A lot of people have asked me to do a video responding to Dan Mlelen, a popular biblical scholar on Tik Tok and YouTube. And to help me do that, I asked Dan to review the script for today's episode to make sure that it's fair and accurately represents his views. Now, Dan has over 2,000 videos on his YouTube channel, so I can't comprehensively examine his work, but I have watched three or four dozen of his videos, and I read excerpts of his new book, The Bible Says.
So, I'm not going to engage the tone Dan uses in his videos because while it can be blunt or snarky, it's not beyond the boundaries of civil discourse. You just don't have the first clue what you're talking about. We might not agree on how to address those we disagree with, even on extremely important issues related to human flourishing, but at least we can agree on the awesomeness of comic book t-shirts that Dan often sports in his videos.
So, here are my overall thoughts on Dan Mlelen and my advice for how Christians should interact with his work and arguments. First, Dan's work shows why Christians need to be aware of biblical scholarship and shouldn't be anti-intellectual. Some people think scholarship is identical with palemics or arguments against Christianity, which isn't true because some scholarship, even critical scholarship, supports key elements of the Christian faith.
For example, as Bartman notes in his book, did Jesus exist? It's the opinion of virtually every expert on the planet that Jesus existed. Now, many of these experts deny Jesus was God or deny certain historical aspects of his life, but they at least agree Christianity's origins lie with an itinerant preacher named Jesus of Nazareth.
Mythicism, in contrast, is a fringe view which says Jesus never existed at all. And proponents of this view often act like photo negatives of religious apologists in their zeal to defend atheism. They work shows why Christians must be cautious when employing scholarship in defense of the faith.
So, while some Christians are fearful of modern scholarship, other Christians engage in the opposite behavior and they uncritically tout scholarship that they think proves Christianity is true when in many cases the scholarship turns out to be pseudo scholarship or it is genuine but it's unrelated to the point they were defending. One example would be this woman who thinks NASA proved the Bible is true by showing an eclipse occurred around the same time Jesus was crucified to explain the darkness of the crucifixion. But she failed to note that this was a lunar eclipse, not a solar eclipse.
Dan has also addressed the false claim that we found remnants of sulfur from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And as a Catholic, I agree with Dan when he points out bad arguments Protestants make when they overread their theology into the biblical text. That includes this gentleman who incorrectly translates Jesus's words on the cross, it is on Jesus's crucifixion.
Third, Dan's work shows why Christians should critically receive what critical scholars assert. Dan often talks in his videos about Christian claims that contradict scholarly consensus. In some cases, when Christians hear this, they may think their faith is false when it turns out the only thing that was false was a non-essential part of their Christian worldview that should be rejected.
This happens to some young earth creationists who think either atheism is true or young earth creationism is true. So if they come to believe the earth really is billions of years old, they irrationally reject Christianity as a whole and ignore other middleground positions like old earth creationism or theistic evolution. Likewise, when Dan says the scholarly consensus is that a certain biblical event never happened, that doesn't mean Christianity is false.
At worst, that would only mean certain forms of biblical inherency are false. It may not even mean the Bible has errors since the text might not be presenting the event should be willing to challenge critical scholars. Any claim, Christian or non-Christian, isn't automatically false just because it contradicts scholarly consensus.
However, when listening to Dan's videos, it would be easy for someone to walk away with thinking that someone must be in the wrong because he or she contradicted the consensus of scholars. But Dan writes the following in his book. When I say this is the consensus, I'm not saying therefore this is true.
I'm just saying therefore this is what the majority of scholars believe is most likely true based on the data that are available to us at this time. Where I don't agree with the consensus view, I'll let you know. On X, Dan defended the claim that John's Gospel does not teach Jesus's God and acknowledged his view is not part of scholarly consensus as can be seen in secular scholars like Bartman who says the Gospel of John in which Jesus does make such divine claims does indeed portray him as God.
Scholarship including biblical scholarship can be mistaken and once rigid conclusions have number five, Dan's work shows why we should always watch out for our own biases. It's easy when you get involved in scholarship to want to undercut ideological opponents and do everything you can to help ideological allies. So, I appreciate that Dan, who seems to believe same-sex sexual conduct is morally good, or at least not morally evil, is honest about the Bible condemning this kind of behavior and not just condemning pedarasti as some revisionist scholars claim.
Other people have criticized Dan for not being as tough on the Book of Mormon as he is on the Bible because Dan identifies as a Mormon. However, I've seen Dan on multiple occasions say the Book of Mormon makes more sense as a product of the 19th century than as a book of ancient records about Jewish immigrants to the New World. I have repeatedly and consistently on my channel and in other social media appearances pointed out dogma is a pjorative term that refers to established human opinions that cannot be questioned, like political dogma.
In that case, I agree we should follow data over dogma and question our assumptions when the evidence suggests otherwise. Some people think all religious doctrine is dogma. But Catholics actually reserve the term dogma for a narrow set of doctrine the church has infallibly defined to be part of divine revelation.
That means even some religious doctrines may have to be revised in light of new data. And this isn't a liberal modernist idea. For example, St.
Thomas Aquinas rejected the view that God intended to teach in Genesis 1:6 that the firmament held literal water, which is why he said Moses was speaking to ignorant people and that out of condescension to their weakness, he put before them only such things as are apparent to sense.
