How do we know that scripture is Inspired?

[ericc]

I suppose that there might be a special case - where the Holy Spirit intervenes and gives a person the certainty about the divine inspiration of the Bible.

How can one discern it is the HS and not any demon masquerading as Him before you know the Bible is inspired? It becomes circular. If you do not know the Bible is inspired and teaches the truth, how can one rely on it to know the HS?

Private revelation is private indeed. Last night what the HS/Lord spoke to me should remain private in most cases and not serve as the springboard for the latest and greatest doctrines to be preached from the pulpit. Latest and greatest typically signify minor novelties and typically man-made.

I think you are missing an important step here. The above should be:
“So how do I know that a particular scripture is inspired? The Church told me so. And I trust the Church.”

It may go something like this for someone coming from another faith. I heard something about the Church. Let us “taste and see”. If you like what you tasted and saw, internally you may develop good feelings about the Church. And after the good feelings were reinforced several times due to prayer and study and observation, it may lead to belief or disbelief. The history check out, the contents checked out or both didn’t. I trust the Church because both these checked out. I am cradle Catholic. Just as you know my religious education was dismal. So that doesn’t give me much of a headstart versus someone like you who probably is more immersed in Bible study. But I have been given time to correct my deficiencies. And despite my shallow lack of understanding about my faith, my teacher’s credentials checked out fine. History, apostolic blue blood, rock solid unchangeable doctrines, priests/Popes come and go and yet the doctrine remain firm. I have never voted in the Church and I trust I never will because God runs his ship pretty tightly. It is always His way, never mine. It is not in the Bible, excellent! The Church will tell me. I don’t have to twist pretzels out of the Bible to say something that wasn’t there. Church history is so rich that we never have to invent something contrary to faith or morals.

But there is no real room for partial belief or cafeteria style Catholicism(yes, we get these also). I like only certain parts or I can not accept some of it. Either way, one copies from the original and somehow without divine authority feels he is entitled to modify it to suit his thinking while claiming self-given divine authority. Obviously self declared authority is no authority. One can’t give to oneself what one didn’t have in the first place.

I say there is no real room to deviate because if one accept the Bible as given By the Church, there is no flexible room to deny other teachings of the Church that is not in the Bible. We know from history that the good news were preached orally initially. Over time, this database was accumulated and sanitized of non-inspired teachings. The Bible is the convenient aid for preaching. It can not interpret itself, the preacher does. The Church didn’t claim all of its teachings are in this database. Traditions are not. Many things spoken about Christ are not written down. To claim all teachings are in the Bible is a man-made rule.

Of course we can not prevent others from taking from the Church and do whatsoever they want with her teachings. We see claims made about her being of pagan origin, being anti-Christ etc. However that is not important in the sense that eventually all of us are judged by our actions. If one is spreading untruths or have reason to know that it is possibly untruthful, then we know that can’t be of Christ. Today, knowledge about religion is easy to research for facts or myths. If one has adequate education, it is almost? sinful not to discern fact/myth and choosing to believe without discerning or choosing to condemn without discerning.

We are all adopted children of God by virtue of baptism. You are not of “step” status. You only have/had a different teacher(s) who feel(s) they are teaching truth. But even teachers have historical background that can be verified. Did their education ultimately came from self-study a book that anyone can purchase or download or did it come from the Church that “launched” the database? Who taught these teachers? You can waterfall that back through time and you will come to an abrupt end pretty early if the teachers are not apostolic.

But the best indicator of the results of these teachers are the number of churches claiming different doctrines or doctrines that keep up with the times. How can the HS be teaching different things to different Churches? What does it tell you if a 100 years ago, these churches forbade divorce or abortion but now ok it? Or now teaches that same sex behaviour is no longer an abomination in the eyes of the Lord? If the faith is trend base, then it tells you that eventually, you will find something objectionable about changing doctrines. Then do you change church? Is morals or doctrine based upon democratic vote? But we know without doubt that Christianity is not a democracy. It has only one vote. God.

But you have traveled far and wide and you are at the CAF seeking confirmation of your beliefs. You owe it to yourself to discern history to the source. The source is not the database. What does the Church understand about this database she has birthed?

Entrance to the Church is free and everyone is invited. Jesus is inviting you to meet everyone in his family. At the doorstep he may just say this to you: You already know my Father, I don’t think you have met my mum yet. And do stay for meals. Eating together is the best way to know me, really know me.

 

[ynotzap]

I see in consideration of what Contarini stated that his position is aligned with the teachings of the Church. Consider the statements of Jesus to St.Peter when Jesus asked him who Peter thought He was, and Peter answered : Thou art the Son of God, the Messiah and Jesus answered " Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father in Heaven". Consider that the apostles all knew Jesus, why Peter. If all the miracles from human observation didn’t convince the apostles that Jesus was absolutely God, why did Jesus make a point of it being revealed not by flesh and blood, (human endeavor, reasoning and even history) but by the Holy Spirit from the Father. At that point Jesus said, thou art Peter, and upon this rock (faith in Jesus, which Peter represented, and whom Jesus chose to be His representative here on earth (the Rock is Jesus), and Peter is the little rock who represents the Big Rock

Also in Eph: 2:9 St. Paul states that "not by works (human endeavor, reasoning or history) but by grace (through Jesus Christ) you have been saved, so no one may boast, it is a gift of God.

Also it is stated in Scripture that " It is impossible to please God without faith"

There is a wealth of evidence by history and right-reasoning, and miracles, and the heroic sanctity of Christians to certainly show that it is reasonable to believe, but Contarini is very consistent with the truth that there is no conclusive evidence that Jesus existed, but there is evidence that God exists by reason, but His identity is only revealed by the gift of Faith, just as the proof of the inspiration of the Bible is accepted on Faith, a dogma of the Church. The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, our Lord, the Head of the Mystical Body of Christ, and the Holy Spirit it’s soul, and Catholic Christians, and all Christians as member, separated, but members.

Perhaps a reason is that ,mankind fell because of pride, and God requires loving and humble submission to Him by taking His Word through belief, and not by reason (works)

 

[Contarini]

I disagree. here is the relevant text of what I posted, and I will insert my comments and highlight key text in red.

