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| ID | 255 |
|---|---|
| Original Title | Cross-Denominational Dialogue: Sola Scriptura in Setting the Table for Charitable and Faithful Christian Discourse |
| Sanitized Title | crossdenominationaldialoguesolascripturainsettingthetableforcharitableandfaithfulchristiandiscourse |
| Clean Title | Cross-Denominational Dialogue: Sola Scriptura In Setting The Table For Charitable And Faithful Christian Discourse |
| Source ID | 2 |
| Article Id01 | 621737756 |
| Article Id02 | oai:digitalcommons.andrews.edu:dmin-1832 |
| Corpus ID | (not set) |
| Dup | (not set) |
| Dup ID | (not set) |
| Url | https://core.ac.uk/outputs/621737756 |
| Publication Url | (not set) |
| Download Url | https://core.ac.uk/download/621737756.pdf |
| Original Abstract | Problem In this project, the problem centers around cross-denominational dialogue. The contemporary Christian theological landscape is highly complex and varied. Theologians engage with different theories of knowledge, authority sources, and theological methods, resulting in diverse perspectives that conflict with each other and with Adventist Christian convictions. The differing rational structures of these perspectives require committed effort to understand and communicate effectively. Best practice cross-denominational dialogue involving the theologically informed must account for these differences and provide a context that can facilitate faithful and charitable discourse. Such a context would not only ease the tensions among different Christian traditions but would provide a safe space for Adventist Christianity to share its own perspective as well. Method The method used to arrive at standards of best practice involved designing a project that assesses a tool that clarifies the dynamic of communication in an interdenominational small group context. A document entitled “Christian Epistemic Models and Sola Scriptura” (hereafter CEMSS) was shared with a sample number of participants. This document introduces a discourse methodology I call “Multiple Simultaneously-Valid Epistemic Models” or the “Multiple-Models Method” for short, which attempts to create a safe space for theological discovery where divergent theological perspectives can coexist without hostility toward each other. I then evaluate the Adventist Christian perspective as a Sola Scriptura Epistemic Model using this tool. A small number of participants were invited to read the CEMSS document and engage in an hour-long recorded video conversation. The video transcripts were then evaluated, and five rules and norms for interdenominational dialogue were extracted. Results The outcome of this project included eight individual participants who agreed to read the CEMSS document and to meet with me individually on a recorded video call. During the video conversation, participants expressed positive reactions to the tool: regarding its framing and clarifying nature. The interactions demonstrated that the tool offered a value-added approach to interdenominational discourse. Moreover, the conversations provided an opportunity to evaluate the discourses and generate rules and norms for best practices in interdenominational dialogue. Conclusion The conversations with the eight participants demonstrated the effectiveness of the tool. The participants understood and saw value in approaching the differences between Christian traditions from an epistemic perspective, of creating theoretical space for multiple models to coexist, and introducing a new Scripture-based approach within this context. However, each had specific concerns and recommendations according to their theological perspectives. The results showed sufficient promise to warrant further testing to determine the generalizability of the method. Expanding the sample size in a larger pilot program has the promise of better illuminating the dynamics of interdenominational dialogue. This pilot template can be used for dialogue among pastors and theologians of different confessions, for interdenominational minister’s associations that involve cross-denominational theological discussions, as well as for pastors and theologians who share a denominational confession but have internal theological disputes |
| Clean Abstract | (not set) |
| Tags | (not set) |
| Original Full Text | Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Professional Dissertations DMin Graduate Research 2024 Cross-Denominational Dialogue: Sola Scriptura in Setting the Table for Charitable and Faithful Christian Discourse Ciprian Mihai Manea Andrews University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dmin Part of the Practical Theology Commons Recommended Citation Manea, Ciprian Mihai, "Cross-Denominational Dialogue: Sola Scriptura in Setting the Table for Charitable and Faithful Christian Discourse" (2024). Professional Dissertations DMin. 821. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dmin/821 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Research at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Professional Dissertations DMin by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact repository@andrews.edu. ABSTRACT CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL DIALOGUE: SOLA SCRIPTURA IN SETTING THE TABLE FOR CHARITABLE AND FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE by Ciprian Mihai Manea Adviser: Maury D. Jackson, DMin ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH Professional Dissertation Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Title: CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL DIALOGUE: SOLA SCRIPTURA IN SETTING THE TABLE FOR CHARITABLE AND FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE Name of researcher: Ciprian Mihai Manea Name and degree of faculty adviser: Maury D. Jackson, DMin Date completed: May 2024 Problem In this project, the problem centers around cross-denominational dialogue. The contemporary Christian theological landscape is highly complex and varied. Theologians engage with different theories of knowledge, authority sources, and theological methods, resulting in diverse perspectives that conflict with each other and with Adventist Christian convictions. The differing rational structures of these perspectives require committed effort to understand and communicate effectively. Best practice cross-denominational dialogue involving the theologically informed must account for these differences and provide a context that can facilitate faithful and charitable discourse. Such a context would not only ease the tensions among different Christian traditions but would provide a safe space for Adventist Christianity to share its own perspective as well. Method The method used to arrive at standards of best practice involved designing a project that assesses a tool that clarifies the dynamic of communication in an interdenominational small group context. A document entitled “Christian Epistemic Models and Sola Scriptura” (hereafter CEMSS) was shared with a sample number of participants. This document introduces a discourse methodology I call “Multiple Simultaneously-Valid Epistemic Models” or the “Multiple-Models Method” for short, which attempts to create a safe space for theological discovery where divergent theological perspectives can coexist without hostility toward each other. I then evaluate the Adventist Christian perspective as a Sola Scriptura Epistemic Model using this tool. A small number of participants were invited to read the CEMSS document and engage in an hour-long recorded video conversation. The video transcripts were then evaluated, and five rules and norms for interdenominational dialogue were extracted. Results The outcome of this project included eight individual participants who agreed to read the CEMSS document and to meet with me individually on a recorded video call. During the video conversation, participants expressed positive reactions to the tool: regarding its framing and clarifying nature. The interactions demonstrated that the tool offered a value-added approach to interdenominational discourse. Moreover, the conversations provided an opportunity to evaluate the discourses and generate rules and norms for best practices in interdenominational dialogue. Conclusion The conversations with the eight participants demonstrated the effectiveness of the tool. The participants understood and saw value in approaching the differences between Christian traditions from an epistemic perspective, of creating theoretical space for multiple models to coexist, and introducing a new Scripture-based approach within this context. However, each had specific concerns and recommendations according to their theological perspectives. The results showed sufficient promise to warrant further testing to determine the generalizability of the method. Expanding the sample size in a larger pilot program has the promise of better illuminating the dynamics of interdenominational dialogue. This pilot template can be used for dialogue among pastors and theologians of different confessions, for interdenominational minister’s associations that involve cross-denominational theological discussions, as well as for pastors and theologians who share a denominational confession but have internal theological disputes. Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL DIALOGUE: SOLA SCRIPTURA IN SETTING THE TABLE FOR CHARITABLE AND FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE A Professional Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Ministry by Ciprian Mihai Manea May 2024 CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL DIALOGUE: SOLA SCRIPTURA IN SETTING THE TABLE FOR CHARITABLE AND FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE A professional dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Ministry by Ciprian Mihai Manea APPROVAL BY COMMITTEE: _____________________________ ______________________________ Adviser Director of Doctor of Ministry Program Maury D. Jackson Hyveth Williams _____________________________ ______________________________ Eric Freking Dean, SDA Theological Seminary Jiri Moskala _____________________________ ______________________________ Ronald Rojas Date Approved © Copyright by Ciprian Mihai Manea 2024 All Rights Reserved iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 Description of the Ministry Context ......................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................... 2 Statement of the Task................................................................................................ 3 Delimitations and Challenges of this Project ............................................................ 5 Description of the Project Process ............................................................................ 6 Theological Reflection ....................................................................................... 6 Literature Review............................................................................................... 7 Description of the Intervention Strategy ............................................................ 7 Implementation, Results, and Evaluation .......................................................... 7 Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations ................................................ 8 Definition of Terms................................................................................................... 8 Summary ................................................................................................................... 9 2. THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION .................................................................................... 10 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 10 The Book of Acts ...................................................................................................... 12 Scholarly Challenges and Concerns.......................................................................... 13 The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) .............................................................................. 17 The Speeches ............................................................................................................ 17 Peter ................................................................................................................... 17 Paul and Barnabas .............................................................................................. 18 James .................................................................................................................. 19 The Decree ................................................................................................................ 20 The Reception ........................................................................................................... 20 Acts 15: A Model for Charitable and Faithful Discourse ......................................... 21 Acts 15 Principle Applied Across Christian History: Ontology and Epistemology . 24 Pre-Modernity .................................................................................................... 25 Modernity ........................................................................................................... 30 Post-Modernity .................................................................................................. 32 Science, Metaphysics and Theology ......................................................................... 35 Summary ................................................................................................................... 39 iv 3. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................ 40 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 40 Qualitative and Ethnographic Research Methodology ............................................. 41 Interfaith Dialogue .................................................................................................... 44 Inter-denominational Dialogue ................................................................................. 47 Approaches to Interdenominational Dialogue .......................................................... 49 Sources of Authority and Categorization Approaches .............................................. 52 Summary ................................................................................................................... 54 4. DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERVENTION STRATEGY ............................................ 55 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 55 Recruitment and Interview of Participants ............................................................... 56 A Qualitative Approach ............................................................................................ 57 CEMSS Document Synopsis .................................................................................... 57 Step 1 – Multiple Viable Models .............................................................................. 58 Step 2 – Christian Epistemic Models ........................................................................ 60 Step 3 – The Sola Scriptura Dilemma....................................................................... 67 Step 4 – The Sola Scriptura Methodology ................................................................ 70 Step 5 – Sola Scriptura and Modernity ..................................................................... 75 Summary ................................................................................................................... 78 5. IMPLEMENTATION, RESULTS, AND EVALUATION ............................................. 79 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 79 Participant 1 .............................................................................................................. 79 Participant 2 .............................................................................................................. 80 Participant 3 .............................................................................................................. 81 Participant 4 .............................................................................................................. 82 Participant 5 .............................................................................................................. 83 Participant 6 .............................................................................................................. 84 Participant 7 .............................................................................................................. 85 Participant 8 .............................................................................................................. 86 Coding Method ......................................................................................................... 87 Rule #1 ...................................................................................................................... 88 Rule #2 ...................................................................................................................... 94 Rule #3 ...................................................................................................................... 98 Rule #4 ......................................................................................................................101 Rule #5 ......................................................................................................................106 Summary ...................................................................................................................107 6. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS....................................108 Introduction ...............................................................................................................108 Summary ...................................................................................................................109 v Conclusions ...............................................................................................................111 Recommendations .....................................................................................................116 APPENDICES ......................................................................................................................118 A. Christian Epistemic Models and Sola Scriptura (CEMSS) Document ......................118 B. Participant Video Transcripts ....................................................................................163 C. IRB Approval .............................................................................................................287 REFERENCE LIST .............................................................................................................. 288 VITA ......................................................................................................................................301 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1. Multiple models on a threshold of viability scale ................................................................59 2. Truth sources and their relative weight in theology.............................................................60 3. Degree of assumed scriptural inerrancy and sufficiency .....................................................65 4. Sources of authority and their certainty levels .....................................................................66 5. Four perspectives regarding sola scriptura theology ...........................................................70 6. Assumed degree of error and its impact on interpretation ...................................................71 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I give praise to God, whose guidance, grace, and blessings have been ever-present throughout this journey, shaping every aspect of my life and this project. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my family—my beautiful wife Natalia and my cherished son Nathan—for their unwavering support during the long hours I spent engrossed in reading, research, and writing, often unable to devote as much time to them as I would have liked. I am deeply indebted to my parents for nurturing in me a profound love for Scripture and the Seventh-day Adventist Church from an early age. Special appreciation goes to my mentor, Dr. Maury Jackson, whose unwavering commitment to excellence and relentless pursuit of perfection greatly contributed to the success of this project. I extend sincere thanks to my second reader, Dr. Eric Freking, for his prompt and invaluable feedback whenever it was needed. I want to thank Andrews University and the Doctor of Ministry department for affording me this opportunity and for all the help along the way. I would like to thank the Gulf States Conference for the opportunity to serve three great churches while I was in this program. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Jeanette Bryson and Melissa Morgan for helping with the editing process. I also want to thank the online theological community that inspired this project, especially the eight participants. viii Lastly, my gratitude extends to my friend and ministry colleague, Adrian Zahid, whose countless hours of insightful conversations played a pivotal role in refining many of the concepts in my mind that I explored in this work. 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Description of the Ministry Context The ministry context for this project was complex and changing throughout. I began the Doctor of Ministry program in 2018 and was hired as a part-time pastor for three small churches a year later. Initially, I planned to focus my Doctor of Ministry project on something related to my congregations. Then the Global Pandemic started, less than a year into my pastoral ministry in 2020, it became evident that I would not be able to continue as a pastor in a usual way due to various complications related to shelter-in-place government mandates and other essential public health matters (Executive Order N-33-20). As a result, like many other pastors, I had to conduct all my visitations and church services online through video conferencing. The opportunity for a direct ministry context diminished significantly. As the world turned to online social networks to keep in touch with each other, it was around this time that the parameters of this new method of engaging theologians using epistemic models crystalized in my mind, and I realized this would be an opportunity for me to test out this method for interdenominational dialogue. Theological discourse online can have certain advantages over offline alternatives in that the internet provides access in one location to large numbers of people with shared interests from all over the world. In fact, Rice, in his book The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community, argues that, with the rise of online discussion boards and social media, we have entered a new phase of human 2 communication with respect to church ministry (Rice, 2009), so any methods for effective engagement on these platforms will prove beneficial even beyond the pandemic. Around this time, I joined a Facebook group composed of about three thousand theologians and theology students from various theological backgrounds. This widened my ministry context beyond a three-church district. Furthermore, it alerted me to the challenges of inter-faith and inter-denominational dialogue. My ministry to this group was to develop a tool that might make cross-denominational dialogue more effective in its aims. I created a sixty-page document that provided an accessible articulation of the Multiple-Models Method. I asked if anyone was willing to read the document and evaluate it. Eight individuals responded to my request to read and discuss the document with me. I offered each of them a one-hundred-dollar honorarium. Statement of the Problem For two millennia, Christian theologians have integrated various authority sources, theological methods, and philosophical traditions to construct their theological systems. The theologically informed rely on these systems to inform their worldviews and to guide their praxis. Because philosophical, theological, and scientific presuppositions have changed over the centuries, different theological systems that are incompatible with each other at a fundamental level have emerged. The discordant rational structures of these systems make cross-denominational communication and understanding difficult, as recognized by the World Council of Churches (Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry 1982). People are often heavily invested in their dogmatic systems and have difficulty evaluating a different point of view with impartiality. This is likely one of the factors that makes 3 interdenominational discourse challenging (Henry 1965) and especially difficult for lesser-known denominations attempting to introduce a distinct viewpoint. Statement of the Task The task of this project was to design, implement, and evaluate a tool that could be used to improve cross-denominational communication by identifying the foundational elements of Christian theology and showing how different sets of initial presuppositions can lead to different conclusions. A document was compiled to articulate the proposed strategy. The tool outlines the logic of the multiple theological perspectives, adding a viable alternative model. To test this tool, various individuals with a background in theology were asked to read the document and discuss it with me. Eight completed the exercise. My thesis assumes several premises that I attribute to human faith experience. Namely, that different theoretical models resulting in diverse worldviews exist, not just among various world religions, but within Christianity as well. The theoretical models consist of assumptions regarding ontology and epistemology that cannot be verified empirically. Nevertheless, these models also involve rational frameworks that build on these assumptions, along with authority structures that serve as a basis for theological norms. Finally, they include theological methods that recycle and reinforce the assumptions and authority sources. Because of the multiple fields of inquiry necessary to hold the models together, considerable time and effort are necessary to sufficiently understand the inner logic of theoretical models in order to evaluate them adequately. For example, one might question whether certain doctrines are biblical without realizing that others have different understandings of how Scripture 4 works, how it interplays with other authority sources, how it is supposed to be interpreted, or even the role that the nature of doctrine plays in the faith (Lindbeck, 1984). Moreover, people are often deeply committed to a particular theoretical model and organize their entire lives around the assumption that their preferred model is correct. Because changing theoretical models (worldviews) is extremely disruptive, this sets the stage for possible bias in the evaluation of contrasting models. Because the different models are built on differing ontological assumptions which are unprovable (they appear to have no place above or beyond them that adjudicates among them), because of the complexity of the models, and, because of the unavoidable bias, it is quite likely that humanity in the foreseeable future will lack the capacity to arrive at any unified model (Adler, 1990). Our epistemic limitations prevent us from conclusively demonstrating the superiority of one model over others. In this case, the most we could hope to achieve is to differentiate those models that appear plausible from those that cannot meet a certain threshold of viability. This will result in multiple, simultaneously-viable models. However, even for those who believe that, despite these difficulties, it is still possible to arrive at one true model, I would suggest that it is still beneficial to follow a two-step process in comparing and evaluating models: 1. First, differentiate between plausible and implausible models using a threshold of viability, and only then, 2. Determine which of the viable models is the correct one. Given these assumptions, the project evaluates a tool that I used to open friendly and productive dialogue with participants who hold to different religious beliefs and worldviews. Having then transcribed and evaluated the resulting conversations, five rules of best practice for 5 interfaith/interdenominational dialogue emerged that further enhanced my method, providing an opportunity to address ahead of time other sources of friction that could potentially emerge. This enhanced “multiple-models” approach can, therefore, become an even more effective tool for interfaith and interdenominational dialogue. It can also provide a context for Adventist Christianity to introduce its own perspective for evaluation. Delimitations and Challenges of this Project The limits of qualitative research have been well documented. This documentation has also helped to strengthen the findings of the qualitative study. One such finding is that there are no hard and fixed rules about how many people should be included in a sample size. The one rule to guide the number of participants is that it should be no less than is needed for the project under investigation. Quality can be enriched when one does not have too many or too few participants. Due to the nature of qualitative research, in-depth analysis takes precedence over large sample size (McCracken 1988, 17). This project is designed to refine a tool that can be piloted in a larger focus group. The current sample offers insight into the capacity of this tool to function as a significant model for a larger pilot test. The project targeted theologically informed individuals with a minimum graduate-level background in religious studies. The target audience consisted of professors and students who are generally quite busy, already doing much reading independently, and not typically inclined to volunteer to read another sixty-page single-spaced document. A reticence to participate in a recorded video conversation has possibly discouraged some potential volunteers as well. In the end, there was very limited racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity among the participants, and all those who volunteered were male. A more diverse sample would be needed to fully determine the generalizability of this tool. 6 Discussing the tool in a virtual face-to-face context was beneficial for addressing any questions regarding the tool’s usefulness in real-time. Restricting the recording time to one hour increased the likelihood that others would watch the video and that the conversation transcript would be manageable. However, it also limited how much information could be covered. Description of the Project Process The project is divided into five parts: the first chapter provides an introduction. The second chapter offers a theological reflection. The third chapter covers the literature review. The fourth chapter outlines the intervention. The fifth chapter provides a narrative of the project. The sixth and final chapter discusses the results. Theological Reflection The theological reflection chapter analyzes the fifteenth chapter of Acts, which describes the proceedings of the Jerusalem Council. In this chapter, two groups with diverse understandings of Christian theology come together to resolve their differences. They listen to one another’s viewpoints and attempt to understand the others’ perspectives. Finally, a decision is made that allows each group to more efficiently continue its ministry within its respective context. I then trace the historical development of differing theories of knowledge and show the impact that these theories have had on Christian theology. Finally, I give a brief overview of the interplay between theology, science, and metaphysics and conclude by reemphasizing the need to approach all these different topics holistically and in an integrated fashion as constituting the components of complete worldviews rather than as independent parts. 7 Literature Review The literature review consists of several sections. In the first section, I outline the methodology followed for this project. In the second section, I discuss other attempts at inter-faith and interdenominational dialogue, whether between Christianity and other religions, among different Christian groups, or between Adventist Christianity and other Christians. Then, in the next section, I discuss theological sources of authority, differing approaches to Scripture, and different attempts to categorize Christian theology. Description of the Intervention Strategy In this section, I describe the ministry task of the initiative I undertook. This task sought to help an online theological conversation community better engage in and experience fruitful cross-denominational discourse. As one participant in a Facebook group with nearly 3000 members, I recognized the challenges for ecumenical dialogue in the post-COVID-19 era and sought to begin testing a tool that could aid in making such discourse productive. Additionally, I sought to make space for Adventist Christian ideas to be heard in a charitable way. My method for connecting with scholars outside the Adventist Christian community relied on an outline I shared with them in the CEMSS document (see Appendix A). I have provided a short synopsis of each stage of my strategy and explained why each is needed. Implementation, Results, and Evaluation In this section, I briefly introduce each of the eight participants. I then list five rules and norms that emerged from the conversations and share statements made by each participant in support of these norms. Since the early history of the Christian Church, as documented in the Book of Acts, Christianity has become the largest religious faith in the world today, with billions 8 of followers. Nevertheless, over two millennia, it has divided and sub-divided into denominations and groups, each claiming direct lineage to the faith of the apostles. This fragmentation of Christianity started with Greek syncretism and the integration of its philosophical assumptions into the biblical narrative and accelerated through the addition of various authority structures and epistemological developments (Jackson 2011-12). As the various philosophical trends emerged, they became immortalized in Christian tradition and became a part of the conceptual world from within which each new generation of Christians has reasoned through its theology. Depending on the philosophical trends, the historical traditions, and the authority structures that different groups in Christianity rely on, different theoretical frameworks emerged that are complex and multileveled and yet often still internally coherent. This dissertation outlines a new process by which dialogue can occur between denominations that preserves the unique identity of each denomination while reserving room for open discussion and honest evaluation of its belief structure. Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations In this final section, I summarize my project and its findings and make suggestions for future improvements and the implementation of the project in a wider setting. Definition of Terms Cross-Denominational Dialogue – This will serve as a synonym for interdenominational, interfaith, and ecumenical dialogue Epistemic Model – Theoretical structure consisting of a particular combination of ontological assumptions, authority sources, and theological methods that relies on a distinct approach to epistemology. 9 Limited Errancy – A position between errancy and inerrancy which states that a Sola Scriptura theology can accommodate some limited degree of error. Multiple Viable Perspectives – Several approaches to theology can be considered viable at the same time because our epistemic limitations prevent us from conclusively eliminating all but one of these approaches. Paradigm – A collection of ideas that form the conceptual framework within which we understand some aspect of reality. Sola Scriptura – The Protestant principle that theology is based on the Bible alone. Solo Scriptura – A rhetorical device used to indicate that individuals who do not engage with tradition are doing theology by themselves. Sources of Authority – In Christianity, various sources of authority have been used in constructing theology, such as Scripture, tradition, experience, philosophy, science, the Holy Spirit, prophets, etc. Threshold of Viability – The necessary threshold that, on the one hand, allows for multiple viable perspectives but, on the other, prevents unreasonable perspectives from qualifying. Summary In this introductory chapter, I have discussed my ministry context, provided statements of the problem, task, delimitations, and process, and a brief summary of each chapter. I explained that my project attempted to introduce a strategy for inter-faith and inter-denominational dialogue that took into account the complex, multi-layered nature of each tradition with the hope that, in doing so, conceptual space would be created for the Adventist Christian tradition as well. 10 CHAPTER 2 THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION Introduction In this theological reflection, first, I examine the fifteenth chapter of Acts as a model for interfaith and interdenominational engagement (Neely 2019), and then I review the history of Christian theological reflection and its divergent paths. Theological reflection includes but is not limited to biblical foundations but also recognizes the importance of history and historical context in understanding and making meaning of God and in making use of the resources of theology and philosophy. In Acts 15, while the two opposing factions at the Jerusalem Council did not belong to different denominations, much less different religions, the perspectives they were debating were in some ways in conflict at a more fundamental level than even some of the cross-denominational conflicts of today. Nonetheless, at this council, the early Church exemplified a pattern of discourse that we would benefit from emulating. In this chapter, I provide a brief introduction to the Book of Acts as a whole and Chapter 15 specifically, highlighting certain challenges and concerns raised by biblical scholars (Gaebelein 1981). I then analyze the council proceedings and discuss how what took place there can be informative for modern-day cross-denominational discourse (Unless otherwise specified, all Bible passages are from the NIV). The Book of Acts begins with Jesus' last few moments with His disciples before returning to His Father. Even after several years of working alongside Jesus, the disciples still 11 hadn’t fully understood His mission. They came to Him asking, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus, however, responded: It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:7,8) Once again, Jesus attempted to remind them of the global nature of their mission, something they had been slow to understand. Not only does this text speak to the global nature, but it also addresses a process of growth in communities of engagement, i.e., near to far (Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then the ends of the earth). And, as the early church began to grow, persecution from the Jewish leaders (or the Judean leaders) led to their scattering from Jerusalem and taking the gospel to a broader audience (Acts 8:1). That broader audience included folk who symbolized the ends of the earth. The conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) and of Cornelius gave early evidence that “…even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). Moreover, during the conversion of the apostle Paul, God had explicitly stated that he was a “…chosen instrument to proclaim [God’s] name to the Gentiles and their kings…” (Acts 9:15). In Acts 11 we are told: Those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. (vs. 19-21) In this way, a community of Gentile believers began to form, raising new questions that the young church had not anticipated. For example, was it necessary for Gentiles to convert to Judaism to become Christians, or could they be Christian apart from Judaism? It is to address these questions that a council was formed in Acts Chapter 15. 12 The Book of Acts The Book of Acts covers approximately thirty years, beginning before the ascension of Jesus and ending shortly before the death of Paul. The first half of Acts focuses on the apostles of Christ and major developments in the early history of the Church, while the second half focuses primarily on Paul’s missionary travels. The fifteenth chapter, the focus of this analysis, is a critical chapter in the organization of the book of Acts as it ties together the two halves of the book (Bock 2007, 486; Marshall 2014, 256). The author of Acts does not identify himself by name in the book, but, according to Burkett, he was well educated, given that “his Greek style and vocabulary is the most literary in the New Testament” (2002, 195). He has traditionally been assumed to be the physician Luke, a traveling companion of Paul (Col. 4:14, 2 Tim. 4:11, Phil. 24) and multiple passages in the book of Acts use the pronouns “we” and “us” when describing Paul’s travels, implying that the author participated in certain events described (Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1–28:16) (Bock 2007, 15). Even though several individuals had traveled with Paul and could have been candidates for authorship, Luke’s authorship was unanimously attested by Church Fathers as early as Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), Irenaeus (130-202 AD), and Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD) (Nichol 1957, 661). The Book of Acts introduces the reader to several important themes. In the first part, Acts explains how the early church was organized, who the leaders were (Acts 1), and how the Christian Church began and started to grow (Acts 2-5). It describes the rift between Christianity and Judaism and the persecution that followed (Acts 6, 7) and explains how Christianity began to spread to the Gentiles (Acts 8-14). In Chapter 15, we are told about the friction between Jewish and Gentile Christians and how the Church resolved the conflict. Finally, the last part of the book 13 (16-28) describes Paul’s missionary journeys and the reception of the gospel in different parts of the world. According to the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, some of the main events and dates leading up to Acts 15 include the following: 31AD - Crucifixion, Ascension, Pentecost. 34 AD - Stephen stoned; church persecuted; gospel carried to Samaria. 35 AD - Paul converted. 35-38 AD - Paul at Damascus and in Arabia. 38 AD - Paul escapes from Damascus during the reign of Aretas; visits Jerusalem “after three years” (Gal. 1:18); goes to Tarsus. 44 AD - James the brother of John martyred; Peter imprisoned at Passover time; Agrippa dies. 44-45 AD - Barnabas brings Paul to Antioch; Paul remains there “a whole year” (Acts 11:26). 45 AD - Barnabas and Paul take famine relief to Jerusalem. 45-47 AD - Paul’s First Missionary Journey; on return, Paul remains at Antioch “no little time” (Acts 14:28, RSV). 49 AD - Jerusalem Council, “fourteen years after” (Gal. 2:1). (Nichol 1957, 101). Scholarly Challenges and Concerns The authorship of the Book of Acts has been contested by some critical scholars, often because of apparent discrepancies between events described in Acts and in Paul’s letters (Burkett 2002, 196). What does not seem to be contested is that the author of the Book of Acts is the same author who also wrote Luke. This is both because of the similar introductions to both books (Luke 1:1-4, Acts 1:1), the fact that both books are addressed to Theophilus, and the similarity in style between the two books (Burkett 2002, 195). The combination of the two books “…makes up about 28% of the New Testament, the largest contribution by a single author” (Burkett 2002, 195). The views of scholars regarding the dating of the Book of Acts fall into three categories: Early (mid-60s), Intermediate (80s), and Late (100-130) (Fitzmyer 1998, 53). Some of the main 14 arguments for the early dating include no mention of Paul’s trial before Caesar and of his death, no mention of Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome, no mention of Paul’s letters, no recognition of Jerusalem having been destroyed, and so on. Arguments for the middle date are that Luke mentions in his Gospel that many others have written accounts of Christ’s ministry, that Jesus knows Jerusalem was destroyed, and so on. Arguments for the late date are that some see the literary dependence of Luke on Josephus, (Fitzmyer 1998, 51–53), but such dependence cannot be proven, according to Hermeneia (Attridge 2008, xxxiii). In Chapter 15 specifically, most scholars recognize the significance of this council for the early church but also find many difficulties with the chapter (Bacon 1907, 454), beginning with difficulties in reconciling Acts 15 with the first two chapters of Galatians. Traditionally, the visit of Acts 15 is assumed to be the same visit Paul mentions in Gal. 2:1 (Mathews 1909, 334). The chronology of the SDA Bible Commentary matches these two chapters as well: “AD49 - Jerusalem Council, ‘fourteen years after’ (Gal. 2:1)” (Nichol 1957, 101). There are, however, several issues with these two chapters referring to the same event. First, if in Galatians Chapter 2, Paul was referring to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, it seems he should have mentioned the apostles' decree and the letter they sent. Moreover, according to the Acts chronology, this would have been his third visit to Jerusalem, which seems to contest his point in Galatians 2 (Parker 1967, 179). Another option is for Gal. 2:1 to be referring to the famine relief visit of Acts 11:30 and for Galatians to have been written before the Jerusalem Council. Nonetheless, there does not seem to be a consensus among scholars on how to reconcile these two accounts. Another aspect of this chapter that has generated scholarly debate has been James’ use of the Amos passage as a justification for Gentiles joining God’s people. According to Stefanovic (2016), critical scholars have argued, 15 that James as a Jewish Christian in Jerusalem would not have used a Septuagint text that differed from the Hebrew original as a proof text for his argument. Thus, for instance, Ernst Haenchen argued that it is “incontrovertibly clear that James’ speech, too, is not a historical report but a composition of the Hellenistic Gentile Christian Luke,” and further concluded: “It is not James but Luke who is speaking here.” (p. 229) Stefanovic argues, however, that James would have probably quoted the Aramaic version of the text and Luke went to the Septuagint to look up that exact text to use as he wrote in Greek (Stefanovic 2016, 241). Another aspect of the chapter that has generated much debate has been the four prohibitions of James in verse 20. Although it is unclear as to why James chose these specific rules from the laws of Moses, it seems that Paul dismissed even these four prohibitions in passages such as 1 Cor. 8:4. Butova (2016) has proposed that “the Decree should be viewed through the lens of the creation-fall-re-creation paradigm, patterns of the natural law of God in Gen 1-3, and worship motifs” (ii). Hamstra (2024) has argued that these four prohibitions/abstentions were part of a wider set of ritual abstentions that were understood to be more universal in character in contrast to other rituals that were intended for God’s covenant nation in anticipation of the Messiah. According to Hermeneia, there are several variants of this passage, with some manuscripts omitting one or more of the four stipulations, while other manuscripts convert them to ethical rather than cultic stipulations, such as from not eating blood to not shedding the blood of human beings. In other cases, the Golden Rule is included as one of the stipulations. However, scholars believe the cultic stipulations to be the original ones because it is less plausible to go from the ethical to the cultic ones (Conzelmann 1987, 118). The first two stipulations, about food offered to idols and fornication, could be taken as belonging together and referring to common ritual practices in pagan temples where partaking of 16 food sacrificed to idols and participating in ritual sexual intercourse with temple prostitutes was part of idol worship. The last two, regarding animals that were strangled and regarding blood, refer to eating blood since it is tough to expel blood from the meat of animals killed by strangling. This could reference the prohibitions on eating blood in Leviticus (Lev. 3:17; 7:26; 17:10; 19:26) and Genesis (9:4), which were viewed as applying to everyone, not just Jews (Nichol 1957, 311–12). The final statement by James that “the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” is viewed as unclear by commentaries. Several proposed interpretations include (1) that Jewish Christians should not be concerned that the Jewish customs will be forgotten if the Church no longer considers them binding, since they will continue to be preached in the synagogues, (2) that since Moses is preached in the synagogues, Gentile Christians should at least abstain from these four things in order not to cause unnecessary friction with the Jewish community, (3) that since the Gentiles are already familiar with these prohibitions, as they have been preached in the synagogues for a long time, they should not find them challenging (Nichol 1957, 312), (4) that if Christian Gentiles are interested in learning more about the Jewish faith on their own, they could always go to a synagogue (Marshall 2014, 268), (5) that this might be a reference back to James’ interpretation of the Amos text he had just quoted, or (6) that James is saying it is not necessary to offer an additional explanation as to why these particular four stipulations are needed, since anyone interested can obtain such information from the local synagogues (Conzelmann 1987, 120). To this list, I will add my own possibility that the preaching of Moses’ law for centuries in the synagogues never really compelled Gentiles to turn away from idols and to worship God the way the gospel has inspired readers. 17 The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) The introduction in Chapter 15 of the book of Acts provides a good explanation of the reason for this council: Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So, Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.’ The apostles and elders met to consider this question. (Acts 15:1-6) From this point, the chapter follows the following outline: - After much discussion, Peter delivers a speech regarding his experience with Cornelius - Paul and Barnabas are allowed to share their experience working for the Gentiles - James delivers his speech and states the decision of the council - Judas and Silas are sent with Paul and Barnabas with a letter from the council - The people of Antioch receive the letter and are glad to hear the decision. The Speeches The main thrust of Chapter 15 is contained in three speeches by Peter, Paul and Barnabas, and James. We analyze each of them as follows. Peter Peter’s authority in the early church is well established, but he is clearly not the primary authority under the present circumstances (Acts 15:19). After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of 18 the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are. (Acts 15:7-11) Peter begins his speech by referring to his experience with Cornelius. Almost two chapters in Acts (10 and 11) are dedicated to this experience. Those events were significant to Peter and the early church because they were clearly intended by God to be understood as setting a precedent. There was a reason that Peter was first prepared for the meeting with Cornelius by being given a vision where he was asked not to call unclean what God had cleansed. There was a reason why, even before he finished speaking to Cornelius and his household – without their being circumcised or even baptized yet – the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the same way He had come upon the disciples at Pentecost. It was God Himself who had made no differentiation between Jew and Gentile. When the Jewish believers later criticized Peter for entering the house and fellowshipping with non-Jews, and Peter explained to them what happened, they could not but admit that God had been behind the entire experience and that “…even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). Peter then brought his point home by stating that, since God had already settled this issue years earlier, there was no reason to “test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear.” Paul and Barnabas When Peter finished speaking, Paul and Barnabas were given a chance to share how God had blessed them in their work for the Gentiles. “The whole assembly became silent as they 19 listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them” (Acts 15:12). Whatever debates had previously occurred, Peter’s speech evidently settled things enough for Paul and Barnabas to speak. We are not told exactly what they shared. However, it must have been thrilling to listen to how God blessed their ministry and how, in whatever places they visited, people were turning away from sin and idolatry and giving their lives to Christ. James Finally, James, who seemed to preside over the council at this time, stood up and voiced the final decision of the deliberations: When they finished, James spoke up. ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: “After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things - things known from long ago.’” ‘It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. (Acts 15:13-21) Referencing Peter’s experience, James quotes several passages from the Old Testament to demonstrate that what Peter, Paul, and Barnabas have shared concurs with the testimony of Scripture. According to Fernando: Scripture and experience both played a role in arriving at the doctrinal formulation that emerged from the Jerusalem Council. God spoke through the experiences of Peter, Paul and Barnabas. But James showed that what they had experienced was in keeping with the Scriptures, so that it should become normative. (Fernando 1998, 427, quoted in Stefanovic 2016, 242) Having provided evidence from the experiences of Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, James now issues his decree. He decides that they should not place further obstacles before the Gentiles who 20 are turning to God, except for a few necessary things: that they “abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood” (vs. 20). The Decree The meeting concluded with a written letter of what James and the council had decided (vs. 23-29), which was sent back to the church in Antioch by the hand of representatives from Jerusalem, such as Judas and Silas (vs. 22, 30, 32). This was an important step to ensure that everyone understood the decision, which had the full authority of the apostles and leaders. Since trouble had been caused by the unauthorized activity of previous Jerusalem visitors to Antioch (v. 1), it was necessary to emphasize that the present delegates, whose business it was to undo the damage caused by those earlier visitors, were fully accredited by the Jerusalem church. (Bruce 1988, 298) The Reception The decree seems to have silenced for some time those Jews who favored circumcision for the Gentiles. We know from Paul’s epistles, however, that he continued to encounter problems with such people for the rest of his ministry (ex. 2 Cor. 11:13). Upon his final visit to Jerusalem, he was arrested because of Jewish Christians who were still “zealous for the law” (Acts 21:20). The Gentiles, however, who read the letter with the decree from Jerusalem, “were glad for its encouraging message” (vs. 21). The Jerusalem decision legitimized their experience with God and their call to ministry. Whatever obstacles Judaizing Christians might place before them, they could no longer prevent the growth of the Gentile Christian Church. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary provides a clear description of the consequences of this decision, which were often positive for the Gentile church and detrimental to the Jewish church: 21 When one considers the situation of the Jerusalem church in A.D. 49, the decision reached by the Jerusalem Christians must be considered one of the boldest and most magnanimous in the annals of church history. While still attempting to minister exclusively to the nation, the council refused to impede the progress of that other branch of the Christian mission whose every success meant further difficulty for them from within their own nation. Undoubtedly there was some uncertainty among the council’s leaders about details of the decision. Certainly, they reached it only after much agonizing. Likewise, there probably remained in the Jerusalem church a recalcitrant group that continued to predict ominous consequences. But the decision was made, and the malcontents silenced—at least for a time. The effects of the decision were far-reaching. In the first place, it freed the gospel from any necessary entanglement with Judaism and Israelite institutions, though without renouncing the legitimacy of continued Christian activity within them. Thus, both Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and the various Jewish Christian missions were enabled to progress side by side without conflict. Second, attitudes to Paul within Jewish Christianity were clarified. While some of the Jewish believers probably became even more opposed to Paul, others—e.g., John Mark (15:37–39)—seem to have become more reconciled to him. Also, as a result of the council, some felt happier in a Gentile ministry than at Jerusalem (Silas; cf. 15:40, passim). Third, the decision of the council had the effect of permanently antagonizing many Jews. From this time onward, the Christian mission within the nation—particularly in and around Jerusalem—faced very rough sledding (cf. Rom 11:28). And when coupled with the zealotism within the nation during the next two decades, this antagonism proved fatal to the life and ministry of the Jerusalem church. (Longenecker 1981, 450) Acts 15: A Model for Charitable and Faithful Discourse To fully appreciate what was achieved at this council, we must first recognize the level of divergence that existed between the two perspectives and how deeply engrained these perspectives were. Given the previous two thousand years of Christian history, the expectation of Jewish Christians that Gentiles be ‘circumcised and keep the whole law’ may appear unreasonable and narrow-minded. Why would they continue in their preoccupation with meaningless rituals and ordinances when God Himself had become incarnate and had given His life for them? However, their position may not have been as unreasonable as it might first appear, given their perspective. For over a thousand years, the Jews had understood the religion of the true God as mitigated through the rites and rituals received from Moses and even earlier from Abraham. 22 Someone born into a Jewish family at that time in history would have been raised with the rituals, festivals, rules, and regulations taught to them day in and day out by their families and communities. It did not make sense that this would be done away with now that the Jewish Messiah had finally come. Mathews (1909) explains: Nothing could be more natural than the position of the Jerusalem Christians at this point. Jesus was a Jew; they were Jews; the gospel was Jewish. To accept Jesus as Christ was to be free from the sentences of the awful Judgment Day, but this justification by faith was enjoyed only by those who were followers of Moses. It was natural for these primitive Christians to feel that it would always be so limited. The Jews were the chosen people of Jehovah and with the exception of the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, and the Samaritans, the Jerusalem community was altogether without precedent for any other expectation. Even these exceptions apparently argued nothing as to the Gentiles as a class. The call, therefore, to the Gentile community at Antioch to be circumcised and obey the Torah if its members wished to enjoy the messianic salvation is not to be taken in the spirit of proselytism, but rather as a conscious effort to establish the new converts of Christianity in an assured relationship with the coming kingdom. (338) By contrast, Paul, who was highly educated, had experienced a drastic conversion and had spent substantial time reflecting on his beliefs while in relative isolation during the three years spent in Arabia (Gal. 1:17,18). He came to understand that the Jewish rituals were not meant to have saving value in themselves but were instead intended as a “…guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Gal. 3:24, 25). Moreover, God had clearly blessed Paul’s missionary efforts (Acts 15:12). These two perspectives were fundamentally different and irreconcilable. They constituted two distinct understandings of the nature of the Christian faith. Convincing someone to change their opinion required much more than proving them wrong on one or two points of divergence. It required the patience to deconstruct one’s worldview and then carefully reconstruct another. Similar differences exist today among different Christian traditions. 23 To address this, the council provided a platform where the two sides could hear each other and understand one another’s viewpoint in a safe environment. The intervention of leaders such as Peter and James made it possible for Paul and Barnabas to share their experiences while the others listened silently. The practice of holy listening has been recognized by many today as an integral part of successful inter-faith and interdenominational dialogue (PGID – How to dialogue n.d.). Moreover, because of the complexity of Christian theology, listening involves a substantial investment of time and energy to really understand the rational structure of a different point of view. This brings us to the next point, that the arguments presented by the apostles were well reasoned, endorsed by the Holy Spirit and experience, and supported by Scripture. Peter argued that the issue had already been addressed among them in his experience with Cornelius. Bruce (1988) explains: He now reminds the company that the fundamental principle which they were discussing had been settled when, several years before, he had been led by God to the house of Cornelius and Gentiles had heard the gospel from his lips. On that occasion God gave an evident token of his acceptance of Gentiles, for the Holy Spirit came on them as they listened to Peter, just as he had come on Peter and his fellow-apostles at the first Christian Pentecost. Cornelius and his household had not even made an oral confession of faith when the Holy Spirit took possession of them, but God, who reads the human heart, saw the faith within them. And if God accepted those Gentiles and cleansed them in heart and conscience by the impartation of his Spirit as soon as they believed the gospel, why should further conditions now be imposed on them—conditions which God himself plainly did not require? (290) Paul and Barnabas shared their experience and the witness of the Holy Spirit in their evangelistic efforts. Finally, James settled the matter by demonstrating that all this had the support of Scripture. The reference to the prophets is important. James’s point is not just about this one passage from Amos; rather, this passage reflects what the prophets teach in general, or what the book of the prophets as a whole teaches. Other texts could be noted (Zech. 2:11; 8:22; Isa. 2:2; 45:20–23; Hos. 3:4–5; Jer. 12:15–16). James is stressing fulfillment, for the prophets agree with what Peter has described. This is not an affirmation of analogous fulfillment but a 24 declaration that this is now taking place. God had promised Gentile inclusion; now he is performing it. (Bock 2007, 503) In verse 10, Peter states, “Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10). The “yoke” in this statement operates as a type of “threshold of viability,” a concept that I have made repeated use of throughout this project. This yoke sets up an unreasonable standard that allows only a limited number of people to qualify as Christians. By needing to be “circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5), a significant barrier would be placed before Gentile believers. In relieving this yoke to only the four prohibitions of James, the barrier was removed, and space was created for the Gentile community to coexist with the Jews. For this project, I also have argued that a threshold of viability is needed that is reasonable enough to allow for multiple viable perspectives to exist but sufficient enough not to permit merely any perspective. The council's final decision allowed for two simultaneous models of operation, one for the Gentile church and one for the Jewish church, with some minor compromises that would enable the two communities to fellowship together with less difficulty. The possibility of a Gentile model that was not hindered by all the ritual requirements of the Mosaic code allowed the Christian Church to grow and expand among the Gentile community with the full blessing of church leadership. A similar arrangement of multiple viable perspectives is the analog needed for faithful and charitable cross-denominational dialogue for us today. The Acts 15 Principle Applied Across Christian History: Ontology and Epistemology The theological conflict described in Acts 15 was only the beginning of millennia of theological divergence. To understand the source of this divergence, I begin to trace the underlying philosophical developments historically. Philosophical perspectives on the nature of 25 reality and how this impacts our ability to access knowledge are highly complex and diverse and have changed significantly throughout history. Moreover, at every step of the way, they have had an influence on Christian theology that can still be recognized today. In addition to the other sources in helping to build the tool, a review of ontological and epistemological history aided in developing the instrument. Pre-modernity Pre-modern understandings of ontology and epistemology can be traced back to the Pre-Socratics in the 6th-5th century BCE (Curd 2020). We will focus on Western philosophy, though other approaches to philosophy exist (Hamilton, 2001; Dubs 1959). Pre-Socratic philosophers came to recognize a difference between the extent and depth of knowledge and to reflect on an unseen reality behind what is seen (Murphy 2018a, 15). They tried to understand what things were made of and what elements were primary (Kenny 2012, 8), what accounted for the similarities and differences between objects, and why these objects could change over time (Marias 1967, 12). Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.E.) and Parmenides (c. 515 BCE) disagreed regarding the possibility of change (McKirahan 2011, 20-78). Heraclitus claimed that all things are in a constant state of flux, even when it sometimes appears otherwise, whereas Parmenides insisted that nothing at all changes and that any observable change is only illusory (McKirahan 2011, 20-78; c.f. Kenny 2012, 163). Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms, and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality (‘Being’), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that ‘all is one.’ From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical. Because he introduced the method of basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of Being, he is considered one of the founders of metaphysics. (Parmenides | Greek Philosopher | Britannica – 2023 ) 26 According to Kenny (2012), “Parmenides and Heraclitus laid out a battlefield for centuries of philosophical warfare” (164). Marías (1967) points out that the problem that needed solving by the time of Plato was “the problem that all Greek metaphysics since Parmenides had posed: the problem of being and non-being” (43). In fact, “For more than a century Hellenic philosophy had striven to solve the aporía (perplexing problem) of making the Entity—one, immovable and eternal—compatible with the things—manifold, variable and transitory” (43). To resolve these philosophical problems, Plato drafted his doctrine of Ideas or Forms, a set of immaterial, unchangeable “blueprints” that existed in another realm and yet could organize reality in the material realm (Marias 1967, 43). According to Makin, Plato believed that “true beings are immaterial, eternal and unchanging forms, while other transient things are mere reflections or imperfect instantiations of the eternal forms” (Makin, 2009). However, Plato’s student, Aristotle, offered a somewhat different solution: the immaterial Forms did not exist in a separate realm but were a part of the individual material objects that they instantiated (Murphy 2018a, 26–27; “Hylomorphism” 2016). Compared to Plato, Aristotle made the material world more accessible. According to Makin, “Anyone who takes substances to be eternal pays a high price for doing so, for, while Platonic forms would be eternal, they are not directly empirically accessible to us, and so the [worldview of Plato is] far more distant from commonsense than that of Aristotle” (2009, 33). Over the next several centuries, Plato’s and some of Aristotle’s works (the rest were lost to the West and rediscovered in the 13th century, Hill 2007, 215) such as “Aristotle - Philosophy and Life” 2019, were developed into Middle Platonism and eventually into Neoplatonism (Olson 2017, 63-64). Neoplatonism developed a God concept known as “The One” and a view of the 27 Forms not as belonging to a distinct realm of their own but as ideas in the mind of God (Murphy 2018a, 23). Despite their differences, both Plato and Aristotle contributed to a view of God known as Classical Theism, where God, among other attributes, was simple, impassible, immutable, and timeless (Leftow 2016). Both saw reality as dualistic (Robinson 2023) or composed of two distinct layers, one material and one immaterial. Finally, both developed a theory of human knowledge rooted in the immaterial forms and, therefore, regulated by this supernatural element (Bonevac 2017). Because Plato believed the forms existed in a separate realm, knowledge occurred through a process of recollection where the human soul remembered knowledge of the Forms from before birth (Murphy 2018a, 19). For Aristotle, knowledge occurred through a process of abstraction by which the intellect evaluated material objects until the soul could grasp their form by immaterial means (Thomas, 1946, 377). All of these components of Greek thought, classical theism, a dualistic reality, the form-dependent theory of knowledge, etc., were adopted into Christian theology by many of the Church Fathers, especially Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas. According to Leftow (1998), classical theism “entered Judaism through Philo of Alexandria It entered Christianity as early as Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria and became Christian orthodoxy as the Roman Empire wound down.” Augustine, possibly the “most significant Christian thinker,” adapted “classical thought to Christian teaching [and] created a theological system of great power and lasting influence” (O'Donnell 2024). Hill 2007 indicates that Augustine “did not cease to be a Neoplatonist when he became a Christian” (115). 28 When the writings of Aristotle were finally rediscovered in the West (13th century) (“The Rediscovery of Aristotle” 2024) after they had been preserved for centuries by Muslim scholars (Hill 2007, 215), they were perceived at first as problematic for Christian theology: Aristotle represented a challenge to Christianity, which was still deeply influenced by Platonic ways of thinking. Plato had taught that the visible world is not the real world: it is simply a pale reflection of a higher, spiritual reality. He urged his followers to look away from the particular, towards the universal, for particular things are just images of eternal, universal Forms. Aristotle, by contrast, was interested in the material world. He believed that physical objects are really real, not shadows of something unseen, and he tried to explain them in physical terms – by reference to what they are made of, what shape they are, what caused them to exist and so on. Since everything is caused by something else, Aristotle postulated that there must be a final cause – an ‘unmoved Mover,’ responsible for all movement and life in the universe. This is his rather impersonal conception of God. So, where Plato thought of the divine in a religious way, as the realm that the human soul must rise to, Aristotle thought of it in a scientific way, as the explanation for the world we see around us. (Hill, 2007, 215). Aquinas attempted to reconcile Augustine’s theological system - which was rooted in Neoplatonic thought - with the views of Aristotle (Murphy 2018a, 13), developing a synthesis that is still viewed as central to Catholic theology up to the present (218). However, while Augustine’s system assumed that true knowledge of reality could only occur through divine illumination (Murphy 2018, 30), Aquinas followed Aristotle in the belief that at least some aspects of reality can be discovered through abstraction by studying the material world, i.e., Natural Theology (Murphy 2018a, 11). The integration of Greek philosophical thought with Christian theology is significant. Olson explains, “Throughout the centuries after the Bible was written, many people, including many Christians, have thought… that Christianity needs to borrow its metaphysic from some other source than the Bible. The assumption has often been that the Bible, because it is a religious narrative and not a book of philosophy, needs supplementation by a speculative, rational philosophy to fill in the gaps or undergird its story about God” (Olson 2017, 63). 29 According to Johnson (2021), however, “the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament contains its own distinct philosophical style in league with the philosophies of Greece and Rome” (1). He further states that “the Hebrew Bible and New Testament betray a philosophical impulse akin to that found in Hellenism … carried out with a discrete philosophical method for its own goals” (4). “Hellenism’s influence on Judaism might have bent this Hebraic philosophical style to the point of breaking, had not the New Testament authors recovered it in a robust ad fontes retrieval movement. In the end, Paul – yes, even Paul – might be leaning into his Hebraic philosophical heritage while merely dressed in the loose-fitting garb of Roman rhetoric and Hellenistic philosophy” (4). Olson (2017) further explains: Beginning in the first century after Christ (the second century AD) and continuing for two millennia afterward, … Christian thinkers have searched for and found extrabiblical metaphysical visions to help Christianity explain itself. The first such interpretive metaphysical framework used by Christians was Middle Platonism—a Greek philosophy widely respected among educated people in the Roman Empire. A precedent for this had been set by the Jewish scholar Philo (20 BC–AD 50), who, in Alexandria, Egypt, had borrowed from Plato and his disciples to interpret and explain the true meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. Church fathers known as “Apologists,” such as Justin Martyr and Origen (second and third centuries), interpreted the Bible through the lens of Platonic philosophy. Beginning with Origen and continuing through fifth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo and hitting its pinnacle with an anonymous Christian writer known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late fifth to early sixth century), a new type of Greek philosophy known as Neoplatonism was used by Christian thinkers as the metaphysical framework for interpreting Scripture and explaining Christian theology to educated, intellectually minded Roman people. (63–64) Within Adventism, several scholars (Canale 1983, 2001, 2005, 2005b, 2011; Graf 2019; Peckham 2019, 2021; Gulley 2003) have written extensively regarding both the integration and incompatibility of Greek thought with Christian theology. A significant segment of Christian theologians today, however, still defend the integration of Greek philosophy and Christian theology (Fuqua and Koons 2023), reflecting the 30 view of Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD), who believed that “…philosophy was given to the Greeks just as the Law was given to the Jews” (González 2014, 87). In summary, the combination of Platonic/Augustinian and Aristotelian/Thomistic assumptions regarding knowledge, God, reality, and human nature described above have influenced and continue to influence Catholic and large segments of Protestant theology to the present. Modernity The Greek philosophical edifice eventually received a critical blow in the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. As Galileo (Helden 2024) and Copernicus (Westman 2024) displaced Aristotle’s geocentrism and theories of motion (“Heliocentrism” 2023), people began to question his entire system. Murphy sees “the rejection of the very concept of Form as the linchpin in the collapse of the Medieval Synthesis, in that forms played a role in all branches of knowledge from biology to cosmology and theology, in the theory of sense perception, and the epistemological ideal of a unified hierarchy of sciences” (Murphy 2018a, 35). With the era of the Enlightenment, many changes took place that made it very difficult to develop a rational basis for Christian theology. Descartes introduced the first major shift in epistemology (Hatfield 2024). Because he was no longer able to trust the “Medieval Synthesis,” he looked for another foundation for human knowledge that could provide certainty. In the process, he realized that virtually every belief can be doubted, except the fact that he himself existed: I decided to feign that everything that had entered my mind hitherto was no more true than the illusions of dreams. But immediately upon this I noticed that while I was trying to think everything false, it must needs be that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ was so solid and secure that the 31 most extravagant suppositions of sceptics could not overthrow it, I judged that I need not scruple to accept it as the first principle of philosophy that I was seeking. (Kenny, 2012, 529) Descartes saw in this realization the indubitable foundation for all human knowledge. If philosophy can have an unshakable starting point, then all subsequent knowledge that can be deduced from this starting point would be equally unshakable. Olson (2017 explains: Foundationalism is the epistemology begun by Descartes and carried forward by later Enlightenment thinkers. Basically, foundationalism depicts knowledge as a pyramid with indubitable truths of evidence and/or reason at the bottom and everything else flowing upward from them by induction or deduction (observation and/or logic). Many modern philosophers adopted some form of foundationalism because it seemed to offer an objective, universal, rational path to knowledge that eliminated faith, revelation, and reliance on authority. At its most extreme, foundationalism claims that knowledge is a term reserved for what can be proven rationally; all else is ‘belief,’ ‘opinion,’ or ‘superstition.’ (27) This vision of a reconstruction of human knowledge built on an indubitable foundation was later appropriated by philosophers of science such that true knowledge was considered to be only that which could be demonstrated through scientific evidence (Ayer 2024; “Logical Positivism” 2023), apart from a bare minimum of properly basic beliefs (NCG Studios 2014) that were necessary to escape cartesian solipsism (Thornton, n.d.). In addition, Kant further destabilized the medieval synthesis by arguing that human reason cannot access metaphysical knowledge (Kant 2022; Olson 2017, 19). He insisted that “knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world.” This is because “the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind’s access only to the empirical realm of space and time” (McCormick n.d.). Since objects can only be experienced spatiotemporally, the only application of concepts that yields knowledge is to the empirical, spatiotemporal world. Beyond that realm, there can be no sensations of objects for the understanding to judge, rightly or wrongly. Since intuitions of the physical world are lacking when we speculate about what lies beyond, metaphysical knowledge, or knowledge of the world outside the physical, is impossible. Claiming to have knowledge from the application of concepts beyond the bounds of sensation results in the empty and illusory transcendent metaphysics of Rationalism that Kant reacts against. (McCormick n.d.) 32 With the increased success of science, the scientific method came to be applied to Scripture through critical scholarship, and this gave an additional epistemic blow, especially to Protestantism (Murphy 2018a, 111). These concurrent developments led to a point of crisis for Christian theology (Olson 2017, 27). Murphy explains that only two possible pathways were left for an epistemology of Christian belief: either reject Modernity’s intellectual achievements - Fundamentalism - or embrace them and turn to “experience” as the basis for theology - Liberalism. Murphy (1996) introduces the following helpful diagram (5): Reid ➔ Princeton Theology ➔ Fundamentalism Descartes ➔ Locke ➔ Hume Kant ➔ Schleiermacher ➔ Liberalism In summary, the philosophical developments of the Enlightenment era, specifically the Foundationalist epistemology, provided minimal intellectual space for Christian theology, forcing theologians to either sacrifice theological substance to remain academically relevant or sacrifice academic respectability to preserve theological integrity. Post-Modernity Regarding Modernity and Postmodernity Murphy (2018) explains: The rise of empiricism in the modern era required a drastic change in methods for justifying religious claims. The prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in intellectual circles in our day is in large part due to the conclusion that no such justification is possible. My own thesis, however, is that philosophical theories of justification have, until now, been too crude to make them the arbiters of theological rationality. The rejection of foundationalism and the development of holist theories of knowledge, particularly by late-twentieth-century philosophers of science, have been important steps in the right direction. (80) 33 The pathway away from Foundationalism is long and complex, and a thorough description is outside the scope of this dissertation. However, the different stages through which this process progressed can be summarized through a series of metaphors used to describe the nature of human knowledge. The key metaphor introduced by Descartes that reflected Modernist Foundationalism was that of constructing a building level by level on top of an indubitable foundation (Murphy, 2018a, 34). By contrast, Quine and Ullian (1978) abandon the building metaphor altogether in favor of a “web of beliefs.” The idea is that we can have confidence regarding any individual claim, not because it is built on an indubitable foundation, but because it is integrated with other beliefs we hold. If we must change any belief, we can do so within the solid structure of the other beliefs it is connected to (Quine and Ullian 1978; Murphy 2018a, 70). Kuhn and Hacking (2012) adopted Quine’s view of knowledge but insisted that his representation of how beliefs are changed only describes regular science. Occasionally, however, many more substantial changes must take place that are more appropriately called paradigm shifts because entire segments of the web must be changed at once. Kuhn viewed these paradigms as incommensurable (Kuhn and Hacking 2012; Murphy 2018, 71). Around the same time, Polanyi (2015) introduced the concept of tacit knowledge. He meticulously described the many ways that personal/subjective elements go into what is viewed as scientific objectivity. There are components of the knowing process that are difficult to quantify but nonetheless play an essential part in the process of scientific knowledge. Moreover, in the area of philosophy of language, Wittgenstein introduced the concept of language games, which further destabilized the epistemology of logical positivists (Olson 2017, 29). 34 Thus, the philosophers of the Enlightenment destabilized the basis of certainty in human knowledge of the Middle Ages by discrediting metaphysics and, specifically, the concept of the Forms. In the same way, post-modern philosophers destabilized the basis of certainty of the modern period: Foundationalism. With the two bases of knowledge no longer being as trustworthy, the way was paved for pluralism, relativism, and uncertainty (“Postmodernism - Relativism, Deconstruction, Critique | Britannica,” n.d.; see Murphy 2018, 7 for a different approach to postmodernism). Murphy has argued, however, that philosophers such as Lakatos and MacIntyre have provided a pathway forward even within Postmodernism. Lakatos disagreed with Kuhn that paradigms must be incommensurable and described them instead as competing research programs because multiple programs can exist simultaneously as long as there is honesty about whether a program is progressing or degenerating (Lakatos 1970; Murphy 2018a, 72). Moreover, MacIntyre pointed out that it is possible to tell when “one paradigm or research program represents a permanent gain in understanding relative to its competitor. In the briefest terms, the theory that can explain its rival’s successes and (acknowledged) failures in a way that the rival cannot show itself to be an intrinsically richer understanding of reality than the rival” (Murphy 2018a, 81). Lakatos’ concept of competing research programs, as enhanced by MacIntyre, provides the theoretical basis for the multiple simultaneous models approach that I am proposing. Having briefly summarized premodern, modern, and postmodern epistemology and ontology, I want to point out that there are traditions within Christianity today that are built on each one of these frameworks and, therefore, have a fundamentally different internal logic. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologies are often built on pre-modern frameworks, Liberal 35 and Neoorthodox theologies on modern frameworks, and Emergent (McLaren 2009; “Emergent Movement” 2007) theologies on post-modern frameworks. Science, Metaphysics and Theology As mentioned in the previous section, a significant epistemic shift occurred due to Enlightenment philosophy and the Scientific Revolution, which had a critical impact on Christian Theology. Hill (2007) explains: The [early post-Enlightenment] scientists believed in God, certainly: but they believed in him as a sort of last-ditch scientific hypothesis, to be appealed to when nothing else could be found. He was a ‘God of the gaps’, used to plug the holes in scientific knowledge. And as science progressed, and the gaps shrank, there was less and less space for God. (317) It could be said that this shift persisted in the same trajectory up to the mid-twentieth century due to the work of the Vienna Circle and the Logical Positivists (ex. Ayer 2024). During this time, Murphy (2018) argues, theories of knowledge were “too crude to make them the arbiters of theological rationality,” resulting in a “prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in intellectual circles in our day” (80) and leaving theologians with only two options: Liberalism and Fundamentalism. However, due to the work of late 20th-century philosophers of science, that trajectory has once again shifted (2018, 80). Nonetheless, even after influential thinkers such as Kuhn, Polanyi, Lakatos, and others have partly reversed the aforementioned trajectory, science still holds a “special, privileged” space (Morganti 2024, 4) in current academic thought, and Christian theologians must find ways to engage with it. Barbour (1990) has pointed out that there are basically four ways that science and theology can interact: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration. The conflict thesis was introduced in the late 19th century by Draper (2014) and White (2011) and has continued to be reinforced up to the present by both atheistic naturalists and biblical literalists (Principle 2006). 36 The independence thesis was famously articulated by Gould (2011) through the phrase Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) as a way to maintain the independence and legitimacy of both fields and to move away from the conflict thesis. However, many philosophers and theologians today who have a background in science prefer to promote either the dialogue or integration approaches (Principle 2006; Dixon 2022; McGrath 2019; 2020). Zondervan (2021) has published a conversation/debate between three philosophers and/or theologians who support each one of these approaches, with the exception of the conflict thesis. Incidentally, the Sola Scriptura model I have promoted necessarily rejects the conflict, independence, and integration approaches in favor of the dialogue approach. However, because of the historic rejection of any form of dualism in Adventist theology (Blanco 2015), this model might be better positioned to enter into dialogue with science than other theological models, at least in some respects. There are many areas of potential conflict between theology and science, such as the claims of some Christian traditions regarding a supernatural layer to reality (ex., forms, souls, etc.) or the possibility of miracles and divine intervention in the natural world. But possibly the two most important areas of conflict have been the Theory of Evolution and Critical Scholarship. Christian responses to evolution have ranged from Creationism, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution and Evolutionary Creation (Biologos 2023). Various authors have tried to resolve the conflict by arguing either that the early chapters of Genesis should be viewed as myth (McKnight et al. 2017) or that it is possible to maintain the integrity of the biblical story if we assume that the descendants of Adam and Eve interbred with humanoids outside the garden (Swamidass 2019). But others, such as Johnson (2023), are not convinced that these solutions fully resolve the conflict between evolution and the conceptual world of Scripture. 37 The field of Biblical (Critical) Scholarship has been developing over several centuries and has many branches, such as textual, literary, source, form, and redaction criticism (Bellinzoni 2018), that evaluate different aspects of the biblical text. Ehrman, a popular critical scholar has argued, for example, that a significant number of books in the New Testament were forged (2011), that segments of Scripture have been intentionally altered (2009), and that the divinity of Jesus was an idea that emerged over several centuries (2014). Needless to say, the uncertainty about what segments of Scripture can be trusted has caused difficulty for Christian theologians. Others, however, have argued that the biblical documents are, in fact, reliable (ex. Bruce and Wright 2018). These scientific topics and others have significantly impacted Christian theology over the past several centuries and have contributed to much of the divergence that exists among Christian traditions. Another issue that is critical to the science-theology discussion is the methodology of science itself. Methodological naturalism has been a central dogma of modern science (Boudry, Blancke, and Braeckman 2010; Forrest 2000; Swamidass 2016), and yet this dogma has often come under the criticism of conservative scholars. Methodological naturalism simply means that, for the duration of doing science, scientists should seek out only natural explanations. Several Christian philosophers, however, have published books criticizing methodological naturalism (Okello, 2015; Bartlett 2017), arguing that its use in science is unnecessary. Even a textbook that is being used in Christian seminaries as an introduction to Christian philosophy has a section criticizing methodological naturalism (Moreland and Craig 2017, 4.3). This critical attitude towards the methodology of science betrays a serious misunderstanding on the part of many conservative Christian scholars. The modern scientific methodology cannot be opposed via philosophical treatises, such as the books mentioned above. 38 To demonstrate that an alternative methodology exists, critics must develop a new scientific enterprise that uses this alternative methodology and yet produces similar or better results than conventional science over an extended period of time. Until and unless such practical demonstration becomes available, we have no choice but to work with mainstream scientific methodology. A final point that should be made in this section is that theologians and philosophers who have an interest in the science-theology conversation don’t seem to be aware that metaphysics also plays an important part (Morganti 2024) in this conversation. However, here also, there are multiple views of how science and metaphysics are to interact. Morganti has produced a helpful list of existing views ranging from extreme anti-naturalism to radical naturalism: 1. The a priori methods of metaphysics, possibly including a sui generis form of intuition, can uncover the truth, perhaps even in domains that are inquired into by the sciences. 2. A priori metaphysics comes first, as it accounts for common sense, that is, ordinary, non-scientific facts. 3. Although it should engage with the sciences as much as possible, a priori metaphysics identifies possible ways things could be like, prior to scientific inquiry. 4. A priori conceptual analysis should be performed first, based on ordinary experience; scientific knowledge is, however, then required as a fundamental ‘testing ground.’ 5. Metaphysics should be derived directly from science (scientifically based ontological investigations; potential falsification of hypotheses; unification of scientific hypotheses;). 6. Metaphysics should itself turn into a purely a posteriori enterprise. 7. Metaphysics should be dismissed. (23) Different approaches to metaphysics and science result in additional differences between theological traditions. 39 In conclusion, even though numerous strategies have been tried for the purpose of facilitating conversation among Christian traditions, there doesn’t seem to be a full appreciation of the multiple levels of divergence that exist among these traditions. As differing assumptions about ontology and epistemology interplay with diverse authority sources, with various views of science, and with separate rational structures tying all these elements together, dissimilar models emerge that give rise to distinct worldviews. Moreover, there does not seem to be an appreciation for the fact that these differing assumptions constitute elements of reality that we cannot verify or demonstrate. Consequently, there does not seem to be a recognition that multiple models have the potential to be correct and should, therefore, coexist as simultaneously viable models, something which, if recognized, will likely change how these Christian groups relate to one another. Today Christian communities are in need of the Acts 15 principle as a model for charitable and faithful discourse. Summary In this theological reflection, I took an in-depth look at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 in order to draw insights from the process followed to resolve a fundamental theological dispute between factions in the early Christian Church. I analyzed the conversations that took place between participants, evaluated the arguments, and studied their solutions. I then traced the development of divergent Christian theological traditions historically, specifically focusing on ontology and epistemology, pointing out the need for an Acts-15-like solution to our modern-day theological conflicts. 40 CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction Since the early history of the Christian Church, as documented in the Book of Acts, Christianity has become the largest religious faith in the world today, with billions of followers. Nevertheless, over two millennia, it has divided and sub-divided into denominations and groups, each claiming direct lineage to the faith of the apostles. This fragmentation of Christianity started as early as the New Testament period, as discussed in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1), and widened with Greek syncretism and the integration of its philosophical assumptions into the biblical narrative and accelerated through the addition of various authority structures and epistemological developments (Jackson 2011-12). As the various philosophical trends emerged, they became deeply reinforced in Christian tradition and became a part of the conceptual world from within which each new generation of Christians has reasoned through its theology. Depending on the philosophical trends, the historical traditions, and the authority structures that different groups in Christianity relied on, different theoretical frameworks emerged that are complex and multileveled and yet often still internally coherent. This dissertation evaluates a tool that serves to outline a new process by which dialogue can occur between denominations that preserves the unique identity of each denomination while reserving room for open discussion and honest evaluation of its belief structure. This literature review is designed to describe the foundational work that precedes and supports the gap that I 41 have identified and seek to answer. Since the inquiry into my topic is nascent in nature, this literature review is, by necessity, quite broad in its approach. In many ways I have looked for related topics that might contribute to how I position my work in relation to this field of study. Very little empirical work exists in the area of interest that I am studying. Given that my specific topic is not mature, this is the best approach to bringing the appropriate literature into focus. Before targeting the literature related to my topic, I spend the first section discussing the methodological decisions made in constructing my project. I then begin to explore some of the existing frameworks of inter-denominational dialogue. I also explore literature related to my approach to the topic of cross-denominational theological dialogue by giving a brief overview of various authority sources and conceptual frameworks used to make sense of the Christian theological landscape. The epistemological frameworks that underlie each worldview are covered in some detail, both historically and in terms of their impact on Christian theology. Qualitative and Ethnographic Research Methodology Because of the complex nature of this project, I chose the qualitative and ethnographic research approach. In particular, the qualitative approach to this study will be evaluative in nature. According to Sensing (2022), “Research, simply defined, is a family of methods that share common characteristics of disciplined inquiry. Research methods contain data, arguments, and rationales that are capable of withstanding careful scrutiny by members of an associated guild. Research prompts us to understand problems, ask questions, and pursue specialized modes of inquiry” (195). Unlike quantitative research, which “generates factual, reliable outcome data that are usually generalizable to some larger populations, … qualitative research produces rich, detailed and valid process data based on the participant’s, rather than the investigator’s, perspectives and 42 interpretations” (Verhoef & Casebeer 1997). According to The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, “qualitative research is intended to approach the world ‘out there’ (not in specialized research settings such as laboratories) and to understand, describe and sometimes explain social phenomena ‘from the inside’ in a number of different ways” (Flick et al. 2007, v.1 ix). Verhoef and Casebeer (1997) explain that Data collected in qualitative research are usually in narrative rather than numerical form, such as the transcript of an unstructured, in-depth interview. Analysis of qualitative data organizes, summarizes and interprets these nonnumerical observations. The goal of qualitative research is the development of concepts that help clarify phenomena in natural, rather than experimental, settings, giving due emphasis to the meanings, experiences and views of all the participants being studied. (65) My study is quasi-experimental and quasi-natural in that it has a virtual setting for conversation intended to evaluate a tool for interfaith and inter-denominational theological dialogue. The following insights from Gadamer (2013) seem applicable here: The specific problem that the human sciences present to thought is that one has not rightly grasped their nature if one measures them by the yardstick of a progressive knowledge of regularity. The experience of the sociohistorical world cannot be raised to a science by the inductive procedure of the natural sciences. Whatever “science” may mean here, and even if all historical knowledge includes the application of experiential universals to the particular object of investigation, historical research does not endeavor to grasp the concrete phenomenon as an instance of a universal rule. The individual case does not serve only to confirm a law from which practical predictions can be made. Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness. However much experiential universals are involved, the aim is not to confirm and extend these universalized experiences in order to attain knowledge of a law—e.g., how men, peoples, and states evolve—but to understand how this man, this people, or this state is what it has become or, more generally, how it happened that it is so. (3) Another significant difference between quantitative and qualitative methods is the type of data being gathered. According to McCracken (1988), When the questions for which data are sought allows the respondent to respond readily and unambiguously, closed questions and quantitative methods are indicated. When the questions for which data are sought are likely to cause the respondent greater difficulty and 43 imprecision, the broader, more flexible net provided by qualitative techniques is appropriate. (16). To properly evaluate the Multiple-Methods tool for its service to interfaith and cross-denominational dialogue, prefabricated unambiguous responses would foreclose on capturing the nuances of a response that could help refine the tool. Therefore, while affording the respondents flexibility in their response generates some imprecision, it is, in fact, this area of ambiguity that is the focus of analysis for generating rules of discourse. Consequently, as McCracken (1988) notes, The selection of respondents must be made accordingly. The first principle is that “less is more.” It is more important to work longer, and with greater care, with a few people than more superficially with many of them. For many research projects, eight respondents will be perfectly sufficient. The quantitatively trained social scientist reels at the thought of so small a sample, but it is important to remember that this group is not chosen to represent some part of the larger world. It offers, instead, an opportunity to glimpse the complicated character, organization, and logic of culture. (17) In my study, I aimed for ten respondents, but eight eventually completed the exercise. The methods of qualitative research were cross-referenced with the methods of ethnographic research, defined as “the study of people and culture, of ‘ethnos.’ Rooted in the discipline of cultural anthropology, it involves doing fieldwork, immersing yourself in the life of a group of people in order to learn something about and from them” (Moschella 2023, 15). This was especially the case when it came to the practice of “pastoral listening.” According to Moschella, “The aim of pastoral listening in ethnography is that the speakers become empowered and encouraged to speak in ways that are authentic, honest, and transformative. In order to hear the deeper stories, pastoral ethnographers must ‘listen’ with all their senses, for what is communicated in words, in a tone of voice, in silences, in gestures, and in actions” (2023, 178). As the principal researcher in this project, I also operated in the role of a pastoral caregiver, 44 nurturing the voices of the respondents and responding to their concerns by developing rules for future discourse. The research design (Moschella 2023, 89; Flick et al. 2007, v.1 37) for this project was in line with the typical complexity of qualitative and ethnographic research. I attempted to combine the long interview approach (McCracken 1988; Flick et al. 2007, v.2) with document, conversation, and discourse analysis (Flick et al. 2007, v.7). The complexity of the subject matter captured in the tool being evaluated would have been too difficult and would have taken too long to explain the entire project during the live interview. Instead, the topics for discussion were presented in written form, and the participants were asked to read ahead of time and to comment during the live interview. The interview itself, conducted during a one-hour recorded Zoom session, was semi-structured (Sensing 2022, 274), allowing participants to focus on those aspects, of the document of interest to them, with the interviewer (myself) occasionally asking questions to guide the conversation further. Therefore, I used a qualitative method informed by the pastoral listening ethos of ethnography to do evaluative research on a tool to aid in interfaith and inter-denominational dialogue. The interview videos were then transcribed (using the free transcription website https://youtubetranscript.com) and the transcription data were coded using the coding process outlined on the Delvetool website (Delve 2024) and the SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (Flick et al. 2007, v.6 38). The responses of the different participants were mined for themes and patterns and used to derive rules and norms for future dialogue. Inter-faith Dialogue In this literature review, I survey other attempts at interfaith and interdenominational dialogue. While the focus of this project has been primarily the interaction between different 45 perspectives within Christianity, there are insights to be drawn from the wider conversation between world religions as well. There has been an increased interest in interfaith dialogue in recent years as our world is becoming increasingly more interconnected and societies increasingly more pluralistic. To address this interest, multiple groups and organizations have been formed for the purpose of building bridges of understanding between various religious communities. For example, the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) focuses on promoting “religious freedom in its emergent forms everywhere: individual freedom of conscience, tolerance, dialogue and understanding, and cooperation among religious groups,” as well as “advocacy for individuals and groups for whom freedom is restricted, always with sensitivity to local understandings of freedom and its implementation” (“IARF - International Association for Religious Freedom” 2024). Another example, the World Congress of Faiths (2015) consists of “individuals drawn from all major faith traditions across the world . . . [looking to] . . . discover opportunities for personal spiritual growth through interfaith engagement” (“What We Do | World Congress of Faiths”). These groups deal with interfaith issues at the macro level. My research involves micro interfaith pastoral groups. Various colleges and universities are developing courses in interfaith dialogue. At Harvard University, the Pluralism Project (2024) “studies and interprets the changing religious landscape of the United States.” According to them, “Christians and Muslims, Buddhists and Jews, Hindus and Humanists may explain their concerns about growing inequality, rising violence in American cities, or climate change in different ways, citing different scriptures or teachings” (Mission & History). The hope is that dialogue could lead to cooperation in these 46 areas of mutual concern. While my tool may be helpful for interfaith dialogue, it is more serviceable to cross-denominational dialogue. Several educators have collaborated towards developing manuals that help guide universities in developing student affairs programs (Goodman, Giess, and Patel 2019) and curriculums (Patel, Peace, & Silverman 2018) focusing on interfaith dialogue. These programs are distinct from the traditional religious studies programs typically offered in secular universities, which focus on “scholarly, comparative and critical methods.” Instead, interfaith programs focus on the “empathetic, sympathetic or appreciative views of religious others” (Patel, Peace, and Silverman 2018, 7). The authors feel that such programs have the potential to address a felt need of modern society by preparing tomorrow’s workforce to better function in a pluralist environment (15). Even governments have been creating organizations for the purpose of promoting interfaith dialogue, such as the United States Institute of Peace. According to one of their reports, “Religion has been, and will continue to be, a powerful contributing factor in violent conflict. It is therefore essential to include religion and religious actors in diplomatic efforts” (“What Works? Evaluating Interfaith Dialogue Programs” 2024). Throughout this process of interfaith dialogue, various groups or individuals have drawn from their experience to formulate rules and norms for dialogue. For example, Swidler has developed a “Dialogue Decalogue” (1983), while Pieck et al. (2015) have created sixteen rules and norms. A compilation of several lists of norms can be found at (PGID- How to Dialogue 2024). At their core, these norms encourage mutual respect and openness to other perspectives. While these rules and norms are helpful, they are primarily focused on empathetic listening and 47 mutual respect. The rules and norms I have extracted from my own conversations are more specifically applicable to the theological concerns of interdenominational dialogue. Inter-denominational Dialogue The Christian theological landscape is incredibly diverse, and that diversity continues to increase. Christianity has spread all over the world and has assumed numerous forms, and as “… churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America began, at the end of the colonial era, to do a new phase of theological work of their own, which included challenging the theological tradition received from the Western theological heritage” (Ariarajah 2021, 135). New forms of thought have emerged where Christian reflection in various cultures recognize indigenous religious traditions as their Old Testament story (Sugirtharajah 2016). One of the attempts to monitor the diversity of perspectives is the Journal of World Christianity which studies “the histories, practices, and discourses of Christianity as found on six continents.” McGrath (2009) also draws attention to the rapid spread of Pentecostal/Charismatic versions of Christianity and the fact that they are far more likely to adapt or synchronize their beliefs to the local perspectives, thus contributing to the diversity. Concerning inter-denominational dialogue, various groups within Christendom have initiated attempts at dialogue across denominations, and some progress has been made. The World Council of Churches (WCC) has been most active in promoting dialogue and understanding among denominations. They describe their mission as follows: The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a community of churches on the way to visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ. It seeks to advance towards this unity, as Jesus prayed for his followers, "so that the world may believe." (John 17:21). 48 The World Council of Churches (WCC) is the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity.” (“What Is the World Council of Churches?” 2023) Within the Catholic Church, ecumenical efforts have been viewed as an outworking of the principles of Vatican II where “all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ's body and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers. (Cassidy 2005, 165). Groups like the National Association of Evangelicals have worked to bring together at least those Christians who view themselves as Evangelicals. They state that their “mission is to honor God by connecting and representing evangelical Christians.” They believe that “the gospel should transform every aspect of our world, but it takes coming together to make that happen… We strive to make our members strong and effective, influence society for justice and righteousness, and gather the many voices of evangelicals together to be more effective for Jesus Christ and his cause” (“ NAE - National Association of Evangelicals,” n.d.). In the Seventh-day Adventist Church, there have been several attempts to communicate with other Christian groups. The most significant was initiated by Walter Martin during research for his book, Kingdom of the Cults (2003; Nam 2005). After extensive conversations, Martin concluded, “it is perfectly possible to be a Seventh-day Adventist and be a true follower of Jesus Christ despite certain heterodox concepts” (2003, 502; c.f. Ministerial Association 1961). Other instances where Adventists have engaged in interdenominational dialogue are with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, (Ecumenical Dialogues, 2023), and with the Lutheran World Federation (Adventists and Lutherans, 2023). 49 Approaches to Inter-denominational Dialogue There seem to be at least two ways to approach both interfaith and interdenominational dialogue: one is to try to develop a synthesis of the different perspectives into one collective view that all parties can agree with and unite on, while another is to try to understand and communicate with others despite their differing perspectives. An example of the first approach in interfaith dialogue has been proposed by Hick (2015) where he has called for a “Copernican Revolution” in theology such that, instead of judging other religions through the lens of our own “correct” perspective, we should see all religions as reflecting some unique aspect of God that is complementary to the perspective of others. By contrast, Cornille has argued that “…every religion inevitably judges the other according to its own particular criteria” and has instead opted to give Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists each the opportunity to approach interfaith dialogue as an outworking of their own distinct perspectives (2014, 48). Similarly, in interdenominational dialogue, the goal has sometimes been to bring about reconciliation and unity, and various strategies have been applied toward achieving this goal. The first strategy has been to identify the points of difference and discuss them until synthesis or compromise is reached. A second strategy has been to prioritize the elements held in common and to downplay the importance of the areas of divergence. A third approach has been to emphasize cooperation in mission without regard for theological differences (Approaches to Ecumenism, 2009). By contrast, some have tried to point out that full agreement is not necessary for mutual respect and appreciation. Chapman describes ecumenical efforts among various Christian groups as taking place through a process of asking hard questions of one another. In ecumenical discourse, there has been a paradigm shift in the understanding of unity. The old paradigm indicated that unity means consensus. Or, in a different formulation, unity 50 means to speak with one voice, with one word. The new paradigm indicates that unity means speaking with different voices, or different words, in dialogue. This means accepting each other despite differences. (Chapman, 2016) But although this is a step in the right direction, there does not seem to be a full recognition of the complex reasons for the divergence among perspectives or how such differences should be handled. This study seeks to explore one or a few of those complex reasons focusing on the epistemic models and worldviews embedded in these diverse perspectives. One promising proposal has been offered by Olson (2016). Building upon the Vincentian Canon, Olson has outlined fifteen points of Christian doctrine, which he feels encompass all that is fundamental to the Christian faith. He then organized the multiplicity of views on these fifteen topics into three categories: the orthodox position, acceptable alternatives, and heresies. He has argued that, while divergent views have always existed within Christianity, these views have mostly been faithful to the essence of the Christian faith. It is only when a view crosses the line into heresy that it becomes problematic. Olson’s proposal helps to broaden the umbrella of what is viewed as an acceptable Christian perspective but does not provide a way to recognize the source and underlying rationale for the differences among traditions. Despite this diversity of approaches and strategies, the literature seemingly misses a recognition that worldview-level differences exist among various Christian traditions. They operate with divergent views of ontology and epistemology, of authority sources, of the correct relation between theology, philosophy, and science, etc. According to Sire, (see also Wilkens and Sanford 2009): A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being. (Sire and Hoover 2020) 51 The concept of worldview is highly complex and has historical, theological, philosophical, scientific, and social dimensions, and “…conceiving of Christianity as a worldview has been one of the most significant developments in the recent history of the Church” (Naugle and Holmes 2002). However, the fact that Christianity is not one worldview, but a collection of worldviews goes seemingly unrecognized. For example, Moreland and Craig (2017) have written an in-depth philosophy of the Christian worldview that covers logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and ethics, and yet, does not account for the fact that the philosophical foundations they describe represent the views of only certain Christians, while others could write an equally complex but very different Christian philosophy textbook. Moreover, there does not seem to be a recognition that metaphysical assumptions cannot ultimately be demonstrated (Morganti 2024) and that this epistemic limitation of humans leaves multiple possibilities open. By not accounting for this limitation, those who hold different perspectives are viewed with suspicion when they could be viewed as equally earnest seekers of truth. Such a realization has the potential to transform the interdenominational and even the interfaith conversation. In the next sections, I provide a brief overview of Christian authority sources and methods of organization. The fields of ontology/epistemology and science discussed in the previous chapter and of authority sources discussed below represent three of the several layers where Christian traditions diverge. It is only as we begin to see how different traditions harmonize the different layers that the internal logic of their theoretical models emerges and can be properly appreciated. All of this has laid the foundation for the tool that was developed, and that will be evaluated in this study. 52 Sources of Authority and Categorization Approaches There are a lot of similarities in how different Christian traditions approach their authority sources, but also significant differences. To better understand the differences between denominations, the WCC commissioned a study of authority sources within various Christian communities. The perennial and vexing question of authority lies at the root of many of the deepest divisions in and among Christian churches. Yet how is one to understand authority itself and the many axes of Christian existence—scripture, tradition, the believing congregation, liturgy, magisterium, reason, and experience—that prove to be more or less authoritative for churches and communions in their life, their governance, and their acceptance of change? (Grdzelidze and World Council of Churches 2014) In studying these sources of authority, the World Council of Churches has produced the following list as seen in the table of contents: - Experience as a Source of Authority for Faith - Reflection from Indigenous Peoples’ Perspective on the Sources of Authority in the Church - The Holy Spirit as a Source of Authority in the African Independent Churches - Congregation as a Source of Authority in Baptist Ecclesiology - Reason as a Source of Authority in the Anglican Tradition - Liturgical Texts as a Source of Authority in the Coptic Orthodox Church - Hierarchy as a Source of Authority in the Orthodox Church - The Magisterium in the Catholic Church as a Source of Authority. (Grdzelidze, 2014) Other authors have identified other potential sources of authority. According to Arnold (2020), there are three sources of authority in Catholicism: Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. Hughes (2019) also identifies three sources of authority in the Anglican tradition, but they are Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. In Liberal Protestantism, Ogden (1976) points out: (1) that it is not Scripture as such but the earliest stratum of Christian witness - the so-called Jesus-kerygma of the Synoptic tradition - that is the real canon of the Christian community; and (2) that the only sufficient warrant for the truth, as distinct from the Christianness, of theological claims is our universal experience and reason simply as human beings. Snowden (1918) identifies the following authorities: reason, feeling, will, value judgment, and the Christian Consciousness. Also, (BBC, 2024), identifies the following religious authorities, 53 “sacred texts, founders of the faith, religious principles or rules, the faith community leaders, religious tradition, and other people in the faith community,” alongside personal authorities such as “friends & family, personal experience, rational thinking, and, conscience.” It is evident that the sources of authority differ, depending on the author. Not only are there differences stemming from the use of different authority sources, but there are differences in how these sources are used. McKim, for example, uses several categories to classify Christian theology by their view of Scripture in relation to preaching: - Liberal Theology: Scripture as Experience - Fundamentalist Theology: Scripture as Proposition - Scholastic Theology: Scripture as Doctrine - Neo-Orthodox Theology: Scripture as Witness - Neo-Evangelical Theology: Scripture as Message - Existential Theology: Scripture as Living Encounter - Process Theology: Scripture as Unfolding Action - Narrative Theology: Scripture as Stories that Shape - Latin American Liberation Theology: Scripture as the Foundation for Freedom - Black Theology: Scripture as Liberation for the Oppressed - Asian Theology: Scripture as Stories for Freedom - Feminist and Womanist Theology: Scripture as the Mother of Models (McKim 1999, 7) Based on these differences, several organizational schemes for Christian theology have been proposed. For example, Jackson has followed a similar outline as McKim but differentiates theology based on “Hermeneutics of Trust” (Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Scholastic, Neo-Orthodox and Liberal) or “Hermeneutics of Suspicion” (Process, Liberation, Black, Feminist and Radical) (Adventist Today, 2021). House (2019) has published a chart called Distinctive Traits of Theological Systems. It introduces the following categories of theology: Catholic, Natural Theology, Lutheran, Reformed, Arminian, Wesleyan, Anabaptist Theology, Liberal Theology, Existential Theology, Neo-Orthodox Theology, Liberation Theology, and Black Theology. Tracy (1996) suggests the 54 following models for contemporary theology: Orthodox Theology, Liberal Theology, Neo-Orthodox Theology, Radical Theology, and Revisionist Theology. The interaction between different sources of authority and different ways of using these authorities can create a wide variety of differences in Christian theology. Moreover, a different view of ontology and epistemology can affect one’s decision regarding authority sources as well and vice versa. Again, these works add to the building of the tool that was evaluated throughout this study. Summary In this literature review, I first provided an overview of the qualitative and ethnographic research methodology. I explained that the nature of this project was such that in-depth and semi-structured interviews were necessary and that these were based on substantial additional reading of the materials provided. I then discussed the interest in and the different approaches to inter-faith and inter-denominational dialogue. Many people are coming to realize the need for better tools with which to engage in a modern, pluralistic society. Nonetheless, there doesn’t seem to be a recognition of the multi-layered differences between different theoretical perspectives and the fact that some of these layers rely on metaphysical assumptions that cannot ultimately be verified, leaving open the possibility of multiple simultaneously viable models. I concluded the chapter with an overview of authority sources in Christian theology and of prior attempts to categorize theology into distinct models. 55 CHAPTER 4 DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERVENTION STRATEGY Introduction This chapter describes the intervention strategy for this project and provides a brief synopsis of the Christian Epistemic Models and Sola Scriptura document referenced as the CEMSS document, a 66-page, single-spaced manuscript shared with the participants (Appendix A). While the tool that was developed for this project is used as a tool to intervene in cross-denominational dialogue, in general, it was not used to intervene in the Facebook theology group where the problem of theological conversation emerged. Instead, the intervention strategy consisted of reaching out to this Facebook theology group of approximately three thousand members and asking for a few volunteers to read the document and discuss it with me over a recorded Zoom call in order to evaluate the tool and improve it. The CEMSS document attempted to accomplish two things: to provide a framework for interdenominational dialogue that creates conceptual space for multiple valid approaches to Christian theology and then to introduce a sola scriptura expression of Adventist theology as a test of this framework for new and alternative expressions of viability alongside other valid approaches. The hypothesis was that a multiple-model context would make the evaluation of a new model easier. Finally, the entire tool would be used as a test of its usefulness in aiding cross-denominational dialogue. 56 Recruitment of and Interview of Participants The participants were, therefore, asked to read the CEMSS document and discuss it with me over an hour-long recorded video conversation. They were offered $100 compensation for the time needed to read the document and to discuss it with me. This already shows the limits of the project, in that those with the spare time to read such a long document were my conversation partners. To find participants for this project, I put up a request in a Facebook Theology Group. The request read as follows: Need Help with DMin Project - Can pay $100/Person Hi, I can really use some help with my project. I have put together a somewhat new approach to Christian theology and need several people with training in theology, philosophy, and/or science to critique the approach for me. I have tried to articulate this approach the best I could in a 60-page document and am hoping that several people will agree to read it and participate in a 45-60 min recorded Zoom session with me where we can discuss potential problems with the approach. Also, since I am relatively new to the group and do not really know people here, it might be best if those interested will comment here so that others in the group could recommend who I should talk to first. The document can be found here: https://bit.ly/ChristianEpistemicModels. If anyone can help out, please let me know. The reason for the video exchange (besides the lockdown) was to first allow me to address any misunderstandings immediately during the recorded conversation. This ensured that any critiques that remained after my attempt to clarify misunderstandings were actual critiques of the material. Second, the video allowed me to review and reevaluate the conversation after the 57 fact, so that I could look at things more objectively. Lastly, others could watch the videos and determine the outcome of the exchange for themselves. The interviews were conducted during the months of January and February of 2021. Both the participants and I took the Zoom calls from home. I began each interview with a brief explanation of the project, asked the participants to introduce themselves, and then gave them the opportunity to share their thoughts about the CEMSS document. During the conversations, I interjected with the occasional clarification, asked questions, and, at times, redirected the conversations toward topics that had not yet been addressed. A Qualitative Approach The project was approached as a type of qualitative research (Flick et al. 2007, v.1) utilizing the “long interview” method (Flick et al. 2007, v.2) to collect data and then parse that data for meaningful insights using a coding process (Delve 2024) that looks for recurring themes and patterns across participants. It should noted that none of the participants’ judgment about the rules for interdenominational dialogue that were derived from this exercise is considered in my final interpretation of their comments. CEMSS Document Synopsis As mentioned, this document attempts to provide a framework for interdenominational dialogue and then to test that framework using a sola scriptura approach. The central premise of the document is that different factions in Christianity have diverse views regarding the correct authority structure for Christian theology. Moreover, the reason for this difference is, at least in part, due to differing views of ontology and epistemology, something that cannot be verified empirically. This epistemic limitation is attested to by the fact that, after centuries of theological 58 debate, we have not come any closer to consensus. So, rather than continuing to debate and attempting to convince each other that we are right, and they are wrong, we can acknowledge our limitations, recognize the plausibility of multiple models, and work side by side in cooperation rather than opposition to each other. The CEMSS document attempts to make this case and then introduces an alternative model through a series of steps outlined below. Step 1 - Propose a non-binary system of model evaluation that allows for multiple, simultaneously-viable models. Step 2 - Organize the various Christian traditions into theoretical models based on epistemological heuristic criteria. Step 3 - Show that two distinct sola scriptura models emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, the Magisterial and the Radical wings, and point out that a working methodology for the latter never materialized. Step 4 - Propose a solution to the sola scriptura problem that succeeds where other attempts have failed. Step 5 - Explain how a sola scriptura approach can engage with modern concerns such as critical scholarship and science. Step 1 - Multiple Viable Models Before presenting a new theological model for people to evaluate, it is essential to determine if their framework for evaluation is fair and impartial. This is often difficult because most people who engage in academic discourse already operate from within a model, are deeply committed to that model, and work with the assumption that their model of choice is correct while other models are wrong or inferior. For most, this matter is not simply an intellectual 59 concern but deeply personal, given that their preferred theology serves them as an organizational principle for life. Any new model, therefore, simply for being different, is automatically viewed with suspicion. A high bar is set that unreasonably puts the burden of overcoming great personal prejudice. Historically, because of this, new models often gain traction only during times of crisis. Therefore, a framework of evaluation is needed that is capable of giving new models a fighting chance. The binary, right versus wrong approach must be abandoned and replaced with a “Threshold of Viability” (see Figure 1) approach that allows for multiple models to qualify as viable simultaneously (see Olson 2016 for an alternative approach). Not all available models can be considered viable. Still, at least some do qualify, and the evaluator can then determine if the new model surpasses that threshold to a similar degree as other viable models: regardless of whether they feel another model is still better overall. A justification for the multiple models approach can be offered similar to the approaches of philosophers of science such as Quine, Kuhn, Lakatos, and MacIntyre (Murphy 2018). Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts, later modified into competing “research programs” by Lakatos, is analogous to the multiple models approach above. Figure 1. Multiple models on a threshold of viability scale. 60 Step 2 - Christian Epistemic Models In order to determine what the viable models should be, we need a system of organization for Christian theology that allows us to group the hundreds of distinct perspectives into families or clusters of similar thought (see Tracy 1996 for an alternative organizational model breakdown). To do this meaningfully, we need to question the source of difference among the models. In essence, we need to evaluate their epistemological commitments. Over the centuries, numerous knowledge sources have been used as a basis of theological authority. These sources include Scripture, tradition, the church, culture, philosophy, science, experience, the Holy Spirit, prophets, visions/dreams, etc. (“Sources of Authority, Volume 2: Contemporary Churches” 2014, 6–7). The question then, is what element functions as the final arbiter in situations where different sources conflict or are not entirely clear? The answer of various Christian traditions to this question elucidates their differences. See Figure 2. During the first few centuries after Christ, theological authority became established within the church hierarchy (Akin 2013). While the various sources mentioned above played a part in theological development, it was ultimately church leadership that determined what Figure 2. Truth sources and their relative weight in theology. 61 constituted Christian theology (“Catechism of the Catholic Church - IntraText,” n.d.). In case of conflict, councils were called where leaders and theologians from all over Christendom came together to discuss and settle theological matters (“CATHOLIC LIBRARY: The 21 Ecumenical Councils” 2023). At other times, church leaders i.e. the archbishops decided these questions directly. The assumption was that the mantle of authority had been passed down from Jesus to the apostles and then to each subsequent generation of church leaders (“Apostolic succession” 2022) up to the present. Although the different sources of authority all played their part, Scripture, tradition, philosophy, culture, experience, etc., the Magisterium functioned as the final arbiter. When the Protestant Reformation began almost a thousand years later, it quickly became evident that a shift in theological authority must first occur. The church must be held accountable to a higher standard than itself if there was to be any hope for change since, clearly, church leaders had no intention of bringing about reform. At the same time, the members of the Magisterium viewed themselves as the divinely appointed ultimate authority. Therefore, Protestantism shifted theological authority from the church hierarchy to Scripture and appealed to Scripture as evidence that a reformation was needed (“Martin Luther’s Most Noble Words - 1501-1600 Church History Timeline,” n.d.). However, the premise that theological authority could rest in Scripture alone was short-lived. The reformers could not agree on what the correct interpretation of Scripture was meant to be. Factions formed, and Protestants began to argue with each other just as much as they argued with Catholics (Eire 2016, 1070). Having made allegiances with civil authorities, wars of religion began (Olson 2017, 26) where Protestant regions fought both those in Catholic regions and other Protestant regions. 62 In the chaos that ensued, philosophers began to search for a more dependable source of authority that avoided both the Catholic hierarchy and the Protestant interpretational conflicts over Scripture (Olson 2017, 27). Instead, these philosophers attempted to develop a perspective built on reason alone (Duignan 2024). For millennia before this, God had been viewed as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Rene Descartes (Marias 1967, 211), however, shifted the foundation of philosophy from God to the self. He argued that nearly everything we think or know about reality could be an illusion or the product of some nefarious entity playing tricks on our minds. But one thing that cannot be doubted is that I, as an individual, exist because I’m thinking about my own existence (Descartes 1993). Descartes thus felt he had discovered the indubitable foundation for modern philosophy. Shortly after, by building on Descartes’ shift in epistemology, Immanuel Kant delivered an additional lethal blow to previous philosophical systems (i.e., Plato/Aristotle.) He argued that all human knowledge is a product of the interaction of both human reason and sensory perception. Therefore, humanity has no pathway by which to access metaphysical knowledge (Kant 2022; Hill 2007, 339). Because these shifts in philosophy coincided with the scientific revolution (Hill 2007, 317), a powerful synthesis developed where human knowledge came to be viewed as starting with a bare minimum of necessary assumptions, after which all subsequent knowledge was acquired through the scientific process. Until and unless a claim could be demonstrated scientifically (i.e. logical empiricism), it was safe to ignore that claim or to treat it as something other than “knowledge.” Eventually, this line of reasoning began to diminish the need for God as well (Hill 2007, 217). 63 For many keen observers of these societal trends, the future seemed bleak for religion and Christianity in particular. In this crisis, a new approach to Christianity was developed. Liberal Christianity, led by Friedrich Schleiermacher, intended to place the Christian religion beyond the reach of scientific scrutiny. Even if science could demonstrate that the universe developed through natural processes from beginning to end, God could still have orchestrated everything behind the scenes. Knowledge of God was not through Aristotelian natural theology or Platonic rational reflection; it was not by inserting God into the areas presently not understood by science. It was not through the direct revelation of Scripture and tradition or through the authority of the church, but through a primordial inner sense of need and dependence on an ultimate reality (Schleiermacher 2015; Hill 2007, 340). Although liberal Christianity was successful for a time in stemming the tide of secularism, it appeared to many as not much better than secularism. Moreover, the version of Christianity that could be developed based on human experience alone seemed very different from historic Christianity. Consequently, two additional movements emerged as a reaction to liberal Christianity. The first is the Fundamentalist movement (“Christian Fundamentalism | Definition | Britannica,” n.d.). For this group, liberal Christianity seemed more dangerous than secularism as it had the pretense of representing Christianity. However, fundamentalism did not have solutions to the problems posed by science and enlightenment philosophy that liberal theology was trying to solve (Noll 1995). So instead, they took a head-in-the-sand approach by refusing to acknowledge any of the challenges of modernity and accepting the Bible presuppositionally (Anderson 2019). The Bible was taken as God's inerrant word that can be accepted unconditionally, and any attempt to raise questions regarding the validity of the Bible was 64 dismissed. Fundamentalism hoped to shield people from doubt and skepticism through anti-education, anti-science, and anti-intellectualism. This approach, however, had no means of setting itself apart from other movements that assigned similar presuppositional authority to other holy books such as the Koran (Murphy 2018, 46). A more intermediate approach was that taken by neoorthodoxy. This approach recognized and acknowledged the philosophical and scientific challenges of modernity and appreciated the efforts made by liberal scholars to address these challenges and create intellectual space for the Christian religion. However, neoorthodoxy also recognized that liberal Christianity had moved too far from the historic Christian faith. It appeared that some form of tangible divine revelation was still necessary for a well-rounded theology, but previous approaches to revelation seemed unworkable. Instead, the premise was introduced that the Church, tradition, and Scripture were not intended to provide general knowledge about the world but were strictly focused on providing knowledge about God through Christ. This would explain why errors could exist in Scripture since those were not the parts given by revelation, which was only intended to point to Christ (“Neoorthodoxy | Definition, Protestantism, History, Key Figures, Theology, & Facts | Britannica,” n.d.; Hordern 2002). These five approaches to theology, the church-based (Catholic/Orthodox,) Scripture-based (Protestant,) experience-based (Liberal,) Christ-based (Neoorthodox) and inerrancy-based (Fundamentalist,) represent the majority of Christian groups today. Each approach holds different assumptions about the nature of divine revelation and of how human beings can acquire a knowledge of God and the supernatural. The assumptions involve not only the modality of divine interaction, but also (1) the nature of God, (2) the nature of reality, (3) the nature of man, 65 and (4) the nature of knowledge acquisition. Consequently, the five traditions represent independent systems of thought that can be treated as distinct theoretical models. The graph below (figure 3) shows the assumptions of different models regarding the degree of assumed Scriptural inerrancy and the sufficiency of Scripture as a basis for theology. It also points out that while sola scriptura necessitates an assumption of sufficiency of Scripture as a basis of theology, it does not also require inerrancy. Another way to think about these models might be helpful. We can divide Christian theology into three categories: high certainty, low certainty, and hybrid views. For high theological certainty, some source of authority is needed that functions as the final arbiter in matters of theology, and there is a limit to what this authority can be in Christian theology (see Figure 4). It can be the church, tradition, Scripture, the prophets, and the Holy Spirit. God could have chosen to preserve Christian truth for future generations in multiple ways. He could have ordained a succession of church leaders like the apostles to perpetuate the faith (apostolic succession), used the Christian community as a whole (tradition,) preserved His message in Scripture, continue to send prophets to guide future generations as he did in the Old Testament, or chosen to guide each individual believer directly through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Each one of these options can be treated as a hypothesis. Figure 3. Degree of assumed scriptural inerrancy and sufficiency. 66 Two of these hypotheses, however, prophets and the Holy Spirit, do not work in Christian academia despite their historic representation (ex., Pentecostalism for the Holy Spirit and Mormonism/Jehovah’s Witnesses/Christian Science for prophets). This is because the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a subjective experience that cannot be placed under academic scrutiny. Similarly, the prophet-based epistemology is circular, given that Scripture and/or tradition are necessary to evaluate the credentials of the prophet, who would also be the authorized interpreter of Scripture/tradition. Therefore, to have high certainty, one must rely on the church, tradition, Scripture, or some combination of these. Catholicism places authority in canon, creed, and church leadership, Eastern Orthodoxy combines church-tradition-based authority, while Protestantism places authority in Scripture, although it assigns partial authority to early tradition as well. In contrast to this high-certainty view, the low-certainty view places authority in experience: that is an even more primordial basis for theology exists in our inner sense of dependence on ultimate reality. People throughout history have shared this inner consciousness of dependence on the divine and have tried to make sense of it the best they could - hence Figure 4. Sources of authority and their certainty levels. 67 Scripture and tradition - but our responsibility is to make sense of our experience within our own modern context (Jackson and Prato 2022). We must try to determine what kind of faith is rational, given the knowledge we have acquired using the tools of modern science and philosophy (Clayton and Knapp 2011). Finally, if we feel that the version of Christianity that rejects the common basis of authority is not robust enough, then a hybrid alternative is to restrict the focus of these authorities, so they do not contradict the modern science/philosophy-based worldview. Neorthodoxy does this by restricting the focus of revelation to Christ so that Scripture, tradition, and the historic church could be mistaken in other respects but still represent a genuine revelation from God and maintain at least some minimal level of authority. These distinct foundational premises can account for most differences in Christian theology and are a sufficient reason to treat them as independent theoretical models even though the models might overlap at times. Step 3 The Sola Scriptura Dilemma In Step 1, we introduced the Multiple-Models framework for evaluation for the purpose of fairness in discourse. In Step 2, we identified the theoretical models that populate epistemic categories in the framework. All the models – Catholic/Orthodox, Protestant, Neoorthodox and Liberal – with the exception of the Fundamentalist model, qualify as viable within this framework. Now, in Step 3, we initially test this framework by introducing the sola scriptura model. We previously mentioned that the Protestant model shifted the ultimate authority in matters of theology from the Church to Scripture. What we did not mention is that two distinct hypotheses emerged out of the Reformation regarding exactly how Scripture should play this 68 role. The first hypothesis was held by the magisterial reformers (ex. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) (McGrath 2012, 5). Luther initially intended to develop an approach to theology based on Scripture alone. But when it became evident that increasingly more people were starting to interpret Scripture in different ways, he became concerned about the potential theological chaos that could ensue (McGrath 2012, 110; McGrath 2009, 10). He began instead to redefine the phrase “sola scriptura” as not being strictly Scripture alone but also including the early tradition of the first few centuries after Christ. The notion was that Scripture would be the basis of theology, but the writings of Christians who lived the closest to Christ before the original faith had time to become corrupted would be a trustworthy guide in interpretation. The Church Fathers, the councils, and the ecumenical creeds were seen as the “regula fidei,” a set of parameters within which Scripture should be interpreted to avoid deviating into interpretational anarchy (Mathison 2001, 151–53). There was, however, another group of reformers, known as the Radical Reformers (ex. Anabaptists) (McGrath 2012, 5), who did not share this confidence in the trustworthiness of the early Church Fathers and felt that theology had to be based entirely on Scripture and Scripture alone (McGrath 2012, 93, 113). The Reformation, therefore, produced two versions of sola scriptura--the magisterial version, which we label pseudo-sola scriptura because it also includes early tradition and the radical version, which we refer to as true-sola scriptura. Because the magisterial reformers believed in forming alliances with state powers and were extended their protection, they were afforded the luxury of time and space for study, reflection, and writing and were able to soon produce a systematic articulation of their approach to theology that has served as a basis for Protestant theological development ever since (Hill 2007, 285). The radical reformers, however, believed in the separation of church and state and, 69 therefore, formed no such alliances. As a result, they were persecuted by Catholics, Protestants, and the civil authorities alike (Eire 2016, 1235) and never had the chance to develop a comparable methodology based on the true-sola scriptura epistemology. This task continued undone for centuries after, and when subsequent attempts were made - by Fundamentalist and other conservative groups - they were not very successful either. By this time, the remaining Protestant world had other priorities, such as finding ways to reconcile Protestant theology with new developments in philosophy and science. Today, the vast majority of Christian theology can be categorized as belonging to one of three groups regarding sola scriptura: Anti-Sola Scriptura, Pseudo-Sola Scriptura, and Failed-Sola Scriptura (see Figure 5). 1) Anti-Sola Scriptura: Catholic/Orthodox, Liberal, Neo-orthodox, as well as the fringe groups that follow their own prophets such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, etc., who reject the idea that theology should be based on Scripture alone. 2) Pseudo-Sola Scriptura: Traditional Protestants still redefine sola scriptura to mean Scripture and the Church Fathers. 3) Failed Sola Scriptura: Anabaptists, Fundamentalists, and conservative Evangelicals who insist on a Scripture-only theology still have no working methodology for preventing such a theology from degenerating into chaos. Figure 5. Four perspectives regarding sola scriptura theology. 70 Thus, most Christians do not believe that sola scriptura theology should even be attempted, they almost universally agree that it hasn’t been successfully done so far, and many question whether it even can be done. For example, Carlton (1977) considers the idea that “the Scriptures are self-interpreting … patently absurd.” Nonetheless, what this means is that unoccupied theological space exists at the very center of the Christian theological landscape: the sola scriptura platform. I propose that Adventist Christians have a robust theological heritage with the capacity to occupy this space. Step 4 – The Sola Scriptura Methodology In Step 1 we proposed a fair discourse procedure, in Step 2 we have populated the categories, in Step 3 we discussed previous attempts of sola scriptura models to meet this threshold. Now, in Step 4 we propose an Adventist Christian model of sola scriptura that clears the threshold. In the previous section, it was pointed out that, more than five centuries after the Reformation, Christianity still does not have a working methodology that is truly based on Scripture alone. It is here that Adventist Christianity offers a three-part solution that can be simply stated as follows: 1) limited-errancy, 2) biblical metaphysics, and 3) biblical macro narrative. The first element involves the nature of Scripture, whereas the other two address the issue of interpretation. Regarding the nature of Scripture, the question typically arises as to whether Scripture should be considered errant or inerrant. There is, however, a third possibility, that of limited-errancy. Sola scriptura is typically associated with inerrancy because it is assumed that the admission of error would require an external authority that can determine which parts of Scripture are erroneous and which parts are not (“Why Is It Important to Believe in Biblical 71 Inerrancy?” n.d.). But this rationale is mistaken, given it is highly possible to work with limited error within a data set by looking for the data trends and ignoring the anomalies, even in the absence of any external guiding element (See Figure 6). The necessary assumption is that the majority of the data is correct, not that it is entirely devoid of error. Such an approach, however, does require a carefully defined data set, meaning that a limited-errancy sola scriptura theology must be canonical in nature (Peckham 2016). Notably, there are additional reasons why certain Christians lean toward biblical inerrancy. Because many Christians approach Scripture with a priori metaphysical assumption regarding the nature of God, the nature of reality, the nature of man, and of human knowledge, they assume that the very process of revelation-inspiration necessitates inerrancy. Canale explains this as follows: Because of how nature and supernature are assumed by classical thinkers, divine truths can only exist and be communicated within the realm of timelessness. That communication is a cognitive event between the mind of God and the soul of the prophet… Once the light of prophecy prepares the prophet’s mind, God infuses divine, timeless truths into that mind. Because God and the human soul are timeless, the truths that are communicated to the prophet by God are also timeless. (Canale 2017, 123) Figure 6. Assumed degree of error and its impact on interpretation. 72 What this means is that revelation is typically assumed to operate as a type of data dump: truth is imprinted on the prophet's soul the way a cell phone receives a software upgrade. They are made capable, therefore, of transcending their spatiotemporal limitations and of relating divine truth exactly as God Himself would relate it. These assumptions about God being timeless (does not experience temporal succession but exists in the eternal present), about human beings possessing an immaterial, immortal soul, about this soul being able to interact with God in timelessness, and about human knowledge being an external information transfer onto the soul, are all philosophical speculations that are superimposed on Scripture and are in no way necessary. Without them, we can view revelation as God entering human history and communicating with biblical authors in the same way that people communicate with one another: through their natural cognitive processes (Canale 2017). God, therefore, needed to relate to the prophets only that which they had the capacity to understand, given their place in history. The prophets then had to process and make sense of the information revealed to them and devise ways to communicate that information to their own historically conditioned community. In other words, this divine process of revelation-inspiration had the capacity for error, as does all communication involving humans. Nonetheless, by either directly correcting prophetic mistakes (ex. 2 Sam. 7), carefully selecting which prophets and their writings would be incorporated into the canon, and by providing sufficient material in the canon to counterbalance any mistakes, Scripture could maintain its role as the “uniquely infallible source of divine revelation” and the “sufficient and fully trustworthy basis of theology” (Peckham 2016, 141). Sola scriptura, therefore, can tolerate a limited degree of error. This view of inspiration, however, does carry certain implications for theology. First, Scripture must be interpreted in chronological sequence as the unfolding development of the 73 narrative is necessary for the proper interpretation of subsequent material. At each stage, the authors and their audiences understood only that which had been previously revealed and did not have the luxury we have today of knowing the entire biblical story from the start. Second, each segment must be approached tentatively, given the possibility of mistakes. Exegesis aims to come as close as possible to the author's intent but cannot tell us if the author's intent is the same as God's intent. Therefore, third, the entire canon must be relied upon in theology, since the only way to determine God’s intent is to see it as the consistent, cumulative view of the biblical authors. In other words, the limited-errancy, canonical, sola scriptura approach to theology is a valid alternative to errantist and inerrantist approaches and deserves consideration, given that inerrantist approaches have not succeeded in producing a workable sola scriptura methodology (Mathison 2001), while errantist approaches cannot produce one by their very nature. The other two elements that Adventist Christianity introduces, a biblical metaphysics and a biblical macro narrative, address the issue of interpretation. The problem with undertaking theology with a book is that different people arbitrarily assign priority to various sections of Scripture and then interpret other sections accordingly. This inevitably results in an endless array of possible interpretations. To avoid this, the Protestant reformers turned to early tradition as an interpretational guide but, in doing so, unwittingly absorbed the metaphysical assumptions of the Church Fathers, which had been influenced by Greek philosophy (Olson 2017, 63–64). The Greek metaphysical assumptions, in turn, affected the perceived overarching narrative of Scripture, and this incompatible metaphysics/macro narrative combination affected all subsequent interpretation (Canale 2013). 74 The solution that the Adventist Christian faith offers is to recognize the macro-hermeneutical impact of narrative and metaphysics and to tackle these elements first. Once the correct metaphysics and macro narrative for Scripture are deciphered, all subsequent interpretation falls into place. The narrative guides us into accurately detecting the priority passages in light of which other parts of Scripture should be understood. The question that remains, then, is how we can determine the correct narrative and metaphysics to use for scriptural interpretation. Throughout most of human history, typically only one metaphysical paradigm appeared viable at any given time or geographical location, so it is understandable that the Church Fathers attempted a synthesis between Christian theology and the predominant paradigm of their time (Platonism during the first few centuries AD; Hill 2007, 14), Neoplatonism by the time of Augustine (Hill 2007, 115), Aristotelianism by the eleventh century (Hill 2007, 215), etc. Today, we no longer have this problem but have a good grasp of the various metaphysical paradigms available. We can set them all on the table and choose the one that most seamlessly integrates with Scripture, as long as the Biblical data favors one particular view (Weiss 2023 argues that the data can support multiple views). Moreover, having selected the biblical metaphysics, we can also list the various overarching narratives that have been used throughout the history of Christian theology and choose the one most compatible with Scripture and its metaphysics. In other words, if we do not approach Scripture with a philosophical bias but allow it to dictate what these macro-elements should be, we can obtain the hermeneutical framework from Scripture itself and avoid interpretational chaos without turning to the Church Fathers. 75 These three components: limited errancy, biblical metaphysics, and biblical macro narrative, constitute the method and when the method is applied the metaphysical perspective is a temporal God, a non-dualist reality, and a non-dualist anthropology. The correct narrative for Scripture, is the cosmic conflict (aka the great controversy; Peckham 2018), not because of some Adventist bias, but because once we eliminate the extra-biblical philosophical speculations, this seems to be the narrative that lines up most seamlessly with the Scriptural data. It should be self-evident by now that the above-outlined method is sufficient to introduce a new trajectory for Christian theology and that, when compared with the other models, this new trajectory has a higher claim to the label sola scriptura. Now we have laid the groundwork for another viable model not influenced by Greek philosophy and yet maintaining continuity with the apostolic faith. Step 5 - Sola Scriptura & Modernity This section is the most difficult to explain briefly, so I refer the reader to the CEMSS document in Appendix A for a fuller description. A few brief comments will be made here. First, it should be self-evident that the Adventist sola scriptura model I have suggested is inherently more flexible than the Fundamentalist model and, in some cases, even than the Protestant model because the possibility of error is built into its fundamental logic. If critical scholars, for example, demonstrate that some section of Scripture is problematic, this does not necessarily discredit the whole model. However, because within this model, error must be limited, this can only take us so far. Second, several points must be made about the nature of science. When studying events that occurred in the distant past, scientists must work with and draw conclusions based on limited data. What this means is that there is always a probability factor involved (Kasser 2013). We 76 might hear that there is scholarly consensus on a particular position, but we are not typically told what probability that consensus is based upon: whether closer to a 60-40 percent probability, for example, or more like 95-5 percent probability. If the former, it would be perfectly reasonable for someone to still hold to the minority position if this position is consistent with their model, but if the latter, it would not be, and dismissing it nonetheless would place someone in the fundamentalist camp. Third, science is by its very nature naturalistic (aka methodological naturalism) and does not handle supernatural interference well (Hill 2007, 318). If a supernatural event or phenomenon could be studied under controlled experimental conditions, there would not be a problem (Boudry, Blancke, and Braeckman 2010). But if some supernatural event occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago there would be no way for science to verify this and it would always assume that a natural explanation is more plausible, even if the event did not occur. In other words, there is no degree of historical and/or archaeological evidence that could ever constitute scientific evidence for a supernatural event. This brings us to our final point: the only epistemic model that is fully compatible with science is naturalism. Any model that makes some claim of God or the supernatural must depart from a fully scientific approach at some point. Today, we live in a highly specialized world where theology is broken down into numerous subdisciplines: exegesis, hermeneutics, philosophy, history, textual criticism, redaction criticism, form criticism, etc. Experts in each of these fields are taught to apply the tools of their specific field and to draw their conclusions. However, we do not live our lives segmented in this way but operate within complete worldviews (Naugle and Holmes 2002). We 77 each must choose a theoretical model and organize our lives based on that specific view of reality. This is why the “threshold of viability” framework is useful because it contrasts models in their entirety, acknowledging that all models have their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, each of the models formulates certain epistemic assumptions that are critical to the logic of the model and yet necessarily depart from a strict scientific approach. In other words, the same degree of scientific scrutiny critical scholars apply to Scripture could just as readily be applied to church authority for the Catholics, to the Scripture-tradition combination of Protestants, to the inner sense of dependence of the Liberals and to Neo orthodox Christocentrism. The responsibility of the Adventist sola scriptura model, then, would be to interact with the scientific scrutiny of its central epistemic element - Scripture - in a similar way as other models interact with the scientific scrutiny of their central epistemic elements. In conclusion, there is room for a new theoretical model in the Christian tradition if the centuries-old sola scriptura dilemma could finally be solved. Adventist Christianity does have a three-pronged solution to this dilemma: limited errancy, biblical metaphysics, and a biblical macro narrative. Such a model has the potential to prove viable when evaluated on a viability threshold alongside other models. Moreover, when presented this way, other Christians could understand and appreciate what Adventist Christians are trying to do in a way that was not possible with previous attempts at communicating our perspective. With these five steps, the tool for intervention has been built. It is the CEMSS document (See Appendix A). The participants who agreed to help in the test and refinement of this tool all agreed to read it and to open themselves up to a recorded conversation where together we discussed the ideas, engaged in our own deliberation, and left a record to be studied. It was from 78 this exercise that norms for inter-denominational discourse were generated that can be service for local ministerial associations, interfaith councils, and Christian interdenominational alliances. Summary In this chapter, I described the intervention strategy used in my project. I explained how I found the eight participants and the interview process used. I then provided a brief summary of the CEMSS Document used as the basis for the conversations. The document consisted of five steps. In step 1, I introduced an impartial system of comparison and evaluation of different theological models. In step 2, I described the five main models in Christian theology: Catholic, Protestant, Fundamentalist, Neoorthodox, and Liberal. In step 3, I introduced a sixth Sola Scriptura model as the unfinished project of the Radical Reformation. In step 4, I explained the inner logic of such a model, and in step 5, I pointed out how such a model can interact with critical scholarship and science. 79 CHAPTER 5 IMPLEMENTATION, RESULTS, AND EVALUATION Introduction Even though over a dozen people initially showed interest, in the end, eight individuals participated in the project. This is a typical sample size for interview-based, qualitative research projects (McCracken 1988, 17), given the complexity of long interviews and the analysis of the large bodies of data that result. Seven of the participants had the desired theological training – at least masters-level course work in theology – while the eighth was a scientist with no formal training in theology (because an entire section of my document discusses the interaction of theology and science, I wanted the perspective of individuals with knowledge of the sciences as well). Lastly, even though all participants initially agreed to the video interview, in the end, one opted to communicate via email only. In this chapter, I briefly introduce each participant (a complete transcript of the interaction can be found in Appendix B), after which I share several rules and norms that emerged from the cumulative feedback I received. Participant 1 This participant introduced himself as a former atheist who became a theist at the age of twenty-one by reading philosophy. After giving his life to Christ, he went back and forth between Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity until he finally settled into Catholicism. He 80 stated that he was very interested in the topics I wrote about (epistemology, sola scriptura, etc.). He teaches religion in a Catholic high school and has engaged in graduate work at Catholic and Protestant universities. This participant raised several objections that are common to Protestant-Catholic debates. He mentioned that Catholics do believe the Bible to be fully inspired but believe that it is not the only authority source for Christians. He asked me if I could make a case for sola scriptura with the Bible alone and whether I could explain the formation of the canon apart from the authority of the Church. He mentioned that some type of conciliar structure is still needed to resolve differences of opinion even alongside a sola scriptura theology. Nonetheless, he still felt that my multiple-models approach was pragmatic and that the sola scriptura model had the potential to work: There's no strict logical reason why it can't work, and I think the paradigm you're putting forth in terms of approaching the Bible first by establishing a metaphysic based on the Bible and then establishing the macro narrative based on the Bible is a very good paradigm. Ultimately, the multiple-models approach allowed us to hold differing views while also recognizing the other’s position as reasonable. Participant 2 This participant comes from a Pentecostal-Evangelical background, has a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies, and was working on a master’s degree in theological studies at Boston University. Throughout the conversation, the participant asked several insightful questions. For example, he wondered whether the recent scholarship of returning to Judaism, known as ‘The New Perspective on Paul,’ can be considered an alternative framework to the traditional Protestant framework provided by the Church Fathers and how this would relate to the 81 framework I am proposing. The New Perspective on Paul implies a reaction to the usual interpretation of Paul on justification by faith. The NPP scholars (ex. Wright) take a historical approach to the issue and criticize opponents as reading their view of justification into the text in the same way the Reformers did (especially Luther). Besides this question, he also raised an important question regarding our ability to escape pluralism if we allow ourselves to make space for multiple simultaneously viable models. Ultimately, he did appreciate the arrangement of Christian theology into epistemic models and the role that metaphysics and macro narrative play in biblical hermeneutics. Participant 3 This participant has been a missionary in East Africa since 2007 and previously in Papua New Guinea, India, and South Africa. He has a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. in World Christianity. He also has a background in chemistry and physics. He teaches theology, biblical courses, and church history. He feels that monocultural and monolingual myopia is one of the main problems in epistemology and hermeneutics. He thinks this is an area where he can contribute to the conversation. This participant mentioned that he “really appreciated the ecumenicity of that approach and moving away from sectarianism in most Christian faith traditions” in reference to my suggestion to allow for multiple valid models. Beyond this, he tried to provide additional suggestions that would enhance my project, such as the importance of culture in theology. He mentioned that without accounting for culture, we would be engaging in “proselytization rather than actual conversion.” He pointed out that in Western culture, we tend to have a secular and mechanistic view of reality, whereas people in Africa and in Bible times saw the world as far 82 more enchanted and imbued with the supernatural. He felt that a sola scriptura theology would attempt to restore this more Scriptural perspective. Participant 4 This participant is an adjunct professor in Southern California. His background is in community organizing and non-profit management, with an academic background in contextualization and world Christianity. He stated that his perspective resonated with that of Participant 3. In relation to the epistemological categories I used, he sees himself somewhere between Neoorthodox and Liberal positions. He stated that he is not a proponent of sola scriptura and is not Reformed. Participant 4 began with a synopsis of what he understood my paper to be about: I appreciate what you are trying to do . . . trying to get clarity about epistemology and that through clarity about our starting points, we can have better relationships with people who are different from our thinking, and I think that is something that is necessary in a diverse church . . . if we can get to the core and really know source priority and method then we can understand ourselves, we can understand each other, and that can cause less confusion, less friction in our work. He introduced the idea that epistemology is not merely a religious issue but that, with the secularization of society, epistemology has broadened, and our religious epistemology has needed to adapt. He stated that while he agreed that the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were a major epistemic shift, there have been other shifts in recent history that are worth mentioning. As an example, he explained that for his parent’s generation, the Cold War played an epistemic role because it caused them to read Scripture a certain way and to ask specific questions about their faith. For him, however, the pertinent issues are globalization, the war on terror, etc. 83 He then pointed out that different theories of knowledge can lead to different assumptions regarding the kind of certainty we can have. He mentioned that liberal models tend to be a lot more comfortable with uncertainty than conservative ones. Ultimately, he felt I was thinking in the right direction with my project and was excited to see what came of it. Participant 5 This participant was working toward a PhD in Christian Theology, specializing in Old Testament and biblical theology. He is very interested in the topics of theological method and theological frameworks that I discuss in my paper. Participant 5 indicated that “[he] enjoyed my paper and the trajectory [I] was taking, especially given the fact that [I] was trying to rescue a tradition that has had its share of difficulties - the sola scriptura tradition - and that has come to be viewed as a hopeless cause, especially in critical theological circles. [He felt that] the avenues [I] explored showed promise and that [I] was pushing in the right direction.” He began by asking whether I was familiar with the Biblical Theology movement and whether I felt that there was any overlap with what I was trying to do or whether the work by these scholars would be helpful. He mentioned that my work seemed to be an attempt to do systematic theology in a way that was methodologically similar to biblical theology. Like other participants, he also brought up the issue of “culture” and wondered how my approach would adapt to cultural diversity. Before concluding the conversation, I wanted to hear from him regarding the final section of my paper, which addressed the philosophy of science. He responded with the following, 84 which I found to be an encouraging assessment, especially in light of the reaction of Participant 8 to the same section: I actually found the way you were handling science really interesting and helpful, and I think charitable to the scientific worldview . . . addressing it from the philosophy of the science side, which was really helpful because you showed the limitations of what it is that science is actually supposed to do . . . . I think the issue for a lot of Christians is that they don't have a good philosophy of science and so they don't know how to navigate that because it's like on one level science is so compelling for many things that we think or that doesn't threaten my faith, so it's fine I can be totally scientifically coherent about this and that but then when science does something, like you know whatever it is paleontology or something, all of a sudden we have a big problem with the scientific method and I think you're addressing that well. I think we need to have a better appreciation for the philosophy of science so that we can see the relationship between putting someone on the moon and dating a dinosaur bone, the relationship between those two things, and then what that has to do with what the Bible says about things. Participant 6 This participant is a scientist and an associate professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine. He is a Faculty Lead of Translational Bioinformatics with a PhD in Information and Computer Sciences. Although he does not have formal training in theology, he wrote a book (Swamidass 2019) demonstrating that it is genealogically possible for the entire human race to descend from Adam and Eve if their early descendants interbred with humanoid creatures that evolved prior to the creation of Adam and Eve. He sees this as a way to reconcile the theory of evolution with the biblical narrative. Participant 6 felt that I had “identified the problem correctly, and I think you identified key components of the conversation correctly . . . you identified epistemology as a really critical thing . . . Scripture and inerrancy as being part of it . . . you also identify science as a critical piece of this . . . .” However, even though my paper does not address the topic of evolution, this participant read my entire document from the perspective of the creation-evolution debate. He viewed my 85 multiple-model approach as “archetypal,” meaning that it forced people into categories and denied them the flexibility to accept evolution even if they belong to an archetype that traditionally does not. My primary hope in talking to him as a scientist was that he would critique the last section of my paper that discussed the philosophy of science. However, because he did not see any real conflict between theology and science, he did not have much to say there. Instead, he focused primarily on the theological sections where he did not have the requisite background. Participant 7 This participant is a retired Baptist minister with a Ph.D. in systematic theology. He fits what I labeled as the “fundamentalist” profile in the paper, which is unfortunate given that my paper was critical of this approach to theology. Because my multiple-models approach requires the differentiation between models that are viable and models that are not using a “threshold of viability,” fundamentalism was always the go-to example of a model that should be placed below the threshold. In other words, this probably was not the best document to use with someone belonging to this group. This participant, nonetheless, still claimed to enjoy my paper. Participant 7 argued that there are only minor variations between biblical manuscripts, and therefore any potential errors are minor; he mentioned that all archeological evidence confirms the Bible and that, in terms of biblical interpretation, just taking the “plain reading” of Scripture is sufficient. In other words, he did not seem to see the need for some of the ideas I introduced, such as “limited errancy,” or for a macro narrative to guide interpretation. When I mentioned that different people come to different “plain readings” of Scripture, he stated that people say that to him too, and when they do, he asks them, “How large is your 86 church? Is your denomination expanding or is it declining? And we kind of, you know, part ways at that point.” He then continued to explain regarding the plain reading of Scripture: But I think it does work. I think it has proven that it's worked over and over in history, and I think in areas such as China it demonstrably shows how it's worked by the number of Christians that are being persecuted and imprisoned there. I would also add that while I was a chaplain I was stationed in South Korea and became very aware of North Korean Christians in internment camps who would escape and come south. All of them without exception said it was the plain reading of Scripture that meant everything to them. This was especially true when it came to the gospels and other passages of the Bible that were more difficult for them. The plain reading of the gospels just cannot be challenged, I don't think. We also briefly discussed the theory of evolution and the possibility of death before sin, and he made some comments regarding the idea of a cosmic conflict. Overall, even though he did not specifically mention it, I did not feel, based on his comments in general, that he found my multiple-models approach particularly useful. He did not seem open to creating the conceptual space for liberal and conservative theologies to coexist. Nonetheless, because we were both very interested in a theology based on Scripture alone, we were able to build a bridge of communication, at least between our own positions. Participant 8 This participant has a PhD in theology and seemed experienced at critiquing academic work. In fact, he treated my paper as an essay submitted for grading in one of his classes rather than as a conversation primer, which is what it was intended to be. He provided me with written feedback and some excellent suggestions that would significantly improve my paper if I ever took the time to rewrite it. However, when he got to the last section of the paper, he became offended and completely cut off all communication with me. Based on his final email (also in Appendix B), he was unhappy with my characterization of the relationship between science and 87 Christianity. He felt that his friends, who are Christian scientists, would be very offended to read those sections of my paper. Because of this, we never had the chance to do a video recording. In his previous email, however, covering the previous sections of my paper, he seemed to enjoy my approach and offered helpful suggestions. He referred me to several good books to use for reference and pointed out sections that were not clear and needed to be reworked. Regarding the Multiple Models approach, he simply stated: This paragraph tells us where you are going. You may need to more deliberately phrase this so that the reader doesn’t quickly pass over this defining paragraph. You may also need to place it early in your introduction so that your readers can see which way your argument is going to proceed. Given that he never before hesitated to voice a disagreement whenever he had one, I took the neutrality of this statement as a sign of support. Despite the fact that our interaction was cut short, the comments provided contributed to the formulation of rules and norms for the interdenominational dialogue below. Coding Method After the video interviews were recorded, the videos were transcribed, and the points that seemed important to the participants were highlighted. The highlighted segments were then compared across participants, and several consistent themes emerged in the process. This allowed for the formulation of several rules and norms for interfaith and interdenominational dialogue. These rules and norms can be used in future versions of the CEMSS document in order to anticipate and address possible objections and concerns that participants might raise. The rules and norms are as follows: 88 The following Exemplify Best Practices of Interfaith/ Interdenominational Dialogue 1) signal ecumenical openness: represent others’ views charitably engaging other approaches for categorizing Christian theology. 2) affirm both archetypal and anomalous perspectives through understanding both historical and current causes of theological divergence. 3) provide a pathway to move beyond multiple models to a personal faith by requiring sensitivity to the role of culture in theological formation. 4) interact with different views of the relations among theology, philosophy, & science, and recognize/clarify views of special & general revelation in various Christian traditions. 5) provide alternative systems for people who cannot engage within a pluralist context. The patterns that emerged in the coding as areas of emphasis among multiple participants are evidenced by the following quotes from the interviews. Rule #1 Interfaith/interdenominational dialogue signals ecumenical openness: represents others’ views charitably engaging other approaches for categorizing Christian theology. The reaction of many of the participants to the idea of multiple models indicated that ecumenical openness was viewed as an important virtue in interdenominational dialogue. Participant 1 stated: “ I really like the way that you categorized your description of epistemology in terms of what are your sources of authority. I think that's a great way to describe the differences between the traditions.” “[You point out the] limits of human epistemic faculties, so stop thinking about right and wrong or conclusive proof, but rather about simultaneously viable models and parameters of viability, so this was the part where I started to really appreciate your pragmatism and your irenic nature that was one of its strengths. I think your paper and your whole argument is very pragmatic and reasonable and tries to be fair and humble in terms of what you can prove and what you know so I thought that was one of its strengths.” 89 Participant 2 also mentioned, “The categories were good, like fundamentalism and atheism. I really did like that because, for example, if you talk to some fundamentalists, they would say, ‘Who cares about Irenaeus? it’s not Scripture,’ ‘Who cares about the Nicene Creed? it's not Scripture,’ so I like that there was a distinction between fundamentalism and Protestantism because a Protestant would say, ‘No, we need the Church Fathers to determine Scripture.’ He did, however, feel that the distinction between neo-orthodoxy and liberalism were “the only two categories in which I think it's definitely harder to make a distinction.” Participant 3 stated: “I really appreciated the appeal to ecumenicity and unity within difference and diversity that you were taking there.” “I really appreciated the ecumenicity of that approach and moving away from sectarianism in most Christian faith traditions where there's a fair bit of sectarianism.” Participant 4 spent most of the time focusing on the multiple-model approach. I feel this participant really understood the value of what I was trying to do. He stated: “I appreciate what you are trying to do to clarify epistemology and that with clarity about our starting points we can have better relationships with people who differ from our thinking. I think that is something that is necessary in a diverse church and Joshua touched on this, but within world Christianity you're going to have Christians who have different ways of thinking. We are not a single type of person and that's what makes humanity and the world and the church so wonderful. We can be open to what the Spirit is teaching other people and allow that to teach us as well, so I appreciate that you're trying to dig into the machine and to figure out how that works. You identified early on that the question we are asking is what basis do the various models have in Christianity for arriving at their conclusions? To determine this, we need to look at the authoritative truth sources, the relative priority assigned to each of these, and the methods, which is what you are trying to do. Knowing the source, priority and method can enable us to understand ourselves and each other, which will cause less confusion and friction in our work.” “Conversations that we've had in that Facebook group where a lot of the friction is because we're not coming from the same place, and we might end up arguing with each other without any conclusion because we're looking in opposite directions to start with.” “We just end up talking in circles, but that shouldn't keep us from fellowship or from doing ministry together. We need to have clarity about where we misalign.” 90 I think one of the reasons this participant appreciated the multiple model approach was because, as a liberal Christian who often interacts with conservative Christians, he felt misunderstood and misrepresented, which is exactly what this approach was intended to fix. “A common and false caricature of liberal Christians is that we don't care about the Bible or that we don't listen to the Bible. Our approach and understanding of what Scripture are and how it functions is different than fundamentalists.” “I arrived at a different understanding through my source, priority and method than yours. That's where I think the importance of having a process to gain clarity is significant, as well as the humility.” “Taking the time to clarify our positions helps to better understand ourselves and each other. Ultimately, it is for a missiological purpose and for being more united as Christians without having to all believe and do the same thing. It helps us to love each other and others better and to see each other for who we really are and not through our own filters. Theology has a greater potential to divide people because we are so trained in our own silos and traditions, our confessional communities, our schools of thought. We focus so much on internal work that we don't do relational work with each other. You are thinking down the right direction, and I am excited to see what comes out of that.” Even Participant 6 who said, “Now, I do disagree, I would say pretty substantially with some of the paths you take” did not disagree primarily because of the ecumenical openness of the approach, but rather because of his concern that what he called the “archetypal” element risked forcing people into preset patterns and stifling flexibility (I will further comment on this participant’s concerns in Rule 2). On several occasions, various participants indicated areas where they felt I was misrepresenting their position. For example, a graphic (Figure 6 on page 65) was used in my paper with the title “Degrees of Inspiration.” This was an unfortunate choice for a title because what the graphic was trying to depict was the degree to which Scripture was viewed as sufficient for theology. This poorly chosen label caused friction and misunderstanding among several participants. 91 For Participant 6, this graphic was problematic because it seemed to indicate that Fundamentalists were the most faithful to Scripture, when, in fact, their approach was anything but faithful. Participant 1 pointed out: “As a Catholic representing people of the Catholic tradition of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, even of the mainline Protestant traditions, I think they would have a problem with framing inspiration in terms of degrees of inspiration.” He explained: You “need more nuance in terms of what are your authorities, because as a Catholic I would agree with Scripture having 100 percent absolute authority and that if it's in Scripture it's true, period. But in addition to Scripture, I also have the church.” Participant 2, however, found the graphic useful: “The categories were good, like fundamentalism being here and then atheism being here, I really did like that because, for example, if you talk to some fundamentalists, they would say, ‘who cares about Irenaeus, he’s not in Scripture; who cares about the Nicene creed, it's not in Scripture,’ so I like that there was even a distinction between fundamentalism and Protestantism because a Protestant would say we need the Church Fathers to determine Scripture.” Another area where Participant 1 felt I was being unfair was regarding how Protestants relate the Church Fathers to Scripture: “I think a Lutheran or an Anglican would want to push back on that a little bit because what they would say is that they do believe that Scripture alone is the only infallible source and they would say the early church didn't have a charism of infallibility and they would say that they only agree with the early church because they think that the early church is following what the Scripture teaches.” In other words, he wanted me to put things “in terms that they would recognize as being accurate about themselves.” The challenge, of course, is that, to say you ‘only agree with the early church because the early church is following what the Scripture teaches,’ implies that you already know what the Scripture teaches, which, according to this group, you cannot know apart from the early church. 92 This illustrates the difficulty of pointing out inconsistencies with people’s views while still attempting, as much as possible, to put things “in terms that they would recognize as being accurate about themselves.” Another similar area of concern was regarding the sections where I discussed inerrancy. Participant 6 mentioned the need to be familiar with the Chicago Statement and the Lausanne Covenant. He said that, if “you've never read the Chicago statement then you don't know what you're talking about.” Participant 8 also stated: “See article V of the Chicago statement. To not reference this statement about inerrancy and then to assert that inerrantists do not consider the content of this very statement [is bad practice].” He continued: “You haven’t at all engaged with any of the literature in this area . . . . You probably at a minimum should have engaged with McGowan’s book The Inspiration of Scripture.” I am not sure either of these participants realized that the position I was advocating was very different than even the most flexible versions of inerrancy. Nonetheless, through examples like this, it became clear that accurately representing other people’s views is critical to successful interdenominational dialogue. Sometimes, this might need to be done through ongoing conversation or correcting and adjusting our descriptions until everyone feels that they are being fairly represented. Both in an attempt to categorize diverse Christian theological traditions to differentiate among models and to introduce the sola scriptura model, I was doing something others have also attempted. Several participants pointed out that I should engage with these different approaches and explain how my approach is unique. 93 Participant 3, for example, wondered, “how your model is seeking to differentiate epistemologies; how that's different from something that's more well known, like the quadrilateral, would be useful or at least recognizing that there are other models, but they may have their limitations…” This was echoed by Participant 8: “As a thought, why didn’t you mention the Wesleyan Quadrilateral?” The Wesleyan Quadrilateral recognizes four sources of theology: Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. The theological models can be differentiated based on the priority they assign to each of these elements, so in that sense, the quadrilateral does something similar to what I have tried to do. Another participant (#2) wondered regarding movements such as “The New Perspective on Paul” (ex. N. T. Wright) and whether these efforts could be another way to avoid dependence on the Church Fathers for interpretation. Participant 5 pointed out, “What you are getting from the Bible is solid Scripture or it's not. You know Scripture as a final authority, but the entire picture comes from the Bible, including the metaphysics. To some extent, certain versions of biblical theology have been trying to provide an account of biblical religion that is internal to the Bible to provide a basis for systematic theology.” “The whole paradigm of the cosmic conflict is great, and I think you illustrate the utility of that of being able to identify something that gives you the whole biblical view so that everything can fit together and make sense. Within this type of research and writing on biblical theology there are many options, so there could be other things that you might find equally helpful. In putting together that kind of a paradigm you could find more support for it, but I think what you're doing is more oriented toward the traditional goals of systematic theology. Although your methodology is similar to that of previous biblical theologians, you're trying to construct a systematic theological framework rooted in the Bible without an intermediate step between the two.” In essence, he felt that there was an entire discipline of biblical theology that was similar to what I was trying to do. 94 Participant 8 was more direct: “Are you saying that every other expression of biblical theology is wrong since only your metanarrative is correct?” “I would say that to confine your position to only one metanarrative robs all the other biblical metanarratives of their place is Scripture: What about the covenantal perspectives? What about the kingship perspectives from Genesis to Revelation? What about the salvation historical approach that is a part of Luke/Acts? What about the “You shall be my people; I shall be your God” relational approaches from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22? Or Goldsworthy’s approach? Or Hamilton’s approach? Surely a larger respect for all the metanarratives is a better position that does not exclude other biblical material from the big picture. What about Current Issues in Biblical Theology: A New Testament Perspective by Carson?” This participant even pointed me to the work of an Adventist theologian he felt I was contradicting: “It appears to me that you are trying to rewrite Hasel’s papers: [the multiplex approach] avoids the pitfalls of structuring a theology of the OT by means of a center, theme, key concept, or focal point but allows for the various motifs, themes, and concepts to emerge in all their variety and richness without elevating any of these longitudinal perspectives into a single structuring concept, whether it be communion, covenant, promise, kingdom of God, or something else. The multiplex approach allows . . . the theologies of the various OT books and blocks of writings [to] emerge and stand next to each other in all their variety and richness.” While multiple meta-narratives might be found throughout Scripture, in my opinion, there can be only one overarching narrative, as these are mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, all these participants brought attention to the fact that similar work has been done by other theologians or movements within Christianity and we must engage with this work and explain how our approach is different and why. Rule #2 Interfaith/interdenominational dialogue affirms both archetypal and anomalous perspectives through under- standing both historical and current causes of theological divergence. Participant 6 was the one participant who strongly disagreed with my multiple-models approach. Because of his response, I think it is important to understand his reasoning. This 95 participant is a scientist and the only participant who does not have the otherwise required level of theological training. He began as follows: “You identified the problem and I think you identified key components of the conversation correctly; you also identify science as a critical piece of this . . . .” “Because a lot of these conflicts are arising around science.” “Now, I do disagree quite substantially with some of the paths you take.” “Archetypal in that you basically start to define archetypes that bundle together several different things.” (I should mention here that there is nothing about young earth or old earth creationism, Ken Ham, or evolution in my paper, so I’m not sure why he brings these up.) “So, you like the archetype of the young earth creationist and the things that the young earth creationist cares about. You then proceed to simplify all of earth creationism down to the young earth creationist archetype you defined. You have the old earth creationist and once again you have certain characteristics where you simplify everything down from the old earth creationists to that archetype. Then you have a conversation between these archetypes and arrange them according to how much they value Scripture, which might be true of your archetypes. But the problem is that it is not uniformly true about people across those camps. There's far more diversity there, which is a problem when we think that our value of Scripture is strongly connected to those archetypes.” “I think an archetypal approach is not the right way to approach this…inhibiting real progress and real understanding by effectively silencing many voices and I think that's why it's actually quite destructive to use that model. There's a better way to approach this than what you're trying to do . . . discard that archetypal approach and focus instead on something that can actually bring out more bundling ideas that are not necessarily linked . . . consider different dimensions in isolation . . . exceptions to the archetypes . . . the archetypal approach creates a problem rather than handling these things in more isolation and then seeing how it all fits together. I would make a two-dimensional graph, on one side you have your positions on origins… and that's one dimension; then you have another selection which is different positions on inerrancy, like the Chicago statements and the Lausanne Covenant.” Here he provides further insight into his views about the history of theology, inerrancy, and what he feels are better ways to categorize Christian theology: “History is important, but I think there’s a far more proximate or recent history that’s important which is the fundamentalist modernist split. So you know the Reformation was 96 about 500 years ago, and the fundamentalist modernist split was perhaps 150 years ago…in the last 50 years or so there’s been an attempt to synthesize about a more modern-day evangelicalism and there’s a lot of crossover . . . trying to sort out the synthesis between both of them and science is caught up in this and you know Scripture is caught up in this; those are actually the two central things.” “The categories you are using don’t really make much sense. I get what you’re trying to do but I think that it needs to be broken down differently. I think Reformation history is interesting, but the history of fundamentalists and modernists and the Lausanne Covenant are critical for disentangling a lot of this.” “The Lausanne Covenant is one of the foundational documents in modern evangelicalism, signed by both Catholics and Orthodox Christians. It emphasizes who Jesus is, as well as core historical doctrines of our faith and some carefully negotiated statements on inerrancy. If you could affirm that there is broad agreement in the church that doesn’t exist on any other topic that is actually Orthodox Christianity, that’s what it means to be an evangelical Christian right now. [The Lausanne Covenant leaders] had the moral authority to really say this, which really changed the face of evangelicalism in critical ways. A large part of starting to work through these issues is reminding people of some of this history” “The problem isn’t really inerrancy, but more of an untutored rhetorical approach to inerrancy . . . moderate evangelicalism is another helpful framework for helping people understand where they sit in the story. That’s far more important than the Luther versus Catholic divide which has ended up going by the wayside. No one really cares about that anymore because people are going to work with a Catholic and Lutherans will work with Catholics if they’re on the right side of the Lausanne Covenant, so from a praxis point of view that’s actually far more important.” In other words, this participant mostly interacted with these topics at a lay level, his primary concern being the interaction of theology and science, and, because of this, he had his own way of organizing different factions in Christianity. My approach focused on differences at an academic level and was not so much prescriptive as descriptive: these are real distinctions that exist within Christian academia. Moreover, even though I chose to introduce the emergence of these differences historically, they represent actual authority structures in Christianity – Scripture, tradition, magisterium, and other documents and practices – that are not going to change with time. 97 However, his main point – that strict categories run the risk of stifling creativity and the ability to be flexible in theology – is a legitimate point and the idea of multiple models must be introduced in such a way as to allow for anomalous perspectives. A couple of participants felt that I was placing substantial emphasis on epistemological shifts that took place centuries ago to the exclusion of more recent shifts. I have already quoted at length from Participant 6, where he made statements such as the following: “History is important, but I think there’s a far more proximate or recent history that’s important, which is the fundamentalist-modernist split. The Reformation was about 500 years ago, while the fundamentalist modernist split was perhaps 150 years ago.” Participant 3 also made similar comments: “The Age of Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, there are more recent epistemological shifts that might be more relevant” “As far as being individually affected by epistemology, I know for my parent’s baby boomer generation, the cold war was an event that set a certain epistemology of their understanding of how they related to the world that led that to a way of processing knowledge in relation to geopolitical powers. This caused them to read Scripture in a certain way, to ask certain questions of their faith, and to practice their faith in a way that differs from mine. My generation processes epistemological events in relation to globalization and global terror, while my kids will have epistemological effects based on climate and democracy. So, it’s important to have these big ones but this can also cause us to detach a bit from them because the enlightenment and the scientific revolution are such a baseline for us that it’s hard to see how that really affects our epistemology without making a caricature.” “Could you include a few more recent examples for yourself about the things that have shaped you? Events that have caused you to see the world in a certain way or to see things that have shaped your epistemology differently than someone whose one degree removed from you, whether that’s generationally, geographically, culturally, or linguistically?” The lesson to draw from this is that more recent shifts in epistemology are important and should be highlighted. I also should have been clearer in explaining why the historical epistemological shifts are fundamental and, in that sense, transcend history. 