Wednesday, June 7, 2017

James Patrick Holding disqualified by the bible from the office of Christian "teacher"

James Patrick Holding, formerly Robert Turkel, is known for little else on the internet than aggressively defending the bible as god's inerrant word.  www.tektonics.org.



And yet he has made statements that would get him kicked out of any conservative or fundamentalist church.  In 2008 I debated him at theologyweb.com, and I remarked that I caught Holding somewhere else talking like an atheist about the bible, and that therefore he would need to employ his tried-and-true "I-was-just-being-sarcastic" excuse to "explain" it to his buddies.

Holding, surprisingly, confirmed that he wasn't being sarcastic, but genuine.  That is, Holding confirmed that he really doesn't care whether the bible is the word of God or not.  Here's the relevant part of the exchange:
-----me: I just found out that you made a statement several years ago that you personally don't care if the bible is the inspired word of God or not, so that your gargantuan efforts to "defend biblical inerrancy" were all in the name of finding a way to beat up other people and had nothing to do with your personal convictions whatsoever. Better break out that "I-was-just-being-saracastic" excuse again, you're gonna need it to back out of that blooper.
-----Holding, I wasn't being sarcastic. Each of the 20 times I have said something like that, it was genuine. Which one did you have in mind? 
Naturally, the owner of theologyweb (who is also Holding's buddy), got rid of this embarrassing blooper, but thankfully it is still preserved by the wayback machine, which is thus an example that a godless secular machine has more concern for actual historical truth than Mr. Holding himself.  Check out the link.

So ask yourself: Where does the bible allow Christian teachers (which office Holding wants his paying admirers to believe he legitimately holds) to have such apathetic (uncaring) attitude toward the divine inspiration of the scriptures?

 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17 NAU)
I can buy that Jesus allowed for mere "salvation" of those who didn't take any position on the inspiration of the scriptures.  What I cannot buy is that Jesus or Paul would have this liberal attitude toward Christian teachers. What are the odds that Paul would have approved of so-called Christian teachers in his churches who didn't care whether the scriptures were inspired by God?

Holding has been publicly endorsed in the past by genuinely qualified Christian scholars like Craig Blomberg, Gay Habermas, and Daniel Wallace.  One wonders what these conservatives would think if they knew Holding took such a shit attitude toward the divine inspiration of the bible?  They might muse that the only reason Holding makes such a big deal out of bible inerrancy is because it gives him something to bitch about, nothing more.

Email Holding sometime and ask him where the bible approves or allows for Christian teachers, as he supposes himself to be, to have such apathetic attitude toward the divine origin of the Scriptures.

His email address is: jphold@att.net
His residence address is: 2609 Greywall Ave, Ocoee, FL 34761

The fact that Holding is a closet-homosexual and that the bible scholars he quoted for years to justify his insulting demeanor toward critics, say he gives Christianity a bad name and have twice disowned him professionally and morally in no uncertain terms, provides sufficient probable cause to believe that Holding is no more a genuine Christian than Robert Tilton or Benny Hinn. 

In the real world we label such conflicted clowns with cognitive dissonance (willingness to hold two mutually contradictory positions on a matter despite knowing they contradict each other).

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