The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work. [Up until this point, all that CA has said is that the text we have today accurately represents what the original author wrote.]

Right, and the next sentence assumes historical accuracy. Yet nowhere do they actually prove historical accuracy.

And as I’ve pointed out in my last post, you have to prove accuracy with regard to the specific points on which the argument rests. You can’t just prove that the NT is sometimes accurate. Nearly all ancient texts give us some valid historical information. Historians don’t divide texts up into accurate and inaccurate in a binary way. They grade them on a spectrum–the more often a text is proven to be accurate, the more likely it is to be accurate on something else. But the most apparently reliable text may turn out to be highly misleading on some specific point, and even texts that are mostly regarded as fictional (like the fourth-century Historia Augusta) may contain a nugget of useful information here and there. You verify everything.

Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy. [Here we arrive at the doorstep of the Trilemma Argument. Dawkins’ fourth “L” - Jesus the Legend - has been ruled out by historical evidence from “extra-biblical writings” that the tract mentions.

From this point on, the Spiral Argument has smooth sailing. The Trilemma Argument is well-known and easily defended. Jesus is Lord.

Oh please. You’re just digging yourself in deeper. The “Trilemma” depends on the assumption that the NT is accurate and that traditional Christianity rightly interprets it, specifically at those points where Jesus appears to claim some sort of divinity. Lewis overstated the case originally, but his original version had some merit over against the kind of sentimental quasi-Christianity prevalent in his day. Lewis was right that to reduce Jesus to “a great teacher” misinterprets him radically. But the alternatives aren’t as stark as Lewis claimed. Jesus could have been what Albert Schweitzer said he was–a mistaken apocalyptic prophet–without being “on a level with the man who thinks he is a poached egg” (Lewis’ words). So we have one of Lewis’ weakest arguments (predictably his most popular) taken to the point of absurdity by lesser apologists.

This is your “easy to defend”?

Further, He promised to build a Church. The Church which God built cannot teach error. Finally, an infallible Church tells us that the Bible is not merely historically accurate, but also infallible.

Right. And that’s the part where any rationality the argument has collapses into the muck. The passage about building a Church is one of the most questionable in the Gospels. Matthew frequently seems to explain things that are stated more cryptically in Mark, and Matt. 16/Mark 8 is an excellent example. Mark doesn’t draw out the significance of the event. Matthew does. It is possible that Mark simply omitted it. But it is far more probable, using historical methodology, that Matthew has expanded the story. And historical method is all about probability.

This one example is, by itself, fatal to the spiral method. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Randy_Carson]

But in fact the problem is with the argument. To go further into the historical evidence is to see just how complicated the evidence is. **It’s not that there isn’t evidence to support the historicity of the NT. It’s that the evidence is too complex and too tentative to hold the weight that the spiral argument puts on it. **

Which, Edwin, is probably why it wasn’t included in a tract. However, this premise of the argument is that the historical accuracy of the Gospels can be supported by extra-biblical evidence. Thus, although the tract did not provide a defense of this premise, the premise was at least mentioned as necessary.

You mention archeological evidence. What archeological evidence? And what on earth does this have to do with the spiral argument?

Archaeological discoveries have proven facts that were previously known ONLY through the writings of the NT authors.

Bear in mind that the spiral argument commits you to proving, by history alone, that Jesus founded an authoritative Church. This is a patently impossible task. But it’s what the argument requires you to do. Nothing less will do for the spiral argument to work.

Perhaps we will never agree, but if the Bible claims that Jesus rose from the dead, and this can be proven to a reasonable degree of certainty, then anything else that Jesus said and did becomes extremely important because Jesus is God.

You know nothing at all about the certainty of my faith. One of the reasons this argument enrages me is that bad arguments of this kind (the Protestant versions) nearly destroyed my faith when I was a teenager, and the fact that so many people glibly accept such bad arguments still makes me wonder. Maybe what I think are my own better reasons are just as deceived. You have no idea of how devastating and harmful it is to make bad arguments for the faith. It’s one of the worst things, intellectually, you can do. If you really care about the weak in faith, you need to take what I am saying seriously.

In my post, I assumed that your faith is strong and that we who are stronger should take care lest we harm those whose faith is weaker. I apologize if this was an error.

 

[Contarini]

Just to reiterate–because like you I’d really like to be able to put this behind us–the spiral method sets itself up for failure, because it has to prove historicity over and over and over again, on specific points, or it collapses. If the Gospels were 95% historical, but the 5% least likely to be historical turned out to be the parts that support the case for an infallible Church, then the argument would fail. You don’t seem to get this, given your “examples of historicity” above.

We believe Christ’s resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies: The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today. peterkreeft.com/topics-more/resurrection-evidence.htm

Kreeft is a philosopher, not a historian. He frequently overstates the case, as here. His case is still much stronger than the spiral argument, though. The evidence for the resurrection is pretty good. But to suggest that it’s as good as that for “any universally believed event in ancient history” (if there even is such a thing) just won’t do.

But even if his claim were right, that wouldn’t help the spiral argument much. The evidence for the resurrection is much, much better than the evidence that Jesus established a Church, much less that he intended it to be infallible.

Nor does it need to do so in order to make its case. The tract is brief, perhaps overly so on this one point, but it points to extra-biblical writings which corroborate the Gospels.

Vague and useless. Which writings? Josephus, as we’ve seen, is irrelevant to the spiral argument–all the most plausible version of the Testimonium Flavianum establishes is that Jesus existed. (There’s some question about whether the passage has any value, since the version you cited is actually a reconstruction by scholars–the version we have in the standard manuscripts of Josephus contains such strong language about Jesus being the Messiah and perhaps divine that nearly all scholars think it’s interpolated by Christians. Hence the more modest version you cite. I accept that Josephus probably wrote something like that, but some skeptics suggest that the whole passage was probably inserted by Christians, and this is certainly a possibility.) And Josephus is by far the best non-Christian source.

Obviously the later Christian sources depend largely on the Gospels, or on oral traditions of the kind recorded in the Gospels. They can’t prove that the Gospels are wholly accurate, only that by about a century after the events described there was a community of people who accepted them as accurate. That’s certainly significant. But it’s not proof of the kind the argument requires.

