My reply to R.L. Solberg on Jesus and Isaiah 53

 R.L. Solberg is a Christian apologist and attempts at his blog to respond to Jewish objections to the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53, here.

I posted a reply as follows, which is crossposted here, given my experience of Christian apologists deleting my polite and scholarly challenges

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Barry Jones

June 16, 2021 8:37 pm

The NAU of Isaiah 53 translates the Hebrew words “zerah” and “tseetsa” as “offspring” and in the immediate context of each, only “biological” offspring is meant. You are thus forced to argue that the meaning of zerah in Isaiah 53:10 is an exception to the rule.

What would be unreasonable in the skeptic who says “offspring” in Isaiah 53:10 means only naturalistic biological offspring, so because Jesus didn’t have any naturalistic biological children, he is not the suffering servant of Isaiah 53?

How do you know the canonical gospel authors weren’t simply creating fictions about Jesus to make him sound more like the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 than he really was? Of course you will tout the historical reliability of the gospels, but I would provide scholarly resistance to that conclusion every step of the way. The question is not whether YOU can be reasonable to see Jesus as the Isaiah 53 servant but whether skeptics can be reasonable to deny this allegation.

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I could have thrown many other reasonable objections at him:

Isaiah 53:10 says if the servant offers himself as a guilt offering, he will prolong his days.  Christians will blindly insist that because Jesus died for our sins as a guilt-offering, God raised him to immortal life.  But because there is no record of any Jew in the 1st century or before thinking that the messiah would have to die and come back to life, its pretty safe to assume that Isaiah's originally intended recipients would have understood "prolong his days" to take the normal sense of "delay the day of his death".

Worse, if it is not unreasonable for a person to refuse to get drawn into the reasons why the U.S. Supreme Court disagrees with the 9th Circuit on whether the 2nd Amendment created a right to private gun ownership, simply because it seems to be an unresolvable quarrel of fatally ambiguous words, then the fact that Christians and Jews have been disagreeing on Isaiah 53 for 2,000 years would similarly make reasonable the unbeliever or skeptic who considered such a debate too convoluted to justify an expectation that any amount of study would be capable of yielding conclusions of any degree of reasonable certainty.  And the disagreements about the meaning of Isaiah 53's words would also constitute the "word-wrangling" which apostle Paul forbade in 2nd Timothy 2:14.

 

Refuting Matthew Flannagan's defense of Divine Command Theory

Inerrantist Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. Matthew Flannagan continues pressing his pro-Divine-Command-Theory (DCT) arguments and thus wrangling words repeatedly about doctrine as if he never knew that 2nd Timothy 2:14 condemns word-wrangling and thus condemns all Christians who obtained higher education in analytic philosophy.  The one discipline in the world that makes you the most prone to thinking word-wrangling is godly, is analytic philosophy.

Flannagan's latest paper is "Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument" which Sophia accepted: 26 October 2020, Springer Nature B.V. 2021.

I posted the following challenge/rebuttal to him at his blog http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html

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Your paper apparently silently presumes that God would never command a man to rape a woman (and you'd be out of a job if you ever pretended God might possibly command rape).  

And it is clear in ALL of your apologetics writings that you want the world to know that unbelievers cannot be reasonable in accusing the bible-god of atrocities.

I offer a DCT argument to refute one particular belief of yours, namely, that those who accuse the bible-god of moral atrocities are unreasonable.  On the contrary, we are equally as reasonable as anybody who accuses the KJV of having translation mistakes.

The atheist's alleged inability to properly ground morals wouldn't help you overcome this rebuttal even if that accusation was true.  YOU believe burning a child to death is worse than raping him or her, so if I can show that your own presuppositions require that God caused people to burn children to death, you will be forced to logically conclude that your god has committed atrocities worse than rape.

God said through Isaiah in 700 b.c.  that He caused the Assyrians to commit their war-atrocities:

 5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,

 6 I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture booty and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets. (Isa. 10:5-6 NAU)

Ashurnasirpal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859, and  admitted "I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.”  You may trifle that this was typical semitic exaggeration, but the fact that we have pictorial reliefs portraying Assyrians "flaying alive" their prisoners certainly makes it reasonable for a person to conclude that Ashurnasirpal's boasts were true to reality.  The production date for such relief is 660BC-650BC, so the specific sort of Assyrians that Isaiah speaks about in 700 b.c aren't likely less barbaric than Ashurnasirpal II.

