Tag Archives: inerrancy

February 13, 2026

Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, by Robin Lane Fox, A Review, Part Two

By Clarke Morledge

Robin Lane Fox is one of the world’s preeminent historians of the classical world. A few years ago, I read his The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, which I would recommend reading, if you want an in-depth epic history of that cultural time period. I kept turning back to Fox’s work on a trip to visit friends in Sicily, back in 2022. I was in Sicily for only a few days, but I visited both the Valley of Temples and Syracuse, two ancient sites from the classical world which Fox covered in his book.

Having an interest in Saint Augustine, I grabbed a copy of Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, and finished reading it not too long ago. Though captivated by Fox’s story of the classical world, I was curious to know of his take on Augustine, considering the fact that Fox is a professed atheist, with little interest in Christianity aside from scholarship. I was bracing myself for some occasional crudities in Fox’s writing style. To be sure, Fox is as entertaining as he is erudite. In describing Augustine’s pre-Christian life as a follower of the Persian philosopher, Mani, Fox whimsically and colorfully concludes:

Manichaeism is the only world religion to have believed in the redemptive power of farts (Fox, p. 180).

Here is the second of a two-part blog series covering Robin Lane Fox’s book, which examines roughly the first half of Augustine’s remarkable life. We pick up the story after Augustine returns to North Africa. A few years earlier, Augustine had become a Christian, under the preaching of bishop Ambrose in Milan. In North Africa, Augustine’s career as a rhetorician had started to gain him an audience when he debated opponents of the historically orthodox Christian church. In this latter part of Fox’s work, we learn more about how Augustine read, and at times, misread, certain passages of the Bible…. and why…. glimpsing into how such readings/misreadings have reverberated throughout later Christian history, particularly in the West.

Robin Lane Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions examines roughly the first half of the great Christian saint’s life, leading up the Augustine’s most famous written work, Confessions.

 

Augustine as a Parish Priest

Augustine had survived becoming a priest in 391, after having only received baptism four years earlier. Augustine’s career as a churchman was now in full swing. This was ten years after the second great ecumenical council met, the Council of Constantinople (381), where the Nicene Creed, which was originally drafted in 325, was finally completed. By the end of the decade, Augustine is thought to have finished his most well-known work, the Confessions.

Among the other great church leaders Augustine corresponded with, Augustine wrote Jerome, the polyglot ascetic scholar a few years older than Augustine, who was working on a new translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, from the Hebrew where it was warranted, into Latin. Augustine quarreled with Jerome primarily over two subjects. First, Augustine was not in favor of Jerome’s efforts to translate the Old Testament directly from Hebrew, preferring the Greek Septuagint instead, the primary Old Testament translation used by Greek-speaking Christians. Augustine was concerned that various Latin translators had difficulty trying to render the Hebrew into Latin accurately, and Augustine wondered if Jerome would make the same kinds of errors. Jerome, who certainly knew the ancient languages much better, was not impressed with Augustine’s objection.

Augustine also was concerned with Jerome’s interpretation of Galatians 2:11-21, where Paul in his anger rebuked Peter. Peter had refused table fellowship with Gentile believers, preferring to eat only with Jewish Christians, an act which infuriated Paul.

Jerome was persuaded that Paul was merely pretending to be angry with Peter. Jerome did not find an “angry Paul” to be consistent with his image of a pious Paul at such odds with Peter. Jerome supposed that Paul employed a display of  an “angry Paul” in order to teach to the Galatians a theological point. Augustine, on the other hand, believed that Jerome’s view suggested that Paul was being deceptive, and that this was unbecoming to think that this form of lying could be found within the text of God’s Word (Fox, p. 667ff).

Augustine’s engagement with Jerome on this helped to spark what would become Augustine’s last book he wrote as a priest, On Lying. The Bible has several incidents whereby people lie, but then are praised for their deception. Fox notes that in Exodus, the Egypt midwives told lies in order to protect newborn sons of the Hebrews, and yet God caused them to prosper (Fox, p. 653). Rahab in the Book of Joshua lies to her fellow Jericho people, telling them that the Hebrew spies left a long time ago, all while they hid in her house, and yet Rahab is praised as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11:31.  In John 7:8-10, Jesus himself says to his brothers that he was not going up to the festival, but later on he went anyway in private.

Fox observes that Augustine believed that “if lies and pretence are once admitted in the scriptures, they will spread far and wide. Like destructive moths or worms, he now says, they will consume whole chests of clothing until nothing but shreds remain” (Fox, p. 757).  But considering that Augustine acknowledged that even Jesus did not tell the whole truth to his disciples, Augustine reread his text and found it “thorny,” and so never published it with his other works (Fox, p. 653). Augustine was perhaps right to call out Jerome on his peculiar view of Paul’s dispute with Peter in Galatians, but even Augustine never felt completely satisfied with his own answer to Jerome on the question of deception in Scripture.

Augustine was continuously wrestling with other challenges he found within the text of Scripture. Until 395, Augustine had pretty much accepted the common view based on the Book of Revelation that a one thousand reign of Christ on earth will follow Christ’s return, prior to God’s final judgment. Christians today would call this view of the future “premillennialism,” that the return of Christ will precede an earthly millennial kingdom. However, Augustine changed his mind on this, believing that there would be no such earthly millennial period. This millennial period was more figurative, and that the peace and rest a believer would experience would be delayed until after God’s final judgment (Fox, p. 670). This gave birth to the idea that the reign of Christ, symbolized by the millennium, was actually the age of the church, a view typically known today as “amillennialism.”