98 Rule #3 Interfaith/interdenominational dialogue provides a pathway to move beyond multiple models to a personal faith by requiring sensitivity to the role of culture in theological formation. This point was raised primarily by Participant 2, not as an objection but as a sincere desire to understand how the truth is ultimately discovered if, in academia, we cannot go beyond simultaneously-viable models due to our epistemic limitations. Is it a Kierkegaardian leap of faith? Is it a Calvinist-style determinism where God Himself chooses who is in the right? I thought this question raised a valid concern and was, therefore, something I should address in future versions of my document. I think it is extremely important for Christian academia to stop operating in terms of who is right and who is wrong, and to think instead in terms of a threshold of viability that reduces the tensions among us and allows us to do theology in a healthier context. However, individuals ultimately must decide what particular orientation they will adopt to live their lives. I propose that each person must do one’s best to really understand each of the models on its own terms, to be sincere in one’s quest for truth and open to change if necessary, and to be open to God’s direct guidance. Participants 3, 4, and 5 all raised the issue of “culture” as an important topic that was not adequately addressed in my paper. For example, Participant 3 mentioned, “Common errors that we make epistemologically come from the specific epistemic limitations that come with monocultural myopia or with monolingualism. I hope that this perspective can help you move beyond what you already have from speaking Romanian and the biblical languages.” “[An important element] is contextualization, which is making something culturally appropriate or culturally intelligible.” As an example, he pointed to his experience as a missionary in Africa: 99 “Here in Africa, we live in a much larger world. Africans believe in the efficacy of both curses and blessings because they see the effects of both curses and blessings, which a Western-trained scientist will argue is a placebo effect. This is because the person has a predisposition to believe in the efficacy of a curse or blessing that psychosomatically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that’s the voice of life experience which is contrary to the testimony of Scripture . . . . There is room to talk about the spiritual realities of angels or demons . . . this doesn’t really enter into any of our theological systems because our worldview isn’t big enough to have a place for that.” He went on to explain regarding culture: “[It is important to see] what questions are being asked, because theology is irrelevant unless it’s answering the questions that are being asked. The Council of Nicaea was specifically trying to formulate biblical answers to questions that were being asked in their culture and by their people . . . because if it’s not practical, what’s the point?” “You state that it’s a known fact that Greek philosophy played a key role in early theological development, and of course it did. If it hadn’t, something would have been desperately wrong because that was the context, and those were the questions that were being asked. They had to be addressed or you would have had proselytization rather than actual conversion.” “The Greeks learned how to be Christians in a Greek way, just as the Jews learned to be Christians in a Jewish way, which is repeated throughout history. Chinese people don’t become Romanian in order to become Christian; Romanians don’t become Congolese before they become Christian, and we can bring our Congolese or Chinese or Romanian cultural questions and as much as our epistemology to the questions we ask. This will enable us to predict what the result of technology might look like. You hinted that the goal of your project is if we start with a well-defined epistemology and allow the metaphysical meta-narrative of Scripture lead us in our reading, it might be possible to predict what the branches of the theology tree might look like. However, one of the variables for that equation is the questions that are asked because you know that the questions that you ask of your data will directly affect the answers that your data can give you.” “Different systems of logic that developed in the ancient Sanskritic tradition are as robust as anything that we have from Plato or Aristotle, but dramatically different. In the missiological work that I’ve done, I’ve noticed that classical Buddhism is incredibly logical. It’s not Aristotelian Western logic, but it’s watertight.” “Diverse cultures and linguistic settings can actually have different logical structures. When you understand the deep epistemology beneath, the questions that are asked, then it makes sense.” “In terms of epistemology, what do we do with purported dreams and visions, on the margins of the Christian world? In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, scores and sometimes hundreds of people are coming to Christ because of dreams and visions. They report Jesus appearing to 100 them and talking to them in their local language, data that the post-Enlightenment scientific method doesn’t really know what to do with.” “My epistemology has to do something with a Sola Scriptura approach. There’s that lovely verse in the Old Testament that says, ‘you will hear a voice behind you saying go to the left, go to the right, this is the way walk in it.’ When I read through, not just my favorite chapter of Romans or John, but the whole book from Genesis to Revelation, including all that obscure stuff in the Old Testament, a Sola Scriptura place indicates that my epistemology and my very worldview should be a bit broader than what it was when I was growing up in an American public elementary school.” Participant 5 made similar points regarding culture: “The whole question of the relationship between theology and culture is something that’s really missing in yours . . . now I know you’re focused on epistemology, which relates to my first question about why are we doing theology in the first place? Whatever theology is adopted must be articulated, which means you are operating within a certain culture. A piece is missing if you adopt a fully sola scriptura theology. How do you get out of the Bible into the actual culture that you’re sitting in in order to articulate what you’ve discovered by being isolated inside the text?” “If you are going to communicate to others and ask, what is it that the Bible actually teaches you have to do so in their world view. This means that you must use their philosophical framework to articulate what the Bible actually is saying. You might come out with something different than what you would by starting with the philosophy and imposing that on Scripture; but you might still come out with something that looks very Greek.” “Theology is part of the creation of culture and so in that sense you’re stuck in a circle because you can’t do theology without culture. But now you have changed that culture because you’ve said something that was not said before, even though it was within the paradigm of that particular culture. So, you are always creating culture while you’re doing theology.” “You’re actually transforming their culture because you’re adding something to their discourse.” “That’s the essence of Christian theology and that’s why it’s been so successful as a global religion because it becomes indigenous so quickly everywhere it has spread. This is because of the way the gospel can be re-expressed in cultural terms that make it indigenous to a culture and yet recreate the culture in the process.” “What is beneficial about your approach is that it doesn’t require you to try to move through so many different worldviews.” 101 Culture interacts with theology on two levels: first, it can influence the initial theological development, which I contend is dangerous for a sola scriptura theology. Second, theology needs to be intelligible to different cultures, which I believe can be done without compromising the theological system. Regardless, this is not something I discussed in my paper, but it is something that should be addressed in the context of interdenominational and interfaith dialogue. Rule #4 Interfaith/interdenominational dialogue interacts with different views of the relationship among theology, philosophy, & science and recognizes/clarifies views of special & general revelation in various Christian traditions. Several participants brought up the topics of natural law, natural theology, general and special revelation, epistemic primitives, etc. This is significant both because, if general revelation/natural theology/epistemic primitives exist, we might not be able to justify allowing for multiple models, and because a sola scriptura theology would need to explain its relationship to general revelation. Participant 1 mentioned natural law in a somewhat different context: “As someone who believes that courtroom language of justification, guilt, sin, substitutionary atonement is beneficial at times, in natural law theory, the instruction manual for how to thrive is the other side of the coin, like two sides of one coin.” Participant 3 specifically mentioned, “General revelation here and there or natural theology, natural law, or a pedagogue.” “To what degree does natural revelation exist?” He even alluded to several verses, “Eternity in their hearts, is it talking about the redemptive analogy, is that legitimate or appealing to Romans 1, did God, in fact, leave Himself for a witness in the world?” 102 Participant 8 also posited: “There is a difficult field you need to explore in the area of epistemology. . . . Is a person born tabula rasa—a blank slate—or is there something about being created in the image of God that provides “epistemic primitives” upon which epistemologies are built? Romans 1 and 2 would indicate that there are . . . This is developed in RC and Reformed areas (Bavinck and natural law theologians in both schools).” Because the topic of general revelation is important to interfaith and interdenominational dialogue, a section in the CEMSS document must be dedicated to explaining how different Christian traditions approach the issue of natural theology, how a sola scriptura theology specifically would approach this topic, and how we can develop a neutral starting point from which we can interact when different theological traditions disagree about the nature of general revelation. In my conversations with the eight participants, at least four distinct views of the interaction of theology and science emerged: Participants 2, 3, and 5 seemed to resonate with my view, as articulated in the last section of my paper. Participant 2: “It was very interesting in the section where you discussed the resurrection and how many apologists like to say we have reason to believe without a shadow of doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. However, when you start with this naturalistic metaphysic, no matter how strong the historical claim that Jesus rose from the dead, we still don’t have any evidence that someone rises from the dead. I found that section very interesting because it really depends on the framework that you're using.” “Sean Carroll was arguing about a model based on a naturalistic system and then Craig was arguing about a model based on a theistic system. The debate didn’t go anywhere because they both were saying ‘here is my system; I can make something work based on my system.’” “There’s some sense of ontological meaning behind the universe that science cannot explain, and that meaning is ultimately a metaphysical question.” 103 “There are some correlations between the brain and religious experience. Someone holding a theistic perspective could argue that God, who interacts with the material universe, would have some avenue through the brain, whereas the naturalist could just argue that your brain is creating the experience.” Participant 3: “The data that you collect is only valid if it’s reproducible under controlled laboratory conditions.” “Later in your paper, you talk about a key event within the Christian narrative, the resurrection of Jesus. If it’s miraculous, you cannot reproduce it in a laboratory. If you could reproduce it in a laboratory, it wouldn’t be miraculous; you couldn’t claim that this is the special interceding of God in history.” “The scientific method, which as you point out, has been really fruitful and for what it’s designed to do it does very well, but it has a self-imposed epistemic limitation because it can’t touch what it can’t touch.” Participant 5: “I actually found the way you were handling science really interesting and helpful, and I think charitable to the scientific worldview.” “Addressing it from the philosophy of the science side, which was really helpful because you showed the limitations of what is it that science is actually supposed to do.” “I think the issue for many Christians is that they don’t have a good philosophy of science and don’t know how to navigate it because on one level science is so compelling because it doesn’t threaten my faith so I can be scientifically coherent. But when science does something like paleontology, we suddenly have a big problem with the scientific method. You are addressing that, and I think we need to have a better appreciation for a philosophy of science so that we can see the relationship between putting someone on the moon and dating a dinosaur bone, and to ask what that has to do with what the Bible says about things.” Participant 7 reflected the fundamentalist attitude towards science. He implied that scientists don’t actually believe what is being taught in school about evolution. He also stated that the Bible was not meant to be a book on science, but did not think the Bible allows for death before sin, so clearly there’s a conflict there: 104 “A Darwinian evolutionist will deny it. They believe in evolution but not Darwinian evolution, yet Darwinian evolution is taught in the public schools as truth, not as theory and biologists are not Darwinian evolutionists.” “Stretch Scripture and try to make it more into a scientific textbook and it’s trying to make Scripture something that it is not, and I have problems with that.” “Death before sin, I don’t think so, I don’t think Scripture supports that.” Participant 6, the scientist, felt that science is limited, that science and theology engage different questions, but that where they do overlap, there’s no real conflict. “Science doesn’t actually engage those questions . . . or disprove God. It doesn’t really seek to prove or disprove miracles. It’s silent about those things.” “But that doesn’t mean it’s the whole story. We can make sense of things through science, but science doesn’t really ever give us the whole story. So, if you realize that, then you realize that it hasn’t ruled out God’s involvement and role.” “If you recognize from the outset that it’s not a total view of the world, a science-only worldview is absurd.” “I don’t think the problem is with science. We’ve been really struggling as a church as to how to engage with science in a way that grants it legitimacy without having it take over everything.” “I don’t actually see any conflict with what I’ve seen in science and what I’ve seen in Scripture. . . . I felt it in the past, but that was because I really misunderstood science and I really misunderstood Scripture.” Participants 1 and 8 felt I was giving science too much credit and buying into the naturalist’s narrative: Participant 1: “I think you’re giving a bit too much credit to naturalism and methodological naturalism in terms of the progress of science. Scientific progress has been concomitant with a rise in naturalism, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a causal link. There are scientists who have seen miracles who still will approach scientific investigations in what you might consider methodological naturalism because they’re assuming anything they see they can break down, 105 put it under a microscope, and figure out what’s going on naturally. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t think miracles happen. Some of them have seen miracles.” “There might be some hypothetical possibility for naturalism to explain how things came into being, but scientists could never explain in scientific terms how something could come from nothing even if they had posited some sort of law in the universe that would necessitate it. If you were asked the question of where the law came from… you’d be forced into the position of that’s just the way things are. But to explain scientifically how things came into being when speaking about the entire universe, that’s everything.” Participant 8 was very unhappy with this section of my paper and stopped talking to me after this. I will quote this portion of his email entirely. The are several instances where he quotes from my paper and then responds. In order to preserve the context for his comments, I will include these quotations but place them in italics. “Hi Mike, I read the last couple of pages. Sadly pages 42-44 do not in any way measure up to the previous pages. [You state:] If resurrections such as these could occur today and be replicated under controlled experimental conditions, science would have no problem recognizing that a resurrection did in fact take place. But for a miraculous event that has taken place in the distant past, there is an endless number of naturalistic explanations that will always appear more credible to someone who approaches the question scientifically, even if such an event did actually happen. It might, for example, be explained by claiming that the people were distracted, intoxicated, or hypnotized, it might be that twins/lookalikes were used to replace the dead, it might be that people were paid serious money to propagate a lie or, that the evidence in the official records was planted and none of it, not even the gathering, actually happened. Whatever the natural explanation chosen, it will always be seen as more plausible than what actually happened, from a scientific standpoint. You have acceded to the empiricist model itself as a means of gathering information. You have stated things not even a rigid atheistic scientist would approve of. They know that historical research is not the same as experimental research and would be offended to read this. It is not a good page at all. You have also failed to examine critically the evidence permissible in historical research. One of the world leaders in historical evidence for ancient history at the University of Sydney was Dr. Noel Weeks (my fellow elder), who passed away in March this year. The problem of historical research is that most people do not understand the research evidence. And so, they give in to what is called liberal scholarship. Sadly, liberal scholarship is not scholarship. It is usually just hypotheses without evidence. Their presuppositions inform 106 their findings. Evangelical scholarship in Ancient and Near East religions is much more thorough and reliable. In other words, there is an intrinsic anti-supernatural bias in the scientific process. It is not the process that is at fault but the bias of the investigators. The same evidence presented for one view is also presented for an entirely different view. I have several friends who are archaeologists. They have no problem with the ‘scientific process.’ And they turn out research that supports conservative evangelical views.” And likewise, your next sentence is just not true. The many Christians who hold science, evolution, and critical scholarship in high regard but also take the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event do so only because they momentarily suspend the scientific rigor, they apply in other areas to make an allowance for something that is critical to their belief system. I have several friends who attained the highest positions in atomic research (retired head of British Atomic Energy), Dr. Peter Holland, who would be very offended to read this. Some hold creationist positions while being world leaders in dating research. I think you need to do more research in each of these areas.” These various views regarding the interaction of theology and science exemplify the need for a careful exposition of the topic. The various perspectives must be acknowledged, and a careful explanation must be provided for why there is a need for a different approach. Rule #5 Interfaith/interdenominational dialogue provides alternative systems for people who cannot engage within a multiple-models context. It is the nature of the multiple-models approach that some models will be viewed as viable while others will not. This is necessary to avoid a completely pluralist/relativist outcome. In my paper, I identified at least three models that fall below the viability threshold, and others could be added to this list as well: Fundamentalism, Prophet-based, and Holy Spirit-based. Fundamentalist models are too simplistic to account for the complexity of modern theology. Prophet-based approaches (ex., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) are circular because they 107 need some way to verify the legitimacy of the prophets, but Scripture and tradition are interpreted through the lens of these prophets. Holy Spirit-based models are too subjective since every Christian believes to be under the guidance of the Spirit. Because these models are characterized as unworkable, supporters of these models will likely not appreciate the Multiple-Models approach I am presenting, and a different strategy will need to be tailor-made to interact with such people. This is specifically in reference to Participant 7, who represented the fundamentalist position. Fortunately, he enjoyed talking with me and reading my paper, but this is unlikely to happen in most cases: “Mike, I want to tell you I’ve enjoyed this. I’m retired and I do not get an opportunity to read papers like this like I did when I was teaching. Iron sharpens iron and I have enjoyed this so much and have studied and gone back and read. I’ve got copious notes and even came up with some quotes from Irenaeus that I was going to share. It's such a blessing for me to have the privilege of doing this with you and I hope I was of some benefit to you.” The themes that have been drawn from these eight participants represent patterns that emerged out of thoughtful engagement with the intervention tool and can further refine the tool for future use. Summary In this chapter, I described the implementation, results, and evaluation of the study. I introduced the eight participants and the coding method through which insights were extracted from the conversations with these participants. I then derived five rules and norms of best practices in interfaith/interdenominational dialogue and provided evidence from the conversations in support of each of these rules and norms. 108 CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Introduction The purpose of this project was to test a tool that aids in interdenominational dialogue, one that has the potential to both improve mutual understanding and appreciation between different Christian theological traditions and to facilitate the sharing of the Adventist Christian tradition. The tool presupposes that different traditions make differing metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, which lead to differing rational structures, authority sources, and theological methods, but that, nonetheless, remain internally coherent. These traditions can, therefore, be viewed as distinct theoretical models that surpass the threshold of viability for genuine options for the Christian faith. In other words, they can be viewed as simultaneously viable models. Moreover, in this context where multiple models can coexist, the Adventist Christian model can be more fairly evaluated. For this to work, however, the Adventist model must be reconceptualized, not as a model where Ellen White plays the role of “prima traditionis (Miller 2016),” nor as a subcategory of the magisterial Protestant model (Froom 1971), nor a version of the fundamentalist solo scriptura model (Mathison 2001). Rather, it should be viewed as an attempt at a canonical pure sola scriptura model (Peckham 2016). Summary For my theological reflection, I drew insights from the Jerusalem Council found in Acts 15. Even though not an instance of interdenominational dialogue, the meeting, nonetheless, 109 involved opposing factions in the early church that had fundamentally different visions of what Christianity was intended to be. This council exemplified the spiritual discipline of holy listening (Moschella 2023, 15), where both sides had an opportunity to share, and an effort was made to understand a differing point of view. It exemplified a respect for experience and the movement of the Spirit and demonstrated the normative role of Scripture. Moreover, it showed that it is possible to create space for multiple simultaneous models and for these models to operate with mutual respect. In my literature review I pointed out that multiple efforts have been made to open up lines of dialogue among Christian traditions. Some have attempted to work out the differences among Christians and to develop a synthesis that everyone can affirm. Others have tried to reduce the substance of the Christian perspective to a few critical elements regarding which there can be universal agreement. Still, others have tried to focus attention away from doctrine and to prioritize instead worship, fellowship, missions, or social justice. Finally, others have tried to extend the net of acceptable Christian perspectives and demonstrate that Christians can hold a wide variety of acceptable alternative views without crossing the line into heresy. However, there does not seem to be a wide recognition of the fact that Christians operate with distinct, worldview-level theoretical models and that our epistemic limitations make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to adjudicate between these models definitively. Consequently, there does not seem to be any attempt to view the different Christian traditions as simultaneously viable theoretical structures within the threshold of viability framework, leaving the different traditions in a constant state of competition with one another or in a semantical debate talking past each other. 110 To test out this approach to interdenominational dialogue, I compiled a 66-page single-spaced document (referred to in this dissertation as the CEMSS document) describing the rationale for the multiple-model approach and introducing the Adventist sola scriptura model as a test case. The CEMSS document could be summarized as consisting of five parts. First, the different Christian traditions were classified by epistemology and identified as Fundamentalism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Neo-orthodoxy, and Liberal Protestantism. Second, the threshold of viability framework was introduced with all models except the Fundamentalist model being above this threshold. Third, a differentiation was made between the epistemology of Magisterial Protestantism and of Radical Protestantism, with Magisterial Protestantism not being a true sola scriptura approach and Radical Protestantism attempting a true sola scriptura approach but never successfully developing the methodology. Fourth, such a methodology was introduced as consisting of three elements: limited errancy, biblical metaphysics, and biblical macro narrative. Finally, in the fifth part, the interaction of this true sola scriptura model with modern concerns, such as science and critical scholarship, was discussed. Having articulated all this in the CEMSS document, I then placed an ad in a theology Facebook group asking for individuals with theological training to read the document and discuss it with me over a one-hour recorded Zoom session. The fact that this was taking place at the peak of the COVID pandemic and at a time when online and social media interaction was booming further justified developing a tool as a strategy for intervention for future purposes of constructive dialogue formation. Out of a dozen or more individuals who initially showed interest, eight completed the exercise. Because of the complexity of this project, which involved extensive reading on the part of the participants as well as participation in an hour-long semi-structured interview, a serious 111 limitation was placed on the potential sample size involved and, therefore, the project was conceived and conducted as a form of evaluative qualitative research. The project did call for individuals with advanced theological training, but as the participants volunteered in response to the Facebook ad, those who participated were a somewhat homogeneous group: I did not have any female participants, people from other countries, cultures, languages, ethnic groups, etc. The Zoom conversations were recorded, and the videos were transcribed and mined for trends and patterns that provided a list of five rules and norms that could be incorporated to enhance future attempts at similar dialogue. Conclusion The conversations with the eight participants were positive overall and showed promise that this approach can enhance cross-denominational dialogue. They also provided the opportunity to extract the following rules and norms: Best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue: 1) Signal ecumenical openness and represent others’ views charitably, engaging other approaches for categorizing Christian theology. 2) Affirm both archetypal and anomalous perspectives through understanding both historical and current causes of theological divergence. 3) Provide a pathway to move beyond multiple models to a personal faith by requiring sensitivity to the role of culture in theological formation. 4) Recognize/clarify views of special & general revelation in various Christian traditions: interact with different views of the relations among theology, philosophy, & science. 5) Provide alternative systems for people who cannot engage within a pluralist context. Regarding norm number one (best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue signal ecumenical openness: represents others’ views charitably engaging other approaches for categorizing Christian theology), most of my participants appreciated the ecumenical openness of my approach. It seems that many today are looking for better ways to make sense of the variety of views in Christian theology in a way that leads to mutual understanding and 112 appreciation. This was especially the case with participant number four, who, coming from a liberal perspective, felt that an effort to understand the epistemic assumptions made by each tradition would help improve his theological interactions with more conservative Christians. Even Participant 6, who had serious concerns with the multiple-models approach I was proposing, still saw the value of ecumenical openness. He just felt this could be accomplished through other methods, such as the Lausanne Covenant. It was only Participant 7, coming from a Baptist fundamentalist perspective, which didn’t seem to show interest in such an approach but felt that the fact that his denomination was growing and flourishing was evidence that his own approach was working. However, it became evident through my interactions that an important part of such ecumenical openness is the necessity of representing the views of others faithfully. This became especially clear when it came to a graphic, I used that was poorly labeled as ‘Degrees of Inspiration.’ Several participants had serious problems with this graphic. The Catholic participant even suggested that I remove the graphic altogether. He emphasized that Catholics believe the Scripture is 100% inspired; they just don’t believe it is the only inspired source. Participant 6 also felt that the graphic gave the impression that fundamentalists are the most faithful to Scripture, even though my paper made it abundantly clear this wasn’t the case. For him, the graphic spoke more forcefully than my subsequent explanations. Thus, even a mistake can prove detrimental to charitable dialogue. Another important feature of ecumenical openness that emerged throughout these conversations was the need to engage with existing frameworks for organizing Christian theology. The theologically informed already categorize Christian theology using frameworks such as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral or academic categories such as Biblical Theology, 113 Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, etc. To introduce a new framework for organization, it is best to engage with these other existing frameworks, explain what they each accomplish and what this new framework can contribute. This also demonstrates respect, understanding, and appreciation of alternative points of view. Norm number two: Best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue affirm both archetypal and anomalous perspectives through understanding both historical and current causes of theological divergence. Participant 6, whose background is in science rather than theology, is the one who felt most strongly about the potential of my multiple-models approach to box people into pre-set categories (archetypes). This was concerning to him because his primary interest was to convince conservative Christians to accept the Theory of Evolution and he felt that, according to my schema, such Christians would not be able to do so. But while my paper didn’t actually address the topic of evolution in this capacity, he did raise a legitimate concern regarding the potential of models to become archetypes. Not just this, but he along with other participants brought up the fact that there are other, more recent epistemic trends that should be taken into account, besides the historic trends that I mentioned. However, the reason I chose to focus on specific historical trends like the Reformation and the Enlightenment is that these represent shifts in authority structures for Christian theology, and these structures are limiting in themselves. For example, if someone believes that apostolic authority comes down to us through the Western Church via apostolic succession, they might personally disagree with the official Catholic position on some topic, but unless they can convince the church to call for another Vatican Council and bring about official change, they will ultimately have to decide whether to trust their own judgment or the judgment of the church on 114 that matter. In the same way, a traditional Protestant would need to provide support for a new position using Scripture as interpreted through the lens of the Church Fathers or abandon the Protestant epistemology altogether. But although these authority-driven epistemic categories are self-limiting, this doesn’t mean that there is no room to introduce anomalous positions. For example, Participant 6 himself has written a book that argues for a view of origins where the descendants of Adam and Eve, after sin, interbred with humanoid organisms that were outside the Garden of Eden. He then proceeds to demonstrate scientifically that, if we allow for this, it is entirely possible, genetically speaking, for every modern-day individual to be a descendant of Adam and Eve. Such an approach would allow Protestant Christians to retain their belief in a special creation, in Adam and Eve and in the fall as described in Genesis, and still accept Evolution. And it seems that this approach could be compatible with the Magisterial Protestant epistemology of Scripture plus Early Tradition. Norm number three: Best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue provide a pathway to move beyond multiple models to a personal faith by requiring sensitivity to the role of culture in theological formation. One important question that my multiple-models approach raises, a question which I opted to leave unaddressed in the CEMSS document out of concern for diverting attention from other, more critical topics, is the question of how one chooses the correct model from among multiple viable models. If the tools we use to determine the viability of models lack the capacity to bring us to one correct view, how can we determine what the truth is? Even though I did not provide an answer to this in the document, it is something that should probably be addressed in future iterations. The response I would provide is that we have 115 access to personal knowledge and not just public knowledge. Academic discourse can only utilize the tools of universally accessible public knowledge while, as individuals, we can rely on personal knowledge as well, such as the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We do, however, need to account for the fact that different individuals approach theology from different starting points (i.e. cultures) and that the models must be adapted accordingly. Norm number four: Best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue recognize/clarify views of special & general revelation in various Christian traditions: interact with different views of the relations among theology, philosophy, & science. In my discussion of the role of ontology and epistemology in Christian theology, I neglected to use terminology that is more familiar to many theologians: General and Special Revelation. The Bible does describe some form of general revelation through passages such as, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Ps. 19:1 and “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” Rom. 1:20. Different Christian traditions, however, have different understandings of how general revelation is supposed to work, ranging from Platonic rationalism to Aristotelian natural theology to modern-day science. The Sola Scriptura approach I have presented also has a view of general revelation, but it is based on the work of the Holy Spirit directly speaking to individuals via conscience, nature, miracles, etc. (Canale 2001). Because the topic of general revelation plays an important role in Christian theology, it needs to be directly addressed. Norm number five: Best practices of interfaith/interdenominational dialogue provide alternative systems for people who cannot engage within a pluralist context. 116 It is important to understand that the multiple-models approach does not have universal applicability. Because this approach relies on a threshold of viability and, because, for such a threshold to be meaningful, some epistemic models must be placed below the threshold, the approach is not conducive to conversations with traditions not deemed viable. Participant 7, for example, coming from a fundamentalist perspective, could have found my categorization of his model offensive. My suggestion is that alternative methods be used with such individuals. These five rules and norms derived by looking for trends and patterns in the conversations with the eight participants can be applied to future dialogue attempts to ensure even more productive engagement. Recommendations The results of this project are promising enough to warrant expanding it to a larger and more diverse pilot program. However, my recommendation is that, if this is done, it will be conceived as consisting of two separate components: one where the different models are identified, and the threshold of viability framework is established, and another where the sola scriptura model is introduced. These two components were unavoidably pressed together due to the limitations of my project but could easily be conducted separately as part of a larger pilot program. Additionally, such a pilot program could be an opportunity to improve the project by incorporating the five rules and norms discovered here into the materials shared with the participants. In addition to such a pilot program, the approach developed here can be used in ministerial association settings, academic discussion groups, or in one-on-one conversations with ministers or theologians from other denominations. It can provide a toolset for engagement with the theologically informed in general and can potentially help resolve certain theological 117 conflicts within our own denomination. In the context of discipleship, this approach can establish the baseline of mutual respect necessary for further growth to take place in Christian discourse. 118 APPENDIX A Christian Epistemic Models & Sola Scriptura Imagine looking over a massive parking lot covered in all kinds of vehicles and, out of sheer boredom, trying to come up with different ways to divide up all these vehicles into categories. You could, for example, organize them by size, by color, by body style or, based on numerous other criteria. Some categorizations, none the less, would be more meaningful than others: sorting them based on whether they are cars, trucks or vans will provide more useful information than color would, for example. Sorting by manufacturer, however, would be even more meaningful, because this would allow you to even make predictions about things like the quality, style and performance of the vehicles given the particular goals and challenges of the manufacturer. The same manufacturer might have built sports cars, trucks or vans, and these might appear more similar to their respective counterparts from other manufacturers than to each other. But just like in biology dolphins are grouped with mammals and sharks with fish in spite of the similarities, the manufacturer organizational scheme would be superior here as well. Similarly, there are many different ways to organize the enormous collection of distinct theological perspectives that exists within Christendom. We can arrange them by whether they are classical or modern, by whether they adhere to certain key doctrines or not or, simply, by the denominations that promote them. But again, some organizational schemes are far more effective than others in that they help us wrap our mind around what would otherwise be an extremely confusing theological landscape. I propose, that one of the most meaningful ways to organize Christian theology is by epistemology. Epistemology is the formal study of knowledge and why/whether various beliefs are justifiable(Steup and Neta 2020)6/25/2024 4:18:00 AM. Whatever epistemology a group or individual builds on (whether intentionally or not,) ends up affecting their perspective regarding the ultimate nature of reality (ontology) which in turn affects how they interpret everything else. In this context, the question we are asking is what basis do the various theological models in Christianity have for arriving at their distinctive conclusions? To determine this, we need to look at the authoritative truth sources being used, the relative priority assigned to each of these truth sources and, the methods used to interpret the sources. Some of the most common sources of authority in Christian Theology are, the Scripture, the Church, the Holy Spirit, tradition, experience, philosophy, science, culture, prophets, etc.For example, here is a document put together by the World Council of Churces that discusses the various sources of authority used by different Christian traditions and the ways these sources are used. “Sources of Authority, Volume 2: Contemporary Churches,” World Council of Churches, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/publications/sources-of-authority-volume-2-contemporary-churches. In the image below, you could imagine a computer program that allows you to arrange the sliders to various levels for each truth source, press a button, and then receive a complete theological system built on that particular arrangement. 119 An epistemic organizational scheme for Christian theology gives us tremendous insight into the particular theological turns taken by each tradition as well as the ability to make predictions regarding the future trajectory of any given model. It can tell us what direction any theologian is likely to take and with what model he is likely to end up, given his use of sources. Theological perspectives that might appear similar on the surface can be identified as fundamentally different given the differences in epistemology. Historical Epistemic Models The role of epistemology in Christian Theology becomes even more meaningful when we look at the development of theology historically. Beginning only generations after the death of the apostles and, for many centuries thereafter, the center of authority for Christian theology rested with the Church. ‘Church,’ at this time, did not mean the totality of believers, but only the ordained clergy, specifically, in this case, the Magisterium. Through ecumenical councils or official pronouncements of the Pope, theological questions were decided and conflict was resolved(“Catholic Essentials - The Magisterium,” n.d.). The Church, however, was not the only or even the main source of truth. Most, if not all the different sources of authority listed above played a part in theological development. The role of the Church was to function as the final arbiter between all the other truth sources, determining the correct path to take whenever other truth sources came into conflict with one anotherAmong the more famous examples are the Councils of Nicea (320AD) - Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought, New edition edition (Lion Books, 2013), Location 1186 Kindle. - Constantinople (381AD) - location 1301, etc.. The Old Testament story of Elijah and Elisha helps illustrate the nature of this epistemic approach. When Elijah was taken up by the fiery chariot, his mantle symbolically fell down to 120 Elisha, signifying a passing down of authority (2 Kings 2:9-15). In the same way, it is argued, when Jesus was taken to heaven, He passed His mantle to the apostles who, in turn, passed it on to the next generation of leaders, and then to the next, (Apostolic Succession(“What the Early Church Believed: Apostolic Succession,” n.d.)) unto this day. If we had a yard stick but were unsure about the accuracy of its measurement, we could take it back to the factory and compare it with their yard-stick pattern. If we doubted the accuracy of this pattern as well, we could further compare it to the world’s official yard-stick standard1. But if we had any further doubts, there would be no higher authority we could appeal to, since this official standard is the very definition of yard measurement. A similar problem exists in epistemology: whatever ultimate authority one chooses to go with, there is no higher tribunal to appeal to, if there is disagreement, given we don’t have direct access to the mind of God. The only options are either to submit to this authority even when every fiber of your being tells you something is wrong, or, to switch epistemic models. Time, however, does eventually reveal the consequences of the epistemic choices that we make. It took over a millennium2 before the Protestant Reformation finally brought about a shift in theological authority. Understanding this exact epistemic dilemma, the reformers realized that the only way the Church could be called upon to reform is if they answered to a higher standard. And the standard the reformers chose to enthrone in place of the Church was Scripture. Whereas before this, the authority of the Scriptures was subject to the interpretational authority of the Church, now, the Scripture became its own independent authority that everything else was subject to and judged by: Sola Scriptura3. None the less, as we shall see a bit later, the reformers did not completely follow through with this claim themselves. But unlike the Church, which managed to retain its hold on doctrinal authority for over a millennium (though often through manipulation and forceAs one example, see story of John Huss. Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity, Rev. and updated, 2nd ed (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 415.), the Scripture did not maintain its exalted position for very long. Part of the reason for this was the inability of the reformers to come to a consensus on what the Scripture actually said. From very early on, differences in interpretation led to fragmentation, something that has only increased with the passing of timeAs one of the more extreme examples, 1 Since 1959 it is by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.9144 meters. (“The Yard - Wikipedia,” n.d.) 2 (In general, Wikipedia references are intended as a quick source of information for topics the reader might not be familiar with) The 95 theses were posted by Luther in 1517 “The Reformation - Wikipedia,” n.d., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation. 3 Martin Luther is quoted to have said at the Diet of Worms, “Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.” Perhaps the most notable words spoken in the Reformation, this according to early printed reports, was Luther's reply at Worms when urged to recant. He uttered the memorable lines in German on this day, April 18, 1521, and then, upon request, repeated their gist in Latin for those who did not understand his native tongue. He was sweating, said witnesses. With a victory gesture he slipped out of the room. “Martin Luther’s Most Noble Words - 1501-1600 Church History Timeline,” accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/martin-luthers-most-noble-words-11629925.html. 121 take the case of Niklaus Krell, chief adviser to the Elector Christian I of Saxony, who was executed in 1601 for the crime of introducing Calvinism to Lutheran lands. Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2016), 1372.. And, this inability to come to an interpretational consensus reflected poorly on the claim that Scripture could function as the ultimate theological authority for Christians (if you purchased a complex piece of equipment and the manufacturer’s instruction manual was understood differently by everyone who read it, you would question the value of the manual as well.) An even more important reason for the shift away from Scriptural authority was the subsequent Age of Enlightenment(“Age of Enlightenment” 2020) and the Scientific Revolution(“Scientific Revolution” 2020). The Protestant Reformation succeeded in breaking the hold that the Church up to this point had had on society, as different regions of Europe began to side with the Reformation. Once the Church could no longer control developments in philosophy and science, an intellectual revolution began, side by side with the political revolution. In the world of philosophy, major shifts occurred, with God no longer being the beginning point of all rational thought. Whereas in the past, theology and the knowledge of God were seen as the pinnacle of intellectual development(Eire 2016, 1575), now, intellectual advancement tended towards the secular. At the same time, the modern scientific method was developed, that began to study the world as primarily natural/material. Every attempt was made to eliminate preconceived assumptions and biases and accept as fact only that which could be empirically demonstrated. As this methodology was being modified and extended to fields such as history and archaeology, it began to be applied to Scripture as well. The Bible was therefore dissected and examined like any other ancient book and the conclusion of the ‘higher critics(“Historical Criticism” 2020)’ was that the book was, for the most part, fictitious/mythical, with many of even the historical events described therein having never taken place. When eventually the Theory of Evolution(“Evolution” 2020) was developed, it undermined the authority of Scripture even further. Needless to say, the future of Christianity seemed bleak under these circumstances, so it is not surprising that a new epistemic center for theology was developed at this time. Liberal Christianity(“Liberal Christianity” 2020), as the new brand of Christianity came to be known, once again attempted to shift the center of authority from an objective divine revelation, either through the Church or the Scripture, to the subjective revelation of human experienceOr “Feeling” as Schleiermacher refered to it. Hill, Jonathan. The History of Christian Thought . Lion Hudson. Kindle Edition. Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought, New edition edition (Lion Books, 2013), location 4473 Kindle.. A new theological edifice was built that relied on experience, reason, science and moralityKant reframed religon as centerd in ethics and morality and as such morality began to hold an epistemic role of sorts in Liberal theology. Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought, New edition edition (Lion Books, 2013), location 4448 Kindle.. The attention was drawn to Jesus’ ethical teachings and social activism rather than to miracles, ritual or superstition. The resulting product, however, ended up looking very little like historical Christianity. 122 Finally, two additional movements emerged over the next century, as a reaction to and due to the perceived danger or inadequacy of Liberal Christianity: Fundamentalism(“Fundamentalism” 2020) and Neoorthodoxy(“Neo-Orthodoxy” 2020). Fundamentalism completely rejected modernism, ignoring science and critical scholarship and returning to an extreme form of privately interpreted Sola Scriptura. The inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture was taken presuppositionally and as beyond questioning and any line of evidence offered against this assumption was simply dismissed and/or denounced. Neoorthodoxy, on the other hand, held onto many of the presuppositions of Liberal Christianity but argued that objective divine revelation was still necessary for Christian theology. This revelation however was Christ Himself, and everything else we had, Scripture, Tradition, philosophy, were human attempts to make sense of that revelation. This approach made it possible to accept the findings of science and higher criticism while still maintaining continuity with orthodox Christian thought. (We should briefly mention that some, early in the Reformation, also attempted to move the epistemic center to either the Holy Spirit's direct guidance of the individual or to His indirect guidance via living prophetsSome examples of self-proclaimed prophets during the early years of the reformation are, Nicholas Storch, Thomas Stubner, and Thomas Dreschel. Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2016), 459. - similar to Pentecostalism or groups like the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists today. But we will not take these approaches into account here.) We can summarize the epistemic center for each of the main Christian traditions as follows: 1) Catholicism (and other similar groups) - the Church/Magisterium 2) Protestantism - Scripture - as understood from within the parameters established by the Church Fathers (will return to this shortly) 3) Liberal Christianity - experience, science, reason 4) Fundamentalism - individualized Scriptural inerrancy 5) Neoorthodoxy - The incarnation of Christ as God’s primary revelation alongside science and reason Another way to visualize the differences between these models is based on how they each relate to Scripture (atheism is listed in the graphic below as a point of reference): 123 Looking at all the doctrinal discussions and debates taking place among Christians from an epistemological perspective helps us understand that consensus among the different models is not possible even in theory, because the final tribunal in each of these traditions is different. Ultimately, each faction is building on a distinct foundation, so, if anything is to be debated at all, it should be the epistemic foundations themselves. But it goes even further than this. As I will show later, the academic establishment probably lacks the tools (and likely always will lack the tools) to fully settle even the question of which epistemic foundation is the correct one. The inconclusive philosophico-theological debates of the past several centuries, rather than being the result of ignorance or bias, more likely reveal a limitation of the human knowledge-building apparatus. It is likely that an epistemic handicap exists, in the very fabric of our reality, that is always going to prevent us from fully settling certain questions. So rather than continuing to look at things in terms of right and wrong, we should learn instead to think in terms of ‘Parameters of Viability’ - a set of criteria that, if met by any epistemic model, qualifies that model as viable and allows it to continue its development under the Christian Academy’s good graces, side by side with the other viable models. The pathway will thus be opened for a truce of sorts to finally materialize in Christian Academia that does not rely on the watering-down of theological distinctives, as was the case with previous ecumenical efforts. Before we continue in this vein of thought, however, I need to first introduce one other epistemic model that, although has received much lip-service over the centuries, has less, up to this point, been mostly overlooked. 124 II. The Quest for Sola Scriptura The phrase ‘Sola Scriptura’ has played such a significant role in Protestant self-understanding that it might come as a surprise to find that, even to the early reformers, the phrase did not mean what one might take it to mean at face value. The reformers believed, as their descendants continue to believe to this day, that there are certain external parameters that are needed to interpret the Scripture correctly, parameters such as the early tradition found in the writings of the church fathers. Such parameters were deemed necessary, in order to prevent wild scriptural speculation, but they none the nonetheless constitute an authority that is logically above Scripture. To be fair, then, the Protestant epistemology should be more accurately classified as pseudo-sola-scriptura, and, for the remainder of this paper, the term ‘Sola Scriptura’ will not be used in reference to Protestant Theology. This reliance on the early church fathers in Protestant Theology was something of an after-thought for the reformers, once having realized the potential danger of having a priesthood of all believers each interpreting Scripture in their own unique way. According to Alister McGrath, “The outbreak of the Peasants’ War in 1525 brought home to Luther that this new approach was dangerous and ultimately uncontrollable. If every individual was able to interpret the Bible as he pleased, the outcome could only be anarchy and radical religious individualism4.” In another one of his books McGrath again states, “The magisterial Reformation initially seems to have allowed that every individual had the right to interpret Scripture; but subsequently it became anxious concerning the social and political consequences of this idea. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 appears to have convinced some, such as Luther, that individual believers (especially German peasants) were simply not capable of interpreting Scripture. It is one of the ironies of the Lutheran Reformation that a movement which laid such stress upon the importance of Scripture should subsequently deny its less educated members direct access to that same Scripture, for fear that they might misinterpret it (in other words, reach a different interpretation from that of the magisterial reformers)5.” Another reason for turning to the patristic tradition was the pressure the reformers felt to show some kind of continuity with the Christian Faith. Was Luther the only person to understand the Faith correctly after fifteen centuries of Christianity? Rather, the reformers explained, the Reformation was not a novel idea, but a return to the true and original Christian Faith from which the Medieval Church had departed. 4 (A. McGrath 2009, 10) (iBooks Version) 5 (A. E. McGrath 2011, 110) (Kindle version) 125 “... the mainstream reformers had no difficulty with the notion of a “traditional interpretation of the Bible.” Mainline Protestantism was emphatic that it was not a new church, brought into existence by the happenstances of the sixteenth century. Rather, it represented a reform and renewal of Christianity, implying and affirming continuity with the great historic tradition of Christian faith, stretching back through the patristic era to the apostles themselves(A. E. McGrath 2011, 93).” “The mainline reformers argued that since Protestantism represented the continuation and renewal of apostolic Christianity, it was able to share in the early Christian community’s decisions concerning norms of faith and that community’s identification of heresies and other inauthentic forms of faith. Most Protestants therefore accepted the traditional ecumenical creeds, regarding these as publicly authorized and endorsed interpretations of scripture.(A. McGrath 2009, 378)” Moreover, reliance on the Church Fathers in Scriptural interpretation itself had a strong historical precedent, as the Fathers themselves looked to the traditions inherited from previous generations: “The importance of the idea of tradition first became obvious in a controversy which broke out during the second century. The “Gnostic controversy” centered on a number of questions, including how salvation was to be achieved. (The word “Gnostic” derives from the Greek word gnosis, “knowledge,” and refers to the movement’s belief in certain secret ideas that had to be known in order to secure salvation.) Christian writers found themselves having to deal with some highly unusual and creative interpretations of the Bible. How were they to deal with these? If the Bible was to be regarded as authoritative, was every interpretation of the Bible to be regarded as of equal value? Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130–c.200), one of the church’s greatest theologians, did not think so. The question of how the Bible was to be interpreted was of the greatest importance. Heretics, he argued, interpreted the Bible according to their own taste. Orthodox believers, in contrast, interpreted the Bible in ways that their apostolic authors would have approved. What had been handed down from the apostles through the church was not merely the biblical texts themselves, but a certain way of reading and understanding those texts. Irenaeus’s point was that a continuous stream of Christian teaching, life, and interpretation can be traced from the time of the apostles to his own period. The church is able to point to those who have maintained the teaching of the church, and to certain public standard creeds which set out the main lines of Christian belief. Tradition is thus the guarantor of faithfulness to the original apostolic teaching, a safeguard against the innovations and misrepresentations of biblical texts on the part of the Gnostics. Irenaeus thus understands “tradition” as an authorized way of interpreting certain texts of Scripture, which went back to the time of the apostles themselves. Scripture must be 126 interpreted within the context of the historical continuity of the Christian church.(A. E. McGrath 2011, 92–93)” Therefore, to modern-day Protestant historians, the 'doctrine for which [the reformers] coined the term sola scriptura' was not so much a call to a Scripture-only theology, but rather an attempt to restore the proper 'relationship between Scripture, tradition, and the Church(Mathison, n.d., 15)' that was held by the early church. Of course, as already mentioned, the use of early tradition as an interpretative boundary for Scripture did not prevent the reformers from arriving at conflicting interpretationsSee for example the Luther - Zwingli debate over the Eucharist. Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 4 edition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 181.. And this is understandable, given that tradition is itself a body of text that is being used to interpret another body of text. If Scripture cannot be interpreted correctly apart from the guidance of tradition, what does one use to interpret the church fathers correctly? Not just this, but where does one draw the line historically? At what point in time could the writings of the church fathers no longer be trusted? Or else, what geographical region best reflects the apostolic faith, given there were differences among the church fathers depending on their location as wellThe ongoing debates between Antioch and Alexandria are an example but many more can be offered. See chapter 28, for example, Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity, Rev. and updated, 2nd ed (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 295.. Most importantly, what do we do with the heavy reliance of many of the church fathers on Greek PhilosophyJonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought, New edition edition (Lion Books, 2013). See first chapter.? We will return to these questions briefly. This notion of interpretational orthodoxy6, however, was not shared by all the reformers. A branch of the Protestant Reformation, which is today referred to as the Radical Reformation (ex. Anabaptists), rejected the idea that the church fathers could be trusted in Scriptural interpretation. Rather, they insisted, theology must be based on Scripture alone. And, in this sense, they were the first among the Protestants to call for a true Sola Scriptura epistemology. While mainstream Protestants “...accepted the traditional ecumenical creeds, regarding these as publicly authorized and endorsed interpretations of scripture. This approach was generally not adopted by sixteenth-century Anabaptist communities, which had serious reservations concerning the authenticity of earlier forms of Christianity, even during the patristic period.(A. McGrath 2009, 378–79)” "Anabaptism, ...was critical of the notion of tradition – not necessarily on account of a disregard for the wisdom of the past, but because of a more fundamental belief that the true Christian church had ceased to exist at an early stage (typically, following the conversion of 6 This does not have to be taken as a disregard for the wisdom of previous generations but rather as a desire to go straight to the source of authority rather than to second-hand sources. 127 Constantine in the fourth century). Why pay attention to the theological past, when it was not truly Christian?(A. E. McGrath 2011, 93)" According to McGrath, "...the Reformation program of a return to Scripture ended up being considerably more complex than at first had seemed to be the case. The slogan scriptura sola turned out to mean something rather different from what might have been expected, with the radical Reformation alone conforming to the popular stereotype of the Reformation on this point.(A. E. McGrath 2011, 113)" But even though the Radical Reformers believed in the necessity of a Sola Scriptura Epistemology, they never quite figured out how exactly to accomplish this. Unlike the Magisterial Reformers who quickly established relationships with secular authorities and came under their protection, the Radical reformers ended up being persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike. Their thought leaders did not have the luxury of spending significant chunks of time in study, contemplation and writing on university campuses as the Magisterials did, but often had to move from place to place to avoid capture“Zwingli took a harsher approach. By 1525, under his leadership, the city of Zurich was aggressively harassing those who refused to accept infant baptism. And in 1527, when adult rebaptism was declared a capital crime, the execution of Anabaptist “heretics” became routine. The first of these martyrs, Felix Mantz, was drowned in Lake Zurich, a fitting punishment, according to the Zwinglians, for someone who had abused the waters of baptism. After Mantz, other Anabaptists would bravely endure martyrdom, or flee to safer corners of the map.” Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2016), 1235.. It is understandable then that they were not successful in producing a methodology for Scriptural interpretation that adequately addressed the concerns outlined by both Protestants and Catholics (that a disregard for tradition and orthodoxy leads to private interpretations, individualism and theological chaos(A. E. McGrath 2011, 102)). Finally, we have already mentioned that a bit later in history, there was one other major attempt to return to Sola Scriptura in the Fundamentalist movement. But as usually happens with reactionary movements, Fundamentalism took an extreme and ultimately unsustainable position. First, presuppositional(“Presuppositional Apologetics - Wikipedia,” n.d.) stances are always self-defeating. Taking the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture as a logically unassailable starting premise makes it impossible to differentiate Christianity from other religions where someone does the same thing with another holy book, like the Koran, for example. Second, this extreme position regarding Scripture offers no additional help to the question Protestantism has been wrestling with all along: how does a Sola Scriptura theology avoid disintegrating into individualism and theological chaos? Rather, Fundamentalist groups more or less just inherit their theological perspectives from whatever Protestant tradition they are each the descendants of, further adding their own distinctive spins. The only explanation they could 128 then offer as to why other Fundamentalist groups with an equally high view of Scripture arrive at different conclusions is that such groups must not in truth be faithful to Scripture or the Holy Spirit. In an attempt to defend the Protestant position against both Catholicism and Modern Conservative Evangelicalism, Keith Mathison, professor of systematic theology at Reformation Bible College, describes the combination of factors that have contributed to the move away from the Protestant position. He explains that it was the Radical Reformation view of Scripture that denied 'the authority of tradition in any real sense. The Scriptures were considered not only the sole final and infallible authority, but the only authority whatsoever. The Enlightenment added the philosophical framework in which to comprehend this individualism. The individual reason was elevated to the position of final authority. Appeals to antiquity and tradition of any kind were ridiculed. In the early years of the United States, democratic populism swept the people along in its fervor. The result, is a modern American Evangelicalism which has redefined sola scriptura in terms of secular Enlightenment rationalism and rugged democratic individualism.(Mathison, n.d., 239)' He then further argues that, "Rather than placing the final authority in Scripture as it intends to do, this concept of Scripture places the final authority in the reason and judgment of each individual believer. The result is relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today. A fundamental and self-evident truth that seems to be unconsciously overlooked by proponents of the modern Evangelical version of solo scriptura is that no one is infallible in his interpretation of Scripture. Each of us comes to the Scripture with different presuppositions, blind spots, ignorance of important facts, and, most importantly, sinfulness. Because of this we each read things into Scripture that are not there and miss things in Scripture that are there.(Mathison, n.d., 240)7" Thus Mathison, in his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura, makes the case that the relationship between Scripture, Church and tradition that the reformers attempted to institute, is the same relationship that the early church knew, the ‘Regula Fidei,(Mathison, n.d., 23)’ a relationship that the Roman Catholic Church departed from by the introduction later in history of an independent tradition passed down orally through the Church(Mathison, n.d., 81). The Reformers used the phrase Sola Scriptura in order to differentiate their position from the oral-tradition-based position of the Catholic Church(Mathison, n.d., 86), but then the Radical Reformers and now modern-day Evangelicals have taken the phrase to a literal extreme the Reformers never intended (he introduces the phrase Solo Scriptura to differentiate the Evangelical position from the Protestant Sola Scriptura.Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, n.d., 149. In the footnote Douglas Jones, “Sola, Solo or Prima Scriptura' is referenced and is a possible source for the 7 The author does not seem to realize that these concerns can be applied just as easily to tradition, and, for the Catholic/Orthodox critic, to the Church. 129 Sola/Solo differentiation.) Because this latter approach is unworkable, it has led to the present theological chaos that exists in Evangelicalism and has allowed Catholic and Orthodox apologists to blame the Protestant Sola Scriptura approach for what is clearly the result of the Radical Solo Scriptura(Mathison, n.d., 152). A major challenge to Mathison’s thesis is that serious fragmentation occurred in Protestantism before it could be said that Protestants adopted the Radical Reformation’s view of Scripture. But whether or not his thesis can be sustained, what is clear is that the three attempts at a true Sola Scriptura theology in Christian history have met with failure: one (Protestant,) because it soon after abandoned the idea and instead redefined the phrase to mean something that no longer qualifies as Sola Scriptura and the other two (Radical and Fundamentalist/Conservative Evangelical,) because they have not managed to provide a viable methodology for a purely Biblical theology that does not degenerate into ‘relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos.’ The general impression of many today is that a true Sola Scriptura theology is probably not actually possible. Orthodox theologian Clark Carlton articulates this concern well: “The idea that the Scriptures are self-interpreting is patently absurd. It assumes a degree of absolute objectivity that would make the most ardent positivist cringe with embarrassment.... Texts do not exist in the abstract. Yet, this is exactly what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura assumes: a bare text that somehow imposed its meaning on the reader.Clark Carlton, The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press,1977), 90. As quoted in Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, n.d., 309.” If a Sola Scriptura theology were possible, however, what exactly would be affected by the lack of reliance on the church fathers? The most obvious answer to this question has to do with the influence of Greek Philosophy on Christian Theology. Instinctively, we might be tempted to think that those who lived closest to the apostles must have inherited the purest apostolic faith. For modern church historians, however, it is a known fact that Greek Philosophy played a key role in early theological development. Jonathan Hill’s book The History of Christian Thought, for example, has an entire chapter on Greek Philosophy at the very beginning of the section on the church fathers. Here he writes, Christianity first appeared as a development within Judaism. The first issues that the early Christians had to deal with were those concerning the new faith’s relations to its parent religion – the most famous example being the circumcision controversy described in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As Christianity grew, however, it had to come to terms with religious and intellectual movements in the wider world – something it has been doing ever since. During those first centuries, theologians had to evaluate these rival movements and try to establish the place of their own faith in relation to them. Should they bitterly oppose anything non-Christian, or try to take over the best ideas of their rivals? 130 The movements that had most influence on early Christianity were the schools of Greek philosophy. Today, philosophy is an academic discipline understood only by specialists. In ancient times, however, it was much broader. Philosophy dealt with issues we would normally associate today with science: the nature of the world, what it is made of, where it came from. It also dealt with what we would consider religious issues: the existence and nature of God, the nature of the soul, life after death, suffering and salvation. (Hill 2013, 158) Hill continues his section on the church fathers by showing that someone who lived as early (born c. 100 AD) and was as significant as Justin Martyr, was not only deeply immersed in Platonic thought prior to his conversion but continued to believe that the two perspectives overlapped even after his conversion. Justin’s “account of Christianity [drew] heavily on his Platonic past.(Hill 2013, 225)” The same can be said about many of the other church fathers that followed Martyr, with a few exceptions. Most importantly, the church father that most influenced the Protestant Reformation, Augustine, “...did not cease to be a Neoplatonist when he became a Christian.(Hill 2013, 1604)” Most theologians today don’t see a problem with the church fathers relying on Greek Philosophy, because they assume the reason philosophy was embraced to begin with is precisely because it lined up with the Christian perspective. As the fathers themselves argued, “philosophy was given to the Greeks just as the Law was given to the Jews. Both have the purpose of leading to the ultimate truth, now revealed in Christ. The classical philosophers were to the Greeks what the prophets were to the Hebrews. With the Jews, God has established the covenant of the Law; with the Greeks, that of philosophy.(González 2010, 87)” The only way the Hellenization Hypothesis is problematic, some would argue, is if the Fall Narrative (the claim that the ancient church capitulated to its environment and abandoned important tenets of the Christian message,) can be demonstrated as correct(Matz and Thornhill 2019a, 72–73). In other words, trust in the Fathers should be a type of default, with the burden of proof being on those who would disagree - it is always convenient to establish one’s position by claiming the default. In the end, however, we’re working with just two possibilities: either Greek Philosophy does align with Christianity, in which case Protestantism is on the right track, or it does not, in which case, using the early church fathers as a hermeneutical lens on Scripture becomes problematic. These are two equally probable and simultaneously valid hypotheses, neither of which can claim default status. The world has had five hundred years to see the results of a Protestant theology influenced by Greek Philosophy via early tradition. What it has not yet seen, in 2000 years of Christian history, is a theology truly based on the Bible alone. Now obviously, if such a thing is not possible, there isn’t much we can do about it. But if a purely Sola Scriptura theology is possible, it really ought to be taken as an embarrassment to Christianity that, in its entire history, no one has of yet developed a theology actually based on its central text. Even if, as some might argue, a Sola Scriptura Theology is no longer viable in the modern age, everyone with even a basic knowledge of Christian theology should be aware that it exists and have a basic understand of how it works, whether or not they ultimately agree with it. 131 What I will argue in the following sections is that there is in fact a pathway8 to a truly Sola Scriptura Theology that resolves many of the challenges faced by previous attempts to develop such a theology. Further, I will also explain how such an approach can still be viable even when taking into account modern concerns, such as Critical Scholarship and the Theory of Evolution. Thus, as we consider the various Christian Epistemic Models and how they all fit into the wider philosophico-theological landscape, there is yet another important model that we need to take into consideration. 8 This is not actually an original approach but has been developed in relative obscurity for over a century and a half now by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. If the approach is viable, however, the source is irrelevant, and the approach belongs to all Christians. 132 III. A Viable Sola Scriptura Methodology Hermeneutical methodologies can get very complex, but, for the purposes of this paper, we need to only wrap our minds around the main elements of a Bible-only methodology. Let us begin with the previously quoted statement by Clark Carlton: “The idea that the Scriptures are self-interpreting is patently absurd. It assumes a degree of absolute objectivity that would make the most ardent positivist cringe with embarrassment.... Texts do not exist in the abstract. Yet, this is exactly what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura assumes: a bare text that somehow imposed its meaning on the reader.Clark Carlton, The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press,1977), 90. As quoted in Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, n.d., 309.” At first glance, the sentiment expressed in this passage might seem self-evident. But is that truly the case? Are bare texts really incapable of imposing their meaning on readers? If several people at a public library were asked to read a series of random books, would an authorized interpreter always be needed to ensure they all arrive at similar interpretations? In reality, there are thousands of books at any given library that describe fantastical worlds and out of the ordinary events and characters that an eight-year-old would have no problem deciphering without additional help. It is precisely because of the incredible meaning-carrying capacity of ‘bare text’ that society still relies heavily on written content. The better question to ask is, what kind of text was the Scripture intended to be? Was it meant to be treated as a stand-alone document or not, given that not all text is intentionally constructed this way? Consider a professor teaching a class and passing out reading material meant to supplement the lectures. In such a case, going over this reading would not be the equivalent of attending the class, since we would miss out on the class lectures that tied everything together. On the other hand, if the professor later decided to write a book on the subject, both the reading and the lecture content could be included such that reading the book would in fact parallel attending the class. An important reason why it is sometimes assumed that Scripture functions more like the supplemental reading described above rather than a comprehensive book, is because Scripture is a collection of distinct writings. It was authored by many different people, from different parts of the world, over an extended period of time9. But again, is that really a defeater for the stand-alone hypothesis? Couldn’t God direct the overall process such that the contributions of different authors would still produce a complete revelation in the end? Couldn’t Scripture be similar to a mosaic10, where a person standing really close sees only a collection of random shapes and colors, but, when they step back, the random shapes come together into a beautiful portrait? In reality, it would be close to impossible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt either that Scripture was intended as a stand-alone or that it wasn’t. But again, this is not the kind of thing 9 Around 40 authors, written over a 1000-year period, from Israel, Babylon, different places throughout Europe, etc. 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic 133 where one position can claim default status11 but rather we are simply dealing with two distinct, equally legitimate hypotheses that each needs to be properly developed and evaluated, so we must consider the stand-alone option as well12. This would mean, however, that we take the time to think through what makes stand-alone documents different. Before we delve into this any deeper, however, there are certain assumptions often taken for granted in discussions about Sola Scriptura that are not, in fact, a necessary component of such a theology. These assumptions revolve around the question of Biblical Inerrancy. How much error could be allowed for in Scripture before it is no longer possible for God’s message to adequately come across? For many fundamentalists, the answer is, none whatsoever. After all, who would then decide which parts are correct and which are not13? But is that really the case? Imagine taking the instruction manual for a complicated piece of equipment and running it through a computer program that introduces random errors. There is a certain percentage of error that would not significantly prevent people from being able to properly handle their equipment. In other words, what matters is not how we can discern which parts of Scripture are correct and which are not. What matters is whether God feels the essential message could still come across in spite of some errors. Thus, there is a spectrum of possible views that still qualify as Sola Scriptura, because they maintain that all that is necessary for a complete theological system can be derived from Scripture alone, whether it contains errors or not. In the picture used previously I intentionally did not place the Sola Scriptura threshold immediately after Fundamentalism to show that there is some degree of error that can be accommodated by a Sola Scriptura theology. 11 See previous discussion on misappropriating default status 12 There is a tendency for people to think in terms of either/or’s when instead, they should become comfortable with multiple simultaneous approaches. 13 https://library.dts.edu/Pages/TL/Special/ICBI_1.pdf 134 In reality, there are deeper philosophical reasons why some Christians hold to a strict inerrantist view when it comes to revelation/inspiration: they have a certain understanding of God’s nature and of how God interacts with humanity (we will return to this point shortly.) Because of this, they assume that the divine message was miraculously imprinted on the prophet’s psycheThomas, Summa Theologica, Complete English ed (Allen, Tex: Christian Classics, 1981). See for example II-II.171.2, and, that the prophet was further under divine control as he committed that message to writing. Having established, however, that there is room for limited errancy in a Sola Scriptura theology, we must now consider how things would work if the revelation/inspiration process was not so tightly controlled. What if, instead of miraculously imprinting divine revelation on the mind, God communicated with His selected messengers through the same cognitive processes we use to communicate with each other? If so, then the content of revelation would not have always been perfectly transferred from the divine mind to the scriptural pages, but each prophet would have to first comprehend the message for himself and then relate that message in writing as best he could14, keeping his own audience in mind. As is always the case with human beings, the potential for error and misunderstanding would be there, and the final product would not always end up exactly as God intended15. None the less, there are other ways besides inerrancy that God could still control the process so that a Sola Scriptura theology would still be workable. First, He could carefully select His messengers/prophets16. Second, He could intervene with direct correction when necessary (ex. Nathan, David and the temple17.) Third, He could oversee which of the prophet’s writings are preserved and become canonical18. And finally, if any error remained, it could be buttressed by the later contributions of future prophets, such that the correct message would still come across in the end. A limited-errancy approach, therefore, while still falling within the parameters of Sola Scriptura, implies that a much heavier reliance on the entirety of Scripture is needed in theological development. Scriptural authority would, in this situation, have a canonical basisSee John Peckham, Canonical Theology: The Biblical Canon, Sola Scriptura, and Theological Method (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016). for an introduction to Canonical Theology: the accuracy of the message would be found in the complete collection of sacred writings rather than in the individual parts. Whatever one might conclude from studying any given passage, that conclusion would have to remain provisional until the rest of Scripture has been consulted on the topic. This is not substantially different from scientists collecting large quantities of data, knowing that, while individual data points might be 14 See for example Dan. 8:27 where it seems the prophet did not understand his own vision. 15 The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) and the passages regarding divorce (Matt. 19:8) are examples where Jesus seems to imply that past revelation had been misunderstood. 16 Ex. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jer. 1:5 17 2Sam. 7:1-5 18 List of books mentioned in the Bible that did not make it into the canon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible 135 anomalous, the data trend as a whole can be trusted19. Sola Scriptura could then properly be extended to Sola Tota Scriptura. The implications of this approach go beyond mere hermeneutics to the presuppositions embedded in the exegetical methodology itself. Since the Protestant Reformation, and later, with the introduction of the historical-critical method, attempts have been made (often justifiably so) to rid the Biblical text of any external presuppositions superimposed on it by past interpreters and to try to get as close as possible to the authorial intent“Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word meaning “to interpret.” Traditionally it has meant “that science which delineates principles or methods for interpreting an individual author’s meaning.” Osborne, Grant R.. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (p. 21). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. Grant, R. O. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Rev. and expanded, 2nd ed (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 21.. Even assumptions regarding any Holy Spirit-inspired continuity between segments of Scripture were eventually dismissed and passages were instead isolated and evaluated on their own merits. While it was understood that careful exegesis has its limitations and could only partially decipher the intent of someone who lived thousands of years ago using only fragments of text, the approach was still considered superior to others that ‘arbitrarily’ superimposed meaning on the text. Even Fundamentalist scholars who do believe in a divinely inspired Scripture, have adopted this isolationist approach to exegesis because it lines up with their view of Scriptural inerrancy. If one’s view of revelation/inspiration assumes that the divine message was imprinted on the prophet’s mind, then getting as close as possible to authorial intent means getting as close as possible to the divine intent. If, however, because of limited-errancy, understanding the intention of the human author does not necessarily mean understanding the message as God intended, then Scriptural passages cannot be exegeted in isolation. A hermeneutical spiral(Osborne 2006) of sorts must be instituted between the parts and the whole, between any given passage and the rest of Scripture. Exegetes and systematicians must finally work out their differences. Another implication of accounting for human participation and frailty in the revelation/inspiration process is that the historicity of Scripture takes on additional importance as well. Each prophet lived at a certain time in history and attempted to relay God’s message to a contemporary audience, an audience conditioned by the pre-understandings derived from the messages of previous prophets but obviously unaware yet of any revelation to be given at a future time. In an inerrancy scenario, we might assume revelation transcends time and space as God imprints on the mind timeless truths applicable to all generations. If revelation must pass through the human cognitive processes, however, historical conditioning takes on an important role as well. To understand the overall message of Scripture, then, we must follow the storyline as it unfolds in its own chronological sequence, since otherwise, we risk reading our own assumptions into the text. We need to interpret each segment of Scripture considering what the author and his audience understood about the present topic from previous revelation. Thus, even the New Testament, which many Christians treat as the hermeneutical lens for the Old, must first be 19 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination 136 understood through the context set up by the Old Testament; an Old-New-Old sequence of interpretation. In summary, more than one perspective regarding the nature of Scripture is possible within the Sola Scriptura spectrum and each carries its own distinct methodological implications. The Limited-Errancy approach relies more heavily on the entirety of the canon20, on the chronology of revelation, and, on balancing localized exegesis with the canonically-derived system. Given that inerrantist advocates of Sola Scriptura have failed this far in producing a viable methodology - one that does not degenerate into ‘relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos’ - we will here focus exclusively on the limited-errancy perspective, as we begin to consider the requirements for approaching Scripture as a stand-alone document. We mentioned earlier that written material can be intentionally designed either to function as a supplement to other sources of information or as an independent source of information. Independent content, however, requires the presence of additional elements that aid in interpretation. If the subject matter is relatively familiar to the target audience, the primary need of a stand-alone text is a unifying thread that ties all the components together into a coherent whole (the way the class lectures in the analogy above tied the supplemental reading together). If the audience comes from different backgrounds, or, if the content itself is unconventional in some way, it is additionally necessary to bring the audience into the same frame of reference the content is written in. The simplest way to illustrate how this works is with an extreme example, a form of highly unusual content that was none the less understood and appreciated across cultures: the popular sci-fi movie, The Matrix (if not familiar with the movie see here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix) In the Matrix, the story starts with a young lady who is about to be apprehended by the police. She suddenly jumps up and floats in the air for several seconds, after which she starts running sideways on the walls single-handedly defeating the team of officers. Someone watching this with no prior expectation, immediately and instinctively goes through a process of interpretative re-calibration. The events just witnessed in the movie clearly defy normal physics and must therefore depict some type of alternative reality: maybe this story takes place in a magical realm, like Harry Potter, or in a superhero reality, like DC comics, or maybe in an exaggerated reality, like the old Chinese Kung Fu movies. We make these types of assumptions because we need some frame of reference within which to interpret what is taking place. But, if our assumptions are mistaken, they affect our ability to understand what is going on. Of course, not long after, the 'curtain' is pulled back for us, and we are informed as to what kind of reality this is (spoiler alert:) that the world the movie characters operate in is not the real world but is rather an extremely realistic computer simulation. It is then further explained that the reason people exist in a computer simulation is because ‘in the early 21st century, there was a 20 A common objection here is that there is uncertainty regarding which books belong in the Biblical canon as well. This objection, however, gives a false impression that there are many potential versions of the canon under consideration, when in fact the vast majority of Christians have been working with just two, which are nearly identical with the exception of a few disputed books. If it could be demonstrated that the inclusion or exclusion of these books significantly alters the data set for interpretation, two versions of the Sola Scriptura theology can be produced. This will still be a significant improvement over the hundreds of versions under the Protestant and Liberal epistemologies and even the church-based epistemology has a Catholic and Orthodox version at least. 137 war between humans and intelligent machines. When humans blocked the machines' access to solar energy, the machines harvested the humans' bioelectric power, keeping them pacified in the Matrix, a shared simulated reality modeled after the world as it existed at the end of the 20th century.21’ Because of the unusual nature of the Matrix film, the audience must be provided with a frame of reference within which to understand what is taking place. This frame of reference, or, what in philosophical jargon we would call the 'metaphysics22' of the movie, is the fact that the events are occurring within a computer simulation. Besides this frame of reference, we are also given the backstory regarding the war between humans and machines, which forms the unifying thread or the macro-narrative that ties all the movie components together into a coherent whole. Once the metaphysics and macro-narrative are clarified, the rest of the story comes together. For Scripture to function as a stand-alone document, a similar approach has to be followed in interpretation: we need to approach it with the expectation that it will provide its own metaphysics, that this metaphysics will then form the basis for its macro-narrative, which, in turn, will function as the hermeneutical lens for everything else. The metaphysics/macro-narrative then, will hold interpretative priority: the interpretative process would have to start by deciphering these elements first, so that they can then be used to understand the rest of Scripture. Intentionally or unintentionally bringing extra-biblical metaphysical assumptions to Scripture, on the other hand, would affect the macro-narrative we end up with, and a macro-narrative mismatch would then create interpretative discrepancies no matter how careful our subsequent exegesis. The fragmentation that occurred in Protestantism is precisely the kind of thing we would expect to see if such a mismatch took place, given its reliance on early tradition. It is in this way that Greek Philosophy, with its distinct metaphysical assumptions, could have derailed Christian theology. If today, we did a broad survey of metaphysical perspectives worldwide, we would find dozens if not hundreds of distinct views23. Throughout history, however, the educated class at any given time usually held to only one metaphysical perspective and, additionally, was convinced that this view was the only rational option. For the earlier church fathers, for example, the generally accepted philosophical paradigm was PlatonismJonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought: The Fascinating Story of the Great Christian Thinkers and How They Helped Shape the World as We Know It Today (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003), location 173 Kindle. According to Hill, in the early years, the philosophical perspective “most significant to Christianity was Platonism.”. And, we have already mentioned that this has left its impact on early theological development. A couple of centuries later, it was Neo-Platonism, which left its influence on Augustine and othersJonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought: The 21 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix 22 By ‘metaphysics’ we are referring to what ultimate reality is like beyond what can be perceived through the senses or through empirical inquiry. For a broader understanding of the field of metaphysics see, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/ 23 See a long list of views under the Metaphysical Theories section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_metaphysics 138 Fascinating Story of the Great Christian Thinkers and How They Helped Shape the World as We Know It Today (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003), location 1604 Kindle. Augustine, “...did not cease to be a Neoplatonist when he became a Christian.”. A millennium later, Christian theology was adapted to Aristotelianism by Aquinas“Theologians disagreed over how to approach the new philosophy. Some condemned Aristotle, since some of his ideas conflicted with Christian doctrine. The prime example was his claim that the world had no beginning, which contradicted the doctrine of creation. Indeed in 1215, Aristotle’s scientific works were banned at the University of Paris – although his logical works were compulsory texts. Attempts were made to impose the ban elsewhere too. But other theologians enthusiastically defended Aristotle without reservation, some appealing to Averroes’s idea of double truth to claim that it is a religious truth that the world is created and at the same time a philosophical truth that it is not. Other theologians, unhappy with this kind of doublethink, sought various kinds of middle ways. Bonaventure represents one approach. He was critical of Aristotle but was prepared to use his ideas cautiously where they seemed helpful. But ultimately the most fruitful approach was that pioneered by Albert the Great and perfected by Thomas Aquinas. For these thinkers, Aristotle was the supreme secular authority. They refer to him simply as ‘the Philosopher’, as if none other existed. Where he contradicts Christian revelation, they accept that he is wrong, for no secular authority can be infallible. But for the most part, and in all purely philosophical or scientific matters, Aristotle is the authority. This attitude was highly controversial in Aquinas’s lifetime. However, after his death and canonization, the rapid acceptance of Aristotle by everyone else was almost inevitable. Ironically, the exaggerated reverence for his ideas meant that there was little creative philosophy of the kind that Aristotle himself had done. It would be two centuries before the Renaissance would pull Aristotle off his medieval pedestal, as thinkers like Hobbes and Descartes redirected the course of philosophy, and scientists like Galileo demolished his physics. Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought: The Fascinating Story of the Great Christian Thinkers and How They Helped Shape the World as We Know It Today (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 2971.. Far more drastic philosophical changes took place after the Enlightenment, with corresponding updates in theology24. And finally, now that modern science has taken over much of the territory previously under the jurisdiction of Philosophy“Philosophy dealt with issues we would normally associate today with science: the nature of the world, what it is made of, where it came from. It also dealt with what we would consider religious issues: the existence and nature of God, the nature of the soul, life after death, suffering and salvation.” Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought: The Fascinating Story of the Great Christian Thinkers and How They Helped Shape the World as We Know It Today (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003)., another theological synthesis is taking place yet again. At every stage, it would have been intellectually irresponsible to deny the factual reliability of each of these metaphysical views, and therefore, a theological synthesis was deemed necessary. What this has meant, however, is the continual revision of Christian theology to adapt to an ever-changing philosophical landscape. Some Catholics and conservative Protestants might reject the notion of a metaphysical mismatch in Christian theology due to what they view as a tag-team endorsement of sorts for a particular metaphysical perspective. The Greek philosophers reasoned their way to a set of conclusions and, the Church Fathers or the Church Magisterium spiritually discerned that the philosophers were correct, so the dual endorsement establishes the correct metaphysics which is then 24 See previous 139 appropriately superimposed on Scripture. The alternative, of course, is that the fathers were just as immersed in their contemporary metaphysical perspectives as most modern thinkers are in their own, and they mistakenly assumed these were compatible with Christianity. The fact that so many intelligent individuals over the millennia have come up with distinct and often contradictory metaphysical perspectives25 should rather indicate an epistemic limitation of human reason. While this topic will be addressed more fully in the final section, consider that human beings have only two avenues to knowledge: our reason and our senses26. Given that metaphysics transcends our spacio-temporal reality, it is beyond the reach of our senses (empirical inquiry/science) by definition. Our reason, though capable of going beyond our senses, does so by relying on postulates; we might build highly elaborate metaphysical constructs on the back of these postulates but the postulates themselves might or might not be correct. We therefore don't have a way of actually knowing for a fact what ultimate reality is like apart from divine revelation. And, if this revelation came through Scripture, we should not superimpose our metaphysical speculations on Scripture, given this will automatically function as a primary hermeneutical lens. Rather, we should allow Scripture to develop its own metaphysics. In summary, a possible pathway towards a truly Sola Scriptura theology that does not degenerate into ‘relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos’ consists of having a limited-errancy view of revelation-inspiration (and its subsequent methodological implications), of deciphering first the Scripture's own metaphysics, of then determining the macro-narrative based on this metaphysics, and, lastly, of using this Biblical-metaphysics-based macro-narrative as the hermeneutical framework for everything else. This approach is no different than what we normally use to interpret other stand-alone documents and is therefore not something external arbitrarily superimposed on Scripture. There is one final consideration to bring up as we work through the implications of a Sola Scriptura theology: self-authentication. Even if we could show that a purely Sola Scriptura theology is possible and that it is internally coherent, this does not automatically mean that the theology is correct. Internally coherent systems could still be just made up. Other epistemic models, appeal to extra-biblical factors such as philosophy and natural theology for authentication of the Christian Faith. How would a Biblical system authenticate itself? Moreover, how would such a system relate to the other epistemic models? Whatever the answer to these questions, the place to find it is, again, Scripture. For now, however, we need to look deeper into the specifics of how other metaphysical systems differ from Scripture. 