Prompted by some recent (but, I think, quite wrong) criticisms of my stance as a conservative Christian who doesn’t accept the belief that the Bible must be seen as inerrant, I’ve been reflecting over the last couple of days on the fact that – as with other doctrines – plenty of evangelicals today assume that since they believe something and so does everyone they associate with, this must be the “orthodox” view, and it must belong to all orthodox Christians in history. Some evangelicals, understandably keen to trace key elements of their own theology back throughout church history, have claimed that their doctrine of inerrancy has uniformly been taught by conservative Christians of all ages.

While there has always been a clear expression of the view that what Scripture teaches is correct, this has certainly not always been seen in terms of the notion of “inerrancy.” After all, the very disagreement that exists between evangelicals who affirm inerrancy and those who do not is a disageement about whether or not the idea that the Bible is authoritative and truthful in what it teaches us should (or need not) give rise to the further claim that the Bible is also inerrant.

Discussions of inerrancy specifically formulated didn’t take place until the modern period, so nobody is going to be able to produce a statement from, say someone in the fifth century saying “I affirm the doctrine of inerrancy.” Certainly, there is plenty of material to quote claiming that the Bible is authoritative and that it contains no false teaching. But here and there over the centuries we do get a window on how some theologians taught about the existence of small errors or inconsistencies in the biblical record, and what to make of them.

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Empirical science and historiography are separate fields of enquiry. No big secret there. Experts (or just interested people) in one can be complete dunces in the other. Every now and then there comes along a real whopper, too. Remember the thoroughly discredited legend about Christopher Columbus, and those who opposed him because they thought the earth was flat? It is now universally admitted that this was a concocted myth strung together by opponents of religious belief, rather than by responsible historians (seriously, a flat earth?).

OK, so the fable about the opponents of Columbus is an extreme example, but still, there’s the occasional comment, historical generalisation or re-telling of history that follows this sort of pattern. Few historians would even bother with the familiar rants about how religion has always been anti-science, religion has tended to get in the way of learning, some still do take the time to correct the outdated and simply misinformed caricatures about the so-called “Dark Ages” (a term no longer current precisely because of how misleading historians have shown it to be) etc. Still, it’s enjoyable to watch one of the online proponents of these and similar tales being rhetorically garroted.

You might wonder why legends like these need to be publicly addressed at all. I mean people can just study history and they’ll know that these silly portrayals of Christianity’s role in culture are false, right? Well, maybe, but here’s the thing: People who make and people who read claims like this on the internet generally use the internet as their source of information on this subject. What’s more, historical research reproduced online that undermines this picture of history is frequently dismissed as a conservative or fundamentalist re-writing of history to suit someone’s belief system. Yes, it’s ironic, I know, but it happens (it happens in the comments at this very blog).

When someone does take the time to engage this sort of tabloid style history, however, it can be a bit of a sadistic pleasure, something akin to, as a young boy, using a magnifying glass to burn the wings off a white butterfly as it lays pinned down by stones next to the entrance to an ant nest. Having said all that (I couldn’t just post a link, I needed an introduction!), I invite you to check out Michael Flynn’s blog post, which eviscerates one such online collection of claims (that collection being called “The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine”). Hat tip to Quodlibeta for the link.

Glenn Peoples

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Today, The twelfth of October, marks the anniversay of the battle for Passchendaele, France, in 1917.

That battle has become representative of the horrors of World War I, thousands of young men scrambling though mud and barbed wire, mown down by German machine gun and mortar fire. The battle was an attempt to capture Passchendaele Ridge as part of a larger effort to push north to take the German submarine bases on the Belgian coast. It was without a doubt (setting aside mass destruction like Dresden or Hiroshima) one of the most bloody days in the history of Western warfare. On October 12 over the space of no more than two hours, more than 2,800 New Zealand soldiers were either killed, seriously injured, or became missing in action.

Recovering the New Zealand wounded from the battlefield took two and a half days days even with 3,000 extra men from the Fourth Brigade, artillery and other units plus a battalion from the British 49th Division. The conditions were horrendous and six men were needed to carry each stretcher because of the mud and water. The Germans suffered the same problems and an informal truce for stretcher-bearers came into force, although anyone without a stretcher was fired on. By the evening of October 14 there simply was no one left alive on the battlefield.

(A witness’s account.)

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A small part of Twentieth Century New Zealand history is usually glossed over, but not any more: The Labour Government of the day wanted to appease Hitler and sit around the table to talk peace even after he broke the former agreement with Britain and invaded Poland:

Though it has been commonly assumed that New Zealand vocally opposed the Nazi expansion and urged Britain to confront Hitler’s regime, two historians are arguing this is not true.

New Zealand continued to push for negotiations with Hitler even as Britain declared war, while still honouring a trade agreement made with Germany in 1937, they say.

Massey University head of history, philosophy and classics James Watson said he and New Zealand Defence Force historian John Crawford began their research after discovering discrepancies in the history books.

Read more HERE. Let’s see, waiting until dangerous states break agreements that were the condition for peace, and then condemning those who want to act swiftly. That’s our Labour alright. Some things never change.

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The Liberal Theocracy? “What?!” You ask in disbelief. A contradiction in terms, you might think. Not so. This episode is, well, long. I noted the howls of protest at my decision to shorten the episodes, and I was listening. But don’t think you’ll get this every episode! The next one will probably be a short one.

 Episode 016: The Liberal Theocracy [55:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I saw something a few minutes ago on nationwide television that nobody should ever have to see.

It was an advertisement, promoting the University of Victoria in Wellington New Zealand. There’s nothing exceptional about that, of course, but what the advert said broke the irony meter. This is a University – an institute of higher learning. A place where knowledge and scholarly integrity flourish. Right?

The ad began, and this is nearly verbatim: “In the 14th century most people were sure that the earth was flat.” This was accompanied by a witty animation of a ship falling off the edge of the earth. Ha Ha, what a bunch of idiots they were in those days, huh? Then came the sales pitch: “What are you sure of?” Then a list of subjects appeared on-screen: philosophy, science, history etc. You can come to Victoria University and let them educate you in those subjects!

Science? History? Philosophy? You’re kidding right? You want to encourage people to come and study these things while you peddle this absolutely absurd caricature that compeltely ignores the scientific and philsoophical acumen of the middle ages and displays a mythical view of history that no respectable scholar of history would take seriously?

Do just a tiny bit of reading before embarrassing yourself by releasing promotional material like this. If it’s too much effort to actually open the cover of a book, pick up the phone and call someone at your University who teaches on these subjects for goodness’ sake! Heck, even Google could have saved your hide here.

When Prentice-Hall published a book that fell prey to such silly myths about the ignorance of dark age dummies, they were torn to shreds. For example, Lawrence S. Lerner, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State University, Long Beach, tore strips off them in an article entitled “nonsense in schoolbooks.” It includes such gems as the label “ignorant fakery” for what Prentice-Hall did by presenting the book at all.

This attrocious misrepresentation of history is debunked at Wikipedia as well.

Jeffrey Burton Russell of the American Scientific Affiliation is on the money, in my ever so humble opinion, when he says that “Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are produced by the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by secular writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity today.” But “contortions” they clearly are, and that Victoria University propagate them is beyond explanation. As Burton goes on to substantiate, the contortion is itself a recent one, only arising after the trend to attack Christianity as unscientific. “No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.”

My two cents: Write to the University. Complain. No responsible educational institute should need to let their standards drop in this way. Secondly, study at the University of Otago instead. At least they won’t peddle fairy tales as history. Well, not this one, at least.

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