Augustine also wrestled with how to interpret God’s hatred of Esau and love for Jacob in Romans 9. Originally, Augustine believed that God simply foreknew whether Esau and Jacob would freely choose faith. But Augustine came to reject this interpretation, thinking that this still made salvation dependent to a certain degree on human effort, something that went contrary to his understanding of the workings of God’s grace (Fox, p. 675). Yet Fox acknowledges that Paul’s treatment of Esau and Jacob in Romans 9 had to deal with the calling of Israel and the Gentiles. It had nothing to do with Esau and Jacob as individuals and their relationship to Adam and the fall. Fox believes that Augustine misread Paul in Romans 9, as Augustine was preoccupied with questions about grace and human freewill, in his wrestling with his Manichee past (Fox, p. 678). A number of believing Christian scholars today concur with Fox’s conclusion.

 

Augustine as the Bishop of Hippo

Bishop Valerius saw that Augustine was more than quite capable in his rhetorical skills, and Valerius had become quite elderly and needed someone to succeed him. So he had Augustine promoted to bishop as well there in Hippo in 396. Less than a year later, Augustine began working on his most famous and influential literary work, Confessions.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine serve as the terminus for Fox’s biographical narrative of Augustine’s life. In the Confessions, Augustine admits of his sins which had kept him from knowing God. Much of the Confessions is an exploration into the deeper meaning behind one of Augustine’s most memorable quotes:

“Great You are, O Lord, and greatly to be praised… You have made us so as to turn to You and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You” (Quoted in Fox, p, 710-711).

In the Confessions, Augustine finds deeper meanings found within the opening chapters of Genesis.  For example, whereas the text of Scripture teaches that humans are to “be fruitful and multiply,” this was difficult for someone like Augustine who was now committed to his celibate ideals. Instead, he interprets Genesis on this point to command that one should “multiply” fruitful meanings while pondering on Scripture (Fox, p. 740).  Instead of holding to the help of Mani, the “Paraclete,” his former mentor, to reveal the meaning of the Scriptures, he holds to “the true Holy Spirit,” in discerning the “allegorical meanings in the text” (Fox, p. 748).

Augustine continued to be troubled by Manichaean attempts to dismiss what was considered to be rather crude statements found in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. As a result, Augustine continued to accept Ambrose of Milan’s allegorical method of interpretation as a satisfying apologetic for Christianity.  But such allegorical readings have had their downsides, as in Augustine’s belief that the closure of a gate in Jerusalem spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel symbolized the perpetual virginity of Mary.

 

Augustine as a Biblical Interpreter

Fox points out that Augustine had a habit of overreading certain allegorical interpretations into biblical texts in ways that strain at credulity. Augustine took the “tunics of skins” (Genesis 3:21) which Adam and Eve were given after the fall in the garden to symbolize human mortality. When Genesis 1:1 says that: “In the beginning, God made heaven and earth,” Augustine read this as saying that this “in the beginning” should be read as “in Christ” (Fox, p. 543).

But such allegorical and other misreadings were not entirely his fault. The Latin translations of the Bible Augustine were depending on were flawed at certain points. Psalm 4:8 reads like this in many modern translations:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (ESV).

Yet in Augustine’s Latin translation, it read as:

“In peace in ‘it itself‘ I will go to sleep and take my slumber. You, O lord, set me in hope.”

The phrase “it itself” was a Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word often omitted in modern translations to simply mean “at once” (the Lexham English Bible being a notable exception which includes the phrase: “In peace I will lie down and sleep at once“).  But Augustine took the Latin rendering to be a reference to God, to make it read as “In peace, in God I will go to sleep and take my slumber.” Augustine uses this interpretation of the Latin mistranslation to mean “God” some 1700 times in his writings.

This just goes to show you that simple, inconsequential misreadings of the Bible can have a ripple effect in how we read the Bible. Let that be lesson for all of us who read and take the Bible seriously!

Furthermore, the last word of the verse in Augustine’s Latin, “hope,” was yet another Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word preserved in our modern translations as “safety.”  “Hope” and “safety” can have overlapping meanings, but the two concepts are not identical. Fox comments that if Jerome, who undertook a major effort to produce an authoritative Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, had read Augustine’s commentary, “he would have acidly dismissed it as based on a Latin translator’s cluster of errors” (Fox, p. 458-459).

The three lusts, an important part of Augustine’s theology of sin, are described in 1 John 2:16:

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” (NASB).

The Greek word translated as “boastful,” in the third lust, was mistranslated in Augustine’s Latin Bible as “curiosity.”  But Augustine’s Latin better fit the three lusts which delayed his own conversion: “the pleasure of the flesh, misplaced curiosity and worldly ambition.”

Augustine was certainly “curious” in his sinful misdeeds, but to be “curious” is not the same as to be “boastful.”

Another example of Augustine working with poor Latin translations of the Bible is found in Romans 7:24-25a. In an modern translation like the ESV, we read:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

However, in Augustine’s Latin translation, which Augustine never bothered to check in Greek because his knowledge of Greek was so poor, the “thanks” at the beginning of verse 25 was rendered “grace,” as in the “grace of God through Jesus Christ” would deliver him from this body of death (Fox, p. 557). This was a case of the right teaching derived from the wrong verse.

 

Sandro Botticelli, Sant’ Agostino nello studio (Saint Augustine in the studio), Fresco, Chiesa di San Salvatore in Ognissanti, Florence.

 

Augustine’s Misstep on Original Sin

The most egregious example is from Augustine’s Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12, which has led other interpreters astray as well. In certain modern translations, like the ESV, the text correctly reads:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

Correctly translated, “death” is the subject of the phrase “death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Augustine’s Latin version which he used mistook the “because” to be “in whom.” In this mistranslation, the subject is misplaced and thought to be a reference to the “one man,” namely Adam, “in whom all sinned“:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men in whom all sinned—”

This gives the wrong impression that not only do we inherit a proclivity towards sin, due to Adam’s example, we are also declared guilty of Adam’s sin. Augustine’s dispute against Pelagius depended a lot on this notion of imputed guilt, not simply a proclivity towards sinful actions, being bestowed on all humans following Adam. Not only are we responsible for our own sin, we are also made responsible for Adam’s sin, a misinterpretation of the Bible which has been passed down through the ages (Fox, pp. 667, 677).