To say nothing of the fact that every Assyriologist I've come across acts as if the literal truth of the Assyrian war atrocities was a foregone conclusion.  One example is BAR 17:01 (Jan/Feb 1991), "Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death"  by Erika Belibtreu, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Vienna University, where she has worked since 1963.  

You can hardly fault atheists for failing to notice all that "semitic exaggeration" when actual Assyriologists think such descriptions are  telling about actual realities.  Just like you cannot fault the ignorant teenage girl who "accepts Jesus" in an inerrantist Evangelical church on the basis of writings by Norman Geisler, and doesn't notice all the obvious philosophical blunders he committed.

 I can predict you will trifle that God's use of the Assyrians doesn't mean he "caused" them to burn children to death, but Isaiah continues in ch. 10 and uses an analogy that makes the Assyrian the axe, and God is the one who uses it to chop things with:

 12 So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, "I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness."

 13 For he has said, "By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this, For I have understanding; And I removed the boundaries of the peoples And plundered their treasures, And like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants,

 14 And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped."

 15 Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. (Isa. 10:12-15 NAU)

Hence, your theory that unbelievers can never be reasonable to accuse the bible-god of atrocities worse than child-rape, is false.

Update August 13, 2021:

Matthew Flannagan's blog usually allows the reader to post a response, and the bottom part of his blog posts looks like this:

see, e.g., http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/03/12473.html#respond

But Flannagan has configured the webpage containing my rebuttal remarks, so that it no longer allows replies:

See, e.g., mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html#comment-260033

No, clicking the the "respond" button doesn't work.  I don't know if Matt will admit that he deliberately disabled the possibility of further commenting on that specific blog post, or if he will do what he did before, and claim ignorance as to why his blog often doesn't allow me to post replies.

Either way, Flannagan's question was insulting and in no wise a reply on the merits.  His Sophia article drew the following conclusion:

Emphasis added by me.

Therefore, it should be clear that my argument that God has commanded people to do things worse than child rape was a very relevant refutation of the the God-is-essentially-good presupposition which Flannagan based his Sophia article on.

It is not false to accuse the bible-god of being essentially evil (i.e., evil according to the standards of Christians, who always presume the evil of any person who would facilitate or command child rape).

My response to Flannagan's blog post was in rebuttal to Flanngan's concluding remarks in the linked SOPHIA article, therefore, my remarks could not have been MORE relevant.  Yet Flannagan has a nasty habit of constantly and falsely accusing his critics of either not reading his argument or misunderstanding him.

My challenge to moralapologetics.com

 I recently found a website where Copan, Flannagan, Habermas and others defend moral arguments for god and answer skeptical objections thereto:   https://www.moralapologetics.com

This was my first posted challenge to them, see https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/2021/2/17/why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument

barry • 3 minutes agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by https://www.moralapologetics.com/.

Can a skeptic possibly be reasonable in harboring a false argument against Christianity? Or do you insist that the falsity of their argument automatically necessitates unreasonableness?

my recent posts to YouTube about Lydia McGrew

 Since I cannot be certain those threads won't be deleted, here's what I posted to the comment-sections of several YouTube videos about Lydia McGrew:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTAja4qvn3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlPWMiiQvY

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When Lydia was asked why spiritually dead people should be expected to understand biblical matters when spiritually alive people cannot even agree on how to interpret most of it, she replied in a way that pretty much conclusively demonstrates that her commitment to Jesus is 100% naturalistic. She said

--------"Being spiritually alive has zilch to do with it." -------------

Apparently she has never read Romans 8:5-8, 1st Corinthians 2:14, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, nor the scores of other NT verses that clearly teach that being spiritually dead either makes it exceptionally difficult, or outright impossible, for the unbeliever to understand spiritual/biblical matters. What an irony that the answer she gave would be contested by a large majority of conservative bible believing Trinitarian Christian scholars!

see http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2017/10/on_some_examples_in_plutarch.html

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See my further answers to her:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/lydia-mcgrews-suspicious-excuses-for.html

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/02/dr-lydia-mcgrews-errors-in-defending.html

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I also show that Lydia's ceaseless "he said/she said" gossipy yappy form of "apologetics" constitutes the very "word-wrangling" that Paul explicitly prohibited in 2nd Timothy 2:14, see

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/06/open-letter-to-lydia-mcgrew-your-online.html

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What I should have added were the many biblical condemnations of being wordy and talkative:

https://www.openbible.info/topics/talking_too_much

Gee, Lydia couldn't possibly be guilty of the sin of too many words, could she?

