Why Biblical Inerrancy?

Yes, there is. He did not record the later events — not just the destruction of Jerusalem but also the deaths of Peter and Paul.

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Its quite clear my statement is written in the context of Luke-Acts both mentioning the death of Paul and the destruction of the temple. That is what my 75-125 date is based on. But even if the author did not mention either you have offered nothing but an argument from silence which in my experience, conservative Christians love to dismiss when they don’t like its implications but uncritically accept when they do. I have already made it plain that a Gentile Christian author writing to a Gentile community has no necessary need to narrate details about the temple destruction a generation or two after it happens hundreds or thousands of miles away. And if he is writing after it when the memory is still fresh there is no necessary need to make the fulfillment more explicit because it is already obvious.

And even if you don’t think it can be conclusively proven Luke-Acts does not know of the destruction of the temple or Paul’s death based on its internal comments, and disagree with the arguments marshalled by scholars, that does not mean you can conclusively demonstrate the opposite, that Luke-Acts did not know of them. This would leave you at an impasse and the dating range would be 60-125 instead of 75-125 CE. Many reasons have been suggested on why Paul’s death is not narrated.

–Maybe the event was near and dear to Luke.
–Maybe he did not want to stir up tensions between Rome and Christians (the deaths he does record seem to be Jewish attacks on Christians. He may have an eye of trying to make Christianity less repulsive and superstitions to Romans. When its primary leaders, like its founder are all executed by Rome, Luke may be between a rock and a hard place.
–Maybe he planned a third volume.

In my view Acts 21 knows of Paul’s death. Many scholars feel the same. Not to mention one has to establish how and when Paul and Peter actually died on historical grounds. There are a lot of unreliable traditions about Christian martyrs out there. For all we know maybe Luke didn’t think Paul was martyred. Can you establish otherwise or that this knowledge was widespread throughout the entire Roman empire in the 80s CE? Maybe it was but we tend to take a lot for granted with this claim. Clement provides early evidence Paul and Peter were martyred but little beyond that seems especially reliable. I think Luke does know but historical claims do require historical evidence.

The purpose of Acts in my view is to show the gospel moves from Jerusalem to Rome. Acts is not even consistent with the portrayal of the rest of the Gospels where Jesus is in Galilee appearing to them, not Jerusalem. The text accomplishes its goal none the less. Conservatives have overstated a lack of details about Paul’s death for a long time.

With all of this very valuable discussion, I wonder if anyone here who is ok as a believer admitting there are errors in the Bible, would you be willing to accept that a single book is without error? :grin:

Kind of funny when you look at it like that. As if it touches on a basic presupposition that special revelation is necessarily errant, which surely says more about us than God.

Well … how bout this: I’m fairly confident that there are no books in the bible (or very few … I dunno… 3rd John?) that all the people who love playing these modern games manage to get right. Pre-occupation with modern notions of inerrancy almost guarantee that one gets much of the Bible massively wrong - at which point, ironically, it becomes a moot point (for them) whether the text itself was “correct” (according to their modern game playing) or not. If I’m going to use a filthy cup to dip out water for myself, it hardly matters how pristinely fresh or sterile the water was to begin with.

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Which is what? I wish you would focus on the conversation we are having and not the one you have replaying in the back of your mind based on all the crummy things you’ve heard evangelicals say over the years.

A better critique would be Jesus’ words to the Pharisees about their meticulous tithing while neglecting the weightier matters of the law. And yet Jesus said that neither should be neglected. That I get! I’m usually aware of what a lousy evangelist I am on a daily basis.

Why? Because we can more easily imagine that we aren’t quite guilty of exactly that same thing? (We no doubt are - in our own ways for today.) But I see no reason why Jesus wouldn’t challenge us for the things we do - like playing games with the Bible.

I could have put it this way:

Not after the ‘inerrantists’ have had their way with it!

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How does one use the Bible well?

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Then there are the sins of the systematic theologians. No sound doctrine can henceforth stand.

If not a book, maybe there is a single chapter the liberal theologian will put up as being inerrant.

Or if I read your comment as you don’t want anything to do with a book after the ‘inerrantists’ have written their commentaries on it, that strikes me as kind of… what’s the word… trivial.

People have been misreading the Bible for thousands of years.

I’m super curious though in the context of this conversation, given all that has been said about how we have to accept errors in the Bible as believers, does this seriously mean that every book in the Bible has errors. This is a very serious charge.

That would be to not read my actual comment, but to pretend I’ve written something I didn’t write. It’s the commentary so produced that I have little use for. The Bible itself isn’t any the worse for wear just because people misrepresent it. My interest in learning from it still stands.

There may be more than one game being played? You did say games, plural.
 

I’m sorry to be misreading your comments. I felt as if you were arguing against me asking the question to begin with.

Also, I wanted to clear up any misunderstanding here:

My point is that we, evangelicals, are often guilty of the same Pharisaical neglect.

How so? Where do you see Jesus or Paul or any of the apostles teaching that the kingdom is getting more restrictive than before instead of less?

Sheep and goats, wheat and tares? You’ve read?

Romans 9:8 So it is not the children of the flesh who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as offspring.

Ephesians 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

Ephesians 5:6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience.

Back to Jesus:
Matthew 23:15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Oh yeah! Have you? Did any of them get taken by surprise about which category they were in? Hint … all of them were surprised. So while that parable shows a stark division, it also showcases our inability to rightly judge everything about ourselves, much less others. That’s why the tares are left among the wheat … It’s gonna take God who alone sees all the way into the heart to really sort that all out properly. And again - if one imagines that some people or groups are nothing but valuable grain (no tares to be found at all in their hearts), and other people or groups are entirely tares (no chilld of God there at all - just ‘storm trooper fodder’ to advance the plot) - then all this view shows is that one has been unable to take in the main message of Romans much less the gospels. They got excited after reading Romans 1, and refused to heed what Romans 2 went on to say about all that. They got excited about Jesus affirming Moses, but refused to consider how Jesus also went beyond Moses and showcased the ultimate futility of the letter. They let damnation (especially of others) loom so large in their view that they forgot that the gospel is about salvation.

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Mervin, I am seriously confused by your comments. I felt massively judged by your original reply to my question about what books in the Bible might be free from error.

And seeing you referring to Romans here, also leads me to think that you find that it is free from error.