Deleting "The Clairity Complaint"
We May Never Know Why the Bible Isn't More Clear
Brett Palmer, © 2009
CONTENTS
I. Introduction
II. Inerrancy and an Apologist's Ignorance
III. Mr. Holding's "Preservation Verses Idolatry"
IV. Mr. Holding's "Practical Acts of Imposition"
V. Conclusion
VI. Notes & Sources
Instead of taking the skeptic request seriously, Mr. Holding has decided again to shirk his responsibility to stand up to the challenge of explaining why the Bible is not more clear should it have come from, as apologists of his sort maintain, the very mind and inspiration of God. Brought to my attention by a reader, Mr. Holding has skimmed and responded extremely briefly with a dismissive mini-reply to my "Clarity Complaint Complainer" article. His response is tucked away from his main site on a side location ("Tektoonics") reserved for his unchecked rants and raves directed toward critics and which also serves as a repository for the display of his crude, 80s-esque, hack-anime drawings. I had noted in my article which dealt with Mr. Holding's limp-wristed, sarcastic acknowledgement of the skeptical question regarding the Bible's lack of clarity despite its divine origins, that "he certainly is free to use whatever form he wishes to answer the complaint (sarcastically, demeaning, scholarly, flippantly, meaningfully, etc.) but he should at least answer it." It's a request that remains unfulfilled. And Mr. Holding can call me every name he picked up in the school- or prison-yard [1] for drawing this failure to his attention, but despite the number of juvenile names he calls me he will still leave the original question unanswered. It's easy to merely dismiss the complaints of critics, but it takes real courage to meet them face-to-face. Mr. Holding's steadfast refusal to actually deal with the complaint is evidence, in my opinion, that he doesn't really have an answer to it other than the assertion that God does what God does and we're all too far beneath the Lord's contempt to question his methods. His miniscule reply totaled all of 58 words, while quoting 681 words from my original 1711 word article and consisted mainly of calling me names including "dumbass", "stupid" and "lazy". It's rather ironic that in his microscopic reply he calls me pompous and lazy! Apparently, Mr. Holding thinks God gets a free-pass when inspiring holy writing and that the rest of us need to sit back with a jar of Vaseline and merely take it as he delivered it. Or, at least, we should assume the position while petulant apologists like Mr. Holding explain what God meant in his holy text since apologists such as he have set themselves up as the interpreter of God's Word so that the rest of us pompous, lazy slobs can get it right and understand what God couldn't explain when he inspired the texts in the first place. As Friedrich Nietzche noted about those like Mr. Holding:
When a man feels that he has a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind -- when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives -- when such a mission inflames him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is himself sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher order! . . . What has a priest to do with science! He stands far above it! -- And hitherto the priest has ruled! -- He has determined the meaning of "true" and "not true"! (The Antichrist)
When it comes to the Bible's clarity (or lack thereof), seems Mr. Holding's god is very much like the US government, perpetually employing others to redo the same job over and over again. And, it would seem, Mr. Holding has taken up his place behind the Formica counter telling skeptics to "take a number" while he deals with the slack-jawed critics one customer at a time.
In his rude reply to my article, Mr. Holding pouts that I did not notice he has removed his original "Clarity Complaint" article from his website. I suppose I must point out to the obtuse Mr. Holding that when I replied to his article it obviously must have been available on-line at the time and that I am not in the habit of checking his website regularly to see what embarrassing articles he has decided to remove during so-called "revamps." Regardless if he took his article down, my reply to it will remain up as others, not so concerned with removing clutter from their websites, nonetheless share his view of the inerrancy of Scripture. I've no interest in Mr. Holding's website maintenance schedules or practices. It seems apparent that by bringing down his article and replying to me wholly with name-calling and no substantive answer to the skeptic complaint, Mr. Holding is acknowledging that he has no response to what I've written. He simply cannot explain why the Bible is not more clearly written, given that it was inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent being, other than to call those who don't bow to his ruling of what is "true" and "not true" as intellectually lazy, pompus and ignorant and to sweep his earlier assertions off his website and barf up a vulgar reply to me personally as an after-thought.
