By the way, one of the apostles that iscredited with writing our New Testament – James – admitted that even the apostles, even those attributed authors of our Bibles, made mistakes: “for we all make many mistakes,” James said in his part of the Bible.

We might safely assume, that by “we all,” James included himself, and all the other apostles as well.

I wrote: “So, if the biblical authors based all of their hopes on the death of the firstborn in Egypt, and if that never actually occurred, then they simply misunderstood the proper foundations of the faith.”

You responded: “It is precisely this kind of conclusion that I find counter-intuitive from a teleological perspective. If we can’t draw the “proper foundations of the faith” from what God has revealed to/through the authors themselves, where then do we find the “raw materials” (so to speak) to construct those foundations and properly respond to the text? The Resurrection of Christ can’t really carry that freight for those generations of the people of God who did not know the identity of Messiah. How would those people of God construe the “proper foundations of the faith”?”
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Whatever the foundation of faith is, it must be something that exists apart from an explicit knowledge of either the Exodus or Resurrection … unless one wishes to deny that faith existed among human beings before biblical revelation came on the scene. That foundation, I surmise, is “faith” in God … and hence, any story or tradition that epitomizes and gives expression to faith (even if that story is not historical) … is a useful and helpful window into our relationship with God. That Jesus came, died, rose again, and ascended historically is the reason that faith in every age is possible … but I’d say that explicit knowledge of Jesus’s ministry, or of any other events or traditions, is not necessary for one to have faith in God.

Trusting biblical authors, as Vanhoozer suggests, is wise … but giving them carte blanche passes to perfection is obviously a mistake because there are too many problems in Scripture. That your judgment is otherwise is yours to make, of course, and I understand the impulse to want an inerrant Bible. But, personally, I don’t see how one can really read the Bible and not see hundreds of obvious errors. If I had to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture’s human authors in order to be a Christian, I simply wouldn’t be one.

While in any case, there might have been other wonders, on which our faith is better based.

Though to be sure, one hopes that Kent S. does not here simply mean, (rather chauvinistically?) that Jews, say, can be saved only by the Christian resurrection? Even conservative Catholic theology is today beginning to consider the possiblity of some kind of salvation for the Jews, prior to Christ.

Incidentally, if you insist that only Christ saves us? THen there are of course many prefigurations of (in effect early appearances of?) Christ in the Old Testament; or in effect, Jewish literature.

And if only the physical resurrection of Christ guarantees salvation? There even elements in the Old Testament that have been taken to suggest such a resurrection. The prophet (Ezekiel? Elijah) finds himself in a field full of bones; bones that come together to form a living corporate body.

So that if, say, resurrection is your major criterion for a valid basis for faith … then there is already one in the (in effect Jewish?) books of the Old Testament. Even a prefiguration of the resurrection of Jesus. (Who by the way, Paul found as the “rock” guiding the Jews in the wilderness. Paul thereby placing Jesus … in the time of the Jews).

Is this an argument between Jews and Christians? One might hope that Jews and Christians (and Muslims, etc.,) might likewise one day come together in a corporate body. Which alone in fact, I suggest, would be broad and strong enough to create the foretold “kingdom” of God and good. “On earth as in heaven.” As foretold.

Could our Christian fundamentalist theologians therefore, get beyond intimations that “only” the resurrection of Christ is the thing that saves us? HOw about the life of Christ? How about previous resurrections? HOw about the Holy Spirit? What about other miracles?

Or if it is only the resurrection of CHrist that does it? Then … after all, we can find that, even in the Old Testament; and therefore, in the Pentateuch, Torah, Tanak, of the Jews.

I should probably be more careful with neologisms, so your point on pragmatic realism is well taken. I also appreciate your desire to accurately represent the argument you made in your book, as far as it went. And for those readers who have not yet read your book, I for one can testify that your responses here are entirely consistent with what I got from reading the book, even though I disagree with your conclusions.

I’m not sure we can get much further in the dialogue at this point; I simply don’t share the presuppositions behind your well-articulated version of pragmatic realism. For example, if it appears that Ezekiel screwed up on Tyre, then my intuitive response is to look for another solution, like other prima facie “dead ends” in the history of interpretation that were eventually “solved.” While this approach continues to rely on induction and deduction for such solutions, it requires as a minimum presupposition a version of authorial intention that accepts Vanhoozer’s sine qua non: a foundational “respect” for the inspired author(s)/redactor(s) that can guide our inquiry in the inductive/deductive cycle whenever we get stuck. When we grant that kind of respect, we leave open the possibility for a solution that eventually may explain the apparent Scriptural contradiction with archaeology, the historical record, etc., rather than reaching the kind of premature “closure” that IMO largely characterizes your Scriptural examples of human “error.”