When coupled with Augustine’s belief about the sacraments, in his dispute with the Donatists, Augustine’s doctrine of original guilt has cast a shadow over the Western church.  The Donatists had made it a habit to rebaptize orthodox Catholics who had received their original baptism from a discredited priest. Since the Bible taught that there is only one baptism (Ephesians 4:4-6), to be rebaptized by anyone was considered a grave sin.

Anyone growing up in a Christian tradition where infant baptism is normally practiced will surely wrestle with this if they encounter friends who hold to the doctrine of “believer’s baptism;” that is, baptism should only be administered to someone who has made a profession of faith, which therefore excludes infants from being candidates for baptism. This issue can trouble the conscience of a believer, whether or not any teaching on “baptismal regeneration” is in view.

Augustine’s response was that the moral disposition of the priest performing baptism could not invalidate the sacrament of baptism, assuming the baptism was done correctly: if it was administered by water, if it was performed in a Trinitarian matter of being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and if it was done with the intention of performing the sacrament.

So if a Donatist were to baptize someone, who had not been baptized before, and that person was received back into the orthodox Catholic church, that person need not undergo a rebaptism. It was the act of baptism that mattered, not the one administering the baptism, which corresponds to the Latin formula: ex opere operato. However, in conjunction with the doctrine of original sin/guilt, as Augustine understood it, this meant that any unbaptized child would effectively be damned if that child died before they received baptism. For Augustine, baptism was considered to be the means by which grace was given to the person, a fundamental idea in Augustine’s theology of sacraments, which eventually became a flashpoint in the 16th century dispute between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Augustine developed much of his doctrine of grace in his later years with his dispute with Pelagius. However, since the dispute with Pelagius came after writing of the Confessions, Fox does not explore this in Augustine: Conversion to Confessions.

 

Critical Reflection on Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions

Veteran evangelical scholar Gerald Bray assesses Fox’s work on Augustine in a manner similar to how I portray it in my own blogging about the book:

Lane Fox knows an enormous amount about the ancient world and brings his vast learning to bear in an eloquent and fascinating way. Digression is his strength, as whole chapters are taken up with studies of Manichaeism, Neo-Platonism, and the like. These descriptions are worth the price of the book.

In reading Fox’s Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, you will discover a wealth of information about the ancient world, a treasure that has helped to get me hooked on learning more about ancient history. This is spectacular. Nevertheless, Bray concludes that Fox’s work on this first half of Augustine’s life is not without fault:

But it’s when we come to the heart of the matter that Lane Fox lets us down most. His account of Augustine’s conversion contains an extended examination of the possible meaning of “tolle lege,” which led Augustine to take up Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is followed by an equally lengthy examination of the possible meanings of the text that moved his heart to turn to Christ. In the end, he concludes Augustine got it all wrong but remained convinced God had spoken to him anyway. His life was turned around, but only by mistake!

I read that section of Fox’s narrative and walked away from it like Bray has done. Fox offers some cogent critiques of Augustine’s interpretations of the Bible, but not all of his critiques work as well. As a committed non-believer, Robin Lane Fox’s presentation of Christianity as articulated by Augustine in his Confessions is vulnerable to critique.

For example, Fox claims that Augustine “evades the word ‘all’” in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, which says that “God our Saviour… wills that all men should be saved.” For Augustine, this “all” means “many” or “all sorts,” as in “all kinds” of people will be saved (Fox, p. 674).

Presumably, Fox’s assertion that when Augustine “evades the word ‘all’,” Fox means that the plain reading of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is teaching a doctrine of universal salvation, a doctrine that Augustine does not accept. After all, Augustine was one of the most influential of the church fathers to teach the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. In Augustine’s mind, the experience of an eternal hell was not simply a psychological or sociological kind of torment, but it was a physical one as well. As New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen says in her epic work, Augustine and the Jews, reviewed elsewhere on Veracity, Augustine actually envisioned that the number of the saved within the whole of humanity would actually be very few.

But leaving aside those weightier concerns about the ultimate fate of non-believers, Augustine’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is not necessarily an evasion as Fox argues, as other contemporary commentators suggest that Augustine might be at least somewhat correct here, even if the text itself is not entirely clear. Many translations today take the forceful edge off of God being the one who “wills” that all individuals be saved and indicate that it is God’s “desire” that all individuals be saved, a less deterministic posture. Here is how the ESV renders the passage:

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Fox’s assumptions about what the Bible actually teaches does not end there. Fox dismisses the story of creation as told in Genesis is “untrue,” from the viewpoint of modern science (Fox, p. 224). Fox claims that the Old Testament “predicted nothing about Christianity” (Fox, p. 228). Fox adds that “critical readers nowadays recognize no such harmony in the Gospels,” which reconciles the differences between those Gospels (Fox, p. 270).

These claims are no surprise as coming from an author who in 1991 wrote the book, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, where the publisher’s description of the book says Fox :

“….introduces us to a Bible that came late to monotheism, propounded a jumble of conflicting laws, and whose authors wrote under assumed name.”

