Concerning Revelation and the Bible
4/96, soc.religion.christian: Reply to Hedgehog
In a recent post, I asked Darryl Ochsner: "What does it mean to say that a collection of documents as rich and diverse as those found in the Bible claims to be the Word of God?" To which Hedgehog replied:
Why does a single author vs a multiple authorship change any of the issues? Let's say that I write a book all by myself (i.e. no human collaborators). Isn't it still possible that a) none of it is inspired by God b) that some but not all is inspired by God c) that every word of it was inspired by God? I just don't see how the multiple authors of the Bible disprove its inspiration. Perhaps Mr. Talbott would care to expand on this issue.
Thanks for your comment and for your question, Hedgehog. I quite agree with your statement of the three possibilities in a), b), and c), but you have, I think, misunderstood my question. I was not asking what it might mean to say that the Bible is the Word of God, and I certainly had no intention of trying to "disprove its inspiration." Merely asking a question could hardly disprove anything. I was asking instead what it might mean to say that the Bible as a whole claims to be the Word of God. What would it mean to say that the Bible as a whole claims anything whatsoever?
For any collection of texts and sources, one possibility is that, despite multiple authors and voices, God has inspired every word of every utterance in the collection (assuming, of course, that we have given sense to the idea of inspiration). But if a rich and diverse collection of texts is put together and one of the texts claims inspiration for itself, in what sense has the collection as a whole claimed inspiration? And if text A claims inspiration for texts B, C, and D, but does not claim inspiration for itself, the same question arises again: In what sense has the collection as a whole claimed inspiration for itself? You see the point. If you have a rich variety of texts and sources, one possibility, as you point out yourself, is that God has inspired some of them in a special way but not all of them. So what would it mean to say that the collection as a whole claims inspiration for itself? What text or source speaks for the collection as a whole, particularly if the collection is put together well after the individual pieces were written? More specifically, what text in the Bible speaks for the Bible as a whole?
-Tom
10/9/96, Society of Christian Philosophers: Reply to Steve Cowan
Hello Steve. Fancy meeting you in this discussion group! I trust that all is well and, in particular, that your dissertation is going well. At the risk of getting myself sucked into a discussion that I have little time to pursue right now, I thought I would raise a couple of questions.
In response to Wes, you recently wrote:
Of course, Paul and I would deny your second premise, to wit, that God is unjust if he imputes Adam's sin to newborms. Appeal to your so-called intuitions all you want. We have Scripture---the sure and certain Word of God which must, by definition, overrule and correct our intuitions.
I presume that by "Scripture" you mean the collection of writings contained in the Bible (as opposed, for example, to the Qur'an). So here are my questions.
(1) Where in the Bible do you find the claim that God imputes Adam's sin to newborn babies?
(2) If the Bible did include such a claim and did insist upon the justice of such imputation, why would you regard it as more reliable in this matter than Wes' intuitions?
I fully appreciate that you may already have addressed such questions previously. If so, then you might just direct me to where you have addressed them, or you might send me an e-mail copy. Thanks.
-Tom
10/15/96, Society of Christian Philosophers: Reply to Steve Cowan
I recently put to Steve Cowan the following two questions:
(1) Where in the Bible do you find the claim that God imputes Adam's sin [or guilt] to newborn babies?
(2) If the Bible did include such a claim and did insist upon the justice of such imputation, why would you regard it as more reliable in this matter than Wes' intuitions?
In my most recent post on inherited guilt, I took up Steve's reply to the first question, but not his reply to the second. So here I propose to take up his reply to the second. Steve wrote:
I certainly agree with Wes that our moral intuitions are important guides for judging moral issues. But, they are not infallible. The Scriptures themselves tell us that the heart is deceitful above all things. We are especially incompetent when it comes to assessing our own moral worth. So, if we have good reason to believe that the bible is the Word of God (and I think we do), and this word informs us of our capacity for self-deceit and the fallibility of our intuitions, then our intuitions must take a backseat to the teaching of Scripture.
