From: eje@irenaeus.mlo.dec.com (Eric James Ewanco)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Question for fundamentalists
Date: 15 Sep 92 06:36:37 GMT
Reply-To: ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <Sep.12.23.57.38.1992.13105@athos.rutgers.edu>, boe@cadsun2.slac.stanford.edu (Robert Boeninger) writes:

> From: boe@cadsun2.slac.stanford.edu (Robert Boeninger)
> Subject: Question for fundamentalists
> Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 23:57:39 GMT+5:00
> Organization: SLAC

> As a serious sceptic, I have a fundamental question for so-called Christian 
> fundamentalists.

> Concerning the claimed inerrancy of the Bible, how is it possible to
> accept as true, facts about the nature of the Bible, such as its
> inerrancy, its being inspired by God, and so on, based on the Bible
> making such claims for itself?  That would appear to be a a case of
> circular reasoning.  

Indeed it is, and wholly untenable.

> Any supposed corroboration of such claims by independent evidence
> all appears to me to be cases of wishful thinking, arguing after the
> fact.  You like to think of the Bible as being God-inspired, and
> therefore you go to great pains to bring up supporting evidence from
> within the Bible itself.  From a purely logical standpoint, it seems
> to me that no amount of claims in the Bible about the Bible itself
> can ever be taken as a validation of those claims.  

> Do any of you have a sensible response to these issues, one that
> does NOT consist of simply quoting the Bible some more?

> Bob Boeninger

Let me explain to you why a Catholic believes in the inspiration of the Bible,
an explanation which, in the end, is the only logical, non-circular and
intellectually acceptable explanation.

Actually I have typed in the text of a tract on this very subject; since it
seems to refer directly to your objections. (clh - no copyright notice appears.
I am sure Mr. Keating desires this tract to be freely distributable.) 

                           PROVING INSPIRATION
                             By Karl Keating
(Author of _Catholicism and Fundamentalism_; founder of Catholic Answers)

The Reformers said the Bible is the sole source of religious truth, and its
understanding must be found by looking only at the words of the text.  No
outside authority may impose an interpretation, and no outside authority, such
as the Church, has been established by Christ as an arbiter.
 . .
  But there is perhaps no greater frustration, in dealing with fundamentalists,
than in trying to pin them down on why the Bible should be taken as a rule of
faith at all, let alone the sole rule of faith.  It all reduces to the question
of why fundamentalists accept the Bible as inspired, because the Bible can be
taken as a rule of faith only if it is first held to be inspired and, thus,
inerrant.
 . .

  Some fundamentalists say they believe the Bible is inspired because it is
"inspirational," but that is a word with a double meaning.  On the one hand, if
used in the strict theological sense, it clearly begs the question, which is:
How do we know the Bible is inspired, that is, "written" by God, but through
human authors? And if "inspirational" means nothing more than "inspiring" or
"moving," then someone with a deficient poetic sense might think the works of a
poetaster are inspired.
  Indeed, parts of the Bible, including several whole books of the Old
Testament, cannot be called "inspirational" in this sense in the least, unless
one works on the principle, reported by Ronald Knox, of the elderly woman who
was soothed every time she hear "the blessed word Mesopotamia."  One betrays no
disrespect in admitting that some parts of the Bible are as dry as military
statistics -- indeed, some parts _are_ nothing but military statistics -- and
there is little there that can move the emotions.
  So, it is not enough to believe in the inspiration of the Bible merely out of
culture or habit, nor is it enough to believe in its inspiration because it is
a beautifully-written or emotion-stirring book.  There are other religious
books, and even some plainly secular ones, that outscore most of the Bible when
it comes to fine prose or poetry.

