You lose, Reverend: a minister blunders while attacking the inerrancy of his own holy book

Pity the poor readers of The Huffington Post. Not only do they have to put up with biased coverage of controversial scientific issues, such as the Intelligent Design controversy (see here, here, here and here for recent examples), but they also have to endure poorly researched articles on religion that are riddled with errors, despite the fact that these articles are often written by ministers of religion, who really should know better. This post is about one badly misinformed minister, Rev. Dr. David J. Lose, who has just written a terrible article for The Huffington Post.

Intelligent Design, as readers of Uncommon Descent are well aware, is a scientific quest for patterns in Nature which exhibit signs of being the product of some intelligence - a quest which is rapidly yielding new results in fields as diverse as cosmology, biochemistry and neurology. The new volume, The Nature of Nature (which I received in the mail today), describes these advances, with contributions from nearly 40 scientists, scholars and public intellectuals who grapple with the key issue: what is the fundamental explanatory principle of the universe, inanimate matter or immaterial mind? The scientific case for Intelligent Design can be made without invoking any sacred book, and the Intelligent Design movement has no official position on the identity of the Designer. Curiously, though, the most vociferous objections to Intelligent Design come not from scientists, but from people who argue, on religious grounds, that the search for patterns in Nature that can be shown to have been designed by some intelligent being is a misconceived one, because any God worthy of the name would not manipulate Nature. The idea that God would manipulate Nature or even that He could, they say, rests upon a simplistic and literalistic way of reading the Bible. In order to discredit this way of reading Scripture, some of these religiously motivated critics of Intelligent Design attack the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy (see here, here and here for examples).

A recent article in The Huffington Post featured an attack on the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy by Rev. Dr. David J. Lose, a minister who holds The Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Biblical Preaching. Lose is the author of Making Sense of the Christian Faith (2010), Making Sense of Scripture (2009), and Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a Postmodern World (2003). He is also the author of a series of articles on the Bible and related religious issues in The Huffington Post. Now, I have no idea what Rev. Lose's views on Intelligent Design are, but his latest offering, entitled, 4 Good Reasons Not to Read the Bible Literally, had me rolling in the aisles. In his attempt to prove that Scripture is not free from errors, the good minister makes eight egregious errors of his own, all in the space of just 1,248 words. These are simple factual errors that anyone can verify, regardless of their theological perspective. Those who have no interest in sacred books may stop here if they wish, but people who enjoy reading absolutely devastating refutations are invited to read on.

UPDATE: In a new article, entitled, Adam, Eve & the Bible, Rev. Lose not only argues that Adam and Eve did not exist, but that the story of Adam and Eve was never intended to be taken literally. What's more, there are two narratives of the creation in Genesis. Rev. Lose asserts that people who insist on reading the creation narratives literally are driven by "the need to have them conform to post-Enlightenment ideas of rational verifiability imported in the mid-19th century to repel attempts to read the Bible as a historical document." I will critique Rev. Lose's claims in the Appendix, where I shall demonstrate that the historicity of Adam and Eve was asserted by the Jews 2,000 years ago, and by the Christian Fathers.

Philo: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book1.html
Josephus: http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/apion-1.htm, http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-1.htm
Origen: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04120.htm
Augustine: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120112.htm, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120113.htm, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120114.htm
Thomas Aquinas: https://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/thomas3.html
Luther: http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/tmmacbellmanmicrocosmos.pdf

A few short remarks about myself

Rev. Lose will probably be wondering who I am, so I'll just direct him to my Web page here if he wants to find out more about me. Briefly, I have a Ph.D. in philosophy; I've never formally studied theology. I also have a few other degrees (B.Sc., B.A., B.Ec., M.A.) as well as a Dip. Ed. that allows me to teach. I live and work in Japan. I'm a supporter of Intelligent Design who believes in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe and in the common descent of living organisms and I have contributed articles at Uncommon Descent before.

I'm not writing the article below with the aim of pushing any particular view of Biblical inerrancy. My position is simply this: that if you're going to write books about it, you'd better get your facts straight. I also dislike woolly-minded thinking and historical revisionism. The past is what it is. Report it if you will; interpret it if you like; but do not attempt to rewrite it. That is a sin.

Rev. Lose's errors, in a nutshell

Rev. Lose's eight egregious errors are as follows.

First, he gets the definition of Biblical inerrancy wrong - a surprising mistake for a minister of religion.

Second, he says that the Bible nowhere claims to be inerrant, when in fact the Bible claims that each and every verse in Scripture is "God-breathed," and that God cannot lie.

Third, he says that the Biblical authors weren't even aiming at factual accuracy, even though some of them claim to be eyewitnesses to the facts that they recorded, or alternatively, claim to have researched their facts very carefully.

Fourth, Rev. Lose claims that literal Biblical inerrancy is a relatively new doctrine that goes back only 200 years, when in fact both Jews and Christians have believed and affirmed it for 2,000 years.

Fifth, he claims that Christians never even tried to harmonize the discrepancies in the Bible until the mid-nineteenth century, when in fact they were already doing so as far back as the second century A.D.

Sixth, Rev. Lose claims that before the nineteenth century, Christians never felt the need to take stories like Jonah and the whale literally, despite the fact that the early Christians (including the great allegorist, Origen) affirmed the story of Jonah as literally true from the second century onward.

Seventh, Rev. Lose ascribes a bogus quote - "I take the Bible too seriously to read it literally" - to Karl Barth, who was arguably the greatest theologian of the twentieth century.

Eighth, Rev. Lose argues that since the people in the Bible are fallible and sinful, they were incapable of communicating supernatural truths without error. However, his own Bible contains a very vivid and humorous example of God taking control of wicked people in order to make them communicate supernatural truths in prophesy (1 Samuel 19:18-24). In any case, God's act of guaranteeing inerrancy on the part of the human authors would not violate their free will, if the human author of Scripture is willing to be directed by God. And directed isn't the same as "dictated to", either - that's a cheap caricature.

For ease of navigation, I've included the following table, to enable readers to navigate their way through my expose of Rev. Lose's errors, in whatever order they wish.

Main Menu

Error #1 - Rev. Lose gets the definition of Biblical inerrancy wrong, at the beginning of his article. His definition completely ignores the intentions of the Bible's authors.

Chicago skyline at sunrise, April 2009. Courtesy of Daniel Schwen and Wikipedia.
In October 1978, The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was formulated by nearly 300 noted evangelical scholars at a conference sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, held at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

In his article, Rev. Lose writes:

At no place in its more than 30,000 verses does the Bible claim that it is factually accurate in terms of history, science, geography and all other matters (the technical definition of inerrancy).

Rev. Lose never tells us whose technical definition he is using. Instead, he links to a Wikipedia article on Biblical inerrancy (!) which gives several definitions, none of which exactly matches Lose's technical definition! This is extraordinarily sloppy for a minister of religion. As we'll see, Rev. Lose is attacking a straw man, in order to promote his own personal watered-down doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.

Before we go on, I'd like readers to see if they can spot the flaw in Rev. Lose's definition. The central problem is that Rev. Lose's definition says nothing about the intentions of the authors of Scripture. Finding fault with a statement that was never intended to be factually accurate and call it "wrong" or "in error" would be a very childish thing to do. In everyday life, we often use common ways of speech which are scientifically inaccurate - for instance, we talk about the sun rising and setting. We use hyperbole: "I've told you that a million times!" We use metaphors: "You are the sunshine of my life." All of these statements would be "errors" if we were to use Rev. Lose's bizarre definition of "inerrant", which as we shall see no defenders of Biblical inerrancy actually do use.

I searched for the phrase "factually accurate" in the Wikipedia article, and came up empty-handed. I did however find this paragraph:

Some literalist or conservative Christians teach that the Bible is without error in every way in all matters: chronology, history, biology, sociology, psychology, politics, physics, math, art, and so on.[11] Other Christians believe that the Scriptures are always right (do not err) only in fulfilling their primary purpose: revealing God, God's vision, God's purposes, and God's good news to humanity.[12]

The definition linked to reference [11] is roughly equivalent to Rev. Lose's definition of "inerrant" as "factually accurate in terms of history, science, geography and all other matters," but the only reference the article gives for this definition is as follows:

Geisler & Nix (1986). A General Introduction to the Bible. Moody Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-8024-2916-5.

What? Is that all? No quotes from the book? No page numbers, even? I have to say that Lose is playing loose with his references here. As a minister, he should have quoted from an official statement, and the obvious statement to quote from would have been The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, produced in 1978 and signed by over 300 Evanglical scholars, including Geisler and Nix! Allow me to quote a few relevant extracts:

I. Summary Statement

4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives...

II. Articles of Affirmation and Denial

Article XII.

We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

Article XIII.

We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Article XVIII.

We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture...

III. Exposition

C. Infallibility, Inerrancy, Interpretation

'[I]nerrant' signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining what the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the most careful attention to its claims and character as a human production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture and conventions of his penman's milieu, a milieu that God controls in His sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.

So history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: Since, for instance, nonchronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When total precision of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed. (Bold emphases mine - VJT.)

Notice those last words: "at which its authors aimed." The intention of the human authors is vitally important to the definition of inerrancy. What were they trying to assert? For instance, when Jesus spoke (Matthew 13:32; Mark 4:30-32) of the mustard seed in one of His parables as the smallest of all seeds, was He asserting that the mustard seed is the smallest seed of any plant (which would have been incorrect, as orchid seeds and tobacco seeds are smaller), or was He simply talking about garden-variety seeds, and asserting that the black mustard seed, Sinapis nigra, was the smallest of all such seeds grown in Biblical times, as John A. Sproule has persuasively argued in an article entitled The Problem of the Mustard Seed (Grace Theological Journal, 1.1 (1980), pp. 37-42)?

The authors of the Chicago Statement affirmed that inerrancy applies to all teachings found in Scripture, and that inerrancy is not limited to spiritual matters, but includes assertions in history and science. This is not the same as saying that the Bible is factually accurate in all matters, as Rev. Lose seems to think. Rather, what it means is that Scripture is factually accurate in all that it asserts to be true - whether it be on spiritual, historical or scientific matters. Moreover, "inerrancy" in the statement does not refer to a blind literal interpretation, but allows for figurative, poetic and phenomenological language, so long as it was the author's intent to present a passage as literal or symbolic.

Rev. Lose claims in his article that inerrancy is technically defined as factual accuracy in terms of history, science, geography and all other matters. As we've just seen, even in conservative Evangelical circles, this definition of inerrancy is false: inerrancy is defined as accuracy in all assertions - religious, historical, scientific or otherwise - made by the authors of Scripture, in the sense that they intended them to be made, under the guidance of God.

Lastly, I should mention that there are some religious believers who would limit Biblical inerrancy to purely spiritual matters - things that God has revealed to us for the sake of our salvation - and exclude factual matters of history and science from the scope of their definition of inerrancy. Thus, among religious believers who support Biblical inerrancy, the main division lies between those believers who would restrict it to spiritual matters, and those who would include in its scope everything that the sacred authors of Scripture intended to assert - including matters relating to history and science.

Within this essay, I therefore propose to distinguish between two forms of inerrancy: (i) strong, universal inerrancy, or the belief that each and every statement that the authors of Scripture intended to assert is true; and (ii) restricted, spiritual inerrancy, or the belief that every statement that the authors of Scripture intended to assert on spiritual matters (faith and morals) is true.

Believers in strong, universal inerrancy would maintain that some of the statements that the authors of Scripture intended to assert were on matters relating to science, history and geography. Believers in strong, universal inerrancy would therefore regard these statements as literally true.