If the reader does his homework by examining this evidence, he will come to the conclusion that the New Testament books are historically reliable.

That’s an astoundingly smug and arrogant claim. It just isn’t true, empirically. Plenty of people have done their homework and have come to a different conclusion. You think that they can’t have done their homework, but why? It appears that you jump to that conclusion solely because they fail to agree with you. It’s not clear that you have done your own homework, for that matter. You clearly have not the least understanding of how historical argument works. The fact that you think that proving the historicity of Pontius Pilate somehow supports the claim that Jesus established an infallible Church demonstrates this. So you are not in a position to judge who has or hasn’t done their homework. You wouldn’t know what doing their homework looked like.

Since one of these books, Matthew, speaks of the foundation of a Church

In a passage highly unlikely to be historical if analyzed in the way we would analyse any other ancient book.

To underline one more time: the only reason anyone entertains for a minute the possibility that Jesus said “You are Peter and on this Rock I will build my Church” is because of prior acceptance of the Christian faith.

No one approaching the Bible as if it were just an ancient book would reach this conclusion, if they had any sound historical training and any smidgen of critical thinking.

If Christianity were an ancient sect that had long died out, and this story was found in several different texts of this ancient sect, only one of which included the claim about Peter’s authority, everyone would conclude as a matter of course that that one text had interpolated the claim into the original story to support some obscure authority figure in some ancient power struggle.

And possibly, everyone would be wrong. Historical method only yields probability, not absolute certainty. But it is the method to which the spiral argument has, dishonestly and insincerely, appealed. And by it the spiral argument stands condemned.

Edwin

 

[Ignatius]

Proving Inspiration
catholic.com/tracts/proving-inspiration

The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.

Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as a history, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament, and more specifically the Gospels. We examine the account contained therein of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy. (The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, since no merely good man would make the claims he made.)

We are able to eliminate the possibility of his being a madman not just from what he said but from what his followers did after his death. Many critics of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection claim that Christ did not truly rise, that his followers took his body from the tomb and then proclaimed him risen from the dead. According to these critics, the resurrection was nothing more than a hoax. Devising a hoax to glorify a friend and mentor is one thing, but you do not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they derive no benefit. Certainly if Christ had not risen, his disciples would not have died horrible deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Consequently, his claims concerning himself—including his claim to be God—have credibility. He meant what he said and did what he said he would do.

Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not yet as an inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority.

We have thus taken the material and purely historically concluded that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. Because of his Resurrection we have reason to take seriously his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name.

This Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the Church is infallible. Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—that is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters of faith—that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as an inspired book.

A Spiral Argument

Note that this is not a circular argument. We are not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the Church’s infallibility and the Church’s infallibility on the word of an inspired Bible. That indeed would be a circular argument! What we have is really a spiral argument. On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired. This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable), and its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired). What we have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church, we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.

The advantages of the Catholic approach are two: First, the inspiration is really proved, not just “felt.” Second, the main fact behind the proof—the reality of an infallible, teaching Church—leads one naturally to an answer to the problem that troubled the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:30-31): How is one to know which interpretations are correct? The same Church that authenticates the Bible, that attests to its inspiration, is the authority established by Christ to interpret his word.

Randy Thank you. This is excellent, so clear and avoids circular arguments.

 

[Contarini]

The historical accuracy of the NT is well-established and it is pathetic that someone with your education and position as a university professor would argue otherwise.

You clearly regard most NT scholarship as pathetic, then.

And that, once more, proves the dishonesty of the spiral method. You have to write off most of the practitioners of the relevant discipline as dishonest, bigoted fools in order to make your case.

Additionally, internal evidence such as the Criterion of Embarrassment supports the idea that the NT is accurate.

Again, you’re demonstrating the fallacy that you prove the accuracy of a text in toto. You don’t. That is not how historical scholarship works.

The criterion of embarrassment applies to specific elements in the Gospels. Yes, the fact that the Gospels contain these embarrassing passages is in their favor. But then we notice that, for instance, Matthew eliminates or explains many of them which are present in Mark.

Yet the spiral argument largely depends on Matthew being accurate where it differs from Mark.

This, again, is a fatal problem for the argument all by itself.

Having established that the NT is reliable on many, many fronts, the burden of proof shifts to skeptics because the authors of the NT have earned the benefit of the doubt by the accuracy of their reporting which has been verified.

Nonsense. The burden of proof is always on the one making the claim. The spiral argument rests on the claim that the NT is accurate specifically in places where all normal historical method would lead us to be suspicious.

And in fact not all the evidence supports accuracy. Much does not. Most of the evidence you cite for accuracy is basic stuff that simply shows that the texts were written by people with some acquaintance with first-century Palestine and are not pure fiction.

And then there are all the apparent discrepancies and difficulties. With the exception of the birth narratives, they do not cause serious problems for the basic historicity of the Synoptic Gospels (John is somewhat harder to defend, and the birth narratives harder yet–not so much because of their supernatural content as because of the historical difficulties they raise and the fact that our two birth narratives don’t support each other but seem to be telling two quite different stories). But it just isn’t true that most scholars approaching the NT without the presuppositions of faith are struck by the obvious accuracy of the texts. The historicity of the NT is very much open to question.

Yet again, bear in mind that we are talking about what can be reasonably proven. We are not talking about what I believe.We are talking apologetics.

Well, duh. The goal of textual criticism is the determine what the original autographs contained…not about the accuracy of the history they record. For example, textual criticism can tell us whether we have accurate text of Shakespeare’s plays, but we cannot conclude from that alone as to whether “Richard II” was faithful to the actual events.

Bottom line: Scholars are confident that the texts we have today are sufficient to give a high degree of confidence that what we read is what Matthew, Mark, Luke or John actually wrote.

But scholars are not at all convinced that Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote the texts that pass under their names.

Edwin

Because I’m right, and you are wrong.

Just. That. Simple.

(cont.)

 

[Randy_Carson]

Right. So Jesus existed. This is supposed to prove that the entire NT is historically accurate how? It’s supposed to prove that Jesus established an authoritative Church how?It’s irrelevant to the point at issue.

It is the first step in the process of proving that the Bible is a historically reliable document. Some people argue that Jesus was merely a Legend, a Myth. Josephus dispels that false notion.

