Notes Along the Way -- Asbury 2.1 What is inerrancy?

Mondays would normally be my day to put a plug through some general notes about my life. This would be a continuation of a post about a month ago about my first year at Asbury. Before that post should be some earlier material on my moving beyond the King James Version.
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What is inerrancy?
6. In college, I took a May term with Dr. Elliott on the Synoptic Gospels. Amusingly, I woke up to drive back to Central and sat down groggily in the morning for a bowl of cereal. As only I could do, as I bent forward to sit down, I poked my eye on a candle still wrapped in plastic.

I would have to wear an eye patch throughout the class. Rather than drive myself, my mother had to drive back with me to Central. It's hard to imagine her driving back to Lakeland by herself, but she must have. She would have been 60, just a smidge older than I am now.

I remember in that class Dr. Elliott posing the question of Matthew's interpretation of Hosea 11:1. I always thought he was a little mischievious, one of those types that feels no need to tell you what he is thinking. We looked first at Matthew 2:14-15, where Joseph takes Mary and the baby Jesus down to Egypt to escape Herod the Great. Matthew says that this fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my Son."

In those days, I had a lovely Thompson Chain Reference Bible, a gift from my parents at some point in high school. It had a chart I loved in the back that showed all the places where the Old Testament was fulfilled in the life of Jesus. You've probably heard the argument -- it's mathematically impossible that all these prophecies could be fulfilled in the life of one person by chance.

But I had never actually gone to look up those Old Testament passages. I assumed that, if I did, I would find fairly straightforward predictions. For example, in this case, I expected to find Hosea to say something like, "When the Messiah comes, he will go down to Egypt for a time. And then out of Egypt will I call my Son."

But when Dr. Elliott took us to Hosea 11:1, that's not what we found. Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction at all. It's God talking about even further in the past, back in the time of the exodus, at least five hundred years before Hosea. To my eyes, it didn't look like a prophecy at all.

To make matters worse, the "son" is Israel -- not the Messiah. And Hosea goes on to say that the more God called after his son, the more he went after other gods. That certainly wasn't about Jesus!

At the time of Dr. Elliott's class, I just smiled. I was secretly rather naively cocky at the time. I don't think I acted that way much in front of others. I just was quietly overconfident that there was no puzzle I couldn't figure out.

So when Dr. Elliott read Hosea, I smiled, confident that I could figure out what was really going on.

7. When it came time for the final paper for that class, I decided to take on the accounts of Peter's denials in the four Gospels. On the one hand, I didn't like Harold Lindsell's proposal in The Battle for the Bible. His suggestion was that Peter might have denied Jesus six times -- three before a first cock crowing and three before a second.

This seemed ridiculous to me. I wanted an answer that seemed likely, not contrived. I grew up expecting the evidence to demand a verdict, not expecting to have to come up with far fetched possibilities.

As I would later put it, his reconstruction was more different from all the Gospels than they were different from each other. To me, that would later suggest to me that his idea of how the Gospels must fit together was more important to him than the texts themselves. So it seems to me many harmonization efforts turn out to be.

So I confidently started my paper (at the last minute), believing somehow that I was smarter than all the countless eyes on the texts for the last 2000 years. Quite amazing, my naivete. 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke were fairly easy to fit together. At 4am, I got to John. I couldn't figure it out. I came up with something. But I wasn't satisfied. I figured I'd return to it later, some other time. After I got some sleep.

I was at a different place two years later. My confidence in the approach of my background had changed. I had learned a great deal about how to read the Bible in context. I had taken inductive Bible study. Its goal was to let the text tell me what it said and not to shove my own theology or ideology down its throat. That would be my undoing -- listening to the text.

8. Back to Matthew and Hosea. At the end of my first year of seminary -- given the criteria people like Lindsell had bequeathed me -- Matthew seemed to be in error. The choice they had given me was "Either Hosea had the meaning Matthew interprets or the Bible is in error."

But the original meaning of Hosea was clear. It wasn't a prediction about Jesus, at least not if taken literally. 

This set me into a crisis. Was this a test? Did God want me to believe something that looks like a lie? Did God want me to turn off my brain and believe on blind faith in something that sure didn't look to be true? Is that the way God works? Is he, as it were, a trickster?

If I might give you a spoiler alert, I would later conclude that Matthew was simply interpreting the text using Jewish interpretive methods of the day. That is, he largely wasn't interpreting Hosea in context -- and that's ok. [1]

In fact, in the end it wasn't too unlike the way my family and I interpreted the Bible growing up. We didn't really understand what it meant to read the Bible in context. We read its words in the light of our questions and our concerns, hoping that the Spirit was guiding our thoughts. We hoped we would hear a word from the Lord, that the Lord would "quicken" the text. We wanted the Spirit to zap us.

In a not-too-dissimilar way, we believe that Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, read Hosea in a "spiritual" way, hearing a meaning that went far beyond anything Hosea imagined. 

The problem was not with the Bible. The Bible was not "in error." Rather, that chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference was misleading. It was Lindsell who was in error for what he insisted the Bible must do. 

He was a modernist. This is a rather fascinating thing. The critical scholarship of the late 1800s and early 1900s said, "Matthew doesn't understand Hosea. He's wrong (and not too bright)." Fundamentalists disagreed but accepted the modernist criterion for error. They responded, "Matthew did too understand. He's right and inspired."

But the correct answer was that Matthew was reading Hosea in a more-than-literal way. It didn't matter that he wasn't reading Hosea exactly in context. That's not a sign of error or a lack of intelligence. It's just a different hermeneutic, an ancient Jewish one.

To be continued

[1] I say largely because Matthew arguably does find an implicit parallel between Jesus coming out of Egypt and Moses leading Israel out of Egypt. He does not completely ignore context. 

Inspiration, Infallibility, and Inerrancy

1. Anna Gaiser asked me how I defined words like inspiration and inerrancy. [1] I have sometimes called these "power words" because they have been very important words to say in certain faith communities over the years. A more cynical person might call them "shibboleths" based in Judges 12. Those among Gideon's troops who were not able to say this word properly were killed as the enemy. In that regard, sometimes it has been less important what you mean by those words as to whether you could say them.

I had a professor in seminary who said being able to say the Bible was inerrant was important for him to be hired. Given the way he thought the word was defined, he told his interview committee that he couldn't in good conscience confess it. The response was, "What if we define it in this way..." The person then went on to give a different way of defining it. The candidate said, "Well, if you define it that way I can say it." They were satisfied and he taught there his whole teaching career.

There were great wars over these things in the seventies in evangelical circles. One thing I have noted is that I do not believe that these battles brought anyone to Christ. I would more guess the opposite. I have not found that one's spirituality or depth of faith maps to one's position. Those with a more "restrictive" view (notice I didn't say "higher" view) do not strike me as being more Christ-like than those with a more complicated view, nor do they strike me as more faithful to God.

When I was at Asbury Seminary, then president David McKenna told the faculty that Asbury simply wouldn't get into those debates, and I think rightly so. People like to argue. People like to define boundaries so they can say who is in and out. These debates don't really bring anyone closer to God. They represent a "bounded set" mentality rather than a "centered-set" one. I'm told that for a while there it seemed like the main item on the Evangelical Theological Society's agenda was to decide who they would try to kick out each year.

A key mistake in these debates is thinking that spirituality or salvation is primarily a matter of belief and the mind. This is neither biblical nor informed. The Bible repeatedly indicates that it is the orientation of one's heart that is the basis for one's virtue and relationship with God. David was not a man after God's own mind. It is not out of the mind that murder proceeds. Sound doctrine is not a fruit of the Spirit. Renewing of the mind in Romans 12 is primarily about our dispositions, as is seen in Romans 12-15.

What's more is that this sort of cognitive approach doesn't fit reality. People act from a deeper place than their intellect. In fact their intellect is usually just a puppet of deeper desires. Nor does intellect correlate with virtue. Don't get me wrong, I love intellect. I love learning. I love the life of the mind. I love ideas. But this is not where virtue or faith lies.

2. Well, I didn't plan on that preface. This was going to be a quick set of definitions. Here goes.

Inspiration evokes the image of breathing. God "breathed" the biblical text. And of course God continues to breathe through the biblical text.

The key verse here is 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is beneficial for teaching, for correction, for redirection, for training in righteousness."

However, this verse has been used to say things it doesn't say. Paul of course did not always feel God's breath in the literal meaning of the Old Testament texts. This verse thus can't be used to police a literal interpretation of biblical passages, for example.

Since the books of the Bible have different literary styles, inspiration probably doesn't mean that the minds of the biblical authors went blank and that we are getting a divine writing style. Even those who hold to a "dictation" view of inspiration usually accept that the personalities and styles of individual authors were involved.

