Drange Disses the Bible
It has, he says, contradictions! (The Improbability of God, 4, 4; p. 376) What an original claim. No Biblical scholar though I am, his sole example of a contradiction is trivially disposed of. Drange complains that the law propounded in Lk 13:3, “unless you repent, you too will all perish,” is not mentioned as a condition of salvation in Jn 3:16, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”; nor in Mt 25:46, “the righteous will go away to eternal life”; nor in Jn 5:29, “those who have done good will rise to live.”
Well, shiver me timbers. Isn’t it obvious that believing in Christ is not merely dead faith? And that live faith requires repentance of sin, such that this repentance is an essential component of the life of practically every human being at whatever stage of spiritual development? The righteous will go away to eternal life, but repentance is necessary precisely for an unrighteous person to become righteous and to stay that way. Those who have done good will rise to live, but repentance is a good done to oneself (and others, if we take repentance in a broader sense of atoning for past misdeeds rather than in a more narrow sense of rejecting evil and resolving to do or be good; see also Mt 5:23-24).
Now if one is presenting an example to illustrate a supposedly self-evident thesis, namely, the fact that the Bible contains contradictions, then one would presumably lead with the most powerful card he has under his sleeve. But if that’s the best Drange can do, then the case for the absurdity of the Bible and therefore the pathetic gullibility of the faithful, as Drange would have it, must be weak indeed.
Furthermore, life is too complex for God simply to “list the things you must do in order to be saved, followed by a clear list of actions.” (376) Everyone’s life is different and requires different things. And many of those things we can indeed find out on our own, perhaps with the help of grace. And some of those things are already part of the Ten Commandments. But Jesus did give us the most general rules, applicable to everybody: love God and your neighbor. (Lk 10:27) He even illustrated them with the beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” (Mt 5:9) He explained the meaning of the word “neighbor.” (Lk 10:29-37) He warned about hypocrisy. (Mt 23:28) He taught us an important prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) He revealed that God is a Trinity. I’ll bet that if Christ had done more, our professor would feel that his autonomy is in danger from the overabundance of rules he is supposed to follow.
In short, yes, a PhD in philosophy is useful in studying the Bible. But nobody was going to make Drange’s life easy for him. Theology, whether natural, systematic, moral, or whatever, is an arcane and difficult discipline which requires rigorous training, no different in this regard from any other science. Unfortunately, our author is arguably a dilettante.