Brief Thoughts on the Ehrman/Williams Dialogue and the Licona/Howe Dialogue, Then Open Phones

Greetings. Welcome to the dividing line. It is a friday. It is a friday that should be like right after thanksgiving but thanksgiving's really late this year i think it's as late as it can get. I think i'm not sure looking at the calendar i'm not sure exactly how they figured these things out but it's really really late uh that means i will be in saint charles for my 19th year um a little bit later farther into december than normal and but we're still doing that and we will be addressing the social justice movement so we'll be looking at all sorts of issues related to that.

Um i think this first time i've done a a conference specifically in that area. I'm not a thousand percent looking forward to that. To be honest with you this particular movement is extremely energy sapping shall we say um but that's what we'll be doing so um i am bringing uh all my brightest koojis because um one of the elders there at the church has twice now in my presence not only mispronounced but miswrote kooji as g-o-g-g-i godji whatever that is.

And so uh as as an act of uh requiring some level of contrition uh and and punishment uh really for this act of disrespect um i'm bringing all my brightest uh wildly brightest koojis um and we'll i might even i might even bring a couple to switch out during the day on saturday because saturday is a really long day they just kill me on saturdays morning afternoon when no one's awake uh it's uh yeah it's it's really rough.

So i might i might just switch a few out just just for the just for the fun of it uh at that that particular point in time rich is right now very thankful that he does not travel with me and certainly does not go to saint charles.

Uh so there there you go um and i i will probably even make sure to bring a kooji uh tie to wear on sunday uh when i don't wear the sweaters but i do have ties. So we will be doing that the first full weekend of of december there in in saint charles and so if you're interested it's always good to get to meet folks there and it'll be the first time we've done this subject.

We've almost every subject that we do there i've already done in preceding years because we've done it for 19 years there's i only know so much so so i we've done oneness oneness stuff and the trinity and the doctrines of grace and church history and islam and new testament reliability.

We've done everything over 19 years and um i i keep telling them if they'd like to get some better speakers in that i i i would fully and completely understand if they wanted to do that and they just uh yeah it's it's easier to book me because uh we know exactly how it works.

You know what you're going to get don't always know what you're going to get when you uh when you when you have other folks anyways um so we're going to open up the phones here in a few minutes uh but i wanted to comment on a couple of items uh that i've said i would get to eventually and i think it's time to eventually get to them a little bit behind the times.

Sorry about that uh but um we've been doing some traveling and so on and so forth. So about what about two months ago now uh peter williams bart ehrman unbelievable with justin briarley the big conversation and um on you know the story of jesus are the gospels historically reliable.

Inerrancy, Inspiration, and the Authority of Scripture

Now if much of our audience is relatively new i do run into folks who are long-time dividing line listeners and watchers and and things like that but really a lot of times it's people just over the past couple of years have found out about the program and so uh not everybody uh goes back into the archives and catches stuff some people do and there's a lot to be a lot a lot of material to be mined uh out of what what can be found in there to be sure to be certain um but a lot of people don't do that and so you may not be aware of the fact that over the years we have um especially you know six seven eight to twelve thirteen fourteen years ago one of the things we would regularly do would be to play either the audio or the video normally audio of bart ehrman debates um william lane craig debates um mike likona versus bart ehrman debates you know for example likona did a debate with bart i think it was their second debate where likona had laryngitis it was just painful to listen to it was rough.

But we would review these debates and we would go in depth into critiquing uh ehrman's naturalistic uh historical um type of argumentation where um his absolute insistence that to do history you have to history by definition must be naturalistic it has to be materialistic.

There can be there is no poss you cannot do history if you allow that god had any plan to accomplish in history from erman's perspective which is weird because he also has this very strange view that if god were to inspire scripture that he would not allow any textual variation in the transmission of manuscripts uh so if if scribes are uh copying the manuscripts then somehow god is going to interfere in history.

So he so he has a perspective that says god can't interfere in history because that's not really history. But if god were to inspire scripture then he would have to interfere in history to keep it without error.

Yeah so we've listened to a lot of people struggle to provide a meaningful response to what erman says anyway um in the conversation with peter williams barterman what was really interesting to me is look in the academy there is you know right now ets spls going on over in san diego and i haven't gone to ets since i think 98 i've told the story before i found and maybe it was just that year okay so maybe i should go back but i just found the attitude um really difficult to deal with um there was you know the the poor benighted church and the great academy giving it guidance and and and stuff's happened since then about open theism and things like that that just made me go whatever a lot of people go.

