It is to say that our conception of inspiration seems like it is a consequence of a modern way of thinking. That is not to say that it is not inspired of God. The Bible is a very human book that was sometimes influenced by culture and even subject to human blunder. Muhammad was a passive recipient of what God had to say. In Islamic theology, the Qur’an is literally dictated from Heaven. It would be a mistake for us to think that biblical inspiration is akin to qur’anic inspiration. It would be a mistake for us to forget the human element of the Bible. We should not take the position that the entire faith will collapse if one mistake is found in the Bible.
If there are, it should not bother Christians. A tenable theory of inspiration does not demand inerrancy. What good reasons are there to think that? Perhaps God allowed his people to tell the story as they recounted it, even if some of the details were different or even contradictory. Both the atheist and the Christian are making this assumption and arguing on that foundation. We are asking the wrong questions.This entire discussion presupposes that if the Bible is the word of God, then there would be no errors at all. So the question presses hard upon us: how is it that we can reconcile the Easter Challenge with our faith? Since the answer is different in each gospel, Barker argues, we have contradictions in the Bible. What did the women visit the tomb? Who were the women? What was their purpose? Was the tomb open when they arrived? Who was at the tomb when they arrived? Where were the messengers situations? Et cetera. We are to look through the gospels and answer the following questions about the Easter story. So Barker, and other atheists, pose this challenge to Christians. Likewise, the Easter Challenge points out that there are contradictions in the events that the Easter story records. Since they overlap in the events that they record, a good Christian will assume also that they overlap precisely in the accounting of every detail. The Synoptic Problem points out the contradictions between Matthew, Mark and Luke. This aligns with what is known as the Synoptic Problem.
While we use it to commemorate that Christ had risen from the dead, there are serious flaws in the Easter story that many Christians do not realize. Dan Barker issued the Easter Challenge a few years ago as an indicator of the demerits of the Christians’ Easter tradition.
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