This offering from our friends at the ever, ever-increasingly appropriately named “Open Source Theology” blog (an ECM group-blog) is a stellar example of the state of Emergent-type epistemology. I believe the opening paragraph says it all:
In 10 principles for reading the Bible in a postmodern context, Andrew proposes that contributors to an emerging post-evangelical theology adopt Principle 2 – “Let’s pretend it’s not inerrant.” He suggests that we “set aside claims to the predetermined inerrancy and sanctity of the Bible, at least insofar as such claims force upon us standards of truthfulness that conflict with criteria of thought that we are not prepared to abandon in other areas of discourse (scientific, historical, literary, social, etc.).” Adopting Principle 2 “allows us to read the Bible as the unbeliever reads it; it helps to defamiliarise the Bible for us, which will be an essential aspect of the deconstruction process…” In the Genesis 1 as True Myth post we’ve been trying to make literal sense of the Biblical creation narratives. What if instead we were to read Genesis 1-3 in light of Principle2?
As with everything else I’ve read from OST, the post requires no rebuttal; it’s self-rebutting.
…and some ECMmers wonder why us iggnit’ nukkle-draggin konsirvuhtivs get the willies when reading their stuff…
mikescape 
October 31, 2007 at 5:21 pm
This is becoming more and more popular to do. It’s Higher Criticism isn’t it.
When I sent an email to Richard Foster from RENOVARE who wrote the ‘Spiritual Formation Bible’ and questioned him on some commentary that is published in this paraphrase version of the bible. His representative said to me that they do not argue about secondary issues like the inerrancy of the scriptures but hold to the apostle creed..
Unity in essentials, Diversity in non-essentials, Charity in all things.
Apparently biblical inerrancy is considered a non-essential to the RENOVARE crowd.
October 31, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Yep, exactly… What cracks me up in the article is exactly that – that they take critically definitional doctrines of the Faith (like inerrancy) and say, “let’s pretentd it isn’t really inerrant… these are not the droids you are looking for… Luke… Luuuuuuuuuuuke…”
Get the second paragraph (builds from the first, and again, is self-rebutting):
October 31, 2007 at 11:28 pm
It’s all adding and taking away from the Word of God isn’t it?
…Emmm, and I am pretty sure doing that is a bad thing! It says that a number of times in the Mythical Story of God…I mean the Word of God.
Talking about the serpent in the garden how’s this from William Branham…
Adding and Taking! It all adds up to a lot of rubbish if you ask me.
The methodology I use to read the Bible is the grammatical Historical approach… It is obvious what parts are allegorical, and what parts are not. You have to come to the Bible with no worldly presumptions and let scripture interpret scripture. Once you try to interpret scripture using today’s post-modern subjective double truths, you end up with so much said and talked about with nothing really being said at all. It becomes soooo subjectively relevant that it becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Hey.. at least we can say, “you can’t say that, it doesn’t mean that, etc.” and they cannot retort! They, by their own standards of reasoning have to be silent on anything of surety.
We, on the other hand, do believe in surety and absolutes.
Post-modernism hahahaha, gotta love it!
November 1, 2007 at 5:44 am
Mike, I wouldn’t dream of labelling you as an ‘iggnit’
nukkle-draggin konsirvuhtiv’, but I do think your comments illustrate
the fact that critics of emerging theologies don’t always – or don’t
always appear to – try very hard to understand what they’re criticizing.
The point of principle 2
was simply to clear a space for open and intelligent discussion about
what sort of text the Bible is and how we might approach it with fresh
eyes for the purpose of mission in a postmodern culture. To be honest,
I don’t really expect you to get this – and maybe you’re right and I’m
wrong. But this paragraph, which was also part of principle 2, should
make it clear that to my mind at least the objective of pretending
(only pretending) that scripture is just a profane text is to
understand it better and re-establish public confidence in it as the
Word of God.
What the emerging church is asserting is that truth cannot be
reduced to artificial doctrines such as inerrancy. We also need to take
into account the literary and historical nature of the Bible – it is
not a magic document, it is a product of human history, no matter how
inspired we may take it to be. We also need to take into account the
intellectual and moral integrity of those who seek to embody this truth
in their lives, and frankly a lot of God-fearing, Spirit-filled
Christ-followers have a hard time dealing with the mental gymnastics
involved in much conservative theologizing.
It may not be apparent in your world, but plenty of committed
Christians do not regard inerrancy as a ‘critically definitional’
doctrine of the Faith, yet have no difficulty taking the Bible with the
utmost seriousness as God’s reliable word. And there really
is absolutely no biblical or theological reason for supposing
that Genesis 1-3 must be taken as a literal
account of how creation and fall happened. American conservative
Christianity has got itself hopeless blinkered on this one. You do not
have a monopoly on truth. Livingjourney’s remark that ‘You have to come
to the Bible with no worldly presumptions and let scripture interpret
scripture’ is preposterous. We all have ‘worldly
presumptions’.
November 1, 2007 at 10:07 am
And thus, Andrew, you prove my point.
And again – self-rebutting.
And you also show the soft underbelly of the ECM: Your epistemological base.
You (as in “your community”) is the new Magisterium. Since you reject the Biblical doctrine of inerrancy as a “hopeless[ly] blinkered” one, you then become the standard and ground of truth – not the Word.
Should I be declaring Habemas Papam…?
November 1, 2007 at 10:45 am
Sorry, the formatting went a bit haywire. The ‘hopeless[ly] blinkered’ referred to the literalist reading of the Genesis 1-2 not the biblical doctrine of inerrancy, though you’re still not listening to me.
Principle 2 was not presented as an epistemological commitment but as a hermeneutical exercise designed to help people read the biblical text as a historical document, much as non-believers might read it, without the protective superstructure of a post-biblical doctrine inerrancy. The issue is not whether the Bible is the ‘standard and ground of truth’ – that’s not in dispute as far as I’m concerned. What is in dispute is how we handle it, and I’m inclined to say that this ‘doctrine of inerrancy’ is more of a nuisance than its worth.
If this doesn’t make sense to you or if you can’t be bothered to read the post properly, fine, but say so. Don’t simply accuse me or the emerging church or whoever of acting as a New Magisterium. At least have the courtesy to engage in constructive conversation – plenty of conservatives have done so on Open Source Theology – and maybe we can all learn something.
A lot of deeply committed believers, both inside and outside the emerging church movement, are coming to the conclusion that there are much better ways of reading the Bible than through the lense of modern conservative dogmatism. In the long run we may prove to be wrong, but the situation is not helped by your shallow sarcasm.
November 1, 2007 at 11:04 am
Ah, Andrew… just because I not only disagree with your position and conclusions, but also think your premise is contrabilical, doesn’t mean I “haven’t bothered to read the post properly.”
My point, Andrew (had you read my post properly), is aptly illustrated – again – by your own words. I give you:
That pretty much sums it up, and – again is self-rebutting and a concise example of the underlying (to be gracious, I’ll call it) deficiency of ECM epistemology.
And make no mistake, Andrew: Though you, trapped within your presuppositions, don’t think of this as an epistemological issue, your own words demonstrate otherwise. It is quintessentially an epistemological issue.
November 1, 2007 at 11:14 am
I didn’t say it wasn’t an epistemological issue. All I said was that principle 2 was not ‘presented as an epistemological commitment’. Yes, epistemology is at issue here – but the principle was simply meant to open up the options a bit, allow people with radically opposed epistemologies to think together, and strip the biblical text of some of its dogmatic overlay. It’s the text, after all, that’s reliable. Not the interpretation of the text.
But I don’t really see how my statement is ‘self-rebutting’ or why this points to such a deficiency in the way the emerging church speaks about truth. Can you explain?
November 1, 2007 at 11:56 am
“Self-rebutting” is somewhat self-explanatory, yeah?
You state:
…and then right after that, negate what you said, with:
Self-negating.
Hence, self-rebutting.
If the doctrine of inerrancy is true (and to deny it you have to first affirm its premise, thus it is a reflexive or “first principle”) then it’s both:
(1) Hardly a nuisance, but instead is irreducibly vital, and
(2) contraindicative of the very necessity of your premise.
Here’s what I mean:
IF the Bible is true (and what’s say… let’s pretend like it is…) then (other than being therefore by direct and inevitable extension inerrant, but I digress) it is already relevant and powerful in itself, with no help necessary at all from man, due to its origin (God), subject (…ah, God), and Illuminator (again… God).
BTW – it’s not “sarcasm” to point out doctrinal deficiency, bro. Especially doctrinal deficiency concerning sine qua non doctrines of the Faith.
We’re big boys, Andrew, and we can take criticism without playing the “you’re really hurting my feelings, as a person and as a Hegelian Dialectic” card. I can take criticisms of my own Calvary Chapel Movement without putting on a petulant pout…
November 1, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I still don’t see the negation. I merely make a distinction between the text of scripture, which may or may not be inerrant, and a doctrine of inerrancy, which is not (despite your protestations) itself biblical, merely a dogmatic formulation devised to provide a rationalist shield for the text. To my mind that is a straightforward distinction. You have a book and you have a metal box that you lock the book up in called the ‘doctrine of inerrancy’. I don’t think we need the box, that’s all.
There’s got to be an easier way of saying that!
I also don’t buy your argument that because the Bible is the word of God (actually a questionable proposition) it must be formally ‘inerrant’. I encounter God in all sorts of imperfect ways in the world. Those encounters do not have to be absolutely inerrant to be authentic.
You said:
I’ve come across this macho posturing before. I’m British and maybe that makes a difference, but it strikes me that there’s nothing very grown up about resorting to sarcasm rather than substantive dialogue. Your original post was not my idea of ‘criticism’, just puerile sniping – it certainly didn’t encourage intelligent engagement.
This is not about being grown up or not, and it’s certainly not about my feelings – did I say you hurt my feelings? It’s about whether we can do a better job of talking to each other across the various theological, intellectual and cultural boundaries that rend the church. I appreciate the fact that you will strongly disagree with this, but from my perspective here in Europe the emerging conversation, for all its faults, is crucial for the future of the church here. It’s not a final position. It’s a place of questioning, of re-reading, of retelling the biblical story in different ways – but that needs imaginative and intellectual space. The two posts on the death of Jesus prior to John Doyle’s post on creation are, to my mind, illustrative of this. I don’t think they undermine the authority and relevance of scripture in any way.
November 1, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Okie dokie, Andrew.
But again – you prove my point.
Just about says it all…
November 1, 2007 at 1:34 pm
‘Okie dokie’ doesn’t tell me very much. Nor does ‘Just about says it all’ for that matter. Where is the problem? It’s very difficult to know what you’re getting at when it’s all so nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean!
What is the basis for the doctrine of inerrancy? What is wrong with taking the Bible out of the box and asking ourselves what sort of book it is? What is it saying? Where did it come from?
Or are you getting bored?
November 1, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I wrote the post; I’m asking what happens if you read the Creation narratives like a non-Christian would do, without presupposing inerrancy. It’s not just a hypothetical question since I happen to be a non-Christian. I’m glad that OST provides a forum for thoughtful and courteous discussion of questions like this. I guess if you and I were to sit around over beers we wouldn’t get very far in finding common ground for conversation. How ’bout them Red Sox?
November 1, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Well, there’s that, and the fact that you’re being severely disingenuous.
The doctrine of inerrancy has been so vastly, and over-adequately defined and defended, even on the blogosphere, and even in recent days that to pretend like you’ve never heard a good, solid defense of it is… well, more than a bit hard to swallow, Andrew.
I have zero desire to re-invent the wheel – I’m not remarkably “Emergent” in that regard (among a plethoric host of other things).
So, I give you:
(1) this article
(2) this article
(3) this article
(4) this article
(5) this article and…
(6) this article.
Oh, drat… I forgot that Johnny Mac isn’t very much in favor in the ECM. Ah… try:
(1) this article
(2) this article, and
(3) this article (jump to the “inerrancy” section)
…but if White’s too conservative for you (and I admit, his Calvinism sometimes really mucks up the picture, but he’s still good), then there’s:
(1) this sermon by Tim Keller – who, I understand, is very well received by at least the conservative elements of the ECM…
(2) this set of resources by John Piper, who – again – I understand is quite liked in conservative ECM circles…
(3) Stand To Reason’s Podcast (you’ll have to register and navigate to the February 20th, 2005 podcast to hear it – registration, last I checked, was free).
I’m going to clue you in on something that might help you to “contextualize” my position: I habor a deep sympathy for Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic – minus, of course, Van Til’s soteriology. Accordingly, I have little patience for “re-imagining,” or “bringing everybody into the big tent and let’s all sit down and chat” or anything like that.
And if the ECM is the hope for the church in Europe… I mourn for the Continent.
…and I pray for revival.
BTW, “okie dokie” means, “yeah, we’re not getting anywhere, I’m not going to convince you, you’re not going to convince me, so we’re going to keep going rounds – but you’re repeatedly making my point repeatedly, over and over again.”
To break it down into simpler terms.
