http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/07/scriptural-inerrancy-again.html
Bill Vallicella is abrilliant philosopher, as well as an astute critic of liberal ideologues.However, whenever he turns to the Bible, his objections are amateurish.
The following is from areader who wishes to remain anonymous but who wants me "to hear adifferent perspective on the matter than that of the Calvinists who comment onyour blog: I don't want you thinking they are the ones rightly interpreting theChristian texts."
It’s flattering to thinkCalvinists have cornered the market on the inerrancy of Scripture, but that’snot quite fair to some other theological traditions. For instance, confessionalLutherans (e.g. WELS; LCMS) also affirm the inerrancy of Scripture. So do “fundamentalists.”
It’s true, though, that othergroups like Arminians are not committed to the inerrancy of Scripture.
Jesus and Paul had a ratherliberal interpretation of the Old Testament Law, by which I mean a non-literal,moralist interpretation. I shall explain this in further detail by offering afew exemplary statements from them both.Jesus famously said that"What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out oftheir mouth, that is what defiles them" (Mt 15:11), specifying what hemeant a few verses later: "But the things that come out of a person’smouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart comeevil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony,slander. These are what defile a person" (vv. 18-20). This is directlycontradictory to the teaching of the Old Testament Law; after a long list ofanimals the eating of which is strictly forbidden, Lev 11:24 reads: "Youwill make yourselves unclean by [eating] these." Jesus denies the literaltruth of Lev 11:24 by denying the reality of ritual purity and impurity;instead he gave a spiritualized, moralist interpretation of purity andimpurity: the only true (im)purity or (un)cleanliness is moral (im)purity or(un)cleanliness.
This objection is vitiated byequivocation.
i) To begin with, Jesus isn’treferring to the OT purity codes. In context, Jesus is referring to the oralTorah. Pharisaic customs.
ii) More to the point, Jesusisn’t talking about ritual defilement, but actual wrongdoing. That’s evidentfrom his examples.
Ritual impurity isn’tequivalent to sinfulness, unless you contract ritual impurity through indulgingin ritually forbidden behavior.
A further expression of thedenial of the reality of ritual purity and impurity and, implied with this, arejection of the temple sacrificial system of worship is involved in Jesus'quoting the verse from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Whenthe Pharisees see that Jesus eats at the same table as many tax collectors andsinners -- i.e., those who would render him ceremonially unclean and incapableof participating in the temple cult, thus removed from the blessings of God --Jesus responds that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Mt 9:10-13)."Sacrifice" is connected to a concern for ritual purity, as well asparticipation in the temple religious system; what God wants is not this, butmercy towards those who are in need of love: particularly those rejected by thereligious figures and "holy men" of his time. God evidently is notconcerned with ritual purity; he wishes that men be kind to one another, and hemakes an effort to show such kindness himself through Jesus. But a rejection ofritual purity, the requirement for sacrifice, the legitimacy of the temple,etc., is a rejection of a literal reading of many Old Testament texts.
i) The statement in Hos 6:6is hyperbolic. Obviously there was a general obligation to perform sacrifice.But Jesus and Hosea are ranking obligations. Not every obligation is equallyobligatory. Some take precedence over others.
ii) Likewise, obedience tothe law involves right intentions as well as right conduct. It’s not just amatter of going through the motions. OT law doesn’t involve a mechanicalcorrelation between cause and effect. Rather, your obedience needs to bemotivated by genuine piety. A “circumcised heart.” Punctilious attention to theexternals is no substitute for inner devotion.
It’s easy for sinners to turnhuman duties into divine duties. To act as if merely or cynically performing areligious rite obliges God to do something for us.
Consider also Jesus' andPaul's affirmation that the true fulfillment of the Law is obedience to thecommand "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (see, e.g., Mt 22:34-30; Rom13:8-10, Gal 5:14). This cannot be literally true, for the various ritual andceremonial injunctions of the Law (e.g., regarding circumcision, dietaryhabits, sacrifices, etc.) cannot in any plausible way be interpreted as mereinstances of love for neighbor; no one would ever get the impression that thecommand to circumcise one's child on the eighth day is an instance of"love thy neighbor" by reading the relevant OT texts. What thisstatement suggests, rather, is a non-literal and moralist interpretation of theOld Testament: what is really of value is the moral teaching about loving yourneighbor; all that ritual and ceremonial stuff doesn't mean much of anythingand can even at times be ignored.