I've got a lot of friends there right now. But i think everybody at ets would agree that the one word that well nt wright has called that silly american doctrine the the one word that in churches and in certain denominations has to be dealt with and may you may even have to sign a document saying you believe it but in the academy is so completely problematic is not the term inspiration.

Because inspiration can inspiration is not even a good translation of the greek term theanostasis in the new testament when when paul says all scripture is inspired or god-breathed inspired is a latin translation that is some that's liable to all sorts of rather wishy-washy interpretations.

You can talk about an inspiring performance or calling a book inspired that was an inspired effort on his part. I mean you can use it in a lot of different ways. It's not tech technical enough to really nail down what it is that you're specifically saying god breathe is much better along those lines.

But i am referring of course to the other i word not even infallibility but inerrancy. And some people use that term without ever defining it. Some people use that term um as a baseball bat without um much thinking um so we've certainly seen it misused.

There's no question about that. But when it comes to the academy um there is a tremendous this pressure upon believing academicians scholars to run from that term because of what it necessitates it necessitates a supernatural world view.

It necessitates um a concept of scripture that simply isn't allowed within the academy itself because the only way really you know i think the chicago statement is as close as we're going to get there it's not perfect but it recognizes the the real challenge that we do face and that i think every christian needs to think through.

Yeah i'm that guy that thinks that every christian should think through things like this. Or some people say no no no no that's just that's only no i if if the christian faith is constantly going back to scripture if semper reprimanda means anything then our doctrine of scripture should have a real central place.

And so i have encouraged all christians no matter what they're calling in life what they're calling by god to really think about what inerrancy means what inspiration means what the authority of scripture is and to recognize that the high view of scripture that we must hold to believe in christian theology views scripture as having not only meaning in the individual text the individual chapter the individual book so an epistle of paul or uh the book of hebrews or the the book of revelation or the gospel of john.

But that there is something about scripture that transcends just the individual authors and their works so that you have in the text of scripture exactly what god wants us to have. That god didn't want us to have the gospel of thomas the god did not want us to have the gospel of peter um or any of the intertense testamental literature um that was so popular amongst the jews that was not something that god intended us to have in the canon of scripture.

And hence the scripture is actually intended to communicate a clear body of truth the faith when you use the faith as a substantive an articular substantive the faith. There are times and that refers to to the content of of the whole christian faith and that we are able to properly and not in an artificial fashion look at what scripture says as a whole not just within one writer but see the threads that flow from the old testament as a whole into the new testament as a whole.

If you have if you don't have a supernatural view of scripture you can't do any of that. There are no there are no threads like that. It's it's a in in most i would probably say most christian education across the world today.

You don't have a high enough view of scripture to be able to actually do those things. So without that you're not going to have the doctrines of trinity. You're not going to have the hypostatic union.

You're not going to have systematic theology. You're not going to have any of these things. And when your view of scripture degrades to the point where you can't do it anymore then you start looking for something like tradition.

You start looking for church authority to fill in where scriptural authority doesn't doesn't fit anymore. And in the academy today there are a lot of sound people who live in a world where they are constantly under pressure from two different directions confessionally within the church they're saying one thing in regards to a very high view of scripture you go into their field or into the rest of the scholars and professors in their university and to even entertain the idea that there's such a thing as a supernaturally inspired revelation from god is career suicide career suicide.

And so there's a lot of christian scholars to just dismiss the idea they're not in a situation where they're a part of a church that would require them to believe something like this or in fact would even accept them if they did.

But then there are these others and it is just a part of of where we are today in western society that this is a an issue that christian scholars have to face. Well there were a lot of really interesting things.

There's no advertising in the that i was just getting dry. I just realized it's a canes. It's i went by canes today. That's not necessarily a statement about chick-fil-a though i've always said that canes chicken is better than chick-fil-a's chicken.

And i did not. I said that even before chick-fil-a threw us under the bus. There's no there's no product placement at all. Um and by the way folks i did not want to believe when i first started seeing the chick-fil-a stuff when i was over in in i think i was in in scotland.

