Demolishing Triablogue, part 3: Engwer's fallacy of using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic

Jason Engwer makes an unexpected admission that he cannot defend the historicity of the virgin birth without engaging in eisogesis.  This is my reply to

Andrew Lincoln's Book Against The Virgin Birth (Part 2)

 Monday, November 04, 2013

(snip)

...I'm not denying that terminology such as we find in Romans 1:3 and John 1:45 is favorable to Lincoln's position. What I'm saying is that we need to be careful in discerning the degree to which such evidence favors his view. If all we had to go by were the letters most commonly attributed to Paul, would we conclude that Jesus was born of a virgin? No. We'd conclude that he most likely was a natural son of a man who was a descendant of David. The same goes for Mark's gospel. And the Johannine literature. And Hebrews. Similarly, 2 Peter 3:15-16 implies agreement with the Pauline literature on this subject, and James, 1 Peter, and Jude don't discuss a virgin birth. But there's a lot of other evidence to consider, including much that Lincoln doesn't address.

Jason, for what reason(s) do you refuse to interpret Paul's statement about Jesus being "seed of David" apart from the gospels of Matthew and Luke?  Is it true that you use the doctrine of bible inerrancy as a tool of interpretation (i.e., no interpretation of a bible verse can be correct, except one that harmonizes it with the rest of the bible)?

Is the case for bible inerrancy so good that it deserves to be exalted in the mind of the investigator to the status of governing hermeneutic?  My investigation into that doctrine leads me to conclude that because so many Christian scholars deny it, and they all disagree with each other about its scope and extent, bible inerrancy has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other tools of interpretation have, such as "grammar", "immediate context", and "genre".  The latter are affirmed as objective tools of interpretation by all serious bible scholars, the former is a hotly contested doctrine that not all spiritually alive people are convinced even exists.

I therefore conclude that bible inerrancy does not deserve to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic.  Consequently,  it does not make sense for you to assert or imply that an interpretation of a Pauline phrase that puts  him in conflict with other biblical authors, is surely an incorrect interpretation.

Therefore, you will have to do something more to falsify  the naturalistic interpretation of "seed of David" in Romans 1:3, than simply complain that such interpretation would contradict what Matthew and Luke have to say about Jesus' link to humanity.  Running afoul of bible inerrancy is about as frightful as running afoul of Benny Hinn.

It would appear that, in light of your admission quoted above, you are obligated to show that no understanding of Paul's meaning in Romans 1:3 can be correct except one that harmonizes it with the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

With other conservative apologists such as Licona admitting that the zombie resurrection in Matthew 27:52 is non-literal "special effects", and that John's preference for artistry over historical truth causes him to conflict with Mark, you will likely never close the door on the possibility that Matthew's virgin birth narrative is, like the zombie resurrection story, a case of pure fiction with no textual indicators to allow the reader to tell where the history ends and the wishful thinking begins.  The fact that other conservatives insist Licona's view amounts to a denial of inerrancy, means when we atheists see it the same way, this is not due to our being spiritually dead.  Indeed, Matthew leaves no clues in the text that the zombie resurrection story in 27:51 ff is any less literal than the crucifixion he mentioned in v. 50, so if he really was going from the historical to the non-historical, he did so in a way that was misleading at best and deceptive at worst.