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.

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.

Ratzinger’s self-admitted reliance on the “Liberal” “historical-critical” method of Biblical interpretation, Part 2

For J. Gresham Machen, a professor of New Testament at Princeton during the first part of the 20th century, “The Bible is primarily a record of events”.

The Bible contains a record of something that happened. What that something is is told us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Jesus of Nazareth was not a product of the world, but a Savior come from outside the world. His birth was a mystery. His life was a life of perfect purity, of awful righteousness, and of gracious, sovereign power. His death was no mere holy martyrdom, but a sacrifice for the sins of the world. His resurrection was not an aspiration in the hearts of his disciples, but a mighty act of God. He is alive, and present at this hour to help us if we will turn to him. He is more than one of the sons of men; he is in mysterious union with the eternal God.” (“History and Faith,” first published in the “Princeton Theological Review 13” (1915), pgs 337-351, and cited here in D.G. Hart, “J. Gresham Machen, Selected Shorter Writings”, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, ©2004)

I just wanted to keep that in mind as we move forward. In my last post, I showed, in Pope Ratzinger’s own words, that not only his own “exegetical” method, but that of Roman Catholic exegesis in general, relied heavily on the liberal “historical critical” method of Biblical interpretation.

It’s true that as Ratzinger said, “the debate about method has moved on, both inside and outside the Catholic Church.” I have previously shown precisely how this “debate” has moved on, in the form of a confluence of methods which enabled modern conservative Evangelical exegetes to retain:

Ladd’s commitment to the historical study of the New Testament, [which emphasizes] an openness to its theological truth. He sees his task as fundamentally a descriptive one, focusing on what the text “meant.” But since he accepts the Bible as the record of the acts of God for the redemption of the world, he therefore accepts the normative character of the New Testament witness and its ongoing relevance for humanity today, i.e., the importance of what it “means.” Ladd thus refuses to regard New Testament theology as merely the history of early Christian experience. Ladd employs the historical-critical method, but in a modified form that allows him to remain open to the possibility of the transcendent and thus enables him to do justice to the content of the materials being studied

Consider the definite nature of the language in this paragraph above: the Bible is “the record of the acts of God for the redemption of the world,” and the “normative character of the New Testament witness”.

Now consider the conditional, almost shadowy way that Ratzinger, however, must characterize his own method in what follows:

I would like to sketch at least the broad outlines of the methodology, drawn from these documents [linked at the end of my last post], that has guided me in writing this book. The first point is that the historical critical method—specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith-is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work. For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths, but is based on history, history that took place here on earth. The factum historicum (historical fact) is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, but the foundation on which it stands: Et incarnates est—when we say these words, we acknowledge God’s actual entry into real history.

Look at how Ratzinger weasels his way through a message that he wants to sound like what Machen said above, but there are many hedges.

So for Ratzinger, the Bible is not “a record of historical events,” as Machen said. It only about historical events. At this point, we are one step removed from Machen. But Ratzinger posits something further.

If we push this history aside, Christian faith as such disappears and is recast as some other religion. So if history, if facticity in this sense, is an essential dimension of the Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method—indeed, faith itself demands this. I have already mentioned the conciliar Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum); it makes the same point quite explicitly in paragraph 12 and goes on to list some concrete elements of method that have to be kept in mind when interpreting Scripture. The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document on the interpretation of Holy Scripture develops the same idea much more amply in the chapter entitled “Methods and Approaches for Interpretation.”

The historical-critical method—let me repeat—is an indispensable tool, given the structure of the Christian faith. But we need to add two points. This method is a fundamental dimension of exegesis, but it does not exhaust the interpretive task for someone who sees the biblical writings as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God. We will have to return to this point at greater length in a moment.

For the time being, it is important—and this is a second point—to recognize the limits of the historical-critical method itself. For someone who considers himself directly addressed by the Bible today, the method’s first limit is that by its very nature it has to leave the biblical word in the past. It is a historical method, and that means that it investigates the then-current context of events in which the texts originated. It attempts to identify and to understand the past—as it was in itself—with the greatest possible precision, in order then to find out what the author could have said and intended to say in the context of the mentality and events of the time. To the extent that it remains true to itself, the historical method not only has to investigate the biblical word as a thing of the past, but also has to let it remain in the past. It can glimpse points of contact with the present and it can try to apply the biblical word to the present; the one thing it cannot do is make it into something present today—that would be overstepping its bounds. Its very precision in interpreting the reality of the past is both its strength and its limit.

