Comment on It’s about authority by Sean Pitman.
Who or what is informing our interpretation of the Bible? When I come across evidence that appears to support an old-earth, do I reject what the Bible says in order to make it fit with my interpretation of the data?
It should be the data and the God-given gift of scientific reasoning ability that drives our acceptance of the authority of the Bible and of the Bible’s ultimate authority regarding those metaphysical claims that are not subject to direct testing or potential falsification. In other words, the Bible’s authority should be based on its demonstrable credibility regarding those things that it says that can be subject to testing and potential falsification – as with any other valid scientific hypothesis or theory that gains more and more credibility over time after surviving many tests.
The problem here is that science itself is not entirely an objective empirical enterprise. There is always the subjective element in science. That is why the available evidence must be considered on a personal basis if it is considered important to the individual.
We simply are not asked to believe even the Bible based on blind faith, but on a reasonable faith that is in fact in line with the weight of available scientific evidence as God has given us to understand that evidence…
Consider an excerpt from an interesting interview with the well-known Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias, along these lines:
What do you say to a pastor who says, “Apologetics is just philosophy, and we do not need that. All we need is the Bible”?
Ravi Zacharias:
I desperately wish it were that simple. When pastors believe and teach, “all we need is the Bible,” they equip their young people with the very line that gets them mocked in the universities and makes them unable and even terrified to relate to their friends. If pastors want their young people to do the work of evangelism — to reach their friends — that line will not get them anywhere. Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the Resurrection…
If a pastor says, “All we need is the Bible,” what does he say to a man who says, “All I need is the Qu’ran”? It is a solipsistic method of arguing.
The pastor is saying, “All I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that.” Even the gospel was verified by external references. The Bible is a book of history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions.
The fact is the resurrection from the dead was the ultimate proof that in history — and in empirically verifiable means — the Word of God was made certain. Otherwise, the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration would have been good enough. But the apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 1:19: “We have the Word of the prophets made more certain … as to a light shining in a dark place.” He testified to the authority and person of Christ, and the resurrected person of Christ.
To believe, “All we need is the Bible and nothing more,” is what the monks believed in medieval times, and they resorted to monasteries. We all know the end of that story. This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the Bible is authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter-perspectives. To say that it is authoritative in these situations is to deny both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible’s sufficiency.
An Interview with Ravi Zacharias by Richard L. Schoonover, associate editor of Enrichment Journal, 2009
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
It’s about authority
@Sandra K. Reiber:
1John 5:10 says that “The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony [or witness] in himself.†So however nebulous or “emotional†or subject to counterfeit you may consider it to be, the inner movings of the Holy Spirit are sure and solid. The most tangible, physical, apparently obvious realities of nature are just as subject to counterfeit. And the human mind is very prone to self-deception. Therefore it stands to reason that we must be led in our quest for “scientific truth†just as much as “spiritual truth.â€
There are internally-derived truths, to include moral truths (like the rightness of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self), that are not subject to testing or potential falsification. However, there are also truths that are external truths which we can only appreciate as our senses and reasoning abilities give us the power to approach an understanding of these truths. Such truths can only be reliably approached through inductive and deductive reasoning with the formation of testable predictive value to our conclusions – i.e. a form of “science”.
External truths that God seems to require us to use our minds to evaluate include the reliability of the Bible. The notion that the Bible has a Divine origin is not an internally derived truth. It must be studied and investigated and tested against other external realities with the use of our higher God-given reasoning capabilities.
Is it possible for these reasoning capabilities to be deceived? Sure it is. But, God does not judge against us if we are honestly deceived. The wicked who are “tricked” in the end of time will not be honestly or sincerely deceived. They will have wanted to believe the lie as did Eve in the Garden when she believed the Serpent (Lucifer). She had abundant evidence to know the truth, but she was tricked, not so much because of the counterfeit evidence the Serpent provided, but because of her own desires contrary to what she knew, with overwhelming evidence, to be true.
