the inerrancy of scriptures. I’m not going so far as Hector Avalos in his book, The End of Biblical Studies, to say the Bible is irrelevant, though he makes some forthright statements that are worth considering.23 (I don’t believe the Bible is invaluable because it is inerrant as the conservative Christian would.)
I find (having also done the following myself when I was a Christian) that because of their unfounded certitude that scripture is inerrant, and thus God’s unalterable word, there are certain side-effects that result. One such side effect is that conservative Christians often have an aggressive approach to evangelism and a tenuous approach to complicated moral questions. There is a line that is crossed when concern for another’s eternal state is approached that borders on harassment. For instance; if I had a big brother or mob behind me and the recipient of the following statement knew of this backing I had, it would constitute harassment at least, a threat at most. “My _________ (fill in the blank with any powerful entity or person) is going to send you to _________ (fill in any adverse experience) because you aren’t on our side. It then becomes an extortion of sorts to then say, “You can avoid all this if you _________ (believe such and such) or say _________ (my God is the only God).24 This example may not be exactly on the point, but what I’m trying to say is that the whole approach to evangelism used by conservative evangelical Christians is threatening. Yet they will give themselves a pass because of the serious subject matter (i.e. our immortal condition) with which they are involved and the certitude they have regarding the “true” author of scripture.
Regarding morality, Bishop Spong has a wonderful rebuttal to George Will that covers the many reversals the Christian church has taken over the centuries.25 The attitudes against various persons that Spong outlines were defended with great force and detailed justification. This same somewhat calloused delivery of “moral truth” is also employed on a personal level. Such as the Bible “advice” I’ve been given when faced with a decision of complexity and consequence that often was impersonal and trite in its content. In both cases there was an attitude that needed adjusting.
To be honest I’d like it even more if conservative Christians would adjust the glorifying of the asymmetrical dealings that their God employs. Adam had a fruit snack; God condemns uncountable trillions of people to original sin. But then as an extension, no matter how petty our offense beyond this “original sin” we are condemned to a non-relationship with the Divine. Which is painful enough, but then we are condemned to an eternity in hell. I’ve actually heard smug defensive Christians answer the following to those who challenge their literal belief in heaven or hell, “Time will tell.” [With them sitting in hermetically sealed, air-controlled heaven strumming harps, the rest of us roasting in hell, shoveling dung.]26
Additionally, because of their certitude, and quite frankly their position of power through time, we have to deal with their influence in policies and politics. We all should have our say in these matters, I don’t wish for conservative Christians or otherwise to not be engaged. I just want them to chill on their proclamation that their way is God’s way (as if they know.)27 To, as the title of this article states, I suggest that we stop the naïve arrogance. Historically this arrogance has led to horrific results. It is arrogance that, combined with power, permitted or commits enslavement of those deemed less-than, “taming” of the savages while on a mission to save the lost, burning of heretics and witches to preserve “truth,” consenting to the discipline of children to the point of abuse, denying full or human rights to women28 and gays, and subduing the earth to the point of no return.
Notice all of these well-documented accounts of Christian behavior were only possible when there was an asymmetrical power relationship.
Finally, I’ll really push conservative Christians’ tolerance with my last request: I wish for a non-religious matrix from which to pursue my spirituality. How that type of spirituality might look is outlined in my other writings, but believe me when I tell you that I have thought through the “whats” and “hows” of spirituality quite thoroughly. Having lived over half of my present life under this conservative Christian understanding of reality and now, now free from it, I must testify that the Divine is more pertinent and vibrant than anything I’d ever imagined. How sweet is the reality of the undefined, the changing, evolving Magnitude. So I wish to share this as freely as America’s dominant religion, Christianity.29 Those of you in that majority I ask that you grant the spiritual-but-not-religious some holidays, some reverential respect of their practices, their own sacred places, and so forth. In short, some broadmindedness, please. Hopefully intolerance of all kinds will have no choice but to fade and relinquish its hold on what is true and viable in our pluralistic society.
I leave you with these quotes which speak to the present urgent need to have assumptions of all types challenged when it comes to seeking truth.
