Category Archives: Bible

Best accessible bible study/commentary series

Posted on by
Reply
Email

 

I read a lot of commentaries from ones that are highly technical into Biblical language nuances, to those that are hyper critical, and again to those that are very “practical”.  I like to read from “liberal”, “conservative” and everything in-between.  This I find necessary to really get into a text and eventually give a talk that is as faithful as possible.  The talk also is submerged in prayer, a robust experience of God, and a high view of the Scriptures for it to become anointed proclamation of the life-changing Gospel of Jesus.

We also of course encourage daily (5x week) reading of scripture and family devotions at least once or more times a week.

Family devotions are best (in my experience) part of when we eat together.  That does not happen every night, but several a week for sure.

One of the best ways to do this is simply have someone read a passage of scripture and devotional book.

This year my family started anew using N.T. Wrights “…For Everyone” commentary series.

The series has the Bible text in the VERY easy reading translation he has done himself, followed by a modern story or illustration and then some of the best common language comments I’ve read by a Biblical scholar for ordinary understanding and application.

I would recommend these for personal devotional reading and study, for family devotions and for small groups to use. 

For small group use it would be helpful if everyone bought the commentary, read ahead of time, and noted questions and quotes that spoke to them.  Leaders can add leading questions too.  Follow up with application – so what for you/us?  Where is the Holy Spirit really prompting you?

Email

Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible: Boyd

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Shel – I appreciate Boyd’s approach.  Being an “ethnic mennonite” and pentecostal I’m glad he’s become Anabaptist!

Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible

from ReKnew by Greg Boyd

the prophecy / skulls & bones.

 Eddy Van 3000 via Compfight

While most of the Bible exhibits a “God-breathed” quality, reflecting a magnificently beautiful God that is consistent with God’s definitive revelation on the cross, we must honestly acknowledge that some depictions of God in Scripture are simply horrific. They are included in what is sometimes called “the dark side of the Bible.” To give just a small sampling, we find God portrayed as doing things such as:

* …causing parents to cannibalize their own children (Lev. 26:29; Jer. 19:9; Lam. 2:20; Ezek. 5:10)

* …causing pregnant women to having their wombs ripped open and their children dashed on the ground (Hos. 13: 16)

* …refusing to allow any compassion to keep him from smashing parents and children together (Jer. 13:16)

* …commanding the Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, child, infant and even animals – “everything that breathes” – though they are not to harm trees, for “trees are not your enemy” (though babies are?) (e.g. Deut. 7:1-2; 20:16-20)

* …telling Israelite men that, while everyone else in a region is to be mercilessly slaughtered, they may spare women they find attractive and marry them. However, if they later “find no delight in her,” they may turn them out on the street (Deut. 21:10-14)

* …commanding parents and others to stone to death children who are stubborn or who strike a parent (Ex. 21:15, 17; Lev. 20:9; Deut. 21:18-21)

In my forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I have an entire chapter of material such this. It is not easy reading! Now, out of obedience to Christ, who consistently spoke of the Hebrew Bible as divinely inspired, and in solidarity with the historic orthodox Church, I feel obliged to confess all Scripture, including horrific material such as this, is “God-breathed” (theopneustos, 2 Tim. 3:16). At the same time, I believe it is also vitally important that we remain ruthlessly honest with ourselves and others and God about this material. How else can we describe material such as this as anything other than horrific, macabre, grotesque, and even revolting? If a portrait of God commanding people to slaughter babies and causing mothers to eat them doesn’t qualify as revolting, what would? If you found material like this in any other ancient or modern text, would you hesitate for a moment from labeling it as macabre, revolting, or some such phrase? If we are honest, we cannot deny it. So how does horrific material like what I just reviewed suddenly become less revolting by virtue of being found in our sacred text rather than someone else’s?

Not only this, but if we refrain from calling this material what it is and instead gloss over it in order to sound more pious, we are in effect condoning its violence. And as I mentioned in a previous blog, there is now a wealth of research demonstrating that violence in literature that is considered sacred is a powerful force in motivating religious violence. It can only be negated by being renounced.

I know it sounds impious to describe any of God’s inspired Word to be horrific or revolting, but I am actually in good company in speaking this way. No less an authority than John Calvin was willing to describe some of the portraits of God in the OT as “utterly barbaric,” “crude” and “savage” as he affirmed that God had to condescend to give such brute laws because his people’s hearts were so “hard,” “incorrigible” and “depraved.”[1] So too, Calvin admits that God’s command to destroy “everything that breathes” in Jericho “would have been savagery” (immanis) and would have been “a deed of atrocious and barbaric ferocity” (quad atrociter et barbara saevitia) were it not God who commanded it.[2] Elsewhere Calvin describes some of God’s commands and actions as “harsh,” “savage” and “barbaric’” (durum, immane, barbarum) as well as  “savage and fierce” (saevi et atroces), as involving “execrable savagery” (detestabilis immanitas), and as constituting a “barbaric atrocity” (barbara atrocitas).[3] I appreciate Calvin’s candor!

Of course, once we acknowledge that some portraits of God in Scripture are horrifically violent, it forces the question of how we can nevertheless continue to affirm this material as “God-breathed.” Calvin tried to resolve the dilemma by arguing that God accommodates himself to human sin and by insisting that God is not subject to our sense of morality.[4] This view is highly problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it undermines the analogical basis of referring to God’s “goodness” and “love” etc. Unless what we mean by “good” as applied to God is analogous to what “good” means in other contexts, then the “goodness” we ascribe to God is devoid of content. The idea that God utterly transcends our moral categories also unwittingly ascribes to God a Nietzschian ethic in which morality is reduced to nothing more than the preferences of whoever is in power. If God says that it was “good” in a particular instance to cause pregnant woman to have their unborn children ripped out of their wombs, then in this view, it was in fact “good,” because he has the power to send you to hell if you disagree.

