Here’s my new blog: http://micahcobb.com/blog.

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My estimation of Ehrman’s logical skills has been reduced by his appearance on “The Colbert Report” a few weeks ago. Here is the clip.

 
The only argument that Ehrman gave (the lack of arguments had more to do with the nature of Colbert’s show than with Ehrman himself) seemed to be about the difference representations of the crucifixion narratives in Mark and Luke. Ehrman claimed that these were “conflicting” since the Gospel of Mark displayed Jesus as being in agony and confused about why he was being crucified, and the Gospel of Luke portrayed Jesus as caring more about the women watching the crucifixion. Ehrman said that Jesus didn’t “seem” to be in agony in Luke.

First, Luke’s gospel does not discuss Jesus’ agony, which is not the same as displaying the person as not being in agony. Concluding the latter takes a little more work than that. (Similarly, if I tell you a story about myself but don’t include any details about what clothes I am wearing, it would be ridiculous to assume I was naked during the story.) Sometimes you’ll hear a woman talking about giving birth, but she’ll be talking about the way her husband acted or her joy at finally having the baby. The woman won’t mention the pain. Surely it would be foolish to assume that, therefore, the birth was painless.

Second, the mere fact that Jesus was being crucified would have indicated to the readers of Luke that Jesus was in pain. To support the assertion that the Gospel of Luke implies Jesus was not in agony because it doesn’t mention it, one would need to show that Luke would have displayed Jesus in agony if he thought Jesus had been in agony. Granted I haven’t read Ehrman’s book, but there does seem to be much evidence in the text to demonstrate one way or the other. (Of course, this involves exegesis more than textual criticism; the latter is Ehrman’s field, and he hasn’t any claims to expertise in the former. So there are other authorities I’ll trust about this.)

Third, and this is what Colbert tried to get at towards the end, differing accounts are not necessarily contradictory accounts. Logically, there is no contradiction between “On the cross, Jesus was in pain” (Mark’s message and confused about the reason he was being killed) and “On the cross, Jesus cared about the women watching him.”

Anyway, I’m sure Ehrman’s critiques are more substantive in the book. I just thought I’d comment on the video.

Ben Witheringon has posted a lengthy review of Ehrman’s latest book, Jesus, Interrupted. Here is the first of several posts that constitute the review.

Our modern culture expects mercy from God. People either do not believe that they are sinful. Or they do not believe that their sins merit death. Either way, how can the gospel be preached if the hearers are firm believers in one of these two views?

The church has to learn to teach effectively the sinfulness of mankind. Otherwise the mercifulness of God will never be known.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” –Matt. 11:28-30

It would do us well in the church, when so many congregations are clamoring to make Christ easy to follow so they can attract ever larger numbers, that the same Christ that takes our burdens is the same Christ who gives us a cross.

“And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.” –Matt. 11:6

Is the Christ we hear preached in the churches today one whom people could take offense at? I haven’t heard it.

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. -Colossians 2:14-15

Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers of this word. Every Christian has been taught that. Even more, every Christian knows that the way he triumphed was through the cross. Jesus was killed on the cross, the powers of this world gained the upperhand–but they only gained the upperhand in the view of the world. To everyone except a small group of Jesus’ disciples, the principalities and powers had won. Jesus was killed. Their hopes of a new Israel were shattered.

Imagine that you were one of the disciples. (Don’t fool yourself into thinking you would’ve “figured” it out. That’s nothing more than spiritual pride–a spiritual pride masking spiritual ignorance.) You’ve followed a man from Galilee around, and this man has made spectacular claims about himself. A few days before his death, he had been welcomed into Jerusalem as a king. Then, he is arrested and crucified. Hung on a cross to die.

You had expected him to conquer, and he was conquered.

But the ways of this world aren’t the ways of God. The power of God doesn’t always manifest itself in the forms of the world’s power. Here’s a powerful passage from Kierkegaard:

This, then, is how it is with loftiness and lowliness. The true Christian’s abasement is not sheer abasement; it is only a depiction of loftiness, but a depiction in this world, where depiction must appear inversely as lowliness and absement. The star truly is high in the sky, is just as high in the sky although, seen in the sea, it seems to lie far under the earth. Likewise, to be a Christian is the highest elevation, even though in this world’s depiction it must appear as the deepest abasement….As soon as you take away the world, that muddy element that confuses with its depiction, as soon as the Christian dies, he is on high, where he already was before, but which could not be seen here by the world, no more than anyone who could not raise his head and thus could see only the star deep down at the bottom of the sea could have the idea that it actually is on high. –(Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, p. 198)

And this is what the passage from Colossians shows us. Jesus, as he hung on that cross, looked low in the world’s view, but was the most powerful anyone has ever been on the face of this earth. He triumphed over the powers of this world in the form of heaven’s power.

Yet, in two thousand years of Christianity, have Christians learned that? How often do we try to triumph over Satan using the powers of this world? We’ll defeat evil in the U.S. by getting control of the government, right?

Of course, I’m sure that, if Jesus had lived in a democracy like ours, he would have triumphed over the world by forming a first century Christian Coalition, or a first century Moral Majority.