Here, it’s important to call your attention to another distinction. For Ladd, “He sees his task as fundamentally a descriptive one, focusing on what the text “meant.” [And this is consistent with the historical-critical method, as Ratzinger described it here.] But since [Ladd] accepts the Bible as the record of the acts of God for the redemption of the world, he therefore accepts the normative character of the New Testament witness and its ongoing relevance for humanity today, i.e., the importance of what it “means” today.

On the other hand, Ratzinger denies that the text, in its historical context means anything for us today. He very clearly separates “what the text meant” from “what the text means.”

* * *
Just to step aside for a second, I want to bring up some comments that Nick has been making; most recently, Nick has been making comments on this topic that show that he really has not got the foggiest interaction with what real “biblical scholarship” entails, and he shows his total unfamiliarity with this world in some comments he’s made:

The sad truth of the last few decades is that "scholars" of the liberal and historical-critical camp generate lots of endorsements because they're part of a ring of elites in academia and publishing. (It's a fallacy to think that because someone is a scholar that they're automatically right or should be given consideration.) If someone like Lampe denies the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals and even says they contain blatant historical errors, then he's not a "conservative." He could be right in other departments or with other arguments, but that's case by case, and doesn't change the fact a rejection of Biblical inerrancy can never place a person in the "conservative" category.

From a Scriptural point of view, I don't see how I can trust someone who already admits the historical events in some parts of Scripture are wrong, because that just raises the question: how do you know these other historical events are right?

Note how Nick’s disavowal of “the liberal and historical-critical camp” is totally at odds with what Ratzinger has been saying in this introduction. He’s correct, to point out that we need to check things on a “case by case” basis. And as I’ve said, it is instructive to see just how little Lampe refers to the Scriptures in his primary work on the Church at Rome; rather, as I’ve said, his work is a vast compendium of all the primary sources that can be gleaned from that period.

Nick also said:

At most your argument would amount to saying B16 is operating from a liberal MO.

But isn’t this bad enough? We’ve established that Ratzinger is “liberal”. But not only that, but he, personally, and the whole Roman Catholic Church has adopted “the historical critical method.” Nick also said:

What's probably the most astonishing about all this is that I'm the one championing total Biblical inerrancy and inspiration as a non-negotiable for good, conservative Biblical exposition...while John has to take a more low-key approach to save face for his buddy Lampe (in order to keep him 'credible' enough to bash Catholics).

Nick is making a category error here. He really has no idea what “inerrancy” is, he seems just to like saying the word. Lampe is incredibly credible, apart from any efforts of my own. His influence will continue. Nick’s disjointed statements here, however, provide yet another example of what Matthew Schultz has been saying for a long time. There is no value engaging with the opinions of individuals such as Nick.

And one more thing. Nobody is “bashing” Catholics. The Roman Church has largely re-calibrated its emphasis on the papacy over the last 50 years. No one can deny that. I’ve had Roman Catholics tell me that this is just plain out of the goodness of their hearts, out of a desire for “ecumenism”.

Instead, for a thousand years, the papacy has been like Leo DiCaprio in “Titanic” – standing on the bow of the ship, arms extended, proclaiming “I’m the King of the World!”

It is the papacy that has bashed the church of Christ. The papacy is as grotesque a distortion of Christianity as I can imagine; and given that such a posture was purchased at the cost of the forgeries and lies that went into it, the schism with the Greek speaking church, the abused trust of those who may have been good people who followed that wolf in sheep’s clothing; the briberies, the wars, the mass murders to achieve such domination.

It’s no small thing to unearth the historical details of how such a misshapen monster came to be.

Peter Lampe, George Eldon Ladd, History, and New Testament Interpretation

J. Gresham Machen said, “The student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian. The center and core of all the Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into an historical framework and leads up to an historical climax. The Bible is primarily a record of events.”*

Down below, there’s some sniping about what constitutes liberal biblical interpretation, and what constitutes conservative biblical interpretation.

Maybe in the 1960’s, there was a clear delineation, but, and I’ve written about this in the past (see here and here for example), but not only is there a confluence of method—the historical analysis is largely the same; the difference is now whether one accepts the supernatural in-breaking by God into history or not—but the evangelical conservatives are winning.