Bible 1 Skeptics 0

So Pontius Pilate existed. Again, irrelevant to the point at issue.

This is relevant because for many years (1900 or so, actually), there was NO independent evidence that someone named Pontius Pilate ever lived. However, archaeologists discovered the missing evidence, and now we know that the New Testament was accurate on the identity of the man who judged Jesus.

Bible 2 Skeptics 0

Fine, Caiaphas existed. This is relevant to the points at issue how?

Bible 3 Skeptics 0

How do we get from “Jesus, Pontius Pilate, and Caiaphas were all real people” to “the NT is accurate in every detail and we can conclude from this that Jesus established an authoritative Church?”

Because time and again (and there are MANY more examples beyond these three), Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been proven to be reliable eyewitnesses of historical events. Consequently, historians place a higher degree of certainty upon these books as a whole, because the credibility of the authors has been established objectively by verifiable proof from science. The benefit of the doubt now goes to the New Testament while the burden of proof shifts to the skeptics.

Clearly, this state of affairs is of great import to those who are interested the sayings of Jesus such as “Upon this rock I will build my church.”

Again, the lack of logic in this kind of argument is truly astounding.

Just to take one obvious parallel: one “classic” of anti-Catholic literature is the autobiography of an ex-Catholic priest called Charles Chiniquy, who claims to have had a conversation with Abraham Lincoln in which Lincoln told him that he knew the Jesuits were plotting to kill him. The fact that Abraham Lincoln and Fr. Chiniquy were real people does not prove that any such conversation took place, and much less that Lincoln’s suspicions (if he had them) were correct. But that’s the kind of thing you’re arguing. If you can prove that some of the facts in the NT are correct, then you prove that the whole NT is correct including the bits needed for the spiral argument.

This is just ridiculous. You have to prove that the relevant bits are accurate. Proving that some other things in the NT are accurate does nothing to help the case. I think the basic problem we are having is that you, like most folks who aren’t historians, imagine that we establish the general reliability of a text and then take everything it says as true. That would be very bad practice in any historical discipline. Historians are concerned with the historicity of specific claims. Of course the more things a text gets right, the more likely you are to trust it where you haven’t yet verified. But you always verify, no matter how generally trustworthy the text. And the examples you’re giving are hardly particularly remarkable as evidence of the New Testament’s trustworthiness.

You are in error here. It is not necessary to establish each and every detail with absolute certainty. When the police investigate a crime, they are able to determine the truthfulness of a witness by things such as the accurate recollection of a shirt the criminal was wearing or the weather or the sound of a passing train. When these sorts of details prove true, the police have greater confidence in believing the things that the witness says which cannot be proved but depend only on their word.

Fine. So whoever wrote John had some knowledge of Jerusalem. That’s all it proves.

No, it also proves that John had an eye for detail and was concerned with recording accurate history.

Bible 4 Skeptics 0

No. It would be a slight improvement on the CA version, but that’s not saying much. The evidence is still irrelevant, except to refute extreme versions of skepticism that treat the Gospels basically as pure fiction. But that’s not the point at issue in the spiral argument. In order to support the claim that Jesus established an authoritative Church, you need a lot more than a few places where the Gospels make accurate claims. You need to work on the actual passages that are relevant to the spiral argument, such as Matt. 16. You need to show some acquaintance with historical-critical methodology in order to understand why the overwhelming consensus of historians is that Matt. 16 and similar passages most likely involve some degree of theological interpretation by the first-century Church.

Actually, I have been doing some study in this area recently which is why A) I’m confident in what I am saying and B) I just happened to be primed for this discussion. Maybe God had me studying these methodologies just so you could hear them.

Or you could give up on the argument altogether. Obviously that is what would really satisfy me. But if you really want to shoulder the task of doing what none of the excellent conservative scholars already out there has been able to do, then fine. Go for it. But you have no idea what you’re signing up for, because your posts so far demonstrate that you have no clue how historical evidence actually works.

Edwin, you have this backwards. Although a few crackpots have taken shots at the Spiral Argument over the years, no one from CA has ever bothered to respond. CA has a long history with this famous tract, and clearly, no one has ever refuted it because CA has never had to revise or defend it.

 

[Contarini]

53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you claim to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God. 55 But you have not known him; I know him. If I said, I do not know him, I should be a liar like you; but I do know him and I keep his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” 57 The Jews then said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.[/INDENT]

Why did the Jews want to stone Jesus if they did not believe that He was claiming to be God?

Why do you accept this particular passage as historical?

Specific reasons for this specific passage. That’s what you set yourself up for when you appeal to history. If you don’t like it, stop using the spiral argument.

That applies to all your examples from the speeches in the Gospel of John. Even a conservative, evangelical scholar like I. Howard Marshall admits (he did so in a lecture I heard) that these speeches cannot possibly be anything like transcripts of what Jesus said.

That does not mean that John lacks all historicity. But the speeches, in particular, tell us about what some early Christians believed about Jesus at the end of the first century than about what Jesus himself claimed about himself. At least, as long as we are really using a strictly historical methodology.

Revelation 1:17-18
“Do not be afraid; I [Jesus] am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”

Would a mere prophet claim to be the “First and the Last”?

Randy, ,this is a vision. It doesn’t even claim to be a historical description of anything Jesus said during his earthly life.

The fact that you can cite this passage as historical evidence just shows, again, that you have not done your homework (to use your own phrase). You have no idea what historical evidence looks like.

6. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and the Son of God Before the Sanhedrin

Daniel 7:13-14
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel prophesied that the Son of Man would be worshiped as God.

No. Haven’t any of your fellow Catholic apologists ever explained to you that worship is a pretty broad term?

Mark 14:61-65
61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 63 The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. 64 “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as worthy of death.

Replying to the High Priest at His trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus quoted the Daniel and applied this prophecy to Himself.

Agreed. This is one of the stronger examples. But if we are really asking the same critical questions of the Bible we would ask of any ancient book, then we have to ask who recorded this trial? Did the Christians somehow send in ninjas and steal the transcript? Did Peter catch the drift of it wafting through the window as he was trying to save his own skin in the courtyard outside? Maybe John 18 has the explanation–it claims that the disciple whom Jesus loved went in to the high priest’s palace (although John does not record this particular exchange). Or maybe some of the priests present converted later–Acts claims that many of them did, although it’s fashionable today to cast a lot of aspersions on the historicity of Acts. . . . .

