The Dividing Line, September 25, 2008

But let's talk with Adam real quick. Hi, Adam! Hey, Dr. White. How you doing? I'm doing pretty well.

I got in the middle of semester again, books up to my ears, you know. That's what happens. Yep. I wanted to ask you a question about, really, your philosophy of defending the text of Scripture, because I know you're debating

Bart Ehrman in January. And, you know, I'm reading a lot of so -called bellhousians and redaction critics, and, you know, you get a lot of this stuff.

And, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to handle a lot of this stuff from a presuppositional perspective, because a lot of folks throw out evidence.

One of the popular theories is Robert Alter's, that he tried to show literary consistencies between texts that are supposedly redacted, and now all of a sudden they're starting to say, well, there was a final redactor that made it all smooth.

How you detected the original redaction, if that's the case, has always left everyone scratching their heads.

I think what they would probably say is, well, because of all these inconsistencies, like in the flood narrative and things like that, you know...

You know, people back then were bright enough to figure out how to do this a whole lot better than they allegedly did, you know?

Yeah, well, it's just the way it is, that, you know, they absolutely have it in their brain that this must be errant, there must be redaction, and that's just the way it is.

That's where they start, there's no question about it. And you're right, that's how you have to have to approach it, and you're right.

I will be seeking to expose the presuppositional nature of Dr. Ehrman's assumptions, just as I did with John Dominic Crossan.

The very first question that I asked of Crossan was, what kind of evidence could be presented to you that would convince you that a miraculous event took place in the first century?

And his response was, well, there couldn't be. There can't be any evidence of the supernatural. There you go,

I just illustrated the presuppositional nature of his starting point to his entire system.

And there is a presupposition in Ehrman's thinking as well, and there is a tremendous amount of this very same kind of naturalistic presupposition that exists in the

Christian Academy, what's called the Christian Academy, and especially when people ask about the

Old Testament issues, and about redaction, criticism, and Wellhausen, and the Graf Wellhausen stuff, and all the various permutations and variations on a theme that develop all the time,

I say, you know, we gave we gave the Old Testament to the liberals, by and large, a long, long time ago.

There are some conservative Old Testament scholars, Gleason, Archer, and others, but they are by far in the small minority.

And that doesn't change the fact that even though the bulk of current writing reflects that same kind of naturalistic presupposition, that really doesn't mean anything, because I don't see a whole lot of thinking outside the box.

In fact, if anything, we've gotten to the point where if you actually are historically

Orthodox in your view of Scripture, you're not even going to be given an opportunity to speak within those contexts. It's almost as bad in that area as it is in the science area, if you dare say, you know, there seems to be a whole lot of evidence of the existence of intelligent design.

You're at, you're fired, you're out, you know, it's pretty much that dogmatic.

And so just the fact that the majority of writing in a particular time period, even the periods 100, 150 years in length, it doesn't mean almost anything, because back in, you know, starting late 1700s and the 1800s, especially with the rise of German scholarship and, you know, moving

John back to the second, third, fourth centuries and stuff like that, what eventually happens? Well, what are the earliest manuscripts in the

New Testament we have? They're from John. So something comes along and things get reoriented and, you know, it takes some work.

But I can understand why, especially when you're in school and you're surrounded with this stuff, it's difficult to, you know, keep fighting the battle.

That was one of the advantages of my going to Fuller Theological Seminary for my first master's degree was that I had to fight that battle.

It was a battle in every single class, and that was good for me in the long run, but it's not good for everybody.

That's not necessarily what I would recommend to other folks. But you're right, you have to approach it from the presuppositional perspective.

And generally, when you do, you get these blank stares because, well, that's always how we've done. Well, actually, it isn't, but maybe in your experience, everything you've read starts from that perspective.

But if you don't start from that perspective, you read Gerhard von Raad or something like that, you find gaping holes in the reasoning because of that.

But, you know, I remember my teacher standing up in front of the class and holding up von Raad's commentary on Deuteronomy, saying, this is the best commentary in English on the book of Deuteronomy in print today.

And when I wrote my review of it, the only positive thing I can say about it is it had a very nice binding.

And then I went into all the negatives. Now, thankfully, he still gave me a really good grade because I had obviously read the book very carefully and made my arguments well.

But, you know, that's what you're up against. But how would you go after those presuppositions?

Once you point out, you know, because it seems like once you go into naturalism and you start arguing, well, naturalism can't account for this, and naturalism can't account for that, it almost seems like you've totally left the biblical text altogether.