In 1974, a New Testament Theologian named George Eldon Ladd wrote a work, “A Theology of the New Testament”, which has become not only a standard textbook for conservative New Testament studies, but it showed the way for a whole generation of evangelical New Testament scholars, who are producing marvelous work these days. (Just look at all of the exceptional commentaries that are available today; I don’t know their genesis, but I wouldn’t be surprised if much of this work was done in the shadow of Ladd’s ground-breaking study.)

Of course, during the first half of the 20th century, there was a mushrooming of “higher critical” study, the hallmark of which involved a denial of the supernatural elements in the Scriptures – names like F.C. Baur (who introduced Hegelian dialectical method into the study of the NT), Albert Schweitzer (“Quest of the Historical Jesus”, 1906) and Rudolf Bultmann, who separated “the historical Jesus” and “the Christ of faith” almost into two different subjects. Methods such as “form criticism” and “redactional criticism” came to the fore.

Conservative “Fundamentalist” scholars rightly recoiled from this anti-supernaturalist type of thinking, and they moved in the direction of Geerhardus Vos’s “Biblical Theology.” But in the process, they also noticed something else. There were some valuable elements in the methods that the “higher-critical” scholars—the Liberals—were using.

Oscar Cullmann used the term Heilsgeschicte (“history of salvation”) and the Dutch theologian Herman Ridderbos became known for a similar approach, “Redemptive History”.

In 1993, Ladd’s work was updated and re-issued with some new material, including a long introductory essay by Donald Hagner (who wrote the two-volume commentary on Matthew for the Word Biblical Commentary series). Hagner describes Ladd’s approach in the context of an Old Testament theologian who had basically adopted the same approach:

Gerhard Hasel’s 1972 work OT Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate, insisted that “there is ‘a transcendent or divine dimension in Biblical history which the historical-critical method is unable to deal with.’ Biblical theology must be done from a starting point that is biblical-historical in orientation. Only this approach can deal adequately with the reality of God and his inbreaking into history.

I’ll pick up from that essay here:

Large-scale New Testament theologies continue to come from German scholars. That of L. Goppelt appeared posthumously in 1974 and became available in a two-volume English translation in 1981 and 1982. Ladd’s and Goppelt’s theologies, though completely independent of each other, share basically the same perspective, namely that of salvation history, and the similarity of approach shows that Ladd’s theology still has reason to be considered viable….

Thus it does not seem that Ladd’s theology, although approaching twenty years old, should at all be thought of as outmoded or passé. Indeed, in its basic orientation, Ladd continues to remain appealing. The reason for this is very simply Ladd’s commitment to the historical study of the New Testament, but with an openness to its theological truth. He sees his task as fundamentally a descriptive one, focusing on what the text “meant.” But since he accepts the Bible as the record of the acts of God for the redemption of the world, he therefore accepts the normative character of the New Testament witness and its ongoing relevance for humanity today, i.e., the importance of what it “means.” Ladd thus refuses to regard New Testament theology as merely the history of early Christian experience. Ladd employs the historical-critical method, but in a modified form that allows him to remain open to the possibility of the transcendent and thus enables him to do justice to the content of the materials being studied (18-19).

I have bookshelves full of works of individuals who have adopted this method, including names like D.A. Carson, Douglas Moo, Thomas Schreiner, Darrell Bock, Andreas Kostenberger, Peter T. O’Brien, but there are many, many more such names, writers who are coming out of the conservative Protestant seminaries who are showing the world once more what Tertullian claimed back in the third century:

In the Lord’s apostles we possess our authority; for even they did not of themselves choose to introduce anything, but faithfully delivered to the nations (of mankind) the doctrine which they had received from Christ. If, therefore, even “an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel” (than theirs), he would be called accursed by us.

It is the heretics who “when, for the sake of deceiving us, they pretend that they are still seeking, in order that they may palm their essays upon us … when men, therefore, are not Christians even on their own admission, how much more (do they fail to appear such) to us! What sort of truth is that which they patronize, when they commend it to us with a lie? Well, but they actually treat of the Scriptures and recommend (their opinions) out of the Scriptures! To be sure they do. From what other source could they derive arguments concerning the things of the faith, except from the records of the faith?”

We therefore come to (the gist of) our position; for at this point we were aiming, and for this we were preparing in the preamble of our address (which we have just completed),--so that we may now join issue on the contention to which our adversaries challenge us. They put forward the Scriptures, and by this insolence of theirs they at once influence some. In the encounter itself, however, they weary the strong, they catch the weak, and dismiss the waverers with a doubt. Accordingly, we oppose to them this step above , all others, of not admitting them to any discussion of the Scriptures.

