Questions About Textual Criticism, Numbers, and the Deity of Jesus

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, let’s put you on the hot seat one more time and talk about some questions that you’ve received. This question comes from the United States.

Dr. Craig, I’ve seen you quoted on many apologetic sites referencing the accuracy of the New Testament. “Of the approximately 138,000 words in the New Testament, only about 1,400 remain in doubt. The text of the New Testament is thus about 99% established. That means that when you pick up a Greek New Testament today you can be confident that you are reading the text as it was originally written.”

Quoting you there, Bill. Then he continues,

I've searched but cannot find the bridge between the oldest manuscripts and the original written. I might be missing something, but doesn't the lack of error to what we have today tracing back to the earliest manuscripts only verify the earliest manuscripts? Why does this provide confidence to the original? It seems that there is a 20 to 150 year gap. Better than anything else out there but to the skeptic still a gap where even well-meaning Christians could edit liberally and pervert the original. David from the U.S.

DR. CRAIG: David hasn't, unfortunately, correctly understood how textual criticism works. The goal of the textual critic is not to discover the reading of the earliest manuscripts; rather, the goal of the textual critic is to compare all of the manuscripts we have in different families and traditions with a view toward reconstructing what the original text read. You can do this by seeing how the manuscripts have been copied, where copyist errors have crept in, and thereby establish the wording of the original. So, for example, I heard an interview several years ago on “The Lutheran Hour” with Bart Ehrman who was claiming that there were these hundreds of thousands of copyist errors that have been made in the manuscripts of the New Testament. And the radio interviewer said to him, “Well, then, what do you think the original text actually said?” And Ehrman said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “You've said there are all these errors that have crept in. What do you think the original text said?” And Ehrman said, “It said pretty much what we've got today.” And the fellow said, “But I thought you said all these errors have crept in?” And Ehrman responded, “Yes, but we've been able to reconstruct the original text.” So for someone like an Ehrman, he recognizes that with about 99% accuracy we know what the original text of the New Testament read and the uncertainty concerns merely trivialities. For example, in 1 John, does he write, “We write this that our joy may be full” or “We write this that your joy may be full”? The manuscripts contain both readings, and we don't know which of those two was original. But it's trivial, and nothing of doctrinal significance hangs upon it.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Greetings, Dr. Craig. I highly enjoy your work so far and have been reading through your book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. As I'm still beginning to learn the basics of Christian philosophy and theology, my question is in regards to the doctrine of inspiration because I find this confusing. Firstly, in regards to the epistles of Paul, I don't have a good reason for my belief that they are inspired by God. And the question that keeps bugging me is what's to say that Paul was anything more than merely just another one of the church fathers? I almost feel like I should be checking what Paul says to make sure it makes sense with the rest of the Bible just like I do for Origen or Irenaeus or Calvin or Augustine, etc. Perhaps this question could be extended to some parts of the Old Testament. The main reason I think that's inspired is because their alleged communication with God and their culture allowed them to produce some really specific prophecies in the Psalms, the book of Isaiah, and others that came true in the life of Jesus. But that doesn't mean all of their traditions were true. I sometimes have doubts about the validity of all the Israelite teachings and thoughts. A simple unified way to put my confusion would be: What is a good way to determine when something is inspired by God or not? I sincerely look forward to reading the answer to this question if you choose to respond. Thanks for your time. Again, you've repeatedly been a huge help to my faith in the past. C.J. in the United States

DR. CRAIG: What I would say to C. J. is that while Jesus himself accepted the Old Testament canon of the Hebrew Bible that was used by Jews at that time as being inspired – being the word of God – Jesus claimed to reveal God with an authority that even exceeded that of inspired Scripture. Jesus claimed to have an authority that was God's own authority, and therefore his teaching was regarded as absolutely authoritative. And he even presumed to revise the Old Testament law on the basis of his own authority. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he would say, “It was said to the men of old” and then he would cite some teaching or interpretation of the law and then he would add, “But I say to you” and on the basis of his own authority would give his teaching. Well, that teaching of Jesus was then handed on to his apostles. So, for example, in Matthew 28 at the Great Commission Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” and then he sends them out to make disciples of all nations and to baptize people teaching them “all that I have instructed you” and promises to be with them. So in the New Testament we find that the apostles had the same extraordinary sense of divine authority. The message that they proclaimed they called the Word of God. Therefore, on that basis, we can say that the letters that these apostles wrote on doctrinal matters carry that same authority bequeathed to them by Jesus of Nazareth and equal to the authority of God itself. So whether it was verbally preaching the Word of God or whether it was the written words that they left, I think we can say that the apostles’ writings are inspired of God having the same sort of authority that the Old Testament did. This came to be recognized very quickly. C. J. asked about Paul's letters. If you look at, I believe it's 2 Peter, 2 Peter says to the congregation to which he's writing in Asia Minor that, “Our beloved brother Paul has also written about this as he does in his other letters” and he says, “There are some things difficult to understand in Paul's letters which the ignorant and unlearned twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.” So here the author of 2 Peter places these letters of Paul, which had evidently been collected and were circulating among the churches, on a par with the inspired Old Testament Scriptures. So I think that we can have confidence in the letters of Paul that these are indeed inspired by God and therefore are authoritative in what they teach about Christian doctrine. In addition to this, I do believe that the church is right in saying that the church has heard the voice of God speaking to us through these New Testament books. There's no question about there being books outside the New Testament that might have been left out. The only question about the New Testament would be whether or not there have been books that have been included that shouldn't have been included. But there's really no question at all about the possibility there could have been things left out that were not included. In the books of the New Testament that were disputed by some in the early church, there is no doctrinal teaching that is based solely upon those works. So even if you didn't allow them in the New Testament as inspired documents, that wouldn't affect any doctrinal teaching in the remainder of the New Testament. But, as I say, the church hears the voice of God speaking in the New Testament. We see and hear the New Testament as God's Word. And I think that's not to be minimized – that this is the universal experience of the church down through the ages. So, in addition to the historical grounds for believing that Jesus gave his authority to his apostles to teach accurately Christian doctrine and that this came to be inscripturated in the New Testament, I think we do have and should not minimize the universal experience of the Christian church down through the ages that we hear God speaking to us in the pages of the New Testament. This is his Word to us.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number four.

