Michael Licona’s Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? purports to show that the Gospels have been influenced by literary devices allegedly used in Greco-Roman literature. The devices that Licona believes he has found in Greco-Roman biography involve altering chronology, fabricating details, and changing other facts. His attempts to apply these ideas to the Gospels do not succeed. Repeatedly, the claim that a biblical passage manifests a fact-altering “compositional device” fails to satisfy the significant burden of proof borne by such a complex claim. Licona often overlooks much simpler explanations or rejects them too hastily. Sometimes he (following other New Testament critics) conjectures factual change or invention by a Gospel author when there is not even any apparent discrepancy between accounts. Sometimes he conjectures the invention of entire scenes or incidents. These issues are important to Christians who are interested in whether or not we can know about Jesus in a reliable way from the Gospels. It is therefore necessary to look into Licona’s claims in detail rather than accepting them lightly. Since they cannot stand up under investigation, the traditional view of the Gospels—that their authors intended them as factually truthful reports—has not been undermined by his work.
A Seismic Shift in the Inerrancy Debate Norman L. Geisler & Douglas E. Potter Open as a PDF A seismic shift is occurring in the inerrancy debate. Unfortunately, few are alarmed about it. In fact, the masses are unaware of it. The shift is from the historically held, evangelical view to a neo–evangelical[1] view of limited inerrancy. The issue is whether inerrancy covers all matters on which the Bible speaks or whether is it...
Open as a .PDF File Billy Graham, Evangelism, Evangelicalism, and Biblical Inerrancy February 27th, 2018 For eighty-two years, Billy Graham’s proclaimed the good news that Jesus died for our sins and arose to offer us eternal life. He preached this gospel to an estimated 210 million people in 185 countries! He somehow managed to earn and keep almost everyone’s respect along the way. No scandals tarnished his reputation and even his...
“What we need today is men who believe in the Bible from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet: who believe in the whole of it, the things they understand, and the things they do not understand.” — D.L. Moody D.L. Moody’s View of the Bible D.L. Moody’s influential ministry became very effective after he accepted the challenge to “stop preaching your own words and preach God’s Word...
Inerrancy Is Vital to Evangelism By Bob Wilkin Today a friend of mine, Dr. F. David Farnell, told me about a blog he posted, ‘The Danger from within the Church,” on January 20, 2018, at the Defending Inerrancy website. His blog has a link to a fascinating yet sad video where Dr. Bart Ehrman, agnostic, and Dr. Craig Evans, Evangelical, discuss the historicity of John’s Gospel. It is called a “debate,” but as far as I can tell...
Review of Jeffrey McDonald’s biography of John Gerstner by William C. Roach Jeffrey S. McDonald. John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America. Eugene: Pickwick, 2017. 263 pp. $26.40. Available at Pickwick and Amazon The twentieth century saw a renewal of evangelical Protestant orthodoxy. It also saw the birth of heterodoxy and heresy. The twentieth century also...
