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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig today the Doctrine of Revelation Part 8. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org the last time we met, we talked about a theory of biblical inspiration that would give us a verbal, plenary and truly confluent word of God that would make sense of the doctrine of inspiration found in the Bible. Now this raises then the question of biblical authority and inerrancy. And we saw that inerrancy is properly defined in terms not simply of what the Bible says, but but in terms of what the Bible teaches. And that the Bible, therefore, in virtue of being God's Word, ought to be thought to be inerrant in all that it teaches. Now, this doctrine confronts difficulties of various sorts, and these are principally three. There are two listed in your outline, but I'm going to add a third category that is recently come to more significance in my mind. First would be simple inconsistencies within Scripture where the Scriptures seem to contradict themselves. A good example of this in the New Testament would be with respect to the accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot. In Matthew chapter 7:27 rather, and verse 5, we read what happens to Judas after he had betrayed Jesus. 275 says, throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went out and hanged himself. So Judas committed suicide by hanging, hanging, according to Matthew. But now when you turn over to the account that Luke gives In Acts chapter one, you find a different story. In Acts 1:1819, Luke adds this parenthetical comment, now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akeldama, that is, field of blood. So here we have a different account of the death of Judas where Judas uses the money to buy a field and then falls and has this fatal injury that ends his life. And so this would be simply one example of apparent inconsistencies in the Bible that would challenge the doctrine that the Bible is inerrant. The second example would be what we might call factual mistakes. And these would not be inconsistencies within Scripture, but rather mistakes that other external sources would be inconsistent with. So, for example, in Luke 2, 1, he talks about a man named Quirinius who he identifies as the governor of Syria during the time of of the census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. And he says in Chapter two and verse one. This was the first enrollment when Quirinius was the governor of Syria. And this contradicts what we know about Syrian leaders in extra biblical material. Quirinius was in fact a governor of Syria, but it wasn't until some years later, later, that Quirinius governed Syria and Luke seems to have gotten the date wrong. So this would be an example of what we might call a factual mistake in Scripture. Recently I've been impressed, however, with the number of non Christians who reject Scripture because of what we might call ethical errors. That is to say, they reject the moral teachings of Scripture as being mistaken. Now, sometimes non theists will incorrectly use these objections as an argument against the truth of Christianity or even against the truth of theism. But clearly, if there are mistakes in the Bible of an ethical nature, that doesn't mean that atheism is true. I don't know of any atheist philosopher who would use as his argument that God does not exist, that there's some mistaken ethical teaching in the Bible. Similarly, it doesn't show that Jesus Christ wasn't the son of God who died for your sins and was raised from the dead. Rather, what these would challenge, and this is why we're considering them here, is the biblical doctrine of inerrancy. The claim would be that this shows that. That these passages in Scripture are not in fact inspired by God, or that the Bible isn't inerrant if it is inspired by God because it contains these ethical errors. What am I thinking of here? Well, the perhaps most famous example is the slaughter of the Canaanites in the Old Testament where God is represented as commanding the Israeli armies to go into Canaan and, and to kill everybody, not only the men, but also the women and even the little children. Very many people will say such a command could not possibly have been given by the good and loving God. This is inconsistent with the nature of God. And so these stories of the conquest of Canaan are either legends about the founding of Israel that never really happened, or if the events actually happened, the Israelites, carried away by their nationalistic fervor, thought that God had commanded them to do this, when in fact he had not. In either case, I think you can see that what this objection properly challenges would be the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It would say that these stories are not true. Similarly, in the Old Testament, the institution of slavery or the subjugation of women is troubling to many people. Now, if it's pointed out that in fact slavery in the Old Testament is not at all like slavery that we're familiar with that was in the American antebellum South, that in fact in ancient Israel, slavery was really a kind of anti poverty program since they didn't have government welfare programs. A man could keep his family together, preserve his dignity by selling himself into slavery until he worked off his debts and then could be freed. So that slavery was actually a kind of anti poverty program that had the advantages of self respect, hard work and keeping the family together. But as I say, if you point that out, they will say, nevertheless, the way slaves are treated, like the way women are treated in the Old Testament, indicates that they're not thought to be equal in moral value to men. The penalties for crimes that injured slaves are less than the penalties of those same crimes when they're done against a freedman or a woman will have to offer certain sacrifices or make certain observances that are greater