I spy before me a topic which I simultaneously anticipate and dread.
One, which I suspect, will cause me greater strife and invoke greater aggression
than most of the other topics I mean to address.
But then again, I have saved the last four chapters for the most inflammatory
areas in which my views have shifted. 'Save the best for last,' as they say.
Why I Changed My Mind
I was once a Christian who bought into the necessity of the doctrine of inerrancy.
I believed that to be a Christian it was an absolute requirement to accept the
Word of God as completely error-free, non-contradictory, unblemished by
the touch of man or time.
As I began to expand and broaden in my apologetic studies, and as I began to engage
more and more people both believer and non-believer, I started to come to the startling
realization that this is simply not the case.
It started with realizing that late additions to Scripture have occurred.
At first I argued against that thought like so many biblical innerantists do.
But this is because those who hold the doctrine of innerancy are held in perpetual
suspended animation by a stark wall of fear that prevents them ever engaging
the manuscripts with a critical eye. As an inerrantist, if you dare raise even the smallest
question, the sky is falling.
I purchased books by Norman Geisler, and others who have published some
profound attempts to defend every single case and instance of contradiction in
Scripture. Having read the arguments contained therein, I felt a pang of doubt.
Many of them seemed shaky or evasive; side-stepping the real challenges to shadow
box with a straw man substitution. None of them really answered some of the tough
questions I had.
Fortunately I made a personal breakthrough.
I discovered that, contrary to what most fundamentalists teach,
it is not a requirement to hold the doctrine of inerrancy and retain your faith as a Christian.
It was not a view shared by the authors of the New Testament, it was not a view shared
by the early church fathers, it was not even a view held by many reformed theologians
such as Martin Luther.
Once one relinquishes their white-knuckled grip on this doctrine, they will find themselves
at once free to explore the diversity of internal discourse and debate within the Scripture
from an objective perspective and to really grapple with intense questions of
theology and faith from a superior vantage point.
Defining What My Purpose is Not
In the interests of not being judged before I even begin, perhaps I should clarify my
purpose in this article. Or maybe it would be easier for me to define what my purpose
is not.
My purpose is not to delegitimize or invalidate the Scripture in any way.
My purpose is not to undermine the relevance or authority of the Scripture to shape our daily lives.
My purpose is not to squabble over individual cases of inconsistency in Scripture.
My purpose is not even to make a comprehensive case on specific instances of contradiction.
These points should be relatively apparent, considering the extensive
emphasis I place on my own use of Scripture to reinforce the points I have
made in each preceding chapter.
It would be harder to find a better way to testify to the auspicious position of Scripture in one's
life than to utilize it as a foundation for much of their theological thinking and belief,
and to accord it rightful authority as a moral guideline in one's personal life.
Rather in this entry, my purpose is to simply explain why I fail to any longer
subscribe to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and to highlight some areas in which
continuing to cling to this doctrine weakens your faith instead of strengthening it.
Before I'm assaulted with dozens of comments reminding me of the passages
in Scripture which supposedly teach the doctrine of innerancy, let me assure
you that I have, in fact, read the passages in question and studied them intently
(2 Ti 3:14-17; 2 Pe 1:19-21; Matt 5:17-18; Luk 24:44; John 10:34-35;
John 14:16; John 16:13).
It's just that I fail to see an airtight case made in them for the doctrine (as specifically
defined) in question.
Let us leave that for now, because I simply do not have the interest in making
a comprehensive argument against biblical inerrancy in this entry, only to explain
some of how I came to this conclusion.
Anyone truly interested in such a comprehensive argument would be well recommended
to purchase Mr. Stark's book, among others.
The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy Doctrine
In 1978, which seems a lifetime ago to some, over three hundred theologians
met in Chicago, Illinois to draft a document detailing their beliefs on the doctrine
of biblical inerrancy. Although there are quite a few definitions of what
inerrancy actually is, and the document itself is somewhat voluminous,
a succinct reading would be:
"...Wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching,
no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history,
and about its own literary origins under God, than it its witness to God's saving grace
in individual lives."
This claim is already somewhat audacious by itself. But do not fear, it gets far worse.
Mostly because the hermeneutic employed by those preaching the doctrine of
biblical inerrancy tends to be one of convenience.
They insist that 'historical-grammatical exegesis' is how all literary forms
of Scripture must be interpreted.
What this means in practice, is that the meaning of each individual
biblical text is 'single, definite, and fixed.'
The 'Bible's own interpretation of itself is always correct, never deviating from,
but rather elucidating, the single meaning of the inspired text.'