Maybe it was london anyways my gut feeling was no and i i found some articles that's oh see you know it's not as bad. And then i started seeing articles about what this covenant house is and stuff has been going on and it is we we got thrown under the bus.

There's that i didn't want to believe it. I tried to believe the best but we got thrown under the bus. Um so uh but i people will testify. I have said for years that canes chicken fingers um it's just better chicken.

It just it always has been uh than um than chick-fil-a anyway but i went by canes today. So there you go. I know you you eat burgers. Well my dad had kfc today actually for his 88th it's 88th birthday so he had kfc instead of a birthday cake.

And i'm like that's yeah but nothing's as good as your fried chicken. He hasn't made his fried chicken for a number of years. So there you go. Last time i made his fried chicken i did a pretty good job.

But i'll be honest with you those deep fryer things man they take forever to clean up. I mean just forever. It's like yeah it tastes good. But do you really do you want to go there or when you can just go to canes let them clean it up.

You know anyway how did how did we get out of that. We squirrel um yeah yeah yeah there you go. Jet lag is uh i i said today would be the rough day on on the on the jet lag. Not the first day back but the second anyway.

Back to this situation i let me just play for you. There's a lot of things that we could look at in the conversation. Um and i may have already did i play that. Maybe i just made reference to it. It was really interesting to me that during this conversation barterman actually said he said i don't have any problem with the idea that jesus prophesied the destruction of jerusalem.

I'm not sure if i played that i might have just mentioned that to jeff because we're in matthew 24 at apologia. Um we will get out of matthew 24 jeff says by the end of the year. I yeah we'll see we'll see.

We'll see. Jeff we'll see. Um but uh maybe i just mentioned it to them or something i don't know. I thought i had mentioned on the program that it was really interesting to to hear ermine say yeah i don't have any problem with the idea that jesus uh prophesied the coming destruction of jerusalem.

Obviously not to the point of accuracy that the new testament writers represent it. But he's like yeah i think a lot of folks who probably saw something's going to happen eventually type of a type of situations that was interesting.

Um but at one point this conversation took place. And please understand i extremely thankful for the next generation um and the generation after that um of brilliant christian scholars who are coming up and and doing wonderful things and the lord's using them and we pray for them.

Um but you can tell that peter williams is struggling because the the big conversations set that justin briarley has ermine is is four feet in front of him. I mean this is an intimate conversation. This is breath mint range.

Okay this is almost a little bit too close for me as a scotsman. I want to back up a little bit um um and i think rich remembers uh when we were on the phone with bart ermine in 2009 uh before the debate.

And the laughter the condescending laughter that bart ermine had toward me as a as an individual he never read any of my books didn't care to didn't think it was relevant. Um bart has that reputation within the academy.

And he he's had a reputation for years at especially at spl meetings and stuff like that of just ripping people to shreds and sometimes in a way that isn't it's not even necessary to do it in that way.

So you know he calls himself a happy agnostic. I've just never found him to be all that happy um but he's right there. And i think peter williams is struggling to find a way to express himself so as to avoid.

Because because listen listen to how bart sets it up. He sets up inerrancy as a fundamentalist doctrine and who wants to be a fundamentalist because we can all just go subscribe to the ifb preacher uh feed on twitter and go.

Ah i want to stay away from these folks. But anyway um here's um let's just listen to it and then i'll comment on it. And uh so here here we go.

Does it matter. I'm not arguing. I'm not arguing that the gospels are completely unreliable.

I'm not saying okay hold on a second. Here we've lost rich. Um. Okay i'm i'm we're trying to play something here. Uh it's a video it's a video so we'll go back here. And uh yeah i'm just seeing the the screen is just me and it's like rich was busy talking to someone on the phone.

So well i said we would open the phones later on. Stop calling until i say the phones are open. Okay. Just rich can't do that and this at the same time. He's not a multitasker on that level. Are you ready.

Okay here we go guys. We know he died we know.

That he betrayed jesus does it matter. I'm not arguing. I'm not arguing that the gospels are completely unreliable. I'm not saying. I'm not saying that the gospels have historical information in them.

Can you trust that what they say about what happened in the life of jesus actually happened or not. I'm saying in many cases no. You cannot trust that. If peter wants to say that in every case they're trustworthy that would be worth talking about.

Like do you think that there are any mistakes. I don't but you don't think. Can you explain how your view would be different.