Inerrancy and an Apologist's Ignorance
However, it may be said that Mr. Holding has indeed made an effort to answer the skeptic's question regarding biblical clarity in his self-published book, Trusting the New Testament. In chapter 11 of the book he writes on "inerrancy and human ignorance." As in his earlier effort now scrubbed clean from his website, Mr. Holding once again places most of the blame for the lack of clarity in the Bible at the feet of those who read it. Just as certain despots like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or North Korea's Kim Jong-il, defer all blame for any personal misappropriate action, Mr. Holding holds blameless his deity for any perceived biblical historical, scientific, scribal or moral errancy. But beyond shifting blame for the lack of clarity in the sacred Scriptures, Mr. Holding offers a rather amusing assertion for what apologists mean by "original manuscript" when referring to the original, inerrant copies of those texts.
Mr. Holding begins his chapter with a characterization of the skeptical position regarding biblical clarity. Running the risk of repeating what was already covered in my earlier article, I certainly want to treat Mr. Holding's chapter in his Trusting the New Testament book fairly. Mr. Holding believes skeptics are asking, "Why couldn't God have just preserved all the copies of the Bible without errors? Then we wouldn't have to worry about textual criticism." (p. 121) Textual criticism is the in-depth study of the surviving biblical manuscripts in order to determine the original or most accurate form of the biblical text. Exactly because the Bible is not clear, has numerous textual errors, duplications, and the like, textual criticism is a robust academic study. However, Mr. Holding forgot an important addition to his caricature of the critic's complaint, and that is the question of how God could have inspired inerrancy in "the original" books which were to make up the Bible, according to apologists like Mr. Holding, but apparently had a problem keeping that inerrancy included in the later copies; later copies which are the only forms of the Bible any of us have seen or ever will see. But, while dropping this observation from his caricature, Mr. Holding does answer this question later in his chapter. He ponders, "Is God obligated to have preserved inerrant copies?" (ibid) I would think God was no more or less obligated to have preserved inerrant copies than he was obligated to inspire inerrant originals. We don't have the original documents to examine for this alleged inerrancy, so we need to be ever vigilant that when having this conversation skeptics are only granting this assertion of "inerrancy in the originals" to the apologists for argument's sake. Having made that gift, however, it still seems to me that if God were to have inspired inerrant originals that the effort put into making these inerrant documents would have extended to the copies. It isn't a matter of obligation but rather one of consistency. God is not like an internet author, composing embarrassing articles for a website and then deleting them during a "revamp." Implicit with the notion of God's inspiration of the biblical texts is the assumption that the deity's omniscience foresaw the deletion of the "originals" from human history and only the retention of copies of copies of copies of copies, many times over, of these originals. So, if we grant the assertion of divine inspiration of inerrant originals, then the divine effort to inspire inerrancy in documents known in advance not to survive long after composition would naturally extend to the copies which would follow. The question is not as Mr. Holding presents it, but is better phrased: "If God inspired inerrant originals, why would he have not preserved inerrant copies?" And that, again, is the skeptic's question. Mr. Holding's answer in his book is the same as in his (now deleted) article: "The quality-preservation of the text is more than sufficient" to apparently get God's message across. Timothy Paul Jones, in his book Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, which I critique in my own article, "Redefining the Uncomfortable Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy", shares this sentiment with Mr. Holding. He wrote, "...the biblical texts that are available to us provide a sufficient testimony for us to understand God's inspired truth...". Again, why then inspire inerrant originals? This is a question no apologist has ventured to answer outside the assumption that the originals must have been inerrant because they were directly inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent god. Later editions were copies made by mere mortals and, apparently, open to corruption (but not so much corruption as to render belief in inerrancy unreasonable, according to the apologist. Apparently, God assured a "sufficient" rendering of his holy Word remain through the centuries).
The Bible, however, seems to suggest that even the copies of Scripture should have preserved the texts' original inerrancy. Mr. Holding looks at Matthew 5:18 which quotes Jesus as saying, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."(KJV) Mr. Holding notes that some biblical inerrantists believe that this verse promises no copies of Scripture will be without error, deviating from the inerrant originals. Amusingly, Mr. Holding believes this is reading too much into the verse, suggesting instead that the passage "refers to the idea of God's Word as preexistent and unchanging, and has nothing to do with the copies on earth...the original [copy of the Bible] is still 'on file' in the home office [Heaven] and will not be changed or corrupted." (ibid) If his fellow biblical inerrantists are "reading too much" into Matthew 5:18, what exactly is Mr. Holding doing with his conjured "originals 'on file'" back at "the home office"? Was he given the grand tour prior to writing his book and saw those inerrant originals for himself? Did he speak to Jesus and find out what he really meant when he was quoted in Matthew 5:18? Just how does Mr. Holding know all this? Mr. Holding's unique insight is as mysterious as the number of licks it would take to get to the Tootsie-Roll center of a Tootsie-Pop; the world may never know!