25 Again, See a long list of views under the Metaphysical Theories section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_metaphysics 26 See on history of debate between rationalists and empiricists: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ 140 IV. Greek Metaphysics & Sola Scriptura Maybe this happened to you: you got on an elevator, waited for the doors to close, and, after a few seconds of waiting, became impatient and pressed the floor button several times, only to see the doors close immediately. The next time around, when again the doors didn’t close, you remembered what you did last time and spam-pressed the button again. The doors, of course, were set on a timer and only coincidentally closed when you pressed the button. But instinctively, you assumed some type of causation27. The human mind is prone to look for patterns28 and to assume cause and effect relationships, whether they exist or not. There is a billion-dollar supplement industry built on people’s tendency to associate ailments with potential cures29. It is not difficult to understand then, why from the earliest stages of human civilization, people tried to make sense of the world around them by postulating all kinds of natural and supernatural relationships. Wearing some object or reciting certain words, brought good luck or protected from danger. If it rained in the right seasons, the gods were pleased; if it flooded, they were angry. If the right rituals were performed or sacrifices offered, their anger might be placated. These speculations regarding the nature of reality acquired by one generation were embellished and passed on to the next. As human society grew more complex, they became formalized and an integral part of community life. Those who rose to prominence as religious leaders became influential members of society, often on par with the civic leaders. Time, money and energy were spent, critical decisions were made, wars were fought, because of baseless beliefs and superstitions regarding both the natural and supernatural. It was in such a context that the Greek Philosophers came on the scene: the intellectual raw materials they had to work with were extremely limited and, there was a specific set of problems that their work was a reaction to. The philosophers began by questioning(Marías and Marías 1967, 38) the validity of many of these deeply held beliefs: what we might call today a skepticist approach to epistemology. They attempted to then reconstruct a worldview based on what they deemed as purely rational principles. Rather than many gods often in conflict with one another, they envisioned one ultimate Source. Rather than the gods being slightly better versions of us, they imagined a God that was altogether different and infinitely superior. Rather than gods with human-like characteristics, lusting after human females or becoming jealous or angry for no reason, they pictured a God entirely beyond emotion, pain or pleasure, completely unaffected by anything outside Himself30. 27 https://www.google.com/amp/s/youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/amp/ 28 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns/ 29 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/most-dietary-supplements-dont-do-anything-why-do-we-spend-35-billion-a-year-on-them/2020/01/24/947d2970-3d62-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html%3foutputType=amp 30 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_theism 141 In observing the natural world, they recognized that everything around them deteriorated with time. They concluded from this that some ideal pattern (form(Marías and Marías 1967, 43)) must exist from which material things begin their deterioration process. Reality, therefore, must be dualistic: there must be a spiritual reality where the forms/ideals exist and of which the material world is but a shadowAnalogy of the Cave - Marías and Marías, History of Philosophy, 48.. Time brings change and change, deterioration, therefore the ideal world is perfect, changeless and timeless while our world imperfect and transient. This perspective led to a pessimistic view of matter, change and time. However, because as human beings, we were able to contemplate the spiritual reality of the forms, this meant that a part of us transcended the material/temporal as well. Our consciousness had a spiritual basis, but it was entrapped in a material shell(Marías and Marías 1967, 47). Given the raw materials the Greek Philosophers had to work with, it is impressive what they were able to accomplish. But we must also ask ourselves if they would still hold these views, were they alive today. As compelling as their arguments might have appeared to the ancients, it is mostly those from a Christian background that still find them compelling today, due to the views having been immortalized in Christian tradition31. And this is peculiar, given these ideas are regarded by many Christians as a form of general revelation or natural theology intended to build bridges with those unfamiliar with the Faith. But how does the metaphysical perspective of the Greeks compare with the metaphysics of Scripture? The primary point of conflict is the philosophical God-construct that eventually came to be known as ‘Classical Theism:’ a God that is an ‘absolutely metaphysically ultimate being’ that is ‘simple, and having such attributes as immutability, impassibility, and timelessness.32’ To the ancients, and to many modern Christian philosopher-theologians, this God-construct is an undeniable philosophical necessity and must be treated as an axiom that precedes Scriptural interpretation. Such forget that human reason, because of its limited reach into the realm of metaphysics, cannot logically make definitive pronouncements about divine nature. At times, the necessity of the classical God-construct is pressed on the grounds that it is the only way to inoculate the Christian Faith against clearly heretical alternative constructs such as 31 Tradition is a kind of thing that has the capacity to freeze time - like a photograph that captures reality as it is at one given point and does not update itself as that reality changes with time. Tradition is the tendency of each generation to view in high regard the perspective of the previous generation. This is both a natural phenomenon, because each generation grows up immersed in the intellectual milieu of the preceding generation - and is thus heavily indoctrinated prior to reaching maturity and the ability to question one’s own beliefs - but also because Christianity encourages us to respect our elders, especially those seem to be closest to God. It tells us that there is safety in the multitude of witnesses, and, with time, the number of ‘witnesses’ that have past exceeds those still alive. Can so many faithful Christians that lived before us have been wrong? Thus, it is very likely that, apart from Christian tradition, western philosophy would have proceeded very differently over the centuries. But tradition immortalized the version of philosophy that existed during the first few centuries AD. The fall of Western Rome had much to do with this as well. The Roman Empire had provided a certain degree of stability to society, a stability that is necessary for philosophical reflection to thrive. After Rome’s collapse, the state of civilization degenerated back into a more primitive form of existence that was not as conducive to intellectual pursuits. The lack of a central leadership structure at this time created a power vacuum that was filled by the papacy. And, under the control of the church, philosophical reflection was fenced in by tradition for almost a millennium when the writings of Aristotel were rediscovered. 32 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_theism 142 Pan/Panentheism, Polytheism, Process Theism, Deism, etc., when in fact all these constructs, including Classical Theism, are equally speculative. If we commit to a Sola Scriptura epistemology, however, then we must restrict ourselves to only the Scriptural data, by definition. And this data does not line up with Classical Theism. The God of the Bible, for example, is not represented as existing in timelessness, the way the Greeks pictured Him, but rather as eternally-temporal. God is therefore historical and personal and is capable of walking in the garden with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening (Gen. 3:8), of having dinner with Abraham (Gen. 18), of speaking face to face with Moses (Ex 33:11), as a man speaks with his friend, and of having a house built so that He might dwell among His people (Ex. 25:8). To the classical theist, all these stories represent anthropomorphisms. To draw such a conclusion under the Sola Scriptura paradigm, however, requires that we would have stronger Biblical data for a different picture of God in contrast to which these examples could be classified as allegorical. We don’t. The vast majority of Scriptural passages represent God as a participant in human history, though not restricted by it (2 Pet. 3:8). The same can be said regarding the notion of divine impassibility. When Jesus spoke of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11) or of the hen wanting to gather her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34), He was revealing the heart of God far beyond the boundaries of the incarnation. And no, this does not make God subject to His own emotions, as classical theists might claim, given He freely chooses to care for His creatures(Matz and Thornhill 2019b). The imaginary ontological chasm between the timeless/spiritual and the temporal/material has created many other problems for Christian theology. The Bible depicts this world as having been created ‘very good (Gen 1:31).’ Yes, it has been marred by sin, and this explains many of the ‘negative’ features observed by the philosophers, but as originally created, the world was exactly the way God intended it to be. Time and change were not problems to be corrected in the afterlife, but integral features of God’s perfect original creation; features that were intended to be permanent from the start and that will remain even after the eschaton (Rev 21,22). Not just this, but the material world was created to be the ‘real world,’ not some ‘shadow’ of another ultimate reality (Plato,) not even the material shell for an immaterial substance/essence (Aristotle,) but reality itself. If there is any dualism in Scripture, it is between the Creator and all of creation, not between a material realm and a spiritual realm33. Human beings themselves were created physical beings intended to exist in a physical world that they would treat with the respect one affords the ultimate medium of their existence (as opposed to assuming true reality was in some spiritual realm and physical reality didn’t ultimately matter very much.) Most Christians today, either because of a priori philosophical commitments or because of tradition-derived pre-understandings, are convinced that the Bible itself teaches substance dualism. This is further reinforced by the tendency to begin the study of Scripture with the New Testament, neglecting the hermeneutical role the Old Testament was intended to play in New 33 Yes, the Bible does mention spirit beings like angels, without clearly explaining their essence in contrast with ours. But this is nothing like the dualistic reality postulated by the Greeks. 143 Testament interpretation. And the metaphysical bias often present in many of the popular Bible translations does not help either34. When trying to understand the Biblical position, however, the question to ask is which perspective must function as the default? We exist in a physical reality and cannot perceive with our senses that a spiritual counterpart also exists. It would not be necessary for Scripture to make a strong case for a primarily physical existence, because that is the existence we are already familiar with. An existence that is primarily spiritual/immaterial, however, would need to be clearly articulated. If we follow the Biblical narrative in its chronological sequence, however, the kind of evidence we would expect to see, if the Bible promoted a dualistic reality, is conspicuously missing. The picture developed through the Old Testament then sheds significant light on key New Testament passages we might interpret differently in isolation35. Logical incongruities with Scriptural teachings regarding heaven and hell, the resurrection, the New Earth, etc. dissolve when we allow Scripture to function within its own metaphysics36. The Christian understanding of ethics and morality has been influenced by Greek Philosophy as well. To the Greeks, God was perceived as the ‘Form of the Good.(Marías and Marías 1967, 52)’ This seemingly resolved the dilemma of whether something is good because God wills it, which would make morality arbitrary, or else God wills it because it is good, which would mean that a moral standard exists that is superior to God Himself37. Also known as Divine Command Theory38, this perspective impacted Christian soteriology in that it led to a courtroom-style frame of reference for understanding the gospel. Instead, morality is actually a function of the nature of created reality and the divine commands are not so much a set of rules externally imposed on creation as they are an instruction manual informing us how to corporately thrive within creation. Because something of a vicious circle always exists between epistemology and ontology, even how we relate to the process of Revelation/Inspiration is affected by whether we believe a timeless God imprints information on a prophet’s immortal soul or a historical God communicates with prophets via their cognitive faculties. The former view is more likely to assume Scriptural inerrancy while the latter, some degree of errancy. The influence of classical theism on Christian theology thus also explains why so many Christians conflate inerrancy with Sola Scriptura39. As mentioned in the previous section, however, it was by influencing the macro-narrative selection that Greek Philosophy most impacted Scriptural interpretation. Unlike the Matrix movie, the Bible does not explicitly articulate its own macro-narrative. But it does provide 34 For example, the ‘gave up the ghost’ expression in the KJV https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=%22gave+up+the+ghost%22&qs_version=9 35 Ex. Slam-dunk proof texts that actually fit just as well without dualistic presuppositions because Christ is the next conscious thought: Absent from the body/present with the lord 2Cor. 5:8, depart to be with Christ Phil 1:23, etc. 36 Ex. Hell must be eternal torment because the soul is immortal, a person goes to heaven when they die in their immaterial state but then gets a body again at the resurrection, etc. 37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma 38 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory 39 Thomas, Summa Theologica, Complete English ed (Allen, Tex: Christian Classics, 1981). See for example II-II.171.2 144 sufficient clues for us to piece this macro-narrative together ourselves, as long as our extra-Biblical metaphysical commitments don’t predispose us in a different direction. While Scripture categorically rejects any form of cosmic dualism40, it paints a far more authentic conflict between the forces of good and evil than Classical Theism would allow for41. The God of the Bible is engaged in a real war with evil and must go to great lengths to gain the victory in the end, in spite of the fact that He is all powerful. The reason for this is the free will of created beings, God’s desire to maintain the love and trust of these beings, and His desire to also ensure that sin doesn’t rise again a second time, once the conflict is finally brought to a close. A brief articulation of the Cosmic Conflict Macro-Narrative can be made in three steps: A. The Epicurean Trilemma The question of why a good God would allow evil to exist makes it possible for us to simplify the argument into a bare-bones logical syllogism: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? One possible solution to this trilemma is free will. A loving, all-powerful God could allow evil to exist if it is freely chosen by an intelligent agent. It would not be meaningful to endow created intelligences with the capacity for free will, if they would then be prevented from exercising it. This solution, however, is not sufficient to account for the particular circumstances humanity is in, because it would not explain the suffering of the innocent: those who did not freely choose evil. A modified free-will response however does work: an all-powerful, loving God can allow evil to exist, temporarily, if this ensures that non-omniscient, free-willed beings will thereby become convinced never to choose evil again for the rest of eternity. In other words, the present human condition can serve as an inoculation process against sin and evil, making it possible to retain free-will and yet permanently secure the universe against evil rising again. B. A Two-Layered Conflict 40 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism#General 41 The God-concept of classical Theism is too exalted for God to ever be perceived as actively participating in a battle with evil forces in any real sense, even if He could (which He cannot being timeless.) Moreover, since God is viewed as the form of the good, there would be no basis of evaluation as to who is right in the conflict, given that would amount to God being judged by Himself. 145 While there are multiple possible scenarios for how such a temporary demonstration of the effects of evil might have unfolded, the scenario revealed in Scripture is one where God is being opposed by one of His most exalted creations turned evil. Lucifer, now Satan, and his followers, have rebelled first, and then brought evil to our world as well. What this means is that the conflict transcends humanity (hence ‘Cosmic,) and involves other created intelligent beings besides ourselves that might possibly benefit from this demonstration, whether or not directly involved in it (ex. unfallen angels, etc. Rev. 12:7-9). C. The Rules of Engagement Because both God and his nemesis are powerful beings that have the capacity to skew the results of this demonstration, certain rules of engagement must exist that ensure the process is fair overall. There are limitations to what both God and Satan are allowed to do, and God subjects Himself to these limitations so that all intelligent agents either participating in or observing this demonstration can see the fairness of the process and draw their conclusions. The Bible does not fully reveal the nature of these rules, but their existence helps explain the apparent silence or absence of God without resorting to imaginary ontological partitions between God and humanity. (It is beyond the scope of this paper to present a thorough scholarly articulation and defense of the Cosmic Conflict construct, but such a work already exists (Peckham 2018).) A historical survey of Christian theology reveals numerous attempts to superimpose a macro-narrative on Scripture. And a Sola Scriptura theology does require that a macro-narrative be identified that can logically connect the parts. When the majority of these frameworks are contrasted with the biblical data, however, it becomes evident that large segments of Scripture must be reinterpreted to force-fit the frames on top of the data. We have already mentioned the Platonic/Aristotelian construct (Classical Theism) that treats instances of divine-human interaction in Scripture as allegorical because of the supposed ontological separation between the timeless God and material/temporal man. Another potential macro-narrative, the Calvinistic ‘Divine Sovereignty’ motif, requires the adoption of determinism as an underlying presupposition, which is extremely difficult to maintain when the Biblical narrative is allowed to develop in its chronological sequence. Other, less popular constructs, like Manichaean Cosmic Dualism42 with two equal but opposing forces or Process Theism43 where God evolves alongside creation, are already acknowledge by most Christians as incompatible with Scripture. Any other potential macro-narrative contrasted with the Biblical data tends to have similar challenges. The Cosmic Conflict macro-narrative, on the other hand, seamlessly accommodates all the biblical data. It can account for both God’s imminence and transcendence, it can account for His action and inaction, it can provide a pathway for making sense of difficult Biblical segments, like the Canaanite genocide, and can reconcile different aspects of God’s character as portrayed throughout Scripture. The challenge with the Cosmic Conflict construct has not been its compatibility with Scripture, but rather, its incongruity with a priori philosophical commitments. 42 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism#General 43 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/ 146 It is for this reason that it has not played a hermeneutical role in patristic theological development and, given the epistemic weight of tradition, in either Catholic or Protestant theology. A Sola Scriptura theology, therefore, requires an epistemic disconnect from tradition and orthodoxy, and then a careful reconstruction of Christian theology from within a biblically-derived hermeneutical framework. The Gospel and Ethics The Protestant Reformation elevated not only patristic tradition but also the gospel itself to the level of a hermeneutical lens for Scripture, sometimes even to the point where entire books were deemed unworthy of being part of the canon based on their perceived incompatibility with the gospelHill, The History of Christian Thought, location 3777 Kindle version.. The gospel, however, functions as a solution to a problem, and the nature of that solution is entirely dependent on the nature of the problem. Thus, macro-narratives play an important role here as well, and, without accounting for this, the gospel-centric hermeneutic is itself yet another departure from Sola Scriptura. Instead, the process of deriving the Biblical gospel must be informed by the correct macro-narrative, after which the gospel can, as a component of that macro-narrative (problem+solution,) play its hermeneutical role. For nearly its entire history, Protestant soteriology has essentially been tripartite/tripartisan, and, as such, the Gospel-Centric Hermeneutic has contributed to the fragmentation in Protestantism. The division has revolved around the question of free will, whether a complete rejection of it (Calvinism,) a minimal acceptance of it (Once Saved Always Saved,) or full acceptance (Arminianism.44) And appeals to tradition have not helped to resolve this conflict, given all three can find representation in the Church Fathers. Approaching the question through the lens of the Bible’s macro-narrative, however, immediately resolves the issue, given the entire conflict is taking place for the very purpose of preserving free will. Several other idiosyncrasies in Protestant soteriology are resolved as well once other elements of Greek Philosophy are eliminated. When one’s ethical framework begins with God as the ‘Form of the Good,’ i.e. the unquestioned ultimate authority in matters of morality, then salvation revolves around finding a legal loophole that preserves the integrity of God’s judicial system while at the same time pardoning the sinner. If, however, morality is not just an absolute independent standard but a descriptor of how creation functions, then the central issue is whether non-omniscient free-willed beings can come to appreciate the nature of the reality they exist in and conform to its existential parameters for their own good and the good of those around them, making possible an eternal, harmonious coexistence. Those who persist in rebellion will continue to harm themselves and others thus rendering the entire demonstration pointless, given they will eventually reintroduce sin into the universe. Salvation, therefore, must transcend the mere forgiveness of sin, and bring about a transformation of the individual as well (a transformation of the whole person existing in the real world, not just the immaterial portion of an individual existing in a dualistic reality.) 44 Most evangelicals are familiar with the Calvinism-Arminianism debates but don’t often notice that there are actually three sides to these debates because ‘once saved always saved’ proponents (usually Baptists) do believe in free will but only until the person accepts Christ. 147 An even greater challenge comes from the fact that Protestant soteriology was birthed out of an existential crisis(A. E. McGrath 1993, 119) and there is therefore extreme sensitivity when it comes to the question of the assurance of salvation. Any incorporation of transformation/sanctification, or even free will in general, into the salvation equation, raises immediate red flags for many theologians. Biblical assurance, however, has a covenantal basis: we can have assurance not because of the removal or inexistence of free will but because God has committed Himself to our salvation. We did not choose to be born here and play a part in this Cosmic Demonstration, we came into the world with a fallen nature, we picked up numerous bad habits and character flaws before we were even old enough to know what we were doing, we live in an evil world full of temptation and, moreover, we have powerful angelic entities working against us. Salvation, therefore, is offered to us as a gift. God takes upon Himself the responsibility of making us the kind of people He needs us to be, and yet He must do this without overriding our freedom to choose. He therefore enters into a covenant with us the moment we make a conscious decision to accept Him and remains faithful to His end of that covenant for the entire duration of our life on earth. We don’t lose and regain our salvation every time we do something wrong; the free gift remains ours irrespective of any factor on our part. When our time on earth is over, however, God has to determine what our ultimate life decision has been and whether we chose to remain Christ’s or not. This is not something that can be forced upon us, but, as long as it is what we want, it cannot be taken from us45. This covenantal approach to salvation is modeled for us in the Old Testament Sanctuary service as it revolved around the yearly harvest cycle. When an individual brought an offering to the temple, or, when the Passover was offered in the Spring, the blood of the sacrifice was collected and sprinkled on the inner Sanctuary curtain, thus signifying that the case of the individual was now God’s responsibility. It was only at the completion of the ceremonial year and of the harvest cycle, during the Day of Atonement in the Fall (cr. Matt. 13:30), that the Sanctuary was cleansed, signifying that God only enters the judgment process when the harvest is ripe, before which He focuses His attention entirely on our salvation. The Sanctuary Model of Salvation reconciles free will and assurance given that our will cannot be taken from us, and God never refuses to save someone who desires to be His. We can thus always come boldly to the throne of grace knowing He ever lives to make intercession for us and that no one can pluck us out of His hand or separate us from His love. It is quite possible that if Luther and Calvin had not relied so heavily on tradition, Augustine, and classical philosophy, and, if they had seen how the Old Testament sanctuary clarified the gospel, Protestantism would have avoided five hundred years of Calvinism-Arminianism-OSAS debates. Sola Scriptura and Self-Authentication We must now return to the question raised at the end of the previous section: how does a theological model that does not rely on external philosophical systems avoid fideism? Every theological system, to deserve our attention, must authenticate itself in some way. 45 This is essentially the Arminian position 148 Picture a mushroom for a second. The body of the mushroom is not suspended in midair but needs a leg to stand on. In the same way, philosophico-theological paradigms cannot exist in a vacuum but must be grounded in some way; arguments must be produced that differentiate these paradigms from purely fabricated fables. Because of this, the various approaches to Christian theology have appealed to a variety of arguments over the centuries whether philosophical, scientific, moral, existential, etc. What is conspicuous about most of these arguments, however, is that it was not Scripture that inspired their use. Does this mean, then, that Scripture does not care about authenticating faith? The religion of the Bible does not portray itself as a religion that must be accepted entirely on faith. Moses, for example, gave Pharaoh many clear signs of God’s majesty while Elijah called down fire from heaven to demonstrate that Yahweh rather than Baal was God. Christ's own ministry was confirmed by miracles, healings and by His resurrection. These out-of-the-ordinary events, however, were the exception rather than the norm, even throughout Biblical history. What then was the primary basis on which the Biblical characters built their faith? As we allow the Biblical narrative to unfold, we come to recognize that Biblical faith is consistently authenticated through God's foreknowledge and control of human history. At every stage in the narrative's progression, faith is placed first on divine promises and predictions that have already materialized and, second, on testable predictions that are being fulfilled as the narrative unfolds: ‘I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.’ (John 14:29) Whether Abraham having a son in his old age, or Joseph’s dream interpretations becoming reality, whether Moses delivering Israel at the appointed time and Joshua conquering Canaan, or Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel anticipating the exile and return to Canaan, God had a schedule for history and documented that schedule ahead of time through His prophets. The epistemic weight that Scripture places on prophecy comes forcefully across as Jesus turns to Scripture to prove His resurrection before actually revealing that He was alive: 'beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.’ (Luke 24:27) The historical-prophetic nature of Biblical faith lines up well with Scripture’s temporal metaphysics. Moreover, within the Cosmic Conflict Macro-Narrative, there is an expectation of a divine timetable superimposed on history, given the entire purpose of this demonstration is meant to address the sin problem as swiftly as possible and return the universe to its original pristine condition. All throughout Scripture, there is an anticipation of an approaching Eschaton that is consistently reignited by specific historical landmarks that manifest with the passing of time. It would be unreasonable to assume that this historical-prophetic element would no longer be a part the Biblical Faith after the time of the Apostles. Thus, believers during the Old and New Testament Eras were not taught complex philosophical arguments by which to establish the epistemic foundations of their faith, but instead anchored their faith in the consistent historical fulfillment of God’s promises. An important difference between them and us, however, is that for us the Canon of Scripture has been closed for two millennia now, meaning, that for the same means of authentication to be applicable to us, some 149 portions of Scripture must have been intended for audiences in the distant future. A Sola Scriptura theology then, must be a Historicist theology. For those not familiar, there are multiple schools of interpretation among Christians when it comes to Biblical prophecy, specifically the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Preterism, applies the fulfillment of these prophecies to the distant past, often to Ancient Greece and Rome. Futurism, another school of interpretation, applies their fulfillment to the future, usually after the Rapture. Idealism, on the other hand, interprets the prophecies apart from any connection to history, as carrying only spiritual significance. None of these approaches allow prophecy to play the corroborating role for Biblical Faith that it played during Bible times. With Preterism, the prophecies were fulfilled so long ago that they could have been written after the fact. With Futurism, they have not yet been fulfilled, and therefore cannot be verified. And, of course, Idealism has no expectation of fulfillment. It is only through the Historicist school of interpretation, where the Biblical prophecies are fulfilled throughout history (from Biblical times until today) and continue to make testable predictions for the future, that Biblical Faith is authenticated. There is a long tradition of Historicist application of prophecy throughout Christian history and especially after the Protestant Reformation(Froom 1982). Today, however, the Historicist approach has been abandoned by most Christians. Part of the reason for this is its susceptibility to speculation and abuse. If someone is wrong about the interpretation of a prophetic event in the past (Preterism), an event in the post-Rapture future (Futurism) or a spiritual application of prophecy (Idealism,) it does not generally create too many problems overall. Being mistaken about events that are expected to happen in a matter of months or years, however, can cause and often has caused, major disruption and disappointment for the Church. But, while this concern is understandable, it is not a necessary byproduct of the Historicist approach. The Biblical Prophecies foretell future events in broad strokes: they describe major geo-political trends covering extended periods of time. And in regards to this, they provide sufficient independent lines of evidence based on which to develop a sound interpretation. Occasionally, additional details are provided that lack sufficient clues to decipher accurately, probably because these details are not intended to be understood until after the events have already taken place. And it is usually regarding these obscure details that speculation takes place and people come up with their fancy theories. All this could be avoided, however, if we concentrate our attention on the parts that are clear and straight forward. Because we would veer too far off track to get into the details of prophecy here, more information is provided in Appendix A. But several key elements should be mentioned even now. The apocalyptic prophecies seem to be organized in a ‘repeat and enlarge’ structure that spans all of history from the prophet’s time until the eschaton. Just like Joseph’s dreams in Genesis had the same general message repeated multiple times using different symbols, the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are not independent of one another or sequential but function in parallel. When in Algebra we want to solve two unknowns, we need to have two different equations. In the same way, the prophecies can be understood by finding the corresponding symbols in each prophecy and then applying the interpretative clues across the board. 150 There is a tendency with many to quickly dismiss the idea that Bible prophecy can function as any form of authentication for Scripture. An objective approach to prophetic interpretation does exist, however. And, when applied, the broad outline of events that these prophecies describe does line up with history. Moreover, specific predictions are made about what we can expect in the future as well, so the possibility to further test these predictions does exist. For now, the main point to take from this section is that prophecy is how Scripture intended to authenticate itself, if allowed to provide its own credentials. Conclusion So far in this essay we have introduced an organizational scheme that helps make sense of what would otherwise be a very confusing theological landscape, and have presented a solution to challenges that had previously kept an important epistemic model unworkable. In the next section, we will dig deeper into epistemology and even the philosophy of science to explain how the Sola Scriptura model can engage with modern concerns (critical scholarship, evolution, etc.) and, why it is that we will probably always lack the ability to conclusively settle on just one of the epistemic models and must therefore learn to work with multiple models simultaneously. Isolating epistemology as the root element responsible for giving each Christian theoretical model its peculiar flavor, not only helps to properly identify and sort the various traditions, but also explains why each tradition took the twists and turns it did in its theological development. We should, for example, be able to take someone who is completely new to the world of theology, explain to them the epistemic presuppositions of any one of these models, and then set them loose and watch them replicate the same theological trajectory originally followed by those who first developed that model. Other organizational schemes would not likely be able to provide the same level of predictive insight. As mentioned, an immediate benefit of approaching theology from an epistemic perspective is that it can cut short the endless debates continually taking place between different factions within the Christian Community. There is no point in arguing about a particular theological position or the correct interpretation of some Biblical passage if, in the end, each party will appeal to a different final arbiter of truth. Moreover, since even the question of which final arbiter of truth is the correct one might be unanswerable, a truce of sorts between the factions might finally materialize. The various models mentioned in this essay, at least, have already proven themselves to have incredible staying power, in spite of all the evidence other models have tried to produce against them46. Such an approach would not mean that every imaginable model would be deemed acceptable. Two of the models mentioned this far, for example, would have a difficult time qualifying as legitimate. First, the fundamentalist (Solo Scriptura) approach lacks a coherent methodology. The approach boils down to every individual either developing his/her own private interpretation 46 Although it does seem that, for the past few decades, the Protestant Model is hemorrhaging academic talent at an alarming rate into either the Neoorthodox or the Fundamentalist camps or even the Catholic/Orthodox camps. The main reason for this seems to be science. I believe I might have a solution to this in the next installment of the essay. 151 of Scripture or falling back on whatever denominational tradition they most resonate with. Besides this, we also briefly mentioned the modern-prophet-based epistemology that some groups rely on, which sometimes treats the prophet as the authorized interpreter of Scripture while at the same time trying to prove the divine calling of that prophet with the Scripture. Since this approach is circular, it cannot qualify as a viable model either. Also, any approach that attempts to make the Holy Spirit’s internal witness the final arbiter cannot work as this cannot be quantified in an academic setting and everyone can claim the witness of the Spirit. At the same time, these parameters of viability cannot be too stringent, or else none of the current models would qualify, given they all have their respective problems. All one has to do is quickly survey the critiques the other models have raised against each one of the individual models to get a sense of what those problems might be. The problems, however, are seldom the same for all models; some models are strong in one area while others are in a different area. One way to think about how this works is to imagine a physical structure, like a house or a building. Most physical structures tend to have certain weight-bearing components that are critical to the structure's integrity. You might be able to knock down entire walls and even rearrange rooms without serious consequences, but, if the weight-bearing components are knocked down, the entire building can collapse. Similarly, theoretical models, like the epistemic models described in this paper, all have their distinct weight-bearing components. In many cases, you can take a critique aimed at one model, re-purpose it to address the weight-bearing components in a different model, and it will prove just as devastating. For this reason, when any given model is being evaluated, it should not be evaluated against some ideal/perfect standard but based on how it measures up against the other models. A set of parameters of viability should first be articulated, all the epistemic models that fall within these parameters should be identified, and the model being evaluated should then be judged based on whether it could meet the criteria of viability to a similar degree the other models do. Of course, unlike with other fields of study where people must come to terms with multiple competing perspectives at the same time, in theology, one's entire existence is often tied to one particular worldview. It can be incredibly disruptive to have to change one's understanding of reality after having spent a lifetime viewing things a certain way and organizing one's life around that view. There are thus instinctive and imperceptible psychological barriers in place that often prevent us from giving other alternatives due consideration47. Moreover, there is an inherent circularity to ontology and epistemology such that, any particular understanding of reality tends to make a person more inclined to resonate with the corresponding epistemic perspective that leads to that understanding of reality (all the while perceiving other epistemic perspectives as less plausible.) The epistemic models themselves function as zero-sum games: if there is any legitimacy to the Protestant perspective, for example, then it brings into serious question the Catholic perspective. Or, if there is any legitimacy to the Sola Scriptura model described in this essay, both the Catholic and the Protestant perspectives are brought into question. It is understandable then that there would be tremendous competition between the models in general and that specifically regarding the Sola Scriptura model, some might find it advantageous to continue to deny the possible existence of such a model even if the model proves viable. 47 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias 152 None the less, there is also great benefit to having these different epistemic models in place. It allows us to better understand our own position as we contrast it with other possible perspectives. We are each greatly benefiting from the fact that hundreds/thousands of deep thinkers have for decades/centuries painstakingly worked through the logical implications of each of these models. We can also see the practical real-life fruit of people taking these perspectives to heart and living their lives accordingly. Whatever model we ultimately choose to go with, we don't have to make that choice in ignorance but are privileged to have access to a tremendous amount of useful data upon which to base our decision. Except for the Sola Scriptura Model, which is. While all the other epistemic models mentioned in this essay have had their place within the corporate Christian consciousness, at least at the academic level, the Sola Scriptura model outlined here, has not. And this might not matter so much, if this was some fringe approach, but it is the one approach that is successfully built entirely on Christianity's central text. If this approach is viable, everyone should be aware that it exists and have some basic understanding of how it works. Is then the Sola Scriptura approach a viable model? This far, I have tried to address the question of whether the Sola Scriptura methodology is coherent, whether it can provide sufficient hermeneutical controls to avoid disintegrating into ‘relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos’ and, lastly, whether it can establish sufficient points of contact with historical Christianity while at the same time diverging from orthodox Christian thought in significant ways. How this model interacts with science and critical scholarship will be addressed in the next section. The argument here can be broken down into three parts: First, I have argued that there are multiple possible presuppositions about the nature of Scripture, revelation and inspiration which coincide with one's metaphysical presuppositions. Sola Scriptura does not have to mean inerrancy, as there is some degree of limited errancy that would still allow for theology to be based on the Bible alone, as long as the totality of the Biblical data is relied upon (it is only if extra-biblical data is introduced that the process would no longer qualify as Sola Scriptura.) This might appear as an arbitrary process to some, but the methodology is actually well understood in disciplines that depend on accurate data analysis. Such a process, unlike inerrancy-based methodologies, will avoid much of the difficulty that arises when attempting to build a theology on conflicting exegetical conclusions48. Second, I have argued that Scripture can function as a stand-alone document if treated the way we treat all stand-alone content: we begin the interpretative process by deciphering first the metaphysics and macronarrative and then using these as the interpretative framework for everything else. Third, I have argued that when the above principles are applied, the clearest point of conflict between Scripture and orthodox Christian theology is the Greek metaphysical construct known 48 This is often the challenge with Inerrancy based approaches. The best exegesis of one segment of Scripture often contradicts the exegesis of another segment, making things difficult to reconcile given both/all passages are assumed to say exactly what God intended. This often results in the creation of a canon within a canon. 153 as Classical Theism with its inherent implications for cosmology, anthropology, etc. Without these external metaphysical parameters superimposed on Scripture we can then place every imaginable macronarrative on the table, contrast it with the Scriptural data, and objectively evaluate to what degree Scripture has to be reinterpreted to make each macronarrative fit. I have argued that the Cosmic Conflict macronarrative is a much better fit than all the major competing alternatives. V. Why Sola Scriptura? It is possible that someone, while by now recognizing the general feasibility of a Sola Scriptura model, might wonder why such a model would even be desirable, given we have other trustworthy sources of knowledge at our disposal. And the quick response to this question is that first, only a handful of valid epistemic models exist in Christian theology, so everyone with even an elementary knowledge of theology should be aware of the available models and of the basics of how they work. Second, the Sola Scriptura model is intrinsically important because it is the only model based entirely on Christianity’s central text. Third, the Sola Scriptura phrase itself has played an important role in Protestant Tradition so it is significant that the dilemma of how to develop such a model has finally been solved. And lastly, the Sola Scriptura model makes testable predictions (prophecy,) so even those who do not presently find the model compelling should be aware of these predictions and thus have a chance to reconsider the model if/when such predictions do materialize. But, more importantly, each of the models has intrinsic assumptions about the level of trustworthiness of the available knowledge sources. These assumptions are themselves based on even more primordial assumptions about the nature of reality, God and man’s nature, and the process by which the human mind acquires knowledge. So, there is a certain circularity49, as previously mentioned, between ontology and epistemology which has the capacity to prejudice us against the proper evaluation of these questions. This is something we should be aware of as we make an effort to give other perspectives a fair evaluation. If a classical theist50, for example, imagines a reality where God is timeless, where human consciousness is rooted in an immaterial soul and where, therefore, our knowledge-acquiring processes transcend material reality and have their roots in the immaterial point of contact between the soul and God, then, such a person will be inclined to trust themselves in deciphering truth in multiple sources, not just direct divine revelation. On the other hand, if we don’t share the classical ontology and therefore view our knowledge-building apparatus as bound by human limitation, then any direct divine revelation will be intrinsically superior to other knowledge sources. Which brings us to the final topic of this essay, the issue of foundational epistemology and its implications for how the Sola Scriptura model relates to other knowledge sources including modern science. 49 A somewhat similar idea is discussed here: https://iep.utm.edu/ep-circ/ 50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_theism 154 Foundational Epistemology To discuss the foundational aspects of epistemology, we need to correctly establish the default position from which such a discussion must start. What exactly can we assume from the start regarding the nature of ultimate reality, the trustworthiness of various knowledge sources, or even the mechanism by which human beings access knowledge? And the answer to this question is..., ‘nothing;’ we cannot take anything for granted because we don’t know a priori what reality is like or what sources can be trusted. Because there is disagreement at the most fundamental level, the default must be a position of ‘ignorance.’ Anything other than an agnostic starting point will inevitably skew every subsequent conclusion. Second, we need to determine a baseline regarding how human beings access knowledge. In part one, we briefly mentioned that humans rely on two primary avenues for knowledge, our reason and our senses51, and then discussed the limitations of these two avenues. The fact that this should be the default position regarding knowledge acquisition can be demonstrated with an analogy that could in theory be converted into an actual scientific experiment: Imagine that you were drugged, kidnapped, and woke up in a large room with thick cement walls and no doors or windows. What process would you follow to figure out where you are and what is happening? You might check around the room for any cracks in the wall that allow you to see outside. You might put your ear to the wall to see if you can hear anything. You might even try to detect some scent in the air. But, if none of this works, that is the end of the direct knowledge you can acquire about your situation using your senses. Empirical/scientific knowledge, in this case, is clearly limited by the fact that you don’t have a way to access what is beyond the concrete walls. Your reason, on the other hand, allows you to go beyond the limits of your senses by considering various plausible scenarios. This could, for example, be some sort of twisted science experiment. Or, maybe, some sadistic form of entertainment, or over-the-top practical joke. The implications of each of these hypotheses can be further developed but, ultimately, unless whoever kidnapped you breaks the silence and reveals to you why you are there, there is no way to determine which of the guesses is correct, if any. This thought experiment helps establish something of a universal baseline for epistemology. We cannot directly know which our senses cannot access, and, the most we can do beyond this is to come up with plausible guesses. We exist in a physical/material reality and gather information about this reality via senses that are themselves a function of the physical/material. The objects that we see, for example, are visible to us because our eyes can detect the light the objects reflect. The scientific process itself studies the material. If anything exists beyond the material, then, it would be outside the reach of our senses, and of science also, by definition. Reason and philosophy often attempt to go beyond where science can go, but the most they can come up with is plausible guesses. Therefore, metaphysics is inherently beyond the reach of the human knowledge-building apparatus and the only way for us to access such knowledge is if it is revealed to us in some way, (just like the kidnapper in the analogy above could reveal to the 51 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ 155 prisoner because they are there.) In other words, we ourselves might be epistemically limited, but God can grant us additional access to knowledge beyond those limitations. Any epistemic system, therefore, that claims something regarding metaphysics, is either arbitrarily guessing, or is making an additional assumption about how knowledge is accessed that goes beyond the default/baseline position we have just established. In other words, a hypothesis is being introduced and a burden of proof is being assumed. If, for example, someone believes that metaphysical knowledge is accessed as the immaterial soul connects with God, that’s a hypothesis. If someone believes knowledge of God can be deciphered in nature, because God imprinted information about Himself therein (natural theology,) that’s a hypothesis. If someone believes God-knowledge comes through feeling, experience, morality, etc., that’s also a hypothesis. And it is also a hypothesis that God might communicate with individuals directly. It is important to point this out because there is a tendency among theologians to assume that theological systems that are based on direct revelation are more fideistic/presuppositional while those that are not more rational. In reality, all theological systems are ultimately presuppositional in that sense, it’s just that you have to peel through additional layers to get to the foundational presuppositions or starting hypotheses. At some foundational level, these systems make assumptions regarding metaphysics and attempt to justify those assumptions in some way that takes us beyond what human beings should have the capacity to know unaided, as illustrated in the concrete room analogy. Thus, each model begins with an assumption/hypothesis regarding how God chose to communicate with us. And, we don’t have a way to know which hypothesis is correct a priori, because we have to first choose a hypothesis in order to develop our picture of God so we cannot then use that picture of God to determine which hypothesis is correct. None the less, in spite of our epistemic limitations, we cannot function in life as true agnostics. We inevitably make some choices regarding what we believe reality to be like and which of the epistemic models is more plausible, and then live our lives accordingly. And rather than making this choice haphazardly, it is to our benefit to think through it carefully. Essentially, we have to start from an agnostic default position, come up with plausible hypotheses regarding the nature of reality, develop these hypotheses into more robust epistemic models and then evaluate the models based on how well they incorporate the available data. For example, one possible hypothesis is that physical/material reality is all there is, i.e. metaphysical naturalism. So, let’s think about how our human epistemic limitations would apply to this hypothesis. Many atheists treat naturalism as the default position in contrast to which other metaphysical possibilities require proof. In reality, a default cannot be arbitrarily assigned to any of the metaphysical paradigms any more than one can assign a default number to dice. We simply have no way of knowing, a priori, what ultimate reality is like. Occam’s razor52, while useful from a practical standpoint, doesn’t make one of the possibilities inherently more probable than the others. The atheist might insist that, even if we cannot know it a priori, the success of science is still a strong indicator that naturalism is correct. But many metaphysical perspectives are compatible with the success of science, so such a conclusion is premature as well. Further, 52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor 156 because of the epistemic limitations of the human knowledge-gathering apparatus, if the naturalistic hypothesis is true, there would not even be a way for us to know for sure that it is true. As our lack of access to metaphysics requires that something outside the system provide us with metaphysical knowledge, and, as naturalism denies that there is anything outside the system, there would be no way to access that knowledge. What naturalism can do, however, at least in principle, is to demonstrate that the natural/material aspect of reality, at least, could have come to exist on its own without outside help. This would not prove that nothing exists beyond the physical/material but would at least show that something like a god is not needed to explain material reality. To do this would require, first of all, that plausible explanations be crafted for some of the more difficult questions such a model raises. (For an example of such a question, as the energy in our universe performs work, it is eventually converted into heat energy, ultimately leading to a state of maximum entropy also known as heat death53. Working backwards, this raises the question of where the initial energy in our universe came from.) The first step then is to identify and develop conceptual models that can explain these types of complex questions. But the fact that an explanation can be crafted does not mean that it is actually what happened. That would need to be demonstrated as well through empirical data, which is difficult, given we have access to such a limited sample size: we can only observe a small fraction of our own universe and have no idea what else exists, if anything, beyond that. The naturalistic hypothesis, then, faces limitations on two levels: first, it lacks the apparatus for accessing metaphysics in order to show that its metaphysical perspective is correct, and second, even that which it can access in theory, material reality, it can access only in small part, at least as of yet. (I am not pointing this out to argue that the naturalistic hypothesis is inferior, but rather to preempt the claim that it is superior, once I start pointing out the problems with other models) The matter is further complicated by the nature of the scientific methodology itself. Unlike philosophy, which has spent millennia trying to untangle the mysteries of metaphysics in spite of this inherently being outside philosophy’s reach, science sidestepped the never-ending metaphysics debates by focusing only on the material world, as a matter of principle. Essentially, the naturalistic paradigm was adopted not as a metaphysical stance but only as a provisional working environment that helped reduce distraction from unanswerable questions. This a priori elimination of a large number of untestable metaphysical variables brought the focus entirely on that which can be empirically verified and has proven incredibly effective at making sense of the world. The approach has come to be known as Methodological Naturalism54 (MN) and has become a key tenet of modern science. Although a significant number of Christians, especially from conservative circles, have traditionally viewed methodological naturalism with suspicion, it is in fact a breakthrough that has allowed science to progress at an unprecedented rate. No human tool is perfect and 100% effective in every situation, but MN-based science has done in a couple of centuries what metaphysics-based science has failed to do in millennia, so Christians should treat science with due respect. But, overall, the approach has been so effective in studying the natural world, that 53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe 54 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Methodological_naturalism 157 philosophers of science have been slow to fully consider the limitations of such a process. In fact, it is difficult to even broach the subject openly as this is automatically perceived as an attack on MN. But even though methodological naturalism is not the same thing as metaphysical naturalism, it is still a methodology that assumes a metaphysic, a metaphysic which might or might not ultimately be correct. The potential therefore exists for discrepancies to accumulate between science and reality, discrepancies which will not likely be readily apparent. To illustrate why this is, let’s assume that the possibility exists for the supernatural to interact with the natural order of things. How would this affect the scientific process? Let’s begin by considering a situation where the scientific process does really well. Suppose we are trying to determine if a certain medication is effective. Here are some of the steps followed: 1) Large Sample Size - Instead of relying on the experience of one or two individuals, we conduct tests that involve several hundred or even thousand individuals. 2) Control group - We divide those involved in the test into two groups, those who take the medication and those who don't, to see if there is a significant difference between the two. 3) Placebo - Those who aren't taking the medication are still given a 'fake' pill so that they don't know they are not receiving the actual treatment. 4) Double-blind - Neither those who are receiving the medication nor those who are administering it know whether the medication is real or not. 5) Randomness - The selection as to who gets the real medicine is random. 6) Data - Accurate data is kept of how the sickness progressed for each individual involved in the experiment. 7) Statistical Analysis - Once the data is in, it is analyzed carefully to determine whether there is a significant difference between the two groups. 8) Reproducibility - One or more independent groups attempt to reproduce the results 9) Peer-Reviewed Publication - The results are published in trusted journals so that others can evaluate the process and possibly use the results in future research. By using such a strict process, it is possible to determine with a fair degree of certainty if any given treatment really works. Moreover, such a process could easily be adapted to supernatural claims as well. Similar experimental conditions could be arranged to determine whether, say, something like intercessory prayer can have detectable effects. However, ideal experimental conditions like those described above are not always easy to arrange. Even when it comes to something as simple as medication, if the active medicine causes 158 visible side effects, for example, those administering the meds can usually tell which of the patients took the real pill and which the placebo, so the experiment is no longer double-blind. Thus, if something happened long in the past and the evidence is not well preserved, if something is too small, too far away, happens too quickly, if there isn't a large enough sample size, if it's an isolated event so there is no repeatability, if we are not able to control for variables or if the testing carries ethical implications (ex. testing on humans), then, the effectiveness of the scientific method significantly diminishes, even when working with purely natural elements. These limitations are considerably magnified when it comes to the supernatural. Let’s use as an example the central event in the Christian Religion, the resurrection of Jesus. But let’s make this event significantly better supported than it currently is: Imagine that over a thousand years ago, some emperor decided to hold a gathering for dignitaries from his own realm as well as from many neighboring nations. At the beginning of the festivities, as a show of strength, he decided to execute a number of prisoners via decapitation, and to leave the severed bodies in the open for everyone to see as the day continued. Late in the day, after the dead bodies had been laying there for hours, suddenly the heads of several individuals rejoined themselves to their bodies and the individuals came back to life. The festivities were immediately halted, the dignitaries all left for their respective homes and wrote up detailed accounts of those events that can still be found today in the official libraries of many different nations. In this analogy, decapitation was chosen as the method of execution rather than crucifixion, to ensure that the individuals were really dead. Moreover, several people were resurrected, not just one, both the death and the resurrection were observed by large numbers of strangers (not only disciples) who were official dignitaries (not uneducated fishermen) and who then went and left behind independent official records in many different countries (not just four gospels where entire sections are copied.) We can add any additional line of historical evidence to this analogy to bolster its credibility if needed, even to the point where we make it into the most well documented historical event ever, and it would still not make it any more acceptable from a scientific standpoint (Christians who don’t believe this should imagine the above story in a non-Christian setting - Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, etc.) If resurrections such as these could occur today and be replicated under controlled experimental conditions, science would have no problem recognizing that a resurrection did in fact take place. But for a miraculous event that has taken place in the distant past, there is an endless number of naturalistic explanations that will always appear more credible to someone who approaches the question scientifically, even if such an event did actually happen. It might, for example, be explained by claiming that the people were distracted, intoxicated, or hypnotized, it might be that twins/lookalikes were used to replace the dead, it might be that people were paid serious money to propagate a lie or, that the evidence in the official records was planted and none of it, not even the gathering, actually happened. Whatever the natural explanation chosen, it will always be seen as more plausible than what actually happened, from a scientific standpoint. In other words, there is an intrinsic anti-supernatural bias in the scientific process. The many Christians who hold science, evolution and critical scholarship in high regard but also take the 159 resurrection of Jesus as a historical event do so only because they momentarily suspend the scientific rigor, they apply in other areas to make an allowance for something that is critical to their belief system. This intrinsic bias in science can be extended to any aspect of material reality. As long as everything that happened was natural, science works great. But if there was supernatural interference at any point in the development of our universe, science would tend to prefer a naturalistic solution instead. This is not just a result of the scientific mindset, but a necessity of the methodology as well. When natural explanations are assumed, those explanations allow for the formulation of testable predictions that can then be examined experimentally. Supernatural assumptions, on the other hand, don’t generally allow for testable predictions because we have no idea how the supernatural works. This should not be viewed as a fault of science, but as a limitation. There are no perfect tools, though science, for what it can do, is pretty great. A metal detector cannot detect plastic objects someone lost at the beach. But rather than denigrate the device for not finding plastic, we should appreciate the fact that it is a much better way of finding lost metal than manually digging through all the sand on the beach. Now of course, this limitation of science is only a problem if in fact there was supernatural interference. The typical argument usually raised here is that in the past, people assumed supernatural causes for everything (lightning, earthquakes, etc.) and now we have found natural explanations for those things, so we will find natural explanations for everything else as well. There is no need to postulate a ‘God of the Gaps55.’ Arguments like this are not sound arguments, however, because there is no way to know a priori what ultimate reality is like, how exactly a god would go about the creative process or, what exactly we will discover through future scientific research. Why couldn’t God use both natural and supernatural processes to create the universe? We ourselves can build robots and then use them to help build cars for us, so there is no reason why God couldn’t create certain things directly and then use those things to help create everything else. Because the naturalist is making the claim that the universe could have come to exist entirely on its own, he is automatically also making the claim that the universe could have developed on its own after God did some percentage of the work first. In other words, if a 0% divine involvement model of the universe is viable (as the naturalist claims,) then a 95%, 70%, 45%, 10% or 1% divine involvement model of the universe must automatically be viable as well. So, if science up to this point has been able to dismiss the 95, 70 and even 45% possibility by finding naturalistic explanations, this does not mean that now the 0% possibility is more likely than the possibilities of 1-44%. It could be that some small degree of involvement was necessary for the universe to be able to exist at all, but everything else after that was left to unfold naturally, and this explains why the scientific method has worked so well this far. None the less, science (methodological naturalism) continues studying the universe under the 0% assumption, because it is dependent on the ability to make testable predictions, something that 55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps 160 would no longer be the case if the supernatural was allowed for. Given any question about how our universe formed, science proposes a naturalistic solution. If it turns out that the solution does not work, it then proposes another naturalistic solution, and so on. Even if none of the proposed solutions work, science doesn’t give up and turn to consider the supernatural, but instead places the question on hold, with the expectation that it will find a naturalistic solution at some point in the future when science has advanced more. Science, therefore, always assumes 0% divine involvement even though it has no way of knowing there was 0% involvement. And this assumption inevitably creates a bias. The only metaphysical perspective fully compatible with science is naturalism; all other perspectives will conflict with science at some point, if the scientific methodology is applied consistently. Should we then dismiss all scientific conclusions as untrustworthy or biased? There are differing degrees of confidence we can have in any given scientific conclusion depending on how well it is supported by evidence. If, for example, we tested a medication on only two people and they got better, we can have limited confidence. If we tested a hundred people, however, we would have more confidence and even more confidence if a thousand people were tested. Science, therefore, must be taken seriously, but cannot be given wholesale epistemic priority when determining which epistemic model is most plausible. Rather, individual scientific conclusions must be assessed based on the degree of supporting evidence in their favor. It should be mentioned here that many theists will have difficulty following the above reasoning because they are accustomed to thinking about the scientific methodology through their own metaphysical perspectives rather than the perspective science itself operates in. Some theists, for example, rely on a Platonic metaphysic where the material world is a shadow of an immaterial reality. Others, on an Aristotelian metaphysic where material objects have an immaterial essence. Still others, on a panentheistic metaphysic where the natural and supernatural are two sides of the same coin, making the natural/supernatural distinction meaningless, etc. Approaching the question through these independent metaphysical lenses muddies the water because it does not allow for the evaluation of the scientific methodology within its own context. Science makes its own assumptions about the nature of reality and that reality is assumed to be materialistic and mechanistic. To understand the limitations of science then, one has to contrast this naturalistic metaphysic with a metaphysics that views reality almost exactly the way science views it, with the exception of occasional divine interference (i.e. the Deist metaphysic.) Without doing this, what they are evaluating is not real science, but a metaphysically distorted version of science. One of the main reasons why both theists and atheists have failed so far in adequately sorting through the limitations of the scientific process is that they all presuppose metaphysics as they reason through the methodology. So, what then does all this mean? First, to exist and function in this world, we need a belief system. True practical agnosticism is not possible; we all hold certain beliefs regarding the nature of reality that guide us in how we live our lives. One such belief is naturalism, there are numerous other belief systems throughout the different world religions and several more in Christianity. Depending on how we set up our criteria of viability, we might be able to dismiss some of these systems but probably not all. 161 If the supernatural does not exist (naturalism,) then, because of our epistemic limitations, there is no way for us to know for certain that the supernatural does not exist. If, however, the supernatural does exist, it could potentially reveal to us more than what our natural limitations allow for. We would need, however, to make certain hypotheses regarding how knowledge of the supernatural is being communicated, develop theoretical models on the back of those hypotheses, and then, evaluate the theoretical models in contrast with the available data. All epistemic models besides naturalism, then, rely on a set of foundational assumptions regarding how metaphysical knowledge is accessed. If those foundational assumptions are discredited, the entire model collapses. Science, however, has an intrinsic bias that, if the methodology is applied consistently, will discredit the foundational assumptions of all models other than Naturalism. The reason these models still exist, then, is because they choose to make an exception and not to apply science consistently when it comes to the critical elements of the particular model. For example, let’s take the Liberal Epistemic Model, given it is the closest to the Naturalistic paradigm within Christianity. If one of the key aspects of the Liberal epistemology is the ‘feeling’ of absolute dependence on something greater than ourselves, then, a perfectly natural alternative explanation can be provided for this ‘feeling.’ It could simply be a coping mechanism that developed through mechanistic evolutionary processes. Science can produce an alternative naturalistic explanation for any aspect of reality where one might otherwise assume that it is necessary to postulate a god. Of course, abandoning such models in exchange for the Naturalistic Model is not a solution either because, as mentioned, the Naturalistic Model lacks a mechanism for verifying its own metaphysics, it lacks, for the foreseeable future, the ability to demonstrate that material reality could have come to exist on its own, and, it uses a methodology liable to give false positives in confirmation of the model. For these reasons, while the Naturalistic Model could constitute a rational perspective, it is not inherently more rational than other epistemic perspectives. We are essentially forced to choose between multiple models that each have their strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, we cannot evaluate epistemic models apart from an alternative model. Consider another analogy: Suppose you were traveling cross-country with a friend and your car broke down in the middle of nowhere. You manage to find a used car dealership, the only one around for miles, and begin looking at their cars. But no matter what car you look at, your friend starts to point out all the problems he can find with that car. After this happens several times, you finally turn to him and tell him that he should pick the car instead. Of course, the minute he does, you find all kinds of problems with his choice just as well. In this analogy, you have to pick a car from the dealership because you have no other options and need to get to your destination, but all the available cars have their problems. There is no 162 such thing as independent evaluation; you cannot compare each car against some ideal standard. The best you can do is to compare the cars with each other. A common mistake in theology is to critique an individual model through independent scientific criteria divorced from an alternative model. This creates an unrealistic standard of evaluation since eventually we will have to choose an alternative model and that model would face similar problems when evaluated by independent scientific criteria. The responsibility of each model, then, is only to meet scientific scrutiny to a similar degree to what the other models do. For example, the Sola Scriptura model described in this essay is intrinsically better adapted to interact with critical scholarship than the Fundamentalist model, because of its acceptance of limited errancy. None the less, it will likely face challenges from higher criticism more than some of the other models, because the Scripture constitutes its epistemic center. All the alternative models, however, will face similar challenges, when a similar degree of scientific scrutiny is aimed at their own epistemic center. Whether this is Scripture and Tradition for Protestantism, The Church, Tradition and Natural Theology for Catholicism, feelings of dependency, morality, science or philosophy for Liberal Theology or the preceding plus the incarnation of Christ for Neoorthodoxy, a critical-scientific approach, if followed consistently, will undermine these epistemic centers as well. The Sola Scriptura model then will not be able to accept critical scholarship wholesale but will need to evaluate independent findings to determine how well supported each of those findings are. An independent branch of critical scholarship might need to be developed to work with the unique needs of this model. In summary, it is essential for us to understand the epistemology of the available models to establish a baseline of viability when it comes to how these models interact with science. This will then impact how the Sola Scriptura model is evaluated. Further, more work must be done in the field of the philosophy of science to better account for the limitations of the scientific methodology. In fact, it is very likely that we must reconsider how we think about philosophy, science and theology in general, to better account for our epistemic limitations. We probably have sufficient data from centuries of progress in these fields to know that we will not be able to achieve consensus any time soon and will need to make room for simultaneous viable models56. 56 Allowing for multiple models simultaneously does not mean pluralism, but only that these are the limitations of the academic endeavor. 163 APPENDIX B Video Interview Transcriptions The interview videos were transcribed using the free transcription website https://youtubetranscript.com. The transcription software occasionally made mistakes which I do not correct here unless I quote their statements in the dissertation. Participant 1 – Taylor – Catholic As a catholic and as representing people um of the catholic tradition of the eastern orthodox tradition even of the uh mainstream mainline protestant traditions I think they would have a problem with uh with framing the inspiration in terms of degrees of inspiration I think that's what's kind of fair but also I think a lutheran or an anglican would want to push back on that a little bit because what they would say is that they do believe that scripture alone is the only infallible source um and and they would say the early church didn't have a charism of infallibility and they would say that they only agree with the early church because they think that the early churches is is following what the scripture teaches putting it in terms that they would recognize as being accurate about themselves yeah, I I really like the way that you categorized um well really the the the your description of epistemology in terms of what are your sources of authority I think that's a great way to describe the differences between the traditions obviously as a catholic or as an orthodox you have two authorities whereas in protestants when you have one concerned that talking about the mainline traditional protestants in terms of um in some way rejecting the idea that the scripture is the only thing that's infallible or talking about catholics and orthodox in terms of we don't think that the scripture is infallible need a little bit more nuance putting more in terms of how what are your authorities rather than because because we would agree that like as a catholic, I would agree scripture 100 absolute authority if it's in scripture it's true period yeah but in listen to scripture I also have the church yeah yeah get rid of the degrees of inspiration thing simultaneously viable models and parameters of viability I started to really appreciate um your pragmatism and your irenic um nature um that was one of the strengths I think of your of your paper 164 your whole argument as it's very pragmatic and reasonable and and kind of tries to be fair um and and humble as well in terms of what you can prove and what you know so I thought that was one of the strengths feasibility or viability your criteria at least one of your criteria is does it um establish unity where then because if we're going to be basing it on the text alone where then in the text are you finding um that that is the methodology we should use where am I finding in the text that that's the methodology I think someone could also say that because you are not just doing scripture but you're also saying this is the methodology we need to use and you're not rooting that methodology in the scripture I think they might be able to kind of make the same argument against you that you're not really doing scripture alone I think pragmatism and reasonability and uh humility I think these are these are some of your strengths, but I do think you would need to try to root it in scripture to make your paper to make your methodology and I think you probably could root your methodology in scripture conciliar epistemology disagreement about something they do look to a council for that address this argument that catholics always make and I actually don't particularly like this argument but catholics always make this and they say how do you know and you actually do address this at one point um but uh I think you have to spend a little bit more time on it is that how how do you know that um the books in the bible are the right books if you don't if you're not positing um some kind of charism of infallibility to the church in putting those together argument uh for tradition based on the canon um I think a lot of people would probably want you to spend more time on that I think that your approach to a limited errancy is a kind of a reasonable approach I don't have any problem with that if you're holding to a strict inerrancy you will have more difficulty reconciling uh different passages which seem to contradict different authors which seem to contradict things in science and things of the bible I think say stating it that way as in more difficulty well that's just plainly true divine command theory led to courtroom understandings of the gospel and morality as someone who who does think that that courtroom language of justification um guilt sin um you know uh substitutionary atonement uh that I do think that that's beneficial at least at times I would just want to say that um in natural law theory you know the the instruction manual for how to thrive is the other side of the coin it's like two sides of one coin 165 you said that your position is basically the armenian position but I I wanted to point out that your position is pretty much the lutheran wesleyan most anglicans pretty much all pentecostals they pretty much share your your position my sheep hear my voice so the traditional claim that protestants have always thought was you know a defensive protestantism um that the scripture authenticates itself through the internal witness of the holy spirit spirit opens your heart in your mind every day when you read that word it's directly to you it's a message for you you know yes as sure as you know that you are alive that that is the word of god yeah as the future can authenticate itself it wouldn't work in an academic setting guess about metaphysics um and this sort of goes back to the thing we touched on just a second ago I don't think that's really a biblical anthropology to say that we only have our senses and our reason and therefore can we guess about metaphysics you know paul says uh god is clearly seen to everyone I think there's we have some sort of inbuilt ability to recognize god that's that's more than just guessing based on reason and guessing based on our senses I think you're giving a little bit too much credit to naturalism and methodological naturalism um in terms of the progress of science okay I mean the the scientific progress has been concomitant with a rise in in naturalism um but I don't think that um that's like necessarily causal the link there um there are scientists who have seen miracles who they still will approach um scientific investigations in what you might consider something like methodological naturalism because they're assuming anything they see they can break it down put it under a microscope and they can figure out what's going on naturally but that doesn't mean that they're um [Music] that doesn't mean that they don't think miracles happen you know some of these people have seen miracles happen there might be some hypothetical possibility for naturalism to explain how things came into be like apart from god I forget your exact use of words but I just want to say that um you know science and I think you're probably going to agree with me here but but scientists could never explain in scientific terms how something could come from nothing even if they had posited some sort of law in the universe that would necessitate that you would ask the question well where did that law come from things just are yeah you have always been this way and eternally but to explain scientifically how things came into being and when you're using things in the word universe that's everything I was going to say the divisions among protestants I think have been overstated and if one of the reasons why we're saying that you know uh solar scripture doesn't work is because of divisions there's really only about like 12 give or take 166 ultimately um your your paradigm and solo scripture are generally there's no strict logical reason why it can't work okay 100 and I think the paradigm you're putting forth in terms of approaching the bible first by establishing a metaphysic based on the bible and then establishing the macro narrative based on the bible I actually I think that's a very good paradigm I think that's actually a catholic paradigm um we that we as catholics could use and should use I mean in the catholic church the priority is always first and foremost philosophy metaphysics I like your approach and I like that you're grounding it in scripture um I I think that although logically it could work um I think in terms of securing the kind of unity that you would need to not fall into the pitfalls of of chaos that the fundamentalists fall into I do think ultimately you're going to need some kind of concealer structure that everyone refers to and when they have a decision everyone agrees to I like this stuff I actually shared uh a passage or a couple paragraphs from your paper uh with some of my friends because I like what you wrote about uh about uh theistic personalism uh versus uh classical theism and uh the problem of evil and how god is actually waging a real war um how he really has emotions and that those uh passages that talk about emotions are revealing the heart of god beyond just the incarnation I don't know if I agree with you in terms of theistic personalism but I liked what you wrote so I shared that and uh so yeah I enjoyed reading your paper VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Well, hello everyone, my name is Mike, I’m a pastor, and I’m working on my D.Min, doctor of ministry, and as part of my project I decided to try something a little bit different which is to kind of write out this fairly large paper about 60 pages or so of a certain approach that I’ve kind of put together to thinking about theology and then of putting it out there and trying to get people from very different perspectives coming at theology from very different angles and to see how they interact with what I’ve written. so Tyler here has agreed to do this with me uh I’m sorry I’m going to keep mixing Taylor with Tyler because I have two friends we'll do each of those names and I can never keep track of who's who but I’m gonna try to do my best to choose him saying you're right so taylor here is gonna uh tell us a little bit about himself and his background and then uh I’ll let him jump into you know the things that he had to come across that he wanted to mention or talk about my paper so what yeah yeah so my name is taylor I am a christian I uh was an atheist from most of my life 21 um through a combination of um actually I became a I became a theist at the age of 21 actually through through a combination of philosophy and kind of meditation reading rene descartes actually his argument for god and in the meditations is when I first started believing god um when at the age of 23 I became a christian uh met the lord jesus christ and um I that was almost a decade ago now um I started off as an evangelical and then I became catholic and I went back to evangelical for a little bit but ultimately came back to the catholic position um recently I’ve been teaching religion in the catholic high school I’ve studied in seminaries and at the graduate level in both protestant and catholic institutions um and I was uh excited to read through this paper of mike's because the topic of solo scriptura and epistemology is something that has been a a hobby of mine sort of a fascination of mine for the past six months or so um and I have been looking at it 167 from a slightly different angle than mike has but it was you know right up my alley so I was I was happy to to to read through this awesome awesome all right so yeah go ahead and just lay it on me I guess right so mike um as I was reading through um one of the first things that popped out to me um was when you categorized the different um degrees of inspiration that the traditions have each of the tradition have and you had on the very far left of your um scale there you had the fundamentalists uh at 100 and then you had the atheist at the zero percent and then you had a solar scripture a threshold um between classical protestant and uh okay it looks like I lost you there for a second I don't know if we lost the connection or yeah I was worried about this I don't know if you could hear me anymore um the quality of the zoom connection always depends on the quality of the internet we might have to stop the recording here and try to come back a bit in a bit when we get this text yep hey are we back yeah we're not okay great cut out there so um the the the first thing that jumped out to me as I was reading through was that as a catholic and as representing people um of the catholic tradition of the eastern orthodox tradition even of the uh mainstream mainline protestant traditions I think they would have a problem with uh with framing the inspiration in terms of degrees of inspiration do you see what I’m saying yeah maybe you could help me with a different way of saying it because I guess there is a difference when you look at all these groups and how they they think of scripture and how they use scripture in their theology so maybe there's a better way to describe the difference maybe degrees of inspiration is not the correct terminology but there is still a difference I mean a fundamentalist will not agree with the way the protestants use um at least some of them won't the way the protestants use the church fathers because there's there's a little bit of a reliance on the church fathers there and they'll definitely not agree with the catholic position either so there has to be some way to differentiate in the um in the uh in the case of the protestants that the traditional mainline protestants how you said they don't really go with solar scriptura because they also try to interpret the scripture within the context of the early church yeah um I think that's what's kind of fair but also I think a lutheran or an anglican would want to push back on that a little bit because what they would say is that they do believe that scripture alone is the only infallible source um and and they would say the early church didn't have a charism of infallibility and they would say that they only agree with the early church because they think that the early churches is is following what the scripture teaches yeah so um putting it in terms that they would recognize as being accurate about themselves was something I wanted to you know discuss uh yeah it's one of the challenges is that depending on who you're talking to they'll describe their own positions differently but I’m kind of trying to step back and get a big picture view of things and it's like no matter whose description of the situation you go with somebody else will disagree with it but essentially like one way I guess one way I tried to describe that in one of the videos I don't know if you had a chance to look through the videos at all but if it's like if you picture the 168 circle and you say the circle is sola scriptura but the church fathers have a smaller circle within this wider circle and and essentially like they kind of zoom in on the correct interpretation of what could be many different interpretations if you just do the bible alone so the the church fathers kind of become these parameters that kind of guide you into which direction to take the solar scriptural principle yeah I I really like the way that you categorized um well really the the the your description of epistemology in terms of what are your sources of authority I think that's a great way to describe the differences between the traditions um especially when you're talking about catholic and orthodox versus um anyone who would hold the soul of scriptura because obviously as a catholic or as an orthodox you have two authorities whereas in protestants when you have one so I think that was a great way to to frame it epistemologically um I just um am concerned that talking about the mainline traditional protestants in terms of um in some way rejecting the idea that the scripture is the only thing that's infallible or talking about catholics and orthodox in terms of we don't think that the scripture is infallible do you see what I’m saying [Music] those were just things that I think would need a little bit more nuance putting more in terms of how what are your authorities rather than because because we would agree that like as a catholic I would agree scripture 100 absolute authority if it's in scripture it's true period yeah but in listen to scripture I also have the church yeah yeah so I think I don't know it could be that somebody that looked at this would find a way to articulate it though that other people say you know what I agree with the way you're saying it but at the same time I’m kind of worried that because the traditions are so different and people look at it from so many different angles that no matter how perfectly you articulate the concept somebody will always have an issue with it somebody always say like no this doesn't describe my position you know and it's it's a little tough to find the the right articulation like have you ever looked over that book I was quoting quite a bit in the third section uh this guy named matheson who thought who wrote that book called the the shape of some scriptura so he goes into a lot of detail explaining how the the traditional protestant position relies on the regulator which is like the the church father's position as a sort of like an interpretative framework so he kind of uses something similar to what I’ve been saying I don't know if he would agree with my degrees of inspiration picture or not but he seems to take that route and alistair mcgrath seems to take that around a little bit but again like if you have any suggestions about how I could articulate the concepts better then I’m all for it um because there's definitely differences in in the sources and like if you if you have theology as a whole and then you ask what is it based on well the fundamental is just say no it's 100 scripture there's not supposed to be anything else while the protestants will say well it's scripture but there's also other stuff that makes creates the basis for the whole of theology and then catholics have more things and and then if you go further down the spectrum even even more and more different so anyway yeah I know what you're saying but I don't know how to say it better really I think what you're saying would be 100 completely fine and uh mainline mainstream protestants would agree with it if you just did two things differently okay you have to get rid of the degrees of inspiration thing okay um everything else you're saying would line up except when you say they don't really do sola scripture of because the way they define solo scripture is in terms of infallibility and while they would absolutely agree with what matheson is saying that they do use their regulatI and they 169 do have a some authority to the early councils and they do want to interpret it within that framework they still would would want a friend to say but we're not saying those things are infallible yeah that's what they mean by solar scripture yeah so somehow I wanna like I wanna acknowledge the position they take I’m not saying it's a bad position and I’m not saying they cannot use the phraseology to describe their position but I want to differentiate that between a different position where we try to work within the text alone and and the thing that I’m describing the other chapters so somehow I got to find a way to to acknowledge their stance while outlining a different type of uh approach to things but anyway go ahead what what's there might it might be it might be as simple as just taking a paragraph to just say they would they would say it this way but you know yeah so the next the next thing is um um let's see I don't know if this is a note or it says can't determine the truth of social scripture I do do limits of human epistemic faculties so stop thinking about right and wrong conclusive proof but rather about simultaneously viable models and parameters of viability so yeah this was a a part where I started to really appreciate um your pragmatism and your irenic um nature um that was one of the strengths I think of your of your paper and of your whole your whole argument as it's very pragmatic and reasonable and and kind of tries to be fair um and and humble as well in terms of what you can prove and what you know so I thought that was one of the strengths okay um let me see the next one was um so in terms of in terms of um why sola scripture has never been done before because um the only ones who really tried to do it um are the fundamentalists but the fundamentalists are so divided that therefore it's it's not feasible so I just want to make sure um that when you're talking about um feasibility or viability your criteria at least one of your criteria is does it um establish unity yeah yeah the the the problem with the way I see it the problem with the the fundamentalist approach is that it lacks a methodology like essentially you could boil it down to somebody saying okay here's your bible go read it you know and then a person goes and reads it and because of whatever background they bring to the table they can read whatever they want into it and depending on you know what sections they read and where they put their emphasis essentially there is no methodology at least the the protestant approach has a kind of a methodology where it says yeah read the scripture but but go along with with you know centuries of others that have read it in the past that have followed a certain tradition and it gives you a little bit of a guiding to how to interpret the scripture while the fundamental support just doesn't even try essentially just like oh I just go by the bible that's it and there's no rhyme or reason you you cannot sit there and explain to somebody else why you get the position that or you you get to the interpretation that you arrive at because you're just saying you just tell them like hey go read your bible and you'll arrive in the same place but people don't arrive in the same place so what do you do then you know so anyway I don't know if that explains the the situation a little bit yeah well um yeah there definitely provided um a little more uh clarity on on the main problem you have that you're trying to solve um with with the fundamentalist approach um my question then would be uh in this moment um is the methodology that that you outline um because you say we first need to start by establishing our metaphysic yeah and then secondly we need to establish our macro narrative um where then because if we're going to be basing it on the text 170 alone where then in the text are you finding um that that is the methodology we should use where am I finding in the text that that's the methodology yeah that's the old question of uh how do you from solar scriptural solar scriptura um yeah so basically all I’m saying is that there's many different approaches that you could use to their theology and and we've we've had hundreds of them and we can kind of categorize them into groups of several dozen and here's one other approach that considers the possibility that the bible was intended to be taken as a standalone right and if you're going to do theology that way you need to think about what it is that we do when we when we treat things as standalones like what is the difference between standalone documents and documents that are not standalone and essentially we're restricted by the sheer fact that unless certain things are in place we just can't interpret documents uh standalones like you know I use that that class lecture analogy you know like if if somebody just gives you a bunch of supplemental readings but they don't have the the thing that tied those readings together the person is just not going to get it because it's missing some essential components you know so it's like the same with the movie example that I use with the matrix there are certain clues that you have to have to be able to interpret the thing as as a standalone concept uh if it's part of something bigger like if it's a if it's an installment in a series of other similar movies like let's say for watching anything related to the avengers like any kind of super hero movie then you know any single episode or any single installment that somebody could kind of get the feeling of what's going on because they have this background of like you know most of their movies tend to always be this way and there's always some kind of superhero element and there's always this and that and then they can interpret it but if it's like a brand new thing that we've never seen before you need those elements to be present to make sense of it so all I’m saying is like like with the scripture we have all these different possibilities that we tried here's another one and if we're gonna try to treat it as a standalone then we gotta treat it the way we treat all standalones because otherwise we just it doesn't work like nobody has found a way to make it work without doing this I don't does that make sense or um yeah when you say um if we're going to treat it like a standalone we have to treat it like we would treat any other standalone I think that that makes sense my question still though I think is that the critique that you make about um protestants not really doing solo scripture because they they have a uh a methodology or a framework and you wouldn't say a methodology but you know they they're not just doing it individually just the scripture alone they're saying we want to read through this lens I think someone could also say that because