Within the Catholic Church, there remains considerable controversy to this day regarding the 1965 Vatican II document Dei Verbum (section 11), which teaches that "the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures." Sensibly read, this definition would imply factual accuracy regarding whatever truths God wished to communicate - which may on occasion include matters relating to history and science, in addition to spiritual or moral truths. However, after the Vatican II council ended in 1965, a few Catholic theologians came out in support of a "restricted" view that the only truths guaranteed to be without error are spiritual truths relating to our salvation.

Dr. Gregory Dawes has critiqued the "restricted" view of Biblical inerrancy in an interesting article entitled, Could There Be Another Galileo Case? Galileo, Augustine and Vatican II. Some of the truths of faith do have a bearing on historical and scientific matters. (The fact that the world had a beginning, and that there was an Exodus from Egypt, are two fairly non-controversial examples.) Dr. Dawes expounds the teaching of the Catholic Church on inerrancy as follows:

The purpose of Scripture is not to teach scientific matters; it is to bring human beings to salvation. But historical and scientific matters, even quite technical issues, would fall under the inerrancy of Scripture, if they could be shown to relate to salvation.

Dr. Dawes soberly concludes that since there is always the potential for conflict between new scientific data when it seems to contradict the truths of faith, "the possibility of another Galileo case cannot be excluded." I think he is right here. I can think of several scientific observations that would falsify Christianity, and I've listed them at the end of this essay.

Error #2 - Rev. Lose misleadingly asserts that the Bible doesn't even claim to be inerrant, when in fact, it does, if you read what the Bible says about itself.

The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed Bible. Courtesy of Raul654 and Wikipedia.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

Rev. Lose asserts in his article that "Nowhere does the Bible claim to be inerrant."

Well, there are two sides to any story, as they say. David Pratte has put up a very thorough defence of Biblical inerrancy on his online essay, Inspiration of the Bible: Is the Bible Infallible, Inerrant, and Verbally Inspired? Pratte's essay is well worth reading, and I would urge readers to spend a few minutes perusing it. Here, I shall do no more than address the key points.

Certainly, if you're looking for a verse in the Bible which states that Scripture is inerrant, you won't find one - although John 10:35 does claim that Scripture cannot be set aside (New International Version) or broken (King James Version), which it obviously could be if it contained errors.

Additionally, 2 Timothy 3:16 clearly states that "All scripture is inspired by God." Rev. Lose acknowledges this verse, but suggests in his article that "inspired" does not necessarily mean "inerrant":

But one can confess that Scripture is inspired by God without resorting to claims that it contains no factual errors. We normally use the language of inspiration in just this way, describing a painting, a performance of Chopin, or even a good lecture as inspired.

I'm afraid that just won't do, Rev. Lose. The word used by the author of 2 Timothy is theopneustos - literally, "God-breathed." Here is what HELPS word studies, a vast 5,000 page devotional Greek and Hebrew Lexicon, has to say on the term:

2315 theopneustos (from 2316 /theos, "God" and 4154 /pneo, "breathe out") – properly, God-breathed, referring to the divine inspiration (inbreathing) of Scripture (used only in 2 Tim 3:16).

2315 /theopneustos ("God-breathed"), likely a term coined by Paul, "expresses the sacred nature of the Scriptures (their divine origin) and their power to sanctify believers" (C. Spicq, 2, 193).

[Inbreathing (2315 /theopneustos) relates directly to God's Spirit (Gk pneuma) which can also be translated "breath."]

2 Tim 3:16: "Each-and-every (3956 /pas, singular) Scripture (Gk, singular) is God-breathed (2315 /theopneustos) and profitable for teaching, for convincing, for correction, for training in righteousness."

The singular (anarthrous) use of 3956 /pas ("all") underlines that each part of speech (every inflected word-form, "reflex") used in the Bible is God-breathed, i.e. inscripturated (written) under divine inspiration. (Bold emphasis mine - VJT.)

[G. Archer, "2315 (theopneustos) is better rendered 'breathed out by God' as the emphasis is upon the divine origin of the inscripturated revelation itself" (A Survey of OT Introduction, fn. 7, 29).]

Scripture, then, is "God-breathed" in each and every part. It cannot be broken or set aside.

Additionally, the Bible tells us that God's "word is truth" (John 17:17). Not just true, mind you. TRUTH.

To cap it all, Titus 1:2 tells us that God "does not lie" and Hebrews 6:18 adds that "it is impossible for God to lie" under oath.

What are we to conclude? If Scripture is "God-breathed" (inspired by God) in each and every part as 2 Timothy 3:16 asserts, and if God's "word is truth" as John 17:17 asserts, and if God "does not lie" as Titus 1:2 asserts, then the conclusion must be that Scripture is true in its entirety and contains no lies. In that respect, at least, it is inerrant.

Update:

One reader has correctly pointed out that "Scripture" would have meant the Tanakh (or what Christians now call the Old Testament) to the writer of 2 Timothy 3:16. This is perfectly true. But that's still 80% of the Christian Bible, and it still refers to an organized collection of writings ("Scripture") that was generally accepted as inspired by Jews and Christians alike in the first century A.D. The question of how the New Testament canon was finally created in the late 4th century A.D. is an entirely separate matter.

Error #3 - Rev. Lose falsely claims that the Biblical authors weren't even aiming for factual accuracy when they wrote, and that the early Christians weren't interested in factual accuracy, either.

The evangelist Luke writing. From a Byzantine illumination, 10th century (now in the British Library). Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

In his article, Rev. Lose asserts:

There is no hint that the authors of the Bible imagined that what they were writing was somehow supernaturally guaranteed to be factually accurate. Rather, biblical authors wrote in order to be persuasive, hoping that by reading their witness you would come to believe as they did (see John 20:30-31)...

Earlier Christians -- along with almost everyone else who lived prior to the advent of modernity -- simply didn't imagine that for something to be true it had to be factually accurate, a concern only advanced after the Enlightenment. Hence, four gospels that diverged at different points, far from troubling earlier Christians, was instead seen as a faithful and fitting recognition that God's truth as revealed in Jesus was too large to be contained by only one perspective.

John's Gospel from which Rev. Lose quotes, actually refutes his case!

Rev. Lose is creating a false dichotomy between persuasiveness and factual truth here. In any case, how can anything be persuasive if it does not point to something factually true?

In any case, the authors of John's gospel, which Rev. Lose cites in support of his case, actually had a very high regard for factual accuracy, as John 21 illustrates:

20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is going to betray you?") 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

22 Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." 23 Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?"

24 This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

Notice here the authors' concern with:

(i) the factual accuracy of the words of Jesus;
(ii) the reliability of the Gospel of John's testimony about Jesus, which was written down; and
(iii) the factual truth of the events narrated in the Gospel.

These authors weren't just trying to be persuasive; they were trying to be as truthful as possible. Thus the very source cited by Rev. Lose to support his claim that the Biblical authors weren't concerned with factual accuracy actually refutes it.

Luke's Gospel is even more preoccupied with factual truth than John's!

Oh, and I wonder what Rev. Lose would make of the introduction to Luke's Gospel (Luke 1:1-4)?

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Bold emphasis mine - VJT.)

No concern for factual accuracy here? Pull the other one, Rev. Lose!

Respectable scholars agree that the Gospels fall into the genre of biographies, and that they were therefore intended to be factually accurate, in accordance with the conventions of the time.

The beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Image of page from the 7th century Book of Durrow. Trinity College, Dublin.

A few years ago, the Christian apologist Glenn Miller wrote an interesting essay entitled, James Still's "Critique of New Testament Reliability and 'Bias' in NT Development"--my initial response. Section Three: My Comments 17-20, in response to James Still, a critic of the accuracy of the Gospels. Still had earlier confidently asserted (see his Comment 20, quoted in Miller's essay): "It is sometimes difficult for us moderns to remember that attention to fact and accuracy is a relatively recent phenomenon of the post-Enlightenment period. To the ancients, poetic license was not just an aesthetic, it was the commonly accepted practice of the day." Miller undertook to write a lengthy rebuttal.

In the course of his rebuttal, Miller describes the meticulous process by which a classical scholar, Richard A. Burridge, arrived at the conclusion that the four Gospels were written as biographies. Richard Burridge is Dean of King's College London, where he is also Professor of Biblical Interpretation. He was educated at University College, Oxford where he received an M.A. and the University of Nottingham where he read for a Ph.D. Burridge, in his magisterial work, What are the Gospels: A comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (henceforth WAG) (Cambridge: 1992), argued that all four Gospels were written as bioi, or biographies, and that the conventions governing biographies in the Roman world would have applied to the Gospels as well - including factual accuracy. As Miller puts it (I've tidied up his formatting in the long quote below, to make it easier to read):

In a thorough-going analysis using genre criticism and literary theory (plus a classicist's approach to genre determination in the field of Greco-Roman history/biography), he [Burridge] builds a solid methodology for approaching the issue of identifying the genre of the Gospels.

First, he delineates the features needed to identify a genre. He derives this list from literary criticism theory (for the widest possible set of features to analyze). His feature-list is (WAG, pp.109-127):

1. Opening Features (Title; Opening formulae/prologue/preface)

2. Subject (Analysis of the verbs' subjects; Allocation of space)

3. External Features (Mode of presentation, e.g. oral, prose, drama, voice; Metre; Size and length; Structure or sequence; Scale; Literary units; Use of Sources; Methods of Characterization; Summary)

4. Internal Features (Setting; Topics/topoi/motifs; Style; Tone/mood/attitude/values; Quality of characterization; Social setting and occasion; Authorial intention and purpose; Summary)

He then examines examples (i.e. actual documents called "bioi" by the ancients) to critically arrive at some description/concept of the genre 'bioi'. He uses five examples from early literature, and five from later literature(chapters 6 and 7). These are:

Isocrates (436-338 BC) Evagoras; Xenophon (427-354 BC) Agesilaus; Satyrus (2nd century BC) Euripides; Nepos (99-24 BC) Atticus; Philo (30 BC-45 AD) Moses

Tacitus (56-113 AD) Agricola; Plutarch (45-120 AD) Cato Minor; Suetonius (69-122 AD) Lives of the Caesars; Lucian (120-180+ AD) Demonax; Philostratus (170-250 AD) Apollonius of Tyrana.

He then examines the gospels for these features and concludes:

Thus, there is a high degree of correlation between the generic features of Graeco-Roman Bioi and those of the synoptic gospels; in fact, they exhibit more of the features than are shown by works at the edges of the genre, such as those of Isocrates, Xenophon and Philostratus. This is surely a sufficient number of shared features for the genre of the synoptic gospels to be clear; while they may well form their own subgenre because of their shared content, the synoptic gospels belong within the overall genre of Bioi. [WAG:218f; emphasis his.]

These results place the Fourth Gospel clearly in the same genre as the synoptic gospels, namely Bioi. [WAG:239, emphasis his.]

At the end of his interesting article, Glenn Miller sums up the results of his exhaustive research:

Conclusion

Several things should be quite obvious from the mass of evidence above:

1. The ancient history-writers WERE VERY concerned over 'fact and accuracy.'

2. They consistently attacked one another for use of a-historical "poetic license."

3. This "passion for accuracy" manifested itself in the difficult areas of historiographical method such as speech-reporting and setting-development/elaboration, and the discussion was so intense, because the foundation of fidelity was so firm.

