Transcription
All right, let's see it. Ooh, I'm being stitched. Does this mean I've entered my first internet beef?
>> No, it's not a beef. It's a learning opportunity for you.
>> But all right, let's see it.
>> And it's not just any Joan. I'm being debunked by Dan McLaren, PhD theologian.
>> I'm not a theologian. I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion.
>> I mean, this has over a million followers, and it was his longest video in months. So, it really piqu my interest. The first examples of God regretting making a decision in the Bible comes from Genesis 6:6 where it says, "So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them when talking about humans and put them on the earth. It broke his heart."
>> So context, the video is about God experiencing regret and whether or not that can be seen in the same way the humans regret given that God is omnisient.
>> Well, for our part, the omniscience of God is not a given. The entire point is to suggest that this passage precludes God's omniscience. If God is regretting something, if new information is changing God's mental state, then God is not omnisient. So this content creator is trying to reconcile the passage stating God regrets with the notion of God's omniscience. Unfortunately, they're not actually reconciling what's in the text with the notion of God's omniscience. They are replacing what's in the text with an entirely unrelated idea and arguing that that unrelated idea is reconcilable with God's omniscience. There are two passages being discussed. Genesis 66 and 1st Samuel 15. I argue that given the context in the wide semantic range of the Hebrew word nah, which is the word for regret, the text itself distinguishes God's regret from the way the humans experience regret. He has turned away from following me. In both cases, the text interprets the regret as relational sorrow. not as a miscalculation or ignorance.
>> So this is meaningless. This doesn't mean anything. This is an utterly irrelevant distinction without a difference to say, "Oh, it's actually relational sorrow, not miscalculation or ignorance is a nonsequiter." What does relational sorrow mean? Sorrow in relation to something.
>> No, Dan, by relational, I don't mean in relation to something. I mean in the context of a relationship. The way someone can grieve the betrayal of their spouse without regretting having married them. Surely you can see that these are two categorically different concepts.
>> Thank you for the clarification. And yes, I'm aware that those are categorically different concepts and thus the source of my misunderstanding because I thought you were actually engaging what's in the text. And now you're telling me you're ignoring what's in the text and you're replacing it with something that is categorically different from what's in the text because you just said that someone can grieve their spouse's betrayal without regretting having married them. But if you're reading a text that has the words, "He regretted having married his spouse," then you're not really in a position to say that the person is grieving the spouse's betrayal and not having married the spouse because the text is quite clearly identifying the source of the regret. Now, as I pointed out in the video, nam here cannot mean grieve something that somebody else did because of the way that nam is formed, but also because of the subordinate clauses that identify explicitly the source of the regret. The text quite explicitly identifies the regret as a product of something God did and you are ignoring that and replacing it with something that contradicts that a categorically different concept that is nowhere in the text. So I gave you too much credit. I assumed that you were actually engaging the text and now you're telling me no, no, no. I was ignoring the text. I replaced it with a categorically different concept because you can't reconcile the words of the text and what they are trying to communicate with the notion of God's omniscience which is why you have to pretend that there's something categorically different going on in the text. And I pointed out, you will not be able to engage the argument I provided in that video, and you won't be able to competently engage the argument in this video because you don't know what you're talking about. You can't engage any of the linguistic arguments. And here, you can't describe a way to conceptualize what's actually in the text that is at all reconcilable with God's omniscience. You can only replace what's in the text with something categorically different cuz they're not reconcilable. And it seems you know that. But you're trying to perform this confidence and this conviction. Uh and I I guess uh you're trying to perform academic competence. Although I'm not seeing that. I'm not getting that from this video. I'm getting deflection. I'm getting nuh-uh and rhetorical evasion and you're going to skip over the overwhelming majority of my video and you're not going to engage a single second of it. Uh, and what you've provided here has only demonstrated that you don't even begin to know what you're talking about. But let's hear the reputation. The text tells us what that regret, what that being sorry is in relation to. It is introduced with that particle key and then we get the subordinate clause and in each case the being sorry, the feeling regret is in relation to something God did and now there's a change. Now circumstances have altered God's position on this. That's relational sorrow. That doesn't mean it doesn't mean regret. That it doesn't mean to be sorry.