Well, but you're having to address, you see, you're having to address what they're bringing to the biblical text.

And so you're having to point out that they are functioning on a worldview that the authors of the books are looking at would never have even begun to conceive, and that they don't really have any particularly good reason for doing so, and that they're operating on certain a priori assumptions that have been given to them by others.

Have they ever bothered to consider the consistency of those assumptions? And in fact, why in the world are you studying this stuff anyways if you're going to accept that kind of a presupposition?

What good is this going to do you anyhow if you do so? So yeah, I realize that it's not so much an argument about that as it is the methodology that you're bringing to the text and saying, hey, you know, you seem to have a real strong desire here to find in the biblical text all sorts of disharmony, but exactly why are you bringing those presuppositions to the text in the first place?

And why is it that the one possibility that can never be allowed into your thinking is that there is actually a consistent and harmonious way of looking at it?

Why is that the one thing? Because I remember listening to Crossan and Borg for hours and hours before we did the debates back in 2005, and that was the one thing that every once in a, you know, maybe three or four lectures just in passing, almost as an afterthought, was sort of like, well, of course, you know,

I mean, people in the past tried to harmonize these things, but that's just silly. And then as we move on, there was never any serious interaction with that kind of a thing at all.

Well, it's not really what goes on today. What really goes on today, and Dr. Ehrbeck was telling me at SEL, a lot of these people will come up and just attack you right out of the bat.

And they'll start saying, like, oh, this is, how do you explain this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and then they'll keep piling it up.

And if you answer all of them, they'll try to find one that you haven't answered. Of course.

But there's, I'm sorry, I wish there was a way that you could, you know, wave a magic wand, make everybody logical and rational and have a high view of truth and a high desire to believe truth, but you can't.

And so in my debate with Osama Abdullah, that's what he was doing, is he had a list on his website, you know, there's lists all over the place, you know,

Dennis McKenzie and biblical heresy from 25 years ago dealing with him. There is no end to the list that you can create of alleged contradictions in the

Bible. And so they'll just sit there and rat -a -tat -tat, throw them out, and if they throw out 15 of them, and you have time to demonstrate that five of them were completely bogus, then they figure, well, you couldn't answer 10 of them, so that's it, even though they didn't have time to.

That kind of thinking, there's nothing, there's honestly, as frustrating as it is, there's nothing you can do about it.

And you have to have a proper attitude about what you're doing and what your own faith is about to not be deeply troubled by that, because we should remain troubled that there are people who have such a low view of truth and such a low desire to be truthful that they could buy, and so lacking in discernment, that they can buy into that kind of argumentation.

But at the same time, you can't let it bother you so much that it becomes a distraction for you.

And I know of what I'm speaking here, because it's just part and parcel of what I do. I have to deal with people like this all the time, and many years ago,

I had to come to the point where I have my faith, and I recognize what the ground of that is, and what causes that to grow, and what causes that to be confirmed, and I can't allow the reactions of others to really impact that.

And it's just, it's something that comes with experience and thinking through the issues that, you know what, when you speak the truth to those who, in God's judgment, do not have discernment to love the truth.

I mean, what does Paul say? What's Paul's description in 2 Thessalonians? Those who refuse to love the truth,

God will cause them to love a lie. When you see that happening in others, you can't buy into that idea that somehow it's your responsibility to cause people to love the truth.

You can present the truth to them. You can model loving the truth to them, but you can't force them to love the truth. It's just not possible.

And so you have to be confirmed in your own love of the truth, in your own faith, and then when you see others and rebelling against that, well, you have to trust that the

Spirit of God will work with them. Okay? All right. All right, thanks for your call.

God bless. God bless. See you soon. Bye. Bye -bye. All right, another one of those students out there dealing with what it's like to be a student, and dealing with the fact that in the vast majority of situations you find yourself in, there are going to be issues.

You're going to have to demythologize scholarship. You're going to have to see the presuppositional nature of these things. Recognize that many of those men who know much more than you do, they can know much more than you do.

And as such, you have to listen to what they're saying. You have to examine what they're saying. But people, even who have a tremendous amount of knowledge, can frequently be extremely naive when it comes to thinking through the bigger issues.

And frequently when they're a specialist in one particular area, they really haven't thought about how that specialized area deals, interacts with, relates to other areas of Christian knowledge at the same time.