But when it comes to agreeing with this method of reading passages
that would appear to be in serious disagreement with other passages,
this method is abandoned in favor of various excuses that seem to
be profoundly lacking in weight.
"Inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and
trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved
to write and speak...
...[we] deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise,
introduced distortion or falsehood into God's Word."
Here, I wish to pause and make the following declaration.
It is my current position that one can disavow the doctrine of biblical inerrancy
as laid out by the Chicago Statement and still:
1.) Be a fully believing and practicing Christian.
2.) Be fully obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ and yielded to the Holy Spirit.
3.) Believe in the overarching inspiration of Scripture.
4.) Believe in the retention of critical doctrines from Scripture.
5.) Believe in the authority of Scripture to speak to one's daily life.
The Concerns Involved in Holding Inerrancy Doctrine
The often unspoken premise which undergirds the arguments for biblical
inerrancy is that if one allows oneself to doubt (even for a moment) the validity or
veracity of a single statement made in Scripture, then one's faith is promptly
thrust into such life-or-death jeopardy that all has already been lost.
Indeed, so the thought process generally proceeds, one has already set the vehicle
in motion down the long and rocky precipice, and there is no stopping it.
This sort of all-or-nothing mentality seems to pervade much of modern
Christian theology and thinking... I don't buy it.
Unfortunately for us as Christians, making such sweeping statements as those
quoted above and then obstinately striving to force the intransigent text of
Scripture to fit the absurd mold we have crafted for it, is only destined to frustrate
us to no end and demonstrates noticeable weakness to those we might be called
to witness.
Yet, another often unspoken premise in biblical inerrancy, is that when a
thoughtful, prayerful, and studious Christian examines the Scripture, he or she
will not be led into an untruth. However, it is decidedly the case that there is
a great plurality of denominations and categories such as liberal and conservative
Christians who hold to a vast variety of various positions on various topics,
all of them supported (or so they claim) by Scripture.
How could all of them be true? Isn't this the entire point we discussed earlier?
That everyone generally clings to the belief that they are right and everyone else is
horribly misguided and wrong?
The inerrancy of Scripture just gives Christians bigger and more hurtful clubs
to wield in proving their 'right-ness'.
We ought to be more humble. We ought to spend more time engaging
with the word rather than simply repeating a mantra again and again.
So... Is Everyone Right Then?
Am I out to prove that no one is wrong in their interpretation of Scripture
and that by default everyone must be correct? Of course not!
What I'm out to prove is that the so-called 'grammatical-historical'
method of exegesis used by those holding to the traditional doctrine of inerrancy
produces incoherent results.
It is my personal belief that doctrines based upon a Scriptural basis
must be constructed with a certain overarching 'consonance' of Scripture
in mind. Remember that cumulative case we referred to earlier?
The same principle applies to biblical hermeneutic.
"...It is reason which tells us when a certain reading of Scripture, however plain itGuaranteeing Inerrancy - Putting God (and Everyone Else) In a Box
may seem, is incompatible with broad Scriptural themes and stable doctrines derived
from centuries of critical engagement with Scripture...
...If Scripture is indeed revelatory---if studying it can offer insight into the divine nature
and will---then the content of Scripture itself rules out the naive idea that these
revelations are to be identified with the literal sense of each isolated proposition found
in the text. Instead, the analogy to sense perception is apt.
While sense perception, taken as a whole, enables us to gain an understanding
of the world around us, individual observations can be, and often are, deceptive.
Sometimes some very consistent surface impressions (such as the apparent solidity
of tabletops and rocks) must be qualified by the lessons learned from a rational study
of the implications of our most systematic and detailed observations
(leading, for example, to the conclusion that apparently solid objects are actually mostly
empty space, within which miniscule particles are suspended by a range of dynamic forces).
Likewise, systematic rational study of the Scriptures taken holistically can reveal
implications that force us to qualify or radically revise our understanding of isolated
passages and even of pervasive surface impressions."
- John Kronen and Eric Reitan 'God's Final Victory'
Returning to a quotation from the Chicago Statement earlier,
how could it ever be possible to guarantee beyond a shadow of doubt
that no single author of Scripture over nearly a thousand year time span
injected into the text any shred of bias, personal belief, philosophical leanings,
theological leanings, doubts, etc?
The only way one could conceivably do so would be to utterly and entirely
deny any semblance of free will whatsoever. For God must have, in essence,
'possessed' those responsible for the authorship of each book of Scripture at
various times and places. For this would be the only means by which we could guarantee
a complete lack of authorial 'input'.
We must go a step further, however, and then state authoritatively that God
proceeded to 'mind-control' thousands upon thousands of human beings down
through the intervening centuries to modern times in order to prevent any
form of tampering, lest the texts be contaminated.