I am generally persuaded by N. T. Wright’s scholarship, but many other scholars dismiss him as a “Christian apologist” rather than a “real scholar.” I think Wright makes a good case for why Jesus would say this and what he might mean by using Daniel in this way, but that isn’t quite the same thing as proof that he did say it. If I were strongly disposed to believe in a Jesus who did not claim to be divine in any sense, it would not be that hard for me to find reasons to question whether even this relatively cryptic and indirect “divinity claim” is authentic.

But let that pass. This is an excellent example of what I meant when I spoke above about the way in which Wright argues for Jesus’ divinity. He argues that Jesus did, in fact, see himself as the “Son of Man” of Daniel, as one who acted with God’s authority and through whom God was returning to Israel. Wright believes that this is in fact the legitimate foundation for orthodox, creedal Christology. But it’s not quite the same thing as a claim of divinity such that, if Jesus were really just a man, he would be “on a level with a man who thinks himself a poached egg.” (If you must quote that wretched “Trilemma,” get in some of Lewis’ wit while you’re at it!)

Edwin

 

[Randy_Carson]

Oh please. You’re just digging yourself in deeper. The “Trilemma” depends on the assumption that the NT is accurate and that traditional Christianity rightly interprets it, specifically at those points where Jesus appears to claim some sort of divinity.

You are aware of the fact that many non-biblical documents provide information about Jesus, right?

So, let’s review what we can learn from hostile pagan and Jewish sources describing Jesus. We’ll do our best to discount the anti-Christian bias we see in the sources. Many elements of the Biblical record are confirmed by these hostile accounts, in spite of the fact they deny the supernatural power of Jesus:

Jesus was born and lived in Palestine. He was born, supposedly, to a virgin and had an earthly father who was a carpenter. He was a teacher who taught that through repentance and belief, all followers would become brothers and sisters. He led the Jews away from their beliefs. He was a wise man who claimed to be God and the Messiah. He had unusual magical powers and performed miraculous deeds. He healed the lame. He accurately predicted the future. He was persecuted by the Jews for what He said, betrayed by Judah Iskarioto. He was beaten with rods, forced to drink vinegar and wear a crown of thorns. He was crucified on the eve of the Passover and this crucifixion occurred under the direction of Pontius Pilate, during the time of Tiberius. On the day of His crucifixion, the sky grew dark and there was an earthquake. Afterward, He was buried in a tomb and the tomb was later found to be empty. He appeared to His disciples resurrected from the grave and showed them His wounds. These disciples then told others Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven. Jesus’ disciples and followers upheld a high moral code. One of them was named Matthai. The disciples were also persecuted for their faith but were martyred without changing their claims. They met regularly to worship Jesus, even after His death.

Not bad, given this information is coming from ancient accounts hostile to the Biblical record. While these non-Christian sources interpret the claims of Christianity differently, they affirm the initial, evidential claims of the Biblical authors (much like those who interpret the evidence related to Kennedy’s assassination and the Twin Tower attacks come to different conclusions but affirm the basic facts of the historical events). Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, and the ancient non-Christian interpretations (and critical commentaries) of the Gospel accounts serve to strengthen the core claims of the New Testament.

• See more at: coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/#sthash.ny3nItXD.dpuf

Having shown that non-Biblical sources corroborate the Gospels to such a high degree, can can confidently conclude that the authors of the NT were able to produce accurate history, they wanted to produce accurate history, and they did produce accurate history.

So, yes, the NT is accurate. And that history tells us that Jesus rose from the dead as evidence of His claim to be God.

Did the Christian Church rightly interpret it the NT? The Church WROTE the NT, so a better question would be, does the NT accurately reflect the beliefs of Jesus earliest disciples - and not the other way around.

Since hundreds of eyewitness were still alive at the time of the writing of the NT books, we may conclude that had any of the writers gotten their facts wrong, they would have been quickly corrected by the community who viewed Jesus as Divine and His words as the Words of God.

 

[Contarini]

1. Jesus forgave sins – which only God can do.
Luke 5:20

This is also a strong argument. Against it one could point to that favorite Catholic prooftext from John 20, in which Jesus gives the apostles power to forgive sins. If he could delegate that authority, why couldn’t God delegate it to him?

Ironically, a historical-critical method helps here. Mark isn’t John, and may not share John’s theology. In Markan terms, this may well be a claim of divinity. But again, in my earlier words, a modified and qualified one.

2. Jesus accepted worship.

Sorry–you can’t use “proskunesis” to prove divinity. Unless of course you are doing to become a Protestant

3. Jesus did not reject worship.
Revelation 19:10 – the angel tells John to worship God only; Jesus never tells anyone not to worship Him.

This is a good argument and gives some meat to the examples above. But again, you are using one book to interpret another. That won’t do if you are using strictly historical methods.

Romans 10:9-13
because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord (kurios) and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord (kurios) will be saved.”

In verse 13, Paul quotes an Old Testament prophet who was speaking about God when he wrote:

Joel 2:32
“And it shall come to pass that all who call upon the name of the LORD (kurios) shall be delivered”

Thus, in one brief passage, Paul uses the word kurios, or Lord, to speak about both the Father and the Son proving that Paul believes that Jesus is God.

I think this is also a good argument. But not, of course, conclusive for Jesus’ self-understanding–if, that is, we are still supposedly using historical methodology. (Very hard to maintain such an illusion after citing Revelation 1, but hey, let’s valiantly soldier on!)

Hebrews 1:1-9
​

Again, we are far afield from any discussion of the historical Jesus here, but in fact the passage doesn’t say that Jesus is God in the full sense of the word. It could easily support an Arian view in which Jesus is a lesser being who somehow mediates God’s glory to the world. First-century Judaism was not as “strictly monotheistic” as we imagine–there was room for mediating beings. The eventual Nicene dogma was actually a movement toward a stricter monotheism–a clearer recognition of the gap between God and creation. But that’s a separate argument.

