Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays fails to show his god disapproves of marital pedophila

Steve Hays just happens to have written on July 8, 2017, a blog article ostensibly answering a Christian complaining that God's presumed disapproval of pedophilia cannot be sustained from the bible.  This is right around the time I began posting my other entries here on the topic of why Christians cannot show that their god disapproves of sex within adult-child marriages.

I answer Steve and his commenters here point by point: 

First, he says nothing at all about the infamous quotations from the Babylonian Talmud where the earlier Rabbis/Sages held that girls are suitable for sexual relations at age 3 years and one day.

Second, he says nothing about the Romans 13 argument which would have biblically justified a man living in 19 century Delaware to have sex with a 7 year old girl, because under Calvinism, God really is the creator of all secular law, not just the laws that cohere with the bible.

Third, he says nothing about the argument that because the bible is not explicit on the subject, this forbids Christians from disfellowshipping the man who disagrees with them on this subject.

Saturday, July 08, 2017

Islam, Christianity, and pedophilia

Question from a commenter:

I wonder, though, if we Christians aren't revealing a weak spot when it comes to objections to pedophilia. When pressed by our opponents, I don't think that we'd be able to provide any prooftexts condemning the practice - or am I wrong? Worse, I could see opponents seizing on the notion of Boaz seeming to be an elder while Ruth appeared to be a young girl. Granted, that's a bit flimsy but I'm not sure what the proper response might be. So I guess I'm asking how you might mount a defence against the claim that the Bible has nothing to say about pedophilia.

Interesting question. Requires a many-layered response:

1. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the Bible is silent on the moral status of pedophilia.

I deny the legitimacy of this move.  My argument is that the bible god approves of sex within adult child marriages, not that god approves of adults having sex with kids outside of marriage.  Hays' characterization is faulty here because apart from marriage, adults having sex with kids would be covered under either the fornication or adultery prohibitions.  It's the adult-child sex taking place within marriage, that is impervious to biblical rebuttal.  But Hays pretends to be answering Islamic arguments concerning charges of pedophilia and the bible, so it's probably not his fault that he is beating up a rather weak form of the argument.  Let's see him refute my particular argument. 

There's an essential difference between a religious text that condones pedophilia and silence.

Not according to the historians who lay out the criteria for knowing when an argument from silence is likely to be successful.  Not all arguments from silence are automatically fallacious.

The Bible's not an encyclopedia. It doesn't purport to address every ethnical issue.

You cannot afford to disagree with Paul, who said his solitary basis for being able to know a human act was sin, was the Mosaic Law: 

 6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
 7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET."
 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. (Rom. 7:6-8 NAU)

It doesn't matter if you are correct to say your God disapproves of marital pedophilia, the challenge is whether you can demonstrate that contention from the bible.  You can't.

Steve continues:

Some activities may not be condemned because they are obviously wrong. It isn't necessary to explicitly condemn them. That's understood. Take the cliche example of torturing little kids for fun.

Several problems: 
a) Paul in Romans 7:7 does not allow for even himself to know, apart from Mosaic law, that some human act is sin;

b) You are a Calvinist who believes God secretly wills all human sin, so by your own admission, God is no less approving of pedophiles who torture kids in basements for fun, than he approves of fathers who make their kids attend a Calvinist turch, which logically means God finds the human acts in his secret will no less holy than the human acts in his revealed will; 

c) no thank you, I'll stick to biblical examples, since they trip you up more easily.  If "obviously wrong" might explain why God is silent about torturing kids for fun, then what are you saying about God's prohibition against bestiality?

 23 'Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. (Lev. 18:23 NAU)

 Indeed, God apparently thought one single prohibition wasn't sufficient:

Exo 22:19 "Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death.
Lev 20:12 If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Lev 20:15 If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal.
Lev 20:16 If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Deu 27:21 Cursed is he who lies with any animal. And all the people shall say, Amen.

 Under your "obviously wrong" type logic, then the only reason God revealed multiple specific prohibitions against bestiality for Israel is because God didn't think Israel's common sense was sufficient to dissuade them from this type of activity. 

That won't help you when you start trying to argue that the obvious immorality of pedophilia would have been appreciated by Israel.

But if sex with animals is an obvious wrong, then why should God feel Israel needed more specific guidance on it than they needed on the proper minimum age of marriage?

Gee, could it actually be that these stupid questions come up because the bible is not inspired by a consistent creator, but is inspired by nothing but various people spouting various theological opinions?

The argument can be extended: how 'obviously wrong' is it to burn your kids to death?  And yet we see God constantly prohibiting the Israelites from imitating this pagan practice:

10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
 11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. (Deut. 18:10-11 NAU)

Same question:  if God thought the Israelites would recognize the "obvious" immorality of burning their kids to death, why did he specifically prohibit it?

You will say the prohibitions against acts condemned by common sense were needed because the pagan nations surrounding Israel did them and Israel might imitate them and often did.

So I really have to wonder why you would defend the high moral scruples of a people who could be persuaded by other cultures/nations, that burning their kids to death, was acceptable?

How many Christians live in big cities full of homosexuality and witchcraft.

How many of those Christians give in to practicing homosexuality and witchcraft?

So if your answer is that God needed to guide Israel because of the corruption of the pagans, you are making the Israelites out to be unacceptably gullible, which cannot be good for your other argument that surely they were wise enough to intuitively "know" when an act was sinful.

Could it really be, after all, that Paul was correct, and that your only hope for identifying human acts God thinks are sinful, is Mosaic law?

I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.

But you claim that God disapproves of sex within adult-child marriages.  You aren't going to prove that disapproval comes from God, if all you are using are natural law arguments.  And natural law arguments can backfire.  It's natural for a parent to not wish to burn their child to death, so was God contradicting natural common sense in Leviticus 21:9?

2. In Scripture, couples marry with a view to having kids. That assumes the bride and bridegroom are sexually mature.

A view fatally mitigated by the NT's consistent reference to Lot as a consistently righteous man.   Lot is called righteous in 2nd Peter 2:7-8 despite how clearly Genesis 19 asserts that Lot recommended to a sexually violent mob that they rape his two virgin daughters.  In other words, if this NT statement is true, then the author did not believe Lot’s attempt to have his daughters raped, constituted anything immoral, especially given that the story says Lot was trying to achieve a good purpose (preventing angels from being raped).  

 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation,  (2 Pet. 2:7-9 NAU)

In other words, while it may have been the ANE norm for virgin girls to lose virginity only in marriage, it also appears that where larger issues were involved, exceptions to normative sexual ethics were allowed.  

Lot, in particular, is considered righteous for offering his virgin daughters in order to save wayfarers. 

Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday.

 
Couple marrying in scripture with a view toward having kids may also assumes the couple is not allowed to engage in the specific sex act that would make the girl pregnant until she is older.  The Song of Songs would suggest at that point that an adult-child couple can engage in other similar acts that would not carry that danger.