 

Robin Lane Fox: Historian vs. Biblical Interpreter

While Fox, as an historian, has read enough biblical studies to offer some various fair and accurate critiques of Augustine, he apparently has not read enough to address some of these more broad-minded claims he makes against historic orthodox Christian faith in general. The evolutionary model of an Old Testament that morphs from polytheism into monotheism over time falls short when compared to the careful analysis of how progressive revelation actually works in the Bible. Scholarship on the Book of Leviticus, and other priestly material in the Old Testament, over the last fifty years, demonstrates a type of coherency of laws that is often missed by casual readers of the Bible.  And finally, various claims made about forgeries existing in our New Testament have been met with resistance by other capable scholars.

This should suffice to say, that not all biblical scholars engaged in historical criticism come to the same conclusions Fox finds so compelling, as readers of the Veracity blog will know (see particularly the review of Jesus Contradicted, by Michael Licona). Augustine sought to harmonize discrepancies which he acknowledged existed in the Bible. But as New Testament scholar Michael Licona has shown, Augustine saw some limits to common harmonization techniques. When Augustine ran into such difficulties, he would look for a deeper spiritual meaning found within the text of Scripture.

For example, according to Michael Licona, Augustine recognized a discrepancy between Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism and Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism. When the voice from heaven speaks, Mark 1:11 reads:

And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (ESV)

Yet in Matthew, the same verse reads (Mathew 3:17):

And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (ESV)

It is as though in Mark the voice is speaking to Jesus himself, whereas in Matthew the voice is speaking to the crowd that was listening in.

A persistent harmonizer might conclude that the voice said both of these statements, once to Jesus and then once to the crowds, or vice-versa. But Augustine thought that this was a more improbable way to interpret the text, and taking harmonization way too far. For some might be tempted to say that the entire narrative about Jesus’ baptism happened multiple times. However, such a judgment would be far fetched, as the Gospels consistently portray Jesus’ baptism as a once in time event.

Instead, Augustine concluded that perhaps Mark is giving us a verbatim account of what was said, whereas Matthew is reframing the heavenly speech in order to instruct the crowds, suggesting a more spiritual dimension. The meaning of what the text is saying is preserved across the Gospels, regardless of how the Gospel author articulates the exact verbiage of the voice. Augustine’s approach to this text offers an improvement over his typical Ambrosian tendency to look for an allegorical interpretation, when faced with such difficulties.

As Augustine put it in his Harmony of the Gospels, the Gospel authors intentionally introduced such differences, while preserving the meaning:

…. At the same time, while preserving the sense intact, they use different modes of expression in reproducing the terms of the voice which came from heaven.

While Augustine at times shook off a strict kind of harmonization as unnecessary, he nevertheless found the Gospels to be compatible with one another, sharing the same essential message, even with a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes “harmony.” This would go against Fox’s inclination towards skepticism, which suggests that there is “no such harmony” between the Gospels.

While I do not share in Dr. Fox’s ultimate conclusions regarding Christianity, I still find him to be a compelling and fascinating writer. I have the Kindle version of Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, but I was primarily engaged in the Audible version, read by Michael Page. On a long road trip to Indiana last year, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions,  clocking in at 25 1/2 hours, made for a good companion that kept me alert the whole way.

It remains to be seen whether or not Robin Lane Fox will continue with another book examining the life of Augustine following the Confessions. Augustine was roughly 43 years old when he worked on the Confessions. He would go on to live another 33 years of service as a Christian bishop in Hippo, until his death. After enjoying Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, I hope that Dr. Fox might continue on and complete this biography of this extraordinary and influential Christian leader and thinker of the early church.

For other Veracity blog posts about Augustine, see the following:

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April 18, 2025

Notes on Leviticus: By Michael Heiser. Part Three

By Clarke Morledge

Which parts of the Law of Moses found in the Book of Leviticus are still binding on the Christian today? Christians from diverse traditions debate this most controversial topic. Jonathan Edwards, perhaps America’s greatest theological mind, had this to say:

“There is perhaps no part of divinity attended with so much intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines do so much differ, as stating of the precise agreement and differences between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ.”1

Leviticus is essentially a law book, detailing the specifics of the Old Covenant, which defined the standards for the ancient Israelite community. But what exactly are the elements from that Old Covenant that have been brought forward into New Covenant? And even if particulars of certain Old Covenant regulations from Leviticus are not binding on New Covenant believers, might there still be lessons in Christian obedience to be learned from them today?

Protestant evangelicals are divided on such issues: Is tithing carried forward under the New Covenant?  Does the Bible allow Christians to get tattoos? What about Saturday Sabbath observance? Hebrew Roots Movement enthusiasts bring forward as much from the Old Covenant as they can, even without a standing temple in Jerusalem. Progressive Christians do just the opposite, and jettison as much of the Old Covenant as they can, when certain moral prescriptions are deemed out-of-date. The diversity of such practical applications in interpreting Leviticus can be bewildering.

I came across the teaching of the late Dr. Michael Heiser several years ago, through his Naked Bible Podcast. An expert in Semitic languages and the Old Testament, he did an audio series on the Book of Leviticus, which were transcribed to form the book Notes on Leviticus: From the Naked Bible Podcast. As the author of The Unseen Realm, one of the most groundbreaking books I have read in recent memory, having influence across multiple denominations and Christian traditions, Heiser walks the student of Leviticus through the text in ways that opened up the book for me, with a lens that helps to better understand so many other parts of the Bible. As I have noted at several points, I am not always convinced by Dr. Heiser’s thinking, but he is way far more right than wrong in what he says, and he challenges me to think more deeply on crucial issues concerning the Bible. The tens of thousands of thoughtful Christians who follow Heiser’s YouTube channel surely agree with me.

Heiser’s premise is that Christian readers have often read Leviticus through presuppositions they bring in from their understanding of the New Testament, often confusing things in the process. Alternatively, Heiser proposes that we should learn to read Leviticus from the perspective of an ancient Israelite. What did Leviticus mean to a follower of Yahweh centuries before Jesus came on the scene?