4. This convention of truthfulness in event and character was also reflected in the genre of Bioi.

5. The 'relaxation' of standards in later antiquity was NOT a majority movement, and was not as methodologically 'deep' as might appear.

6. The Gospel literature prove to be "members" of the Bioi genre, and hence partake of the general conventions of that genre, relative to accuracy and ornare.

7. Additional data for Mark and Luke is available to suggest that their standards were in fact somewhat HIGHER than the prevailing norms.

In short, James Stills' remark, once again, shows a lack of the requisite familiarity with the literary and historical context in which the early Christian writings were formed. "Fact and Accuracy" WAS treasured (and sought after) both by the secular ancients and by the gospel writers.

Rev. Lose's own theological hero, St. Augustine of Hippo, treated the Gospels as factually accurate.

Tiffany stained-glass window of St. Augustine, in the Lightner Museum, St. Augustine, Florida. Courtesy of Daderot and Wikipedia.

In his article, Rev. Lose depicts St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) very sympathetically, as a troubled young man seeking after truth who found Biblical accounts of fantastic events (like Jonah and the whale) impossible to believe, and who was only able to convert to Christianity when "Ambrose, bishop of Milan, introduced Augustine to allegorical interpretation -- that is, that stories can point metaphorically to spiritual realities rather than historical facts." Thus according to Rev. Lose, St. Augustine no longer felt the need to treat the Bible as a factually accurate book after he became a Christian; instead, he regarded it as spiritually true.

The problem is that St. Augustine's own writings completely demolish Rev. Lose's claim. Here is what St. Augustine wrote in Book I, chapter 1 of The Harmony of the Gospels, composed around 400 A.D.:

1. In the entire number of those divine records which are contained in the sacred writings, the gospel deservedly stands pre-eminent. For what the law and the prophets aforetime announced as destined to come to pass, is exhibited in the gospel in its realization and fulfilment. The first preachers of this gospel were the apostles, who beheld our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in person when He was yet present in the flesh. And not only did these men keep in remembrance the words heard from His lips, and the deeds wrought by Him beneath their eyes; but they were also careful, when the duty of preaching the gospel was laid upon them, to make mankind acquainted with those divine and memorable occurrences which took place at a period antecedent to the formation of their own connection with Him in the way of discipleship, which belonged also to the time of His nativity, His infancy, or His youth, and with regard to which they were able to institute exact inquiry and to obtain information, either at His own hand or at the hands of His parents or other parties, on the ground of the most reliable intimations and the most trustworthy testimonies. Certain of them also — namely, Matthew and John — gave to the world, in their respective books, a written account of all those matters which it seemed needful to commit to writing concerning Him.

2. And to preclude the supposition that, in what concerns the apprehension and proclamation of the gospel, it is a matter of any consequence whether the enunciation comes by men who were actual followers of this same Lord here when He manifested Himself in the flesh and had the company of His disciples attendant on Him, or by persons who with due credit received facts with which they became acquainted in a trustworthy manner through the instrumentality of these former, divine providence, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, has taken care that certain of those also who were nothing more than followers of the first apostles should have authority given them not only to preach the gospel, but also to compose an account of it in writing. I refer to Mark and Luke....

Even the book of Genesis was intended by its author(s) to be a factually accurate historical narrative.

In his article, Rev. Lose extols the virtues of "allegorical interpretation -- that is, that stories can point metaphorically to spiritual realities rather than historical facts". If any book of the Bible were to bear out the advantages of the approach Rev. Lose advocates, it would surely be the book of Genesis, which has led to endless wrangling between Christians about what influence science and religion should have in shaping our worldviews. Allegorize Genesis, and the apparent contradictions between science and religion melt away, right?

Except that there's one small problem. A whole host of reasons relating to style and literary form, indicate unambiguously that the book of Genesis was not written as a poem or allegory, and strongly supports the view that it was written as an historical narrative, and that it was intended by its author(s) to be factually accurate. The view that Genesis 1 to 11 was not originally intended as an historical narrative is virtually untenable. I refer the skeptical reader to the following online articles:

(1) Genesis 1-11 as Historical Narrative by W. Gary Phillips and David M. Fouts.

(2) Is Genesis poetry-figurative, a theological argument (polemic) and thus not history? by Dr. Don Batten, Dr. David Catchpoole, Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati and Dr. Carl Wieland.

(3) The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell the Story by Dr. Stephen W. Boyd.

(4) Five Arguments for Genesis 1 and 2 as Straightforward Historical Narrative by the Creation Science Association of British Columbia.

(5) Is Genesis Poetry or Historic Narrative? by Helen Fryman.

Any honest attempt to clear up the apparent factual inaccuracies contained within the Bible must start with the frank acknowledgement that the first 16 books of the Old Testament - the five books of the Pentateuch and the following 11 books which narrate the history of Israel - were intended by their human authors to serve as factual historical narratives, and that in the New Testament, the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles were also written and composed as historical narratives and were thus meant to be factual.

I am not a Biblical scholar, and I am wary of making pronouncements as to exactly which factual statements the authors of the Bible intended to convey. Let me add that I believe in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe and in the common descent of all living things. However, I have no doubt that substantial parts of the Bible - including Genesis - were meant to serve as factually accurate historical narratives, even if we cannot always be sure exactly what the authors were trying to get across to their readers. To ignore this vital point is to do violence to the intentions of the human authors of the Bible.

Error #4 - Rev. Lose falsely claims that "literal" Biblical inerrancy is a relatively new doctrine, when it's actually 2,000 years old.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

Incredibly, Rev. Lose claims that the doctrine of literal Biblical inerrancy is a theological novelty, and that it was unknown as recently as 200 years ago. As he puts it in his article:

We tend to think of anything that is labeled "conservative" as being older and more traditional. Oddly enough, however, the doctrine of inerrancy that literalists aim to conserve is only about a century and a half old.

The Catholic Encyclopedia reviews the evidence for belief in Biblical inerrancy among Jews and Christians in ancient times

Oh yeah? Here's what The Catholic Encyclopedia says on ancient Jewish and Christian attitudes to Scripture in its article, Scripture:

...Flavius Josephus attributes to the twenty-two protocanonical books of the Old Testament Divine authority, maintaining that they had been written under Divine inspiration and that they contain God's teachings (Contra Appion., I, vi-viii). The Hellenist Philo too is acquainted with the three parts of the sacred Jewish books to which he ascribes an irrefragable authority, because they contain God's oracles expressed through the instrumentality of the sacred writers ("De vit. Mosis", pp. 469, 658 sq.; "De monarchia", p. 564)...

... St. Clement of Rome (I Corinthians 45) tells his readers to search the Scriptures for the truthful expressions of the Holy Ghost. St. Irenæus (Against Heresies II.38.2) considers the Scriptures as uttered by the Word of God and His Spirit. Origen testifies that it is granted by both Jews and Christians that the Bible was written under (the influence of) the Holy Ghost (Against Celsus V.10); again, he considers it as proven by Christ's dwelling in the flesh that the Law and the Prophets were written by a heavenly charisma, and that the writings believed to be the words of God are not men's work (De princ., iv, vi). St. Clement of Alexandria receives the voice of God who has given the Scriptures, as a reliable proof (Stromata I.2).

The testimony of both Jews and Christians from 2,000 years ago bears witness to the fact that they regarded Scripture as inerrant.

The testimony of the Jews of 2,000 years ago: Flavius Josephus and Philo

Galilee in the time of Josephus. From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Looking up the words of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.), I came across the following passage in his work, Contra Appion (I, viii):

8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, (8) which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account, no, nor in case all the writings that are among them were to be destroyed; for they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the inclinations of those that write them; and they have justly the same opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present generation bold enough to write about such affairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those that knew them; examples of which may be had in this late war of ours, where some persons have written histories, and published them, without having been in the places concerned, or having been near them when the actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of Histories. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

From the above passage, it is readily apparent that Josephus believed:

(i) that internal contradictions diminished the credibility of a book or collection of books;
(ii) that the Bible contained no contradictions, whereas the Greek histories contained many contradictions;
(iii) that Scripture was of Divine origin and therefore could not be tampered with;
(iv) that Jews were obliged to undergo torture, if necessary, rather than say one word against the laws and historical records found in the Bible; and finally,
(v) that information derived from mere hearsay (such as the Greeks relied on) was likely to be inaccurate and therefore did not qualify as genuine history.

Since he regarded the Bible as free from contradictions and inaccuracies, and as being of Divine origin. That certainly sounds like a literal doctrine of Biblical inerrancy to me - and it's 2,000 years old!

What's more, as I'll show below in my discussion of Rev. Lose's Error #6, Josephus accepted the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale as literally true. Need I say more?

Philo of Alexandria, by Andre Thevet. In Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens (1584). Courtesy of Wikipedia.

"What about Philo?" I hear you ask. "Wasn't he an allegorist?" Indeed he was - but that didn't stop him from being a literalist as well. As a devout Jew, Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-50 AD) felt bound to adhere to the literal meaning intended by the sacred author of Scripture, in historical matters as well as matters of faith. For example, in his work, On the Creation, he addresses the question of why Moses describes the world as being created in six days in Genesis 1:

III. (13) And he [Moses] says that the world was made in six days, not because the Creator stood in need of a length of time (for it is natural that God should do everything at once, not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it); but because the things created required arrangement; and number is akin to arrangement; and, of all numbers, six is, by the laws of nature, the most productive: for of all the numbers, from the unit upwards, it is the first perfect one, being made equal to its parts, and being made complete by them; the number three being half of it, and the number two a third of it, and the unit a sixth of it, and, so to say, it is formed so as to be both male and female, and is made up of the power of both natures; for in existing things the odd number is the male, and the even number is the female; accordingly, of odd numbers the first is the number three, and of even numbers the first is two, and the two numbers multiplied together make six. (14) It was fitting therefore, that the world, being the most perfect of created things, should be made according to the perfect number, namely, six: and, as it was to have in it the causes of both, which arise from combination, that it should be formed according to a mixed number, the first combination of odd and even numbers, since it was to embrace the character both of the male who sows the seed, and of the female who receives it. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

Philo evidently regarded the six days of creation as a theological "given," even as he searched for a deeper mystical significance in the number six. For Philo, the figurative meaning of Scripture lay on top of, but did not supplant, the literal meaning, which he believed the sacred author intended.

The same attitude of respect for the inerrancy of Scripture is apparent when Philo writes about Noah's age at the time of the Flood, in his work, Questions and Answers on Genesis, Book II, chapter 17:

(17) Why did the deluge take place in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, and in the seventh month, and on the twenty-seventh day of the month? (Gen. 7:11). Perhaps it happened that the just man was born at the beginning of the month, at the first beginning of the commencement of that very year which they are accustomed to call the sacred year, out of honour, otherwise the sacred historian would not have been so carefully accurate in fixing the day and month when the deluge began to the seventh month and the twenty-seventh day of the month. But, perhaps, by this minuteness he intended manifestly to indicate the precise time of the vernal equinox, for that always occurs on the twentyseventy day of the seventh month. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

Clearly Philo regarded the Flood as a literal event, and he also regarded the vast ages of the Biblical patriarchs as literally true, because of the great care taken by the sacred author when narrating the chronology. Notice that Philo refers to the sacred author as "carefully accurate." Philo certainly saw many allegorical meanings in the Flood narrative, but he still felt obliged to adhere to the literal meaning as well. The fact that he felt bound to adhere to a literal interpretation of the Flood as an historical event, including even the Bible's description of the ages of the patriarchs, supports the view that he viewed the Bible as inerrant in its historical assertions, and not just its assertions on spiritual matters. In other words, he seems to have believed in strong, universal inerrancy.

