A hopefully thoughtful exposition on inerrancy
This is in response to comments made on Wade Burleson's blog. Since my response is so long, I thought it would be appropriate to post it here in case Wade prefers to delete my comment. It's kind of my summary of the concept of inerrancy...
I'm going to ramble for a bit. Hopefully you won't jump to any conclusions about where I'm going until you wander to the end:
I think our claims about inerrancy need to be modulated by a realistic view of the origin of the bound books we carry around that have the word "Holy Bible" on the spine.
I can easily point you to passages--such as Jesus's handling of the adulterous woman in John 7:53 through 8:11--that must be declared erroneous. Those passages do not exist in the earliest manuscripts (a fact proclaimed both in many translations and checkable by visiting biblegateway.com)
And since they do not consistently appear in ALL manuscripts, at least SOME of the manuscripts MUST be wrong...either by "omission" or "commission" of including the text. If you agree with this comment, you either need to rip out those passages or carefully consider what I'm about to say next.
What about a claim of inerrancy for the original manuscripts? How do you administer that claim through copying and translation? The typical Southern Baptist is uninterested in hearing anything with respect to inerrancy other than this: "The Holy Bible I am carrying is without error." Yet I offer that most of those Bibles carry the potentially erroneous passage I mentioned before.
This isn't the same kind of claims that our atheist friends press when trying to offer errors: they point to such things as the claim of the ratio between the circumference of certain columns and the diameter being presented as 3 instead of pi. And our gloss of explanations in dealing with their concerns typically are both patronizing and defensive. The result is that it looks like we are spinning the word "error" to mean what we're comfortable having it mean rather than the common English usage of the word.
Hence the word inerrant is in many ways misleading. We can't make that kind of quality claim either regarding any of our manuscripts in hand nor regarding any of our translations. We make it regarding the original manuscripts not because the Bible makes that claim (it doesn't), but because it provides us theological comfort to consider those manuscripts to be without error.
I'll offer that it is a LOT like Justice Potter Stewart's famed comments on obscenity: unable to define it rigorously, he noted that he would recognize it when he saw it. Inerrancy is not a word with clear, applicable meaning. It is a fuzzyheaded concept that lacks precision and lacks application.
The result for the thinking person is for them to be left with the sense that the term "inerrant" means to trust without thinking. To the thinking person, the spiritual claim of inerrancy can sometimes covers a multitude of uncareful thought that ranges from inappropriately treating biblical language as both too literal AND (thinking of the Song of Songs) as too symbolic. It can lead us to misread the book of Ecclesiastes (and perhaps most of the book of Proverbs) as being divine guidance when some of it is just insightful human analysis. And it CAN lead us to substitute rules for thinking and ritual for faith.
I can easily pardon nonbelievers for being disappointed by our poor reasoning in adopting the rubric "inerrant" and the Rube Goldberg contraption of explanation that supports it.
On the other hand, Rex's comment illustrates--as Dave has accurately pointed out--that the original conservative resurgence was about TWO things:
1. Whether all of God's written word is (and can be treated as) trustworthy.
2. Whether the employees of the Convention would be held accountable to teaching about the Bible and about faith as as if the Bible is fully trusthworthy
The purpose of the CR was to make the claim (ignore the language and semantics because they REALLY are confusing if not misleading) that you can read the entire Bible--including most attempts at faithful translations and perhaps even paraphrases--with the HOPE/FAITH that God intended it to be transmitted to us exactly as it was and with the additional HOPE that the Holy Spirit will somehow administer the reading of that Word in such a way that the essential truth will be apparent to us.
Are there errors in the Bibles we carry? Almost certainly. How does God overcome those errors? He created a story that has parts of the Bible interconnect with other parts in a deeply woven fabric of redemption. Parts that take on errors must be compared to parts that remain substantially error free to understand and interpret the words that we have. This--combined with the time period over which the materials of the Bible were written and collected--gives us a way to avoid both cultural myopia that has made its way into some of the prescriptive guidance and adoption of false doctrine.
So...while I disagree with Rex's comments about the truth being true and untruth being untrue, I see the point he is making as this: let's recognize the depth of the conundrum that must be fought through for a believer to come to the point that they can trust the Bible that way. We don't need to beat them over the head with the word inerrant. We need to guide them into all portions of the Bible so they can see how the pieces fit together into a coherent whole.
That means you have to read the history in places like Samuel, the Kings, the Chronicles, and even Ezra and Nehemiah in order to understand the prophecies in the major and minor prophets. And you have to glimpse the typology of the Old Testament rituals to fully understand Jesus's sacrifice.
