Catholics believe the Pope's infallible. That's why Hollywood won't let him on Jeopardy. "I'll take loaves and fishes for 7 billion." Hell yes, you will.
No company asserts that their financial statements are perfect. They assert that their financial statements contain no material errors. Religions are different. They assert that their scriptures are divinely inspired, inerrant, and infallible. They assert zero errors.
Muslims are totally blunt when it comes to this. They believe the Qur'an is the inerrant, perfect word of God.
Muslims are totally blunt when it comes to this. They believe the Qur'an is the inerrant, perfect word of God.
Jews believe in the divine origin and immutability of the Torah. The Torah will not mutate no matter how much Stan Lee bombards it with gamma rays.
Mormon Article of Faith No. 8 says, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." Hopefully I translated Article of Faith No. 8 correctly.
In Hinduism, the Vedas are considered divinely inspired. That is, they are "not human compositions." The Hindu scriptures that are not considered to be divinely inspired are known collectively as the "Darth Vedas."
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says, "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact." It goes on to say that since there are no extant original manuscripts of the Bible, those which exist cannot be considered inerrant.
Regardless of any explicit claims, religious scriptures are obligated to be inerrant. Scriptures are supposed to tell us the truth about a God who decided to be hidden, intangible, and non-obvious. An error in scripture about something that's verifiable in the natural world would undermine its reliability regarding anything that's hidden, intangible, or non-verifiable, like God.
Therefore, all scriptural errors are material. Maybe.
In Statement on Financial Accounting Concepts No. 2, FASB defines a material error as "an omission or misstatement of accounting information that, in the light of surrounding circumstances, makes it probable that the judgment of a reasonable person relying on the information would have been changed or influenced by the omission or misstatement."
The Bible says that Elisha was bald. If he really had hair like Fabio, then, as a reasonable person, my judgment would be changed regarding the reliability of Revelation's report that the hair of the Son of Man is white like wool and/or snow. If the Jesus of Revelation doesn't have white hair, then how can I be sure of the doctrine of the trinity?
Fortunately for Judeo-Christians and Judeo-Jews throughout the world, Elisha's baldness is not in question.
But what about math?
1 Kings 7:23 describes a "sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim ... It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." Unfortunately, this is contrary to the facts of Euclidean geometry and poses a problem to Biblical inerrancy. If 1 Kings 7:23 said that it took a line measuring 31.415926535 cubits to measure around the sea of cast metal, it would still be off by about nine-trillionths of a cubit.
So I guess the Bible does have a materiality threshold. I'd like to say its materiality threshold is at least nine-trillionths of a cubit. If the materiality threshold was zero, then 1 Kings 7:23 would have to contain all the digits of pi, and the only thing more boring that reading the digits of pi is reading the book of 1 Kings.
So I guess the Bible does have a materiality threshold. I'd like to say its materiality threshold is at least nine-trillionths of a cubit. If the materiality threshold was zero, then 1 Kings 7:23 would have to contain all the digits of pi, and the only thing more boring that reading the digits of pi is reading the book of 1 Kings.
A cubit is the distance from your elbow to your fingertip. So maybe a really lanky guy measured the circumference and a little guy measured the diameter. Or it may have been customary in post-Davidic Israel to report all cast metal sea measurements in tens of cubits.
Here's where I'm going with this. All organized religions teach that God chose to reveal himself through scripture rather than by making his existence and identity unquestionable. The implication, then, is that the scripture through which he reveals himself is inerrant. However, the scriptures of every religion are at best unclear on certain important points, and at worst have glaring contradictions and/or errors.
I don't think anyone would care about 1 Kings 7:23, including me, if it said that the sea's circumference measured 31 cubits, so clearly, on some level, materiality applies to scripture.
Here's where I'm going with this. All organized religions teach that God chose to reveal himself through scripture rather than by making his existence and identity unquestionable. The implication, then, is that the scripture through which he reveals himself is inerrant. However, the scriptures of every religion are at best unclear on certain important points, and at worst have glaring contradictions and/or errors.
I don't think anyone would care about 1 Kings 7:23, including me, if it said that the sea's circumference measured 31 cubits, so clearly, on some level, materiality applies to scripture.
But since the verse says 30 cubits, I'm torn. I'd be a dick to reject the Bible for something as completely unimportant as the stats on a wash basin. But on the other hand, it's hard to believe the Bible got the mysteries of the universe right if it got a sixth-grade math problem wrong.