In Scripture, couples also sometimes begin marital rites upon no other basis than that the man lusted after the woman's beauty, Deut. 21:10-14, a passage that neither expresses nor implies the purpose of the marriage would involve having children:

 10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
 13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
 14 "It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her.   (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)

Steve continues:

3. Ruth was a widow. Moreover, she'd been married for ten years before her husband died (Ruth 1:4-5; 4:11). Presumably, she was in her twenties when she married Boaz.

4. Are there passages in Scripture that have implications for age of eligibility in reference to marriage?

i) Take the much maligned passage about war brides (Deut 20:10-14). The brides are widows. So these are not prepubescent girls. It's unlikely that they are even adolescent girls. Rather, the context suggests adult women. They are chosen for their overt womanly sex appeal.

You are dreaming:  

a) It's Deut 21, not 20, you specified "much maligned passage about war brides, and Deut. 21:10-14 is far more explicit in its discussion of war brides than Deut. 20 is.

b) you cite no contextual or grammatical evidence to show these female war captives were widows, 

c) that Moses allow his men to enslave prepubescent and adolescent girls is clearly seen in Numbers 31:18, and 

d) you don't know what ancient Israelite men would have found attractive in other females, in Deut. 21:11, what would constitute "beauty" is not defined and left to the eye  of the beholder; 

e) if the GNT is correct in translating v. 14 as "you forced her to have sex with you" is a proper dynamic translation, the probability increases slightly that the text is assuming younger girls, i.e., those more likely to resist first intercourse; 

f) if the GNT is correct in its rape-translation, then these Israelites apparently didn't have any scruples against a single act of rape as the result of an attempted marriage rite, and this increase in their barbarity gives you all the less justification to automatically assume the god of the bible surely agrees with modern American Christian scruples on sex.

ii) In 1 Cor 7:36, the virgins are, at the very least, sexually mature, and the word (hyperakmos) may well mean the "bloom of youth". That suggests females in the upper teens or early twenties. 

here you assume the inerrancy of the bible, when the more scholarly objective approach would appraise the morals of the ANE Hebrews solely on terms of ANE practice and the OT.  And regardless, Paul's meaning is ambiguous,

48      36-38. The Apostle applies the preceding teaching to a particular case. There has been a lively discussion among exegetes concerning the precise relation of the man (tis) to his “virgin” in these verses.

Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (1968]; 

Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996).  

The Jerome Biblical commentary (electronic ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

 ....and he appears to be talking about a man with a virgin daughter who is past her sexual prime and wants to marry another man, since he is dealing with a specific problem that apparently had no common sense answers:

36. behaveth … uncomely—is not treating his daughter well in leaving her unmarried beyond the flower of her age

Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. 

On spine: Critical and explanatory commentary. (1 Co 7:36). 

Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

So if spiritually alive Christians cannot even agree on what Paul's meaning is, you can hardly seriously expect your unqualified interpretation of Paul's words to look the least bit persuasive to spiritually dead Muslims and atheists.

5. It's common to speculate that Mary was an adolescent bride who was widowed by the time Jesus began his public ministry because she married a much older man. But even if we grant some of the assumptions, it was probably rare for people to die of old age in the ancient world. Mortality was high, and there are many common ways to die young, viz. illness, accident, infection.

But Joseph was likely rich given that he apparently had more children with Mary, not a wise decision if he was poor.  Joseph was a carpenter, and he could easily have earned enough of a living to avoid the harsh realities that caused shortened life spans, such as famine, or eating diseased food, forced to take dangerous labor-intensive jobs, etc.

6. Regarding the morality of older men who marry younger women, that depends.

i) On the one hand are coercive or exploitative relationships.
Older men (and women!) in positions of power who abuse their authority by taking advantage of subordinates.

I don't see why you think that matters.  Even denying the pedophilia interpretation of Numbers 31:18, you still think these men expected these little girls to start slaving away in their houses soon after hearing the dying shrieks of their parents and siblings.  Some would argue that the way these men obtained the service of these little girls was horribly exploitative, and worse than a single act of sexual molestation. Touching a little girl improperly doesn't kill off her parents.

ii) On the other hand, there are desperate or ambitious women who take the initiative. They court or seduce older men who can advance their career, provide financial security, or lavish lifestyle. That's calculated. Some women are attracted to alpha males or powerful men. I'm not making a value judgment, just a sociological observation. Between consenting adults, I don't think age disparity is coercive or exploitative.

Posted by steve at 9:29 AM

But you are ignoring the precise question at issue:  What age did the Hebrews require a girl to reach, at a minimum, before they would allow her to be married to an adult man?  You simply don't have any biblical basis to select any age except the age of 12 that can be gathered from what is already known about ANE peoples outside the bible.  But that does not represent an absolute mandate, anymore than a state's law requiring a person to be 18 to marry is absolute, since we know some states will allow lower age with parental consent.  You can only show what was "normative", you cannot do what you need to do, and that is to show that sex within adult-child marriages was consider sinful.

    ANNOYED PINOY7/08/2017 3:00 PM  

    I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.

    That's a powerful statement by Steve. Christian ethics based on the Bible takes into consideration natural law. Even if Islam could theoretically do the same thing, Islam nevertheless teaches that it's okay for men to have sex with prepubescent girls. As I said in the comments of another blog:

    To add to what Steve said, if one reads Ezek. 16:1-8 (and following) God likens his relationship with His people as Him having found her like a newly born abandoned child. He waited until she was sexually mature to "marry" her in covenant. I think that suggests the same thing Steve is saying. I think we can inductively infer from this what the Jews believed during that time and what God Himself approves of regarding when it's appropriate for a female to get married.

 Even assuming Ezekiel 16 is the answer to your dreams (it's not, God is rather stupid and brutish to assume that formation of breasts and pubic hair indicates the girl is "ready" for love), Gleason Archer and others have accepted that some kings in the Monarchy were fathering kids at 11 years old.  As I said in another post, revered commentators believe that the modern practice of girls marrying before puberty was true also in the OT days:

 Second, many conservative Christian scholars still revere the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary, because what it has to say about the bible remains very scholarly despite its having been written in the 1800’s.  After acknowledging King Ahaz fathered a child at 10-11 years old, they recognize the question this will pop into the mind of the reader, and they go on to cite documentary evidence that prepubescent marriage was normative for middle-eastern families, and this evidence forces Holding, without a rebuttal otherwise, to admit ancient Hebrews were willing to allow marriage at even younger ages than 12:

