Issue #149-Letters on: the word 'perfect' & its ap

Biblical Errancy Issue #149-Letters on: the word 'perfect' & its application to God, salvation, Paul & What He Wrote in the NT, New Book We'd Like toe Publish, Islamic Mouthpieces

Nov 10, '08 11:37 AM
by Loren for everyone





Issue #149 Editor: Dennis McKinsey


May 1996

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A national periodical focusing on Biblical errors, contradictions, and fallacies, while providing a hearing for apologists

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Because of considerable correspondence, this issue, like last month's, will be devoted entirely to letters from our readers.


DIALOGUE AND DEBATE

Letter #611 from HJ of Charlotte, North Carolina (Part a)

You take issue with fundamentalists when they choose to define a word to suit their purpose. Since listening to a number of your tapes and reading many of your BE newsletters, frankly, I find it necessary to accuse you of doing likewise. It's a sad commentary to fault the opposition for using junk warfare while flailing disembodied or misunderstood words at them yourself.

Case in point: You define perfect as absolute or unwavering in its meaning. In all civilized languages people use words to mean whatever they choose for them to mean at that moment. "I've looked for this dress everywhere. It's perfect! I'll wear it to the Woop-goopers' dinner tomorrow."

Pursuant to your style of argument, this dress, being perfect, must have made itself spontaneously, cannot be damaged or soiled and will fit any and all comers flawlessly, while making them also beautiful beyond perception. Furthermore she sought it looking between every molecule in the universe. Hog wash. The lady obviously meant she'd shopped several stores and the dress suited the occasion. To condemn her to perpetual labor in a tailor shop for her statement would be unkind. So would saying that she used the word correctly.



Editor's Response to Letter #611 (Part a)

When are you and your compatriots going to realize we are dealing with the perfect work of a perfect being? We aren't talking about statements by fallible people but statements beyond mortal man's capability. No man can go everywhere or create something that is flawless. That's beyond his capacity and we all know it. But it's not beyond God's capability and that's what's on the agenda. For that reason your analogy is completely invalid. No one is going to hold any mortal to a standard only God can fulfill. So that's not the issue and you are only trying to deceive people by implying it is. There is a world of difference between God using the word "perfect" and man using it. As I have stated repeatedly, if Noah was not morally perfect, then he had no more right to be on the ark than anyone else. If Noah wasn't morally perfect, then the flood was useless because it did not purify the world by eradicating all the evil people and starting things anew as we are told. And if Noah wasn't morally perfect, then neither is God, because the same Hebrew word for "perfect" is applied to God in Deut. 32:4. In essence, when you are dealing with God and the perfect book, you have entered an entirely different arena that cannot be compared to everyday living by normal people.

Moreover, what rationale led you to conclude that if something is perfect it must have made itself, spontaneously no less. I don't see the logical connection and why can't it be damaged or soiled. Are you saying that because something is perfect it must remain so forever? And why must your dress fit all comers. That's an impossibility. How could any dress be all sizes simultaneously? Your leaps in logic repeatedly elude me.



Letter #611 Continues (Part b)

I sense that you would want to ask, "Can't God just say what He means even though He is dictating?"

Please tell me what authority you use to claim that if God is perfect he could not make something imperfect? Even experts do a lesser job sometimes because they intend to.



Editor's Response to Letter #611 (Part b)

Don't try to build a strawman. I'm not asking for God to say what He means. The problem is that he said what he meant (assuming it's his book) and you don't like what you heard. You are the one implicitly asking for him to say something different.

You say a perfect being can do things that are imperfect when he intends to. But that is a repudiation of the very definition of God. By definition, everything he does is perfect. He can't do something that's imperfect. How can a perfect being do imperfect acts and still be called perfect? Your reference to "experts" is invalid because you are dealing with mere mortals who are not perfect and couldn't be so even if they wanted to. No expert ever did a perfect job. He is only classified as an expert when compared to others in the trade. He is more qualified than others and performs the same deeds better, but nothing he does is perfect. When experts do a lesser job, they are not moving from perfect behavior to imperfect behavior but are moving from imperfect behavior to behavior that is even further from perfection. Again, you are trying to concoct an invalid analogy.