November 1, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Ah, the Sox…
…I’m a Detroit fan. The Sox aren’t quite as bad as the Yankees, but real darned close… Part of the Baseball Unholy Trinity, with the Yankees and the Mariners…
I appreciate your asking the question, how to read the Bible. I (as I’d mentioned previously to bro’ Andrew) am somewhat presuppositional in my apologetic. That is, to boil it down and apply that broad term to the current disucssion, I believe the Bible is inerrant; when I discuss it, I presuppose that, as well as presupposing that it is the power of God for salvation. Therefore, I believe my job is to say what it says, live it out in my life by the Spirit’s grace and power, and let Him do what He will with that in your heart.
I don’t need – or want – nor should I – try to “help it out.” IF God is real, and IF His Word is true, then He’s quite capable of applying and defending and extending its influence as He sees fit.
…pretty deterministic/fideistic for a non-Calvinist, no…? ;D
If you want a good, hearty chuckle, you can check out this podcast – though, I warn you; this pastor’s a complete twit, not really that bright, and more than a bit on the dweeby side… But it will give you a relatively good idea of how I handle the Word.
Rock on…
November 1, 2007 at 3:01 pm
So my question was “what if?” Having read a lot of OST discussions and participated in a few, I find that the authority of Scripture and its literal interpretation seem to dominate even in places where I would expect it not to. So, for example, we engaged in a long discussion about whether Genesis 1 might be read as a “true myth,” but we ended up talking about what the various verses literally mean and how they can be fit together into a coherent whole. So I decided to try moving the discussion onto another track: what if the creation stories were more like thought experiments than actual descriptions of what happened in space and time? If some branch of emerging Christianity were to uphold that position, what might happen?
It sounds like you regard the whole emerging scene as bad news already, so I suspect you wouldn’t want to have that conversation. Guys like Dawkins and Harris on my side of the divide wouldn’t either, since they regard the whole Judeo-Christian heritage as a cultural catastrophe. So call me an “emerging agnostic,” seeing if a conversation across the divide is even possible.
Also, I’m a White Sox fan — so at least we share a hatred of the Yankees. I didn’t realize that the Mariners were part of the axis of evil.
November 1, 2007 at 3:16 pm
They are. My lovely and gracious wife is a Tribe fan, so the Mariners are automatically included in that designation. Mostly because (per my wife) they …well, whine a lot.
And to turn a phrase, “there’s no whining in baseball…”
You are correct that I don’t really have a great desire to have a conversation about “first principle” issues of the Faith – if by “have a conversation” we mean that in the way that the ECM generally does.
That is, in the sense that the “first principle” issues aren’t, and are open for “re-invention.”
To answer your (very good) question: If some branch of Christianity (of whatever strain) were to uphold that position (the “thought experiment” thing), then it would no longer be Christian.
It’s like asking: If Islam began questioning the doctrine of (for instance) shirk – which precludes the concept of the Trinity – what might happen?
Answer: It would, definitionally, no longer be Islam.
Or, like asking: If atheism began questioning whether or not there is a God, what might happen?
Answer: It’d no longer be atheism. It’d have morphed into something else – in that case, agnosticism.
Again – I have deep sympathy for Van Til’s presuppostional apologetic; so I of course automatically view Dawkins’ et al hatred of Judeo-Christianity as more than a bit amusing, given that he/they live off of what Van Til would often call the “borrowed capital” of J-C thought…
November 1, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I have hurriedly gone through those links and picked out what seem to me the salient points. Sorry if I’ve missed something important. I see nothing that suggests to me that the Bible itself demands to be treated as inerrant.
The writer of Psalm 19 says that the Mosaic law is complete – an adequate provision for the life of ancient Israel. But we do not live according to the law. We live according to the Spirit.
We have an argument for expository preaching as a logical extension of the doctrine of inerrancy. But how much expository teaching is there in 2 Corinthians? Not a great deal.
I entirely agree with Paul that all scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16), but that does not mean ‘inerrant’.
Most of that stuff from John MacArthur is proof texts taken out of context.
I would venture to say that ‘word of God’ never refers to the Bible in the Bible but always to a specific address to his people.
White’s deductive argument is worthless. Even if it proves that God has the power to communicate perfectly, it certainly doesn’t prove that he has. He has the power (perhaps) to right every wrong, heal every sickness, prevent every car accident, and so on, but for some reason he doesn’t.
So despite your impressive list of authorities, I still don’t really see that a doctrine of inerrancy is somehow necessary or desirable for authentic faith. But having said all that, I don’t think the question of inerrancy is the crucial one. Much more important is the question of what the Bible means, what story is it telling.
Anyway, I’m off to Irish dancing lessons – and another fine jig.
November 1, 2007 at 3:35 pm
And thus, Andrew, we have no common ground for discussion – hence, “okie dokie.”
The story of the Bible is irrelevant if it can’t be trusted.
And if it’s not inerrant, it’s errant.
If it’s errant, it contains errors.
If it contains errors, it cannot be trusted.
The syllogism is complete and inescapable.
UNLESS you postulate a magisterial authority over the Bible that can determine what parts are reliable and what parts aren’t – whether that authority is vested in an ecclesial body, or in the “whole community”, is unimportant.
Again… shall I say, habemas papas…?
November 1, 2007 at 4:45 pm
God created a good creation . Creation sinned. God must be incompetent.
November 1, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Logic.
Does.
Not.
Follow.
;D
More like:
“God created a good creation. He gave that good creation free moral agency. That good creation did a spectacularly stupid thing, and sinned. God had already known from before the foundation of the earth that man would snooker it, so He instituted “Plan A,” whereby He would become Man, pay the price required for wrecking the good creation, and return man to a state of fellowship with Himself.”
The Problem of Evil is another one of those things which has been adequately examined by minds far smarter-er than mine.
November 1, 2007 at 5:03 pm
God’s plan B included provisions for an inerrant bible that ended up as messed up as the inerrant creation.
It denigrates God to limit Him by our error prone ways. That would be a truly incompetent God!
November 1, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Ah – that’s only if you view that darned Bible as being messed up.
…which I of course categorically deny.
November 1, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Yes, but Mike, neither you nor John MacArthur has provided a good reason for thinking that the Bible postulates its own inerrancy. What is that belief based on?
Your syllogism (which is not actually a syllogism) doesn’t help us. I find that I trust all sorts of imperfect authorities – historians, doctors, journalists, lawyers. Things don’t have to be absolutely inerrant in order to be trusted – that’s simply not true. I have a very high confidence in the truthfulness of scripture, but I do not find that it is in anyway helped by the a priori and frankly unfounded assertion that the Bible must be completely true in every detail.
In any case, a doctrine of inerrancy is not a guarantee that the Bible has been correctly interpreted. There’s plenty of nonsense promulgated in the name of biblical inerrancy, and there’s no point making a big fuss about the truthfulness of something if we can’t agree what it means.
Whatever our epistemology, it always comes back to the judgment of the community. Conservative evangelicalism is just as guilty of operating a magisterium as any other section of the church.
November 1, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Actually, I believe that (for instance) Johnny Mac has provided ample reason for holding to the doctrine.
Interpretation is a separate (if equally important) issue from inspiration.
I am not trusting in lawyers, or doctors, or salesmen, or my Aunt Ruth, or Mickey Mouse, or anything else that is obviously errant for something as vital as my eternal salvation. I AM trusting in a Bible that does claim to be from God, and does claim inerrancy to itself (J. Mac and White both speak to that, among others) – perhaps later I’ll summarize. But right now, we’re throwing assertions at/past each other – mine just happen to be right.
Slight pause, station break, as I get to go indoctrinate some poor souls as to what this apparently errant book which may-or-may-not contain words of some deity which might (or, who knows, might not) have the capacity to express himself/herself/itself in terms and ways that are identifiable, hopefully, but we won’t press that too hard so as not to offend those who may or may not agree, after all, all traditions are to be equally valued on the same footing in spite of adhering/not adhering to the aforementioned expression of the previously mentioned deity – or, if you prefer, “higher consciousness,” or, if you prefer instead, “expression of the Jungian collective unconsciousness” or…
November 1, 2007 at 6:56 pm
You’re talking nonsense again. That’s a ridiculous caricature. Just stick to the point. I’ll wait for the evidence that the Bible claims to be absolutely inerrant. As for my eternal salvation, my trust is in the Lord who made heaven and earth, who brought me from darkness into light, who gave me the Holy Spirit, and who speaks to me through his Word.
November 1, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Ah, yes… but on what authority do you believe that? if Scripture is errant, what possible claim to certainty about your salvation do you have? what if the sections of Scripture you’re basing that hope on prove to be part of that whole “whoops! this isn’t actually what God said…” category? How can you be sure?
And again, Andrew; that you categorically dismissed out-of-hand the arguments of (for instance) Johnny Mac doesn’t by any means actually negate them – or are you doing the very thing you previously accused me of – failing to properly read and interact with what’s been written…?
Things that make you go “hmmmmmm…?”
November 2, 2007 at 3:38 am
Since the conversation was with you rather than with John MacArthur, I was rather hoping you would tell me why you hold so fiercely to a doctrine of inerrancy.
Besides, I did respond to his arguments, albeit briefly. So, for example, I don’t see how you can build a doctrine of complete scriptural inerrancy on Psalm 19, which speaks of the blamelessness or perfection of the Jewish Law as a prescribed way of life. MacArthur blithely assumes that ‘scripture’ and ‘law’ are synonymous, but that’s not true. Plus, as you are no doubt aware, we no longer live under the Law but under grace. I mentioned this earlier, but you completely ignored it.
I also pointed out that theopneustos does not mean ‘inerrant’ – that’s not the meaning of the word. In the real world, rather than in the make-believe world in which fundamentalists appear to live, it is entirely possible for communication to be inspired and trustworthy without being epistemologically absolute.
As I said, my trust is not in the supposed perfection of a text but in the God who is revealed through the testimony of the text, through the historical experience of the community, through the presence of the Spirit in my life and in the life of the church, and so on. Is any of that absolutely reliable? No. That is why it is called faith. But I would much rather put my faith in God than in your intellectually incoherent and biblically unsupported doctrine of inerrancy.
As you said earlier, we are grown-up men. It is children who need the illusion of absolute assurance. Adults are prepared to take risks – we see in a mirror dimly, not yet face to face. I don’t need ‘certainty’ about my salvation. I trust.
November 2, 2007 at 5:36 am
Andrew… if it’s not absolutely reliable, then there’s an element of unreliability to it. If there’s an element of unreliability to it, you can’t completely rely on it. If you can’t completely rely on it, you can’t trust it – you could be wrong, you could be fooling yourself – you could in fact not be saved.
And how can you put your faith in God – when you have no independent, external-to-yourself criteria for doing so? You believe… basically what you want to believe, and you become the final arbiter of truth, the source and mediator of authority.
It sure sounds spiritual to say:
…but in fact what you become guilty of what you accuse me and other iggnit, nukkle-draggin’ konsirvuhtivs of: talking gibberish.
And if you try to retreat to the hand-waving, these-are-not-the-droids-you-are-looking-for safety of “the historical experience of the community…” then just get on with it and complete that short little hop across the Tiber. Because the ECM, though borrowing freely from “the historical… community” does so only in the most “buffet bar” sense. If you’re going to hold to sola ecclesia, then be honest and hold to it whole-hog.
What you’re really trusting in is your own, single opinion of what you feel is true, hidden somewhere in the Text, and what you feel is the consensus of what the Church has always believed… while merrily rejecting out-of-hand the overwhelming majority of both.
There are necessary and inescapable consequences for abandoning inerrancy.
And theopneustos does by direct implication lead (dare I say, “infallably”…?) to the concept of inerrancy (for instance: here. I also like what this guy has to say).
Faith is not blind. Blind faith is worse than no faith. Faith is predicated on facts.
November 2, 2007 at 6:14 am
Even the “historical church” (usually taken by Catholics and Eastern Churchmen to mean, pretty much, their own communions) believes in inerrancy.
I love this article by the Catholic Truth site.
Some particularly delicious snippets:
Protestantism’s argument with Rome isn’t about whether or not the Bible is inerrant and authoritative; it’s about whether or not the Bible is the apex authority, or whether it shares that perch with the Church’s magisterium.
d’oh…
November 2, 2007 at 10:57 am
I just put up excerpts of this ongoing debate on OST for those who were wondering what’s happening over here.
November 2, 2007 at 11:17 am
This is a very frustrating dichotomy isn’t it? Either (the 66 books of Protestant) Scripture is inerrant and therefore completely trustworthy, or Scripture is chock full of errors, mistakes, and heresies, and it cannot be trusted at all.
Perhaps Andrew’s view is that there is a third option?
I always have to wonder what counts as an ‘error’. In mathematics, I know what an error is (e.g. 2+2=5). But what counts as an error in an narrative (e.g. D’oh! Shakespeare made a mistake!)? Perhaps errant and inerrant are categories which aren’t helpfully applied to these kinds of texts…
Peace,
-Daniel-
November 2, 2007 at 11:27 am
Good question, Daniel.
It is a frustrating dichotomy… but an inescapable one.
If the Bible has one error, then it might have more – who is it who is vested with the authority to determine what God really meant, and what that silly goof-nugget Paul put in of his own accord, the big jokester, him…?
So there really isn’t a viable third option.