I guess I am left with only one question. You drew this conclusion:

So, if the biblical authors based all of their hopes on the death of the firstborn in Egypt, and if that never actually occurred, then they simply misunderstood the proper foundations of the faith.

It is precisely this kind of conclusion that I find counter-intuitive from a teleological perspective. If we can’t draw the “proper foundations of the faith” from what God has revealed to/through the authors themselves, where then do we find the “raw materials” (so to speak) to construct those foundations and properly respond to the text? The Resurrection of Christ can’t really carry that freight for those generations of the people of God who did not know the identity of Messiah. How would those people of God construe the “proper foundations of the faith”?

In many respects, I can’t say that I see your comments responding to or reflecting what I’ve said. I’ve never described evangelicals as “antirealists,” and I am not particularly an advocate of “counter-anti-realism,” nor am I trying to give the “hard sciences” and “historical criticism” their particular due. I am a pragmatic realists, who argues that there are such things as right and wrong interpretations and that human interpretations never reflect that reality precisely but only (potentially) adequate or usefully. So the correspondence between human ideas and the world itself is a matter of practical correctness. Science and traditional historical criticism tend to be more positivistic than I would be, though I do thing that the historical critics are close to the mark on many things they say.

Joe: I do believe in the resurrection, and I further believe that we have before us the kind of post-resurrection historical evidence that we might expect if such a resurrection occurred. On the other hand, I don’t believe that most people believe in the resurrection because of historical evidence; there must be something about the story itself that is particularly appealing as an answer to the human situation.

Jim: Because I believe that the Bible is both divine and human, I’m quite happy to admit that the biblical authors sometimes errantly attributed worlds to God that were mistaken, such as Ezekiel’s failed prediction that Tyre would fall to Babylon. In such cases, we have the strange paradox in which errant human discourse about God is included in God’s inerrant written words. A proper parallel to the phenomenon would be that God is inerrant as creator and sustainer of creation but, nonetheless, his creation includes error and evil which does not belong to him … though it is precisely HIS creation that causing the problems. The problem of Scripture is merely a permutation of the larger problem of pain and evil, this being the perennial problem faced by successive generations of humanity. So, if the biblical authors based all of their hopes on the death of the firstborn in Egypt, and if that never actually occurred, then they simply misunderstood the proper foundations of the faith.

BTW, to deny any given miracle in the Bible on the basis of historical evidence is not anti-supernaturalism. Anti-supernaturalism would be to deny all miracles.

There is the possibility that the Exodus story does remember a more modest historical event in which God was faithful and which could serve as a basis for human hope. Also (as I argue in the book), even if all of the evidence is against it, one could conclude, as a matter of faith, that the Exodus took place. That’s fine if that how one feels about it, but I just disagree.

IMO, the bible is as filled with human errors as the cosmos if filled with error and evil. Any hermeneutical strategy that denies this is akin to the Christian Scientist who argues that pain and suffering is an illusion.

Your comment about my confusing neologism “counter-anti-realism” is entirely appropriate. But you understood it correctly. Kent’s hermeneutic seeks to avoid the anti-realism he sees underlying more conventional evangelical hermeneutical presuppositions by according hard science and historical criticism their full due. The result is “counter-anti-realism” in that sense only and does not rise to the level of antisupernaturalism. However, since both I and Kent subscribe to a physical resurrection (thus my facetious comment about 1 Cor 15), my point was that Kent’s denial of a physical (i.e. “real”) Exodus actually does boil down to anti-supernaturalism. Just as you pointed out, why does he insist on a physical resurrection? It is not because he believes the Bible attests to it but rather because the “historical evidence” supports it. However, this introduces a profound inconsistency in God’s self-representation and actually makes it harder to trust Scripture, very simply because it’s harder to trust God to be true to his promises. The epistemic parallel between Exodus and Resurrection is way too transparent from a speech-act perspective, assuming an ontological consistency of the character of God in his dealings with—and “speech” to—man. This impugns the theological “simplicity” of God and leaves us with no hermeneutical “true north.”

Which brings us to your “conjuring” analogy, now that I see where you’re coming from, philosophically. As I intimated above, I do in fact believe that 1 Cor 15 teaches a physical resurrection, though I see what you’re saying, even for that passage. I assume you would cite the end of the chapter, “Flesh and blood do not inherit the Kingdom of God” to support your contention that it does not teach a physical resurrection. This is not the venue to argue Paul’s precise referent and what he then means by “we will all be changed,” but that would need to be ironed out hermeneutically. For the purposes of our discussion, I think we need to see the personal eschatology taught in the OT and NT as parallel in some meaningful epistemic way—they are either both “conjuring” (to use your analogy) or both “physical.” I do see God’s redemptive speech-acts as “addressing” the psychological, social, and cultural, but there is an undeniable eschatological component to God-speech that will not be consummated until the end of this age, and I believe the metanarrative does teach an irreducible physicality to that consummation.