One of the major themes in Leviticus is the concept of atonement. I am publishing this post on Good Friday, which in the Christian calendar commemorates what Jesus accomplished on the cross for us. Many theologians link Good Friday to the concept of atonement, the focus of this final post in this series. But the exact meaning of atonement has stimulated a significant debate among scholars: What does it mean to say that Jesus died for our sins?

On the late Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible Podcast, this Old Testament scholar brings out important highlights, accessible to everyday Christians, who want to have a better grasp on Leviticus, one of the least studied, least understood, and least read books in the Old Testament.

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July 5, 2024

Jesus, Contradicted, by Michael Licona. A Veracity Book Review.

By Clarke Morledge

Have you ever been troubled by what might appear to be contradictions between the four Gospel accounts? If so, then Dr. Michael Licona’s Jesus, Contradicted will help you to tame the doubts in your mind, and have a fresh look at the trustworthiness and reliability of the Bible.

I know because I have been there. Having not grown up in an evangelical church, I never heard of the concept of “biblical inerrancy” until my years in college in the 1980s. Growing up in a liberal mainline church instead, the Bible only had a secondary role in spiritual formation. As a teenager though, I read through all of the New Testament (except for Revelation), and I was wrestling through the things I read in the Bible. One of the first things I noticed is that there are differences between the four Gospels and how they report various speeches and events.

The idea that there were differences in the Gospels really did not bother me. If anything, the differences in the Gospels only intrigued me to look more closely at the New Testament. As Christian apologist and former cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace has said, the very fact that the Gospels DO have differences lends credibility to the authenticity of their accounts. For if all four Gospels said exactly the same thing, this would be evidence of collusion, which would raise suspicions about the integrity of the New Testament. Instead, because there were opportunities to smooth out the differences and the Gospel writers did not do so, this gives us greater confidence in the truthfulness of the Christian story.

But apparently, not every Christian is convinced that having differences in the Gospel is a good thing. Some argue that we should do whatever we can to harmonize the Gospels, even if some of those harmonizations come across as unconvincing, embarrassingly ad-hoc, otherwise severely strained.

Mike Licona, a New Testament scholar, is one of most able defenders of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, having debated Bart Ehrman, the world’s most well-known skeptic, on several occasions. Now, Michael Licona is arguing for a more robust view of biblical inerrancy, in Jesus, Contradicted: : Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently

 

My Faith Crisis Over Inerrancy

Michael Licona, author of Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently, has struck a chord with me. But I need to set up the story a bit more before I offer a review of this new book.

In the mid-1970’s, Harold Lindsell, who had been a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, had popularized an idea to try to resolve the apparent contradictions in the various accounts of Peter’s denials of Jesus, on the night Jesus was handed over to the authorities to face trial and eventually to be crucified. Mark 14:72 and Luke 22:61 has Jesus saying that a cock would crow twice after Peter denies Jesus three times. But in Matthew 26:74-75 and John 18:27, a cock crows once after Peter denied Jesus three times. Matthew has Jesus predicting one cock crow, while John says nothing about Jesus predicting anything about a cock crowing.

Lindsell’s solution was to say that Peter denied Jesus a total of six times: three times before the first cock crowed, and then three more times before the second cock crowed. Other strict inerrantists arrive at similar conclusions, arguing that Jesus’ differing prophecies in all four Gospels must align together in all incidental details.

While this type of harmonization sort of “works,” it still really confused me. After all, all four Gospels explicitly state that Peter denied Jesus three times, not six times as Lindsell’s “inerrantist” interpretation suggested. I reasoned that if this type of convoluted logic is required to make sense of “biblical inerrancy,” then I simply could not accept it. I really wanted the Bible to be “inerrant,” but as a mathematics major in college I just could not force my mind to accept the idea that 3 equals 6.

I pretty much shoved the idea off of my mind, visiting it every once in a while, but I just could not get past the problem. It was not until I read Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy ( introduced and reviewed here on Veracity,) a multi-views book highlighting the perspectives of five different biblical scholars holding separate and distinct definitions of what constituted “biblical inerrancy,” that I finally had some peace about the matter. Not every proponent of “biblical inerrancy” holds to the rather strict version championed by Harold Lindsell.

This was quite a relief. I could now hold to a version of “biblical inerrancy.” My problem was that I still was not sure what that version of “biblical inerrancy” really looked like.

A few years ago, I got a copy of Michael Licona’s book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, oriented towards scholars, to try to help me. So far, I have only gotten part of the way through it until Dr. Licona came out with a shorter, more accessible revision of the book this year, Jesus Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently. I am so glad I read this new book!

Jesus, Contradicted: Why The Gospels Tell The Same Story Differently, by Michael Licona, offers a more evidenced-based approach to handling differences in the Gospels, without resorting to tortured harmonization efforts concerning incidental details.

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April 27, 2022

Why I Trust the Bible: Bible Translator Bill Mounce Answers Real Questions and Doubts

By Clarke Morledge

Were the Gospels written by anonymous people who had no direct contact with early eyewitnesses to Jesus of Nazareth?

.… Part of an on-going series on the “historical criticism” of the Bible….

How Do You Answer Critics, Who Try to Use “Historical Criticism,” to Attack the Message of the Bible? 

Dr. Bill Mounce, who has served on the translation committee for the New International Version of the Bible, and as the New Testament Chairperson for the English Standard Version of the Bible, has heard of claims like these before. Critical scholars, most notably represented by those like University of North Carolina professor, Bart Ehrman, argue that the writers of the four Gospels were written by sophisticated Greek-speakers, who lived in a very different world from Jesus’ original followers, made up of mostly illiterate persons, like Peter the fisherman, who primarily spoke Aramaic, and only very little Greek. We have no real idea who exactly wrote the Gospels, though they were probably composed as completed works as late as the 2nd century, and therefore, the historical information presented in them can not be entirely trusted as being accurate about Jesus.

