Mark Dever questions John Piper and Al Mohler on the Inerrency of Scripture. An extract from a discussion on the topic "Inerrancy - Did God Really Say...?" at T4G 2012 The Underestimated Gospel.
Paul is the wisest person in the bible and condones slavery and the beating of slaves and tells women they will be saved by child birth? What? Come on Piper.
Jonathan Paul wasn’t even ATTEMPTING to write scripture in much of what ended in the NT! Many of his personal correspondences were gathered and sorted by later church leaders for their doctrinal preference. Even Paul would have been baffled if he saw how People quote him like Jesus today. Blasphemy
God has inspired men to write accounts using their own culture and knowledge and their experiences to write about God's supernatural involvement in history. Often times they represent a view of the world that does not bare any relation to the science we know today, but is a view common to those around them at the time of the books writing. Similarly ancient battle historians often exaggerated the size of their battle victories and the numbers of their own army. This more than account for the internal differences recording the same event but located in different historical books. But by denying this fact Mohler's sets the atheist up to say, "If I find two accounts of the same event that differs, and since the human elements of the writing don't allow for any modification of historical detail (Mohler rule) then as soon as I point out an example then those passages become "Errant." Further the Bible can be claimed to have errors and further that those errors are divine! Great apologetics.
Which is inerrant, 1 Kings 4:26 or 2 Chr 9:25? 1 Kings 5:16 or 2 Chr 2:18? 1 Kings 7:15 or 2 Chr 3:15? 1 Kings 7:26 or 2 Chr 4:5? 1 Kings 9:23 or 2 Chr 8:10? 1 Kings 16:8 or 2 Chr 16:1? How about multiple number discrepancies between the named sons in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7?
+Cody Clearman Sure did. Did he say anything else that was a better reason? Please note my comment, I didn't ask if that was ALL he had, I asked if that was the BEST he had.
+Luckystrike Piper referenced what is known as general revelation and divine revelation…. On top of that, look at 2 Timothy 3:16-17. If one passage of scripture is false, then we have to doubt the whole Bible… I simply choose to believe that it is entirely inerrant.
Cody Clearman The bible is true because the bible says it's true. Great argument there. The best definition of general revelation I've come across is "“the revelation of God to all people, at all times, and in all places that proves that God exists and that He is intelligent, powerful, and transcendent.” The classic argument form ignorance, I don't know everything about how the universe works so I'll just say god did it. Divine revelation? Voices in your head. You are welcome to believe the bible is inerrant if you want, you're also welcome to believe in pink unicorns, there's as much backing for one as the other.
THE BIBLE HAS BEEN CHANGED MANY TIMES, EVEN IN JEREMIAH’S DAY! Have you ever heard a Neo Evangelical say, “I know God would never let His Word be mistranslated, so I can be sure the King James Bible does not have a single error in it!” We hear more and more false preachers and teachers telling their flocks that, not only that the original books of the Bible are “inerrant,” or “infallible,” but now they’re saying a translation that was made in 1611, by a group of translators who worked for the Church of England, the same church that was started just a few years before by a king (Henry VIII) who wanted to get rid of his first, Catholic wife, because she couldn’t produce a male heir and ended up with 5 wives (two whom he murdered), and multiple mistresses…yeah, the translators in the church started by THAT GUY, were somehow magically controlled by God to produce a perfect edition of His Word??? Not really!!! There are actually a LOT of errors in the King James Bible and, sadly, many newer translations into English by Neo Evangelical (Fundamentalist) Bible book publishing companies continue to keep many of those errors! Why? Simple! In order to preserve many a false doctrine of Churchianity that emerged over the centuries, even by the end of the First Century CE! This is nothing new. There was a Jewish prophet named Jeremiah, who lived during the time when the Kingdom of Judah was losing more and more of its independence until, finally, it was attacked one last time by the King of Babylon who laid the city to waste and destroyed the First Temple that had been built by King Solomon. In his Bible book, he complained about the way in which scribes were changing the words of, what was then, the Judahite (Jewish) Bible-the Torah, or what is now often called the Five Books of Moses! In verse 8:8 he said (in the Berean Study Bible), “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the Law of the LORD is with us,’ when in fact the lying pen of the scribes has produced a deception?” What then, does this mean for us today? Well, we have to use the brains God gave us and take full advantage of the scholarly disciplines of Textual and Contextual Criticism in order to pour over all the copies of copies of copies of the original Bible texts (because the originals or "autographs" have long been lost to the ravages of history) in order to determine which of the many thousands of differing copies are most likely to say what the original autographs said, and then, “rightly divide” them to determine which parts apply to us today! Rick Lannoye (the Deception Detector), author of www.amazon.com/Real-Life-Jesus-Nazareth-Really-Stood-ebook/dp/B09V4BJ62D
How do you know the Bible is true? Piper's momma told him so. So much for the great Calvinist intellect. The other reasons he gives are about as feeble. "God told me so" has no authority with people who were not told so, and who have no reason to take Piper as God's unquestionable authority in this claim. His third reason, that the Bible makes sense out of everything, simply ignores with contempt all the people for whom the Bible does not make sense of everything. You can make a pair of glasses out of all kinds of lenses, but that doesn't mean the glasses are flawless. The irony is, for all Piper's Calvinist emphasis on divine sovereignty and Biblical infallibility, his approach is astonishingly solipsistic.
The "false trilemma" of liar, lunatic, or lord doesn't work for me. Jesus (and Paul) could have been genuinely mistaken, thinking they were telling the truth while not. Or Jesus could have not said the things attributed to him, as the gospel writers (and Paul) could have simply passed on the words of liars or lunatics. After all, Christians don't apply the "liar, lunatic, or lord" false trilemma to Muhammad who also claimed divine inspiration... or they simply assume "liar", while being certain that Jesus (and the gospel writers) were not liars despite having the same bias to spread propaganda as the authors of the Qur'an. The Bible is given the benefit of the doubt by Christians, and it's obvious why to skeptics.
The difference is obvious, Muhammad was a war lord and had much to gain by claiming to be a prophet and he amassed a fortune and built an army and had multiple wives all thanks to that, while the early Christians had nothing to gain and in fact they were persecuted, and Jesus lived a very modest life by all accounts.
@@hullie7529 Or perhaps didn't exist at all. I rightly pointed out why this is a "false trilemma", because other options besides those 3 exist (such as Jesus didn't even make the claims attributed to him).
Why did god decide he needed a bible to spread his word? Why can't he just send his word straight to our frontal lobe in a language we understand by the same means he used to blow life into Adam? If he's the creator of all things, he surely has the technology. And if not, he can always get in touch with Microsoft. That would be a win-win situation because, if he were to communicate with us in this way, there'd be no need for apologists or maudlin programs like this one.
James Pelton If he didn't need to, then why did he? Don't tell me that he moves in mysterious ways and that he doesn't have to explain himself. And how do you know that "He chose this way" to communicate? Nowhere in the bible does your god claim authorship, other people claim it on his behalf and that, dear Jimmy, is what's known as hearsay and does not count as evidence. More pertinently, why is there a bible at all, what's its purpose? As a communications instrument, and not only because it's riddled with errors and contradictions, even you in a sane moment might agree that it's a failure. For it to be rated a success, wouldn't the whole world have to have accepted its 'message' and been converted to Christianity? The question you need to ask yourself is, why do believers in other manifestations of 'God' not believe in yours if he's so omni this, that and the other and such a bossy-boots (first commandment)? And what is it that atheists think they know and you don't?
***** I am the math teacher of your nightmares -I won't just accept your answer, I want to see your workings. I'm not here to ridicule, you do that well enough all on your own. Like when here you call my Diogenesian light a threat if you can't answer a question. You fail to recognize that You Tube is an open forum in which your every word is scrutinized by friend and foe alike. If it's mutual masturbation you want, you should spend more time in church, they provide a better haven for your outdated and preposterous beliefs and they even promise a happy ending.