2 Kings 16:1–4. On the time mentioned, “in the seventeenth year of Pekah Ahaz became king” see at 2 Kings 15:32. The datum “twenty years old” is a striking one, even if we compare with it 2 Kings 18:2. As Ahaz reigned only sixteen years, and at his death his son Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five years (2 Kings 18:2), Ahaz must have begotten him in the eleventh year of his age. It is true that in southern lands this is neither impossible nor unknown,33 but in the case of the kings of Judah it would be without analogy. The reading found in the LXX, Syr., and Arab. at 2 Chron. 28:1, and also in certain codd., viz., five and twenty instead of twenty, may therefore be a preferable one. According to this, Hezekiah, like Ahaz, was born in his father’s sixteenth year.
------33 In the East they marry girls of nine or ten years of age to boys of twelve or thirteen (Volney, Reise, ii. p. 360). Among the Indians husbands of ten years of age and wives of eight are mentioned (Thevenot, Reisen, iii. pp. 100 and 165). In Abyssinia boys of twelve and even ten years old marry (Rüppell, Abessynien, ii. p. 59). Among the Jews in Tiberias, mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen are not uncommon (Burckh. Syrien, p. 570); and Lynch saw a wife there, who to all appearance was a mere child about ten years of age, who had been married two years already. In the epist. ad N. Carbonelli, from Hieronymi epist. ad Vitalem, 132, and in an ancient glossa, Bochart has also cited examples of one boy of ten years and another of nine, qui nutricem suam gravidavit, together with several other cases of a similar kind from later writers. Cf. Bocharti Opp. i. (Geogr. sacr.) p. 920, ed. Lugd. 1692.

Keil, C. F., & Delitzsch, F. (2002). Commentaryon the Old Testament. 

(Vol. 3, Page 283-284). 

Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Annoyed Pinoy continues:

    Many (not all) Muslims have the wrong notion that once menstruation occurs it's God's sign that she is ready to be sexually active and bear children. But that's not medically true. Other parts of a woman's anatomy (like the hips) need to develop for her to be ready to bear children. That's a reason why a lot of women die or suffer terrible injuries in Islamic cultures. Because they didn't postpone marriage long enough.

 Good reasons to call the God of Ezekiel 16 stupid and brutish for thinking a girls "readiness" for love is indicated by formation of breasts and pubic hair.   Plenty of 10 year old girls have fully formed breasts and public hair, and yet are obviously nowhere "ready" for sex as God thinks they are.

    The Christian God of love, wisdom, and healing would naturally want and expect us culturally to promote a safe age for marriage (with the assumption that the consummation of the marriage occurs soon after marriage).

Or because so many Christians are insincere liberal idiots, the Christian God has decided to wreak havoc and chaos in America like he apparently did in Israel, read Deut. 28.

In some cultures female sexual maturation occurs earlier than in other cultures. So, there can be no specific fixed age for a female to marry.

But a god who creates a universe shouldn't have a problem doing at least as good of a job at setting the minimum age by law, as godless secularists have in America for the last 50 years.  

It depends on both biological and psychological maturity.

No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair.  Ezekiel 16. 

    Mr. Fosi7/08/2017 8:10 PM
    My first response when I saw the initial question that Steve is addressing was to point out the repeated directive in Song of Solomon to "not awaken love before it's time" and the idea at the end of the book that the "little sister without breasts" is one who is being guarded/protected. It's also clear from the language of that book that the lover and the beloved are sexualy mature.

Again, sex within adult-child marriages was likely not "normative" in ANE cultures, but that does not fulfill your burden to disprove the contention that the God of the bible disapproves of that act.

    Also, there is a much more basic argument to be had from the 2nd greatest commandment.

That's a rather vacuous argument:  were the Israelites treating their neighbors as themselves when massacring the baby boys in Numbers 31:17?

    Children are never sexual objects in the bible.

Argument from silence.  Can you back it up?

You can call that 'silence' if you like but in the presence of plenty of sexual stories and rules regarding sex, it is a ringing silence.

On the contrary, the fact that the rules specifically prohibit obvious sins like bestiality, but never give the minimum age or conditions under which a girl could be legitimately married, counsel that the god of the bible did not feel that sex below any certain age was prohibited.  Does God care more about animals having sex, than he cares about kids having sex?

    Finally, Christian parents don't encourage their kids to marry and have sexual relations with adults and Christian kids are told to obey their patents. Not exactly second use of the law but the bible is primarily for God's people.

But marriage today is based on romance and an evolved intellectual consideration of compatibility, entirely different from the arranged marriages for business and profit and continuation of family line as they were in the ANE.

Steve's failure is clear from the fact that he presupposes biblical inerrancy...he is writing to Christian inerrantists who are just as prone as he is to automatically think any use of the bible to justify modern Christian morality is valid. It doesn't matter if Paul knew of other ways to identify sin apart from the Law, what else Paul knew does not fit with his absolutist language in Romans 7:7. 

So while you are free to believe the bible condemns sex within adult-child marriages, you certainly cannot fulfill your burden to show that the god of Moses similarly disapproved.

Demolishing Triablogue: No, Steve Hays, a theology of secondary causes does not absolve God from being the author of evil

Steve Hays argues that Calvinists can consistently deny that God is the author of evil as long as they have a theology of secondary causes:

If actor was a synonym for auctor, then to deny that God is the "author" of sin means that God is not the agent, viz, God is not the doer or performer of sin. Rather, it's the human agent (or demonic agent) who commits sin. 

In that sense, it's perfectly coherent for Reformed theologians who deny that God is the author of sin–so long as they have a theology of second causes.

Several problems:

1 - Some bible texts claim God is directly responsible for causing people to sin, such as Ezekiel 38:4, the hook-in-jaws metaphor bringing to mind a sense of absolute force.

2 - Semantic quibbles about how God doesn't personally act in the human sin are theologically suspect, a god who is as omnipresent as Calvinists typically say he is, has more intimate association with a kidnapper's crime than the kidnapper.  Or are some classical theist doctrines resting upon hyperbolic biblical language?

3 - Semantic quibbles about how God doesn't personally act in the human sin do not imply that God is somehow not culpable.  God often orders others to sin:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."
 (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Unless Calvinists say they would absolve the mob boss from the crime of murder because he only ordered the hit, but didn't himself actually pull the trigger, then the popular moral objection to the Calvinist god authoring evil is not refuted by observing that God doesn't personally commit the sins.

4 - Secondary causes are moot for the reason explained above:  If what God himself is doing is evil, the fact that secondary agents have their part to play in the overall scheme does not take away from his own culpability.

 

5 - God appears to have carefully distinguished the evil David did, from the evil that god himself would do, to wit, causing David's wives to leave him and have polygamous sex in public with another man:

  9 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 (2 Sam. 12:9-13 NAU)

 Whether the wives had freewill is immaterial; God is claiming all the credit for causing this instance of people engaging in polygamous sex in public.

 

V. 12 doesn't make sense if it doesn't mean God is declaring himself responsible for this particular bit of evil. 

There can be no doubting whatsoever that at the end of the day, consistent Calvinism teaches that people compare to God the way puppets relate to a ventriloquist.