than if a man needed to do so. And so these indicate a lower view of the personhood of slaves and women that we would find very troubling because we believe in the equal intrinsic value of all human beings. And it's not just the Old Testament. One of the major objections to people in our contemporary culture is the Bible's prohibitions of homosexual activity. For many people, this is just deeply wrong to say that persons who have a homosexual disposition that they did not choose and cannot get rid of cannot live happy and fulfilling lives, but must be celibate for the rest of their existence through no fault of their own. And so among non believers, the Bible's prohibitions of home homosexual activity are often regarded as teachings that could not genuinely be from God. These must represent ethical mistakes in the Bible, and Jesus himself isn't exempted from these objections. For example, Jesus teachings on divorce and remarriage go down very hard today. Look at what Jesus says in Mark 10:11, Mark 10:11. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Here Jesus prohibits divorce, but then also remarriage. And this command is widely ignored in the Christian church today. It's not just non Christians that find this hard to swallow very widely. In the church there are Christian believers who once were married who have suffered a divorce, but now have found someone else whom they believe God has for them and they remarry. And sometimes at least those marriages are much happier and work out better. So it might be claimed this is an ethical mistake on Jesus part. This teaching cannot be right. That it is wrong to divorce and then to remarry another. So I think you can see that these ethical errors, as well as factual mistakes and inconsistencies would all be reasons not for denying the existence of God or the person and work of Christ. But they would be reasons for calling into question biblical inerrancy. These would be seen as human mistakes that have worked their way into Scripture. And so while Scripture is inspired by God, it is God's word. Nevertheless, it does contain these sorts of mistakes. And I think we have to admit that anyone reading the Bible would not arrive at a doctrine of inerrancy inductively. He wouldn't read the Scriptures and finding no mistakes, conclude that therefore the Bible is inerrant. He would, on the basis of difficulties like these. And others say it probably has these mistakes in it or these errors in it. But I think that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is not based on inductive reasoning. Rather, it is a deductive argument based upon the attitude of Jesus to the Hebrew Scriptures, what we today call the Old Testament. When you look at Jesus attitude toward the Hebrew Scriptures, he called them the Word of God, and he treated them as completely reliable and trustworthy and true. And on the basis of Jesus attitude toward the Scriptures, we as his disciples also embrace that teaching. So this argument might be summarized in the following way. Two parts to this first part, whatever God teaches is true. This is because God is a morally perfect being. He is the greatest conceivable being and therefore no deceiver. God is not a deceiver. And so if he teaches you to believe something, that which he teaches you is true. Second, historical, prophetic and other evidences show that Jesus is God. And this is where you would introduce your typical apologetic arguments and Christian evidences for the person of Christ. 3. Therefore, whatever Jesus teaches is true, if Jesus is God and whatever God teaches is true, then what Jesus teaches us to believe is true. The second part of the argument then picks up as its first premise the conclusion of the first argument. Whatever Jesus teaches is true. And then the crucial premise. Number two. Jesus taught that the Scriptures are are the inerrant Word of God. And here one would simply look at how Jesus regarded the Old Testament. And if you're interested in exploring this in greater detail, let me recommend the book by John Wenham called Christ and the Bible where he does an extensive study of Jesus attitude to toward the Hebrew Scriptures. And then it follows number three. Therefore, the Scriptures are the inerrant word of God. So the belief in biblical inerrancy is not something that's arrived at deductively. Inductively. It's not something arrived at inductively. It is a deductive inference based upon the person and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the inerrant word of God, and he is our teacher, and therefore we should follow him in his teaching. John 10:34,36 gives a nice summary of Jesus attitude toward the Hebrew Scriptures. John 10:34, 36. Here Jesus is disputing with his Jewish opponents, and Jesus answered them. Is it not written in your law? I said you are gods? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken. Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world? You are blaspheming here. Jesus quotes from Psalm 82:6. He refers to it as the Word of God. His argument is based upon a single word, the word Gods, which is found in that passage. And he says that Scripture cannot be broken. And the sense seemed to be here that it's reliable. It can't be just annulled or set aside. So what that means is that we believe in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy on the basis of Christ's attitude toward the Old Testament. It's been said, I think quite rightly, that we don't believe in Christ because we believe in the Bible. Rather, we believe in the Bible because we believe in Christ. It's because we believe in Jesus and his divinity and lordship that we believe what he taught about the Old Testament. Now the question then arises, well, then how do we. Well, let me entertain any questions at that point before I suggest how we should then approach these difficulties, inconsistencies, factual mistakes, ethical errors. Any question about the basis for belief in biblical inerrancy. Yes, Robbie.
