Evangelical Realism

(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 10.)

Imagine, for a moment, that Jesus has been accused of rape, or child molesting, or some other nasty crime. You, as judge, need to decide whether or not Jesus is guilty of the charge, and you ask to see the evidence. The evidence, however, consists of a book written by a man who was not present when the crime occurred, in which the crime is described. You are asked to convict Jesus on the grounds that the man who wrote the book named a couple dozen well-known political and religious leaders, a comparable number of important cities and trade routes, and a few observations about the weather. Since he has spelled all the names right, you are asked to conclude that the man is a meticulous historian who must have been, or had access to, actual eyewitnesses.

Is this enough evidence to convict Jesus of the crime?

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According to Vox Day, you can believe that the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One, and that eternal life awaits you after the death of your mortal body, and that God will reward you for “smiting the infidel,” and that God is personally speaking to you in your heart and leading you to open warfare against the forces of evil, apostasy, and heresy, and none of your beliefs are in any way responsible for your subsequent warlike behavior. If you lack those beliefs, however, then as far as Vox is concerned, your absence of faith bears full responsibility for anything done by anyone who also lacks faith.

Each member of the Unholy Trinity demonstrates some level of concern with finding a way to assert that atheism is in no way to blame for the murderous atrocities of Communism, deservedly infamous for committing the worst mass murders in Man’s history. Dawkins and Hitchens are both fully aware of how badly the lethal record of atheists holding absolute power undermines their case against religion and they are eager to find some way of explaining this record in a manner which allows them to separate the actions of the responsible individuals from their denial of the existence of God.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 10.)

We’re continuing to look at Geisler and Turek’s argument that Luke and other New Testament writers ought to be believed uncritically because of such feats of historical accuracy as spelling the names of local cities and political leaders correctly. As we saw last week, God’s failure to show up in real life means that all of our faith must be based on trusting men, and Chapter 10 works hard to establish the claim that we shouldn’t entertain any doubts or suspicions about what Luke and other NT writers tell us, no matter what they tell us, because they are “eyewitnesses” (or at least have some sort of access to eyewitnesses), even if it’s not always clear what they’re supposed to be eyewitnesses of.

Geisler and Turek make the same argument with respect to Luke’s gospel as for the book of Acts: Luke correctly identified specific historical figures, and therefore we should accept, without any doubt or skepticism, all of his other claims as well. In a way, they are to be commended: they are basing their argument on the principle that the truth is consistent with itself, and that a witness, even an eyewitness, should be judged in terms of how consistent their testimony is with the real-world facts. That’s a good, reliable standard of evidence, but if we apply it equally to all of Luke’s testimony, we find that there are some problems.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 10.)

God’s consistent and universal failure to show up in real life is an undeniable fact with an inescapable consequence: we have no choice but to rely upon men to tell us about God, in His absence. For this reason, Christian apologists like Geisler and Turek have to put a lot of effort into making sure we’re willing to believe what men tell us. Chapter 10 gives us the full treatment.

Do the New Testament documents contain eyewitness testimony? Let’s begin by taking a look at the eyewitness claims of the New Testament writers.

If you accept the plain reading of the text, the New Testament certainly contains eyewitness testimony. Notice how many times various apostles claim to be eyewitnesses:

G&T follow this with a list of NT verses where the speaker or writer claims to be a witness or to have seen and heard something. But notice how this particular argument begins: “If you accept the plain reading of the text…” As I’ve mentioned before, the field of apologetics is not intended to convince unbelievers, it’s intended primarily to convince believers. The conservative, evangelical Christian, upon reading these words, will be encouraged to embrace the conclusion because conservative evangelical Christians are committed to what they see as the “plain reading” of the text. In a way, it’s a sort of rallying cry, a way of saying, “Everybody on our side, get over here.” Given what follows, it’s not surprising that G&T would want to make sure their target audience is rooting for the right side from the very beginning.

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This week I thought we might pay a visit to the Tektonics forum over at theologyweb.com, home of the monthly “Screwball Thread” wherein JP Holding and company defend The Faith by hurling animated smilies at people whose words displease them. If you’ve been following the September SCrewballs [sic] thread, you’ll know that Holding has recently started following the XFiles Friday posts here, and they’re apparently putting a bit of a burr under his saddle. This week’s installment has him so worked up that he breaks from his usual pattern of simply posting excerpts, and tries to fisk them (or at least the bits that he quotes). In doing so, he gives us a bit more insight into his own personal world, and his techniques for insulating himself from those aspects of the real world that might prove troublesome.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 9.)