Mr. Holding's "Preservation Versus Idolatry"
Another unique insight into why God did not preserve inerrant copies of his text is offered by the inventive Mr. Holding. He notes that critics of biblical fundamentalism often accuse inerrantists of being "bibliolaters," or of worshipping the actual text itself. This would remove focus from the genuine object of worship, God himself, and focus it instead on a book. Mr. Holding observes that throughout history Christians have often clamored over one another for pieces of a "holy relic," alleged pieces of Christian history such as the supposed wood from Christ's cross, claimed vials of Mary's breast milk, or "genuine" threads from an apostle's garment. Mr. Holding asserts that there are no inerrant copies of the Bible today because, if we did possess them, "we might well see genuine, widespread bibliolatry" as Christians elbowed each other for the latest copy of the truly inerrant Scriptures. "This," he claims, "would be the problem of relics a thousand fold." (p. 122) He goes on to relate a story of how he once visited a traveling exhibition of the original United States Declaration of Independence some 20 years ago. He recalls throngs of people lining up to see the original document, being carefully searched by vigilant security personnel, winding through a maze of pathways leading to a center stage upon which sat, encased in glass, "that fragile, revered document." (ibid) [2] Authentic inerrant copies of the Bible, Mr. Holding asserts, would have resulted in tragedy, "far worse than what actually has happened in our [Christian] history" when people worshipped relics of the cross instead of Christ himself.
But, Mr. Holding's thinking is very sloppy. "Holy relics" which have circulated in the Christian community can hardly be compared to copies of the Bible. The comparison would have been more accurate if Mr. Holding had compared parchment scraps from the original biblical documents with these other holy relics like "genuine" pieces of Christ's cross or "authentic" vials of Mary's breast milk. Copies of Christ's cross, while cherished and worn as jewelry by many believers, have hardly the same prestige as the original, even though they are faithful reproductions. While the truly original Bible may have been worshipped, encased in glass under environmentally-controlled conditions, held hostage by one faction of Christendom or another were it to have survived through history, inerrant copies likely would not have been subject to the same control or political-religious vices. But, Mr. Holding asks, "...how would inerrant copies of Scripture have been received?" (ibid) Mr. Holding uses the metaphor of the United States Declaration of Independence as an example of what can happen to original documents; and, to be sure, what he says is true regarding the original [3]. However, available in bookstores, online, museum gift shops, and a variety of other places are exact duplicates of the original Declaration of Independence. The copies are inerrant insofar as they reproduce every word, signature and blemish of the original document, suitable for framing! Indeed, the National Archives webpage even offers visitors a free download "of the actual Declaration of Independence parchment." [4] I hardly see throngs of security-checked patriots lining up to get their error-free copy of the Declaration at Barnes and Noble. Purchasers online do not have their personal information sent to the Department of Homeland Security when downloading an inerrant copy. Mr. Holding's imaginative solution to why we don't have inerrant copies of Scripture seems to have run amok here. And, besides, copies of the inerrant Bible would have had an added benefit. Inerrant copies would relieve apologists from referring to the invisible inerrant "originals" still "on file," per Mr. Holding, "at the 'home office'". Skeptics are referring to why God did not ensure inerrant reproductions of the holy texts, not the preservation of the original documents or fragments thereof (although, for an omnipotent deity, the latter should not have been any more difficult than the former). It's a question Mr. Holding avoids everywhere he tries to address it [5]. Producing exact replicas of revered documents is obviously easy enough for mere mortals, as a visit to the National Archives website evidences graphically.
