No Logical Necessity of Inconsistency

David Waltz keeps saying that it is inconsistent for any of us (especially John Bugay) who believe in inerrancy and that Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Timothy being the last before his execution by Nero in 67 AD, to use Peter Lampe's historical post- canonical/post-apostles evidence that Rome did not have a mono-episcopate bishop until after the middle of the second century.

John Bugay did the research and is presenting the evidence from Peter Lampe (click under Peter Lampe in the side bar of categories) in many articles lately.

David bases this on saying that Lampe has three presuppositions that are the foundation for his belief that Rome did not have a mono-episcopacy bishop.
For the sake of argument, I will take these 3 points as David sees them, although it seems it could be argued that there are other presuppositions that are earlier in the thinking of Lampe. These don’t seem to be real pre-suppositions, but rather deductions based on other presuppositions.

See David Waltz’s article here where he outlines Lampe’s 3 presuppositions:


The three presuppositions are:
1. Paul did not write the Pastorals. Lampe’s first presupposition: the Pastorals were not written by Paul, and were composed at a much a later date

2. The writer of Revelation does not mention elders or bishops for the local churches in chapters 1-3, but emphasizes the "earlier", charismatic gift of prophesy. (but he does mention 24 elders in heaven in Revelation chapters 4, 5, 7, and alludes to this by the twelve gates (12 tribes of Israel) and twelve foundation stones(12 apostles) in chapter 21 - is this symbolic of the saints of OT and NT ? ie, 12 tribes of Israel (OT) and 12 apostles (NT) ? Is this a symbol of the Universal, invisible Church? This shows the Reformers were not so off in emphasizing the Universal, invisible Church, of the elect among all the nations, while not neglecting the visible church on earth.) Lampe says Revelation emphasizes only the charismatic office of “prophesy”, assuming a later date for Revelation. Lampe’s second presupposition: the original Christian ministry consisted of "charismatic offices".

3. Lampe’s third presupposition: the "Catholic" concept of the ministry did not have apostolic warrant, and was an evolutionary development that took place at different times in different geographical areas, with the churches at Rome being one of the last regions to fully endorse the "Catholic" development.

I would like to show that agreeing with a form of no. 3 does not necessarily depend on agreeing with no. 1 or no. 2, but especially no. 1. (for the sake of space and time, I am putting no. 2 about the book of Revelation aside for now; it does not directly affect the charge that David is making, in my opinion.

David calls no. 1, Lampe’s first presupposition. But there is evidence of a presupposition even deeper than that. First, Lampe is assuming and demanding that the travel details of the Pastorals must be fitting into the travel and prison details of the book of Acts.

Since we believe that Paul was released from prison in Acts 28, went on to make other missionary travels, wrote 1 Timothy and Titus then, and then was arrested again and then executed by Nero around 67 AD; then John’s (and our support for this) using Lampe’s historical details to bolster the case for a plurality of elders as the original biblical church government (Acts 14:23; Acts 20:17, 28; Titus 1:5-7; I Peter 5:1-5) is not inconsistent, for the historical details of the plurality of elders vs. the mono-espicopate issues do not depend on rejection of Pauline authorship of the Pastorals.

David Waltz claims that using Lampe for the history of the church in Rome is inconsistent; because Lampe does not believe in inerrancy. However, it seems Lampe’s deeper presupposition than than is specifically that he assumes that the Pastoral epistles must fit into the end of the book of Acts, when Paul is in prison under house arrest for 2 years somewhere from 60-62 AD. We know this because of internal historical markers that are well documented and beyond the scope of this post. Since the information in the Pastorals and Romans 16 does not fit into Acts, and creates a contradiction, Lampe assumes that what follows is that these are real historical contradictions to the text and therefore not inerrant.

But, Lampe does not seem to understand or believe that Paul was released from prison in AD 62; Luke wrote Acts then while Paul was still in prison there, hence the abrupt ending; and went on to further missionary journeys and was arrested again in 67 AD and executed then under Nero.

See several good commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles that discuss these issues:

1. George Knight,The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text. A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary) Eerdmans, 1992.
2. William Hendrickson, Thessalonians, Timothy and Titus, New Testament Commentary. Baker, 1957.
3. J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. Thornapple, Baker, 1963.
4. Donald Guthrie. The Pastoral Epistles. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Inter-varsity, 1957, 1984.
5. Philip Towner. The Letters to Timothy And Titus (New International Commentary on the New Testament, 2006).
6. William D. Mounce — Pastoral Epistles (Word Biblical Commentary, 2000).

They all agree with the conservative traditional scenario that Paul was released from prison after Acts 28, and wrote I Timothy and Titus later and then was arrested again, and wrote 2 Timothy right before his execution by Nero around 67 AD.

Here is a longer quote that David Waltz provided me with from Lampe in some email exchanges: (David also provided this more fuller quote earlier in his arguments against John.)

"The Pastoral letters presuppose Aquila and Prisca still to be in Ephesus (2 Tim. 4:19) while Paul is already in Rome. This is one of the historical inconsistencies found in the Pastorals.

For example, when Paul moved from Ephesus to Macedonia, by no means did Timothy remain behind in Ephesus, as 1 Tim. 1:3 supposes: Acts 19:22; 20:1-4; 2 Cor. 1:1; Rom. 16:21. In 2 Tim. 1:16-18; 4:13, 16ff., 20, the author attempts to place himself in the situation of Acts 28:16-31 and in the previous journey, whose purpose was the collection (Acts 20:2f., 5ff., 15ff.). But at least during the sojourn at Corinth, Timothy is present (Acts 20:4; Rom. 16:21), so that for Timothy, who is the recipient of the letter, the information "Erastus remained in Corinth" in 2 Timothy 4:20 is superfluous. In no way did Trophimus remain "ill at Miletus" (2 Tim. 4:20); rather, he accompanied Paul heartily to Jerusalem (Acts 21:29; 20:4)." (Lampe, From Paul To Valentinus, pp. 158, 159)

To which I responded with embedded comments into Lampe’s quote. My words are in blue.

"The Pastoral letters presuppose Aquila and Prisca still to be in Ephesus (2 Tim. 4:19) while Paul is already in Rome. This is one of the historical inconsistencies found in the Pastorals.
But there is no necessary inconsistency here, on the face of it. Paul is writing from Rome and 2 Timothy is written in 67 AD, much later than Romans in 57 AD, so it is no problem that Aquila and Prisca went back to Ephesus from Rome (Romans 16:3).

For example, when Paul moved from Ephesus to Macedonia, by no means did Timothy remain behind in Ephesus, as 1 Tim. 1:3 supposes: Acts 19:22; 20:1-4; (see? Lampe is trying to fit it into Acts – don’t you see that? That is my main point.) 2 Cor. 1:1; Rom. 16:21. In 2 Tim. 1:16-18; 4:13, 16ff., 20, the author attempts to place himself in the situation of Acts 28:16-31 (see? he is assuming this; and again trying to fit the Pastorals into the Acts Roman imprisonment) and in the previous journey, whose purpose was the collection (Acts 20:2f., 5ff., 15ff.) (again, depending on Acts details) . But at least during the sojourn at Corinth, Timothy is present (Acts 20:4; Again Acts details Rom. 16:21), so that for Timothy, who is the recipient of the letter, the information "Erastus remained in Corinth" in 2 Timothy 4:20 is superfluous. In no way did Trophimus remain "ill at Miletus" (2 Tim. 4:20); rather, he accompanied Paul heartily to Jerusalem (Acts 21:29; 20:4). (see again! ? Attempts to harmonize with the Acts scenario) " (Lampe, From Paul To Valentinus, pp. 158, 159)

David wrote:
“Anyway, one of these days it seems I need to address Lampe's musings, for to date, I am not aware of any solid critique of his bold claims.”

Can’t you see [David !] that these arguments do not have a necessary logical demand that his arguments against the Bible (Pastorals written by Paul in 67 AD; inerrancy, etc.) are the same as against the early post canonical period ( 71 AD – 150 AD ?) of Roman church polity (plurality of elders, mono-episcopacy) ?


So, John’s using Lampe’s historical details of the early church in Rome does not demand that those arguments are inconsistent or being based on other arguments against Pauline authorship of the Pastorals or against the inerrancy of Scripture. It is not inconsistent for Protestants to use Lampe’s historical post-canonical, archeological evidence, but at the same time, reject his rejection of inerrancy and his rejection of Paul as the author of the pastoral epistles.