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B
Hey, Dr. Craig.
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Hi.
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C
My question was about act the Acts 2 verse.
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A
Wouldn't it be.
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C
I'm pretty sure that they conferred together, the priests, and they bought the field and then he died in it? Or like in. In that realm of events that they bought the field with his money when they threw it back at him, or.
- [18:21]
A
Yeah. What about the hanging himself and the falling down and gushing out?
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C
I just wanted to. I just wanted to ask you about that because. What did you say? That he bought the field?
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Well, as I read the.
- [18:35]
C
So he bought the field indirectly. That's what my question was.
- [18:38]
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That would be, as I understand it, an attempt to harmonize the passage. Right. Acts 1:18 says, this man Judas, that is to say, bought a field with the reward of his wickedness. Whereas the Matthew account says he took the money and threw it into the temple, he gave it back, he didn't want it. Now, you could say that what happened, as you said, was it was done indirectly that they bought the field. And so Luke is just using here a device of compression to say it was his money or something. And I think that's a very legitimate approach to handling biblical difficulties. But we'll talk about that next. How do we then deal with these sorts of difficulties? But what I'm wanting to first explore is why should we believe in inerrancy at all? Why not believe that the Bible is God's word, it is inspired by God, but then not go the next step and say, well, therefore I believe it's inerrant. And I would say on the basis of what I just explained, Jesus attitude toward the Scriptures that he himself had. Okay, anybody else? Bruce?
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B
Well, we had a little bit of this when you were gone, but, you know, in. Or maybe more than a little bit. But I think there's some situations that are where these are reported situations are reported where there's facets of it in one account and left out in others and other elements added. So there is harmonization. So I think we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should allow for, broadly for harmonization.
- [20:34]
A
Sure.
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B
Well, like in the case of, of Judas and his hanging, some have suggested he hung himself and because after a while the ropes and everything deteriorated and he was, he was, he was bloated. He was bloated and whatever that, that when this happened, then he, he fell and from that tree and then. But there's other, we, we talked about other things, other situations like the anointing at Bethany. But in reading that, it seems like there's a harmonization that they assume that one side of it assumes, the argument assumes that the banquet took place immediately when he came to Bethany rather than maybe some days hence.
- [21:21]
A
Yes. Well, you're getting into the solution again to the difficulties, and I'm going to say something about that next. But notice this is why I call them difficulties. They are difficulties that we confront in the text. But then there may be ways, as you've just explained, of dealing with these difficulties in a way that is consistent with Jesus teaching. So the question will be, if we can't handle these difficulties, if they prove so recalcitrant that we think the Bible has an error in it, which premise in this argument, then do we give up? And I'll say something about that later, because I don't think we're to that point. So I think that this gives good deductive grounds for believing in biblical inerrancy. And then we'll have to deal with these difficulties in various ways, as both of you have already suggested. All right, any other question about why a Christian should believe in biblical inerrancy at all? Yes,
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B
along those lines, in second Peter three, Peter actually calls Paul's writing scripture, his letters, as being scripture.