>> What? And that absolutely has to do with what you could label miscalculation or ignorance. God did something not knowing what would happen. Okay, I'll get to the offiscating language in a second, but the explanation here only works if God acted with a full knowledge of the future. And not only is that incompatible with omniscience precisely, and the other part of the equation is that you cannot reconcile the words of the text with the presupposition of God's omniscience. We've already seen that when you attempt to do that, you have to replace what's actually in the text with something that is not in the text, with something that directly contradicts what's in the text, with something that is categorically different from what's in the text. Because God is not omnisient in these narratives. God's omniscience is not reconcilable, is not harmonizable with these narratives. That's the entire point. These authors did not think of God as omnisient.
>> You're assuming that God's regret is the same kind of regret that you and I experience, but that is exactly what's being contested.
>> It's not an assumption. It's the only plausible conclusion to draw from the words that are in the text and how those words are used in ancient Hebrew. And as you demonstrated, you can't provide an alternative interpretation. You can only replace what's in the text with something that is a categorically different concept from what's in the text. You can't even pretend to be able to offer a plausible alternative.
>> Anyway, he also spends a great deal of time with the shocking 34-minute video trying to debunk the use of the word naham and another point I made, but it's really just more of the same. Yes, more of the same demonstration of what the words that are in the text are used to mean in ancient Hebrew according to the overwhelming majority of the experts and more of the same demonstrating that you don't even begin to have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
>> So, I'm not going to spend time on it. Feel free to go watch it. Instead, I'm going to let him summarize his position for you.
>> God does not have all knowledge. is not omnisient and does things only to find out later they shouldn't have done those things. This is about God regretting something that they did because they did not foresee the outcome. They regret. They feel sorry that they did the thing. They don't feel sorry that humanity is hurting. They feel sorry that they did the thing. Well, you can call God a he. I promise you won't get cancelled. Now, look, I normally don't go after people in a targeted way, but I do want to make something very clear about who this guy Dan is. His entire approach to scripture is one where he comes out on top of the scriptures rather than beneath them. He does not allow the text to exercise authority over him. Rather, he positions himself as the authority over the text.
>> There's literally no other options. Texts do not have any inherent meaning. Meaning is generated when they are engaged by a reader, a listener or a viewer. And you're generating meaning that is on top of the scriptures. When you look at this text, it says God regretted doing X and saying, well, it doesn't mean God regretted doing X. It means God grieved that someone else did X. So, you're doing the same thing. You're overruling the words on the page and replacing them with the words that you decide the texts are allowed to be communicating. And I at least try to allow the text to operate on their own terms. We have to generate meaning ourselves, but I have the training and the skills and the discipline to be able to let the text mean things that I don't like because I'm trying to approximate what they would have meant to the authors and the earliest audiences. You are declaring what the text is and is not allowed to mean. You are coming out on top of the scriptures when you say, "Well, God has to be omnisient." So, we're going to make this say whatever we need it to say in order to preserve God's omniscience because the text is not allowed to deny God's omniscience. You are doing what you're accusing me of doing in a far more bllythe, oblivious, and dogmatic way. and you refuse to accept that that's just the inevitability that there's no other possible way of getting meaning from a text other than imposing meaning upon the text.
>> and from that posture he offices the truth with so much academic jargon. So just because you cannot understand an academic discussion does not mean that the discussion is obuscatory that I'm not actually presenting the overwhelming consensus view that I'm not actually presenting the only plausible way to be understanding fundamentally what's going on in these texts. Your ignorance is not evidence of the obfuscatory nature of my argument. It's just evidence of your ignorance.
>> Every last word of the Bible is negotiable. And you can be as upset about that as you like. But what you can never do is come up with an argument that renders that conclusion anything other than the only plausible one.
>> to him. The Bible is not the authoritative word of God. Is not the final court of appeal.
>> No, for you as well, for everyone who makes meaning with the Bible. Because again, the Bible has no inherent meaning. Meaning is only generated when it is engaged by a reader, a listener or a viewer. And when you engage the Bible and say, "Ignore the words on the page, replace them with what you know the Bible is allowed to say," you're doing it even more dogmatically.
