o  4 RESPONSES to Premise B: Premise (B) assumes the following:

1: The Bible may be functionally perfect. What would it mean for the Bible to be ‘perfect?’ Aristotle identified three meanings of perfection:

1. which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

2. which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

3. which has attained its purpose.

Indeed, it may be that Bible is perfect, despite its apparent ‘flaws’ in meeting the third meaning above of perfection, and that the first two aren’t necessary for this to be the case. In fact, it may only be the case that if the Bible didn’t fully meet meanings 1 and 2 above that 3 would obtain in the actual world! Specifically, the Bible as we have it may be perfect in attaining its purpose which for the evangelical God is to bring an optimal balance between saved and unsaved into a free and saving love relationship with Himself, and unless 1 and 2 were not met, that this would not happen (see below for more on this). With respect to meaning 1, it may be that people would idolatrously worship the Word of God, instead of God Himself, and thereby such people would not have as good a relationship, or perhaps no relationship with God if the Bible was perfect in sense 1 (i.e. if we had the original manuscripts). Or it may be that is was BEST for God to accommodate the Bible to the cultures that they were written to in order to develop and mature the minds and moral characters of such peoples. Moreover, 2 seems like a logically impossible property for any text to have. For any good making property of a text (eyewitnesses, number of sources, etc.) one could always add one more ad infinitum such that there would always be something better than we could have. Thus, it seems to me that all that is necessary and sufficient for the Bible to be ‘perfect’ is that is be of such a nature that an optimal balance between saved and unsaved be achieved for those who come into contact with it. So, what an atheist would have to show is that if some feature about the Bible were different, that that would bring more people into a free and saving love relationship with God, but such a claim would be sheer speculation. I realize that there are various nuanced branches that come off of my response but if you keep reading this blog section, as well as my response to the argument from Biblical confusion, I think they will be resolved.

2: Divine inspiration is not identical to divine speech; the Bible is not a dictation from the ‘mouth’ of God, and so it is an open question as to whether an inspired Bible would be inerrant and ‘perfectly clear.’ Upon reflection, it occurred to me that inerrancy is neither sufficient nor necessary for a text to in fact, be inspired. It is not sufficient because presumably there has been one or more texts in human existence (phonebooks, textbooks, poems, stenographer's recording of a court case, etc.) that was inerrant, or possibly there willbe one in the future,and yet such texts surely are not inspired by God in the relevant sense. Inerrancy isn't even necessary in order for a text to be inspired by an omni-God if inspiration isn't identical to divine speech, andbecausethe extent of inspiration can be a property of a certain part, parts, or supervenient featureof the text, rather thannecessarily having to attach to thefull depth and breadth of some text(i.e. theme, narrative, message, ethics, knowledge of salvation, some eclectic combination of these, etc.). Moreover, when we ask the epistemological question: How do you know some text is inspired? we are no closer to an answer by appealing to the inerrancy of a document because some texts are inerrant and are not inspired, and moreover, inspiration doesn't logically entail inerrancy. So, the inerrantist and the 'errantist' both have to offer us some good reason to think that a text is inspired by God.

Moreover, to say that if a part of Scripture is in error that therefore the whole thing must be in error commits the fallacy of composition which can be stated as follows: inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part). For example, to infer that the whole elephant is light because every part of the elephant is light would commit this fallacy. Likewise, to say that "If the Bible is not wholly true, then our assurance of salvation has no dependable and divine warrant (p. 154)" commits this same fallacy.

3: We can know that Christianity is true even if the Bible is not inspired:

Just as historians are able to mine and extract historical facts from texts that are biased, contradictory with one another, factually mistaken at parts, and the like, so too there are criteria and grounds of justificationby which we canknow and establishthat Jesus is the messiah, Lord, and have assurance of salvation wholly apart from any discussion of inspiration and inerrancy. At the same time however, it will be these criteria and grounds of justification which are the key to establishing the fact of inspiration. In particular, the historical case for the resurrection in conjunction with historical facts concerning Jesus own radical teachings, claims, and actions serves as divine vindication that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, and against the backdrop of Second Temple Judaism, we can also infer that Jesus was the embodiment of YHWH. Thus, the main strand or theodrama running through the Old and New Testaments (that the majority of scholars from both areas relating to both testaments would agree on) is Creation, Creatures Apparently Thwarting God’s Creative Purposes, Followed By a Plan Of Redemption An Consummation Which Some Will Reject And Others Accept. So, the arguments of natural theology can get you a theistic God that has created the universe, and then the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus gets you an inductive proof of the theodrama (just listed above) given the position in that theodrama that Jesus confirms for us (namely the redemption) which points backwards to Creation and Thwarting of God’s Purpose ( a kind of Fall although that is a Christian way of putting it) and by pointing forward to the consummation of all creation as well. Even apart from the arguments of natural theology the resurrection inductively confirms the truth of the other strands or themes in the Grand Theodrama like a widget on an assembly line. At this point, it cannot be overstated that the great thing about first establishing the fact of inspiration for some text (i.e. the Bible) is that it leaves us psychologically confident that despite any 'pockmarks' that a text may or may not have, we can still know that it is inspired, and in the relevant sense (i.e. with respect to our assurance of salvation). Moreover, it allows us to honestly approach the text and determine the extent of inspiration free from dogmatism, fallacy, and bias.