The same will be true to an even greater degree for those in the end of time who end up working against God. Because of their evil desire to go against what they know to be true, God will have no choice but to give them up to believe the lies that they want to believe. The only difference between these and Eve in the Garden is that Eve had not fully understood the path she was taking. She had enough information to know she was doing wrong when she took the path, but she did not have enough information to really understand all of the implications of her decision. This will not be the case with those at the end of time who choose against God. These will make this choice in the fact of much greater light; so much greater in fact that the granting of additional light would make no different to their decision. At this point the case of such is hopeless for there is nothing further that God can do for them to bring them back from their deliberately chosen rebellion against the light that they already consciously understand…
Yes, the deceptions will be very clearer, so cleaver that they would deceive the very elect if the elect actually had anything but the fullest desire to know, love and live by the truth. However, God will supply abundant evidence for the truth to those who are earnestly and honestly searching for it. There simply will be no honest reason left to be deceived for those who really do love the truth that they have found so far.
In short, God wants to appeal to our minds as well as our hearts. He supplies more than enough evidence to cause the honest reasonable mind to be able to find Him if one searches for Him with the entire heart. Remember when Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, appealed to the evidence of prophecy to support His claims rather than reveal himself directly to his disciples? He wanted to appeal to their intelligent minds first and let this evidence result in an appeal to the heart later.
Biblical prophecy is a very important scientifically testable evidence in support of the Divine origin of the Book. It is consistent with external reality – as are it’s claims regarding other external physical realities. This is unlike all other religious books which form the basis of other religions on this planet. This is why the Bible stands unique among them all as clearly of Divine origin – because of its testability against physical reality.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
It’s about authority
@Sandra K. Reiber:
So I’m uneasy with the idea that human reason is the “best measure of truth.†As finite and erring creatures, do we not need to choose to trust in a source outside ourselves to be that best (authoritative) measure for us? The exercise of our reason is in that process of choosing, it seems to me.
In figuring out that the Bible is indeed a very reliable external source of truth, one must use “scientific” reasoning to do this in a convincing manner. Some come to their conclusions based on feelings or emotions of “truth”. Personally, I do not consider such methods, short of direct Divine revelation, nearly as reliable as the scientific method of approaching truth. Many other people have come to very different conclusions as to which book is the most reliable – such as the Qur’an or the Book of Mormon, etc.
Not everyone’s reason brings him/her to the same conclusion as everyone else, obviously. Not everyone has the same ability to reason or to determine “truth”. This is why we are not judged, morally speaking, by our ability to reason, but by our ability to love the little truth that we think we do know – especially when it comes to loving our neighbors as ourselves. How can we who have never seen God love God if we do not show love to our neighbors whom we can see?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
It’s about authority
@Sandra K. Reiber:
I don’t know if that was your understanding of his position, but it doesn’t seem quite the same to me. If it is, that may mean I have misinterpreted your position.
I believe as Shane Hilde said, that the Bible is “self-attesting,†and not to be accepted with the proviso that if something (in science) comes along that convinces me the Bible is wrong I will have to reject it. The only question is whether we individually are going to be convinced, via whatever means it takes for us to come to that acceptance, that the Bible is inspired of God and an “infallible guide†for our life…
As Shane will agree, the Bible is not merely “self-attesting”. If it was not at all consistent with external realities outside of itself, it wouldn’t be any more useful than believing in Santa Claus or garden fairies – no matter how internally consistent the stories of Santa Claus or garden fairies might be…
It is in this sense that the Bible is supported and confirmed through external evidence – through “science”.
Cliff understands that scientific conclusions are always tentative because science always involves an element of subjectivity and is therefore open to potential falsification itself. There are, therefore, always leaps of faith in science. This doesn’t mean that science isn’t helpful. It’s pretty much the best we have when it comes to determining the “truth” of any information that comes into our minds regarding the world that exists outside of our minds – to include the trustworthiness of the Bible.
Science is simply a process of inductive and deductive reasoning that all of us use every day. It give “predictive value” or a dependability score to the “weight of evidence” that we have personally experienced. For Cliff and I, if that weight of evidence ended up supporting the modern theory of evolution, we would not longer remain SDA or even Christian. The contradiction between the theory of evolution and Christianity is so strong that one or the other would have to go in our opinion. This is the reason why Cliff has noted, many times, that he is in the SDA Church because of the doctrines of this Church; not because of its culture or anything else since the SDA “culture” is actual quite foreign to the culture he was born in. This is also the reason why Cliff has spent so much time reading up on scientific apologetic arguments as well as the philosophy of science.
I know Cliff’s ideas on this topic pretty well and have talked to him fairly extensively on the phone and through many E-mails regarding these issues. I think we are in very close agreement here…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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