If in these lie their resources, before they can use them, it ought to be clearly seen to whom belongs the possession of the Scriptures, that none may be admitted to the use thereof who has no title at all to the privilege ….

Now this heresy of yours does not receive certain Scriptures; and whichever of them it does receive, it perverts by means of additions and diminutions, for the accomplishment of its own purpose; and such as it does receive, it receives not in their entirety; but even when it does receive any up to a certain point as entire, it nevertheless perverts even these by the contrivance of diverse interpretations. Truth is just as much opposed by an adulteration of its meaning as it is by a corruption of its text. Their vain presumptions must needs refuse to acknowledge the (writings) whereby they are refuted. They rely on those which they have falsely put together, and which they have selected, because [of] their ambiguity (Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics).

Hagner summarizes Ladd’s influence and this confluence that Ladd has posited:

Without question Ladd’s theology reflects the orientation of a specific interpretive community, that known widely as “Evangelicalism.” It was Ladd who was especially instrumental in helping many fundamentalists to see for the first time not merely the acceptability, but the indispensability, of historical criticicsm. Evangelicals – at least many of them – have become more open to many of the conclusions of critical scholarship (in regard to, for example, the authorship and dating of New Testament writings and the implications for the development of the New Testament) in the twenty years since Ladd wrote (in 1974). They continue, however, to share the basic convictions embodied in Ladd’s approach to biblical theology. For all the actual diversity in the New Testament writings there remains an unforced and genuine unity among them at the same time. For all the historical particularity of these writings they continue to possess a normative authority for the church. And if, as J. Reumann has recently written, “the ultimate test for any biblical theology will be whether it enables faith and obedience to God’s word,” that practical concern was close to the heart of Ladd. Ladd’s interpretive community continues to cherish the goals of faith and obedience. At their best, evangelicals will cultivate openness to all that increases faith and leads to a more effective obedience (pgs 19-20).

As for Lampe’s work, one of the things these scoffers fail to recognize is that the New Testament is mentioned or referenced only in about three or four of his 41 chapters and four appendicies. As I’ve said before, Lampe seemingly scavenges every single piece of paper, every inscription, every cemetery, every scrap of archaeological evidence that’s available in that city, from that time period.

Nick bloviated: “This is one reason why I don't rush to endorse or appeal to that many scholars, and why I almost always subordinate the opinions of scholars to that of Scripture and primary historical sources.”

Nick, you couldn’t even read “primary historical sources” if it weren’t for scholars like Lampe. They’d be inaccessible to you.


* From the essay, “History and Faith,” Machen’s inaugural address as assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, delivered on May 3, 1915. The essay was first published in the “Princeton Theological Review 13 (1915), pgs 337-351, and cited here in D.G. Hart, “J. Gresham Machen, Selected Shorter Writings”, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, ©2004).

Why all the many excuses for not interacting with Lampe’s work, on the Roman Catholic side, need to be ignored.

Nick said: If someone like Lampe denies the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals and even says they contain blatant historical errors, then he’s not a “conservative.” He could be right in other departments or with other arguments, but that’s case by case, and doesn’t change the fact a rejection of Biblical inerrancy can never place a person in the “conservative” category.

On Page 2, Lampe seems to say he doesn’t trust the accuracy of the Pastorals, 1 Peter, Luke-Acts, and Mark in his overall research.


Nick gets this second item wrong. Lampe doesn’t “seem to say he distrusts the accuracy of the Pastorals...” He says, he avoids using them because they are contested; to rely on their historical accuracy would only cause the accuracy of his own arguments to be questioned. And so, in order to avoid such questioning, he chooses only to use information that is not contested. Here is his actual quote:

Peter Lampe: We face a tour through a variety of material: literary materials, above all, but also epigraphical and archaeological ones are at hand, which often become illuminating only in combination. What is contested with respect to geographical provenance (e.g., the Pastorals, 1 Peter, Luke-Acts, Mark), is relegated to the “footnote cellar” with the well-known “cf.” at relevant points, so that the results [of my work] will not be burdened a priori by uncertainty. There is an abundance of sufficiently clear urban Roman sources, and for those other text-complexes special studies have already been produced. Even if the Pastorals, 1 Peter, Luke, and Mark are related to the “footnote cellar,” there is still ample New Testament material left for consideration in the text above. (Lampe’s actual quote, page 2).