The higher criticism of the 19th and 20th century brought the entirety of the text into such disrepute that no one knew which parts to trust and which parts to reject. And any system of hermeunetics that admits to any Scripture being essentially in error puts all readers, all worshippers, all preachers, all teachers, and all theologians into the role of deciding for ourselves which parts to keep and which parts to throw away.
When my dad--arguably a moderate--made that argument to me for the first time, I realized why it is important to treat the Bible as "inerrant" even if I find a tremendous amount of intellectual sloppiness in the word itself. I am putting my trust in an invisible God that he has provided a reliable revelation of himself that--if I will eat the scroll--will lead me to a complete understanding of Him.
But we need to remember the SECOND point of the Conservative Resurgence (thinking also of how Dave concluded his just previous post): while there is a certain amount of flexibility in concluding exactly how God administers the plan of salvation, at the heart of it the Bible must be treated as a reliable text in order for us to have any unity at all. Without the Bible being treated as reliable literally anything goes. And it did.
But treating the Bible literally can be done in a way that builds bridges and avoids violation of conscience. If my brother Rex has not reached the point in his life where God has convinced him as completely as he has me regarding the full truth of Scripture, I still can love him as a brother and I believe God can still save him. I believe God WILL save many whose theology is defective because at the end of the day and at the heart of the matter they put their ONLY trust in God...and specifically in Jesus Christ...for deliverance.
But the problem that Wade points to with the entirety of his blog and that Dave re-illustrates is that only a central, unified core of doctrine can be permitted to be taught by the Convention and her entities. The discussion is and should be on which parts are acceptable to be taught as singular truth and which parts can be taught as, essentially, doctrinal opinion. A very simple illustration of that can be seen in the varying Southern Baptist views on the doctrines of grace (especially the doctrine of eternal security of the believer) v. free will-based conversion.
I actually admire Rex for digging into the Bible to make his points. His post that ends "and so Acts Chapter 15 begins" is a classic example of this. I'm glad to have him around and I think we can tolerate his not yet perfected knowledge of the Bible and of Christ Jesus...as long as he can tolerate ours. ;)
Greg Harvey
P.S. I tremble in fear at the thought that this post is both too long and too off-topic to be hosted in Wade's comment section for this post. I intend to post it on my blog and leave Wade with the freedom to delete it here if he so chooses.
P.P.S. If you got to the postscript intending to take issue with something I wrote, I'll respectfully ask that you not try to divide and conquer my points. I'll also offer that if you follow the link to my blog you can either respond there or look at my profile and respond to my email address and engage me in a more substantive discussion than I will willingly have on Wade's site.
I'm going to ramble for a bit. Hopefully you won't jump to any conclusions about where I'm going until you wander to the end:
I think our claims about inerrancy need to be modulated by a realistic view of the origin of the bound books we carry around that have the word "Holy Bible" on the spine.
I can easily point you to passages--such as Jesus's handling of the adulterous woman in John 7:53 through 8:11--that must be declared erroneous. Those passages do not exist in the earliest manuscripts (a fact proclaimed both in many translations and checkable by visiting biblegateway.com)
And since they do not consistently appear in ALL manuscripts, at least SOME of the manuscripts MUST be wrong...either by "omission" or "commission" of including the text. If you agree with this comment, you either need to rip out those passages or carefully consider what I'm about to say next.
What about a claim of inerrancy for the original manuscripts? How do you administer that claim through copying and translation? The typical Southern Baptist is uninterested in hearing anything with respect to inerrancy other than this: "The Holy Bible I am carrying is without error." Yet I offer that most of those Bibles carry the potentially erroneous passage I mentioned before.
This isn't the same kind of claims that our atheist friends press when trying to offer errors: they point to such things as the claim of the ratio between the circumference of certain columns and the diameter being presented as 3 instead of pi. And our gloss of explanations in dealing with their concerns typically are both patronizing and defensive. The result is that it looks like we are spinning the word "error" to mean what we're comfortable having it mean rather than the common English usage of the word.
Hence the word inerrant is in many ways misleading. We can't make that kind of quality claim either regarding any of our manuscripts in hand nor regarding any of our translations. We make it regarding the original manuscripts not because the Bible makes that claim (it doesn't), but because it provides us theological comfort to consider those manuscripts to be without error.