The testimony of the Christians: St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.)

St Augustine and Monica (1846), by Ary Scheffer. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

With the sole exception of Origen (whom I'll discuss at the end of this section), the early Christians shared the same belief in the inerrancy of Scripture as the Jews. Here, for instance, is St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), writing on Biblical inerrancy in his polemical work, Contra Faustum, Book XI, section 5:

In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The authority of these books has come down to us from the apostles through the successions of bishops and the extension of the Church, and, from a position of lofty supremacy, claims the submission of every faithful and pious mind. If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. In other books the reader may form his own opinion, and perhaps, from not understanding the writer, may differ from him, and may pronounce in favor of what pleases him, or against what he dislikes. In such cases, a man is at liberty to withhold his belief, unless there is some clear demonstration or some canonical authority to show that the doctrine or statement either must or may be true. But in consequence of the distinctive peculiarity of the sacred writings, we are bound to receive as true whatever the canon shows to have been said by even one prophet, or apostle, or evangelist. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

Rev. Lose is quite happy to say that Scripture is mistaken on matters of fact; however, St. Augustine declares that Christians are not at liberty to say that Scripture contains mistakes.

At this point, Rev. Lose may produce a card from up his sleeve. "What about the Principle of Limitation, which St. Augustine upheld in his writings, according to the careful researches of Professor Ernan McMullin? In his essay, "Galileo on Science and Scripture," in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, ed. Peter Machamer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 271-347, McMullin identifies five principles for interpreting Scripture which he claims to have found in the writings of St. Augustine. The last of these is the Principle of Limitation:

Since the primary concern of Scripture is with human salvation, texts of Scripture should not be taken to have a bearing on technical issues of natural science.

Now, if St. Augustine really held to this Principle, it would certainly follow that Scripture cannot be regarded as inerrant on scientific matters - for if Scriptural passages have no bearing on these matters, and cannot be used to settle these matters, then they can hardly be said to inerrant on these matters. But did St. Augustine hold to the Principle of Limitation? Dr. Gregory Dawes makes a well-argued case that he did not, in an essay entitled, Could there be another Galileo case? Galileo, Augustine and Vatican II.

Will the real St. Augustine please stand up?

Dr. Dawes contends that Professor McMullin's (and Galileo's) attribution of the Principle of Limitation to St. Augustine is highly questionable, and cites as evidence St. Augustine's remarks (De Genesi ad litteram 2.16.33-34) on the question of whether the sun, the moon and the stars are actually of equal brightness. Even in St. Augustine's day, long before the invention of the telescope, there were some people who were suggesting that the stars were actually just as bright as the sun, and that they appeared fainter only because of their greater distance from the earth. In his initial response, St. Augustine tells his readers that believers should avoid "subtle enquiries" (subtilius aliquid quaerere), adding that "for us it would seem sufficient to recognize that, whatever may be the true account of all this, God is the Creator of the heavenly bodies." But then he immediately adds: "And yet we must hold to the pronouncement of St. Paul, There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another of the stars; for star differs from star in glory [1 Cor 15:41]." Dr. Dawes comments:

In other words, whatever position one accepts, Augustine insists it must be compatible with 1 Corinthians. If he truly held to a principle of limitation, he would not have regarded 1 Corinthians 15:41 as having a bearing on this matter at all.

The intrinsic brightness of the stars is a technical scientific matter, and yet St. Augustine clearly believed that a passage in Scripture could have a bearing on the issue. It would seem, then that Professor Ernan McMullin's interpretation of St. Augustine is mistaken. Dr. Dawes contends that Augustine actually endorsed a different principle, which he calls the "Principle of Differing Purpose":

What I want to argue is that neither position - neither a principle of limitation nor a principle of independence - can plausibly be attributed to Augustine. It is worth noting that McMullin himself seems uneasy with doing so. He does so only with the concession that Galileo holds to a much broader form of that principle than Augustine would have accepted. Augustine holds only that Biblical authority should not be invoked when it comes to "technical issues of natural science" (emphasis mine), while Galileo suggests it should not be invoked with regard to any kind of natural knowledge (1998: 306). But this is a slippery distinction. At what point, for instance, does a knowledge of nature in general, where Augustine does invoke the authority of Scripture, fade over into "technical issues of natural science," where apparently he would not? In any case, a close examination of De Genesi ad litteram suggests that Augustine's position is not accurately described as a "principle of limitation," in any sense of those words. Unlike Galileo, Augustine is not interested in limiting the authority of the biblical writings. He therefore holds to an entirely different principle, with a rather different set of implications. Augustine's hermeneutical principle in the matter of what we would call science and religion is better described as a "principle of differing purpose."

Dr. Dawes continues:

The purpose of 1 Corinthians 15 is not to teach the physical details of the universe, but to speak about human bodies at the resurrection of the dead, a fact which Augustine recognizes in the same passage ("Paul speaks thus because of the likeness of the stars to risen bodies of men"). Compared to the doctrine of the resurrection, such subtle speculations about the structure of the universe are rather a waste of valuable time (cf. 1982: 2.16.34). Yet - and this is the key point - when, in fulfilling this more serious purpose, the Scriptures make reference to aspects of the physical world, what they say must be taken with the utmost seriousness.<9> Pace McMullin, such biblical texts do "have a bearing on technical issues of natural science," even if they were not written for that purpose. As it turns out, Augustine suggests that 1 Corinthians 15:41 could be interpreted in such a way that it does not preclude the scientific opinion he is discussing. One could, for instance, argue that, while the heavenly bodies are all of the same brightness in themselves, St. Paul's remark refers to their differing degrees of brightness when seen by us. But at the end of the day, Augustine suggests that believers should accept the plain meaning of Genesis 1:16, even in this rather technical matter. As he writes, "we do better when we believe that those two luminaries [the sun and the moon] are greater than the others, since Holy Scripture says of them, And God made the two great lights" (1982: 2.16.34).

Obviously, St. Augustine was wrong in his astronomy. However, his reasoning concerning the Scriptural passages cited above certainly indicates that he did not hold to the Principle of Limitation which Professor McMullin ascribes to him. Clearly, Augustine believed that the inerrancy of Scripture extended to scientific matters as well. That supports the claim that St. Augustine believed in a strong, universal form of Biblical inerrancy.

St. Augustine: quite a literalist!

People who know little about St. Augustine are apt to cite him as a supporter of the allegorical of Scripture - and so he was, as long as the literal sense was preserved as well. Certainly, St. Augustine's interpretation of Genesis was very literal.

St. Augustine expressly taught that:

the world was 6,000 years old (City of God, Book XII, chapter 12);

that creatures of all kinds were created instantly at the beginning of time;

that Adam and Eve were historical persons;

that Paradise was a literal place;

that the patriarch Methusaleh actually lived to the age of 969;

that there was a literal ark, and that the Flood covered the whole earth;

and that he vigorously defended all of these doctrines against skeptics in the fourth century (yes, they existed back then, too), who scoffed at them.

The curious reader can confirm what I have read by consulting St. Augustine’s City of God Book XIII and Book XV. And there's much more in his work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis.

The testimony of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

St. Thomas Aquinas depicted in stained glass. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is regarded as the greatest theologian of the Catholic Church. We can see just how much of a believer in Scriptural inerrancy Aquinas was from the following passage in his Summa Theologica I, q. 32, article 4, where he is discussing a speculative theological question regarding the Trinity. St. Thomas asserts that truths that are part of the Christian faith fall into two categories: Divinely revealed truths which are received directly from God, and truths which are not directly received from God, but which cannot be denied without contradicting some Divinely revealed truth. Denial of divinely revealed truths is simply heretical:

Anything is of faith in two ways; directly, where any truth comes to us principally as divinely taught, as the trinity and unity of God, the Incarnation of the Son, and the like; and concerning these truths a false opinion of itself involves heresy, especially if it be held obstinately. A thing is of faith, indirectly, if the denial of it involves as a consequence something against faith; as for instance if anyone said that Samuel was not the son of Elcana, for it follows that the divine Scripture would be false.

The reader will notice that Aquinas treats the idea that Scripture might be false in even a tiny assertion as a reductio ad absurdum. The obvious conclusion is that for St. Thomas, divine Scripture cannot be false, and every one of assertions is true. If that is not a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy (in the strong sense of the word), then I can only ask: what is?

Moreover, the above passage makes it quite clear that for Aquinas, Biblical inerrancy excluded the possibility of factual inaccuracy. St. Thomas' logic is quite straightforward here: denying that Samuel was the son of Elcana entails that Scripture is false, which is contrary to the faith; hence the proposition that Samuel was the son of Elcana is indirectly a matter of faith. However, Christians were free to have different opinions on questions where it has not been established that anything contrary to the faith would follow. That includes abstruse, speculative questions relating to the Trinity, such as the number of properties - known as nodes by which the three Divine Persons were distinguished, which is the question Aquinas is writing about. "Concerning such things," he declares, "anyone may have a false opinion without danger of heresy, before the matter has been considered or settled as involving consequences against faith."

However, the reader may still be wondering how Aquinas could be so sure that the human author of the Biblical account of Samuel's birth intended to assert, as an historical fact, that Samuel was the son of Elcana. The answer to this question lies in the way he read Scripture: he believed that historical narratives should be read as a series of factual statements.

Aquinas insisted that Christians were bound to accept the literal interpretation of Scripture any events in the Bible that were "set down as matter of history." Thus when discussing the question of whether the word "Paradise" in Genesis 2 referred to an actual, historical place or a figurative, spiritual one, he writes:

I answer that, As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiii, 21): "Nothing prevents us from holding, within proper limits, a spiritual paradise; so long as we believe in the truth of the events narrated as having there occurred." For whatever Scripture tells us about paradise is set down as a matter of history; and wherever Scripture makes use of this method, we must hold to the historical truth of the narrative as a foundation of whatever spiritual explanation we may offer (Summa Theologica I, q. 102, art. 1).

Laurent de la Hire, "Job restored to prosperity," 1648. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk.
Aquinas taught that Job was a real person.

Finally, Aquinas' discussion about whether the figure of Job actually existed removes all doubts that St. Thomas believed in Biblical inerrancy, and that he also believed that the historical narratives in the Bible had to be factually accurate, in order for the Bible to be free from errors. According to Aquinas, Christians are bound to believe that Job was a real, historical person, and not an allegorical figure. In the Prologue of St. Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on Job, Aquinas considers and rejects the view that the book of Job is intended as nothing more than a parable. The Jewish philosopher and Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), following other Jewish sages, had asserted in his Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, chapter 22, that the book was not factual, but a work of fiction, designed to teach us about Providence. Maimonides based his denial of the historicity of Job on the total absence of biographical information in the book concerning Job's ancestry, his parents and when he lived. All we are told about Job is that "In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job" (Job 1:1, New International Version). Nevertheless, St. Thomas is quite emphatic that Job is a real historical character:

But there were some who held that Job was not someone who was in the nature of things [i.e. not a real, historical person - VJT.], but that this was a parable made up to serve as a kind of theme to dispute providence, as men frequently invent cases to serve as a model for debate. Although it does not matter much for the intention of the book whether or not such is the case, still it makes a difference for the truth itself. This aforementioned opinion seems to contradict the authority of Scripture. In Ezechiel, the Lord is represented as saying, "If there were three just men in our midst, Noah, Daniel, and Job, these would free your souls by their justice." (Ez. 14:14) Clearly Noah and Daniel really were men in the nature of things and so there should be no doubt about Job who is the third man numbered with them. Also, James says, "Behold, we bless those who persevered. You have heard of the suffering of Job and you have seen the intention of the Lord." (James 5:11) Therefore one must believe that the man Job was a man in the nature of things.