So clearly, what Lampe is saying is that, while these texts are contested, he will rely on those texts that are not contested, and in doing so, he will strengthen the force of his argument.


On the other hand, consider Joseph Ratzinger: For evaluating the relationship of the pastoral epistles to the great Pauline epistles, a brief passage in the first epistle to the Corinthians seems important to me .... If we take this text seriously, we must acknowledge that, whoever may have composed them, the Pastoral epistles are ... (Joseph Ratzinger [with a stamp that says “Pope Benedict XVI” on the front], San Francisco: Ignatius Press, (c) 1982/1987, pg 280).

Again, Nick said: this evidence is clear that Lampe denies Biblical inerrancy and Pauline authorship for many Pauline epistles. Overall, he fits the liberal scholar MO which is to be quick to downplay and discredit the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture in favor of secular works.

Now there’s a mark of certainty for you!

Add this to his fuzzy endorsement of "resurrection of the whole man" (and the "fusion" into oneness," and his citation, as pope, of Teilhard de Chardin, and you Catholic guys have got yourselves a whale of a good example of why you seriously need to consider swimming back this way.

An Army of Scholars Studying Ancient Rome, the Church of Ancient Rome, and the Book of Romans

Some time ago, it was pointed out to me that Peter Lampe was a flash in the pan. That his work was insignificant.

Several days ago, Steve Hays suggested to me and several other of us that we look up Robert Jewett’s commentary on Romans (a $90.00 retail value!) and check out the information on Romans 16 and the early Roman church.

Matthew Schultz has done so, and the link to the pages is here. I highly recommend you take a look at this, if you’re interested in what the church in ancient Rome was like – my hope is to go through this and post some of the more relevant passages, but for now, this is an exceptionally rich source.

Meanwhile looking up more information on Robert Jewett, and I came across this:

D. THE ROMANS ARCHIVE IN HEIDELBERG
A large bibliography of critical studies on Paul's letter to the Romans written from 1830 onwards has been assembled and many of the articles and monographs have been copied and gathered into a research archive now located in Heidelberg. The list of titles is presently more than 1000 pages long, single spaced, and will probably grow to 1500 pages when the project is compete. At present approximately 25% of this bibliography is available either in duplicated form in the files of the Heidelberg archive or in the monograph collection associated with the project.

The plan is to scan the entire bibliography and in cooperation with the university computer office, to place it on a website that would be available to students and scholars around the world. Since more has been written on Romans, verse for verse, than on any other biblical writing, or indeed, any other classic in the western world, and since only partial bibliographies are presently available, this project would provide a significant service. We hope that by 2004 the photographic scans of the bibliography would be available to scholars, and that by 2008 each item would be available in a version that could be downloaded and searched. In view of the thematic range of Romans, this bibliography would be useful to scholars in a number of fields.

Background and Development of the Project
The initial bibliography has been collected by Peter Lampe in connection with his book, Die Stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1987, 1989); English translation, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) and by Robert Jewett in connection with writing the Hermeneia Commentary on Romans since 1980, including a series of preliminary publications. The agreement to create a united research archive was made in 1995, to be located in Kiel where Lampe was serving as Professor of New Testament. When he was called to the chair in Heidelberg in 1999, an invitation was extended for Jewett to become a guest professor in connection with locating the archive here. An agreement on this was reached as Lampe negotiated his post with the university. The Evanston research archive was brought to Heidelberg in the summer of 2000 and was joined with Lampe’s archive in a renovated portion of the WTS building at Kisselgasse 1.

The scanning project is associated with the Forschungsstelle für die Wirkungsgeschichte des paulinischen Briefes an die Römer, attached to Lampe’s chair in Heidelberg.

[W]ith the commencement of a research grant for the bibliography project from the University of Heidelberg at the beginning of 2002, many of the technical aspects of the project have been researched and resolved; arrangements with the university computer center and the university library are in progress; the first staff persons were engaged; and the process of scanning with newly purchased equipment will begin later this spring.

The Need for a Comprehensive Bibliography on Romans
Romans is the only biblical book for which no comprehensive bibliography has been published; it remains the sole biblical writing on which a bibliographical article in the Theologische Rundschau article has never appeared. The reason for this is that the bibliography is so immense that no one has been able to master it...