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I also directly and politely challenged Lydia to debate the resurrection of Jesus, as I have plenty of arguments that are unique and do not repeat the fanfare of HumeShe declined, saying

------------"Nobody who speaks in defense of the gospel, not even an apologist, is setting himself up to spend indefinite amounts of time answering anybody with a keyboard who comes along, thumps his chest, and says, "I hereby challenge you." Go away."-----------

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So I wonder: if a skeptic does little more at his blog beyond critiquing Lydia's apologetics, but then declines her debate challenge by saying "Nobody who speaks in opposition to the gospel, not even a counter-apologist, is setting himself up to spend indefinite amounts of time answering anybody with a keyboard who comes along, thumps his chest, and says, "I hereby challenge you." Go away."

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(I responded to her entire bullshit excuse for refusal to debate me, here: https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/lydia-mcgrews-suspicious-excuses-for.html)

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Would Lydia suspect or not suspect a professional counter-apologist of being afraid of losing the debate, should he decline a debate challenge using the same pretexts that Lydia did? Or does she think it is written in the stars that only gossipy Christian apologists are allowed to use obviously dishonest excuses to duck challenges?

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Lest anybody think it is only stupid skeptics who think Lydia is unnecessarily hostile in her comments, then maybe you think conservative Trinitarian inerrantist evangelical Ph.d experts on Jesus' resurrection are "stupid skeptics". Lydia's unnecessarily negative tone is also why Licona didn't wish to debate her:

https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2018/04/mike-licona-answers-regarding-lydia-mcgrew/

Maybe its just my "stupidity", but if anybody had an internet-world of constantly "refuting" their opponents, but then was also known to consistently duck challenges from capable opponents, it would be reasonable to infer that in at least some of those debate rejections, she is lying: her real reason for refusal to debate is the same reason a criminal Defendant would rather not take the witness stand: his bullshit story wouldn't last long under cross-examination.

Let's just say that because Lydia is so loud-mouthed about the errors of Habermas' "minimal facts" approach and Licona's refusal to use the canonical gospel resurrection narratives, this is going to justify skeptics to say that because even spiritually alive people cannot figure out what type of apologetics god wants the church to use, it is going to be reasonable for the skeptic to classify the subject matter as too convoluted to risk becoming involved with and then likely adding to their sins another sin of thinking Lydia is wrong and somebody else is right.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays' Trinitarian speculations violate Paul's prohibitions against foolish questions and ceaseless word-wrangling

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled 

Ares redivivus

Apostate Dale Tuggy's philosophical objection to the Trinity is that it (allegedly) violates the law of identity.

It does.  You insist that Jesus is separate in person from the Father, but that both have identical wills in all things, when in fact it is the "will" that makes the person distinct from another.  Talking about two different people who agree on absolutely everything and have the same identical thoughts is absurd, and we'd only expect false religion to spend 2,000 years trying to prove the impossible.

Some Trinitarians stray from Nicaea's ideas about Jesus and the Father, and allow for Jesus to will things contrary to the Father, but that's only because they are constrained to believe that way by the biblical evidence, not because the Trinity concept allows it.  By the way, you bible forbids the Nicaean concept of Jesus.  

 39 And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." (Matt. 26:39 NAU)

 If Jesus had infallible assurance that the Father would never grant this request, why did Jesus make the request?  If you had infallible assurance that your boss would not let you go home from work early, would you still ask "Boss, if it is possible, let me go home early, yet not as I will, but as you will" ?  Of course not. You'd only ask such a thing if you didn't know whether the boss would allow it. In which case Jesus is asking an identical question because he wasn't sure whether God would allow it, but he probably concluded soon after that God wouldn't allow it.  The point is that you cannot reconcile Matthew 26:39 with your Nicaean view that Jesus is little more than a perfect reflection of God the Father.