Hello again, Steve:
The difficulty I have with the above paragraph is two-fold. First, the question I have asked does not concern the reliability of our intuitions in general, nor does it concern our competence in "assessing our own moral worth"; it concerns only the reliability of Wes' specific intuition--the widespread intuition--that it would be unjust to impute the guilt of Adam's sin to newborn infants. So if Paul did teach such a doctrine, as I have already argued he did not, then the question we would have to consider is this: Why should we regard Paul's teaching in this matter as more reliable than Wes' intuition? Or put it this way: Why not regard Wes' intuition as a more reliable source of revelation than Paul in this matter? (How about "Prophet Wes"? It has kind of a nice ring to it, doesn't it?)
Second, consider more closely your statement that "if we have good reason to believe that the Bible is the Word of God (and I think we do) . . .," then our intuitions must take a back seat to the teaching of Scripture." Isn't that merely redundant? If we have good reason to believe that Paul's teaching on some matter is more reliable than Wes' intuition, then indeed Wes' intuition must take a back seat, so to speak, to this teaching. But by the same token, if we have good reason (as I think we do) to believe that Wes' intuition (on the matter in question) is more reliable than anyone's teaching, whether it be Paul's or anyone else's, that God justly imputes guilt to newborn babies, then such teaching must take a back seat, so to speak, to Wes' intuition. In short, if two propositions are logically inconsistent, then any grounds for accepting one are indeed grounds for rejecting the other. But that's a bloody truism and does nothing to help us decide which is more reliable: Paul's (alleged) teaching that God justly imputes Adam's guilt to newborn babies, or Wes' intuition that he does not.
Now I'm not going to ask, as I believe Wes already has, why you believe that the Bible is the (inerrant) Word of God. Whatever your reasons, they are no doubt many and complex. What I do wonder about, however, I can perhaps best explain this way. For my own part, I would reject the authority of any author, whether it be Paul or anyone else, who declared that God has commanded us to torture babies for our own pleasure. I find it impossible to imagine, in other words, any historical consideration, however miraculous or seemingly wondrous, that would convince me of the divinely inspired character of such a teaching. And I wonder whether you would feel as I do about this particular matter. If not, then I must ask: What conceivable sort of historical consideration would convince you that such teaching is divinely inspired? But if, as I suspect, you would feel the same as I do in the matter of torturing babies, then I must also ask: Are you not here relying on your own moral intuitions, even as Wes and I might rely on ours when we reject the supposed teaching that God imputes guilt to newborn babies, restricts his mercy to a chosen few, and (even worse than a command to torture babies) predestines some persons to eternal perdition?
-Tom
10/31/96, Society of Christian Philosophers: Reply to Steve Cowan
Hi Steve,
I'm writing to introduce you to a (mythical) hiking buddy of mine, an old-timer whom I shall call Jake. I thought you might like to meet Jake because he absolutely agrees with you on the matter of biblical inerrancy; indeed, he is utterly impatient with my own view that the doctrine of inerrancy is theologically useless. But though Jake agrees with you on the matter of inerrancy, he also agrees with me on the matter of inherited guilt; he is no less impatient with "the blasphemous idea," as he would call it, that infants are born guilty than he is with the idea of a fallible Bible. So I thought it might be fun to get his reaction to some of your own appeals to the inerrancy of Scripture, particularly as you have made them in support of an idea that he rejects, namely that of inherited guilt.
The first passage I showed him was the following, where you claim that Wes' intuitions must take a back seat to the teaching of Scripture. You wrote:
I certainly agree with Wes that our moral intuitions are important guides for judging moral issues. But, they are not infallible. The Scriptures themselves tell us that the heart is deceitful above all things. We are especially incompetent when it comes to assessing our own moral worth. So, if we have good reason to believe that the bible is the Word of God (and I think we do), and this word informs us of our capacity for self-deceit and the fallibility of our intuitions, then our intuitions must take a backseat to the teaching of Scripture.
I'm sorry to report, however, that Jake was unimpressed. "Look," he said, his voice becoming shrill, "the moral law written on our heart and expressed in some of our most basic moral intuitions is also a revelation from God, and it is no less infallible than the Bible. So how can one infallible revelation take a back seat to another? And we also have, by the way, an infallible revelation in nature. You know that; you've led backpacks into the wilderness! Indeed, if the moral law and the teachings of nature were not also infallible revelations, then neither would Paul be an infallible authority, for it is Paul who declared that God himself, the very God who cannot lie and did not lie in the Bible, has written his law on our hearts and has revealed himself in nature."