IV. Did Jesus’ enemies believe He claimed to be God?

1. The Jews tried to stone him for blasphemy.
John 8:58 – “I AM’
John 10:30-33 – second attempted stoning
2. The Sanhedrin asked Jesus if He was the Messiah and the Son of God
Mark 14:61-62 (cf. Daniel 7:13-14, Psalm 110)

The blasphemy charge doesn’t necessarily mean that they thought he was claiming to be God in the fullest, unqualified sense of the term. They may simply have thought that he was identifying himself with God too closely.

I think there is an excellent argument to be made that Jesus did so identify himself with God and was not just a “great teacher.” The Trilemma works if you rework it in a very cautious, qualified form.

Edwin​

 

[Randy_Carson]

Right. And that’s the part where any rationality the argument has collapses into the muck.

Wait…I thought you said that the argument fell apart earlier over the question of historical reliability. Now you are claiming that it collapses here instead. Edwin, I’m starting to wonder about you…

The passage about building a Church is one of the most questionable in the Gospels. Matthew frequently seems to explain things that are stated more cryptically in Mark, and Matt. 16/Mark 8 is an excellent example. Mark doesn’t draw out the significance of the event. Matthew does. It is possible that Mark simply omitted it. But it is far more probable, using historical methodology, that Matthew has expanded the story. And historical method is all about probability. Mark was writing like a news reporter given a brief story

This one example is, by itself, fatal to the spiral method. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Philosopher Richard Swineburne speaks of the “principle of testimony” - in the absence of counter evidence, we should believe what others tell us they have done or seen. Without this principle, Swineburne tells us we would have very little knowledge of anything. Most of our beliefs are based on what others have told us about geography, science or history. Most of what we know is not based upon our own direct experience but upon the testimony of reliable and knowledgeable people.

In the case of Matthew 16:18-19, Matthew has proven himself to be both reliable (see why we went through all that previously?) and knowledgeable (he was an apostle and an eyewitness). Therefore, in the absence of contrary evidence, we accept his testimony as true. The fact that Mark did not testify on this point does not detract from Matthew’s personal credibility. Would it be nice to have a second verse corroborating Matthew? Of course! It would be nice to know what happened to the Lost Colony or to Amelia Earhart, too. But history does not always provide that degree of certainty.

In the case of the gospels, they are better than plausible; they are likely to be true and accurate based upon ALL of the available evidence provided by many, many disciplines of study.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Just to reiterate–because like you I’d really like to be able to put this behind us–the spiral method sets itself up for failure, because it has to prove historicity over and over and over again, on specific points, or it collapses. If the Gospels were 95% historical, but the 5% least likely to be historical turned out to be the parts that support the case for an infallible Church, then the argument would fail. You don’t seem to get this, given your “examples of historicity” above.

Kreeft is a philosopher, not a historian. He frequently overstates the case, as here. His case is still much stronger than the spiral argument, though. The evidence for the resurrection is pretty good. But to suggest that it’s as good as that for “any universally believed event in ancient history” (if there even is such a thing) just won’t do.

But even if his claim were right, that wouldn’t help the spiral argument much. The evidence for the resurrection is much, much better than the evidence that Jesus established a Church, much less that he intended it to be infallible.

Nor does it need to do so in order to make its case. The tract is brief, perhaps overly so on this one point, but it points to extra-biblical writings which corroborate the Gospels.

Historical evidence can be conclusive but not coercive.

And you are entitled to your opinions about the Spiral Argument, but at some point, you might consider keeping them to yourself. Catholic Answers stands behind the argument and their credentials exceed yours many times over.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Randy Thank you. This is excellent, so clear and avoids circular arguments.

I’m happy to pass it on to those who have ears to hear it.

 

[Contarini]

Having previously demonstrated the general reliability of the Gospels as corroborated by archaeology, Jewish historians, etc., I think the burden of proof is upon those who deny that Jesus’ spoke these words.

And for about the fifth time, or maybe the fiftieth, you demonstrate that you don’t have a clue how historians work.

You don’t demonstrate the “general reliability” of a text and then proceed to take everything it says as true. The more generally reliable the text, the more likely you are to accept it. But each specific claim has to be examined on its own grounds. Sure, if not much rests on it, or if historians are snoozing (they are human and do snooze), they may let a lot of stuff by in a text they have no particular reason to doubt. But then some bright young whippersnapper will point out their error in a doctoral dissertation. . . .

And Matthew is not, to put it mildly, a generally reliable text. In some ways it’s more open to question than John. John is a valid independent witness, even if the speeches pretty clearly reflect later theological understanding of the significance of what Jesus said rather than anything like a transcript of his actual words. Matthew, if the majority view is correct, is heavily dependent on Mark, and what he adds is generally pretty dubious if analyzed by normal historical methods.

Using normal historical methods, any critical historian would be strongly inclined to dismiss a story or saying that rested solely on Matthew’s evidence.

However, it is not necessary for you to base your acceptance of the exact words on the basis of the Church’s AUTHORITY; you base your acceptance of these words on the Church’s credentials as a reliable eyewitness to a historical event.

That last phrase is, from a historian’s point of view, gibberish. There isn’t a person called “the Church” who is still around today and was present in the time of Jesus. Mystically, sure. But not to the historian’s eye.

There is no sound reason to think that the differences between Matthew’s account of Jesus’ words to Peter and the parallel accounts in Mark and Luke derive from Matthew being an eye-witness or having talked to some additional eye-witness. It’s possible, of course. Lots of things are possible. Just not very probable.

Why? Well, it is impossible to corroborate every detail of an ancient text. The best that we can do is to establish general reliability. If the things we can verify do check out, the the document in question, the gospels in this case, may be assumed to be factual unless there is good reason to think otherwise. Once established as a generally reliable document, a historically favorable presumption prevails, and the burden of proof shifts to the skeptics.

That’s how apologists talk. It’s not how historians talk.

Here’s the bald truth: ancient historians don’t like texts (as sources–they may be really interesting things in their own right). They don’t trust them. They much prefer archeological evidence if they can get it.

But see my earlier points about Matthew not, in fact, being a particularly reliable text. (You consistently speak of the Gospels as a unit, but that won’t do, historically. They are four different texts.)