These problems with Calvin’s view aside, the more fundamental problem is that the dilemma we’re facing isn’t first and foremost about the clash between horrific portraits of God in Scripture and our moral intuitions. It’s rather about the clash between these portraits and God’s own self-revelation in the crucified Christ. On the cross he reveals his eternal nature to be self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love. God is love (1 Jn.4:8), and this love is defined by the cross (1 Jn. 3:16). This love doesn’t seem compatible with God committing himself to mercilessly smashing families together, and that is the core problem. In fact, not only would we expect all material in Scripture to be consistent with what we learn about God in Christ, but on Jesus’ own authority as well as the uniform witness of Church history, all material in Scripture bears witness to Christ (Jn 5:39-45; Lk 24:25-278, 32, 44). It’s not self-evident how a portrait of God committing himself to mercilessly smash families together and causing parents to eat their children bears witness to Christ. That is the real problem, and nothing Calvin says has any bearing on this issue.

I will say more about this in blogs to come, and much more to say in my forthcoming book. For right now I will just leave you with this. I only began to discern a way to understand how horrific depictions of God in Scripture bear witness to the crucified Christ when I finally stopped trying to deny these depictions were horrific. So long as we try to tidy up, sanitize, minimize and piously gloss over material that we honestly know in our hearts is macabre and revolting, the best case scenario is that we will succeed at finding a slightly less revolting deity in these portraits than we initially found. This is what standard evangelical apologetic approaches accomplish, on a good day. It is in essence the approach I adopted five years ago when I began this present project. But I came to see that even the very best of these approaches are of no value when it comes to disclosing how this material bears witness to the self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love of God on Calvary. And to make matters worse, all the while we are tidying up our macabre depictions of God, we are bearing some responsibility for the way this material continues to serve as a precedent for people to appeal to in order to justify their hatred and violence, as it has served throughout history.

To be clear, in obedience to Jesus, I adamantly affirm that all this material is inspired by God. In my book I argueagainst the many scholars today who try to resolve the problem this material poses by dismissing the text, whether on historical or theological grounds. But to say it is God-breathed says nothing about how it is God-breathed. Nor does it say anything about how this material is to be interpreted such that it bears witness to God’s unfathomable love revealed on Calvary.

As with all matters of faith, the place to start is by getting honest with ourselves, each other, and God by admitting the obvious. It was when I got to this point that the clouds began to lift and I began to discern that something else is going on in these horrific portraits that I hadn’t noticed before. So can we be honest? Can we agree that causing babies to be viciously ripped out of wombs, causing babies to be dashed on the ground, and causing mothers to eat them is horrific, macabre, and revolting, regardless of where the divine portrait is found, and regardless of the deity this behavior is ascribed to? As we admit this, let us hold fast to the conviction that this material, in all of its ghoulish detail, is “God-breathed.” And now begin to prayerful ask – how might this depth of depravity point us to the cross?

Lord bless our honest ponderings!

 [1] For discussions of this material, see D. F. Wright, “Accommodation and Barbarity in John Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries,” in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson, A. G. Auld, ed. (JSOT, Supp. 152: 413-27; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 413-27; item., “Calvin’s Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Hart, and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony commentary,” Calvin Theological Journal, 21 (1986), 33-50.  There is, of course, a “paradox” running throughout all Calvin’s work – shared by all other Calvinists – that the hardness that God must condescend to work through and that God ultimately punishes people for was all predestined.  But that issue is for another time.

[2] Wright, “Accommodation,” 417.

[3] Ibid., 417-18.

[4] He says, for example, “let us remember that the court of heaven is not one whit subject to our laws.” Ibid., 418.

 

Email

Who Put the 3:16 in John 3:16?

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Who Put the 3:16 in John 3:16? By

Mark Coppenger | 

Like the fellow who thought he’d be crossing visible longitude lines on his ocean voyage to Europe, some may think that the chapter and verse divisions were on the sheet when apostles such as John (or psalmists such as David) wrote down Scripture. But no, they wrote letters and poetry and Gospels and other history without numbering. Those markers were added centuries later. Indeed, when Jesus referred to Exodus 3:6 in Mark 12:26, He simply located it in “in the passage about the burning bush.” Neither the “12:26” nor the “3:6” were yet in place.[i]

To make a long story short, biblical scholars were making divisions of one sort or another in the centuries following the books’ original composition, but it wasn’t until the early 1200s that we got our current chapter setup, thanks to Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. As for the verses, Jewish scribes had already done work on the Old Testament around the year 900, and their work was wedded to Langton’s. But the Church had to wait another 300 years for its New Testament breakdown, performed by a French-born printer, Robert Estienne or Etienne (also know by the Latinized version of his name, “Stephanus”).

He was a Protestant refugee in Geneva when he decided to construct a concordance for the Greek New Testament, but he found the broad A, B, C, D divisions unwieldy. So he inserted verse numbers, and the product was an overnight success. This isn’t to say his choices were free from criticism. Though the original writings, whether by Moses, Luke, or Peter, were free from error, that same inerrancy did not extend to Langton and Estienne, as useful as their work has proven to be.

For instance, most modern translations group 1 Corinthians 11:1 with the closing verses of chapter 10, under such headings as “Christian Liberty” (HCSB), “The Believer’s Freedom” (NIV), and “Do All to the Glory of God” (ESV). Most simply think that 11:1 belongs with the previous chapter. And other critics have objected to the way Estienne cut up single sentences, as with the opening words of Romans. Depending on where the translator puts the period, the first sentence of that epistle runs four (ESV; NIV) or six verses (HCSB).

Still, it’s hard to imagine how we could get along without these markers, as we cite or quote “Psalm 23” or Paul’s instructions regarding the believer’s relationship to the state in “Romans 13:1-7.” They’ve proven most helpful as we’ve made the most of the fact expressed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

So one hears, “Okay class, let’s open our Bibles to today’s text. I’d like each of you to read threeverses as we go around the room.”


 

 

[i] A good account of the process can be found in Robert L. Plummer’s 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), as well as in Edgar J. Goodspeed’s classic How Came the Bible? (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1940). Encyclopedia entries are also useful, such as the article on “Estienne” in The Westminster Dictionary of Church History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971).

Mark Coppenger

About Mark Coppenger

Mark Coppenger is professor of Christian apologetics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, director of the Seminary’s Nashville extension, and managing editor of Kairos Journal. He received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University. He has published several books and has contributed to such publications as Teaching Philosophy, Touchstone,American Spectator Online, and USA Today.