You must pardon me at this juncture for not choosing to follow
along with you on this fairy-tale voyage of thought however, because I see no evidence within Scripture or outside of it to prove that God behaves in this manner in His dealings with mankind,
or that His hand can be seen in this way through history.
I've never known God to make someone into a 'Spirit-filled zombie'.
And if the evidence for God's behaving this way doesn't exist within the very
infallible text we are discussing as being created through this method, then the
conversation seems to have been one gigantic exercise in futility, and we might as well
have been relaxing on the sofa at home eating ice cream.
What seems clear is that Scripture contains a plurality of differing and sometimes (it would seem) competing perspectives. To expect any different from such a broad spectrum of authors
dwelling in such a broad spectrum of times and places would be ridiculous.
Authorial bias, in fact, is one of the few things we can be sure of when dealing with Scripture.
The truth, in light of what I have personally witnessed during my research and
study of Scripture, is that any hermeneutic becomes a choice precisely because
of the serious tension that exists within it.
Without authorial bias how could we account for some of the following differences:
Nationalistic Tendencies
Ezra refuses to allow the northern-dwelling peoples of Israel to help rebuild the temple
Why? Because they were race-traitors. Their only crime? Being captured by the Assyrians
and integrated with people from other surrounding areas. They were not pure Israelis.
This led to Ezra decreeing that every Jewish man married to a non-Jewish woman
was to divorce her and exile both her and any offspring from the land, in essence
leaving them to fend for themselves.
This is in spite of the fact that interracial marriages had been permitted for some length
of time (Moses was married to a Midianite and an Ethiopian (Ex 2:15-22; Num 12:1))(Deu 20:14).
This sort of nationalistic attitude is in severe tension with the teachings of the
prophet Amos (Amo 9:7), with the teachings of Jesus about the same Samaritan people
(Luk 10:29-37), and with the message given in the entire book of Jonah, which honestly
makes such behavior and attitudes seem petty and childish from a perspective of
Scriptural commentary. This nationalism is also in contrast with the entire
message of Israel as the blessing to the nations; a continuing pattern which begins
in Genesis, runs the entire gamut of prophets, continuing straight to
the end in the eschaton of Revelation.
Competing Explanations For Suffering
To list another conflict of Scripture with itself, one need look only at how the
infamous 'problem of evil' is dealt with in its texts.
Traditional Jews viewed human suffering as being almost universally attributed
to sin (Prov 10:16, 24-25, 27-29; John 9:1-3).
But this is a view contradicted by Jesus (as seen above), and by the books of Job and Ecclesiastes,
the latter two of which took what could be seen by many as a bleak and almost nihilistic
outlook on life. According to Job and the Preacher, sometimes bad things
happen to good people and that's just the way it is.
Speaking of Ecclesiastes, we find there yet another development or 'evolution' in
theological thought, and that is the afterlife.
The ancient Hebrews had no defined doctrine of afterlife. And it is a view
that is quite clearly reflected in the sayings of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.
It was not until around the time of Jesus that a more detailed concept of
afterlife had been developed.
So one could conceivably make a robust case for an internal conflict in Scripture
between the afterlife of Ecclesiastes and the afterlife of the scholarship that existed
in Jesus' time and thereafter.
A Fistful of Apparent Contradictions
The parade of internal debate continues.
Ezekiel 18:20 makes claims that children are not punished for the sins of their parents.
Isaiah 13:16, Leviticus 26:29, Ezekiel 5:9, and Jeremiah 19:9 each seem to disagree.
The problem that one encounters with all of these 'internal contradictions' in the Scripture
is not necessarily even the contradictions so much in themselves, as it is in this stolid
mindset that attempts to force Scripture to bend and conform to our attempts to tame it.
But this simply cannot be done.
To deny that some people in Scripture seriously misunderstood God's character
(or we have seriously misunderstood it, one or the other), would seem to be a tricky
business of fooling oneself.
And if Moses enslaving 31,000 Midianite virgins (no doubt raised in pagan practices)
and treating them not as human beings but as 'spoils of war' (Numbers 31:31-35),
speaking for God valuing vegetation over human life (Deut 20:16-19),
Ezra exiling helpless women and children with no regard for the edicts
concerning widows and orphans (Ezra 10; Ex 22:22-24; Deut 24:17),
Micah mistakenly smelting silver into a graven image for the Lord (Jdg 17:1-5),
Jephthah sacrificing his only daughter as a human sacrifice to Yahweh (Jdg 11:29-40),
and priests consistently prioritizing religious symbolism instead of the
underlying spiritual principles that lend them their power (Mic 6:6-8; 1 Sam 15:22; Prov 21:3; Isa 29:13; Hos 6:6-7), indicates that even renowned men and women of Scripture could
(and often did) get God horribly wrong, then how humble ought we to act in not repeating these errors of presumption?