We cannot let any group, however devout, blackmail us into silence by their expressions of hurt feelings whenever they feel that we are getting close to the truth. That is what con artists do when their marks begin to get suspicious, and that is what children do when they can’t have their way, and it should be beneath the dignity of any religious group to play that card. The responsibility of science is to safeguard the well-being of those it studies and to tell the truth. If people insist on taking themselves out of the arena of reasonable political discourse and mutual examination, they forfeit their right to be heard. There is no excuse for deliberately insulting anybody, but people who insist on putting their sensibilities on a hair trigger demonstrate that they prefer pity to respect. …
I’m proposing we break the spell that creates an invisible moat around religion, the one that says, “Science stay away. Don’t try to study religion.” But if we don’t understand religion, we’re going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century. Just about every major problem we have interacts with religion: the environment, injustice, discrimination, terrible economic imbalances and potential genocide. In our own country, the religious attitudes of people are clearly interfering with the political discussion. So if we fail to understand why religions have the effects they do on people, we will screw up our efforts to solve these problems.30
Herbert L. Calhoun adds,
Thus what lies at the subtext of the Christian worldview is both arrogance and intolerance, which almost always go hand in hand. Sadly, Christianity has evolved into a closed, rigid cultural system unto itself, one very much incapable of being forward looking, or even looking outwards and assimilating into it or absorbing other forms of religious or cultural experiences and thought.31
Post Script:
The Miracle of Jesus
I wrote a poem one Christmas that teased out some questions I had around the magic required to pull off an incarnation. God needing to know which person, which month, which egg would have the characteristics he would need to complement the “sperm” he would be donating to the cause. Because we know in modern times what a difference genes can make not only in physical looks and functioning, but also temperament and possibly personality. Did God want an ugly Jesus, a disabled Jesus, a moody or depression-prone Jesus, a too sexually-driven Jesus, a mentally unstable Jesus? If Jesus was to be human and divine, God had to let human physical influences be influential and that can entail a “roll-of-the-dice.” What would people really be saying when they made the following observations? “Jesus you truly have your mother’s eyes, or nose, but your hair, or legs are definitely hmmm…?”
But lately I’ve been wondering about this need for incarnate mental and psychological balance for Jesus. When I consider his thoughts and choice-making I look at the supposed testimony of his capacities and see that he was intelligent, insightful, and also psychic. One might even assert He had paranormal capacities. Was it the God part of him that contributed these paranormal talents, or was he like our modern day psychics who don’t necessarily have a divine influence? Either way, this capacity to know the secret lives of others, to know the future, to know where he ultimately came from, and to heal others (even from a distance) had to figure in his choices. A psychologist who knows his/her client better than most people in the client’s life would be unethical giving instruction that they know could harm their client. If, as Jesus was believed able to do (i.e., to know what a person will do in the future) one would have to be very cautious indeed.
How did Jesus balance all the implications of his words and actions? For example, knowing that one person would hear or see what was occurring and, as a result, be blessed, while another witness (or maybe twenty or more) to the event would meet disastrous consequences? Would these disastrous things that Jesus was able to know beforehand be sins of commission? When he spoke, did Jesus consider what would be associated with his words farther down the line? That those future interpretations of his words and life events could bless or curse the world to which he wished to bring salvation?
What about timing? What if he had not gone down a certain road and, as a result, never even met an important apostle? Or what if he pushed the timing too fast, he could have been crucified before the Last Supper or his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, or on a day that Pilot was in a different mood and offered clemency to Jesus that day?
Knowing all he knew, yet being limited by human capacity, would Jesus be accountable for sins of omission? He really couldn’t do it all, all that he knew needed to be done. Supposedly, according to sanctioned theology, Jesus was wholly human, wholly divine. Does Jesus, by merely being a human, create sins of omission? Or does God judge him “without” sin because he prioritized well? It is required that Jesus be without sin to die for the sins of others. What part of Jesus was doing the judging of his actions borne out of the human element? Did Jesus-the-human make this call or Jesus-the-Divine? When he was tempted in every way, how did the conversation go inside between the God part and the human part? Really, if God were totally, fully in me telling me what to do, I believe my human will would be stilted (to say the least). Finally I wonder, from a psychological point of view, did Jesus have a “shadow?”
The conclusion we could make regarding all this above surmising can range from, “who cares” to “God has that all worked out,” but incarnation of God does bring up some honest inquiries as to how. To me it is easier to assimilate a facet or part of the Divine as in, “we are all a spark of the Divine” than to have to have all the divine embodied in one human entity. As a third grade student once asked me, “When God was in Jesus what was going on with the rest of the universe?” Knowing his temperament, he probably won’t be headed to seminary where they will give him all the minutiae of the trinity.