A form of that 3rd presupposition, is based on the Bible verses of “elders in every church/city” (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5) and the other pertinent passages on the work of elders being “shepherding the flock” and “able to teach”, and “overseeing the flock” (see below), and I Clement, Hermas, and that Ignatius leaves out the bishop in his letter to the Romans; ) and maintain inerrancy and not be inconsistent in using Lampe’s other historical information on the early church. The development from a plurality of elders for each church (Acts 14:23 – very early – for Galatia; and Titus 1:5-7; I Clement, Hermas) to the mono-episcopate (Ignatius and beyond) does not depend on Lampe’s first two presuppositions.

As John Bugay noted in his excellent article,
"This Bridge should be Illuminated" the extended quote from Lampe is mostly based on I Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas, and so does not depend on rejecting Paul as the author of the Pastoral Epistles.

Lampe based his arguments on I Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas. This is, in my opinion, the best of John’s posts in this subject matter, because of the evidence Lampe brings from I Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. I would add that Acts 14:23; Acts 20:17, 28; I Peter 5:1-5, and Titus 1:5-7 all confirm that the Biblical and historical record show that the original church government/polity was a plurality of elders (presbuteroi) for each church.

David Waltz calls Lampe’s belief that he does not believe that Paul wrote the pastoral epistles as his first presupposition. Yet, it seems that the reasons for Lampe’s belief that Paul did not write them is because he assumes that the historical and travel information must fit with the sequence of historical events in the book of Acts.

There is a reason why commentaries are so thick

I expect that very few of the folks who read Beggars All have read or will read all or even most of the exchange between me and David Waltz on the topic of Peter Lampe. There’s just too much detail, and I’m going to provide more here and in what follows. There is no other way to address the charges that David Waltz has been making, than to go into rigorous detail about the things we are talking about.

There is always a right way to go about doing something, and there is a “quick and easy” way to do something. I tried to mention this the other day, and this notion was mocked and dismissed. For example, let’s begin with one example from his recent “rant”:

JB: In any discussion of “church history,” you have to understand, as Turretin says,

Thus this day the Romanists (although they are anything but the true church of Christ) still boast of their having alone the name of church and do not blush to display the standard of that which they oppose. In this manner, hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church, they think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them concerning the various most destructive errors introduced into the heavenly doctrine (Turretin, Vol 3 pg 2).

DW: What has the above quote to do about what the 'early church' believed, and what I have written on this matter—can you spell 'red-herring'?

This is not a “red herring”. This is a description of the method being employed. And David Waltz seems to have learned the method well. What Turretin is saying is that Rome does not – it did not in the time of the Reformation, and it does not do so now – respond directly to charges. They side-step an examination of these charges by claiming “authority”. Turretin then goes on to say that it is the way of the Reformed to patiently work through each doctrine, doctrine by doctrine, and be certain we’re understanding it from Scripture. In that way, we know what is true and what is false “authority”. There are, after all, “most destructive errors [having been] introduced into the heavenly doctrine.”

The arts of our opponents impose upon us the necessity of this disputation that we may distinguish the real face of the church from its counterfeit; nor suffer ourselves to be deceived by those specious and splendid names (destitute of truth) which they are accustomed to repeat with perpetual crowing and great clamor, that they may be considered the sole heirs … (Turretin, vol 3, pg 2).

What’s involved from our side, Turretin says, is “the way of discussion and examination of doctrine.” To be sure, this is “long, uncertain, and dangerous,” and the way of our opponents is “quick and easy,” one might say. But this is the nature of the dispute which our opponents “impose upon us.”

* * *

And so David Waltz has shown up with three “quick and easy” reasons why we should reject the historical analysis of Peter Lampe. And I have dismissed Waltz because not only is his “argument” not an argument, but what he has repeating over these last months is more akin to slur and innuendo. At such times, as recently, when he adds information, he adds very little genuine, substantial information; he merely restates his original charges more slowly; he repeats them in bold and adds color, as a way of providing weight to the non-substance of what he is saying.

His “non-argument” has taken two forms. Here is the earlier form:

Lampe holds that Paul did not write the Pastoral epistles.

Therefore, Peter Lampe is a “Liberal”.

Anyone who adopts the writings of “Liberal” writers is inconsistent.

After it was pointed out (among other things) that Ratzinger, himself once widely acknowledged as “a Liberal”, continues to incorporate liberal methodologies (even as pope) into his biblical theology, then the “argument” changed (knowingly or unknowingly) to something like this, its more recent form:

Peter Lampe holds that Paul did not write the Pastoral epistles.

Holding this is a “liberal presupposition” (of the kind that ALL Liberals have ALWAYS HELD).

This “liberal presupposition” affects the outcome of his work.

Therefore, Lampe’s work is not to be trusted as accurately reflecting the historical situation in the early church.

On this second matter, even if this were true, Waltz gets it wrong. But on both matters, he has equivocated on two important terms, and those terms are “liberal” and “presupposition.”

In all discussions of religion, it is vitally important to define one’s terms up front, and then to remain consistent throughout. Given that this is a blog, and not a scholarly research paper, I may have been lax with definitions. That doesn’t mean that I’ve not been consistent with my own definitions. For example, I’ve written at length about the current state of New Testament scholarship, and I’ve talked about what “conservatives” believe, what “liberals” believe, and how there has been a confluence of method. And further, I’ve noted that this confluence of method enabled both liberals and conservatives to largely (though not completely) agree on the factual content of very many things. To repeat myself on this, there are the things that most scholars, conservative or liberal, have come to accept as historical facts. They may differ a bit on the dates of things – the dating of these things is certainly unknown, but of the events themselves and the general order these events occurred is relatively agreed upon.

This is why every introduction to the New Testament discusses dates of authorship of the New Testament books. Now, keep in mind, there is a great confluence here, too. David Waltz cites James White to me (from memory, not from actual citation, which he is too lazy to go back and find), and tells me I should listen to what James White says about what EVERY liberal believes about the Scriptures.

In the old days, for example, some German liberal scholars believed that the Gospel of John had been written in the late second century. They believed that right up to the time that a fragment from a manuscript of John was found, that dated from the year 125 AD.

You might say, the history and the archaeology forced them into a more “conservative” understanding of the historical facts. This is the nature of the “confluence” I’ve been talking about.

There was a time, too, when the “Pastoral Epistles,” the letters of Paul to Titus, were thought to have been written around 150 AD. But here, too, there is a confluence of understanding (no such early fragment has been found regarding Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus). Yet, as Craig Blomberg reviews Philip Towner’s commentary on these letters, he notes that “Towner rejects the unproven theory of non-Pauline authorship and ably [highlights] the individual distinctive of each letter.”

And again, there is a confluence here; late dating is being squeezed into an earlier and earlier understanding of these letters. New Testament scholars such as Towner and L.T. Johnson (a “liberal” Roman Catholic!) have, in their commentaries, have gone to great lengths to document sound reasons why authentic Pauline authorship should not be rejected, in spite of the fact, as Towner says, “it is not possible to prove the authenticity” of these letters.

However, the difference is minimal between “not proving” and yet “rendering highly probable” that Paul wrote these letters. And in doing so, Towner, especially, goes to great lengths to make the case, including detailed histories of the cities and churches (Ephesus and Crete) to which Timothy and Titus have been dispatched, the destinations to which these letters were addressed, have been found in dispute. We’ve seen David Waltz’s oft-repeated charge:

Lampe’s first presupposition: the Pastorals were not written by Paul, and were composed at a much a later date

The Pastoral letters presuppose Aquila and Prisca still to be in Ephesus (2 Tim 4:19) while Paul is already in Rome. This is one of the historical inconsistencies found in the Pastorals…

For example, when Paul moved from Ephesus to Macedonia, by no means did Timothy remain behind in Ephesus, as 1 Tim 1:3 supposes: Acts 19:22; 20:1-4; 2 Cor 1:1; Rom 16:21…

How did the author come to the mistake regarding Aquila and Prisca?…

Conclusion: In a search for appropriate names to create a literary fiction based in Ephesus, the prominent names of Aquila and Prisca could not miss falling into the hands of the deutero-Pauline author. (Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 2003, pp. 158, 159.)

What’s the context, first, of Lampe’s use of these statements, and second, what's the context of Waltz’s [contextless] contention that these statements, pretty much alone, should form the basis of the rejection of Lampe’s other conclusions?