While it is self evident that reliable, comprehensive bibliographies are needed in every field, the crucial role that Paul’s letter to the Romans has played in theological development since the Reformation makes this an urgent desideratum. Now that computerized techniques of assembling bibliographies are available, and scanning techniques well developed, it is possible to break this deadlock and make this rich research available to scholars everywhere. Since so many of the items in the current bibliography that have been located through library and journal searches are available only in limited locations, they are available only to those with the means and time to travel. Most scholars and theological students around the world do not have such resources. The development of an on-line bibliography with the full texts of these studies will thus contribute to the productivity of scholars. Increased access to the scholarship of other nations and earlier generations will also encourage ecumenicity.

The Scope and Organization of the Bibliography
The Romans bibliography is organized in three sections: introductory issues; studies related to specific pericopes; and theological, thematic studies. In view of the range of the argument of Romans and its decisive role in ecclesiastical debate over the centuries, the latter section includes most of the important themes in biblical theology. The table of contents for the bibliography is attached.

Scholarly studies from all over the world are included. Since there is such a large polemical literature on Romans, only critical items of scholarly interest are included For the most part such articles discuss the Greek terms and the historical and cultural background of the argument. Important theological studies are included but merely polemical articles defending ecclesiastical traditions are not. If all articles and books related to Romans were included, the bibliography would be twice or three times as large, and far less useful for scholarly work. Although Romans research in Europe and North America has long restricted its bibliographic interest to the North Atlantic, Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s commentary in 1993 listed hundreds of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American items for the first time, some of which predated the development of the bibliographic surveys in Biblica, New Testament Abstracts, and Internationaler Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaften und Grenzgebieten. Fully one third of his commentary consists of bibibliography he gathered over the years of working in the libraries of Italy and Spain. Jewett has conducted similar bibliographic surveys in Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. The plan is for Lampe and Jewett to extend such surveys into the Netherlands and eastern Europe over the course of the next several years...

I'm amazed at the power of the Internet; I have said in the past that I believe that the Internet in our day will have the same kind of effect on the message of the Reformation that the printing press had in Luther's day.

As I said, I just found this off the cuff. It would seem as if the sheer weight of this effort has already had an immense effect on Roman thinking on the papacy. (See my articles on the non-existent early papacy). It will be interesting to follow up and see where all of this continues to lead.


Update: I do need to apologize. It was not Blogahon who was arguing that Lampe wasn't a serious scholar. On the other hand, Sean was noting that Lampe was "arguing from silence":

you should expand your reading a bit. There are many very smart and equally challenging Catholic theologians who don't argue from silence as much as Peter Lampe and who don't draw the same conclusions as your go to set of texts.

http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2008/08/god-said-it-i-believe-it-but-what.html

And again:
You are very selective in the church historians that you embrace...very selective. Lampe's argument is one from silence and even if it wasn't it does not destroy the papacy.

http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2009/01/bono-luther-and-seeds-of-modernity.html


It was another writer over there who was saying that Lampe was essentially not a serious scholar.

I have been unable to turn up any indication that serious scholarship is interested in his work. I haven't found any reviews discussing his work or that other scholars are basing their work on his. This suggests to me that Lampe is not quite in the mainstream as you think he is....

Again, Lampe doesn't seem to have made much inroad into scholarly discussions. Fly-leaf recommendations don't count, particularly if they are from liberal Catholics like Duffy who are on record as advocating for a weakening of the authority exercised by John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger.

http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2008/09/scratching-surface-of-pivotal-passage.html

Some concluding thoughts from the Called to Communion discussion 1

I’ve mentioned in the past that the issue of the early papacy (or rather the non-existent early papacy) is the “soft underbelly” of Roman claims. If anyone has been involved in these types of discussions – Catholic/Protestant – you know there is always something that can be brought up to evade or change the topic. (The phrase “oh yeah, but what about this…” comes to mind.)

I’ve outlined in another post what Roman Catholics have traditionally believed about the papacy, things which I believed in my early years (the 60’s and the 70’s) – and it’ll be useful to recap them here:

1. The pope is the chief bishop, primate, and leader of the whole Church of Christ on earth.

2. He has episcopal jurisdiction over all members of the Church.

3. To be a member of the Catholic Church, a man must be in communion with the Pope.

4. The providential guidance of God will see to it that the Pope shall never commit the Church to error in any matter of religion.

(Source, Adrian Fortescue, “The Early Papacy”)

These four items are things that are said always to have been believed – and Vatican 1 etched them into stone, so to speak. But these thing are said to have been believed back into the earliest days of the church. From the beginning, according to some.