1 Evolutionary Christianity by Rev. Michael Dowd. Quote cited at
http://www.thankgodforevolution.com/node/1994:
Given what we now know about our origins, the theist-atheist dichotomy no longer makes sense. Both presuppose a trivial, unnatural God and a Cosmos that is not itself divinely creative. Reality is my God and integrity is my religion. By this, I mean that what is real is my ultimate commitment and being in right relationship with Reality/God, and assisting humanity in this process, is my calling and deepest inspiration.
2 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
Sadly, society and parents insidiously put out messages from childhood on that others know what’s best. Many people are deeply conditioned to expect and hope some outside agency, power, or person will solve their problems. Letting go of expecting or even wanting this is difficult, partially because what one is left with is oneself, and all of one’s limitations. (p. 154)
To counter these experiences for our children, we oddly enough may want to listen to a former chief of neurology, Robert Burton, and his article “The Certainty Epidemic,”
We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. That is enough. We do not need and cannot afford the catastrophes born out of a belief in certainty.
Read Burton’s whole article, “The Certainty Epidemic: We all seem convinced we’re right about politics, religion, or science these days. What makes us so sure of ourselves?” here.
3 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
“This is the serious challenge those who leave authoritarian groups face. People usually try to overcome this through a determination never to be duped again. … Behind most cynicism there is a disillusioned idealist (p. 153).”
“Disillusionment in itself is not the real problem. Awareness involves breaking through illusions, which, of course, is disillusioning (p.155).”
4 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
“Certainty must be able to withstand challenges and counter-evidence – anything that brings doubt. No amount of reason and experience can give the necessary kind of certainty, especially about the future. So faith is the key to religious certainty (p. 167).”
“…and simple explanations that can never be disproven are necessary for certainty. Everything that occurs is “a test of faith,” “a lesson,” “the will of God,” or “God works in mysterious ways.” These are some of the catechisms that keep certainty from being shaken (p. 168).”
Again we may do well to counter this certitude – we are certain of things because they are true, right (pun intended)? – with the understandings that Robert A. Burton, M.D. offers in his article On Being Certain:
But modern biology is pointing in a different direction. It is telling us that despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” arise out of primary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of rationality or reason. Feeling correct or certain isn’t a deliberate conclusion or conscious choice. It is a mental sensation that happens to us. …
To be aware of thinking, we need a sensation that tells us that we are thinking. To reward learning, we need feelings of being on the right track, or of being correct. …
To be an effective, powerful reward, the feeling of conviction must feel like a conscious and deliberate conclusion. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren’t. These involuntary and uncontrollable feelings are the mind’s sensations; as sensations they are subject to a wise variety of perceptual illusions common to all sensory systems. Understanding this couldn’t be more important to our sense of ourselves and the world around us. …
At the same time as I am forced to consider the possibility that contrary opinions might have a grain of truth, I am provided with the perfect rebuttal for those who claim that they “know that they are right.” It is in the leap from 99.99999 percent likely to 100 percent guaranteed that we give up tolerance for conflicting opinions, and provide the basis for the fundamentalist’s claim to pure and certain knowledge.
5 Christian Atrocities: http://notachristian.org/christianatrocities.html
6 But, has God set the example that often justified these historically recorded killings? Though this site takes some liberties, the point of the chart is obvious.
“How many has God killed? (Complete list and estimated total),” by Steven Wells:
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
7 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
The truth or falsity of a given worldview may not ultimately be provable. But what can be shown is whether it is authoritarian. Authoritarianism is present in much that is taken for granted, often including what is held by some to be sacred. The prescription that what people hold sacred should not be criticized is itself unconsciously authoritarian. The sacred and the taboo go together – in particular the taboo against challenging the sacred. In our view, the sacred is formally made sacred precisely to protect it from criticism, because it cannot stand on its own (p.182).
8 Liberal Christians by and large don’t have this issue, for they tend to be more in line with typical truth seekers. They find truth and live it out in community with a bit more modesty, knowing their beliefs might be more probable than others’; the liberals’ truth is not an absolute authoritarian truth. A liberal Christian’s truth holds that it needs tempering with other discovered truths, unlike the conservatives’, which sees the need for all truths to be subservient to the one they possess. A liberal Christian knows that inerrancy of scripture is tenable at best, and that even if it was to be established, other religions are still valid paths to the Divine. In short, and in my opinion, they are more tolerant and more tolerable.
