Valid Criteria for evaluating Biblical Prophecy

[Tart]

I recently came into a debate with someone about prophecy. We discussed creating criteria for the debate on how to evaluate prophecy.

So what is a "True Prophecy" (according to the Bible)?

I would suggest it would be God inspired, from an "All Knowing God", and would have to either be fulfilled, being fulfilled, or going to be fulfilled...

For the point of this discussion, I am asking for what criteria we can use (perhaps a set of rules) for evaluating whether or not prophecy is true. Im not asking to evaluate any specific prophecy itself, but creating criteria to do so. However, if you think it would be beneficial to reference a prophecy to help explain/understand some kind of suggested criteria, that would be appropriate for the discussion... Debating about the prophecy itself is beyond this topic and should be taken to other threads...

Keep in mind, that not being able to prove or convince someone does not invalidate prophecy, it simply says it cant be proven... The prophecy could still be true even if not proven, in which case the prophecy shall not be rejected or confirmed, but shall be put into a state of "reasonableness" (What is reasonable to believe).... This is just my suggestion...

The point is to give a set of criteria to establish what can make up a true prophecy...

Anything goes for what you like to suggest. But first, id like to suggest that there should not be in place a criteria that can be used to reject prophecy, that could be true prophecy. If we were to set up some criteria to reject even real prophecy, that is not good criteria... I think that is like the "No True Scotsman Fallacy"...

Here is two list you can look at for sources...
You think they would or would not meet a good set of criteria? Why/ why not ?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_ ... e_prophecy
viewtopic.php?t=2142&lofi=1

[samscilley]

Hi Tart,

God tells us what a true prophesy and prophet is and what is not a true prophesy or prophet in the Bible.

Deuteronomy 18:14-22, "If it does not come about or true, that is the thing that the Lord God has not spoken"

Deuteronomy 13:1-5, "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you."

Both Old Testament passages written to Jews but it is the standard that the Lord has given to all Christians on how to determine a prophesy or prophet is from God.

If it is not in keeping with what we know today is Scripture (The Bible) then it did not come from God.

One could argue that if this is the case then any prophet who spoke regarding any other covenant other then the Old Testament covenant is false.

This would be true if The Old Covenant did not speak of the new covenant that was to come. But now all Christians have a covenant once for all delivered to them and can not be changed.

Jude 1:3, Galatians 1:6-10.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 1 by Tart]

I would suggest it would be God inspired, from an "All Knowing God", and would have to either be fulfilled, being fulfilled, or going to be fulfilled...

The problem with your criteria, Tart, is that we are unable to check to see if a given Prophecy X is from an all knowing God, or is going to be fulfilled (which is what the entire debate is about!).
RedEye's list of criteria is fine as far as I can see. Each point is something that humans can check. Why should we humans grant the status of "Real Prophecy" to something using criteria we cannot actually evaluate?

Im not asking to evaluate any specific prophecy itself, but creating criteria to do so.

Your criteria means we cannot do this. We cannot check to see if a prophecy is from an all knowing God.

The prophecy could still be true even if not proven,

then why call it a prophecy? How is this not just an attempt to have this status sneaked in the back door? If something cannot pass RedEye's criteria (which are reasonable), then it does not get to be counted as prophecy.

in which case the prophecy shall not be rejected or confirmed, but shall be put into a state of "reasonableness"

How is it "reasonable" to call something a prophecy if it doesn't pass the criteria for doing so?

But first, id like to suggest that there should not be in place a criteria that can be used to reject prophecy, that could be true prophecy.

This is a risk with any criteria used to evaluate anything. It sounds to me like you're afraid that RedEye's list can (and would) disprove what you believe are real prophecies, so you don't want to use it, you want to stack the deck in your favour.

Imagine if I was afraid that my car wouldn't be counted as being this vintage, rare model, so what I did was reject any criteria that could be used to actually evaluate it as such.

You have to be prepared to risk being wrong, Tart.

If we were to set up some criteria to reject even real prophecy,

Are you going to demand that some things count as "real prophecy" before we run them through the gauntlet of criteria?

I think that is like the "No True Scotsman Fallacy"...

A NTS fallacy involves an adjustment of criteria on the fly so as to always arrive at one's predetermined conclusion.
Not the case with this discussion. Once criteria can be agreed on (and RedEye's list is very reasonable).

...unless, you've looked at RedEye's list, and you realize that nothing from the Bible could actually pass it? Is this a not so tacit admission?

[StuartJ]

I LOVE the RationalWiki criteria:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_ ... e_prophecy

Demonstrates what utter nonsense biblical fortunetelling is.

This passage is one of the most erroneous in the Bible. Since Ezekiel was penned, Egypt has never been recorded as a 'desolate waste'. There is no historical evidence of a time when people have not walked through Egypt; when for forty years Egypt was uninhabited after the civilization started there; or for when Egypt has been surrounded by other desolate countries.[4] God sets out a checklist of specific events that will occur:

Egypt and everything from the tower of Syene to Ethiopia will be desolate and waste
God will own the Nile
No humans will walk through Egypt
No animals will walk through Egypt
Nobody will live in Egypt for 40 years
Egyptians will leave Egypt and be scattered among other nations
After 40 years of scattering, Egypt will be repopulated by the scattered Egyptians
Egypt will be a weak kingdom, and will never control "the nations"

The apologist responses are a hoot

Thank you SO much for the link ...!

[samscilley]

Hi Tart,

I am not familiar with this list that RedEye\'s has introduced.