Letter #611 Continues (Part c)

To argue that God would have to make man perfect in order to be perfect himself flies in the face of the very common sense which is your stock in trade. Why would not man be perfect for His purpose? "Let's cast the die," He might have said, "and see what numbers come up!" (Two dice, in the case of Adam and Eve).

This, of course, refutes His omniscience, but what the heck, nobody's perfect! If God is perfect then he is omnipotent and can do anything even though it be paradoxical. (Yes, Virginia, He can make a rock so big that even He can't pick it up. Then He'll pick it up to prove He's omnipotent!). I made up that rule myself. How do you like it?



Editor's Response to Letter #611 (Part c)

Now you're getting silly! You refer to God casting dice as if he wouldn't know the outcome beforehand. This is an argument? You say God can perform the paradoxical which is a euphemism for contradiction and then admit you made it up. How do I like your rule? I don't! It's childish. You said he can't pick it up and then reversed 180 degrees and said he picked it up. Your rule is as absurd as your argumentation. But still, I'd like to thank you for saying common sense is my stock in trade.



Letter #611 Concludes (Part d)

...Who told you that excellent in every way means perfect? In spite of the fact that not even perfect always means perfect you have already expressed that perfect is a superlative. "Excellent" falls short of perfect, even if it's the lady's excellent dress! You can't add up enough excellents to have a perfect any more than you can add up a bunch of pretty goods and get an A+....



Editor's Concluding Response to Letter #611 (Part d)

At times your letter borders on being incoherent when not puerile. Who said anything about the word "excellent"? And what does that have to do with the issue? We're discussing the word "perfect." Another one of your strawmen? What do you mean by saying I have always said perfect is a superlative? There are no degrees or gradations with respect to "perfect," just as there are no degrees or gradations with respect to God. You seem to think that God and his book should be held to no higher standard than one would expect from mankind in general. Not only are your arguments poor but you possess an amazing ability to express yourself in rambling, disjointed, uncommunicative, sophistic rhetoric. It doesn't take a mental genius to realize that non sequiturs, invalid analogies, and strawmen are your stock-in-trade.



Letter #612 from Rev. WW of Lufkin, Texas

In a discussion of salvation with a local acquaintance (I won't call him a friend because he is an admitted atheist) reference was made to your publication, Biblical Errancy. In several issues you address the subject of salvation, but issues 3, 71, and 94 concern me the most. Your interpretation of biblical passages referring to salvation are on the surface scholarly and penetrating. They give the illusion that we Bible believing Christians are ill informed when we tell others that faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is all that is needed for salvation. However, it is you who have missed the point.

Scripture teaches a great deal about salvation. In treating such an all-encompassing theme, it discusses a number of different facets of that doctrine. But regardless of how esoteric they may appear to the evangetically inept, what it all comes down to when properly interpreted is simply to have faith. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God." Faith and nothing else is required, not works, not grace, not predestination, not choice....



Editor's Response to Letter #612

You haven't proved much of anything, my friend. All you have done is utter some unsubstantiated allegations that blend with your biblical inculcations. First, you refer to my analysis of the Bible as being superficially scholarly and penetrating without providing any substantive evidence. I'd appreciate specifics rather than glittering generalities. Which of my observations in particular are less than scholarly? Second, you said I misled your fellow Christians by giving them the impression that faith in Jesus Christ is not all that is needed for salvation. But that's not my position; that's the Bible's stance. You'd better reread your own book, my friend. You missed more than one point; you missed all of the data in the commentaries of issues 3, 53, 54, 71, and 94 which show that works, whim, predestination, universalism, faith, and grace are all possible avenues to salvation according to Scripture. You've thrown all of your eggs into the Eph. 2 basket, while discounting a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Your mind is set in ideological concrete because the Bible itself says that faith alone is not the only route to salvation. As I said before, faith alone may be the position of Paul but it does not meld with the assertions of Jesus, James, the OT, and elsewhere. You state that, "Scripture teaches a great deal about salvation." It most assuredly does, but, unfortunately, you have chosen to ignore about 90%. You say that, "what it all comes down to when properly interpreted is simply to have faith," when only the scripturally inept would make such an erroneous comment. You say, "Faith and nothing else is required, not works, not grace, not predestination, not choice." That may be your position but it's not that of the Bible. Again, I would advise you to read the issues cited earlier or Chapter 16 in my book, The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy.