Notice Aquinas' wording here: "one must believe" that Job was a real man. This makes little sense unless Aquinas subscribed to a very strong, universal form of Biblical inerrancy.

The testimony of Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Martin Luther depicted in stained glass in the Church of Martin Luther in Murska Sobota (Slovenia). Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Although Martin Luther entertained doubts about the canonicity of four books in the New Testament (Hebrews, Jude, James, Revelation) which some of the ancient Christian Fathers had rejected, he had absolutely no doubt about the inerrancy of the remaining books which he regarded as canonical:

I have learned to ascribe the honor of infallibility only to those books that are accepted as canonical. I am profoundly convinced that none of these writers has erred. All other writers, however they may have distinguished themselves in holiness or in doctrine, I read in this way I evaluate what they say, not on the basis that they themselves believe that a thing is true, but only insofar as they are able to convince me by the authority of the canonical books or by clear reason. (Weimarer Ausgabe, 2. 618. Contra malignum Iohannis Eccii iudicium…Martini Lutheri defensio 11519.)

Update:

Luther's response to the heliocentric theory of Copernicus is also very telling. The remark below by Luther was made in response to the publication of the brief Commentariolus, which appeared a few years before Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (published in 1543). It comes from Luther's "Table Talk" (Tischreden), or record of dinner-table conversations:

There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth. (Emphasis mine - VJT.)

The scriptural passage to which Luther was referring was Joshua 10:10-15.

Rev. Lose is a Lutheran minister. I'd like to put this question to him: would he not agree that these passages from Luther are an affirmation of Biblical inerrancy, in a very literal sense? If Rev. Lose is still inclined to dispute whether Luther actually believed in a strong, universal form of Biblical inerrancy, I would like to refer him to an online essay by John Warwick Montgomery, entitled Lessons from Luther on the Inerrancy of Holy Writ.

The Belgic Confession (1561)

A portrait of John Calvin. Courtesy of Wikipedia and www.rvc.cc.il.us.

Another document I'd like to quote from The Belgic Confession (written in 1561; revised several times, down to 1619), a Calvinist document which was adopted by national synods in the Netherlands that were held during the last three decades of the sixteenth century. This Confession is a doctrinal standard, to which many of the Reformed churches around the world still subscribe today. The Belgic Confession unambiguously attests to the inerrancy of Scripture, and declares that everything contained therein is to be believed without a doubt:

Article 5: The Authority of Scripture

We receive all these books and these only as holy and canonical, for the regulating, founding, and establishing of our faith.

And we believe without a doubt all things contained in them-- not so much because the church receives and approves them as such but above all because the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they prove themselves to be from God.

For even the blind themselves are able to see that the things predicted in them do happen.

Article 7: The Sufficiency of Scripture

We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it. For since the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in it at great length, no one-- even an apostle or an angel from heaven, as Paul says--[2] ought to teach other than what the Holy Scriptures have already taught us. For since it is forbidden to add to or subtract from the Word of God,[3] this plainly demonstrates that the teaching is perfect and complete in all respects. Therefore we must not consider human writings-- no matter how holy their authors may have been-- equal to the divine writings; nor may we put custom, nor the majority, nor age, nor the passage of time or persons, nor councils, decrees, or official decisions above the truth of God, for truth is above everything else.

For all human beings are liars by nature and more vain than vanity itself.

Therefore we reject with all our hearts everything that does not agree with this infallible rule, as we are taught to do by the apostles when they say, "Test the spirits to see if they are of God,"[4] and also, "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house."[5]

[2] Gal. 1:8 [3] Deut. 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19 [4] 1 John 4:1 [5] 2 John 10

Now, a supporter of restricted, spiritual inerrancy might point out that Article 7 is concerned with truths which are required for salvation, and suggest that Scripture is inerrant only regarding these truths. But this overlooks the exalted epistemological status given to Scripture. It alone is perfect and complete in all respects; therefore any human writings which contradict Scripture are to be set aside as lies. Additionally, in Article 5, Christians are told to "believe without a doubt all things contained in" the canonical books of Scripture. That sounds like a very strong, universal (or in Rev. Lose's terminology, "literal") doctrine of inerrancy to me.

The trial of Galileo (1633)

Galileo Galilei. Portrait by Leoni. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

I would be most remiss if I failed to mention the case of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Rev. Lose maintains that the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is a nineteenth-century innovation. Why, then, does he think Galileo got into trouble with the Catholic Church, for promoting the theory that the Earth goes round the Sun? The whole basis of the Church's objection to this theory in Galileo's day was that it seemed to contradict passages in Scripture, such as "He [God] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved" (Psalm 104:5) and Joshua's command, "Sun, stand still over Gibeon" (Joshua 10:12). But if Scripture was not universally regarded as inerrant within the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century, then this objection would be beside the point!

Galileo squarely confronted the Biblical difficulties facing his theory in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, written in 1615. In the following passage, Galileo describes the unscrupulous tactics used by his opponents to discredit his theories among the public, and their specific grounds for condemning his opinion:

First they have endeavored to spread the opinion that such propositions in general are contrary to the Bible and are consequently damnable and heretical. They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly, rather than those from which a man may receive some just encouragement. Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from their very pulpits with unwonted confidence, thus doing impious and inconsiderate injury not only to that doctrine and its followers but to all mathematics and mathematicians in general. Next, becoming bolder, and hoping (though vainly) that this seed which first took root in their hypocritical minds would send out branches and ascend to heaven, they began scattering rumors among the people that before long this doctrine would be condemned by the supreme authority. They know, too, that official condemnation would not only suppress the two propositions which I have mentioned, but would render damnable all other astronomical and physical statements and observations that have any necessary relation or connection with these...

The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err; it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes a erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

From the above passage, it is evident that in the Italy of Galileo's day, publicly asserting a proposition that was contrary to the Bible was regarded as damnable and heretical, and could get you condemned as a heretic by the Pope - which implies that the Catholic Church regarded every proposition in the Bible as true. That's Biblical inerrancy, in the strong, universal sense. What's interesting also is that in his letter, Galileo did not deny the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. He, too, believed in Biblical inerrancy ("the Bible cannot err"), and he even suggested a literal but "common-sensical" reading of troubling Biblical passages such as Joshua 10:12-14, which any defender Biblical inerrancy in the strict sense (as applying to all matters asserted to the sacred authors of Scripture) could support:

The sun, then, being the font of light and the source of motion, when God willed that at Joshua’s command the whole system of the world should rest and should remain for many hours in the same state, it sufficed to make the sun stand still. Upon its stopping all the other revolutions ceased; the earth, the moon, and the sun remained in the same arrangement as before, as did all the planets; nor in all that time did day decline towards night, for day was miraculously prolonged. And in this manner, by the stopping of the sun, without altering or in the least disturbing the other aspects and mutual positions of the stars, the day could be lengthened on earth — which agrees exquisitely with the literal sense of the sacred text.

However, certain passages in Galileo's letter make it clear that Galileo himself adhered to a version of Biblical inerrancy that was considerably "thinner", or more restricted, than that of his Catholic contemporaries. As Dr. Gregory Dawes has pointed out in his well-researched essay, Could There Be Another Galileo Case? Galileo, Augustine and Vatican II, Galileo believed that biblical authority should not be invoked to oppose any scientific claims that might be firmly established in the future:

It is not only matters which have been demonstrated with certainty which are - in practice - to be exempted from the authority of the Bible. It is also matters which are capable of being "demonstrated with certainty or known by sensory experience."

Galileo thus wanted to restrict Biblical inerrancy to matters of faith and morals, as Dawes argues. In other words, he believed in the restricted, spiritual inerrancy of Scripture, whereas his opponents believed in strong, universal inerrancy. This was a major theological innovation, although it would not have been technically regarded as a heresy in Galileo's day, as the Catholic Church at that time had made very few dogmatic declarations relating to Biblical inerrancy, apart from the statement by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that in matters of faith and morals (in rebus fidei et morum) no one should presume to interpret the Bible in a way that is contrary to the teaching of the Church or to the consensus of the Church Fathers. Galileo wanted to add that in "those passages alone which are matters of faith or of morals" one should follow the consensus of the Church Fathers, but not in matters touching on science and history.

Origen (185-254 A.D.): one Christian Father who did not support full Biblical inerrancy

Origen. From Greek Wikipedia. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

I would be less than truthful if I were to conclude this section without mentioning that I have found one Christian Father who denied the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, regarding factual matters. Specifically, Origen held that the human authors of the Bible - and in particular, the authors of the Four Gospels - at times deliberately altered the facts regarding the events they were narrating, even introducing literal falsehoods, in order to illustrate some higher spiritual or mystical truth. Origen held, however, to a very exalted view of the inspiration of Scripture, as Dr. Michael Holmes of Princeton Theological Seminary demonstrates in his article, Origen and the Inerrancy of Scripture (JETS 24/3, September 1981, 221-231). Dr. Holmes also points out that Origen believed that Scripture was spiritually inerrant, even if he did not believe that the Bible was literally inerrant.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, however, the views of Origen were not generally shared by the other Christian Fathers; I have not found any other Church Father who agreed with Origen's assertion that the Bible contains literal factual errors. (I would be interested in getting feedback on this point.) I should also add that some of Origen's theological views were later viewed as heretical by the Church - for instance, his views on the pre-existence of human souls, and on the nature of the resurrected body. I will refer the curious reader to the article on Origen in The catholic Encyclopedia. While Origen was extremely popular in the century after his death, later critics attacked what they regarded as his excessive allegorism when interpreting the Scriptures.

Origen makes his views on Biblical inerrancy plain in his Commentary on John, Book X, sections 3 and 4, where he discusses the discrepancies that exist between the Four Gospels. Origen :

Section 3: What we are to think of the discrepancies between the different Gospels

We must, however, try to obtain some notion of the intention of the Evangelists in such matters, and we direct ourselves to this. Suppose there are several men who, by the spirit, see God, and know His words addressed to His saints, and His presence which He vouchsafes to them, appearing to them at chosen times for their advancement. There are several such men, and they are in different places, and the benefits they receive from above vary in shape and character. And let these men report, each of them separately, what he sees in spirit about God and His words, and His appearances to His saints, so that one of them speaks of God's appearances and words and acts to one righteous man in such a place, and another about other oracles and great works of the Lord, and a third of something else than what the former two have dealt with... He, then, who takes the writings of these men for history, or for a representation of real things by a historical image, and who supposes God to be within certain limits in space, and to be unable to present to several persons in different places several visions of Himself at the same time, or to be making several speeches at the same moment, he will deem it impossible that our four writers are all speaking truth. To him it is impossible that God, who is in certain limits in space, could at the same set time be saying one thing to one man and another to another, and that He should be doing a thing and the opposite thing as well, and, to put it bluntly, that He should be both sitting and standing, should one of the writers represent Him as standing at the time, and making a certain speech in such a place to such a man, while a second writer speaks of Him as sitting.