And they could use sources. Inspiration doesn't mean that Mark couldn't have been a source for Matthew and Luke. After all, the book of Joshua tells us it used the book of Jashar as a source.

Another verse often connected to inspiration is in 2 Peter 1:20-21 -- "No prophecy of Scripture comes into existence by one's own unloosing, for prophecy was not brought at some time by the will of a person but, being brought by the Holy Spirit, people spoke from God."

So when Amos spoke to the people at market in the northern kingdom, he was speaking for God. It does get complicated when the New Testament authors hear meanings that a prophet like Isaiah would not have understood--"fuller senses" of the same words (sensus plenior). Many of the words the New Testament applies to Christ are such spiritual readings that go beyond what the original speaker understood.

And of course Amos spoke oral oracles. Likely someone else put his words into a book form. Then that book form was passed down and translated. There were likely multiple, slightly different versions of Old Testament passages in circulation in the centuries before Christ.

All that is to say that it gets messy when you get into the details. God breathed words through prophets and priests and scribes. God breathed new meanings through those same words to various New Testament authors. God breathes through Scripture to people doing lectio divina today.

Yes, Scripture was, is, and will be inspired.

The hermeneutical dimension that may not be foreseen by everyone is that words take on their precise meanings in a specific context. Accordingly, the same words can mean significantly different things to different people. The meaning of the words of the Bible can change in the eyes of the reader. This is both a tool the Holy Spirit uses to keep Scripture a living word and also a reason why there is so much disagreement over what the Bible actually means. It had a first "breathed" meaning. It has arguably had many other "breathed" meanings since.

3. Scripture is authoritative. Authority implies that a posture of submission is implied. Submission pertains especially to commands and instruction. One can have a reverence for things that aren't commands, but of course we are not called to worship the Bible.

With regard to obedience, I must first make sure that I am understanding the nature of biblical instruction appropriately. After all, I am not the direct Y-O-U of any passage in the Bible. The Old Testament was written to ancient Israel, and I personally am not even Jewish. The New Testament says it was written to Romans, Thessalonians, Corinthians, seven churches in Asia Minor. None of those are me.

2 Thessalonians 2:5 captures this truth well--"Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" Obviously he was not talking to me or anyone alive today.

So I must process the instruction of Scripture with a view to who its original audience was and how that instruction connects to me and us as a whole today. This is simply the hermeneutical situation. It may mean that God expects more restrictive behavior for us today (for example, I am not supposed to be polygamous like Abraham). In other cases it may imply less restriction (for example, a woman can have short hair today).

The process of discerning the way the authority of Scripture plays out for me/us can be complicated. For one, there is instruction in the Old Testament that the New Testament appropriates differently (e.g., eating pork). There are commands that were culture-specific (e.g., we should not start up slavery again). There were commands that were situation-specific (God probably doesn't expect everyone to sell all they have and give to the poor).

There is a lot of discernment involved in figuring out what God instructs us today. It is best done in a community of faith where you "work out y'alls salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12). We take into account the flow of revelation in the Bible, since the understanding of some things becomes more precise as we move through its pages (e.g., on Satan, on the afterlife, on individual culpability...). We take into account what the kingdom of God will be like (e.g., there will be no subordination of wives to husbands in the kingdom). We take into account the character of God (which keeps us from using Scripture as a weapon in the manner of the biblical Pharisees).

Yes, the Bible is authoritative for believers.

The hermeneutical complication is the realization that the Bible was written to ancient audiences and that the meaning both of the words and the significance of the instruction was a function of what words and actions meant in those contexts. Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it doesn't mean the same thing.

4. Scripture is infallible. That is to say, Scripture never fails to accomplish what God wants it to accomplish. The key verse here is Isaiah 55:11 -- "My word will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I intent and succeed in the purpose for which I sent it."

Of course "word" here is not limited to Scripture. In context this verse is referring as much to God's command, his will, as to any written word. Here is an example of the principle mentioned above, namely, that we tend to define the words of the Bible from our "dictionaries" rather than read them for what they actually meant originally.

The word infallible was anathema in some circles in the culture wars of the 70s. It was viewed as a second rate view of Scripture. The reason was that people used it to say that the Bible was only expected to be correct in matters of faith and practice, not in matters like history or science.

Such an approach seems to miss the point made above that all the language of Scripture was "incarnated" in the flesh of the categories of those to whom it was first written. Otherwise they wouldn't have understood it. The Bible operates with a geocentric view of the universe. Why wouldn't it? So the way matters of faith and practice are presented came in the language and paradigms of the original audiences.

Kevin Vanhoozer has suggested a much more profound and appropriate way to approach the notion of infallibility. First, there was a profoundly puzzling sense of some previous thinkers that the purpose of language was merely informative. This perspective is so wide of the obvious diverse uses of language it is dumbfounding. A work like J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words now seems so basic as to boggle the mind that anyone would even question its basic premise.

That premise is that words do things. Yes, they can inform. But they also promise, command, reassure, express emotion, etc. When you say, "I do" at a wedding, you are doing something much more than informing your spouse of your belief!

So God had and has many purposes with Scripture. God makes promises (which, by the way, are often conditional on our response). God makes commands (but he gives us the freedom to disobey). The psalms express praise, thanksgiving, anger, lament. It's not that we cannot learn things from the psalms, but this is not their primary purpose. It makes little sense to say that the purpose of God in Psalm 137:9 is to inform the Babylonians or Jews of something!

Scripture does not fail to accomplish God's purposes for it.

What is hermeneutically profound is to realize how varying these purposes are. Words do far more than merely inform.

5. Finally, Scripture is inerrant. In the words of one seminary, "It is without error in all that it affirms."

In the light of what it means for Scripture to be infallible, we can now put this more precisely, following Kevin Vanhoozer. When the purpose of Scripture is to convey information, that information is without error.

There are three important considerations here. The first is simply to reiterate what we said about infallibility. Not every word of Scripture is meant to affirm something. For example, Psalm 137:9 is not informing or commanding the Jews to kill Babylonian babies. Its function is expressive, expressing a combination of despair and anger. The word inerrant is a mismatch to this verse. To use it of this verse is to miss the point of the verse.

A second consideration is that a biblical point sometimes comes in ancient clothing. When Paul says he visited the third heaven, his point is not cosmological. He is saying that he was in the very presence of God. He is not making a point about the structure of the universe, as if the universe was simply a matter of going up through two layers of sky until you reached God in the highest sky.

Discerning the point can be a slippery thing, which is why again the Bible is best appropriated in communities of faith. One can say, "That isn't the point" to try to get away with things you shouldn't be able to justify. But the potential abuse of a truth does not negate the truth. The literal understanding of Genesis 1 is not necessarily the picture some are going for. Genesis 1 seems to picture the stars in a dome with the waters that came down in the Flood above it.

Genre also comes into play here. You would not fault a parable for not being historical. A parable is "fictional" in genre. So we must consider the parameters of ancient history when we interpret biblical histories. If in fact it should turn out that Esther or Job were meant to be read as novellas, that would not be in any way a statement that they were untrue.

Here is an important point. These modern shibboleths were probably in part meant to restrain interpretations of the Bible. The idea was, "If we force a person to say Genesis 1 is inerrant, then we can stop belief in evolution." But the shibboleths really don't pull it off. If you are saying some aspect of the biblical text was a matter of the intended genre, you are not accusing that text of an error. You are implying that the interpretation of the person who disagrees with you is in error, not the Bible.

A third consideration involves locating an individual passage within the flow of revelation. The idea of God sending an evil spirit on Saul is a less precise sense of temptation than 1 Chronicles 21:1's sense that it was more precisely Satan that tempted David or James 1:13 sense that God doesn't tempt people to do evil. We should never apply a verse directly to ourselves today without first locating it within the whole counsel of God in Scripture.

The Bible is without error in all that it affirms.

Now, let us pray and work together to discern what it affirms and how God would have us appropriate it in our contexts today as communities of faith.

[1] See my earlier post on Wesleyans and inerrancy.

