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).

Divine Atrocities of the Old Testament: God takes "joy" in watching men rape women

The more common ground two people have on a matter, the greater the chances they will resolve their differences on it.  While most conservative Christians are sufficiently brainwashed that they don’t really care any more about bible verses that say God creates evil, I would hope that the female Christian reader agrees with me that “rape” is immoral without exception.  If then it could be shown that God doesn’t just “cause” rape, but “delights” to watch it happen, no amount of theological sophistry will likely convince such females to just shove this under the rug of “god’s mysterious ways”, and they will hopefully express a concern about the depraved nature of Mose or whoever the author of Deuteronomy was.

Deuteronomy 28:1-15 is a cheerful passage about all the good that the Israelites can expect God to do for them if they obey him.

But Deuteronomy 28:15-63 details numerous shocking unspeakable atrocities that God will inflict on Israel if they do not obey him.

In 28:30, one of those curses God will inflict is the rape of Israelite women.

  28 "The LORD will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart;

 29 and you will grope at noon, as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways; but you shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you.

 30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.

 (Deut. 28:28-30 NAU)

 “Violate” in the Hebrew is shagel, and it means rape or ravish.  This is why other English bibles use equal terms:

ESV  ravish her.

NET  rape her.

In 28:63, this depressing litany of horrors is summed up by declaring that God will take just as much “delight” in causing these horrors to disobedient people, as he takes in prospering those who obey:

NAU

63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:63)

NIV

63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

The lexicons tell us what the above-cited NAU/NIV comparison hints at, that the Hebrew word for delight (sus, or sis, Greek: euphraino in the Lxx) can be properly defined by the synonyms for delight, such as rejoice, please, joy, rejoicing, happiness, glee, bliss, gladness, exhilaration, exult, jubilation, etc., 

The same word (whether MT Hebrew or Greek Lxx) is used in Deuteronomy 20:6 to assert that a man would "enjoy" planting a garden and eating from it.  Here are a few lexical entries: 

Strong's
7797 שׂוּשׂ [suws, siys /soos/] v. A primitive root; TWOT 2246; GK 8464; 27 occurrences; AV translates as “rejoice” 20 times, “glad” four times, “greatly” once, “joy” once, and “mirth” once. 1 to exult, rejoice. 1a (Qal) to exult, display joy.---------Strong, J. (1996). The exhaustive concordance of the Bible : Showing every word of the test of the common English version of the canonical books, and every occurence of each word in regular order. (electronic ed.) (H7797). Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship.

Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon

[Fri] εὐφραίνω impf. pass. εὐφραινόμην; 1aor. pass. ηὐφράνθην; (1) active make glad, cheer up someone (2C 2.2); (2) passive, of social and festive enjoyment be merry, enjoy oneself (LU 16.19); of religious and spiritual jubilation rejoice, celebrate, be jubilant (AC 2.26)

εὐφράνθη VIAP--3S εὐφραίνω

εὐφραίνω    impf. pass. εὐφραινόμην; 1aor. pass. ηὐφράνθην; (1) active make glad, cheer up someone (2C 2.2); (2) passive, of social and festive enjoyment be merry, enjoy oneself (LU 16.19); of religious and spiritual jubilation rejoice, celebrate, be jubilant (AC 2.26)

Friberg, T., Friberg, B., & Miller, N. F. (2000). Vol. 4: Analytical lexicon of the Greek New Testament.
Baker's Greek New Testament library (Page 181). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

The Harper Bible Commentary doesn't shrink back from the grizzly horror depicted here:

The most terrible thought of all may be v. 63, which describes God as taking grim pleasure in Israel’s destruction…

Mays, J. L., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1996, c1988).
Harper's Bible commentary (Dt 28:1). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Where exactly does the skeptic go wrong in saying Deuteronomy 28 teaches that God is capable of taking the same "delight" in watching the rape of Israelite women who disobeyed Mosaic law, that he takes in prospering those who obey Him?

Even if the "delight" is solely with reference to "justice", can you honestly tell yourself that the infinite creator of the universe was incapable of coming up with a less barbaric response to said disobedient women?  If God had appeared personally to the Israelites and physically interacted with them and prevented them from sinning much like a parent prevents a child from running out in the street, you are sure that such a theophany would have had no more beneficial effect on them?

An attack on the "God is always good" presupposition

On what basis is God "good"?  Does he conform to a standard of good outside of himself?  No.  Christians say God is himself the highest logically possible standard.

But if that is the case, then the statement "God is always good" means nothing more than "God always conforms to his own standard of morality."  How useful is it to point out that an intelligent person always acts in conformity to their unique personal moral code?  Isn't that the actual case with most intelligent beings anyway?


If the phrase "Martha conforms to her own standard of goodness" does not establish her goodness, then

The phrase   "   God  conforms to his own standard of goodness"  by logical necessity cannot establish God's goodness either, as both statements are logically equal.

 Are you ready for the kill-shot?

God himself regrets his own prior choice to create man, over in Genesis 6:6-7, a choice which he himself earlier had said was "good" (Gen. 1:31), and nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context, chapter or genre of Genesis 6 will support the "anthropomorphism" interpretation.  That means the more likely true interpretation is that God really did literally regret his prior act of creating mankind.  That will remain supported by the context, whether or not that interpretation would cause the passage to contradict something else in the bible.  And since bible inerrancy has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other interpretation-tools like "grammar" and "context" have, non-Christians are fully rationally justified to refuse to exalt bible inerrancy in their minds to the status of governing hermeneutic.  So if it be true that the literal interpretation of Genesis 6:6-7 makes it contradict something else in the bible, it could still enjoy support from the grammar, context and genre nonetheless.

If it be true that God can start out thinking his creation of man is 'good' (1:31), then later regret that very act (6:6-7), then it is the bible's own witness that prevents us from saying anything and everything god does is always good.

You can avoid this logic by saying God was wrong to regret his prior creation of man, but if God was wrong to so regret, then he not only can, but did misconstrue the moral goodness of his own prior creative act, and that kind of thinking would bobsled you faster toward my conclusion than my own argument would have.

I conclude that a) God being the ultimate standard of good renders the statement "God is good" utterly redundant and meaningless, leaving no rational reason for Christians to convey such a thing to an unbeliever, and b) because the "anthropomorphism" interpretation of God's regret over his own prior acts in Genesis 6 cannot be sustained on the basis of any universally recognized hermeneutic such as grammar, context or genre, the bible is teaching there that God actually did change his mind on whether his prior creative act was good, and God changing his mind about whether an act was morally good, spells disaster for the fundamentalist Christian who insists that God's goodness is without exception.

If God's goodness isn't absolute, you then err by constantly talking of God's goodness as if it was some foregone conclusion utterly immune to criticism.