Section 4: Scripture contains many contradictions, and many statements which are not literally true, but must be read spiritually and mystically

In the case I have supposed where the historians desire to teach us by an image what they have seen in their mind, their meaning would be found, if the four were wise, to exhibit no disagreement; and we must understand that with the four Evangelists it is not otherwise. They made full use for their purpose of things done by Jesus in the exercise of His wonderful and extraordinary power; they use in the same way His sayings, and in some places they tack on to their writing, with language apparently implying things of sense, things made manifest to them in a purely intellectual way. I do not condemn them if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye of history happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or of what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time, and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They proposed to speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and where this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material. The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood. As, for example, we might judge of the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob says to Isaac, "I am Esau thy firstborn son," and spiritually he spoke the truth, for he already partook of the rights of the first-born, which were perishing in his brother, and clothing himself with the goatskins he assumed the outward semblance of Esau, and was Esau all but the voice praising God, so that Esau might afterward find a place to receive a blessing. For if Jacob had not been blessed as Esau, neither would Esau perhaps have been able to receive a blessing of his own. And Jesus too is many things, according to the conceptions of Him, of which it is quite likely that the Evangelists took up different notions; while yet they were in agreement with each other in the different things they wrote. Statements which are verbally contrary to each other, are made about our Lord, namely, that He was descended from David and that He was not descended from David. The statement is true, "He was descended from David," as the Apostle says, "born of the seed of David according to the flesh," if we apply this to the bodily part of Him; but the self-same statement is untrue if we understand His being born of the seed of David of His diviner power; for He was declared to be the Son of God with power...

Origen goes on to discuss many of the contradictions raised by Rev. Lose, including his cleansing the Temple at the beginning of his ministry in John, and at the end in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Origen resolves these discrepancies in much the same way that Rev. Lose does: the writers were not intending to give a literal account of Jesus' life, and they felt free to alter the details of certain events in order to suit their theological purposes.

I shall make a few brief comments on Origen's views on Scripture.

1. Strictly speaking, even Origen could still be described as a believer in the strong, universal inerrancy of Scripture: he accepted all the statements which the sacred authors of Scripture intended to assert. It's just that on his view, uneducated people who read the Bible are apt to think that the sacred authors intended to assert a lot of statements about science, geography and history which in fact they did not intend to assert, which invites the question: how are we supposed to tell what they really intended? How do we know when to read a passage literally? On this point, it is worth recalling that Origen believed that the Church could determine how the Bible should be read, so he was not overly troubled.

2. Even Origen was a Biblical literalist on the subject of creation: he publicly championed the view that the world was less than 10,000 years old, against pagan skeptics. Origen vigorously defended "the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that," against the mockery of the pagan skeptic Celsus, who thought that the world was much older, in his book, Contra Celsus (Against Celsus) Book 1, chapter 19.

3. Origen also believed that the Biblical story of Jonah was literally true, describing him as "a man who, by a strange miracle, passed three days and three nights in the whale's belly" in his most famous work, Contra Celsus, Book VII, chapter LVII.

4. Origen seems to be arguing that it is perfectly OK for the sacred authors to tamper with the facts of an historical narrative, in order to bring out a higher spiritual meaning. I disagree, and I think most of my readers would too. It might be all right to tamper with the facts like that, if everyone knows what you're doing. The fact that the Christians were producing harmonies of the Gospels in the early centuries suggests that they didn't know what the Gospel writers were up to, if this was their game. Clearly, not everyone in those days thought that a little creative embellishment to bring out a higher "spiritual meaning" was cool. I would also argue that the historians of Origen's day would have faulted him on this too. Let's remember that the Gospels were bioi - biographies, and were therefore bound by the canons of historical accuracy which I described earlier in the section on Rev. Lose's Error #3. In those days, telescoping of a narrative and omitting superfluous material was regarded as perfectly acceptable for an historian; putting words into people's mouths was not. An historian could omit or skip over irrelevant facts, but could not add to or alter the facts. Anyone writing a biography of Jesus would have been bound to follow this convention.

5. The fact that St. Augustine of Hippo, who was heavily influenced by his teacher St. Ambrose, who had read Origen's works very widely, did not follow Origen in his interpretation of Scripture, but instead composed a Harmony of the Gospels, in which he defended the notion that there were two cleansings of the Temple, speaks volumes.

Error #5 - Rev. Lose falsely claims that the early Christians never even tried to harmonize the apparent discrepancies in the Bible, when in fact they did from the second century onwards.

The first two pages of the "Borg MS", an Arabic version of Tatian's Diatessaron. Tatian was an Assyrian Christian who wrote a harmony of the Gospels around 170 A.D., called the Diatessaron. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

Rev. Lose writes:

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus drives the moneychangers out of the Jerusalem Temple in the days immediately preceding his crucifixion. In the Gospel of John, he does this near the beginning of his ministry, two years before his death...

You can attempt to reconcile these and other discrepancies in the biblical witness, of course, and literalists have published books almost as long as the Bible attempting to do just that. In the case of the different timeframes for the cleansing of the Temple, for instance, one might suggest that Jesus did this twice, once at the beginning of his ministry and then again, for good measure, two years later. But far from "rescuing" the gospels, such an effort distorts their distinct confession of faith by rendering an account of Jesus' life that none of the canonical accounts offers...

Earlier Christians -- along with almost everyone else who lived prior to the advent of modernity -- simply didn't imagine that for something to be true it had to be factually accurate, a concern only advanced after the Enlightenment. Hence, four gospels that diverged at different points, far from troubling earlier Christians, was instead seen as a faithful and fitting recognition that God's truth as revealed in Jesus was too large to be contained by only one perspective. Flattening the biblical witness to conform to a reductionist understanding of truth only limits the power of Scripture.

Unhappily for Rev. Lose, the evidence of history clearly shows that Christians started trying to harmonize the Gospels almost from the get-go. Most scholars date John's Gospel to c. 90-100 A.D. The early Christian apologist and ascetic, Tatian, combined the four gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — into a single narrative called the Diatessaron, around 160 to 175 A.D. Tatian was an Assyrian who was a pupil of St. Justin Martyr in Rome. Although it never supplanted the four Gospels, which were viewed as authoritative because they could be authenticated as having been written in the time of the apostles by people who personally knew Jesus or His disciples, Tatian's Diatessaron was held in high regard in Syria, and remained in use in churches there down to the fifth century.

In Section XXXII of his Diatessaron, Tatian addresses the cleansing of the Temple by blending various features of Matthew's, Mark's and John's accounts, and placing the event somewhere between the beginning and the end of Jesus' ministry - a kind of compromise solution, if you like:

32 1 And when Jesus entered Jerusalem, he went up to the temple of God, and found 2 there oxen and sheep and doves. And when he beheld those that sold and those that bought, and the money-changers sitting, he made for himself a scourge of rope, and drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and the money-changers; and he threw down their money, and upset their tables, and the seats of them that sold the doves; and he was teaching, and saying unto them, Is it not written, My house is a house of prayer for all peoples? and ye have made it a den for robbers. And he said unto those that sold the doves, Take this hence, and make not my Father's house a house of merchandise. And he suffered not any one to carry vessels inside the temple.

And his disciples remembered the scripture, The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. The Jews answered and said unto him, What sign hast thou shewn us, that thou doest this? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and I shall raise it in three days. The Jews said unto him, This temple was built in forty-six years, and wilt thou raise it in three days? 10 But he spake unto them of the temple of his body, that when they destroyed it, he Arabic, would raise it in three days. When therefore he rose from among the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this; and they believed the scriptures, and the word that Jesus spake.

The reader who compares Tatian's account with the Gospel accounts (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:13-22) will readily see that he has skilfully blended them, in a way that smooths over the differences.

About 250 years after Tatian, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), in his Harmony of the Gospels, Book II, chapter 67 (Of the Expulsion of the Sellers and Buyers from the Temple, and of the Question as to the Harmony Between the First Three Evangelists and John, Who Relates the Same Incident in a Widely Different Connection), employed a different strategy when harmonizing the different Gospel accounts of Jesus' cleansing of the Temple. St. Augustine resolves the apparent discrepancy by positing two cleansings of the temple - the very thing which Rev. Lose deplores as a strained and artificial harmonization, which Christians of antiquity felt no need to do! Here is how St. Augustine resolves the matter, in his own words:

129. Matthew goes on with his narrative in the following terms: "And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple"; and so on, down to where we read, "But you have made it a den of thieves." This account of the multitude of sellers who were cast out of the temple is given by all the evangelists; but John introduces it in a remarkably different order. For, after recording the testimony borne by John the Baptist to Jesus, and mentioning that He went into Galilee at the time when He turned the water into wine, and after he has also noticed the sojourn of a few days in Capharnaum, John proceeds to tell us that He went up to Jerusalem at the season of the Jews' passover, and when He had made a scourge of small cords, drove out of the temple those who were selling in it. This makes it evident that this act was performed by the Lord not on a single occasion, but twice over; but that only the first instance is put on record by John, and the last by the other three.

My intention here is not to say that St. Augustine was right in harmonizing the Gospels as he did. I simply wish to point out that St. Augustine would not have felt the need to do this unless he believed that the Gospels were factually accurate. And as we have seen, his belief in the historicity of the Bible was widely shared by Christians of his day.

Error #6 - Rev. Lose falsely claims that Christians didn't take the Biblical account Jonah and the whale literally until the 19th century, when in fact, Jews and Christians have believed it literally for 2,000 years.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

What did Jesus say about Jonah and the whale?

Jesus' saying on Jonah is only reported in Matthew's Gospel.

Here's an extract from Barnes' Bible Commentary on Matthew 12:40:

[The words of Jesus - VJT]

40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

[Commentary]

For as Jonas was three days ... - See Jonah 1:17

This event took place in the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere between Joppa and Tarshish, when he was fleeing from Nineveh. It is said that the "whale" seldom passes into that sea, and that its throat is too small to admit a man. It is probable, therefore, that a fish of the "shark kind" is intended. Sharks have been known often to swallow a man entire. The fish in the book of Jonah is described merely as a "great fish," without specifying the kind. It is well known that the Greek word translated whale, in the New Testament, does not of necessity mean a whale, but may denote a large fish or sea-monster of any kind. - Robinson, Lexicon.

Three days and three nights - It will be seen in the account of the resurrection of Christ that he was in the grave but two nights and a part of three days. See Matthew 18:6. This computation is, however, strictly in accordance with the Jewish mode of reckoning...

In the heart of the earth - The Jews used the word "heart" to denote the "interior" of a thing, or to speak of being in a thing. It means, here, to be in the grave or sepulchre. (Italics mine - VJT.)

Huxley's challenge

The evolutionary biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), known as "Darwin's bulldog", was quite familiar with claims made by nineteenth century Christian divines that Biblical stories like that of Jonah and the whale were never meant to be taken literally, and that they were meant to serve purely as "types" or allegories of higher spiritual truths. Huxley penned a crushing reply to this line of argument:

I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately among "types" and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God's methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of "Wolf" when there is no wolf? If Jonah's three days' residence in the whale is not an "admitted reality," how could it "warrant belief" in the "coming resurrection?" If Lot's wife was not turned into a pillar of salt, the bidding [233] those who turn back from the narrow path to "remember" it is, morally, about on a level with telling a naughty child that a bogy is coming to fetch it away. Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him? (Huxley, T., Science and Hebrew Tradition, Vol. 4 of Huxley's Collected Essays, "The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science", (1890), pp. 232-233, .) (Emphases mine - VJT.)

As a Christian, I have to say that I agree with Huxley. I cannot see how the Biblical account of Jonah could have served to illustrate any spiritual truth for Jesus' audience 2,000 years ago, unless they took the story as an historical fact.

