There are some key elements that need to be discussed that are related to this issue. The sources come from the book we have mentioned in this series and from the BG website. But we are not responding to the comments at the latter.
We just want to deal with a few key aspects that all unbelievers demand of everyone.
#1. think critically
When you do apologetic work, you will hear these words often. The unbeliever assumes that the Christian has not thought through their decision to become a Christian. They conclude that Christians just grow up in the church, claim to be Christian, and lap up whatever the preacher has said.
This is just not so. While many Christians do grow up in the church, the bulk of the Christian faith members come from unbelievers who already have thought critically about God, the Bible, and everything in the Bible.
One example of this was Lee Strobel. His book The Case for Christ was his attempt to do critical thinking about Jesus and the Bible and his work led him to become a Christian. The definition of critical thinking is as follows:
Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyse, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write (source)
and
the process of thinkingcarefully about asubject or idea, without allowingfeelings or opinions to affect you (source)
Once a person, who becomes a Christian, has done all of this, they do not need to do it again.. They have done all the work and made their decision. Sadly, too many unbelievers want Christians to continuously do this process and that is just not possible.
There is no need to rehash the same old thing every time there is some claim made against the trinity and the Bible. After the person has done his critical thinking and made their decision, they learn the truth and take by faith what God has said in the bible.
Faith is an act of taking God at his word and that shows God that we believe Him. We do not believe him when we are constantly demanding evidence to prove an event or person found in the Bible.
Doing that is NOT critical thinking but doubting and disbelieving God.
#2. ability to reason
This is another faulty assumption made by unbelievers. They think that Christians that fail to re-think their faith every time some opposing claim is made are not using reason. But we do not have to do what the unbeliever expects or demands. Because we do not act in the manner the unbeliever wants doe snot mean the Christian does not have the ability to reason.
Nor does it mean that the Christian has not used reason to stand on their faith. rejecting the unbelieving side of the faith is using reason. It just produces a result that the unbeliever does not like.
We see the errors in their arguments and so-called evidence and have used our ability to reason to reject their claims. That is not wrong. The unbeliever does not have a monopoly on reason, its definition, or its application.
The definition of the term ‘ability to reason’ does not exclude Christians from rejecting the arguments of the unbeliever:
Reasoning ability refers to the power and effectiveness of the processes and strategies used in drawing inferences, reaching conclusions, arriving at solutions, and making decisions based on available evidence.(source)
Both critical thinking and the ability to reason apply to the topic of infallibility and inerrancy. The Christian has used their mental powers to conclude that the Bible is both infallible and inerrant and that is not wrong.
Just because the unbeliever doe snot like it, does not mean the Christians’ decision to stand on infallibility and inerrancy is a mistake or faulty use of critical thinking or lacks the ability to reason.
The unbeliever gets upset because they failed to justify their decision to be an unbeliever by ruining someone else’s faith.
#3. Tolerance
This has become a keyword in just about every segment of society as unbelievers do not like how their fellow unbelievers, no matter how perverse, are being treated. Here is what Dr/ Limndsell said in his book on page 126:
…the atmosphere at the seminarywas hostile toward those who held to inerrancy.
Those that disagree with the correct position do not like those that do. This has been going on for quite some time and only has become more obvious in recent decades. The once persecuted and excluded have become the persecutors and the intolerant.
Instead of learning how to act towards others during their time as the excluded, etc., and becoming the example, these groups have gone further and acted worse towards those who disagree with them.
One reason may be that those who hold to errancy, the fallibility of the Bible and alternate preferences, etc., know they did not make the right decisions and want to blot the truth from their presence so they can continue to deceive themselves.
Or they are just getting revenge on those by inflicting pain and suffering on those they disagree with even though many members of the latter group did nothing to the former groups.
These new tormentors want to be treated in the biblical way described by Jesus, yet refuse to do the same for those they disagree with. That is evidenced by the current woke and cancel cultures that are worse than vigilante justice and kangaroo courts.
If those alternative believers and groups want to be treated correctly, they should treat those who disagree with them a lot better than they are doing.
#4. Mixing the groups
There is no better term to use here but the following quote from page 127 of Dr. Lindsell’s book provides a better explanation:
The recommendations of the committee called for the “fostering of a spirit of acceptance and respect for divergent views within the contect of our historic committment”
This does not work. Once you let sin in the church or their academic institutions it is hard to get it out again. You do not teach both ways as that fosters a spirit of confusion and that is not of God.
As God said, you are either on my side or against me, and in the church, you are supposed to be on God’s side. There is nothing in the Bible that says its content is both fallible and infallible, errant and inerrant. You need to make a choice and pick a side.
You cannot have both views in the church or Christian academic institutions. One is from evil and the other is from God and they do not mix together. Inerrancy and Infallibility are from God.
The Bible tells us that God does not lie so anything called an error in the Bible is calling God a liar. That is wrong. If science or any research field claims there is an error in the Bible, then there is something wrong in the science and research but nothing is wrong in the Bible.
While unbelievers point to the numerous supposed errors in the Bible, they are not really errors. Textual criticism is a flawed process as it assumes too many facts not in evidence. Plus, the so-called errors as we have mentioned in the earlier parts of this series are not really errors that change anything about the Bible, its contents, its doctrines, and its historical & scientific recordings.
The people claiming there are errors, like Dr. Ehrman, make their accusations from deceived and blind minds. How are they going to know the truth? Especially about the Bible, God’s holy book that he wrote?
Think about it and use your critical thinking and ability to reason to see that God is right and unbelievers are not.
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