I'll offer that it is a LOT like Justice Potter Stewart's famed comments on obscenity: unable to define it rigorously, he noted that he would recognize it when he saw it. Inerrancy is not a word with clear, applicable meaning. It is a fuzzyheaded concept that lacks precision and lacks application.
The result for the thinking person is for them to be left with the sense that the term "inerrant" means to trust without thinking. To the thinking person, the spiritual claim of inerrancy can sometimes covers a multitude of uncareful thought that ranges from inappropriately treating biblical language as both too literal AND (thinking of the Song of Songs) as too symbolic. It can lead us to misread the book of Ecclesiastes (and perhaps most of the book of Proverbs) as being divine guidance when some of it is just insightful human analysis. And it CAN lead us to substitute rules for thinking and ritual for faith.
I can easily pardon nonbelievers for being disappointed by our poor reasoning in adopting the rubric "inerrant" and the Rube Goldberg contraption of explanation that supports it.
On the other hand, Rex's comment illustrates--as Dave has accurately pointed out--that the original conservative resurgence was about TWO things:
1. Whether all of God's written word is (and can be treated as) trustworthy.
2. Whether the employees of the Convention would be held accountable to teaching about the Bible and about faith as as if the Bible is fully trusthworthy
The purpose of the CR was to make the claim (ignore the language and semantics because they REALLY are confusing if not misleading) that you can read the entire Bible--including most attempts at faithful translations and perhaps even paraphrases--with the HOPE/FAITH that God intended it to be transmitted to us exactly as it was and with the additional HOPE that the Holy Spirit will somehow administer the reading of that Word in such a way that the essential truth will be apparent to us.
Are there errors in the Bibles we carry? Almost certainly. How does God overcome those errors? He created a story that has parts of the Bible interconnect with other parts in a deeply woven fabric of redemption. Parts that take on errors must be compared to parts that remain substantially error free to understand and interpret the words that we have. This--combined with the time period over which the materials of the Bible were written and collected--gives us a way to avoid both cultural myopia that has made its way into some of the prescriptive guidance and adoption of false doctrine.
So...while I disagree with Rex's comments about the truth being true and untruth being untrue, I see the point he is making as this: let's recognize the depth of the conundrum that must be fought through for a believer to come to the point that they can trust the Bible that way. We don't need to beat them over the head with the word inerrant. We need to guide them into all portions of the Bible so they can see how the pieces fit together into a coherent whole.
That means you have to read the history in places like Samuel, the Kings, the Chronicles, and even Ezra and Nehemiah in order to understand the prophecies in the major and minor prophets. And you have to glimpse the typology of the Old Testament rituals to fully understand Jesus's sacrifice.
The higher criticism of the 19th and 20th century brought the entirety of the text into such disrepute that no one knew which parts to trust and which parts to reject. And any system of hermeunetics that admits to any Scripture being essentially in error puts all readers, all worshippers, all preachers, all teachers, and all theologians into the role of deciding for ourselves which parts to keep and which parts to throw away.
When my dad--arguably a moderate--made that argument to me for the first time, I realized why it is important to treat the Bible as "inerrant" even if I find a tremendous amount of intellectual sloppiness in the word itself. I am putting my trust in an invisible God that he has provided a reliable revelation of himself that--if I will eat the scroll--will lead me to a complete understanding of Him.
But we need to remember the SECOND point of the Conservative Resurgence (thinking also of how Dave concluded his just previous post): while there is a certain amount of flexibility in concluding exactly how God administers the plan of salvation, at the heart of it the Bible must be treated as a reliable text in order for us to have any unity at all. Without the Bible being treated as reliable literally anything goes. And it did.
But treating the Bible literally can be done in a way that builds bridges and avoids violation of conscience. If my brother Rex has not reached the point in his life where God has convinced him as completely as he has me regarding the full truth of Scripture, I still can love him as a brother and I believe God can still save him. I believe God WILL save many whose theology is defective because at the end of the day and at the heart of the matter they put their ONLY trust in God...and specifically in Jesus Christ...for deliverance.
But the problem that Wade points to with the entirety of his blog and that Dave re-illustrates is that only a central, unified core of doctrine can be permitted to be taught by the Convention and her entities. The discussion is and should be on which parts are acceptable to be taught as singular truth and which parts can be taught as, essentially, doctrinal opinion. A very simple illustration of that can be seen in the varying Southern Baptist views on the doctrines of grace (especially the doctrine of eternal security of the believer) v. free will-based conversion.