 

Indeed, unless one accuses Paul of premising his Romans 9 theology on hyperbole, which would nuke Calvinism off the face of the planet, then when Paul tries to support his theology by arguing that God is potter and we are the pots, he really wasn't pushing the analogy too far.

 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
 (Rom. 9:19-21 NAU)

If Paul wasn't pushing the pot/potter analogy too far, then we cannot be any more responsible for our sins, than pots can be responsible for being what they are. 

Why God paints himself as so wrathful against his pots turning out to be exactly what he wanted them to be, requires we conclude that God is as irrational as an intelligent being can possibly get:  He is angry and wrathful because his plans worked perfectly.

One has to seriously wonder at how Calvinists can go about seriously believing that God makes Christians feel guilty about doing his secret will.

If a Calvinist praised God's secret will in allowing children to be raped to death, would God accept or reject this theologically correct form of praise?  

If God is a God of truth, does that mean he accepts any and all praise that is based on actual truth, or does God require that praise of him not take into account certain actual truths?

These are questions that Calvinists, who think God secretly wills all human sin, cannot easily answer.

Demolishing Triablogue: Miracles and Induction

Steve Hays points out flaws in induction his discussion of miracles, and I answer him point by point.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Posted by steve at 1:59 PM

Miracles, induction, and retrodiction

According to the principle of induction, we can retroengineer the past from the present. There's a chain of events leading up to the present. Antecedent states produce subsequent states.

The same causes produce the same effects.

Since that's repeatable, if we're familiar with the process, we can retrace an effect back through intervening stages to the originating cause.

For instance, when I see an adult human, I know how he got to that point. I can run it backwards from adulthood through adolescence, childhood, gestation, and conception.

All things being equal, that's a generally reliable inference.

Meaning those who affirm miracles must show that their hypothesis to explain the data is better than whatever naturalistic hypothesis is being used to counter the miracle-explanation.  You can argue that during your mission to Uganda, you were dead from disease for the three days that nobody could find you, and that God resurrected you in the same body, but you will have to show that your theory to explain the data is more convincing than the naturalistic theories that either you are lying, deluded, just kidding, or you weren't truly dead.

However, miracles pose an exception to induction. A classic miracle (in contrast to a coincidence miracle) is causally discontinuous with the past. A miracle isn't uncaused, but it's not the result of a causal chain. Rather, a miracle results from the introduction an anomalous cause outside the ordinary chain of events.

I deny the coherence and legitimacy of such talk.  You might as well say God lives "outside of time".  Utter nonsense. When you propose a break with the "ordinary chain of events", you carry the burden to show that your theory to explain the data is better than the naturalistic theories proposed to counter your own theory.  When you can demonstrate any such place as "outside the ordinary chain of events", let me know.

It represents a break in the causal continuum. The continuum resumes after the break, taking the miracle as a new starting-point.

For instance, suppose a person suffers from a naturally irreversible degenerative condition. Suppose he undergoes miraculous healing. That outcome can't be retrodicted from his prior condition.

In the case of miracles, induction hits a wall. When the subsequent course of events is the result of a miracle, inductive inference can't go further back than the miracle.

If what happened was a miracle, then yes.  But this sophistry does not translate into practical life.  If you claim to have been recently healed miraculously of permanent blindness since birth, the limits of induction are not going to slow me down in the least from attempting to authenticate all of your relevant medical and witness claims, should I decide to focus my investigatory curiosity on such a thing.

It can't reconstruct the past before the miracle occurred, because the post-miraculous state is not a product of the pre-miraculous state. Induction can only take you from the present to as far back in time as the precipitating miracle. It can't jump over that to the other side, because the chain of events prior to the miracle is a dead-end. The prior chain of events terminated with the miracle, which represents a new beginning.

This raises a potential problem regarding past-oriented sciences (e.g. cosmology, historical geology, paleontology, evolution). If miracles occur in the past, are they even detectable?

What's the scope of any particular miracle to reset the status quo? That limits our ability to reconstruct the past.

This thought experiment is totally worthless, because the only way you can successfully invoke the fatal limits of induction is by assuming what happened was indeed a miracle, in which case, yes, induction would not suffice to argue against it.  So I'll give Hays the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he intended only theists and other miracle-watchers to take him seriously.

What Hays needs to do is provide argument in favor of the one miracle he believes is the most compelling.

Demolishing Triablogue: Moses was not humble

Steve Hays takes on the old atheist canard about how Numbers 12:3, saying Moses was the most humble man on earth, wouldn't have been written by a truly humble man.

But some would argue that when you talk back to God and suggest a plan to him different than His own, this personality trait doesn't leave room for humility:

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

When apologists start hemming and hawwing about how God didn't "really" want Moses to leave Him alone (v. 10), we skeptics start hemming and hawwing about whether giving a false impression of one's intentions constitutes lying.

 lie2 noun     
1An intentionally false statement.     ‘they hint rather than tell outright lies’     ‘the whole thing is a pack of lies’     
1.1 Used with reference to a situation involving deception or founded on a mistaken impression.     ‘all their married life she had been living a lie’

 Steve says

"More humble than anyone else on the face of the earth" is simply hyperbole.

 ...making us wonder whether other statements in the bible, such as those describing God's wrath, are also hyperbole.  Do unbelievers really face the terrible wrath of God in the literal sense, or is this just hyperbole?

Also, doesn't matter if it was hyperbole, this would still have left an impression on the original readers even if they knew it was exaggeration.  When I tell a friend that my neighbor is the "nicest guy in the world", the fact that this is not technically true but exaggeration, does not mean the hearer just dismisses the comment outright.

She still receives the impression that in my view he is one of the nicest persons one can know.  The hyberbolic way of speaking still creates a strong literal impression, and likely would more so with pre-literate societies.

So you cannot get rid of the problem produced by literal interpretation, by classifying the speech as hyperbole.  The literal intent is still there even if the language is exaggerated.      

Demolishing Triablogue, part 5: The Virgin Birth and Mark 6:3

Jason Engwer argues that the failure to mention Joseph as Jesus father in Mark 6:3 is more consistent with the theory that there was something peculiar about Jesus' birth, than with any other theory.

NAU  Mark 6:1 Jesus went out from there and came into His hometown; and His disciples followed Him.
 2 When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?
 3 "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him.
 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household."
 5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. (Mk. 6:1-5 NAU)

Engwer's biggest oversight is Mark's failure to say anything explicit about the virgin birth, if indeed Mark says what he does in 6:3 because of a scandal that ultimately arises from Jesus being born of a virgin.

Engwer will say Mark didn't feel the need to repeat what his originally intended audience already believed or accepted, but on the contrary, early patristic testimony asserted that Mark's purpose was no less than to repeat for his church, at their request, what they heard Peter preach.  From Eusebius, H.E. 6:14, Schaff edition:

Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters, as to the order of the Gospels, in the following manner: The Gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first. The Gospel according to Marks had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it.