But that’s just me…
November 2, 2007 at 12:13 pm
So what’s so bad about saying that I trust in the God who is revealed in, among other things, the historical experience of the community? We are part of a historical community going all the way back to Abraham that has struggled in all sorts of different ways, under all sorts of different conditions, to live up to its faith in the one creator God. Israel’s God was revealed in the historical experience of the community – that’s what the Old Testament’s all about.
What sort of anxiety makes you toss out these alarmist accusations about crossing the Tiber just because someone has regard for the inescapable historical fact that we are heirs of a tradition? You as much as me. Where do you imagine your particular flavour of Christian belief system came from? Certainly not straight from scripture.
Again, what I trust in is God, who has made me through faith a descendant of Abraham, a member of the ‘new covenant’ community. What I spend a lot of my time doing, however, is trying to understand how the Bible tells its story. My particular interest is in how that story interacts with history, which is basically why I advocated Principle 2. My objection to the formal doctrine of inerrancy is not so much that I believe that the Bible is flawed to any degree – after all, my believing it makes not a scrap of difference to whether it is true or not. It is rather to the fact that a priori commitments of this nature tend, in my view, to obscure rather than clarify the relation between the biblical text and the historical ‘text’ (difficult concept that!) to which it is so intimately bound. I see this work as important because – in my conceited and small-minded way – I believe it may hold the key to rebuilding a credible witness to the gospel following the collapse of Christendom in Western Europe. The need for this may be difficult to appreciate in Grand Rapids, but it is painfully apparent here that a new paradigm is required.
I couldn’t find your infallable [sic] implication in the Warfield article, which basically is a defence of the traditional reading of theopneustos as ‘God-breathed’ against Cremer’s novel interpretation ‘inspiring to its readers’. But it’s a long article, and I may have missed something – I’m sure you’ll point it out to me. The other article to which you linked was without substance.
The quotations from the Gospels in the excerpt from the Catholic Truth article demonstrate that Jesus regarded the prophetic word of God as binding of Israel, but this is still some way short of the modern rationalist argument that the Bible must be 100% true or it’s useless. What am I to make of the death of Judas? Did he repent, give the money back, and then go and hang himself (Matt. 27:3-5). Or did he buy a field with the money and die ‘accidentally’ as the result of a fall (Acts 1:18-19)? It seems to me much more ‘truthful’ to recognize that these are contradictory stories than to promote some spurious harmonization in order to save an artificial doctrine of infallibility.
November 2, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Good. We finally agree on something.
And no, I’m not being…what’s the ECM word for it? “Snarky”…? in saying that.
What I mean is that the doctrine of inerrancy exists external to my assent to it – it is true whether I believe it or not.
Pro’lly not what you were intending to say, but I reinterpreted, reimagined, and recontextualized the statement within the context of my community of faith.
…because you’re making the same mistake the J-Dubs do in rejecting the Trinity. Since the word “trinity” isn’t there, it must be false.
…ah, yeah. ’bout that. The concept of the Trinity is all over the Text, from Genesis 1 on. It’s a necessary and inescapable conclusion drawn from the testimony of the entire Bible.
So, too, with Warfield’s/the Bible’s claims of inerrancy.
IF the Bible is “God-breathed” (let’s pretend that it is), and if words mean things (and let’s pretend that they do), and if you really do believe that you interpret the Bible through the lens of what the church has historically believed (and let’s pretend that you do), then the inevitable consequence of the Bible being “God-breathed” is that it is inerrant.
As I’d pointed out above, Rome teaches that. Even the Eastern Church does – at least, by implication if nothing else (c.f. the works of Fr. Georges Florovsky, for instance). The debate (until relatively recently) hasn’t been about whether the Scriptures are inerrant, but whether they are above the Church or beside her in authority.
Difficulties exist in the Text. Nobody’s denying that, Andrew. But you either take those difficulties to mean you don’t fully understand the issues involved or don’t have complete enough information to properly understand the passage(s) in question (my approach), or that you (singular or plural, in the sense of “whatever historical community you’d like to identify with at the moment which happens to not agree with the historically historical community of faith which accepted inerrant Scripture”) are really the arbiter of all truth and get to determine ex nihilo what’s really binding and what’s not.
And what’s with the sic…? Es whut Im sayinge les truew bceause i mispsdelelled a wurd?
Again – what possible reason do you have to trust in God’s salvific grace if all you have to rest on that He’ll save you in the first place is a Bible that you can’t really trust because everybody knows it’s not really what God really meant to say…?
November 2, 2007 at 1:03 pm
How does that follow? Humans are God-breathed but they’re not inerrant. God-breathed means ‘God-breathed’. It doesn’t mean ‘inerrant’, not even by implication – unless, perhaps, you have a rather mechanical, dualistic doctrine of God or a very weak doctrine of faith. Why not accept that God speaks through imperfect human vessels and that his speech shares in the intrinsic qualities of human culture and history?
Paul gives a very good answer to that question: ‘it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee’ (2 Cor. 1:22). Or is that being too spiritual? It is the Spirit in our hearts not an inerrant book that is the guarantee of our salvation. The same point is made in 2 Cor. 5:5 and Ephesians 1:14. But not one word about a 100% perfect book.
November 2, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Oh, the [sic]. That was getting my own back for “hopeless[ly] blinkered”.
As for Judas, it simply feels dishonest to deny the contradiction. I agree that very often discrepancies are only apparent, and maybe that will turn out to be the case here. But what sort of God is it who can get all the facts right but leaves these glaring contradictions in the text for honest people to trip over?
November 2, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Mike,
I bless you today.
You and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but we completely agree on this one.
The campaign against Biblical inerrancy is a campaign against the very Word of God and the faith once delivered to the saints.
I have nothing to add to your comments as you have defended that truth faithfully and well.
Blessings on you for doing so.
November 2, 2007 at 3:11 pm
It’s interesting that the Bible never tries to prove the existence of God. It presupposes it. In the same way, the Bible presupposes the doctrine of inerrancy. While humans are God-breathed, they also have a will and make choices, often times sucky ones. God breathed the scriptures. The words themselves have no will, no choice. They simply communicate information. They communicate a will, they have none of their own.
While I agree with the concept behind Andrew’s principle 2, that being reading the Bible through the eyes of an unbeliever so as to better communicate God’s truth with the unbeliever, the purpose of it is to communicate God’s truth. See what the unbeliever sees and show Him God’s truth through it.
So I read Genesis 1-11 with my unbeliever filter on and think, “Man, this is messed up. This contradicts everything I’ve learned in school. How can this be true?” The answer isn’t to conclude that it isn’t literal history and must be something else. The answer isn’t to question the reliability of God’s word. Rather it is to question the reliability of fallible man’s science and presuppositions concerning history. It’s my job as a teacher of the word to say, “This is what man says. This is what God says. Here is how man’s presuppositions that are built into the science makes the interpretations and conclusions wrong, here is how using God’s presuppositions with the same science give us more scientifically correct interpretations and conclusions. This confirms that the Genesis account can be taken at face value.”
Concerning Genesis 1-11, there is no reason, scientifically or historically, to take those chapters as anything less that a literal historical account. There just isn’t. Only when we hold man’s wisdom above God’s does a problem present itself. Again, as a teacher of the word, it is part of my responsibility to be able to show people the answers to these problems as found in the word, to show people, “Man wants this to be true, so he therefore teaches that it is.” It’s subjective, relative truth. If it’s true for God then it’s true for us. That’s absolute truth.
November 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Term-switching.
Ba’al is “god,” and God is… same term.
You’re confusing general use of terms with technical/specific use of terms.
The Church has always seen Theopneustos in the sense that Paul uses it in a very different sense than what happened when God breathed into Adam and made him a living soul.
Who says I don’t?
I’m a charismatic; I not only believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but the perpetuity of the Gifts – including prophecy. But prophecy doesn’t begin to rise to the level of Scripture.
So as long as when you say, “his speech shares in the intrinsic qualities of human culture and history” you are referring to the latter, you’ll have no argument from me.
The second you apply that to the former, however…
…this is a hill I am very much prepared to die on.
Where? In the errant Bible you’re talking about? You know… come to think of it… I don’t think Paul was really speaking for God there – I mean, he sure wasn’t when he spoke of gender roles in the Church, now did he?
[Oh, no he didn’t! …oh, yes, he did! He did bring up another hot-button issue… silly conservative…]
Then my original point stands.
You have no real basis to believe anything – since that mere book you’re referring to can’t be trusted to not merely “contain” God’s Word, but actually be God’s Word.
November 2, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Mike (Newnham; obviously not talking to myself, there…)
We agree on more than we disagree on, I think… but regardless, you don’t realize how much of a blessing your post is to me.
Rock on…
November 2, 2007 at 3:36 pm
And Corby – you’re a blessing just because you’re you.
And because you get my Star Trek allusions.
November 2, 2007 at 4:28 pm
So Corby (or Mike or anyone): if you were talking with an unbeliever, would you try to poke holes in secular scientific understanding of things like the Big Bang and evolution? Or would you encourage the unbeliever to ignore the Genesis 1-11 topic for the time being and propose that s/he accept Christ by faith, presuming that by grace s/he would then come to recognize the truth of the Biblical narrative? Or something else?
November 2, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Good question, John.
For me (and since it’s my blog, and you’re reading it, I get to ascend briefly into the pulpit here), I don’t try to poke holes in secular scientific undrerstanding of anything – so long as the unbeliever sticks to actual science.
I also don’t encourage anybody to ignore anything in the Bible.
Instead, believing as I do that the Bible is God’s revelation to man, and that it isn’t just a human book (your homework assignment: look up the terms (1) verbal, (2) plenary, (3) confluent, and (4) perspicacity), I encourage the person to read it for himself – and I’d be happy to answer any questions along the way as I’m able.
What I’ve found is that every objection one can raise RE: the Bible can be answered.
For instance, you essentially bring up cosmology in your question. Whereas I am unapologetically a Recent Creationist, I also recognize that’s not the only interpretive option (remember that interpretation is a distinct, albeit equally important, consideration from inerrancy) – there’re Old-Earthers like Dr. Ross at Reasons To Believe who have pretty good (if ultimately, in my opinon, flawed) Biblical answers which harmonize with the standard cosmological model.
I also would point out (as you ably have over on your blog) that science is a constantly-evolving corpus; it is constantly in a state of flux, and can only arrive at truth by degrees of certainty that come short of absolute certainty. Often, in the history of science, what we thought we knew we later find out we didn’t really know.
By contrast, the Bible is what it is and says what it says, eternally, irrespective of the current cultural climate (unfortunately, as far as the {left wing of} the ECM is concerned).
So, in summary, my encouragement is to “read it.”
November 2, 2007 at 5:06 pm
ktismatics – I would do both. I would lay the groundwork concerning the scientific stuff that an old age and uniformitarian thinking were invented in the 1800s by those who didn’t want to believe the Bible. Experimental, observational science didn’t lead people to think that way, they literally wanted to do away with God and the Bible. Because they simply decided to ignore the Bible and not even try to interpret the evidence in light of it’s history, that presupposition has been passed down till today. Scientifically, a global, catastrophic flood makes far better sense of the rocks and fossils we see today than the uniformitarian view. That’s just one example.
Because the Bible’s account of creation and it’s early history make more sense of the evidence we see today, that would lend to it’s reliability. If it’s reliable then it’s message is true. People are sinners in need of a savior. That savior is Jesus. We can trust Him, we can trust His word. We can put our faith in it even with an incomplete understanding of all of the how’s.
Creationism is just one obstacle people have concerning the Bible. But, ultimately, belief is an act of faith. With time, diligent study, and the building of a personal, real relationship with God, those questions will be answered. I love it when people answer questions. The issue shouldn’t be whether or not it’s ok for people to ask questions. The issue is the fact that there are answers. Ask. Doubt. Challenge. But know that there are real, absolute answers.
November 2, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Thanks Mike and Corby.
As you say, Mike, “every objection one can raise RE: the Bible can be answered.” Yet, while someone might have an intuitive belief that God created the universe, it seems pretty unlikely (though not impossible) that someone would come to Christ via the creation narrative. Certainly that’s not what most Gospel preaching focuses on. Once you get to Genesis 1-11 and addressing objections, it’s probably more a matter of the potential convert overcoming a few last hurdles before making a commitment of faith that s/he’s already leaning toward. You mostly don’t want to think that faith means throwing away your reason and common sense on things like the creation and the flood. Having guys like you to talk to, who believe that the Bible story actually makes more sense than the scientific story, might tip the balance decisively.
As to those who don’t believe the Bible is inerrant but who say they have accepted Christ: do you regard that as authentic Christianity? I.e., how far down the slope does someone have to go before they fall off the mountain?
November 2, 2007 at 8:05 pm
“Authentic Christianity…” Hmmmm. If you mean to ask, “are they Christian,” in the sense of, “are they saved,” my answer would be, “quite possibly, though I have no idea how they’d know that.”
Salvation is by grace alone, not by inerrancy alone.
But I question by what criteria the errantist is basing his conviction of faith…
And more on this later, but I don’t mean to imply that Scripture is really at odds with actual science – rather, with the prevailinq scientific dogmatism of the current age.
November 2, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I think that you have made excellent points Mike.
How about the question…
How did Jesus view scripture?
November 3, 2007 at 1:20 am
ktismatics – Actually, many people do come to Christ because of the creation narrative, especially those who see it as a hindrance to believing in Jesus. When their questions or objections are answered, (a) many times their last stumbling block is removed and/or (b) they recognize God as their creator and decide to trust in Him.
I encourage people to investigate the evidence, both interpretations of the evidence. Most people have never heard the creationist interpretation of the evidence using the same observational science. When they see that it really does make better sense, their reason and common sense is strengthened.
As far as falling off the mountain goes, as Mike said, salvation is by grace through faith, not through inerrancy, young earth creationism. At the same time, there will be a consistency in what one believes if they believe they are saved by grace through faith. Believing that is beyond reason and common sense.
And, as Mike said, scripture isn’t at all at odds with science. It is at odds with the built-in presuppositions that really do lead to bad scientific conclusions. This is one of my favorite topics. Feel free to email me off list. I’d love to engage in a dialog if you have any questions about it.
November 3, 2007 at 4:12 am
I don’t think this is correct: ‘god’ and ‘God’ are not the same term, certainly not as you are using them, which is why you have a capital letter for the second term. ‘God’ in the context of your argument refers to a unique entity; ‘god’ refers to one possible entity among many.
A more accurate analogy would be: a book is man-made and a trumpet is man-made. ‘Man-made’ has the same meaning in both statements; you can’t argue that because the book is made from paper and the trumpet from metal that ‘man-made’ has a different meaning in each instance.
So no, it’s not term switching.
I find that a rather idiotic response to a serious point. Paul writes that the guarantee of their salvation is the experience of the Holy Spirit. I find that in my own life remarkably similar experiences give me an overriding sense that I belong to God, that he has made me his own for his purposes, and so I learn increasingly to trust the story that the historic community tells about itself.
You say that you have to have a 100% reliable text in order to be confident of salvation; Paul says you have to experience the Holy Spirit in order to be confident of salvation. The two of you are saying contradictory things, and, paradoxically perhaps, I trust Paul rather than you and the obsessive, Pharisaical fundamentalist tradition that has to have every single word lined up in its exact place before it will trust in the God who made heavens and earth.
Christian faith is about a relationship with the creator God in community through Jesus Christ. I trust that relationship, which is the experience of the Holy Spirit, inspiring worship, generating love, and teaching me from the scriptures.
November 3, 2007 at 4:15 am
Here’s an analogy. Let’s say you’re a steward on an airplane that I am boarding to fly from benighted Europe to Grand Rapids. You say to me: ‘Good morning, sir. Welcome aboard our perfect, inerrant and infallible plane. You are aware, I trust, that this aircraft is 100% reliable, absolutely flawless, nothing wrong with it at all?’
Now actually, this begins to make me a little nervous. What are you trying to hide? I wonder. Then as I get on the plane, I notice that one of the interior lights is flashing erratically. I point out to you that the light’s not working properly, and you say to me, ‘Oh, it’s meant to be like that. You don’t understand the issues involved. You simply don’t have enough information to properly understand how this plane works. Sure it looks faulty, but it’s not really, because somewhere in the manual (I can’t remember where just at the moment) it says that this is a perfect, inerrant and infallible plane. And surely, sir, you wouldn’t risk your life in it unless you believed that it was a perfect plane? In fact, if you don’t believe it, I’m not sure we can allow you on the plane. Let me check with the captain.’
While your back is turned, I slip past and make my way down the aisle towards my seat. I’m getting seriously nervous, but I remind myself that lots of other people have flown in the plane and they report that it’s OK, it’ll get you to your destination. So I’m thinking to myself no problem, I’ll make the journey, I haven’t found anyone else who flies to Grand Rapids from here. But I could really do without this guy pretending that everything’s perfect.
As I settle into my seat, I notice that my inflight entertainment screen is flickering. I call a flight attendant, a pretty girl with a winning smile, and point out the problem. She says, ‘I’m sorry about that, sir. It must be broken. I’ll find you another seat when the doors close.’ I breathe a sigh of relief.
November 3, 2007 at 11:50 am
Andrew – As I said earlier, the infallibility and inerrancy of scripture is presumed, it’s built into the scripture. It never tries to prove it, it never tries to make a case for it because it’s already there, just like the presupposition that God exists is there. I don’t understand how it is that you don’t see this. You say you trust Paul. Paul assumed inerrancy. He believed he was writing the very words of God. If you trust Him, as you say, then you must trust He was writing the very words of God. If he was not, then why believe it at all.
We get the message of God’s love and grace from His word. If His word can’t be trusted then the message can’t be trusted. If the message can’t be trusted then why put your faith in it or God? This is the problem with your plane illustration. Obviously planes are man made. The come from a factory operated by humans. The factory and the planes are designed by humans. Yes, God chose human vessels through which to deliver His word to the world. But it came from Him. He is the source. Proverbs tells us He holds His word above His name. The word of the Lord stands forever. If it is anything less than inerrant we have a problem. We then begin to pick and choose what we want. “I like the Jesus parts but not the sin parts.” Where does it end? And who decides?
November 3, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Yes. Paul write that. …and? If he’s writing his own opinion, SO WHAT?
EXACTLY!!! YOUR experience. Not sola scriptura, not even sola ecclesia, but solo mio. You, and your experience, become the arbiter of what is true or not.
No, you don’t.
If you did, you’d agree with inerrancy, since that’s what the historic community (in the main) believes and always has.
Again – you believe in the historic community only in so far as the historic community already agrees with you.
Again – Paul says that… where, exactly?
And how are you sure that what Paul was saying wasn’t just his own opinion?
False dichotomy.
You can’t trust Paul – because Paul is writing in an errant text. To trust Paul is simply to trust some dude’s best guess – why not believe in what Muhammad said? Why not believe in the Upanishads? Why not trust in the Book of Mormon – at least the LDS’s have the “burning in the bosom…” What you have is… well, what do you have, since you keep going back to a Bible (Paul’s writings you say you trust in) that you can’t trust in because it contains errors?
Answer: It’s not Paul you’re trusting in.
It’s your assent to what you hope Paul was saying, since his opinion (as you interpret it) happens to mesh with your own.
And you were term-switching. I wasn’t meaning the English words “god” and “God.” I was meaning the Hebrew. Both Ba’al and God are referred to by elohim in the Text. Yet the use of the word elohim is very different when applied to Ba’al and when applied to the Lord.
November 3, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Taking a morning stroll around the neighborhood I had a thought about this discussion that I’d like to run by you.
America is probably the most Christian nation in the world. Practically everyone believes in God, a large proportion go to church fairly regularly, most believe that the Bible is the word of God. Evangelical and charismatic churches are growing at a good clip. According to a Gallup poll from last year, half the adult American population believes that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.
Europe and Australia, though still nominally Christian, have more atheists (though still a distinct minority), much less church attendance, far fewer evangelicals, much greater belief in the slow evolution of man from apes. Some of the impetus and leadership behind the emerging movement come from England and Australia. Most of the postmodern philosophers the emerging people cite come from “post-Christian” Europe.
So, I could see how the conservative evangelical community in America would regard emerging theology as rolling over, as giving in to secularization, as a kind of Europeanization of Christianity. Emerging isn’t going to fix anything that’s broken — it’s part of what’s already broken, born of a compromising spirit. Instead of infusing Christianity with new life, it weakens that life. America is evidence that there’s no need to abandon inerrancy or a recent creation in order to sustain a vibrant Christian faith. Europe should follow the American evangelical example rather than vice versa. Toughen up doctrinally and the people will respond.
Not to get too political, but… it’s kind of like the international outcry against the American-led invasion of Iraq. The UN goes about its multilateral business of inspections and sanctions and diplomacy, but it only serves to encourage Saddam in his recalcitrance. Worldwide protest against the war stems from this same conciliatory spirit. Europeans have already grown accustomed to terrorism on their soil, and they’ve gotten afraid of provoking the terrorists. For America, one attack is enough: no conciliatory gestures, no diplomacy, no deals. Toughen up and stay the course.
Does any of that sound right?
November 3, 2007 at 1:37 pm
OK, Mike, Corby, so why isn’t the glaring contradiction between Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of Judas’ death evidence that the Bible is not 100% inerrant? And don’t give me that guff about not understanding it properly.
And what does Paul mean when he says that the Holy Spirit (not the scriptures!) is the guarantee of our salvation? How is the presence of the Spirit in the life of the believer not a matter of personal experience? And why can’t I claim to know that I am saved because I have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit? After all, to have the Spirit is to be saved – it is the concrete reality of being reconciled to God.
The personal experience of Cornelius and his household was evidence for Peter that they were saved and should be baptized. Personal experience is a very powerful and compelling thing. So why can’t I appeal to my personal experience of the Spirit as the necessary biblical guarantee of my salvation?
You foolish fundamentalists! Let me ask you this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of rationalist assent, or by hearing with faith?
Your argument for inerrancy as a prerequisite for salvation simply contradicts Paul. It’s an unnecessary and erroneous doctrine.
Nope, still not term-switching. Baal is ‘god’ and YHWH is ‘god’ are mutually exclusive statements; they can’t both be true. ‘Scripture is God-breathed’ and ‘humans are God-breathed’ are not mutually exclusive. Your argument still doesn’t hold. There is no reason why ‘God-breathed’ should have different semantic or epistemological implications with respect to scripture than it does with respect to humans.
November 3, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Or maybe, Corby, it never makes a case for it because it’s an unnecessary postulate. You can’t just say it’s presumed. How do you know that?
I don’t see it because what you say doesn’t make sense.
No, he didn’t. What evidence is there for that? He undoubtedly believed that at times he was directly communicating the word of the Lord to his readers. 1 Corinthians 7:10-12 rather suggests that he distinguished between what he was saying and what the Lord was saying. But even allowing for that, nothing in Paul suggests that he believed that his actual letters somehow transcended the normal limitations of human communication. He wrote what he believed to be true or useful, but he did not claim that the output was perfectly consistent and infallible.
If you trust Him, as you say, then you must trust He was writing the very words of God. If he was not, then why believe it at all.
This is the bit that really doesn’t work for me. I think, in the first place, it is a basic theological mistake to suppose that God’s word must come through to the written text in epistemologically privileged, perfect form. That might make good Mormon or Islamic doctrine, but to my understanding it distorts the nature of the relationship between God and his people. We are part of the communication process.
I also don’t get the all-or-nothing argument. Faith doesn’t need that sort of contrived certainty, and it wouldn’t be faith if it did. I don’t believe that everything that Josephus wrote in his Jewish War was correct, but I believe he gives a broadly reliable account of the events – enough to make use of it in, say, a commentary on the Gospels. Of course, the New Testament demands a very different type of trust from us, but I simply don’t share your fear that if it’s not 100% true it’s not worth believing. Your tradition has drummed that need into you, mine hasn’t.
You know the big issue for me is that insisting on a doctrine of inerrancy simply doesn’t solve the problem. It simply shifts it from scripture itself to an extra-biblical formulation. I still have to trust. You telling me that the Bible is inerrant doesn’t make it any more believable. In fact, given my cultural background, it makes it rather less believable, particularly when the best you can say is that it is assumed by scripture itself. To be honest, the Bible speaks to me much more powerfully as a historical document, soaked in the ordinary realities of human culture, than as a supra-historical sacred text that needs to be propped up with an external doctrine of inerrancy.
I still encounter the God who renewed creation in Abraham, who brought into existence a people for his own possession, who redeemed that people through the faithfulness of Jesus, who raised Jesus from the dead so that we might have newness of life, who poured out his Holy Spirit as a prophetic and transforming presence in the church, who asks that we stand for God-centred righteousness and justice in the world, who holds out the assurance that in the end Satan and death will not have the final say, who will make all things new.
I’m sure you’ll find something wrong with that, but that is my confession. Enough.
November 3, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Nothing wrong with it – you just have no real basis for believing it, since the Book that delivers this to us is riddled with errors. Your basis for faith is… nothing.
That’s what’s wrong, Andrew. Not your confession, but that your basis for belief is… your belief.
Where does it says that God renewed creation in Abraham?
Your answer: A flawed text.
Where does it say that He brought into existence a people for His own possession?
Your answer: A flawed text.
Where does it say that Jesus came, redeemed, died, rose again, and justifies?
Your answer: A flawed text.
In short: You have no real basis for faith.
At least, no real basis outside of yourself.
And again – you CANNOT retreat to the “belief of the historic community,” since that historic community believes in a perfect, inerrant Text.
All you can retreat to is, “I believe it because, well, darn it all, I believe it.”
Solo mio.
The epistemological basis of the (liberal wing of the) Emerging/Emergent Church.
November 3, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Guys, I’ll dive in here.
Here are 35 points I put together, mostly taken internally from the scriptures themselves, that reveal or imply the fact that the scripture is and must be inerrant:
1. All scripture is inspired by God: 2 Tim. 3:16-17
2. Paul personified scripture as God speaking: Gal. 3:8,22
3. The totality of what scripture records is a divine oracle: Rom. 3:2
4. Paul’s arguments in scripture can turn upon a single word: Gal. 3:16
5. To felix, Paul testified he believed in everything written in the law and prophets: Acts 24:14, Rom. 15:4
6. Nowhere does Paul dissent from any of the teachings of scripture, whether its history, doctrine, morals, or prophecies.
7. Scripture is the voice of the Spirit: Acts 4:25, Heb. 3:7; 10:15
8. Peter wrote that no scripture ever originated from man’s will: 2 Peter 1:20-21
9. The Spirit of Christ spoke through the prophets: 1 Pet. 1:11, as he did through Paul: 2 Peter 3:16
10. Jesus pronounced the indefectible authority of the Old Testament: Matt. 5:17-18, Luke 16:17
11. Jesus called scripture the word of God: Matt. 7:13
12. Jesus said that everything in scripture had to be fulfilled: Mk. 14:49
13. Jesus made the same claim for scripture as He did for His own words: Matt. 24:35, Jn. 7:17; 12:48-50
14. Jesus’ “arguments were clinched by a text, His foes were rebuked for not knowing scripture better, Satan himself was rebuffed by a simple appeal to the written word of God, His ministry was governed down to the smallest detail by what scripture predicted the Messiah would be and do. He refused to separate revelation from scripture, which He used plentifully, confidently and effectively,” Biblical Revelation: Clark Pinnock
15. Christ was never reluctant to criticize the views of His generation when they impeded the true knowledge of God, unlike the modern liberals who seek to interpret scripture in light of secular standards and norms.
16. Jesus rarely appealed to direct revelation for His teaching, He usually cites the scripture as His witness: Luke 4:21; 7:22, 17; 18:31
17. Jesus said God’s word cannot fail or be broken: Matt. 4:4; 5:18
18. God’s word is inerrant as originally given : Pr. 30:5-6
19. God’s word possesses authority: Isaiah 1:2
20. God’s word is efficacious and will not return void: Heb. 4:2, Isaiah 55:11
21. There is no “evidence Christ on any occasion belittled scripture or set it aside (as the Jews did with tradition), or criticized it, or opposed it (although at times He was free or interpretative with it), or operated as a higher critic of the Old Testament in any way, “ Biblical Revelation: Clark Pinnock
22. God’s word has clarity: Psalms 119:105
23. Everything that a believer needs to know about salvation and the Christian walk is contained therein: 2 Peter 1:3-4
24. Scripture contains enough to lead men to Christ and enough to ensure the doctrinal, spiritual and ethical welfare of the people of God: 2 Tim. 3:15, Luke 24:25-27
25. The scriptures proved sufficient for Christ and the apostles and they had no other authority
26. The scriptures thoroughly furnish the man of God for every good work: 2 Tim. 3:17.
27. “Nor is there any afflictive circumstance a good man can come into, but there is a promise in the word of God suitable to him,” Gill.
28. “For scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which as nothing useful and necessary to be known has been omitted, so nothing is taught but what is of importance to know,” Calvin
29. The Bible was written over 1500 years by 40 or more writers encompassed in numerous historical settings and cultures, men from numerous walks of life, dealing with every height and depth of emotion, facing situations which parallel any situations we may ever find ourselves, hence the Bible contains what we need to face any situation
30. Scripture doesn’t exhaust all possible or even all actual revelation: John 21:25
31. All scripture is not equally clear: 2 Peter 3:16. Yet obscure passages don’t affect the clarity of the essential doctrines of salvation. Scripture is essentially clear because it is God’s otherwise it would fail in its intention and not be sufficient. Because it is both we are commanded to read and obey it: John 5:39, Acts 17:11
32. Most Christians agree about at least 90% of the doctrines of scripture
“If authority fails, all the ancient controversies and heresies will reappear, all is permitted,” Biblical Revelation, Pinnock
33. “The spiritual vacuum in every church is partly due to a loss of biblical authority,” pg 12, Biblical Revelation, Pinnock
34. If one part of the Bible is untrue, can we trust any part of it?
35. The Bible strictly forbids adding or taking away from the word of God: Rev. 22:18, 19; Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Prov. 30:6
November 3, 2007 at 3:55 pm
livingjourney,
You asked what Jesus thought of scripture. I’m glad you asked. In addition to what I wrote above about how Jesus view the innerancy of scripture, consider this:
Jesus Himself believed that God’s word was inspired and infallible and thus spoke of a literal fall of man, a literal Adam and Eve, a literal personage of Satan, a literal Noah, a literal flood, a literal Jonah and that Jonah was literally eaten by a fish and then vomited out, a literal Elijah, a literal destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone by God, etc., etc. He believed that the scripture “cannot be broken” and that not “one jot or title” of the Law would ever pass away.
November 3, 2007 at 3:55 pm
One last thing here. The first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis have been questioned here, as well as whether or not the Bible’s creation accounts contradict scientific facts. I would like to challenge you readers (you know who you are) to do some inquiry on the great stuff that is coming out of late on the the prehistory chapters of Genesis. Chuck Missler’s CD commentary on Genesis is fantastic, for instance. I myself have been teaching those chapters and if anyone would like to check out my teaching on that book you can access it here:
http://www.calvarychapel.com/greenbay/genesis/gen.htm
Also, there is very intriguing 15 minute video that I uploaded to our church web site by an Christian astrophysisist named Russell Humphreys that describes using Einstein’s theories of Relativity how God might have created everything from nothing. I love the fact that he based his theoretical models upon what several scriptures tell us about this creation. You can watch that video here:
http://www.calvarychapel.com/greenbay/starlight_and_time.ram
God bless!
Jim
November 3, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Oh, and you keep bringing up Judas and stuff to try to bolster your claim that God can’t keep His story straight…
Andrew: You’re a very intelligent dude. Surely you aren’t intending to imply that you haven’t read somewhere some good stuff harmonizing the different (from perspective, not subject of in regards to actual facts) accounts… right?
I could reproduce/summarize them here (and I might, later), but for now…
Try…
(1) this article
(2) this article
(3) this PowerPoint presentation
(4) this article
(5) this article, and
(6) this article, from one of your Pharisaical fundamenta–hey!!! This is actually from a Catholic… huh… whodathunk?
…which brings up another point, Andrew. Attempting to cast the discussion in light of “highly educated intelligentsia who reject inerrancy because, let’s face it, that’s just silly” versus “them iggnit nukkle-draggin’ konsirvuhtivs/fundeeeeeeeeeementalists” doesn’t work.
Fundies aren’t the only ones who recognize the inerrancy of the Text, and you know that.
November 3, 2007 at 4:12 pm
BTW, I also want to comment on this:
…HUH???
Andrew… are you (again) doing what you accuse us conservatives of doing – not carefully reading what we actually say and simply reacting?
When – ever – did I say that inerrancy was a soteriological issue?
In fact, I believe that in answering John’s questions earlier, I’d made mention of the fact that you’re saved by grace alone, not inerrancy.
Sooooo… Andrew… where’d that come from…? [said in my best Dr. Cox voice]
My/our contention is not whether or not you’re saved – not my job to find that out, anyway.
My/our contention is that you have no basis whatsoever for trusting your salvation, since you can’t trust the Book that talks about the Messiah who gives you that salvation.
November 3, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I believe there is only one scripture that is written to the non-believer. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 4:17. We don’t need to read our mail through the eyes of a person that the letter is not meant for. Do you read letters from your wife, wondering what she is saying? Do you translate her words into greek and Hebrew to get a better understanding of her heart. Or are you looking for the errors so that you can find the loop holes to live a more self absorbed, sinful lifestyle? God wrote a love letter to his children, not for the heathen. I didn’t read the bible and then got saved, I responded to a rumor of this Jesus guy who could raise me from the dead, with minnimal understanding of God’s word. As I entered a relationship with Jesus THEN the Bible made sense to me.
How can we apply princple #2 to this portion of scripture?
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
1Cr 2:11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
1Cr 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
1Cr 2:13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
1Cr 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1Cr 2:15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
1Cr 2:16 For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
November 3, 2007 at 4:22 pm
John – interesting thought. I would allow that America’s political posturing (don’t get me started on our recent – and by “recent” I mean the last several decades – global adventurism) is an outgrowth of our prevailing cultural weltanschauung, which is directly informed by our spiritual underpinnings.
But keep in mind: America’s perspective is directly descended from Europe’s. Our spiritual heritage is heavily impacted by both the Reformation and the later Revivalism movements – which had their genesis in Europe, not here. That, and how, Europe has lost her way (theologically, culturally, politically, and – lets face it – in sports) makes for a fascinating, complex study to undertake.
But of course, being a theologically conservative Christian, I’m not in the least bit surprised by it, and I also believe it’s only a matter of time before America herself “rolls over,” too.
It has been forseen… [cue the Imperial March]
November 3, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Mike,
Admittedly, I haven’t read all of the comments, but I got through the first twenty or so.
I think you are a bit confused on your logic/philosophy. A position that is “self-rebutting,” by definition, is a position that asserts something and then defeats its own assertion. Proving this is difficult. For example, if I say, “The cat is on the mat,” the only way that my position can refute itself is if I assert the negation: “The cat is not on the mat.”
But Andrews position clearly does not do this. First, he posits the Bible as the standard and ground for truth. This, he says, is not the issue. What he suggests, next, (if I read him correctly) is that we proceed methodologically as though the Bible were not inerrant for purposes of seeing it from another perspective. His suggestion is simply to approach the Scriptures from a different angle. This might be similar to if I, having read through The Picture of Dorian Gray several times, decided to try reading it from a different perspective. Perhaps I read a thorough feminist critique and then proceed to read through Dorian Gray another time, but this time reading as though I were a feminist critic.
Clearly, Mike, this is an issue of literary methodology. This has nothing to do with being self-refuting or self-rebutting. The only way Andrew’s statement is self-refuting is if he actually refutes his own assertion. Say, for example, that he at some point asserts that the Bible is not the standard or ground for truth. But please note (and this is an important point): even if he encourages reading the Bible as though it were not truth for the purpose of reading from a different perspective, he has still not refuted himself. Again, this is an issue of methodology. One can read the Bible from a different perspective in order to understand a text in a new and different way, while all the while still believing that it is truth.
Hopefully this helps out with a bit of your philosophical confusions.
November 3, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Mike said:
The story of the Bible is irrelevant if it can’t be trusted.
How do you “trust” a story??? “Trust” seems to me to be a strange and odd choice to apply to story. For example, do I “trust” the story of the Hobbit??? I dunno. Seems like a strange thing to say.
And if it’s not inerrant, it’s errant.
Good point!
If it’s errant, it contains errors.
Depends upon who defines “error.”
If it contains errors, it cannot be trusted.
This is a bit misleading. For example, I have a very, very high degree of trust for my parents, as well as for my brothers and sisters. Also, I trust many of my friends. And all of this despite the fact that they contain errors, many errors, in fact.
So, I think common sense and common human experience rebuts your assertion here, Mike. Rather soundly, I might add.
The syllogism is complete and inescapable.
Hardly.
Your logic is based on faulty premises, but despite the fact that you are errant I still “trust” that you have good intentions!
November 3, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Erdman,
If you cannot trust all of the Bible (therefore it is errant), then who is to say what parts of the Bible you can and cannot trust? How do you know that you can trust any of it at that point? Who should decide this? Though there many today picking and choosing which parts of the Bible they want to believe or obey, doesn’t doing this imply that in a sense they are playing God? Isn’t this also what the Bible condemns of adding to and taking away from the word of God? According to the last chapter of the book of Revelation the person who does this will inherit all of the curses that are within the book…
November 3, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Why, thank you for that.
However, my logic isn’t based on faulty premises. Just premises you don’t happen to agree with. ;D
Andrew’s position is self-negating because he’s basing his views (including his salvation) on a book he really can’t, if he’s being consistent, trust.
Trusting my parents is a very different thing than trusting my God.
With my parents, I can (and have learned to) make provisions for their errancy; they are, after all, only human.
My God, on the other hand, makes no errors.
Unless He does, which means we have much, much bigger problems than whether or not we should read the Bible like it was Dorian Grey, Lord of the Flies, or The Complete Collection of Calvin and Hobbes.
Andrew’s position is self-rebutting (contrary assertions notwithstanding). After arguing for an errant Text, he then points to the testimony of that Text as the basis for his assurance for salvation. Which, when pushed to reconcile that, forces him to attempt to retreat to the “historical community” argument. But when that is shown to be a not-very-friendly position to take (as far as his position of rejecting inerrancy goes), he finally retreats to the real basis for his faith.
Which would be… ah… his faith.
Solo mio.
November 3, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Mike, the fact is that everybody picks and chooses. Just saying that “I believe in inerrancy” simply doesn’t make it so. In fact the logical position is self defeating, regardless of your presuppositions, and contra van Til, for the same problem exists even assuming that your presuppostions are the “right” ones.
Secondly, it’s dishonest to the text. You start out imposing a grid, an understanding, a prefilter, that the text now has to conform to. Anything in the text that refuses to toe your line has to be reinterpreted to make it fit…
Arguing that the text itself demands the straitjacket is rather silly, for it does not, it is rather our fear of uncertainty that drives us to sell our faith so short.
November 3, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Such as?
Think it through: If the Text is errant, then it is worthless, as far as trusting in its testimony for something as critical as where you’re going to be for eternity. Why not trust in the Book of Mormon, too? After all: they put a huge deal of stock in it (although, to be honest, they put a lot more stock in the Doctrine & Covenants and Pearl of Great Price than even in the Book of Mormon…)
Why not trust in the Upanishads? Seriously, why not?
Why not trust in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib…? Wouldn’t that book be better?
November 3, 2007 at 9:17 pm
JimB_CC,GB
November 3, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Andrew’s position […] posits the Bible as the standard and ground for truth.
Bu his angle in approaching the bible is to…
… proceed methodologically as though the Bible were not inerrant for purposes of seeing it from another perspective.
So, let me get this straight. He sees it as the standard for truth, yet he says we should read it as if it has strayed from the truth.
Why?
November 3, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Oh yeah and Mike…
Funny you should say that. Just today I was reading about Smith, and he came to the decision that all the different denominations were all wrong and he really wanted to know why. So, instead of going to scripture to find the answer of their apparent errors, he decided to go into deep prayer and ask for direct personal revelation. Needless to say after much experience the book of Mormon was written. He never used the bible as the standard or measuring tool to test all things against. He came to the conclusion after secluding himself and asking for direct revelation that Christianity had it wrong.
If the bible is errant then why would you use it? What would be your standard, and your measuring tool to test all things against?
November 4, 2007 at 3:42 am
[…] HUGE thread that about ‘Emergent – Post-Modern’ stuff. He wrote a post called ‘Perfect Example of Pomo Epistemology‘ where he sourced something from ‘Open Source […]
November 4, 2007 at 8:10 am
(My sincerest apologies to those with the same views.)
Wow very nice intellectual conversation you guys are having.
I’ve got only one question … um let me see now … are you guys Christians?
It seems to me that if your answer is yes than there is no need for this discussion!
Either you are a Christian and you believe in the inerrant Word of God or you don’t and thus you are not a Christian.
I must apologize because I feel like a toddler listing to a grownup conversation and therefore I only read like 1/4 of the posts (sorry!) also I could not bring myself to read further since you guys seem to be a bunch of atheists.
Atheists I call you for I lack the vocabulary to describe someone that calls himself a Christian yet live a not-so-Christian life. What does it exactly mean to be a Christian? I thought it meant that you are a follower of Christ and thus God! So it does not matter if the Bible is or is not inerrant since being a Christian means that we will be lead by the Spirit of the One True God!
“Stop me if I’m wrong!”
Furthermore since we are Christians we trust COMPLETELY in God.
Psalm 91:
1 “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty
2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare”
You disgrace God with your discussions! No wonder the atheists have so many things to say against us Christians, it is because we are all a bunch of HYPOCRITES!
Come on say it with me..H Y P O C R I T E S!
It seems to me this discussion (and other ones like it) was created to cover up the insecurities you have in your faith and thus in God.
This thread disgusts me! You should all be ashamed!
If you want to know how to read the bible why not take a peak at how the Jews do it. Since the Bible was originally written by Jews! Did Moses not write the Pentateuch? Was he not in the presence of God for 40+ years? If the complete truth of the Bible was revealed then I’d say you guys better be prepared since Judgement is on its way. The Light of the Word of God will be revealed at the coming of the Word.
If you are looking for another way to interpret the Bible why not try to read it as you would read the prophetic books and trust that God would lead you on the road to Him.
Once again if you call yourselves Christians then discussion over otherwise go find a different religion.
November 4, 2007 at 9:19 am
Let me see if I’ve got this straight so far. There’s a split among believers about whether the Bible is or is not inerrant. Those who believe that it IS inerrant also believe that if it WASN’T inerrant their faith would not longer have a firm foundation. If the Bible had errors it couldn’t be trusted; it becomes just another work of man, a compilation of men’s opinions. Without a reliable and objective scriptural testimony faith is reduced to subjective opinion and feeling. There would be no way to decide between Biblical Christianity and any other religion that purports to be true.
Those who believe that the Bible IS NOT inerrant say that it doesn’t really matter when it comes to validating their faith. The Scriptures are one source of assurance and revelation, along with the internal witness of God in one’s heart and the community of believers. Together these sources of testimony converge on an ultimate truth. This truth cannot be known with 100% certainty, but that’s not really a problem. All these sources together present a reliable human witness to God’s nature and grace which transcends human witness.
It’s not clear how people arrive at these contrasting beliefs. Do some believers assert inerrancy BECAUSE it’s necessary to have a completely reliable revelation on which to base their faith? Or do they achieve complete personal assurance BECAUSE of their belief in inerrancy? Conversely, do some believers reject inerrany BECAUSE they’ve discovered errors in the text and found that it didn’t matter to their faith? Or do they accept the possibility of Biblical error BECAUSE the combined testimony of Bible, subjective experience and community means that no one source is crucial on its own?
No one on this string has said something like this: I believe the Bible is inerrant, but it wouldn’t really matter even if it does contain errors. Nor this: I believe the Bible contains errors, but I am completely certain about the truths it contains. This isn’t a critique; just an observation: these are hypothetical cells in a grid of belief that remain unoccupied, or something like that.
November 4, 2007 at 9:33 am
All the beliefs about inerrancy and its importance expressed so far are internal disagreements among Christians (though JohnnyMnemonic begs to differ). Same God, same faith, in broad-brush terms the same belief in the divine inspiration and reliability of Scripture. The non-Christian falls outside this grid. If you don’t believe in the God to whom the Bible gives testimony, you have no a priori reason to believe that the Bible contains ANY truth about God, let alone inerrant truth. If you have neither an internal witness of the regenerating Holy Spirit nor an interpersonal witness of the community of believers to rely on, these other sources are unavailable to you as testimonies to the truths of Scripture. One might say that, when it comes to reading the Bible, the non-Christian occupies a whole different REALITY from the Christian.
Andrew’s “Principle 2” suggested that believers try reading the Bible “as if” it weren’t perfect testimony to a God they already have faith in, to read it the way unbelievers read it. In comment 65 Erdman reiterated this proposed “what if” idea, temporarily setting aside Christian presuppositions about the Bible as a way of gaining a different perspective on the text. So let’s say that unbelievers read the Bible as a human text, without recourse to divine testimony of its truthfulness provided either by the text, by the community, or by internal regeneration of the spirit. Do Christians derive any benefit from reading the Bible like a non-Christian? By visiting that alternate reality for awhile, are Christians likely to come away from the experience with any new insights about the text or their faith? Are they likely to learn anything valuable about the unbeliever by seeing through his eyes for awhile, by talking together about the text on the unbeliever’s terms?
As an unbeliever I can see advantages to this approach. On the other hand, I can also imagine arguments to the contrary. Maybe it’s better to present as clear a picture as possible of the Christian reality, then rely on the Holy Spirit to draw in those with ears who are being prepared to hear. Why take a walk on the dark side when you have to step into the light in order to see the truth? But this is just me speculating about what believers might think. On the other side, it must be acknowledged that the unbeliever does believe something: that the Bible isn’t true, that there is no such God, etc. The unbeliever also entertains hopes that maybe if the believers could step into this alternate unbeliever reality for awhile they’d start seeing things more clearly. So perhaps there is a danger. What sayest thou?
(I might cross-post some of this on OST where the discussion started. I don’t know if the OSTers are following along on this thread, but they’ve been pretty quiet over there.)
November 4, 2007 at 10:24 am
You’re right, Mike, sorry. What I meant was that you appeared to be making belief in inerrancy a prerequisite for any assurance of salvation. Correct me if I’m wrong. But then it still seems to me that this contradicts Paul’s insistence on the personal experience of the Spirit as the guarantee of one’s position in Christ.
I note, however, that the disgusted JohnnyMnemonic writes: ‘Either you are a Christian and you believe in the inerrant Word of God or you don’t and thus you are not a Christian.’ That seems to be saying what I mistakenly attributed to you. You can’t be saved unless you believe in the complete factual and theological inerrancy of the Bible.
I had a look at the attempts to harmonize the two accounts of Judas’ death. It might be interesting to examine them in detail some time, but on a cursory reading they are not really convincing. Luke still says that Judas acquired the field with the money and then died in it. Matthew says that the money was returned, and Judas’ death and the purchase of the field are presented as independent events. Even if we allow that the priests bought the field in Judas’ name, which seems highly improbable, we would have to suppose that Judas waited until the priests had bought the field in his name and then went and hanged himself in it. I suppose it’s just about possible, but it is not a story that is told by either Matthew or Luke, and it depends on too many conjectures to put a great deal of trust in it. You also have, of course, have the major problem of understanding how Matt. 27:9-10 fulfils a prophecy of Jeremiah, but that is another matter.
Mike, my intention is not to denigrate or undermine scripture. I will do my best to defend the integrity and truthfulness of scripture, but I believe it is better not to prejudge this by imposing a doctrine of inerrancy. The basic reason is that I think the Bible is far more interesting and persuasive when treated as a historical text. That was the intention behind principle 2.
By the way, can’t you do something about the Rottweiler?
November 4, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Nope; right there you’ve nailed it.
You are basically trusting in an inward, subjective witness of the Spirit as the basis for your assurance of salvation – i.e., how you know that you’re saved.
My point has been to help connect the dots with this critical, critical point:
(1) I’m not against that inward witness. Remember that you’re talking to a Charismatic, here; I “do” the whole Holy Ghost thing, get my Azusa Street freak on, pray in an unknown tongue, lay hands on the sick, take words of prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, etc., etc., very seriously. But that’s all subjective – my trust is not – cannot be based on the Holy Ghost tingles. Hindus have been known to practice glossolalia. Analogs of prophecy and words of wisdom/knowlege are common among indigenous religions. New Agers practice faith healing (of a sort). My subjective experience can only confirm my assurance – it cannot be the basis of it. Otherwise:
(2) why not become a Mormon? Or, more to the point, why is the Mormon wrong? I am of course assuming you agree that Mormonism lies waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside the pale of Scriptural orthodoxy. But your testimony of the inward assurance of the Holy Spirit sounds eerily similar to the Mormon’s assurance of the Holy Ghost – what they also call their “testimony.” So, since you’re both relying on a subjective, internal witness for your assurance, what’s the difference?
(3) You keep mentioning what Paul said… yet you can’t use that as the basis for your assurance… since he’s only a man and his words are therefore fallible – per your presuppositions. So instead of the inward subjective, unverifiable witness of the Spirit confirming the objective, verifiable testimony of inerrant Scripture, you use errant Scripture to confirm the inward witness.
Again: solo mio.
And with the Judas thing… your objections are still really little more than the natural consequence of your presupposition of errancy. The fact that very plausible solutions exist to the seeming problem of the “different” accounts does not – cannot (for you) – factor in; you’ve already decided the accounts can’t be reconciled. Whereas I come at the Text with the presuppostion that they don’t need to be “reconciled” – only understood. Contradictions are apparent only, and stem from a lack of further information.
(For instance, you state “Even if we allow that the priests bought the field in Judas’ name, which seems highly improbable, we would have to suppose that Judas waited until the priests had bought the field in his name and then went and hanged himself in it,” you’re thinking like a European. To the Hebraic mind, Judas – though he did not have anything direclty to do with buying the field – did buy it, since it was his money that was used. Much in the same way that Levi could be “in the loins of Abraham” when he met Melchizedek. No, Levi wasn’t – if you’re thinking like a European. Yes, Levi was – if you’re thinking like a Hebrew. “Problem” evaporates.)
But all that aside: Bottom-line, once you loose yourself from the moorings of an inerrant Text (which, again, the historic church has always believed in) you’re left with only one basis for your assurance – ah… you. Your “inward witness.” Which puts you in the exact same boat as the Mormon, or the Sikh as he experiences God through the hymns of Guru Nanak, or the animist who experiences the spiritual through his rituals and thus embraces a form of pantheism, or…
And as for the Rottweiler… sigh. Let’s just say I think I finally get a small little glimpse of what Mike Newnham gets to put up with over on The Blog Of Which We Do Not Speak.
November 4, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Lots of good stuff, Mike, but this still doesn’t make sense to me. My view is that scripture can be trustworthy without being inerrant. My trust is in the Lord, but that is a very uncertain experience: I’m not always sure what he’s saying to me, I’m not always sure how he’s guiding me through different situations. But that doesn’t make the faith less real or God less trustworthy. I’m happy – honestly – to trust in scripture as a historical document that in all probability shares in the limitations and failings of human communication. And I trust not least because the Spirit bears witness in my heart that I have become part of a historical community called by the creator to be his new creation in the midst of the nations and cultures of the earth.
As I said before, the argument simply doesn’t work. A Muslim, a Sikh, a Mormon – anyone can claim that their scriptures are absolutely inerrant. Their god can claim that their scriptures are absolutely inerrant. You simply move the problem from here to there. The doctrine is worthless.
So where’s your evidence for the presumption that the priests buying the field with the moeny Judas had returned was to the Hebraic mind synonymous with Judas buying the field with the money from the reward? And if it was Judas’ field, how come it became a public cemetery. It should have passed to Judas’ family. The fact that the land became a public cemetery strongly suggests that it was regarded as public money.
You know, the Dutch have tried growing square tomatoes by putting them in little boxes. They grow square (or I suppose cubic), but when you take them out of the box, they quickly become round again. There’s a lot of wisdom in that.
November 4, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Here’s the problem, Mike. The same thing applies to truth claims as it does to experience claims.
November 4, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Ah, but mine is independently verifiable. And when I examine the Word and the supposed “discrepancies,” I find that there aren’t any. Even the Judas thing which you want to believe is a discrepancy, there are good, solid explanations of the multiple (perspectives that simply give greater depth to the) accounts in question.
There is a ton of good, solid scholarship to support that. I don’t really think you’re prepared to call someone with an educational pedigree of the level of R. C. Sproul an intellectual slouch, are you? Tim Keller? Mark Dever…?
Yes, an appeal to authority; my point in bringing it up is to point out that the issue of inerrancy – unlike the issue of your “burning of the bosom” – has been very adequately examined, defined, and defended by far finer minds than mine – or even yours. The doctrine is independently verifiable – falsifiable, if you will – and so is not subjective. It’s not a “my god declared thus and so, so you’d better believe it” but instead, “it is so, and here are the proofs.”
If the Bible is inerrant (and it is), then there is an objective standard by which we can test our subjective claim to salvation.
If, however, the Bible is errant, we have no better basis for the claim of salvation than the Mormon or the Sikh.
Period.
Let’s pretend the Bible is errant for a second: Then we – neither of us – have any real reason to believe outside of our own internal, subjective experience – and thus our faith is blind – and thus, we’re in no different a place than the Mormon, Sikh, etc.
BTW – Sikhs don’t claim inerrancy for the Guru Granth; in fact, their view of inspiration sounds awfully similar to yours.
Also, Mormons don’t send people to their Scriptures for verification – they send them to the subjective realm of receiving the internal witness of the Holy Ghost. So again – you’re in the same boat as they are (and my arguments with them, BTW, sound very similar to the one I’m having here… odd…)
The doctrine of inerrancy isn’t “worthless.” It’s utterly indispensible.
November 4, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Andrew said – “As I said before, the argument simply doesn’t work. A Muslim, a Sikh, a Mormon – anyone can claim that their scriptures are absolutely inerrant. Their god can claim that their scriptures are absolutely inerrant. You simply move the problem from here to there. The doctrine is worthless.”
This is the root issue. You are right. Anyone can claim it, but they can’t all be inerrant. Only one of them can be, which means the rest are errant, which means they are wrong, which means it would be (sorry for not being PC) silly to believe them. It’s a multiple choice test where only one answer is right. Only one answer is inerrant. If all of the answers are errant then the test is, as you say, worthless. But the reality is that there is one correct answer.
As I was reading todays posts I was reminded of a song. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” If someone gets tricked into believing that they can’t trust the Bible, then what is their ultimate basis for believing that Jesus loves them? This is what is happening to our young people. 80+% of kids raised in Christian homes go to college and abandon their faith in Jesus and the Bible. The science profs “prove” that evolution is true, the history profs “prove” that the Bible’s history is wrong or it’s an unreliable text, these things contradict the Bible, the Bible is therefore untrustworthy, therefore what’s the point in believing?
Paul said in Romans 10:9 that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. Paul’s basis for making this statement is “according to the scriptures.” Paul went from town to town demonstrating from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. In Antioch, he and Barnabas spent a year there teaching many people the scriptures. They weren’t teaching it as a historical document or narrative, they were teaching it as the word of God that could be relied upon and trusted for there salvation and redemption because God’s word is perfect, complete, inerrant. In the Gospels, it’s always Jesus did thus and such “according to the scriptures.” Jesus said that not one jot or tittle shall pass away before all things be fulfilled.
Sounds pretty inerrant to me.
November 4, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Corby I agree completely with you.
Luk 24:27 And beginning from Moses, and from all the prophets, He explained to them the things about Himself in all the Scriptures.
And…
Act 17:2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,
Act 18:28 For he was powerfully refuting the Jews publicly, demonstrating by the Scriptures Jesus to be the Christ.
Act 8:35 And opening his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, Philip announced the gospel to him, Jesus.
November 4, 2007 at 10:00 pm
That is exactly right. Joseph Smith instead of going to the Scriptures to examine things he instead relied on subjective experience without testing anything that was revealed to him with a standard other than his own subjective experience. That’s how he came up with a completely different cult like religion.
November 4, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Merriam-Webster defines “mysticism” as:
1 : the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics
2 : the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (as intuition or insight)
3 a : vague speculation : a belief without sound basis
b : a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power
If you accept as true some spiritual concept because of your own personal experience then you are a mystic.
There are many examples I could use, but since we are on the subject, Joseph Smith is a perfect example of a mystic. He claimed to have had visions and wrote The Book Of Mormon based upon his own subjective experiences. He didn’t go to scripture to verify or judge the validity of his visions or writings and thus he is considered a mystic.
Andrew, tell me why we should not consider you to be not a genuine Christian but merely a mystic (albeit perhaps an EC mystic) ?
November 5, 2007 at 1:02 am
I think MikeMnemonic’s position has been refuted by mike macon, so let me just point out to Corby #83, that various other religions, including Islam, do claim a doctrine of inerrancy and unfortunately their followers also have grids in place for understanding their texts in such a way that no one will be able to convince the “true” believer that there may be an error here or there. In this sense, if you are going to start out with an assumption of inerrancy and then refuse to be swayed no matter what then there really is no qualitative difference.
I remember one friend who went to great lengths to prove that the Gadarene demoniac actually suffered from MPD and that therefore, in ancient cultures, could reasonably be thought of as both one or many…
It is not on such silliness that rests either the authority or the power of God’s Word, which is living and active – not just statically inerrant!
And Mike, our prayers are with you…
November 5, 2007 at 8:29 am
Andrew,
The problem with looking at the scripture as an unbeliever is that you are looking with unbelief, which is always condemned in the scripture. Jesus often required faith of people before He would ever heal them. In fact, in Rom. 14:23 we read, “and whatever is not from faith is sin.”
God requires the Christian to have eyes of faith not unbelief and this is because “faith is the conduit through which the Lord works in our lives.”
In Heb. 4:2 we read about some who even had God’s word preached to them however it didn’t profit them because they didn’t receive it in faith: “2 For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”
Likewise, in this world the saying is that “seeing is believing,” however in the spiritual realm this is opposite, “believing is seeing.”
Hebrews 11:3 tells us that it is by faith that we understand how that God created the world from nothing, “3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
Looking at the scripture from another perspective, that of unbelief or the unbeliever, simply means that you are going to miss out understanding God or His word.
November 5, 2007 at 10:34 am
The point I wanted to make was that this discussion was one between learned men and not between wise men. To be wise is to know God. You can not know God if you do not know yourself.
When you talk about the Bible I hear only people talking about the text and not the Essence contained within. If you actually had a deeper insight of your faith and religion you would have known that there is more to the Bible than just a literal translation. Also you can not expect someone who is already a believer to view the Bible from a non believers perspective, since the higher our understanding of the spiritual the more will be revealed to us.
It is like mathematics. When you were in grade 8 the maths done in grade 10 was completely foreign just as third years maths at varsity will be completely Greek to a first year student. The same way the Light of the Word is revealed to us.
The older and more experienced I get the more the Bible is renewed in my eyes. Renewed because scriptures I thought I understood gained new meaning and I gained new insight.
How can you have a discussion about the truthfulness of the Bible if you do not even now how to read it! When Jesus referred to the Bible did He speak of the New Testament or the Old Testament (or both)? The same goes for all of the New Testament. At the time of the New Testament the Bible was the Tanach! And at the beginning of the Old Testament it was the Torah or Pentateuch.
The Bible was written by Jews for the Jews of that time. It is with that in mind that the Bible should be read.
For the inerrancy part no one can actually conclusively give proof. The New Testament is basically a witness and not the Bible itself since in the time of the apostles the Bible was the Tanach.
Now you can argue that the writers of the New Testament were filled with the Holy Spirit and that means that everything that they said was led by the Spirit of God, now the Light of the Torah to which they contributed was their testimony of Christ our Lord (which is the vital part) and nothing else. Thus if there are discrepancies in the scripture of the New Testament then it simply was because of the observations (historical account) of different men.
So the question seems to be which part is considered as a historical account and which as the Light of the Word. Do discrepancies like the whole Judas thing, if they were true, really change anything?
Show me one place where the Essence, that is the Light of the Word, was in error! You need to get a clear picture of which Bible the scriptures are referring to.
(Those nice quotes out of the Bible some of you made I’m not saying whether it is true or not or whether it can only be applied to the Old Testament or the New (or both), but simply for the sake of arguing inerrancy quoting scripture from the New Testament hurts the case of those that are pro inerrancy.)
It’s the same with the whole Creationists-Evolutionist controversy. Does it really matter how God created the Universe!
Also except for being a historical account the bible gives very deep insights into the spiritual. Ask yourself this if God is eternity then God can not be defined but the word eternity, when attributed to God, forces some kind of definition but God is without definition. Indeed eternity is a word we use to describe some sense of the Character of the being called God. In the same way the Jewish religion have gone and with the help of God created a language which is divine in the sense that their whole alphabet was created as a language to explain the spiritual qualities.
How can we try to talk about something that is without definition? Simple we follow the example of our Forefathers. We are after all still in a sense Jewish but the difference between Christianity and Judaism is that we walk under the new Covenant of God.
You cannot attempt to understand God with logic since logic is confined in the finite. God lies within the paradox.
To quote Gallileo Gallilei:
“The Universe is a grand book which cannot be read until one first learns to comprehend the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics…”
“God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.”
November 5, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hmmm. Here’s a thought regarding “solo mio”. If other religions also claim inerrancy in their scriptures, why did you choose to believe in the Bible?
If it is because of the work of the Spirit in your life, then your choice is based on your experience, is it not?
If instead you chose to believe in the Bible soley by faith, then you have no reason to believe Christianity to be more true than, say, Islam. You might say that what you have experienced since this choice has confirmed the Bible as inerrant – but then, your reasoning is again based on your experience.
How is this not “solo mio” as opposed to what Andrew has described in his profession?
November 5, 2007 at 10:59 am
Peter – Inerrancy can be demonstrated very simply. One way would be to examine the claims of the writing against history or science. Hindu writing suggest that the earth rides atop a great turtle (or elephant?) as it travels. That is wrong. Muslim writing also make equally incorrect historical and scientific statements. The Bible makes no such erroneous claims. In fact, as time goes on, the various disciplines are catching up to what the Bible has said for some 6,000 years and they are the ones being corrected.
That’s why I chose the Bible. More accurately, I chose the Bible primarily because it was right about history before history happened. Detailed, specific prophecy coming true in detailed and specific ways. 100% accurate and there is more to come.
November 5, 2007 at 11:43 am
Just because one claims inerrancy obviously doesn’t make it so. 2+2=4. Thats testable. That’s provable. Any other answer is wrong. Put a different number in the equation and the answer is wrong. Put a different operator in the equation and the answer is wrong. Someone could jump up and down and scream all day that their answer is right, or that the right answer doesn’t have to be the right answer, that it can be the right answer without needing to claim to be the right answer.
In order to pass the test, the answer needs to be right. If someone wants to believe a different answer, there is no point in me trying to make them. If someone is looking for the correct answer, I can help them with that with certainty, supplying a confidence for their faith that exists outside of themselves.
Most of the time though, people being drawn to the Lord aren’t concerned about this issue, they are confused about what they have to do, how they earn God’s love, etc. So I address those things. But, at some point, their faith will be directly challenged because of a doubt that is brought up about God’s word. It really is a foundational issue. If I were to tell them that God’s word doesn’t need to be inerrant, that it’s a standard for truth that the historical community has believed in so you can too, then I might as well tell them that they could be a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. because they have a historical community of believers as well. They also have an inner subjective witness.
But when those waves and winds of doctrines come, what does Paul point people back to but the inerrant word of God. The Bereans were more noble because they tested Paul against the Old Testament. The word is the test for our basis for faith (basis being the key word). Again, no one should overlay the idea of inerrancy over the scriptures. That’s bass ackwards. The word demonstrates its own inerrancy. That’s what I mean by it’s built-in to it, that is presumed in it. It stands up to our tests of it.
November 5, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Thanks to Jim B_CC GB, who said this: “The problem with looking at the scripture as an unbeliever is that you are looking with unbelief, which is always condemned in the scripture.” The unbeliever looks at the Bible with unbelief. So is it agreed that it’s not a good idea for the Christian to make the effort of seeing with the unbeliever’s eyes in order to understand where he’s coming from? That the Christian should show the unbeliever the Scriptures as seen through a believer’s eyes, in hopes that the unbeliever’s eyes too will be opened?
November 5, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I, personally, have no problem with getting into someone else’s shoes for the purpose of seeing things from their perspective, so long as it’s for the purpose of bringing them into truth. I think it can be a good tool, but it ought not to be the primary method of Bible study and instruction.