THE BIBLE'S OWN CLAIM

  What about the Bible's own claim to inspiration? There are not many places
where such a claim is made even tangentially, and most books in the Old and New
Testaments make no such claim at all.  In fact, no New Testament writer seemed
to be aware that he was writing under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, with the
exception of the author of the Apocalypse.
  Besides, even if every biblical book began with the phrase, "The following is
an inspired book," such phrases would prove nothing.  The Koran claims to be
inspired, as does the Book of Mormon, as do the holy books of various Eastern
religions.  Even the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science,
claim inspiration.  The mere _claim_ of inspiration is insufficient to
establish a book's _bona fides_. 
  These tests failing, most fundamentalists fall back on the notion that "the
Holy Spirit tells me the Bible is inspired," an exercise in subjectivism that
is akin to their claim that the Holy Spirit guides them in interpreting the
text.  For example, the anonymous author of _How Can I Understand the Bible?_,
a booklet distributed by the Radio Bible Class, lists twelve rules for Bible
study.  The first is, "Seek the help of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit has been
given to illumine the Scriptures and make them alive to you as you study them.
Yield to his enlightenment."
  If one takes this as meaning that anyone asking for a proper interpretation
will be given one by God -- and that is exactly how most fundamentalists
understand the assistance of the Holy Spirit to work -- then the multiplicity
of interpretations, even among fundamentalists, should give people a gnawing
sense that the Holy Spirit hasn't been doing his job very effectively.

NOT BY SYLLOGISMS

  Most fundamentalists don't say, in so many words, that the Holy Spirit has
spoken to them directly, assuring them of the inspiration of the Bible.  They
don't phrase it like that.  Rather, in reading the Bible they are "convicted"
that it is the word of God, they get a positive "feeling" that it is inspired,
and that's that - which often reduces their acceptance of the Bible to culture
or habit. . . .  [F]undamentalists begin with the fact of inspiration [] and
then they find things in the Bible that seem to support inspiration, claiming,
with circular reasoning, that the Bible confirms its inspiration, which they
knew all along.
  The man who wrestles with the fundamentalist approach to inspiration (or any
of these other approaches, for that matter) at length is unsatisfied because he
knows he has no good grounds for his belief.  The Catholic position is the only
one that, ultimately, can satisfy intellectually.
  The Catholic method of finding the Bible to be inspired is this.  The Bible
is first approached as any other ancient work.  It is not, at first, presumed
to be inspired.  From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a
text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other
ancient work.
  Sir Frederic Kenyon, in _The Story of the Bible_, notes that "For all the
works of classical antiquity we have to depend on manuscripts written long
after their original composition.  The author who is the best case in this
respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript of Virgin that we now possess
was written some 350 years after his death.  For all other classical writers,
the interval between the date of the author and the earliest extant manuscript
of his works is much greater.  For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900,
for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600." Yet no one seriously disputes
that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers.
  Not only are the Biblical manuscripts we have older than those from classical
authors, we have in absolute numbers far more manuscripts to work from.  Some
are whole books of the Bible, others fragments of just a few words, but there
are thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other
languages.  What this means is that we can be sure we have an accurate text,
and we can work from it in confidence.

TAKEN FIRST AS HISTORY

  Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as history, tells
us, particularly the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels.  We examine
the account of Jesus' life and death and his reported resurrection.
  Using what is in the Gospels themselves, what we find in extra-biblical
writings from the early centuries, and what we know of human nature (and what
we can otherwise, from natural theology, know of divine nature), we conclude
that Jesus either was just what he claimed to be, God, or was a madman.  (the
one thing we know that he could not have been was merely a good man who was not
God, because no merely good man would make the claims he made.)
  We are able to eliminate his being a madman not just from what he said -- no
madman ever spoke has he did; for that matter, no sane man ever did either --
but from what his followers did after his death.  A hoax (the supposedly empty
tomb) is one thing, but you do not find people dying for a hoax, at least not
one from which they have no prospect of advantage.  The result of this line of
reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead and
that he was therefore God and, being God, meant what he said and did what he
said he would do.
  One thing he said he would do was found a Church, and from both the Bible
(still taken as merely a historical book, not at this point in the argument as
an inspired one) and other ancient works, we see that Christ established a
Church with the rudiments of all we see in the Catholic Church today -- papacy,
hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, teaching authority, and, as a consequence of
the last, infallibility.  Christ's Church, to do what he said it would do, had
to have the note of infallibility.
  We have thus taken purely historical material and concluded that there exists
a Church, which is the Catholic Church, divinely protected against teaching
error.  Now we're at the last part of the argument.
  That Church now tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church's
word for it precisely because it is infallible.  Only after having been told by
a properly constituted authority (that is, one set up by God to assure us of
the truth of matters of faith, such as the status of the Bible) that the Bible
is inspired do we begin to use it as an inspired book.