It will seem mundane at places, and that’s why I’ve avoided going too much into detail. But the details are there, and I am familiar with them, and so I feel comfortable to simply reject Waltz’s charges out-of-hand. But in the same manner that Rome, with its all-encompassing bombast asked for the detailed critique rejecting Roman authority that Turretin provided in his day, that Keith Mathison decided was necessary to provide a detailed rejection of Roman claims in his own defense of his work on Sola Scriptura, David Waltz is, in his simplistic and taunting way, asking for the analysis which I hope [Lord willing] to produce in the coming days.

“Ever seeing but never perceiving...”

In the arcane mind of David Waltz, my most recent post qualifies as a “rant”.

Among my other offenses:

It took John less than 20 hours to type up a response (LINK ) to my March 31st post (LINK). IMHO, John should really think about taking a bit more time digesting and reflecting upon the material that he critiques...

John has failed to give us his definitive definition of the term "liberal" which he has used in a good number of contexts; and second, John described Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as, "a full-blown pantheist", but never really tells us exactly what he means by this (instead, he provides a few quotes out of context, and then gives Michael Horton's highly debatable definition)...

Yet another prime example of John's penchant for double-standards, he isolates Rome’s presuppositions, and asks us to start without these; but then, he refuses to isolate HIS presuppositions, and Dr. Lampe's presuppositions, and start without these...

I’ll say in response to this, other than David having called Lampe a “liberal,” (and having loosely associated him with Harnack), David himself doesn’t state what Lampe’s “presuppositions” are. Assigning “guilt-by-association” is not the same thing as stating what someone’s presupposition is. As I’ve said, he is more than welcome to point these out so that I may then reject them, but no such thing is forthcoming. And I intend to look at David’s actual [and quite fluffy] objections in a forthcoming blog post.

Here is yet another example of where John has failed to give us a definition: exactly what does John mean by the early church?

Um, ok. It is really the New Testament church, and the couple hundred years after that.

Does John realize that a number of the scholars that he cites in his posts believe that it is impossible to speak of 'a church', but rather, that one must speak of 'churches'?

I’ll address this when I speak of “The Bauer Thesis”. Needless to say, I assume an “early orthodoxy,” I’ve written extensively about an “early orthodoxy,” and I’ve assumed that David Waltz also believed that such a thing existed, and so, what’s the dispute? I for one do take the New Testament at its word; I’m a member of a PCA church, whose views of church and Scripture are not hard to find.

That’s to be contrasted, by the way, with David Waltz, who has not, that I am aware of, made a positive articulation of his own faith (contrary to the title of his blog). Since he is going to characterize me, I’ll return the favor. I have seen David around for a long time, and other than that he was born in to a Jehovah’s Witness home, landed in Roman Catholicism for a while, then rejected it, I’d say it’s pretty hard to find a positive statement as to what he actually does believe.

He certainly makes no bones about the fact that he has 15,000 books, and he has a lot of leisure time to read them. But I would suggest, pending the presentation of some evidence to the contrary, that he is a lost soul and this complaint from Paul (echoing God’s complaint about Israel) is very appropriate:

“The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said through Isaiah the prophet:

“‘Go to this people and say,
“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

Instead of sitting back and lobbing bombs – unsubstantiated bombs – why don’t you come out of the shadows and tell us who you are and what you actually believe?

JB: The effort to “understand what they knew and when they knew it” is an effort to exclude all presuppositions about what the early church believed. It is an effort [emphasis supplied] to create a “presupposition-less” understanding of what the early church believed.

DW: I sincerely believe that John is either being grossly naive here, or dishonest with us—it is impossible to approach what the 'early church' believed without presuppositions.

JB: Now, to be sure, nature abhors a vacuum, and trying to create a “presupposition-less” understanding, is to try to create a kind of vacuum.

DW: Finally some sound thoughts John's from pen.

Why did you even bother pulling this out to comment on? It’s not like I’m trying to pull a fast one on anyone.

DW: First, it is certainly not a presupposition-less world that we are dealing with; and second, John has yet to interact with 'conservative' Anglican and Catholic scholars who defend the conception of the 'early church' he cited above.

Again, I didn’t say it was a presupposition-less world; only that I am making the effort to understand that world as it was, without the lens of presuppositions.

Second, Roger Beckwith, whom I’ve cited at length, is a “conservative Anglican scholar” … who defends the conception of the “early church” which I either did, or didn’t, cite above, according to which version of David you believe.

John, have you lost your mind...can you prove to me what you think the 'early church' believed?

Can I prove to you what I think? Probably not.

And perhaps more importantly, do you honestly believe that the Reformed paradigm is devoid of significant development?

That’s no real secret around here.

JB: The thing that I am most trying to do is to provide a positive picture of what the world was like in the days of the early church. Lampe is not the only writer I’ve cited. I’ve been citing from F.F. Bruce and Roger Beckwith - not liberals at all, to be sure - and many others as well. I do this because, when you try to understand what the church, as a whole really believed (in various places and at various times), you first have to understand the world as it existed in those times and places. What it was really like.

DW: You are limiting yourself here; try reading Aland, Barker, Dunn, Hanson, Kümmel, Küng, Segal, and then get back to me.

And you’re the one calling me inconsistent? How, precisely, do the writings of these individuals fit into your paradigm of understanding? Do you inconsistently embrace them? Do you reject them? If so, why? And if you reject them, then why do you care if I have read them or not? Or are you just a name-dropper?

You make it sound as if there are no 'gaps' in the historical record and that a unified theory exists among NT scholars as to the precise nature and theology of the early church/churches...I don't buy it John, I am just too well read on this issue to do so.

Right, right, you know it all. Ever seeing, but never perceiving … and before you call that a smear, why don’t you make a positive articulation of your own faith, so that we can have some idea of what it is that you do know and perceive and believe?

But nobody ever said there was a “unified theory among NT scholars as to the precise nature and theology of the early church”. Of course there are gaps. But what I am on record as having said is that now that conservative scholars like Darrell Bock and Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger are investigating that time period of the late first century and early second century church, I have great hope about the work they will produce on this topic. I’m firmly convinced that as these individuals write more and more about the early church, Protestants will have a very clear picture of precisely why the Reformers were fully justified to reject Rome’s claims of authority.

DW: Once again, false and misleading; I do not, nor have I said, that their work is flawed in exactly the same way; your putting, “Lampe and Von Harnack both believe the Pastorals were not written by Paul. Therefore, their work is flawed in exactly the same way.”, in quotation marks and ascribing it to my pen is dishonest, and misleading. Further, it sure sounds like you are trying to smear Dr. Harnack!!! (Ooops...I forgot, it is OK for you to smear...)

Let me quote your own words back to you: “Enter Dr. Peter Lampe and John Bugay: A careful reading of Dr. Lampe demonstrates that he sides with Dr. Aland and the modern higher critical school [and that would be Von Harnack] in accepting the following presuppositions…” A school into which you lumped both Von Harnack and Aland.

I have gone on record as maintaining that John is being inconsistent, and none of my continuing research into this important issue suggests otherwise.

Right David. I’m sure that your continuing research into this important issue is of eternal value and consequence. “Take my word on it.”

Presuppositions

Since this is going to be such a dry topic, I thought I’d begin with a little bit of humor.




As you watch this video, note that there is some confusion on the part of one of the actors. The tall guy knows something the other guy doesn’t know:

“Who’s on first”
“What’s on second”
“Idunno’s on third”

Bud Abbott, the tall guy, knows that these are the names of the players who are actually playing the field. Costello doesn’t know these are the names, and that’s where the confusion comes in. What’s humorous in this is the equivocation that’s rampant here, but not being reported.

In a way, David Waltz is playing Costello to my Abbott. Except, I’ve always laid all my cards (and definitions) on the table. He said in his most recent post:

John (and others), continues to ignore the fact that presuppositions have serious implications concerning one's assessment of raw data that can legitimately be interpreted in more than one sense, and there is no question in my mind that this is especially true when one attempts to determine the form/type of ministry that Jesus' apostles had intended/instructed to be functioning after their departure into heaven. And further, it is one's view of the Christian ministry which constitutes one of the preeminent factors in determining the very nature of the Church founded by Jesus and His apostles.

David muddles things, and he does so pretty badly. I do not “ignore the fact that presuppositions have serious implications.” There are presuppositions all over the place. Some people try to slip in presuppositions without us knowing it. That’s where these folks find me so frustrating. I isolate Rome’s presuppositions, and I say, “let’s start without these.” That’s the main thing I try to do.

David is not even talking about the right set of presuppositions.

My goal all along, and I’ve stated this many times, is “to understand what [the early church] knew, and when they knew it.” Direct question for David Waltz: Have you ever seen this in any of my blog posts?