>> Him, the Bible itself is on trial with him as a modern scholar conveniently serving as judge and jury.
>> Again, there's literally no other way to get meaning from the Bible. It does not have any inherent meaning. It is not possible to just excavate pure and unadulterated meaning. Meaning must be created in negotiation with the text and a reader, a listener or a viewer. You're doing the exact same thing. You are deciding what the text means. Only you're doing it far more dogmatically. You're not allowing the text to operate on its own terms. You are dictating the terms to the text. You're saying this is what the text is allowed to mean. the text shall not be allowed to say this, that, or the other. And that's why you must replace the words in the text with this categorically different concept that has nothing whatsoever to do with what's going on in the text. And you can't even make a good case for that. You can only engage in this ad homonym argument. You can only deflect and basically say, "I'm going to ignore the majority of the argument. I'm going to dismiss it as obfuscation because I don't understand it. And then I'm going to attack the person so that the people for whom I'm performing are made to feel like I have actually said something here and you haven't. There is no person or group of people on the planet that has authority over the boundaries of all Christianity. There never has been. Maybe Jesus is that person, but we've been trying to reach him about his car's extended warranty and he's not returning our calls. He makes much of the so-called multivocality of scripture, vehemently insisting that the Bible doesn't speak with one coherent voice.
>> That's simply the indisputable reality, as I've demonstrated time and time again on my channel. You can either accept that reality or you can lie to yourself and to everyone else about that reality. But as I pointed out in one of the clips you shared, what you can never do is present an argument that makes univocality a plausible conclusion. You can't even pretend to be able to do that. You can't begin to try to do that. And I think it's because you know that univocality is a dogma. It's not something that is supported by any data. Ironically, his belief in multivocality is itself absolutely univocal, at least between him and his audience, because the moment you disagree with that, he tries to discredit you like he did in my video over and over and over again.
>> So whether or not someone in the audience agrees or disagrees with my position has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of univocality. So here once again we're trying to simulate a rhetorical point landing by bringing together two categorically different concepts and pretending they're the same thing. Uh you don't seem to understand what univocality is. It's not agreement or disagreement with my audience. And this content creator doesn't even have the foggiest idea what they're trying to do. This content creator betrays their abject ignorance of how this works and how argumentation works and how logic works. This content creator is entirely ignorant of how biblical Hebrew works and how context works. This content creator is bafflingly naive and uninformed. And the reason why he does this is because his entire career depends on him being the voice of reason. The authority that claims there's no authority. This is why atheists and deconstructionists all gravitate toward him because he gives them what they're looking for. You see, even the theologian agrees with me that your Bible is flawed. And that's the whole stick. convincing people that certainty belongs to a scholar, not the scriptures.
>> Well, this is not true for a number of different reasons. I've repeatedly pointed out we can't be certain about an awful lot of stuff. I've also repeatedly invited people to challenge me. And in the past, I've acknowledged that other people were right and I was wrong about certain things. So, show me I'm wrong. Engage the scholarship. Engage the linguistic argument. engage my concerns. Prove that I am wrong when I say you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about. I think we both know why you're not going to be able to do that. I need some more. Well, qed as I'm sure the kids are still saying, but if you know better than me what the verb nam is being used to communicate in these passages, then show me. Demonstrate it. Prove your case. Prove that I'm wrong and I'll be happy to acknowledge it. You have to make an argument, though. You can't just retreat to ad homonym and presuppositions and rhetorical deflection like you've done in this video. You actually have to engage the data. That's the whole point of my channel is to share what the data indicate, at least to the best of our ability to interpret them. And I'm not the authority on that. I'm just reporting on what the authorities have said, which is why I shared a bunch of scholarship regarding what's going on with the verbal root nakam in these passages. You know, all the stuff you glossed over, all the stuff you said you were going to ignore in favor of these ad homonym arguments that you just couldn't help but retreat to. Prove to me I'm wrong. I have shown a number of times in the past that I'm willing to acknowledge when I have been shown to be wrong. And it has happened. But we both know you're not going to do that. And we both know why. And the fit for this video is Adoni and Hisasher.