Posted on 11/18/2004 9:29:49 AM PST by gobucks
In a study of logic, there is something which we call "undecidable propositions" or "meaningless sentences", which are statements that cannot be determined because there is no contextual false. One of the classic examples cited is the Epiminedes' paradox. Saul Kripke says:
Ever since Pilate asked, "What is truth?" (John XVIII, 38), the subsequent search for a correct answer has been inhibited by another problem, which, as is well known, also arises in a New Testament context. If, as the author of the Epistle to Titus supposes (Titus I, 12), a Cretan prophet, "even a prophet of their own," asserted that "the Cretans are always liars," and if "this testimony is true" of all other Cretan utterances, then it seems that the Cretan prophet's words are true if and only if they are false. And any treatment of the concept of truth must somehow circumvent this paradox.[1]
Epimenides was Cretan and he said that "Cretans always lie". Now, was that statement true or false? If he was a Cretan and he says that they always lie, is he then lying? If he is not lying then he is telling the truth and therefore Cretans do not always lie. We can see that since the assertion cannot be true and it cannot be false, the statement turns back on itself. It is like stating "What I am telling you right now is a lie", would you believe that or otherwise? This statement thus has no true content. It cannot be true at the same time it is false. If it is true then it is always false. If it is false, it is also true.
Well, in the New Testament, the writer is Paul and he is talking about the Cretans in 1 Titus, as follows:
A prophet from their own people said of them "Cretens are always liars, wicked brutes, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. For this reason correct them sternly, that they may be sound in faith instead of paying attention to Jewish fables and to commandments of people who turn their backs on the truth. (Titus 1:12-14)
Notice that Paul says that one of their own men – a prophet - said that "Cretans are always liars" and he says that what this man say is true. It is a small mistake, but the point is that it is a human mistake. It cannot be a true statement at the same time that it is a false statement. Thus, how can Christians claim that the writers of the New Testament - in this case, Paul - had "inspiration" from God?
Some Christians have taken the position that a strictly logical approach to Epimenides' statement can result in it not being a paradox after all. If it is not a paradox, one may argue that Paul's calling it "true" was a subtle bit of mockery with tremendous foresight regarding later developments in logic. If that is the case, then maybe Paul's statement actually was inspired. For example, while discussing Paul's comments in the epistle to Titus, one Christian theological periodical concedes that "one of the very greatest of Christian thinkers enters the logic books wearing a dunce's cap"[2] but then argues that Christians can find recourse in the fact that the statement might not be paradoxical. To back up this claim, the article calls to witness Quine, one of the greatest logicians that ever lived, thus it is important that we consider what Quine wrote:
There is the ancient paradox of Epimenides the Cretan, who said that all Cretans were liars. If he spoke the truth, he was a liar. It seems that this paradox may have reached the ears of St. Paul and that he missed the point of it. He warned, in his epistle to Titus: "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said The Cretans are always liars." Actually the paradox of Epimenides is untidy; there are loopholes. Perhaps some Cretans were liars, notably Epimenides, and others were not; perhaps Epimenides was a liar who occasionally told the truth; either way it turns out that the contradiction vanishes.[3]
The question that arises now is how Quine was able to figure out that maybe other Cretans were liars or maybe Epimenides sometimes told the truth. Epimenides is clearly saying that Cretans are always liars. Every time a Cretan speaks, he is lying, so how could the statement ever allow for a Cretan (be it Epimenides or some other Cretan) to speak the truth? The reasoning is genius, and goes as follows: the obvious assumption behind the belief that the statement is paradoxical is that if all Cretans lie, then Epimenides is lying, so if his statement is true, it is false. In that sense it seems like any other pseudomenon. From here, if we consider the statement false, we are no longer forced into the kind of paradoxical vicious circle that a true pseudomenon (like "this sentence is false") pushes us into. Commenting on a similar line of argumentation, Schoenberg writes the following:
We may feel intuitively that the argument is paradoxical; yet, from a formal logic point of view, it does not really have the look of a paradox. It looks simply like reductio ad absurdum proof of the falsity of 'All Cretans are liars.'[4]
Thus, as Quine noted, it is not inconsistent to assume that some other Cretan does not always lie, or that some other statement by Epimenides was true. Prior explains this quite well:
If we treat the Cretan's assertion as true, and so assume that nothing true is ever asserted by a Cretan, it follows immediately that the Cretan's assertion is false. If, however, we treat it as false, there is no way of deducing from this assumption that it is true. We can, therefore, consistently suppose it to be false, and this is all we can consistently suppose. But to suppose it false (considering what the assertion actually is) is to suppose that something asserted by a Cretan is true; and this of course can only be some other assertion than the one mentioned.[5]
A paradoxical statement has no discernable truth value, but the statement by Epimenides can be seen as having a truth value (i.e. it is false), and if that is the case we can reinterpret the statement as not being paradoxical. However, establishing a truth value for the statement does not escape the problem with Paul's claim since the saying of Epimenides is false. As Prior noted above, we cannot consider the statement true (as Paul did). If sophisticated analysis determines after all that this statement by Epimenides is not paradoxical, and thus has a truth value, the only consistent supposition we can make is that it is false.