Email

From IM: Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Shel – I was just referring to this book when talking with one of our growth group leaders…

There Is No “Me and Jesus” in the Bible

Misreading

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible
by E. Randolph Richards & Brandon J. O’Brien
IVP Books (2012)

Part Two of a series.

One major impediment Westerners have in reading the Bible and practicing the Christian faith is our individualistic perspective. For the Bible was written in a much more collectivist culture and it reflects that orientation.

My (Randy’s) anthropology professor worked in a remote tribal area for years. His village friends gave him a nickname that meant, “Man who needs no one.” This would be a positive American trait, but they were not intending to compliment him.”

In this age of accessible transportation, many have traveled for business or pleasure, or on mission trips that have exposed them to different cultures. It is common for folks to express how eye-opening such experiences can be. I would affirm that, but found it even more of an epiphany when I hosted a friend from India here in the States. I remember one entire day of driving him around our city to visit with various people. It was just the two of us riding in the car for hours, interspersed with short meetings, usually with individuals in office buildings. After a particularly long stretch of driving I asked my friend, “Well, what do you think of the U.S.?” In essence he replied, “It’s ok for a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

It struck me immediately that he was feeling isolated and lonely here. Thinking back to my experiences with him in India, I realized that, in his natural setting, he was rarely alone or in a setting that was not filled with crowds of people. His clinic is attached to his home, so he never really leaves his work or his patients. His mother and several other extended family members live with him, and there are neighbors and friends and merchants and hired workers in and out of his home all day. The streets of the city where he lives are constantly crowded with people, animals, and every manner of vehicle. If he wants some “me” time, he has to intentionally seek solitude (which, amazingly to me, he seems to need far less often that someone like myself) by leaving town for awhile.

As societies become more technologically sophisticated they inevitably become more individualistic. This leads to the “losing my religion” phenomenon we have been talking about in recent days, for Christianity is not an individualistic faith. And as the authors say, “It is difficult to present the values of a collectivist culture in a positive light to Western hearers.”What is a virtue in one society is often considered a vice in the other. This is extremely important to grasp, for it means that the deep presuppositions and outlooks that form us as individualistic people in the contemporary world do not reflect the cultural ethos represented in Scripture.

We do not, cannot read the Bible accurately until we face up to these blinders.

 

12tribesThe authors show how we have westernized and individualized the Christmas story into a tale of a small nuclear family who traveled alone and overcame personal challenges to bring the Christ-child into the world. In reality, it likely happened in the context of a clan of relatives: “The birth of Jesus was no solitary event witnessed only by the doting parents in the quiet of a cattle fold. It was likely a noisy, bustling event attended by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.”

We imagine Paul in terms of romanticism’s ideal: the lone writer, agonizing over his words and pouring out his heart under God’s inspiration to express profound spiritual ideals. However, “Paul would not have locked himself away in some private room to write. …He more likely would have sat in a public place: the breezy, well-lit atrium of a prosperous home like Lydia’s or in an upstairs balconied apartment. Family and friends walking by would have stopped to listen [as he dictated out loud to his secretary] (ancients read out loud) and to offer advice (it shows you care).”

We routinely ignore the NT testimony to the fact that Paul had co-authors and that he always functioned as part of a team when he was able to do so. Many of the NT epistles were probably collaborative efforts as Paul and his partners discussed the needs of the congregations they were addressing and how to deal with them.

Richards and O’Brien also discuss the radically different perspective that collectivist cultures have about conversion and religious faith. “We are used to our decisions, and thus our conversion, being personal and private affairs.” However, the NT records householdconversions. And more collective societies still have this perspective. They cite Duane Elmer, a missionary who testified:

…when he shared Christ  with Asian adults he “was constantly told that they could not make a decision to follow Christ without asking a parent, uncle, aunt or all three.” At first he thought this was an evasive maneuver, a ruse to avoid making the hard decision of faith. Over time he realized that this is simply how collectivist cultures work. People “do not make major decisions without talking it over with the proper authority figures in their extended family.” This is hard for us Westerners to understand. We believe they are simply doing what the authority figure(s) said and not making decisions for themselves. My (Randy’s) Asian friend speaks of his conversion this way: “My father is wiser than I am. If he says Jesus is better, then I know Jesus is better.” My friend has a faith as strong and rooted as mine. His certitude about Jesus came a different way than mine, but it as firm.

One of the most common ways we misread the Bible through Western, individualistic eyes involves our failure to understand the plural pronouns in the NT. In English, we use the word“you” in both singular and plural contexts. Therefore, we regularly misread teachings and instructions which are directed to entire congregations as being spoken to “me” as an individual.

In my view, this is one of the great issues in Biblical interpretation and its application to the Christian faith — How do we translate the words of Scripture that reflect a way of life much different than we know in our own individualistic culture and apply them to our lives and churches today?

Email

Stand Firm: Taking Rachel Held Evans to School

Posted on by
4
Email

Shel – I’ve enjoyed some of Rachel’s commentary on politics and the Evangelical church – but she is clearly not much of a Biblical scholar….

From Stand Firm:

Taking Rachel Held Evans to School

Doug Wilson takes apart Rachel Held Evans’ latest bit of exegetical confusion.

“So we may conclude from this aspect of it that when Rachel Held Evans set up shop to teach us what the Bible says about womanhood, it took her about ten minutes to start producing Talmudic arcana and extra rules instead of straight Bible. Not only extra rules, but dumb ones. But of course, making it look silly is a central part of her whole project. But here is the difference. The rabbis wanted people to take their Talmud as seriously as they took the Scriptures. Evans wants people to be as dismissive of the Scriptures as they are of her arbitrary little Talmud…more”

Ouch…be sure to read the whole post by Wilson. It’s brief, true, and devastating.

I have been reading Evans’ posts recently since she is influential with some women I care about. The most troubling thing to me is that she is an exegetical demagogue. What I mean by that is that her arguments tend to have little or no exegetical substance but they are seen by many as having weight because her conclusions fit with conclusions her readers want to embrace. She provides a kind of faux biblical cover for women to ignore or “reinterpret” various passages that have, granted, been misused abusively by men in the past. It is very sad. I don’t think think she means to be a demagogue. She’s no doubt sincere. But I am disturbed that she has such a following given the quality of her arguments.

