Bob Thune 2004-03-24

From Summa Bergania

From : David Bergan

Sent : Wednesday, March 24, 2004 7:32 PM

To : Bob Thune, Jr

Subject : Getting deductive

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Hi Pastor Bob,

Sorry again for leaving you hanging the last few days. I'm feeling great now, and God gave us a fantastic day to enjoy.

You are probably right that the bigger hurdle may be my own will rather than the reasonableness of the arguments themselves. But I hope I'm not so stubborn as to be totally lost... I mean, I struggled with the story of God hardening Pharoah's heart for years, and now that I see a way that the verb could render those passages literally, and still in a way consistent with God's overall character, I am no longer troubled by it. My guess is that should the evidence laid out for the overall inerrancy of the Bible be as reasonable as that is, I will gladly make the leap and put my soul at ease.

ARGUMENT 1:

1) God exists, and is personal and sovereign and good, and delights in revealing himself to His creation.

Sounds good.

2) God is capable of (and seems to show a history of) revealing himself through human/created means - prophets, poets, kings, donkeys. (Of course he uses a burning bush here and there also...)

I agree. Poor Balaam... rebuked by his own donkey.

3) When God speaks (if we can establish that He does so), His word must be reliable (based on premise #1)

Sure.

4) God, in His sovereignty, is perfectly capable of inspiring and preserving a written text for us, assuming He wants to.

(No conclusion will yet be drawn, because there are still some steps we have to make... just evaluate the premises so far. Preview: I'm trying here to get us deductively to answer your "question 1" - why can we say that any books are inspired by God?)

Sure. Sounds good.

ARGUMENT 2:

1) Many biblical books (granting exceptions like Ruth) claim God's authority, declaring "Thus says the Lord" and commanding obedience.

Mmmmm.... I tend to think that when a book says "Thus says the Lord" it is referring only to the immediate passage, like when the prophet is quoting God. But the other parts of the book are just the author writing down the story. For example, I take it as true and directly inspired that God said to Jonah "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." But that doesn't to me say that every word in the book is directly inspired in the same way. The 'God Says' part applies to the what follows in the quotation marks, but not necessarily the rest of the story.

However, this is tough to think about because there isn't any part of the book of Jonah that I doubt. It all seems reasonable to me, but I don't assume that because God is directly quoted in the book means that He therefore inspires it all... just like when David Kranz makes a quote of your uncle, I don't assume that John has in any way approved Kranz's entire article.

2) The Bible, based on 2 Tim 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21, claims that the Old Testament is God-breathed.

Also Mmmmmmm... I am comfortable accepting the Old Testament as God-breathed in a casual sense. But I'm not sure that Paul meant to be taken precisely literally with that statement... just as I'm not sure that Jesus was meant to be taken precisely literally that we must hate our mother, father, wife, and children, as it is said in Luke 14:26. The idea from Jesus is to put Him above these things - which we can certainly agree on. And similarly I think the idea from Paul could be that Scripture is on the whole good and should be read and taught - but it would be a reach to take that statement to mean full 100% inerrancy. I would have thought that if that is what Paul intended to mean, he would have put another sentence in the letter saying so, instead of leaving it up to us to assume that "God-breathed" means "fully inerrant". "God-breathed" is pretty and poetic, "fully inerrant" is more of a scientific, logical, or legal term.

Sorry... the premise was only that the OT was "God-breathed" according to Paul. Yes, I agree, as explained above. I'm getting ahead of myself. I shouldn't be talking about inerrancy until that actually becomes part of the argument.

2 Peter refers to the prophesies... I have no problems with that. Prophesies that come true could only be either a) God-inspired or b) really really really lucky guesses. Option (b) is not at all a reasonable doubt.

3) The New Testament books all are either written by or verified by an apostle.

Really? Who was Jude? Who was Matthew? I know James was Jesus's brother, but was he also an apostle? The authenticity of 2 Peter is dubious since it copies a large chunk from Jude and it refers to events after the year that everyone thinks Peter died (67 AD). And I didn't go to great lengths to research this... I found that statement right in my Bible (which, by the way, claims its own inspiration in the footnotes... so it's not a Wiccan Bible or anything like that).

And out of curiousity, what about other books and letters written/verified by apostles not in the New Testament like the Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Lost Gospel of Peter, etc. [1]

The Book of Enoch is an interesting one in particular, because the Eastern Church seems to accept it as inspired, and the Book of Jude quotes it as though it were Scripture... yet Protestants threw it out with the Apocrypha.

4) The standard for the reliability of any text is the reliability of the source (which is why a letter from your mom is more reliable than a letter from a cult leader).

(This argument is heading toward what the Bible claims for itself, and how we should evaluate that.)

I definitely agree with this point. Paul's claim that the OT is God-breathed has more weight than if Hitler or Mr. Kranz said it. However, the ultimate in reliability is not only when a 'good' author makes a claim, but also when he explains his reasoning behind it - as Thomas Aquinas does throughout the Summa, and Augustine does all over his writings, and as you and I are doing right here. Paul's statement does have weight coming from him as a man of God, but it would have had more weight coming from him AND followed by supporting evidence or reasoning.

Ready for the next level.

Your friend,

David

--David Bergan

"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?"

"For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment..."

-CS Lewis (The Great Divorce)