I actually admire Rex for digging into the Bible to make his points. His post that ends "and so Acts Chapter 15 begins" is a classic example of this. I'm glad to have him around and I think we can tolerate his not yet perfected knowledge of the Bible and of Christ Jesus...as long as he can tolerate ours. ;)
Greg Harvey
P.S. I tremble in fear at the thought that this post is both too long and too off-topic to be hosted in Wade's comment section for this post. I intend to post it on my blog and leave Wade with the freedom to delete it here if he so chooses.
P.P.S. If you got to the postscript intending to take issue with something I wrote, I'll respectfully ask that you not try to divide and conquer my points. I'll also offer that if you follow the link to my blog you can either respond there or look at my profile and respond to my email address and engage me in a more substantive discussion than I will willingly have on Wade's site.
posted by greg.w.h@1:31 PM link-to-post
17 comments
17 Comments:
Greg,
A very thoughtful and clear statement. I commend you for it knowing that commendation for a post does not necessitate an agreement with every word or idea conveyed as you would know better than most since you have graciously done that very thing with Rex.
I must say, however, you have said very little with which I would personally disagree.
One thing I DO wish to state is that the comfort I draw from the conviction that the original biblical materials were without error is that, in translating the scriptures, it behooves us to go back to the earliest translations available, when possible, to get our clearest meaning since we would be closest to the original statements. That would be like cutting a piece of wood from the original cut [granted we don't have the original thus the earliest is our best available] to get a more precise cut of later pieces. None of the translations can be said to be as the originals were, but let's get as close as possible. That's my comfort zone in a statements about the originals being without error.
Good stuff.
Greg: It is comforting to find someone who might understand my answer to the question, "Do you believe in Biblical inerrrancy," which was, "I really don't know what that term means." And I don't, so I don't try to struggle too much with the concept.
I think a lot of posters at Grace and Truth will misunderstand your position and accuse you of being one of those dreaded "Moderates." As it happens, I am one of them myself; I don't get the sense you are anything but a conservative with an interest in precision.
In any case, thanks for the post, and it will inspire both my thoughts and prayers this evening.
Kurt A. Ehrsam
Thanks again for your comments, Paul. I hear your point about the originals being inerrant and the hope that greater fidelity is carried forward with that doctrine. I don't intend to unmoor believers from the words they use that solidify their trust in the Bible and in the originals. I just hoped that my faith struggle in this area and the conclusions I arrived at might be helpful to others.
I was the PK in the family that instead of always listening to Dad's sermons read Genesis to Song of Songs over and over and over. To me it is impossible to conceive that the stories have been deeply manipulated to protect various perspectives or to bolster particular views. So I very early rejected human higher criticism such as the JEPD theory. Even if there was later editing, in my opinion the believable essence of the stories--depicting humans warts and all--was retained. And once you conquer those sections and start putting the timeline together, the OT prophets start falling into understandability as well.
And once you've reached the chasm that ends with Daniel and restarts with the Gospels, I think the careful reader can quickly tie the New to the Old and the Gospels to the Epistles. Then the apocalyptic passages in Matthew, Thessalonians (second? can't remember off the top of my head), Daniel, and Revelation all start reverberating with each other.
It is a magnificent work of revelation and it is even more magnificent because God inspired human authors to collect THEIR thoughts for their contemporaries while he collected HIS eternal thoughts for us. Miraculous in every sense of the word!
Greg
Kurt:
God has blessed me with a thick skin to go with my (unfortunately) ever-expanding tendency to wordiness. I would like to think that a careful reader won't claim I'm a moderate, but I understand why you would say that.
But I covet all prayers on my behalf regardless. One of the startling revelations God gave me during an extremely unfortunate period of time that my wife and I went through was that there were literally hundreds of Christians bringing our name before his throne. That gave us a courage to face that present difficulty that is impossible to explain and even harder to show adequate gratefulness over.
Greg
Greg,
I am Rex Ray's pastor. I have known Rex for almost a decade and I find him to be trifling at times (I think he would say they same about me :) )
He and I are world's apart on our view of scripture. But you know what? Rex cares/loves people and has a genuine love for Jesus and a desire to live as a disciple of our Lord...even though he love a good debate now and them!!! (He is 70+)
On top of that there is no one that reads and studies the biblical text (in the Living Bible!!)any more than Rex Ray.
He has challenged me more and taught me more than he will ever know.
I am an inerrantist This means: The scriptures were recorded just as God intended them to be in the originial manuscripts. They must be properly understood in relation to literary, theological, historical, and grammatical concerns.