11.4 Scripture as Revelation 2

Previously in this chapter:

• 11.1-3 Overview, Natural Revelation, and the Word

11.4 Scripture as Revelation
11.4.1 God-breathed

• 2 Timothy 3:16 - "All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for instruction, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness."
• Note that the NT did not always find this God breathing in the literal meaning of OT passages (cf. Matt. 2:15 and Hos. 11:1-2). In Galatians 4:24 finds God breathing through Genesis by way of allegory.
• Also note that 2 Timothy would have referred to the Old Testament, since the New Testament was not yet collected at that time.
• 2 Peter 1:20-21 - "No prophecy comes into existence of one's own loosing, for prophecy was not brought by the will of a mortal but, being brought by the Holy Spirit, people spoke from God."
• 2 Peter is particularly concerned with its audience's belief in prophecies relating to Jesus and his second coming (2 Pet. 3). That is to say, it is not only the Scriptures but the prophecies of prophets in the early church that are likely in view. He is assuring them that prophecy is not a matter of opinion but comes from the Holy Spirit.
• In short, special revelation is much bigger than the Bible itself. The Bible is a subset of special revelation in general.
• 1 Peter 1:10-12 - Contextual study makes it clear that most of the words of the prophets were about the time of the prophets, although there are some ambiguous texts (e.g., Isaiah 53). An incarnational sense of revelation suggests that 1 Peter's understanding of revelation is itself incarnated revelation.
• So a "translation" of 1 Peter 1:10-12 might go like the following: "The Holy Spirit inspired the early Christians to see anticipations of Jesus' sufferings in the Scriptures. God thus planted such potential meanings into the words of the prophets, although the prophets themselves probably only saw the first meanings to their audiences rather than these "fuller senses."

11.4.2 Infallible

• Isaiah 55:11 - "My word will not return to myself empty but accomplishes everything it sets out to do."
• Again, this statement is in no way limited to the books of the Old Testament that were in use at the time of writing. The point is that God's will--here personified as his word--is unfailing. Scripture reveals to us a subset of his overall will. 
• What is God's will in Scripture (cf. Vanhoozer)? Sometimes it is to give its audiences and us commands (in this respect it is authoritative). Sometimes it is to give us promises and anticipations of what is to come (in this respect it is unfailing). Sometimes its purposes were to express the joy, anger, sadness, and feelings of God's people (e.g., in the imprecatory psalms, psalms of lament, thanksgiving psalms, etc). Sometimes its purpose was to inform (in this regard it was inerrant within the level of precision that accorded with God's will).

11.4.3 Authoritative

• All of God's commands are summed up in the Great Commandment: Love God and Love neighbor (see section on Christian ethics). Matthew 22:34-40
• The authority of Scripture relates specifically to its commands upon us. All of these are filtered through the love command. As the ethics section sets out, this is an authority of the whole of Scripture rather than a direct authority of its individual parts.

11.4.4 Means of Transformation

• The Bible has often been treated as a source of information or beliefs, but this is its most elementary function, not its deepest one.
• We know this because "God looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7) and spiritual identity is a function of the heart more than the head (Mark 7:20-23).
• The inspired instruction of 2 Timothy 3:16 has to do with the discipleship of the person, not the mere informing of the mind--correction, training in righteousness.
• The Bible thus uses Scripture to change people--to bring them into relationship with him, to mold them into Christ-likeness, to make them more loving. 
• The Bible is thus at its heart a sacrament of transformation.

11.4.5 Synthesis

• There were original moments of inspiration--the individual books of the Bible were inspired to speak to their original contexts largely within the conceptual frameworks of their original audiences. 
• We do not hereby preclude the possibility of stages in the generation of these books. As Christians, we focus on the canonical form of these texts but don't preclude the possibility of inspiration in relation to "pre-forms" of the canonical text.
• Over the course of the testaments, we can plot an overall, increasing precision in the revelation. In general, the New Testament conceptualizes revelation more precisely than the Old Testament. This dynamic is sometimes called "progressive revelation."
• The Holy Spirit continues to inspire individuals as they read Scripture, never in contradiction of God's revealed character, but to "improvise" for specific contexts (which is essential for the appropriation of Scripture to specific circumstances). We find this dynamic in the sensus plenior of the New Testament use of the old.
• The final revelation, the "last Word" (cf. N. T. Wright) was Christ. All the rest is anticipation, witness to, and unfolding of the witness.

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel
Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ
Chapter 6: Salvation
Chapter 7: The Holy Spirit
Chapter 8: The Church
Chapter 9: Eschatology
Chapter 10: Christian Ethics

SA8. The Bible is inspired, infallible, and inerrant.

This is the eighth post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
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The Bible is inspired, infallible, and inerrant.

1. In the previous article we discussed some of the variations among Christians with regard to their conceptions of the Bible and some of the terms currently used to describe the Bible. That article focused especially on some possible missteps and extremes in relation to those terms and conceptions. In this article, we want to lay out a more coherent way of thinking about those terms in relation to the Bible.

2. When a person thinks of meaning as static and as something that inheres "in" a text, it is natural to think it sufficent to say that, "the Bible is inspired" as a sufficient encapsulation of its origins in God. But since a text is subject to multiple interpretations, we must ask "which interpretation" of the Bible is the inspired one.

It had an original meaning, so we can say that the original meaning was inspired. We might go further to say that the Holy Spirit continues to inspire meanings in dialog with the text as individuals read with the eyes of the Spirit. The first centuries of Christendom also developed traditional readings of certain key texts, and certain Christian traditions also have traditional readings of certain key texts.

Not all of these readings are or were inspired, but perhaps many are. When we say that the original meanings were inspired, we must mean that they were inspired within their original contexts, because meaning is always contextual. These books were inspired to speak to a certain time and place within whatever their original parameters were. At times those meanings were situational or for a particular time. At other times something more universal was meant

What was God thinking as far as "all time"? Even more, what was God thinking for my time and context? This is where we must often work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). [1] Many want certainty and absolute clarity, but this is the road to making the Bible into an idol. Surely we might consider many of the common Christian understandings of key verses to be inspired understandings (creation out of nothing, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity).

Meanwhile, the interpretations of some traditions may be God speaking to those traditions, giving them an emphasis for a particular place and time. And some of the meanings I as an individual see could be God speaking to me. The problem of course is telling when God is speaking and when he is not. Any meaning we see that falls outside the law of love or rule of faith is immediately to be ruled out. And there is good reason for us to read the Bible in community so that the Spirit can correct us if we are on the wrong track. [2]

3. God's word never fails. It is infallible, unfailing. God's word does many different things. It commands. It promises. It informs. Sometimes it gives us an opportunity to express our anger, sadness, or thanksgiving.

God's word, as we have said, is bigger than written words. The words of the Bible give us the most important of God's words for his creation, the final Word of which is Jesus Christ (John 1:14). God's words are, in the first place, his will in action, his commands to the creation, the instruments through which he acts in the world. [3] They include words of hope and words of truth.

4. When God's word commands us to do something, that word is authoritative. When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we are most naturally referring to those words in Scripture through which God gives us his commands. It is not the purpose of every passage to give commands, and some of God's commands were for specific times and places. When God speaks a command to us, his command holds absolute authority over us. [4]

Much of Scripture is narrative. It describes things. Sometimes the narratives of Scripture do imply God's will. [5] In other cases they describe events that happened. Description is not prescription. Just because Gideon used a fleece to find God's will does not necessarily mean that we should.

The commands of God to Israel were commands of God to Israel. The New Testament tells us that Gentile believers are not bound by circumcision (Gal. 5:2-4), the food laws (Mark 7:19), or the Sabbath law of Israel (Col. 2:16). There is a drive among some to find some universal principle behind these commands to apply still to today and perhaps we can find some, but this drive is more our obsession than God's. Paul feels no need to find some universal principle behind the law regarding the Jewish Sabbath or Jesus behind the food laws.

Some commands in Scripture had to do with the context or situation in which it was commanded. Do women today need to have authority on their heads because of the angels (1 Cor. 11:10)? Do we need to be careful about wearing clothing of mixed thread (Lev. 19:19)? We have difficulty even understanding the original purpose of these instructions. To require them today would simply be to follow a rule for its own sake with little sense of purpose. Most likely, these commands had everything to do with their original cultural contexts.

So while God's commands hold absolute authority over us, the Church must work out salvation with fear and trembling. God said it to them and that settled it for them. But we need the Spirit and the Church to wrestle with how to apply some commands to today.

5. Some of God's purpose in Scripture is to give us hope. He has made promises to us, promises to come again. Promises to save us from judgment, from Satan, and from the world. He has promised us his love and his justice within the context of his love.

Some of his promises in Scripture were conditional. He sent Jonah to preach coming judgment on Nineveh, but that promise was not absolute. There was the possibility of forgiveness and repentance. In the same way he has promised the world judgment, but he has given us a way out.

In the same way, his promises to Israel at any one time were contingent on their obedience. His election of Israel is "without repentance" (Rom. 11:29), but it is contingent on their obedience. So God's promises are unfailing, infallible, but some of them are conditional.

6. When God's word tells us truths, those truths are inerrant. As we mentioned in the previous post, many American Christians in the twentieth century were preoccupied with the Bible as a source of propositional truths. There was not a little cultural blindness here, for the unexamined assumption here is that the Bible is mostly about ideas and beliefs.