And lastly, you injudiciously quoted Eph. 2:8-9, a passage contradictory within itself. It says you are saved through faith, while simultaneously calling salvation a gift of God. How can it be a gift when it must be earned. If you don't make an effort, if you don't have faith in Jesus, then you aren't saved. How, then, can it be called a gift completely divorced from any works on your part? You must do something-believe in Jesus-in order to receive it. Apparently, even after having read my commentaries, you remain unaware of other roads to salvation and unaware of a substantial contradiction in the passage upon which you are relying for support.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letter #613 from HK of Randolph, Mass.

Dear Mr. McKinsey. I've now had the chance to read several issues of BE, and like very much what I see. I thought that you might find it useful to have some feedback from a new reader.

Overall, BE is great! It's highly informative, literate, reasoned, etc. And I'm especially glad that you went to a 2-column format--it makes it much easier to read.

OTOH, the dot-matrix printer you use to put the newsletter out is *not* so great. The dot matrix print itself is of very mediocre quality, and it looks worse when you go to italics. Nor is the type font great--a serif'd font would be much more comfortable on the eye.

The reproduction of the newsletter is fine--it's the original printing which could benefit from some work....

Finally, I'd like to suggest another area you might explore in BE, and that's Paul and the automatic acceptance of his writing which is found among Christians. Because Paul wrote that stuff in the bible, Christians automatically accord him respect. But just who the hell *was* Paul? What is the source of his authority as an original source for Christian thought? Did anyone with authority appoint him or bestow his blessing on Paul, or is it possible that Paul was just some kind of con-artist who saw a good opportunity to make a name for himself with this new product line?.... By Paul's own account, he was quite a zealot. Now, there are some things about the behavior of zealots which are quite well-known. For example, Paul boasts of his lying to "save souls"--"I became all things to all men, that I might [save?] some." This confusion of means and ends is one of the things which characterizes demagogues and fanatics of all persuasions (religious, political, social)....

The bottom line is, I think it would be beneficial for Christians, as well as for their victims, and certainly interesting for all concerned, to go back to basics and start thinking anew about who Paul was, how he came to be such a major part of Christianity, how his ideas relate to those of Jesus, how they might be a parody of what Jesus wanted, etc. I suspect he's simply a con artist or opportunist who saw a good thing and latched on to it, and sold his ideas by force of personality. Thanks. Keep up the interesting work!



Editor's Response to Letter #613

We appreciate your compliments and you'll be happy to learn we will no longer use italics on our dot-matrix printer. I concluded several issues ago that it was just too hard to read. Hopefully we will be able to improve the overall print quality by employing a lazer printer but that's still in the works. Your comments regarding Paul are worth considering, although that's essentially an extra-biblical topic outside our normal purview....