Conclusion
In the end, the following seven-point syllogism completes our argument:
1. Paul claims a Cretan uttered a certain proposition. 2. The proposition is not true. 3. Paul claims the proposition is true. 4. Paul's claim is an error. 5. Paul's writings are errant rather than inerrant. 6. Errant scripture is not inspired scripture, as held on by Muslims. 7. Therefore, Paul was not inspired.
Hence, whether the statement is meaningless or false, the basic argument which we have raised still stands. The conclusion of the seven point syllogism given above still rings true: Paul was not inspired.
And only God knows best!
Ironically enough, all the sources he sites are Western sources, including Harvard.
All that said, it is quite amazing how content and context are utterly divorced in this screed.
an author can still be inspired without being perfectly inerrant. It's not an either/or situation - there is a middle ground.
1 John 4:4-6 *Ye* are of God, children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. *They* are of the world; for this reason they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. *We* are of God; he that knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
Classic. One of the things you don't find in nature is an ignorance purposefully placed by a creature at all, much less in order to make strategic use of it later as a widget to perpetuate mere discourse. "Because" the possibility exists that some errancy might have crept in, there's a little crack in the door to not understand some portion of God's Word and in that lack of understanding to 'form an opinion' (through many volumes written in many centuries...) on what God may have 'meant'. When the lying spirit is exposed as a liar, there is always the fall back to the 'fallible mind' defense, eh?, having set it up earlier with the 'errancy effect'. That spirit in your flesh is quite the ambidexter of lies: he gives God compliments as if God were a man (implying the 'possibility of inspiration' exists) AND denies God is His Word and wrote the Scriptures Himself though real,literal new creations in Jesus Christ.(but 'inspiration' is supposedly no guarantee of delivery of the 'holy information' that the Scripture supposedly is...something was or 'may have been' garbled in transmission...)
God either is His Word or He is not. Yes or no. God says He is His Word and that He speaks through all of us as real,literal new creations in Jesus Christ, that He does the willing and the doing of His good pleasure. No where in all of His Word does He say He does the willing and the doing--except in writing His Word.
John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Matthew 10:20 For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
Phil 2:13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
These aren't equivalent statements. Neither is any equivalent to "all Cretans always lie". I see language games in the guise of logic.
I still like simplicity. God knocked Saul on his butt! If that's not God inspired than what is? Let's wake up every day in expectation of a God inspired lightning bolt that changes everything.
Because Paul was not inspired in one instance, he was therefore not inspired in any instance. Of course. Perfectly logical. /sarc
To be technical, it's possible to lie and still tell the truth: one is lying if he tells the truth while believing it to be false.
"Gobucks," have you ever known or heard of someone who lies often and continually? And someone says about him, "He's always lying." Does that mean that this person NEVER says anything that is true? No. Then how can you know that this is NOT precisely the way Paul made his statement about the Cretans? After all, Paul was at the island of Crete for a time himself and may have written his words to Titus based on his own experience or dealings with Cretans while he was there. Paul had been at Fair Havens and Phoenix, two points on the western coast of Crete, on his final journey to Rome.
Moreover, it has been correctly observed that, with regard to the inspired writers, the element of HUMAN influence does manifest itself from time to time in the Sacred Writings - but this does NOT in any way compromise the INERRANCY OF THE CENTRAL MESSAGE OF GOD'S REVELATION TO MAN CONTAINED IN THE HOLY BIBLE, AND THE MANY RELATED TEACHINGS/DOCTRINES EXTENDING FROM THAT MESSAGE.
For example: the Apostle Peter, when under extreme pressure, denied Jesus whom he loved dearly (Mt. 26:69-75). His words of denial were obviously the human side of Peter emerging under great trial. Yet, his words of denial were recorded and preserved as part of the Divine record. On the other hand, this same Peter was the apostle chosen by the LORD to subsequently deliver the first-ever gospel sermon/message (Mt. 16:17-19; Acts 2:14-40)... BUT EVERY WORD OF THAT PROPHETIC UTTERANCE - THAT ORIGINAL, HISTORIC GOSPEL MESSAGE GIVEN IN JERUSALEM ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST - WAS INSPIRED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD AND WAS ** NOT ** PETER'S OWN WORDS... Hence: "Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pt. 1:20-21; see also Mk. 13:11, Jn. 16:12-15).
"Gobucks," it's clear that you haven't learned how to "rightly handle the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15). Your very APPROACH to the word of God is erroneous to begin with.
did you see what i wrote in post 1?
The purpose of posting the article was to illustrate just how far out and whacky the islamic approach to scripture is...
It seems to me that Paul said the statement that "all Cretans" are liars is true. What he did not say was that every word out of their mouth was always a lie. Even liars can speak the truth, if it serves thier purposes. Or if they don't need to lie.
Just like basically honest peopel will sometimes tell a lie. It depends on motive and frequency as to whether someone is a liar (habitual liar), or has told a lie.
I think the better rendering is: "Cretans perpetually lie." In other words, they just keep lying and lying and lying, like the CBS energiser bunny. I don't think this can be construed to imply that everything they say is a lie, without exception.
Interesting. Also, the translation still begs the question of which Cretans are being considered. "Cretans" in this context could mean "all Cretans", "practically all Cretans" or "Cretans, generally". You could even lawyer it down to mean "some Cretans". I suspect that there is a similar ambiguity in the original Greek.
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