you are not just doing scripture but you're also saying this is the methodology we need to use and you're not rooting that methodology in the scripture I think they might be able to kind of make the same argument against you that you're not really doing scripture alone yeah yeah I I know what you're saying and I’ve thought about that too and really there isn't like a way to to this to fully dismiss that argument and say here's here's the methodology in the scripture to support what I’m saying but when you compare the models and you look at you know if you take if you take the model I’m presenting and the the closest to it which is probably the protestant model and you put them side by side you could say well this one is definitely more reliant on scripture because he tries to get all the interpreted developments from within as opposed to the protestant model that still uses his lands that could have been tainted by outside elements you know the church fathers were affected by their environment their culture and their 171 presuppositions as opposed to like just going and trying to get all those pieces from the bible itself so maybe instead of calling this the scriptural model I could call this the the the model that's more so scriptural than the other models or something like that yeah I I I think that you I think that your response is again one of your strengths here is I think pragmatism and reasonability and uh humility I think these are these are some of your strengths but I do think you would need to try to root it in scripture to make your paper to make your methodology and I think you probably could root your methodology in scripture although um I think as a catholic I think that there are things in scripture that point towards um a conciliar epistemology you know in the book of acts for example when it when there comes a disagreement about something they do look to a council for that so I think that's something you have to wrestle with yeah and the the thing is like whichever approach you come from there's a way to subsume those elements into your approach so for example from the catholic perspective because you could look at the that and and kind of subsume the stuff I’m saying into your point of view well I could say yeah you know I see the point of the council but the council functions within the wider context of the stuff I’m saying you know so they they're coming at it from the the scripture scriptural approach and then they once they have this basis of agreement then they have a counsel within that basis of of agreement because even if you do follow a solar scriptor approach like like let's just say people adopted this model that I’m describing and you know we have several thousand people go along with it there would probably be quite a bit of consensus but they're still gonna be points of difference and they're still gonna have to be discussions and they're still going to have to be councils where people come to an agreement but it's agreement from within this context as opposed to having a wider context uh because you're working with writers like multiple sources and and extra elements besides scripture so anyway does that make sense yeah yeah no I I like um does it need to start recording again or is it still recording yeah it's recording good okay great no I like I like your response um so the next part was where you said um was scripture intended to be standalone or supplementary and then you are already just talking about this right now um so my thought was well um you know you because you talk about the intention of the author did the author create this this book to be standalone or supplementary and the the question that rose in my mind or the issue that was in my mind was that the bible is actually a collection of books yeah yeah and I’m not sure that we could say that any single book um was intended to be a standalone um and um the fact that the bible as a whole as a collection was put together through a canonical process through or through a conciliar process [Music] I think because you talk about how [Music] you talk about the bible as a mosaic or as a collage that paints one picture when you put it all together but if if god was intending for that collage to be the standalone then it seems that god has intended that through a conciliar process so then I I do think that because of that there you would have to address this argument that catholics always make and I actually don't particularly like this argument but catholics always make this and they say how do you know and you actually do address this at one point um but uh I think you have to spend a little bit more time on it is that how how do you know that um the books in the bible are the right books if you don't if you're not positing um some kind of charism of infallibility to the church in putting those together 172 yeah, I only have a brief footnote on that in the paper uh in one of the videos because essentially my my I did videos where I took each section of the paper and I kind of did it in video format for people that I want to read I heard your I heard your response to it in the video oh you did hear it I did and I thought it was I thought it was clever and insightful in terms of a basketball coach goes around and he just picks the best players obviously he will have the best team um but um and and I guess maybe your your limited errancy would kind of give you this leeway because maybe one book here or there was not right but most of the books are the right books um so so maybe your response to that is is sufficient um coming from a catholic background and having seen that argument uh for tradition based on the canon um I think a lot of people would probably want you to spend more time on that um let me see the next one is um so when you talk about inerrancy and uh limited errancy said that the inerrantists um have degenerated into or have at least had a tendency to degenerate into uh relativism subjectivism and theological chaos phrase comes from matheson's book he keeps repeating that argument that oh yeah okay that the approach that fundamentalists use just doesn't work because it ends up being this yeah right so that was one of the things was in terms of if if one of our markers of feasibility is in terms of theological unity yeah um, I don't think that proponents of limited errancy have done a better job of staying together than proponents of inerrancy yeah um I don't I don't know too many uh working with limited errands see that have uh some kind of cohesive element the way I’m trying to present here you know like usually the the further people move away from from inerrancy the more they switch sides into like new orthodoxy where they say things like uh there's a point to scripture but it's not necessarily the details you know like the bible is pointing to christ or the bible is pointing to something else the bible is teaching theology not science or all these things uh and and then they they use other elements to kind of bring their theology together whether it's science logic philosophy or something else something external but yeah you're right I mean I don't I don't see a lot of cohesion in in the limit that uh ernest he approaches either okay and and just for the record I I think I probably do find myself somewhere closer to limited errancy than completionerancy just because of I mean there's that passage in hebrews where he says like if you if you fall away and lose your salvation you can never gain your salvation back and I don't believe that's true I don't I don't I think you you could lose your faith and gain your faith again so I I think that your approach to a limited errancy is a kind of a reasonable approach I don't have any problem with that yeah just just throwing something there because I had someone else from the from the theology group comment on my paper in over an email and the person took a took an issue with some of this because he said I wasn't really addressing uh I wasn't doing justice to the concept of inerrancy based on the the inerrancy document there's this uh oh it's like the chicago statement the chicago statement uh but the chicago statement clearly says that it it's it's not allowing for errors and scriptures it's you know it's allowing for different uh modes of interpretation different 173 type of inspiration people getting more light as time goes historically but they're not errors while I’m saying no there could be errors because you don't need to have an inherent document to still get the picture in the end so that just wanted to throw that out there because um I think what I’m saying is it's fairly different than than the typical university position that is that is is you know fairly popular yeah and and where you said in the paper you said that if you're holding to a strict inerrancy you will have more difficulty reconciling uh different passages which seem to contradict different authors which seem to contradict things in science and things of the bible I think say stating it that way as in more difficulty well that's just plainly true if you were to state it more strongly and say well then it would be impossible to do that then I think that might be where you might be uh but I don't think you did that well hopefully I didn't yeah I just I just think it's it's uh it's a challenge right it is more challenging yeah yeah and you know it's the the general consensus to me like as far as I can see from my reading around different groups within the theology world there there seems to be a general consensus among the people that don't believe in inerrancy or at least that don't take the fundamentalist approach to scripture they all seem to agree that the fundamentalists have not succeeded in producing a coherent theological method so I’m not the one saying it it just seems like whether it's catholics orthodox regular products and mainstream protestants they all seem to agree that the fundamentalists have failed in giving us that methodology so I’m just saying look you guys go ahead and try if you believe that's the way it works here's another way of doing it and this method is still a scriptural because you don't have to be inherent to do salespeople theology that's just not a a logical necessity of hospitals right and I I think that was important to point out yeah I think that was important to point out so how many more of those little points do you have because we're coming up to like eight eight ten right now and you have about 20 minutes um I have a few I’ll try to go through them quickly okay um I’m not on time I’m not a time limit are you on a time limit no I’m not but I just didn't want to make this huge video all right I’ll try to go through them quickly so um and I’ll try to pick the the important ones so um on the divine command theory where you started you started to get in a little bit to the metaphysic here and you said that the divine command theory led to courtroom understandings of the gospel and morality but morality is not an eternal set of rules but an instruction manual for how to thrive in creation um and I wanted to push back a little bit there because um the courtroom language you know in romans chapter 2 3. yeah I should have mentioned that it's there it's definitely there right right and as someone who who does think that that courtroom language of justification um guilt sin um you know uh substitutionary atonement uh that I do think that that's beneficial at least at times I would just want to say that um in natural law theory you know the the instruction manual for how to thrive is the other side of the coin it's like two sides of one coin you you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah um then uh in terms of uh assurance um you had a footnote where you said that your position is basically the armenian position but I I wanted to point out that your position is pretty much the lutheran wesleyan most anglicans pretty much all pentecostals they pretty much share your your position yeah and I do too um the okay so in terms of solar scriptura needs a historicist view of prophecy in order for scripture to self-authenticate itself 174 now this is actually that part of the paper I didn't have the time to do I I was trying to do something in the appendix and get into a lot more detail I never got around to it because I’m kind of running out of time but go ahead and tell me what you think and I rent your appendix a little bit so my critique was that um logically speaking and even the when it comes to um when it comes to the the scriptural paradigm for how does god authenticate himself how does how does the word authenticate itself um yeah sometimes god is through prophecy you'll know prophets a real prophet if what he says comes true but also jesus says you know my sheep hear my voice so the traditional claim that protestants have always thought was you know a defensive protestantism um that the scripture authenticates itself through the internal witness of the holy spirit which is something you you disagree with um I actually think is true um at least strictly logically speaking god can make it known to someone like say you've never you've never heard of the gospel before in your life you're in jail somewhere you've never heard about christianity someone gives you a bible you're sitting there reading it it's not making sense and all of a sudden one day the holy spirit opens your heart in your mind every day when you read that word it's directly to you it's a message for you you know yes as sure as you know that you are alive that that is the word of god yeah as the future can authenticate itself that way without necessarily needing um prophecy do you see what I’m saying yeah I I don't disagree with that I I I essentially like there's different types of authentication I think the ultimate authentication of all of all of this all the stuff we believe in comes through that personal experience with god because god is a real person and and he he can bypass our um our technical elements where we sit there and philosophize and reason through stuff he can go way beyond that and prove himself to us but within the context of you know you're sitting down with somebody and you're trying to rationally set up your your argument it seems to me that the bible kind of takes this route as opposed to some of the other approaches that we usually use but yeah the good point I need to I need to elaborate on that more yeah absolutely because I do agree with you when you said it wouldn't work in an academic setting absolutely right that's not something you could go show someone academically but as we but yeah so yeah I’ll try to move on here to the next one um um so you said foundational in foundational epistemology section you said that humans only have their senses and their reason and therefore can only guess about metaphysics um and this sort of goes back to the thing we touched on just a second ago I don't think that's really a biblical anthropology to say that we only have our senses and our reason and therefore can we guess about metaphysics you know paul says uh god is clearly seen to everyone I think there's we have some sort of inbuilt ability to recognize god that's that's more than just guessing based on reason and guessing based on our senses yeah so so here's I need to find a way to articulate that better so the the thing I’m trying to say here is that we need some sort of starting point when we communicate with each other because we all have some kind of epistemology as to how do we connect with the beyond you know how do we understand metaphysics even within the christian tradition like if you look at all the different christians or all the different people in the world that call themselves christians don't have some kind of epistemology but it's different and it's difficult to communicate because we are very starting point is different so what I’m trying to do is say okay here's a baseline it's 175 something that we cannot deny I mean I can take you in this concrete room and throw you in there and ask you to tell me where you're at or what's outside or what's on the other side of the wall and you could guess and you could try to look through but you're not gonna guess because your senses are limited and you only have certain possibilities that you could say it might be this it might be that or whatever and and that's the limit of where we're at anything beyond that uh is if we treat it as a hypothesis then we could say okay this particular group in christianity starts here but has this this epistemic hypothesis this group has this hypothesis and so on so this becomes sort of like the starting point in the conversation and we can actually engage people from other religions and and atheists and everybody else because that's our starting point then we go from there so I don't know if if that makes sense and I don't know if I can think of a better way to explain it but I’m trying to do something a little bit different I’m not saying that's all we have I’m saying that's just the thing that we can prove that we have to begin with and then everything else from there yeah we're making a case for our position after that yeah yeah, I think it sounds like it kind of goes back to the last one where it's like in an academic setting you couldn't really argue for it yeah yeah kind of thing because what do you do I mean you're sitting next to a guy and and he has his thing he says you know the holy spirit came and spoke to me and told me xyz and you say well the holy spirit spoke to me and told me something completely different or my understanding of the spirit's voice is this and then you're kind of stuck you know you don't have a way to to begin the conversation yeah yeah [Music] um so when you talk about naturalism um I think you're giving a little bit too much credit to naturalism and methodological naturalism um in terms of the progress of science okay I mean the the scientific progress has been concomitant with a rise in in naturalism um but I don't think that um that's like necessarily causal the link there um there are scientists who have seen miracles who they still will approach um scientific investigations in what you might consider something like methodological naturalism because they're assuming anything they see they can break it down put it under a microscope and they can figure out what's going on naturally but that doesn't mean that they're um [Music] that doesn't mean that they don't think miracles happen you know some of these people have seen miracles happen um so I I wanted to push back a little bit there um and then you you made a statement that um naturalism scientific naturalism could um could possibly that there might be some hypothetical possibility for naturalism to explain how things came into be like apart from god I forget your exact use of words but I just want to say that um you know science and I think you're probably going to agree with me here but but scientists could never explain in scientific terms how something could come from nothing even if they had posited some sort of law in the universe that would necessitate that you would ask the question well where did that law come from sure uh now how how much time did you spend as an atheist were you fairly young were you already pretty philosophically advanced when you became a christian or become atheist um I spent well the first 21 years of my life I I did some introduction to philosophy in junior college but nothing advanced 176 yeah yeah so I mean there's quite a few highly intelligent atheists out there that don't really have issues with some of these questions because they have different ways of working with them you know they have uh I mean stephen hawking's had his own his setup of how the universe began and then you have uh steve carroll I believe his name is who has this multiverse approach and and there's many different hypotheses that they have so they find ways to work around it and they they probably won't say necessarily that things came from nothing they would just say that there's some kind of something that was always around and then things develop from theirs in some way it is a difficult question for them to answer but evidently he hasn't convinced most of them that there's a god and and I’m uncomfortable with just dismissing it and saying well the only reason they're not agreeing that there's there's a need for god is because they're like rejecting god or they're trying to like live a life of sin or you know sometimes christians accuse atheists of that like oh you're you're just biased because you you you want to do your own thing and you don't want to believe in god so that's why you take the position you do I’m just giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying hey these are intelligent people they're highly educated they're advancing their fields of study and they believe that there might be a an answer to the question and I’m saying great so you know you're I’m I’m acknowledging the fact that your your position is legitimate it's a viable position and so on I think the ins and strict abstract logic if we were to consider a hypothetical world in which god did not exist you would have to be forced you would you'd be forced into the position of um things just are yeah you have always been this way and eternally but to explain scientifically how things came into being and when you're using things in the word universe that's everything I think the famous quote or at least infinite maybe infamous quote from hawking in his book was that because a law like gravity exists therefore it was inevitable that something would be yeah but then the question is and and I’ve heard a lot of people say you know hawking's a brilliant scientist but a terrible philosopher because it seems so obvious to me the question is well hawking if the if the if that law is there then that's something you see yeah and basically all they're saying is that those somethings whatever they are they were just always there and you know it is what is that's that's always been there that's yeah and I think that's what they would have to say is it just is what it is yeah so I mean I’m not like I don't want to you know defend necessarily a position that I personally don't agree with but at the same time um I I’m I’m not even interested in that debate because to me it's like hey I’m just gonna allow a lot of the possibility that that's a viable option and go from there um and I don't know what else I could say about it really quick I know you did have something more on a personal thing that you wanted to share so are you done with your list oh um so I think you may have already answered this one um it was just um because I was thinking about um a marker feasibility for any of these paradigms or epistemologies uh in terms of unity and I was thinking that um the the divisions first I was going to say the divisions among protestants I think have been overstated and if one of the reasons why we're saying that you know uh solar scripture doesn't work is because of divisions there's a there's a popular quote and you didn't reference this but that there's thirty thousand denominations uh I I’ve read about this stuff too and I I disagree with that entirely I think there's really only about like 12 give or take um that you can name off top of your head and um you could you could group pretty much every protestant into one of those 12 groups right lutheran anglican calvinist wesleyan methodist 177 baptist pentecostal and that's kind of like it there might be one or two others right but for my question then would be is one of the goals of your methodology or is one of the markers of viability of your methodology um that it will produce unity yeah that's that's a little tough to say but I would say logically speaking if you come to scripture with the correct framework if such a thing as like in other words if the premises of the scripture are correct which is that god intended this thing to be treated as to be the main source of theology and to be treated as a standalone if that's correct then coming at it with the right framework should produce some level of consensus that you cannot get if you have the wrong framework so um if the protestant approach was incorrect because it superimposed the wrong metaphysics he superimposed the wrong the macro narrative the roman era on the scripture that could explain the fragmentation that happened afterwards well if you come at it with the correct framework logically it should issue have some kind of cohesiveness because everybody's reading it through the same story like there's this grand story this this big picture and then they come to scripture and they read it from that same lens and he should have some kind of some level of cohesiveness obviously if we run the experiment you know I don't know what will happen but people always have their quirks and some some people always find some reason to disagree so there might still be some level of division but then there's division everywhere I mean you know there's catholics and the orthodox and then there's divisions in the catholic church and everywhere else as well so the goal isn't to have perfect unity the goal is to at least be at the same level of unity as other other models um that are aiming for that so anyway um yeah so I don't know do you do you have any more on that list or do you want to get into the main stuff you wanted to talk about well and I also interrupt the recording here and start a new one if you think it's going to take a while now I I think we've kind of gone over in our discussion uh most of the main stuff I I think ultimately um your your paradigm and solo scripture are generally there's no strict logical reason why it can't work okay 100 and I think the paradigm you're putting forth in terms of approaching the bible first by establishing a metaphysic based on the bible and then establishing the macro narrative based on the bible I actually I think that's a very good paradigm I think that's actually a catholic paradigm um we that we as catholics could use and should use I mean in the catholic church the priority is always first and foremost philosophy metaphysics and then you move in you know when when a priest enters the seminary to become a priest the first thing he does is two years of philosophy and then he gets theology so I I like your approach and I like that you're grounding it in scripture um I I think that although logically it could work um I think in terms of securing the kind of unity that you would need to not fall into the pitfalls of of chaos that the fundamentalists fall into I do think ultimately you're going to need some kind of concealer structure that everyone refers to and when they have a decision everyone agrees to yeah yeah yeah and like I said earlier uh it depends on whether the considerate structure is based within the framework or outside the framework or there's a wider framework besides scripture or not but but I agree with you like at some point um it's kind of like a business you know if you if you run a business and you want to expand and go and plant extensions of your business in other states and overseas or whatever you need to have some kind of governmental structure that makes decisions and and so on but you have to have that that principle of unification and so on that you work with and um whether that's limited or scripture whether it's a 178 wider framework it affects the decisions you make um yeah so uh so you you don't you don't have the because I know at the beginning you said that you wanted to talk at length about something of your own personal experience you want to do that anymore we've covered that already where I don't even remember I don't remember what it was okay no problem so any other thoughts or is that pretty much it that's pretty much it I I like this stuff I actually shared uh a passage or a couple paragraphs from your paper uh with some of my friends because I like what you wrote about uh about uh theistic personalism uh versus uh classical theism and uh the problem of evil and how god is actually waging a real war um how he really has emotions and that those uh passages that talk about emotions are revealing the heart of god beyond just the incarnation I don't know if I agree with you in terms of theistic personalism but I liked what you wrote so I shared that and uh so yeah I enjoyed reading your paper and I’m glad I could uh provide some feedback for you hey that's that's a really great stuff and thanks a lot for taking the time um so I have your permissions to share this right I want to share with the group um maybe some of the other people that are gonna talk to me later might benefit from this conversation because then they kind of know where to take their their suggestions um anyway uh we can talk again if you have anything else in the future let me know but uh I think that's a good stopping point for the recording because people don't like to sit there and listen to extended conversations you know yeah there's only so much people can put up with but uh hey uh thanks a lot I’m gonna stop the recording here and then we can close off after that all right all right thanks Participant 2 – David – Conservative Evangelical movement of a return to judaism and interpreting in jewish context more coming at an epistemic like a metaphysical like how we arrive at a background to understand the nature of reality do you believe that it would be possible to arrive at sort of an absolute metaphysical picture it was very interesting on the section even where he discussed the resurrection and how many apologists like to say okay we have reason to believe without a shadow of a doubt that jesus rose in the dead uh however when you start with this naturalistic metaphysic either way no matter how strong the historical claim that jesus rose from the dead is we still don't have any evidence that someone rises from the dead yeah yeah uh so i found that section very interesting that it really all depends on the framework that you're using 179 sean carroll was just arguing here's a model based on a naturalistic system and then craig was arguing here is a model based off a theistic system and the debate didn't go anywhere because they both were saying here is my system here is my system i can make something work based on the system um because there's some sense of ontological meaning behind the universe and that that ontological meaning that science cannot tell us meaning and that meaning is ultimately a metaphysical question some correlations between the brain and religious experience now someone coming from a theistic perspective could argue um hey like well it would make sense that god who interacts with the material universe would have some avenue through the brain and then the naturalist could just argue um hey this is what your brain is just creating the experience conundrum of hay this is in my interpretation of the universe of naturalism versus theism because it seems like the the solar scriptura with the fundamentalist on a bigger scale kierkegaard with the legal yeah um the leap of faith like ultimately kierkegaard was saying just make that jump of kind of faith so, your main audience is for this uh project is the academic circle would say on like the kicker guards model of just like a fightism kind of model like way of thinking but the religious experience model arguments are kind of the strongest which is i found very interesting a theodicy question if anything on how like why god doesn’t make his presence known to everyone like kierkegaard now it's even starting to jump towards like uh alvin plantinga and like the argument that just because we don't know god's reasons for doing so doesn't mean god does not have a reason the narrative of cosmic conflict the narrative of could function in a sense as a unifying uh factor between all of these interpretations kind of like how the creeds function in this uh this like the nicene create functions as this barrier this safeguard yeah i think so narrative could also function as that safeguard that interpretations don't go beyond this narrative, or interpretations don't go beyond this creed personally and like uh narrative could function as so that way we don't have this uh because if you look at it or something like with story there's just something so fundamental about that to human existence you know humans have always made sense of the world from narrative and 180 story yeah um so i think for me the the the way to kind of avoid these pitfalls of the solar scriptora is obviously grounding it in narrative that was probably one of my favorite parts of the the liberalism fundamentalism neo-orthodoxy uh i i like that the thesis at the beginning of the paper neo-orthodoxy i was kind of confused on why neo-orthodoxy was kind of rather than look what's a little bit this the distinction between neo-orthodoxy and liberalism and why you kind of kept them as two separate categories the lines between you know and even liberalism is starting to get a little blurred neo-orthodox yeah yeah so i think it yeah in the in a lot i think it's kind of even a challenge that you're doing because in our day and age a lot of these lines are blurred with like neo-orthodox liberalism that it's almost kind of it's very hard to put them in categories the lines between you know and even liberalism is starting to get a little blurred so, i think it yeah in the in a lot i think it's kind of even a challenge that you're doing because in our day and age a lot of these lines are blurred with like neo-orthodox liberalism that it's almost kind of it's very hard to put them in categories when i initially read the thesis i was a little skeptical but i i really do love the thesis now on how your even your metaphysic will lead into where you land so for example uh a lot of theirs like even a brand of like atheistic christians who they're atheists in their metaphysic but they still believe in the ethic of christianity where they would lean to like a liberal and like liberals have like the modernity that okay well like for example the gospels have these miracle stories well we don't believe in miracles jesus was this radical social teacher so we follow the social teaching yeah and so whereas if you come from like this theistic metaphysic you are embracing the the meta narrative of the kingdom um so i really i really loved that distinction i i i it was a fantastic on how your metaphysic will determine even where your how you view scripture distinct the the categories were good like fundamentalism being here and then atheism being here i i really i really did like and i like that because like even so for example if you talk to some fundamentalists they would they would say who cares about um irenaeus they're not scripture who cares about the nicene creed it's not scripture um so i like that there was even a distinction between fundamentalism and protestantism because a protestant would say no we need the church fathers to determine uh scripture neo-orthodoxy liberalism is definitely a little harder to fuzzy yeah yeah those are the only two categories in which i think uh it's definitely harder to make a distinction Video Transcript 181 well hello again i'm pastor mike and i'm here with david uh so we're gonna have another conversation about this paper that i put together that um is uh i've called the christian epistemic models in sala scriptura and by the way if anybody wants to download the paper and read it so they know what we're talking about it's at uh bitly d i t dot l y dash uh solar script or manifesto so the purpose of this is that i'm working on my doctor of ministry and i thought of kind of uh approaching things a little bit differently by writing things out first and kind of explaining my my my perspective on christian theology as a whole and then giving other christians coming from a wide variety of different perspectives you know yesterday i talked to somebody from the catholic perspective i'm hoping to talk to some atheists and people from different angles and kind of get get a feel for how they interact with what i've written so uh here they really i mean yeah you want to maybe give us a little bit of a background where you're coming from and and then you're free to to get started yes so i come from the city of waltham massachusetts which is right in the boston area i'm currently doing a masters of theological studies at boston university um i come from pentecostal backgrounds although i'm kind of figuring out where i fit in all of this uh discussions but i would classify myself as an orthodox christian um i might even dare classify myself sometimes as evangelical um so that's my background going into this discussion and uh conversation and you said that you've uh studied theology at some level right yes my bachelor's degree is from north point bible college i have a major in uh biblical studies okay and i'm currently doing my master's in theological studies okay great so um yeah just feel free to jump in and let me know where you want to start first question i had come to my mind is when we're talking about proper frameworks in interpreting scripture yeah and you brought up that one of the main frameworks has been through the early church uh through church fathers i'm assuming such as uh irenaeus ignatius clement um justin martyr um however there are obviously some contentions with that but i'm curious on this is that within contemporary scholarship there's this movement of a return to judaism and interpreting in jewish context so you see with ep sanders and t wright um dj james dj dg dunn so i'm wondering if that sort of line of thinking would be cl would classify as a framework to interpret the bible to keep us from these pluralistic or uh multi interpretations yeah so so i think there's there's some some value to that i think obviously you know going back and trying to understand the the jewish mind at the various phases i wish the bible was written uh it's gonna give us insight and you know people have done that to some degree and i think they're doing it a little bit more now uh trying to understand paul through the last of the first century judaism um my question is kind of stepping back a little bit further from this and saying okay that's fine go ahead and do this but at some point you're gonna arrive at some theology and and i'm defining theology as a in a very broad sense so i'm kind of saying like what is your ultimate picture of reality you know if if you were to describe to us what is what is what's what what are things like out there you know is there god is there not a god what is this god like uh what is the world like what are what are human beings all these big things this big picture things and and what is the purpose of it or why is it happening why are we here where are we going and all this at some point regardless of the methodology people use they still have to arrive at this big picture and there's different ways that people arrive at that picture because sometimes 182 they rely entirely on scripture sometimes they rely on scripture and tradition sometimes they rely on philosophy and other other sources so the end results end up being different that way okay so to clarify you're saying that while it's so while it's good to have for a scriptural interpretation there's still the issue of how we come to us because obviously if you talk to an atheist or someone who doesn't hold a religious background they are going to say okay it's it's great to understand this text in the light of judaism but there's still that presupposition that background that so you're kind of more coming at an epistemic like a metaphysical like how do we arrive at a background to understand the nature of reality and i guess my question from there let me just say one thing with that is one of the reasons i'm doing this is because i think if we look at the various interpretations across the board in christianity i think the metaphysics skews our interpretation in the end so regardless of how careful we are in trying to commit to the you know to the people of the early centuries and say okay i'm going to try to read the bible through the lesson you know first century jews or whatever it is that i'm studying our metaphysics still ends up affecting our overall theology and and even affects our interpretation so i think we need to address those elements too okay and so would you say that i'm just kind of curious is there kind of when you think of an absolute metaphysics do you believe that it would be possible to arrive at sort of an absolute metaphysical picture uh so in my the last section of my paper i'm essentially arguing that we're epistemically limited when it comes to metaphysics and because of that essentially everyone is relying on some kind of postulate or axiom they're they're they're making some fun fundamental assumptions they're starting with some presuppositions and then developing those presuppositions and they arrive at different places and it is extremely difficult to to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that one of the perspectives is correct and the other is wrong the only thing we can do at this point in time as far as i could tell is to kind of create a space and say everything within the space is still viable and there's some things we can dismiss because they're incoherent like there's some metaphysical perspectives that they just don't work because they don't make sense or maybe by modern standards with all the scientific data we have today they just they just don't we don't have a way to harmonize them with our present understanding of reality so we can dismiss some metaphysical perspectives but the others were kind of stuck with them and there isn't really a way to to solve that problem and then what that ends up doing is it affects the rest of our theology because we start with these assumptions and then everything else is kind of skewed by our metaphysics so yeah i definitely would agree that there is this sort of difficulty in sort of uh grounding anything especially even i liked the it was very interesting on the section even where he discussed the resurrection and how many apologists like to say okay we have reason to believe without a shadow of a doubt that jesus rose in the dead uh however when you start with this naturalistic metaphysic either way no matter how strong the historical claim that jesus rose from the dead is we still don't have any evidence that someone rises from the dead yeah yeah uh so i found that section very interesting that it really all depends on the framework that you're using and uh there's this really interesting debate a while i'm sure you're aware of william lane craig 183 yeah and he had a debate with sean carroll the physicist and the interesting thing is sean carroll was just arguing here's a model based on a naturalistic system and then craig was arguing here is a model based off a theistic system and the debate didn't go anywhere because they both were saying here is my system here is my system i can make something work based on the system but if the debate wasn't what system ultimately explains reality so they were just arguing back and forth over here's a model that says that there's an eternal universe whereas here is a model and so it kind of so um [Music] i'm kind of so this just brings me to one philosopher named david hart bentley who ultimately says that um because there's some sense of ontological meaning behind the universe and that that ontological meaning that science cannot tell us meaning and that meaning is ultimately a metaphysical question i guess is that um i'm trying to even phrase this question uh because david hart bentley he even says he doesn't care about uh what cosmology asks he loves cosmology but isn't it ultimately cosmology cannot give you any ontological so okay while you're kind of thinking about how to phrase your question i would say this that uh somebody coming at things from a scientific perspective you know anybody could do science whether they're a christian whether they're an atheist whatever but if they themselves come are atheists if they're naturalists the scientific part is not the source of their meaning but they could derive meaning even from within a network because naturalism is a metaphysic it's a metaphysic that just says there is no metaphysics you know so you could be a naturalist and derive meaning and you could say you know well hey out of all these accidents here we are and we're conscious and we're aware of things that we could change our reality and improve and learn and we could make something of ourselves regardless of the fact that there isn't anything else so uh the you know it's not fair to expect science to provide the meaning but the the that of physics does have a basis for meaning it might not be the same kind of meaning we get when we believe there's a god but you could still build something on that at least that's that's my opinion one of the one of the difficulties i have a lot of times when discussing things like this with other theaters is because i'm i'm a little more partial to the atheists sometimes in the way they think about some of this stuff and i'm kind of like you i've watched a lot of those debates uh and by the way i need to apologize to xiaomi or however he pronounced his name because yesterday i called him steve carol in another discussion like this with a person from that group but uh yeah i've watched a lot of these debates and by the end i'm like okay so what is the conclusion you know yeah this model i i go within if i go this model i go with them and i think that kind of goes into what i'm saying because essentially you have this metaphysical hypothesis and once you start in that direction you could build it up and make yourself really interesting but it's still based on on an unknown okay okay um so essentially uh you're kind of like it's kind of more on the sense that while meaning is a purely ontological question someone can still derive meaning up like without even believing in any sense of like ontological metaphysic um and then it's interesting uh one more kind of question that i had this was the second framework that i kind of came in is that there is a lot of neuroscience discussions on the neuroscience of religion yeah and uh one of the questions is okay well it's kind of interesting how someone's framework helps with interpreting the data yeah so there's some correlations between the brain and religious experience now someone coming from a theistic perspective could argue um hey like well it would make sense that god who interacts with the material universe would have some avenue through the brain and then the naturalist could just argue um hey this is what your brain is just creating the experience 184 yeah, so essentially each model uh subsumes the the data from other models and interpreter interprets it within its own framework you know yeah and so i guess what i'm kind of um because it kind of seems like the with when it tying this back to the solar scriptura model discussion is that in the essay you're arguing that um one of the the problems of protestant solar scriptora is that there's no grounding in that there's going to be multiple interpretations so i'm kind of wondering i feel like this whole discussion with uh naturalism and theism is that but on a bigger scale yeah of um where do we conclude um where do we ground meaning where do we ground uh so i'm just kind of wondering um if this project is aiming at finding a way to bridge the gap between that so it's not like this um conundrum of hay this is in my interpretation of the universe of naturalism versus theism because it seems like the the solar scriptura with the fundamentalist on a bigger scale if you know what i'm trying to say okay so maybe maybe i'm misunderstanding you but are you asking how we avoid the like pluralism or how do we avoid the uh meaninglessness when we have all these different available models yeah, how do we so do you think that our uh kind of for lack of a better terms that kind of like this uh nihilism and it's not nihilism but so this is something that i really should put in my paper and i've wanted to put in my paper but i didn't mostly because by the time i was done it felt like um it would kind of distract from the points i was making to put it in there but what i'm what i'm arguing the paper is from an academic standpoint it's not from a holistic standpoint so basically what i'm saying is that there's a limit to what we can do with the tools that we have available in academia so we're epistemically limited when we're trying to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a dial using science using logic using any of the other sources we have to demonstrate that one particular model is the correct model so the only thing we can do in academia is to make space for multiple models and to allow people to develop those models and function with them without constantly like being harassed from one side or the other where this group is trying to prove the others wrong and there's this endless battle but in in life as a whole we're not limited to the tools of academia because you know if god exists god is god is a person he's capable of taking us beyond the tools we have available as the limitations of our humanities so to speak so god might have ways to lead us beyond that yeah so those are not the kind of things you could put in a test tube and then and then demonstrate to everybody else so, this is kind of reminding me of a little bit of like kierkegaard with the legal yeah um the leap of faith like ultimately kierkegaard was saying just make that jump of kind of faith so and also i just kind of just such as a question for clarification so your main audience is for this uh project is the academic circle is the aca the academy yeah more or less because i think a lot of the stuff i talked about the average person would probably not even be able to follow because it's somewhat complex and i mean i know i don't know anything about this stuff until a few years ago so i'm sure others will have a difficult time with that too um but hey if anybody is able to kind of follow the argument that's great it's 185 probably just a matter of kind of translating what i've written in this paper into a more common vernacular so people can can follow the arguments that way yeah so the lay so it's more for the the because like um it's more for the academy rather than um even kind of like clergy people are not like the target audience yeah in in many cases they might not be okay uh that was just like a kind of that's just for me clarification um so i'm wondering i kind of want to hear on how uh what you would say on like the kicker guards model of just like a fightism kind of model like way of thinking um yeah i'm not sure i have to probably think about that a little more before i can give like a very good response to that uh because i i don't fully drive with with that idea um i sometimes i use an analogy and all the analogies i use are limited and you know obviously they're not going to be able to fully demonstrate what i'm saying but um this is a simple analogy like let's say there's a room kind of like my other example this concrete room well let's say two people are in this room and they're not they're disconnected from the outside world like you know they might be doing some experiments in there and they're not they're not aware of what's going on outside the room but there's somebody outside the room that kind of watches what's going on right well the question is if this person outside the room has control over some of the objects in the room can they possibly show somebody in the room that they're present well not while the other person won't know it so you know you know for example so like let's say there's something on the table and they move it around and then when the other person is looking they're not they stop you know so only one person is aware of the other's presence than the other so anyway i don't want to spend too much time on this example but like imagine uh these two people are working on the scientific experiment and they're inside this room for a while and there's somebody outside that's always only supposed to be there between eight in the morning and eight at night and then they go home at night but somebody comes in the middle of the night and wants to make one of the two people aware that they're they're still there even in the middle of the night they're not supposed to be that type of thing but they want one person to know but not the other anyway maybe i'm stretching the example too much but the point is logically a person outside the room should be able to make their presence known to one person and the other person not to be aware of it and like for example you could pull the other guy saying hey did you see that thing moving no i didn't see a move i didn't see any evidence of anything and then they turn around into something else and then it starts moving again you know yeah and then i can see kind of one person arguing oh a gust of wind came through exactly right right so essentially like if if a conscious entity exists on outside of the system they should be able to make one of the two individuals where their presence while the other one remains ignorant now you could expand the same analogy to where there's 100 people in the room and 50 people are aware well 50 people are not aware that somebody's outside the room right so essentially the point of this is that if there's a god god could make his presence known to people in some way whatever it is logically he has the tools to make make the reality of his existence known through some some means that is not available to everybody else so at some point uh throughout history as especially after the enlightenment we've kind of developed this thing where there has to be like the only kind of knowledge that is acceptable is general knowledge like unless you could demonstrate something scientifically and everybody can go and test it for themselves and prove that this thing is true then it's not real knowledge but logically speaking if a god exists there's no reason why this god couldn't reveal himself to individuals and not to everybody right and then you look around and 186 say hey i'm not the only one that has has this experience with the divine other people have it as well but not everybody and that's okay you know it doesn't mean that it's a it has to be like a general knowledge type of thing now personal knowledge is not proof for everybody but it is proof of the individual that has that knowledge so i cannot use my personal experience with god to demonstrate his reality to to the atheist he has to have his own personal experience to be able to come to that conclusion but it is good enough so that i could reasonably or rationally believe that that there's something out there beyond beyond just a natural world so i don't know i don't know how that drives with uh to me it seems like something slightly different than this leap of faith thing that uh you're mentioning but yeah yeah so it's kind of more uh and so i'm kind of now that just really makes me curious on how um because i know even like uh the the academy uh is discussing on how religious experience uh ties into this and um i remember i was i think it was the great courses plus i was listening to and one academic philosopher was saying he feels like all of the the analytical philosophical uh arguments kind of fail but the religious experience model arguments are kind of the strongest which is i found very interesting so i think yeah i wouldn't say that they're like ultimate proof in the sense that like i said you can't convince everybody else that they're real because they haven't experienced what you experienced but i'm just looking at it from the logical perspective like logically speaking if you have a system and you have a rational entity outside the system there's no reason why this person or this whatever it is couldn't make them their presence known to somebody inside the system okay like there's nothing preventing them from doing that there was a time kind of in uh at some point i'm not sure if if it came around from kant or somebody else i need to go back and trace that but there was this idea of a sort of a causal closure to where like within the natural sphere is the only thing that can affect things inside and nothing from the outside will come in and impact the natural sphere but uh like there doesn't seem to be a rational explanation for why that has to be like you could have a natural material universe and you could have something outside of this universe that can come in and interfere in some way and there's no logical reason why you shouldn't be able to do that so so you're kind of saying that so based on that religious experience uh argument well not everyone has that those religious experiences uh and so the kind of question is kind of like a a theodicy question if anything on how like why doesn't god make his presence known to everyone yeah yeah and i know you you spoke a little bit on like uh the calvinistic systems on your uh in your project yeah yeah so i wouldn't i wouldn't use a calvinistic explanation for that i would say um first of all that you know god doesn't have to reveal himself or itself to everyone at this moment in time like just because like like let's say i'm talking to an atheist and that he says i have no experience with god so i have no basis for what you're talking about that doesn't mean 20 years from now he won't have that experience you know yeah so it doesn't have to happen from the very beginning and other things are like it's possible that that god could decide you know god has some kind of purpose and he can make a decision as to how he's gonna decide what happens to the individuals in the you know in the afterlife so to speak based on other criteria regardless of whether the person has a full understanding of what's going on so god might not need us to you 187 know understand the correct religion and and and have a partic follow a particular set of steps for him to be able to save us uh he might be looking for other factors and he might be working behind the scenes to the point where sometimes we're not aware that he's actually the one working or doing what he's trying to do anyway like i can't give a good explanation for this without like writing it out so it makes sense so i'm kind of hesitant to spend too much time on that but i know what you're saying because it's definitely a gap in my paper like i probably need to write a second paper and just focus on that aspect and explain how you could have uh some kind of certainty and some kind of sense that you're you're going in the right direction even though from an academic perspective from like a general perspective a general knowledge perspective you don't you're limited in your ability to prove which model is correct so that might that might have to be like essay number two and it's probably going to be another 60 pages because it's it's hard to give like a an explanation that sounds good and makes sense with just a few words you know um but yeah i know i know exactly what you're what you're saying with us and what you're asking about this um yeah and like my mind because i really love this topic so my mind is just jumping between i named like five different philosophers like in this discussion so my mind was jumping into like kierkegaard now it's even starting to jump towards like uh alvin plantinga and like the argument that just because we don't know god's reasons for doing so doesn't mean god does not have a reason yeah yeah yeah so like one of the one of the things i was talking about in in uh in the solar scriptura section was about the cosmic conflict so if you're going to work in that paradigm essentially the purpose of the cosmic conflict is to inoculate the universe from from this sort of rebellious state that we're in now where people are just doing their own stuff and going against god and as far as individuals are concerned they could become inoculated against sin and against evil whether they're aware of all the factors or not like somebody who say lived five thousand years ago or three thousand years ago in south america or somewhere and they have no clue about any of the stuff we're talking about it doesn't mean that they cannot go through life and still learn the lessons that they need to learn for god to be able to say okay this person is safe you know they're gonna they're not gonna create problems once they put an end to this cosmic conflict because they learn their lessons they they realize that they need to submit to me and and things like that so i don't know how familiar you are with the whole concept i only briefly addressed it in the paper but yeah i i've read uh the odyssey of love uh before so i'm very they have some sense of um so essentially like depending on which uh construct you're working in there are ways to explain some of these questions within those constructs so you could answer the question of why is it that some people god reaches out to and some people doesn't reach out to you obviously calvinists have a very simple way to explain it because you know they say i just ordain some people to this and some people do that but even within the the free will uh route that i've kind of described there's ways to explain that question that uh that's that don't make it seem like god is being unjust or unfair in the in the process and then i guess on that note one final question that i have is that earlier in the early in the paper is talking about the contentions that um with this solar scriptora model one of the problems that comes from it is that there's no is that one person could arrive at an interpretation and another person could arrive at an interpretation and then how do you weigh in on those interpretations so 188 i'm kind of wondering if narrative and that the narrative of cosmic conflict the narrative of could function in a sense as a unifying uh factor between all of these interpretations yeah that's that's what i argue like essentially you know you could start with with different hypotheses again i use that term just i guess i have a little bit of a science background so i kind of think along those lines but you could start with the hypothesis and say okay maybe the way people were meant to to understand god was through all these different avenues but if you come to the hypothesis where you say maybe god intended for us to get our theological or philosophical perspectives from scripture the minute you say that you have to say well there has to be some kind of unifying factor because otherwise there's no way to to make sense of it there's so many parts so many different stories there has to be some big picture within you interpret everything yeah within which you interpret everything else so then that's what i would say if we're going to do salt scripture ideology then the macro elements have to take priority you know when we go when we do our interpretation we need to like put the whole thing on the table the entire scripture the entire canon and treat it as one body of data an entire body of data and go through from the beginning to the end and focus first on the big elements before we try to interpret the the the micro elements or the pieces of the puzzle as opposed to the it's kind of like when you build a puzzle and then you do the frame yeah you could you know have a sense of where everything else goes so, kind of like how the creeds function in this uh this like the nicene create functions as this barrier this safeguard yeah i think so narrative could also function as that safeguard that interpretations don't go beyond this narrative or interpretations don't go beyond this creed yeah yeah because otherwise you could take any event you know you could take you could take some passage of scripture where god does something that might seem a little bit uh mean or or unfair right and if you don't have this bigger frame where people say well then that's that's god's character and that's how god is and since god's character is perfect that means that's the correct way to behave and therefore i should emulate that you know and then i could ex i could justify slavery for example i could say it's totally fair to you know to have slaves because you know here's this passages in the old testament where god said you know the slavery is okay or whatever or then in the new testament uh paul says you know tells uh falin to go back to his master whatever you know so you you find a way to you go to the individual passages and and you develop your picture of god from those passages and then you justify all kinds of things but when you step back and you you try to decipher the big picture and figure out what is happening and why god is doing all these things then everything else is interpreted in that framework so for example the old testament passages then you say well no that's probably not god's ultimate intention but he's he's going along with this because you know he's not going to fix all the problems at once or he's you know he's um there's a phrase for this but i can think of it now where you know he's dealing with with the group of people that have many problems and he's kind of taking them step out of time and trying to get a progressive yeah progressive revelation and so on so then you have a basis for reinterpreting reinterpreting things that at face value might point you in a different direction and jesus does this a lot for example in the sermon on the mount where he says you have heard that it was said you know eye for an eye but i tell you you know turn the other cheek well he had a basis for making the statement a lot of christians interpret that as jesus just being his divine self and making new rules and new laws but i would 189 say no he's actually interpreting the passages in the old testament through this wider framework of his understanding of god that he got from the whole picture that you know as he studied the old testament and understood his his father through the big picture of scripture so yeah uh just one second yeah yeah so i think i i think personally and like uh narrative could function as so that way we don't have this uh because if you look at it or something like with story there's just something so fundamental about that to human existence you know humans have always made sense of the world from narrative and story yeah um so i think for me the the the way to kind of avoid these pitfalls of the solar scriptora is obviously grounding it in narrative yeah yeah so i think that is pretty good i like that yeah so obviously there's going to be debates about which is the correct macro narrative and and all this stuff but uh you know if you're gonna try to do theology from scripture you're forced to go with some narrative because otherwise you're all over the place and the tendency for whatever reason in christian theology for people that aimed at you know digging into scripture and getting their theology for scripture has been to go uh into the exit jesus to to kind of dig deeper and go to the details and try to make sense out of the details but i think that was a mistake i think they needed to to look at the macro picture you know to look at the big picture and then let that guide them to the details because if you focus on the details you could draw all kinds of conclusions after that anyway and again like i said in the paper our metaphysics ends up influencing which macro narrative we got to end up choosing as well so um we gotta figure out both those elements otherwise um you know the macro narrative just won't make sense if you have a different metaphysic yeah i totally agree with that yeah so yeah anyway uh any other thoughts [Music] yeah that's all i have for my my thoughts um how do you feel about the categories that i kind of brought things into um yeah i that was probably one of my favorite parts of the the liberalism fundamentalism neo-orthodoxy uh i i like that the thesis at the beginning of the paper um i i personally felt a little bit like the thesis at the beginning of the paper on how how you view got a little it was like at the beginning and then it kind of like i it the these it wasn't really found elsewhere throughout of the category i really did like it though the the neoliberal amino the neo-orthodoxy i was kind of confused on why neo-orthodoxy was kind of rather than look what's a little bit this the distinction between neo-orthodoxy and liberalism and why you kind of kept them as two separate categories yeah it's it's an interesting thing and again uh i think other categories could probably be proposed but these are the ones that seem the most uh distinct to me so i'm still trying to you know kind of talk to different people and see what you know if they feel that i need to make adjustments to that breakdown but um one of the ways you could kind of separate theology is to to have uh authority-based theology and then you could have like reason-based theology so you know the pre-enlightenment you have the the church being the authority or tradition being the authority or the scripture being the authority or the holy spirit spirit or something that kind of guides your your theological thought process and then after they like me you you have people trying to like find rational bases for for everything else so you know whether it's somebody like conda says well you know you have morality so we we kind of draw our understanding from of god based on you know the sense of morality that we work with and then go from there and then stop walker came in with the the sense of dependence and this feeling of odd towards god and all 190 this and they try to go from there in the way i look at it new orthodoxy seems to kind of try to build a bridge between these two extremes you know reasons science-based systems versus authority-based systems um and the way she seems to do it is by saying that and hebrew i mean parts and others that began the thing and then it kind of moved away from them quite a bit afterwards but bart sort of set the pace uh what they did is to to say well all these sources of authority they're good in a sense and they're needed because a purely rational basis for theology is just not enough you know and especially practically speaking you know when he realized that his liberal professors were supporting the the the germans in in the war and all this stuff you realize that there's a problem there like their theology is not permeating into the practical life the way it should what christianity should um so he he kind of said well no all these things are good but but we misunderstood the purpose of this authority elements in in theology they're not meant to be teaching us all these different elements that we've picked up throughout history regarding what our theology is there's a they're meant to point us to christ uh so barth has this thing where he kind of got rid of natural theology and said you know there's no way for us to really understand god through other means we cannot understand through philosophy or through through studying the natural world or any of the other methods that people have used god has to reveal himself to us if there's any hope of us understanding god he needs to to come and and come to us and reveal who he is to us and that's why you have an incarnation and that's why you have the son of god living among us and all this and you know all of scripture all of tradition all these things they're they're essential in as much as they point to christ you know they might be off on cosmology they might be off on other aspects you know we're probably we we probably know a lot more from science and from reason and just reasoning through things on our own that we do by reading scripture or by following augustine or somebody else but all these things were essential because they pointed us to christ you know the prophets the apostles everybody point us to christ and that's what matters and this created kind of a bridge where you could still have that element of authority uh and and yet function within a modern world you know and and deal with higher criticism with critical scholarship with the theory of evolution and all these other things that we have to deal with as christians so i don't know if that makes sense but that's kind of how i see it and that's why i know that certain for example if you talked a little bit more of like your traditional evangelical uh it's almost like as if neoliberal no not neoliberalism uh sorry uh orthodoxy is almost like this uh terrible terrible thing it's and it's almost and i think in our day and age the modern 2021 i think the lines between you know and even liberalism is starting to get a little blurred uh like so for example um um liberation theology would be in a sense considered a uh liberal theology but neo-orthodox and even like a lot of protestants would still embrace the liberation theology yeah, a lot of these lines have become blurred in in recent years and i would even say that many of the so-called evangelical universities where people go to get an mdiv or whatever um they present themselves as evangelical but the professors really come from any orthodox perspective and i don't know how much that comes across in their classes or not but you know that's that's my suspicion just by my interactions with people yeah i go to uh boston i'm at the seminary at boston university and they kind of just take the stance of like uh they try not to take a stance yeah but i would say they lean liberal and some professors neo-orthodox yeah yeah so i think it yeah in the in a lot i think it's kind of even a challenge that 191 you're doing because in our day and age a lot of these lines are blurred with like neo-orthodox liberalism that it's almost kind of it's very hard to put them in categories yeah yeah and they they um oppose categorization a lot of people get upset when you try to box them into stuff but unfortunately we kind of have to i don't know if you watch any of the videos but i use this example in one of the videos to go along with my other examples in the paper where i say like imagine like several hundred people going to a walmart picking up all the merchandise and then dumping it in the middle of the warehouse and then you have the warehouse open to the public and then another walmart store open to the public and people going there shopping and you could you could imagine that after a while people will get sick and tired of going to this warehouse and sorting through thousands of items to find a toaster or whatever they're looking for they might as well just go to the real warm-up martin they know exactly what section the the toaster is in and they go there and they find the rider will pick it up and buy it and go home as opposed to like trying to wrestle with a bunch of other people through all this junk it's the exact same items the same millions and millions of items that walmart has here are there in the warehouse as well but because they're not organized it's very difficult for us to to work with it right so organization for us for the human mind is necessary to make sense of large bodies of data and unfortunately christian theology has become this immense body of data the immense body of perspectives that essentially most people are just lost they don't know what to do with it they don't they don't even really know when they hear something it's whether it's something they agree with or not because they don't understand where it's coming from you know like they might say oh that's awesome yeah yeah i really did like on how like when i first read the when i initially read the thesis i was a little skeptical but i i really do love the thesis now on how your even your metaphysic will lead into where you land so for example uh a lot of there's like even a brand of like atheistic christians who they're atheists in their metaphysic but they still believe in the ethic of christianity where they would lean to like a liberal and like liberals have like the modernity that okay well like for example the gospels have these miracle stories well we don't believe in miracles jesus was this radical social teacher so we follow the social teaching yeah and so whereas if you come from like this theistic metaphysic you are embracing the the meta narrative of the kingdom um so i really i really loved that distinction i i i it was a fantastic on how your metaphysic will determine even where your how you view scripture yeah and it doesn't just stop there i mean there's there's buddhists who have a buddhist metaphysic they have superimposed that on a christian theology and there's new agers you know who have like a new age metaphysic and yet they they talk about jesus and and sometimes you can't even tell if they're that they're not christian because they've embraced the a lot of the christian vocabulary the christian outlook but the metaphysic is actually completely different so um yeah so all these things end up affecting the theology yeah and like i said i think that the distinct the the categories were good like fundamentalism being here and then atheism being here i i really i really did like and i like that because like even so for example if you talk to some fundamentalists they would they would say who cares about um irenaeus they're not scripture who cares about the nicene creed it's not scripture um so i like that there was even a distinction between fundamentalism and protestantism because a protestant 192 would say no we need the church fathers to determine uh scripture yeah yeah so um i like i think that i did love the categories i would just say is that like it the the neo-orthodoxy liberalism is definitely a little more harder to fuzzy yeah yeah those are the only two categories in which i think uh it's definitely harder to make a distinction between the new orthodox and liberalism but i don't know exactly which perspective you identify with but it might be harder for you but i think somebody that's within the new orthodox perspective they're very clear as to why they disagree with the liberals so in their mind the distinction is very clear you know they there's this body of christians that they view as liberal christians and they don't belong to that body the way they view themselves so yeah but anyway unfortunately it's hard to draw very clear lines because of this sort of blending in across the perspectives uh but nonetheless we need some kind of categorization yeah uh yeah totally i agree and i think and by the way i did start with this and then kind of shift the directions but in the end i don't know if you notice but like in the last section i came back to the models a little bit because uh it affects how we how we approach the different perspectives uh when it comes to you know their interactions with other factors like science and critical scholarship and all these things so i kind of came back to it i don't know if it was very clear yeah i picked up on that yeah so all right any other thoughts or uh that's it for me that's it great well hey i appreciate you taking the time and reading through it and giving me your feedback i hope my feedback was beneficial yeah it was great and by the way if you at some point in the future have any thoughts or want to share anything else for you to get in touch with me and i have your permission to share this video put on my website yes i want to put it in the in the theology group as well so that other people that want to talk to me kind of get a sense of the previous discussions yes uh you have my full permission all right cool all right well um take care and uh talk to you soon thank you take care Participant 3 – Joshua common errors that we make epistemologically comes from the specific epistemic limitations that comes with monocultural myopia or with monolingualism and so i hope with bringing that perspective i can help you know broaden beyond what you would already have from english romanian and the biblical languages relationship between epistemology and uh hermeneutics one is contextualization which if there's time i might get on later uh you know making something culturally appropriate uh in a way that not so much culturally appropriate as culturally intelligible i think would be a more helpful way to put it collect is only valid if it's reproducible under controlled laboratory conditions you couldn't have the truth claim that this is the special interceding of god in history explore the relationship between epistemology and hermeneutics because if you're trying to build um a solar scriptura approach where you mean solar scriptura which you know obviously when the protestants said solas scripture their sola was very qualified 193 i really appreciated the uh that communicity of that approach and moving away from uh sectarianism in most christian faith traditions there's a fair bit of sectarianism so, i really appreciated the um the appeal to ecumenicity and you know and and unity within difference in diversity um that you were taking there epistemology being the roots most of the roots we don't see talking about epistemology and hermeneutics and tandem because uh they're really uh there's a lot of overlap i think between between the two two concepts scientific method which as you point out has been really really fruitful and for what it's designed to do it does very very well, but it has a self-imposed epistemic limitation because it can't it can't touch what it can't touch here in africa we live in a much larger world um africans believe in the efficacy of both curses and blessings because they see the effects of both curses and blessings and a western trained scientist will argue that well at moses is a placebo effect it's because the person you know had a predisposition to believe in efficacy of the cursor of the blessing that psychosomatically it became a self-fulfilling prophecy blah blah blah blah blah but that's the that's the voice that life's experience and uh it's also completely contrary to the testimony of scripture there is room to talk about spiritual realities about something that angels or demons might be doing this woman was dealing with spirits that were pretending to be dead people it doesn't really enter into any of our theological systems because our world view isn't big enough to have a place for that your hermeneutics were implicit and for a project of this type my background would find to make the hermeneutics explicit besides in addition to what you're you're already making explicit what questions are being asked [Music] because uh theology is irrelevant unless it's answering the questions that are being asked of nicaea was very specifically trying to formulate biblical answers to the questions that were being asked in their culture and by their people because if if it's not practical what's what's the point architects should certainly um you know heed the questions that are being asked you state that you know that it's a known fact that greek philosophy played a key role in early theological development and of course it did if it hadn't something would have been desperately wrong 194 because that was the context uh i mean those were the questions that were being asked yeah so they had to be addressed or you would have had proselytization uh rather than actual conversion the greeks had to learn how to be christians in a greek way just the way that the jews had to learn to be christians in a jewish way that's repeated you know throughout chinese people don't have to become romanian in order to become a christian romanians don't have to become congolese before they become christian you know and we can bring our congolese or chinese or romanian cultural questions and as much as our epistemology the questions we ask will help enable us to predict what the result technology might look like and you hinted this and that the the goal of your project is if we start with a really well-defined epistemology and try to have and try to let the the uh the metaphysical meta-narrative uh use the term uh macro-narrative i usually use meta-narrative or similar it's not quite the same uh of scripture lead us in our reading it's fairly it might be possible at least you're hoping to predict what you know what the branches of the theology tree might look like but again a part of one of the variables for that equation is the questions that are being asked because you know the the questions that you ask of your data obviously it will directly affect the answers that your data can give you want to you know you know emphasize that an important component of that historical conditioning is is cultural conditioning to re-emphasize uh the the cultural side of things throughout history in any given uh geocultural area general revelation here there or natural theology natural law um or you know uh you know a pedagogue to what degree does natural revelation exist eternity in their hearts uh is it you know talking about the redemptive analogy you know is that legitimate or appealing to romans uh the first chapter um did god in fact leave for god's self for witness in the world methodology for how they would go about that um was it was different and the results were made or are shockingly diverse but there was a common shared uh root epistemology that you know you know we can re use reason and logic and all of us can you know have the same common sensical interpretation and so if we if we get if we just set aside all the traditional understandings they were really trying to do what you were doing and to have a pure solar scripture you know approach to theology and uh and to do away with the in some way solafide philadelphia and um and to do what what you're trying to do in a in a soul of scriptura where solar really does mean only uh and reason so really they're they had two solos uh sola scriptura and solar ratio and but their project their project failed um of its intended purpose at least because their vision for what this restored newly you know finishing what the reformation started um yielded you know denominations that not only culturally but theologically look very very different from each other 195 different systems of logic that developed in the ancient sanskritic tradition absolutely as robust as anything that we have from uh pastor goris or plato or aristotle but but really really different and in the mythological work that i've done you know i've noticed that classical buddhism is incredibly logical i mean its logic is absolutely watertight it's not aristotelian western logic but it's watertight different cultures and different linguistic settings can actually have different logical structures and when you understand the deep epistemology that's underneath it number one and number two when you understand the questions that are being asked um then it's like oh i get it this makes sense now in terms of epistemology what do we do with purported dreams and visions okay um on the margins of uh of the christian world in places like iraq and afghanistan there are scores and sometimes hundreds of people yeah who are coming to christ because of dreams and visions where they report jesus appearing to them and talking to them and obviously in their local language and that's data that the post enlightenment scientific method doesn't really know what to do with my epistemology um has to do something with that yeah you know from a solar scriptura approach and i'll close with this um there's that lovely verse in in the in the old testament and my wife would remember the reference but i don't remember at the moment that says you know you will hear you know a voice behind you saying you know go to the left go to the right this is the way walk in it yeah and so when i read through not just my favorite chapter of romans or john but the whole book genesis revelation including all that obscure stuff in the old testament um a solo scriptura place indicates that uh my epistemology and my very world view should be a bit broader than what it was when i was you know growing up in an american public elementary school Video Transcript uh for that all right so um uh hello again i'm pastor mike and i'm here with joshua and we're going to continue the conversation about the the paper i've written a little bit ago called the christian epistemic models and so scriptura uh so um this paper is available for anybody that wants to kind of get a sense of the the background of the discussion uh probably the easiest way to get a hold of it is by typing in bitly bit dot l y dash uh solar scriptural manifesto that's probably the fastest way to find it um anyway so just with that quick introduction i'm gonna let joshua introduce himself tell us a little bit about himself and then we'll just jump right in good morning from kenya and good evening to california uh my name is joshua my wife is ruth we've been blessed with six children we have uh been resident here in east africa since january 2007 so we have a lot of african experience i previously spent some time living in papua new guinea and india and uh with my wife in south africa for a little bit over a year when we had a short teaching gig at a bible training institute we're missionaries here in kenya we work primarily with the maasai and turkana and people groups we speak the ma language of the masai and the sempur language of the semburu people we're learning swahili i can mess around and read a little 196 bit with greek hebrew and french so while i would not consider myself a polyglot i'm also not monolingual and that shapes uh not only how i speak but actually how i how i see the world and how i interpret things i have a broader view as you know uh not being monolingual yourself uh you know being able to think in more than one language and then and to operate more than one culture it really broadens your view of the world in helpful ways one of the most common errors that we make epistemologically comes from the specific epistemic limitations that comes with monocultural myopia or with monolingualism and so i hope with bringing that perspective i can help you know broaden beyond what you would already have from english romanian and the biblical languages most of our work is with training church leaders developing a local language curriculum we've published teaching materials in the ma language in swahili and turkana a long time ago i used to be a chemist especially in quantum mechanics form a level of chemistry and i've been published in with some research in the journal of chemical physics and uh my only other english language publication has been in the field of the intersection of theology and linguistics okay um so were you ever a theology professor at some point maybe i misunderstood what you said earlier um educationally my background is uh i have an old school uh masters of divinity okay uh of the type that does not shortchange the biblical languages yeah and had had a concentration uh in historical theology uh with an additional headsy emphasis in missiology and so my thesis won a uh rarely offered award [Music] and it was looking missiologically at trying to take the model that we have uh in uh the syriac greek and latin traditions of the church especially how they interacted with local cultures especially with uh hellenization uh in the greek speaking areas of the eastern roman empire and in west asia outside of the roman empire and trying to do the same thing with uh hindu philosophy and some of the the bhakti devotional traditions of hinduism that was back in 2000 and in 2016 an editor had read my thesis and invited me to uh submit a book proposal for revising it for publication so i've been too busy to do anything about that but it was a pleasant honor um currently i am uh one paper away from finishing the coursework of a phd program in world christianity uh under mark shaw and the great andrew f wall uh and i uh i i teach in maasai or uh in translation teaching in english into swahili triparkana because my levels of fluency aren't that good for those languages uh and so i teach mysterology uh biblical courses and church history uh primarily uh i'm also one of the two administrators of an african theology uh forum that has over 1500 members around the globe including a number of surprisingly big names in the theological field great uh well sounds good i think you're overqualified to comment on what i've written but uh i'd love to hear what you have to say okay so uh the first thing i want to look at is on the the second page of uh of your document uh you know your graphic caught my eye i'm a visual i'm a visual person uh and so layout and things like that kept my attention pretty easily and looking at the truth sources and their relative weight and theology uh and with what i've read in the introductory paragraph so far the the question that really came to my mind and and i said to myself i hope that pastor mike really developed this is what is the relationship between epistemology and uh hermeneutics you know as you know you and i could equally have 100 confidence in a given truth source or source of authority and yet our theological conclusions uh or theological systems that we build on that foundation could nonetheless be shockingly different yeah and there's a number of things that can uh that can go into that including you know our preset positions and so forth but one of the major differences is having a different uh hermeneutical approach we have the same data and we 197 may share the same uh epistemic commitments for how we can be certain about the validity of the data at hand and yet we can come up with completely different uh you know conclusions yeah i mentioned that uh i work with the this african theology forum african christian theology and uh one of the big areas where there's two big areas one is contextualization which if there's time i might get on later uh you know making something culturally appropriate uh in a way that not so much culturally appropriate as culturally intelligible i think would be a more helpful way to put it but another big aspect of that is the question of hermeneutics and so we talked uh uh in our field about african hermeneutics over against uh you know for example uh post enlightenment based western hermeneutical models for example in the post enlightenment world view there's very you know little room for the supernatural and you talk about that this uh in the bottom third or quarter of your paper when you're talking about the scientific method yeah that also resonated with me as a former scientist of course and um with the scientific you know method you know you're only allowed to deal with the data that you can collect but the data that you collect is only valid if it's reproducible under controlled laboratory conditions and so the whole process of peer review and academic research and we've especially seen this with all the research uh about the the novel coronavirus recently is you know somebody may have this paper that looks you know hey maybe you know this particular drug is going to be a miracle drug like penicillin for um the coven 19 disease but are those results you know reproducible and other can other groups duplicate you know the conditions of your experiment and get the same results and so the press very easily picked up and reported on things that were initial reports that hannah having that weren't yet you know confirmed and then it turns out that there were problems with the study and it couldn't be reproduced and so science says well it was promising but we're going to scratch that off and try something else now um there's not room for for the supernatural and so uh later in your paper you talk about the key event within the christian narrative which is the resurrection of jesus uh you can't by definition if it's miraculous you cannot reproduce it in a laboratory yeah if you could reproduce it in a laboratory it wouldn't be miraculous you couldn't claim you couldn't have the truth claim that this is the special interceding of god in history if it was something that just happened that you could reproduce it and so uh very often the metamorphosis of the catapillar into a pupa into a butterfly or moth is used as an analogy for resurrection for good reason but it falls short as all analogies are bound to do because it is reproducible yeah if you get some caterpillars and you get the right kind of leaves for them to eat um a third grader can reproduce the the the metamorphosis of the um of the caterpillar into a butterfly or moth so it's pretty special and there's parts of it we don't understand because if scientists cut into the cocoon to see what's happening they stop the process so it's kind of like heisenberg's uncertainty principle uh the very act of examining what's going on affects what's going on yeah so you know or throating your there's cat you know when it's in the box you don't really know if it's a dead or live or even there but once you've opened the box you've messed up the experiment because you you've you know you've impacted it so with kind of that in mind i would want this paper to really explore the relationship between epistemology and hermeneutics because if you're trying to build um a solar scriptura approach where you mean solar scriptura which you know obviously when the protestants said solas scripture their sola was very qualified yeah they they didn't mean only only this and nothing else they meant only scripture as opposed to scripture plus popple decreedles plus the full 100 body of authoritative tradition plus you know the commentaries of your favorite you know theologian who more or less agreed with you yes or what have you um 198 so you kind of ran through my whole paper in about five minutes there so let me jump back to the beginning and throw in an analogy that i didn't use in the bakery that i thought about a lot but it just never quite felt like it fit in but i i think i've used it in the videos maybe i don't remember exactly but sometimes i watch some of those but i haven't watched all seven yeah i mean it's the same thing but just slightly different it's redundant really to go through both of them so sometimes i think of this kind of like picturing a garden that has multiple trees now each tree as it grows it has branches going in many different directions but if you trace them back they all go to the same trunk which goes to the same roots so epistemology to me is as if we're looking at the roots of the tree and hermeneutics is as we go up and we see how he branches in various ways you could in the same garden have multiple trees where the branches kind of overlap but if you trace them back you see that ultimately they go to different routes so that's that's kind of a differentiation so for example in some of this this uh this graphics i had here um i use the i use the analogy of a supreme court in my paper because you know if you're trying if you're coming from different perspectives and you're trying to sort things out like you have a disagreement you're trying to sort things out if you have the same epistemology at least there's some hope that you could trace your your reasoning back to some foundational point and figure out where you're going from there but if you have different epistemologies you're ultimately just going to hit a dead end because the the ultimate decision the supreme court of your theology is different so there's there's no no way to really come to some consensus there so anyway i'm kind of mixing multiple analogies here but hopefully that paints a little bit features or preachers are allowed to do that more than other people yeah so anyway i didn't go too much into hermeneutics i spent a little bit of time i think in the third section or the fourth section there but uh um i wanted to kind of emphasize that the starting points are different for some of our theological traditions yeah and i don't know uh what your ultimate goal is for uh you know in the final purpose of uh you know this paper you know at the moment this is a long essay you know it's not a it's not yet a doctoral thesis or you know about or what have you uh i don't know if you and and i'm not sure uh what type of thesis is is required with with your current program yeah so this is known about projects excuse me i know that that's some uh some demons you know are very project oriented with a long essay that accompanies it others still you know require you have the project but then you have a full thesis write-up as opposed to a long essay yes i'm not sure what what your ultimate goal is so this is not going to be my dissertation my dissertation will be different but this will be like a basis for it so essentially i'm i'm trying to put together this this way of approaching theology that kind of um organizes ideas in a way that is easier to make sense of and it makes it easier to um to communicate across the board so when when different people coming from very very different perspectives end up being unable to to you know get across their ideas to each other because of their background and different different outlooks and things this sort of at least in my opinion is this kind of makes it a little bit easier to to kind of have this conversation plus it makes it easy to easier to evaluate different perspectives and and uh and say okay so one of the things i propose in the paper is to to kind of think about developing some parameters of viability instead of thinking in terms of right and wrong where you know everybody you know there's all these different perspectives and everybody believes that they're right and everybody else is wrong well instead we can we can create this kind of wider space where we allow multiple models to coexist and uh kind of go from there so 199 yeah and i i really appreciated the uh that communicity of that approach and moving away from uh sectarianism in most christian faith traditions there's a fair bit of sectarianism so in my own in the christian tradition in which i grew up one of the the mottos was uh christians only but not the only christian you know where the goal was to say we want to be thoroughly christian as opposed to being roman or baptist or presbyterian or whatever but we refuse to say that those other people are not also christians with us yeah their approaches are different we disagree with them about abcdefg and yet you know we recognize that we belong to the same one universal church on the ground there are a lot of congregations who have forgot the uh have they've changed the christians only but not the only christians to we are the only christians and you are not yeah and so and you see and i've i don't know if i can think of any um christian denomination that has not at some point in its history uh exhibited that uh tendency towards sectarianism and so i really appreciated the um the appeal to ecumenicity and you know and and unity within difference in diversity um that you were taking there i've been thinking as you were talking about the model that you didn't use you know about the uh the epistemology being the roots that works for me in part because while we may see a few roots running you know along the ground and above the above the surface of the soil uh obviously most of the roots we don't see yeah you know we don't see what they're doing underground and yet if if termites suddenly you know overnight ate all of the roots the tree is going to crash the ground yeah but i'm still thinking about uh the talking about epistemology and hermeneutics and tandem [Music] because uh they're really uh there's a lot of overlap i think between between the two two concepts uh i mentioned the the the post enlightenment uh you know scientific you know world view you know behind the scientific method which as you point out has been really really fruitful and for what it's designed to do it does very very well but it has a self-imposed epistemic limitation because it can't it can't touch what it can't touch um in most african world views on the other hand uh there is it's it's we here in africa we live in a much larger world um africans believe in the efficacy of both curses and blessings because they see the effects of both curses and blessings and a western trained scientist will argue that well at moses is a placebo effect it's because the person you know had a predisposition to believe in efficacy of the cursor of the blessing that psychosomatically it became a self-fulfilling prophecy blah blah blah blah blah but that's the that's the voice that life's experience and uh it's also completely contrary to the testimony of scripture and so if we're really serious about uh a soul of scripture will we mean sola as opposed to to be saying zola that we really mean sola you know faith grace glory of god scripture you know all five of them um but here are our world views it's a much bigger world and there is room to talk about spiritual realities about something that angels or demons might be doing yeah and it looks in fact a whole lot more like the world we see when we read the old testament new testament western commentators often don't know what to do with that whole story of the witch of endor summoning the shade of samuel now it seems pretty clear to me that the woman was