So Engwer cannot explain Mark's failure to explicitly mention the virgin birth on the theory that Mark trusted that his readers already accepted this doctrine.  Because they were already converts and a church, they clearly had accepted all major teachings Peter gave them, yet Mark is precisely repeating for them in written form that which they previously heard and believed.  So Engwer's presumption that the author of Mark either knew about or accepted the virgin birth story, but for some mysterious reason never quite got around to mentioning it, is quite strange:  The virgin birth, if true, would certainly strongly support, at least for Christians, their belief that Jesus was the promised messiah.  Yet Engwer would have the reader believe that Mark never thought such a strong supporting bit of history/doctrine worthy to be explicitly mentioned?

Engwer wastes his readers time arguing for such a trifling thing, because Jesus, when presented with an opportunity to say something good about his mom or his birth, declined to do so:

27 While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed."
 28 But He said, "On the contrary (Greek: men), blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it." (Lk. 11:27-28 NAU)

Louw-Nida indicate that in the Greek, "contrary" signaled disagreement with the former speaker:

89.128  μενοῦν ; μενοῦνγε: relatively emphatic markers of contrast - 'but, on the contrary, on the other hand.' μενοῦν: μενοῦν μακάριοι οἱ ἀκούοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ φυλάσσοντες 'on the contrary, those who hear the word of God and keep it are happy' or '... fortunate' Lk 11.28. For other interpretations of μενοῦν in Lk 11.28 , see 89.50 and 91.8. μενοῦνγε: μενοῦνγε σὺ τίς εἶ ὁ ἀνταποκρινόμενος τῷ θεῷ 'on the contrary, who are you to talk back to God?' Ro 9.20.

So Jesus was not simply reminding people of the higher priorities, he was disagreeing with the female speaker's assumption that the blessedness of his mother had any relevance to anything concerning the gospel.

Oh, did I mention?  Jesus also never brought up the subject of his birth.

I answer Engwer in point by point fashion here, since he or somebody at Triablogue is apparently too frightened of my scholarly answers to them and have banned me, while dishonestly leaving up their replies to me. 

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Posted by Jason Engwer at 5:31 AM

Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 5): Mark

Mark's gospel, like Matthew and Luke, has John anticipating Jesus' ministry before it begins (1:2-8).

As in the other gospels, Mark has John popularly received early on (1:5). See my comments earlier about the significance of John's reception.

Mark's accounts of the calling of the disciples (e.g., 1:16-20) are similar to what we find in Matthew. See my earlier comments in my post about Matthew's gospel.

The infancy theme of Jesus' background in Nazareth is mentioned by Mark (1:24).

Mark 1:24 neither expresses nor implies the least little bit about Jesus' infancy, it merely indicates that somebody believed Jesus to have been from Nazarteth, whether he was actually born there is hardly at issue:

 23 Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,
 24 saying, "What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are-- the Holy One of God!"
 25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet, and come out of him!" (Mk. 1:23-25 NAU)

 Conservative Inerrantist Evangelical scholar J.A. Brooks says absolutely nothing about Jesus' infancy in his commentary on Mark 1:24:

1:24 The questions sought to put Jesus on the defensive and force him to justify his action (cf. Judg 11:12; 2 Sam 16:10; 1 Kgs 17:18; 2 Kgs 3:13; 2 Chr 35:21). The second sentence, however, could be an assertion rather than a question: “You have come to destroy us!” The demon tried unsuccessfully to oppose Jesus by employing his name. Note how the demon spoke through the man, sometimes for himself and sometimes for demons in general. “Holy One of God” probably is a messianic title, although there is very little attestation for that. In the Old Testament God is usually the Holy One. Here the title implies that Jesus has a special relationship with God. In v. 24 the demon acknowledged the true identity of Jesus (cf. v. 34)—something the disciples were slow to do. In fact, only at the crucifixion did a human being confess Jesus as the Son of God, and he was not one of the disciples (15:39).

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 51). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Asserting that the demon spoke the true identity of Jesus, does not constitute evidence either way on Jesus' infancy.  And it doesn't matter if the reference shows somebody thought Jesus was "born" there, Jason's purpose in the article is not to establish that Jesus was born in Nazareth, but that Jesus was virgin-born.  Nothing in Mark 1:24 supports any concept of virgin birth.

Other Christian scholars see nothing about Jesus infancy in this passage:

“The Holy One of God” (ὁ ἃγιος τοῦ Θεοῦ). The demon addresses Jesus as “Jesus, the Nazarene.” After asking about the purpose of Jesus’ coming, the spirit then demonstrates his knowledge of Jesus’ true identity, “The Holy One of God.”

Guelich, R. A. (2002). Vol. 34A: Word Biblical Commentary : Mark 1-8:26.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 57). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Engwer continues:

The theme of Davidic ancestry is present as well (10:47-48, 11:10, 12:35-37). Again, keep in mind the implication of a Bethlehem birthplace.

Even granting Jesus was born in Bethlehem, this does nothing to speak to his being born of a virgin.  Do you  believe Josephus when he says a cow gave birth to a lamb, merely because he correctly mentions Jerusalem and the Temple?  Probably not.

And a high estimate of Jesus' character, with its implications for Jesus' childhood, is present in Mark (1:24), as in the other gospels.

Correction, the story has a story character that gave a high estimate of Jesus.  Trying to establish the historicity of such high estimate by blindly buh-leeving the account is about as stupid as arguing that Donald Trump is a good politician because one of his enemies once said something good about him.

The belief of Jesus' own family that he was crazy, and their refusal to believe his miraculous claims, have more weight than Mark's hearsay quotation of a demon-possessed man:

 20 And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal.
 21 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, "He has lost His senses." (Mk. 3:20-21 NAU)

 5 For not even His brothers were believing in Him. (Jn. 7:5 NAU)

 Inerrantist Brooks is quite explicit that "his own people" in Mark 3:21 means "family" and that they thought Jesus was acting like a crazy person to the point that they intended to take him by force:

3:21 In the Greek text the subject of the first two clauses is literally “those with him.” The KJV and RSV (1st ed.) interpret this to mean “his friends,” the NASB and NKJV “his own people,” and the RSV (2nd ed.), NRSV, NEB, REB, and NIV “his family.” In view of vv. 31–32 the last of these is certainly correct. The idea that Jesus’ family opposed him troubled some ancient copyists who changed the text to read, “When the scribes and the rest heard.” The concern of Jesus’ family was not likely limited to his physical needs (v. 20); they probably were more concerned about the family’s reputation because in their estimation Jesus was acting in a fanatical and even insane way. The same verb is used in Acts 26:24 and 2 Cor 5:13 and means literally to stand outside of oneself. The verb translated “to take charge” means to arrest in 6:17; 12:12; 14:1, etc. Evidently they intended to seize Jesus and force him to return to Nazareth with them.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic).