The effort to “understand what they knew and when they knew it” is an effort to exclude all presuppositions about what the early church believed. It is an effort to create a “presupposition-less” understanding of what the early church believed. Now, to be sure, nature abhors a vacuum, and trying to create a “presupposition-less” understanding, is to try to create a kind of vacuum.

If the early church truly believed certain things, I want to understand what those were. But if they did not believe things, then to suggest that they did, in any way, would be equally wrong. And as I’ve stated many times, it is necessary to exclude one particular, pernicious modern-day Roman belief as a presupposition of what the early church believed:

God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors.

This is not something that the early church believed. And if you think they did, in this presupposition-less world, it is up to you to show where they believed it.

This statement is a conception of authority that Roman Catholics today believe, and at every occasion, they try to say, “It was this way with the early church, too, they just didn’t know it.” Now, that is the unstated presupposition that Roman Catholics, especially the Called to Communion sort, try to impress upon us. They just simply assume that’s the case.

In any discussion of “church history,” you have to understand, as Turretin says,

Thus this day the Romanists (although they are anything but the true church of Christ) still boast of their having alone the name of church and do not blush to display the standard of that which they oppose. In this manner, hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church, they think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them concerning the various most destructive errors introduced into the heavenly doctrine (Turretin, Vol 3 pg 2).

And what is “the controversy waged against them”? In Turretin’s day, it was the Protestant Reformation. And what did the Reformation say? It said, repeatedly, “Roman authority is not God-given authority.” “Roman authority is not God-given authority.”

I ask them to show where this authority came from; the most that I get in response is a variation of the “authority” quote above. They can’t prove it from the records. Instead, they have to come up with nonsensical explanations such as, “they believed it ‘implicitly,’ they just didn’t know it. It took ‘further reflection’. What did Newman say? “No doctrine is articulated until it is opposed.” That’s just a nonsensical way to look at things, and it did not in any way correspond with the historical facts on the ground.

If you look at the actual historical events, you’ll see raw power struggles and a Roman authority that was determined to assert itself at every turn.

The thing that I am most trying to do is to provide a positive picture of what the world was like in the days of the early church. Lampe is not the only writer I’ve cited. I’ve been citing from F.F. Bruce and Roger Beckwith - not liberals at all, to be sure - and many others as well. I do this because, when you try to understand what the church, as a whole really believed (in various places and at various times), you first have to understand the world as it existed in those times and places. What it was really like.

Lampe is one of those historians who genuinely succeeds in reconstructing that ancient world, its ancient beliefs. To do so, he has done actual historical work – “historical-critical” work. These historians (Bruce and Beckwith and Lampe and others) go to those places, and cite not just religious documents, but all documents – they check the archaeology for what the land structure was like, what the topography was like. Where the rich people lived, where the poor people lived. Where they worshiped. What they worshipped. The kinds of building structures they worshipped in. The kinds of authority structures that were existent in the ancient world. Where these folks died and were buried.

And they create a picture of that ancient world that is more complete, more complex in all of its interactions, than anything else that any writer in the 12th or 15th or 17th or 19th centuries can imagine. They don’t take a video camera back there, but the work that is produced is probably as close as we will come to that ideal.

Into this mix, David Waltz wants to inject the illegitimate method of “smear by association” and suggest that “Lampe’s presuppositions caused him to misunderstand that world.” And in an effort to try to somehow to “prove” this, Waltz, in his most recent post, takes a long selection from the writings of the most well-known of the German liberals, Adolph von Harnack, and says, “Lampe and Von Harnack both believe the Pastorals were not written by Paul. Therefore, their work is flawed in exactly the same way.” Here is his “analysis”:

Enter Dr. Peter Lampe and John Bugay: A careful reading of Dr. Lampe demonstrates that he sides with Dr. Aland and the modern higher critical school in accepting the following presuppositions: first, the Pastorals were not written by Paul, and were composed at a much a later date; second, the original Christian ministry consisted of "charismatic offices"; third the "Catholic" concept of the ministry did not have apostolic warrant, and was an evolutionary development that took place at different times in different geographical areas, with the churches at Rome being one of the last regions to fully endorse the "Catholic" development. John accepts the last of these presuppositions, seemingly ignoring the fact that it is built upon the foundation of the other presuppositions, which John rejects. I have gone on record as maintaining that John is being inconsistent, and none of my continuing research into this important issue suggests otherwise.

“Take my word for it,” he says. This is the sum total of David Waltz’s analysis.

He doesn’t prove that Lampe has these presuppositions. He doesn’t describe how and why these alleged presuppositions exist within Lampe’s work. He doesn’t describe the historical situation and say, “this begins here, that begins there”. David Waltz simply makes some loose assumptions, he declares “guilt by association,” and then he wants to go and take a nap or something.

This is not an analysis. It is a smear tactic. Pure and simple.

If Waltz ever wanted me to take him seriously, he would have dived into Peter Lampe’s work and show, not some kind of implied “guilt-by-association,” but rather, thought-by-thought, how Lampe’s portrayal of historical facts somehow becomes corrupted.

But Waltz does not do that. He is not capable of doing such a thing.

Bud Abbot isolates on the fact that “‘Who’ is the name of the player on first, and ‘What’ is the name of the player on second, and ‘Idunno’ is the name of the player on third,” and in doing so, he is able to keep his story straight, in the face of a confused sidekick who equivocates without even knowing that’s the source of his own confusion.

Best-of-Breed New Testament Scholarship

David Waltz said: NT scholars like Lampe do undermine the NT; if Paul did not write the Pastorals, then the author who did is a boldfaced liar, and if the author of the Pastorals is a boldfaced lair, then the letters are not “God-breathed”, and should not be in the canon. (Further, Lampe contends that there are at least two historical errors in the Pastorals.)

While I'm glad to see that David has adopted this attitude, I do need to take issue with him.

In an earlier paragraph in the same comment, he said:

Further, Robert Lee Williams (a Baptist) in his book, “Bishops Lists” (linked to above), disagrees with Lampe on some crucial historical issues, one of which Lampe is for sure mistaken—i.e. that Irenaeus was the first to persuade “a Roman bishop to curtail tolerance” of the theological diversity in Rome (hope to create a new post soon to document this).

I've looked through that work, briefly, and I would love to see a Baptist take on the issue of "apostolic succession." I would also be interested in seeing a Baptist interact with Lampe.

(I would note that on page 108 your author, Williams, cites Elaine Pagels. Just sayin'.)

But the fact is, Lampe’s work is extremely solid. Both Schreiner and Moo interact with his work on Romans 16 in a favorable way. It was a thorough and effective study, and it is, you might say, "state of the art." It has effectively silenced those critics who may have wanted to say that Romans 16 was not part of the original letter, but rather was appended to it at a later date.

You may think that his belief that Paul did not write the Pastorals somehow leads him to arrive at conclusions that you would not accept, but you cannot possibly say his work is anything less than stellar work. And it's not even as if Lampe has written in any scholarly capacity to argue that the letters of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus were pseudepigraphic works. You are measuring the man’s work by what are almost off-handed comments that he has made.

Again, I cannot stress enough, that the bulk of Lampe’s work is not a “New Testament Criticism,” but it is rather a historical (and sociological) analysis of Rome, largely in the second century.

* * *

As for the issue of pseudonymity, Towner, in the introduction to his commentary, says that pseudonymity as a theory about the writing of these epistles, "can be seen as a solution that sought a middle ground between the earliest critical view -- in which a judgment of non-Pauline authorship meant 'forgery' and at best a reduced authority within the canon -- and the unpalative [in the academy] conservative insistence on authenticity. Existence of pseudonymity in the ancient world is well documented. And studies of the phenomenon in Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures have shown that it was a literary means of drawing on ancient authoritative voices to address current situations, and, most significantly, that the process was accepted and understood by the communities and free from allegations of deception"(20-21).

This is to say that Lampe's view (which represents an incidental mention and not a major writing) is not a radical view, but rather a "middle ground" in the scholarly discussions that go on about these letters.

(For those who are interested, Carson and Moo, citing Lewis Donelson in their Introduction to the New Testament, affirm that there are no instances of the earliest [New Testament era] church of having "accepted a document as religiously and philosophically prescriptive which was known to be forged. I do not know a single example" (pg 342). They go on to say, however, that "we should surely sympathize with the second-century presbyter who composed a 'Pauline' writing 'from love of Paul' and find little difficulty in imagining an earlier example of the same kind of thinking. The difficulty is not the idea of pseudonymity but the lack of evidencethat the New Testament Christians gave any countenance to the idea" (343-44).)