Letter #614 from JV of Chicago, Illinois

Dear Dennis. Recently I came across a problem in the bible you may or may not be aware of. In the essay entitled "Of the Books of the New Testament," the patriot Thomas Paine concludes that most, if not all, the letters attributed to Paul in the new testament were not written by Paul. As proof of this, Paine shows that certain of Paul's letters (1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians) end with a clear statement claiming authorship other than Paul; in most cases, the city in which the letter was written is also given. For example, the biblical book entitled "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians" concludes with this statement: "Written from Rome unto the Ephesians by Tychicus." This letter begins with a statement that Paul wrote it, and ends with a statement that someone called Tychicus wrote it. I decided to check the bible to see just who it was that wrote this particular letter. Well, Paul did, and so did Tychicus--depending on which version of the bible you read. For instance, the New King James version omits not only the closing statement of the Ephesians' letter but all the closing statements of authorship that Paine cites for the other Pauline letters--thereby neatly avoiding one of the more obvious conflicts about who wrote the letters attributed to Paul. But wait--I have a King James version of the bible, published shortly after the turn of the century, and--lo and behold--the end-statements of authorship that Paine mentioned in his 19th-Century essay are there for all to see. I also happen to have a copy of Gideon's version of the King James bible and--presto!--the end-statements disappear again. The end-statements are gone, then they're there, then they're gone again. Since there are many versions (and translations) of the bible, and I have not read even a fraction of them, I'm certain the confusion over who actually wrote the so-called Pauline letters will be with us for a long time.

What disturbs me most about all of this is the gall of the christians. If there's something in the bible that is contradictory or assaults reason, they eliminate it with a new "version" (or new translation). So much for the vaunted inerrancy of the bible.



Editor's Response to Letter #614

Dear JV. I've been aware of this problem for years but never pressed the issue because it works to our advantage for biblicists to strongly assert that Paul was the author of all those letters. The more writings they attribute to Paul the greater opportunity we have of exposing the duplicity of one of Christianity's most important founders. More writings only make him more vulnerable. The more he said, the more we can critique and the greater becomes the number of contradictions, inconsistencies and inaccuracies we have at our disposal. So I wouldn't work too hard to restrict his authorship. He's one of Christianity's creators and the more that can be laid at his doorstep the more open to attack he becomes.

Before closing, there are a couple minor points you might want to reconsider. First, the Gideons have no version of the bible that I am aware of. If my memory serves me correctly the Gideons are merely a group of people, mostly businessmen, who agreed to finance the distribution of the King James Bible in hotels, motels, etc. Secondly, I don't think you meant to say, "If there's something in the bible that is contradictory or assaults reason, they eliminate it with a new "version" (or new translation)." If that were true, most versions of the Bible could be written on memo pads. I think I know what you meant to say, so I would recommend that you either rewrite or eliminate that sentence. In no way, shape, or form has everything in any version of the Bible been eliminated that is contradictory or assaults reason.



Letter #615 from PC of Bainbridge, Georgia

...You and your work have meant more to me than any of my college courses or professors.



Letter #616 from JR of Saline, Michigan

Dear Mr. McKinsey. ....I just received my long-awaited copy of "THE ENCYCLOPEDIA". Words cannot describe how pleased I am to have it. I would love to send it to you to have it autographed but it's going to be a long time before I'll be able to part with it long enough to do that. I would like to urge you in the strongest way possible to consider publishing a compacted "vest pocket" edition of your "encyclopedia" so I could keep it handy for "battle" whenever I encounter the "enemy" unexpectedly. You know, a cute little volume printed on that super thin gilt-edged paper, perhaps with a simulated leather cover. I'm serious - I would be willing to pay good money for such a treasure.

I have a teenage son who is very confused by all the christian propaganda he's being bombarded with by his friends so I am forever grateful for your assistance in helping to present the "real" story to him.... Keep up the great work! P.S. I'm already looking forward to receiving your NEXT BOOK!



Editor's Response to Letter #616

Dear JR. Depending on how The Encyclopedia turns out I already have plans for two additional books I would like to publish. One would be a debater's handbook specifically designed for verbal encounters in which all of the notes from my five large notebooks would be condensed into an easy-to-read, readily accessible, tabulated, alphabetized format for quick reference during encounters with biblicists. Instead of being in narrative form, it would resemble a dictionary or almanac with a wealth of biblical citations followed by observations on their obvious implications. More than likely this volume would be even larger than The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy.

The second book would be far smaller and contain the information found in our Dialogue and Debate and Letters to the Editor sections. Some of the Review sections could be included as well. A lot of good information is contained within these arenas that was never included within The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy.