Engwer continues:

Jesus' mother, as in the infancy narratives, is named Mary (6:3).

I don't see how the infancy narratives getting the name of the mother right is supposed to lend any credence to their mythical elements.  There is nothing about getting somebody's name correct that suggests the author is intending to assert only historical facts.  1st John was written in part to combat a proto-gnosticism in which some heretics got the name of Jesus right, but got the theology wrong.  Thousands of Christian Jews got Paul's name correct, but apparently trusted in an allegedly false rumor about him, Acts 21:18-24.

Jesus has siblings (6:3), and Mark describes them in a way that corroborates the infancy narratives, as I explained when I discussed Matthew's gospel.

All that need prove is that the infancy narratives have expanded upon less mythical facts in the earlier Markan gospel.   And the fact that most scholars agree that Luke and Matthew are borrowing material from Mark anyway, means the "corroboration" is useless because it isn't independent.

The people of Nazareth in Mark 6:1-6 seem to be aware of some unusual circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth. Joel Marcus writes:
    In Jewish sources the father's name is normally used to identify the son even when the father is dead (see e.g. Do'eg son of Joseph in b. Yoma 38b and Jesus son of Jesus in the Babatha archive; cf. Ilan, "Man," 23 n. 3). Contrary to this custom, Jesus is designated [in Mark 6:3] by his mother's name rather than his father's. Both Matthew and Luke revert to the usual pattern, Luke 4:22 reading "the son of Joseph" (cf. John 6:42) and Matt 13:55 "the son of the carpenter."…

Sure is funny that when inerrantists can find some support for their theory in the Talmud, they reference the Talmud as if the support is beyond question.  But when others point to statements in the Talmud to the effect that, say, children as young as 3 are suitable for sexual relations, then suddenly, the inerrantists remind us of what an unreliable grab bag of contradictory convoluted traditions the Talmud is.

 Indeed, the relevant portion from the Talmud says the saying was uttered by a Rabbi "Rabina"

Rabina raised an objection: The story of Doeg b. Joseph whom his father left to his mother when he was a young child:

It was this same "Rabina" who asserted that Gentile girls become "suitable for sexual relations" at 3 years of age:

  Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”     From Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Will somebody trifle that Rabina was faithful to the historical truth about the Jewish custom of calling sons after their fathers even after the father died, but was conveniently not faith to the truth about Jewish customs in his pedophilia?

    Ilan ("Man") has shown that a matronymic could be used when the mother's pedigree was superior to the father's, but that can scarcely be the case here, since Davidic descent was the most important of all, and Jesus was a Davidide on his father's side…

Jesus was Davidic because of his mothers' side too according to most scholars:

The problem would have been insoluble had it not been for the wisdom of God. The solution lay in the genealogy of Mary, recorded in Luke 3 (vv. 23–38), which goes back through Nathan to David. Through Mary Jesus is physically an heir of David, and through Joseph He receives the legal right to the throne (while sidestepping the physical curse upon that line). “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!” (Rom. 11:33). Because of His miraculous conception our Lord receives title to the throne of David in the Kingdom of God. Dying without a son (cf. Isa. 53:8), He carried that title to the right hand of God. It is most interesting to note that since the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70 it has been impossible to reconstruct the Davidic genealogy. The only reliable genealogies we have are those in Matthew and Luke, and they point incontrovertibly to Jesus of Nazareth as the virgin’s son—the divinely promised King of the Jews.

"The Virginal Conception of Our Lord  in Matthew 1:18-25  —  David J. MacLeod*  

The Emmaus Journal. 1999 (electronic ed.). 

EMJ—V8 #1—Sum 99—30.  Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

 That Luke records Mary's genealogy was a position taken by many in the early church.  See Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture, by Jaroslav Pelikan.  Paul David Younan says the genealogy of Matthew traces Mary back to David.  So let's not get too cocky about how Joseph is so important to establishing that Jesus descended from David.

Calvin thought Luke was tracing Mary's ancestry back to David:

But we have not yet replied to their objection, that the ancestry of Joseph has nothing to do with Christ. The common and well-known reply is, that in the person of Joseph the genealogy of Mary also is included, because the law enjoined every man to marry from his own tribe. It is objected, on the other hand, that at almost no period had that law been observed: but the arguments on which that assertion rests are frivolous.

Calvin, J. (2000). Calvin's Commentaries (electronic ed.). 

electronic ed. (Mt 1:18). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

R.A. Torrey agreed:

1. The genealogy given in Matthew is the genealogy of Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, his father in the eyes of the law. The genealogy given in Luke is the genealogy of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is the human genealogy of Jesus Christ in actual fact.

Torrey, R. (1998, c1996). Difficulties in the Bible : Alleged errors and contradictions. 

Willow Grove: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing.

Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book 4:

Isaiah He says: “Hear me, and ye shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you,” adding “the sure mercies of David,” in order that He might show that that covenant was to run its course in Christ. That He was of the family of David, according to the genealogy of Mary, He declared in a figurative way even by the rod which was to proceed out of the stem of Jesse.

Schaff, P. (2000). The Ante-Nicene Fathers (electronic ed.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

  Engwer continues:

    These alternate theories being found wanting, and given the hostile nature of the confrontation, it is likely that the use of Jesus' mother's name is a slur against his legitimacy, as Stauffer ("Jeschu") and S. Wilson (Strangers, 188) among others argue. This aspersion would correspond to the tendency in later Jewish traditions to portray Jesus as a bastard (see e.g. Origen Against Celsus 1:28-32, 39, 69; b. Sanh. 67a), a pattern that may already be reflected in John 8:41. Ilan, though disagreeing with this exegesis, cites an interesting parallel, the derogatory designation of Titus as "the son of Vespasian's wife" in 'Abot R. Nat. 7 (B), which implies that he is illegitimate (see Ilan, "Man," 42-43 n. 86, and cf. Saldarini, Fathers, 68 n. 15). McArthur ("Son of Mary") argues against the implication of illegitimacy in Mark 6:3 that "son of Mary" is an informal reference, not a formal genealogical expression, and that there is nothing necessarily unusual or derogatory about an identification by the mother's name in such informal contexts (cf. e.g. 1 Kgs 17:17; Acts 16:1). But Mark 6:3 comes closer to being a genealogical formula than the parallels cited because of the extensive list of other male family members. McArthur's theory, moreover, does not explain the apparent embarrassment of Matthew and Luke at Mark's term

You don't know that it was embarrassment that led Matthew or Luke to read a bit different.  Matthew says:

 54 He came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?
 55 "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
 56 "And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?"
 57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household."
 58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. (Matt. 13:54-58 NAU)

 If indeed it is true that Matthew is here showing "apparent embarrassment" over Mark's more terse "son of Mary reading, then we have to ask why Matthew felt embarrassed by this reading.  Did he think he discovered a slur in the crowd's quoted language that Peter's interpreter Mark had missed? 