But I do believe that we may look to that period between 100 and 200 as a time when, after the death of the last apostle, that there was a void in the earliest church. There was, as O’Connor said, a time when “the Early Church was so eager for details that within another century it created the full accounts which are found in the apocryphal Acts.” And there is, as you are aware, a long, long list of pseudepigraphic and even forged works from this time. A huge number of these cropped up in support of legends of Peter – this is why Eamon Duffy can say that virtually everything that individuals like Origen, Ambrose and Augustine (and Roger Collins extends this list to Irenaeus and Tertullian) believed about Peter was “pious romance.”

Ken is right – Irenaeus did put forth some nonsense – such as that Jesus lived to be 50, and that Peter and Paul “founded” the church at Rome.

So I have no problem accepting the analysis that Hegesippus “drew up,” or “crafted” (his word, as reported by Eusebius) the list of Roman bishops – using names from that city’s historical memory, to be sure – but that such a list had not been kept from the beginning.

***

Just as an aside, I recall reading that you are from Northern California? Quickly, who are the mayors of San Francisco going back 100 years? (Hegesippus wrote in 166, and so it would have been approximately 100 years-worth of names he’d have had to come up with.) Who are the mayors of your current home town going back 100 years? What were their names – be sure to get them in the correct order – and affix dates to them. If you can’t do it, what would you do? Ask old folks for some of the names they remember. There’s no guarantee that would be a successful effort though. And if you were arguing against heretics, as Hegesippus was, and going back 20 or 30 years, there weren’t actually any “mayors” but maybe just councils or itinerant sheriffs, well, you might be tempted to incorporate those names in the drawing up of those lists. But it doesn’t make for an accurate list.

* * *

It may be possible for you to question Lampe’s analysis of the Hegesippus/Irenaeus lists, but I cannot imagine you can challenge his analysis of episcopoi/presbuteroi -- he relies incredibly heavily on primary sources such as Clement and Hermas and others, and you certainly can’t (easily) challenge his entire fractionation-and-house structure. The “presbyterial style” of government also has deep roots within the New Testament.

The Victor/Irenaeus situation you alluded to somewhere seems highly plausible, especially given that Polycarp had made a similar kind of intervention with Anicetus with regard to the Eastern church in the dating-of-Easter situation.

* * *

The bottom line is that you can’t simply dismiss Lampe’s work because of his “presuppositions” (which you may well be wrong about). The field of New Testament scholarship is just too small of a society – like a small town, in which very many of the players know very many of the other players, and even though a writer may think that Paul didn’t write the Pastorals, other more conservative New Testament scholars (such as Schreiner and Moo) still quote and cite and even rely on their work in other situations. Lampe’s thoughts about 2 Timothy is not dependent on his work regarding Romans. And the reverse is true as well. Each conclusion (by each writer) must be, and is, worked out on its own.

In the world of technology, there are two ways that people create systems. One is to assemble “Best of Breed” networks, whereas others may use something like Microsoft end-to-end. There are certainly better security solutions than a Microsoft security solution. There are just some situations in New Testament (and early church) studies that you want to look for a “best of breed” understanding of things.

The best New Testament scholars I've read don't go around saying, "I reject your work because you're liberal". (Though some used to do that.) No, the proper thing to do -- and the thing that is done -- is to look at each item, point-by-point, and interact with it. That's why these commentaries are so long. Because commentators do go word by word, and verse by verse, and consider all of the options -- what past writers have said, and what current writers are saying, and only then do they suggest what the best interpretive option is, and why.

Lampe's work "From Paul to Valentinus" is a thorough and thoughtful analysis of virtually everything we know about the church in the city of Rome in that era. If some of his presuppositions (which you cannot fully discern) slip out as he is building the sub-points for certain supporting arguments, it shows at worst that he his human. It does not reflect on the overall shape of the work.

David Waltz fails to consider what is being studied, and thus makes a false analogy

David Waltz continues to press his charge of "inconsistency" against me by making this dubious analogy:

William Dever is to Old Testament what Lampe is to – what? What is it that Lampe studies again? David fails to complete the connection. Nevertheless he presses ahead from this posture of unsupported innuendo:

The trilogy of books pictured above from the pen of William G. Dever represents a solid consensus of recent critical scholarship that works under the premise that archeology and secular history must take precedence over Old Testament Biblical historicity. The results undermine much of the Old Testament’s historical and theological witness. Dever, and the consensus of critical OT archeologists and historians, like Lampe (as John pointed out above), “have seemingly examined each and every scrap of paper from that era, each and every inscription, each and every available public record, in order to come to his conclusions”, and his conclusions include: a pre-monarchy group of “Israelites” is a myth; an exodus of a large group “Israelites” out of Egypt to Palestine is a myth; Moses is not an historical figure; monotheism did not exist until after the Babylonian captivity; the pre-monotheistic Yahweh had a wife (and possibly wives—Mormon apologists love this kind of stuff). Once again, this is what happens when a scholar begins with the premise that archeology and secular history must take precedence over Biblical historicity.

This analogy again shows me that David Waltz really isn’t thinking in terms of specific applications here; rather, he is making generalizations (“reliance on archaeology”) without really considering the granular details of what’s being studied. And it’s in his failure to consider the details that his analogy breaks down.

In this post I'll place Dever's work into the context of Old Testament studies, and provide a brief comparison with Lampe's work within the time frame that he studies. And in a future post, I'll deal with some David's other contentions from this and previous posts.

A crash course on contemporary Old Testament studies
Jeffrey Niehaus (Ph.D., Harvard University and Professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), in his Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology, (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2008), notes that “there are three possible sources of parallels between the Old Testament (and the Bible as a whole) and the ancient Near East: The mutual recollection of major events that actually did occur (e.g., Creation, the Flood), the use by biblical writers of literary and legal forms already current in the ancient Near East (e.g., poetic parallelism with its stock word pairs, the second millennium B.C. International treaty/covenant form), and finally, the activity of deceiving, demonic spirits (producing parallels between supposed acts of pagan gods and the acts of God as they appear in the Bible (177).

Niehaus notes the irony that, in our day, theology is often practiced more as an academic discipline than a spiritual one. It is the case that Dever himself admits “I am not even a theist,” clarifying his beliefs: “My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed “stories,” often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information.”

Niehaus puts this posture into perspective:

There are almost always two ways of looking at the data. The first way is to consider them to be part of an ancient Near Eastern worldview. In that case, the biblical authors are just couching things in terms familiar to them from their contemporary thought world. The second way is to consider the parallels as rooted in truth: revealed truth in the Old Testament and the Bible, and distorted truth in the ancient Near East. We prefer the second approach because it is consistent with the claims made by the biblical writers and speakers themselves (177-178).

Thus Waltke can point to the types of “discoveries” and “consensus” that Dever is talking about, and put them into perspective:

The common idea of an evolutionary development of biblical monotheism emerging from within Canaanite religion contradicts the Bible’s own claim for the historical otherness of the true faith, including a monotheism that goes back to the patriarchs. The evolutionary model of the religion of Yahweh in the last decades has found support in recently discovered inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (in northeast Sinai, 800 BC) and from Khirbet el-Qom (near Hebron, 725 BC), which show that Yahweh had Asherah, a Canaanite fertility deity, as his consort. … On this and other evidence, the writings of even some senior scholars in the field reflect a growing consensus that true monotheism emerged only late in Israel’s history, probably in the exile as represented in Isaiah 40-55. … But this inscriptional evidence can better be interpreted to validate the biblical testimony that Israel constantly whored after the Canaanite fertility gods (cf. Deut. 16:21-22). Professors of the history of Israel’s religion who seek to topple the biblical account that Yahwistic monotheism reaches back to patriarchal times and to replace it with an evolutionary model developing from polytheism to monotheism do so with a broken reed of ambiguous textual and artifactual evidence (Waltke, An Old Testament Theology,Grand Rapids: Zondervan (2007).

This is an important distinction. So while both Lampe and Dever may appear similar methodically, to have “have seemingly examined each and every scrap of paper from that era, each and every inscription, each and every available public record, in order to come to his conclusions,” there is a vast difference between the worlds that they are studying, as well as a huge difference in the result of their work.

While Lampe relied on perhaps hundreds of inscriptions and thousands of primary source documents, and thus was able to reconstruct a remarkably complete and multi-faceted picture of the world he was studying, Dever and those like him are forced to work with “ambiguous” evidence and, because of the nature of Old Testament studies, they inevitably use their “evidence” in only one of two categories: that of either validating the Old Testament testimony, in which case their conclusions contradict the one reliable literary source that exists for that era (i.e., the Old Testament), or of coming to an opposite conclusion, which runs clearly counter to the literary testimony (i.e. the Old Testament).

