Biblical Inerrancy is Patristic

An Attack on Apologetics, of Sorts · Biblical Inerrancy is Patristic

Apologetics Prof Criticized My Video. My Response #deconstruction
C. J. Cornthwaite | 7 May 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZdDEOV5qE

2:56 I couldn't get hired there either.

The inerrant word of God has 73 books.

4:28 Not having an agreed canon of Scripture does not preclude holding Biblical inerrancy.

On a certain view it may make Biblical inerrancy absurd.

And obviously, if we don't have a 66 book canon in the Early Church (which we haven't), it makes the combination of Biblical inerrancy with 66 books absurd.

So, that's a red herring.

Ken Ham holds to 66 books and Biblical inerrancy. I hold to 73 books and Biblical inerrancy. Various early centuries theologians, clergy or not, would have held to perhaps anything from 65 to 81 books (66 minus Esther to Ethiopian) and this does still not preclude that they all held Biblical inerrancy.

4:57 "then you have the Catholic Church ... inerrancy was developed in the late 19th C. by Fundamentalism"

University of Toronto seems to love fake history.

1) You pretend the Catholic Church came after Early Church Fathers. (Unless I'm overinterpreting "then"). The Catholic Church was born on Calvary and attained maturity on Pentecost of the year commonly identified as AD 33.
2) You also pretend that the Catholic Church does not teach inerrancy.

Check Catholic Encyclopedia. 1917.

Inspiration of the Bible cites:

It will never be lawful to restrict inspiration merely to certain parts of the Holy Scripture, or to grant that the sacred writer could have made a mistake. Nor may the opinion of those be tolerated, who, in order to get out of these difficulties, do not hesitate to suppose that Divine inspiration extends only to what touches faith and morals, on the false plea that the true meaning is sought for less in what God has said than in the motive for which He has said it. (Denz., 1950)

Providentissimus Deus (Leo XIII, 1893).

The article traces it back:

Theologians discuss the question, whether inspiration controlled the choice of the words used or operated only in what concerned the sense of the assertions made in the Bible. In the sixteenth century verbal inspiration was the current teaching. The Jesuits of Louvain were the first to react against this opinion.

If we go to St. Thomas, he expresses it like "the Holy Ghost dictated" ... so, he was a believer in verbal inspiration.

Franzelin taught inspiration of subject matter. Obviously with verbal preservation from error.

Johann Baptist Franzelin, Cardinal and theologian; b. at Aldein, in the Tyrol, 15 April, 1816; d. at Rome, 11 Dec., 1886. Despite their poverty, his parents sent him at an early age to the neighboring Franciscan college at Bozano

5:48 Have you never heard of the Tibur inscription which suggests that Quirinius had been in Syria twice?

The first time over when "officially" he was in Cilicia, starting in I think 8 BC.

Cilicia is in modern Turkey near the border of modern Syria, he was on mission in Cilicia and assisted someone else in Syria, because he was competent.

No problem.

6:02 The traditional view on Judas' death would be:

• he hanged himself and was rescued
• he validated the purchase which the priests had done for him
• when setting his hand to that plough, he was torn asunder.

6:02 bis Furthermore, the idea that "Biblical inerrancy is absurd" doesn't prove "Early Christians didn't believe inerrancy" ...

6:17 "bad reading" — on your view taken from Toronto, and which presumes "texts" should be read as if not reflecting "facts" ... because if they did reflect facts (and they do) the best reading logically is the one that harmonises ...
"over simplistic" — again on your subjective evaluation ...
"based on this idea of Biblical inerrancy" — which contrary to your fake news from Toronto, was held by historic Christianity from scratch.

6:34 Or the canon is inspired, because the Church is theopneust even before the writings were (and yes, Moses' leadership was theopneust before he wrote one letter in any of the books of Moses, that was the OT Church).

7:01 Toronto told you to detect bad readings when Fundies harmonise, but somehow cannot teach you even basic due diligence in the reading of Acts 4?

The one reference to Peter being illiterate is this:

Now seeing the constancy of Peter and of John, understanding that they were illiterate and ignorant men, they wondered; and they knew them that they had been with Jesus
[Acts Of Apostles 4:13]

Who exactly is the subject "they"?

And Annas the high priest, and Caiphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest 7 And setting them in the midst, they asked: By what power, or by what name, have you done this
[Acts Of Apostles 4:6-7]

So, the "illiterate and ignorant" men were so according to the understanding and therefore also standards of Annas, Caiaphas, John, Alexander and other relatives of Annas.

Pretty much as you judge the person you respond to as "unacademic" according to your standards.

Those standards in either case doesn't preclude being able to read and write. Illiterate may mean "analphabet" in modern journalistic jargon, but is very clearly not the whole range of meaning of "sine litteris" ...

