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I am not aware of anyone who takes a strictly literal interpretation of Psalm 114:4 (The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.)True enough!!! But, I have seen Christians who still think, because of their particular understanding of literal interpretation and biblical "innerrancy," that Elijah himself will actually come again at some time in the future, a style of thinking similar to what is seen among some of the more orthodox Jews.
So, the fact that God has presented a number of prophetic details in obscure, cryptic language poses an interpretive complexity that we all have to wrestle with. Some people think that truth equates to literal 'correspondence,' in which case this produces some hurdles for those who think that biblical statements and the actual world events to which they point, have to match in exacting quality and quantity. I, on the other hand, would say, "Sometimes, perhaps, but not all the time." The prophecy concerning Elijah, as fulfilled in John the Baptist, is a clear case in point for my view, as is the case of Isaiah's prophecy that is used in relation to Jesus' Virgin Birth, among other things. These things were not given in a succinct, clearly unmistakable articulation ... but they are true, nevertheless.
Peace
2PhiloVoid
I am not aware of anyone who takes a strictly literal interpretation of Psalm 114:4 (The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.)
Perhaps the root theological misgiving for me is that inerrancy prescribes biblical interpretation too narrowly because it prescribes God too narrowly.
First, it implies that those who critique inerrancy stand in opposition to God himself. This is a conversation-stopper and, if taken to heart, erects a wholly insulated, self-referential system of thought, which is in fact what has happened.
I think it is meant to be poetic, as isI suppose you should count yourself fortunate that you have not been near the epicenter of a major earthquake.
I think it is meant to be poetic, as is
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Exactly...God has been reduced to puny human understanding. God created the entire universe. The omnipotent, incorporeal God-spirit cannot be reduced to a human. Humans are finite, relatively ignorant, sort of stupid. There is no way to reduce the Sovereign of the Universe to something a human can easily understand. By reducing God to that, it removes the awe and reverence one should have for that Sovereign. It deludes humans into thinking they can truly divine the mind of God.
That idea is seen here by the inerrantists use of circular logic...their answer for everything is "because Bible". They presume to think what the Sovereign of the Universe wants/believes/thinks and presume to think for God. Belief in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy devolves into a legalistic, narrow-minded, "us vs. them" mentality that does not do anyone any good. It is in direct opposition to the Great Commission of Christ when He said "Go and make disciples of ALL nations...". Instead, with their legalistic pride, they turn people away from the message and the God.
It is a great pity that the sovereign God, the immutable Lord of time and the universe became a pitiful human being, born in truly disgusting circumstances and subjected to pathetic torture and a terrifically humiliating deat.
Oh boy...I can see you got confused there...but I'm used to that by now.
Yep, and I am quite used to being confused.
Just to help you out...I was referring to the being commonly known as "God the Father"...whom I believe to be a genderless incorporeal being. IF I was referring to the God-man manifested in flesh and known as Jesus, i would have done so.
Are you trinitarian in your theology?
And you care...why?
Just curious as it does make a difference in other areas of one's theology.
is Biblical inerrancy is just a theory?
Is there enough evidence to support or demand adherence to “Biblical inerrancy”, it just seems like a lot of conjecture, no substance.
I'd like to present Biblical scholar Peter Enns' thoughts in Biblical inerrancy (the first couple paragraphs from "five views of biblical inerrancy", the rest from his blog). My hope is that we can get a discussion going in inerrancy.
Enns:
“The core issue, however, is how inerrancy functions in contemporary evangelical theological discourse. This too varies, but when all is said and done, I do not think inerrancy can capture the Bible’s varied character and complex dynamics. Though intended to protect the Bible, inerrancy actually sells it short by placing on it expectations it is not designed to beat—as evidenced by the need for generations of continued publications and debates to defend it.
On a deeper and ultimately more important level, inerrancy sells God short. Inerrancy is routinely propounded as the logical entailment of God’s truthfulness, which for many inerrantists leads to the necessary expectation of the Bible’s historical accuracy. The premise that such inerrant Bible is the only kind of book God would be able to produce, or the only effective means of divine communication, strikes me as assuming that God shares our modern interest in accuracy and scientific precision, rather than allowing the phenomena of Scripture to shape our theological expectations.