From a fundamentalist view well i think that's not a very helpful analytical term. No i just want to know where you stand. I mean do you think it's completely inerrant. Um what i think that the traditional christian view is that all scripture is true.

That does not mean that the copy that someone has in front of them. No no i'm not talking about copies necessarily. I'm a copy.

You know yeah now see see at that point he's not talking about copies. And yeah there is a proper distinction to be made in regards to inerrancy as far as manuscripts concern. But but ermine's not talking about that.

That's pretty clear. Ermine is talking about initial writing and that's where the focus of inerrancy is. Obviously is men spoke from god as they're carried along by the holy spirit. Um and just look at the look on the face i mean almost anybody sitting across from bart television cameras trained on them.

Um there there's a tremendous amount of pressure that's going to be put on you here. Um and what is interesting to me. And i'm going to keep playing it. But what is interesting to me is most of this conversation was and was going to continue from here to be turned into peter williams looking at harmonizing alleged contradictions things that we've done for years and years and years and yet we were i've been told for years you got to get away from that.

You can't defend that type of it's just dead end. You did the dadada and yet that ended up being what was what was going on here which i i found really really interesting valid.

But do i um follow the belief that when god speaks words of scripture they are they um bear his own.

Character of truthfulness. Yes. So you think everything in the bible is true. There are no.

Mistakes of any kind. The word bible has multiple values a physical value and if i prefer the word.

Scripture do i believe. All scripture is true. Yes with no mistakes of any kind. Anywhere do i. Yeah i.

Believe that god didn't make any mistakes of any kind. I don't think god makes mistakes either. But i'm not talking about god. But you don't believe in god. Uh exactly. But i mean i i do need to be able to you know express what i do believe and not have words put on my mouth.

Well i believe that all scripture is. Uh true. Yes i i mean. And. And from that point of view you're willing to look for ways in which there can be a reconciling of what bart obviously believes are irreconcilable stories.

Yes not that i'm necessarily that interested in following them up because again there are multiple alternatives. I mean you can look at this. The word he hanged himself you know um in in matthew is just one word in greek.

So you ask yourself. So the the context here was.

Eventually end up being a lengthy conversation about judas's death and barterman's assertion assertion that there are certain irreconcilable statements. Now what's interesting to me is especially the the judas death issue which i know we've talked about in the past.

But it's interesting to me that when you ask bart for his best examples i don't find his examples overly compelling. Um he completely misses the day of the crucifixion on the part of john. Um there is a very consistent it's not a reach it's not a um um the the super surface level harmonization type stuff that you'll find in some works.

Um at robertson had had laid it out in his harmony of the gospels years ago. I did a whole presentation on this at the jeremiah cry thing. I think 2010 something like that. I forget when it was in new york.

Um i've done it i've done it in saint charles too. I've dealt with barterman stuff with that. But then here you have the judas thing and we have very little information. We have two accounts and both of them clearly assume for people reading the story locally um that we don't have.

It's sort of like when we read paul writing to the thessalonians and saying now remember what i told you when i was with you. So i don't have to i don't have to tell you about this. And we're all yes you do we weren't there.

Um and but but that's what their big discussion was about. But for ermine it is simply presuppositionally not possible that there is a book that has both human elements and yet remains a revelation from god.

It's just it's just impossible. And you could tell that williams was struggling to know how to express what's clearly a high view of scripture within that context. Um and that's something that is like i said christian scholarship has to deal with absolutely all the time.

And what was interesting is it really paralleled the other conversation that took place on inerrancy around the same time. I think it was a little bit afterwards. I forget what the date was. These all this been within the past two three months.

Um and that was at ses the debate dialogue between michael icona and richard howe. Um on what is inerrancy. And i listened to the entirety of of that. I didn't watch it. Uh i i listened to well i listened to the ermine williams on too and it was a little frustrating it it did get bogged down.

Um going back over stuff where it just seemed the two sides weren't communicating really really well but i was taken aback by some of the things were said. I found myself in between the two. Um i agreed with like kona on certain things in regards to uh how you understand the genre of some of the stories some of the parables he doesn't use the terminology i use of necessary telescoping uh but talked about many of the same incidences in the synoptic gospels especially between matthew and mark.

Where mark gives he calls it the gals version versus matthew's guys version. So you know like kona likes to do the i don't know what you'd describe it but the populist type thing. And so he basically says that the person's giving all the details.

