An Open Challenge to Norman Geisler

[Rational Gaze]

Good idea.

We British came up with the idea. After all, we deported all our criminals to Australia.

[Manwë Súlimo]

Either William Lane Craig is far shorter than I imagined (which would be odd, because I've seen tons of his lectures and debates), or Mike Licona is a Nephilim*:









* - I'm sure Geisler would say so.

[Rational Gaze]

Either William Lane Craig is far shorter than I imagined

He's shorter than me.

[Chrawnus]

Either William Lane Craig is far shorter than I imagined (which would be odd, because I've seen tons of his lectures and debates), or Mike Licona is a Nephilim*:

Goliath himself would be intimidated by Licona.

[Kenny]

The guy just won't let up:

http://www.normangeisler.net/public_...onseMLEPS.html

[Chrawnus]

The guy just won't let up:

http://www.normangeisler.net/public_...onseMLEPS.html

Norman Geisler, A Response to Mike Licona’s EPS Paper

Third, Licona’s basic problem is methodological. He adopts an unorthodox methodology and system that is used on the whole Gospel narration. One’s theology is not the only thing that can be unorthodox. There can be methodological unorthodoxy as well. As noted in our “Ten Points” article on our web site, the method of determining genre adopted by Licona and his supporters is clearly unorthodox. This was pronounced unorthodox by ICBI, as shown below. Licona said clearly, “there is somewhat of a consensus among contemporary scholars that the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography (bios).” Then he goes on to say that “Bioi offered the ancient biographers great flexibility for rearranging material and inventing speeches,…and they often included legend. Because bios was a flexible genre, it is often difficult to determine where history ends and legend begins” (ibid., 34, emphasis added in these citations). Little wonder Licona has gotten himself into trouble. A bad methodology leads to a bad bibliology and to bad theology.

© source where applicable

[Manwë Súlimo]

Little wonder Licona has gotten himself into trouble. A bad methodology leads to a bad bibliology and to bad theology.

Yea, bad methodology is determining genres and the capabilities that each can and can not address.

Geisler, you're a dumbass.

[Mountain Man]

I'm starting to get the impression that Geisler knows he's wrong but is in so deep at this point that he refuses to admit it. I think the only thing that will bring him back to reality is if/when he gets brought down hard.

[jpholding]

The guy just won't let up:

http://www.normangeisler.net/public_...onseMLEPS.html

Me neither. Expect a response on the Ticker in the next few hours.

[ApologiaPhoenix]

I found it amusing that Geisler says Mike has not stopped his family and friends from commenting on the net.

Family. Geez. I wonder who he has in mind.

And yes. Silly me. I guess we should let Geisler post whatever he wants and give no response to it.

[Mountain Man]

So is Geisler implying that it is in someway improper for family and friends to defend someone who they think has been wronged?

[Rational Gaze]

So is Geisler implying that it is in someway improper for family and friends to defend someone who they think has been wronged?

That's not what I got from the article. The two implications I got were: Geisler is an idiot, and Geisler is an idiot. The idiocy displayed by this man is such that it merits two separate mentions.

[jpholding]

I found it amusing that Geisler says Mike has not stopped his family and friends from commenting on the net.

Family. Geez. I wonder who he has in mind.

And yes. Silly me. I guess we should let Geisler post whatever he wants and give no response to it.

And friends. WhodatIwonder?

***

Just posted this reply...turns out less than half was useful/relevant for me to comment on.

http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/201...er-turkey.html

Geisler Trots Out Another Turkey

Apparently stung by having been grounded by bright stars like Copan and Wallace, Norman Geisler has issued yet another rather sorrowful analysis of the situation; and to get to the main point: No, he still does not get that you can’t dehistoricize a text that wasn’t meant to be taken as historical in the first place. I can’t comment on all that he says – at least half of his commentary is either not relevant to my views, or involves matters of which I have no knowledge, but I’ll touch on what I can.

Geisler starts by listing certain events and complaints, of which we have some commentary:

Licona objected to internet presentations of matters like this and insisted that these discussions should take place in a “scholarly” context. However, this premise is seriously flawed for several reasons. First of all, Licona posted his paper and other discussion on this topic on his web site.

This is frankly one of the most childish and silly objections I have seen in a long time. How is the posting of this paper and discussion on a web site contrary to discussion on the specific issue of inerrancy taking place in a scholarly context? Posting a paper is not a “discussion,” unless Geisler has now become so insensate that he is having “discussions” with his own computer screen. It is also standard today to post scholarly papers online; the Internet encapsulates a broad range of interests, including scholarly ones, so there is nothing remiss in posting the paper there. It seems rather that Geisler is becoming more and more frustrated with his inability to control the discussion (as he does on his Facebook page by deleting responses). As I noted previously, while Geisler may have gotten away with this sort of thing before (except with Caner), he won’t this time – because he will not and can not assert authoritarian control over every aspect of the situation.

Beyond that, Geisler does not specify what “other discussion” he has in mind, so it’s not possible to comment.