Does that sound like Matthew thought Mark wrote inerrantly?  Indeed, why else do Matthew and Luke change Mark's wording, if they thought Mark's choice of wording was inerrant?

Why should the teller of the virgin birth story feel the last bit embarrassed by an earlier gospel author reporting that Jesus was merely "son of Mary"?  Did Matthew perceive that this was not a mere sign that the people perceived something peculiar about Jesus' birth, but that they had good reason to believe Jesus was an authentic naturalistic bastard fathered by somebody other Joseph?

Furthermore, Metzger holds that there are early and wide textual variants in which the crowd in Mark 6:3 does mention Jesus' father Joseph, so apparently even early scribes felt Mark's choice of wording would likely be taken as contrary to the similar statement in Matthew 13:35:

6.3 te,ktwn( o` ui`o,j {A}

All uncials, many minuscules, and important early versions read, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary …?” Objection was very early felt to this description of Jesus as carpenter,11 and several witnesses (including p45) assimilate the text to Mt 13.55 and read, “Is not this the son of the carpenter, the son of Mary …?” The Palestinian Syriac achieves the same result by omitting o` te,ktwn.

 There is no reason why the emphasis on Jesus' mother throughout the gospels cannot simply imply that Joseph was dead by the time Jesus began his ministry.  Engwer is crazy to try to squeeze so much out of one phrase in Mark 6:3

Engwer continues his rebuttal to MacArthur:

or reckon with the hostile context of our passage

Maybe he doesn't, but there is hostile context in Matthew 13:55 too.

In my post on Matthew's gospel, I mentioned that we should take note of how themes in the infancy narratives are connected to other concepts.

Yeah, like themes in Greek mythology are connected to other concepts.  Big deal. But thanks for making clear that you aren't talking to skeptics.  You are clearly addressing only those who already believe and therefore need far less argument to cross the line and assert the historicity of Jesus' virgin birth.

If an early Christian source applies passages like Isaiah 11 and 52-53 to Jesus, how likely is it that he didn't also think Jesus fulfilled a Christmas passage like Isaiah 9?

Isaiah 9 was allegedly a prediction of Christ's ministry to the Gentiles.  If the gospels are historically reliable when they assert Jesus had a significant ministry to Gentiles:

  45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere. (Mk. 1:45 NAU)

12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee;
 13 and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.
 14 This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet:
 15 "THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI, BY THE WAY OF THE SEA, BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES--
 16 "THE PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN DARKNESS SAW A GREAT LIGHT, AND THOSE WHO WERE SITTING IN THE LAND AND SHADOW OF DEATH, UPON THEM A LIGHT DAWNED."
 17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. 4:12-17 NAU)

 15 But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. Many followed Him, and He healed them all,
 16 and warned them not to tell who He was.
 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet:
 18 "BEHOLD, MY SERVANT WHOM I HAVE CHOSEN; MY BELOVED IN WHOM MY SOUL is WELL-PLEASED; I WILL PUT MY SPIRIT UPON HIM, AND HE SHALL PROCLAIM JUSTICE TO THE GENTILES.
 19 "HE WILL NOT QUARREL, NOR CRY OUT; NOR WILL ANYONE HEAR HIS VOICE IN THE STREETS.
 20 "A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT, UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY.
 21 "AND IN HIS NAME THE GENTILES WILL HOPE."
 (Matt. 12:15-21 NAU)

...and if the apostles really heard the resurrected Jesus commission THEM to preach to Gentiles (Great Commission, Matthew 28:19), then what are the odds that Peter and the church would, shortly after Jesus ascended, regard the salvation of Gentiles as some shocking unexpected theological development they'd never have guessed without a special divine revelation to Peter, as they do in Acts 11:18?

Or does Engwer think such questions as his beg too many presuppositions to be answered?  If Engwer can safely assume the first-century Christian knows doctrine B because he knows doctrine A, why can't skeptics similarly argue that Acts 10-11 is false history, on the ground that Peter surely knew doctrine B (Gentiles could be saved) because he knew doctrine A (Jesus taught Gentile salvation)?

Mark often refers to the theme of Messianic prophecy fulfillment, even opening his gospel with it (1:2-3). Since Isaiah 9 and Micah 5 are two of the most explicitly Messianic passages in the Old Testament, how likely is it that Mark didn't think Jesus fulfilled those passages?

About as likely as Matthew thinking Mark's language was inaccurate.  Compare "could" do no miracle (Mark 6:5) with Matthew's theologically easier "did not" do any miracle there (13:58).

You apologists think Daniel 9 is an exceptionally powerful apologetic since it allegedly shows somebody in 600 b.c. predicting something about Jesus with amazing precision, but despite NT authors liking the idea of the OT predicting Jesus, nobody in the NT makes anywhere near the big deal out of it that you do.

One of the problems with critics of the infancy narratives is that they're too focused on what a source like Mark explicitly tells us.

That's because you enter dangerous territory when you try to draw conclusions from an author's alleged inferences or silence.  Mark's failure to explicitly mention the virgin birth, however, is so significantly unexpected that it screams out for an explanation other than his alleged acceptance of it.

Much of the relevant evidence is of an implicit nature.

Which might explain why your arguments are shockingly unpersuasive to any except inerrantist fundamentalists.

Mark doesn't say much directly about Jesus' childhood.

Probably because he didn't think anything about Jesus' childhood had significant relevance to the gospel message.  Again, Jesus replies in opposition to the women who brings up the subject of his mother, Luke 11, supra.

His gospel is derived from what Peter taught, and Peter's apostolic work was focused on what occurred from the ministry of John the Baptist onward (Acts 1:21-22).

Which is precisely why there's no need to assume Peter believed anything about the virgin birth story.

Peter would typically begin his public teaching with John and Jesus in their adulthood,

No, Peter's sermon in Acts 2:14 ff neither expresses nor implies anything about John the Baptist.  You are asserting patterns merely because, by your own admission, you detected Peter doing something in a single bible passage.  Peter's doing something once does not establish a pattern.

so Mark started his gospel there. But there are some implications for Jesus' childhood in what Mark tells us, even though he wasn't focused on the subject.

And what you overlook is that if Mark himself believed what you think he did (i.e., Jesus was born of a virgin, this is why there was a scandal about Jesus father or childhood), then Mark's failure to explicitly assert something in favor of the virgin birth is a screaming silence that suggests the assumption is wrong, and it is for another reason that he fails to explicitly assert any virgin birth matter.

Something else should be said here about the gospels and other early sources in general. Once Jesus begins publicly teaching and performing so many miracles, his adulthood overshadows his childhood.