There is another key difference. I’ll pick that up (and others) in another post.

Getting to the Specific Issue

David Waltz wrote:

Do not wish to digress here, but it does remind me a bit of James White’s charge/s leveled against Muslim apologists who quote “liberal”, critical Christian scholars in their debates, whilst James allows himself to use “liberal” and critical Islamic scholars.

That is not the exact charge that Dr. White makes - he is not saying Muslims (or anyone else) cannot quote or use any liberal Christian (or Islamic) scholarship at all, at any time, for any reason; he is saying the specific example of them using liberals/skeptics/agnostics and non- inerrantists ( like Bart Ehrman/Bultmann/Crossan/and even James Dunn, who is not as liberal as the rest) against the text of the NT undermines the Muslims’ whole Islamic religion and the Qur'an, since the Qur'an affirms the Torah, Zobur (Psalms of David) and Injeel (Gospel) of Jesus as revelation from the one true Creator God who is able to speak and inspire books. (Surah 2:136; 5:46-48; 5:68; 10:94; 29:46)

Islam claims it is the third in line of the Monotheistic religions and that the first two (Judaism – in “the law and prophets and Psalms”) and Christianity (Injeel = Gospel) were given truly at that time in a “dispensational” (in stages for each time period) kind of way. Dr. White is saying that their attacks on Scripture undermine Islam as the 3rd religion that "completes all religions", since Islam itself is based on those 2 previous religions and their books.

David, do you see the difference?

For example, we can use Ehrman and Crossan and other liberals/skeptics/agnostics to help affirm the historical reality of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by the Jewish leaders under Pontius Pilate, around 30 AD, because the specific point where they agree with true history, undermines Islam and its denial of true history (denial of Christ's crucifixion - 4:157), and because at the same time, it is powerful even more because those same liberals reject the miracle of the virgin birth of Christ, which Islam accepts. (Qur'an, Surah 3:45-48; 19:19-21) The inconsistency is with Islam and the Qur'an. Since Muslims believe that God is one and is the Almighty Creator and speaks and gives revelation in books, and even names the books of the previous revelations, "the Law", "the Zobur", and "the Gospel", then it is inconsistent for them to use liberal scholars specifically on the text of the Text of the Bible, as their main attack that under girds all of their apologetic method of the doubting of the Biblical text. Furthermore, the Qur'an never says the text of the NT has been corrupted, although that is their theological belief, because the contradictions of the Qur'an force them to come up with that conclusion.

Everyone should be interesting in listening and watching Dr. White's debates against Muslims, and his recent ABN shows ; here on the NT textand here on the crucifixion; and here on the two natures of Jesus part 1; and here on the two natures of Jesus, part 2getting his DVD's and get prepared to witness to Muslims and deal with their questions. www.aomin.org

Given the times we live in today, I hope and pray that those who only enjoy Dr. White dealing with Dave Hunt or Arminianism or Roman Catholicism will see the crucial and strategic importance of equipping the church to deal with Muslims and evangelize them and reach out to them in speaking the truth, love, boldness, gentleness, patience, and respect.

Therefore, John Bugay can use Peter Lampe, and has used him well in his historical research on Rome against the Roman Catholic Claims of the Papacy and authority, even though Lampe may not be an inerrantist on the Scriptures.

Exhortation to David Waltz

To David Waltz -
In response to his being open to Bahai'ism and stating that he is "testing the spirits", and "checking the fruits", etc. to see if it is true, etc.

"open to the possibility that "Bahai'ism is true" here;

"testing the spirits" and "checking the fruits" (posted by John at 3:58pm)

David -
How can you "test the spirits" (as if it might be true) of something that is non-Christian from the get-go, (and by nature says that Islam was a further development of Christianity - which is impossible and contradictory) since you just said you believed in the Deity of Christ - doesn't make sense at all!

If you have the Spirit of Christ, you can immediately tell that Bahai'ism is a non-Christian religion and a false system and evil (1 Cor. 2:10-16) and it's desire for unity/peace and its message of universalism/Unitarianism is similar to the ungodly desire for unity at the expense of truth at the Tower of Babel - Genesis 11.

If you know Christ as the only way, the only mediator, Savior, and Lord, (and that necessitates the doctrine of the Trinity and the revelation of Christ and His work in the NT being the "final word" = Hebrews 1:1-3; also Jude 3); why would you want to be "open" to anything else?

Someone who knows Christ truly does not seek anything else. Jesus Christ is the treasure and the goal and the truth and the joy! How can you be hungry or thirsty for something else?

There is nothing to add to Christ.

And also Bahai'ism not only "adds", but has to completely re-interpret everything of the Bible and sound Christian doctrine.

Christ is enough; He is the satisfaction - John 7:37-39

John 4:14
If you have truly drunk the water that Christ gives; you would not thirst for something else - Sola Christus!

"whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst"

The one who has truly drank from Christ, will "Never thirst" again for something else!

John 6:35 (New American Standard Bible)

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst."

Have you ever considered that you could be falling into the trap described by 2 Timothy 3:7 - "always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth?"

Aquila and Priscilla, itinerants

Down below, David Waltz presented me with a "contradiction" that, well, let me give him the stage:

Me: First, once again, I have not charged you with “intellectual dishonesty”. Second, I would like to present some of Lampe’s positions which I suspect you (as well as K&K) [Kostenberger & Kruger] would not agree with—which, as you probably know, come via the same methods that Lampe uses to arrive at his historical assessments (e.g. form criticism, redaction criticism, et al.). I shall begin with the following from Lampe’s pen:



“The Pastoral letters presuppose Aquila and Prisca still to be in Ephesus (2 Tim 4:19) while Paul is already in Rome. This is one of the historical inconsistencies found in the Pastorals. 



For example, when Paul moved from Ephesus to Macedonia, by no means did Timothy remain behind in Ephesus, as 1 Tim 1:3 supposes: Acts 19:22; 20:1-4; 2 Cor 1:1; Rom 16:21…



How did the author come to the mistake regarding Aquila and Prisca?>> (Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 2003, pp. 158, 159.)



Now, do you believe that “the deutero-Pauline author” (Lampe’s words/take, not mine) of 1 Timothy made a “mistake regarding Aquila and Prisca”? DO YOU DISAGREE WITH LAMPE?

The issue here seems to be that Lampe doesn't accept that 2 Timothy was actually written by Paul. I don't happen to agree with this particular assessment, but I'm not going to discount all the rest of Lampe's work because of it. As I noted below, Carson and Moo give plenty of good reasons why they do think that Paul wrote all 13 letters attributed to him.

As well, I'm a guy who marks up his books. And I have a sticky-note at this very point with the note "Check references to Paul's travels. A few things on this.

In the first place, Aquila and Priscilla's travels (or non-travels) are not a matter of faith. It well could be that they were precisely where Paul, writer of the Pastorals, said they were.

Second, if Kostenberger and Kruger are in the least bit concerned about it, they are New Testament scholars, and they definitely have the means to check out something like that.

Third, I've checked Towner ("Letters to Timothy and Titus", Grand Rapids, Eerdmans); he outlines their travels through Paul's letters, and he does not even seem to be aware of the problem. After noting that they had "at some point migrated (apparently) from [Asia Minor] to Rome," he notes:

Subsequently, at the time when Claudius had expelled all the jews from the imperial city (Acts 18:2), they came to Corinth. They also appear in Paul's letters (Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19). When Paul was en route back to Syria/Antioch, they all stopped off at Ephesus, where Aquila and Priscilla were left (1 Cor 16:19) and Paul began to preach (Acts 18:26). B the time Paul wrote Romans, the couple had returned to Rome (Rom 16:3). Yet at the time of this writing they had apparently returned to Asia Minor, probably in the vicinity of Ephesus (650-651).

It could be that Aquila and Priscilla, like Paul, became itinerant missionaries, and they could well have settled back in Ephesus where they seem to have started.

So if this is the most significant point of contention that you have found (it is first -- do you lead off with your biggest and best?) -- then what else is there?

Um, really? (But let us pray.)

As sometimes happens, a discussion over a relatively minor matter was (most probably accidentally) expanded into a larger concern through a frank admission.

