I have had some conversations recently with someone who thinks that circular arguments are sometimes OK. And around the same time, the possible circularity of arguments attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John came up in my Sunday school class. In John 8, Jesus is depicted as saying that his testimony about himself is essentially self-authenticating. This is all the more problematic because Jesus is depicted in chapter 5 as saying that if he testifies about himself, his testimony... Read more
I have heard people make claims about fundamentalism being a form of mental illness, but I’ve often felt that that was an inappropriate slight against genuine mental illness, using it in the demeaning way that popular speech talks about craziness and insanity. Moreover, there are lots of atheists who have said that religion of any sort is a mental illness, and hopefully all well-informed people are aware of the abundant counterevidence to that claim – which turns out, on closer... Read more
Here is the final installment in this series of posts allowing you to listen in on a conversation that I had with a colleague about biblical inerrancy (although I expect that our conversation will continue, and so this is the “final installment” of this part of it): COLLEAGUE What evidence from the Bible led you to abandon inerrancy? JAMES It was the sheer accumulation of examples of problems, contradictions, and/or human fallibility that changed my mind – not... Read more
Here is some more of my conversation with a colleague about inerrancy: COLLEAGUE Thoughts on Frame’s points under the criticisms section? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/an-interview-with-john-frame-on-apologetics-to-the-glory-of-god/ JAMES I think the problem is that there is still the assumption that not only is there an ultimate authority, but also the assumption that the human being engaging in the circular argument has grasped the meaning and will of that authority so perfectly that none of the uncertainty that comes with being human needs to temper... Read more
I thought I would giver readers of the blog the chance to listen in on the conversation that I have been having recently with a colleague on the topic of biblical inerrancy – in case any of you are curious how I sometimes end up blogging about the topics that I do, or in case you find the conversation helpful as you explore and discuss the topic yourself… COLLEAGUE James, I read your “Just Sayin” post today and clicked... Read more
The latest Star Wars movie, Solo, manages to feel genuinely like a perfect prequel to A New Hope and the rest of the original, even more so than Rogue One. That even though it follows the opening words “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” with more words, and not the classic fanfare. This post will include spoilers, but if you haven’t already seem the movie and are in two minds about whether to do so, please... Read more
I have been blogging quite a bit about inerrancy, as you may have noticed. That is mostly because I have been having a conversation with a colleague about the topic. I will share some excerpts from that conversation in the next couple of days. Today, I want to share some background of my own connection with biblical, as well as links to others who’ve been blogging about the subject lately. I abandoned inerrancy when I realized that I was defending... Read more
I shared in a recent blog post a quote from an earlier post of mine about inerrancy, and I thought that it might perhaps be worth turning into a meme. Read more
Someone in my Sunday school class told me that they heard recently that there were 700 titles/names/ways of referring to Jesus in the Bible. I was pretty sure that my skepticism about the figure was not due to my lack of knowledge of the Bible, and so I decided it would be worth looking into what lay behind this claim. This view is articulated in a book by Elmer Towns, one of the founders of Liberty University (which in itself... Read more
Chris Glaser recently wrote, “as Jesus said of the Sabbath and the fundamentalism of his day, the Bible was made for humankind, not humankind for the Bible.” That comparison seems quite apt to me. Fundamentalists think that pointing to the Bible as though it were God or at least the Word of God incarnate inlibrate, it will make things better. But biblical inerrantism is a burden, because the Bible itself resists this straightjacket and pushes against it, to say nothing... Read more
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