Claim CH101.1:

If the Bible cannot be trusted on scientific and historical matters, then it cannot be trusted on matters of salvation and spirituality.

Source:

Morris, Henry M., 2000. The vital importance of believing in recent creation. Back to Genesis 138 (June). http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=874

Response:

  1. The Bible was not intended to teach matters of science and history. Therefore, those areas should not be held to standards of literal accuracy.

  2. The general ideas in the Bible, such as salvation and God's majesty, do not rely on literalism for their communication. An error or contradiction in detail does not affect the overall message.

  3. The claim is a non sequitur. That something is wrong in one area does not prevent it from being perfectly accurate in another.

  4. Theologians through the ages have considered parts of the Bible suspect but accepted the rest as canon. In fact, it was exactly such a process by which canon was determined. Even Martin Luther considered some Old Testament passages suspect (Armstrong 1996; Engwer n.d.; Shea 1997).

  5. A logical consequence of this claim is that the Bible cannot, in fact, be trusted, because parts of it (not only Genesis) are known to be wrong if interpreted literally.

  6. Creationists themselves sometimes make claims that contradict the Bible. For example, Whitcomb and Morris (1961, 69) claimed, contrary to Genesis 7:21-23, that some land animals not aboard Noah's ark survived.

Links:

Schneider, Robert J. n.d. III: Does the Bible teach science? http://www.berea.edu/SpecialProject/scienceandfaith/essay03.asp

References:

  1. Armstrong, Dave, 1996. The New Testament canon. http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ45.HTM
  2. Engwer, Jason, n.d. Catholicism and the Canon. http://members.aol.com/jasonte2/canon.htm.
  3. Shea, Mark, 1997 (Mar/Apr). Five myths about seven books. Envoy http://www.envoymagazine.com/backissues/1.2/marapril_story2.html
  4. Whitcomb, John C. Jr. and Henry M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadephia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.

Further Reading:

Charles, R. H., ed., 1913. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://www.ccel.org/c/charles/pseudepigrapha/

Seghers, Jim, 1998. Sola Scriptura. http://totustuus.com/solascri.htm

Sungenis, Robert A., 1997. Not by scripture alone. Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Co.
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created 2001-2-18, modified 2005-7-13