4: It may be logically impossible for a book to be authored by God through a human medium in terms of inspiration or such a world may have other outweighing deficiencies in it:

1. The words of the Bible are the product of free human activity.
2. Human activities (such as penning a book) can be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom. 3. God totally controlled what human authors did in fact write.
4. Therefore, the words of the Bible are God's utterances.
5. Whatever God utters is errorless.
6. Therefore, the words of the Bible are errorless.
Premise 2 is for all we know, false. Consider the following argument:
1. The words of the Bible are the product of free human activity.
2'. Human activities (and their products) cannot be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom.
7. The doctrine of inerrancy entails God's total control of the words of the Bible.
8. Therefore, the doctrine of inerrancy is impossible.
If one persists in affirming the doctrine of inerrancy, then, since (7) is true virtually by definition, one must deny (1); that is to say, in order to affirm inerrancy, one must hold to a dictation theory of inspiration but that is the view of Islam, not Christianity. The Christian view on the origin of Scripture involves both a human and divine component; inspiration, not dictation. The bottom line is that the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture is incoherent according to this argument. In order to support this conclusion, one has to defend premise 2'. Some suggestions in support of premise 2' are as follows:
1) The only way God could have totally controlled what the human authors wrote would have been to take away their freedom.
2) If God can control human activities in such exquisite detail as to produce through free agents a Scripture which is verbally and plenary inspired and inerrant, then there seems no reason why He could not control human activities such that people always freely refrain from sin. Given, then, the evil in the word, (2') is probably true. But if (2') is probably true, then, as argued, the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration and inerrancyis probably false.

*William Lane Craig has offered a middle knowledge account of inspiration whereby God could inspire an inerrant text, but he doesn’t consider that worlds in which this is feasible for God may have other overriding deficiencies such as an abundance of horrific and tragic evil, or whatever else so that even if God could, He wouldn’t inspire an inerrant text. For example, an inerrant text may have led to hubris and even more Crusade type events in the history of mankind. Is it really worth it to have an inerrant text if more people would have died because of it?


Given 2), we can add premises 10. and 11. :
10. A world in which an inspired, inerrant Scripture is freely written is feasible for God and
11. A world containing as much good as the actual world without as much evil is not feasible for God
But 10. and 11. are broadly logically incompatible or, at least, improbable each with respect to the other. But such claims are pure speculation; we are simply not in an epistemic position to make responsibility such pronouncements.
Thus, for all we know, God couldn't inspire an error free Bible that involves free human activity. So then, what we would be left with is an inspired text that contains at least one error. So, I think that what this argument is really getting at is the question: If the Bible appears to be human in origin, how can we know that it is divinely inspired? That is, we need to distinguish between the FACT, the MODE, and the EXTENT of inspiration. If we can first establish the fact of inspiration, then we are free to determine the extent and nothing of fundamental importance would hang on the doctrine of inerrancy in such a case.
Christians do not base their belief in the inspiration and authority of the Bible on the 'evidential argument from the bible.' Rather, Christians believe in the inspiration and authority of the Bible for two main reasons:
1) The immediate witness of the Holy Spirit convinces them that the 'great truths of the gospel are in fact true'; including most essentially those truths that involve the assurance of salvation AND
2) In addition (for some), because of the historical case for the Resurrection.
On the basis of one and/or two, Christians believe in the inspiration, and authority of the Bible, but not necessarily in the inerrancy of the Bible.
Thus, on the basis of the Holy Spirit and/or the apologetical case for the Resurrection, Christians can rationally conclude that God is ‘behind’ the text of the Bible to a certain extent, even if the extent of this ‘inspiration’ does not extend to the full depth and breadth of Scripture. Thus, we can rationally believe that the Bible is inspired even if it is all too human, and even if we become convinced that there is a genuine error in it. As has been said:
Its’ not that Christians believe in Jesus because they believe in the Bible, it’s that they believe in Jesus and the Bible is about Jesus in the relevant respect.
Let's offer something by way of a response to each of the 7 points in the above argument:

1.  It contradicts itself or is very unclear in many places.

2.  It contains factual errors, including unfulfilled prophecies.

Are 1&2 errors according to the standards and conventions of the Biblical authors?
-But the problem with this line of argument is that it assumes three things: (i) that the inconsistencies are irresolvable rather than merely apparent; (ii) that the inconsistencies lie at the heart of the narrative rather than just in the secondary, peripheral details; and (iii) that all of the accounts have an equal claim to historical reliability, since the presence of inconsistencies in a later, less reliable source does nothing to undermine the credibility of an earlier, more credible source. In fact, when you look at the supposed inconsistencies, what you find is that most of them—like the names and number of the women who visited the tomb—are merely apparent, not real. Moreover, the alleged inconsistencies are found in the secondary, circumstantial details of the story and have no effect at all on the core of a narrative. So then, what we can find is a unity amongst the diversity that is robust enough to give us significant information we would need to know.

-What source critics understand is that (1) ancient redactors weren’t as bothered by these sorts of contradictions as we moderns are, and (2) for the most part their M.O. was to faithfully preserve their source material, allowing contradictions to stand. (They hadn’t heard about the doctrine of inerrancy yet.) So a few tiqqune sopherim (pious scribal alterations of the text) notwithstanding, scribes were interested in preserving their source material intact. Redactors compiled source materials not as a modern would, in order to weave a seamless, consistent narrative, but rather to bring together various traditions into one body… The redactor’s purpose was not to combine the sources into a coherent, internally consistent narrative, but rather to combine the narratives in a way that allows them to maintain their distinctiveness while at the same time uniting them. Redactors cared about their source material, not because they thought it was “inerrant,” but because the source material reflected the traditions of the peoples.