My pet theory is, St. Peter called himself "kipha" and not "kaiapha" and generally spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, and that was the reason why Caiaphas and his relative Annas (who had replaced Caiaphas as high priest of the year) "understood" he was unlettered.

Given the interrogation situation, I don't think Peter's answer was longer than the five verses, and obviously he was not given a pen to show he could write or not, he was judged on the impression he gave in those 144 syllables, as his speech is in Latin translation.*

There is no reason to think he couldn't read or write after 3 and 1/2 years under Jesus. There is no reason from those verses to conclude he had no literary style, so he could have dictated. Either way, nothing in the assessment by the Temple (which had a highly passionate bias against Jesus, by now) as reported by St. Luke contradicts St. Peter writing I and II Peter.

How childish can you get and still pass off as sophisticated?

7:24 The one "fisherman" who wrote a Gospel was a tax collector and a Levite.

The one argues he knew Greek and Latin letters, the other he knew Hebrew letters. And before you pretend Papias mention of his Hebrew collection of logia, Matthew actually is a collection of logia, 56 % of the text, with surrounding explanations.

How you can argue people spent 3 and 1/2 years studying under Jesus and neither learned to write nor to dictate is beyond me.

Like the argument from Acts 4, this argues a very extreme Jewish, and I don't mean Messianic Jews or Jews for Jesus, bias.

[tried to add:]

I should perhaps add, I hold with Revd Jean Colson that John the Gospeller wore the golden headband and was a lower tier of disciples than the twelve. But higher in the OT, as a Cohen.

7:31 Pseudepigrapha is not the default.

Apart from Jean Colson's argument that John the Gospeller was not son of Zebedee, but misidentified with him by young Irenaeus who left Asia Minor at age 16, and got that one detail wrong, there is no strong case against any traditionally assigned author. And even this isn't one, since it's only about a conflation, not against all the info about the traditionally assigned.

7:55 F F Bruce and yourself Plymouth brethren? (see wiki on FFB)

Well, explains your ignorance of what the Catholic position is.

8:40 Just because II Peter wasn't accepted by everyone in the first and second century doesn't mean it wasn't around.

10:03 On this one I would agree.

Except maybe Thomas.

Oxyrrhynchus 840 was a pious work but not an inerrant Gospel, and the Church under divine inspiration sifted it away as access to the four inspired ones became more generalised.

10:18 The dates of the Gospels are:

Matthew, 30's or 40's
Luke 50's
Mark before Peter died as a martyr
John after Patmos, so after 90 AD.

The idea of Marcan priroity was boosted by Prussians who didn't want Biblical inerrancy, especially not in as Papal friendly a document as Matthew. It had existed perhaps a century before the Kulturkampf, but as a very marginal view.

10:25 Luke second century?

Based on what liberal misreading of history?

11:20 As to "stupid" it's actually your reference to how the university professor (at Toronto) described Evangelicals, and later on, the contexts you use it are like about things (stupid confirmation bias, stupid tradition).

As to "addiction to certainty" it's actually there in the outro, and bringing up "addiction" is even more of an ad hominem than your opponent does from what you cite.

11:44 I'm sorry, but "addiction" is not an idea, it's a motivation.

Therefore, even if you said "addiction to certainty" as a thing, it's not an idea, it's an imputed motivation on those who have an idea. So, still an ad hominem.

12:20 According to the principle you have just given, lots of Scientists promoting Evolution are in fact not doing research, they are doing apologetics.

Research is a method. Knowing what one wants to confirm is a motivation.

You cannot rationally critique a method by imputing, even realistically, motivations to those using it. You'd need to show how the motivation interferes adversely with for instance good logic.

And you seem to read an argument only to dish out your ready dismissal of that type of it. I actually go through your arguments in order to trace each piece of flawed logic, hence the many comments under the video.

13:06 "very different from scholarship"

According to what Communist Re-Education Camp?

Scholarship is about looking at facts, conclusions, logic.

You require, in order to "do scholarship" looking at your own motivation. Sorry, doesn't work that way. Latin has six distinct cases for regular nouns and adjectives, with eight functions (three on the sole ablative), whether I want to do "all human language is structured" or "Latin is the best, f... the rest" ... motivation doesn't matter. (If you are curious about my own motivation, all human language is structured, but Latin has some more good and old texts than for instance Swahili, also easier to pronounce than Xhosa, unless you've been raised there).

13:23 Again, agreed at least partially.

Penal substitution works for corporeal death. Jesus physically died so as to get the right to give us Resurrection.

When it comes to salvation from sin and hell, Calvary and Holy Mass are the same propitiatory sacrifice, and God the Father held the exact same attitude to the Son on Calvary as over Jordan (Matthew 3:17).