If there has been any redaction, editing, etc God has somehow guided that processs through the
Spirit (As I learned from from one of my Liberty Baptist Theological professors!!) to give us reliable manuscripts that are infallible in purpose ( which means that they are not prone to lead to error)
Using your example form the book of John...many early manuscripts have the story they just have it in different places. As Leon Morris states it is as if the early church did not know what to do with the story...they knew it was authentic but did not knwo how to treat . It suonds like something Jesus would say and do.
Maybe God wanted us to wrestle with it becasue we do not know what to do with it either. Maybe we should also ask why the early church may have struggled with it.
Maybe we should remember that John himself said that Jesus did so many things that if we they would have been written down...there would not be enough books to record them all!!!!!!
Obviously the Spirit has been in the process from tramission to translation to...interpretation...but obviously He has allowed some ambiquity to keep us humble and dependent towards Him.
As I say to Rex, "Even if the Scriptures are inerrant...I am not." I have strong convictions on many things. I am dogmatic on a few things but I am sure of one thing. God will use the scriptures (inerrant or not) and imperfect people, the power of the Holy Spirit and the message of the cross as He continues to work out His plan and purposes in human history.
On that he and I agree,,,maybe (I cannot believe that I am about to say this...but when all isaid and done...maybe that is enough.
RMS
Amen, Rodney. I will add that if God can love and save the cantankerous among us, he can probably even save me. Which is why I would prefer for us to listen hard to--and even embrace--those who chafe at too easy explanations than to dismiss what they have to say.
Most of the time they are guiding us past the arguments that have the same quality of usefulness as the one regarding how many angels can really dance on the head of a pin. I've found these dear saints intuitively know when we push our intellectualism too far and make claims that aren't supported by either direct claims by God or even simple reason.
I truly believe God tolerates a LOT more ambiguity than we realize. And I've come to realize that in the strangest of places: working to design hardware and software that must be stern in meeting its key functional requirements while being flexible in how those requirements are actually implemented. There are times where the final implementation of key functions is modified at the very tail end of a project as we gain new insight on how to implement the spirit of the requirement in a more efficient manner.
I, oddly enough, think at those times of how Moses entreated God not to destroy the Israelites even at the cost of his own life. Only the true cynic can read that passage and conclude that Moses did not change God's mind. We worship a compassionate, living God who is capable of reasoning with us and loves us to reason with him. I see folks like Rex as being given a special dispensation by God to contend for the heart of God rather than to allow the stiff-shirted among us to turn this marvelous faith into a dry, dusty, too mechanical contraption.
I believe we are on the same page you and I
Grace and peace
RMS
Does the apparent changing of God's mind cause a Calvinist any problems? My general impression is that they don't regard God as being flexible.
Bennett Willis
That's a good question and I actually thought about it when I originally considered the situation.
I look at it as God's sovereignty being specific as to those he intends to regenerate who then can make a reasoned choice for Christ jesus. But he might not necessarily decide in advance precisely how or when each person is "reached". Otherwise the determinism and anti-evangelicalism of hyper-Calvinism seems justified.
But my view of the doctrines of grace leaves room at the moment of decision for more free will than a strict Calvinist might. I suspect some would call me a 4.5 pointer because of that, but I recognize how important God's sovereignty is to choosing the Bride. And I also recognize that the father in the parable sent out invitations to some who were not initially invited so that the wedding party would be full.
For myself, I've decided to allow that verse to surround the mystery of precisely when God completes election. I'll offer that--using the phraseology of computer science--it is more likely to be late binding rather than early binding. God can still determine in advance regardless.
For me, the doctrines of grace are very successful at tempering my personal pride over what I have done to bring about faith or set the conditions for me even to accept salvation. I am not inclined to re-ignite that pride by trying to pour concrete around the conditions by which God accomplishes any portion of salvation for any of us.
Greg Harvey
Greg,
Please don't call me moderate, as I am not moderate in my relationship to Christ, the Bible, or living the implications of faith. However, you are welcome to use liberal!
The arguments I have seen for inerrancy begin with the logic: God is faithfully true, so in order for the Bible to be God's Word, it must be without error. That is an unacceptable premise for me. The Bible IS God's Word. That is not conditional. To extend the logic of the argument would be to say that any doctrine, sermon, witness to the gospel must be inerrant for God to be involved in the process. That is obviously false.