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A
Let's have that verse, second Peter, what is the verse three?
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B
And it's. Well, it's kind of hard to read through, but 14 through 17.
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A
Let me just get it here. Second Peter 3, 14
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B
or really 15, I guess.
- [23:05]
A
Right. I'm going to talk about this passage when we get to the question of the canon of Scripture. But this is a remarkable verse. He says, our beloved brother Paul wrote you according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. So here this author knows the Pauline epistles, right? He refers to the letters of Paul that he has written. And then he makes this interesting comment about Paul's letters, that there are some things in them hard to understand. Already in that day they were having a challenge which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. And then this stunning phrase, as they do the other scriptures, he's placing the epistles of Paul on the same letter as these Old Testament scriptures that Jesus said are the word of God, therefore absolutely trustworthy. Here we have at least an inner biblical witness to very, very early acceptance of the letters of Paul as canonical as scripture, inspired and therefore trustworthy. Now, I think there was another comment over here. No. Okay. Yes, here.
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C
Hello, Dr. Craig, good morning. I saw an interview with Richard Swinburne on Closer to Truth about this, and his comments were very interesting. He said that he was asked the question about biblical inerrancy. And he said, well, when it comes to the Muslim religion of Islam, he said that the revelation is the book, like the book is the revelation of God.
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A
The Quran.
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C
Yes, but he said. But with the. But he said, with the Christian faith, the revelation is not the Bible. It's really Jesus Christ as taught by the church. And then he said something I found interesting. He said that the early church fathers and some other later theologians agreed that there could be some things that the early writers wrote down that factually we know because they're. They were ignorant people about some things, so they got some things wrong. But that wouldn't make the Bible not authoritative. It's just. But the real revelation Is Jesus, he's really what's infallible? And I didn't know if, like, okay, so is he saying that the Bible is still the word of God? Or, like, would he still agree with that? Or. I just didn't know what your thoughts were on that.
- [25:42]
A
This is a common move among contemporary theologians, and it's one that I disagree with. And I want to refer you back to an earlier lesson where we dealt with this topic, where God's special revelation in his living Word is Jesus Christ, who is called the Word of God in John 1. But then it seems to me there is also this propositional revelation in Scripture. And so you have in two Timothy 3, 16, where he says that the Scriptures are God breathed, they are inspired of God, and that this is a property of the text. So I don't think that we can escape or shouldn't escape the problem by saying that the Bible is not special revelation. It seems to me that that's the way Jesus regarded the Hebrew Scriptures. And I think that that's what the Scriptures teach about themselves. So the fact that Jesus is the living word of God doesn't mean there isn't also a written word of God that is the Bible. Yes, Brad. So now I want to try and reconcile that when good Christians study the Word and they study areas which, in my opinion, the genre is historical.
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C
Yes.