First of all, our co-blogger Ken let us know that:

David Waltz has not returned to Rome - but he is open to Bahai'ism -
see our discussion here at his website- especially in the comboxes.

http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/07/seal-of-prophets-is-there.html

"Me: Yes, I remain open to the possibility that the Bahai Faith is true. . . . "

I actually missed that the first time around.  But it gets better.

David Waltz also said in a comment that Blogger apparently ate (since Blogger has been eating comments left and right today, unfortunately mostly to David's detriment): 

you and Rhology are ‘allowed’ a number of worldview and/or ecclesiastical changes in your respective journeys without the worry of derogatory comments being cast your way, but I, who have made fewer changes than either you or Rho, must constantly defend my spiritual journey

Me: 

Um, unthinking heathen -> atheist -> Christian is not very many changes. 1.5 or so. 

He continued:

If I apply your understanding of “change” I have made NONE—I am, and always have been, a Christian.

Me:  

1) No, you haven't always been. You were born an enemy of God.
2) You were once a Jehovah's Witness. Um, that's not Christian.
3) You were once a Roman Catholic. Not Christian either.
4) I have no idea whether you hold to the biblical Gospel, but my educated guess is that you do not.

So no, I'm sorry; your statement is false.

David: 

If JWs are not Christian, what are they? Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim…

So, in reality, though I had begun by thinking this was a relatively minor issue, it is of a much greater concern to all of us, for David, than I had originally thought.  While defending himself from the occasional questioning regarding his spiritual journey and instability, he has honestly and openly called Jehovah's Witness a Christian religion, and it has been revealed that he thinks Baha'i is a live option in the marketplace of ideas.  Let us indeed pray for David Waltz. 

The most fundamentally honest approach that I can imagine

Has anyone here read D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo's "Introduction to the New Testament"? New Testament scholarship has been, over the last 200 years, one of the most hotly contested areas that one can imagine. And yet, it is hard to imagine that there is a New Testament scholar whose work that Carson and Moo have not interacted with.

Who among us would accept the work of F.C. Baur, or Rudolph Bultmann in its totality? And yet, who would not say that their work had a major effect on the study (and our knowledge) of the New Testament?

There are four letters written by Paul that absolutely no one (who is a serious New Testament scholar) would contest. The most unfriendly kinds of critical scholars that we can imagine hold that, of Paul's letters, at a very minimum, Romans, Galatians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians are absolutely, unquestionably written by Paul. To one degree or another, others argue that some or all the rest are pseudepigraphical; usually they argue that they were written by someone in Paul's circle of disciples, in his name.

Yet a scholar like Thomas Schreiner (and with him, Carson and Moo) can not only say that they hold all 13 Pauline epistles as authentic (and the works of 1 and 2 Peter to be authentic as well, for example), they are able to say precisely what the theories are of the scholars who disagree with them, and in the process of stating these other theories as clearly as they can, they also argue strenuously for their own (conservative) positions.

This is the most intellectually honest approach that I can imagine, and it's one that I try to emulate. And as a result of their work, and contra someone like Mark Noll, it's possible to say that conservative, evangelical biblical scholarship is more well-respected in critical circles than it has ever been.

* * *

David Waltz stopped by last night to accuse me of intellectual inconsistency. It's funny, he's always so cheerful with me, who would have guessed that he harbored such doubts?

He said: I still cannot help but suspect that his anti-Roman Catholic bias has some negative ramifications on his research and beliefs.

David, you have got this precisely backwards.

I do not hide the fact that I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. I came out of that organization and religion after a long personal struggle, one that has occupied most of my life.

Briefly, I grew up as "a good Catholic boy" from the ethnic neighborhoods of Pittsburgh; I heard the Gospel® as a young man, and saw it lived out in the lives of some friends -- one good friend from my closest circle was a Baptist, (and yes, we argued religion), and others were from more Charismatic circles. I admired them for their adherence to their faith. I moved around back then (late 70's, early 80's) -- and I moved from Charismatic Catholic circles to Protestant Charismatics, and several years later I landed in a Reformed Baptist church with a pastor who has become a lifelong friend.

Some time later, other friends were starting up a fellowship for "completed Jews," Jewish believers who wished to express that Jesus was their messiah. Don't you know, that fellowship had some serious difficulties determining who was in charge -- who would set the theological theme for that body: the pastor, who had studied at a very fine southern seminary (and whom they brought in just because of that fact), or the church council, among them major donors, in whose homes the fellowship began, and whose large donations helped to secure the mortgage on the building that they purchased.

It was about that time that I went back to the Roman Catholic church, on the ground that "such disputes had been fought and settled in the early church."

I don't mind to say that I was naive at that time. At that time I was devoted enough to have thought I wanted to study to become a priest. Over a several-year period of time, I considered both the diocesan and the religious priesthood -- and at one point I had applied for and was accepted into a local seminary program. Some time later, I married. My wife and I have six children. I attended Opus Dei "Evenings of Recollection" for about two years.

In my lifetime, I have earned the right to have a "bias" against the Roman Catholic Church. My "beliefs" have been shaped by a willingness to give the Roman church far, far more benefit of the doubt than it ever deserved. My "beliefs," far from being shaped by a bias, were forged in the process of having wholly abandoned myself and my life and my family's life into the bosom of "Mother Church," the much vaunted authority of which, the further in I got, seemed to be further and further contrived.

I won't go into details about the Seminarian friend (St. Mary's, Baltimore) who was a daily communicant at the same time I was, whose masses I attended after he was ordained, who put the homosexual moves on me. Nor will I go into details about the parish priest who married my wife and me, who baptized our children, who playfully licked my three-year-old son's face (pretending to be a puppy). I won't go into the details of how he was one of the "pedophile priests" who was at first moved, and only later de-frocked. There are some horrific details that go along with his name, and I could give you his name and you could Google him and find the news stories about him. (And in fact I have sent his name and some links to my friends and fellow bloggers here for corroboration).

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But such issues genuinely are peripheral to the issue at hand. As James Swan often says, if you're going to tell a story, tell the story of Christ -- the Gospels of Jesus, and Paul's Gospel, and Peter's Gospel, and the truthfulness and the trustworthiness and the authority of Scripture.

As for my "research," I read everything that's available that I can get my hands on. I'm a 50-year-old man with a wife and a family -- and some of the folks here know some of the difficulties that my family has been through in recent years. I don't have access to a seminary library, and with it, the research journals that might put a finer and more current touch on some of what I've been reading. I am not a scholar, though I would like to be one. Still, that does not mean I am not taking the most fundamentally honest approach that I can take.

But there is nothing I'm writing, that I am aware of, that is being intellectually dishonest with the materials. If anything, what I am finding is that there is a flood-tide of scholarship that is coming to "anti-Catholic" conclusions -- including the work of such Catholic writers as Raymond Brown, Eamon Duffy, Robert Eno, Francis Sullivan, Klaus Schatz, and others.

One might go so far as to suggest that David Waltz does not understand what it is that he is reading -- the particular conclusions that make a scholar liberal or conservative, or how they arrive at those conclusions. What might be agreed with or disagreed with, and on what basis.

The name Raymond Brown comes up among some of the more traditionalist and devoted Catholic folks, as if Brown was somehow a traitor. But I have (briefly) studied Greek under an individual who knew Brown personally. Raymond Brown was, in my opinion, one of the best friends that some of these conservative Catholics could have. They don't know it, but Brown's method was (a) to study the critical sources and know them the best that he could, while (b) not moving beyond what positions that "the Magisterium" had staked out. In doing this, he was one individual (among others) who prevented Roman Catholicism in its traditional form from sliding completely into the hole that the ultramontanist, ultra-anti-modernist popes dug with their defiant cries of "I AM Tradition" and their anti-modernist oaths. Without scholars like Raymond Brown, the Roman hierarchy would have died the death of a complete laughingstock, drunk on its own imagined sense of authority.

And I'll give you an example of it. Near the end of the Brown/Meier work "Antioch and Rome", Brown was worried that his conclusions would be dismissed because he was too Roman Catholic.

"On both sides many scholars oversimplify the historical situation, agreeing only that for better or worse I Clement had remarkable success in shaping future church thought.

The discussion is not facilitated by the fact that the underlying motif is often a conflicting view of church organization today. The battle offer the unimpassioned pages of I Clement is often a surrogate for a battle between the impassioned descendants of the Reformers and of Trent; and since I am a Roman Catholic, I rather doubt I shall be judged objective about the issue. (pg 177, emphasis in original).

