By Paul F. South
NEW ORLEANS -- Two prominent religious scholars will debate “The Textual Reliability of the New Testament,” April 4 and 5 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Bart Ehrman, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Daniel Wallace, a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary will be featured as part of the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum.
Ehrman is the James A, Gray Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill, where he has been part of the UNC faculty since 1988. He has published a number of books and articles on the New Testament and early Christianity, including two anthologies of early Christian writings.
Among his best-known works: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind the Men Who Changed the Bible and Why, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at the Betrayer and the Betrayed, and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies.
Ehrman holds a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College, and M. Div. and Ph. D. degrees from Princeton Seminary.
He challenges the reliability of Scripture.
In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman wrote: “the more I studied the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, the more I realized just how radically the text had been altered at the hands of the scribes, who were not only conserving scripture, but also changing it.”
While at Princeton, Ehrman began to reject teachings learned as part of his evangelical upbringing. Following a professor’s comment that “perhaps Mark made a mistake” in the gospel account, Ehrman bean a journey that would result in what he called a “seismic change” in his view of the Bible. He now considers the Bible “a human book from beginning to end.”
Daniel B. Wallace is founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. He is the senior New Testament editor of the New English Translation (NET) Bible and co-editor of the NET-Nestle Greek-English Diglot.
Wallace’s work, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics, is used in more than two-thirds of the colleges and universities that teach the subject. His recent books include Reinventing Jesus and Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit?
Wallace is a graduate of Biola University and holds masters and doctoral degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary. His postdoctoral work includes study in Greek grammar at Tyndale House in Cambridge.
In his work in textual criticism, Wallace contends the Bible is reliable, and that Christ is at the center of the truth of scripture.
In an online interview earlier this year, Wallace said “When I think about bibliology, my starting point, my foundation, is that the Bible is the revelation of God’s great acts in history. On top of that foundation, and precisely because God’s greatest act in history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is infallibility. As the pyramid goes higher, the capstone is inerrancy.”
Concerning his Christ-centered view of the inerrancy of scripture, Wallace said, “What I have done in my own epistemological approach to inerrancy is to ground it in the person of Christ rather than in the teaching of the apostles. And ultimately, this has freed me to take a very Christocentric approach to my beliefs in which the Bible is the handmaiden to Christ rather than the other way around. And that, in effect, has brought me to worship my Lord with my whole person much more, rather than simply (or at least mostly) have a cognitive experience with the Bible.”
Other speakers will include New Orleans Seminary’s Bill Warren, Michael Holmes of Bethel University, David Parker of the University of Birmingham, and Dale Martin or Yale University. Each is a highly respected scholars in the field of New Testament textual studies.
Greer-Heard Director Robert Stewart, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology
who occupies the Greer-Heard Chair of Faith and Culture said the annual forum is unique.
“It brings together an evangelical scholar and a non-evangelical scholar to dialogue on an important topic in faith or culture in a context that is fair and balanced.”
This year’s topic on the reliability of the New Testament, should spark lively discussion, Stewart said.
“This topic is a timely one and much in the news in recent years. This year’s conference will help all who want to know the truth about the traditional Gospels and why they are a reliable record of what Jesus said and did,” Stewart said.
In its history, the forum has been attracted some of the world’s leading thinkers.
“We try to get the best thinkers to represent each position. We don’t tilt the playing field; it is intended to be a level playing field for all parties involved,” Stewart said. “As an evangelical Christian I am convinced of the truth of the Christian worldview and believe that all we need to put forward a convincing case for the Christian faith is a fair arena. Greer-Heard provides just that.”
The forum provides for meaningful exchange in the marketplace of ideas between Christians and non-Christians, Stewart said.
“Far too often non-Christians or non-evangelicals think that Christians are unaware of sophisticated objections to the Christian worldview or unable to respond knowledgably to such objections. This is largely a stereotypical view of evangelical Christians. The Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum put the lie to this idea.”
The Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in Faith and Culture is a pilot program of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The Forum is designed to provide a venue in which a respected evangelical scholar and a respected non-evangelical scholar dialogue on critical issues in philosophy, science, religion, and/or culture from their differing perspectives.
The forum is a five-year pilot program made possible by a gracious gift from William L. Heard, Jr. and his wife, Carolyn. This program provides a forum for an evangelical scholar and a non-evangelical scholar to come together for dialogue on a particular issue of religious or cultural significance. The forum is not exactly a debate, although by design the speakers necessarily differ in their opinions. Instead, the intention is to provide a model for civil discourse on important topics and an environment in which to discuss differences--without abandoning one's convictions--and to make a case for one perspective over against another.
Previous forums have included John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright, The Resurrection: Historical Event or Theological Explanation? (2005); William Dembski and Michael Ruse, Intelligent Design (2006); and Daniel Dennett and Alister McGrath, The Future of Atheism (2007). Audio CDs and MP3 downloads are available for purchase on our online store. The contents of the first conference are also available in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, edited by Robert B. Stewart (Fortress Press, 2006) from major booksellers everywhere. Intelligent Design (edited by Stewart), was released ealier this year by Fortress Press.