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A
And they disagree with it. They call it myth and poetry and not truth. And I'll just say the Genesis one. Ah, well. Oh, boy. I don't want to open up that can of words. Oh, come on, come on. Because we dealt with in Defender Series 2 in the doctrine of Creation, where, you remember, we spent months looking at Genesis chapter one and asking ourselves, what kind of literature is this? How is it to be interpreted? And so forth. I'll just refer you to those lectures rather than, as I say, rehearse them again here. And the question would be, Brad, are these people being dishonest in saying that this is a genre of literature that isn't meant to be taken as history? And I certainly think that's an open question with regard to Genesis 1. All right, well, then, how should we approach these biblical difficulties when we do encounter them? Well, obviously, we should first of all try to resolve the difficulty. We ought to try to see if there isn't some solution. And here, crucial to the question will be the one that Brad just raised, namely, the literary genre of the literature we're dealing with, as well as the techniques that were employed by ancient writers in, for example, the writing of history. And this is where Michael Lacona has done such good work in comparing the Gospels to the lives of, of Greek and Romans composed by Plutarch, an ancient historian. And Mike has been able to show that many of the same techniques that ancient historians like Plutarch used in writing ancient lives are also employed by the Evangelists. And yet they weren't errors or mistakes on Plutarch's part. These were accepted as part of that sort of writing. And so he mentioned such things as compression, where a narrative would be compacted. Sometimes this is called telescoping. You think of a telescope when it's extended, but then you can collapse that telescope and it all folds up into just one segment. And I think you see something like that, for example, in the Easter narratives. In the Gospel of Luke, if you read the Easter story in Luke, it looks as though it all happens on the same day. Luke doesn't even have evening and the next day come before he gets to the end of the account. And yet when you turn the page and you read the first chapter of the Book of Acts, you find that Jesus appeared to his disciples over 40 days before the Ascension. So Luke himself knows that this didn't all happen on Easter Sunday, that it spread out over a period of 40 days. But he compacts it, he telescopes it down. And the person who is reading this in an unsympathetic way without understanding these literary devices, might think that Luke is erred here when Luke himself knows that it happened over a long period of time or displacement. And I mentioned here the stories of the cleansing of the temple in the Synoptics being during the Passion Week. But in John, early on, transferral of sayings from one person to another, simplification of a narrative spotlighting certain persons. All of these are legitimate techniques that ancient historians used. On top of these techniques, you have the flexibility of oral tradition. Editorial redaction by an author for clarity's sake, paraphrasing. You remember that in that day they didn't even have such thing as quotation marks. So that these red letter editions of the Gospels are utterly misleading in thinking that these are the very words uttered by Jesus. What we're reading, even in the Greek, is a translation of Aramaic that Jesus spoke. So these aren't the very words of Jesus. And especially as I say, they don't have direct speech and indirect speech very often. They will blur into each other. So in dealing with these sorts of inconsistencies, I think first of all we need to understand the type of literature we're dealing with and then the techniques that ancient authors used in writing. And a lot of these difficulties will simply vanish when we do that. They turn out not to be errors at all. Or on top of that, we might try harmonization. And this shouldn't be despised. I think sometimes harmonizations are proposed and to deal with these other elements, such as compression, displacement, simplification, and there you do get brittle and artificial and implausible harmonizations. But that doesn't mean that harmonization is utterly out of account, that it can never work. Sometimes life is complicated and in fact harmonization may, may hold. One very striking example of this was given by the former dean of the seminary at which I taught, Dr. Kenneth Koncer. He told the story of how he received a phone call one day from his brother that their mother had been hit by a bus in downtown Chicago and was being rushed to the hospital. Well, sometime later, Dr. Conser received a call from the hospital reporting that his mother had been killed immediately in an automobile crash. And he thought, what is this? The brother was there, he knew what happened. And yet this was an official report from the hospital. But how could you reconcile these? Well, they later found out that his mother had in fact been hit by a bus when she was crossing the street in downtown Chicago. She was picked up by the ambulance and was being rushed to the hospital when the ambulance was involved in an automobile collision. And she was immediately killed. So that both stories turned out to be true. And yet, as Dr. Kantzer said, if I were to propose this as a harmonization for dealing with some biblical inconsistency, I would be laughed out of the room. It shows that sometimes life can be complicated and in fact there may be a harmonization, such as in the case of the death of Judas that was mentioned. And then finally, for dealing with these inconsistencies, we have to take into account remember that inerrancy is what the Bible teaches. That doesn't mean that there can't be elements in Scripture that are not accurate, but they're not part of the teaching of Scripture. Those would be ways of dealing with inconsistencies. Now, whether or not that will be fully successful remains to be seen. I'm suggesting that this is simply a technique for how you would then approach these sorts of difficulties. What I'll do next time is share how one might approach so called factual mistakes and ethical errors in Scripture for the person who believes on the basis of Jesus teaching in biblical inerrancy. But to close the class today, I'd like to read a benediction from the book of Romans and invite us all to bow our heads, as I do so now to him who is able to strengthen you according to the Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages, but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God, be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen. The copyright for the content of this recording is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to Reasonable.