When we read the narratives of the Bible in context, however, their purpose was not primarily to tell us places, dates, and people. Ancient histories and biographies were much more about good and bad examples of character, as well as identifying who God is and who we are, than about historical precision in the way we demand it today. The stories of the Bible give us good and bad examples of character. They tell us who God is and how we are to be as his people. These were the primary purposes of ancient stories.

God also revealed himself in the categories of the people to whom he was speaking. This is the principle of incarnation--God is a God who takes on our flesh (John 1:14). He is a God who meets us where we are. He does not make us come up to his level, which is impossible. He speaks our language. He uses anthropomorphisms. He met them in their categories.

So the picture of Genesis one has two layers of water with the sky in between them (Gen. 1:7-8), and the stars, sun, and moon placed in the sky (Gen. 1:14-17). Paul thinks of himself taken into the third sky (2 Cor. 12:2). Adam is a living soul made up of dust and breath (Gen. 2:7), and the Thessalonians are body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23).

The pictures here were not the point of the revelation, they were the flesh in which the incarnated message was clothed. God created the world and has given us light to find our way during the day and the night. Paul was taken into the very presence of God. God has given us life and expects our whole person to be his.

God's word never fails. His words have different purposes. When his purpose in Scripture is to reveal a truth, then that truth will most certainly be without error. [6]

7. Some of God's words are meant to give us hope or to give us a mechanism by which we may express our thanks, joys, sadness, and even anger. God's word always accomplishes what it sets out to do (Isa. 55:11), so in these instances, as in all instances, his word is infallible, unfailing. We might certainly learn something from a psalm of thanksgiving, a psalm of lament, or an imprecatory psalm (one expressing anger toward enemies). But the primary purpose of these psalms was not to inform. The primary purpose of these psalms was to express something.

So we can rejoice and give thanks as we read thanksgiving psalms. We can identify with the sorrows of the psalmist as we read a psalm of lament. And we can vent our anger as we read an imprecatory psalm.

Even here we must be careful. The authority of Jesus demands that we love our enemies. So if we would dwell on an imprecatory psalm while thinking of our enemies, we would be using Scripture to sin. Similarly, God does not want us to lament forever. At some point we must move on, for there is work to do for the kingdom.

8. Inspiration thus speaks to the source of God's word in God. God has breathed words to his people in Scripture. Infallibility is the overarching category for the unfailing nature of those words. God's words never fail to accomplish what he set them out to do. They are authoritative when they command. They guarantee hope in promise. They are without error when they inform. They are a means of catharsis when we are joyful, sad, or angry.

Yet the most important way in which God uses Scripture is to change us. To make us, both individually and corporately, into a holy people. He makes us Christlike. He makes us like him. Ultimately, Scripture is God's word. He can do with it whatever he wants.

Next Sunday: SA9: God uses all sorts of instruments of grace to transform his people.

[1] The books of the Bible do not say, "And for those of you reading in a specific context in the twenty-first century, here's how these principles or these contextual instructions would play out."

[2] We might apply something like Wesley's quadrilateral to "impressions" we think we are receiving from the Holy Spirit. First, does my impression fit with the accepted principles of Scripture--the law of love and the rule of faith? Second, does it fit with what the Church in general has believed and taught, realizing that individual Christian traditions can get things wrong. Thirdly, what do other wise individuals have to say, given their experience--have I sought the counsel of others? Finally, what does common sense seem to say--is it reasonable?

God has sometimes done "unreasonable" things in the past, but most crazy impressions just that--crazy. The more "unreasonable" the impression, the greater the certainty you should expect to have. But if it is unloving and harmful, it is not God speaking.

[3] This is the Hellenistic Jewish background for the word logos as it is used in the Gospel of John and perhaps implicitly elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., Colossians 1:15; Heb. 4:12-13).

[4] There is a sense in which the word infallible does not fit neatly with God's commands, because God often gives us the freedom to disobey. But God has not failed in any respect in this case, because God in his sovereignty gave us the choice. So Romans 3:3 denies that our faithlessness in any way nullifies the faithfulness of God.

[5] This is the so called "evaluative" point of view of a story, God's point of view.

[6] I have been influenced significantly by Kevin Vanhoozer in formulating the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture in this way. **

Inspiration, Authority, Infallibility, Inerrancy

Here is a summary of my current thoughts on the words inspiration, authority, infallibility, and inerrancy as they relate to Scripture. I submit them to the body of Christ as part of the ongoing dialog of the church.

1. It seems to me that there are two approaches to the Bible in relation to these "power" words. The first is that we need to get the words straight and then we can read the Bible. Perhaps I am unable to see the cultural glasses I am wearing but I resist this approach because, to me, it suggests that I can't let the Bible say what it says. I have to construct an elaborate system of electric fences and barbed wire before I try to interpret the biblical text.

In our modern context, I see debates over these sorts of words as a defensive mechanism against modernism or, to be more precise, against the rise of the historical-contextual method of reading the Bible. In other words, these words set up boundaries for how you can and cannot interpret the Bible in its historical context. Again, this is my opinion and one that should be weighed carefully. To me, the text meant what it meant. If the original authors and audiences understood it, then those meanings were a function of the language and contexts of that time.

2. So what is inspiration then? For me it becomes, first, a contextual inspiration, inspiration to speak to a specific time and place. It is a mysterious cooperation of the human and divine. The vocabulary and thought patterns are both those of the human author and yet guided by the Holy Spirit. At times I think the Spirit wanted specific wording; at times I suspect he was content for a number of different possible wordings.

The first inspiration was an "incarnated" inspiration. That is to say, it came largely within the worldview categories of the original audiences (heaven is up, the world is flat, the dead are "under the earth").

But I believe God had more in mind than just the initial audiences. He knew everyone who would read those words for the centuries to come. He planted meanings that would jump out at the earliest Christians as they scoured the Bible for truths about Jesus. Who knows, perhaps he even planted specific wordings with you and me specifically in mind. Again, these are my perspectives, to be weighed.

3. Scripture is authoritative because God is authoritative. IMO, a premodern reader reads the text as God's direct commands to him or her. In context, these were commands in specific contexts and so, to be true to their actual meaning, we have to understand the principles behind the precepts to apply them appropriately. Just doing what they did may not be truly doing what they did in a different context.

Authority relates most specifically to biblical material that is in the form of command. A narrative can have some authoritative implications but it is more indirect. Again, it can get complicated, IMO. The authority of the commands to sacrifice in Leviticus has to be processed through the fact that Christ died for our sins as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So the authority of Leviticus is the need for me to trust on Jesus for the atonement of my sins.

4. Infallibility relates to the fact that God's word never fails (Isaiah 55:11). It always accomplishes what it sets out to do. So when God makes a promise in Scripture, it will not fail within the parameters he has set for it (sometimes his promises and threats of judgment are conditional on our response, as with the threat of destruction on Nineveh in Jonah).

5. Similarly, when the purpose of God's word is to relate truth or information, it is without error. I believe these truths, as I said, come in incarnated form. In other words, we have to distinguish the truth from the clothing in which it comes. We need to know the parameters of what is being said. Is the statement that a mustard seed is the smallest of seeds really a comment about botany? I don't think that's the point.

6. Finally, when 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is inspired and profitable for instruction, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness, I don't think we should assume that Paul or the biblical authors always saw this truth on a literal level. That is to say, many of the truths of Scripture were on a spiritual level. IMO, there is a good deal of circularity in the way some authors use this text as an endorsement of a particular modernist hermeneutic. In the case of "don't muzzle the ox," the biggest inspired truth Paul saw for the Corinthians had to do with supporting your ministers materially--a spiritual rather than literal meaning of the text (1 Cor. 9:9-10).

So those are a few of my thoughts at this point on the journey...

Worthen: A Form of Intellectualism... (9)

Chapter 8 of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. 

Reviews of previous chapters include:

Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Chapter 8 (Democrat Evangelicals)

And now, chapter 9, "Evangelicals' Great Matter."  I lament that this book has taken so much of my time. I would rather be reading something else. But I believe it is important for someone with my particular skill set to be engaging the whims of religious culture. I view my engagement with these sorts of issues a ministry to evangelicalism and to my own faith community.

Those who control the story, control the future. Most people aren't interested in nuance--slogans and simple narratives win the day. Scholars, who usually deal in nuance and are often boring communicators, are thus easily and often lynched by the masses. I feel like someone needs to be carefully wading in these historical waters and offering simple but accurate counter-narratives.

1. Two names basically sum up this chapter. The first is Harold Lindsell, known for his incendiary 1976 book, The Battle for the Bible. His slogan? Inerrancy.