Calvin noted errors in the Biblical text, long before JEPD. To throw back to the original manuscripts presents its own problems: which version of Revelation is the original text? (It circulated in three editions of varying lengths.) Which version of Daniel in which language? (There is enough redaction here that we can't be sure of the original language, nor which chapters should be included.)
Another underlying premise of inerrancy theory has to do with theory of inspiration as limited to the writing of the original documents. John 8, the added endings to Mark, and the additions to the Lord's Prayer are easily attested as added to the original texts. What we fail to consider is that for texts like the Pentateuch, there was no original TEXT, as its first circulation was oral, not textual.
I would rather consider the Biblical texts inspired, authoritative, and sufficient, but inspiration covers more than the writing and redaction of a text. It includes the events of revelation, the recognition of revelation, the transmission of revelation (through all its processes, twists, and turns), its recording, preservation, and recognition as an authoritative record of God's revelation.
Inerrancy is not required for faith. It is not necessary for the Bible to be true. It is also not backed up by the facts in careful analysis of oral and textual transmission. One can view in Jesus' critique of certain OT concepts the idea that there are errors in its presentation. We will also find, however, that God is not above using fallible people and animals to communicate his word of grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, and truth.
( More on this.
I have seen people lift an English version in the air to claim it as inerrant, only to fly to original manuscripts to support the claim. What does it profit one to hold an errant copy of an inerrant original if only an inerrant one is sufficient? The logic does not work. (Nor is it necessary!)
The term "moderate" translates "lukewarm" for me, too. As such I even misapply it in describing my dad as he's neither truly "moderate" nor is he lukewarm.
The rest of your comments I essentially agree with in much the same vein as Paul Burleson commended my post: I agree with the thoughtfulness you put into your comments even if I might quibble on a point here or there, especially from a semantic viewpoint.
For instance: your claim that the original Torah was oral is no more supportable than the theory of inerrancy being "true" by the same conditions. Your assumption is that it is true. You can't produce evidence to prove that.
You also don't address whether you trust God's Word or not which is what I indicated I believe is the essence of the doctrine of infallibility (doctrine simply means teaching as opposed to "theory.")
I think your thought process on the more comprehensive term "inspiration" is indeed helpful and also has the merit of being a biblical term. I also agree that the belief in inerrancy is irrelevant to faith in Christ Jesus. Anyone can have that faith without subscribing to inerrancy.
I wrote with the hope that people who have subscribed to the word "inerrancy" might read what I wrote and have a more accepting view of those that don't subscribe to that word. As such I chose a balanced position between affirming their "sense" that the Bible is trustworthy while not directly challenging their "belief" in inerrancy. I didn't see any reason to do that.
Your comment goes there, though, and as I said I think you've presented that position thoughtfully and commendably.
Greg
Here are a few quotes to the effect of an oral tradition as background to the canonical accounts in their present form. Harper's Bible Commentary.
"Folktale and other essentially oral genres of literature have proved particularly congenial material for structural analysis, and since some of the Bible (especially the narrative portions of the OT and the Gospels) has some similarity to folktale and may well reflect a lengthy oral transmission, interesting results have been achieved." --article on "Structuralism"
"It is not clear precisely when the transition took place in Israel between prophecy that was originally oral and prophecy that was originally written. Early prophetic books, such as Amos, still show signs of oral composition, while the latest ones, such as Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, were clearly produced first in writing."
--article on "Literary Style: Prophecy in Search of Form"
"Comparative study of the multiple versions of gospel traditions has led to the conclusion that from the time of Jesus’ utterance of his words and of the formation of stories about his deeds, the words and stories were transmitted orally and independently of the narrative contexts in which we now read them."
--article on "Tradition History"
"The books of the OT as we have them today came into being over a very long period, at least a thousand years. Moreover, most books did not come into existence suddenly and completely as they do today when one author writes a book and “publishes” it. Rather, they came into existence gradually—older sources were incorporated, materials were edited, and further additions were made, whether in oral tradition that formed the basis for the text or after the writing down of a text."
--article on "the Bible and Its Communities"
"We have seen that in actual biblical times, or the earlier portion of them, religion was not yet governed by a defined Scripture. Faced with a religious problem, people did not turn to a written text, for their religion was not yet organized in that way. Quite possibly some traditions such as some legal ordinances had early been committed to written form, but many other religious traditions were transmitted orally. Neither the prophets nor the earlier kings appealed to any existing “Scripture”; prophetic words were mostly spoken, not written, in the first instance."
--article "Prescriptural Religion"
See also, "Oral Materials, Sources, and Traditions"
James Luther Mays et al., Harper's Bible Commentary (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1996, c1988.
I can look up other sources, but I would think this resource would be acceptable as scholarly and well-grounded.
Oral tradition does not designate something as invalid. It is simply a different way of communicating important stories and traditions of a people, especially in a marginally- or non-literate age.
I thought I did state clearly that I trust God's Word. I find the Bible trustworthy, reliable, authentic, authoritative, and sufficient for matters of faith. My problem is with a theory about the Bible being forced onto it, such that I must now interpret the text from the position of that theory.
Chris,
Thanks for the additional reply. Your comments add greatly to my roughly outlined frustration with inerrancy. Two followups:
1. When you said "I would rather consider the Biblical texts inspired, authoritative, and sufficient, but inspiration covers more than the writing and redaction of a text.", I offer that all of these terms are descriptive and you have a technical concept that goes with each. I didn't translate any of them into "trustworthy" which is a warmer, more subjective notion of how one views the Bible because you don't seem to approach it that way.
I, like you, carry a good deal of skepticism for technical descriptions that imply a knowledge that we don't have. I had hoped that came across in the original comment. You seem to read me as favoring inerrancy. I tolerate the term, but I hardly favor it.
I offered the real thing that we desire from the doctrine/theory of inerrancy is the ability to trust what we read in the Bible. Honestly I think you and I basically are arguing the same point with slightly different terminology. You desire to reject the term inerrancy because it imposes a view on the Bible. I've attempted to modulate (a term I used in the original post) the meaning of the word so it is less speculative and more applicable. I thought I could do that by emphasizing the need for trustworthiness of the Bible. You take the approach of emphasizing other words--especially inspiration--to accomplish a similar result.
2. Regarding your references on oral transmission, I think we both agree that we're reading a theory not a fact. And it's not even a theory based on strong evidence but is--by the scholarly sources--admitted to be supposition that is based on comparison with other documents. If the written word is inspired within your framework of the word "inspiration", then it is a unique event. So while I think we can speculate on oral transmission, it isn't impossible to consider that well-formed stories could come from the source of inspiration and do not require time to accumulate.
That doesn't mean that I'm claiming I know WHO wrote the Torah. We do know God commanded Moses to keep a journal. And we do know that he wasn't around when the patriarchs walked the earth. So oral transmission is the best "under the sun" explanation of the patriarchal stories. And probably Moses' journal as well as his education are the best "under the sun" explanation for the detail in the Exodus-Deuteronomy writings (if he wrote them.) But if God was involved, is anything impossible?
So I'll offer one more thought in conclusion: to what extent do you and I owe our theological resilience to the fact that we're both TCKs? I know for me it was foundational because I was exposed to MANY Christian leaders at the same time while in a church--even as a PK--you might know only a handful at a time.
In addition, the "civil religion" of Indonesia was their philosophy they called Pancasila (pon-chuh-see-lah). It included the concept of gotong-royong which is loosely translated "give and take" and might have the additional translation "both accept and tolerate".
As such, I don't have a strong interest in leading people to believe what I believe. But I have a very strong interest in leading people to diligently search, think, and reason on their own. I'll offer, again, that your comments very much express that similar desire that folks keep thinking as they encounter faith head on. Thanks for taking the time to write them down!
Greg
Greg,
Yes, I refuse to use the term as acceptable, because to me it is a lie. The Chicago statement essentially says, "Lets just use the term inerrancy and define it so broadly that it does not mean what most people would take it to mean. That it too dishonest for me.
As far as trusting the Bible, I have no problem. Definitely some of that comes from my TCK background, as I have had various multicultural expositions to doctrine, theology, and Biblical interpretation from various beginning points. I have found that our presuppositions are often much more important than most of our methods.
As to oral tradition, yes it is theory, but I see a LOT of support for it from Scripture, as well as the normal processes of cultural development. The limitations of writing in a semi-nomadic wilderness area on clay tablets in a pastoral setting are numerous. The Talmud as the source point for attribution of Mosaic authorship also claims Samuel to have written both 1&2 Samuel, though he died before the end of the first.
Judging from Exodus 18, Moses would not have had time to write much. Authorship, however, was normally attributed to influential figures, not the actual task of those same persons. For the most part, I think we impose too much of our Western, "modern" concepts of authorship and text on textual traditions of a very different sort than those we are familiar with.