That's the gal version versus the telescoped version. Is the guy version. Well um i i don't know that necessarily follows but be that as it may. Um so there were times i'm i'm i'm tracking with like kona going yes the reason there are differences in the stories dating the fig tree incident things along these lines are issues related to telescoping um alleged contradictions then are based upon providing assumptions that you're reading into the text in light of the fact that the writer who doesn't give as much detail you're assuming is saying this this and this though they don't say it.

So you're assuming that matthew is putting a certain time period on the fig tree incident even though he doesn't say it that kind of thing. But then on the other hand what surprised me was there are things like kona said we we covered what was it two years ago three years ago we covered when his book came out on differences in the gospels um maybe only a year and a half ago his assertion that mark had simply made a mistake as to the locations.

Remember it was tiberius and it was it was around the sea of galilee geographical issue. And we had we went through that in the program. I expected that to be one of the central issues i expected um like kona's identification of the dead rising in matthew at the resurrection of jesus which was the focus of geisler's attack on like kona when his book on resurrection came out.

And his assertion like kona does not cannot possibly believe in resurrection up to frustration duh cannot possibly even inerrancy if he is saying that there were no dead that rose and appeared to people in the city um and i've always found like kona's explanation of what he thinks that is happening there to be exceptionally ad hoc uh liable to easy refutation to be honest with you anyway i expected that that would be where the focus was the mark thing specific places where like kona has said there's an error but it wasn't ended up being the the things that how is identifying as a specific error seemed to just be differences in how the writers were expressing the same event one with more detail and the other with less detail.

And then whether you would read into the less detailed account certain assumptions that then make it contradictory to the more fully detailed account. But especially at the beginning of the and of course this is always when i've said this many many times the cross-examination is where a debate takes place.

This is where a debate takes place. So i want to listen to the beginning of the the dialogue. And then we'll make some comments and we'll open up the well as i start this let's go ahead and open up the phones because i only intend to spend a couple minutes watching it and then briefly commenting on it.

So eight seven seven seven five three three three four one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one let's.

Listen to uh what is said here. You gave that syllogism. The bible is the word of god. God cannot err therefore the bible cannot err. You know i got problems with that syllogism. I think the logic is sound.

But the first premise i have problems with that when you say the bible is the word of god. Now i do believe the bible is the word of god. But in the sense that it's always used in that syllogism it to say the bible is the word of god it carries a lot of freight that goes unstated and and usually undefended for what it's meant to to say.

Now you did defend it by saying you know the word the scripture is god. Breathe theonoustas in greek. So so you know. Tell me. I'd be interested to know. Tell me more. You said you don't know the mechanism of divine inspiration.

It's irrelevant. How do you imagine the process of theonoustas. God breathed.

Yeah i wouldn't say that i don't know the mechanism. At least in some instances we do know the mechanism. For example uh god at one place actually writes with his own finger the the decalogue. So there there's a mechanism.

Right there. Uh sometimes the if this can be classified as a mechanism sometimes the scriptures talk about i will put my words in their mouth or or i move them these kinds of things so much more. Beyond those kind of phrases i'm at a loss to know what even a mechanism is trying to discover.

And as i suggested it's sort of irrelevant that it doesn't matter what the mechanism is since what the scriptures testify about itself is the is the is the resultant of whatever that mechanism. In other words even if it was a voice that okay even if it was that or it was just an impression or or no matter no matter what the resultant the preaching of paul the writing of the epistles the writings of the prophets these.

Kind of things is the word of god so how does. How does your view of god breathe.

Differ from divine dictation. Now this is this is this is where i want to focus in. How does your view differ from divine dictation is very very important. Um because a lot of people assume that if you believe in plenary verbal inspiration which means that the inspiration the supernatural action of god extends to the actual words that are recorded rather than a denial of plenary verbal would mean that only concepts come from god but they can be errantly expressed in human language.

Um but the dictation idea is is almost it's an automatic writing idea. It's it's it's like uh a person is is just all of a sudden overcome and they just you know just start writing stuff and they they don't even know where it's coming from.

Uh the it's like they are taken over by a spirit or or some force. And the result is then scripture. Um a lot of people have that idea and and i guess i can understand where it comes from. I've always said that that that's not a meaningful category.