Alternatively, you can discount the likelihood of Jesus ever preaching the Sermon the Mount or claiming to be God or any other number of points of doctrine contained in the Gospels.

But using that approach, you will also have to discount what you think you know about Aristotle or Julius Caesar or any other ancient figure of history about whom we have far less information than we do about Jesus Christ.

Bunk. We don’t have less information about Caesar than about Christ. We have multiple independent sources for Caesar, and we have plenty of archaeological evidence such as coins. We have texts written by Caesar’s enemies. The closest we have for that with regard to Jesus are a few casual references by Romans to what Christians believed about Jesus, the already discussed passage in Josephus, and some very late and highly dubious references in the Talmud (which may not even be about “our” Jesus at all, though to be honest I think they are). We have all kinds of literature by Caesar’s contemporaries, in contrast.

However, you are being presumptuous when you speak of “what I think I know.” You don’t know what I think I know. And one thing I do think I know is that probably much of what I think I know about Caesar isn’t so, since I’m not a specialist in the period.

So no, this doesn’t cut any ice with me.

Aristotle much less so. Of course we know almost nothing about Aristotle, and most of what we have is legend.

Yet again, you have no case, and the fact that you think you do indicates that you have no idea how ruthlessly skeptical historians are.

Alexander the Great would have been a much better example. Our sources for him are actually worse than for Jesus, and (to my surprise, when I looked this up in an earlier version of this argument some years ago) we don’t even have coins. Of course we have the indirect evidence that Greek did spread all over the Middle East, that somebody named a bunch of cities “Alexandria,” and that everybody in later centuries assumed that a conqueror called Alexander had done this. So very strong reasons to think that there was a conqueror by that name. But it’s quite possible that our literary sources are largely fictional, written in Roman times to make analogies between Alexander and Rome.

This is foolishness.

No, it’s normal historical procedure, to which you are a stranger, clearly.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Historical evidence can be conclusive but not coercive.

And you are entitled to your opinions about the Spiral Argument, but at some point, you might consider keeping them to yourself. Catholic Answers stands behind the argument and their credentials exceed yours many times over.

Oh really? What credentials would those be?

Do they have any church historians on staff? Anyone with a Ph.D. at all, in fact? It doesn’t seem so.

Now this is an unpleasant subject. But you asked for it. Catholic Answers is not an institution with academic credentials. It is an apologetics institution. That is to say, a propaganda institution. It is very good at slick messaging, at packaging quotations from the Fathers to make a point, etc. It’s not very good at critical analysis of history.

And you seem to be threatening me in some way. I don’t know with what. Being kicked off the forum? That would probably be a good thing. I’m not going to be unnecessarily obnoxious just to accomplish that end, but if attacking the spiral argument gets me in trouble, it would be a great way to go. Someone has to tell the truth about this monstrous parody of an argument. You are damaging souls and confirming unbelievers in their unbelief.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Wait…I thought you said that the argument fell apart earlier over the question of historical reliability. Now you are claiming that it collapses here instead. Edwin, I’m starting to wonder about you…

No need to wonder. As I’ve said a number of times, the argument collapses many times over. It has no sound places at all that I can see. But it gets worse as it goes on.

Philosopher Richard Swineburne speaks of the “principle of testimony” - in the absence of counter evidence, we should believe what others tell us they have done or seen. Without this principle, Swineburne tells us we would have very little knowledge of anything. Most of our beliefs are based on what others have told us about geography, science or history. Most of what we know is not based upon our own direct experience but upon the testimony of reliable and knowledgeable people.

Too simplistic for a historian. Philosophers are, in their own way, very simple people, though of course they can reason abstractly far beyond most of the rest of us. I wouldn’t speak of a principle of testimony per se, but I certainly think there’s no point in being skeptical without good reason.

Good reason, however, doesn’t have to mean counter evidence per se. The question is: what explanation is most probable given everything we know? Sometimes this points toward skepticism, sometimes toward credulity. Sometimes we just don’t know, and should say so. By purely historical methods, we just don’t know for sure whether much of the NT is reliable. That gives adequate warrant to Christians to accept the NT on faith, but it doesn’t provide a basis for the spiral argument.

In the case of Matthew 16:18-19, Matthew has proven himself to be both reliable (see why we went through all that previously?)

Actually you have presented no evidence for the reliability of Matthew that I remember.

and knowledgeable (he was an apostle and an eyewitness).

No, the author of the Gospel as we have it was most likely not an eyewitness.

See what you’re doing? You can only make the argument work by assumption upon assumption upon assumption.

Therefore, in the absence of contrary evidence,

We have contrary evidence–Mark and Luke. Silence is sometimes an argument. Again, the point is that we go with comparative probability. This isn’t a criminal trial–Matthew isn’t innocent until proven guilty. It’s a question of which of many competing possibilities is most likely. (One major flaw in modern apologetics is the adoption of a “legal” approach, which gives a facade of rationality but has almost nothing to do with good historical method. A lawyer isn’t trying to find out what is most probable–he’s trying to argue a predetermined case. This is, in part, why apologetics have become such a corrupt enterprise and are so scandalous to critically minded people.)

we accept his testimony as true. The fact that Mark did not testify on this point does not detract from Matthew’s personal credibility. Would it be nice to have a second verse corroborating Matthew? Of course! It would be nice to know what happened to the Lost Colony or to Amelia Earhart, too. But history does not always provide that degree of certainty.

But the spiral argument requires it. When historians have one source to go on, who appears to be adding to a simpler account found in other sources, who frequently seems to add theological interpretation and clarification, whom even a conservative scholar like Gundry believes to be engaging in “midrash” frequently, and who does not clearly have any superior knowledge, they suspend judgment if they are feeling charitable, and dismiss the historicity of the event n question if they aren’t.

In the case of the gospels, they are better than plausible; they are likely to be true and accurate based upon ALL of the available evidence provided by many, many disciplines of study.

It’s easy to say things like that, Randy. It’s very hard to substantiate them. And your efforts so far aren’t very promising.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

It is the first step in the process of proving that the Bible is a historically reliable document. Some people argue that Jesus was merely a Legend, a Myth. Josephus dispels that false notion.

