Accommodation: God's Word in Human Words (Biblical Criticism and Inerrancy)

[Vinnie]

@Daniel_Fisher

The authorship of the pastorals is one topic i’ve studied in depth, and the parroted erroneous arguments that remain as ubiquitous as urban legends are one of my biggest pet peeves. I genuinely do appreciate your charity toward Sparks, but i fear that it may be misplaced. I may start a thread to discuss this topic in particular and demonstrate why i believe that Sparks and similar scholars are hardly approaching the topic as an objective observer, honestly wrestling with the data, but rather are wholesale embracing a narrative while being very careless with the facts at hand.

I’d be happy to see the positive evidence you can cite in favor of Pauline authorship. I am sure you are aware that merely trying to explain away objections to Pauline authorship is not remotely close to the same thing as providing actual evidence for Pauline authorship. Given the abundance of many Christian forgeries, including 3 outside the New Testament in Paul’s name, I am sure you are aware that positive evidence is needed for asserting Pauline authorship of every work bearing his name.

Also as for Sparks, he stated explicitly in his book that he does not agree with critical
scholars on every issue. So your charge of him blindly accepting them all is unfounded. That is a sweeping generalization. Second, most critical scholars feel the same about conservatives. Their hermeneutics and pious imagination never leads to a single negative judgment when evaluating the reliability of scripture. Something unheard of for any other document in existence.

Also, I have not shown Spark’s charity yet. He is presenting well argued thoughts right now. The nest of his model of inspiration should come after chapter 5 which I will get to soon. I am critical of every work I read, but also recognize good arguments and writing based on reading hundreds of scholarly books and many hundreds of scholarly journal articles on NT studies. Sparks is very sober.

@Daniel_Fisher

I don’t want to derail this particular thread, but the arguments around authorship of the pastorals is perhaps the best example I personally find of the agenda and presuppositions of the critical scholars pursuing a narrative, and even the theistic scholars such as Sparks near-blindly parroting what ought to be obviously erroneous arguments.

Well, this type of sentiment would be immensely ironic for anyone thinking scripture is inerrant and goes out of their way to try to explain hundreds of obvious contradictions in the texts. As far as obviously erroneous arguments, those more frequently come from conservatives misrepresenting and misunderstanding critical scholars.

Vinnie