***** See. that's what I mean about ridiculing yourself, however do you know all these things you claim to know with such certainty? You make the elementary error the religious so often make when claiming that non-believers hate Jesus - given that you can't show me that he ever existed, what's there to hate? To coin a phrase - I don't hate the cookie monster, either! You can stop praying on my behalf, for I already am Nicodemus (I asked the questions, didn't I?) but, unlike him, mere words don't convince me of the truth of the message; I guess the reason is that I'm not some stone-age, ill-informed and needy barbarian with time on his hands. As for your pompous benediction allowing me to attend to my own devices, I don't need your permission, thank god. Instead: may the light and the love of the lord guide and keep you .... see how ridiculous that sounds?
Ed Walsh Being nice is not part of the job description, that's something that believers insist is their bailiwick. They forget, of course, that being nice is elective and not prescriptive.
You guys probably have great intentions but who needs credibility of historicity when you have the power of God? The bible itself tells us all about the apostles baptizing & bringing people to Jesus without using scripture. Yes scripture is amazing & powerful and a blessing. But Jesus was perfectly fine with making up NEW stories to illustrate the principals HE wanted to teach people about. And the apostles certainly did not go around passing out scriptures to people.
147 up votes. Ridiculous. Our earliest authors takes from other writings that predate the OT by over 500 years. JEPD theory is almost certainly false, but we can ask why did Moses record the details in the Law written in Leviticus and produce a different version in Deuteronomy. Did God forget what he had dictated? Did Moses fall asleep and just make stuff up in Deuteronomy. Why did God copy the code of Hemorobi in the Torah? Atheists can rattle off these apparent contradictions. All of which can be explained as under the free will of human authors to choose how they wrote styles, perspective, plot, which characters to focus on, using figurative and literal language. But remove human choice from the equation these quickly become errors in science, medicine, history. God becomes fallible and atheists seize these misrepresentations as an easy victim. Fundamentalism is very recent in church history and is dying off. Let's stop misrepresenting synergistic authorship affirmed for 2000 years.
I read the Bible and am comforted, empowered to wade through the crises of life. The book is a divine-human product. Because of the human element it is fallible and hence open to criticism. The contradictions arise from the disparate outlooks of the human authors who penned the various books and the cultural backdrops against which they wrote them. But there are certain eternal truths in the Bible as well as in the Sacred Scriptures of all other religions which have their origin in the all-pervasive and all-knowing Author of the world we live in. Inerrancy is an outdated term when applied to the Bible or to any of sacred texts of other religions. When we say the Bible is inerrant we are unwittingly ascribing the numerous errors in the Bible to God.
There are plenty of errors in the gospels alone. The infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew are 2 different stories. just compare them. There's no way one of them occurred and more than likely, neither of them occurred.
tod beard there is no error in the Bible. It's sad that you are not longer with Christ but he loves you. You must to have faith in God to believe. God Bless you
Andre' Mauricio, I beg to differ sir. I'm going to paraphrase this but all you have to do is read the Jesus infancy narratives staring with Luke 2:1 and Matthew 2:1. Compare them side by side. Starting with Luke 2:1- The holy family travels from their home in Nazareth to Judea for a census/ Jesus is born in Bethlehem/ Mary goes through the Rites of Purification and 42 days later they return to Nazareth. Starting with Matthew 2:1- The holy family resides in Judea/ Jesus is born in Bethlehem/ After the Magi leave, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and warns him that Jesus is in danger because Herod is killing all the newborns/ He takes his family in the middle of the night and they flee to Egypt/ They don't return to Judea until after Herod's death. On their return to Judea, they get word that Herod's son Archelaus was ruling Judea so they withdrew to Galilee and settle in Nazareth for the first time. The only thing these stories have in common is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. So much for inerrancy.