See, this is the problem with a literal translation of the Bible, which as I understand it, most evangelicals support. It's the "either you buy the whole story or you can't be Christian" ideology. Doesn't it make more sense to interpret the Bible (or the Quoran or the Torah) as a series of, well, stories recounted by humans, who ARE fallible? Is it totally wrong to put our own interpretation on things? Or is that how everything got screwed up to begin with?
ReplyDeleteMelinda,
DeleteFor me it all comes back to God's hiddenness. He wants us to know who he is and that he exists. But he's hidden. So he reveals himself through scripture. As a result, it seems like scripture should be inerrant and perfect. Not only that, it should be crystal clear. That way it wouldn't matter if we "put our own interpretation on things" because we'd all end up at the same answer with the same interpretation.
Great to see you last week! I'm bummed I won't see you in Hawaii.
Greg, could it be that scripture was at one point perfectly clear. Yet this was before the age of digital recording, and we had to rely on the old telephone game whereby as the more the story is told, the less of the story is actually told. Therefore, I think it is actually possible that the Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Mormons are all interpreting the same scripture, yet due to the telephone game, we end up with somewhat different versions today.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the bible is a collection of old stories, as is the Quran, and other books, similar to the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Pit. In other words, just a story that has been passed on thru generations.
Steve, that seems to be precisely what the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was saying: It started out perfect, but since we don't have the originals, we don't know if what we have now is perfect.
DeleteI even find it challenging to trust that the originals were perfect, however. For instance, one common concern is the length of time between the events described in the gospels and when the gospels were written. From my half-assed "research" it appears that at least 30 years passed. That's a long time for memories to get hazy.
As a result of writing the post, I'm convinced that if God exists, it's not important to him that we know about him. He chooses to not abide among us in a tangible way, and his scripture seems to be corrupted or, at minimum, confusing regarding key doctrines. My stance as an agnostic has been reinforced that if God exists at all, then deism is the most likely scenario.
That said, I think it makes sense that the scriptures of each of the world religions are an attempt to remedy the human condition. Since the human condition is more or less standard across eras and locales, the proposed remedies should all have striking similarities.
I wouldn't say this was offensive, so you did ok with that. These are real and legitimate issues which you give a simple example of. When a Christian says the Bible is without error, they shouldn't mean it is exact on everything. We should recognize that the intent of the author is a factor. The author may be speaking figuratively in order to make a comparison or, as in this case, he may be estimating. Estimating is common, especially in the OT, when the author gives us figures of how many died in a battle and says 20,000 died that day and in the next battle 10,000 died, we don't think someone counted and the exact number was 20,000 and coincidentally the next battle was exactly 10,000. It is obvious that these are estimations and the authors intent was simply for us to understand the extent of what happened, not to take a census. Sometimes they don't tell us how many died because it is not a part of the purpose of what they are writing, so the author has the right to leave things out too.
ReplyDeleteYour example is one in which the author estimates, he isn't sitting there measuring it as he writes, so based on that intent it is accurate.The author is to be taken literally in light of their intent. If he intends to speak figuratively, historically, or to estimate, then we take it according to that intent. This is generally obvious through employing a little basic logic like you did with your example.
God reveals Himself in a book, and therefore, that book ought to be trustworthy and we should be able to verify some things at least. You have ignored all the archaeological confirmation which has been found which confirms so many things in the Biblical accounts, both OT and NT. Those account for something, but if you need every claim to be confirmed, then obviously you will never be satisfied - such people then pick on anything that isn't exact, as if the author doesn't have the right to his own purpose for telling us things.
Melinda- You are right, people putting their own interpretations on things is exactly how things have got so screwed up. Instead of making up our own interpretations we need to care about what the authors meant.
Duane,
DeleteFunny first line since I was also worried about being unfunny.
I can buy the estimate explanation, especially with the wars. With the circumference it's a bit more of a stretch, but still a solid explanation. It's a teeny thing, and if God just had forced the writer of Kings say 31 cubits in diameter, that would be one less thing that would make me think that Christianity is made up.
It can be explained away, but it would be a better world if it didn't have to be explained away.
I'm (kind of) glad you brought up archeological confirmation. I'm planning on tackling that in a future post along with manuscript evidence.
Delete