If we are open and honest with ourselves in our dialogue with one another and in our
hermeneutic, we will find that what the Scripture truly represents is a perpetual handing
down of the word of God from generation to generation, during which occurred a gradual and systematic evolution (if you will) of theological thought and reasoning.
The Apostles Didn't Comply With 'Proper' Hermeneutic
I could be mistaken, but am fairly certain, that when the early apostles wrote their epistles
often quoting passages of Scripture from the Old Testament directly referencing Yahweh,
and redirected those passages as referring to Jesus Christ, that they were well outside
the established norms of the time (Rom 10:13 <> Joel 2:32; Rom 9:10-11 <> Isa 45:23; Matt 3:3 <> Isaiah 40:3; 1 Pet 2:7-8 <> Isa 8:13-14; John 19:37 <> Zech 12:10; John 12:41 <> Isa 6:5).
They apparently had not read the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy on how to
conduct proper exegetical analysis of Scripture.
Had they done so, they might have humbly toned their ambitious usage down a notch
so that future generations would not have to scratch their heads and wonder.
Neither Did the Early Church Fathers
The fact is, exegesis of Scripture has been a continuing dialogue and debate within
the structure of the Church since the earliest of times. Many of the early church fathers
were not at all gathered together in union on how Scripture should be properly interpreted.
In terms of the Old Testament and its relevance to Christianity as it was redefined
by Jesus Christ, even the chief advocate for incorporating it into the canon Iranaeus,
clearly comprehended that some texts simply do not correspond with proper Christian
attitudes, and so a multiplicity of systems for interpreting Scripture were introduced.
This is a point that is extremely well elucidated upon by well known Christian
philosopher and scholar Richard Swinburne in this educational interview segment.
So it would seem that in dealing with inherent contradictions and internal debate
found within the bible, we must choose a methodology, or a patchwork of methodologies
utilized by those who have come before us; or to devise our own framework for interpreting
Scripture. Gregory of Nyssa clearly disagreed outright with many Old Testament texts
and concluded that the only solution was allegorical reading.
Origen and John Cassian concur.
Augustine ended up involved in a late transition from allegorical to literal reading,
however he prioritized the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the conscience
of the reader as a lens through which any passage is filtered.
What seems critical to note is that although Augustine and later influential theologians
such as Martin Luther subscribed to a more literal approach to Scripture (indeed Augustine
is quotes as referring to Scripture as 'wholly free from error' (Ep. 82.3)),
neither of them viewed the literal approach to Scripture the same was as modern
proponents of the doctrine of inerrancy do.
For them, the literal reading of the text of Scripture was modified by the theological
predisposition brought to the text.
A Proper View of Scripture Must be Holistic and Christ-Centered
In this sense, I concur with the conclusions of John Kronen and Eric Reitan regarding
a biblical hermeneutic that takes a holistic and Christ-centered approach to interpreting Scripture
(a methodology originally espoused by Martin Luther):
"In general terms, if we find ourselves unable to find an interpretation of a scriptural
passage that is consistent with the core message that we are saved through Christ's
redemptive work, Luther would advise us to leave it out of our theology rather than
distort the gospel.Where interpretation fails us, criticism is preferable to blind
appropriation; but both interpretation and criticism express a deeper devotion to Scripture as a whole.
Thus, Luther took Scripture to be its own interpreter and critic:
he thought it was Scripture itself that provides the Christocentric hermeneutic by which
individual passages are interpreted, criticized, or even jettisoned if that is what is required.
For Luther, it is more important to Scripture to cling to its Christocentrism than to
its inerrancy."
"Whatever else might be said about interrancy, once Scripture is seen fundamentally
as a means of bringing us into a personal encounter with the Christ of the gospel story,
the need for inerrancy wanes. While Scripture would have to be reliable overall
as a witness to God's redemptive work in order to mediate a transformative encounter
with Christ, such reliability does not demand that every passage be inerrant, and it certainly does not require that the plain sense of each passage be prima facie correct.
If the heart of Scripture is the message that God has acted in history through Christ to save a fallen humanity and reconcile the world to Himself---and if the purpose of the Scriptures is to mediate a personal encounter with this savior who was not defeated in death and so is not merely a character in history but a living presence in whom we can place our trust---then the question of whether, for instance, Samson really slew a thousand Philistine soldiers wielding nothing but a donkey's jawbone becomes of little importance."