Sure…

I had no reason to reject the Catholic view, and honestly I immediately began believing it. I realized I had no reason to disbelieve it, and a few reasons to believe.

Anyway, I was reading Colossians a few days ago and came across this verse: For in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Notice that the verse says that the fullness of the deity dwells bodily. The verb is present tense. So, I wonder, could this be implying that Jesus is still incarnate?

To my more orthodox readers, I want to say that I grew up in a Protestant denomination that looked down up any systematic theology. In fact, it simply refused to do it. Of course, refusing to do systematic theology meant resisting complex doctrines of the Trinity (and refusals to even use the term Trinity since it isn’t in the Scriptures), but using complex (and faulty) reasoning to condemn the use of instruments in worship. So, don’t be shocked at my ignorance about traditional trinitarian and Christological thought–I am but the product of my upbringing.

But I won’t discuss that in this post. I just wanted to establish that I am not a socialist or leftist who thinks the more government, the better. Up until just recently, I had a bumper sticker on my car that said, “GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE ANSWER!” (To quiet any grumblings, let me just add that I took it off because it was falling off, not because I disagreed with the sentiments.)

I want to ask a question, and if anyone has an answer I’d like to hear it. Why is the political right okay with socialized (public) education, socialized police forces, socialized firefighter departments, socialized military, socialized transportation systems (including roads), etc., but are so opposed to socialized medicine?

What economic or political arguments could be given to legitimize all the former  government controls, but make socialized medicine problematic?

What am I missing? It seems blatantly inconsistent to me. (More inconsistent than reading the 2nd Amendment strictly, while allowing the president war powers that can meet a strict reading of the U.S. Constitution!)

Before I make my point, let me first say why I consider my point important. I have noticed (in myself and in others) the tendency to act as if an error in Scriptures would undermine our whole faith. If Genesis really isn’t a historically accurate picture of the creation of the universe, for example, then we have no hope left. I think the reasoning is that if the Scriptures are wrong on *any* point, then the Bible isn’t God’s Word, because God wouldn’t speak falsehoods. And, if the Bible isn’t God’s Word, then it isn’t reliable in matters of faith.

So, here are my thoughts on this subject:

1. Even if the Bible contains errors, it can still be reliable. Our eyes sometimes makes mistakes–we see a distant tower as round when it is square, or we might see something out of the corner of our eye when nothing was there, or a near-sighted person might see a blurred image of color in the distance, when it is really a person. But we still consider our eyes reliable. If we see fire, we walk around it. If we see the edge of a cliff, we don’t walk over it. And so on. (Someone might reply that our eyes make mistakes, but the reason they are still reliable is that we know the situations they fail and so can withhold trust in *those* circumstances. But I don’t think this is thoroughly accurate. Take our hearing as an example: sometimes our hearing fails us in ways we aren’t aware of, e.g. someone is speaking to us and we think they say one thing but they really said another thing. We might even act upon the thing we *thought* they said. The point is that, on the whole, we consider our hearing reliable even though it fails us, and it fails us sometimes when we aren’t aware that it will fail us.) So, overall, I see know reason why we can’t find the Scriptures reliable even if they makes mistakes in some cases. The Gospels might not get Jesus’ words exactly right, but they can still be a reliable source of his teachings.
2. Even if the Bible contains errors, we can still think of it as given to us as a guiding instrument by God, i.e. it can still be God-given. This will probably be even more controversial than my first point, and I’ll admit I haven’t thought about it as much as my first point. But most Christians would agree that our bodies were designed by God, and, furthermore, that our body parts were designed by God for specific reasons. For example, it is thought that our eyes were designed by God to see. But our eyes can occasionally fail us, as I gave examples of above. But, the eyes, despite occasional mistakes, are still God-given instruments for seeing. So, likewise, I see no reason that we can’t view the Bible as a God-given instrument for guidance in the faith, even if it is occasionally wrong.

In general, I think we have set the bar too high with regards to Scripture. By this I don’t mean that Scripture isn’t inerrant and infallible–I’m not denying that. I mean that we have set the bar too high as far as what the denial of inerrancy and infallibility would mean. If the Bible is errant and fallible, it can still be reliable overall, and it can still be a God-given instrument for our guidance in the faith. (For that matter, so can the Church and its leaders: they can be God-given instruments for guidance in the faith, without having to be perfect.) It can be harming to people’s faith to give them an all-or-nothing–inerrant Scriptures or our religion is false–and then send them out into the academic world, where their faith becomes extremely vulnerable.

This is similar to the history of philosophical thought on our senses. It has been tempting to set the bar so high with knowledge that it is an all-or-nothing situation with regard to our senses: either they are perfect, or they are unreliable. Of course, lowering the bar (which was probably only raised by philosophers, not by common usage…though don’t quote me on that!) means that we can have a middle ground, reliable but imperfect senses.

Anyway, I would be glad to hear any thoughts–especially criticisms–of my views here.

I have decided that, when I update them, I will repost them so that they show as new posts. I haven’t decided if I’m going to delete the older posts or just leave them for posterity. I’ll probably just leave them on the off chance that someone has linked to them on the website (I know that several of my posts have been linked to, but not all of them). So, be looking for old posts rewritten.