Second, he has not restrained his family and friends from carrying on a defense of his view on the internet.

Well isn’t that just too bad for Geisler. Once again, he’s merely frustrated because he can’t control everyone’s views and shut them up (as again, he does on his Facebook page) whenever he wants to. Beyond that, Licona’s family and friends are all adults and it is silly and childish to expect Licona to “restrain” anyone just because Geisler is having a herd of cows over this. Indeed, what this amounts to is that Geisler is objecting that Licona isn’t acting like a bully – the way he does.

Not that it matters. It is absurd in any event to make an issue of this, because Licona’s obvious point was that Geisler’s mode of posting open letters first was where his offense began. Geisler threw the genie out of the bottle, though, and now it is too late; he set the terms, and if he’s now being turned into a pumpkin because he didn’t want to take the steps the right way – in a scholarly context – he shouldn’t complain when he gets a taste of his own ipecac.

Third, Licona preferred an academic context which he knew would contain more persons who shared his view.

Note that this comes from a guy who (again) keeps deleting links from his Facebook page posted by those trying to share that point of view. This is also from a guy who (we are learning) only selectively sent out a petition and did not include on that list some he knew would not share HIS point of view. Beyond that, I’d like to see some statistical substance behind this claim – for it occurs to me that in academia, more people would share Licona’s views; whereas, in such a case, it is non-academics – people with less knowledge to make suitable judgments – who share Geisler’s views. If that is so, then perhaps Geisler needs to think about what that would mean: That in a class of people with the same faith commitment, it is the less informed, more ignorant people share his views.

Fourth, public review is appropriate for any published view such as Licona’s, but he feared this would be more negative.

I can’t comment here because Geisler is presuming to know Licona’s motives, which I am not privy to, but I would observe that in academia as a whole, it’s more usual among credible members to start with a more scholarly context before going public. Those that go public first are usually people with an axe to grind – like Bart Ehrman.

Fifth, the scholarly context of the EPS was not very scholarly in its format since no opposing paper was permitted on this controversial issue.

Oh really? Okay. So: Who submitted an opposing paper, please? And it was turned down, was it? How exactly, and for what stated reasons? It seems odd that Geisler names no names of persons who submitted these papers. If they exist, we’d like to know who they are.

Beyond this Geisler complains rather much about some of Licona’s stronger language in the paper. I’ll just say that Geisler can be grateful it wasn’t me writing the paper – I think he deserved even stronger language, frankly. As before, though, I don’t buy his retort that he professed personal love for Licona – as I said, that’s what all theological bullies do before they punch you in the nose.

In the next section, Geisler denies that punitive measures have been taken against others: Habermas and Copan. As I observed in a comment in the last post, Geisler and Holden are trying to force an artificial distinction because they know they've been exposed as bullies. Habermas was clearly uninvited precisely because he took a stance on inerrancy in reaction to the situation with Licona, and no amount of semantic gerrymandering will excuse or erase that. That it reflects Habermas’ own views is true, but also beside the point: This is a matter of speakers being denied a place because of a shared ideological commitment.

Of course, one might argue that Habermas was excluded on his own merits, but the situation would hardly be different had it been that Habermas was the one who wrote the book Geisler addressed, and then Licona came to his defense. The point rather is that Geisler and Co. are resorting to ideological bullying out of sheer ignorance of the facts (eg, about Greco-Roman bioi, inerrancy, etc) and a refusal to face them honestly and head on.

Next section: Geisler simply denies that he is unconsciously canonizing the interpretations, as the “record” supposedly shows. Sorry, but that record is scratched, and it is Geisler singing the same “dehistoricizing” line over and over again – the one that continues to evade him. He is indeed canonizing his interpretation by declaring the genre factors off limits and refusing to deal directly with them.

Next section: Comments on bullying and scholarship, and the alleged seriousness of the “problem”. It is here that Geisler needs to directly address the pertinent questions about things like genre, Greco-Roman bioi, etc. but as before, he is content to do a high-speed watusi in the opposite direction and resort to the usual canned warnings about “putting scholarship over lordship,” “methodological unorthodoxy,” etc. that he substitutes for honest appraisal of the data. Actually demonstrating that the method is bad – other than by appeal to authoritarian pronouncements – that is apparently beyond Geisler’s meager academic capabilities to perform.

Further sections on the doctrine of inerrancy warrant no comment from us, aside from that Geisler yet again shows that he doesn’t “get it,” when he says things like:

Rather, inerrancy as a doctrine covers the truthfulness of all of Scripture. Such a false claim to inerrancy is vacuous since according to Licona the Gospel affirmations could be completely false—in that they did not correspond to any historic reality—and yet the Bible would still be considered completely true!

Uh, yes…exactly. Thus for example, Proverbs are not absolute; yet they can still be considered completely true. Revelation, an apocalypse, can use wild imagery that isn’t literal, and also still be considered completely true. Geisler is oblivious here to the concept of a semantic contract between reader and writer/speaker which allows for such variations according to genre. Of course, the panic button is just that: There isn’t an actual genre similar to the gospels (bioi) in which the contents are what Geisler would call “completely false”. As we have noted, in bioi, such instances would be isolated. But they did exist, and Geisler’s repeated appeal to ICBI statements about “truthfulness” show that he remains oblivious to this.