Email

Is God’s Love Limited to the Elect? Rebutting a Calvinist Challenge to the Gospel

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Is God’s Love Limited to the Elect? Rebutting a Calvinist Challenge to the Gospel

The doctrine of limited atonement is probably the most hotly debated of the five points of Calvinism among evangelicals. It is also Calvinism’s Achilles’ heel; without it the other points fall.

By Roger E. Olson

The recent renaissance of Calvinism among evangelicals has brought to the fore the issue of the scope of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross. Many evangelical Christians simply assume that Christ died for all — that He bore the sins and suffered the punishment for every sinner. For the last four centuries, however, there has been a minority report among Protestants. Most Calvinists, followers of the French Reformer of Switzerland John Calvin (1509–64), have taught that Christ only bore the punishment for the sins of the elect — those unconditionally predestined by God for salvation. Contemporary Calvinists (they often prefer we call them Reformed Christians) call this doctrine “particular redemption” or “definite atonement.”

Among the contemporary evangelical defenders of limited atonement are, most notably, R.C. Sproul and John Piper. Sproul (b. 1939) has been an influential evangelical apologist and Reformed theologian for much of the last half of the 20th century. From his base in his Ligonier Ministries he has spoken on the radio, traveled to speak at numerous apologetics and theology conferences, and written many books — most of them dealing with God’s sovereignty from a strongly Reformed perspective.

Piper (b. 1946), pastor of Minneapolis’ Bethlehem Baptist Church, and founder of Desiring God Ministries, also travels widely and speaks at large gatherings of evangelical Christians — including the Passion conferences attended by thousands of mostly Southern Baptist teens and twenties. He is a prolific author whose books, includingDesiring God: Confessions of a Christian Hedonist (1986), have sold millions of copies. Like Sproul, Piper is a passionate promoter of five-point Calvinism.

FIVE-POINT CALVINISM

Five-point Calvinism is belief in the doctrines symbolized by the TULIP acrostic: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. Calvinists created the acrostic about 1913, but the “doctrines of grace” it represents date back to Calvin’s successor — Theodore Beza (1519–1605) — principal of the Genevan Academy (a Reformed seminary in Geneva, Switzerland, founded by Calvin). Limited atonement stands at the center of this theological system. Sproul, Piper, and many other contemporary, influential evangelical theologians tenaciously hold and defend this position.

LIMITED ATONEMENT

What does limited atonement or particular redemption mean? According to Sproul, who prefers to call this doctrine “purposeful atonement,” it means that God intended Christ’s death on the Cross to secure the salvation of a definite number of fallen human persons — those unconditionally chosen by God. Like other Calvinists, Sproul argues that Christ’s substitutionary death (i.e., God inflicted on Christ the punishment for sins deserved by sinners) was of sufficient value to save everyone, but God only intended it to save the elect. In the most important sense, Christ only died for the elect and not for everyone.

For Sproul (and others like him), this doctrine is not dispensable; it is part and parcel of the TULIP system that they believe alone does justice to the sovereignty of God and the gift nature of salvation. One argument Sproul uses, following the Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–83), is that, if Christ died for everyone alike, then everyone is saved. After all, so the argument goes, it would be unjust of God to punish the same sins twice — once by laying the punishment on Christ and another time by sending the sinner to hell.

Piper is equally passionate about limited atonement. Like Sproul, he does not consider it a minor point of theology. In an article entitled, “For Whom Did Christ Die? And What Did Christ Actually Achieve on the Cross for Those for Whom He Died?”1 Piper argues that it is not the Calvinist who limits the Atonement but the non-Calvinist who believes in universal atonement. The reason: Those who believe in universal atonement must say Christ’s death did not actually save anyone but only gave people opportunity to save themselves. Or they must embrace universalism.

Piper continues by arguing that Christ did actually die for all people but not in the same way. All people benefit from Christ’s death by, for example, receiving certain blessings in this life they would otherwise not have — but only the elect receive the benefit of salvation from it.

This doctrine of limited atonement is probably the most hotly debated of the five points of Calvinism among evangelicals. Evangelical theologian Vernon Grounds, former president of Denver Seminary, lashed out against the doctrine. Pointing to John 1:29; Romans 5:17–21; 11:32; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 2:9; and 1 John 2:2 he wrote, “It takes an exegetical ingenuity which is something other than a learned virtuosity to evacuate these texts of their obvious meaning: it takes an exegetical ingenuity verging on sophistry to deny their explicit universality.”2 Needless to say, many evangelicals, including some Calvinists, find this doctrine repugnant.

BASIS FOR LIMITED ATONEMENT

Before explaining why this doctrine is repulsive, it will be beneficial to look at the reasons why many Calvinists think so highly of it and promote it so passionately. Once again, what is this doctrine? It is that God intended Jesus’ death on the Cross to be a propitiation (substitutionary, atoning sacrifice) only for the sins of the elect — those God has selected to save apart from anything He sees in them or about them (other than His choice of them for His glory and good pleasure).

Why would anyone believe this?

Proponents of limited atonement point to several Scriptures: John 10:15; 17:6, and similar verses in John 10–17; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 5:25–27; Titus 2:14.

Calvinists use John 10:15 to support their teaching: “The Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Many other verses in John say much the same — that Christ laid down His life for His sheep (i.e., His disciples and all who would come after them).

Calvinists also point to Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” They assume “us all” refers to the elect.

Ephesians 5:25–27 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Calvinists believe this passage, like many others, refers only to the church as the object of Christ’s cleansing sacrifice.

Titus 2:14 reads: “Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” Calvinists believe that Paul, the author of Titus, seems to restrict the saving benefits of Christ’s death to “his people” which they equate with the elect.

Calvinists assume these verses and others like them teach that Christ died only for those chosen by God for salvation. But these verses do not teach Calvinistic beliefs. Nowhere does the Bible explicitly teach this Calvinist doctrine.

Calvinists read into these passages their belief that Christ only died for the church, for His people, for His sheep. These verses do not say Christ did not also die for others. And, as we will see, there are many passages that clearly teach Christ did die for everyone.

There is another reason Calvinists believe in limited atonement. If Christ died equally for everyone, they aver, then everyone is saved. They argue that those who believe in universal atonement face two unavoidable but biblically untenable options: either Christ’s death saved everyone or it saved no one. This argument is, however, fallacious. Universal atonement does not require universal salvation; it only requires the possibility of universal salvation.

It is possible for the same sins to be punished twice and that is what makes hell so absolutely tragic — it is totally unnecessary. God punishes those with hell who reject His Son’s substitution. An analogy will help make this clear. After the Vietnam War, President Jimmy Carter gave a blanket amnesty to all draft dodgers who fled to Canada and elsewhere. By presidential decree they were free to come home. Some did and some did not. Their crime was no longer punishable; but some refused to take advantage of the amnesty and punished themselves by staying away from home and family. Believers in universal atonement believe God allows sinners who refuse the benefit of Christ’s cross to suffer the punishment of hell in spite of the fact it is totally unnecessary.

Perhaps the most rhetorically powerful reason given for limited atonement is that offered by John Piper (and other Calvinists before him) who says in For Whom Did Christ Die? that those who believe in universal atonement “must say” that Christ’s death did not really save anyone but only gave people an opportunity to save themselves. This is totally fallacious reasoning.

Arminians (those who follow Jacob Arminius in rejecting unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace) believe Christ’s death on the Cross saves all who receive it by faith. Christ’s death secures their salvation — just as much as it secures the salvation of the elect in Calvinism. It guarantees that anyone who comes to Christ in faith will be saved by His death. This does not imply they save themselves. It simply means they accept the work of Christ on their behalf.

RESPONDING TO CALVINISM

It’s difficult to resist the impression that Calvinists who believe in limited atonement do so not for clear biblical reasons but because they think Scripture allows it and reason requires it. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but at least some Calvinists such as Piper have criticized others for doing the same.3 Piper criticizes others for allegedly embracing doctrines only because Scripture allows them and logic requires them. It seems to many non-Calvinists, however, that believers in limited atonement do exactly that. Lacking any clear, unequivocal biblical support for this doctrine, they embrace it because they think Scripture allows it and their TULIP system logically requires it. After all, if election is unconditional and grace is irresistible, then it would seem that the atonement would be only for the elect.

Scripture contradicts limited atonement in John 3:16,17; Romans 14:15; 2 Corinthians 5:18,19; Colossians 1:19,20; 1 Timothy 2:5,6; 1 John 2:2. Everyone knows John 3:16,17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Typically, Calvinists respond that in these verses “world” refers to all kinds of people and not everyone. However, that would make it possible to interpret all the places where the New Testament reports that the “world” is sinful and fallen as meaning only some people — all kinds — are sinful and fallen. The Calvinist interpretation of John 3:16,17, seems to fit Vernon Grounds’ description of the faulty exegesis used to defend limited atonement.

First John 2:2 is another passage we cannot reconcile with limited atonement: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” This passage completely undermines the Calvinist interpretation of “world” in John 3:16,17 because it explicitly states that Christ died an atoning death not only for believers, but also for everyone. Here “world” must include nonbelievers because “ours” refers to believers. This verse makes it impossible to say that Christ’s death benefits everyone, only not in the same way. (Piper says Christ’s death benefits the nonelected by giving them temporal blessings only.) John says clearly and unequivocally that Christ’s atoning sacrifice was for the sins of everyone — including those who are not believers.

What about 2 Corinthians 5:18,19? “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Calvinists sometimes argue that this passage supports limited atonement. After all, if God was in Christ not counting everyone’s sins against them, then everyone is saved. Therefore, they say, “everyone” must mean only the elect. But that’s not true. When Paul says that God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s sins against them, He means if they repent and believe. In other words, the Atonement did reconcile God with the world so He could forgive; it satisfied the demands of justice so reconciliation is possible from God’s side. But it remains for sinners to accept that by faith. Then full reconciliation takes place.

Colossians 1:19,20 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” It is impossible to interpret “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven” as referring only to the elect. This passage refutes limited atonement. So does 1 Timothy 2:5,6: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.” The only way a believer in limited atonement can escape the force of this passage is to interpret the Greek translated “all people” as somehow meaning “all kinds of people,” but that is not an interpretation allowed by the common use of the phrase in Greek literature outside the New Testament (or elsewhere in it).

Many Scriptures clearly indicate that Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was meant for everyone; that His substitutionary punishment was for all people. But there are two seldom discussed New Testament passages that absolutely undercut limited atonement: Romans 14:15 and 1 Corinthians 8:11. In these verses, Paul sternly warns Christians against causing people to be destroyed for whom Christ died. The Greek translation of the words “destroy” and “destroyed” in these verses cannot mean merely harmed or injured. Clearly Paul is warning people that it is possible to cause people for whom Christ died to go to hell (by causing them to stumble and fall by showing off one’s own liberty to eat meat sacrificed to idols). If TULIP Calvinism is correct, this warning is useless because this cannot happen. According to Calvinism, the elect, for whom Christ died, cannot be lost.

The weight of Scripture is clearly set against limited atonement. Calvinist interpretations of these and similar passages remind one of the sign outside a blacksmith’s shop referring to its artistic work with metals: “All kinds of fancy twisting and turning done here.” However, the problem with limited atonement goes beyond a few verses that Calvinists cannot explain without distorting their clear meanings. The greatest problem goes to the heart of the doctrine of God. Who is God and what is God like?

LIMITED ATONEMENT AND THE NATURE OF GOD

If God is love (1 John 4:7) but intended Christ’s atoning death to be the propitiation for only certain people so only they have any chance of being saved, then “love” has no intelligible meaning when referring to God. All Christians agree that God is love. But believers in limited atonement must interpret God’s love as somehow compatible with God unconditionally selecting some people to eternal torment in hell when He could save them (because election to salvation and thus salvation itself is unconditional). There is no analogy in human existence to this kind of behavior that is regarded as loving. We would never consider someone who could rescue drowning people, for example, but refuses to do it and rescues only some as loving. We would consider such a person evil, even if the rescued people appreciated what the person did for them.