As with any scholarly claim like this, there are elements of truth here. Yes, the four Gospels we have probably did not originally have the names of their authors embedded in the text. Titles like, “the Gospel according to Mark,” were added to the text by the late 2nd century. Yes, Jesus’ original hearers primarily spoke and understood Aramaic, while all four Gospels are written in elegant Greek.

But as Dr. Mounce writes in his Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have about the Bible, the idea that it was really Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who wrote their respective Gospels, was the unanimous consensus by the mid-2nd century. If the Gospels were truly anonymous, we would have heard of other possible author names being put forward as alternatives. But we do not see any contested argument regarding the names of authors in the historical record. In the ancient world, where we had no mass communication systems, made available by today’s technologies like the Internet, the traditional names of the Gospel writers consistently flourished throughout the geographically vast area of the Roman empire.

Contrast this with the disputes over who wrote the Book of Hebrews, the only New Testament book that lacks a particular claim to a particular author. Tertullian argued that Barnabas wrote Hebrews. Other early church fathers suggest Clement of Rome, or Luke. Eusebius believed it was Paul. Some even say Priscilla wrote it. Origen concluded, “In truth only God knows.”

In the case of Mark’s Gospel, we do have good evidence that Mark was indeed the author. Though the writings have not directly survived, Eusebius tells us of the church father and writer Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, until about 130 CE, who was a disciple of John. Papias in these lost writings had written that Mark had become Peter’s interpreter. Furthermore, Clement of Alexandria attests to Peter being in Rome, preaching in perhaps the 60s, of the first century. This would indicate that Mark probably wrote his Gospel, based on the eyewitness testimony of Peter, as derived from sermons that Peter gave in Rome, prior to Peter’s martyrdom.

When Doubts Arise: Having a Reliable Guide to Answer Informed Critics

Bill Mounce givens seasoned, evidence-grounded answers, like the one above, to the type of doubts and questions raised by critics of the Bible today, in Why I Trust the Bible. Dr. Mounce makes judicious use of the insights gained by the “historical criticism” of the Bible, that enhance our understanding of the Scriptural text, rather than undermining it. Mounce’s audience is directed at ordinary Christian believers, who find themselves overwhelmed by the popular claims of skeptics, who are looking for reasoned explanations, that are readily accessible, and that do not descend into the overly technical. For those looking for more academic treatments of these topics, Mounce footnotes his references for those who want to dive deeper into these type of discussions.

I was particularly impressed with Dr. Mounce’s chapters on textual criticism, answering both the criticisms against New Testament itself popularly expressed by the famous atheist/agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman, as well as the King James Only-movement on the other side of the debate. Those few chapters alone are worth the price of the book, written at a level that most people should be able to understand, that covers all of the important questions that are typically raised on this topic.

I can quibble with Dr. Mounce on a few points here and there throughout the book. For example, Dr. Mounce’s claim that the “had formed” for the animals’ creation in Genesis 2:19, as found in the ESV and NIV translations, does not carry a sense of temporal sequence, has been criticized by other scholars as a form of cheating when it comes to certain Bible translations (see page 257). But such complaints are minor, as set within the context of the whole of Dr. Mounce’s excellent work.

All in all, Why I Trust the Bible is probably one of the best resources available, that critique some of the more extreme conclusions made within the “historical criticism” movement, regarding the Bible. From questions about the canon of Scripture to the latest intellectual fad of “Jesus Mythicism,” Bill Mounce hits nearly every major topic that skeptics will bring up about the Bible. That being said, this may not be the right book to give to a knowledgeable non-believer, who devours every book that Bart Ehrman publishes. Dr. Mounce pretty much assumes that his audience are either Christians, or those who are genuinely seeking information about the Bible. There are lots of great books now about the existence of God, how science and faith relate to one another, and social justice issues concerning Christianity, but if I had to pick just one book that specifically looks at the trustworthiness of the Bible, Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have about the Bible stands near the top of the list.

One Serious Gripe

If I had one serious complaint to make about Why I Trust the Bible it would be that the book is too short. Why I Trust the Bible could have explored certain issues at a greater length and depth, but the author chose not to. Dr. Mounce’s book clocks in at around 280 pages, whereas British Anglican liberal scholar John Barton’s A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, ( reviewed earlier in this blog post series on Veracity ), and endorsed by Bart Ehrman, clocks in at a hefty and whopping 635 pages. Both books are written for a popular audience, and easily digestible. Both books address overlapping material. Both Dr. Mounce and Dr. Barton are world-class scholars. But in spite of the length of Barton’s A History of the Bible, that might easily scare off some readers, Barton’s book outsells Dr. Mounce’s shorter Why I Trust the Bible, and most likely, will continue to outsell it.

I wonder if the topic of “historical criticism” of the Bible is avoided by church-going believers, because they are afraid with what they might find there. Thankfully, Bill Mounce’s Why I Trust the Bible does not exploit such fears, as it actually does the exact opposite. But perhaps the popularity of John Barton’s A History of the Bible exploits the growing skeptical reading audience’s desire for more material to challenge historic, orthodox Christianity.

While conservative evangelical book publishing has continued to improve tremendously over the past few decades, substantial volumes geared towards the general public have languished when compared to similar texts produced by progressive Christian and non-believing scholars. Back when I was in seminary in the 1990s, I remember being mesmerized by books written by the progressive Bible scholar, Elaine Pagels, available at the Barnes and Noble bookstore, while being frustrated by the lack of alternative volumes written by otherwise equally competent conservative evangelical scholars, on similar topics, altogether absent from those Barnes and Noble bookshelves. Elaine Pagels was introducing me to a whole new world of “historical criticism,” but the evangelical churches I knew of in those days, addressed such topics with crickets!!