And also:
"...the central Christian revelation in Scripture is not the isolated propositions expressed by the text but the person of Christ and the saving work of Christ encountered through
the text. In George MacDonald's words, the Bible 'nowhere lays claim to be regarded
as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the
ever-unfolding revelation of God. "It is Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge", not the Bible, save as leading to Him."
"The task of Christian theology is the task not only of drawing doctrines from ScriptureFinal Thoughts and Summary
and from the encounter with Christ that it mediates, but of coordinating these propositional revelations into a coherent system of ideas that can help us make sense of (and hopefully deepen) our relationship with Christ.
This theological enterprise evolves in constant conversation with Scripture---interpreting texts whose meanings are unclear in order to fit them into the core understanding of God and humanity that emerges out of our scripturally mediated encounter with Christ;
setting aside (as 'straw') those texts that we simply cannot integrate into this understanding (always conscious that if these 'straw' texts become too numerous we should be ready to rethink our holistic reading).
The criticism can run both ways: sometimes Scripture calls us to recognize ways in which our initial attempts to formulate our experience of the divine into doctrines, or to organize those doctrines into a system of thought, have fallen short."
-(Quotations in Sum from) John Kronen and Eric Reitan, 'God's Final Victory'
My purpose in this chapter has been to state my viewpoints on the nature of Scripture and its
continuing evolution in theology, and that I do not feel it is a requirement
to believe that it is one-hundred percent error free in its entirety to hold to
it being powerful, relevant, authoritative, and that its core message(s) of salvation
have been preserved intact for us to study today.
The conclusion that I have come to after much thought and consideration
is to concur with Gregory Boyd:
The earliest disciples didn’t believe in Jesus because their scripture (the OT) proved to them that he was the Son of God.Ultimately, I do not believe in the veracity of the Gospel because someone came along one day and declared that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God; free in every single instance from any error
They were rather convinced by Jesus’ claims, his unique life of love, his distinctive authority, his unprecedented miracles, his self-sacrificial death, and especially his resurrection.
Once they believed in Jesus, they looked for him and found him in their scripture. But they never would have been convinced that Jesus was Lord had they started with scripture alone.
Unfortunately, most evangelicals today are taught to do the opposite. They base their faith in Jesus’ Lordship (as well as everything else) on their belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.
This is “unfortunate” because this way of structuring our faith leverages everything on the perfection of this book, forcing the Bible to carry more weight than it was ever meant to carry.
Every single problem people find with scripture now threatens to undermine their faith.
in every single category, be it scientific, historical, grammatical, etc.
I believe in the veracity of the Gospel because of the absolutely compelling
life of Jesus Christ.
Because His story resonates profoundly somewhere deep within me and the Spirit witnesses to me of the authenticity of it. This may not be enough for others, but its enough for me.
It is my firm belief that no one could make up a character as uniquely genuine as Jesus.
So I suppose that I will have to say, like Dostoevsky, "If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth... then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth."
As stated earlier, I never intended to reach any sort of sweeping conclusion within this
entry. To do so would require much more space and time (and patience)than I currently have in my possession and is beyond my scope.
It's also been done with far more talent and research by other scholars,
one of whom is Thom Stark, author of the book 'The Human Faces of God',
who wrote:
"...A book dropped from heaven takes all of the hard work out of it for us.
That construct promises us certainty, it promises us hard and fast solutions to moral
enigmas, but what it delivers is dependence, lethargy, and self-righteousness.
This construct is held up as God's very word to us, but it is a cheat sheet;
it is the answers in the back of the book.
Precisely by offering us an unassailable set of moral axioms---ready-made---it removes
the necessity of the only thing that can make us moral and virtuous people: struggle.
Don't mistake me. I'm not saying that the scriptures themselves do this to us.
I am saying that the construct of an infallible book does this to us.
Freedom from this construct, freedom to examine the scriptures, freedom to
subject them to critique---that is the freedom to engage in moral struggle, the freedom
to commit oneself to the struggle to find God, to find the truth, to find justice,
even if that means struggling against some of our own traditions and sacred texts.
It is not a rejection of God...
...We need to be allowed to hear the distinct voices in the argument; but inerrancy
wants to homogenize those voices. The struggle is essential; and it is perpetual.
There is no easy road to moral maturity. The scriptures have a lot of guidance to offer
us along that difficult road, but they are not the destination.
If they were, we would not have to walk the road."
The contradictions and internal disputes of Scripture do not deter me one iota
from believing that it is absolutely compelling and integral to my daily journey of
faith. Rather they inspire me to further investigate, study, and never give up
the faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment