McClellan is an active member [as far as I can tell] of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). For over a decade, he served professionally as a scripture translation supervisor for the Church, helping oversee translation work for global editions before transitioning into full-time public scholarship and content creation.
McClellan approaches the Bible strictly through academic historical-critical methods, cognitive linguistics, and anthropology. Operating under his slogan "Data Over Dogma," he emphasizes that the biblical texts are non-univocal, historically conditioned human artifacts containing competing theological viewpoints, demonstrable historical discrepancies, and evolving theological concepts rather than an inerrant, monolithic divine voice.
Why My Blog Is Critical of Him
My critique does not focus on McClellan’s personality or beliefs but on what I've identified as deep epistemological blind spots, methodological double standards, and basic logical missteps:
Dismissing Classical Logic and Defining Contradictions
In my critique of his video Five Bible contradictions you can’t make go away (Parts 1–5), I point out that McClellan rejects the traditional definition of a contradiction (that P and non-P must occur in the same sense, time, and respect) as a rhetorical "apologetic trick". I was absolutely shocked that basic logic was so casually cast aside. The Law of Non-Contradiction is not an apologetic invention but a foundational law of logic.
When a critic asserts that two textual accounts represent an irreconcilable contradiction, they are not merely registering a difference in narrative focus - they are asserting a universal negative claim: that there is no possible world in which both accounts can simultaneously be true. In formal and modal logic, proving absolute impossibility carries an asymmetric epistemic burden. A critic asserting a true contradiction must demonstrate that Account A (P) and Account B (non-P) assert the exact opposite in the exact same sense, at the exact same time, and in the exact same respect.
Consequently, the function of a historical or textual harmonization is not necessarily to prove beyond all doubt what definitely happened; rather, its primary logical function is an undercutter. By offering a sensible scenario where both details can fit together, they show that the two accounts aren’t mutually exclusive after all. In standard epistemology and legal jurisprudence, demonstrating logical possibility directly refutes the universal claim of impossibility. Dismissing harmonization as mere "apologetic rescue" fundamentally misunderstands how logic works: you cannot claim two witnesses are irreconcilable while simultaneously ruling out the very possibility of non-contradictory synthesis.
McClellan dismisses harmonization as inventing "unsupported scenarios," but standard legal testimony and ancient historiography regularly expect distinct witnesses to report differing details that require reconciliation.
Critics often conflate the historical question ("Is this harmonized scenario the most probable historical event?") with the logical question ("Does an insurmountable contradiction exist?"). If the critic's thesis is that the contradiction cannot be made to go away, showing a viable harmonizing reading refutes their categorical thesis.
In legal cross-examinations and ancient source criticism, independent accounts of the same event routinely exhibit omissions, distinct thematic selections, and different perspectives. Treating divergence as direct negation commits the fallacy of confusing narrative omission with factual denial.
The Law of Non-Contradiction requires identity of sense, relation, and time. Unless a critic can prove both authors intend mutually exclusive meanings within the identical frame of reference, declaring an objective contradiction is a philosophical overreach rather than neutral data analysis.
In my breakdown of the Nativity discrepancies in
Dan McClellan's "Unanswerable Contradictions" - Part 1.2 - The Timing and Details of the Nativity, I show how his standard historical-critical conclusions rely on an arbitrary evidentiary double standard:
McClellan uses the secular historian Josephus to declare Luke's census timeline an impossible anachronism, despite Josephus’s well-documented record of massive chronological dislocations, compressed timelines, and duplicate accounts.
Meanwhile, he subjects Luke - an author with documented administrative and civic precision - to automatic skepticism, dismissing viable Greek grammatical readings (such as πρῶτος functioning comparatively) and mistaking narrative ellipsis/omission for factual denial.
Semantic Reductionism (e.g., Satan in the Old Testament)
In my post, Satan isn’t in the Old Testament - McClellan, I critique his claim that Satan is absent from the Hebrew Bible. I demonstrate that his conclusion relies on freezing the lexical term śāṭān in a single box while ignoring crucial grammatical and canonical evidence:
He overlooks the anarthrous (article-free) construction in 1 Chronicles 21:1, where Hebrew grammar marks the transition of an appellative title into a proper personal name.
He discounts early Jewish translation traditions (such as the Septuagint transliterating Σατάν as a proper noun) and downplays the clear cosmic hostility exhibited in texts like Zechariah 3 and Job.
Rather than representing unvarnished empirical science over religious bias, McClellan’s work exemplifies an interpretive framework engineered to guarantee division, mistaking the philosophical constraints of modern naturalism for neutral historical fact.
The Illusion of "Data Over Dogma" - the Foundational Criticism
No one can eliminate all their biases, but as an expert in the cognitive science of religion and someone who does this for a living, I do an awful lot better than most, which means I'm not here to play for anybody's team. I think of myself more as someone who's here to try and call balls and strikes and represent the scholarly consensus to the best of my ability.
Although, as I've explained many, many times if I do have a Dogma, it is that when all other things are equal, and that's an important caveat that people like to ignore when all other things are equal, I will always give the benefit of the doubt to the less powerful group.
McClellan frames his role using the umpire metaphor - simply calling raw "balls and strikes" according to public "data" rather than "playing for anybody's team."
Critique from the Paper: As my paper argues, this framing resurrects a nineteenth-century positivist conceit that Hans-Georg Gadamer famously termed the “prejudice against prejudice.” There is no unmediated, theory-neutral position from which an interpreter can stand outside the hermeneutical circle to view "pure data." Or there is no way to, as McClellan puts it, "call balls and strikes".
The Epistemic Blind Spot: A baseball umpire looks at an objective physical strike zone with defined geometric parameters; a biblical text, however, consists of ancient linguistic signs that cannot even be read or translated without prior ontological and epistemological assumptions about history, language, and causation. McClellan mistakes his own heuristic lens for the lens-less perception of reality itself.
McClellan concedes that eliminating bias is "aspirational," but immediately claims an epistemic exemption: “as an expert in the cognitive science of religion and someone who does this for a living, I do an awful lot better than most.”
Critique from the Paper: In my essay, I point out that technical training in historical criticism or cognitive linguistics does not eliminate metaphysical commitments - it merely systematizes them.
The Epistemic Blind Spot: While cognitive science may help map human cognitive shortcuts or anthropomorphic deity concepts, it possesses no special faculty for answering foundational epistemological questions (such as whether divine self-disclosure is historically possible). Claiming that professional specialization renders his output functionally immune to "playing for a team" masks the reality that the guild of academic historical criticism is itself a team operating with rigid confessional boundaries (Troeltschian naturalism and methodological atheism).
Thus, methodological naturalism and academic secularism form the very 'team' McClellan goes to bat for, even while claiming to operate without a jersey. By adopting methodological atheism as his starting heuristic, McClellan is not standing above the game calling neutral balls and strikes - he is enforcing the house rules of naturalistic historicism.
McClellan explicitly admits to a dogma: “when all other things are equal... I will always give the benefit of the doubt to the less powerful group.”
Critique from the Paper: This admission directly confirms my paper's charge that critical historiography is bound to a Conflict Ontology and an Atomizing Hermeneutic of Suspicion.
The Epistemic Blind Spot:
An Axiom Outside the Data: A preference for the "less powerful group" is an explicit ethical and ideological prior, derived from modern socio-political liberation frameworks, not an inductive conclusion derived from ancient manuscripts - i.e. the data. .
Who Decides "Equal"?: In historical abduction and inference to the best explanation, "all things" are almost never mathematically equal. Declaring evidence to be in equilibrium is itself an interpretive judgment. By introducing power dynamics as a tie-breaker, McClellan formally imports the deeply rooted Marxist concept of critical theory into historical evaluation, prioritizing modern moral sentiment over historical probability. Marxism provides one of the most prominent frameworks for analyzing power dynamics.
Self-Subversion of "Data Over Dogma": Once an interpreter announces that their interpretive default is governed by solidarity with an identity class rather than the text's own communicative intent, "dogma" is no longer secondary to data. It serves as the ultimate adjudicating rule whenever the data permits ambiguity.
In my essay, I note the acute tension in McClellan's reliance on cognitive linguistics and reader-response theory - namely, the claim that texts have no inherent meaning and that meaning is generated solely in the mind of the reader.
The Quote's Conflict: In this statement, McClellan claims he is striving to “allow the data to operate on their own terms.”
The Incoherence: If a text possesses no intrinsic meaning apart from reader reception, the text has no terms of its own to operate on. McClellan cannot consistently maintain a postmodern semiotic skepticism when critiquing traditional readings, while simultaneously asserting a positivist realism wherein his own readings represent the pristine "terms" of the original data.
McClellan lays out this exact argument in the opening chapters of his book, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues. In the introduction/chapter 1 of The Bible Says So, McClellan grounds his methodology in cognitive linguistics and semiotics, writing:
"A text is just a collection of squiggles, and there is no 'meaning' inhabiting any of them (whatever that might mean). Meaning is generated in, and confined to, the mind of a reader..."
"Reading a text is not a matter of excavating or extracting meaning from it; it's a matter of creating it ourselves and trusting that we've come close enough to what was intended." (p. 5)"...we're creating meaning with the Bible. … I frequently refer to this process as 'negotiating' with the text." (p. 8)
Words objectively do not have meaning. All meaning associated with communication resides entirely and exclusively within the mind of the individual articulating... or the individual interpreting... There is no sense in which 'meaning' somehow resides wi
thin blobs of ink, pixels on a screen , in the light reflecting off of hand signs, or in sound waves - McClellan's personal blog
The quote crystallizes the central thesis of Dan McClellan and the Epistemology of Biblical Criticism: "Data Over Dogma" is a compelling rhetorical brand, but it collapses as an epistemological framework.
Far from operating above the fray as a detached umpire calling neutral balls and strikes, McClellan remains thoroughly situated within a specific interpretive tradition. His method is bookended by unacknowledged philosophical axioms at the start (methodological naturalism and Troeltschian historicism) and an explicit ideological tie-breaker at the end (giving preference to the "less powerful group").
More fundamentally, his project suffers from a fatal internal tension. He cannot coherently deploy postmodern, reader-response anti-realism to delegitimize traditional theological readings - insisting that texts are mere "squiggles" devoid of intrinsic meaning - while simultaneously adopting a naive positivist realism that treats his own historical-critical reconstructions as the pristine "data operating on their own terms." If the biblical text possesses no inherent meaning independent of reader creation, then McClellan’s historical conclusions are not the neutral revelations of an umpire; they are simply the "negotiated" products of modern academic presuppositions.
Ultimately, McClellan does not transcend the hermeneutical circle. He simply rebrands the secular guild’s interpretive quadrant as objective reality.
See more on Dan McClellan on my Deconstructing Dan McClellan page
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