In examining the documentary evidence for the text of the New Testament, Geisler and Turek have consistently blurred the distinction between having an accurate record of what Christians were saying early on, and the accuracy of the sayings themselves. Reacting to the suggestion that the New Testament is unreliable because the documents weren’t written until long after the events they describe, G&T seem to be assuming that if they can make the documents sound close enough to the A.D. 30’s, they will have proven that the documents are reliable. That’s a logical fallacy, however:

If my pet is not a mammal, then my pet is not a dog.

My pet is a mammal.

Therefore my pet is a dog. (Oops, my pet is a ferret!)

If the New Testament documents were not written before 100AD, then they are not reliable. Geisler and Turek are saying that the manuscripts were written before 100AD, and therefore they are (allegedly) reliable—the same logical fallacy as is illustrated above. In trying to answer the skeptics, however, they accidentally betray the fact that there is indeed good reason to doubt the reliability of the testimony within the documents. And not just because they portray God as behaving in ways that are markedly different from what we see in real life.

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Dr. Greg Boyd has a post up at Answering the Skeptic on the topic of how Christians should respond to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Boyd’s 6 point rebuttal says that, in essence, (a) not all scholars agree with Ehrman, (b) Ehrman’s tone is “alarmist,” (c) 95-98% of the New Testament is not in any serious doubt, (d) we have more manuscripts for the NT than for any other ancient document, and (e) Ehrman exaggerates. Boyd’s last point, however, is the one I find the most interesting.

Bart may (or may not) have substantiated his claim that sometimes intentional alterations were made in the text to make a passage sound more “orthodox.” Even if we grant this (and many textual critics would not), it doesn’t affect much.

First, if we throw out all the texts about which there is some question — including those that may have been intentionally altered — it wouldn’t affect our general estimation of the reliability of the New Testament documents and wouldn’t affect anything important to the faith.

Second — and this is very important — in the ancient world written texts were regarded as expressions of an oral tradition, and it was understood that it’s okay to slightly modify oral traditions to address new issues that have arisen in the community. So even if certain texts were altered slightly (and all the alleged alterations are in fact slight), it doesn’t mean there was anything sinister going on. This is what people expected to be done. [Emphasis mine.]

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Ok, I screwed up: I said that last week was the end of Vox Day’s chapter on Daniel Dennett. Somehow I missed one last section, and it’s a beaut. Check this out:

Dennett’s admirable call for science and religion to lay down their arms and proceed in a spirit of amiable curiosity is subject to one final logical flaw, from at least one religious perspective. Many religious worldviews postulate the existence of intelligent, supernatural beings whose actions affect the physical world, but the Christian view, in particular, puts forth the disturbing notion that our present world is not ruled by God, but by an evil supernatural being, one who long ago usurped humanity’s God-given sovereignty. This being, Satan, is not only self-aware, but has been intelligent enough to fool the mind of Man from the very start, beginning with the first temptation in the Garden of Eden.

Vox, like so many others, is actually re-writing Genesis with that last comment. Nowhere in the Bible is it ever stated or suggested that Eve was tempted or deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden. A mere talking snake was the villain in that story—Satan didn’t become a character in Bible stories until after the Jews had been exposed to Persian dualism. But he’s a useful character in many ways, and Vox intends to use him to manufacture one final flaw to charge to Dennett’s account.

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As charismatic Christians like to tell us, Jesus once said, “Nobody puts new wine in old wineskins,” meaning that old traditions can’t always accommodate new movements of God, or something to that effect. He never said anything about putting old wine into new wineskins, however, and I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for how Christians re-frame Scriptural teachings to accommodate new interpretations. JP Holding gives us a good example of this in his article on “Biblical” faith, which we started to look at last week. But before we get to Holding, let’s do a quick review.

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According to an Associated Press report, a 28-year-old man who killed 6 and wounded 4 on a shooting rampage testified that “I kill for God. I listen to God.” Now, obviously it would not be fair to blame Christianity for this man’s mental illness, nor can we fairly hold God responsible for his actions (any more than it would be Darwin’s fault if the man had said “I kill for Darwin”). This case does, however, point out an interesting question, which is how do we know he’s not telling the truth?

A popular Christian claim is that God is the source of all morality. In other words, things like shooting rampages are not wrong in and of themselves, they’re only wrong because God forbids them. Or, as Vox Day puts it, “God’s game, God’s rules.” There’s no power greater than God that can force some external moral standard on the Almighty, therefore God is free to define morality however He sees fit. Who is to say, then, that God cannot make a special set of rules, for this one deranged shooter, that commands him to go on a shooting spree and kill people? Sure, he’s insane, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not telling the truth about God. So how do we know?

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