David Waltz said: For instance, John eagerly endorses the critical German scholar Lampe concerning the status of the Roman church/s during the 1st and 2nd centuries, and then thoroughly recommends Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger's The Heresy of Orthodoxy which is at odds with some important conclusions of Lampe.

David, I would like for you to show me where you think I might disagree with Lampe, or where you think Kostenberger and Kruger might disagree with him. Perhaps you're willing to tell me just how the work of these individuals is at odds and then we can discuss the specifics of it, and only then you can genuinely begin to charge me with intellectual dishonesty. Or not.

But I'll do you one better. Kostenberger and Kruger approvingly can cite Baukham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," even though Kostenberger also wrote a substantial (and substantially critical) article taking issue with Baukham's conclusion that someone other than the Apostle John wrote the Gospel of John.

Such a disagreement neither negates the validity of the rest of Baukham's highly significant work, nor does it make Kostenberger somehow "intellectually dishonest" for both (a) citing Baukham while (b) disagreeing with some of his conclusions. Kostenberger has shown that he is well prepared to talk about where he agrees and where he disagrees with Baukham, and he is well prepared to say exactly why. It is the very same method used by Carson, Moo, and Schreiner that I've alluded to in the opening section of this post.

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David Waltz: the fact that John, James White, and many other epologists are willing to solicit liberal, critical scholarship ONLY when it furthers their aggenda/s, whilst denying the same method to their opponents, is an all too common practice—that you do not discern commonality and/or inconsistency here is a bit troubling...

I've mentioned just recently that there is a confluence in the work of some of these scholars, and I'll give you one more such example, a blatant one at that:

http://reformation500.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/a-positive-view-of-christian-foundations/

Harvey Cox, who no conservative Christian would consider an ally, recently summarized the work of the Jesus Seminar: while setting out to disprove much about history, in the process they proved he was a first century Palestinian Jew who claimed to be God and who was crucified under Pontius Pilate; his disciples fanned out to the world with the story that he was raised from the dead. Cox said:

“Despite widespread discrepancies among the researchers, some things were not contested. All agreed that Jesus really had existed, and that he was a first-century Palestinian Jew living under the heel of a Roman occupation that – like many such occupations before and since – had split its captive people into feuding sects and warring factions. They also agreed that he was a rabbi who taught the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, and gained a following as a teacher and a healer in Galilee, especially among the landless and destitute, but that he aroused the ire of the nervous ruling religious circles and the tense Roman authorities. When he and some of his followers arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover holidays he caused a stir in the Temple, was arrested, interrogated, and executed by crucifixion, a form of death by torture reserved by the Romans for those suspected of subverting their imperial rule. But after his death, his followers insisted that he had appeared to them alive, and they continued to spread his message even in the face of harsh persecution.” (Harvey Cox, “When Jesus Came to Harvard,” ©2004, pgs 18-19).

Even “critical scholarship” is confirming the facts of the life and death of Jesus Christ. We have come a long way since the days when the someone like Bertrand Russell could say that Jesus didn’t even exist.

So yes, I've not failed to cite this aspect of Cox, a thoroughly liberal thinker -- but I am not the one straying into the liberal camp here. Rather, it is Cox who has been forced, by the facts and evidence, to admit such things that the vast majority of his liberal fellows can only cringe at.

This is a Harvey Cox conclusion that we can agree with. But we also know precisely where we would disagree with him. Such is the nature of the confluence of conservative and critical scholarship. And guess what? No one is being intellectually dishonest here.

David Waltz on Scripture and Tradition, and Richard Bauckham

David Waltz on Scripture and Tradition:

"Once again, Scripture is CLEAR, but only for those who have embraced the true regula fidei. This was THE view of the majority of the early Church Fathers, and has been recognized as such by a consensus of patristic scholars; the following are but a few selections from this overwhelming consensus."

Here's a citation he used for support:

The ‘ancillary view’ is Lane’s term for the sixteenth-century Protestant view, in which tradition functions as an aid, but not a norm, for the interpretation of Scripture… In spite of claims to the contrary, the Reformers did not return to the ‘coincidence view’…The Reformation posited a degree of discontinuity in church history… (Richard Bauckham, “Tradition In Relation To Scripture and Reason”, in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, ed. Drewery & Bauckham, p. 122.)

So, this quote from Bauckham is used as scholarly evidence that the Reformers posited a "discontinuity in church history" because they rejected the established God-given relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Since the Reformers rejected this, they therefore rejected the true regula fidei. The true regula fidei embraces the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Compare this citation to how it reads in context:

Richard Bauckham:

The ‘ancillary view’ is Lane’s term for the sixteenth-century Protestant view, in which tradition functions as an aid, but not a norm, for the interpretation of Scripture. The Reformation principle of sola scriptura was not primarily directed against tradition, but against the teaching of the contemporary church. But it was therefore a rejection of those understandings of the role of tradition which served to justify the teaching of the contemporary church as apostolic and to permit no appeal to Scripture against it. In other words, it was a rejection of both the ‘coincidence’ and the ‘supplementary’ views. In spite of claims to the contrary, the Reformers did not return to the ‘coincidence view’, and could not do so, because that view depends on the harmony and continuity of the contemporary church’s teaching with both Scripture and tradition. Once the contemporary church’s teaching is judged to be unscriptural and therefore dependent on corrupt tradition, it is no longer possible to identify true tradition in the way that the ‘coincidence view’ requires, by means of the Vincentian canon. True tradition can now be distinguished from corrupt tradition only by testing all tradition according to the standard of its faithfulness to Scripture. Scripture inevitably becomes the norm for the identification of true tradition, rather than tradition the norm for the interpretation of Scripture. The Reformation posited a degree of discontinuity in church history—the possibility and the fact of serious and long continued doctrinal error by the authorities of the church—which necessarily deprived tradition of the normative status it had in both the ‘coincidence’ and the ‘supplementary’ views. If Scripture can be pitted against tradition to reveal its corruption, then Scripture must be not only materially (as in the ‘coincidence’ view) but also formally sufficient.

The great respect which the Reformers had for the Fathers, and especially for the creeds and the councils of the early church, does not contradict this belief in the formal sufficiency of Scripture. Certainly they could appeal to the true tradition of the early church against the corrupt tradition of the medieval period, but in a way which ultimately presupposes the independent authority of Scripture. Only by judging tradition according to the standard of Scripture could they evaluate the first five or six centuries as relatively pure and the succeeding centuries as progressively corrupt. No other principle (such as the notion of an undivided church) made the tradition of the patristic period especially authoritative, since, as article 21 of the Church of England’s 39 states, even general councils ‘may err, and sometimes have erred.’

See Richard Bauckham’s chapter, Tradition In Relation To Scripture and Reason,” in Benjamin Drewery and Richard J. Bauckham, eds., Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, A Study in the Criteria of Christian Doctrine, Essays in Honour of Richard P. C. Hanson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), pp. 122-123.

Bauckham isn't making the point David said he did. In the citation from Waltz, the Reformers are caricatured as departing from the universal established truth concerning Scripture and Tradition. Perhaps Waltz saw this because of his previous Romanist worldview.

In context though, Bauckham says:

"The Reformation principle of sola scriptura was not primarily directed against tradition, but against the teaching of the contemporary church. But it was therefore a rejection of those understandings of the role of tradition which served to justify the teaching of the contemporary church as apostolic and to permit no appeal to Scripture against it."

The Reformers rejected "both the ‘coincidence’ and the ‘supplementary’ views" of Tradition.

He then states "The Reformation posited a degree of discontinuity in church history" because:

"the possibility and the fact of serious and long continued doctrinal error by the authorities of the church—which necessarily deprived tradition of the normative status it had in both the ‘coincidence’ and the ‘supplementary’ views. If Scripture can be pitted against tradition to reveal its corruption, then Scripture must be not only materially (as in the ‘coincidence’ view) but also formally sufficient."

And then finally:

"The great respect which the Reformers had for the Fathers, and especially for the creeds and the councils of the early church, does not contradict this belief in the formal sufficiency of Scripture. Certainly they could appeal to the true tradition of the early church against the corrupt tradition of the medieval period, but in a way which ultimately presupposes the independent authority of Scripture. Only by judging tradition according to the standard of Scripture could they evaluate the first five or six centuries as relatively pure and the succeeding centuries as progressively corrupt."

Since the citation Waltz used is from an older post, the question becomes, what is now the true regula fidei for Mr. Waltz? Now that he's abandoned Romanism, perhaps a re-reading of some of his older blog entries is in order.

"True tradition can now be distinguished from corrupt tradition only by testing all tradition according to the standard of its faithfulness to Scripture."