Calvinists typically handle this in one of two ways. Some say that God’s love is different from our love. But if it isthat different, it is meaningless. If God’s “love” has no similarity to anything we would call love, if it resembles hate more than love, then it loses all sense of meaning. Then when a person says God is love he might as well be using a nonsense word like “creech” — God is creech. Also, where did God better demonstrate His love than in Jesus Christ? But is Jesus Christ’s love for people arbitrary and hateful to some? Or does Jesus Christ in His love for all people reveal the heart of God? Calvinism ends up having to posit a hidden God very much unlike Jesus Christ.

Another way Calvinists handle the love of God and try to reconcile it with limited atonement and double predestination (the two are really inseparable) is to say that God loves all people in some way but only some people (the elect) in all ways. Piper, for example, exalts the love of God for everyone — even the nonelect.4 He says that God bestows temporal blessings on the nonelect — meaning as they move toward their predestined eternal torment in hell. John Wesley, responding to a similar claim by Calvinists in his time, quipped that this is such a love as to make the blood run cold. Another response is that this simply means God gives the nonelect a little bit of heaven to take with them on their journey to hell. What kind of love is this — that gives temporal blessings and happiness to people chosen by God for eternal suffering in hell? After all, if Calvinism is correct, there is nothing blocking God from choosing all people for heaven, except, some say, His own glory. Some Calvinists say that God must manifest all His attributes and one attribute is justice that makes hell necessary. Again, however, that won’t work because the Cross was a sufficient manifestation of God’s justice.

Limited atonement makes indiscriminate evangelism impossible. A believer in limited atonement can never say to any random stranger or group: “God loves you and Christ died for your sins and mine; you can be saved.” And yet this is the very life blood of evangelism — telling the good news to all and inviting all to come to Jesus Christ with repentance and faith. Many Calvinists are evangelistic and missions minded, but in their evangelism and missions they cannot tell everyone within the sound of their voices that God loves them, Jesus died for them, and He wants them to be saved. They can proclaim the gospel (as they interpret it), but they cannot solicit faith by promising salvation through Christ to everyone they meet or to whom they preach.

Limited atonement is the Achilles’ heel of TULIP Calvinism; without it the other points of TULIP fall. If God is truly love, then Christ died for everyone that all may be saved.

 

Richard L. DresselhausRoger E. Olson, Ph.D., professor of theology, George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University, Waco, Texas. He authored Against Calvinism: Rescuing God’s Reputation From Radical Reformed Theology.

 

Notes

1. http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/piper/piper_atonement.html

2. Vernon C. Grounds, “God’s Universal Salvific Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed., Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1975), 27.

3. John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Portland: Multnomah, 2000). See the lengthy footnote about Pinnock’s allegedly faulty hermeneutics, 70–74.

4. Ibid., 48ff.

Email

James K.A. Smith (Fellow The Colossian Forum) Review Pete Enns’ The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins,

Posted on by
2
Email

Shel Boese / Shelby Boese – At Mercy Church we are willing to call how one looks at Genesis 1-2 (as long as you hold to the authority of Scripture) a secondary issue.        Did God create in 7-literal “young earth”days? 7-eons? Theistic evolution?  I strongly affirm that Adam and Eve were real and first humans into which God breathed the spirit. James KA Smith also points to the problems of taking up theistic evolution in a non-nuanced way.  You need to not affirm it in a way that makes God the author of sin/evil (strange coming from a neo-calvinist/determinist…but I digress).

We must not make the Word of God into something cheap by imposing our culture and values on the text – but ask what is the nature of the literature that God inspired?  What did it say to them? What question(s) did the audience have? (e.g. the genre is much less focused on “how” but rather “who” and “why”.  AND what is God saying through the cannon and the Church by the Holy Spirit as a whole through time? – much to the shagrin of hard-core fundamentalists and liberals – who do violence to the Bible – one in the name of their own clarity and the other in the name of their own confusion)?  What does it say to us?

Having said all that – let the debate rip – and remember science is not done in a neutral philosophical vacuum either.  Thank you James KS Smith for keeping us on our toes (and of course good philosophy of science and art critiques the blind faith “scientism” that also is taken up by theists who want to pander to the pop-atheists.

First deal with the modernist/foundationalist views in the pop-atheist faith of scientism…

 

http://www.colossianforum.org/2012/06/19/others-weigh-in-on-smiths-review-of-enns-book/ Others Weigh in on Smith’s Review of Enns’ Book

Posted by  on June 19, 2012

James K.A. Smith, a senior research fellow here at The Colossian Forum, has recently reviewed Pete Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins, prompting a lot of attention from those invested in the conversation on Christianity, evolution, and human origins. Smith’s review focuses primarily on Enns’ methodology rather than his position:

“If one wants to disagree with Enns’ conclusions, it is crucial to first attend to the whole framework within which he pursues his project. In fact, even if one were inclined toagree with his conclusions, it is important to consider whether one also wants to accept the way he gets there. More importantly, if evangelicals are going to debate these matters well, we need to consider more foundational issues and not rush ahead to nailing down a ‘position.’”

Smith critically approaches the paradigm of the biblical studies guild, claiming that Enns is caught between the limits of this paradigm and his “sincere desire to aid and equip the church to be faithful in the modern world.” One significant shortcoming of this paradigm, according to Smith, is the reduction of interpretation to authorial intent, focusing mainly on the intention of the authors of Genesis. Smith refers to this account as one “from below.” Furthermore, Smith says that this account concedes Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria), an idea that Smith believes we should not assent to. What’s more, he calls into question Enns’ assumptions by proposing the following:

“First of all, the Christian church is not a recipient of the book of Genesis as a discrete unit; we receive the book of Genesis within the Bible and the Bible is received as a whole – as a ‘canon’ of Scripture. Second, internal to the canon is the conviction that meanings Godintends are not constrained by what human authors intended.”

