Bob Thune 2004-03-26
From Summa Bergania
From : David Bergan
Sent : Friday, March 26, 2004 4:50 PM
To : Bob Thune, Jr
Subject : God and His big lungs
Hi Pastor Bob,
I see where your train of thought is headed, but of course it is my job to stop this train at every inch to make sure the wheels will stay on the track.
Yup, argument #1 is just fine. I have no doubt that God could give us a sacred text and preserve it throughout the centuries. It's just that the hard part is knowing which texts are sacred and which are not since God hasn't put an authenticity hologram on the cover of each of His books like Microsoft does. And there are lots of pirated sacred texts out there...
Argument #2 - Conclusion #1: "If Scripture is God-breathed, then it is inerrant. "
I tend to agree. God is not a liar. However...
1) Does God-breathed mean inerrant in all aspects? For example, if Job is God-breathed, then does that mean it is historically/scientifically true? Or could it just be God-breathed with respect to its morality? Jesus taught in parables all the time, but He never wanted the crowds to assume that the parables were literally true, that there was a literal prodigal son, a literal Good Samaratin, etc.
For sure I think the parable of the prodigal son is God-breathed. It has an excellent moral purpose and reflection on the Kingdom of Heaven. But that doesn't mean that I think there was a real father with two sons, one of whom demanded his inheritance, and so on... Just the same, the book of Job could also be a parable with an excellent moral purpose, but scientifically and historically fictional. I mean there are some strange animals in there and it takes place somewhere totally separated from the Jewish people.
Or when Jesus says (in John) that He is the vine, I accept that as a God-breathed statement since the metaphor is meaningful, but I don't think Jesus was made of chlorophyll.
2) Are there degrees of inspiration (God-breathedness)? The trilemma works for Jesus because either He was the Son of God or He wasn't. There is no middle ground. However, I'm wondering if inspiration is not so much a binary relationship but more of a spectrum of degrees. At the left side (not refering to politics) there is totally directly God-inspired stuff like the prophesies, and as you slide to the right you have the major inspirational stories and sermons (Jesus's parables, Sermon on the Mount, etc.), and then you have the practical wisdom like in Proverbs, and then the history, and then the geneology, etc. And on this same spectrum we can put all literary works, from Plato and Aristotle (somewhere near the left side) to Nietzsche and Freud (way on the right).
Inerrancy, for sure, is a binary relationship. There is no middle ground there, either. Either the text is flawless or it has flaws. Either it is all literally true, or it isn't. So if inspiration is a thing of degrees, I find it hard to pull a binary relationship out of it. It would be like taking everything in the rainbow from Green to Purple and calling it White, and taking Red through Orange and calling it Black. That's not a very good analogy... Ok, here's a better one. It's like taking your stereo and saying everything on the volume from halfway on up is "on" and everything below halfway is "off".
Argument #2 - Conclusion #2: "The burden of proof is therefore on the skeptic to prove divine inspiration false; not on the believer to prove it true."
I'm not sure that I buy that one. Let's say Osama bin Laden writes a short and sweet book that claims inspiration from God. (He probably did, but I can't say for sure.) The book might be all of two sentences: "This is from God. Everybody go and kill the American firstborns." How are the skeptics (you and I) going to disprove that? If we can't disprove it, we have to start shooting. And before you write this off as David's crazy nonsense, remember that Abraham was put in a very similar situation in Genesis 22. For him, the inspiration was direct, so the authenticity hologram was undeniable. But what I see you saying in this conclusion, is that anything that claims the authenticity hologram automatically has it, unless we can bring enough evidence against it to make a reasonable doubt.
The rest:
I agree that all historians acknowledge the early Christians as being extraordinarily ethical. But I hesitate to say that being ethical necessarily means writing inerrant letters. Ghandi was an extraordinarily ethical person, and so is my mother, but I don't think that their theology is all that hot. (And if we really want to be picky, Paul by his own admission wasn't so nice, either. He called himself the chief of sinners, and he did have a history of beating Jesus's wife (the Church)... I say this with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.)
Even though I disagreed with just about everything, I think we are getting somewhere. I look forward to your thoughts. I am leaving in 15 minutes to go to the "Worldview Weekend" in Sioux Falls. The program notes show that I will be getting a variety of Christian seminars... and I guess one on the scientific evidence for young-earth creationism, too. That should be interesting. I'll be free to write again either Sunday or Monday.
Enjoy the weekend!
Yours,
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)