Regardless of all that, my main concern is that in using the term we are enforcing mass ignorance, rather than encouraging people to understand the Bible for what it is. It is God's word in a greater sense than a sermon I preach is God's word to my congregation. At the same time, it is God's word through fallible human instruments. Our attempts to interpret it correctly fail to do God's message justice. What does it help if we say the text is something it never claims to be?
From my vantage point, then, I will not use the term, so as not to mislead others in what I consider dishonest jargon.
Chris,
I'm going to aim for a common ground that I think the two of us share. Rather than worrying about your dissatisfaction with inerrancy, let's see if we both agree on this:
All words that do not have simple meanings that are simply understood by a group of people coming either as actual children or with child-like faith are distracting jargon. The simplest expression of faith in the Word of God is therefore the best: "I believe God 's inspiration--a biblical word that Paul uses in 1 Tim 3:16--is sufficient for me to treat the Bible as a child would treat it: It's God's word, it's filled with word pictures of how he relates to those that want to relate to him, and I can't go wrong by searching it diligently so that His Holy Spirit can reveal the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to me through that word.
I already tend to avoid more complicated explanations of the trustworthiness of the Bible. But I'm not particularly interested in creating barriers between myself and other, weaker brothers by either completely accepting or completely rejecting words they treat as extraordinarily important. Instead I will encourage them to express their love for the Bible in terms of personal witness instead of relatively dry and impersonal jargon.
There is room in that statement to treat the Bible as entirely sacred: i.e. completely set aside for the purpose of revealing God to us and helping us see that he's wiling to relate to ANYONE that desires to relate to him. And there is room in that statement for individuals to be given the freedom of conscience to entertain various degrees of doubt as they try to get their arms around the book itself. That we should do that as an action of obeying Christ's commandment to love one another seems a good enough reason to systematically plan for and accept such a wide range of responses instead of attempting to coerce doctrinal conformity.
Does that seem like a reasonable approach to you? Or are you set on trying to get me to reject the word inerrant in its entirety? It isn't that I fail to understand your arguments. I just don't feel led by the Holy Spirit to as extreme of a position as you desire me to take.
Greg Harvey
Greg,
Yes, that is reasonable. I would generally ignore someone else's use to the term as a point on which we disagree. I would generally ignore someone's attribution of mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Biblical support for our understanding of the solar system's structure, or the earth as flat. I cannot personally use the word, but another's use of it is an issue of their faith journey, not mine. I would not insist that others take my position, but it the only one I find coherent for my journey with Christ.
If I were to use the term inerrancy, it would be an attempt to fool others into thinking that I believe something I do not. I would rather be clear on disagreement and still work together for unity under the Lordship of Jesus Christ than to pretend to pass someone's litmus test. For me, that is an issue of integrity, akin to being asked to reinterpret the BF&M2000 however I chose so that I could sign it.
In Brasil, we say "I will not argue with you. I will argue with your ideas." Somehow, we seem to equate our ideas with our identity in our North American context. Deep down, however, we all disagree. If we try, however, we can find plenty of common ground in serving Christ Jesus as our only sufficient Lord and Savior.
Thanks for your openness. I appreciate your desire for unity in our joint service to Christ Jesus. May you ever find the grace and courage to remain faithful to Christ, wherever, and however He leads you.
I don't know if you ever check back this far or not--and I probably won't come this way again. I have really enjoyed your comments (mostly on Wade's blog) for the last several years. I appreciate your determination to simply (as simply as reasonable) speak your opinion clearly and in a well thought out manner. And I appreciate the time you spend on the comments--unless writing software has caused you to "get it right on the first pass."
I came this way almost accidentally and found a comment that indicated I have been here before. :) Sort of like following a trail and finding your mark scratched into a boulder.
Completely off the subject--but brought up by the thought of finding your mark. I was traveling on Canada 1 highway near Lake Superior. When we entered the country where the granit rocks became common, I started to notice that on the places the road had left "outcroppings" that people had build stacks of rocks. They were similar to the ones that are built by the Inuit tribes. Sort of a stylized man. This went on mile after mile. There were almost no suitable places that did not have a stack of rocks. Some of them will be there for years--and some fall down the first winter. If I had had my children with me, I would have found an unused one and we would have made a stack. I think that if I ever plan to go that way again, I might bring some flat rocks from Texas to make the horizontal layers of the stack--and etch my name and the date in them. Be one of a group of builders who left a positive mark on the environment.
I'd like to think that our comments will have similar effects on the people that read them--but I have my doubts.
Anyway, I appreciate you. :)
Bennett Willis
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