Simple. An easy idea to rally around. How could a scholar compete, full of nuance and knowledge of ancient genres unfamiliar to the person in the pew or the wealthy donor? Even to make a counter-argument sounds like you are against the Bible. As one Southern Baptist leader at the time put it, "it is no easy matter to bridge the gap between the scholarly historical approach and the views of the Bible which some people hold" (199).

Lindsell would have his revenge on Fuller, where he left in protest in 1962. He would paint a picture in his book of them as liberals abandoning Scripture--a narrative I heard from someone even last week. Here is Fuller's evil statement on the Bible: "All the books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, are the written word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice"

Lindsell wanted more and was instrumental in getting the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy written in 1978. Such a tool would help fight off trends like women in ministry and the way the church growth movement was contextualizing the gospel in new contexts. It would stem the tide of the charismatic movement with its emphasis on the Spirit speaking through Scripture.

"To argue that [his] inerrantist position represented the original view of the early Church Fathers and Protestant Reformers, Lindsell began with a string of quotations plucked from church history and shorn of context" (201). The meaning of words is not merely in quoting them (locution). It is in knowing what they meant within the context where they were spoken (illocution). Lindsell quoted the words, but gave them subtly different meanings, because he had quite different assumptions from a different time and place.

Yes, Christians have never thought of the Bible as having errors. But what is an error? And what meaning to the Bible were they saying did not have error?" Even the Reformers were not reading the text as a science or history book but as a book about faith and practice. Even Lindsell's old roommate and friend, Carl Henry, lamented that Lindsell had "shifted the public perception of the evangelical movement from its role as a dynamic life-growing force to a cult squabbling over inerrancy" (202).

Worse, he basically set conservative Christians on a warpath to devour each other, which made no one more godly, did great harm to the church internally, and turned lost souls off to Christ.

2.  The second name in this chapter is Francis Schaeffer. Mark Noll, then the darling evangelical historian of Wheaton, had this to say about Francis Schaeffer to Newsweek: "the danger is that people will take [Schaeffer] for a scholar, which he is not. Evangelical historians are especially bothered by his simplified myth of America's Christian past" (218).

Worthen sums up his historiography in this way: "Schaeffer wowed audiences by explaining 500 years of intellectual history in a paragraph and a casual chalkboard diagram--but he did so with exaggeration, oversimplifications, and misinformation that would make a specialist cry" (216).

What was this grand narrative? It was one of decline. It was Schaeffer that made abortion the climax of a Western decline that he said started with Thomas Aquinas in the 1100s. Interestingly, it was Schaeffer who made abortion the centerpiece of conservative American Christian politics, to where even today many Christians can't even imagine a Christian voting for a Democratic candidate.

His book, How Should We Then Live?, was more than influential in ideas. It was a multi-media presentation. Evangelicals would now begin to enter the entertainment world to try to influence the popular imagination. He would revive the slogan, "Ideas have consequences" (from a 1948 book that instead looked to William of Ockham instead of Aquinas as the beginning of the end).

Schaeffer created a battle for civilization based in ideas. After all, Schaeffer had dabbled in the fundamentalist Calvinist world of Kuyper and Van Til. So it is predictable that he would see a decline of ideas at the root of civilization's decline, starting with the ridiculous notion that Aquinas stood at the fountainhead.

True decline, from a biblical standpoint, has to do with submission to God and love of our neighbor. Has love of neighbor declined in our world? I seriously doubt it. There was as much hatred and prejudice in the Middle Ages down to the civil rights era as ever. In fact, if anything, the Western world is more loving than ever toward the other.

Submission to God appears to be in decline, especially if you filter it through a question of what people believe. But are less people truly in submission to God than before? In truth, people who call themselves Christians have always used the name of God, even the Bible as a cover to do hateful things opposed to God! Were the fundamentalists pastors who rallied with the KKK more in submission to God than Bill Nye the science guy, even though he is an atheist?

I don't want to push too hard on Schaeffer's ideas here. I think he even influenced some of my early thinking on the last 500 years, at least indirectly. I believe that Schaeffer was a wonderful man and I wish I could have met him. I believe L'Abri must have been a wonderful place for people to find Christ. I think I would have enjoyed the warmth of this man, who believed in taking care of God's creation and helping those in need.

I have only pushed back because, as you know, ideas have consequences.

3. I also push back because these forces so easily capture popular imagination, so much so that my own tradition is infected. I didn't think much of it at the time, but what business did Wesleyans have going to Bill Gothard's seminars in the 70s, when his sentiments are vastly different from those of historical Wesleyanism?

In 1978, Nazarene scholar Mildred Wynkoop summed up my feelings well: young Nazarenes "are being drawn in to the many 'cultish' movements in our religious world, today... These include groups with a very strong Calvinist ground, often camouflaged by social activity or flashy philosophy... A one-man (or woman) operation... 'Un-Christianizes' all those who question or reject some theory of Scripture... Claiming to be a Shepherd over others (only Christ is Shepherd) rather than Servanthood, as Jesus and Paul indicated" (209).

Finally, this chapter covered the switch to the NIV that took place in the 70s. Interestingly, it was facilitated in reaction to The Living Bible. Next to the KJV, the NIV looked like a liberal force. But next to the Living Bible, it seemed conservative.

The bottom line of the NIV debate is that many people can't tell the difference between what is a matter of faith and what is a matter of tradition. A person's faith inevitably gets formed around whatever form of faith they grow up with. Accordingly, when a person says something about there not just being three wise men, they take that as an attack on faith rather than as a refining of faith.

So it was with the NIV. If you grew up with the ending of Mark, it seemed like an attack on faith to suggest it wasn't original. In reality, it was just a refining of the form of faith. Ironically, when the TNIV and then NIV2011 came out, those who had formed their faith around the old NIV made the same KJV complaints again and came up with the ESV.

Hear the conclusion of the matter: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again!

A History of Inerrancy

A few quick thoughts on how I think the Bible's truthfulness has been conceived over time and has changed throughout church history.

Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.

Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.

Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.

The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.

It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.

Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.

We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.

In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now).  Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.

My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.

Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries.  If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.

Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.

Some thoughts after walking through the book...

Inerrancy Review (Final)

I have been reviewing Zondervan's new Five Views of Inerrancy. I wasn't sure what I would think of the book but it has been very helpful. I have not been able to give as thorough a review (or read) as I would prefer but I'm sure Zondervan would like you to buy the book. :-)

The two previous posts were:

• Mohler's CSBI Inerrancy
• Vanhoozer's Speech-Act/Bird's Global Inerrancy

I only have time today to give a taste of the last two contributors: John Franke and Peter Enns.

John Franke
Franke is deep and nuanced, like Vanhoozer. His perspective, if I understand him, is quite fascinating, maybe even profound. Because we are finite and God is infinite, "God 'adjusts' and 'descends' to the limited capacities of human beings and 'lisps' to us, as adults do to infants, in order to be made known" (267).

God "pragmatically points us in the right direction without the necessity of being photographically precise or drawn exactly to scale" (268). "Inerrancy affirms that narratives, propositions, and assertions--in fact, all the genres of Scripture--are true but still relative to their context. Inerrancy should not be used to suggest, then, that the words of Scripture transcend their situatedness as a form of decontextualized, absolutist theological language" (270).

Let me see if I have understood him. The Bible reflects God on his mission to save humanity through Christ. The goal is Christ leading to the goal of humanity and the creation's restoration. Along the way, the infinite God has lisped to humanity in its varied contexts. These moments point the way forward. They point to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

They do not point precisely because of their situatedness. As a result, "Scripture itself authorizes multiple perspectives... circumscribed by the... canon" (276). "Scripture is inerrant in its witness to the plurality of perspectives that are indispensable to the practice of missional Christian community" (276).

Let me see if I can apply what I think he's saying (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). He's saying it's okay for some of us to believe in women in ministry and for some of us not to, because different situations in the canon at different times have called forth both directions. But I think he would also say that the missional trajectory of Christ and the kingdom make the egalitarian position superior to the other. I could have misunderstood him.

Pete Enns
Enns believes "that the term inerrancy has run its course and that evangelicals need to adopt other language with which to talk about the Bible" (115). If Mohler sees CSBI inerrancy as a matter of presupposition, no matter what the evidence seems to say, Enns largely favors an evidentiary approach.

One strength of Enns' chapter, I think, is his sense that the Bible reflects incarnated revelation. God speaks truth "through the idioms, attitudes, assumptions, and general worldviews of the ancient authors" (87). This seems obvious to me, because God wants to be understood. When you want to be understood, you speak the language of those with whom you want to communicate. "Scripture is a collection of a variety of writings that necessarily and unashamedly reflects the worlds in which those writings were produced" (115).