Bible 1 Skeptics 0

Randy, it’s not a game, and if it is you don’t get to write the scoring rules. You’re being silly here.

This is not about whether Jesus was a legend or a myth.

This is relevant because for many years (1900 or so, actually), there was NO independent evidence that someone named Pontius Pilate ever lived. However, archaeologists discovered the missing evidence, and now we know that the New Testament was accurate on the identity of the man who judged Jesus.

That’s not true. Tacitus, Philo, and Josephus all refer to him. Of course, even if it were true that archeology confirmed the NT on this point, that wouldn’t prove that the NT was accurate on every point. That’s the false assumption you make over and over.

But in this case you have your basic facts wrong. This is a non-issue.

Because time and again (and there are MANY more examples beyond these three), Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been proven to be reliable eyewitnesses of historical events.

Randy, no one doubts that they were written in (or maybe, in John’s case, just after) the first century, somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. And few people doubt that they intended to record events that they believed actually happened. So it would be absolutely amazing if they didn’t contain plenty of valid historical information.

You are arguing

1. The Gospels are sometimes right
2. Therefore we should assume that anything mentioned in even one Gospel is historical

Don’t you see that this isn’t logical? And it’s not sound empirical methodology. You don’t assume for sure either that a source is correct or that it isn’t. You look at all the evidence and pick the most probable interpretation, stating your degree of certainty (which in any event with only one or two sources is almost always going to be very low either way). You do not establish the “general reliability” of a source and then treat it uncritically. No source, at all, is as reliable as that, if we are treating the Bible as if it were any other ancient book. (I.e., faith might lead us to treat the Bible differently, but supposedly we have set faith aside for the purpose of the exercise.)

Consequently, historians place a higher degree of certainty upon these books as a whole

What historians? Higher than what?

because the credibility of the authors has been established objectively by verifiable proof from science. The benefit of the doubt now goes to the New Testament while the burden of proof shifts to the skeptics.

Somebody has badly misled you as to the state of the scholarship in this field. . . . .

You are in error here. It is not necessary to establish each and every detail with absolute certainty.

Straw man. It isn’t about absolute certainty. Although the spiral argument seems to require that. It’s about relative probability.

When the police investigate a crime, they are able to determine the truthfulness of a witness by things such as the accurate recollection of a shirt the criminal was wearing or the weather or the sound of a passing train. When these sorts of details prove true, the police have greater confidence in believing the things that the witness says which cannot be proved but depend only on their word.

Yes, and frequently they wind up executing innocent people based on these methods.

It’s all about relative probability. Yes, of course the more you can show a source to be reliable, the more you can trust it when there isn’t clear corroboration. But it doesn’t work in the blanket, automatic way you are claiming. The primary emphasis is always, for a historian, on the specific reasons to trust or mistrust a specific claim. And you are, again, just completely out to lunch on how historians generally regard the Gospels. There is a range of opinion, of course. My own views are toward the conservative end of the scale, with folks like N. T. Wright and a bit to the right of someone like Raymond Brown, who was himself a moderately conservative scholar. Yes, I know people here regard him as a flaming liberal. Which, again, demonstrates the radical gap between the world of Catholic apologetics and the world of historical scholarship.

No, it also proves that John had an eye for detail and was concerned with recording accurate history.

Definitely John is more historical than 19th-century critics assumed. We agree there.

Actually, I have been doing some study in this area recently which is why A) I’m confident in what I am saying and B) I just happened to be primed for this discussion. Maybe God had me studying these methodologies just so you could hear them.

Oh really? God wants me to give up on Christianity altogether?

Or is God just trying and testing me?

Or maybe God wants me to stop posting on this forum and stop talking to conservative Catholics generally:shrug:

Certainly nothing you have said inclines me to think that the spiral argument has any value. You keep demonstrating, over and over, that you do not know what historical evidence looks like and how it works.

 

[Contarini]

Edwin, you have this backwards. Although a few crackpots have taken shots at the Spiral Argument over the years, no one from CA has ever bothered to respond. CA has a long history with this famous tract, and clearly, no one has ever refuted it because CA has never had to revise or defend it.

Of course they don’t bother to respond. I don’t expect them to.

There is no point arguing with them. Their identities are bound up in this nonsense. Probably there is no point arguing with you either. But I had some hope you might see reason. And perhaps at least people like Lucy can see these posts and be encouraged rather than being driven away from the faith (whether Catholic or generally Christian).

For the lurkers: the Christian faith does not stand or fall based on these kinds of bogus arguments. There is abundant evidence for Christian faith from all kinds of sources. But it doesn’t work this way. You can’t establish the “general reliability” of the Gospels, move from there to proving a specific story to be accurate, and move from there to proving a specific later theological interpretation to be accurate. It’s not as linear than that. It’s a question of what story most makes sense of the universe. Historical evidence is one part of that, but an important part. That’s the proper role for the valid points Randy has made about the general historicity of the Gospels.

Edwin

 

[Randy_Carson]

It’s easy to say things like that, Randy. It’s very hard to substantiate them. And your efforts so far aren’t very promising.

Edwin

I’m torn.

Do I really want to put in the time necessary at this point to respond fully to each and every one of the points you assert in your posts?

Or do I simply back away from the discussion because I can see that your views about what we know and don’t know, what we can know and can’t know with reasonable certainty are very different from my own?

I don’t know.

You made a couple of decent points here and there…yes, I should have chosen Alexander the Great instead of Julius Caesar, yes, I did not mention Matthew specifically when I was laying out the case for historical accuracy of the NT (though I think the extra-biblical evidence shows Matthew to be reliable), but no, I don’t think I have made all of the assumptions and errors which you assert.

Obviously, you have issues with the CA article - you managed to get that message across. I just don’t find your objections to it to be all that strong. And I find easier to place my confidence in both CA and the other authors with whom I am familiar than in you. No offense intended. Credibility has to be earned, and CA has paid its dues, IMO. I’m still waiting for a copy of your book!

At any rate, I think I will retire from the field. Victory is yours if you wish to claim it. For my part, I may spend some time reviewing the exchange and preparing for the inevitable next round because thus far, I do not see that either of us is likely to change our position any time soon.