…Put it another way, inerrancy is a theory."
1. Inerrancy prescribes the Bible–and God–too narrowly
The title of my essay [in the book] is “Inerrancy, However Defined, Does Not Describe What the Bible Does.” What I mean is this:
However inerrancy may be defined—whether strictly or in its more nuanced, progressive varieties (both types are represented in this book)—however it is defined, in my opinion inerrancy doesn’t sit well with what I see when I open my Bible and read it.
As I see it, inerrancy prescribes the boundaries of biblical interpretation in ways that creates conflict both inner-canonically and with respect to extra-biblical information. This is why “holding on to inerrancy” (as it is often put) seems to be such a high-maintenance activity, requiring vigilant and constant tending.
This dynamic suggests to me not only that the term may not be an apt descriptor of Scripture, but it virtually guarantees continued unrest within evangelicalism whenever alternate voices are raised.
In my opinion, a strict, literalistic, inerrantist position requires more intellectual isolation that I am not willing to grant—as I’m sure a good number here would agree. A more progressive variety is marked by such things as a true working respect for the Bible’s literary qualities, genres, and historical settings, which tends to temper a strict inerrantist model. But here, too, the ceiling for me remains too low.
If I may play on that spatial metaphor for a moment—strict inerrancy, hermeneutically speaking, is like crawling on my belly through a low and narrow tunnel; progressive inerrancy (and pardon the reductionism) is like wandering though a house—but with 5-foot ceilings.
It’s good to be able to get on my feet, but I can’t stand up straight without hitting my head and after a while my back is so stiff I couldn’t straighten up if I wanted to.
In other words, as I see it, a progressive form of inerrancy (a position voiced by two of our co-authors) still does not provide the room to address the data and give the sorts of answers that I feel are warranted and necessary.
In order to allow for the types of interpretive conclusions, genre designations, and hermeneutical strategies that I am convinced need to be applied to Scripture, I would have to redefine inerrancy in ways that would leave me feeling dishonest—my own Inigo Montoya moment from Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This is why, beginning in 2007, I discontinued my membership to ETS. Nothing personal.
Perhaps the root theological misgiving for me is that inerrancy prescribes biblical interpretation too narrowly because it prescribes God too narrowly.
The premise all inerrantists hold to on some level—albeit in varying degrees—is that an inerrant Bible is the only kind of book that, logically, God would be able to produce, the only means by which a truth-telling God would communicate.
As I see it, the rhythmic, recurring, generational tensions over inerrancy within evangelicalism are fueled by the distance between this a priori theological expectation about God and how his book should behave, and the persistently non-cooperative details of biblical interpretation.
I think of inerrancy as a model of Scripture. Models are brought forward to explain a set of phenomena. If they do not adequately address the phenomena, then the model ceases having compelling explanatory value, and is usually set aside in favor of others models.
One can refine or nuance any model, to be sure, but how much nuancing can inerrancy handle? And when we keep in mind inerrancy’s function within evangelicalism, which has been essentially defensive, to keep out wrong thinking, then too much nuancing removes many of inerrancy’s teeth.
2. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy prescribes an unworkable model of Scripture
The prescriptive function of inerrancy is showcased in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, both in terms of its own rhetoric as well as in the authority subsequently bequeathed to it in evangelical culture. I feel this prescriptive function has obstructed the kind of critical dialogue clearly surfacing within evangelicalism.
I’d like to mention here just one issue to illustrate: how the Chicago Statement connects truth, God, and Scripture. We find this very early on, in the section entitled “A Short Statement,” which consists of five assertions intended to set parameters for what follows.
The first statement speaks of God “who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only.” This opening premise is critical to the rhetoric of the Chicago Statement: it links inerrancy with the very nature of God, which is, indeed a common defense of inerrancy.
But I am not willing to give this assertion a free ride.