Again, this invokes systematics in another very important way, namely anthropology and the question of physicality in man’s constitution and how that relates to personal eschatology. Wow. Shazaam! Kinda makes me wonder whether you (Joe) should hang onto the hem of my garment when Jesus returns, or I should hang onto the hem of yours (cf. Zech 8:23). (BTW, I do have Jewish blood.) One of us will be very surprised. :-)

Normally, Realism is considered allied to, and all but identical with, Naturalism; and opposed to supernaturalism.

To be sure, “speech acts” occupy an interesting place between naturalism and supernaturalism.

I think we agree that a survey of speech acts in the Bible would be an interesting research project. Though still, can we really make speech acts entirely physical and scientifically supportable? At times, speech acts seem rather magical. As in conjuring. The magician says a magic word, and things appear out of thin air, ex nihilo; like a magician saying a few magic words or prayers – and then making a rabbit appear in an empty hat.

Speech acts do have a physical effect it seems; but it is hard to come up with an account of their mechanism, that is consistent with say, the doctrines that regulate and inform physical effects: with hard science.

For that reason, since it is hard to justify the BIble in physical terms, most theologians today simply give that up. Or they metaphoricalize/spiritualize both the Old Testament and the New. And tell us, that it’s all spiritual. So that now, allegedly, we have the appearance of consistency between Old and New Testaments. Simply by assuming there is no physical reality at all, underlying either testament.

How are the old physical promises metaphoricalized? Commonly it is said for example, that 1) Jesus metaphoricalized bread from heaven; by suggesting that his own spirit was a kind of nourishing spirit – or “bread indeed.” And 2) in the same way, theologians today commonly (albeit anachronistically) read the same metaphoricality into Moses getting bread (“mana”) from heaven.

To be sure though, there are many scholars who are now objecting to this “spiritualization” and “metaphoricalization” on many interesting grounds.

Does Kent S. do this? In a way, his allusions to the physical reality of the Resurrection seem delivered in a deliberately inadequate, throwaway manner; as if he intended to give dogmatism its due … but then move on to more serious matters. I suspect that deep down, Kent S. is not quite as convinced of the simple physicality of the Resurrection as he seems at first.

And by the way, why insist on dead bodies rising from graves? When 1) the evidence against it is enormous; while furthermore 2) carefully read, even the Bible itself does not insist on it. Other accounts of Jesus reappearing in a more metaphorical and yet real way exist. As when a stranger on the road to Emmaus reads scripture .. and is suddenly seen as Jesus. This describes a simple but real phenomena; when we read the words and ideas of someone, and believe them, then a bit of the spirit of the writer, is reborn in us. The ancient author “lives on” in us.

This Resurrection might seem rather too spiritual /metaphoricalizing. But my own studies in the cultural, social transmission of ideas, of culture, suggests that after all, this is real enough. Ideas, spirit, live on through culture; books. LIke the Bible.

So, to have a consistent physicality to both Old and New Testament, and to support the physicality of the entire Bible, it is not really necessary to speak of literally, physically dead bodies rising up alive from their graves, as Kent seems to. There are other, better models of resurrection available, even in the Bible itself. Models consistent with the sciences of Psychology and Sociology.

Incidentally, Kent: as for specifically defeating “dualism” by defeating the water dragon; I don’t think dualism was defeated at that time. It seems clear that Christianity remains extemely Manichean to this very day, in its good-vs.-evil, God-vs.- Satan, word vs. “world,” spirit vs. “flesh” thinking.

Augustine was originally a Manichean; and I think the quintessentially Manichean Good vs. Evil framework subtly entered Christianity inextricably, by way of the undertones of his philosophy.

So that the rift, the dualism between God and Man, word and world, heaven and earth, remains. And it will have to be healed in some other way than by 1) the most common method in theology today: an allegedly all-enveloping spiritualization. Nor 2) for that matter, will that rift be healed by reductionistic physicalism. And to be sure, I personally don’t think it can be done 3) by Speech Act theory either. (Though I listen with interest to this theory).

How do we end the rift, the distance between God and earth? Religion and the world? How do we bring heaven down to earth again? To do that, I favor the 4) Behavioral sciences: Psychology, Sociology. And more remotely, Culture Studies. Which can speak about the mind or spirit – even its immortality or resurrection – as a real thing, after all.