Is this the fault of evangelical book publishers, or the book reading market that tends to shy away from lengthy books of this type? I do not know that answer here. But what I do know is that we need more substantial books, along the lines of Mounce’s Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have about the Bible, that help to counter a growing skepticism in an increasingly secularized world.

 

In closing out this book review, I am leaving a whole list of teasers that might inspire you to go out and buy the book. Thankfully, Dr. Mounce has released a set of short videos, most of them clocking in at well under 5-minutes, that give you a summary of each chapter, plus a few extra videos that dive a little deeper into more complex topics. Here is the link to the entire YouTube playlist, but right below is the first video in the list, and I have hyperlinked to the other videos in the playlist, just below that. This is great stuff for your own personal discipleship journey, and might even be useful in a small group setting. Enjoy!! 

 

Chapter 1: Did Jesus really exist? Who was the Jesus of history?

Chapter 2: Who wrote the Gospels?

Chapter 3: Are there really contradictions in the Bible?

Chapter 4: What about “discrepancies” in the Bible that really, really look like contradictions?

Chapter 5: Why do we have 27 books in the New Testament?

Chapter 6: When was the New Testament canon closed? What was the role of the church?

Chapter 7: Are the original Greek texts for the New Testament hopelessly corrupt?

Chapter 8: How were the ancient New Testament manuscripts copied down through the generations?

Chapter 9: How does Dr. Bill Mounce interact with the claims of Dr. Bart Ehrman?

Chapter 10: There are so many Bible translations! Which ones can you trust?

Chapter 11: What are different philosophies behind Bible translations?

Chapter 12: Can I trust the character of God given to us in the Old Testament?

Chapter 13: Can we trust the historicity of the Old Testament?

Conclusion: Why does Dr. Mounce trust the Bible, and why should I?

What is “Jesus Mythicism?”

Does the Bible adequately show that Jesus really existed?

How accurate are the Gospels, if they were written down at least 20-25 years after Jesus lived on earth?

How good were the memories of the Gospel writers?

A tough apparent contradiction: Staff, or no staff?

Staff, or no staff? A shorter summary.

How many times did Peter deny Jesus?

Does the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew contradict the genealogy in Luke?

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April 8, 2022

Was Jesus Mistaken About Abiathar? : Why Thoughtful Study is Better Than Ad-Hoc Harmonizations

By Clarke Morledge

In his 2005 New York Times best seller, Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman told the story of how he discovered that there were mistakes in the Bible. Despite having attended stalwart evangelical institutions, like Moody Bible College and Wheaton College, in Illinois, Ehrman arrived at Princeton Theological Seminary, having serious questions about the Bible’s reliability.

….. in a series on the “historical criticism” of the Bible….

Did Jesus mess up when He referenced the Old Testament, or did He say what He did on purpose? (Credit: Christianity Today magazine.)

When Harmonization is Helpful … and When the Search for Ad-Hoc Harmonizations Can Lead Someone Away from Faith

Bart Ehrman decided to write a hefty paper about a famous Bible discrepancy in Mark  2, where critics have claimed that Jesus mistakenly named “Abiathar” as a high priest in days of King David, when he should have used the name “Ahimelich.” Ehrman used the tools of “historical criticism” he had learned, trying to harmonize the details to somehow make the Bible “fit.” After pages and pages of analysis, a professor suggested to him that perhaps Mark or Jesus simply got that particular detail wrong.

At that moment, years of effort to “defend the Bible” came crashing down around Dr. Erhman. He remained a Christian after that for a few years, albeit a rather liberal or progressive one. But he gave up his faith altogether soon thereafter, the process of deconstruction having run its course to a full-blown agnosticism, if not downright atheism.

This story helped to catapult book sales of Misquoting Jesus, and later titles, thus giving Dr. Erhman the privilege of selling millions of books, for over the past 17 years. Every year or so, I have run into someone I know, or someone close to them, who has looked to Dr. Ehrman’s books as part of their deconstruction movement out of Christianity. Anytime Dr. Ehrman shows up on YouTube, he gets thousands of views.

Now, I am not saying that Dr. Erhman has been in it for the money. He is not. Nor is he purposefully attempting to destroy the faith of other believers in telling his story. He is not doing that either. Some Christians take a cheap shot at Ehrman and make wild accusations like these. Not only are such accusations unfair, they fail to adequately address some valid questions about what the Bible is actually teaching, concerns raised by Dr. Ehrman.

Other Christians have taken a more measured approach, but still find themselves nervous when they hear such claims, suggesting that Jesus, or someone else in the Bible, was wrong. The natural tendency is then to gravitate towards some relatively quick, ad hoc explanation of the discrepancy. You then latch onto some “possible” way of interpreting a passage differently, breathe a sigh of relief, and then move onto the next difficulty.

Now, such harmonization is not without merit. One of my favorite YouTube apologists, Inspiring Philosophy, somewhat leans towards this very approach with that passage. However, caution is in order, as such harmonization efforts can easily come across as either self-serving or overly complex, thereby encouraging skeptical critics to remain hardened in their skepticism.

A Quick Sidebar: One or Two Temple Cleansings?

A quick example here can suffice: All four Gospels each record one instance of Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. However, while Matthew, Mark and Luke place this event around the week prior to Jesus’ Crucifixion, John places the event at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Some Christians, with godly scholarly support, contend for a harmonization approach, whereby we are to conclude that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice during his public ministry, first at the beginning of His public ministry, and second towards the end of His public ministry (One gracious, friendly commentator on a previous blog post even gave me a theological reason why there must have been two cleansings…. though well intended, I was not convinced).