Worse, Jesus makes explicit the disagreement between his personal will and the Father's by saying "not as I will".  The negation is perfectly pointless if Jesus' will was always in harmony with the Father's.  If you and your girlfriend both desire to eat at McDonald's, do you say "if it be possible let's eat somewhere else, yet not as I will, but as you will" ?  Obviously not...unless you are just playing games.

I think this is the part where you answer one logical contradiction with another, and account for Jesus' will not being in harmony with the Father's by pretending Jesus was only speaking here "from his human nature", not his divine nature.

Ok, then what?  Was Jesus' human will at variance with the Father's will, yes or no?    Or must I become an expert on Monothelitism before you will deem me worthy of response?

Are you quite sure that when the gospel authors said "Jesus" did this or that, they sometimes meant only his human nature and sometimes meant only his divine nature?  You'll forgive me if I don't assume the gospel authors were as paranoid about upholding systematic theology and inerrancy as today's fundagelicals.  I'd rather believe the gospel authors were far less sophisticated than this, a theory more consistent with the way things were in the 1st century...which means when they attribute words to Jesus, they are necessarily implying that ALL of Jesus was in support of what he was saying/doing...and not merely his "human nature".

And that's to say nothing of the fact that having "two natures" constitutes logical contradiction.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that if we are to presume Christ was consistent and perfect, this would demand that BOTH his natures are in agreement with whatever he did or said.  So, Steve, who asked the Father for the possibility to avoid their cup of suffering there in Matthew 26:39?  Jesus?  Or the second person of the Trinity?

One issue this raises is how to define identity.

An issue which I'm sure kept Jesus' original followers up late at night, shivering with fright about the consequences of getting any of this stupid sophistry wrong.

For instance, I've argued that if A and B can be put into point-by-point correspondence, then that's a rigorous definition of identity. However, reflection symmetries meet that condition, yet reflection symmetries remain distinguishable by virtue of chirality.

Unfortunately, the bible says enough about Jesus to forbid concluding that he was in perfect harmony with the Father, so take your Nicaean "light from light" and shove it up your word-wrangling strife-loving bible disobeying ass.

But another issue is whether ancient people operated with a stringent definition of identity.

Yeah, the fact that Nicaea didn't happen until about 300 years after Jesus died, sort of deprives you of all sense of purpose in life.  I suggest you write a monograph on the shit and have it peer-reviewed.

Let's take hypothetical example. In paganism, the gods are not indestructible. One god can kill another god. In that event, he ceases to exist. No more body. No more consciousness. Yet it's possible to recreate him through sorcery.
Suppose Zeus gets really miffed with Ares and zaps him out of existence, but Hera brings him back through some magic ritual. There's a gap in his existence: from existence to nonexistence to reexistence. Would pagans regard Ares redivivus as one and the same individual?

Did you miss the part of the NT that forbids you from engaging in stupid questions?

While some metaphysicians might balk, I have no reason to think ordinary ancient people would regard Ares redivivus as a different individual from his former self.

And atheists have no reason to think Jesus' original followers would have viewed him as "light from light".  Sometimes biblical authors accidentally let the inconvenient historical truth come out.  Paul in Acts 13:33 applied the "This day I have begotten you" Sonship  Psalm 2:7 to the point in time when Jesus resurrected:  

32 "And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers,
 33 that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, 'YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.'
 34 "As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: 'I WILL GIVE YOU THE HOLY and SURE blessings OF DAVID.' (Acts 13:32-34 NAU)

 I think this is the part where you insist that anybody who thinks this is saying Jesus was begotten of God on the day he rose from the dead, are morons for not realizing that the need to defend inerrancy is always more important than the need to understand biblical authors correctly.  Never mind that being begotten on a specific day was the original intent of this Psalm:

“Today” points to the fact that the words were announced on the coronation day, the day on which the divine decree became effective.

Craigie, P. C. (2002). Vol. 19: Word Biblical Commentary : Psalms 1-50.

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 67). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

So, Steve, when the the divine decree in Psalm 2:7 become effective in Jesus' case?  On the day he rose from the dead, as Paul taught and as the original context of the Psalm would require anyway?

Or did I forget that rule of interpretation that says NT authors are always allowed to take the OT out of context and still be correct to do so?