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AR 25:10 - "Undesigned coincidences" in the New Testament
In this issue:
AMERICAN POLITICS - have Republicans become "more cultlike and resistant to compromise or moderation"?
NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY - mounting evidence that the gospel writers are not guilty of "literary creativity"
Apologia Report 25:10 (1,467)
March 11, 2020
AMERICAN POLITICS
Why We're Polarized, by Ezra Klein [1] -- The Week (no byline, Feb 21 '20, p21) reports that "America's political future sure looks gloomy, said Norman Ornstein in the New York Times. In his 'thoughtful and persuasive' new book, Vox.com co-founder Ezra Klein offers ample evidence that no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election, the polarization that's tearing the country apart is likely to worsen. To Klein, we have been spiraling in this direction since the 1964 Civil Rights Act triggered a political reshuffling that made both parties more homogeneous. ...
"Because Klein is a liberal, said Barton Swaim <www.on.wsj.com/38ESVMH> in The Wall Street Journal, he presents Republicans as the more troubling tribe. After he makes 'the rather obvious point' that political affiliation is often more about identity than rational self-interest, he turns almost exclusively to the GOP to find examples of irrational behavior." [6]
Back to Ornstein, who writes that "people are now more motivated by their antipathy for the other party than by affinity for their own." In response, "when we are presented with evidence contradicting our beliefs, the strong reaction is to discount it and look for evidence that confirms our beliefs. Persuasive studies show that if you take people who are deeply into their political identities and make them watch, listen to and read those who have opposite views, it causes them to dig even more deeply into their core identities, not alter them or soften their views of the enemy. And the impact of all this is greater on those who pay the most attention to issues and politics than it is on the more disengaged! ...
"One research project asked white college students about race, and then primed them to think about white privilege. That led them to express more racial resentment, not less. ...
"The political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck demonstrated [2] that in the 2016 campaign, racial resentment activated economic anxiety, not the other way around, and that the relationship between the two can be surprising. ...
"The reinforcement of identities means that white liberal Democrats are 'less likely than African-Americans to say that black people should be able to get ahead without any special help.' As the journalist Matthew Yglesias notes, 'Democrats themselves have moved the goal posts in terms of what kind of racial views one is expected to affirm as a good liberal.' ...
"By doubling and tripling down on a more homogeneous group, Republicans have become more cultlike and resistant to compromise or moderation; Democrats, in contrast, have 'an immune system of diversity and democracy.'" <www.nyti.ms/331JPbr>
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NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY
Consider this argument: "When we read the gospels and Paul's letters carefully, it becomes apparent that there are lots of details which serve no obvious purpose, but which connect them into a plausible fabric giving a reliable account of events." Lydia McGrew develops this in her book Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts [3]. Ian Paul interviews McGrew (Psephizo, Feb 2 '20) about her work as an introduction to her recent new book that takes the argument further.
LM: "Philosopher and apologist Tim McGrew, my husband, ... began looking back into older authors from the 1700s and 1800s and found this argument." In particular, William Paley's Horae Paulinae [4], written in 1790, "applies the argument to the Pauline epistles and to Acts. ... We agreed at that time that it was imperative to write a new, book-length treatment that would bring the argument to 21st-century audiences....
"An undesigned coincidence is an incidental interlocking that points to truth. The coming-together of two statements has an appearance of casualness. ... A classic kind of undesigned coincidences occurs when two different writers or speakers give details of an incident and one of them explains the other without appearing to be doing so intentionally. ...
"For example, I love the one where you can tell from I Corinthians 16:5-10 that Timothy has already left for Greece and that Paul expects the letter to get to Corinth before Timothy does. Then you can match that up with Acts 19:21 and a lot of other clues and see that Paul is probably in Ephesus when he's writing I Corinthians, and you look at a map and see that the letter could be sent to Corinth by a shorter route while Acts says that Timothy was sent into Macedonia. So if he went on to Corinth, he would have gotten there later, by the long route. It's such a beautiful connection between the two books of the New Testament and the geography.
"I'm also excited about some of the new undesigned coincidences that I will be mentioning in the book on John's Gospel that I'm currently writing. These support the robust historicity of John and the fact that John and the Synoptic Gospels work together rather than contradicting each other. ...
"That's the kind of thing that is wonderful to me to see: The Gospels explain one another and fit together so well.
IP: "You note that many of these things were observed, by William Paley and others, prior to the rise of 'Higher Criticism'. Why do you think these insights were lost or forgotten?"