Fortescue goes on to state that the underpinning, further, revolves around these three foundational elements:

But all of this depends on something else, he said. "All of this depends further on three more theses, into which we cannot enter here." (Pg 51)

These three theses that he did not touch are:

1. "That our Lord gave these rights to the Apostle St. Peter."

2. "That St. Peter must have a successor in them."

3. "That his successor is the Bishop of Rome."

Ratzinger tried to defend these three theses in his “Called to Communion.” And some time ago, I started to get into this and analyze it – it is a genuinely weak set of arguments, given what we know today.

* * *

Peter Lampe’s work (which we know as “From Paul to Valentinus: Christians in Rome During the First Two Centuries”) was first published in Germany in 1987. This work was not a first-of-a-kind work by any stretch. It was sort of a tying together of a lot of disparate threads of thought, which had started more than half a century prior. Here is a summary of some of the major efforts that I’ve found:

In 1927, James Shotwell and Louise Loomis compiled virtually every document that had been used in support of the papacy from the first five centuries of the church (“The See of Peter,” New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, ©1927, 1955, 1991). These were grouped roughly into “three distinct sets of texts on the ascendancy of the Papacy within the Roman Catholic Church.”

Without going into detail, the vast majority turned out to be, at best, a “curious and less respectable set of documents, the popular apocryphal literature, which grew up around the figure of Peter almost as soon as reliable records began, literature sprung from misconceptions and confusions or else frankly fictitious.”

In the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, a Lutheran theologian named Oscar Cullmann wrote a major study, “Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr” (the first English translation Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953). In this work, Cullmann analyzed both the theological claims of the papacy (and provided major exegetical studies of Matthew 16:17-19 and related texts). As well, he analyzed the historical literature in tremendous detail, in order to ascertain Peter’s role in the early church, as well as the concept of “succession.” He concluded among other things:

The original Church was led by [Peter], and he led it only in its earliest period. For as soon as the foundation for this leadership is laid, Peter will give it up. Another, James, will take it over in Jerusalem, while Peter will concentrate entirely on his missionary work and will do so, indeed, in a subordinate role under James.

This later subordination of Peter under James is a fact important in every respect. It confirms first of all that the leadership of the Church by Peter also has its significance for us chiefly as a starting point. [This is a point that Cullman has been making throughout: the fact that Peter is "first" is a unique fact. There is no "successor" to Peter. Any leadership role that was given to Peter, any primacy, was completed by this time. It was non-continuing in any way.].

James is the actual head of the Church from the moment that Peter dedicates himself completely to missionary work. The memory of that fact was steadily retained in the whole of Jewish Christianity, which took an interest in the ancient traditions. According to Hegesippus, “The brother of the Lord, James, takes over the leadership of the Church with the Apostles. (Citing Eusebius E.H. II, 3, 4).

Particularly important is the fact that the Pseudo-Clementina, which are friendly to Peter, clearly subordinate Peter to James. Peter has to “give an accounting” to James, “the bishop of the holy Church.” To him Peter sends his public addresses, and [Pseudo-]Clement calls him [James] “Bishop of Bishops,” “leader of the holy church of the Hebrews and of the churches founded everywhere by God’s providence. [Pseudo-]Clement traces Peter’s commission to him [Clement] back to a commission that James gave to Peter. These late reports thus agree with what we can learn concerning James from the letters of Paul and the book of Acts.

[In other words, any "Petrine succession" to Clement came through a commission to James. This document, by the way, was one of the documents that was widely believed for hundreds of years, known as the "Pseudo-Isidore Decretals."]

It will not do, however, to make some such objection as that Peter went to Rome just at that time in order to “transfer” the primacy from Jerusalem to that place. In reality Peter does not leave Jerusalem in order to transfer the primacy elsewhere; he leaves rather to spread the Gospel. But the significant thing, as said, is that in relation to the new leadership at Jerusalem he does not continue in some superior position, as though James were only his substitute, or were only Bishop of the church at Jerusalem, already sunk to the position of a local church. He rather subordinates himself to the authority of James as the central government. (Cullman, “Peter,” 224-226).

There is more to this, and I’d love to publish it some time.

In 1969, Daniel William O’Connor published “Peter in Rome,” a critical study designed to look at the question of whether Peter actually ever was in Rome. And the answer there was “yes, but likely only at the end of his life. It is probable that he was martyred and buried there. His bones were never recovered.”