I meant John Walton in paragraph 4 above, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (IVP, 2009).

Joe, I’m not sure how much credence I’d put in the MD, but thanks for the “vote of confidence.” I was musing over Kent’s latest post when Joe’s response chimed in, and I have to say that he brings up a number of things that I was also thinking.

Kent’s argument in the book is very transparent and well-articulated, and he basically summarizes this in his response above. Not being a scholar in historical criticism, much less the period of Egyptian history that he references as overlapping the estimated time of the Exodus, I can’t comment on the absence of any evidence for contemporary historical accounts of a “cry in Egypt” that Kent insists should have been documented for an event as profound as the death of all firstborn and then the wholesale destruction of an army in pursuit of the fleeing Israelites. However, I think Joe’s points are legitimate and complement my own prior comment about the historical argument being an “argument from silence”; it certainly is not determinative in and of itself.

Joe probably articulates the points he makes better than I could, so I won’t belabor them, but I do offer an extension of the logic begun in Joe’s his second paragraph. Joe has correctly assessed our concurrence on the point he makes about a God over the physical universe. My point takes off from Kent’s comment on my use of speech-act theory to support my view of inerrancy. I still think Kent misses a point about this I tried to make earlier—I believe that Vanhoozer’s model elevates the use of speech-act theory to something more than a mere heuristic device to employ in his development of a meta-hermeneutic that “respects” inerrancy. Let me try to explain why I think speech-act theory is more than a mere heuristic by appealing to the revealed character of God:

It seems incontrovertible to me that God is presented by the authors of Scripture—before anything else and then totally consistently—as a God who speaks. Some might object that Gen 1:1 first addresses ex nihilo creation, however John Barton has made an excellent case that this is not in fact the main subject of Gen 1. Indeed, these creative acts wrought by divine speech involved a “decree” of order and function out of chaos, telos out of purposelessness involving material “stuff,” however that stuff got there in the first place. God-speech then continues by addressing humanity with a decree: a commission of human agency to implement the divine telos. But when the Fall ensues, God-speech must then “evolve” to redeem the Creation commission by promising life in the Seed to reverse the curse of death. God then continues to speak throughout revelatory history in his giving of the law and progressively filling out the details of his promise of life in the Seed.

Now consider a new Bible version in which—by analogy with the popular “words of Christ in red” editions of a few decades ago—we were “blessed” with an OT version of the “words of YHWH in red.” Wouldn’t it be nice to just go from Genesis to Malachi and nail down every speech-act of God. What would we find? We would find a lot of direct dialogue with Moses, as well as numerous prophets who repeatedly testified that the dabar YHWH came to them on such and such a day in such and such a month of such and such a year, “and he said ‘….’ ”

Now think of the number of times we might run into “red” words that said something to the effect of “Am I not the God who brought you out of Egypt on eagle’s wings and preserved you alive to be a people for my own name?” Pretty transparent rhetorical question, would you agree? It seems to me pretty clear, Kent—and this is my “logical extension” of what Joe started above—that if you impugn the integrity of the Exodus as represented in the Scriptural account, you basically undercut the reliability of YHWH’s promise of life at any point following the “error-laden” account of the Exodus on which the telic thrust of YHWH’s promise of life depends. IOW, how can any hearer of transmitted oral tradition (or reader of a written account of that tradition) rely on the promise of a God who speaks, when we can’t rely on the substantive basis for that promise to be true in the same sense that the ground for that promise is represented?

If the “words of YHWH in red” can’t be trusted because of “historical evidence” that screams from silence, then it seems counter-intuitive to me that there can be any meaningful doctrine of inerrancy. Why not then—as Joe has intimated—default to a “super gnosticism” of spirituality based on “the mythic power of the text”? Taking the next logical step, if the people of God to whom the promise of life was available on the basis of the purported physical reality of the Exodus is really to be understood only for its “mythic power,” why must we then insist on a physical resurrection and throw in 1 Cor 15 (by that annoying fellow Paul) for good measure? The two scenarios (Exodus and Resurrection) should be epistemologically parallel in addressing the people of God from the standpoint of speech-act theory (as I envision its use), with “message” (or “locution”) and “telos” (or “perlocutionary intent”) being mutually informing). Yet Kent’s argument distracts Exodus from Resurrection and introduces a profound discontinuity that cannot be supported from either a canon-conscious or metanarrative point of view. It also creates a lacuna in the logic of Kent’s argument, because it contradicts his own counter-anti-realism hermeneutic and in fact ironically introduces an element of anti-supernaturalism by granting favored status to historical criticism over what might be called a “genre solution” that takes seriously what I call “the words of YHWH in red” as reflecting a God who speaks (reliably).