First, it implies that those who critique inerrancy stand in opposition to God himself. This is a conversation-stopper and, if taken to heart, erects a wholly insulated, self-referential system of thought, which is in fact what has happened.
Second, what is missing here, at the outset of the Chicago Statement where it would be most appropriate to include it, is hermeneutical self-consciousness—a reflection on the nature of the truth that God speaks…in ancient texts.
That the Chicago Statement doesn’t give even a nod here to the hermeneutical and theological dimensions of discussing God, truth, and Scripture is more than just a gaping hole: it colors the document from beginning to end and renders it entirely inadequate for engaging the very issues that bring the inadequacies of inerrancy to light.
What should be brought explicitly to the forefront here—at the outset—is the manner in which God speaks in Scripture, namely through the idioms, attitudes, assumptions, and general worldviews of the ancient authors. I know the Chicago Statement makes a subtle overture to this later on, but too ambiguous, too little, and too late.
3. Israel believed in many gods
Consider the phenomenon in the Old Testament: that Israel’s God is not the only deity but one of many.
For example, in Psalm 95 Yahweh’s greatness is proclaimed by means of a comparison with other gods: “Yahweh is the great God, he great king above all gods.”
Job 1-2 and Psalm 82 begin with Yahweh presiding over a divine council. In Job the scene is quickly dominated by “the accuser,” but in Psalm 82 Yahweh is chiding the other gods for not meeting out justice on earth as they should.
And in Exodus 12:12, the last plague is described as Yahweh’s crowning judgment on “all the gods of Egypt.”
Since, as we are told in the Chicago Statement, in Scripture it is God who speaks, and God speaks only truth, and would neither deceive nor mislead us—what are we to conclude? That there are in fact other gods, some of whom are subordinate to Yahweh and others with whom he contends?
One could suggest ad hoc solutions: these aren’t gods but angels or demons or hyperbole. But the Old Testament doesn’t say any of this, and making things up to protect dogma is never a good idea.
God, who (according to inerrantist rhetoric) speaks only truth when telling us about himself, says “gods.” If “days are days” (Genesis 1), floods are floods, dead Canaanites are dead Canaanites, then surely gods are gods.
Right? Shouldn’t the inerrantist logic be followed through to the end?
Or consider Deuteronomy 32:8, where the high god Elyon—known to us also from Ugaritic religion—apportions the nations to the lesser gods, one of whom is Yahweh, whose “portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share”—and so Kemosh gets Moab, Baal gets the Canaanites, and so forth.
(You’ll need to consult a good commentary or study Bible to see this. Early Jewish scribes changed the text to conform to strict monotheistic standards. English Bibles reflect this later “corrected” reading, but without seeing it in translation notes you’d never know it.)
Are we–according to inerrantist logic–bound by Scripture and the truth-telling God who speaks therein to say, therefore, that Israel’s God, like the other gods, is ethnically and geographically bound and answers to a higher authority?
The language of the Chicago Statement is not helpful to me in these instances. What does it mean to speak of these sorts of things as “truth” from God and therefore “inerrant”?
I understand that inerrancy, as it is commonly defended, only pertains to what the Bible teaches or affirms (as some of my co-authors repeat)—but I see a lot of teaching or at least affirming going on here in these verses.
If these texts that tell us about God aren’t at least “affirming” something, I’m not sure what the word means.
I also realize these descriptions of God aren’t everywhere in the Old Testament, but does that really matter? Are we free to “pick and choose” what we want to believe?
These statement are so…clear…God is speaking clearly….if we don’t follow his plain word here, what reason would we have to follow his word anywhere? The next thing we’ll be doing in denying the resurrection.
Forgive the rhetoric. I’m just trying to make a point, and I hope it is not too subtle.
4. Inerrancy doesn’t describe what the Bible does
I don’t think the gods of the ancient Near East exist, nor did our God ever preside over a heavenly board meeting, nor was he ever under the authority Elyon.
I do believe, however, that the ancient Israelites believed that, but that does not mean that their belief at this moment in redemptive history represents absolute “spiritual reality” so to speak.
Now why do I say that? It’s not because I disrespect the Bible. I have two reasons.