A SPIRAL ARGUMENT

  Note that this is not a circular argument.  We are not basing the inspiration
of the Bible on the Church's infallibility and the Church's infallibility on
the word of an inspired Bible.  That indeed would be a circular argument.  What
we have is really a spiral argument.  On the first level we argue to the
reliability of the Bible as history.  From that we conclude an infallible
Church was founded.  And then we take the word of that infallible Church that
the Bible is inspired.  It all reduces to the proposition that, without the
existence of the Church, we could not tell if the Bible were inspired.
 . .

INADEQUATE REASONS
  The point is that fundamentalists are quite right in belief the Bible is
inspired, but their _reasons_ for so believing are inadequate because knowledge
of the inspiration of the Bible can be based only on an authority established
by God to tell us the Bible is inspired, and that authority is the Church.
  And this is where a more serious problem comes in.  It seems to some that it
makes little difference why one believes in the Bible's inspiration, just so
one believes in it.  But the basis for one's belief in its inspiration directly
affects how one goes about interpreting the Bible.  The Catholic believes in
inspiration because the Church tells him so -- that's putting it bluntly -- and
that same Church has the authority to interpret the inspired text.
Fundamentalists believe in inspiration, though on weaker grounds, but they have
no interpreting authority other than themselves.
  Cardinal Newman put it this way in an essay on inspiration first published in
1884: "Surely then, if the revelations and lessons in Scripture are addressed
to us personally and practically, the presence among us of a formal judge and
standing expositor of its words is imperitive.  It is antecedently unreasonable
to suppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the
outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above
without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the
nature of the case, interpret itself.  Its inspiration does but guarantee its
truth, not is interpretation.  How are private readers satisfactorially to
distinguish what is didactic and what is historical, what is fact and what is
vision, what is allegorical and what is literal, what is idiomatic and what is
grammatical, what is enunciated formally and what occurs _obiter_, what is only
of temporary and what is of lasting obligation? Such is our natural
anticipation, and it is only too exactly justified in the events of the last
three centuries, in the many countries where private judgment on the text of
Scripture has prevailed.  The gift of inspiration requires as its complement
the gift of infallibility."
  The advantages of the Catholic approach are two.  First, the inspiration is
really proved, not just "felt."  Second, the main fact behind the proof -- the
fact of an infallible, teaching Church -- leads one naturally to an answer to
the problem that has troubled the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:31): How is one to
know what interpretations are right?  The same Church that authenticates the
Bible, that establishes its inspiration, is the authority set up by Christ to
interpret his Word.

---
A set of sample tracts may be obtained by sending a donation of $3 (U.S. funds
only) to:

Catholic Answers
P.O. Box 17490
San Diego, CA 92177

--
/=============================================================================\
| Eric Ewanco - Software Engineer     For the rash and outrageous opinions ex-|
| Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard MA  pressed herein I alone am responsible;  |
| ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com          they do not belong to DIGITAL(TM).      |
\==============================- 2 Th 2:15 -==================================/
    "...[T]he greatest and most ancient Church known to all, founded and
    organized at Rome by [] Peter and Paul, [is] that Church which has the
    tradition and faith which comes down to us after having been announced
    to men by the Apostles.  For with this Church, because of its superior
    origin, all Churches must agree ...  and it is in her that the
    faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic tradition."
       -- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, c. 180 A.D., 3,3,3.