Hello, Dr. Craig. I've noticed that there is a difference between sounds that have meanings (words) and just sounds. For a sound to have meaning there must be something that we causally interact with and want to then communicate. With numbers, to me it is painfully obvious that a number is just a word or a symbol that denotes how many of something concrete exists. Positive cardinal numbers talk about how many finite things there are and positive rationals talk about the infinite part-whole relationship. Negative numbers and imaginary numbers are then simply symbols invented in a game when the rules are changed. Why then do we even entertain the notion of an abstract object as being coherent? Defining something that is not in space and not in time and not causally potent is just halfway then to describing not anything. You have previously mentioned that using numbers as nouns commit us to their existence. Why? For example, “The number of people who died in the plane crash is 115” can simply be rephrased as follows: “The word symbol that represents how many people died in the plane crash is 115.” This commits us to the existence of a word or a symbol, not a non-spatial, non-temporal, and acausal object.

This is from Tariq in Oman.

DR. CRAIG: I agree with Tariq that we shouldn't be realists about numbers. I don't think that numbers do exist. But I don't think they can be dismissed quite as easily as Tariq imagines. I think he's incorrect when he says that for a sound to have meaning there must be something that we causally interact with. That seems plainly wrong. For example, the sound “the equator” clearly has meaning in the English language, but the equator is not something that we causally interact with. It is a geometrical line that encircles the Earth. It's not something that is causally potent. Or we talk about things like unicorns or fairies or leprechauns. These do not causally interact with us, and yet these sounds or words have meaning. So I don't think we can simply say that because numbers don't causally interact with us that the sounds for numbers (like 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth) are meaningless or do not refer to anything. Rather, the key point is the one that he mentions. How do we ontologically commit ourselves to the reality of certain objects? There is a very widespread view that you commit yourself to the reality of certain objects by using singular terms for those objects in sentences that you regard to be true. So, for example, if I say, “The number of people killed in the crash is 116,” they believe that I've committed myself to the number 116 because I have used that singular term in a sentence that I believe to be true. And here I agree with Tariq. I don't believe in that criterion of ontological commitment. Often we can paraphrase away those commitments by saying something like this: “116 people were killed in the crash.” And there I used the word adjectivally rather than substantively as a noun. So according to this criterion of ontological commitment I'm not committed to the reality of the number 116. But in many cases I think we may not be able to paraphrase away successfully these commitments without meaning loss, but fortunately I just don't think the anti-realist is under any obligation to paraphrase away these singular terms referring to abstract objects. Rather, I think we should simply reject this criterion of ontological commitment as highly implausible and outrageously inflationary. It would commit us to all sorts of fantastic realities if we take it on board. Therefore I think we should be skeptical of this criterion.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig, I'm reading through the transcripts of your Defenders series podcast on the Trinity to gain a firmer grasp of the concept. One of your classes you mentioned the difference between God the Father (ho theos) and God the Son (kurios). My understanding based on how I interpreted what you said was that ho theos relates specifically to the term “God” while kurios relates specifically to the term “Lord.” My question is: What is the difference between the terms “God” and “Lord” biblically? Are they two synonymous terms that can be used interchangeably, or is there a biblical theological difference between the two? Alex in the United States.

DR. CRAIG: This is a hugely interesting question. The Greek word for God is ho theos (as Alex mentioned). In the Hebrew Old Testament, the sacred name of God was Yahweh, and this would often be abbreviated by four Hebrew letters called the tetragrammaton. Well, when pious Jews read aloud the Hebrew Scriptures in the synagogue services, they dare not pronounce the sacred name of God (Yahweh) and so they substituted a different word adonai for that. Adonai is the word for “Lord.” Now, when this gets translated into Greek, in the Greek Old Testament the word then for “Lord” is kurios. So kurios is the word that Greek speaking Jews would say instead of the divine name. So in this case kurios refers to the name of God in the Old Testament – in the Hebrew Scriptures. Now fast forward to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the word ho theos (God) usually refers to God the Father. In the Old Testament God says, “I am your Father,” “I am the Father of the Jewish nation.” And so when Jews spoke of God (or in Greek ho theos) they usually meant God the Father. Now early Christians believed in the deity of Jesus Christ but they didn't want to say that Jesus is ho theos because that would be heard as saying Jesus is God the Father, and they didn't believe that. They didn't think that the Father had sent the Father into the world to die on the cross for our sins. So they had to find other ways of expressing the deity of Christ without calling Christ ho theos. So what did they do? They went back to the Greek Old Testament and picked up on this term kurios (Lord) and they applied that term to Jesus. They said Jesus is Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you will often have these expressions in the New Testament, “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a way of affirming the deity of Christ without saying he's the Father. What is especially remarkable about this usage is that the New Testament Christians would use prooftexts from the Old Testament referring to Yahweh as Lord (kurios) but they would apply them to Jesus. So, for example, Paul says in Romans 10, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord [kurios] and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And then he gives the prooftext from the prophet Joel, “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord [and that's “Yahweh” in Joel, in the Hebrew Old Testament] will be saved.” So they took these prooftexts from the Old Testament about Yahweh and applied them to Jesus. This is just hugely significant theologically. It is a way of affirming the deity of Jesus Christ but preserving his personal distinctness from the Father.^[1]