surprised and so clearly there's a degree to which she was a fraud like a lot of psychics that we have and we have in america but there's different ways of being fraudulent you can be fraudulent because you're just lying and making stuff up or you can be fraudulent because you're pretending that one thing is another thing and so um an african will tell you that this woman was dealing with spirits that were pretending to be dead people yeah she wasn't really a necromancer she was dealing with demons who were mimicking the dead people and she recognized that this was not the demon or spirit that she was used to working with and that actually was samuel because you know god had pulled a fax foot on her and she was absolutely terrified why would she have been 200 terrified if what had happened with what normally happened but even so in the american context that stories really suitable for youth groups in the youth group meeting that's closest to halloween and because it'll get the kids attention they're like ooh creepy but it doesn't really enter into any of our theological systems because our world view isn't big enough to have a place for that yeah yeah so in some sense some of the metaphysical perspectives that i talked about in my paper don't even include a metaphysical perspective that you probably deal with there in africa i mean that that could be a a perspective all of its own um you know i've talked about some of the ones we have here like the platonic metaphysics and of lean and some of the more modern ones but uh there's there's like an actual entirely different approach to scripture than a different approach to theology that you probably end up having to deal with in that part of the world well and the other thing um that i should really make sure that that i have time to mention um in addition to to the basic you know questions uh of epistemology you know how how do we know how do we validate our supposed data and the and hermeneutics you know what's the what's what's the interpretive lens that brings things into focus um you know people with worse eyesight than me you know might have trifocals and you know based on which part of the lens they're looking at a whole different area will come into focus and if they're looking through this bottom curve while tilting their head back they can't clearly discern anything that's that's a bit far away because you know the lens determines you know what the focus is and determines what data you know will be seen uh so you have the the basic questions of epistemology and you have uh you have the basic of hermeneutical approaches um which it's not that i think you haven't been concerned with hermeneutics it said i noticed that your hermeneutics were implicit and for a project of this type my background would find to make the hermeneutics explicit besides in addition to what you're you're already making explicit with strength in the project from my perspective yeah but the third thing no i'm just gonna say i agree with you i think part of the part of the issue with doing that however is that i believe the hermeneutics actually uh what will be awarded they essentially spring out of the the epistemology so depending on which tradition you're you're working through the logic for your hermeneutics will be very different uh so you'll be happy it would have been kind of difficult to take the time to go into the hermeneutics for each of the different epistemologies that i'm talking about because there's a different logic to wrong would work but no i i mean i in principle i agree with what you're saying because it's it's an essential element of the interpretative process and so the third thing after the basic uh episemic questions and and the form that the the grinding if you will of the hermeneutical lens uh to form its focus the third thing uh is what questions are being asked [Music] because uh theology is irrelevant unless it's answering the questions that are being asked and so one of the reasons that a lot of contemporary people uh are very happy to completely reject for example the niacin formulation is because the capital of nicaea was very specifically trying to formulate biblical answers to the questions that were being asked in their culture and by their people and you know if you had those same individuals and if they had the same philosophical background and if they were operating with the same you know linguistic framework but you provided them with the set of questions that were so deeply concerning to uh the german academy in the 1800s at the time when you know the school of higher criticism was 201 being born the nicene fathers would have given us different formulations yeah probably because they would have had because they would have been wrestling with a different set of questions yeah uh and i think that's something that we we have to acknowledge um and so uh so that would be practical technology well yeah because if if it's not practical what's what's the point and there is a point because practical theology is the building that we see the less practical as people might say theology might will be the the infrastructure you know of the bones of the building that we don't see if you remove them the building falls down but realistically it's only builders contractors and architects who are interested in knowing what's there yeah the rest of us just go in and out of the building and use the stairs or use the elevator and don't even think about it don't even think about the physics that makes it work unless there's a disaster in the building collapses yeah that's it you know uh when the 911 attacks failed the the twin towers in new york city you had all these articles about the physics of the of architecture of skyscrapers and what might have been able to be done differently nobody outside of the field cared about that before 2000 people died and so i mean that is what it is but um it's important to write i think my favorite my paper is meant for the architects you know it's supposed to it is it it isn't and that's that's fair enough because um if you don't have architects uh you have buildings that collapse and we see that here in parts of africa where um for whatever reason there maybe there's corruption people take shortcuts and um you know you have people builders who are without scruples who are just trying to make money and um you know during the rainy season you will have you know a six-story building full of people collapse and it and and it collapsed basically the way you would expect it to collapse if demolition experts or trying to make it fall without damaging the neighboring properties so the architecture and architects are very very important but architects should certainly um you know heed the questions that are being asked you state that you know that it's a known fact that greek philosophy played a key role in early theological development and of course it did if it hadn't something would have been desperately wrong because that was the context uh i mean those were the questions that were being asked yeah so they had to be addressed or you would have had proselytization uh rather than actual conversion um those who know me know that i'm i'm rather fond some would even say enamored of the work of professor andrew f wall when he talks about conversion and prosperity uh professionalization he points out that proselytization means um you have to become a jew before you can become a christian yeah uh you ha you have to adopt the accruments of jewish culture [Music] and you know first of all in acts 15 the jerusalem council ruled that's not the way we're going to do things and then secondly in the middle of ephesians uh you know paul talks about christ breaking down the dividing wall of hostility between the different the two different groups and it's really interesting when we look at the development of the church in the new testament context we see a shift from [Music] a jewish context to a hellenistic context and and so you have the greeks had to learn how to be christians in a greek way just the way that the jews had to learn to be christians in a jewish way that's repeated you know throughout chinese people don't have to become romanian in order to become a christian romanians don't have to become congolese before they become christian you know and we can bring our congolese or chinese or romanian cultural questions and as much as our epistemology the questions we ask will help enable us to predict what the result technology might look like and you hinted this and that the the goal of your project is if we start with a really well-defined epistemology and try to have and try to let the the uh the metaphysical meta-narrative uh use the term uh macro-narrative i usually use meta-narrative or similar it's not quite the same uh of scripture lead us in our reading it's fairly it might be possible at least you're hoping to predict what you know what the branches of the theology tree might look like but 202 again a part of one of the variables for that equation is the questions that are being asked because you know the the questions that you ask of your data obviously it will directly affect the answers that your data can give you if you're act if you're asking the wrong set of answers the data will lie to you the questions the data will lie to you but sometimes there are multiple sets of questions all of which are potentially correct and so the data will give different answers to those different questions uh yeah so i guess the the the question then here is kind of like this um it seems to me that there's two elements here one of that is the one you're bringing up which is the questions being asked but but on the other end of the equation there's the the framework being used so you know whatever we're looking at in whether at different points in history or whether the different traditions we have today people seem to have a framework whatever framework they they acquire from from their own traditions and then each of those frameworks is able to take questions that are modern questions that are historical whatever type of questions questions that are relevant in one culture and or not relevant in another culture and each of the those frameworks has a way to kind of subsume that set of questions and make sense of it in its own way so you know somebody coming from maybe like a catholic perspective might come to you to visit you in africa and interact with the questions that people have there and have one set of answers to their questions well somebody coming from say a liberal perspective will come over there and have a whole different set of answers based on the framework they're working with so there's this sort of interplay kind of like uh two poles pulling in opposite directions between the the theoretical framework and the practical aspect of the theology and uh at least that's how i see it where these two things kind of impact one another where they they kind of inform each other and affect each other so where we are in the paper now are we uh yeah so i'm going through to see through any really important things i want to make sure that um that i can uh could mention one thing uh well this is around page 18 or so yeah so still near the beginning of the document um so uh you know you talk about the importance of historical conditioning and and really that's what you were saying just now when you were talking about how if uh you know roman catholic friends from america visited me here in africa um their historical commitments uh to roman catholicism is going to function as a hermeneutical lens for them yeah and change and so uh i would just i may sound like a broken record but um i would again want to you know you know emphasize that an important component of that historical conditioning is is cultural conditioning um so i'm not just i'm just saying that it seems to me that the two work together so for example a person they do work together a person has a certain lens here and they are addressing a certain set of questions here then they come over there and they're addressing a different set of questions but because of their lens they might answer those questions differently than you would answer a couple differently so yeah absolutely and again i was only repeating it in order to re-emphasize uh the the cultural side of things yeah you know as somebody who has spent most of my professional life in either asia or africa rather than america where i where i was born and grew up and was nurtured and trained i've learned how very important you know culture is and you know a lot of times well with the training that i did when i was just a college student uh before doing an internship in papua new guinea um a 203 banter that we learned was um it's not wrong it's just different so that we don't come in you know with our western world view and ways of thinking and you know walk all over everybody who thinks you know differently um but uh you know sometimes you can you know you can't conclude well this this thing right here this is both different and wrong uh but you know it it's it's it's important where we draw those lines and some things are are different maybe a little unpalatable to our taste but still but still not wrong um you know coming out of that uh and related to that uh on page 21 um you know you you observe that throughout history the educated class at any given time usually held to only one metaphysical perspective i would want to make that you know more you know more more specific that throughout history in any given uh geocultural area yeah uh that that holds because obviously you know the the educated class of western europe in the 14th century was pretty uniform and is also completely different from the educated class of the the the greek speaking educated uh romans whose first language was latin in the second century yeah and so you know again the the the culture you know uh matters there um okay just glancing quickly at my notes uh to see what things i'll just i'm happy to let you read and which things i would really want to make sure to to discuss so that one i think doesn't really need discussion um so one thing that uh in particular um so uh on page 25 you talked about you know uh you know given the raw materials the greek philosophers had to work with it is impressive what they were able to accomplish uh and then you then you return to the idea of how many christians you know uh would regard that greek philosophy as a form of general revelation or at least a conduit through which you can find general revelation here there or natural theology natural law um or you know uh you know a pedagogue for the greeks was was the term that people like justin martyr used [Music] and you discussed this a little more further below but at that point you know the question that i was asking for this epistemic project is you know you know to what degree does natural revelation exist you know of course a hardcore secular scientist will say not at all a committed christian who's also a hardcore scientist very often will say that well it does exist and it's meaningful to them you know on the weekends but when they're at work they function as if it as if it doesn't exist um but you know for a solo scripture epistemology if we're going to take it really seriously you know i think we have to ask was justin martyr correct in adopting the language of uh spermaticos lagos from the stoics and saying well yeah they were onto something but we need to make that we need to make the lambda and that logos a capital logos that does it because it's really it's really christ um you know is the is the thesis of methodologist don richardson the eternity in their hearts uh is it you know talking about the redemptive analogy you know is that legitimate or appealing to romans uh the first chapter um did god in fact leave for god's self for witness in the world yeah and um and so you've done a really good job i think analyzing the uh the historical uh you know perspective of how things developed but for a solo scriptura uh approach you know that that's a question that that really needs needs to be addressed now uh does it it's a question for me does that need to be addressed kind of at the front end or does it need to be addressed midway through when having laid the epistemic foundation you're trying to figure out just what the scriptural you know metaphysics is yeah yeah so just to kind of give a very quick synopsis because i didn't really discuss that in the paper but as you trace the even even the the definition of general revelation philosophically throughout history uh when christians had a a platonic band they view general revelation as coming through the true reason so because of the optimism yeah because the world was more of a shadow of things it was the mind and the thinking the mathematics and all these things that gave us a picture of god and a picture of ultimate reality and then as you move towards the 204 aristotelian phase of human history after after aquinas and you know that side of history then it's it's coming through through the natural world and it's coming through through empirical study um the liberal side of it kind of merged the two i think where like things are both natural and supernatural at the same time and it's almost like a fantastic perspective at least as i see it maybe i'm wrong on that i'd like to talk to somebody coming from the liberal perspective and see how they explain it um within the solar script or a paradigm as i understand it uh general revelation um is not god revealing things in nature or in human reason itself but we're using these things to give individuals revelation and i don't know how to say it quickly and still have it make sense but just to give you an example let's say somebody you know some person is going through their life minding their own business and then they come to a point where they start to think about eternal things and wonder why they're here and what's going on god could use something like a natural disaster or some kind of family crisis or he could use you know the person might be out for a walk and they see a beautiful sunset god can use nature or he could use emotion or he could use all these things to impress the individual so that they're more receptive to the holy spirit but the revelation is not imprinted in these things the way aquinas might might look at something and say okay here's some aspect of the natural world and god is teaching us something through this thing directly so i don't know if that difference makes a lot of sense as i'm explaining it in like 30 seconds but that's one difference that i see between like the the scriptural methodology or the the metaphysics versus some of the other traditional metaphors and like like the uh the platinus or uh i suppose uh more specifically uh the influence of neoplatinism um through uh plotness origin and especially pseudo dionysius in the medieval period in the enlightenment area and then in the philosophy of people like john locke you know coming out of the enlightenment really impacted especially english language uh english-speaking christianity where you know reason reason is king and so you have in the in the 1800s in america you had many new denominational groups developed all of which uh as a core value they were they were restorationists and what they were choosing to to restore for their view of the new testament christianity um would differ uh her methodology for how they would go about that um was it was different and the results were made or are shockingly diverse but there was a common shared uh root epistemology that you know you know we can re use reason and logic and all of us can you know have the same common sensical interpretation and so if we if we get if we just set aside all the traditional understandings they were really trying to do what you were doing and to have a pure solar scripture you know approach to theology and uh and to do away with the in some way solafide philadelphia and um and to do what what you're trying to do in a in a soul of scriptura where solar really does mean only uh and reason so really they're they had two solos uh sola scriptura and solar ratio and but their project their project failed um of its intended purpose at least because their vision for what this restored newly you know finishing what the reformation started um yielded you know denominations that not only culturally but theologically look very very different from each other yeah yeah i wanted to just qualify something there because um you know we use the the term reason as as a collective term when in fact i think it covers two areas um so in in the in the basic sense reason is something that's inevitable i mean we cannot have a conversation without having some kind of logical sense to what we're saying and how how we make our arguments and how we work through things so so there is sort of a basic level at which reason is inevitable for for everyone no matter how we do things um i think the way the the phrase reason is used in 205 theology has more to do with um the idea that you could use reason to to dig deeper beyond the the basics of you know everyday life into the actual metaphysics so so you know you have people trying to to kind of logically work their way backwards and figure out what ultimate reality is like using reason so it kind of extends you know reason could be understood in more than one one way uh just to kind of qualify what you're saying there because yeah what yeah and i realized that that our time slot is uh is nearing the end yeah but you know you use the phrase you know different different forms of reason i want to do a little bit of a tangent off of that um and i've had some some pretty robust uh debates with people and talking about you know what is what is logical and what is logic and for a lot of americans um logic only is uh aristotelian syllogistic logic [Music] and everything else is absolutely illogical and um it's uh to me that's actually a little bit a little bit laughable because uh you know if you've if you have experience outside of one culture you know that you know that's not true yeah um and so when i was uh so in seminary and and working on my my mdiv degree one of the books that i read uh had a title something along the lines of the the logics of india and there was an f after logic because there were different systems of logic that developed in the ancient sanskritic tradition absolutely as robust as anything that we have from uh pastor goris or plato or aristotle but but really really different and in the mythological work that i've done you know i've noticed that classical buddhism is incredibly logical i mean its logic is absolutely watertight it's not aristotelian western logic but it's watertight uh the problem with it from my view is that its premises are flawed and it doesn't matter how good your logic is if your premises are flawed you know um your starting point is wrong you're going to end up with wrong conclusions and i think that we find that in buddhism uh but then also when my wife and i first moved as a needy with the south african 2000 there were aspects of you know broader african culture obviously you know south africa and congo kenya are all very different but they have a lot of similarities just like the different just like you know italy northern germany france scotland ireland new jersey and california had perhaps more similarities and differences from the common heritage and that there were aspects of african life and culture especially when it comes to resource management that made absolutely no sense to me at all i was like why didn't god send me to india where i might disagree with people but i understand the logic and it makes sense you know we're trying to i can i i can handle confucianism it works for me it makes sense it's logical you know it's as logical to me as marcus aurelius is he's one of my favorite latin authors but i later after after we'd lived in kenya for about four years i stumbled you know across a little book called african friends and mother and money matters uh written by an anthropo a christian anthropologist and that kind of opened up i was like oh wow this is absolutely 100 logical and reasonable when people build their uh their little uh vegetable or fruit stalls on the side of walk all the way up to the curb and it seems absolutely stupid to my american mind it makes 100 it makes sense because i understand the logic now and so um the because they're different cultures and different linguistic settings can actually have different logical structures and when you understand the deep epistemology that's underneath it number one and number two when you understand the questions that are being asked um then it's like oh i get it this makes sense now [Music] well joshua i know uh i don't want to keep you over uh what we discussed as far as time so do you have any closing thoughts for us or did you cover most of the things you wanted to cover 206 um there's one other thing i can't remember if i included this in the notes or not and so i'll mention it just in case i didn't and uh you know that's that's the questions of uh in terms of epistemology what do we do with purported dreams and visions okay um on the margins of uh of the christian world in places like iraq and afghanistan there are scores and sometimes hundreds of people yeah who are coming to christ because of dreams and visions where they report jesus appearing to them and talking to them and obviously in their local language and [Music] that's data that the post enlightenment scientific method doesn't really know what to do with yeah or like well that's interesting i um um briefly brought that up in a footnote i think in my paper just because like from within an academic context those things are kind of intangibles you know you can't really discuss them the way i discuss some of the other approaches but they're there and there's i mean the the pentecostal tradition depends heavily on on the miraculous so the pentecostal traditions do and in africa and asia even the non-pentecostal traditions do as well yeah because it's again it's a part of their broad you know uh review and i mean uh in terms of there have been times when i'm not uh i don't belong to a pentecostal tradition myself but i'm also not a cessationist and um at the bottom of the hill of the dirt road we live on you know where we come to a paved road when we need to go to the city we turn left if we uh because we can still get there if we turn right it's just going to take an extra hour so why would you do that yeah there have been times when i my left turn signal's on and i'm at the bottom of my hill and i have just felt a strong compulsion to turn right and go the long way and i've done that i've listened to that and then i've learned that had i gone left the way that i usually go i would have been in the middle of of of the congested market center of uh and gong town um when a riot erupted wow with uh people burning tires throwing rocks at vehicles and um and so epiphanologically what do you do with that how did i know that i shouldn't go go left it's i mean it's certainly an intangible but um you know it's i mean you know if you check the timeline which we did when we still remembered you know the times we would have been midway through the market area when it erupted and we would have been stuck yeah yeah uh blocked on both sides and who knew we might not have even survived um and so um my epistemology has to find something to do with that with that data yeah because um there are that that wasn't that wasn't a one-off occasion yeah things like that have happened while we've lived here um you know at least five times five specific times that i can think of and um you know uh and andy and each time by listening to whatever it was i was hearing go right don't go left it has literally kept my family out of it out of a dangerous situation yeah um and so uh my epistemology um has to do something with that yeah you know from a solar scriptura approach and i'll close with this um there's that lovely verse in in the in the old testament and my wife would remember the reference but i don't remember at the moment that says you know you will hear you know a voice behind you saying you know go to the left go to the right this is the way walk in it yeah and so when i read through not just my favorite chapter of romans or john but the whole book genesis revelation including all that obscure stuff in the old testament um a solo scriptura place indicates that uh my epistemology and my very world view should be a bit broader than what it was when i was you know growing up in an american public elementary school well uh josh thank you so much for taking the time i really enjoyed the talking and uh it's exciting too yeah me too be able to have a face-to-face conversation on the other side of the world you know i mean we if it wasn't for the pandemic we never have uh this might never have caught on 207 really but uh the the technology is wonderful on the days that it works yeah right well thanks a lot and uh hopefully we'll be in touch about other things in the future if anything comes up very good i'll i'll send you an email attaching the the document with my notes for you to to look at and do what you you want if you want to correspond on any of the points that i've mentioned uh i'd be happy to i've also listed a number of uh secondary sources that could potentially strengthen your argument if you had the time to incorporate them so i realize that everything has limitations of scope always effective there's always more we can say yeah i really i really appreciate that let me start the recording and then we'll uh um just say our goodbyes Participant 4 – Michael – Liberal i'm probably somewhere between neo-orthodox and liberal my um in my treatment of scripture i am not a solo scriptura person myself and i am also not reform i appreciate what you're what you are trying to do and that is what i what i appreciate what you're trying to do is that trying to get clarity about epistemology and that and then that through clarity about our starting points we can have a better relationships with people who are different from from our thinking um and i think that that is something that is is necessary in in a diverse church um that and joshua touched on this but in within world christianity you're going to have christians who have different different ways of thinking we are not a single type of person and that's what makes humanity and the world and the church uh so so wonderful um that we can we can be open to what the spirit is teaching other people and allow that to teach us as well so i appreciate that you're trying to to dig into the machine that to figure out how that works um you identified early on that the question we are asking is what basis do the various models have in christianity for arriving other conclusions to determine this we need to look at the authoritative truth sources the relative priority assigned to each of these and the methods and i think that that that really um zeroed in for me that what you're trying to do is you're trying to distinguish source priority and method in in your paper um i if if i'm if i'm reading if i'm trying to understand you through the paper um there's that type of analytical um mind that that if we can get to the the core and really know source priority and method then we can understand ourselves we can understand each other and and that that can cause less less confusion less less friction in our in our work spending more time in priority and i think that that would be that would be an area for you to to grow this paper the wesleyan quadrilateral how your model is seeking to differentiate epistemologies um how that's different from something that's more well known um like the quadrilateral would be useful or at least 208 recognizing that there are other models but they may have their limitations and if if you're working common a common uh caricature of liberal christians is that we don't care about the bible or that we don't listen to the bible and it's not true but our our approach and understanding of what scripture is and how it functions is different than fundamentalists you make that argument historically um that that um platonic epistemology is different than our a contemporary western scientific cosmology more of a contextualization question which is what fascinates me um i mean that's my area of of ministry and and um and research and that once you get into that contextualization side of it i think that you'll find some um you'll be able to put a finer point on what you mean in differentiating between so between source um but also being able to see where sources just be the same source is being used in different ways based on social location based on nation of origin um what would you see different between clergy and lay people takes the project from being historical analysis to being more um more contemporary not to to argue historical theology and that's that's where i think it can be a lot of fun anyway that um and can give us ways to to reach out and work together um understand each other better or understand where where we're missing each other we just end up talking in circles but that shouldn't keep us from fellowship that shouldn't keep us from doing ministry together we we just need to know we need to have clarity about where we where we misalign conversations that we've had in that facebook group um where a lot of the um a lot of the friction is because we're not coming from the same place and and we might end up arguing with each other to no conclusion because you know we're we're looking in opposite directions to start with gendered language for god you talk about about he um that um that that's that's a major major issue for me social constructs about gender there's social constructs about power um that were that we're using um we're using the same source but different epistemology and a lot of that comes ultimately a lot of that doesn't come down to how we treat scripture it comes down to how we treat tradition and how we treat our own our own culture and language i became more involved in my church tradition um that um ordains women supports women in ministry is led by women arrived at my understanding through through my source priority and method differently than you've arrived at your source priority method and that's where um where the the i think the 209 importance of of having a process to gain clarity is is significant as well as the humility for us to to think through our talk about the church universal um where you can be a little more specific like you're talking about the catholic the roman catholic church there's a point to be made there that epistemology is not solely a religious issue [Music] that our religious epistemology happens in relationship to our social epistemology and that and this might be the an issue of secularization that that we as our social epistemologies are growing and changing our religious epistemologies can struggle to catch up age of enlightenment and the scientific revolution there are more recent epistemological shifts that might be more more relevant individually affected by epistemology um that um um i know for my uh for my parents generation um for baby boomers um the the cold war was an event that set for them a certain epistemology of their their understanding of how they related to the world um that that led that epistemology understanding that that way of processing knowledge in in relationship of geopolitical powers caused them to read scripture in a certain way cause them to ask certain questions of their faith and cause them to practice their faith in a certain way that were not the same for me um i mean for me the or for my generation we would have um epistemological events in relationship to globalization global terror now we have i mean and then my kids will have epistemological effects based on climate um and democracy um that so the the um that that being able to it's important to have these big ones um but that can also i think that we can detach a bit from them because the enlightenment and the scientific revolution that's the water we swim in it's such a baseline for us that it's hard to see how that really affects our epistemology without making a without making a a caricature bring up a few more recent recent examples or examples for yourself about um the things that have shaped you to see the world in a certain way um or caused you to things that have shaped your epistemology differently than someone who's one degree removed from you whether that's generationally or geographically culturally linguistically we had a microscope um that post-modernism was us realizing that we had put our thumbprint on the on the lens and that that that the there's still things that we can learn with with the tool of the microscope but we have to recognize that that we have smudged it before we looked and and part of of understanding through the microscope as a post-modern as a post-modern theologian is understanding what is our smudge and what is what we're actually looking at liberal christianity um that's probably what i would try and emphasize in there is more so than than experience and we're trying to account for our own and we're trying to account for our own um our own our own context our own culture yes and and the culture of others 210 because the point of your paper is not to establish classifications um it's it's to illustrate why this is important um that if you can if you can find a typolog a typology that works for you use it themselves as objective in their their ability um and i mean this is left over from from our enlightenment age is this belief that our human reason can be pure and that we as as um scientists of the scripture um or scientists of the sacred can be pure laboratory instruments because i'm not reform for example i don't have a i don't expect a theological perfection in in in theodicy um that um yeah i i don't have to i can accept that there's differences in the gospel accounts um without having to reconcile them to reconcile those in a way that that wouldn't make sense to matthew mark luke or john um i can accept that there are differences and that i can appreciate those differences that that the differences can lead me to see it can lead me to hear the gospel in a different way because we because we can't get our hands on god we can get our hands on a book yeah and if we can make this book that's printed in english be be god for us um then it that's where we can we get our authority um and that's that that's a way that really mishandles scripture and god that i know is a caricature of um of those positions but it's it's what i see i'd say from a sociological side um that that we're looking for replacements for god and sometimes that replacement is the bible the ability to make predictions regarding the future trajectory of any given model event changed biblical studies if we were to have a similar dead sea scrolls type event contemporary issues such as the effects of um of racialization um on or gender on our biblical interpretation um because those things get too because those things are are challenging to the source they're treated differently to have 10 people in that room and we're all going to read the text in 10 different ways [Music] and that doesn't bother us at all yeah so because because we're using that source differently and that um but we take that data plug that into our our model and see what does that mean for for these traditions um the the changing landscape of biblical scholarship is more more women and more people of color more people from the global south are involved in academic biblical studies um how is that going to change these um these communities based on their epistemology how does a new translation of the how does a new english translation affects some churches a lot and other churches don't notice if you have an epistemological model that says the the received text is canon nothing can be added to the received text nothing can be taken away from the received text that if that's significant to your source you're going to treat that speculation in a very different way than someone who the receive text carry carries less weight than the the social commentary the hypothetical the innovation the history of tradition 211 the it might be good to to read some on the harmonical spiral outside of um biblical interpretation and theology because it's also a concept in anthropology and sociology um so that i think but i think that will help to kind of bring those ideas together page 35 your bottom paragraph is great um that of course unlike other fields of study where people must come to multiple competing perspectives at the same time um [Music] that i think that's that really to me kind of sums up why you're doing what you're doing um and then page 36 it allows us to better understand our own position as we contrast with other perspectives yes yes um that's that's that's why we're doing it um um yeah and yeah like i just said i mean the ability taking the time to to clarify our positions um helps us understand ourselves better helps us understand each other better and all of that ultimately is for a missiological purpose and for us for us being more united as christians um without having to all believe the same thing and do the same thing and for us being able to to love each other and love others better and because we're not we're not we're able to see each other as who we really are and not through our our own filters um that that um if if you're if if someone who is conservative is looking at me as a liberal through their their their lens of course i'm going to be wrong but of course they're going to be wrong to me because they're not working through that same lens but being able to and i think theology has that theology has a greater potential for that because we are we are so trained in our silos our traditions our confessional communities um our schools of thought um that that that we we do so much internal work that we don't do the relational work with each other so that's so i think that there's um you know as as you're getting the ball rolling on this i think that it's you're you're thinking down the right direction and i'm excited to see what comes out of that Video Transcript well hello again i'm pastor mike and i'm here with michael uh again um i've asked him to review this paper i've written it can be found at uh bitly bit dot lly dash uh solar scriptra manifesto um and um essentially we're just gonna talk about whatever thoughts you have to share about the paper so michael uh take a few minutes just kind of introduce yourself tell us a little bit about your background and uh then we can get started sure thank you mike uh i am um a adjunct professor in southern california my background is in community organizing nonprofit management and my academic background is in contextualization and world christianity and so that was a bit of the lens that i brought to to this paper if uh i mean i know you have but if your listeners have listened to uh joshua baron's presentation i i watched his because we've worked together a bit in the past and uh he he stole my lines um that that i really enjoyed uh uh that conversation and i i think the overlap that we've had in in world christianity especially um bring some of those epistemological and hermeneutical questions to the forefront so um i appreciated everything that he had to say i haven't had a chance to listen to the other commentators yet but that that was one that i enjoyed for a bit of reference about myself um i am in your in the categories the epistemological categories that you use i'm probably somewhere between neo-orthodox and liberal my um in my treatment of scripture i am not a solo scriptura person myself and i am also not reform so um that kind of that gives you a 212 little bit of theological context for how i work through the paper or if that leads you to some more questions that's that's that's great that's that's great i'm actually kind of glad because i think i've kind of talked to more of the conservative side of things so i today i even dialogue with some atheists and i want to get like the opposite perspective as well um so i'll let you like if you want to share something i'll let you share first and then i'd like to come back and kind of get a feel to see if what you thought about the categories if you feel like they were working for you if we need to make some changes and all that stuff as well so go ahead thanks um well i i appreciate what you're what you are trying to do and that is what i what i appreciate what you're trying to do is that trying to get clarity about epistemology and that and then that through clarity about our starting points we can have a better relationships with people who are different from from our thinking um and i think that that is something that is is necessary in in a diverse church um that and joshua touched on this but in within world christianity you're going to have christians who have different different ways of thinking we are not a single type of person and that's what makes humanity and the world and the church uh so so wonderful um that we can we can be open to what the spirit is teaching other people and allow that to teach us as well so i appreciate that you're trying to to dig into the machine that to figure out how that works um you identified early on that the question we are asking is what basis do the various models have in christianity for arriving other conclusions to determine this we need to look at the authoritative truth sources the relative priority assigned to each of these and the methods and i think that that that really um zeroed in for me that what you're trying to do is you're trying to distinguish source priority and method in in your paper um i if if i'm if i'm reading if i'm trying to understand you through the paper um there's that type of analytical um mind that that if we can get to the the core and really know source priority and method then we can understand ourselves we can understand each other and and that that can cause less less confusion less less friction in our in our work and and you i think that you do you spend most of your paper talking about source yeah um that that we that we need like you said we need to look at the authoritative truth sources being used um where i would where i would differ but this isn't my paper it has to do with priority um and because we we do broadly speaking share this share a source when we're talking about scripture um fundamentalists protestants catholics um neo-orthodox and liberal like all of those categories share a source in in scripture canon will vary in traditions of course but we share that source however we we our priority about how we evaluate and interpret differs um and so and then in method that gets more into the hermeneutic side um how do in how we do what we do with that um that's why that would probably be my like where i would primarily diverge from you um would be spending more time in priority and i think that that would be that would be an area for you to to grow this paper is to is to to look at those different categories that you've named christian traditions um and that that um that you're identifying their priority um and so i'll i'll close that and see where see where we go yeah so uh i mean maybe i'll let you finish your all your thoughts and then come back to this but what i would like to hear is from your perspective how would you define the categories because i do agree with you everybody uses the scripture but the way they view the scripture is different and i have some understanding of like maybe the more modern side of christianity but because i 213 didn't grow up in that tradition i'm i'm not fully immersed in it enough to like fully wrap my mind around it so maybe that's something you could kind of give me your perspective on it yeah um well it might be useful to um uh another model that that i that i think um gets into this is the wesleyan quadrilateral yeah that it's it's asking a similar question um you know how do we how do we define and distinguish um our scripture reason experience and tradition and just like you have your um your slider buttons um they would have their quadrilaterals um as as their image for that um and so i i think that spending a little bit of time with that about how your model of how your model is seeking to differentiate epistemologies um how that's different from something that's more well known um like the quadrilateral would be useful or at least recognizing that there are other models but they may have their limitations and if if you're working within a a tradition that has a a higher regard for solo scriptura um then it might be that you're you're trying to understand more about that piece of the quad roulette quadrilateral what do we mean when we talk about scripture um and but i think that so i think that that's um [Music] uh that's where being able to define the approaches i'm on um i think is page six or seven you have a um a graph of degree of biblical inspiration and you you summarize very briefly what you mean by each of these positions that that that you could speak a little bit more into how they prioritize their um their epistemology or how they epistemize or sorry that's made a verb out of that how they prioritize the different parts of their epistemology yeah that it's a combination of scripture experience reason tradition um context questions um and all of that i also it may just be something that i'm more sensitive to as a in your paper as a liberal christian um that a common a common uh caricature of liberal christians is that we don't care about the bible or that we don't listen to the bible and it's not true but our our approach and understanding of what scripture is and how it functions is different than fundamentalists to be the the furthest possible the way that we as liberals um the way that we as liberals use the bible is never going to satisfy a fundamentalist the same way that the way that a fundamentalist reads the bible is never going to satisfy a neo-orthodox or liberal christian so um and that's where and that's where i think being able to rather than than distinguishing so much about different sources you can you can identify these are the priorities that they give to their to this or because of their priorities this is how they how their source is affected okay but knowing that you are um you know you're trying to get to this core of epistemology um that that the you you would need to make the case that that they really that they're more different than they are similar um and you get in you make that argument historically um that that um platonic epistemology is different than our a contemporary western scientific cosmology because those things are so different it's easy to see that they're how they they operate um joshua makes the point in talking about an african uh epistemology and how that's different but he would say too that even like there is no singular african epistemology that there are many epistemologies um uh within our african umbrella so sorry you make the point historically to say look at platonism look at medieval epistemology look at contemporary epistemology the finer point will be in the 21st century how how different are epistemologies that we're making um that we're distinguishing on and that that's going to become more of a contextualization question which is what fascinates me um i mean that's my area of of ministry and and um and research and that once you get into that contextualization side of it i think that you'll find some um you'll be able to put a finer point on what you mean in differentiating between so between source um but also being able to see where sources just be the same source is being used in different ways the um sorry my my notes went away um this is kind of a small note um that that back on page two where you have the the slider buttons um uh another way that 214 uh to visualize this because you talk about bible tradition philosophy community science experience and other um another way to visualize that could be through um a radar chart that could could make for a very compelling visualization especially particularly because you can compare those to each other um and it's going to give you more of a it's still a two-dimensional chart but it's going to look it's going to to show differences much more starkly so um so a radar chart um that where you it it might be useful um as you're describing um fundamentalist protestant catholic um neo-orthodox liberal atheist um to try and to try and score these seven things one to ten you know and you can plot that on a radar chart or you can i mean you could use the one that you use use now and you'd be able to see that you that you might see you know fundamentalists they're their bible is very high their science is very low their experience is very low um you know so and and that's going to show you differently than liberal christian where bible might be we'll say a four out of ten um tradition a four out of ten philosophy an eight out of ten community a nine out of ten you know like and that's going to show you that that one chart looks like this and the other chart looks like this yeah and and that's that can help make your case for um why why these groups don't see eye to eye yeah that's very good yeah that's a great idea i mean i was kind of hinting at that by having the the buttons there but i if i had plotted them out it would have made a lot more sense right and i think especially as you're as you are defining the problem early on that can be useful yeah um that um that because you give the you give the illustration you say one way that you could understand it is this but then you don't show us and um and then i mean from each of those groups um i mean it can be an exercise to to to see um how how well you are representing those groups um to have someone who would be a self-identified neo-orthodox person um you know let them score themselves or let them score their tradition um uh let a catholic uh let a contemporary catholics score their tradition um and and because i think you'll see those people can be self-critical enough to know what their their positive end i don't think anyone would give themselves a 10 out of 10 on all seven categories um and you would also i think you would also then start to see um in that scoring level i'm not thinking of the data side of it that you know if you were to what differences would you see in that type of data between um generationally what types of differences would you see based on social location based on nation of origin um what would you see different between clergy and lay people yeah you know all of these differences that that we might see i mean now it's becoming a much bigger data project it's a great project yeah but but i think especially um i mean it would demonstrate that you have done the research into these categories that that you know that you'd be able to to describe them in enough detail that people could see themselves in it yeah um that that um and i think that again kind of takes the project from being historical analysis to being more um more contemporary and and that there's there's an there's enough diversity in the church today and will continue for the next century to be a diverse church that we need this type of information we need this type of research and reflection to deal with our contemporary church not not to to argue historical theology and that's that's where i think it can be a lot of fun anyway that um and can give us ways to to reach out and work together um understand each other better or understand where where we're missing each other that um that if i have i have some great friends who i would consider them fundamentalists and i i just know that when we um when we are discussing when we're just when we're discussing theology or discussing ministry that that the there because we arrive at our conclusions in different ways if we don't acknowledge those things we just end up talking in 215 circles but that shouldn't keep us from fellowship that shouldn't keep us from doing ministry together we we just need to know we need to have clarity about where we where we misalign and that's where i think that's where i think graphically um it can it can help show that and um and and particularly that that you do the work or or enlist people who would identify with those traditions um that they would see themselves in those characterizations yeah this is great michael you know you're the first fourth person i've talked to so far in this medium and everyone i've talked to so far seems to have grasped that concept which for me it's like a big thing because i've talked to hundreds of people over the years and it's it's been very hard to have people get it and somehow for whatever reason you guys got it and you kind of see the value of of thinking along this line so i'm excited about that because it's like it's not an easy thing to to explain you know because it's it's somewhat esoteric somewhat somewhat abstract you know people don't always have the patience to follow all this different historical pathways that happen and all this stuff but i think it's beneficial to like get a sense of this stuff and to understand the differences and and if we're not the reason just like you said i mean you're sitting there talking to your friends and you could be arguing for the next five weeks or whatever back and forth when in fact you know you could know from the very beginning that you're never going to reach a conclusion until people evaluate their epistemologies i mean it's just not going to happen so it's kind of we could bypass all that and just get to the point so to speak but anyway sorry to interrupt go ahead well i mean i uh i think part of it is um i mean you you asked this question you i mean this invitation went out to a pretty diverse theological community yeah and so the um uh and you've seen conversations that we've had in that facebook group um where a lot of the um a lot of the friction is because we're not coming from the same place and and we might end up arguing with each other to no conclusion because you know we're we're looking in opposite directions to start with so we're never going to see eye to eye um and i i i mean to bring an example um of that into the the um into your paper um something that from my tradition really stands out to me is when you use uh gendered language for god you talk about about he um that um that that's that's a major major issue for me and um and i know that it's not i know it's not the purpose of your paper to um you're not talking about the gender of god um but it that can become an epistemological issue um because someone will say well the bible says he when really they mean my english translation says he um i mean they or they they can say the the greek and hebrew are a masculine word in which case i'll respond and say well there's there's the hebrew that's that's feminine that that there's there's social constructs about gender there's social constructs about power um that were that we're using um we're using the same source but different epistemology and a lot of that comes ultimately a lot of that doesn't come down to how we treat scripture it comes down to how we treat tradition and how we treat our own our own culture and language yeah that kind of stuff would have gotten cleaned up if i spend a little more time editing but because i'm just kind of the person where i put my ideas down and then move on and go on to the next thing i i let them slip but i know exactly what you're saying i got my one of my uh i guess my my mdiv at a at a university that was pretty big on that so i had a teacher that basically told us if you use gender language for god you're never going to get it in my class so when you put it that way we were pretty careful on the papers but without somebody breathing it's kind of like 216 and that was and that was similar for me to i did my um graduate work at fuller theological seminary and and that was one of that was part of their style guide that if that that if you use gender language or in your your papers or your your thesis dissertation um that that that wasn't not just not just um theological gendered language but any gender language but it was but even being in that environment um it didn't really connect with me until i became more involved in my church tradition um that um ordains women supports women in ministry is led by women um that it became more of a more of a concern for me that i had an abstract idea of it but when you're once you're in a community with people where your your language means means more than just what you're saying um it can be more i think that's part of where um as you're trying to disentangle like what is what is source what is priority what is method um that that we can get get through those things because if we don't unravel that then we're always making assumptions about what the other person means that that that i could read what you write and say oh he's using this masculine um typology for god he must be misogynistic he must be traditional he must be um you know fixated that he's obviously using these words on purpose because he has an androcentric view of god um and and that may not be the case but i've arrived at my understanding through through my source priority and method differently than you've arrived at your source priority method and that's where um where the the i think the importance of of having a process to gain clarity is is significant as well as the humility for us to to think through our um have clarity for ourselves why we we're doing it the way that we're doing um so i i i mean i have a note in there just to check that it sounds like you're already checking that but i know this isn't your final paper that you're that you're submitting um that and there's a few notes like that um uh there's a few times where you talk about the church universal um where you can be a little more specific like you're talking about the catholic the roman catholic church where just to really zero in um on to have specificity um when you're describing a group um and i mean like you mentioned this you were trying to you're getting your ideas down so i'm not i'm not a copy editor so i'm not trying i just realized that i had multiple versions of the paper uh on at different places do you have one that has an appendix or it doesn't it's an appendix i don't think so okay yeah okay now i lost my place in my notes um uh you made a good point on um well now if it's different different um papers it might not be the same page number no it's the same paper but one of them had an appendix and then the other one did and i just noticed that because i was talking to somebody today and they had a lot of extra stuff that i didn't expect um page four um in the second paragraph you you talk about um i think you're talking about the development of reason and you talk about the um shift away from scripture authority in the age of enlightenment and scientific revolution and i think there's a point to be made there that epistemology is not solely a religious issue [Music] that our religious epistemology happens in relationship to our social epistemology and that and this might be the an issue of secularization that that we as our social epistemologies are growing and changing our religious epistemologies can struggle to catch up with that or struggle to incorporate that well this would be the difference between um what you'd call syncretism and critical contextualization um that how well the how 217 well does the how was your religious epistemology how well does the christian faith adapt correctly adapt in a healthy way to your cultural differences um and and i think that that could be a point i mean it again kind of underscores what is your source what is your priority method um but i thought that it i thought that it was good you could develop that a little bit more um that i'm glad that you at least you recognized here on page four that um it's it's it's not just epistemology is not just a religious issue again it's pretty historical you're talking about the age of enlightenment and the scientific revolution there are more recent epistemological shifts that might be more more relevant even if they're not as as big um i think that the i mean these big ones are important to to recognize because we're obviously still affected by the enlightenment and the scientific revolution those are just those are such big changes in our our self-conceptualization as a people that that more recent ones um i think we'll speak into that and more recent ones that um i think can can help people to see how they are individually affected by epistemology um that um um i know for my uh for my parents generation um for baby boomers um the the cold war was an event that set for them a certain epistemology of their their understanding of how they related to the world um that that led that epistemology understanding that that way of processing knowledge in in relationship of geopolitical powers caused them to read scripture in a certain way cause them to ask certain questions of their faith and cause them to practice their faith in a certain way that were not the same for me um i mean for me the or for my generation we would have um epistemological events in relationship to globalization global terror now we have i mean and then my kids will have epistemological effects based on climate um and democracy um that so the the um that that being able to it's important to have these big ones um but that can also i think that we can detach a bit from them because the enlightenment and the scientific revolution that's the water we swim in and joshua did a good job of explaining some of the um african epistemology and how that's or traditional african epistemologies and that can give us a good idea um of the difference but if you're speaking to a mostly western audience with this paper the scientific revolution the age of enlightenment that's it's such a baseline for us that it's hard to see how that really affects our epistemology without making a without making a a caricature of well hundreds of years ago before electricity before modern medicine um people's epistemology was x y and z um that that you could bring up a few more recent recent examples or examples for yourself about um the things that have shaped you to see the world in a certain way um or caused you to things that have shaped your epistemology differently than someone who's one degree removed from you whether that's generationally or geographically culturally linguistically um you know that that's an interesting thought that i don't know if i i can develop on the spot right now i might have to think about it for a bit and come back and maybe even uh i don't know maybe send you a text at some point and talk about a little more but um so what i've thought about epistemology i guess there's different layers of it because you know the the first part of the paper deals with epistemology at the surface level like okay here the church makes the decision here it's about scripture here it's about reason and so on but that was the other paper i went to a lower level where i talked about just even concepts of how knowledge works you know the classical concept is that there's there's something there's a part of us as human beings that is connected to god and knowledge comes directly from god to our soul to our minds as opposed to like empirical study and all the stuff that we take more seriously today and all these things so there's different different hypotheses regarding the the process of knowledge acquiring um so i think one of the big shifts between the enlightenment and and today is it's kind of the post- 218 modern er where where there's this sort of you know the alignment had this the sense that you know now that we figured out how to do science we can figure out everything pretty much so there was this very optimistic attitude towards towards knowledge while you know the last century or so and the closer we come to the present people who realize that hey maybe we are kind of overestimating where where all these new tools we have would be able to bring us and we're kind of at a point right now and it's not everybody i mean scientists a lot of scientists still seem to have this this sort of optimistic attitude regarding our ability to to continue to grow in knowledge while some of the philosophers seem to to have the sense that maybe we you know knowledge-wise maybe we're not gonna know maybe we're kind of stuck in this in this epistemic void or limitation or something that's going to prevent us from yeah from fully grasping but you're talking about you know you're talking you mentioned the cold war you mentioned uh global warming and all these things so i almost feel like that's kind of a middle there between this this bottom layer i'm talking about and the superficially i was talking about earlier yeah we're going to think about that yeah and that and that might be useful to to differentiate some of those things um that i mean again it gets into to degrees of epistem degrees of epistemology maybe um that that even with that you're trying to get down to the to that that base level um and um i'm not sure if we i'm not sure if we do have a i'm thinking anthropologically at the moment um i'm not sure if we have a a universal epistemology to get to um [Music] or that that we wouldn't be satisfied by whatever like i mean that if we would say at the base layer we are animals and our epistemology is what we sense and what our what our neurons tell us i don't think that i don't think that as christian theologians were satisfied with that answer um um and so to try and get to what what are what are the core things that that that you might get down to a few a few core things that there's a you know a western epistemology there is a an african epistemology i mean if we're speaking in broad terms um uh that that can can see things in similar but not quite the same i'm thinking about um i'll i'll put a put it tie that one up um i was thinking about as you were talking about um the difference between the enlightenment and post-modernism um the the image that came to mind for me was um if if modernism if the enlightenment gave us the gave us the tool of a microscope and so we believed that that we could we could figure out exactly how things work because we had a microscope um that post-modernism was us realizing that we had put our thumbprint on the on the lens and that that that the there's still things that we can learn with with the tool of the microscope but we have to recognize that that we have smudged it before we looked and and part of of understanding through the microscope as a post-modern as a post-modern theologian is understanding what is our smudge and what is what we're actually looking at and that and that we again we have the humility to to recognize um this was my smudge or the person that i'm reading this was their smudge and that's why we need to that's why we need more people looking at looking through their microscopes um uh to maybe for the theologian we should say a telescope instead that um that that uh that we have to account for our our own self in that process which is i mean probably what i would get to um when you when you described um uh when you're describing the the the different types of of biblical inspiration that to talk about liberal christianity um that's probably what i would try and emphasize in there is more so than than experience and we're trying to account for our own and we're trying to account for our own um our own our own context our own culture yes and and the culture of others so that i'll work on that metaphor a little bit more but but but it i think can be useful for us i mean the way you described the enlightenment i think was was right on that that it caused a belief in in um in the 219 thinking class of society that it caused belief that that we can figure this out we have um and and for christians and the enlightenment it was god has given us the reason we can figure this out um and with the with with the right tools the right questions we can get involved with this and that is not i don't think that is is wrong necessarily and it's not unchristian to believe that god has given us a mind and creativity and tools um but again it kind of speaks into the the the manner in which we understand ourselves is what leads us to our epistemology yeah so you know one of the things i want to do is to be fair to to each of these groups in how i describe them um but it's to me it seems like a very complex task because for one thing it's not a uniform group i mean there there's people that see themselves very differently but there does seem to be like you know if if we describe liberalism for example and we describe traditional protestantism there does seem to be something in the middle that that's more like new orthodoxy there seems to be a bridge in the middle so like if you step far away you could you could see a concentration of data points here in a concentration of data points here and one here but when you're close there's it's more like a spectrum like like things just kind of blend all the way through you know so i think the separation is useful for us to be able to have a meaningful conversation but at the same time it's it's always going to step on somebody's toes because they see themselves slightly more this way in that way yeah and there's and there there's there's words that you might use to define a group that i have a different connotation for those words and even even the word the word liberal um in a in a philosophical sense that means something um that that you may not mean that that i may read or that anyone might read in a in a way that doesn't it's not as clear as you you mean to be yeah um yeah so i'm kind of dependent on uh you know some of them the popular historians and the classifications they make and pick up a history book like christian theology the past 2000 years they're going to mention new orthodox that they're going to mention so that's just kind of how it's been divided and i think that's that if i think that like and because i i don't want to get too bogged down on this because the point of your paper is not to establish classifications um it's it's to illustrate why this is important um that if you can if you can find a typolog a typology that works for you use it and just say that you know i'm using this scholars categorization um they define these terms as a b and c um and then footnote you know or like other scholars distinguish but as this um that um because the main thing i you know the main thing you want to be aware of in that is that that whoever you're choosing or that you're you're reading you're researching that from enough perspective that you don't have you know three fundamentalists describing what post-modernism is yeah yeah yeah that obviously that makes makes sense yeah one of the things is that even though people make this categorizations a lot of the times they're not doing it from an epistemological perspective they're coming at it from a different method of classification they're looking for other criteria by which they divide their groups so that's somewhat of a difference so even though i'm using other people's classifications i'm not using it exactly as them because i'm looking at it in terms of like what exactly are these people doing when they do their theology how are they reasoning through the process you know so just back to what you were saying earlier i think one of the key aspects of a more liberal theology is the uncertainty factor there's sort of an 220 acknowledgement of uncertainty and for me that's a hard one to work with because to have pure uncertainty you have to be an agnostic so there is uncertainty but there's a limit to the uncertainty because otherwise you wouldn't be able to differentiate yourself from somebody that just says i don't know anything you know i have no idea about anything metaphysical you know and i don't quite understand the logic of where people draw the line and what they know and what they don't know and all that stuff but yeah and i can see how that would um particularly because you're i mean the whole project is about knowledge um that the that that might be one of the one of the tools that you use is is how how comfortable a tradition is with ambiguity that and i'd say maybe the another way of framing that is how how um how much a tradition views themselves as objective in their their ability um and i mean this is left over from from our enlightenment age is this belief that our human reason can be pure and that we as as um scientists of the scripture um or scientists of the sacred can be pure laboratory instruments and that that's as a as a post-modern liberal person i just have doubt about that um and but because i because i'm not committed to that ideological position it allows me to to um incorporate more perspective and um or appreciate people even if they're not entirely if they're not entirely accurate uh i mean if he you get at this point um and what approached scripture the same way that that um i don't need a scientific accuracy in in um in scripture for it to be true yeah you know because yeah um and and you get in use the term um limited errancy i think yeah um that so even there there's there's a um uh there there's a sense that even within inerrancy there's some ambiguity um that an oxymoron but yeah um but but that the um [Music] but but if if you're with if you have an ideology that doesn't require perfection doesn't expect perfection then you're not dependent on that in order to determine truth um because i'm not reform for example i don't have a i don't expect a theological perfection in in in theodicy um that um yeah i i don't have to i can accept that there's differences in the gospel accounts um without having to reconcile them to reconcile those in a way that that wouldn't make sense to matthew mark luke or john um i can accept that there are differences and that i can appreciate those differences that that the differences can lead me to see it can lead me to hear the gospel in a different way or to share the gospel in a different way um because there's there's not a because there's an openness to it i think like in today's day and age i think it's it's somewhat of a commonly accepted thing that you don't need perfect data to get trustworthy results like for example you know we're dealing with the pandemic we're dealing with the vaccine going out there's a point where you could do enough experiments and get sufficient data to say hey this data is trustworthy there's a clear trend here in the data that tells me you know i have a certain confidence level that i can work with so we're ready to go to the public um well you know just just because there's some anomalies in the data we don't dismiss the entire package of data you know so yeah um i i think within the within the public secular sphere almost everyone that's rational has accepted that but for some reason in theology there's this sort of necessity to cling to this inerrancy concept based on from what i've seen i'm just this pure fear that if you allow a little bit of error here the whole thing collapses because you don't know and any other errors where they are and you don't you cannot trust anything but that's that's not how things work in real life and i think that um i mean so in in our in our secular world you're talking about margin of error yeah that you know that we we accept margin of error and we accept different types of margin of error 221 for a different you know with the margin of error that we would accept for a vaccine is very different than the margin of error that we accept for um do i take an umbrella with me to work that that uh but you're right we have this idea that or we bring this assumption that there can be no margin of error in scripture because that would make it false and and i mean i can see that where that comes from the fundamentalist modernist debates from 100 years ago um where we're still dealing with that i can see in [Music] evangelicalism where that's a major it's a major point of authority that you know we have we have sorry i'll if i can be uncharitable for a moment you'll have to forgive me because you're a christian um you know that that that we because we because we can't get our hands on god we can get our hands on a book yeah and if we can make this book that's printed in english be be god for us um then it that's where we can we get our authority um and that's that that's a way that really mishandles scripture and god that i know is a caricature of um of those positions but it's it's what i see i'd say from a sociological side um that that we're looking for replacements for god and sometimes that replacement is the bible yeah yeah so you know just to kind of go back to some of the previous things we said yeah i think even even this perspective that you're sharing right now it has a lot to do with you know your understanding and others understanding about how knowledge is accessed you know because you know if if somebody has a sense where god in us speaks directly to the soul and and gives us this enlightenment has to to know certain things you tend to trust things differently or maybe from the catholic tradition where there's kind of um will be the word like a attack team's endorsement so to speak where you you know you have your scripture then you have the natural theology that backs up the things you've yeah you know so there's there's two sources that can overlap and reinforce each other and then coming further towards the modern side you don't have those those same levels of authority so because of that there's more uncertainty and you're dealing with the with the data differently so um and one of the things i've kind of brought up is how do we test our starting assumptions here because we we're kind of stuck you know like we don't really have a way to prove it one way or another yeah and that is something that i it's a note that i made earlier on in the paper where you talked about um you know if we have our model we can predict let's see where how do you say it um um i can't find that but but um you you um you're talking about with this project that if we can establish our model we can predict the outcome oh yeah that's that's right after the charts with the with the degrees um with the scale thing okay yeah that yeah okay got it yep um the yeah give this insight to the particular theological terms by tradition as well as the ability to make predictions regarding the future trajectory of any given model i this is i said i was post-modernist this is the modernist in me speaking now i really want that to be true i want that to be possible maybe just as a as a um as a researcher i want that um but that's that's true in different ways for different models because like for example if you if you work with some of the more traditional perspectives if you give somebody the starting points you could kind of predict fairly closely how they're going to end up but from another perspective given the starting points and they have like a plethora of directions they could take them because of the very nature of the starting point you know but i think and so i mean that jumped out to me and and you know i i i think that it's i think we just maybe we just have to calibrate our expectation for that um because because i did think that you 222 would you would have something in there about um uh you know that if if you were able to see that in someone's theological model the um uh you know that scripture has this pr has this primary place fellow scriptura is the the epistemological core um if you when you have an event like the dead sea scrolls yeah for example and how that that event changed biblical studies if we were to have a similar dead sea scrolls type event how would how would that affect that you could predict how this this affects um uh that that theological group um i think like just i mean this will probably require a longer conversation but i think the fundamentalist model is very rigid and has a very hard time with that but the model i'm kind of sharing with the limited error setting has more flexibility obviously it doesn't have the flexibility you would have within a new orthodox or liberal model but at least you kind of you know bend around like for example let's say we come to overwhelming evidence that an entire book of the bible is just it's it's not trustworthy it's not dependable it's not original whatever yeah it doesn't take away all the other data we have to work with and we can make adjustments for that so and maybe smaller things that that you can see by understanding that model you can understand where you might have trouble with with um uh i mean the exactly of having a if we had another gospel up here that's one potential thing but even like in understanding how a particular model will understand theological biblical scholarship like bart hart irman and the work that he's done on gnostic gospels is not going to be well received in that theological model yeah yeah um you know i have i have my own issue with bart ehrman so i'm not here as his cheerleader but um uh that that's going to be an issue um or or um uh more content other contemporary issues such as the effects of um of racialization um on or gender on our biblical interpretation um because those things get too because those things are are challenging to the source they're treated differently than um than how in how other traditions would would affect them in a catholic tradition for example you have more um more authority given to the um magisterium and the the um the the tradition of interpretation that there might be a change in the or there might be it be a change in the text via translation or authorization um but that's not going to change every other part of authority and then and then you take that into a liberal we'll say you take that same thing to my church and you know in our bible study we're going to have 10 people in that room and we're all going to read the text in 10 different ways [Music] and that doesn't bother us at all yeah so because because we're using that source differently and that um but but i can give you some ways to start to see you know if this is your model if this is your epistemological model um by knowing where you sit you can you can you can anticipate how that will will develop and progress um data about biblical literacy in in the west um what does that mean for different traditions can we predict that based on like can we take that data plug that into our our model and see what does that mean for for these traditions um the the changing landscape of biblical scholarship is more more women and more people of color more people from the global south are involved in academic biblical studies um how is that going to change these um these communities based on their epistemology how does a new translation of the how does a new english translation affects some churches a lot and other churches don't notice you know that that all of that um you know comes into play that there are lots of things that can affect us in in lots of things that already are affecting us um and not just some bombshell who discovered a fragment of the gospel of maybe we discovered you yeah my this is this is a cul-de-sac but my um my my curiosity lately is that that q is not a document but it's the oral tradition of the women in the early church and that um that obviously they didn't write it down because they didn't need to but in an 223 oral storytelling culture um q are those stories that were held onto by the community so that's why they're similar and that but being the well i guess this is where the the social dynamics come into play is that that um because our our biblical studies biblical scholarship community is largely male and they they are writers they they expect that things are written down and they don't operate in oral story hotel culture anyway that's a that'll be a different conversation for a different day when we say q there is just as much evidence that it's the oral storytelling culture of the women then that than that there's an actual document floating around yeah that's a critical critique of a critical critique well that's right that's why we can have so much fun talking about it and but sorry to get back to the point um but something so something like like raising that as a possibility if you had if you have an epistemological model that says the the received text is canon nothing can be added to the received text nothing can be taken away from the received text that if that's significant to your source you're going to treat that speculation in a very different way than someone who the receive text carry carries less weight than the the social commentary the hypothetical the innovation the history of tradition um would have to be it might if if my epistemology is based on the the um the the the new revised standard version according to the year 19 [Music] 17 whenever you know whenever that if that is the received text nothing about how the bible was made changes that because i have my received text yeah well i think we're coming up on the outward is there any other major elements let me let me just scan from here really quick um i i think that we covered most of it i i um on page 15 um you say in the end however working with just two possibilities at the greek philosophy does a line of christianity or it does not um i i don't like that so what are you reading what do you write page fifty yeah okay yeah okay um i think that it's a false dichotomy um i i think that the no no um yeah sorry i didn't write that at all i'm talking about their dichotomy like oh okay i gotcha um some of yeah these notes we've already talked about some so you'll see that um data is another one you'll see um uh on page 19 you talked this the paragraph that starts even fundamentalist scholars yes and you talk about the hermeneutical spiral in there um you me you mentioned it but it's footnote 69. you mention it but then you don't come back to it and i think that this this concept of hermeneutical spiral is gonna can can do a lot for connecting the dots between our source our priority and our method yeah i love the hermeneutical spiral so i just just i'm using it a little bit different than what it actually the way it's been used because it's the hermeneutical spiral is between the text and the leader text in the original culture and our version of the text in our code and it's this back and forth but i'm using it kind of in terms of like the the entire body of data versus the specific localized body of data so yeah but i i don't know the it might be good to to read some on the harmonical spiral outside of um biblical interpretation and theology because it's also a concept in anthropology and sociology um so that i think but i think that will help to kind of bring those ideas together i mean you'll see these notes that come through here um the yeah we talked about a lot of this i liked i liked your end section more than your beginning okay um so i i don't know if the um that there might be some things that you some of the ways that you summarize the paper i'm looking specifically on page 23 and where you start in summary it took you 23 pages to get a really clear expression of what your project is um and so so just i do i do some work to kind of um see how how well you 224 you just you spend i think you spend a lot of time defining the problem and then you don't get to this you don't get to the solution at the beginning you have to get through this middle section first for that um [Music] page 35 your bottom paragraph is great um that of course unlike other fields of study where people must come to multiple competing perspectives at the same time um [Music] that i think that's that really to me kind of sums up why you're doing what you're doing um and then page 36 it allows us to better understand our own position as we contrast with other perspectives yes yes um that's that's that's why we're doing it um um yeah and yeah i've got a couple other notes in there just for for some things um if you haven't written down feel free to send them to me yeah uh yeah i'll just send them to you instead of coming through and then we can always um chat back and forth about that um but i mean i i like i just said i mean the ability taking the time to to clarify our positions um helps us understand ourselves better helps us understand each other better and all of that ultimately is for a missiological purpose and for us for us being more united as christians um without having to all believe the same thing and do the same thing and for us being able to to love each other and love others better and because we're not we're not we're able to see each other as who we really are and not through our our own filters um that that um if if you're if if someone who is conservative is looking at me as a liberal through their their their lens of course i'm going to be wrong but of course they're going to be wrong to me because they're not working through that same lens but being able to and i think theology has that theology has a greater potential for that because we are we are so trained in our silos our traditions our confessional communities um our schools of thought um that that that we we do so much internal work that we don't do the relational work with each other so that's so i think that there's um you know as as you're getting the ball rolling on this i think that it's you're you're thinking down the right direction and i'm excited to see what comes out of that sounds good like i i really enjoyed hearing your side of things uh i think one of one of my other major projects with this is to see if it's possible to to come up with this criteria of viability like to to say okay here are multiple models that are different and we might disagree with it but they seem to be viable they seem to possibly work we haven't come up with sufficient data to fully dismiss them so they're still in there and to have some kind of conversation obviously not just us because it has to be on a wider scale but um about what would be those criteria viability and how do we determine what what still works what is outdated what is just not functional anymore and so on and that you're and that we're able to say like the reason why i don't think it works is because of my epistemological difference that it's it's not a it's not based on it's not it's not a moral decision it's not a cultural decision i think that we just have a different epistemological set yeah and i think that that can also help us to see each other better yeah well hey thanks a lot for taking the time no problem i'm going to stop the recording and then just hang on for a second yeah sure so thanks again 225 Participant 5 – Ambrose – Centrist Evangelical i really enjoyed the layout of it i enjoyed kind of the historical background that you developed and um just the way you kind of like described what it was that you were doing and like put it within the kind of trajectories of christian theology historically speaking [Music] so i thought that was really helpful and i found it kind of just interesting a lot of it's familiar to me but it was just kind of good summary as well um and what i really enjoyed was that you're really attempting to kind of rescue something that has been um really the mainstay especially protestant um theology for a long time and yet as you point out has had many difficulties and and sort of in many circles especially kind of more critical theological circles has really just been abandoned as a hopeless sort of cause and so i i as myself i'm an evangelical christian and so like i just appreciated um that you're trying to take seriously the problems that sola scriptura has had and actually try to find some way forward that would allow us to to pursue that with some kind of authenticity and um but still that's kind of methodologically rigorous and responsible i guess you could say so so yeah i thought it was really great um in that respect and and i think there's some promise to it as well i think the the avenues that you're exploring uh certainly i think are are pushing on the right kinds of questions and looking for some some good answers to those questions biblical theology movement you are getting the whole package from the bible that it's that it's really solid scripture or it's not you know a scripture as a final authority or something but that the entire picture is somehow coming from from the bible including like you say the metaphysics so i feel like to some extent at least some versions of biblical theology have been trying to do that they're trying to give some kind of an account of biblical religion that would be kind of internal to the bible and and and then provide that as some kind of a base for systematic theology the whole paradigm of the cosmic conflict yeah um and so which i think is great and i think you illustrate the utility of that of of being able to identify something like that that kind of gives you the whole bible view that then everything can can fit within and make sense of um it's just that within the kind of like research and writing on biblical theology there's many other options right and so there could be other things that you might find equally um helpful or just like the general premise of putting together that kind of a paradigm you could find more support for it i think but i think what you're doing is more the sense i get anyways from reading it is that it's it's more it's more oriented towards kind of the traditional goals of systematic theology and and so even though you're kind of doing you know methodologically you're doing something that i think is very similar to what biblical theologians in the past have tried to do you're you're not just doing it as like a precursor to systematic theology you're actually trying to make make a systematic theological framework that's really rooted in the bible without using just using the bible without having to have some intermediate step like to get between the two the whole question of the relationship between theology and culture and i feel like that's something that's really missing in yours now i know you're you're like very focused on epistemology and that kind of thing but this kind of gets at my first question i asked about like why are we doing theology in the first place it seems to me that whatever theology is it has to be 226 articulated which means now you're operating within some kind of a culture and i and i just feel like there's a missing piece if you're going to try to do a fully sola scripture or a theology the way that you're doing it you might just be hiding inside the bible then how do you get out of the bible into the actual culture that you're sitting in in order to articulate what you've discovered by being isolated inside the text okay but if you were going to communicate if you're going to go the other way though and and say what is it that the bible actually teaches but you have to do it in their world view which means you have to use their philosophical framework in order to articulate what the bible actually is saying then i think you would come out with something maybe different than what you would by going the other way and starting with the philosophy and imposing that on scripture but you might still come out with something that looks very Greek well i mean as long as people are able to understand that there's different uh metaphysical perspectives and we're operating within different you know kind of big picture world view and so on um you could explain to people okay this is how you see things this is your world view this is the assumptions you're making and this is how i see it you don't have to agree with me but this is kind of the reasons why we come to this conclusions um yeah i mean i don't know if that's necessarily worse than trying to uh reframe your entire belief system within their within their paradigm because i'm not sure if you're even communicating your system across i mean like we look at christianity today and some of the essential elements are extremely different i mean even basics like within early protestantism you have the calvinist and the armenians the core element which is the gospel which is the major thing that the protestants built their whole thing around and yet they had this massive disagreement that was metaphysical nature you know yeah it's not the same thing i mean i don't know so yeah i like the the way that you've kind of like analyzed all of the different models um so that so that they can be like related to each other and particularly at the level of epistemology theology is actually part of the creation of culture and so in that sense you're stuck in a kind of a circle all the time because you can't do theology without doing it in a culture but as soon as you do it you've now changed that culture because you've said something that was not said before even though you said it within the paradigm of that particular culture and so you're always creating culture while you're doing theology you're actually transforming their culture because you're adding something to their discourse that's the essence of christian theology and that's why it's been so successful as a global religion because it becomes indigenous so quickly in all of the places where it has spread and i think that part of it is because of the kind of way that the gospel is able to be re-expressed in cultural terms that make it kind of indigenous to a culture and yet sort of recreate the culture in the process somehow make greek philosophy work for a hindu person is beneficial about your approach is that it's it doesn't require you to try to move through so many different kind of world views 227 interpreting history in such a way that it conforms to prophecy now you've got to basically have a hermeneutics of history do feel like you're smuggling in a kind of epistemology that that's not necessarily from the bible that's like you've just got a more basic assumption about the relationship between reality and statements about reality right like in terms of in terms of what what would make a proposition true an epistemology that may or may not come from the bible it's not you know what i'm saying so i'm just i'm just saying that might disrupt the whole like sola scriptura thing through theology and not through prediction fulfillment critical scholarship beyond that one of which would be that daniel and other apoc apocalyptic writers were never trying to predict anything i actually found the way you were handling science really interesting and helpful and i think um i i think uh charitable to the scientific worldview addressing it from the philosophy of science side which was really helpful because you showed the limitations of like what is it that science is really actually supposed to do i think the the issue for a lot of christians is that they don't have a good philosophy of science and so they don't know like how to navigate that because it's like on one level science is so compelling for many things that we think oh that doesn't threaten my faith so it's fine i can be totally scientifically coherent about this this and this but then when science does something like you know whatever it is paleontology or something all of a sudden we have a big problem with the scientific method and it's like i think so i think you're addressing that well i think we need to have a better appreciation for a philosophy of science so that we can see like what's the relationship between putting someone on the moon and dating a dinosaur bone like what is the relationship between those two things and then what does that have to do with what the bible says about things Video Transcript well hello everyone my name is uh mike i'm a pastor and i'm doing a doctor of ministry uh for which i've asked several people to kind of critique a project i'm working on uh it's a paper called the christian epistemic models in sola scriptura the paper is available at bitly bit.ly dash solas retro manifesto if anybody wants to download it and follow along as we talk so i'm here with ambrose he's agreed to help me out so i'm gonna ask him to introduce himself a little bit and then we can get started 228 yeah so i'm really happy to be here with you mike and uh to help you with this project and i'm very interested in the subject i am currently a phd candidate at mcmaster divinity college in hamilton ontario and my phd will technically be called a phd in christian theology but my specialization is in old testament theology in particular and kind of biblical theology more broadly so i'm doing a bit of new testament work as well and yeah so i'm very interested in in the topic of uh sort of theological method and sort of theological frameworks and all the things that you're talking about in in your work so i was really happy to get the chance to work with you on it i was just thinking