No it doesn't, there was a lady who directed his attention to the blessedness of his mother, giving him the perfect opportunity to explicitly assert something about how his mother possessed any type of special uniqueness, yet Jesus opposes this female speaker and directs her away from the subject of his mother.  Luke 11:27-28, supra.

When Jesus was standing before people, teaching them and performing such a large number and variety of miracles in their midst, why would he spend much time pointing them to a far smaller number of miracles that occurred a few decades earlier, when he was a child?

Maybe for the same reason Matthew and Luke did when they did their preaching on the virgin birth?

Why would the New Testament authors and others involved give much attention to his childhood?

Ask Matthew and Luke, they can explain how it is that something in Jesus' childhood retained its historical importance despite Jesus himself becoming the center of attention.

Just as Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah's childhood are far outnumbered by predictions about his adulthood,

Yup, you aren't talking to skeptics.  There are no OT prophecies about Jesus' childhood, unless you are talking in the useless-for-apologetics sense of typology.

it makes sense for matters pertaining to Jesus' childhood to only occasionally come up during his adult ministry.

On the contrary, it makes sense to assert that the virgin birth stories of Jesus are late inventions, and we normally expect the earlier account to be less encumbered with embellishments, which appears to be exactly what happened here.

Tough Questions Answered: Do the Three Accounts of Paul’s Conversion in Acts Contradict Each Other?

This is my response to an article by "Tough Questions Answered", entitled

Do the Three Accounts of Paul’s Conversion in Acts Contradict Each Other?

Posted: 26 Jul 2017 06:00 AM PDT

The conversion of Saul/Paul is so important to the author of the Book of Acts that he presents the story three times (Acts 9, 22, 26).

Or there were several different versions of that story, which the author sought to harmonize.

Each version is different, and this fact has led some critics to say that the accounts are contradictory. But is that necessarily the case?

Contradictions don't have to be the case "necessarily".  Historiography is an art, not a science, and contradictions can be properly inferred from circumstantial evidence, its why juries often choose to disbelieve an alibi witness.  It is not true that the alleged contradiction has to be proven with absolute certitude, since no position about an ancient historical matter, where not corroborated by other disciplines, can be proven with absolute historical certitude anyway.  If certainty isn't needed to harmonize, certainty also isn't needed to show contradiction.

First, we must note that there are several common elements in the three versions:

    Saul is on his way to Damascus to gather up Christians.

    He sees an intense light.

    The Lord asks why Saul is persecuting him.

    Saul asks who the speaker is.

    Jesus reveals that it is he.

What are the differences? Darrel Bock, in The Gospels and Acts (The Holman Apologetics Commentary on the Bible) , writes:

    The biggest differences in the accounts have to do with whether the men traveling with Saul see the light and hear nothing (22:9) or stand speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one (9:7). . . . Another difference is that Ananias does not appear at all in the Acts 26 account. . . . Another key difference between the accounts is that Saul does not mention his call to reach the Gentiles in the account given in Acts 9, whereas he shares this detail in Acts 22 and 26.

Bock then argues that each of these differences can be reconciled.

About the different experiences of the men traveling with Saul,

    The elements at play here can be reconciled (Witherington 1998, 312– 13),

 But just because the wording "can" be harmonized, doesn't mean the wording really is in harmony.  Defense attorneys often succeed in persuading juries that a perceived contradiction in their client's testimony can be harmonized, but that hardly demonstrates that the testimony was truly harmonious.

as for instance in the following way: The men hear a sound, but it is not intelligible to them;

The very idea that a person could speak to you loud enough to be heard by your traveling companions who all speak the same language, but they could not "understand" what was being said, is total bullshit.  We see the same dreck in John 12:29.  The extreme likelihood that this story is fable, outweighs whatever benefits you think are gained by harmonizing them.  You may as well show you can harmonize several different accounts of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Gee, a lot of good that would do!

they also see a light but not Jesus himself.

Once again, the dependence of the story upon miracles reduces the significance of showing harmony in the accounts. Sure is funny that, if the story be true, we hear nothing in history about those traveling companions converting, which they likely would have, had they believe Paul's interpretation of the experience was valid.

Only Saul sees someone in the light and is able to discern a speaking voice in the sound. Saul’s companions experience something less than the full event, which means that the appearance is neither an entirely private vision nor a fully disclosed public event. It is a public event whose details are for one man alone, Saul of Tarsus.

Which is precisely why the account is unbelievable, rendering pointless any effort to show the different accounts of it can be harmonized. 

John Polhill, in Acts, vol. 26, The New American Commentary , agrees with Bock:

    Paul’s traveling companions served as authenticators that what happened to Paul was an objective event, not merely a rumbling of his inner psyche.

Paul's traveling companions aren't doing the talking.  This is LUKE REPORTING what they said, as such it is hearsay, and must be evaluated as hearsay, not as if it was their own first-hand account.  And Luke's willingness to whitewash church history dishonestly just to make Paul look better (Acts 15, Jesus never requiring Gentiles to be circumcised would be the natural answer to the Judaizer question, but the apsotles instead avoid Jesus like Paul did, and like Paul, cite to the OT and their subjective ministry experiences to answer the Judaizers...yeah right!) doesn't motivate one to trust his hearsay reports where they clearly are intended to popularize Paul.

They heard a sound, but they did not see the vision of Jesus. Acts 22:9 says that they saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke with Paul. The two accounts are not contradictory but underline the same event. Paul’s companions heard a sound and saw a light. They could verify that an objective heavenly manifestation took place. They did not participate in the heavenly communication, however, neither seeing the vision of Jesus nor hearing the words spoken to Paul. The revelation was solely to Paul.

Once again, assuming your harmonization scenario works as well as you think it does, the argument against miracles and Luke's historical dishonesty render pointless any attempt to harmonize different accounts of edifying fiction.

Regarding Ananias being left out of Acts 26, Bock writes, “This may be in part because the book has already mentioned him in detail twice, in Acts 9 and 22. Luke chooses not to be redundant on this detail, and so he provides a telescoped account.”

If a "may" can justify you to declare a successful harmonization, why can't "may" justify a skeptic to declare a successful showing of contradiction?  Is there some law of the universe that says speculation can only be successfully invoked by fundamentalist Christians hell-bent on defending biblical inerrancy?

Regarding Saul not mentioning his call to the Gentiles in Acts 9, “Ananias notes in 9:15 that Saul would be called to a Gentile mission, so we probably have another example of telescoping. Another possibility is that Luke chose not to note this detail in his third-person narrative because the Gentile mission had not yet taken place, but this argument is somewhat weakened by the mention of the mission to Ananias. In any case, Saul’s not mentioning his Gentile mission in Acts 9 is simply an outcome of Luke’s literary choice, the exact reason for which is not clear.”

Which means the possible reason that the accounts are lies remains on the table, which sufficiently refutes the inerrantists who think the possibility of lying is off the table.