Rev. Lose's incredible claim: Christians didn't take the story of Jonah literally until the nineteenth century

Rev. Lose writes:

Oddly enough, the doctrine of inerrancy that literalists aim to conserve is only about a century and a half old. Not only did many of the Christian Church's brightest theologians not subscribe to anything like inerrancy, many adamantly opposed such a notion. For instance, St. Augustine -- rarely described as a liberal -- lived for many years at the margins of the church. An impediment to his conversation was precisely the notion that Christians took literally stories like that of Jonah spending three days in the belly of a whale. It was not until Ambrose, bishop of Milan, introduced Augustine to allegorical interpretation -- that is, that stories can point metaphorically to spiritual realities rather than historical facts -- that Augustine could contemplate taking the Bible (and those who read it!) seriously...

Earlier Christians -- along with almost everyone else who lived prior to the advent of modernity -- simply didn't imagine that for something to be true it had to be factually accurate, a concern only advanced after the Enlightenment.

The passage clearly implies that:

(i) St. Augustine did not take the story of Jonah and the whale literally;
(ii) his teacher, Bishop Ambrose, didn't take it literally either;
(iii) before the nineteenth century, Christians did not read the story of Jonah and the whale literally; and
(iv) before the nineteenth century, Christians did not require believers to take the story literally. All of these claims are patent nonsense.

Fact: Both St. Ambrose and St. Augustine took the Biblical account of Jonah literally

The fact of the matter is that while St. Ambrose did frequently uphold allegorical interpretations of Scripture, he did not use them to supplant the literal meaning. Both St. Ambrose and St. Augustine took the Biblical account of Jonah literally.

In his Latin Commentary on Twelve Psalms, St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Psalm 43, writes:

For just as Jonah was asleep on the ship, and snored soundly, because he was not afraid of being observed, so our Lord Jesus Christ, the Figure that fulfilled the sign [of Jonah] by his death, slept during that time on the ship of the Gospel; and just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so the Son of man was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, in His passion of the body. (N.B. This is my very rough translation from the Latin - VJT.)

In this passage, St. Ambrose matter-of-factly assumes the literal truth of the Biblical story of Jonah. The logic here is obvious enough: if the story of Jonah were not true, then it could not serve as a sign.

St. Ambrose's pupil, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), who converted to Christianity at the age of 33, clearly affirmed the literal historicity of the story of Jonah and the whale in Epistle 102, written around 409 A.D. in reply to a priest named Deogratias, who had reported some objections to the Christian faith made by a mutual acquaintance of theirs, a pagan. Some of these objections, says St. Augustine, seem to stem from the pagan author Porphyry, but the last objection, concerning the story of Jonah, is presented as being a standing subject of ridicule among the pagans, who rejected the Biblical account of Jonah living in the whale for three days and of the plant which later miraculously sprang up over Jonah as utterly absurd. In his response, St. Augustine writes:

31. To this I reply, that either all the miracles wrought by divine power may be treated as incredible, or there is no reason why the story of this miracle should not be believed. The resurrection of Christ Himself upon the third day would not be believed by us, if the Christian faith was afraid to encounter Pagan ridicule. Since, however, our friend did not on this ground ask whether it is to be believed that Lazarus was raised on the fourth day, or that Christ rose on the third day, I am much surprised that he reckoned what was done with Jonah to be incredible; unless, perchance, he thinks it easier for a dead man to be raised in life from his sepulchre, than for a living man to be kept in life in the spacious belly of a sea monster.

32. But perhaps our objectors find it impossible to believe in regard to this divine miracle that the heated moist air of the belly, whereby food is dissolved, could be so moderated in temperature as to preserve the life of a man. If so, with how much greater force might they pronounce it incredible that the three young men cast into the furnace by the impious king walked unharmed in the midst of the flames! [See Daniel 3 - VJT] ...

33. It is neither unreasonable nor unprofitable to inquire what these miracles signify, so that, after their significance has been explained, men may believe not only that they really occurred, but also that they have been recorded, because of their possessing symbolic meaning. Let him, therefore, who proposes to inquire why the prophet Jonah was three days in the capacious belly of a sea monster, begin by dismissing doubts as to the fact itself; for this did actually occur, and did not occur in vain.

2,000 years ago, the Jewish historian Josephus took the Biblical story of Jonah literally

A manuscript leaf from a Latin translation of Josephus' work, The Antiquities of the Jews. 1466. National Library of Warsaw. Courtesy of photographer Andrzej Klossowski (1990) and Wikipedia.

In his work, Antiquities of the Jews 9:10:1-2, the Jewish historian Josephus (37-100 A.D.) wrote:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Amaziah, Jeroboam the son of Joash reigned over Israel in Samaria forty years. This king was guilty of contumely against God, and became very wicked in worshipping of idols, and in many undertakings that were absurd and foreign. He was also the cause of ten thousand misfortunes to the people of Israel. Now one Jonah, a prophet, foretold to him that he should make war with the Syrians, and conquer their army, and enlarge the bounds of his kingdom on the northern parts to the city Hamath, and on the southern to the lake Asphaltitis; for the bounds of the Canaanites originally were these, as Joshua their general had determined them. So Jeroboam made an expedition against the Syrians, and overran all their country, as Jonah had foretold.

Now I cannot but think it necessary for me, who have promised to give an accurate account of our affairs, to describe the actions of this prophet, so far as I have found them written down in the Hebrew books. Jonah had been commanded by God to go to the kingdom of Nineveh; and when he was there, to publish it in that city, how it should lose the dominion it had over the nations. But he went not, out of fear; nay, he ran away from God to the city of Joppa, and finding a ship there, he went into it, and sailed to Tarsus, in Cilicia (19) and upon the rise of a most terrible storm, which was so great that the ship was in danger of sinking, the mariners, the master, and the pilot himself, made prayers and vows, in case they escaped the sea: but Jonah lay still and covered [in the ship,] without imitating any thing that the others did; but as the waves grew greater, and the sea became more violent by the winds, they suspected, as is usual in such cases, that some one of the persons that sailed with them was the occasion of this storm, and agreed to discover by lot which of them it was. When they had cast lots, the lot fell upon the prophet; and when they asked him whence he came, and what he had done? he replied, that he was a Hebrew by nation, and a prophet of Almighty God; and he persuaded them to cast him into the sea, if they would escape the danger they were in, for that he was the occasion of the storm which was upon them. Now at the first they durst not do so, as esteeming it a wicked thing to cast a man who was a stranger, and who had committed his life to them, into such manifest perdition; but at last, when their misfortune overbore them, and the ship was just going to be drowned, and when they were animated to do it by the prophet himself, and by the fear concerning their own safety, they cast him into the sea; upon which the sea became calm. It is also reported that Jonah was swallowed down by a whale, and that when he had been there three days, and as many nights, he was vomited out upon the Euxine Sea, and this alive, and without any hurt upon his body; and there, on his prayer to God, he obtained pardon for his sins, and went to the city Nineveh, where he stood so as to be heard, and preached, that in a very little time they should lose the dominion of Asia. And when he had published this, he returned. Now I have given this account about him as I found it written [in our books.] (Emphases mine - VJT.)

Let the reader note what Josephus is doing here. First, he gives a brief historical narrative in Book 9 of his Antiquities of the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel (who reigned from 793/786 B.C. to 753/746 B.C.), based on the Biblical accounts in 1 Kings 12:26-33 and 2 Kings 14:23-25. The latter account also mentions the prophet Jonah.

Next, he states that in the interests of accuracy he is bound, by his promise of truthfulness as an historian, to describe the actions of the prophet Jonah, as recorded in the Hebrew books. In the course of the story, he describes how Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and was vomited out three days later, "without any hurt upon his body." He realizes that many of his readers will find the tale fantastic, but as an historian he feels duty-bound to record the account for his Greco-Roman audience, in the interests of accuracy. Having discharged his duty, he writes, in evident relief: "Now I have given this account about him as I found it written [in our books.]"

After that, Josephus goes on to briefly describe the end of Jeroboam's life, before moving on to the next king.

An honest and fair-minded reader could only conclude that Josephus, a highly respected historian, regarded the Biblical account of Jonah as a fact.

Fact: All the Church Fathers took the Biblical account of Jonah literally

What's more, the Biblical account of Jonah was upheld by all the Church Fathers, without exception. As The Catholic Encyclopedia states in its article on Jonah:

Catholics have always looked upon the Book of Jonah as a fact-narrative...

Not a single Father has ever been cited in favor of the opinion that Jonah is a fancy-tale and no fact-narrative at all.

The article, written by James F. Driscoll in 1910, goes on to say that "In the works of some recent Catholic writers there is a leaning to regard the book as fiction," implying that doubts about the historicity of the Biblical story of Jonah did not surface in the Catholic Church until the late nineteenth century! So much for belief in the historicity of Jonah being a theological novelty, as Rev. Lose asserts!

The testimony of the second century: St. Irenaeus treated the story of Jonah as a fact

St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul (now Lyons, France). Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The earliest Christian Father to mention the story of Jonah was St. Irenaeus, writing in the late second century (c. 180-200 A.D.). In Book III, chapter 20 of his work, Against All Heresies, St. Irenaeus discusses the story of Jonah in a short passage, and treats it as a historical fact, which illustrates the kindness and transcendent power of God:

He [God] patiently suffered Jonah to be swallowed by the whale, not that he should be swallowed up and perish altogether, but that, having been cast out again, he might be the more subject to God, and might glorify Him the more who had conferred upon him such an unhoped-for deliverance, and might bring the Ninevites to a lasting repentance, so that they should be converted to the Lord, who would deliver them from death, having been struck with awe by that portent which had been wrought in Jonah's case, as the Scripture says of them, "And they returned each from his evil way, and the unrighteousness which was in their hands, saying, 'Who knows if God will repent, and turn away His anger from us, and we shall not perish?'" (Jonah 3:8-9) ...

Irenaeus goes on to draw a parallel between the Biblical account of Jonah being swallowed by the whale and the original transgression of Adam and Eve, who were also swallowed by "the great whale, who was the author of transgression" - i.e. Satan. In both cases, God arranged for the delivery of individuals who needed salvation: Jonah from death inside the whale, and Adam and Eve from Satan's lies.

For as — so also, from the beginning, did God permit man to be swallowed up by the great whale, who was the author of transgression, not that he should perish altogether when so engulfed; but, arranging and preparing the plan of salvation, which was accomplished by the Word, through the sign of Jonah, for those who held the same opinion as Jonah regarding the Lord, and who confessed, and said, "I am a servant of the Lord, and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land" (Jonah 1:9).

The testimony of the third century: even the great allegorist Origen took the story of Jonah literally

Origen. From Greek Wikipedia. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Even the Christian Father Origen, who loved to draw allegorical meanings from Scripture, clearly affirmed the historicity of the Biblical account of Jonah in his most famous work, Contra Celsus, Book VII, chapter LVII. In this chapter, Origen replies to an objection to Christianity brought forward by Celsus. Celsus had argued that Jonah, who was said to have escaped from a whale unharmed, would have been a fitter object of worship by Christians than Jesus, who died on a cross:

After this, as though his [Celsus'] object was to swell the size of his book, he advises us "to choose Jonah rather than Jesus as our God;" thus setting Jonah, who preached repentance to the single city of Nineveh, before Jesus, who has preached repentance to the whole world, and with much greater results. He would have us to regard as God a man who, by a strange miracle, passed three days and three nights in the whale's belly; and he is unwilling that He who submitted to death for the sake of men, He to whom God bore testimony through the prophets, and who has done great things in heaven and earth, should receive on that ground honour second only to that which is given to the Most High God. Moreover, Jonah was swallowed by the whale for refusing to preach as God had commanded him; while Jesus suffered death for men after He had given the instructions which God wished Him to give.