LM: "I think there have been a few quite different movements that probably explain it. First, the rise of higher criticism <www.bit.ly/39yGGCG> itself made too many Christians diffident about this type of argument. ...
"The second cause may have been the emphasis upon inerrancy <www.bit.ly/38x10CX> in the twentieth century in response to the higher criticism. I want to be clear that I am not saying that inerrancy is incompatible with the argument from undesigned coincidences. Far from it. But it was just a different emphasis and tended to supersede a more evidential, bottom-up defense of the reliability of the documents.
"The third cause, late in the 20th century, for no one's noticing this argument was the emphasis upon a 'minimalist' approach to defending the doctrines of Christianity and the fact of the resurrection. [A] bold defiance of higher critical approaches, an attempt to refute them completely, that has not been popular in Christian circles, not even evangelical apologetic circles."
IP: "Richard Bauckham has argued, on slightly different grounds, that the assumptions and conclusions of Form Criticism <www.bit.ly/2VVUoLQ> no longer stand up to scrutiny. How do your examples of undesigned coincidences relate to Bauckham's argument?"
LM: "Bauckham is talking about assumptions such as that the Gospels were corrupted over time and written down at many removes from the original events. ...
"I would say that my conclusions support something even stronger than what Bauckham concludes. It's also worth pointing out, as Bauckham does, that much other criticism (such as redaction criticism) takes for granted the assumption that he is rejecting ... [W]e can take Bauckham's argument that the Gospels come from eyewitnesses and are reliable and go even further with it than he does."
IP: "Out of your research, you have disagreed with scholars who defend the importance of literary creativity on the part of the gospel writers. Can you give an example which demonstrates what is at stake here?"
LM: "In my research both before and after I completed Hidden in Plain View, I've been examining the work of some evangelical scholars who think that the evangelists were literally creative in the sense that they were changing the facts about what happened while appearing to narrate completely realistically. ... An example that someone might think of as more radical, put forward by Michael Licona and Daniel Wallace, is that John changed the words on the cross.... [T]he research I've done on undesigned coincidences is leading me to a very different conclusion. ...
"My research since Hidden in Plain View has been related to the literary device views that I discussed above. These are advocated by Dr. Michael Licona.... They are also promoted by Craig Evans and Craig Keener, and William Lane Craig has advocated a couple of these theories as well as deferring to Licona more generally. These are all, of course, known as quite conservative scholars and apologists. The idea is that the Gospel authors felt free at times to alter the facts in their stories." [Keener wrote the foreward for Hidden in Plain View - RP]
"[T]he Gospels are what they present themselves as being prima facie, which is historical reports of what happened. The result of that is my new book, The Mirror or the Mask, which just came out on December 10, 2019 [5]. That book both responds to the literary device views in detail and presents evidence for a nuanced, positive reportage model of the Gospels." <www.bit.ly/32XKYAW>
The publisher's promo for The Mirror or the Mask reads: "In recent years a number of evangelical scholars have claimed that the Gospel authors felt free to present events in one way even though they knew that the reality was different. Analytic philosopher Lydia McGrew brings her training in the evaluation of evidence to bear, investigates these theories about the evangelists' literary standards in detail, and finds them wanting. At the same time she provides a nuanced, positive view of the Gospels that she dubs the reportage model. Clearing away misconceptions of this model, McGrew amasses objective evidence that the evangelists are honest, careful reporters who tell it like it is. Meticulous, well-informed, and accessible, The Mirror or the Mask is an important addition to the libraries of laymen, pastors, apologists, and scholars who want to know whether the Gospels are reliable."
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Why We're Polarized, by Ezra Klein (Simon & Schuster, 2020, hardcover, 336 pages) <www.amzn.to/32Ze6aT>
2 - Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, by John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck (Princeton Univ Prs, 2019, paperback, 360 pages) <www.amzn.to/2xtuyET>
3 - Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts, by Lydia McGrew (DeWard, 2017, paperback, 288 pages) <www.amzn.to/2xeGvOs>
4 - Horae Paulinae, Or, the Truth of the Scripture History of St. Paul Evinced, by William Paley (Palala Prs, 2015, hardcover, 278 pages) <www.amzn.to/3aIJNbd>
5 - The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, by Lydia McGrew (DeWard, 2019, paperback, 582 pages) <www.amzn.to/38xB3n1>
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