Mr. Holding's "Practical Acts of Imposition"
Scraping for more reasons why God did not ensure inerrant copies, Mr. Holding appeals in his chapter to something he calls "The Coercion Factor." He believes "[t]he presence of inerrant copies would implicitly coerce people into conversion." (p. 123) But how so? Apologists, even without inerrant copies, maintain that what we do have is "sufficient" for anyone to come to faith in Jesus Christ. What would inerrant copies be? More than sufficient? And what is wrong with that? Adam and Eve are said to have spoken to God face to face but that didn't seem to prevent them from disobeying his commands and exercising their freewill. By the way, how would having inerrant copies supplied for the support of faith be any different than that which was supplied to the apostle Thomas following Jesus's resurrection? The New Testament gospel of John, 20:24-28, reports,
Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" (NRSV)
Now, while verse 29 claims Jesus blessed those, unlike Thomas, who believe without seeing visible proof of Christ's resurrection, the point remains that God/Jesus was certainly not shy about "coercing" people into faith. And skeptics are not asking to put their hands into the wounds in Jesus's side, but merely for consistency with the claim of biblical inerrancy. If the "original" documents of the Bible (still "on file" at the "home office") were inspired to be inerrant, why not the copies? If we follow Mr. Holding's reasoning, we should assume that those who originally wrote, heard or read the "original" books of the Bible --before copyists corrupted the text (but not so much as to render them insufficient!)--were coerced into their faith. If God didn't mind coercing this first audience, why worry about the coercion of future audiences? Or, might Mr. Holding be suggesting that the "home office" [non-physical] copy is the only inerrant version and that all "copies" of it on Earth are necessarily errant copies (to one degree or another)? However, Matthew 5:18 refers quite specifically to "jots" and "tittles." Jots and tittles refers to the smallest letter and the tiniest pen stroke of the text. Do etherial copies of the Bible contain jots and tittles? I suppose Mr. Holding can make up whatever characteristics he wants regarding his imagined "home office" copy of the Bible (apologists do, after all, determine what is true and not true!). It can have jots and tittles. It can have commas and question marks. It can have margins and page numbers. It might even have a ringed coffee cup stain from where God left his drink while attending to Noah and his great flood. It might be printed on velvet, or on bright, hot pink computer paper, or on the dried and tanned skins of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. I'm likely forgetting some colorful scenrio for how Mr. Holding envisions the "home office" copy of the Bible, but perhaps that's due to my imagination not being as fruitful as an apologist who creates parody sites to mock his critics rather than answer their charges and uploads poorly drawn anime characters like a frustrated, wanna-be cartoonist. Regardless of various details, however, there's no doubt this "home office" copy of the Scriptures is inerrant in Mr. Holding's fantasy!
Mr. Holding then dredges up another perceived problem with God maintaining inerrant texts. Inerrancy, apparently, isn't the same for everyone. In Mr. Holding's chapter he notes that not everyone possesses the same level of understanding. "No language, no culture, has exactly the same structure and outlook," he writes. "That being the case, how would it be logistically possible --and again, not coercive-- to provide inerrant copies and translations for every person on earth?" (ibid) He asks this of a supernatural being, his "trusted" New Testament of which claims,
"With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26, NIV)
Mr. Holding's imagination once again runs wild while he tries to "imagine how serious that controversy would be if we each had our own copy with different contents attuned to ourselves, attuned to differences in language, culture, as well as personal worldview or assumptions." (ibid) First of all, we already have Bibles translated for different cultures and in a variety of languages and, again, apologists like Mr. Holding maintain that these less-than-inerrant copies are "sufficient" to inspire faith in the message they deliver. Is it really that much of a stretch to allow the translation of the "original" inerrant copies to move from the hand of human committees to the hand of God himself? As for the assertion that these copies would need to conform to the "personal worldviews or assumptions" of each individual, that's absurd. The message of Scripture is the same no matter what a person's worldview or assumptions. Either nearly 3 million people left Egypt or they did not. The story is either historically inerrant or it's not. The story's inerrancy does not rely upon a person's personal worldview or assumptions. The only thing that would alter from one version of the divinely-assured inerrant Bible to another is the same thing that alters in human translations: the delivery of the message. Mr. Holding believes again that providing inerrant translations for individual human cultures and languages would be an act of coercion but he does not explain how. He wonders if God would "manipulate the hands of every scribe" so as to assure inerrant copies. But why would the method of copying the inerrant text be any different from the production of the inerrant originals? If God "manipulated the hands" of the scribes writing the original documents, then why not manipulate the hands of the copyists? And if God did not manipulate the hands of the original scribes then why would he need to manipulate the hands of the copyists? If this god cannot assure the inerrant delivery of his book --a trait I'm sure Mr. Holding would covet for the delivery of his own self-published titles [6]--then he hardly deserves the title of "god" in the first the place. The mere existence of a variety of Bibles, all differing one from the other and none of them inerrant in scientific, historical, moral or literary delivery is evidence for the skeptic's view that no biblical text has ever been inerrant and the books do not, nor ever did, emanate from a divine source.