That objection is simplistic.
i) To begin with, this isn’teven an accurate quotation. It omits the prior and all-important command tolove God.
ii) Moreover, the statementthat loving God and loving our neighbor fulfills the law is a summary statementrather than an exhaustive statement of their legal obligations.
iii) Furthermore, itprioritizes legal obligations. Some are more important than others.
iv) Finally, different lawscan reflect different specific instances of a common generic principle.
v) BTW, these distinctionsdon’t imply a “nonliteral” reading of OT law.
One more example would bePaul's affirmations regarding the ultimate insignificance of circumcision:"A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcisionmerely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; andcircumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the writtencode" (Rom 2:28-29); "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision isnothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19);"Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts isthe new creation" (Gal 6:15). No one would ever come to such a conclusionmerely reading what the Old Testament says regarding the requirement ofcircumcision: "Every male among you shall be circumcised . . . . Mycovenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcisedmale, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from hispeople" (Gen 17:10, 13-14). Paul elevates obedience to the moral commandmentsof God, especially "love thy neighbor", above the command ofcircumcision, so much so that the latter command is effectively annulled.
No one would come to theconclusions that Jesus and Paul did merely by reading the salient Old Testamenttexts themselves; their interpretation is non-literal and moralist, and ismerely one manifestation of the tendency towards spiritualized, internalizedinterpretations of inherited religion that appears in other places (e.g.,ancient Greek religion with the advent of the philosophers) as well. (For moreon this, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Contents of Paul's CulticAtonement Metaphors (Boston: Brill, 2004), 47ff.)
i) To begin with, Paul isdealing with a shift from the old covenant to the new covenant. Circumcision isa sign of old covenant membership. Naturally the new covenant will have adifferent sign of covenant membership, to distinguish the new covenant from theold covenant.
Paul isn’t distinguishingbetween lower and higher obligations within the old covenant, but between theold covenant and the new covenant.
ii) Yet even within the OT,there was a distinction between physical circumcision and spiritualcircumcision (“circumcision of the heart”). Physical circumcision had noultimate independent value.
iii) Circumcision isobligatory so long as the covenant it signifies is obligatory. If the oldcovenant expires, then circumcision expires.
That is not quite what I amasserting. Lev 11:24 asserts that eating certain foods makes one rituallyunclean, not morally unclean (there is a difference!), and therefore assertsthe reality and the importance of ritual purity for religious life. (Take, forexample, the affirmation of Lev 13 that after childbirth, a woman is unclean:that is because (just as in other ancient religions, e.g. primitive Hinduism),touching bodily fluids and losing bodily fluids makes one unclean and unfit forparticipation in the cultus; it is has nothing to do with morality whatsoever.)
Jesus’s statement takes forgranted the difference between ritual impurity and moral impurity.
Ritual purity and impurity isnot the same as either moral or physical purity or impurity; it is a distinctcategory of purity that is distinctive of very old, ancient religions and whichis no longer very intelligible to the modern mind; we simply don't believe inthis stuff anymore. Ritual purity is one more condition one must have in orderto participate in the sacrificial systems in ancient religions, such astraditional, non-philosophical Hinduism and ancient Judaism.
Ritual purity symbolizes theholiness of God while ritual impurity symbolizes the iniquity of man. That’sthe point of the OT purity codes. To cultivate an awareness of man’s iniquityin the presence of a holy God (cf. Lev 11:44-45).
In some cases, the puritycodes may classify certain things as unclean due to pagan connotations. It’s away of disassociating Jewish conduct from pagan idolatry. But that’s a specialcase of cultic holiness. It falls under the same general rubric.
A state of ritual impuritywas not inherently sinful. A pious Jew could remain ritually unclean for anindefinite period of time. That only became unacceptable when he had to performa cultic duty, which required him to ritually purify himself before performingthe cultic duty.
Over time, in variousreligious traditions that advanced such as ancient Greek religion, the categoryof ritual purity and impurity was reinterpreted as being symbolic of moralpurity and impurity, and not as having any significance or being of its own.(E.g., when Socrates says in Phaedo that only the pure may see the Forms upondeath, he is understanding "purity" in a moral sense, not a ritualsense, though the terminology is ritualistic.) This is what happens in Mt 15. Inresponse to the argument of the Pharisees that his disciples have defiledthemselves (from the point of view of ritual purity) by eating with unwashedhands, Jesus at Mt 15:11 asserts that nothing that enters into a man makes himunclean, which in this context clearly is a denial of the reality of ritualimpurity, the presupposition of his critics' complaint; this is areinterpretation of the ancient category of ritual (im)purity into moralisticterms. The terms "(im)pure", "(un)clean", etc., originatedas terms describing ritual cleanliness, and were eventually transformed andreinterpreted as referring to a moral reality.
i) Mt 15:11 doesn’t deny theexistence of ritual impurity. Rather, it makes the point that ritual impurityshould not be confused with moral impurity. The Pharisees inverted the properorder, elevating symbolic moral pollution above actual moral pollution.
ii) Moreover, the Phariseesinvented their own purity codes, which sometimes negated OT law.
