tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post792090926667721254..comments2024-03-22T16:09:48.895-04:00Comments on Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics: Peter Lampe, George Eldon Ladd, History, and New Testament InterpretationJames Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16136781934797867593noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-41814969903282335242011-03-02T14:09:39.539-05:002011-03-02T14:09:39.539-05:00Thanks Truth. Some of this detail is extremely arc...Thanks Truth. Some of this detail is extremely arcane, and it really is amusing to watch them beat their chests over this. <br /><br />Because if that's the best they've got, they're sunk. And to some degree, they've got to begin to realize it. <br /><br />Lampe is able to "revise" old historical accounts, because he is correcting them with incredible amounts of new historical detail.John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-60050043056199501562011-03-02T14:03:19.075-05:002011-03-02T14:03:19.075-05:00Hi John,
Nice argument. Thanks.Hi John,<br /><br />Nice argument. Thanks.Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-1304229615061602812011-03-02T14:02:18.034-05:002011-03-02T14:02:18.034-05:00For example, look at this from Nick:
Texts like 2...For example, look at this from Nick:<br /><br /><i>Texts like 2 Tim 4:19 say Aquila & Pricila were in Ephesus while Paul was in Rome, yet Lampe says this is historically false.</i><br /><br />Does Nick even know why Lampe puts this particular item on the table? Much less, how it affects argument?<br /><br />Or: <i>3) On page 159, Lampe says:<br />"In no way did Trophimus 'remain ill at Miletus' ([as stated explicitly in] 2 Tim 4:24); rather, he accompanied Paul heartily to Jerusalem" Which is another charge of blatant historical error in the text itself. </i><br /><br />A good commentary on 2 Timothy will address these items on their own merit. <br /><br />Both of these items are used as supporting details for Lampe's <i>textual</i> analysis of why Romans 16 <i>is</i> a part of the original letter (contra some "liberal" interpretations that hold that Acts 16 was appended at some later date). <br /><br />The actual locations of Aquila and Priscilla and Trophimus, at any given time, are beyond the scope of our knowledge now, because we do not have the precise dates of some of Paul's travels. We can provide some very good outlines, but we don't know where he was, or who was with him, on January 4, 57 ad.<br /><br />Nor should it matter to us.<br /><br />I don't know, specifically, where Lampe is getting this particular information from. I do know that much ado has been made about apparent discrepancies between some accounts in Acts and in Paul's letters. But Paul Barnett, for example, has worked through these and has largely harmonized these accounts. <br /><br />Nick, given his emphasis on "inerrancy," is not going to argue with Lampe's conclusion that Romans 16 is integral to the original letter.<br /><br />Whether Aquila & Pricilla were in Ephesus while Paul was in Rome, really has no bearing on Lampe's overall analysis at that point, except that if Lampe is incorrect about this being an error, his argument that Romans 16 was integral to the original handwritten letter is just an itsy-bitsy bit weaker.John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-27601782580046141862011-03-02T13:50:48.929-05:002011-03-02T13:50:48.929-05:00Truth -- presuppositions are important in many res...Truth -- presuppositions are important in many respects, but there are some ways in which they are not important.<br /><br />Consider a completely different discipline. If the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sends back photos and scientific data from Saturn, their presuppositions don't matter a whit about the factual information captured in the data.<br /><br />Similarly with Lampe: the information that he sends to us from ancient Rome are not dependent on presuppositions for the factual content of the data.<br /><br />Let me give you some idea of how he uses that.<br /><br />He takes Paul's personal greetings in Acts 16 -- "the church that meets in your house" and "the household of Aristobulus" and things like that -- then he compares them with actual lists of tituli churches that we have from the fourth century -- and combines that information with archaeological information about cemetaries, and he is able to give a substantial amount of detail about the locations of these churches. <br /><br />Then he talks about the social conditions -- trade routes, different parts of the city where these churches are located, and the social classes that may be living in these different regions. (I provided some selections from first-hand accounts taken from the Trastevere section of the city, and the working conditions of tanners who worked there, for example).