With the mission of The Colossian Forum in mind, Smith posits that the “location” from which we read the Bible should be the practices of Christian worship. We therefore receive Scripture from the particular place of the church, and this place exhibits particular practices that influence our interpretive frameworks. Authorial intent or “original meaning,” therefore, cannot be the determinative factor in our interpretation of Genesis:

“Worship is the primary ‘home’ of the Bible and it is in worship that we cultivate those habits and virtues we need to read Scripture holistically. That will certainly generate meanings of Old Testament books that could never have been intended by their human authors; but that doesn’t mean they were not intended as meanings to be unfolded ‘in front of the text’ by the divine Author.”

The review closes with Smith’s investigation of Enns’ view of original sin, claiming that Enns’ account fails to recognize what’s at stake: the goodness of God. If our acceptance of evolution leads us to eschew the issue of the origin of sin and the causal claims made by original sin, according to Smith, we are likely to make God the author of sin:

“If God uses evolutionary processes to create the world and sin is inherent in those processes, then creation is synonymous with the fall and God is made the author of sin – which compromises the goodness of God.”

Since Smith’s review, others have weighed in, including Fuller Seminary professor J.R. Daniel Kirk, whose critical assessment of Smith’s review prompted correspondance between the two of them in the comment section of Kirk’s post. Even Enns himself briefly remarked on Smith’s review, planning to contribute to the conversation in more depth at a later date. This has not happened yet, but it would promise to be an exciting exchange.

The review was also highlighted by the people over at Near Emmaus and the Gospel Coalition, and apositive nod was given to the review by the folks at the City of God blog. In his own review of Enns’ book, Professor Ken Schenck briefly mentions that Smith might be right about needing to address a more fundamental question before moving on to the issues raised by Enns. Last, Richard Beckrelates his own reflections on the problem of evil to Smith’s concern that Enns’ account renders God the author of evil.

Smith’s original review was posted nearly two months ago, but the conversation is worth re-surfacing here on the blog. There’s still a lot of ground to be covered.

Email

WHAT TO SAY WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “THE BIBLE HAS ERRORS”

Posted on by
Reply
Email

WHAT TO SAY WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “THE BIBLE HAS ERRORS”

Jonathan Dodson » http://theresurgence.com/2012/05/28/what-to-say-when-someone-says-the-bible-has-errors?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheResurgence+(The+Resurgence)

Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffee shop who said, “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?

How should we respond? What do you say?

Instead of asking them to name an error, I suggest you name one or two of them. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies of the original documents of Scripture. As you can imagine, errors have crept in over the centuries of copying. Scribes fall asleep, misspell, take their eyes off the manuscript, and so on. I recommend telling people what kind of errors have crept into the Bible. Starting with the New Testament, Dan Wallace, New Testament scholar and founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, lists four types of errors in Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning.

TYPES OF ERRORS

1. SPELLING AND NONSENSE ERRORS

These are errors that occur when a scribe wrote a word that makes no sense in its context, usually because they were tired or took their eyes off the page. Some of these errors are quite comical, such as “we were horses among you” (Gk. hippoi, “horses,” instead of ēpioi, “gentle,” or nēpioi, “little children”) in 1 Thessalonians 2:7in one late manuscript. Obviously, Paul isn’t saying he acted like a horse among them. That would be self-injury! These kinds of errors are easily corrected.

2. MINOR CHANGES

These minor changes are as small as the presence or absence of an article such as “the” or changed word order, which can vary considerably in Greek. Depending on the sentence, Greek grammar allows the sentence to be written up to 18 times, while still saying the same thing! So just because a sentence wasn’t copied in the same order, doesn’t mean that we lost the meaning.

3. MEANINGFUL BUT NOT PLAUSIBLE

These errors have meaning but aren’t a plausible reflection of the original text. For example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9, instead of “the gospel of God” (the reading of almost all the manuscripts), a late medieval copy has “the gospel of Christ.” There is a meaning difference between God and Christ, but the overall manuscript evidence points clearly in one direction, making the error plain and not plausibly part of the original.

4. MEANINGFUL AND PLAUSIBLE

These are errors that have meaning and that the alternate reading is plausible as a reflection of the original wording. These types of errors account for less than 1% of all variants and typically involve a single word or phrase. The biggest of these types of errors is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which most contemporary scholars do not regard as original. Our translations even footnote that!

IS THE BIBLE RELIABLE?

So, is the Bible reliable? Well, the reliability of our English translations depends largely upon the quality of the manuscripts they were translated from. The quality depends, in part, on how recent the manuscripts are. Scholars like Bart Ehrman have asserted that we don’t have manuscripts that are early enough. However, the manuscript evidence is quite impressive:

  • There are as many as 18 second-century manuscripts. If the Gospels were completed between AD 50–100, then this means that these early copies are within 100 years. Just recently, Dan Wallace announced that a new fragment from the Gospel of Mark was discovered dating back to the first century AD, placing it well within 50 years of the originals, a first of its kind. When these early manuscripts are all put together, more than 43% of the New Testament is accounted for from copies no later than the second century.
  • Manuscripts that date before AD 400 number 99, including one complete New Testament called Codex Sinaiticus. So the gap between the original, inerrant autographs and the earliest manuscripts is pretty slim. This comes into focus when the Bible is compared to other classical works that, in general, are not doubted for their reliability. In this chart of comparison with other ancient literature, you can see that the New Testament has far more copies than any other work, numbering 5,700 (Greek) in comparison to the over 200 of Suetonius. If we take all manuscripts into account (handwritten prior to printing press), we have 20,000 copies of the New Testament. There are only 200 copies of the earliest Greek work.
  • This means if we are going to be skeptical about the Bible, then we need to be thousands of times more skeptical about the works of Greco-Roman history. Or put another way, we can be a thousand times more confident about the reliability of the Bible. It is far and away the most reliable ancient document.

WHAT TO SAY WHEN SOMEONE SAYS “THE BIBLE HAS ERRORS”

So, when someone asserts that the Bible has errors, we can reply by saying:

Yes, our Bible translations do have errors—let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are a thousand times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be a thousand times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.

Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have “an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents.” Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

In order of easy to difficult:

Email

My Preferred English Bible Translation: NET

Posted on by
1
Email

church relevance has a great introduction to the NET bible.  I like the translation philosophy and that it’s not ideologically driven.

http://churchrelevance.com/the-net-bible-by-bible-org-1st-edition/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+churchrelevance+%28Church+Relevance%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

 

The NET Bible by Bible.org (1st Edition)

MAY 31, 20121COMMENTRESOURCES

Bible.org undertook a new approach to translation with the First Edition NET Bible by allowing the reader to read 60,932 translator notes spread throughout its pages. This means you can better understand the original languages even if you don’t speak Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

You can read or download the NET Bible online for free, but this review features the premium bonded leather version with Smyth-sewn binding.

The NET Bible was created by over 25 biblical language scholars to provide a free, faithful Bible translation that could be used by Christians and ministries globally without the restraints of translations with intellectual property limitations. By providing thousands of translation notes to complement the text, the NET Bible hopes to reveal biblical truths from entirely new perspectives.

John 3:16
For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

James 1:27
Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

As a twentysomething, I find the 9.5 point type and kerning to be perfect. However, the type size may be a bit too small for comfort for older generations. As with other study Bibles, the translation footnotes sometimes take up the lion’s share of a page. But if you are reading the NET Bible, you are likely doing so to get the insights of the translators’ notes, in which case the more the merrier.

The premium Cromwell bonded leather cover is soft yet firm and good quality for a bonded leather Bible. The pages are made of premium Bible paper with gold gilded edges and bound with Smyth-sewn binding.

It is large but not too large. Surprisingly, it is comfortable to hold and lays beautifully despite its size and newness.

In addition to the rich translators’ notes, the NET Bible also features full color satellite maps of the Holy Lands. Additional features include the standard maps of the journeys of Abraham, Moses, and Paul, etc. as well as a concordance.

Overall, the NET Bible is a good mix of quality where it counts while still keeping the price very affordable.

Translation: The NET Bible
Publisher: Bible Studies Press (2005)
ISBN: 0737501014
Language: English
Cost: $39.95

Cover: premium Cromwell bonded leather (black)
Binding: Smyth-sewn binding with 1 black ribbon marker
Pages: 2,560 pages of premium Bible paper with gold gilded edges
Type: 9.5 point black text
Dimensions: 6.75″ x 9.63″ x 2″
Special Features: 60,932 translation notes from over 25 scholars, full color satellite maps and photos, concordance

This post features a complimentary review copy and Amazon affiliate links.

Email

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”

Posted on by
Reply
Email

By Jonathan Dodson http://www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com/what-to-say-when-someone-says-the-bible-has-errors/

Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffee shop who said: “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?” How should we respond? What do you say?

Instead of asking them to name an error, I suggest you name one or two of them. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies of the original documents of Scripture. As you can imagine, errors have crept in over the centuries of copying. Scribes fall asleep, misspell, take their eyes off the manuscript, and so on. I recommend telling people what kind of errors have crept into the Bible. Starting with the New Testament, Dan Wallace, New Testament scholar and founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, lists four types of errors in Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning.

Types of Errors
1) Spelling & Nonsense Errors. These are errors that occur when a scribe wrote a word that makes no sense in its context, usually because they were tired or took their eyes off the page. Some of these errors are quite comical, such as “we were horses among you” (Gk. hippoi, “horses,” instead of ēpioi, “gentle,” or nēpioi, “little children”) in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 in one late manuscript. Obviously, Paul isn’t saying he acted like a horse among them. That would be self-injury! These kinds of errors are easily corrected.

2) Minor Changes. These minor changes are as small as the presence or absence of an article “the” or changed word order, which can vary considerably in Greek. Depending on the sentence, Greek grammar allows the sentence to be written up to 18 times, while still saying the same thing! So just because a sentence wasn’t copied in the same order, doesn’t mean that we lost the meaning.

3) Meaningful but not Plausible. These errors have meaning but aren’t a plausible reflection of the original text. For example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9, instead of “the gospel of God” (the reading of almost all the manuscripts), a late medieval copy has “the gospel of Christ.” There is a meaning difference between God and Christ, but the overall manuscript evidence points clearly in one direction, making the error plain and not plausibly part of the original.

4) Meaningful and Plausible. These are errors that have meaning and that the alternate reading is plausible as a reflection of the original wording. These types of errors account for less than 1% of all variants and typically involve a single word or phrase. The biggest of these types of errors is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which most contemporary scholars do not regard as original. Our translations even footnote that!

Is the Bible Reliable?
So, is the Bible reliable? Well, the reliability of our English translations depends largely upon the quality of the manuscripts they were translated from. The quality depends, in part, on how recent the manuscripts are. Scholars like Bart Ehrman have asserted that we don’t have manuscripts that are early enough. However, the manuscript evidence is quite impressive:

  • There are as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts. If the Gospels were completed between 50-100 A.D., then this means that these early copies are within 100 years. Just recently, Dan Wallace announced that a new fragment from the Gospel of Mark was discovered dating back to the first century A.D., placing it well within 50 years of the originals, a first of its kind. When these early manuscripts are all put together, more than 43% of the NT is accounted for from copies no later than the 2nd C.
  • Manuscripts that date before 400 AD number 99, including one complete New Testament called Codex Sinaiticus. So the gap between the original, inerrant autographs and the earliest manuscripts is pretty slim. This comes into focus when the Bible is compared to other classical works that, in general, are not doubted for their reliability. In this chart of comparison with other ancient literature, you can see that the NT has far more copies than any other work, numbering 5,700 (Greek) in comparison to the 200+ of Suetonius. If we take all manuscripts into account (handwritten prior to printing press), we have 20,000 copies of the NT. There are only 200 copies of the earliest Greek work.
  • This means if we are going to be skeptical about the Bible, then we need to be 1000xs more skeptical about the works of Greco-Roman history. Or put another way, we can be 1000 times more confident about the reliability of the Bible. It is far and away the most reliable ancient document.

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”
So, when someone asserts that the Bible has errors, we can reply by saying: “Yes, our Bible translations do have errors, let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are 1000 times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be 1000 times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.”Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have “an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents.” Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.

Email