9 “The Modern Inerrancy Debate” by Dennis Bratcher: http://www.crivoice.org/inerrant.html
Speaking of the inerrancy debate from a more liberal view Bratcher states,
In many contexts it has become a shibboleth in promoting certain ideological agendas, and is being used by some as a means to divide and judge other Christians to the point that it creates more controversy and debate than it communicates anything positive about the Christian Faith or about Scripture. …
In the larger social and cultural scene, the whole concept of the inerrancy of Scripture may actually be having the opposite effect than many intend. It is intended to affirm the authority and value of Scripture as the sole guide to the Christian Faith, as the source of inspired instruction for meeting the spiritual and ethical challenges of a modern world. Yet the direction in which the concept has evolved and the manner in which it is being presented today both tend toward an “all or nothing” or an “either/or” acceptance of a whole range of ideological and theological ideas linked to the concept, with a corresponding militant attitude toward those who do not accept it in toto. The result has been that in many cases beyond the narrow circles of those who promote the concept, it has weakened the credibility of Scripture and created tremendous controversy, friction, and pain within the Christian community.
The author names names,
One other factor came into play in the development of the inerrancy debate. Most of the “defenders” in the early stages were from the Reformed tradition, especially fundamentalist Baptists (nothing at all here against Baptists; it is just a historical fact). That simply meant that the debate was cast nearly from the beginning in terms of narrowly focused theological concerns and agendas. Two closely related theological ideas from that tradition affected how the debate took shape: the emphasis on the total sovereignty of God, which works out into predestination in some circles; and the total depravity of humanity. …
So, this view of the inerrancy of Scripture was developed both from the pressures of culture, as well as from some very specific theological agendas. The Bible is then read through the lens of a doctrine developed totally outside Scripture itself, and often without taking seriously the evidence within Scripture. …
The defenders of Scripture began asserting things about Scripture that neither the Bible itself nor some of the theological positions outside of a narrowly interpreted Calvinism can possibly sustain. …
Many of his following points will be covered in this article.
This results in a circular argument. One can affirm inerrant autographs as inspired only by assuming a view of inspiration that produces inerrant autographs. …
…how can an inerrant text be produced from non-inerrant sources? If so, on what basis do we affirm that the sources are inerrant since they were not Scripture? This would leave open the logical possibility of other documents being inerrant that are not Scripture, which would undermine one of the primary reasons of affirming inerrancy in the first place: the unique authority of Scripture. …
Here is his less rigid approach to scripture.
However, I do not view Scripture in those terms. I do not understand the Bible itself to be direct revelation, and I do not consider it be revelation about everything. Scripture is the witness that the community of faith has borne to or about revelation. …
Scripture is revelatory only in the secondary or derivative sense that it is a witness and response to God’s revelation.
10 “Memory Tricks” by William Saletan: A writer for Slate and Gayatri Devi: Neurologist and clinical associate professor at New York University School of Medicine:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/06/24/midmorning2/
11 Additional quotes supporting these points include:
“False memories are common”
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20101008-21216-2.html
That is, witnesses who discuss an event with a co-witness are very likely to incorporate misinformation presented by the co-witness into their own memory for the event…
Once their memory has been contaminated in this way, the witness is often unable to distinguish between the accurate and inaccurate memories. – Dr. Helen Paterson
“How Much of Your Memory Is True?”
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true
Already it corrodes our trust in what we know and how we know it. It pokes holes in eyewitness testimony, in memoirs, in our most intimate records of truth. Every time we remember, it seems, we add new details, shade the facts, prune and tweak. Without realizing it, we continually rewrite the stories of our lives. Memory, it turns out, has a surprising amount in common with imagination, conjuring worlds that never existed until they were forged by our minds … Eventually you are not really remembering what happened; you are remembering your story about it. – Kathleen McGowan
12“Good Question: Text Criticism and Inerrancy”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/october7/31.102.html
13 James Carse states, “But Paul has nothing to say about the life of Jesus, not a trace of his teachings or his healings. If we had to rely on Paul for a portrait of Jesus, we would know nothing more than Paul’s personal reaction to a mysterious event.”
http://www.salon.com/books/atoms_eden/2008/07/21/james_carse/index.html
Ironically many people find Paul to be the actual “founder” of Christianity, more than Christ himself. So having Paul, who had never even seen, let alone conversed, with Jesus as not being a part of the eyewitness accounts is quite substantial.