Nor, again, would Mary Baker Eddy find any solace here as Geisler implies, because there is no first century genre package that would allow the sort of allegorization she forced onto the text. Rather, Geisler here is more like Eddy in his own methodology, as he tries to force his own modern conceptions – completely without respect for genre and contextual considerations – into the text.

I would note briefly Geisler’s referral to Blocher which shows that he (and Blocher) fail to grasp this point:

Blocher advocates a literal interpretation of the passage because the last words of verse 53 "sound as an emphatic claim of historical, factual, truthfulness with an intention akin to that of 1 Corinthians 15:6."

The problem is that the sort of statements Licona refers to in extrabiblical literature would also sound, to modern ears, like an emphatic claim of historical, factual, truthfulness. Thus this is not a useful criterion for making a decision.

After yet more oblivious and circular appeal to ICBI statements, Geisler accuses Licona of misusing the words of J. I. Packer. Since I do not have the access I would like to material by Packer, I’ll have to pass on commenting, other than to note that it is ironic that Geisler admits that if Licona is right about Packer, “this would only prove that Packer was inconsistent with his view own inerrancy.” Since Geisler himself holds to an old earth view, this is as much an admission that he is inconsistent in his views on inerrancy – and so, then, were many framers of ICBI! It is said that the age of the earth wasn’t part of the test, but my creationist friends would say that it needs to be – and that (using Geisler’s own methodology) such ICBI members as retain an old earth view are compromising because of the demands of science.

A further section discusses evidence of Matthew 27 as historical, and since (again) I do think it was, I need say nothing of that section, other than that I would say some of Geisler’s arguments for the historicity of the text are rather poor.

We return to comment with material on alleged “use of an invalid historical verification principle.” In this though there is little more than the standard head-in-sand approach we have seen time and time again from lesser-educated pastors and authorities like Geisler, Mohler, and Packer who, as we have said, wouldn’t know Agricola from Coca-Cola. It is also rooted in a naïve and childlike understanding of “faith” as separate from fact, as exemplified by this comment quoted from Packer:

It is good to test the credentials of Christianity by the most searching scholarship, and to make faith give account of itself at the bar of history. . . . [However], faith is rooted in the realization that the gospel is God’s word; and faith recognizes in its divine origin a full and sufficient guarantee of its veracity. So with Scripture, ‘God’s Word written’: faith rests its confidence in the truth of the biblical narratives, not on the critical acumen of the historian, but on the unfailing trustworthiness of God”

As we have shown, however, this is an invalid understanding of pistis (faith). Indeed it is more akin to the sort of view held by critics like Bultmann, who denied the historicity of the texts. This brand of faith was a resort used to rescue faith from disbelief – and that is what Packer is unwittingly offering here as well. And, I will add, Packer too, in the quote Geisler offers, maintains the same lack of realizations about genre and “dehistoricizing” non-historical texts.

Geisler thereafter retreats to the canned sound bite that Licona’s type of “historiography was conceived by liberal scholars and is suited to their end. “ That is simply nonsense. Liberalism does not make the Gospels into Greco-Roman bioi any more than it turned the Agricola of Tacitus into a bioi. Geisler is simply waving around the “L word” (liberal, not Licona!) to inspire uncritical fear.

So, in the end: Geisler continues to refuse to confront the critical issues of interpretation head on, and prefers to resort to obscurantist, authoritarian bullying. He is hiding behind the wall of his own Facebook page and even his own past reputation as a way of avoiding the core issues which decide the matter.

That’s a turkey so dry that not even a lakeful of gravy will make it palatable.

[Rayado]

Oh, there is gravy to this turkey, and it's irony gravy.

It's because he appeals to Blocher...and he completely missed why J.I. Packer is relevant to charges of 'methodological unorthodoxy.'

Why is that terribly ironic?

Because J.I. Packer also appealed to Blocher in defending the framework hypothesis, not theistic evolution, directly and unambiguously against a literal reading of Genesis 1:1-2:4. My guess is that Geisler got word beforehand of a J.I. Packer quote being used in Licona's talk but did not get the details right.

That talk can be heard here. The relevant material starts at roughly the 29 minute mark and goes through the (very interesting, all things considered) Q and A.

Also, in regards to "Geisler simply denies that he is unconsciously canonizing the interpretations, as the “record” supposedly shows." I would agree with Geisler that he has not unconsciously canonized his own interpretation. That is because he has consciously done so.

[nightbringer]

What I really don't get is why Geisler is using language to do with orthodoxy to describe the dispute. He can think that Licona is wrong sure, and say that his views are unbiblical, or non-evangelical, but how can he say that Licona is unorthodox? Is Geisler really claiming that Licona has abandoned the historical Christian faith?