<br /><br />He also has a chapter that discusses the education level of Justin Martyr - he works through Justin's writings, and traces quotes and citations from classical literature, and cross-references that with other things we know about Justin. <br /><br />His presuppositions really don't enter into any of that at all. The accounting he gives is extremely factual, and extremely detail-oriented. <br /><br />He leaves room open for "theological interpretation." He says, for example, "I've illuminated a bridge; that bridge must be crossed." <br /><br />I personally don't hesitate to cross that bridge, based on the thorough historical foundation he's provided. <br /><br />Nick and David Waltz and the others will whine all day long that he's not an inerrantist.<br /><br />But what they won't do is to provide specific examples of how the handful of items they've cited affect his overall work.John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-17224346648568989272011-03-02T12:28:19.770-05:002011-03-02T12:28:19.770-05:00Hi John,
There seems to be a substantive differen...Hi John,<br /><br />There seems to be a substantive difference between the:<br /><br /><b>Historical</b>-Criticism (aka Higher Criticism) methods<br /><br />and the Grammatical-<b>Historical</b> (GH) methods.<br /><br />Both use history or historiography, but the presuppositions they use to approach historical understanding and research are different.<br /><br />-----<br /><br />Anyways, in the case of Nick, I think his biased presupposition is that theologian-scholars must begin their historical research with the presupposition that the Church is infallibly correct. And if a theologian-scholar does not adhere to that, then Nick dismisses this theologian-scholar's arguments and conclusions as being too "liberal."<br /><br />On the flip side, and what he's arguing, is that conservative Protestants adhere to the inerrancy of Scripture as a presupposition. And therefore, conservative Protestants should be wary of theologian-scholars who don't hold to the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-77970892846122013692011-03-02T12:08:04.876-05:002011-03-02T12:08:04.876-05:00Truth, maybe I should have been more specific in m...Truth, maybe I should have been more specific in my original comment about the "sniping down there" -- <br /><br />To clarify, it's not the "historical-critical" methodology itself that is "liberal" -- the methodology itself is used by both conservative and liberal interpreters.<br /><br />This is the effort to understand the context of a particular passage; the writer, the audience, the situation that's being addressed, etc.<br /><br />What makes a particular "biblical interpretation" conservative or liberal is its presupposition to disbelieve what Hasel described as the ‘transcendent or divine dimension in Biblical history...’ <br /><br />Ladd recognized this; the approach he adopted, then, was to "accept the supernatural in-breaking by God into history."<br /><br />Under this criterion, Raymond Brown is not a "liberal" biblical interpreter. I know from a professional associate of Brown's that he specifically worked within the constraints of both historical-critical methodology and Roman Catholic dogma as he wrote, and as he came to conclusions in his writings.<br /><br />Lampe's comments to the effect that Paul didn't write the Pastoral epistles, or that the recording of some travel details may have been in error, does not make Lampe a liberal, either.<br /><br />And the converse of that is what I was getting at. <br /><br />These guys are saying, "Brown's a liberal, so therefore, nothing he says is worth reading."<br /><br />That's an entirely wrong-headed way to look at it.<br /><br />And too, they say "Lampe's a liberal, so therefore, nothing he says is worth reading."<br /><br />The point I tried to make here is that these labels -- "conservative" and "liberal" -- as applied to biblical criticism today, are not very precise ways of speaking of things at all, they are not indicative of the quality of the work that is done, and so they are not very helpful at all in this type of discussion.John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-84221902275505114282011-03-02T11:51:35.942-05:002011-03-02T11:51:35.942-05:00The things that constitutes liberal biblical inter...The things that constitutes liberal biblical interpretation and the things that constitute conservative biblical interpretation.Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-31085768007704392082011-03-02T11:42:31.985-05:002011-03-02T11:42:31.985-05:00Which specific things are those?Which specific things are those?John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19795707.post-4160151029135861702011-03-02T11:39:22.489-05:002011-03-02T11:39:22.489-05:00"Down below, there’s some sniping about what ...<i>"Down below, there’s some sniping about what constitutes liberal biblical interpretation, and what constitutes conservative biblical interpretation."</i><br /><br />These things are worth pondering.Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.com