"Hmm," I gulped. "But isn't Steve right about the human heart being terribly deceitful? Our minds are finite and our judgments fallible; surely there is no dispute about that. And isn't it possible that our sinful nature has also corrupted our reasoning about justice?"
"Yes, of course. Mr. Cowan is quite right about that. We have an infallible revelation in nature, but our reasoning is so screwed up that we don't always interpret it right. And similarly for the revelation of the moral law. It is sometimes hard to know whether our present under- standing of its precepts, not to mention our efforts at applying them to specific situations, accurately reflect the infallible revelation within; that's why we need a set of procedures to make these infallible precepts clear to ourselves and to make sure that our overall interpretation of them is consistent.
"But it is no different," he continued, "with the Bible. Isn't it just as hard to know whether our present understanding of biblical truth accurately reflects the infallible revelation that God has provided?--and isn't that why, once again, we need a set of procedures to make biblical doctrines clear to ourselves and to make sure that our overall interpretation of them is consistent? I mean, look at the bewildering variety of interpretations that exist. Every sect or denomination, every epoch, every culture seems to have a quite different interpretation of even very basic doctrines. The Western Church, for example, thinks it finds a substitutionary theory of Christ's atonement in the New Testament, but the Eastern Church is just as confident that no such doctrine exists there. Thank God, our most basic moral intuitions seem to be more stable (and more widely shared) than that!"
At this point, Jake paused for a moment. "Look at this!" he exclaimed suddenly, with a look of triumph on his face, his hand shaking as he pointed to the following passage:
We have, IMO, overwhelming reason to accept the Scriptures as divine revelation, and no reason to believe that Wes' intuition (which is not and has not been universally shared by the human race) is certainly true. So, I win! ;-)
"See, that's just what I mean. Mr. Cowan is comparing apples and oranges. I know, you think that's okay: Apples and oranges are both examples of fruit; they both have seeds; and they have a lot else in common as well. But you know what I mean. Mr. Cowan is comparing Wes' intuition, as he now grasps and interprets it, with some idealized conception of Scripture. One could just as easily compare Mr. Cowan's *interpretation* of a doctrine he thinks he finds in Scripture--like the idea of inherited guilt--with some idealized conception of the revelation written on Wes' heart. And then one could argue as follows: `We have overwhelming reason (included everything Mr. Cowan would say on behalf of the Bible) to believe that the moral law written on Wes' heart is a divine revelation, and no reason to believe that Mr. Cowan's interpretation of Paul (which is but one of many) is certainly true. So you win, Mr. Talbert."
Once again Jake paused, and I thought he might be finished. But he wasn't. His face suddenly reddened as he blurted out, "The main thing is that all this talk about the deceitful human heart cuts in two directions. You showed me one of Mr. Wes' posts, and I have no doubt that this man's heart is very deceitful indeed! But why suppose that Mr. Cowan's heart is so pristine pure? Sure, he seems like an exceptionally honest and sincere young feller. But if Mr. Wes' deceitful heart could distort his understanding of justice, why couldn't Mr. Cowan's deceitful heart--or perhaps the deceitful hearts of those from whom he learned his theology--distort his understanding of Scripture? Look at history, for God's sake. Over the years, deceitful human beings have appealed to the Bible in defense of slavery, racism, the exploitation of women, the burning at the stake of young women (charged with witchcraft), the murder of heretics, and even protracted torture. I'll bet you that human deceit has done a lot more to distort and undermine a proper interpretation of the Bible than it has to distort and undermine our most basic intuitions about justice. And besides....."
Just then the telephone rang, which is probably a good thing because Jake was starting to repeat himself, and he was called away to do some campaigning on behalf of the environment. I was therefore unable to press him on the theological usefulness of an infallible text. But in any event, as you can see, Jake is no ordinary hiker. So Steve, meet Jake; and Jake, meet Steve. Now have at it guys!
-Tom