In 1973, there was a major work, “Peter in the New Testament,” subtitled “A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (© 1973 Augsburg Publishing House. I have a Wipf and Stock reprint). This work was edited by Raymond Brown, Karl Donfried and John Reumann, “from discussions by” about nine different Roman Catholic and Lutheran scholars, as part of “the United States Lutheran—Roman Catholic Dialogue” that was going on, and its topic was “the Role of the Papacy in the Universal Church.

The conclusion of this group was really to have raised more questions than they answered, and at the end, the reader was referred to the second phase of this work, a patristic study “co-chaired by the Ref. Dr. A.C. Piepkorn of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and by Professor J. McCue of the School of Religion at the State University of Iowa (Iowa City).

I have not been able to track down this work, but a 2004 survey by a Franciscan priest Rev. Adriano Garuti (“Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Dialogue” San Francisco: Ignatius Press) summarizes the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue this way:

In spite of a certain rapprochement (which is unthinkable if it is confronted with the theory of the papacy formulated by the First Vatican Council), it is impossible to overlook the controverted points which still exist, especially concerning the ius divinum and the fullness of the power of the Bishop of Rome (pg 193).

Dr. Peter Lampe is a Lutheran scholar who is one of the signatories of the 1998 document that was presented in advance of the “Joint Declaration on Justification,” which strongly suggested that that “Joint Declaration” was a mistake.

* * *

As I mentioned, Lampe’s study came out in 1987. In 1989, the Vatican began its own historical study. The results of this study have not been published, as far as I know. (If they had found something favorable, don’t you think they would be crowing about it? But instead, what came out of that, was the 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint, in which we see the spectacle of a pope asking for theological input on ways “to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.”)

Shortly thereafter, the Vatican held a “theological” symposium on the papacy in 1996, and the strongest reassurances for the papacy that came out of that was, “we are aware of development in the papacy” … “Peter was the leader of the apostles” … “the bishop of Rome is [somehow] the successor of Peter, based on the fact that Peter and Paul died in Rome…”

The symposium is characterized by its properly doctrinal nature, aimed at extracting the essential points of the substance of the doctrine on the Primacy, according to the Catholic Church's conviction of faith...

In addition, there was a document of “reflections” published, just to keep everyone “on the same page,” that is, “These "Reflections" - appended to the symposium - are meant only to recall the essential points of Catholic doctrine on the primacy…” – this is now what it is essential to believe.

THE PRIMACY OF THE SUCCESSOR OF PETER IN THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH
Reflections of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect
Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop emeritus of Vercelli, Secretary

No longer are the boastful claims made by Fortescue a part of the calculation. As much as possible, historical considerations have been stripped from “what it is now essential to believe”.

Note this paragraph from the conclusion of that theological symposium, written by Ratzinger:

On the basis of the New Testament witness, the Catholic Church teaches, as a doctrine of faith, that the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of Peter in his primatial service in the universal Church;13 this succession explains the preeminence of the Church of Rome,14 enriched also by the preaching and martyrdom of St Paul.

Note the bone given to Paul, although Peter and Paul were “Founders” of the church at Rome. Note also that somehow, in some undefined way, it is “the New Testament witness” where this “succession” “explains” “the preeminence of the Church of Rome”.

This “explanation” may be found in Ratzinger’s “Called to Communion,” and I will say here, that it is such a tremendous stretch, that I find it to be laughable. (You may not, but then again…)

The summary of that document is:

13. … it is essential to state that discerning whether the possible ways of exercising the Petrine ministry correspond to its nature is a discernment to be made in Ecclesia, i.e., with the assistance of the Holy Spirit and in fraternal dialogue between the Roman Pontiff and the other Bishops, according to the Church's concrete needs. But, at the same time, it is clear that only the Pope (or the Pope with an Ecumenical Council) has, as the Successor of Peter, the authority and the competence to say the last word on the ways to exercise his pastoral ministry in the universal Church.

So, in effect, "nanny-nanny-boo-boo on you."

Nevertheless, there is going to be a “last word” on the papacy; it is forthcoming, and it is going to be the result of these historical studies that these Called to Communion folks are mocking and dismissing right now.

In a discussion at Called to Communion

Sean Patrick has put forth a bit of a challenge, with the title, Modern Scholarship, Rome and a Challenge. This of course is based upon my writings about Peter Lampe and some of the echoes with David Waltz. I'm very pleasantly surprised to report that they're allowing me to comment.

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.