Um you you certainly do. Have you know god saying thus say the lord if when you have a prophet who inquires of the lord in regards something is real and and they say thus say it the lord. Okay that is that is direct revelation in regards to a specific question a specific situation certain kingdoms attacking israel whatever else it might be.

But that doesn't fit especially in the new testament. It does not fit with paul's writings. It does not fit with the nature of the gospels. It does not fit with apocalyptic. Really it doesn't. It was a lot of a lot of things.

Um and i've used the illustration many many times of the fact that when you read the new testament as a whole you encounter many different styles in the original languages. So when you first start translating you start with the easy stuff like first second and john um you read some mark gospel of john then you can move into paul and all that's preparing you to eventually run into the the difficulties of luke acts and hebrews which are written at the highest level as far as vocabulary and syntax and grammar and um all that kind of stuff very classical in in their form if that's dictation that that doesn't make any sense.

Um because there are multiple levels and there are multiple styles and not only that you have personal expression. I mean you look at the psalms and you look at the the range of emotions that the psalmist is experiencing.

And the psalter gives us the whole range of human experience and apocalyptic. And paul saying to timothy bring the cloaks and the and the and the books and especially the parchments and and and things like this.

And what that means is the idea of just a dictation theory. My concern here is i'm not sure if we're gonna have time to get to it but at one point like kona basically states to how that as far as he can see he does not understand how you can have a certain view of inerrancy without dictation theory.

And that concerns me because as far as i can read the chicago statement on inerrancy um i don't think that r .c. sproul and other people had a dictation theory at all. And yet they had the highest view of inerrancy and inspiration the the god.

Okay i'll just say this i think reformed people have a little leg up here because the god who is working all things according to counsel of his will who who who predestines all things um ephesians 111 does so in such a fashion that he's big enough to put the writers of scripture into the context where they're going to write the things that he wants us to have.

He doesn't have to destroy the human beings. He sovereignly chooses the human beings put some of that situation and produces scripture so that it functions the way he desires it to function without having to destroy the human personalities who are in fact the ones through whom it comes.

Um the reformed god can do that. And i only simply say that because of the strong emphasis in other perspectives on the absolute autonomy of the human will. And i don't know how those who emphasize the absolute autonomy of human will can even begin to explain the origination of scripture.

I i just don't. I think there's there's an inconsistency there. But anyway so i certainly do not believe in a dictation theory. And yet i believe that god is big enough to have as peter said men spoke so paul uses his vocabulary.

John uses his vocabulary. Peter uses his vocabulary. His amanuensis uses his vocabulary. Which is why there's difference between first second peter um and all the all the issues about you know is it possible that for example peter um dictated a letter in aramaic and allowed his amanuensis to translate into greek.

That would explain a lot of stuff. Well what's quote-unquote inspired there. Uh what's is it the end result or the initial impetus to write. Um what what is it all sorts of questions to deal with there.

Um but god is big enough to give us his word and not be limited by us and by our choices and knowledge. And so on and so forth. Um so i don't believe in a dictation theory but i believe that what god wants us to have is exactly what he has provided to us.

So with that differ from divine dictation.

It doesn't differ necessarily. So so yeah i mean it could very well be dictation for all i know.

Okay so it seemed that i would never answer that way i would add because there is an already established category and understanding of what divine dictation would be. Um and and it seems fairly obvious to me that that's what like kona is asking about.

Um and i it ties back to. I have a feeling that's probably where ermine is too. There are times you know you know so often ermine is so well read and then other times he just makes statements especially in the field of theology that demonstrate a huge massive black hole in his understanding of christian theology.

It's just a just a huge one. Um and it would not surprise me at all especially given the odd strange view he has repeated doesn't back off of that if god inspired the scriptures that there could not be any textual variance.

Uh yeah. Okay doesn't doesn't i mean i'm not saying that.

It is dictation. But if there is dictation that wouldn't be. That would be what god breathed is. And in some places it might. Very well you could construe perhaps some of the verses to be a form of dictation.

Where he tells david to write these things in a book. Well what does he know to write beyond what it is that presumably god is telling him to write. Hey mike can i ask you you said something. You said that that first premise is freighted with things that are unstated.

What do.

You think those things are that are unstated. Well yeah i think it's. It's when you say the bible's the word of god and it's used in the context of this syllogism. The bible's the word of god it's kind of it's god's speech in written form.