Interestingly, Enns does have a suggestion for how he could continue to affirm inerrancy. He suggests a "descriptive" rather than "prescriptive" approach. "A descriptive model of inerrancy would try to take its cues from biblical behavior and so draw inferences about what qualities to expect of Scripture" (114).  Rather than tell Scripture what it could say, you would listen for God in what seemed to be said.  Then, "no matter what is encountered, the reader is in the presence of the wisdom and mystery of our God."

Happy reading, if you get the book when it comes out on December 10!

Inerrancy Book Review (Part 2)

Yesterday, I largely looked at the critiques of Al Mohler's understanding of inerrancy in Zondervan's new Five Views of Inerrancy.  I had three major take-aways:

• Christians throughout the centuries have always affirmed the complete truthfulness of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
• However, the way in which Christians have affirmed the truthfulness of Scripture throughout the centuries is not exactly the same as the way the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) affirms it.  Most of the authors in this book affirm inerrancy without equating it exactly with CSBI.
• The CSBI is a product of twentieth century American evangelical culture. It has cultural features.

I wish I had time to delve into the intricacies of each author's thought in this book, as well as the responses of each author. Alas!  I will go ahead and stretch out the review one more day, so that I can at least give a little more brain space to Kevin Vanhoozer and Mike Bird today. So my hope is to finish up tomorrow with Enns and Franke.

Kevin Vanhoozer
Vanhoozer is a class act. Like Franke, I don't think he goes far enough with the polyvalence of the biblical text. But V's version of inerrancy is brilliant in relation to the original meaning of the biblical text.

His fundamental insight seems completely indisputable: God did not just speak in the Bible to convey information. He spoke to communicate in several different ways (215). He is worth quoting: "God's Word can be relied upon to accomplish the purpose for which it has been sent, and when this purpose is making affirmations, it does so inerrantly" (223, italics his).

For V, infallibility is the broader category into which inerrancy fits. Inerrancy relates to those instances when God's purpose in the biblical text is to affirm cognitive truths. But God has many other purposes--commands, promises, perhaps even to give us an opportunity to lament or vent. Other words are more suitable to those purposes. Commands are authoritative. Promises are infallible. Laments are cathartic. Assertions are inerrant.

Vanhoozer here is appropriating the insights of speech-act theory. V advocates a "well-versed" approach to Scripture that "acknowledges that what is said is not always an affirmation" (220). Again, this seems beyond dispute. To limit, as C. F. H. Henry did, the basic function of language more or less to the cognitive and to making propositional assertions (214-15) seems almost an incomprehensible position today. Henry may have had a Spock-like personality, but he is clearly the exception among us mortals rather than the rule.

V quotes with approval David Dockery's 1986 definition, which presumably stands behind the wording of inerrancy that Asbury Seminary seminary uses: "The Bible, in the original autographs, properly interpreted, will be found to be truthful and faithful in all that it affirms concerning all areas of life, faith, and practice" (207).

Dockery and Vanhoozer are making a crucial distinction here.  Not everything "mentioned" in the Bible is the point, what was being affirmed. Let me provide my own example. The point of Paul saying he was taken up into the third heaven was not to make a statement about the structure of the universe. Frankly, the point was not even to say that Paul was taken into the presence of God. What the passage was affirming was that no one has the right to boast before God, and though Paul could boast more than his opponents, even he was nothing next to God.

To me, this is a far more defensible version of inerrancy than Mohler's. I'll leave V there. He has some other valid clarifications to make. For example, to take the Bible literally is not the same as literalism. To read the Bible literally, to V, is to read it in terms of what the author was actually doing with the text, which might not actually be literal.

Michael Bird
I think one of the biggest purposes Bird had in mind in his chapter was to put American cultural myopia in its place. His basic point is that global Christianity has been doing just fine with its own affirmations of the Bible's truthfulness and doesn't need to import America's baggage to become more informed and holy.

He spends a couple pages going through a host of affirmations about the Bible used in global Christianity.  None of them use the word inerrant. Even the Westminster Confession, the cornerstone of Reformed faith, affirms the "infallible truth and divine authority" of Scripture (161). The Lausanne Conference comes closest, "without error in all that it affirms" (162). Most, he says, use words like "infallible" and "authoritative."

He does not consider "infallible" a retreat from confidence in the Bible's truthfulness any more than Vanhoozer does. Rather, it takes "a view to the purpose for which God has revealed himself" (163). For Bird, that focus of revelation primarily has to do with Christ and God the Father. "The Bible was intended to impart knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer, and under that premise, the Bible is completely true in all that it says" (163).

The actual word, "inerrancy" is a relative latecomer on the theological scene. J. I. Packer suggests it was not regularly used in this connection until the 1800s (162-63). Bird can live with it, although he agrees with Donald Bloesch that it is not the preferable word (172). He doesn't see a material difference between it and infallibility (163).

He clearly considers it rife with Americanism and takes a few opportunities to mock us for peculiarities we don't know we have. "Only American evangelicals use Scripture to argue against gun control, against environmental care, and against universal healthcare" (156).

He notes that we have transported our myopia here and there around the world with our enculturated missionaries: "I have met some peculiar Christians from Africa and Europe with oddly American beliefs about taxation, end-times theology, the King James Bible, and prescribed styles of worship" (145 n.2). He excludes these transplants from his description of the global church.

He has no interest in our debates over inerrancy. He sees it used primarily as a weapon in American circles, "a way of forcing conformity to certain biblical interpretations, and to weed out dissenters in denominational politics" (157). "Inerrancy is primarily a weapon of religious politics to define who is in and who is out."

In the end, like John Stott, he is not so much interested in formulas of subscription as in practical submission (165). "How we live under the Bible is the ultimate test of what we believe about God and the Bible."  By the way, elsewhere in the book, Vanhoozer notes that Stott, a British evangelical, was uncomfortable with the word inerrancy because it seemed to reduce the Bible to a set of propositions (200 n.2).

I hope to finish up tomorrow with Enns and Franke.

Five Views of Inerrancy (Book Review Part 1)

Zondervan was kind enough to give me an advanced copy of the new, Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy.  This is the first of two posts in review.

1. About ten years ago, before 9-11 had sunk in, I saw things exactly as Robbert Webber observed in The Younger Evangelicals:

Traditional evangelicals had fought to the death over inerrancy in the 70s. The boomer, pragmatic evangelicals, had largely not been interested in the subject because they were focused on church growth. Webber wrote of the "younger evangelicals" at the turn of the millennium, whom he believed were not interested in fighting over propositions but in focusing on the person of Jesus Christ and in making a concrete difference in people's lives in the world.

Since 9-11 we have seen a conservative backlash in America. The young, restless, and Reformed are on the rise, typified by the Gospel Coalition. It is no surprise that the debates of the 70s are resurfacing. Indeed, for good or ill, the Christian generation that was just coming to consciousness after 9-11 and during the Iraq War may eventually spit Webber's younger evangelicals out of their mouth.

Ironically, this Fall is also the 30th anniversary of the year Norm Geisler effectively pushed Robert Gundry out of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) over this issue, even though Gundry affirmed inerrancy. Gundry had written a fine commentary on Matthew but one that did not fit with Geisler's sense of inerrancy. The debate was not over the evidence. Geisler never contested the details of Gundry's interpretation! He simply believed an evangelical couldn't believe that there was Jewish midrash in the New Testament, a priori.

2. Of the authors in this book, I suspect only Al Mohler thinks that was the right decision. In general, Gundry's ouster is usually referenced as a blight on ETS and the low point of its history. Mohler is of course one of the ringleaders of the neo-Reformed movement. He is also the only one of the authors in this book who thinks the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) is anything like a sufficient definition of inerrancy.

This is an important point. Three of the evangelical writers in this book, all benchmark evangelicals who believe in inerrancy, do not think the CSBI is the best standard by which to define it. A fourth author, Peter Enns, thinks the word "inerrancy" must be so qualified that it is ultimately counterproductive to reading the books of the Bible on their own terms. The take-away from these five authors is thus important because it means no one can assume that inerrancy = CSBI.

Four of the five authors believe that CSBI is a reflection of twentieth century American cultural categories. For example, Mike Bird, who strongly affirms inerrancy, is a stalwart evangelical. But he is also an Australian who taught for a time in Scotland. As an outsider to American culture, he finds the Americanism of Mohler's position all too obvious. This brings up a very important point.

Mohler's perspective may seem like common sense to many of us because we are American Christians. That is to say, the cultural dimensions of Mohler's approach are seen most easily from the standpoint of evangelicals outside North America.

3. Mohler's perspective on inerrancy requires us 1) to see his version of inerrancy as the only legitimate position for a Christian (believe it or effectively distrust God), 2) to see his interpretation of Genesis 1 as the only possible interpretation for a true Christian, 3) to read the stories of the Bible with the same general parameters with which we read historical texts today, and 4) to allow only for readings of authorial references in the New Testament that take them as part of the revealed point.