In the end, even though Mr. Holding erased his Clarity Complaint article from his website but tried to answer the issue in his book, he fails again to satisfy the skeptic's question. Instead of giving reasons for biblical errancy and the lack of inerrant copies of the text, he invents excuses. There simply is no reason to believe why God would not have maintained inerrant copies of Scripture if we are to believe he produced an inerrant original (or, at least has an etherial copy of the original "on file" at the "home office"). Sweeping the problem from his website does not make the question go away, no matter how many names skeptics are called for asking it. Apologists and believers still refer to the copies of Scripture as "inerrant," insofar as they are "interpreted correctly," ("He has determined the meaning of 'true' and 'not true'!") so what difference would it make to have truly inerrant copies, other than relieving us of arrogant, foul-mouthed apologists with over-active imaginations? And who wouldn't be in favor of that?
1. Mr. Holding worked as a librarian in a Florida State penitentiary for a time. Return to Text
2. Would that Mr. Holding had done some research into this claim. Doubtless he is under the delusion that he actually visited a traveling exhibit of the Declaration of Independence. However, a quick call to the National Archives, where the Declaration has been kept since 1952, and a conversation with "Jane" there confirmed my suspicion upon reading Mr. Holding's anecdote: he did not see the original document. There are a few "original copies" of the Declaration, drawn up shortly following the creation and signing of the original (25 of which known as Dunlap imprints), and a couple of these occasionally go on tour, but the original document, like Mr. Holding's fantasized original Bible, is back at the "home office" (not in heaven, but in Washington, DC). And it does not go on tour. When it was moved to the National Archives in 1952, a short trip down the street was a production in and of itself. As noted on the Archive's website:
At 11 a.m., December 13, 1952, Brigadier General Stoyte O. Ross, commanding general of the Air Force Headquarters Command, formally received the documents at the Library of Congress. Twelve members of the Armed Forces Special Police carried the 6 pieces of parchment in their helium-filled glass cases, enclosed in wooden crates, down the Library steps through a line of 88 servicewomen. An armored Marine Corps personnel carrier awaited the documents. Once they had been placed on mattresses inside the vehicle, they were accompanied by a color guard, ceremonial troops, the Army Band, the Air Force Drum and Bugle Corps, two light tanks, four servicemen carrying submachine guns, and a motorcycle escort in a parade down Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues to the Archives Building. Both sides of the parade route were lined by Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marine, and Air Force personnel. At 11:35 a.m. General Ross and the 12 special policemen arrived at the National Archives Building, carried the crates up the steps, and formally delivered them into the custody of Archivist of the United States Wayne Grover.
Can you imagine what would be involved in moving the document in a van as part of a "traveling tour" so the folks in Mayberry could have a peek at it? Once at the National Archives, the Declaration was to remain for ever more. As then-President Harry S. Truman said during the ceremony marking the move in 1952:
"The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are now assembled in one place for display and safekeeping. . . . We are engaged here today in a symbolic act. We are enshrining these documents for future ages. . . . This magnificent hall has been constructed to exhibit them, and the vault beneath, that we have built to protect them, is as safe from destruction as anything that the wit of modern man can devise. All this is an honorable effort, based upon reverence for the great past, and our generation can take just pride in it."
The document now
...stand[s] at the center of a semicircle of display cases showing other important records of the growth of the United States. The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights stand slightly elevated, under armed guard, in their bronze and marble shrine. The Bill of Rights and two of the five leaves of the Constitution are displayed flat. Above them the Declaration of Independence is held impressively in an upright case constructed of ballistically tested glass and plastic laminate. Ultraviolet-light filters in the laminate give the inner layer a slightly greenish hue. At night, the documents are stored in an underground vault.
Mr. Holding's mistake in writing (and memory, probably) that he visited the (not a copy) Declaration of Independence ("that fragile, revered document") during a traveling exhibit would likely have been picked up by an editor had Mr. Holding used one before he self-published, or if Xulon, his publisher, employed them to read over manuscripts they receive prior to providing them for public purchase. Return to Text
3. Or same-age copies of the originals as was likely the case with the copy that Mr. Holding saw as a traveling exhibition. See Note 2 above. Return to Text
4. Click the following URL for your own personal copy! (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_zoom_1.html) Return to Text
5. Mr. Holding will not be able, however, to delete chapter 11 from Trusting the New Testament as he swiftly and easily as he can remove pages from his website as part of a so-called "revamp." Return to text
6. See note 2 above. Return to Text
SOURCES
Holding, James Patrick (2009) Trusting the New Testament. Xulon
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