Bob Thune 2004-03-10 3
From Summa Bergania
From : Bob Thune, Jr
Sent : Wednesday, March 10, 2004 9:04 PM
To : David Bergan
Subject : Re: Status of the Bible
David,
Well, first of all, thanks for your vote. I think John will need every one he can get (judging from the 528 vote margin last time).
Second, thanks for the reply although we're really not as deep in the rabbit hole as you might think, we are definitely more than surface-deep. I welcome the dialogue. I have to be careful here because I've never met you face to face, and that's bad, because I usually come across more strongly in writing than I do in person. So if I write anything that seems confrontational or aggressive, take it with a grain of salt, and know that it's just the curse of the written word. I care about you and your soul and your walk with Jesus, and these intellectual questions only matter because they affect deeper issues like faith and trust and conviction and resting in Christ alone for everything.
I am tempted to respond point-by-point to your questions, but instead, I will start by directing you to a bigger issue. It's clear from your slam against Daschle that you believe in absolute truth. Where, then, is that truth to be found? Obviously in God, but how is it mediated to us? The best I can gather, from what you've said, is that reason is our best mediator. You say "reason is the final authority; Scripture illumines reason." I'm surprised you can hold to any semblance of religious belief with that as your standard. David Hume and George Berkeley argued 200 years ago that if reason is our standard, then we must throw out miracles, the deity of Christ, and any sort of certainty. You can be a Deist based on reason; but you cannot be a Christian. I agree that the Christian worldview is reasonable; but it cannot be established on reason. How, for instance, can reason grasp the doctrine of the Trinity? Or of the virgin birth? Or substitutionary atonement?
To be frank, David, the issues I just mentioned are much more difficult than the ones you suggested. It makes no sense to say, "My reason allows me to accept the doctrine of the Trinity, but I can't accept Paul's apparent confusion in 1 Cor 7." We would be left, as I said before, with each person's "reason" deciding which parts of Christian doctrine are "reasonable" for him/her. Thus there would be either no concrete basis for faith, or we would have to accept what the majority of people find most reasonable (which, as you know, changes with time).
To push you on another point all reasoning is circular. Taking a claim inside the Bible and using it to argue for the Bible's authority is no different than you claiming that your own reason is a reliable authority. Both are inherently circular; it's just that you like one better than the other. Who are you to trust your own reason? Have you ever been wrong? Deluded? Had a bad dream? Our reason fails us every day. Just today I thought I saw a guy I knew in the coffee shop, but when I approached him it turned out to be someone else. Your own reason is actually one of the most fallible sources of knowledge. We tend to TRUST ourselves and our own judgment more than that of others; but please, don't claim that reason is any less "circular" than the Bible's internal claims for its own validity.
On another note, let's take your claim about 2 Tim 3:16. Taking a skeptical position, let's set aside the entire New Testament and just deal with the OT (because, as you point out, I think Paul here is obviously referring to the OT. But be warned that I'm not letting you off that easily. You must still deal with 1 Cor 14:37, where Paul says that he is writing the Lord's commandment, and 2 Peter, where Peter places Paul's writings on equal footing with "the rest of the Scriptures." But I digress). In our skeptical hypothetical situation, we at least have an inspired Old Testament based on 2 Tim 3:16, and we have a historical Jesus who claimed that the entire Old Testament spoke of Him (see Luke 24:25-27). So you must ask: Did God's choice to inscripturate his own breathed-out word stop with the end of the OT, or did he inspire his apostles to continue to record his authoritative word?
Another note in response to one of your points: there is a difference between the early church Fathers "creating" God-breathed Scripture and recognizing God-breathed Scripture. We do not believe that the NT BECAME the word of God when the Fathers settled on the canon. Rather, we believe that they RECOGNIZED the letters which were canonical. There were clear standards for which books made it "in", the most important of which was that the book had to be connected to an apostle. A weak but suitable analogy might be that a Treasury investigator does not DECIDE whether money is counterfeit; the bills are not made legal or illegal by his decision. He simply is trained to recognize true legal tender from that which is counterfeit.
We can take the rabbit hole as deep as you want to go, so let me know. At some point it might do you some good to consult some books I can recommend; they can take you much deeper in less time and with more accuracy than I can. But if I may be blunt: you are settling for weak arguments. The proposed contradictions in Scripture that you mention, the question of Bible vs. Koran, the long ending in Mark, etc all are easily and convincingly answered if you will take the time to do the research. If you want to be convinced by the arguments you've stated, then I can't change your mind; but if you're willing to search out answers, you will find them in abundance.
Let me know where you want to go from here. I appreciate your earnest desire to seek truth and engage in constructive dialogue! May it draw you closer to the Christ who is my life.
Bob