Here, Origen describes Jonah as having been "swallowed by the whale", and describes his survival inside the whale as "a strange miracle." That sounds clear enough to me.

The testimony of the fourth century: St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Jerome took the Biblical account of Jonah literally, too

But wait, there's more! A September 2002 article by Thomas Crean in Living Tradition magazine, an organ of the Roman Theological Forum, lists valiuable quotes by two Church Fathers in the fourth century - St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Jerome - who accepted the story of Jonah as literal fact, despite objections from skeptics:

St. Cyril of Jerusalem refers to the story of Jonah in his 14th Catechetical Instruction, about 347 A.D.. He is defending the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, and with Jewish objections particularly in mind, also makes allusion to this most famous of incidents, the ingorging of the prophet by the 'great fish'. St. Cyril says:

"To me both alike are worthy of credence. I believe that Jonah was preserved, for all things are possible to God; I believe that Christ also was raised from the dead".

It is to St. Jerome that we owe the earliest full and extant commentary on the book of Jonah. The saint composed it towards the end of the 4th century, in Bethlehem. He has no doubt but that Jonah, a type of Christ, is also a real person: indeed, in his preface, he asks that the prophet may bestow on him a renewed fervour, so that he may write as he ought. In several passages of the book, he notes certain characteristics of the historical Jonah, for example, his magnanimity in wanting to die, so that the crew of the ship should be saved. He distinguishes clearly what belongs to historia, the life and adventures of the prophet, from what belongs to tropologia, this same life as a prefigurement of the Saviour. In commenting on chapter two, he says:

"I am aware that some will be incredulous that a man should be preserved three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, to which the shipwreck had led him; these people are either believers or non-believers: if they are believers, they are obliged to believe much greater things."

Among these 'much greater things', the saint lists the preservation of the three young men in the fiery furnace (Dan.3), and Daniel's being preserved among the lions (Dan.14; Heb.11). One might also include any of the miracles of resurrection in either the Old or the New Testament.

A possible counter-example from the fourth century? Not!

The article goes on to discuss - and refute - a possible counter-example: St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who drew an allegorical meaning from the story of Jonah but nowhere denied its historicity:

The second oration of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (362 A.D.) is sometimes cited as if it were a patristic forerunner of modern denials of the historicity of the book of Jonah. In truth, this does not appear to be the purport of the text (Orat. 2, 104-10). St. Gregory does not say, contrary to what has been suggested, that the story is absurd, but that it would be absurd or improbable if one supposed a prophet such as Jonah to have really thought that he could escape from the presence of God by going to Tarshish, or not to have desired the salvation of the Ninevites. In reality, he says - as St. Jerome was also to say - the prophet knew by his prophetic vision that salvation for the pagans would mean the fall of Israel; this, and not literally escaping the divine presence, was the motive behind his flight:

"He saw the fall of Israel, and understood that the grace of prophecy would pass to the nations. This is what leads him to withdraw from preaching and delay the execution of his mission. He abandons the contemplation of joy (which is the meaning of the word Joppe in Hebrew), that is, the high position and dignity which he had possessed formerly, and he throws himself into the sea of sadness. This is what makes him weather the storm, fall asleep, be shipwrecked, ... be thrown into the sea and be swallowed by the whale without dying: there he invokes God, and by a wonder, he rises on the third day with Christ... . I willingly admit that he perhaps had some right, for the motive I have expounded, to be forgiven his hesitation in carrying out the office of a prophet."

It seems clear that the saint takes the prophet Jonah to be a real person, whose exploits, whilst carrying a symbolic meaning, form also a coherent history when one knows the true motive of Jonah's flight. (Emphases mine - VJT.)

Error #7 - Rev. Lose ascribes a bogus quote to the great 20th century Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth.

Karl Barth (1888-1968), a Swiss Reformed theologian who was one of the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century. Courtesy of Maria Netter and Wikipedia.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

Rev. Lose quotes a saying by Karl Barth (1886-1968), arguably the greatest theologian of the twentieth century: "I take the Bible too seriously to read it literally." Problem is, Karl Barth never said that, as far as I can tell. Rev. Lose gives no source for the quote, and the only online source I've seen for this soundbite is a statement made by Rev. Matt Fitzgerald, pastor of Epiphany Church in Chicago, Illinois, in 2004.

Another similar quote ascribed to Karl Barth is this one: "I love the Bible too much to take it literally." As far as I can tell, this unsourced quote first appeared in a post on a discussion forum by Kara Speltz, on 5 November 2006.

Now, Karl Barth was indeed no Biblical literalist, as this article in Time magazine (Witness to an Ancient Truth, 20 April 1962) clearly demonstrates:

Barth accepts and welcomes scholarly criticism of the Bible, even when it shows the Scriptures to be full of errors and inconsistencies. He does not consider the Bible infallible, and he deplores orthodox Protestants who make it into "a paper Pope." Nevertheless, the Bible testifies to God's Word, which is revealed to man through human speech. The words that the Biblical writers use may not always be the appropriate ones, but they must be accepted as words elected by God. (Emphasis mine - VJT.)

"Paper Pope." Now that would have been a good quote in support of Rev. Lose's case. But he didn't check it out. He used a bogus quote instead. Rev. Lose really should be more careful where he gets his theological quotes from - particularly when they're unsourced.

UPDATE

According to a private communication I recently received from a Professor of Church history, although it is true that Karl Barth definitely did not affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, he did say, in an interview with Donald Grey Barnhouse in the 1930s: "I do not wish to be classified as other than a Bible Christian." The context: theological liberals and conservatives were in compromise -- running with Hitler. And Barth did say these words of farewell to his students as he was forced out of Germany under the Third Reich -- "exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis. Keep to the word, to the scripture that has been given us." And he did say, in his lectures on Evangelical Theology delivered at the end of his career, that theologians must let the biblical writers look over their shoulder and correct their notebooks, and not vice versa. In short, Barth was much more traditional on matters Scriptural than some people think.

Error #8 - Rev. Lose falsely claims that since the people who wrote the Bible were fallible and sinful, they were incapable of communicating supernatural truths without error.

"David and Saul" by Julius Kronberg. 1885. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
According to the Bible (1 Samuel 19:18-24), the Spirit of God seized Saul and turned him into a prophet, despite the fact that he was plotting to kill David, the Lord's anointed.

Error #1 Error #2 Error #3 Error #4 Error #5 Error #6 Error #7 Error #8

In his article, Rev. Lose writes:

Rather than imagine that the Bible was also written by ordinary, fallible people, inerrantists have made the Bible an other-wordly, supernatural document that runs contrary to the biblical affirmation that God chooses ordinary vessels -- "jars of clay," the Apostle Paul calls them -- to bear an extraordinary message. In fact, literalists unwittingly ascribe to the Bible the status of being "fully human and fully divine" that is normally reserved only for Jesus.

So why, then, would so many people read the Bible literally?

Here, Rev. Lose criticizes those who make the Bible into "an other-wordly, supernatural document." One can only conclude that Rev. Lose views the Bible as a purely natural document. He appears to be arguing that if the human authors of the Bible were sinful and fallible, then anything they wrote must be fallible as well. To assert otherwise, he claims, is Bibliolatry.

This is an extraordinarily naive statement for a minister of religion. It was ably refuted by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus (paragraph 20) more than a century ago, in words which most Jews and Christians of his day would have wholeheartedly endorsed:

"It is futile to argue that the Holy Spirit took human beings as his instruments in writing, implying that some error could slip in... For by his supernatural power he so stimulated and moved them to write, and so assisted them while they were writing, that they properly conceived in their mind, wished to write down faithfully, and expressed aptly with infallible truth all those things, and only those things, which He himself ordered; otherwise He could not Himself be the author of the whole of Sacred Scripture" (DS 3293)

What Pope Leo XIII is saying here is that God is capable of supernaturally directing the wills of human beings, in order to make them express those truths that He wants them to communicate.

Surely Rev. Lose is familiar with the Biblical account (1 Samuel 19:18-24) of Saul and his men being seized by the Spirit of God and made to prophesy, even as they sought to kill David, the Lord's anointed.

18 Now David fled and escaped and came to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth. 19 It was told Saul, saying, "Behold, David is at Naioth in Ramah." 20 Then Saul sent messengers to take David, but when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, with Samuel standing and presiding over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul; and they also prophesied. 21 When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. So Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also prophesied. 22 Then he himself went to Ramah and came as far as the large well that is in Secu; and he asked and said, "Where are Samuel and David?" And someone said, "Behold, they are at Naioth in Ramah." 23 He proceeded there to Naioth in Ramah; and the Spirit of God came upon him also, so that he went along prophesying continually until he came to Naioth in Ramah. 24 He also stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Therefore they say, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" (Emphases mine - VJT.)

I ask: if God's Spirit could make even a would-be murderer prophesy, then what is to stop God from using sinners to express inerrantly whatever He wants them to? Nor need this involve a violation of our free will: if the human author of Scripture is willing to be directed by God, then where is the problem? Finally, it should be borne in mind that direction is not the same thing as dictation. God, in directing someone's mind and will to express certain supernatural truths, may well be content to leave the choice of words up to them.

Moreover, Rev. Lose's argument would prove too much, even for him. For if the human authors of the Bible were fallible in historical and scientific matters, they were no less fallible in spiritual matters. But this would undermine Rev. Lose's claim that the stories in the Bible "point metaphorically to spiritual realities rather than historical facts." Obviously, if the human authors were not Divinely protected from error when they wrote, then the Biblical stories could "point" the wrong way when discussing "spiritual realities."

To illustrate my point, consider the following question: is the Bible right or wrong on matters relating to sexual ethics?

Rev. Lose's argument, taken to its logical conclusion, implies that the Bible contains errors of all kinds, and not just errors relating to history and science. If that's what he believes, fine; but at least he should have the honesty to say so, publicly and unambiguously.

Appendix: A list of scientific observations that would falsify Christianity

In my discussion of Re. Lose's Error #1, I wrote that I could think of several scientific observations that would falsify Christianity. Here they are:

1. Observations confirming that the universe is infinitely old, with no beginning. Christians believe that God does not just conserve the universe in being; He actually created the universe.

2. Scientific proof that human beings did not spring from a common stock, and that the human race had a polyphyletic origin. Christians believe all human beings are made in the image of God, and that they spring from a common stock.

3. Scientific proof that the following distinctively human abilities - i.e. the capacity, as opposed to the exercise of these abilities - emerged at different times in the past: the ability to create a language with rules of discourse and a structured grammar; the ability to engage in logical argument (and not just means-end reasoning); the ability to entertain abstract concepts such as "truth," "goodness" and "beauty"; the ability to entertain a concept of God who is worthy of worship and who punishes wrongdoing; and the ability to believe in a personal after-life. Christians believe all these abilities to be (a) spiritual and (b) God-given.

4. The discovery of a non-human animal (e.g. a dolphin) possessing one or more of the abilities listed above. Christians believe that God cares for animals, but that only humans are made in the image of God.

5. The discovery of a race or tribe of human beings who are currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason, but who are utterly incapable of even comprehending – let alone accepting – the Gospel message. Jesus commanded His followers to preach to all nations (Matthew 28:19).

6. The creation of a machine that was capable of conversing at length about any topic – including its own mental states and life story – in such a way that it could fool an audience of intelligent people into thinking that it was human. Christians have traditionally believed that reason and language are God-given abilities.