God gave us His word with the intent that it be understood. The first thing we are supposed to do is get into the shoes of the people to which the original writing was addressed. How would they have understood it? How would they have applied it and reacted to it in their lives? From there we can try and bring it into other dynamics. Once I have a good grip on what Paul was trying to communicate to the Galatians at that time in that culture, I can transplant that to our time and culture, for believers and unbelievers.
Some parts of the Bible are addressed to non-believers. The Gospel of John for example. John 20:31 “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” Clearly John had people who did not believe in mind. Some parts are written to God’s people who are in open rebellion (parts of the prophets for example, some of the letters in Revelation). Most of it is written to those who already believe and committed their lives to God (the Law, the Epistles).
At the same time, Paul tells us that only people who have the Spirit of God in them can discern the spiritual things. That’s why the cross is foolishness to the world (and some EC teachers). It isn’t until the Spirit convicts people of sin, righteousness, and judgment that they are able to discern some of this stuff. If the unbeliever thinks to himself, “God is stupid. Would He sacrifice His kid? That’s a dumb plan.” I certainly don’t agree with that person. I take their presupposition, show them where it’s wrong, and tell them the truth of the matter.
Most unbelievers view of the Bible could be compared to the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” There is no right answer to the question because the presupposition is incorrect. I don’t beat my wife. I don’t have to try and answer it on their terms, but it does help to understand their point of view in order to correct it.
November 5, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Some interesting discussion. For those who may be interested, I have posted on the error of inerrancy here: http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2006/03/21/the-error-of-inerrancy/
November 5, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Corby you say,
…Paul tells us that only people who have the Spirit of God in them can discern the spiritual things. That’s why the cross is foolishness to the world (and some EC teachers).
That was what I was getting too waaaayyyy back in the beginning of this thread.
We should study and more importantly take instruction from the bible with the council of the Holy Spirit and with our new spiritual eyes and not with the spirit of this world or our human understanding.
And Paul appeals to the scripture first to explain this.
1Co 2:9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”–
1Co 2:10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
1Co 2:11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
1Co 2:12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
1Co 2:13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
1Co 2:14 But a natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
November 5, 2007 at 8:19 pm
ktismatic,
Thank you, and yes. So, lets build on that. The scripture itself teaches us that it is inspired by God (God breathed) and therefore inerrant (many verses about this are already documented in my very first post here). If it is the word of man then that’s another matter, but it claims to be the word of God, and God cannot lie or even change (He’s immutable), and therefore His word can be counted upon to be 100% true and accurate.
So, how should we apply this truth? If we happen to find a verse that appears to contradict what “the lake of truth” in the rest of scripture teaches (there are actually very few of these passages in scripture and none deal with any major or key doctrinal passages), then we know that this particular verse must have some sort of interpretation that you do not yet understand that causes it to align itself with the rest of the scripture. It can’t flow against “the lake of truth” in the scripture you see.
If we find some verses that we don’t really understand or know how to interpret then we must assume that there is an understanding or interpretation somewhere to be found, for God’s word is inspired and therefore inerrant.
JohnnyMnemonic, you need to realize that the New Testament is inspired by God just as the Old Testament. Jesus said of His own words: Luke 21:33, “33 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away,” and John 6:63, “63 “…the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Peter even wrote about Paul’s writings stating that they were “scripture” and thus inspired by God: 2 Peter 3:15-16, “15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
The capital “A” apostles (the 12, Paul being one of them of course) were given the calling and responsibility of receiving and dispensing the revelation of Jesus Christ to this world and therefore their writings are to be considered scripture and inspired by God.
The kind of looking that Corby mentions here is not what I was speaking about though. The kind of looking at the scripture like an unbeliever that I was speaking of occurs when we look at it like a higher critic, through eyes of unbelief as a doubter of God, expecting it to be unreliable and fallable. There is never an acceptable excuse for “unbelief.”
A little warning is in order for those who are distorting God’s inspired and inerrant word, look at 2 Peter 3:15-16 above again, through your unbelief you are distorting God’s word to your own destruction…
November 5, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Well I finally got through 97 posts so I guess I have something to say 🙂
If I may make a sweeping generalization (forgive the reductionism) I have come to the conclusion that the Emerging Church (at least Andrew’s wing) seem to look to unite the church in its practice. That is why inerrancy is not as big of an issue for them. Ultimately, inerrancy or errancy, if you practice the truth of the Bible that is what ultimately counts.
In the other corner, the rest of the evangelical church has been and continues to unite people by their doctrine. Partnerships are formed on a basis of shared confession. Certainly this is rooted in the belief that right doctrine will lead to right practice. Notice it is doctrine first (inerrancy) that must be established long before two groups can unite on practice.
This comparison has played out multiple times in this “conversation” on this blog post. Some want salvation to be based on the experience of the Spirit, others want it to be based on the inerrant Word of God. Unfortunately, this is yet another false dichotomy. Both must be present for salvation. No one can ascend to salvation through right practices alone. No one can ascend to salvation by right doctrine alone.
So the answer is ultimately…both! What is the point in believing inerrancy unless you practice what the inerrant word says! I agree with Andrew in that is pointless to talk about inerrancy without talking about what is actually commanded from the inerrant word. Inerrancy without experience = Hell. Inerrancy is a “useless doctrine” without practicing a Spirit-filled life. On the other hand, trying to prove what a Spirit-filled life is without having an inerrant Bible is always impossible. Ultimately, Andrew is right…if practice and experience is what you are after, then you don’t need in inerrancy. I believe Jesus was after both. To have right beliefs and right practice is what true Monotheistic Lordship (my cool word) is all about. Believing God’s word as perfect only matters because without inerrancy there will always be errant practices. Without belief that God’s word does offer perfect (maybe sufficient is a better word here) commands and practices leaves no guard rails for experience and practice. I am not saying we can understand how those perfect guard rails work, but that is the role of the Spirit…to guide us into truth. In conclusion, fight for inerrancy because without it practice is anyone’s best guess. But please, NEVER talk about inerrancy without acknowledging that it is an incomplete doctrine unless we include its purpose…experiencing God! God’s word is inerrant only because it is the only source for guiding people to becoming like Christ. It is not inerrant so we can sit back and smile while tossing out philosophical proofs that merely prove its inerrant while never talking about why God made it that way. Like the Israelites we should tremble that we know what God has spoken and lived to tell.
**As for Judas…come on. Its not the point of the text to prove exactly how Judas got the land…just that he died. To call that an “error” is assuming absolute knowledge on your part. You don’t have to like the harmonization theories but unless you can prove that one is right or wrong you really can’t say anything. I cannot prove whether or not the titanic hit an iceburg because it couldn’t see it or because the captain was drunk. Both could be true, but the fact is that it sank.
November 5, 2007 at 10:46 pm
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/2007/11/06/the-full-monty-of-discipleship/
Alan Hirsch just explained my thoughts a lot better 🙂
Probably why he has a book deal and I don’t
November 6, 2007 at 1:53 am
Thanks Corby, livingjourney and JimB_CC,GB for your thoughts on reading the Bible like an nonbeliever. Among believers the question is whether Scripture’s inerrancy serves as bedrock for subjective and community experiences of the faith, versus the three converging together on the truth. Consequently it’s usually a matter of questioning at great length and under duress the possibility that some individual bit of Scripture or tradition or practice should be revised or dropped.
For the nonbeliever none of the three converging strands is in place: no acceptance of the Bible’s authority or truth, no internal witness of the Spirit, no community of believers to reinforce the usual understanding of what’s right. If the believer were to meet the nonbeliever on his or her own turf, it might be necessary to build faith up from scratch rather than whittling away at the edges of a pre-existing faith. So, for example, someone might come to believe most of the core tenets of Christianity but find it difficult to overcome skepticism regarding Paul’s apparent acceptance of slavery or the 6-day creation or attributing various OT slaughters to God’s will. I think the non-inerrantists would be more willing to accept any number of asterisks and caveats in a new convert’s statement of faith. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is of course a matter of debate.
November 6, 2007 at 7:50 am
Ktismatics, you are a nonbeliever though you have studied the bible probably more than any of the others that have contributed to this thread so far. I believe that there certainly should be space within our belief to talk to you and to others that are agnostic, atheists, those of other religious persuasions or even those Christians with whom we don’t exactly see eye to eye on this or that doctrine – yes including even the doctrine of inerrancy.
I think it may make some of us feel quite uncomfortable, but then no one ever said that just ‘being human’ was the easiest thing in the world.
November 6, 2007 at 8:18 am
Well, Sam, I’d say I’ve studied the Bible more than most nonbelievers have, but I certainly haven’t looked carefully at the synoptic discrepancies and Biblical affirmations of scriptural authority that have been featured in this discussion. Whether Judas bought the field or not isn’t central to anyone’s understanding of Christianity. On the other hand, the Bible’s assertion of its own inerrancy doesn’t mean much either if I don’t believe many of its other assertions and can’t confirm them via other, more naturalistic truth tests I have at my disposal.
November 6, 2007 at 8:34 am
I’ve long been a member of various scholarly discussion forums and from what I have seen there it is relatively short work to “prove” an error, at least by normal standards of argumentation. But, if a participant has decided beforehand not to be convinced then no amount of proof or argumentation is going to work. In fact it may even endanger someone’s faith if they have to face the fact that the Bible contains even one error, and that is sad!
As Corby Stevens says above in #92 “In order to pass the test, the answer needs to be right.” and he also points out that this has little to do with whether, and how, a person can be drawn to Jesus.
So, “inerrancy or not” is largely an internal Christians-talking-to-Christians sort of issue that doesn’t even have much application in apologetics or in sharing the gospel with others.
November 6, 2007 at 8:52 am
Mattie J,
Thanks for your thoughtful and well written post, and the web article that you directed us to. I thought that I would agree with you as I read your post, but then when I went to the web article, I came away with some questions.
I had never seen the three intersecting circles of orthodoxy (belief in the inerrancy of scripture included here), orthopraxy (putting the truth to practice or what in the book of James is called being a doer of the word), and orthoproxy (having correct feelings?).
This last one is the one I am having a hard time identifying and accepting. Part of me thinks its important to do what we do in our life because this is our desire (thus our feelings are involved), however one of the things I believe is paramount to growing up in our spiritual faith is learning to distrust our feelings and learning to do God’s will even if we don’t feel it or feel like it.
Maybe I am not understanding this so if you could explain it to me I would appreciate it. Also, I don’t see any scriptural support for your views either in your notes here or in the article. Why do you and the author not feel a need to reference scriptural support for the things you believe and do, and only make vague illusions to scripture?
Its not our opinions, no matter how correct they may be, but the word of God that changes lives, resolves arguments, and gets to the core issues in people’s lives, and thus it is called the sword of the Spirit (a weapon God’s people need to learn how to skillfully wield):
Hebrews 4:12, “12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
November 6, 2007 at 1:32 pm
JimB_CC, I think I can calirify further. While we must learn to distrust our feelings and learn to do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it, the goal is ALWAYS to move us towards having the correct feelings for doing the will of God. Otherwise, it Christianity has no transforming power on our will and we are no different than any unbeliever. That is why the three sphere’s idea is so great. All three must be at work in order to grow deeper with God. When are feelings are not there, Orthodoxy is right there to bring us back in. When we have the Holy Spirit guiding our feelings and emotions, we will be able to practice the disciplines that draw us back to God.
As for the Scriptural support, we probably just have a slightly different view on the regulative principle (not surprising since I don’t know any two people who have the same view on it 🙂 ). I don’t think you can use Scripture to prove, say, Paul’s view of discipleship to a “T”…at least not easily. Paul certainly has an assumed method of discipling people, we all do, but unless someone questions him on it, he is not going to explain it. Therefore, I try to see instances that show forth how Paul uses what he knows to point back to how he knows what he knows. Confusing? Here’s my best attempt to explain it.
In Philemon 8, 9, and 10 Paul states the he could command (orthodoxy) Philemon to keep Onesimus (orthopraxy), but instead he appeals to his will (orthopathy) so that we will want to do what is both right theologically and practically. Again, I realize this might be a stretch for some, but as I said, no one questions Paul’s method of discipleship, so trying to explain it is hard to do within Scripture. But judging by this passage, Paul uses all three spheres in a way to motivate Philemon to become a better disciple. Paul appeals to these three spheres in just about every epistle.
Read Titus and watch how Paul appeals to people’s practices (suitable for good works), doctrine (teach what accords with sound doctrine), and will (remember how you were before Christ (3:2-3). Certainly, there will be overlap, the analogy in the article shows that) but ultimately, all three are involved.
Lastly, I think some of this doubles for Paul’s view of man. Mind (orthodoxy), body (orthopraxy) and soul (orthopathy). Does that help?
November 6, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Orthopraxy – sounds like a disease one would get on Star Trek.
November 6, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Corby,
I’m thinkin’ its more like what Orville Redenbacher would have if he were a chiropractor.
November 6, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Mattie J,
Thanks for the clarification. The Lord bless you, body, soul, spirit, mind, will, and heart!!!
November 7, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Jim – agreed. As a chiropractor his pops would be lighter and fluffier and more of them.
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