While there is nothing technically wrong with this harmonization, it can come across as sounding rather ad hoc, or forced, as it fails to answer the question as to why no one single Gospel records the two Temple cleansings. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that Jesus could have gotten away with the first Temple cleansing in John, without getting arrested, but the second Temple cleansing chimes in well with his arrest later in the Passion Week.

Rather, a much better solution is to say that John was not trying to give a chronological account of the one Temple cleansing. Instead, John put the (single) Temple cleansing first in his narrative, to theologically highlight the fact that Jesus came to take down the Old Covenant, as represented by the Temple, and install a New Covenant, centered around faith in Jesus as the Son of God.

In other words, Temple worship does not save us. But faith in Jesus does. And that is Good News!! There is no real concern about possibly “de-historicizing” or “demythologizing” the Bible, as Rudolf Bultmann tried to do. It just makes better sense to read the text this way. No ad hoc harmonization required.

The main problem with a rather ad hoc harmonization approach to the Scriptures is that it tends to reduce Bible study to working a puzzle, merely trying to find solutions to a problem to be solved, instead of seeing Bible discrepancies as a window into exploring a mystery that sets a truly Christian imagination on fire. While sometimes solving a puzzle in the Bible is a worthwhile endeavor, as is the case with syncing up Paul’s description of his missionary journeys, when compared to potential discrepancies we find in the Book of Acts, the rich 2,000 year history of Christian reading and study of the Scriptures suggests meditating on the intricacies of Bible discrepancies actually helps the reader enter into the theological depths of God’s Word, at a whole new level. When the juices begin to flow to help the believer to expand their imagination, to think God’s thoughts after Him, to see that there are mysteries unfolding in the text, then that is a wonderful sign that the Holy Spirit is at work.

Connecting the dots associated with what at first appears to be conflicting data points in the Bible have led to some of the most remarkable conversions in the history of the church. It is that type of fired up Christian imagination that helped to turn former skeptics, like the 5th century Augustine of Hippo, to the 20th century Oxford don, C.S. Lewis, to having faith in Jesus. Bishop Ambrose in Rome helped Augustine see the Bible in a whole new way. J.R.R. Tolkien did this for his Oxford scholar/friend C.S. Lewis.

A Case Study on Doing Bible Study Without Excessive Harmonization

British pastor/teacher Andrew Wilson takes the difficult Mark 2 passage regarding Jesus’ supposed “mistake” about Abiathar as an illustration to make this very point, and he makes the illustration a lot better than I can. I took part of Wilson’s essay from behind the paywall at Christianity Today magazine to post the best part here, so I hope Christianity Today will not mind (it may just inspire someone to subscribe to CT, which would be for their benefit).  Enjoy and be edified:

One of my favorite discrepancies is Jesus’ “mistake” in Mark 2. In this passage, the Pharisees criticize Jesus for letting his disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath. In response, Jesus explains that he and his friends are doing what David and his men did when they ate the holy bread in the time of Abiathar the high priest (Mark 2:25–26). The problem is, 1 Samuel 21 tells us that Ahimelech, not his son Abiathar, was the high priest at the time that David and his men ate the holy bread. Either Jesus made a mistake or Mark did. In either case, evangelicals get nervous.

Scholar Bart Ehrman said that when he discovered this discrepancy in seminary, it kick-started his departure from Christianity. Progressive UK pastor Steve Chalke made it his opening salvo in a debate with me about the truthfulness of the Bible. Countless Christians, on the other hand, upon seeing the problem, have rushed to their study Bibles or other resources where they discover, in relief, that the Greek phrase epi Abiathar could mean “in the passage about Abiathar” rather than “in the time of Abiathar.” “That must be it,” they exclaim. “Problem solved. On to Mark 3.”

Yet there is far more going on in Mark 2. Jesus’ argument is not that he has found an obscure guy in the Old Testament who once ate bread on a Saturday. His point is that David, Israel’s true king-in-waiting, and his consecrated friends were allowed the holy bread that day. Jesus is interpreting his actions through the story of Israel’s greatest king. He is saying, in that cryptic way he often does, “I am David. These guys are my men. So they can eat what they want.”

So Jesus is David, the true king of Israel, and the disciples are his allies. But they aren’t the only characters in the story. Herod is Saul, the current king who has drifted from God and now wants to kill the pretender to the throne. John the Baptist is Samuel, the fiery prophet who prepares the way for the new king and confronts the old one. Judas is Doeg the Edomite, the betrayer. And Abiathar? He is Eli’s great-great-grandson, the last surviving member of the old priestly line, whose eventual removal from the priesthood would prove true God’s word through Samuel (1 Kings 2:27).

All of this means that Jesus mentions Abiathar rather than Ahimelech for good reason. He is saying, “I am David, these are my men, and the current priests are Abiathar. They are in charge now, but in just a few years their priesthood will end, just like Abiathar’s. And my kingdom will be established, just like David’s.”

I think that’s wonderful. The Holy Spirit didn’t put discrepancies in Scripture to provide fuel for skeptics, employment for commentators, or annoyance for evangelical Christians. He did it to make us think, search, meditate, read, learn—and be ever filled with awe.

Andrew Wilson’s treatment of this difficult passage is a good example of a better way we should deal with certain Bible discrepancies.  In the next post in this series, just in time for end of Holy Week, we will examine one of the most puzzling passages in the Gospels. To give you a hint, we will be talking about “Zombies” in the Bible. Look for it on Good Friday!

In the meantime, please keep Michael Licona in your prayers for his big 7-hour debate with Bart Ehrman, to be recorded tomorrow, on the question, “Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?” It happens tomorrow, April 9th, starting at 9:30am, EDT!!

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