Letter #617 from SS of Angels Camp, California

Dear Mr. McKinsey. A short note to thank you for writing The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy. It should be required study in every school in the country.... Thank you again for what has to have been a Herculean labor of love.



Letter #618 from GL of Waldorf, Maryland

Mr. McKinsey. I recently finished your extensive book on Bible errancy. You really dissect the book. I was curious if you are a wealthy person, as it would seem to me that you would need a staff and a lot of concentrated time to do all that work and analyses. In any event, I enjoyed the book a great deal.

Islam appears to be a rather hard-headed, ruthless, debilitating religion to me and the Koran is a lot of repetitive nonsense. You mention in your book that you have some further analyses concerning the Koran. How could I get them?.... I am 72.... I feel that all religion is bunk, as Edison said.... The tenets, ideas, philosophies, etc. of all religions fly in the face of basic reason, logic and good sense.... I have also read about Mormonism and the Book of Mormon. It is almost impossible to believe that there is a significant number of people who cling to that hogwash. Amazing!!



Editor's Response to Letter #618

I appreciate your compliment and can assure you that I am not a wealthy person, although, like everyone else, I would like to be. I have no staff other than my wife who acts as my bookkeeper and the amount of time I devote to this cause is sizable.

Islam is an exceptionally dangerous religion because the Koran actually advocates the eradication of its opponents. With all their faults, New Testament writers never went quite that far. The Ayatollah Khomeini is far more representative of true Koranic teachings than the Islamic mouthpieces who periodically appear on the media and tailor their propaganda to an American audience. Look at any country dominated by the mullahs and/or their sidekicks and you'll see what Islam really entails. You can find more information about Islam in the commentaries of Issues 105, 106, and 107.



(GL is a periodic writer of letters to his hometown newspaper. We would like to thank him for sending the following letter to the Chairwoman of his local Board of Education, which was also sent to, and published by, his local Maryland paper on November 23, 1994. It would be nice if more people followed his example--Ed.).

Dear Mrs. Patterson: Not surprisingly, I have noted that the Bible, as well as other religiously oriented material, is part of the collections in public schools throughout Charles County. We have no objection to the Bible being included but feel that all views concerning mythology, religion, and rationalism should be available for scholarly research. And since the Charles County Public Schools are subsidized by taxpayer funds, it is important to be cognizant of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

With these thoughts in mind, I would like to request that the following reference sources be added to the libraries of the schools of Charles County: (1) The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy by C. Dennis McKinsey. Prometheus Press, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, New York l4228-2197. (2) The Bible Handbook. 11th Edition by Foote & Ball. Published by The Pioneer Press, 1961.

It might be possible that the above books could be supplied with moderate or little cost. Your response to this request would be appreciated.



Letter #619 from HM of Bellbrook, Ohio

Greetings Dennis. It isn't often that I'm overwhelmed by the urge to write a letter of praise to the author of a book I enjoyed reading, but in your case the urge had to be satisfied. If I could save only one book from my considerably large collection of literature critical of religion (that is, if my house was on fire), it would doubtless be The Encylopedia of Biblical Errancy. It, more than any other, strikes at the very heart of Christianity, reducing the revered scriptures to superstitious rubble. It seems unlikely that any reader could still accept the Bible as God's Word after a journey through the absorbing pages of your Encyclopedia.

This certainly has to be your crowning achievement to date, though your newsletter cannot get lost in the shuffle. Have you ever thought of donating a copy to the U.S. Supreme Court (where "the buck stops here") or to your local library, etc.? I've been tempted to purchase several copies myself and mail them to a chosen few.... Good luck on the sales of your splendid book, Dennis. It's my favorite!



Letter #620 from MC of Santa Clara, California

Finally received your book last week. Definitive! Excellent! I look forward to your monthly issues with pleasure. I am running out of space on my "Religion" shelf!



EDITOR'S NOTE: If you find any errors in The Encylopedia of Biblical Errancy please let me know as soon as possible. The editor and I would like to have them corrected if a second edition is issued. With as many names, dates, places, facts, and citations as are in this book, no errors of any kind would be too much to expect.