you know uh i don't know if you noticed so it's on the screen here as well my middle it shows up as my middle name but it's actually my first name it's cyprian so what are basically two saints here having a conversation sounds good yeah i actually so sorry that's that's actually your first name is superintendent zipper is my first name but it's hard to pronounce for most people so i just go by mike yeah i got yeah yeah and it's uh it's off by uh a y instead of one either otherwise we both have the exact names of the saints so yeah right so yeah okay whatever yeah you want to take the paper okay so first of all i guess um a question i would have for you or just like my initial kind of uh reaction let me do that let me just kind of give you my initial sort of reaction to the whole thing uh and then i'll i'll tell you maybe a question that i have um in particular that you can address um so first of all i thought it was really interesting i i really enjoyed the layout of it i enjoyed kind of the historical background that you developed and um just the way you kind of like described what it was that you were doing and like put it within the kind of trajectories of christian theology historically speaking [Music] so i thought that was really helpful and i found it kind of just interesting a lot of it's familiar to me but it was just kind of good summary as well um and what i really enjoyed was that you're really attempting to kind of rescue something that has been um really the mainstay especially protestant um theology for a long time and yet as you point out has had many difficulties and and sort of in many circles especially kind of more critical theological circles has really just been abandoned as a hopeless sort of cause and so i i as myself i'm an evangelical christian and so like i just appreciated um that you're trying to take seriously the problems that sola scriptura has had and actually try to find some way forward that would allow us to to pursue that with some kind of authenticity and um but still that's kind of methodologically rigorous and responsible i guess you could say so so yeah i thought it was really great um in that respect and and i think there's some promise to it as well i think the the avenues that you're exploring uh certainly i think are are pushing on the right kinds of questions and looking for some some good answers to those questions so um so yeah i thought it was you know overall really great in that respect but here's kind of the first question i have that maybe you could speak to is nowhere in that paper did you ever say what you actually think theology is or why or why it is that we're doing it in the first place [Music] yeah it's uh that's one of those questions that it's so in your face that you don't think about you know um so i think somebody reading my paper would probably notice this from reading the paper but um i look at theology as kind of a theory of everything and i use the i use the phrase theology philosophy because you could have a theory of everything that qualifies as theology or a theory of everything that qualifies more of a philosophy like for example buddhism might be more of a philosophy but it's still like a theory of your entire picture of what reality is about you 229 know and you could be an atheist but you have a picture of how you view all of reality um so you know we have all this mental constructs of what reality might be like and we have pathways that we use to arrive at those constructs and some of those pathways are a more serious intellectual endeavor and some of them are just haphazard where people just say well i'll kind of like like a potluck where you pick a dish from here in a dishwasher a lot of people's philosophies these days are just all over the place and i think part of the task of theologians and philosophers is to to think carefully about how they reason through their their process and and that there's some kind of consistency from where you start and where you end up and other people can look at your premises and follow along and say i could see where they're coming from and where they're going with this i don't know if that answers your questions but that's kind of how i think about this so kind of more like a comprehensive world view exactly as opposed to just some kind of subset of something within abroad and i'm not saying working on a subset is not a legitimate pursuit but ultimately we live our lives within a comprehensive world you know or at least we try to and sometimes especially more recently with scholarship we've sort of uh zeroed in on things and forget that eventually we still have to believe something in order to just function you know and go about our life every day gotcha yeah yeah so i guess my other question was then like why um well that kind of answers both of my questions actually as i'm thinking about it um okay so then i guess another point that i kind of noticed in the paper because i feel like what you're trying to do is something that i mean as you point out it's it's an open uh problem you could say okay so it's not we haven't i don't think come up with a satisfactory solution per se however it's not a problem that's been ignored either and so i just wonder like if how familiar you are with the whole biblical theology movement and what you think if you think that movement would have anything to offer to the kind of effort that you're making because i think they were trying to kind of deal with the same question but in some ways their claim was was or their assumption more was that they were going to develop a biblical theology that would serve as some kind of a basis for systematic theology but i think what you're doing kind of feels a bit more like biblical theology to me especially with your emphasis on like use using the biblical data to actually arrive at what you call the metaphysics right like that that you are getting the whole package from the bible that it's that it's really solid scripture or it's not you know a scripture as a final authority or something but that the entire picture is somehow coming from from the bible including like you say the metaphysics so i feel like to some extent at least some versions of biblical theology have been trying to do that they're trying to give some kind of an account of biblical religion that would be kind of internal to the bible and and and then provide that as some kind of a base for systematic theology and do you think and this will kind of get back to my other question too in terms of why are we doing theology in the first place do you think that there's some kind of like value to making that distinction and do you know of anything or do you like what's your thought about some of the biblical theology that's taken place and do you think it's effective for what you're trying to do um so i'm i'm someone that kind of knows a little bit about a lot of stuff but not a lot about specific things you know because i'm i've tried to kind of step back and get a big picture view of the whole thing like i mean there's so many disciplines you know i mean even within just 230 theology you're dealing with like hermeneutics you're dealing with languages you're dealing with philosophy you know there's dozens and dozens of disciplines but then you step back and you have an entire world of you know physics biology geology genetics and so on it just it's endless really and it's hard to kind of wrap your mind around everything but i've tried to kind of step back and see the interaction of all these elements and how they they play together um i'm not trying to say i'm doing anything original but i don't hear other people talking about things the way i'm talking about them and i feel like it's helpful to approach it this way like for example categorizing theology by epistemology um is kind of helpful in the same way categorizing biology yeah genetics is helpful you know organizing living things by by genetics is helpful because you're connecting the source of the diversity to the yeah to the final conclusion itself yeah um and then even evaluating things like um you know we this this past 200 years or so we've given a lot of preeminence to the scientific method and have kind of worked hard to adjust archaeology to science which i think it's it's not a bad thing like i think science deserves our respect because he hasn't accomplished quite a bit but i don't think we spend enough time evaluating the limitations of science properly and i think it's out of fear because it seems every time people um try to control the scientific process we end up making mistakes that we end up paying for later like we bring assumptions to the table and then we realize those assumptions are bad and we hurt ourselves by it and yet there's still something there to be figured out so i i guess i don't think i'm answering your questions but that's kind of i've come at it from like this big picture view where i've tried to bring all the different elements together and organize them a certain way that i haven't seen other people organize everything in and i i think it's helpful to do it this way yeah but who knows maybe maybe there's better ways to do that i don't know no i think i i agree with you that it's what you're doing is not quite exactly what's out there really widespread the reason i bring up biblical theology though i'm just i'm seeing an affinity with what you're doing and so it might be worthwhile to do a bit of reading in that area just to kind of get a little more kind of insight as to the kinds especially when you're thinking about things like like you've got the um i can't remember if you used the word meta-narrative or not but the the whole paradigm of the cosmic conflict yeah um and so which i think is great and i think you illustrate the utility of that of of being able to identify something like that that kind of gives you the whole bible view that then everything can can fit within and make sense of um it's just that within the kind of like research and writing on biblical theology there's many other options right and so there could be other things that you might find equally um helpful or just like the general premise of putting together that kind of a paradigm you could find more support for it i think but i think what you're doing is more the sense i get anyways from reading it is that it's it's more it's more oriented towards kind of the traditional goals of systematic theology and and so even though you're kind of doing you know methodologically you're doing something that i think is very similar to what biblical theologians in the past have tried to do you're you're not just doing it as like a precursor to systematic theology you're actually trying to make make a systematic theological framework that's really rooted in the bible without using just using the bible without having to have some intermediate step like to get between the two you know yeah so i think that's a good for sure yeah i think you could do biblical theology from multiple epistemic frameworks so you know you might come from the traditional protestant framework you might come from a fundamentalist framework and still do biblical theology but you're making different assumptions and sometimes we kind of overlap all these different 231 approaches because they're all under the label biblical theology without considering the presuppositions they're each working with right yeah yeah you're definitely i think more interested in the epistemological foundations and how that creates the different kinds of theology that we have yeah so yeah i i think there's overlap between what i'm saying and uh some of these disciplines um but there's also some differences there yeah um one thing i was interested in your when you were kind of laying out the different uh you kind of had that like line of different sorts of i guess you could say um ways of doing theology and you had you had there the the line for like the threshold of sola scriptura and you had atheism on the one end and fundamentalism on the other end and then you kind of had the other stuff in between protestant catholic liberal theology etc um i'm wondering what uh where would you locate on there if you've know much about him a guy like paul tillich because i think he gets lumped in with liberal theology but i think if you really read him carefully and understand what it was he was trying to do it's not really liberal theology but it's also not neo-orthodoxy it's decidedly against that yeah yeah i have a hard time with people like that and i guess one of the reasons i chose the categories i did is based on just how common ideas are you know and i could be wrong but in my experience i run into these specific groups a lot more than i run into like anomalies you know for example i think it depends also how you define the groups uh because it could be the like essentially like what the way i understand uh neo-orthodoxy is kind of like a bridge between the liberal perspective and the traditional perspective uh because by centering on christ they are able to to bring elements over from traditional christianity that liberal christianity kind of lost or didn't have a logical way to hold on to them uh but they were also able to hold on to things like biblical scholarship critical scholarship and all these things at the same time so they were able to kind of merge the two and i think i think tilik also does that but i think he uses a different center and i don't know enough about him to fully understand how it works but it could still be labeled as this kind of in-between model right that bridges the two but maybe does it differently than somebody like bars right yeah well definitely an in-between model that's a fine way to describe him because he um well i think what did he actually call his autobiography in which he kind of tells his life story sort of but also with an eye towards his theological development and so forth i think i forget the title of it but it's something about i think it's on the boundary on the boundary and that's really his whole kind of mo is that he's he's sort of between the different things on a whole host of kind of issues i think it's just interesting um i think what he kind of raises though that's interesting that some of these other approaches don't because you're right i think he's more of an anomaly and most people just lump him into liberal theology and move on with their lives and in some ways that's okay because he's um i mean just depends how you're dividing up your categories right but but um i can certainly see that but um he is more of an anomaly but i think the thing that he kind of raises that i think is very interesting is the whole question of the relationship between theology and culture and i feel like that's something that's really missing in yours now i know you're you're like very focused on epistemology and that kind of thing but this kind of gets at my first 232 question i asked about like why are we doing theology in the first place it seems to me that whatever theology is it has to be articulated which means now you're operating within some kind of a culture and i and i just feel like there's a missing piece if you're going to try to do a fully sola scripture or a theology the way that you're doing it you might just be hiding inside the bible then how do you get out of the bible into the actual culture that you're sitting in in order to articulate what you've discovered by being isolated inside the text you know um i i i have a way in my head i don't know if it would work once i articulate it for other people to critique but um i mean as a as a pastor i've worked with tons of people from many different cultures and i've never really had an issue with communicating ideas across because i start by listening and i try to understand how they reason and where they're coming from and then i try to explain what i'm trying to say in a way that makes sense to them so i think there's a way of doing that um you know you have to be pretty specific i guess like you could say okay here's this stat this uh framework or this mindset that this particular people group have how would you present your theology to this group and then we can think through that and um and and kind of come up with an approach a lot of times some perspectives are so different that you actually would have to do for them what i'm trying to do for the christian perspective where you kind of dissect it down to the bottom level sorry someone's no problem apparently apparently they're having a fire drill in this building that i'm in right now i don't have to leave but there might be an alarm going off so sorry go ahead no problem yeah so um so you know for example i thought about working in a hindu context to really be able to communicate to that culture like you have to take the time to to go through their entire philosophical system to the bottom level and understand the same metaphysical foundations that they have and how they build their system from there the way we do with our theology and i think once you do that you'll be able to at least have some basis of communication because a lot of times we say things and to them it means something very different than what we mean when we say it right so there's this breaking communication so again i don't know if that's answering your question or not but yeah it certainly is starting to get at it i think the reason why i bring this up is because i mean you you definitely critique sort of like the greek philosophical paradigm that stands behind the church fathers and that sort of thing and i i like that because i'm an old testament guy and so i'm always very suspicious of all these greek categories that they came up with and stuff um but on the other hand i would actually see those um like philosophical paradigms like right down to the level of the base epistemology and the initials like starting assumptions that people are making that ground their world view um like that's what a culture consists in fundamentally and so then i sit here and i go okay so if the way the church fathers have articulated things is borrowing church uh i don't know if you can hear that i had no idea this is my church building and they have a daycare in here i never knew they were going to run a fire drill today it's not loud enough to be annoying so i think well that's good um anyways so i i guess my my point was if if what they have done has has taken greek philosophy or something like that and imposed it on the bible say okay but if you were going to communicate if you're going to go the other way though and and say what is it that the bible actually teaches but you have to do it in their world view which means you have to use their philosophical framework in order to articulate what the bible 233 actually is saying then i think you would come out with something maybe different than what you would by going the other way and starting with the philosophy and imposing that on scripture but you might still come out with something that looks very greek you know and and doesn't necessarily look like what you articulated in your paper about um you know the cosmic conflict and all that stuff well i mean as long as people are able to understand that there's different uh metaphysical perspectives and we're operating within different you know kind of big picture world view and so on um you could explain to people okay this is how you see things this is your world view this is the assumptions you're making and this is how i see it you don't have to agree with me but this is kind of the reasons why we come to this conclusions um yeah i mean i don't know if that's necessarily worse than trying to uh reframe your entire belief system within their within their paradigm because i'm not sure if you're even communicating your system across i mean like we look at christianity today and some of the essential elements are extremely different i mean even basics like within early protestantism you have the calvinist and the armenians the core element which is the gospel which is the major thing that the protestants built their whole thing around and yet they had this massive disagreement that was metaphysical nature you know yeah it's not the same thing i mean i don't know so yeah i know i i definitely see what you're saying i think that's that's partly why that was one of the things i should say that paul tillich gets criticized for because he wants to enmesh theology within the culture at such a deep level that it becomes unrecognizable as christian yeah to most people's sensibilities because most people i mean he has i think he has a very high view of scripture actually but but um but the way it comes out it's like you know it just sounds like something so foreign to the bible because the bible's from a totally different worldview yeah and so so that's kind of one of the criticisms but on the other hand i do think he's on to something in the sense that he talks about how theology is actually part of the creation of culture and so in that sense you're stuck in a kind of a circle all the time because you can't do theology without doing it in a culture but as soon as you do it you've now changed that culture because you've said something that was not said before even though you said it within the paradigm of that particular culture and so you're always creating culture while you're doing theology and i think maybe that would address some of what you're saying in the sense of um i just want to get my points across and have people understand it and if i have to adapt that to their culture then that's what i'll do so that i know they're understanding what it is that i'm actually trying to say and and they're they're hearing me um but i think by doing that by doing theology that way then you're actually transforming their culture because you're adding something to their discourse that is like native to their culture and yet is coming from the bible in the case of how you're doing it so that it has a kind of uh an effect on it that that you know on their culture right so that it's not just it's not just appropriating the bible to their culture but it's actually has it having a transforming effect but still staying like within it and i think that's actually to me that's really important i think at its base that's the essence of christian theology and that's why it's been so successful as a global religion because it becomes indigenous so quickly in all of the places where it has spread and i think that part of it is because of the kind of way that the gospel is able to be re-expressed in cultural terms that make it kind of indigenous to a culture and yet sort of recreate the culture in the process you know 234 yeah so um i know what you're saying i mean i've kind of come across this questions in the past and i think one of the things that my approach can offer to this is to say well hey if that's that's the angle you're coming from that's fine but that doesn't prevent us from being able to recognize that there's different models and evaluate them and and try to like be able to communicate across from one model to the other now that we understand where we're at and i think different people will probably have different approaches and you know maybe if this model is the correct one then hey great it's it's available it's there and you know it has a chance to do its thing well if this other model might be the better one it's also available and it's able to you know people are working with it and they're able to go out there and try to communicate their message across um so i guess my approach was to to think because we're kind of dealing with these things from an academic perspective um and a lot of times academia has had certain standards that have kind of restricted theological development to some degree and i think we need to have a conversation in christian academia where we where we say look there's multiple models we don't have a way to dismiss all of them except one and just say everybody comes with agreement that this is the only one that's that's working so let's make peace with that figure out what the acceptable models are and come up with some criteria and say okay these are the standards by which we decide what models work and what models don't and then anybody has some idea they can come and present it and see if it falls within those parameters but i'm not aware of anybody having put together anything like this and i don't know how easy it is to the without causing a major stir but i do know i mean i i agree with you that the the way you're trying to approach it in terms of what i just said about the essence of christian theology it's probably the best one in the sense that um it's it's trying to make the what's in the bible come alive in some culture whereas the other models you could communicate across cultures or whatever uh or within your own culture but in order to do that you're actually kind of like i don't know it feels more colonial in a way because now you're taking greek philosophy and i've got to somehow make greek philosophy work for a hindu person i think it's like i don't know if that's i don't know if that's really the way christian theology should work so i think i mean i do i do agree with you that that trying to approach it the way you are definitely is kind of like better in that respect and and i i like the the way that you've kind of like analyzed all of the different models um so that so that they can be like related to each other and particularly at the level of epistemology let me let me throw this out there considering what you're saying uh it seems that you're actually if you go the traditional route you have to go through multiple steps because you you start with the the christian perspective the original christian biblical perspective whatever it is then you pass it through the lens of hellenistic thought from or aristotelian thought or wherever you're at in in the culture whichever tradition you're with you pass it through that lens and then you got to pass it through another lens when you're talking to a hindu for example uh so we could actually bypass the middle lens and just go straight from the bible to the hindu culture even if we're going to do that i mean you're you're yeah yeah cutting the middlemen sort of speak yeah um yeah that's what i'm saying yeah no that's exactly what i'm saying is is beneficial about your approach is that it's it doesn't require you to try to move through so many different kind of world views yeah um did um did you have um any like before i ask you some questions did you have any other things you wanted 235 to bring up um maybe your questions will address them anyways the only other thing i wanted to ask you about was the um i'd be interested to talk about how you think that prophecy validates scripture because it wasn't clear to me well it seems like what you're saying is prophecy validates the truth and authority of scripture yeah but that to me that's not the same thing as saying prophecy validates the theology that i construct from scripture yeah the i guess the question i was addressing there is um how do you how do you deal with the question of authentic authentication when you're moving away from philosophy so you know you you look at all the different theological perspectives and they spend a lot of time building up a philosophical foundation because they work with the assumption that the bible doesn't address certain questions so we have to address those ourselves before we come to biblical or to christian theology directly so there's like this space like let's say you're talking to an atheist there's a certain amount of space you deal with in philosophy and then once you're done with that and you bring him to theistic a more theistic perspective and closer to us to christians then you could go into the regular christian theology but if you're kind of restricting yourself to the biblical data then the question to ask is does the bible address stuff like this does the bible ever even concern itself with it and i think it does i mean i think there's lots of situations in the bible where people are skeptical they're doubting they're scared they're confused and god gives them reasons to believe in different ways and there's many ways god does this but i think the one that seems to be the the least subjective and the least personal is the prophetic aspect where you know predictions are made over extended periods of time and people keep you know like when the when jesus comes he doesn't i mean there are miracles there is the resurrection there's all these things you know the personal experience with him but he takes the time to show them like no there's there's a thousand years of things that were predicted that i'm fulfilling right so he's he's basically relying on on the the foreknowledge of god as as a basis for for everything he's doing um so all i'm really saying with that is that if we're gonna do subscription archaeology then that's a question that's another question we have to approach from a solid scriptural perspective because it's a legitimate question how why why why take the bible seriously why take christianity seriously and i'm not saying all the other things don't work like we could still use philosophy because they use some of the arguments that people use but we do need to shift our our focus a little bit in that sense but in doing that aren't you sort of adopting a correspondence theory of truth which isn't that philosophically prior then to can you kind of explain what you mean with that well so like in order for that to authenticate scripture like prophecy that presupposes a certain view of what truth consists in and reality to some extent because one thing i was actually thinking of i noticed um i forget which thing it was because i read the appendix too and um you had an example in there of oh i have it's in my ipad just can i go off screen for a second yeah so while uh ambrose is looking for for his uh ipad there i uh didn't realize it until just a couple of days ago that i had two different versions of my paper online and one of it has had an appendix and one didn't everything else was the same but one of them had this appendix and the appendix was actually a really old paper i wrote a long time ago that was there as a placeholder for what i was intending to put in the appendix and uh and then i just realized that i i didn't mean for that to be there because it wasn't at the level that i wanted it to be so there's probably going to be things in there that i i'm not gonna be comfortable defending at this point but it is what it is that's okay 236 um yeah i had said that at the beginning of it that this was an old paper yeah there you go i think i put uh uh anyways it was helpful though to be honest with you because it really did flesh out at least some of your preliminary older thoughts about what you meant by that authentication piece um oh yeah so at a certain point you said something about rome was divided into the nations of europe and has remained divided to this day in spite of numerous efforts to reunite and you're mapping that onto the clay uh and iron feet the statue and daniel so what that immediately made me kind of think because you said somewhere in there about how we cannot you know we have to avoid the fallacy of interpreting prophecy in such a way that it conforms to history [Music] but what about interpreting history in such a way that it conforms to prophecy like that's another side of that coin and i'm not sure historians would agree that that's the best way to characterize the end of the western roman empire that it turned into the nations of europe you know what i mean like there's a question there you've got to because now you've got to basically have a hermeneutics of history yeah that and that and not you're not can't get any of that from the bible like does the bible like maybe maybe you've got to get from your biblical worldview that you're developing by trying to be sola scriptura if you want it to be historical like that then you have to also somehow have a hermeneutics of history that you're also getting from the bible um yeah that's something i'm gonna need to think about a little bit because i'm not sure how harmonic of history would work necessarily i i just look at in terms of um when you're when you're working with the with the model you have to ask the question how precise was this model intended to be or this analogy or this example or illustration you know if you if you buy a hot wheels car are you going to be able to open the hood and see the exact connection of the engine parts and all the stuff or you know it's just a piece of plastic that looks like a toyota or whatever um the the prophecy has this the statute and you know if you if you just read through the thing daniel's talking about you know you're you're the head of gold there's this other whatever power that's coming after you and all this stuff so you know and there's multiple ways i understand there's multiple ways to to interpret that i think um harmonia puts all the metals right within babylon so it's just basically different kings of babylon in the same like the bronze and and so on but i think based on on the story itself it seems to fit a lot better with history and essentially when you look at the roman empire it kind of collapsed especially the west it collapsed at some point and it broke up into into these pieces now you know i know people that try to decipher which exactly are the ten kingdoms and you know it's the alimony and the whatever that became the germans and the franks and the span spaniards and so on i don't do that because i don't think the the the illustration was intended to be that precise i mean it's just a statute and he had ten toes you know you're not gonna have a statue with 13 toes for about 30 seconds representing 300 years or something and then 15 toes for the next 50 seconds or whatever you can't do that with an illustration but i think overall it seems to fit so i don't know if you have a different picture of history that you think conflicts very largely with that with that uh well i guess no my my point is like you it just seems so you're just assuming something about the relationship between modern europe and the roman empire's disintegration and like that needs you've got to have and maybe you're right but the point is you have to have some hermeneutics that gave you that story right because somebody else might say well hold on a second half most of europe wasn't even part of the roman empire like what about all those guys and how does that fit into it and so like yeah i mean rome kind of breaks up but to trace that to 237 today being like there's still all of these sort of like pieces of rome that were hanging around and you talk about how they're held together sort of you know loosely by the catholic church or something through most of you know the medieval period and so forth i mean and that's all fine i'm not necessarily saying you're wrong about that but somehow you arrived at that particular picture of history and so that's a different question how do you how do you tell the story of history and maybe you're just telling it in such a way that it just looks so much like the prophecy and isn't that convenient but couldn't you just be imposing that on history itself you know what i mean um yeah i i i think there's there's definitely need for a lot a lot more work in in that area to articulate it well um at the same time i personally cannot help to feel that there's some kind of uh harmony there some kind of uh analogy because i mean you could pick up any history book and you would just you just read about how you know the empire disintegrated basically it couldn't be held together anymore and uh he was constantly being harassed by all this external forces coming in and and somebody needed to step into this power vacuum and then the church pretty much ended up kind of taking over kind of you know helping out and especially because they had uh i believe they had a series of plagues at the same time and the church stepped in and really helped with that and kind of took a leadership role and he created an interesting difference between the western church and the eastern church because in the east you still have the emperors for almost another millennium you know so yeah even today the catholic church and the orthodox church are very different yeah because there wasn't that sense of political leadership political power that developed in the west yeah so i mean the elements are there they're not they might not be as precise and they might not be as well articulated and yes i totally agree like you could you do need some kind of way to interpret the history and some explanation but uh even though the case even though that's the case i think at least from the way i look at it it seems like there's definitely some kind of harmony there or some kind of connection there it's almost like it's it's too similar to be random it's too similar to be uh just you just kind of happen to coincide or sorry i think that makes sense i don't know yeah no i mean what you're saying definitely i i hear what you're saying but i think it also that whole way of thinking about it then the whole authentication piece i do feel like you're smuggling in a kind of epistemology that that's not necessarily from the bible that's like you've just got a more basic assumption about the relationship between reality and statements about reality right like in terms of in terms of what what would make a proposition true like there's a question about that what makes a proposition true are there is there even such a thing as a proposition in philosophy these are kind of big questions and you have to have resolved those questions before you can answer the question does this historical event validate that biblical picture you know um do you think that's that it's different when it comes to the old testament prophecies like as you look at the new testament and you look at jesus first and then the apostles making a connection between the life of jesus and the old testament is is what i'm trying to say different than that or is that also a situation where they're kind of pulling things out of a hat that probably weren't necessarily there um 238 well first of all i'm not saying you're pulling things that aren't there i'm just saying the way you're finding them to be there has presupposes an epistemology that may or may not come from the bible it's not you know what i'm saying so i'm just i'm just saying that might disrupt the whole like sola scriptura thing that that you you might need an epistemology that comes before the bible in order to even ask the question whether or not the two things correlate but in terms of what the disciples were doing or like the the new testament authors were doing i think they were doing something very different from what you're doing because i think they were authenticating the gospel by recourse to the old testament but specifically through theology and not through prediction fulfillment and the the reason why you see that is that most of what because like what you're describing i think is more kind of prediction fulfillment in a way in daniel although if you look at critical scholarship on apocalyptic literature you know you didn't really get into this in your paper you talked about preterite futurist and historicist views but i mean there's other views in critical critical scholarship beyond that one of which would be that daniel and other apoc apocalyptic writers were never trying to predict anything either back then yeah exactly so so there's that whole piece of it too but but that's the kind of the but you can kind of see it in daniel right even if even if you take a preterit view of it it's like yeah let's say this thing was written sometime in the maccabean period and you can see that daniel's mapping all these images onto the history that's going on at the time or whatever so like you can see the prediction fulfillment kind of scheme but that's not really what the gospel writers and other new testament authors are doing when they say something like jesus was born of a virgin and this fulfills the prophecy in isaiah 7 and then you go back there and you read that and it's got nothing to do with jesus like historically speaking and prediction speaking so then it's like well what are they doing then they must be it's like some other kind of theological way of handling the text they're theologically handling the text in those situations but in other situations it seems that they're actually making some kind of connection like um other other passages in isaiah you know where it talks about uh descriptions of the kind of life jesus is gonna live um uh passages about his death and sounds and all these different things it seems like yeah yeah there there are they are making theological arguments many times but other times they're making connections to historical expectations that that the nation had for for a while yeah i think in some i think there's probably a range of things there for sure but but i think when like for instance when it's at the end of luke on the road to emmaus when jesus explains to them beginning with moses and all the prophets uh everything about him like this if he really went through the whole bible because i think you can so the way that i do biblical theology i think there's really not a page of the old testament that you can't find jesus on but it's not in a prediction fulfillment way it's in a theological way and so i think you can fit the whole thing around explaining who jesus was in the gospel event and i think that's probably more than norm actually i think the other kind of like prediction fulfillment stuff is more like jesus's miracles that it's like little bits of like confirmation but that by and large the main sort of criteria for new testament sort of understanding of the old testament and light of the christ event seems to be more something like faith and that's validated by i i think the explanatory power of the theology to explain the meaning and significance of jesus in a way that nothing else can explain it whether or not he did a particular historical thing that was predicted ahead of time i don't know i 239 i think i i know what you're saying and i think there's definitely um a lot of work work out in that in that area um i do think that there's a certain expectation though in the old testament i i think one of the one of the difficulties for the jewish faith after that was exactly the fact that they they had an expectation that wasn't fulfilled or it just seemed like it was taking longer than expected uh i mean even as as the new testament happens they have a lot of wrong expectations but there's still some expectation and they're getting it from from you know their historical faith they're expecting a messiah to come they're expecting something to change they're expecting all these different things um yeah so anyway i i i'm i'm sharing this because i think it's something that um you know when when you when you look at the bible it seems to point in this direction but i think there's definitely a lot of work done i and others probably need to do to to make it a a really solid thing and i think there's an element of testable prediction here as well to where we don't actually need to to take a position on this we could say okay if we develop a certain methodology and the methodology is sound we can try to determine what this is saying and where it's pointing and if the prediction is materialized then we know we're on the right track if they don't then they don't but i think there's there's this predictive element there and from an epistemic perspective that has some value because somebody could listen to you and at some point in the future when something materializes they might say hey i had to run to something as long as that is meaningful if you're just saying like something random or arbitrary or or so not the script that people you can apply to anything then it doesn't matter yeah i think actually what you could do is um not you in particular but just as people think about how to to authenticate scripture theologically the way that you've kind of introduced i because i think i mean i think you're on to something i think you just got to take it one level deeper because you're you're focusing on the predictive element but i think fundamentally the question you're really asking is can i show that the bible and in particular theology that is biblically derived can i show that it's actually true yeah fundamentally and i think and so that's what i mean about things like the explanatory power of old testament theology to explain the meaning and significance of jesus um that's what i'm talking about and i think there's a bit of that too and actually that might even get you away from some of the controversy about prediction fulfillment stuff because you could accommodate more views of apocalyptic literature because it could be true of events in the present even if it wasn't trying to predict them it could still be true of them because it could be talking about geopolitical realities that are kind of endemic to human you know activity and things like that and so it could still be true in that sense and i think that's the deeper more fundamental question does the bible turn out to be true in that respect i think um part of this uh plays into this cosmic conflict micro narrative that i was talking about because there's this um there's this sense that there's a certain logic to history like basically um you know we have a choice and the choice is to follow god or not to follow god but if we don't follow god god can can tell us in advance where we're gonna end up like there's there's gonna be a certain trajectory to history that's just going to be the the inevitable result of taking things a certain way so i think it kind of falls into that bigger picture uh that i was bringing up and also like i said in the appendix i don't i think the purpose of this is not evidence in itself as much as just this the the little bit of extra evidence that you need to bring somebody who's on the sidelines to the point where they could actually take the other types of evidence seriously like personal experience type of evidence the evidence from the old testament and from having this cohesive worldview and all these things you're talking about because sometimes you need that nudge like 240 something to take the person's like the the first few steps so they could move move on to the other lines of evidence which i think are more worse are stronger overall because they you know they affect the they affect more aspects of life more aspects of your of your existence so they they have more evidentiary power in the long run but um i think prophecy could play this other role on kind of like a beginning thing yeah um we got about 10 minutes left so i don't want to keep you too much longer but uh did you did you have any other thoughts that you wanted to bring up or no i think those are all the main things i had uh made a note of as i was reading through it so okay again just quickly i was going to ask you if you had any thoughts on the on the last section i i know you you kind of mentioned you're coming from the evangelical perspective and i i i had asked somebody else to have a conversation with me coming from that perspective and when they got to the final section of the paper they had a lot of issues with how i was dealing with science so i don't know did you have any thoughts on that or yeah um i actually know i i liked it i um i mean i'm weird you know i i'm an evangelical i don't know how else to describe myself but well to begin with i'm in canada so evangelical up here is not quite the same thing as it is like for instance 81 of our evangelicals did not vote for trump in 2016 but um like so it's it's a different it's a different kind of uh evangelicalism up here for sure but um your i actually found the way you were handling science really interesting and helpful and i think um i i think uh charitable to the scientific worldview you could say and and rightly so i i think that that we too often set up a kind of um sort of antithesis or like a kind of a conflict between science and the bible that doesn't need to be there yeah and i felt like what i enjoyed about what you had to say was that i've listened to lots of biblical scholars talk about we shouldn't have a conflict between science and the bible and they explain all the ways you can understand the bible so that it's not in conflict with science and so they address it from the bible side but i felt like you were addressing it from the philosophy of science side which was really helpful because you showed the limitations of like what is it that science is really actually supposed to do and and that's great and science should do that and it shouldn't try to do things that it's that it's not able to do or you know supposed to do yeah so yeah i enjoyed that section quite a lot actually i thought it was well written and i thought it was well um i felt like you had more expertise in that area actually it seemed like you had done more research or something like it just it definitely seemed a lot more developed so yeah i'm hoping to talk to some scientists soon and they're gonna completely disagree with what you just said and they're gonna they're gonna tell you well scientists might but i think from a philosophical perspective like in terms of philosophy of science you know they're gonna tell me i have no business yeah scientists don't like philosophers though that's that's the way it goes 241 well hey i'm glad to hear that uh yeah i think um i don't know we we need some work some serious work done in the area philosophy of science and we need to do it differently than what has been done before in evangelical circles uh and what what's frustrating to me is that we have this habit as i would say probably especially in american evangelicalism where we sort of develop these microcosms where we we live and function like some type of echo chambers and we basically say like okay this is correct and everybody who's outside of this the sphere uh they're heretical so we don't need to pay attention to them but the rest of the world just ignores us you know they just put us over here and they keep doing their thing and time passes and science progresses and they keep advancing and we're still stuck in this sort of imaginary world that we've built for ourselves yeah we can't do that anymore if we're gonna have impact well and i think the other thing that's important and i think that's why i appreciated that you actually were dealing with it from the philosophy of science side and not just from the theology side is um i think people like christians even like fundamentalists who really are kind of like anti-science on one level they can't escape like science in their life like for most other things right and so they end up having to do these really weird like hermeneutical stuff where they they try to sort of have their cake and eat it too yeah and so it's like on the one hand they'll just accept as scientific statements you know something in the bible that has to be a scientific fact but then they'll take other things that a person using the same kind of hermeneutic could easily read the bible for instance and and decide the earth has to be a disc on water with you know under a dome well they're not going to accept that you know because it's like no like the science on we sent a man to the moon or whatever so it's like we have to accept that science and i think the the issue for a lot of christians is that they don't have a good philosophy of science and so they don't know like how to navigate that because it's like on one level science is so compelling for many things that we think oh that doesn't threaten my faith so it's fine i can be totally scientifically coherent about this this and this but then when science does something like you know whatever it is paleontology or something all of a sudden we have a big problem with the scientific method and it's like i think so i think you're addressing that well i think we need to have a better appreciation for a philosophy of science so that we can see like what's the relationship between putting someone on the moon and dating a dinosaur bone like what is the relationship between those two things and then what does that have to do with what the bible says about things you know like yeah exactly it's like basically we take the scientific methodology and when it comes to something we don't like we tweak it so that it could actually lead to the conclusions we wanted to lead and then we expect everybody else to accept that as science but it's like no if you want to tweak the methodology tweak it all across the board then take the next 50 years doing science and showing the world that your methodology is better than the secular scientific methodology and then we'll take this seriously we're not just gonna like tweak the methodology from one area that you disagree with type of thing you know yeah but i mean the minute i say this stuff there's a certain group of jungles that get really angry really when i talk about this stuff and i don't know how to explain it differently but well i thought you navigated it pretty well because you stayed away from like the hot button scientific issues and just stayed on the philosophy of science yeah which i think is good 242 all right well yeah my time is up uh as far as keeping you here uh it's been an hour and i i i really enjoy what you said and i think you know you bring up some some good points that need a lot of work and honestly i'm probably not equipped to address a lot of these i just wanted to kind of set up a pathway or get a get us something going so that others can jump in and contribute that have a more specialty in those areas but um awesome yeah well hey i really appreciate you uh just making this available to whoever because i i mean i love this type of conversation i love the topic i love the the philosophical part of it you know the real deep questions about how to do theology and how that all works and uh and i'm definitely i believe in biblical authority i'll say that so yeah so i'm always interested in uh and how we can do that well in our theological methods so yeah i appreciate i appreciate being able to read your work and interact with you in person about it it's awesome so all right well thanks a lot i'm gonna stop the recording and then just hang on for a minute sounds good [Music] Participant 6 – Swamidass – Scientist/Evangelical really does seem to be oriented towards a pastoral eye like you're thinking through what does this look like in the church what does it look like in congregations that's the project that you're about here i think that's that's a good project i think also you really identified epistemology as a really critical thing i think that's true scripture and inerrancy as being part of it i think that also is supposed to be part of the conversation i'd say a big part of why it's difficult is how uh is how really the term inerrancy or solo scriptures become litmus tests i'm an inerrantist myself i think there is a problem though with a an untutored or un or a naive view of inerrancy that even the biggest proponents of inerrancy have cautioned against now i do disagree i would say pretty substantially with some of the paths you take you identified the problem correctly i think and i think you identified um key components of the conversation correctly i think that's completely true there's probably more i mean you also identify science as a critical piece of this because a lot of these conflicts really are rising around science archetypal is that you basically start to define archetypes that bundle together several different things 243 so you like the archetype of the young earth creationist and the things that that young earth creationist cares about and you then you know proceed to simplify all of the earth creationism down to the young earth creationist archetype you defined you have like the old earth creationist and once again you have a certain characteristics there you simplify everything down the old earth creationists to that archetype and then now you have a conversation between these archetypes and you you arrange them uh for example on how uh how much they value scripture which might be true of your archetypes but here's the problem is that is not true uniformly about people across those camps there's there's far more diversity there and i think the problem is when we think for example our our value on scripture is connected to those archetypes in a strong way i think an archetypal approach is not the right way to approach inhibiting real progress and real understanding by effectively silencing frankly a lot of voices and i think that's why it's actually quite destructive to use that model there's a better way to approach that what you're trying to do fixate on what ken ham is thinking discard that archetypal approach and and focus instead in something that can actually bring out more bundling ideas that are not necessarily linked consider different dimensions in isolation it's actually a fairly large mistake you make is actually granting far too much legitimacy to people who take a non-traditional view of sola scriptura that's actually a great deviation from the people who actually proposed it care about scripture the most are the ones who are gonna know how to value scripture really carefully and are informed about scripture right um so i i would i would actually really reframe them chicago statements which i think is a really important place to look also the lausanne covenant is another place to look we're talking about you've never read the chicago statements then you don't know what you're talking about you should at least read those if you get what i'm saying you should you know what they're saying and so i think kind of starting to explain it in terms of the chicago statement's inerrancy or you know the lausanne covenant inherency or kind of explaining what that is and explaining uh how people will affirm it and how people affirm it with dissent i think is really critical and so instead of like the single dimensional sort of string we're more talking about really organizing different ways how people really thought about what inerrancy is yeah another another thing really related to this is some what sometimes people call a high view of scripture 244 what would you trust more science or scripture and i think for a lot of people they really want to know i mean for me i want to know that the answer is i would trust scripture more scripture um and it has to do with not just inerrancy it also stays with loyalties and where we place a place our loyalties resist is any tight linking between anything on the solar scripture side that hold to a high view of scripture or a high view of inerrancy that also affirm evolution so that would be a way then gives a better way to organize now exceptions to the archetypes the archetypal approach really creates a problem rather than more kind of handling all these things in more isolation and then seeing how it all fits together would make a two-dimensional graph on one side you have you know the position you are in origins another and that that's one dimension and then you have another intervention which is um you know different positions on inerrancy like chicago statements lassan covenant history is important but i think there's a far more proximate or recent history that's important which is the fundamentalist modernist split yeah so that's about so you know the reformation is you know about 500 years ago uh the fundamentalist modernist split is maybe about 150 years ago last 50 years or so there's been like a there's been like an attempt to really build a synthesis about that and kind of more modern day evangelicalism right yeah yeah yeah and there's a lot of crossover this day trying to sort out some sort of synthesis between the two of them um and yeah science is kind of caught up in this and you know scripture is caught up in this those are actually the two central things like lutheran versus methodist but which type of lutheran and which type of methodist categories you're using i mean i don't think that they really make as much sense and like i get what you're trying to do i just think that needs to be broken down in a very different way and i do think the the reformer history is interesting but the but the history of the fundamentalists and the modernists and then you know i mean i think the luzon covenant is actually very critical for entangling a lot of this too to say that again 245 one of the foundational documents in modern evangelicalism i mean catholic signed it orthodox people signed it it's really everyone around there and really kind of put emphasis on who jesus is and core historical doctrines about in our faith and also it made some very carefully negotiated statements on inerrancy and the point is is that you know if you can affirm this and not everyone could i mean like mormons can't affirm the lesson covenant right um but if you could affirm that there's agreement very broadly in the church in a way that's um you know uh that hadn't really happened since then on any other topic like well you know that is actually orthodox christianity that's what it means to be you know evangelical christian right now they had moral authority to really say this and that actually really changed the face of evangelicalism in in really critical ways and so um so you know a big part i think of starting to work through these issues is actually you know kind of reminding people of some of this history the problem isn't really inerrancy it really is is more kind of like an untutored naive merely rhetorical approach to inerrancy it's really a problem to try and reinvent the wheel on those things without engaging them recovering that far more recent history when we talk about scripture maybe that there's legitimacy across all these divides it's a very strong argument against a archetypal approach because archetypal approach doesn't really allow for that moderate evangelicalism is another really helpful frame for helping understand people to help people understand where they sit in the story now yeah that's far more important than the luther versus catholic divide that divide has ended up i think kind of going into by the wayside no one really cares about that anymore because people are going to work with a catholic and lutherans will work with catholics if they're on the right side of the sun covenant together and so that that's actually from a praxis point of view far more important science doesn't actually engage those questions or disprove god it doesn't really seek to prove or disprove miracles it's silent about those things so that um but that doesn't mean it's the whole story so um what i can say is it's the tractable story that we can make sense of through science but science doesn't really ever give us the whole story so if you realize that then you realize that it doesn't hasn't ruled out god's involvement and role total explanations yeah there's a lot of problems but if you recognize from the outset that it's not a total view of the world science-only worldview that's absurd 246 i don't think the problem is with science what i'd say is the issue is is that we've been really struggling as a church and how to engage with science in a way that grants it legitimacy without having it taken over everything be best worked out in dialogue constructive resistance where you know where there's you know meaningful autonomy i don't actually see any conflict with what i've seen in science and what i've seen in scripture i felt it in the past and usually that had to do because i really misunderstood the science and i really misunderstood scripture think you're on the right track i mean and i don't want to come off as too negative i do think that the real key issue though is moving away from an archetypal approach uh to really doing something that can start defining issues better so you can start understanding the diversity in the church better Video Transcript well hello again uh i'm pastor mike monet and i'm as i've shared in previous episodes i'm working on a doctor of ministry project and i've put together a document um that i've asked a number of people to kind of read through and critique and today i'm here with the doctor joshua's from sao miros i was going to ask you how to pronounce the name properly hopefully you correct me on that um and he's going to give me a little bit of feedback uh as to the paper and whatever other things he wants to share um for anyone that wants to read the document that we're talking about it's at uh bitlybit.ly.solasquitra manifesto so with that i'm going to go ahead and let josh introduce himself and we'll go from there hi my name is josh somados i'm a professor at washington university in st louis i'm a scientist i'm also a christian and i'm the author of the genealogical adam and eve and the founder of peaceful science yeah and for anybody that's interesting that's a great book i highly recommend it um i i think i sat down and read the whole thing in one setting in a matter of hours i couldn't put it down so yeah definitely an awesome book um okay so i know you had some thoughts on the on the material and i know some of the things you disagree with which is great because a lot of the people i've talked to so far were kind of more on the positive side of it and i want to hear the other side of the story so by all means just jump in and uh kind of tell me what i think there's a lot of good things about what you're doing i mean i think that you're i think you're right that epistemology has to be part of the conversation uh when we start to work out what our differences are and i think what you're trying to do which i think is really right is you're not satisfied with the way how we're working through our differences right now in the church yeah you're trying to find some better ways to do so is that a good way to put it 247 yeah yeah i think yeah i think that's an important conversation so basically even if somebody disagrees with most of the stuff in my paper at least they should agree that we need to come come up with better we need a better way than what's going on right now the way we're doing it right now is is not working exactly exactly so i agree with you there and i think that's the right place to put focus and i think you know doing this from a demon you're doing this certainly with academic components but it really does seem to be oriented towards a pastoral eye like you're thinking through what does this look like in the church what does it look like in congregations and and i think that also is really critical um you know and there's got to be some sort of connection between what experts who understand theology and historical theology and all this stuff are thinking about and working through and how it's actually handled in congregations and not all congregations are well connected to that it's another place where i think there's something really strong and important there i think yeah i i think we've gotten to a stage in in academia where we're too specialized you know kind of like if you went to a doctor and you went to a cardiologist then you went to endocrinologist or whatever and they all focus on their thing but nobody stepped back and looked at the big picture yeah i wouldn't say the problem with specialization i say the problem is disconnection yeah so having deep knowledge in a narrow thing is not a problem i think the problem is when that deep specialized knowledge just gets locked away exactly it's not connected so i don't think the problem specialization i think the problem is really disconnection yeah um and and you know a large part of it is often because that economic work isn't really connected back to practice of what goes on in congregations i think that's the project that you're about here i think that's that's a good project i think also you really identified epistemology as a really critical thing i think that's true i think it's epistemology needs to be part of the conversation you've also talked about um our notions of soul of scripture and inerrancy as being part of it i think that also is supposed to be part of the conversation i'd say a big part of why it's difficult is how uh is how really the term inerrancy or solo scriptures become litmus tests in a way in a populist sense in the church and way it's actually disconnected why people even originally met by it in the first place and i don't actually think there's any problem with inerrancy i mean i i'm an inerrantist myself i think there is a problem though with a an untutored or un or a naive view of inerrancy that even the biggest proponents of inerrancy have cautioned against yeah yeah um and so that's that's all that's all good there so i think in that sense i think you're really on the right track now i do disagree i would say pretty substantially with some of the paths you take okay all right so do you have a sequence you want to go through i mean whatever you think is the most important thing just jump in and kind of so um what you did is you started by kind of i mean i just kind of located like you identified the problem correctly i think and i think you identified um key components of the conversation correctly i think that's completely true there's probably more i mean you also identify science as a critical piece of this too and obviously that's important as well because a lot of these conflicts really are rising around science but then what i'd say is you take an archetypal approach to organizing conversation okay um and that archetypal approach is fundamentally self-defeating it's not the right approach okay so i'm gonna understand a little bit i want to 248 explain to you what i mean by archetypal is that you basically start to define archetypes that bundle together several different things okay so you like the archetype of the young earth creationist and the things that that young earth creationist cares about and you then you know proceed to simplify all of the earth creationism down to the young earth creationist archetype you defined you have like the old earth creationist and once again you have a certain characteristics there you simplify everything down the old earth creationists to that archetype and then now you have a conversation between these archetypes and you you arrange them uh for example on how uh how much they value scripture which might be true of your archetypes but here's the problem is that is not true uniformly about people across those camps there's there's far more diversity there and i think the problem is when we think for example our our value on scripture is connected to those archetypes in a strong way because i i don't actually think that that's true now i think some people want us to think that okay and that's why it becomes actually it kind of plays into a deep misinformation about what's really going on i think an archetypal approach is not the right way to approach it a good way to think about it is if you can imagine like uh you know we've all used powerpoint where we're trying to arrange uh you know images on a on a on a screen right and then how you just want to go here but it keeps on snapping into the wrong place yeah and and you're saying but no i'm trying to go here and it just snaps you back that's what archetypes do they psychologically say oh you're kind of fit that pattern so you must also think that this this and this yeah but no no i don't think that but no no you're in the archetype and you snap people that way and what it ends up doing is actually really inhibiting real progress and real understanding by effectively silencing frankly a lot of voices and i think that's why it's actually quite destructive to use that model in a particularly in a congregational context because what it does is actually silence people um in a way that that isn't helpful there's a better way to approach that what you're trying to do with that well you know it's funny that you're saying this because i can totally relate to what you're saying in yours in your field of things like for example every time i get into an evolution discussion people always put me in a box and i don't want to be in that box because i don't agree with pretty much all the camps that i'm familiar with but i always know that most people have major disagreements with the camp that they're most associated with yeah um maybe not all but most um and it's most common you would say kind of like as you get farther away from the current leaders but the problem is the current leaders have not actually given us a good way out of this mess we don't want to really fixate on what ken ham is thinking oh yeah and what uh you know what uh you go down the list of all those groups you don't want to fix it on that and uh you know that kind of gets into more of a political framing where it's like you know who's on my side you know are they being who's on your side i think i think that's just not helpful i think it's much better to understand not uh is to basically discard that archetypal approach and and focus instead in something that can actually bring out more diversity so i can give you some different um approaches that can give more organization without having the same problem of of like a of an archetypal or a clicking or a false bundling approach that you're taking okay okay so let let me see what uh because really i think almost in all all human knowledge we progress by organizing so for example in biology we have the the genuses the the species all these things organized and there's always anomalies i mean you have some criteria and 249 the anomalies are the exciting thing that's yeah where we'd see a new way arise right yeah but but but we organize them to make sense of the anomaly so we i mean if we just discarded all our organizational structure then we'll be stuck we'll be back at the beginning so i'm not saying discard all of our organizational structure i'm saying discard an archetypal organizational structure okay so it is a mess so give me an example of how you would you do sort things a little bit differently so the problem is the the problem with archetypes is that it ends up bundling ideas that are not necessarily linked okay and uh that's the problem that's the fundamental problem and it basically locks us into that frame a better way to do it is to consider different dimensions in isolation and then see how people you know fall on those things so for example one uh dimension you can have is you know what is your view of sola scriptura and not link it strongly to any of the archetypes just explaining the different ways to understand it and and to have some complexity there so one mistake i think it's actually a fairly large mistake you make is actually granting far too much legitimacy to people who take a non-traditional view of sola scriptura that's actually a great deviation from the people who actually proposed it it's what i would call as like naive u what i call the fundamentalist view yeah i would call it a naive view yes and it's not actually rooted in tradition it's just basically um you know if you go talk to someone on the street who has no awareness of this and is just picking something that rhetorically sounds like they care about scripture a lot yeah yeah that's you know that that that's not really um a real position per se um and to to put that as like the one that cares about scripture the most is bizarre the ones who are gonna care about scripture the most are the ones who are gonna know how to value scripture really carefully and are informed about scripture right um so i i would i would actually really reframe them and make it really clearly there and then we can ask questions then for example and i think there's a lot of things that are bound up in the solo scripture idea there's a little scripture there's also an errancy um there's very little discussion if any about the chicago statements which i think is a really important place to look also the lausanne covenant is another place to look we're talking about and inaudib and so those those starting points are really critical because if you're going to talk about inerrancy but you don't know if you've never read the chicago statements then you don't know what you're talking about um and and there's certain things that are said there that really have to be explored and explained especially in a congregational context so people even know what inerrancy is you don't have to agree with the chicago statements but if you're going to reject it or hold to it you should at least read those if you get what i'm saying you should you know what they're saying and so i think kind of starting to explain it in terms of the chicago statement's inerrancy or you know the lausanne covenant inherency or kind of explaining what that is and explaining uh how people will affirm it and how people affirm it with dissent i think is really critical and so instead of like the single dimensional sort of string we're more talking about really organizing different ways how people really thought about what inerrancy is yeah another another thing really related to this is some what sometimes people call a high view of scripture say that last part again this related what you're saying sometimes what sometimes people call a high view of scripture high view of scripture yes you can also think about organizing questions too like you know if scripture you came to being came to believe was in conflict with what science said what would you trust more science or scripture and i think for a lot of people they really want to know i mean for me i want to know that the answer is i would trust scripture more and that's what i what i 250 would say yeah um and that would be an example of how you might understand you know putting a magisterial view of scripture or a high view of scripture um and it has to do with not just inerrancy it also stays with loyalties and where we place a place our loyalties so you can imagine having a much more detailed um comprehensive view of explaining what solar scripture is right now you can also do the same thing on origins uh looking at things like where do you think humans came from you know how old is their universe right but what i would really resist is any tight linking between anything on the solar scripture side and that now what you could say is that most evolutionary creationists do not hold to inerrancy yeah that would be a true statement okay most people that have understood christians that that affirm evolution to really hold to that but it's really important to recognize that that's not actually an intrinsically strong linking it's not like one leads to the other and so are there any questions that hold to a high view of scripture or a high view of inerrancy that also affirm evolution so that would be a way then to start exploring and organizing the space in a different sort of way and you know what you'll find when you start breaking it down that way i think you'll find out that there's a lot of people that will say well yeah i guess my issue is not really with evolution because if there's people out there that affirm evolution but with a high view of scripture i don't have a problem with them yeah my problem is really with those ones over there that are doing that but it's not because of evolution it's really because they're doing this yeah yeah and so that gives a better way to organize now that's clear and you can also start asking questions of like well you know um what if there was a way to do this to believe acts while also believing why would that be a good thing yeah even if there isn't a lot of people there could that be a better way forward so i think that that gives us a better rubric a better framing to start thinking about these issues and we just talked about a couple of dimensions but you can imagine several dimensions here yeah you can also talk about science and kind of thinking about how we think through that and several others i think also too what's really critical to understand through this is the exceptions to the archetypes let me talk about young earth creationism for a moment you know ken ham is one archetype right yeah he kind of really is where everything kind of clicks to when it comes to earth creationism just because of his prominence but um but he actually is out of step with where most young earth creationists are most young earth creationists are very uncomfortable when they see him do it about how he talks about jesus most of them aren't they they don't like how he talks about other christians for the most part they they might be young creationists too and agreeing with them on the age of the earth but they would disagree for example with how he's really reached they talked about um talked about bill craig yeah and and called him a compromiser and all that they'd say well no he bill craig is wrong but he's done a lot of good for the faith and they would have a very different attitude about that um and you know uh many young christians that i've talked to has told me that you know if my kids i mean i'm young with christianity i disagree with you but if my kids ended up like you and held scripture and jesus the way you do as they affirmed evolution i wouldn't have a problem with it yeah and so um and they wouldn't have said that to many other christians that are from evolution but they said it to me why is that because the real dimensions that matter aren't actually the details of what you believe in the past and you don't want to link those things type and so uh so what happens is actually you know um the archetypal approach really creates a problem rather than more kind of handling all these things in more isolation and then seeing how it all fits together yeah if that makes sense well let me take just like two minutes to to try to explain what i was trying to do a little bit better and if it doesn't make sense then we'll move on to something else 251 because you're actually like the fourth or fifth person that picked on that one element in my paper and and saw the problems with it uh so i need to go back and find a better way to do it but i think i'm gonna wait till i get a little bit more feedback before i go back and rewrite the paper uh what i'm talking about is the chart where i talk about degrees of inspiration then i put i put the fundamentalists all the way i think that that is a disaster yeah so a lot of a lot of people have problems with that the thing is i need to figure out a way how to say what i'm trying to say that makes more sense and i haven't figured that out yet but what i'm talking about is what do the individual groups claim to do not what they're actually doing i don't think that that's that's actually important it's not about the groups i think that's amazing it's important for what i'm trying to to get across to but uh regardless okay so essentially um i'm looking at the whole of their theology and their whole of their philosophy so if you know if you take christians coming from different angles and you look at their whole way of thinking their entire world view uh they position scripture in different ways so i guess i just disagree with that entire premise i don't think that's a helpful way of thinking about it um i just don't think it's true i don't i don't think that's how it's happening i mean i understand i think i understand what we're trying to say but look i mean i think a better way to do it is i would make a two-dimensional graph on one side you have you know the position you are in origins another other thing is you know you can't really produce a clean ordering on all those now i would probably throw in some other things like young biosphere creation which are you know seventh-day adventists that actually think the earth is old but life is young throwing some of the surprising things there and that that's one dimension and then you have another intervention which is um you know different positions on inerrancy like chicago statements lassan covenant and you can kind of think through that right yeah um and and then ask okay so in that squadron where do individuals fall so where does ken ham fall where does you know uh where do organizations that have belief statements you could have too it's like where does aig fall where's reasons to believe fall where does biologos fall and where are some of the outliers people who are like where does joshua medas fall where does ken ham fall where does um you know where does john walton fall where does all these those sorts of people fall you see the diversity is kent hovind still alive or is he i'm not i know he's alive is he still around in the debate or is he kind of off of the uh well you know there's a difference between rhetoric i mean like a huge part of young earth creation there's a rhetoric around yeah around inerrancy that is actually deeply disconnected from the tradition and that's great that's what it is but that doesn't mean it's actually inerrancy um yeah so so here's the thing josh the thing is my paper isn't revolving around the debate about evolution like that wasn't my i'm just making myself a thing on origins right where you actually had like where people sit on there and see and you said that if you're an old earth creationist then this is where you sit with inerrancy if this is where um so so i'm i'm speaking about the 252 entire theology not just the origins issue like that's just maybe one element out of a hundred or a thousand different doctrinal elements we don't have unified theological points of view on this like you know um i mean like old earth creationists are incredibly diverse they have very diverse views young earth creationists are very diverse yeah evolutionary i mean like everyone's very diverse i don't think i think you're um it's more like a stereotype than a clear explanation of reality um the thing is i never said that any one of these groups is young earth creationist or older creationist i mean there might be fundamentalists that fall on the old earth creationist side there might be catholics that fall on the younger creationists so i never made that connection we talked about fundamentalist protestants and but even then i mean like oh was it like evangel i mean you can go back and look at that there was one there was one very early figure you're right it didn't have it didn't have where you were on origins but it had those traditions but even with those traditions they're very diverse yeah they are but but the key is this when um when protestants were working through their epistemology because the the protestant reformation happened in a setting where people believe that the church is the only one capable of coming up to the correct interpretation of scripture and if they had accepted that premise the pro the reformation would have fallen apart so they had to find a way to to establish a different center for theology and they came up with the scriptural concept but it was a very qualified sola scriptura because different people were reading the bible and coming up to with totally different conclusions and at some point they said man we got to put some some reins on this or otherwise it's just going to end up in chaos and they argued that the way to reign in scriptural interpretation is to go by the the early church fathers to to go by the regular feed they the the expression was you know the the early tradition of the church yeah i mean i guess i think history is important but i think there's a far more proximate or recent history that's important which is the fundamentalist modernist split yeah so that's about so you know the reformation is you know about 500 years ago uh the fundamentalist modernist split is maybe about 150 years ago yeah and that's still with us um and so i think and you know all the denominations that formed during the reformation all went through a fundamentalist modernist split into two different branches they'll be like kind of like the liberal branch and then the conservative branch right and uh the liberals were the the modernists and the and uh and the conservatives were the were the uh the fundamentalists but then um you know maybe over the last 50 years or so there's been like a there's been like an attempt to really build a synthesis about that and kind of more modern day evangelicalism right yeah yeah yeah and there's a lot of crossover this day so so it's a little bit more confusing as to deciding who who sides with what where and um you can just have you know liberals versus conservatives that's not a good question you know so ken ham is solidly in a fundamentalist not an evangelical yeah yeah exactly um and there's a lot of christians out there that are solidly modernist they're not really evangelical either but there's a large number of people who i mean i'd say probably the bulk of um you know the professing church right now is in that evangelical place right of trying to sort out some sort of synthesis between the two of them um and yeah science is kind of caught up in this and you know scripture is caught up in this those are actually the two central things because 253 like the fundamentalists took scripture and the modernist took science with them when they split right yeah and so i mean i think that's a far more helpful framework um and so that also highlights why it really is a little bit kind of difficult to say you know we're modernists i'm sorry where um protestants fit because it really depends what type of protestant you're talking about yeah and not even like lutheran versus methodist but which type of lutheran and which type of methodist um you know which end of that split were you in the methodist church which ended that split were you in the in the lutheran church um and and how did you navigate that how did your tradition navigate that so i mean i i i think that there is um i think there's a i i mean i just think that a lot of the categories you're using i mean i don't think that they really make as much sense and like i get what you're trying to do i just think that needs to be broken down in a very different way and i do think the the reformer history is interesting but the but the history of the fundamentalists and the modernists and then you know i mean i think the luzon covenant is actually very critical for entangling a lot of this too to say that again i missed the last question is very critical for entangling a lot of this too okay so i i don't quite i couldn't quite make that word what covenant lausanne covenant tell me a little bit about that because i actually haven't heard that expression before so you know like in the 60s like you know i think the modernist fundamentalist split was very very strong right and then in the 70s there was like the jesus movement it was kind of talented 60s in there and you have like you had kind of a resurgence of the missionary movement and um and really kind of in that you had all these denominations that didn't usually talk to each other they're kind of bumping uh against each other in the mission field and there was also kind of the whole 10 40 window and like the whole you know you know every tribe movement that was like a very big deal during that time yeah and so basically uh billy graham and john stott called an international meeting that had several thousand people show up from across the world i mean there's like over 150 nations that were really there and just about every denomination you can imagine and they came up with a charter or covenant to really define what is the gospel what are we doing what is the church how does it all fit together how do we work together in a way that isn't just a bunch of people like fighting with each other yeah and that's really considered one of the foundational documents in modern evangelicalism i mean catholic signed it orthodox people signed it it's really everyone around there and really kind of put emphasis on who jesus is and core historical doctrines about in our faith and also it made some very carefully negotiated statements on inerrancy and the point is is that you know if you can affirm this and not everyone could i mean like mormons can't affirm the lesson covenant right um but if you could affirm that there's agreement very broadly in the church in a way that's um you know uh that hadn't really happened since then on any other topic like well you know that is actually orthodox christianity that's what it means to be you know evangelical christian right now some of the language in it is a little bit dated i mean it's from the 70s right yeah yeah but but when you get to the actual content then and you think about the fact that this involved christians and was born in a process of christians across the entire world not just a bunch of uh you know a small group of you know you know white christians in a corner uh is here they're uh telling everyone else what to do and you realize it was negotiated in that um and the the the position papers and the books written about it were very well thought through and also you know they had moral authority to really say this and that actually really changed the face of evangelicalism in in really critical ways and so um so you know a big part i think of starting to work through these issues is actually you know kind of reminding people of some of this history um so for example um the way how the sun covenant talks about inerrancy is it says that the bible is without errors and all that it affirms and it's the only infallible guide to uh to practice 254 yeah that's what it says so even even catholics agreed to that right and in that way um you know you know evangelicalism as defined in the sun covenant is bigger than catholicism yeah it's bigger than than any single denomination because it's really all the denominations that are orthodox really speaking together um that seems to be a pretty critical um piece of the puzzle that really needs to be talked about now some people didn't think the lassonde covenant was enough that's even part of the motivation for the the chicago statements on inerrancy but even then when when you look at what it says there it like the you know the statements are very clear that inerrancy does not lock you into a young earth it's very clear that when it talks about evolution it only means a godless process and so if you're talking about evolution as something like other than a godless process then it's not what they care about yeah okay it's also really clear that scripture doesn't speak with um with scientific precision and that's a mistake that's because they were looking at the whole picture they didn't want people to come back and say well jesus says that the smallest of seeds was a mustard seed and we know that orchids have smaller seeds therefore jesus was not divine and the bible's errands they didn't want people to play that silly game because that was abusing the text from what you meant so they really talked a lot about you know about these details right and so um the problem isn't really inerrancy it really is is more kind of like an untutored naive merely rhetorical approach to inerrancy which kind of beats your chest and says you're the one who takes scripture the most seriously that's the problem i'm curious what is the general acceptance of this uh as far as the wider community i mean i'm sure the fundamentalists probably don't agree with that or at least actually the way how it works in evangelicalism is that we're generally ignorant people when it comes to our traditions um and but um but at the same token we're also fairly orthodox so we're ignorant of the story out of which our beliefs come but we're also not heretical for the most part if that makes any sense so what uh usually happens is people have normally never heard about it but you show it to them and they're like oh yeah i can agree and affirm to all of this and then if you also look at how belief statements are supposed to work is that they're not actually supposed to be entirely normative i mean it's just a human document in the end you can say you know i agree with everything in the lucent government except for with this exception this is the one place i just sent and this is the reason why and disclose that i'd explain why and with that it'd be very hard to find anyone who identifies as evangelical who wouldn't be able to affirm it without one or two what we would probably consider fairly minor you know minor uh reservations one friend of mine erica carlson she's a physicist at purdue when she was asked to affirm it she read it carefully and said you know i can't affirm it because it says that the gospel is for all men but i think it's also for women and children too her to affirm the said oh okay sure that's fine no problem with that so that's an example of kind of dissenting from it right in a way that isn't really ultimately a problem and frankly she probably has a point yeah you know if we were to redo it you know maybe we'd actually adopt better language there you get what i'm saying yeah you know it might be an interesting thing to propose having a re revised meeting or so they have done follow-up meetings so there's a lassonde organization and so they've had the manila manifesto and a couple others and none of them have had i think quite the same impact as the lasson covenant and you know i i think that that's fine i mean frankly you know that was really special that happened you know we don't we're not like revising the nicene creed yeah i think i think uh i think that that's okay that we haven't um i mean part of it is you know there's denominational meetings and usually those large sorts of statements arise because of actual 255 social pressure that's creating a real question that everyone has to to address and really what it was is that's really at the peak of the fundamentalist modernist design they couldn't really use standard categories like the ones you're using to say who was actually really aligned with them or not because they couldn't say the methodists are with us because some methodists were out there in this place that was denying the gospel and some of them were so they're trying to figure out how do we navigate that and so that's really how it was solved and so um i think it's really a problem to try and reinvent the wheel on those things without engaging them i think that that's that's the mistake of evangelical closing that we do we try and take this really big problem that we're trying to negotiate and ignore all the history and effort that's gone into it to resolve it all the institutional investment that's gone into these things and then just try and do it all from scratch that's not that's not sensible i mean we're part of a larger story we can't just divorce ourselves from that even if we forget it it's still there and i think that there's a lot to be gained by recovering that far more recent history does that make sense yeah yeah uh i i need to definitely look into this a little more i'm sure i come i came across it somewhere in my in my studies but for some reason it never like got my attention uh you know i'm familiar with the chicago statement and all that and i've definitely heard about um you know ecumenical but there's also all of the exposition of it so stock wrote a really good exposition of it yeah i mean one of the things too that they have to do which is different from fundamentalism fundamentalism is really about a monochromatic view of the church like there's one right way and then if you're not aligned with us you're really against us that's what fundamentalism is right um i mean you can see it in ken ham but to be clear not all young earth creationists are fundamentalists sure but you can see it in ken ham um one of the the challenges you have to work through if you're an evangelical who believes that the church is broader is you have to figure out why is it that there's so much disagreement in the church you have to have a good theological account of disagreement i mean if the if the scripture is important and we can all read it and we how is it that we all come to disagree on important things based on scripture how how do we make sense of that reality now fundamentals doesn't have that problem because they look at it and say well because all of them aren't real christians yeah yeah yeah that's that's the easiest uh cop-out or you know like well you know the modernists don't have the problem either because they just say well scripture isn't really that important exactly exactly and so you know but the but the evangelicals in a different spot because they're kind of facing you know the uncomfortable reality of diversity in the church a lot of people who seem to be in good faith and really caring about scripture and so stot actually dealt with this and he picked out ephesians 3 10. and where it's talking actually about the gospel if you look at the context the context actually makes it a lot more clear that this is a good interpretation and he takes a literal interpretation of that which says um where it talks about how the many colored wisdom of the church will be revealed i mean sorry the many color wisdom of god will be revealed in the church is what it says yeah and he argues that you know and so this is actually what ends up being part of the song covenant too it talks about the many colored wisdom of god and i mean i talked about it in my book too right yeah i talked about how many color wisdom might arise and the whole point is that he's he's looking there at ephesians 3 10 and he's seeing oh it's talking about there'll be multiple colors to god's wisdom and so that probably applies here when we talk about scripture maybe that there's legitimacy across all these divides not that everyone's right but there might 256 everyone might have a hold of some sort of legitimacy here that there's that we can actually do this better together than we could ever apart and so it really is a strong theological case for diversity and i think that that that's part of once again i think the evangelical uh story is important i mean i think that that that i would argue has really been borne out um and once again it's a very strong argument against a archetypal approach because archetypal approach doesn't really allow for that because it's kind of clicking everyone into a particular frame that may or may not be a good fit and saying that that's the right way to look at reality where i don't actually think that that's true i think the right way to look at reality is very different um i think it's looking at it through the lens of um you know better frames of reference you know actually what like i mean i mean you can pick out a whole bunch of them you could talk about um an aerospace one way to look at it that's one tradition in the church and where do people sit on that i think the more recent history of the fundamentals modernist divide and how it gave rise to moderate evangelicalism is another really helpful frame for helping understand people to help people understand where they sit in the story now yeah that's far more important than the luther versus catholic divide that divide has ended up i think kind of going into by the wayside no one really cares about that anymore because people are going to work with a catholic and lutherans will work with catholics if they're on the right side of the sun covenant together and so that that's actually from a praxis point of view far more important um than yeah the history is there for us to just understand why things happen a certain way they could have turned out a whole different direction if things had taken a different turn you know for a hundred a thousand years ago i mean you know a thousand years ago the catholic and orthodox church divide happened and there's consequences of that that still affect us today anyway we're coming kind of up on you know almost an hour now and i did want to spend a little bit of time on the science side of things is there okay can we switch to that sure all right so um i don't know if you have any comment on any of any other thing i said in the last section of the paper but i did have some questions for you so i don't know if you want to start with all right ask your questions just ask my questions okay so um one of the the things that i've kind of been frustrated with in the realm of the philosophy of science is that i'm not aware of any clear statement of how we understand the connection between the supernatural and god and and all those elements that we believe as as christians and the methodology of science itself that basically just tends to look at the world as a sort of cause and effect natural reaction you know so if somebody gets sick in africa they might say oh you know you have an evil spirit or you know some something is punishing you but we never think about those things you know us westerners we just say oh you feel sick go to the doctor and there's probably a cause for it that's a physical material natural cause that explains your sickness and and that kind of a mindset we apply everywhere in science and i've never really come