Steven Avery

And I agree with you that the fact that Luke was an excellent historian does not prove any of his statements as true. In the inerrancy discussion, it simply makes it more sensible when one looks at the text with historical respect and even (gasp) a sympathy for harmonization . The general historical accuracy fits well the inerrancy viewpoint, but tis not at all a proof.

Incidentally, I prefer not to consider folks having a good discussion like this as "opponents", even esteemed (granted that mellows it out). Some may be friends, for many I can have the utmost respect, even with a philosophical/spiritual divide.

And in many cases all sides may be trying to clarify their own thinking, whether anybody moves position some or not. That is one of my prime motives in posting here.

Shalom,
Steven

Steven Avery

On one of the scholarly forums today they used atomistic. Is that less "sneering" than dissection? If you recommend better, more accurate, phraseology, I'm listening.

However, if you start with that as your "bedrock assumption", then you have a priori closed off any spiritual viewpoints, including considerations of sin and redemption and Messiah and scripture, and in doing so you will have to consider any alternate propositions as unwarranted.

Shalom,
Steven

Apikorus

It seems only to deny a priori only a very small and narrowly construed aspect of spiritualism. There is much room for spiritually guided beings to make human error. Infallibility of the text is a medieval obsession.

Secularists have no a priori commitment to any text -- not the Hebrew Bible, nor the New Testament, nor the Qur'an, The Iliad, the Bundahisn, etc. Consistency requires that all be approached with the same general historical-critical methodology. Praxeus asserts that this approach is prejudiced against Christianity, for it does not consider the possibility that the holy Christian texts have a supernatural quality.

There are two reasons why this argument is a poor one. First of all, the secularist adopts the same stance toward all religious claims. Why should Christian claims be granted any more credibility than Hindu ones? Second, if it is somehow true that a text has been preserved by supernatural means, there should appear remarkable coincidences which the secularist is unable to explain.

For example, had it been the case that all the biblical scrolls from Qumran agreed letter-for-letter with the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, that would be remarkable, and well-nigh inexplicable. Of course, this is not the case, and the are several different text families represented at Qumran, and no two biblical DSS fragments of significant length agree in complete detail with each other or with the MT.

Sven

On the one hand its medieval (Martin Luther & Co.). On the other hand:

Beyond the problem of communication, one of the main problems with the argument for inerrancy of Scripture, or even the companion argument for near total historical reliability of Scripture, is that it is based on a very modern and quite rationalistic premise. The modern debate arose between 1900 and the 1920s, and was developed into the 1970s, as a defense against historical skeptics who were launching some very scathing attacks against the authority of Scripture from the perspective of historical positivism and scientific naturalism.

from http://www.cresourcei.org/inerrant.html

I only skimmed the article - seems to be interesting and not as far out as praxeus (and others) stance.