If you look at what a person has stated is a prophesy in the past and have found that only some things came true then we know that that person is a guesser. They don't speak from God.

People who are true don't speak what is false.

The Old Testament has many things in it that show it came from God. The Old Testament Prophesies of Christ coming. The New Testament gives account of a man Christ Jesus who came and fulfilled what was prophesied. The evidence shows no contradiction in what was written and what we think we know today.

The Bible has over 40 people write it and no one has ever contradicted what each other said and what we think we know today.

If I went to a bank and asked for a million dollar loan and said it would be repaid at the time the bank designates, that bank would not have any problem giving me there trust if I showed the same kind of track record that the Bible has shown.

The Bible has prophesied that all righteous will go to heaven and the earth will be burned up.

2 Peter 3:9-13,

This has not happened yet and it sounds like it was written in a very literal sense.

I believe it to be true because of Peters track record. What he wrote does not contradict the rest of the Bible as a whole which can be proven thru evidence that the Bible is true.

Lets say I tell you I can predict every week what sports team is going to win. But before that I predicted every natural disaster that took place the year before, before it happened. And lets also say I predicted every person by name that would die that same year by name. Would you believe me when I said I could predict the sports team? Knowing human nature there is a good chance you still would not believe me even though I gave you all that evidence that I could predict future events.

My point is this. The only thing we have to go off of if we are to believe that a prophesy is going to take place is evidence and a track record. If you have enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and the track record is good then you can and should believe that the prophesy is true.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 5 by samscilley]

RedEye's list for criteria is here viewtopic.php?p=948787#948787

Welcome to the forum, by the way! Nice to see someone new.

As for what you say...what would your criteria be? If I were to condense what you said, would I be correct in saying that your criteria would be merely that it's in the Bible? You didn't give us anything else to go on as to how you are able to judge that a claimed prophecy is actually real, just the claim from you that what is in the Bible is real e.g. when you claimed that the Bible correctly predicted Jesus Christ. You don't give us anything to work off of.

So far, no-one is willing to work through RedEye's list of criteria. I haven't memorized the entire Bible, so for all I know, there could be something in there that passes his criteria. Is there anyone willing to do the work to show us that something? What is wrong with RedEye's criteria? Someone else commented that he was worried that the criteria could rule out what he thinks are real prophecies, but that to me is an inadvertent admission that what he claims are real prophecies would not pass muster and so he's not willing to actually run the gauntlet.

[samscilley]

Hi RedEye's,

Thank you for the welcome.

So what I am understanding is your criteria says you would literally have to talk directly to God to believe a prophesy to be true in the Bible. Is that so?

[rikuoamero]

Hi RedEye's,

Thank you for the welcome.

So what I am understanding is your criteria says you would literally have to talk directly to God to believe a prophesy to be true in the Bible. Is that so?

I'm not RedEye, and if I understand him correctly...no, that is not what he is saying, regarding speaking directly to God. The criteria he wants to use do not mention speaking directly to God at all.

[samscilley]

Sorry rikuoamero!

I was looking in the wrong area for who I was addressing.

I am thinking that this is the criteria that you are bringing up.

What specific prophesy in the Bible do you say does not meet this criteria that has already taken place?


For a statement to be Biblical foreknowledge, it must fit all of the five following criteria:

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.

2. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.

3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.

4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.

5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.


I would also add:

6. The event must be a complete fulfillment of the prediction. That is, the prophecy must accurately predict the event. And the event must fulfill each component of the prophecy in a passage. If I say that the god Sodales revealed to me that next week Tom Cruise will purchase a red Ferrari and next week Mr. Cruise actually buys a red Porsche, my prophecy has failed the test.

7. The event must be shown to have actually happened. The event must be independently confirmed to have happened. Ideally, there should be historical or archeological evidence that the event really occurred. The outcome of the prophecy must be evident by the present time, with that outcome well documented by publicly available facts. For instance, reliable and independent historical records, stones and relics found at archaeological sites and museums and evident facts of world history all count as publicly available facts. But unverifiable reports do not count, especially reports of miraculous events that are exceedingly improbable from an objective perspective. (Lack of evidence that the event has happened does not necessarily disprove the fulfilled prophecy. The event may still have happened. But without reliable evidence of the event happening, the fulfilled prophecy has lost any apologetic value).

8. The prophecy must have happened before the event. The prophetic statement must be proved to precede the fulfillment event in time. Definite empirical evidence must be publicly available to document that the prophecy predates its fulfillment. For the Jewish prophetical books, this criterion is satisfied by all outcomes dated after 150 BC, the average date of copies of Bible books among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is also about the time the independently-circulated Greek translation, the Septuagint, was completed in Alexandria, Egypt. Otherwise, knowledge of the outcomes could have influenced the selection process, canonizing those books with fulfilled prophecies while discarding other books with embarrassing ones, thereby producing a spurious prophetic accuracy using the unfair advantage of hindsight..

[Tart]

[Replying to post 6 by rikuoamero]

Ok rikuomero...What do you think about my request? That no criteria should be put into place that is able to reject a real, true, and valid prophecy?

Im fine with accepting rigid criteria, give me a gauntlet. I am simply requesting that the criteria for evaluating if prophecy is true, should actually have room to allow a true prophecy to be evaluated as true...

If it is not a true prophecy, it should be thrown out, but if it is a true prophecy is should be accepted.

That is the entire point of creating any criteria!

Why shouldnt we accept criteria that fits that mold?

Are you suggesting we should create criteria that can reject true and valid prophecy?