14 “An Open Letter to Neale Donald Walsch” by Bill Randles:
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/NealeDonaldWalsch.html
15 “Ages and Dispensations”
http://photos1.blogger.com/photoInclude/blogger/1917/1432/1600/prophecy_dispensation.jpg
16 Darin Weil’s article is titled, “Inerrancy and its implications for authority: Textual critical considerations in formulating an evangelical doctrine of scripture.” The article not only addresses the difficulties around the Old Testament inerrancy issues, but the whole cannon of protestant scripture “a doctrine of scripture must explain authorship, authority, divine and human origin, and the history of the text from composition to present day.”
True, this site may seem to be totally counter, or argue against, most of what I propose here. But in fairness I offer it knowing that in the end one has to trust this whole process to the mystery of God’s workings. To again quote Weil: “To answer this question, the doctrine of preservation was developed. The doctrine maintains that inasmuch as God divinely inspired the text He also divinely preserved it throughout the centuries. This, however, raises several other questions, namely, how did God preserve it?” Go here for the entire article.
17 Citation refers to excerpts from Bruce M. Metzger’s The text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration
here: http://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/0195072979
18 http://www.rcbaptist.com/html/the_inerrancy_of_scripture.html
19 http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1997/october27/7tc076.html
20 “The inerrancy of scripture: The fifty years’ war … and counting,” by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
21“Wasn’t the New Testament written hundreds of years after Christ?”
http://www.carm.org/wasnt-new-testament-written-hundreds-years-after-christ
22 Reverend Michael Dowd, in his article titled “Giving Heresy a Bad Name!” writes,
Ironically, the early Church Fathers are directly responsible for the New Atheists phenomenon today—as is the concept of canon, or scripture. Once you declare that a set of writings in the past will forever be the best map of reality (and provide the most accurate picture of God and all the core concepts of your faith: sin, salvation, heaven, hell, etc) then you virtually guarantee that, at some point in the future, the one and only real God (Reality!) will raise up those who will attack that notion with the ferocity it deserves.
Find the entire article here.
23 To see an erudite summary of his book, reviewed by Robert M. Price: “RMP Reviews Hector Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies. Prometheus Books, 2007,” go here.
24 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
“Love and self-sacrifice are joined in all renunciate moralities. When unconditional love is made into prescription of how to be, it is really an authoritarian mechanism of control (p.297).”
25 “An Open Letter from Bishop Spong to Political Columnist George Will of the Washington Post.”
http://www.gaycatholicforum.org/html/body_spong_to_will.html
26 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
“When dealing with others who are less certain, simply having certainty gives dominance (p. 80).”
27 Kramer, J. & Alstad, D. (1993). The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.
The stance “I know a lot, but I can make mistakes” cannot compete with “I know everything that counts and never err about what’s important.” So those who play the knower role are under great pressure to put forth an image of certainty. (p. 47)
28 “God’s Hostages” by Sam Harris
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/sam_harris/2007/01/women_are_property_1.html
29 “Idolatry of the Written Word” by Rev. Michael Dowd http://www.thankgodforevolution.com/node/1985
Thinking and speaking of God in traditional ways (thereby using mostly biblical metaphors) has cost all forms of traditional faith in the western world both relevance and credibility. Indeed, I’d go so far as to suggest…The primary cause of the Church’s decline in size and influence in Europe, and now also in America, is this: valuing the Bible as the only scripture while failing to see that today’s science, interpreted meaningfully and mythically, reveals God’s nature, God’s ways, and God’s guidance in many ways far more accurately than anything the biblical writers could have accessed millennia ago.
30 “Dissecting God: Philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that America is drowning in religion – and that faith needs to be analyzed with the tools of science” by Gordy Slack
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/02/08/dennett/index.html
31Herbert L Calhoun’s review of, Arrogance Of faith: Christianity And race in America from the Colonial era to the Twentieth Century, by Forrest G. Wood can be read here.
Joel Jacobs, 2010, All Rights Reserved
Edited by LMD
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