You don't have to believe in 66 books of "penal substitution before the wrath" to believe in Biblical inerrancy.

15:17 Yes, there is a rational argument for that.

The argument from 500 witnesses is stronger than your side of Apologetics makes it out.

If Paul said "five hundred witnesses, most of whom are still alive" he is taking the risk that someone goes there to check.

It's not arguably that 500 fraudsters would have stayed around in the way of persecution as from the Temple.

It's also not arguable that 500 dupes would have agreed to fraud.

The one go to for a sceptic is "no one could have checked" but:

• Roman roads were good
• business didn't work in modern ways
• St. Paul's audience anyway involved what would correspond to "employers" (i e back then slave masters).

If he was bluffing, he took a huge risk. And if he was bluffing, how come he got decapitated outside Rome, rather than get out of harm's way when it started to get dangerous?

15:29 Obviously they are rational conversations.

Jesus held one with disciples on the road to Emmaus about how it was prophecied in all of the OT. Perhaps excluding the Ketuvim, which apparently hadn't yet been fixated in the Jewish canon.

15:33 "not a materialist, not a rationalist conversation"

Rationality is not limited to the false philosophy of materialism.

Your criteria again reek of DiaMat. Also known as Communism. Not saying those are your political leanings, but that's where you can trace the worldview you have of what constitutes rationality.

15:42 I Corinthians ...

It was written about the year 56, not from Philippi, as it is commonly marked at the end of the Greek copies, but rather from Ephesus. (Challoner)

Matthew

Before his departure from Judea, to preach the gospel to distant countries, he yielded to the solicitations of the faithful; and about the eighth year after our Saviour's resurrection, the forty-first of the vulgar era [A.D. 41], he began to write his gospel: i.e., the good tidings of salvation to man, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. (Butler).

41 is earlier than 56. Matthew is earlier than I Cor. According to Church tradition. If you pretend the records these things are based on partly by just probable arguments are spurious, that's a substantive claim, not just a default.

Prussian Bible scholarship doesn't determine what mentions of the Resurrection are earliest.

15:59 "Paul had a visionary experience"

And the Lord said to him: Arise, and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do. Now the men who went in company with him, stood amazed, hearing indeed a voice, but seeing no man
[Acts Of Apostles 9:7]

To me this argues, Paul's vision was a pretty solid physical reality. As I would expect from Lourdes and Fatima. It was not interior to Paul's mind or his companions wouldn't have heard any voice.

16:29 The only problem with the evidence as you see it for arguing the Gospel is true is, you presume Matthew is later than Mark and Mark later than I Cor.

That chronology, like one involving millions and hundred thousands of years to different human like creatures or not so human like ones, argues an evolution.

But discard the chronology (and you should, in both cases), and you don't have such an argument for evolving humanity or evolving traditition.

16:56 How did you define "circular argument" again?

I know it's true 16:48 i'm going to find the evidence for it 16:49 there's the evidence that what I believe 16:50 is true

You have apparently never studied formal logic. A circle in proof as proof is a circulus in probando. A circle in explanation as explanation is a circulus in explicando. But a circle between explanation and proof or between either and intention, is not a vicious circle. And a circle in presentation is also not a vicious circle.

You have been brainwashed to misdetect "circular argument" which is a non-extant fallacy. Circulus in probando is an extant one. Circulus in explicando is an extant one.

Instead of having "fun" (in a very dry way) about someone's logic, you are having "fun" at his intentions, which, logically speaking, is beside the point. (It wouldn't be if what he was arguing for were an attack on someone, the attacked party or friends would be perfectly entitled to speak of motives and intentions in such cases, but here we deal with theoretic propositions, what happened).

16:59 "faith, mystery and spirituality, and none of these things are rational"

You are misdefining all three, or misdefining rational.

18:18 If you think we can't know if the Gospels accurately portrayed Jesus, you have gone from the heretic you were to currently apostate.

20:11 For those oldest manuscripts, one of them, we don't have the actual manuscript any longer, as far as someone from Chick publications has recently argued.**

But even if both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were genuinely from the time, not tampered by a liberal scholar (which that editor was!) they could have been preserved because they were Arian Bible manuscripts, instead of burning them like Protestant Bibles, one would have laid them aside and not used them, which explains their pristine shape.

* Peter's actual words contain one au, which I simplified to o, and one ae, which I simplified to e. A word document was started with this copied text, and I replaced each lower case vowel with the upper case, 52 I, 25 E, 22 O, 24 U, 21 A = 144 vowels, so syllables (remaking qU into qu, this happens 6 times, so actually 144 - 6 = 138 syllables, big deal).

** 01 Is Sinaiticus a Fake?