across anybody explaining at what point we acknowledge the supernatural and it's it's connection with the methodology of science so i don't know if you have any thoughts on that i know you've you wrote up an article on methodological naturalism which i thought was really good but i still didn't feel like it went too far into the areas that i'm concerned with so i don't know what your thoughts are on that yeah well i mean i think that that is actually well understood as part of the fundamentalist modernist split so the modernists kind of went down this path of denying all miracles okay um and many of them um perhaps most of them even denied the resurrection because that's just the path they want and i mean they took hold of science which they thought had shown that there 257 were no miracles and there was just a natural and they went down that path and then you know the fundamentalists that it's not fair to say they abandoned science um they abandoned mainstream science they kind of created their own little version of it yeah which i personally think it's it's not useful and i think the whole attempt needs to be redone i don't know what your thoughts on it but to me like fundamental science is not really i think yeah i mean i think yeah i mean i'm not a big fan of creation science but but regardless i mean these are the two the two approaches right so but basically for a long time people just thought mainstream science just proves miracles and it does that but but there's really nothing there there science doesn't actually engage those questions so if you never ask the question you're never going to get you know the answer it doesn't really seek to prove or disprove god it doesn't really seek to prove or disprove miracles it's silent about those things so you know um what we do know is that thinking about for example diseases through germ theory that lens is incredibly powerful yeah and it is this so we know that there's some legitimacy to it and you can't just ignore that um but that doesn't mean it's the whole story so um what i can say is it's the tractable story that we can make sense of through science but science doesn't really ever give us the whole story so if you realize that then you realize that it doesn't hasn't ruled out god's involvement and role in different things and and you know there's a question of how it is and ultimately we don't really know unless god tells us and he didn't give us a lot of those details but you know we yeah so so i i personally you know i'm not concerned with science ruling out miracles as far as that's cons that part of it like i'm okay with that side and and i'm not worried that i'm going to rule out miracles if i accept science but my question is more in terms of like the methodology itself and it just seems like the methodology has has no stopping point like there's a certain way of reasoning and the only place that this reasoning will take you if you follow it all the way to its logical conclusion is a universe that is entirely mechanistic from beginning to end well it's logical conclusion is incoherent to be clear so i think the issue is not actually with the methodology it's with any sense that this is the complete way of seeing the world if you think science is a complete way of seeing the world it gives total explanations yeah there's a lot of problems but if you recognize from the outset that it's not a total view of the world and it never was meant to be a total view of the world it does some things well and it does some things extremely poorly and so it's not really about adopting a science-only worldview that's absurd it's really about how do we hold science alongside other things that's the real question i think a lot of these problems really go away so science just doesn't tell us the whole story and okay so let me let me let me ask you a specific example so you know you're i don't know if you can call yourself an evolutionary biologist or not i'm not sure what your proper question that affirms evolution okay but the evolution only only starts once we already have life but as far as the abiogenesis aspect of it that is considered a whole different field but at least that element at this point we still don't have answers to it so you know there's tons of people tons of scientists in evolution we don't have all the answers yeah exactly exactly but at least that part you know there's a lot of stuff that has been worked out but as far as the biogenesis is concerned there's a lot of scientists working on it but they haven't really figured out a way to explain that part now i asked the question okay well isn't there the possibility that that's one element that god just did himself like sure yeah but the thing is scientists are still going to keep digging in to find a way to to explain it yes so what is the answer there just let them keep working they're never gonna why 258 not okay i mean why not say hey maybe god did it and even if they come up with an explanation that may not be how it happened maybe god still did it yeah but what's the problem with them just going and investigating it i don't understand no i don't think there's a problem with them investigating but it just seems that um when we haven't come up with a philosophy of how to relate to to the scientific process and when to say well in this situation we know for sure this is the case in this situation scientists have an answer but we don't know for sure this is the right answer and how to navigate those things like i don't i've never seen it scientists will tell you right now that we don't have the right answer we don't know how the first oh that part that part we don't but you know other things we have some answers but how come how confident we are that we have the correct answers like i guess there isn't like a class where you could sit down and somebody teaches you okay this is how you navigate so i don't think the problem is with science what i'd say is the issue is is that we've been really struggling as a church and how to engage with science in a way that grants it legitimacy without having it taken over everything so that's the issue and i think that the right answer is like a theology that takes scripture seriously and takes science seriously and tries to make sense of everything together i think that's i think that's the right approach and i think it's going to be best worked out in dialogue between uh you know scientists of goodwill and theologians and people in the church of goodwill too that um we can kind of be there as blind men taking all the different parts of the elephant and you know have a conversation with her and try and figure out together what the elephant looks like all at once and so that requires us you know actually truthfully taking hold of something that we have perception of right and also requires some trust and fairness to one another as we actually try to correctly represent what we've taken hold of the other person hasn't and realized that they might have also taken something a hold of something legitimate that we haven't taken a hold of yet yeah that that sort of conversation amongst the blind men is i think the only really way forward but that's been hard that hasn't really been happening in the church right there's very few people who have figured out how to bring these things into dialogue with one another where there's constructive resistance where you know where there's you know meaningful autonomy i think that's that's what a good conversation has you know and you know that that that's possible i mean it's i think my book and some of the conversations leading up to it were examples of that right um but i think i think that's just something that we have to really learn how to do as a congregation um i agree with i agree with everything you're saying so i'm not i'm not trying to disagree like i guess maybe my mind works a little different but i'm always trying to kind of figure out um how to navigate some of this stuff because you know you could talk to somebody and say okay here's an area where science has come to a certain conclusion but i personally think god is actually involved here you know i cannot prove it science cannot prove me wrong and that's just the way it is but then here's another area where science has reached certain conclusions and i believe as christians we need to go along with that even though you know you might think the bible pulls you in a different direction and how do we decide which is which situation i mean i i don't actually really know i mean it's a bit of an incoherent question for me because i don't actually see any conflict with what i've seen in science and what i've seen in scripture i mean i can talk hypothetically about those sorts of things but i don't actually see any conflict i mean it's i just don't see conflict at all i'm not even dealing with any friction at this point i mean i 259 felt it in the past and usually that had to do because i really misunderstood the science and i really misunderstood scripture so um and and i'm saying that that's true even if you take a very literal reading of genesis i mean it's not like i'm saying i'm not taking scripture as talking about the physical world that's not it i mean it's just i just don't you have to work very hard to make conflict here and i'm just not doing that work um so it's a little bit hard to figure that out what i can say is that there's a lot of confusion about this in general and i think the best thing to do is actually start you know learning and talking to people and getting educated and getting understanding what i tell students and i think it really applies to us as scholars too is uh to really take proverbs um you know proverbs 3 5 seriously where it says you know i'm sorry not three five i'm blanking on it i think it's four or five it says you know above all i'll seek understanding and all you're getting get understanding i think the first part is like get understanding i mean i think there's a lot of apparent conflicts that aren't so just get understanding and i think we're in a moment now where i think if you do get understanding i think i think i'm i'm a bit skeptical than at the other end that there's going to be a large amount of conflict yeah i think that's probably a point where you and i are gonna maybe be on different sides of this um for for some time because i think people have certain commitments that bring them to different conclusions and i tend to just respect their commitments in the sense that uh you know for example if i talk to somebody who's coming from the catholic perspective their commitment is to to their church in other words they they feel like there's a certain epistemic primacy to the decisions that their church makes sure and i respect that too but that doesn't tell me what the problem is what do you think the difference is well the point is that whatever people's commitments are might lead them to certain conclusions and then they're going to have issues whatever you know depending on each each tradition they might have different difficulties than you do because you're coming from a different angle at the the bible or at your theology well maybe but i mean i'm coming from something that's actually fairly close to what people say is the starting point of being on earth creationism so you know i think you know catholics for the most part don't have a challenge with science but yeah they don't have a challenge with this with this you know you can ask them like what exactly do you feel the conflict is the people who are tending to have the conflict are the people who are the literalists and all of them right and those are the ones where you know i'm coming from that starting point you know uh so i think that's where um i mean that's where i question it i mean i think i think there's uh you know there's gonna be obviously we categorize our different groups differently but you know i i see certain people who are strict fundamentalists in the sense that they they're very naive like you said they're very naive in their scriptural interpretation but then there's there's other christians who are are fairly advanced theologically they might be doctors of theology whatever in the protestant tradition but because their commitments are to to certain uh early church traditions you know maybe augustine maybe certain uh tell them for example they they might be following calvin's perspective on things uh and then they might disagree with some of the conclusions scientists come to because of that so they have those those pre-commitments so it might cause more conflicts from them than what you're doing with you you don't come from that tradition 260 well maybe but i mean i think that they can articulate that i mean i work with a lot of christians from different traditions too i mean uh and usually what i've seen is that when you talk to people who are informed of those in traditions they'll actually start with misunderstandings often but they'll come to agree actually there isn't a fundamental conflict here but then what ends up being the blocker is not actually any fundamental conflict on ideas it actually has to do with they're concerned about being public because they're going to face a populist uprising against the populist fundamental uprising yeah that's a good point that's a good point and so that's not a real conflict that's actually that's not a real conflict that's an invented conflict that has to do and what i've even told them is you really should start saying that you're concerned about the fundamentalist incursion on your denomination yeah and you know um i mean this is something that's actually very clearly seen for example amongst lutheran uh you know lutherans in missouri synod lcms like there's like clearly the lutheran tradition which is actually a very august tradition that's very thoughtful on all these things they have a a really um careful seminary it's done really good work and then and then you know in the 70s they really had an invasion of fundamentalists yeah yeah yeah it's people's livelihoods so you have to account for that i mean you know if you have a large group of people supporting your seminary that are gonna not yeah but the thing about is that fundamentalist fundamentalism is actually in conflict with lutheranism yeah yeah and so then the question becomes of like you know if you can't actually see the conflict between this scientific theory out there and lutheranism but the fundamentalists are going to be upset you know how do you work through that now i'm not trying to say it's easy to work through but then i mean i think it helps to identify it once again as correctly like the fundamentalist modernist split and how evangelicals are trying to kind of form in a correct synthesis and you know most of us have actually can recognize fundamentalism and most of us don't actually realize that that's not actually the way forward yeah yeah um i mean evangelicalism is a lot bigger than fundamentalism is the thing yeah anyway i think i think what you did with your book uh resolved a major conflict from people for people so that's you're able to say certain things that we we might not have been able to say five years ago or ten years ago because you resolved the adam and eve issue i i agree with you that i think without some of the stuff that i kind of put forward in my book i'm probably i'm probably being a bit too glib and frankly i have said stuff like this in the past before my book came out and people didn't understand what i was saying and we get into these conversations about adam and eve where it was really interesting people like are you trying to say that everyone out there is wrong about what science says about adam and eve um like all these people people i said well i mean pretty much i'm sorry but now we're past that stage i think people i think recognize a lot of them even change their views so you're right i mean i do think the conversation has changed yeah yeah so maybe who knows we're at a place where things can take a different turnout a lot a lot easier because we're we have the intellectual elements to to move forward you know so yeah but i mean for your project i think you're on the right track i mean and i don't want to come off as too negative i do think that the real key issue though is moving away from an archetypal approach uh to really doing something that can start defining issues better so you can start understanding the diversity in the church better um i think uh you know really mapping out like what are different ways you can and i think it'll actually simplify your paper instead of trying to make the case that x idea is like with y idea you don't have to do that anymore you know you just try and kind of give the range of views on a particular thing and um and then you can kind of see what the distribution of people is across that and and i think just because it'll become a far easier paper to write yeah that'll be that'll be good if i can but i'll have to do a lot of thinking through everything to figure out how to hopefully that 261 was helpful and i didn't uh i didn't uh running my party too much i appreciate the time i mean i uh i like i said i really enjoyed your your work so i'm glad that you were willing to take the time and and talk to me and um i'll definitely think about all the stuff we discussed i don't know where i'll end up on the whole thing once i give it the thought but uh um definitely it's been helpful and i'm sure others will enjoy the conversation as well yeah thanks a lot thanks for having me thanks thanks a lot for coming josh and uh we'll be in touch online i'm sure we'll run into each other at some point absolutely all right later take care Participant 7 – Jerry – Baptist/Fundamentalist i'm not a protestant do not fit the protestant profile cultural christians new king james only people westover baptist white supremacist groups 99.5 of scripture can be traced right back to the original documents and then if you take what little bit is left and you toss out name spellings and numbers like a thousand or a hundred thousand or ten thousand you throw those out you really only have a handful of scriptures that translators even discuss and so you find uh doctoral dissertations over fragments of verses yeah and uh and so so of course i say that the scripture is is certainly truthful and as close as we could expect anything that's been translated to be to the to the true inerrant word of god the spelling of a name that's not really really an issue if we're talking about a number of i think it's a hundred you think it's a thousand but for me just a clear plain reading of that text demonstrates that it's about the protection of the woman weight the mountain of the scripture falls then upon that text if you have a small god who does not intervene in the affairs of men then there's not a lot that you're going to be able to to uh grab a hold of in the scripture you're going to discount miracles you're going to just discount the changed lives of people who come to faith but if you have a big god then then you can understand that god can do great and big and wonderful things he can heal he can touch people he can remove addictions and he can do these kinds these kinds of things 262 jesus film uh you know it was uh uh taken to africa into south america and asia and they would show this jesus film and people immediately flocked to come to know christ jesus churches were started missionaries were started so i think there is a methodology it has proven that it's worked they said it was the plain reading of scripture that meant everything to me and they said especially when it came to the gospels the other passages of the bible were more difficult mere christianity by c.s lewis yeah in which he lays out the fundamental beliefs of christian christians zero archaeological evidence to show that anything in the bible's wrong zero but there's been a tremendous amount of archaeological data showing the bible is correct archaeologists that have been converted a darwinian evolutionist and they will deny it they they do believe in evolution but not darwinian evolution but yet darwinian evolution is taught in the public schools as truth not as theory and the biologists just are not a darwinian evolutionist stretch scripture and try to make it more into a scientific textbook and and it's trying to make scripture something that it is not and and i have problems with that okay um death before sin yeah no i i don't i don't think so i don't think so at all i don't i don't think the scripture supports i don't even see cosmic warfare i look at that very differently satan in the book of job is always uh is presented as subservient he comes to god he says can i do these things god's permissive will allows evil to play out so that true and complete justice can be done it isn't until after all the evil is played out can justice truly be when rendered so for it how do you define good outside of god it's just such a blessing for me to have the privilege of doing this with you well hello again everyone uh i'm pastor mike uh i'm here with uh gerald um and um we're going to be talking about the paper i've written a while back uh just like i have with several other people for those that might not have seen previous conversations the paper we're discussing can be found by typing in bitly bit dot l-y slash uh solar scriptor a manifesto so you could download that paper and read along if you want to uh but that's what we're discussing today so i'm gonna allow joe to introduce himself and then we'll get started go ahead 263 hello i'm uh most of my friends call me jerry jaren galwin i have a doctorate systematic theology pastored i'm a retired army chaplain uh a baptist and uh i'm not a protestant okay now uh would you say that the majority of baptists don't consider themselves protestants or is that just something you personally hold i think the uh the rank and file would say we are not protestants i think for most of this of uh let's say uh seminary folks advanced degree folks uh would also agree that there they do not fit the protestant profile but there's a lot of um carryover that goes both ways okay so a lot of the doctrinal uh beliefs the core beliefs of christianity we would basically agree on but as far as church polity we would disagree and and we would prob we might disagree on uh the the the your topic of soul of scripture you would we have a very very high view of scripture yeah let me ask you this also um when you say baptist because i'm i'm not very familiar with baptists in general but i do know a little bit but when you say baptist do you include all the denominations that call themselves baptist or are you mostly referring to a particular brand of baptists because i know there's many different forms of baptist right there's about a half dozen yeah major branches of baptist life and i will try when i speak i'll try to uh if it's a general thing i'll try to be general if it's specific to one denomination or another uh i'll try to try to do that uh i'm i am a southern baptist okay uh particularly but i know seventh day seventh day baptist which is a very small group and they meet on saturday yeah uh so you know as an example um what about uh as far as i'm not sure what the term for it it is but as far as one's position on uh salvation uh in my experience i've come across three different types of baptists um and i would even say just and i could be totally wrong but this is just my observation like if i took if i looked at all the baptists in the world everybody that considered themselves baptist it seems to me that about i don't know maybe 60 70 fall within the one saved always saved perspective and then there's another like 20 some percent that fall within the calvinist perspective and then there's maybe 10 percent for within the uh free will perspective so are you familiar with that idea of calvinist versus one zero versus armenians yes uh calvinism are we see it addressed a lot a lot of times as reformed theology yeah um uh i do not have a lot of dealing with them okay uh with that particular group most and this is very general most southern baptist churches are opposed to reformed theology okay although there are uh reformed theology reformed theology churches in the southern baptist sphere uh because southern baptists really focus on missions and education and so if you can support missions and you can support the general education idea then you could be a southern baptist yeah uh every southern baptist church is independent there's not a hierarchy that tells a local southern baptist church what it can or cannot do and that's a key point in all baptists across the spectrum they are independent by nature they are the most pure democratic form of government out there it is purely a vote yeah so um i i guess so you know the question then would be do you fall on the one saved always safe site or on the free will baptist side of things 264 i'm definitely uh once saved always okay so then i kind of know where you're coming from um yeah i've talked to several baptists and tried to get more definite figures but from from the most i can put together so far it seems like the majority of baptists are on the one side always safe side but there are there are several on the calvinist side and a little bit less on the armenian side yes i would say probably eighty percent are one save to always say okay and probably 15 are reformed uh usually uh reformed usually end up either that church moves to become an independent church or uh out of uh baptist life or what we typically would call baptist life and then you have the free will baptist which is kind of a standalone yeah kind of thing there's also primitive baptists i don't know if you're familiar with those at all um is that connected to anabaptism or is that something different it it's really closer to uh mennonites yeah i've met i met some of those as well yeah okay um i'm from romania and in romania it seems most of the baptists i talk to theirs fall on the freewill baptist side of things but i haven't talked to a whole lot so i could be wrong but that's my experience i've run into a lot of free will baptists there anyway okay so let's let's move on to to the topic at hand um so a lot of the things i'm i'm saying in my paper are not so much me saying them but i'm quoting what seemed to me as the authority figures within the wider protestant community so i kind of follow the evangelical crowd and and see what who the thought leaders are and you have people like aleister mcgrath and uh this keith mattison person i have i had quite a few segments from that seems to have been influential because a lot of people i talk to seem to parrot his way of thinking and a lot of the stuff i'm saying comes from them but you you seem to disagree with that idea so i'm curious um i'll just let you talk and kind of share where you're coming from and then i'll have some questions for you um as well for one thing your your luck the lie that you drew that had fundamentalism on the left and uh liberal theology on the far right i mean we can flip that around i'm not i'm not committed to the directions but yeah well i understand well if you just stretch it out the fundamentalism to the right liberals to the left are to whatever but i would add a couple of things in there i think that would help clarify it a little bit and that would be between liberals and atheists i would put i would add cultural christians yeah that's a good one i've thought of putting that in but that's a good point yeah because cultural christianity is really kind of what now now defines the united states it's it's not it's certainly not christian yeah uh some people use the phrase post-christian nation i don't think that's really appropriate but cultural christianity i think is kind of what we see in in the realm of politics today yeah yeah on the other extreme on the other side of fundamentalism i would add uh new king james only people i don't know if you've met many of those i've made quite a few years uh but they seem to god seems to have generously sprinkled them about yeah yeah uh i have uh had numerous run-ins with king james only only folks and so i'm definitely not in that crowd okay good and then even to the further away than those folks are and i'm not sure if you've come across folks like this but the westover baptist yes yes yes they 265 were even further extreme and then i would add uh some of the white supremacist groups even further yeah uh so i hate to even put them in in a context around christianity but when you discuss the the uh the power of scripture or the presence of scripture or its precedence of scripture all of those i think have a part because of how destructive they can be yeah yeah and how they're mentioned so often especially in political circles they try to lump a lot of people to the right in one big category paint with a with a wide brush which i think is very destructive yeah i think uh the the spectrum of christian perspectives is extremely complex um i mean we could probably like if we were careful and detailed we could probably list tens of thousands of different unique positions that are somewhat different than the the positions right next to them uh but obviously for for the scope of what i'm doing it you'll be too too difficult to get to that detail i'm just kind of trying to get that some of the bigger categories well the reason the reason i mentioned them was because of of of how how and what they say about themselves and how they look it's how they have stated scripture they're they're very extreme yeah and it's nice to throw the the extremes but i i think you're also right in that we can never reach the extremes of those that try to place themselves under the banner of christianity we would never make it yeah when we run out of space on any graphic at least um so i'm i'm more concerned in the in the mechanism of inspiration and um i guess the the theological term is revelation and inspiration so revelation is how god reveals himself to humanity and then how humanity receives that revelation and transmits it to others and i think one of the one of the comparison tools we have is to look at other groups that might not be christian or might be on the extremes of christianity for example islam right islam has this idea that allah just came down and and gave uh muhammad the quran as is i mean it's like basically almost the book came down from heaven pretty much it's just exactly the way god wants it you know and we could look at the mormon church and they could say well joseph smith received those tables and and copied them down so basically whatever people have in their hand is exactly what god gave the to the prophet uh in christianity we're not even the most conservative christians are not quite there because we have to acknowledge the fact that there's uh autographed you know the original writings and there's been translations and copies and all this stuff so uh pretty much everybody that's informed acknowledges the fact that it's a little bit more tricky than god just dropping a book from heaven so we have to kind of play around with that and and figure out exactly you know how precise the document we have is compared to what god would have said if if he could just write the book himself the way he wanted so i mean i'll let you kind of describe your view of this old question that is an important important point that um i think the the person the average person that sits in a pew really doesn't understand uh i entered seminary when this whole inerrancy issue came about i showed up at seminary and the first thing i heard people talking about was inerrancy yeah and uh i'm from little uh i'm from the country uh in alabama uh out in the boondocks and my first thought well which translation is the best one i mean that was my my first thought yeah and so this inerrancy question always seemed to be in in a real sense foolishness because we don't have those documents and we have to trust and the rank and file must trust in the translator because there i know of no pastor including myself that is so well versed in greek aramaic and hebrew that he can lay that out plainly every sunday when he stands up to preach yeah yeah so in one 266 sense from a practical point of view this inerrancy question to me is kind of foolish so the question then must be is the bible that we hold in our hand good yeah and i i think with uh things like the dead sea scrolls and other ancient art of artifacts and and and parchments that still come to life verifies that 99.5 of scripture can be traced right back to the original documents and then if you take what little bit is left and you toss out name spellings and numbers like a thousand or a hundred thousand or ten thousand you throw those out you really only have a handful of scriptures that translators even discuss and so you find uh doctoral dissertations over fragments of verses yeah and uh and so so of course i say that the scripture is is certainly truthful and as close as we could expect anything that's been translated to be to the to the true inerrant word of god yeah so um i guess part of the the um scope of what i was trying to to discuss with this whole thing is that uh you know what we've i mean protestants in general and i think baptists will probably fit in this category regardless of how they feel about protestantism but we we've been talking about the idea of sola scriptura and that's been kind of a slogan or a concept that you know ever since protestants broke away from catholicism has been you know some somewhat prominent within conversations and what i've tried to argue is that their the idea of sola scriptura and the idea of inerrancy is not the same thing in other words you can be more relaxed when it comes to the concept of inerrancy like you could allow for some level of error and that does not necessarily mean you're moving away from sola scriptura so that's been kind of the main point of what i tried to get across um i think it would depend upon what kind of era are we talking about if we're talking about the spelling of a name that's not really really an issue if we're talking about a number of i think it's a hundred you think it's a thousand i don't think that's really a big deal either yeah uh so so for those kinds of things i don't think it's a real issue uh but if we if we move to some other kinds of uh things about scripture then uh it's going to be a real problem yeah so so this is good this is this is kind of where i was going with this um because the the normal rationale is look we're gonna take a passage you know there might be some mistakes in spelling whatever but the overall message has to be correct and if it's not correct uh you know we're to be led astray you know we're going to believe something that isn't true so by definition scripture has to be making the correct point at every every step or else it's going to lead us astray and what i've tried to say is that that's not even that is not necessarily the case because we have an entire canon so you know you could go to one section of the scripture and if you isolate it and you do your entire theology based on that section and you're diligent you know you go to the original manuscripts you learn your greek and hebrew whatever you have to do and you're diligent to exegete the passage perfectly but there is still a possibility that maybe the original author didn't quite understand it or didn't explain it properly and that still wouldn't be a problem for sola scriptura as a theology because there's another there's an entire bible to correct whatever problem is in that passage and if you're if you're just going to focus on that one passage and build your theology on it then it's a problem but if you go through the entire scripture and you look at everything it has to say on a certain topic then even if something is is not clear or maybe it's pointing in a different direction the rest of the scripture can can you know kind of redirect you to to what god intended you to understand 267 well let me let me see if i can rephrase that in baptist terminology okay and see see if we're talking about the same thing uh if you if you take uh any given scripture well we could take for instance um a passage that you mentioned in your paper uh the t jesus being questioned about divorce yeah so the question is uh did jesus issue a new teaching is jesus correcting an old teaching uh or is jesus is jesus agreeing or disagreeing with moses uh and so we can we can ask these kinds of questions in the text now i let me let me just kind of back up just a little bit i consider myself a fundamentalist or a conservative i consider myself a textualist i focus on the text yeah the text and and and i am in the minority of baptist i think when i say that all i really care about is what the text says yeah not just that one scripture in matthew 19 but the weight of the text so uh i would look at this this passage and i would say see that jesus immediately goes back to genesis which is the foundational basis for marriage yeah and then he says about moses about what moses did was moses only did this because of the sinfulness of the men who were wanting these divorces and so the right of divorcement was a protection for the for the woman and and for me uh maybe i'm alone here but for me just a clear plain reading of that text demonstrates that it's about the protection of the woman you don't have to really read anything in there jesus says it's for the hardness of your heart she's talking to men and that they give the rit of divorcement to the woman it's her get out of jail free card and so but the but when you look at the text and you study it and you do all the diligence like you say then to me the weight the mountain of the scripture falls then upon that text yeah and out of the rubble comes your sermon for sunday because it's the weight of the the mountain of the bible that that directs or indicates the what the message will be based on that text yeah so i think we're kind of saying the same thing i mean you're you're not just fixating on one one piece of the bible but you're looking at the big picture in the whole story that he has to say and i think that's the key about how jesus went about and i'm not saying that jesus as the son of god couldn't introduce something new and i think he did introduce new ideas and and bring bring additional insights but a lot of times we see jesus talking and it just seems that jesus is actually faithful to the old testament like he's reading it the way people should have read it all along it's the pharisees that were not being faithful they were they were pulling things out of context or they were not really reading god's heart into the things that were taking place and they were just taking it legalistically like you know here's a set of rules just follow those rules and that's it but if you have this big picture of who god is and what he's trying to accomplish then it it kind of aids your interpretation along um i i don't know i want to give you a chance to kind of share what your concerns are and then maybe i'll wait to interrupt until a little bit later and i'll ask you some more questions well let me just add one little bit about this idea of of scripture it really depends on your view of how big your god is if you have a small god who does not intervene in the affairs of men then there's not a lot that you're going to be able to to uh grab a hold of in the scripture you're going to discount miracles you're going to just discount the changed lives of people who come to faith but if you have a big god then then you can understand that god can do great and big and wonderful things he can heal he can touch people he can remove addictions and he can do these kinds these kinds of things so i think it's important uh to have an understanding of of of where or how big your god is and how and what kind of position you give authority when i when i was growing up uh one of my mentors uh ralph brother ralph haygood he's gone on to be with the lord uh he he was famous for holding up his bible and saying to the congregation i believe every word of this 268 is true so much so that i believe even the fake leather is real and so so it's your you know your view your eye view of scripture your your idea of how big is your god really plays a role in this idea of solar scripture and and i think that's to me that's key yeah i i agree with you there and i think one of the the values of looking at the whole spectrum of christian theologies is to see that different people have different elements in their theology so you know almost everybody has respect from for scripture in some way so for example i've had conversations with somebody some people from the more liberal side of things and they didn't appreciate the idea that they don't have a high view of scripture but their high view of scripture is definitely different than maybe your high view of scripture they see it as a book that they need to respect and value and and a book that they can read and uh and connect with god through but they they don't always see everything in it as something that should inform their theology and because they they don't get the majority of their theology from scripture then they have to have other sources whatever they might be you know like for the catholics it might be the church itself for more liberals they have to go to science they have to go to philosophy and other elements but i think that the definition of scripture is that we get our our theology and by theology i mean our entire perspective of of reality so i'm using a broad definition of theology meaning everything we believe about the nature of reality and sola scripture simply should mean that we get our entire picture from scripture as opposed to other sources now i personally don't think inerrancy is necessarily a component of that because as long as you're faithful to the whole of the scripture whether some parts of it might be uh errant or not doesn't really affect the whole because you're still getting all of your theology from only the bible um well you you must know different liberals than i do really well i mean it's true there's a way because because there's really to me there's two camps in the in in the liberal theology there's the one that that are honest with scripture but they discount miracles and and this much of the supernatural yeah then there are those others uh liberal that bring a host of agenda items into the things such as uh the lbjq agenda the homosexual agenda the uh uh i went blank on uh uh the latin american uh uh liberal theology liberation theology liberation theology thank you uh i went totally blank it's i guess it's my age and and so you know i've had more dealings with the latter than i have with with the former though while i was a chaplain on active duty i did have some dealings with a former and and we could fellowship we could take communion together we could do so many things together we shared pulpits we did these kinds of things yeah but uh you're right that they they have a different definition of what or or their view of scripture is very different from the more conservatives or evangelicals would be so i agree completely yeah so so my main concern is just basically that like what are the sources of theology and is it possible to get your entire theological paradigm just from the bible that's the question i was working with and i think it is even though today the majority of scholars don't think it's possible to just use the bible that's interesting because uh the scholarship that i'm familiar with would go the other way of course i'm i went to a southern baptist well an alabama baptist university stanford university in birmingham alabama and then from there i went to new orleans theological seminary and then i went to for my doctorate i went to an independent baptist school so that is my professional education but in my professional life i dealt with you know a broad spectrum and and being in 269 the uh military chaplaincy you had to deal with all kinds uh of christians from catholic to orthodox orthodox catholics greek orthodox russian orthodox 09 yards all the way to uh to mormon seventh day adventists and and and the others uh so i i i don't know i i could be wrong on this but my per my perception is that during a lot of the 20th century uh the more conservative side of evangelicalism uh was more popular while today seems that and it's not really liberal but it's more towards the liberal side within this within the scholarly world it seems like they're they're more popular today uh i would i would say the position that i see as the most popular is neo-orthodoxy so so i agree have like a parthian perspective on unreality yeah i i agree i think in the scholarship world i think that is the dominant view but if we as we begin to scale it back to those that stand in the solar scripture category i think it would swing the other way yeah of course of course in the software category you have to be more conservative right so my okay so the next objection that the rest of the academic world would would throw at people who claim to be sola scriptura is the the idea that there isn't a methodology so for example the argument could be put like this imagine you got a thousand people who have never seen a bible never heard of christianity don't know anything about it coming from different perspectives all over the world and you have a few minutes or maybe an hour whatever you need to sit with them and explain to them a methodology and then you give them the bible and you say here take the bible and figure out what it says for yourself so what exactly can we tell them during those 30 minutes or an hour or whatever it is that where we can explain to them that that methodology well i thought when i read that in your paper i i really i really started laughing because there's a number of things uh uh that came to mind uh one is the jesus film uh you know it was uh uh taken to africa into south america and asia and they would show this jesus film and people immediately flocked to come to know christ jesus churches were started missionaries were started so i think there is a methodology secondly uh there's a and uh i had meant to to dig it out but i'm not sure i think i know right where now i think i know right where it is there is a a graphic novel style bible i don't know if you've seen those yeah probably not uh it is are you familiar with graphic novels yeah okay you know that they pictures lots of artwork kind of cartoony there's now two graphic art bibles that are out there and they are just uh here in southwest florida where i live now these are these are things that just spreading like wildfire and we're seeing more young people coming to christ than we have in the last several years so i think the methodology is you have a plain reading of scripture you interpret scripture by scripture and you uh and you uh uh it's kind of like iron sharp sharpening iron and uh you look for that plain reading and you look for uh simple the simple explanation first and and you go and that's that is the the basic approach and i think that's a methodology yeah no it is a methodology all i can say is that most of the people that i'm reading and that i'm coming across disagree that the methodology works uh well i would i know i've had people say that to me too and i said and i asked how large is your church is your is your denomination uh expanding or is it declining yeah uh and and and we kind of you know part ways at that point uh but i i think it does work i think it has proven that it's 270 worked and uh over over history and i think in areas where uh such as uh china i think we it's demonstrably showing that it's work by the number of christians that are being persecuted there and being imprisoned there and i would also add while i was a chaplain i was stationed in south korea and became very aware of north korean christians that were put in internment camps and they would escape and come south and they all all of them i don't know of any exceptions but they said it was the plain reading of scripture that meant everything to me and they said especially when it came to the gospels the other passages of the bible were more difficult for them but the plain reading of the gospels just cannot be challenged i don't think yeah yeah so i'm i'm not opposed to the plain reading of the bible as you describe i do believe that you know you could have people pick up a bible and not know anything and just read it from beginning to end and get a lot out of it i think in in academia a lot of the concern has been all the differences in theology so uh you know people are looking at all the points of disagreement between different types of christians and and trying to figure out what the cause is and how to differentiate them and uh and how to kind of sort through those things so um it seems like you could get equally sincere christians who have an equally high view of the bible reading it and then we we still end up with all these denominations and and many different perspectives and um doesn't seem like there's a solution to explain why one person goes this way one person goes that way well i would i would disagree with you there uh to to an extent because i'm sure you're familiar with mere christianity by c.s lewis yeah in which he lays out the fundamental beliefs of christian christians and i i think except for groups that i would consider cult groups and i think i think just speaking to you for a little while i think you would agree uh which ones were i'm talking about without naming them yeah uh that if we exclude those and we take the most most liberal christians and we take the most liturgical christians and we take the most evangelical christians you put them all a room together they would all agree so it comes to how we practice our denomination how we practice our faith or how we practice uh church government or how we practice how we do the lord's supper whether we do it weekly monthly daily quarterly yearly uh and we we strip away all those superficial kinds of things and we still have the unified church of christ so your your take is that um there's the essentials where there's general agreement and then there's the non-essentials where there might be difference and uh maybe on the practical side especially and so on yes yeah uh yeah i i mean i i do agree that there's there's some agreement on the essentials so we could say that i think today we're things have gotten a little bit harder to to deal with because of just just modern uh modern realities i mean you know science has brought in a lot of new ideas and people are trying to sort through those and kind of figure out how they um harmonized with christianity and then we have the cultural trends and where christians fit in this whole thing so it's a little bit tough i think maybe 100 years or 200 years ago it would have been easier to say yeah we have all these things in common with minor variations in practice and non-essentials well i i agree that that 200 years ago 50 years ago 20 years ago even i think we would be there but but you bring in another uh and in your paper you mentioned this too about science uh there's been zero archaeological evidence to show that anything in the bible's wrong zero but there's 271 been a tremendous amount of archaeological data showing the bible is correct uh uh ramsey's book that's a classic the seven churches of revelation is a great example of that he was he was uh an agnostic challenged uh is the bible real and he said well i'm gonna go prove it isn't and he you know he was converted and we have other archaeologists that have been converted uh who have set out with a preconceived notion that there's no way this is true and they find that that it is true uh i've been following uh a lot of uh israel archaeology recently and uh i was watching an interview with the president of the uh of the trust that oversees the temple mount a muslim and he says there's absolutely no evidence there was ever a temple here and uh almost just a few weeks after that interview they found tipple coin money or shekels that were designed to be used only on the temple and i'm thinking well i wish we could ask him that same question what about these shekel coins that are clearly designed for temple use and uh we find uh uh the these kinds these kinds of things all the time but archaeology doesn't disprove scripture and so then we come to the biggest uh scientific hit that christianity has taken and that is uh charles darwin and so we we have a lot of uh uh people say well doesn't charles darwin prove that christianity isn't true well if you go back and read what charles darwin actually said charles darwin was a christian and he was just recorded reporting recording what he saw and asking questions doing a good scientific thing but if you go and ask biologists are you a darwinian evolutionist and they will deny it they they do believe in evolution but not darwinian evolution but yet darwinian evolution is taught in the public schools as truth not as theory and the biologists just are not a darwinian evolutionist and in fact a few years ago i had a friend of mine who was a research biologist and he said he had a researcher join his team and she says well how come there's nothing there's no reference in your works or papers about darwin and he says do you believe in darwinian evolution and she goes yes he goes what school did you go to so she didn't last very long so i think the problem with science and christianity is more of a media problem than it is a scientific problem um so what would you classify yourself on the on the spectrum would you be like a young earth creationist an old earth creationist a theistic evolutionist or nor have you very familiar with those labels i am familiar with them uh i am uh i belong to several apologetic sites in which these questions come up all the time and uh uh i you know it's it's hard to know how to answer that question uh i do not believe the world is billions of years old like like some people some uh scientist geologists have said i've seen geologists you know the the ranges millions to billions and i think that's just absurd if you don't know just say you don't know yeah so i am i don't believe that the earth is as old as the uh oh geologists say that it is but i don't believe that that the earth was created 8 000 years ago either okay so i'm i don't think i i think it's it's a mistake to take the bible as a scientific book it's not it's not a science textbook it's it's a book about uh coming to know god it's about god self revealing his heart it's not god revealing how old the earth is yeah yeah uh does any of that affect um you know the genesis story adam and eve uh the fall the plan of salvation or not at all not for me not at all okay and i think for i think for most evangelicals it doesn't really play a role either you know there's the the gap theory that that people play around with and there's the uh in kentucky the uh the ark museum is that what it's called the art museum um i know what you're talking about with ken ham right museum of the art maybe yeah uh and and uh i think that they're putting out information that that uh is trying to stretch scripture and try 272 to make it more into a scientific textbook and and it's trying to make scripture something that it is not and and i have problems with that okay um so overall you would would you think that there was death before sin death before sin yeah no i i don't i don't think so i don't think so at all i don't i don't think the scripture supports that uh although there there's an interesting jewish tradition that adam had two wives i don't know if you're familiar with that or not his first wife was named lilith and uh are you familiar with this i heard the two wives i never heard about the the littlest part but the little part well it's a little r-rated but i'll try to make it simple uh uh there is the the jewish idea of what positions uh a couple should have engaged in in sexual intercourse and lilith wanted the other way around and so she was taken out of the picture this is a robetic tradition yeah uh it's it's not biblical in any sense it's it's just it shows you uh it's an example of where you can go when you leave the scripture yeah yeah okay um anyway i i don't want to keep us going for too much longer because we're coming up on an hour but did you have any other thoughts you wanted to share about the paper before we um yep i made i made notes okay let's make sure you get as much in there as we can right uh let's see we did that we did that uh i i did you you mentioned matheson i i did agree with with uh your take on him uh but i don't think your references i don't think they really expressed the uh about the evangelical movement as it's expressed today uh i think the the emphasis of evangelicals has always been the great commission uh sharing the gospel with people with with a desire that they accept christ as their savior yeah and and uh so i i i thought anything outside of that is is denominational fluff and it's really not the core of the evangelical movement uh have you come across this book before yes okay i did not read it but i've read excerpts from it yeah then you've also you also quoted uh carlton clark at least twice yeah he's an orthodox theologian right and uh i i i think he unfairly characterized the idea of self-interpreting scripture uh i just thought uh uh i don't know how else you can approach the text if you don't let the text define the text yeah well i mean so someone coming from an orthodox perspective is almost the same as coming from a catholic perspective who is naturally going to argue against the idea of self-interpretation because because they believe that the church has to do the interpretation for you but what i one of the reasons i i quoted him is because matheson quotes him right make his case so madison uses clark carlton to make the case for the position he's advocating right so yeah uh i i just don't think i i think matheson loses credibility by quoting clarkson and i think he does more harm to his argument by quoting him uh then then the other way uh also on page and i know we're really getting into the weeds here on page 31 okay let me let me catch up with you really quick i have the paper here page one okay yeah you have on there you're talking i think it's about the middle of the page and you have angelic forces okay or at war or in battle yes yes go ahead yeah i would change that to demonic demonic force okay uh the the re the reason being there is a preconceived idea that angelic is always good and obviously in your context they are not yeah yeah or you could add evil angelic forces okay i'll keep that in mind i'll have to read it more carefully because i can't see another moment but yeah i i think i know what you're talking about i have a different page number here and then cosm the cosmic warfare when you're talking 273 about dualism yeah i i was really confused there because i don't see i don't see that that cosmic war battle warfare dualism as you do and and especially now after we have talked and i've gotten to know you a little bit i'm really perplexed at you using that kind of uh of language of cosmic dualism and cosmic warfare no that that's two separate things cosmic dualism um is a heresy that came up in uh manichaeanism back in like the fourth or fifth century i don't remember exactly now right uh basically um was it marcian uh i'm kind of i think so yeah he came up with this idea that basically you have two equal but opposing forces and they're constantly in battle sometimes one is winning the other losing but it always balances itself out and that was dismissed as a heresy right but all i'm saying is that the cosmic conflict paradigm that has become more popular the past few decades because of apologetics so you have william and craig and others that promote this idea it's a different thing than cosmic dualism they're two separate ideas they're not the same thing well as i was reading in your paper i was wondering if you if you were con interchangeably using those so that that helps yeah i'm trying to differentiate them actually but i don't even see cosmic warfare i look at that very differently satan in the book of job is always uh is presented as subservient he comes to god he says can i do these things uh joel would reject you if you would let me do x y and z and god says well you just go ahead dealing with god's permissive will there but there's really not a battle uh and so i i was trying to think of the instances of come up with all the instances i could come up with with cosmic with where there would be a supernatural battle going on and the only one that i could come up with was in daniel when uh gabriel is on his way to speak to daniel and he says i was hindered 21 days and i had to call michael to come and help me yeah yeah uh and so but that really isn't a cosmic battle that was a a supernatural battle that interfered with god's message going to daniel and so i i really don't see that as a as a cop it's certainly not cosmic warfare maybe a cosmic skirmish okay you know i think the imagery for the cosmic battle comes out of uh revelation you know where you have the dragon and you know there's a there's a war in heaven and satan and his angels are cast out and all that but you know not that you mention it i'm actually curious how baptists uh view the big pictures because you know i interacted quite a bit with reformed people and they have don't hang out with them anymore yeah well it's difficult to hang out with them but i've already spent quite a bit of time with them but anyway with reform people they have this big paradigm that's based on god's sovereignty so once you understand their sovereignty motif you understand how they view the big picture you know who is god what is he doing what is he trying to accomplish it all makes sense once you understand there's the underlying premise of sovereignty and and determinism but i haven't really talked about this to see how your big picture comes together like what what is god trying to accomplish why is there sin why is there suffering what are the because you do a lot of free will but you allow free will only for the person to make a choice and after that their choice is settled you know they've they've accepted christ and and that's it so you have some element of free will but not not the way the free will baptist for example would have it oh i would characterize it a little differently uh you have you have free will in the big picture up until you accept christ as your personal savior and then your salvation is determined yeah yeah that's what i'm saying or your lostness is determined if you reject christ right if you reject christ 274 the final time the final thing um so so in in that sense that's true but after you accept christ you still have many many choices to make yeah will you be faithful today will you be faithful tomorrow will you be faithful next week and so all of that affects your sanctification justification uh holiness righteousness all of the it still affects it still has a has a role to play in your development as a christian and so when uh i guess this picture is commonly used in baptist life when you get to heaven you will have a crown how many diadems would you have in your crowd yeah will it be one you just slipped under the door or will you have you know a crown full yeah and then you know so so so that's one aspect of it but the the other the the other the big picture thing is i certainly acknowledge god's sovereignty uh god is creator i think the most important verse in all the bible is genesis 1 1 yeah god is creator we are the creature and that is the only kind of relationship we can ever have with god is creator creature creature creator that's the only relationship that's possible yeah uh we get we get treated differently other we get treated better than a creature because we're joint heirs with christ but we're still fundamentally a creative being so how do you what is your answer to somebody that's asking the question you know why is god allowing so much evil and suffering in the world well that that's uh not one of those things you can do a short answer on but let me let me let me be as quick as i can and i think i can i've answered this so many times i think i could do it pretty quickly if you took take an apple and you drop it it will have a bruise on it yeah and you pick up the apple and you cut the bruise off it's still scarred you drop the apple again and it has another bruise you throw it against the wall it has a breeze pretty soon it will have so many bruises it'll be inedible yeah now at any point you could have eaten the apple you might have only eaten half the apple a third of the apple or the four to the apple but at some point along the line it became inedible so we can't judge how inedible the fruit is until after it has been destroyed and so god allows god's permissive will allows evil to play out so that true and complete justice can be done it isn't until after all the evil is played out can justice truly be when rendered so for it for example we have this in in the old testament uh the sins of the father visits even to the third and fourth generation yeah but the next part of the verse but righteousness goes for generations to generations it's more yeah so if someone does an evil act until that evil act has accomplished all it's going to accomplish that person can't be judged yet i see so it basically has ripple effects and you have to have the full [Music] picture to be able to render a proper judgment that is correct yeah now why did god allow for sin to exist to begin with was the was that inevitable like couldn't have god just created adam and eve perfect and everybody else perfect and just kept them perfect or is that where free will comes in well i think that's where free will comes in and and i have atheist uh beat me up on apologetic websites all the time saying well god is a judge and i noticed that you had an example uh if if god allows x y and z then god isn't just and so forth but uh uh those those arguments are uh academic in nature scholarly in nature but where the rubber meets the road is is god does god allow evil well uh i came across this i don't remember where i wish i did uh but how do you the question was raised how do you define good and a student raises his hand and says because of the absence of evil and the teacher goes no you define evil because it's the absence of good but how do you define good and so they go around the circle and and so i've all i've never read or 275 never came across how you define good from a you know academic standpoint but i know how to define evil because if there's no good in it but how do you define good outside of god yeah i i don't know that you can well that's definitely a conversation all its own so i don't want to jump into something new now when we're already passing i'm happy to have that one with you sometime sure sure uh we can definitely do this again i i just uh prefer to keep the the videos short enough for people to watch because otherwise nobody's gonna bother watching anything yeah i completely understand mike i want to tell you i've enjoyed this uh i'm retired and and i do not get an opportunity to read papers like this like i did when i was teaching uh and and iron sharpens iron and and i have enjoyed this so much and i have studied and i've gone back and i've read i've got copious notes i even came up with some quotes from irenaeus and that i was going to share but i just it's just such a blessing for me to have the privilege of doing this with you and i hope i was of some benefit to you yes yes thank you so much jerry yeah i i thank you for saying that i appreciate it um i uh basically i'm trying to finish this program i mean as soon as possible because i'm trying to get in another program so i'm kind of in a rush to get my dissertation done over the next few weeks and and uh finish everything up but i'm also trying to maintain this channel up and have conversations and and get as much feedback as possible so uh is this paper the the core of your just your dissertation so the way i have to do it because i'm in a in a doctor of ministry program which is different than a phd the way i have to do it is i have to use the paper but then work with other people so i'm going to connect with other ministers and other theologians and ask them to kind of run through the paper and then try to apply it to other people they talk to and then get feedback that way so it's a little bit of a kind of a different setup the way it's happening but these conversations are helping me because it's helping me to like get different perspectives and feedback from different different sources i'm trying to even talk to atheists and and people that are completely on a different you know coming from a very different point of view and get their feedback as well so well if i knew a nice atheist i would i would give give you his number well there's plenty out there but uh i i have some really cool atheist friends but unfortunately they're too busy to get get caught up in stuff like this but uh hopefully i'll find somebody but uh anyway yeah we could we could maybe uh arrange for a second second meeting like this in a few weeks and uh see if we could cover some of the other things you came up with i would be interested to uh to see to hear your uh methodology uh with uh sola scripture and see uh and see where that how that plays out i would be very interested to see what your methodology is okay okay so maybe that's the next topic we could get into if we ever do this again all right well thank you again god bless and may god richly bless you and bless this this this time of study for you i miss it yeah yeah it's it's fun i enjoy it and i enjoy talking to to all the different people i'm meeting all right jay well thanks a lot let me pause the recording and i'll chat afterwards thanks thank you 276 Participant 8 - Steven – Evangelical No Video – Only Email All worldviews are presuppositional in origin The term neorthordox takes into account many different views. i.e. Barth, Brunner, current Princeton theologians, Bevan Childs, etc. Neoorthodoxy, on the other hand, held on to many of the presuppositions of Liberal Christianity Perhaps “elements of neorthordoxy” but you need to reference these. The problem I perceive here is not “scriptural inerrancy” as such, but rather personal interpretation. The theological basis of inerrancy is propositional revelation. The error many within the fundamentalist school make is in their haste to affirm inerrancy they make their interpretation of scripture of equal authority epistemically. There is a field you will need to explore and it is a difficult field in the area of epistemology: Is a person born tabula rasa, a blank slate or is there something within our creation in the image of God that provides “epistemic primitives” upon which epistemologies are built? Romans 1 and 2 would indicate that there are .. this is developed in RC and Reformed areas (Bavinck and Natural Law theologians in both schools). 5) Neoorthodoxy - The incarnation of Christ as God’s primary revelation alongside science and reason… This generalization may not be accurate. There are as many main organising themes as there are writers in the field of biblical theology. I would like to think your statement is generally true.. however.. generalizations are always dangerous. I think part of the problem is lacking the agreed upon language categories in order to discuss these things. Ron Laura attempts to do this a little, with the term “epistemic primitives” speaking to the issue of foundational (another hot topic word) belief structures. The philosophical view allowing foundationalism ( in contrast to Grenz’s “post-foundationlism resulting in a form or magisterium as we “read scripture together”), is Scottish common sense realism (itself having some epistemic foundations in Aristotelian thought advocating an empirical and scientific philosophy wherein trust of our senses is implicit and necessary. The principles of common sense are fundamental to our accumulation of knowledge of both metaphysical and physical constructs. It may not be the hard empiricism of Kant or the hard rationalism of Descartes, but an acknowledgement of both is necessary in recognising underlying presuppositions. 277 So rather than continuing to look at things in terms of right and wrong, we should learn instead to think in terms of ‘Parameters of Viability’ - a set of criteria that, if met by any epistemic model, qualifies that model as viable and allows it to continue its development under the Christian Academy’s good graces, side by side with the other viable models. The pathway will thus be opened for a truce of sorts to finally materialize in Christian Academia that does not rely on the watering-down of theological distinctives, as was the case with previous ecumenical efforts. This paragraph tells us where you are going. You may need to more deliberately phrase this so tht the reader doesn’t quickly pass over this defining paragraph. You may also need to also place it early in your introduction so that your readers can see which way your argument is going to proceed. (Malcolm Yarnell is producing some good work on some early dutch anabaptists that may not conform to this generalisation). The problem with this sentence is that epistemologically everyone has presuppositional stances that shape any and every worldview. They are not self-defeating to the holder. They are how they evaluate the arguments of their opponents. Any argument I present from my worldview will not necessarily be relevant to someone from another worldview. The arguments others find substantial are those that appeal to their own presuppositions that make up their worldview. So for instance, someone grounded in Empiricism through their educational influences will be most influenced by arguments of an empiricist nature. I personally don’t find those arguments substantial as they reflect only minor fields of knowledge. The sentence also gives away that your own epistemology may be steeped in the Empiricist sicientism or hard positivism of modernist culture. Having established, however, that there is room for limited errancy in a Sola Scriptura theology, In your section on inerrancy you have jumped the shark. You haven’t explained your point let alone proven your point. You probably should rethink page 18 altogether. Page 19 while it appears you are claiming something new is what is taught in most theological seminaries under the term progressive revelation.. see article V the Chicago statement. To not reference this statement about inerrancy and then to assert that inerrantists do not take into account the content of this very statement? You haven’t at all engaged with any of the literature in this area. Nor have you adequately presented the limited errancy perspective. You probably at a minimum should have engaged with McGowan’s book the Spiration of Scripture. As a thought, why didn’t you mention the Wesleyan Quadrilateral? Are you saying that every other expression of biblical theology is wrong since only your metanarrative is correct? I would say that that to confine your postion to only one meatnarrative robs all the other biblical metanarratives of their place is scripture: What about the covenantal perspectives? What about the Kingship perspectives genesis- revelation? What about the salvation historical approach that 278 is a part of Luke/Acts? What about the you shall be my people I shall be your God relational approaches from Genesis 1- rev 22? Or Goldsworthy’s approach? Or Hamilton’s approach? Or Surely a manifold larger respect for all the metanarratives is a better positionthat does not exclude other biblical material from the big picture? Or Current Issues in Biblical Theology: A New Testament Perspective by carson? it appears to me that you are trying to rewrite Hasel’s papers: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232861296.pdf https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2205&context=auss https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2269&context=auss [the multiplex approach] avoids the pitfalls of structuring a theology of the OT by means of a center, theme, key concept, or focal point but allows for the various motifs, themes, and concepts to emerge in all their variety and richness without elevating any of these longitudinal perspectives into a single structuring concept, whether it be communion, covenant, promise, kingdom of God, or something else. The multiplex approach allows aside from this and in the first instance that the theologies of the various OT books and blocks of writings emerge and stand next to each other in all their variety and richness. 2 Page 39 Hi Mike I red the last couple of pages. Sadly pages 42-44 do not in any way measure up to the previous pages. If resurrections such as these could occur today and be replicated under controlled experimental conditions, science would have no problem recognizing that a resurrection did in fact take place. But for a miraculous event that has taken place in the distant past, there is an endless number of naturalistic explanations that will always appear more credible to someone who approaches the question scientifically, even if such an event did actually happen. It might, for example, be explained by claiming that the people were distracted, intoxicated, or hypnotized, it might be that twins/lookalikes were used to replace the dead, it might be that people were paid serious money to propagate a lie or, that the evidence in the official records was planted and none of it, not even the gathering, actually happened. Whatever the natural explanation chosen, it will always be seen as more plausible than what actually happened, from a scientific standpoint You have acceded to the empiricist model itself as a means of gathering information. You have stated things not even a rigid atheistic scientist would approve of. They know that historical research is not the same as experimental research and would be offended to read this. It is not a good page at all. You have also failed to examine critically the evidences permissible in historical research. One of the world leaders in historical evidences for ancient History at the University of Sydney was Dr. Noel Weeks (my fellow elder) who passed away in March this year. The problem of historical research is that most people do not understand the research evidence. And so they give in to what is called liberal scholarship. Sadly liberal scholarship is not scholarship. It is usually just hypotheses without evidence. Their presuppositions inform their findings. Evangelical scholarship in Ancient and Near East religions is much more thorough and reliable. “In other words, there is an intrinsic anti-supernatural bias in the scientific process.” It is not the process that is at fault but the bias of the investigators. The same evidence presented for one view is also 279 presented for an entirely different view. I have several friends who are archaeologists. They have no problem with the “scientific process.” And they turn out research that supports conservative evangelical views. And likewise your next sentence is just not true. “The many Christians who hold science, evolution and critical scholarship in high regard but also take the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event do so only because they momentarily suspend the scientific rigor they apply in other areas to make an allowance for something that is critical to their belief system” I have several friends who attained the highest positions in atomic research ( retired head of British Atomic Energy) , Dr. Peter Holland, who would be very offended to read this. Some hold to creationist positions while being the world leaders in dating research. I think you need to do more research in each of these areas. Email Transcript 3 For example, here is a document put together by the World Council of Churches that discusses the various sources of authority used by different Christian traditions and the ways these sources are used. “Sources of Authority, Volume 2: Contemporary Churches,” World Council of Churches, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/publications/sources-of-authority-volume-2-contemporary-churches. Better reference. A broad sweeping statement… Always use “many.. etc” in order to avoid the exceptions.. broad sweeping statements lead critical readers to immediately pick up the exceptions in order to disprove the thesis. Ie.e Savronella, Wyclif, Lollards, Husites etc etc in both Easter and Western church traditions would disprove the broad sweeping statement. I agree with your general statement bye the way. “Part of the reason for this was the inability of the reformers to come to a consensus on what the Scripture actually said.” But unlike the Church, which managed to retain its hold on doctrinal authority for over a millennium (though often through manipulation and force10), the Scripture did not maintain its exalted position for very long. Part of the reason for this was the inability of the reformers to come to a consensus on what the Scripture actually said. From very early on, differences in interpretation led to fragmentation, something that has only increased with the passing of time11 . And, this inability to come to an interpretational consensus reflected poorly on the claim that Scripture could function as the ultimate theological authority for Christians (if you purchased a complex piece of equipment and the manufacturer’s instruction manual was understood differently by everyone who read it, you would question the value of the manual as well.)” This is not good gramma. “now, intellectual advancement tended towards the secular.” When? At the same time, the modern scientific method was developed, that began to study the world as primarily natural/material 280 Don’t use Wikipedia as a reference. Use the references in Wikipedia as references. 12 “Age of Enlightenment,” in Wikipedia, November 12, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Age_of_Enlightenment&oldid=988309204. Every Assertion must be demonstrated with references. When eventually the Theory of Evolution16 was developed, it undermined the authority of Scripture even further Finally, two additional movements emerged over the next century, as a reaction to and due to the perceived danger or inadequacy of Liberal Christianity: Fundamentalism20 and Neoorthodoxy21 . Fundamentalism completely rejected modernism, ignoring science and critical scholarship and returning to an extreme form of privately interpreted Sola Scriptura. The inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture was taken presuppositionally and as beyond questioning and any line of evidence offered against this assumption was simply dismissed and/or denounced. All worldviews are presuppositional in origin . “any line of evidence offered against this assumption was simply dismissed and/or denounced.” Packer had written extensively on the issues rather than just “simply dismissing and denouncing” I think you might have wanted to say that scripture was perceived to be propositional in nature. Peter Jensen reference maybe. The term neorthordox takes into account many different views. i.e. Barth, Brunner, current Princeton theologians, Bevan Childs, etc. Neoorthodoxy, on the other hand, held on to many of the presuppositions of Liberal Christianity Perhaps “elements of neorthordoxy” but you need to reference these. 4) Fundamentalism - individualized Scriptural inerrancy The problem I perceive here is not “scriptural inerrancy” as such, but rather personal interpretation. The theological basis of inerrancy is propositional revelation. The error many within the fundamentalist school make is in their haste to affirm inerrancy they make their interpretation of scripture of equal authority epistemically. There is a field you will need to explore and it is a difficult field in the area of epistemology: Is a person born tabula rasa, a blank slate or is there something within our creation in the image of God that provides “epistemic primitives” upon which epistemologies are built? Romans 1 and 2 would indicate that there are .. this is developed in RC and Reformed areas (Bavinck and Natural Law theologians in both schools). 281 5) Neoorthodoxy - The incarnation of Christ as God’s primary revelation alongside science and reason… This generalisation may not be accurate. There are as many main organising themes as there are writers in the field of biblical theology. I would like to think your statement is generally true.. however.. generalisations are always dangerous. “The inconclusive philosophico-theological debates of the past several centuries, rather than being the result of ignorance or bias, more likely reveal a limitation of the human knowledge-building apparatus. It is likely that an epistemic handicap 7 exists, in the very fabric of our reality, that is always going to prevent us from fully settling certain questions.” I think part of the problem is lacking the agreed upon language categories in order to discuss these things. Ron Laura attempts to do this a little, with the term “epistemic primitives” speaking to the issue of foundational (another hot topic word) belief structures. The philosophical view allowing foundationalism ( in contrast to Grenz’s “post-foundationlism resulting in a form or magisterium as we “read scripture together”), is Scottish common sense realism (itself having some epistemic foundations in Aristotelian thought advocating an empirical and scientific philosophy wherein trust of our senses is implicit and necessary. The principles of common sense are fundamental to our accumulation of knowledge of both metaphysical and physical constructs. It may not be the hard empiricism of Kant or the hard rationalism of Descartes, but an acknowledgement of both is necessary in recognising underlying presuppositions. So rather than continuing to look at things in terms of right and wrong, we should learn instead to think in terms of ‘Parameters of Viability’ - a set of criteria that, if met by any epistemic model, qualifies that model as viable and allows it to continue its development under the Christian Academy’s good graces, side by side with the other viable models. The pathway will thus be opened for a truce of sorts to finally materialize in Christian Academia that does not rely on the watering-down of theological distinctives, as was the case with previous ecumenical efforts. Before we continue in this vain of thought, (vein) This paragraph tells us where you are going. You may need to more deliberately phrase this so tht the reader doesn’t quickly pass over this defining paragraph. You may also need to also place it early in your introduction so that your readers can see which way your argument is going to proceed. (Many of) Their thought leaders did not have the luxury of spending significant chunks of time in study, contemplation and writing on university campuses as the Magisterials did, but often had to move from place to place to avoid capture (Malcolm Yarnell is producing some good work on some early dutch anabaptists that may not conform to this generalisation). (that a disregard for tradition and orthodoxy leads to private interpretations, individualism and theological chaos37). No need for brackets here. Finally, we have already mentioned that, a bit later in history, there was one other major attempt to return to Sola Scriptura in the Fundamentalist movement. But, as usually happens with 282 reactionary movements, Fundamentalism took an extreme and ultimately unsustainable position. Think about rewording this sentence. You probably may need a heading here: Critique: First, presuppositional38 stances are always self-defeating. The problem with this sentence is that epistemologically everyone has presuppositional stances that shape any and every worldview. They are not self-defeating to the holder. They are how they evaluate the arguments of their opponents. Any argument I present from my worldview will not necessarily be relevant to someone from another worldview. The arguments others find substantial are those that appeal to their own presuppositions that make up their worldview. So for instance, someone grounded in Empiricism through their educational influences will be most influenced by arguments of an empiricist nature. I personally don’t find those arguments substantial as they reflect only minor fields of knowledge. The sentence also gives away that your own epistemology may be steeped in the Empiricist sicientism or hard positivism of modernist culture. Taking the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture as a logically unassailable starting premise makes it impossible to differentiate Christianity from other religions where someone does the same thing with another holy book, like the Koran, for example. (response: and this is a problem? Why?) Second, this extreme position regarding Scripture offers no additional help to the question Protestantism has been wrestling with all along: how does a Sola Scriptura theology avoid disintegrating into individualism and theological chaos? Rather, Fundamentalist groups more or less just inherit their theological perspectives from whatever Protestant tradition they are each the descendants of, further adding their own distinctive spins. The only explanation they could then offer as to why other Fundamentalist groups with an equally high view of Scripture arrive at different conclusions is that such groups must not in truth be faithful to Scripture or the Holy Spirit. (this is a good paragraph. You may like to reword it and develop each sentence to make more impact). In an attempt to defend the Protestant position against both Catholicism and Modern Conservative Evangelicalism, Keith Mathison, professor of systematic theology at Reformation Bible College, describes the combination of factors that have contributed to the move away from the Protestant position. He explains that it was the Radical Reformation view of Scripture that denied 'the authority of tradition in any real sense. The Scriptures were considered not only the sole final and infallible authority, but the only authority whatsoever. The Enlightenment added the philosophical framework in which to comprehend this individualism. The individual reason was elevated to the position of final authority. Appeals to antiquity and tradition of any kind were ridiculed. In the early years of the United States, democratic populism swept the people along in its fervor. The result, is a modern American Evangelicalism which has redefined sola scriptura in terms of secular Enlightenment rationalism and rugged democratic individualism.39 ' Another very good paragraph. Each sentence should be expanded or developed as a separate argument. 283 “ardent positivist” (you may need to clarify the term for your readers) If a Sola Scriptura theology were possible, however, what exactly would be affected by the lack of reliance on the church fathers? The most obvious answer to this question has to do with the influence of Greek Philosophy on Christian Theology. Instinctively, we might be tempted to think that those who lived closest to the apostles must have inherited the purest apostolic faith. For modern church historians, however, it is a known fact that Greek Philosophy played a key role in early theological development. Jonathan Hill’s book The History of Christian Thought, for example, has an entire chapter on Greek Philosophy at the very beginning of the section on the church fathers. This paragraph is a bit clunky and may better be introduced by the quote from Hill. Again clunky… The only way the Hellenization Hypothesis is problematic, some would argue, is if the Fall Narrative (the claim that the ancient church capitulated to its environment and abandoned important tenets of the Christian message,) can be demonstrated as correct52. In other words, trust in the Fathers should be a type of default, with the burden of proof being on those who would disagree - it is always convenient to establish one’s position by claiming the default. This statement requires you to have read every systematic and bliblical theology ever written in order to make the statement: The world has had five hundred years to see the results of a Protestant theology influenced by Greek Philosophy via early tradition. What it has not yet seen, in 2000 years of Christian history, is a theology truly based on the Bible alone. Now obviously, if such a thing is not possible, there isn’t much we can do about it. But if a purely Sola Scriptura theology is possible, it really ought to be taken as an embarrassment to Christianity that, in its entire history, no one has of yet developed a theology actually based on its central text. Even if, as some might argue, a Sola Scriptura Theology is no longer viable in the modern age, everyone with even a basic knowledge of Christian theology should be aware that it exists and have a basic understand of how it works, whether or not they ultimately agree with it. On the other hand, if the professor later decided to write a book on the subject, both the reading and the lecture content could be included such that reading the book would in fact parallel attending the class. A bit clunky and does not immediately convey what you mean. Having established, however, that there is room for limited errancy in a Sola Scriptura theology, In your section on inerrancy you have jumped the shark. You haven’t explained your point let alone proven your point. You probably should rethink page 18 altogether. Page 19 while it appears you are claiming something new is what is taught in most theological seminaries under the term progressive revelation.. see article V the Chicago statement. To not reference this statement about inerrancy and then to assert that inerrantists do not take into account the content of this very statement? https://defendinginerrancy.com/chicago-statements/ 284 page 20.. “In summary, more than one perspective regarding the nature of Scripture is possible within the Sola Scriptura spectrum and each carries its own distinct methodological implications. The Limited-Errancy approach relies more heavily on the entirety of the canon70, on the chronology of revelation, and, on balancing localized exegesis with the canonically-derived system. Given that inerrantist advocates of Sola Scriptura have failed this far in producing a viable methodology - one that does not degenerate into ‘relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos’ - we will here focus exclusively on the limited-errancy perspective, as we begin to consider the requirements for approaching Scripture as a stand-alone document.” You haven’t at all engaged with any of the literature in this area. Nor have you adequately presented the limited errancy perspective. You probably at a minimum should have engaged with McGowan’s book the Spiration of Scripture. I think John Frame’s review may be helpful and highlights the shortcomings at this point. https://frame-poythress.org/review-of-andrew-mcgowans-the-divine-spiration-of-scripture/ And, the metaphysical bias often present in many of the popular Bible translations does not help either93 . Your example shows that you have been influenced by the modern English use of the term Ghost rather than its wider usage in the 1600’s Page 30 The challenge with the Cosmic Conflict construct has not been its compatibility with Scripture, but rather, its incongruity with a priori philosophical commitments. It is for this reason that it has not played a hermeneutical role in patristic theological development and, given the epistemic weight of tradition, in either Catholic or Protestant theology. Well actually the Christus Victor position is probably the current position on most theological seminaries world-wide. See Bird. As a thought, why didn’t you mention the Wesleyan Quadrilateral? Third, I have argued that when the above principles are applied, the clearest point of conflict between Scripture and orthodox Christian theology is the Greek metaphysical construct known as Classical Theism with its inherent implications for cosmology, anthropology, etc. Without these external metaphysical parameters superimposed on Scripture we can then place every imaginable macronarrative on the table, contrast it with the Scriptural data, and, objectively evaluate to what degree Scripture has to be reinterpreted to make each macronarrative fit. I have argued that the Cosmic Conflict macronarrative is a much better fit than all the major competing alternatives. Are you saying that every other expression of biblical theology is wrong since only your metanarrative is correct? 285 I would say that that to confine your postion to only one neat narrative robs all the other biblical metanarratives of their place is scripture: What about the covenantal perspectives? What about the Kingship perspectives genesis- revelation? What about the salvation historical approach that is a part of Luke/Acts? What about the you shall be my people I shall be your God relational approaches from Genesis 1- rev 22? Or Goldsworthy’s approach? Or Hamilton’s approach? Or Surely a manifold larger respect for all the metanarratives is a better positionthat does not exclude other biblical material from the big picture? Or Current Issues in Biblical Theology: A New Testament Perspective by Carson? http://archive.atsjats.org/Davidson%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Gerhard%20Hasel%20final%20rev.pdf It appears to me that you are trying to rewrite Hasel’s papers: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232861296.pdf https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2205&context=auss https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2269&context=auss [the multiplex approach] avoids the pitfalls of structuring a theology of the OT by means of a center, theme, key concept, or focal point but allows for the various motifs, themes, and concepts to emerge in all their variety and richness without elevating any of these longitudinal perspectives into a single structuring concept, whether it be communion, covenant, promise, kingdom of God, or something else. The multiplex approach allows aside from this and in the first instance that the theologies of the various OT books and blocks of writings emerge and stand next to each other in all their variety and richness. 2 Page 39 Second Email Hi Mike I red the last couple of pages. Sadly pages 42-44 do not in any way measure up to the previous pages. 43 If resurrections such as these could occur today and be replicated under controlled experimental conditions, science would have no problem recognizing that a resurrection did in fact take place. But for a miraculous event that has taken place in the distant past, there is an endless number of naturalistic explanations that will always appear more credible to someone who approaches the question scientifically, even if such an event did actually happen. It might, for example, be explained by claiming that the people were distracted, intoxicated, or hypnotized, it might be that twins/lookalikes were used to replace the dead, it might be that people were paid serious money to propagate a lie or, that the evidence in the official records was planted and none of it, not even the gathering, actually happened. Whatever the natural explanation chosen, it will always be seen as more plausible than what actually happened, from a scientific standpoint 286 You have acceded to the empiricist model itself as a means of gathering information. You have stated things not even a rigid atheistic scientist would approve of. They know that historical research is not the same as experimental research and would be offended to read this. It is not a good page at all. You have also failed to examine critically the evidences permissible in historical research. One of the world leaders in historical evidences for ancient History at the University of Sydney was Dr. Noel Weeks (my fellow elder) who passed away in March this year. The problem of historical research is that most people do not understand the research evidence. And so they give in to what is called liberal scholarship. Sadly liberal scholarship is not scholarship. It is usually just hypotheses without evidence. Their presuppositions inform their findings. Evangelical scholarship in Ancient and Near East religions is much more thorough and reliable. “In other words, there is an intrinsic anti-supernatural bias in the scientific process.” It is not the process that is at fault but the bias of the investigators. The same evidence presented for one view is also presented for an entirely different view. I have several friends who are archaeologists. They have no problem with the “scientific process.” And they turn out research that supports conservative evangelical views. And likewise your next sentence is just not true. “The many Christians who hold science, evolution and critical scholarship in high regard but also take the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event do so only because they momentarily suspend the scientific rigor they apply in other areas to make an allowance for something that is critical to their belief system” I have several friends who attained the highest positions in atomic research ( retired head of British Atomic Energy) , Dr. Peter Holland, who would be very offended to read this. Some hold to creationist positions while being the world leaders in dating research. I think you need to do more research in each of these areas. 287 APPENDIX C Institutional Review Board – 8488 E Campus Circle Dr Room 234 - Berrien Springs, MI 49104-0355 Tel: (269) 471-6361 E-mail: irb@andrews.edu March 30, 2021 Mike Manea Tel. 909-809-6737 Email: mikecmanea@gmail.com RE: APPLICATION FOR APPROVAL OF RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN SUBJECTS IRB Protocol #:21-034 Application Type: Original Dept.: Doctor of Ministry Review Category: Exempt Action Taken: Approved Advisor: David Penno Title: Mentoring leaders in effective communication of the Sola Scriptura methodology. Your IRB application for approval of research involving human subjects entitled: “Mentoring leaders in effective communication of the Sola Scriptura methodology” IRB protocol # 21-034 has been evaluated and determined Exempt from IRB review under regulation CFR 46.104 (2)(i): Research involving online virtual data collection procedures including audio or video recording in which information obtained is recorded by the investigator in such a manner that the identity of the human subjects cannot readily be ascertained, directly or through identifiers linked to the subject. You may now proceed with your research. Please note that any future changes made to the study design and/or informed consent form require prior approval from the IRB before such changes can be implemented. Incase you need to make changes please use the attached report form. While there appears to be no more than minimum risks with your study, should an incidence occur that results in a research-related adverse reaction and/or physical injury, this must be reported immediately in writing to the IRB. Any research-related physical injury must also be reported immediately to the University Physician, Dr. Katherine, by calling (269) 473-2222. We ask that you reference the protocol number in any future correspondence regarding this study for easy retrieval of information. Best wishes in your research. Sincerely, Mordekai Ongo, PhD. Research Integrity and Compliance Officer 288 REFERENCE LIST Adler, Mortimer J. 1990. Truth in religion: The plurality of religions and the unity of truth. First Edition. New York, NY: Scribner. “ADVENTIST CHURCH RESOURCE LIBRARY - Adventists and Lutherans.” 2023. April 30, 2023. https://kirjasto.adventist.fi/adventists-and-lutherans. Adventist Today, dir. 2021. 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Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic. 301 VITA Name: Ciprian Mihai (Mike) Manea Date and Place of Birth: July 26, 1974, Bucharest, Romania Wife: Natalia Manea Children: Nathan Manea Education: 2022-2024 University of Luzern, MA in Philosophy, Luzern, Switzerland 2018-2024 Andrews University, Doctor of Ministry, Berrien Springs, Michigan 2016-2017 La Sierra University, Master of Divinity, Riverside, California 2005-2006 Cal State San Marcos University, Teaching Credential, San Marcos, California 1997-1998 Andrews University, Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan 1992-1996 Cal State Polytechnic University Pomona, Bachelor in Biology, Pomona, California Degrees Awarded: 2024 Doctor of Ministry (c) 2017 Master of Divinity 1996 BA degree in biology Professional Experience: 2020-present Middle School Teacher, California Virtual Academy 2019-2020 District pastor, Gulf States Conference of Seventh-day Adventists 2008-2016 CFO Zahid/Manea Marketing 1996-2008 Teacher, substitute teacher, and teaching assistant for various districts throughout California |
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