All four of the other authors in this book consider one or more of these presuppositions to be potentially problematic. All of the critiques of Mohler are quite strongly made, and here are a few of them.

Vanhoozer
Kevin Vanhoozer teaches at Trinity and has taught at Wheaton. He is an evangelical's evangelical. His critique of Mohler, however, sounds much like what we will hear from the others. "The Chicago statement is not quite the same proposition that the early church affirmed" (72). It reflects a development of understanding.

A second critique of Vanhoozer is that Mohler runs the risk of confusing his interpretation of the Bible for the Bible itself. The CSBI actually relates to a particular interpretation of the text and is thus open to dispute and scrutiny.

Bird
Mike Bird is an Australian evangelical. By the way, all the writers in this book are also Calvinists, reflecting the origins of modern inerrantism. (It is worth noting that the forebears of this modern form of inerrancy used a different hermeneutic than my church's abolitionist forebears, and they used their hermeneutic to argue anti-abolitionism from Scripture, just as Mohler uses a similar hermeneutic today to argue against women in ministry).

Bird agrees strongly with Vanhoozer that the inerrancy before the CSBI, ETS, and even the Princeton Calvinists of the 1800s was different from modern inerrantism, even if analogous. It is thus only a half-truth for Mohler to say that "inerrancy was the affirmation and theological reflex of the church until the most recent centuries" (56).

Bird has a problem with Mohler's "line in the sand," when Calvin and the Westminster Confession do not use the words "without error" any more than Fuller's doctrinal statement. "As a global evangelical, I could not find the enthusiasm to denounce as dangerous to the evangelical faith a person whose doctrine of Scripture is at its essence the same as my own."  The options are not as black and white as Mohler makes them out to be.

Franke
The unanimity with which all the other evangelical voices in this book critique Mohler is striking. Franke also notes that the sort of inerrancy affirmed throughout church history "was not that of the historical-grammatical interpretation, a literal reading of the Bible, and the CSBI" (77). This is part of the cultural myopia of Mohler. Throughout history, the truthfulness of Scripture often involved non-literal interpretations, which Mohler eschews.

For example, Clement of Alexandria considered the truthfulness of Scripture to come in part through allegorical meaning. (I have also pointed out that 2 Timothy 3:16 included non-literal understandings of the OT.) Franke's closing words in his critique mirror those of the others: "Might it be that the CSBI is more reflective of a particular set of North American hermeneutical and theological assumptions than is appropriate in light of the biblical narrative?" (81).

Enns
Enns is the only one in this book who has stopped using the word inerrancy, although he used to. His main critiques of Mohler have to do with his tone and the a priori nature of his assumptions. Mohler simply assumes that a true Christian will have the same views as he does. All evidence must be shoved into that mould, no matter what.  It is, according to Enns, a "strategy designed to insulate Mohler and his views from criticism" (60).

Enns has a couple other critiques of Mohler. One is that God revealed himself in the cultural categories of the biblical audiences. Thus the truth of the Bible was culturally embedded. Accordingly, there is a greater degree of progressive revelation in the pages of the Bible than Mohler would allow.

4. So what is good in Mohler's position?  Christians throughout the centuries have affirmed the complete truthfulness of Scripture.  When the Bible speaks, God speaks!  The debate is thus over how God has spoken that truth in Scripture.

Sunday Theology: The Final Revelation

Here is my perhaps weekly series on theology in video form.  This continues my posts on revelation.

This one is on the "final revelation," which as you might guess is Jesus Christ.

Nazarenes and "Detailed Inerrancy"

The Nazarenes voted today to keep their Statement of Faith the same in a couple regards.  First, they voted to keep the current wording that describes the Bible as "inerrantly revealing the will of God."  Then they declined adding the word "meritorious" to their wording on atonement. You can see the report of their Scripture study commission here.

I personally think it is best not to adjust the faith statements of a denomination unless you've really, really thought it through.  Some Nazarenes wanted to adjust the statement on inerrancy to a more thoroughgoing wording along the lines of the 1970s debates.  The committee concluded that the fundamentalist sense of inerrancy, which they termed "detailed inerrancy," was not Wesleyan but Calvinist in origin, that Wesleyan theological giants like H. Orton Wiley didn't jump on that bandwagon (the classic Wesleyan systematic theology author), and that it would create a massive split in the denomination (with most of its leaders in every area having to leave).  And, after all, you can still believe in the fundamentalist version with the current wording.

Keith Drury had this to say in his Facebook blow by blow: "This report on Scripture would probably be embraced by virtually all Bible scholars in The Wesleyan Church... I suspect neither denomination is going to change their statements on scripture--though in practice both denominations have about the same functional position. The report lays down the gauntlet arguing that 'detailed inerrancy' is a Calvinist fetish and not truly Wesleyan."

I've argued here before that the Wesleyan Church operates with a broad rather than restrictive understanding of inerrancy.  God has not erred in any truth he has revealed in Scripture. The real task is to work together to determine exactly what he has said and is saying.

On the other issue, the Nazarene church opted not to single out penal substitution as a more central or important perspective on atonement than any other.  Again, the pressure is coming from Calvino-fundamentalist influences on the Church of the Nazarene.

Very interesting...

Inerrancy 7: Conclusion

1. A Little History
2. The Authority of God
3. Different Kinds of Speaking
4. What God Intended 1
5. What God Intended 2
6. What God Intends
_______________
7. Conclusion
The Wesleyan Church has never defined exactly what it means by inerrancy. Obviously it means that the Bible is without error.  But it has never defined what an error is or created a list of positions on specific issues as if to say, "Such and such a position on this issue violates inerrancy."

This is a crucial observation.  It surely means that there is some leeway among Wesleyans in exactly what a person understands an error to be.  Whether individuals affirm inerrancy surely depends, within reasonable limits, on their attitude toward Scripture rather than on the specific positions they take.

When some Wesleyans use the word "inerrancy," they have a very specific list of positions in mind.  For example, it might mean affirmation that God created the world in six literal days, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, David the Psalms, and Isaiah all of Isaiah. It might mean for them that the gospels are historically harmonizable on the level of detail and that all the books of the New Testament were literally written by the individuals whose names are on them.

It is very understandable that some equate inerrancy with these positions, because these were some of the key issues at the time the term came to the fore in American culture.  Modernists had taken contrary positions and said the Bible was in error. Fundamentalists had responded that the Bible was not in error and took traditional positions.

But both sides, interestingly, were operating with the same definition of an error at the time, namely, the modernist one.  Fundamentalists, perhaps without even fully realizing it, absorbed the definition of an error as something not being historical, not being literal, or not being scientifically accurate. As I hope this booklet has shown, these standards for error are not obviously the appropriate ones for the Bible, as common sense as they may have seemed in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

For example, what if the rules of ancient history writing were not the same as modern history writing?  What if God inspired the biblical authors in genres that we are not as familiar with today?  As I mentioned earlier, it is no error if you do not hit a target you are not aiming for.  No one considers a parable to be lying even though the genre of parable is fictional rather than historical.

To affirm inerrancy thus does not presume that a person will take a particular position on these sorts of issues.  The key to inerrancy is not so much specific positions on interpretive issues but whether a person believes the Bible failed at some point at what God wanted it to do.

The value of this approach is that it allows Wesleyans to listen to the biblical text, even if they think it is leading in a different direction than tradition.  They may of course be wrong.  But can we really say we are interested in truth unless we are willing to change our minds given a sufficient basis or amount of evidence?  It is often the person who feels threatened by new evidence who argues most strongly against it.

Thankfully, Wesleyans have never fought over inerrancy.  Wesleyans have always valued Scripture on the highest level.  We have never had a group of scholars or ministers arguing that the Bible has errors in it.  If some Wesleyans have at times had what seemed to be peculiar positions, they have held them within a framework of respect for the Bible and a sense that they accurately understood what God intended the text to mean.

What a great thing to be able to say that!  We have neither had scholars trying to convince us that the Bible has errors, nor have we had hard core fundamentalists trying to kick people out of the church for their positions on specific issues.  Both arguably have the wrong attitude. You can rest assured that such controversies do not bring anyone closer to God. They are far more likely to drive people away from Christ.

Wesleyans believe that God's word never fails.  The books of the Bible never failed at what God inspired them to do nor do they fail at what he intends them to do today. God's commands in the Bible were authoritative then, and they remain authoritative over us today insofar as God intends them to remain in force. Finally, the truths that God asserted in the Bible were true then, and they continue to be without error today, inerrant.