In other words, my argumentis this: the Leviticus text presupposes the genuine, independent reality of anancient category of religious life, namely ritual purity and impurity, whereasthe Matthean text asserts the reality only of the moral category of religiouslife. The Leviticus text represents an ancient way of religious thinking,asserting that there is such a thing as ritual purity distinct from moraluprightness.
Ritual purity is distinctfrom moral uprightness. Ritual purity symbolizes holiness. But symbolismdistinguishes the sign from the significate. A symbol is not identical withwhat it stands for. Rather, it’s a relation between two things: the emblematic sign,and the reality which the sign illustrates.
If his laws are not based onthe nature of the things the laws are about -- e.g., if the law against contactwith the dead is not based on an actual polluting power of a deceased body --then his laws would seem to be entirely arbitrary.
i) All laws are not of akind. Moral laws are based on the nature of things.
ii) There’s a sense in whichsymbolism is to some degree arbitrary. There's no necessary, one-to-onecorrespondence between a symbol and what it symbolizes. You could havedifferent symbols for the same thing, or the same symbol for different things.Symbolic meaning is ascriptive rather than inherent. Culturally assigned.
At the same time, thatdoesn’t make the relation “entirely arbitrary.” Some symbols are more naturalthan others. There’s a reason Isaiah says “all flesh is grass” rather than “allflesh is brass.” One metaphor is more suited to the sentiment than another.
Regarding ritual purity: likeI said, ritual purity/impurity is a concept we do not believe in as moderns andcan no longer really understand, but it was evidently clear enough to thoseancients for whom it was a great concern.
We can grasp the conceptof symbolism. And symbolism can be believable. A particular classification may beobscure to us, given our cultural distance, but the broader principle isintelligible.
This does not line up withhis behavior -- he [Jesus] regularly comes into contact with the rituallyimpure and there are no recorded instances of his undergoing purificationafterward -- nor with his words -- as, for example, in Mt 15.
That’s a fallaciousinference. Jesus didn’t have the same relation to the ceremonial law as anordinary Jew. According to the Gospels, Jesus is the Son of God Incarnate.Naturally God can’t be defiled by contact with his creatures.
Moreover, Jesus is the Saviorand the Redeemer. In the nature of the case, he will socialize with sinners.That’s a part of his mission.
BV comments: I find the foregoing persuasive andwould extract the following argument against inerrancy from it:
1. If the Scripture isinerrant, then no later passage revises, corrects, contradicts, annuls, orabrogates any earlier passage.
2. There are NT passages thatcontradict OT passages, e.g. MT 15:11 contradicts Lev 11:24.
Therefore
3. It is not the case thatthe Scripture is inerrant.
The argument is valid in point of logical form. If the first premise is not true, thenI simply do not know what plenary inerrancy means. (I assume we mean byinerrancy plenary (full) inerrancy. Otherwise I could maintain that my blog is inerrant, provided you ignoreall assertions in it that are mistaken. "It is everywhere inerrant except where it isn't.") The first premise is true and so is thesecond as the anon. contributor demonstrated. Therefore, the Scriptures are not inerrant.
That's grossly simplistic:
i) Not all laws are moral laws. There are laws of utilityas well as laws of morality.
ii) Moreover, in the case of moral laws, we need todistinguish between the generic principle which the law exemplifies, and thespecific instance. Even if the underlying principle is universal, the specificinstance may be indexed to the socioeconomic conditions of a particular timeand place.
For example, a law against cattle rustling exemplifies ageneral prohibition against theft. But that law is not culturally universal. Itonly obtains in the socioeconomic context of farming and ranching.
iii) We need to distinguish between higher and lowerobligations. Not every obligation is equally obligatory. In case of conflict, ahigher obligation supersedes a lower obligation.
iv) On a related note, we need to distinguish betweenintrinsic obligations and instrumental obligations. Every duty is not an end initself. Some duties are means to ends. They are designed to facilitate aparticular outcome. They have no inherent value.
v) In addition, even moral laws may be concessive. Not all moral laws reflect an ethical ideal. They may set the bar fairly low.
vi) The ceremonial laws have symbolic value. Their value isindexed to a particular function. And that can terminate.
vii) Likewise, it’s often possible to nullify a contractthrough breach of contract, although the violation will incur contractuallystipulated penalties for nonperformance.
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