Steven Carr

Craig Keener is a Biblical scholar.

http://www.charismamag.com/index.php...he-still-heals

Here is an example of the standards he sets.

'When Thérèse was 2 years old, she cried to her mother that a snake had bitten her. By the time Antoinette Malombé reached her daughter, little Thérèse had already stopped breathing.

Antoinette lived in a remote region of Republic of Congo in central Africa where medical resources weren’t immediately available. Strapping her child to her back, she started running to a village where a family friend, evangelist Coco Moïse, was staying. When he prayed for Thérèse, she began breathing again. By the next day she was fine.


This account was reported to me directly by Antoinette. When I spoke more with her about it, I asked how long Thérèse had gone without breathing. She paused and thought about the distance she had to traverse to reach the evangelist’s village and said it took her about three hours.

The human brain suffers irreparable damage after only six minutes without oxygen, even if the person can be artificially revived. Thérèse had gone close to 180 minutes without taking a breath. Yet she suffered no brain damage—as she herself can attest to today, many years later. Thérèse recently completed seminary.

I am married to her younger sister, Médine Moussounga Keener, and Antoinette is my mother-in-law. Though not meaning to question my relatives’ account of Thérèse’s healing, I nonetheless checked with Moïse, just to be sure, and he confirmed the story as I had heard it.'


The Congo also has many documented stories of child witchcraft. Sometimes the child witches are killed.

As Dr. Keener believes all stories told to him by Christians in the Congo, why is he against killing child witches, as Christians in congo can produce many, many stories of witchcraft done by children?


Why is Biblical scholarship filled with people whose standards for accepting the supernatural are so low that they cannot even be parodied, or ridiculed, just gawped at?

dog-on

Isn't belief in the supernatural a requirement for theism?

Isn't Dr. Keener a theist?

Steven Carr

But you would expect people who believe in the supernatural to have some sorts of standards for evaluating tales of the supernatural.

Or perhaps we should just burn the witches....

Toto

My guess is that some of them knew exactly what to make of them.

Because James Randi is here?

Steven Carr

KEENER
'Even in Africa, of course, most people who die remain dead. '

CARR
Other news is reaching us about the sanitary arrangements of bears and the religious affiliation of the Pope.

KEENER
Several years ago, an Indian doctoral student at my seminary explained that his Baptist church in India had grown from a handful of members to about 600 through prayers for healing. He noted that even if I prayed for the sick in India, they would get healed; yet he was dismayed because no one he prayed for in the United States got healed. God was eager for the precious Hindus this man prayed for to know how much He loved them.

CARR
Thank God I am an unbeliever. That means God will heal me, not like those believers in the United States who God doesn't heal...

I cannot believe Keener is not laughed at by serious Biblical scholars.

Toto

www.craigkeener.com/

Toto

www.craigkeener.com/

dog-on

What standards would those be, exactly? As the supernatural violates any standard, wouldn't any standard that one might propose necessarily be biased against the supernatural, pretty much by definition?

Hebrews 11:1, I suppose.

Steven Carr

You mean that accepting third-hand hearsay as evidence is bias against the supernatural?

dog-on

Third-hand hearsay is evidence, of course. Not accepting it in the case of the supernatural, while accepting it in a case where I tell you that my sister told me that her neighbor owns a dog, would be the bias.