Inerrancy 6: What God Intends

1. A Little History
2. The Authority of God
3. Different Kinds of Speaking
4. What God Intended 1
5. What God Intended 2
_________________
6. What God Intends
The default reading of Scripture is probably not to focus on what it meant, past tense, but on what it means, present tense.  Probably, most Christians would not see a distinction.  What it meant is what it means in all tenses--one meaning for all time.

As the last section explored, others will conclude that language usually does not work this way. In fact, you could argue that the more general an audience language has, the less immediately relevant it normally is to any one audience.  By contrast, evangelical Bible scholars generally see the New Testament letters as "occasional" in nature, meaning that in general they were not written as theological treatises but to address the needs of real communities at specific times and places. Even in the case of Romans, few if any experts would consider this magnificent letter to be a "compendium of Christian doctrine."  It also addressed a real community at a particular time and place.

These dynamics bring us to the question of how to apply Scripture to today. Sometimes the text will reach out to us over time and apply directly to our situation today.  Sometimes it will not.  Sometimes it will apply in a more general sense but with different specifics. Our Wesleyan heritage would also allow that the Spirit can sometimes reapply the text to us in ways completely new and different from anything originally meant.

Whatever God intends the text to do today, it will unfailingly do. Whatever God wants to assert to us today through the text will be inerrant. Whatever God wants to command us to do today through the biblical text will be authoritative.  And these may be the same, similar, related in some way, or completely different from what he originally intended in the past through those Scriptures.

For example, if we look at biblical commands, we would all agree that some biblical commands obviously apply to all time. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is one (e.g., Matt. 22:39). This command is present both in the Jewish Law and throughout the New Testament. The New Testament itself repeatedly affirms the love command as an encapsulation of the Law. Christians since have found this command to ring true. It is one of the unquestionable absolutes of Christian ethics and just as authoritative over us today as ever.

What about the instruction for Thessalonian men to greet each other with a kiss (1 Thess. 5:26)? What about the commands to offer animal sacrifices or to put tassels on the edges of garments? In the first case, the meaning of greeting with a kiss today probably would not be the same at least in North America as it was in ancient Thessalonica.  Here God's intention is surely that the church view itself as a family and in warm fellowship.  Perhaps a holy handshake will do the trick. We can thus play out the instruction in a similar way while not doing exactly the same thing.

But I do not know of any Christians that believe God intends for us to offer animal sacrifices today, and I do not know any Christians who stay up at night worrying about having clothing with tassels. In the first case, the New Testament book of Hebrews puts Leviticus into Christian perspective. In the second case, most Christians would consider tassels as something specific to Israel and not required of believers in the new covenant, following the lead of the apostle Paul.

When you get into the details, the old, "God said it, I believe it" approach simply does not settle it in many cases because we are not the original audience. We are not the ones God was talking to. A lot of spiritual common sense is involved in applying Scripture, not to mention a whole lot of inherited Christian tradition about applying the text. And chances are, we are not even fully aware these processes are going on.

How do we know what God intends for a text, especially when it is not exactly the same as what he intended originally?  There is a historical method for determining what the text meant. But to determine what God means today for the text goes beyond what it meant and requires input from outside the text in question itself.

In the case of the Old Testament, the New Testament (if you are a Christian) gives us a clear sense of what God intended for the church beyond what he might have intended for Israel. Those who read the Bible as a single book may not even realize the extent to which they already read the Old Testament through New Testament eyes. They may not even be fully aware of the originally intended meaning for Israel.

For example, ancient Israel arguably did not read Genesis 2-3 as the reason there is sin in the world.  They probably did not see the serpent in Genesis 3 as Satan. They may not even have read it as the reason there is death in the world. We are so used to reading Genesis through the eyes of Paul (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15) as Christian tradition has interpreted him (e.g., through Augustine), that we automatically read these chapters with Christian eyes, as we believe God intends for us to read them.

But Genesis 2-3 do not mention Satan. We have no evidence of a Jew interpreting the snake as Satan until around the time of Jesus. The word "sin" is nowhere in this passage. Indeed, in the story, Adam and Eve were expected to die from the very beginning--the tree of life would have added life. If we listen to the original story, death is a consequence in the sense that Adam's disobedience (also a word not used in Genesis) prevented life. It did not directly cause death.

What God intended for this story in ancient Israel arguably had to do with expressing the problem of hard labor in farming, pain in childbearing, and why snakes and humans do not get along together (Gen. 3:17-19). After all, this is what the text actually says. But through the eyes of the New Testament, we believe that God intends for us to see much more in the story, namely, the sinful human condition that needs the atonement of Christ.  God did not fail in his original purposes for the text and he does not fail today in the text.

God did not fail in the New Testament when he inspired Paul to see a more cosmic meaning to the story, even though it was a relatively new meaning as far as Israel was concerned. And the Spirit will not fail you if the Spirit speaks authentically to you through some new meaning of the text he gives you. God did not fail in the first meaning he intended, the original meaning. God did not fail in the New Testament or Christian meaning he established for biblical texts, the God meaning. And God will not fail in any extended meaning he might make come alive for you, a Spirit meaning.

The problem with extended meanings is knowing for certain that they are from God. An individual can be completely wrong about what the Spirit is saying. But any word from God is as authoritative as any other, because the authority behind any of God's authentic words is God. The problem of knowing which is which is our problem, not a problem with the word itself.

Many people do not realize how flexible the meaning of words is.  This is why there are tens of thousands of Christian groups, so many of which think they are simply reading the Bible and doing what it says. Even the New Testament authors themselves, although God spoke through them, perhaps did not fully realize this flexibility of language. They were good charismatics, who heard what God intended for them in the words without always realizing how it might have been different from what God originally intended for Israel.

They did not err when they saw spiritual meanings in Old Testament texts.  I was once quite troubled about the way Matthew uses Hosea in Matthew 2:15. In Matthew, Joseph and Mary have taken toddler Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod. They stay there till Herod dies. Then they return to Israel, which Matthew says fulfills the Old Testament verse, "Out of Egypt I called my son" in Hosea 11:1.

I had never looked, but I fully expected that if I were to look this verse in Hosea 11 up, I would find a fairly straightforward prediction saying that the future Messiah at some point would travel out of Egypt. But that is not what Hosea 11 says. Hosea 11 is not a prediction about the future. It is a comment about something that was already past for Hosea for some 500 years, the exodus from Egypt.

And not only was it not originally about the Messiah or Jesus, it was about sinful Israel.  Hosea 11:2 goes on to say that although God had brought Israel, his son, out of Egypt, Israel had served other gods. The passage in Hosea goes on to say how God was going to judge the Israel of Hosea's day for its faithlessness, which God did when he brought Assyria against them and destroyed the northern kingdom in 722BC.

I was horrified by this issue when it first really came home. Given the fundamentalist way I had understood inerrancy, Matthew seemed to be in error. He seemed to have misunderstood the passage in Hosea. After all, there is no ambiguity whatsoever about what Hosea meant, and Hosea certainly wasn't predicting anything about the Messiah, let alone about his travel plans.

This is why some Wesleyans will want to take a broader understanding of inerrancy, one that allows for God's intentions for a text to be broader than even what a biblical author originally understood. Now Matthew may very well have known he was taking Hosea in an extended sense.  We cannot even say his understanding of the text was in error.  I would now certainly want to say that the fundamentalist expectations I had of the text were in error.

But none of that is the point. The point is that God did not fail in what he wanted to do originally through this biblical text in Hosea's day. And God also did not fail in what he wanted to do in the New Testament through an Old Testament text in Matthew's day. And the Spirit will not fail in something he may want to do today through this biblical text.

When 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is God-breathed and that it is profitable for teaching, correcting, and training, it is important to realize that no New Testament author treated this instruction as if it only applied to the literal or original meaning of a text. Paul shows this quite clearly in 1 Corinthians 9:9-10, where he applies a verse in Deuteronomy 25:4 that says not to muzzle and ox when it is harvesting grain. He sees the key meaning of this verse not in its literal meaning, but in an extended sense. Paul practically dismisses its literal reading. The spiritual meaning he legitimately sees is that ministers should be supported by those whom they serve. 2 Timothy 3:16 thus cannot be used to enforce a narrow view of inerrancy.

So some Wesleyans function with a more or less fundamentalist understanding of inerrancy, one that sees each text more or less having one meaning for all time. They would see those meanings as largely assertive and apply inerrancy to all or almost all aspects of that single meaning. This is an acceptable perspective for a Wesleyan to have.

Other Wesleyans will factor in the kinds of complexity we have been discussing throughout this booklet. This is also a legitimate perspective for a Wesleyan to have. Both groups should respect each other because both are, in their own way, doing their best to listen to the text and to submit to God's authority as mediated by the text.

Tomorrow: the conclusion (dv)