Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
“AS THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES GO, SO GOES THE CHURCH”—J. Gresham Machen—The Christian Faith in the Modern World, p. 65 Should a pulpit committee hire a pastoral candidate from certain seminaries who staff their faculty with evangelical, critical scholars who will train your church people in God’s Word and lead in the spiritual development of your congregation?
THIS BLOG ARTICLE IS BASED ON THE OFTEN MADE CLAIM BY BART D. EHRMAN: "Not only do we not have the originals, We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals." - Misquoting Jesus (p. 10)
Because of liberal scholarship of such persons as Bart D. Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, Karen L. King, and Marvin W. Meyer; many have become suspicious and skeptical about the Bible being the Word of God and orthodox Christianity, being the Christianity that heresy grew out of centuries later.
The Greek New Testament was copied and recopied by hand for 1,500 years. Regardless of those scribes who had worked very hard to be faithful in their copying, errors crept into the text. How can we be confident that what we have today is the Word of God?
Agnostic early Christianity and textual scholar Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, writes, "For me, though, this was a compelling problem. It was the words of Scripture themselves that God had inspired. Surely we have to know what those words were if we want to know how he had communicated to us, since the very words were his words, and having some other words (those inadvertently or intentionally created by scribes) didn’t help us much if we wanted to know His words." Misquoting Jesus (p. 5)
"Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places." - Agnostic NT textual scholar Dr. Bart D. Ehrman
There are SIX major contributing factors as to why some Christians gave taken to deeper studies while others have not. The FIRST contributing factor that contributed to the wave of interest in such fields as hermeneutics (Biblical Interpretation), textual criticism of the Old and New testament (TC), Bible translation process and philosophy, church history, apologetics, among many others?... Continue Reading →
"Four such Gospels became most widely used—those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament—but many others were written. We still have some of the others: for example, Gospels allegedly by Jesus’s disciple Philip, his brother Judas Thomas, and his female companion Mary Magdalene." - Misquoting Jesus (p. 24)
Apologist Norman L. Geisler "Bart Ehrman’s denial of the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture has many driving factors. Some of those include his reaction to his training as a youth and the appeal of academic sophistication to him. Others relate to his struggle with the problem of evil. But clearly the reason he accepts many of his conclusions are because of his philosophical presuppositions and methodological ideology. Yet all of these have been shown to be faulty. This faulty methodology has led to his faulty theology. Thus his presuppositions, methodology, and historical claims are ..."