One reason is the New Testament. A canonical view leads us further along the biblical plot line, so to speak, and so I believe that there is one God not many (a view that is already echoed in other portions of the Old Testament).
Scripture is varied and on the move, and so for inner-biblical reasons alone, I don’t expect every part of Scripture—even those parts that talk about God—to provide absolute, unerring, truth.
The second reason is what we know through historical and archaeological work about the ancient tribal environment in which the ancient Israelites participated. Understanding something about the world of the Bible can help us here.
The way God is described in Job or the Psalms, etc., makes perfect sense in that cultural context. But the opening assertion of the Chicago Statement, that God “who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only” –that seems off topic to me, words not designed to address what we are seeing here.
I apply this same sort of thinking to the three issues discussed in our book, especially two of them—the historicity of the fall of Jericho and God’s command to exterminate the Canaanites.
To understand both I appeal to (1) the gospel movement away from tribal thinking about God, and (2) to archaeological and literary data from Israel’s cultural context.
This is why I draw the rather common, almost mundane, conclusion (and you have to read my essay in the book to get the details) that the stories of Jericho and Canaanite extermination are (1) not “historical” in any sense that we normally use the word, nor do they (2) provide a binding, permanent, absolute picture of God.
I can certainly understand and respect why ancient Israelites would speak this way. But, like the issue of many gods in the Old Testament, this doesn’t mean that the Jericho and Canaanite extermination episodes are the final word historically or theologically.
I do not believe I am dismissing the Old Testament, nor is this (for heaven’s sake!) dualistic Marcionism, which says the Gods of the Old Testament are two different Gods. I am not saying there are two gods; one God is the God of Scripture. But God is portrayed differently by the biblical writers at different times and places.
Within the Old Testament God is already portrayed in diverse ways. In the Gospel, Christians believe, the fuller gaze on God is provided through the Gospel.
Acknowledging this diverse portrait of God, especially when getting to the New Testament, is simply an aspect of grappling with “Bible in context” and the canonical complexity of the problem of continuity and discontinuity between the testaments.
And doing so is simply to participate in the Christian theological project that has been part of the church’s consciousness since Paul and the Gospel writers–what do we do with the story of Israel in light of the Christ event? This isn’t anything new.
5. An “Incarnational Model” is more helpful
For me, inerrancy or the Chicago Statement don’t come close to addressing this fundamental hermeneutical challenge for Christian readers of the Bible.
I do continue to think, however, that an incarnational model of Scripture is helpful. It’s not new. I didn’t invent it. Some form of it goes back at the very least to Athanasius. And no one, least of all me, is claiming by this analogy I am claiming a hypostatic union in Scripture (!!).
It’s an analogy—explaining one thing by means of another. The main purpose of this analogy is to present a vision of Scripture where historical context ceases being such a huge doctrinal hurdle, a problem to be solved, and becomes yet another picture of how God willingly and lovingly participates in the human drama.
It provides theological language for why the Bible acts so…ancient, why we see the use of mythic language and concepts in the Old Testament—a heavenly boardroom scene—or why Israel’s God is portrayed as a tribal warrior for whom mass killings seem to be his preferred method of conflict resolution.
I don’t think inerrancy is the right category for wrapping my arms around Scripture’s complex dynamic.
But a God who is in the business of meeting us where we are (this is good news) and a Scripture that displays for us this energetic, relentless—and mysterious—interplay of the Spirit of God and ancient cultures…well, I’m not saying I get it. And I do understand this thought may be troubling, to some more than others.
But as C. S. Lewis puts it, the incarnation is after all “an incurably irreverent doctrine.” It’s not comfortable. It’s even a bit unsettling when we think of how God likes to show up.
An incarnational model is not the only or best way to think of the Bible at all times. But when the topic turns to historical matters—the core of our book and heart of the inerrancy debate—it at least gives me theological language by which to talk about what I see in Scripture with respect and awe.
To sum up, inerrancy for me is a model of Scripture that does not describe well what Scripture does. Perhaps in our current moment, God is not calling us to reinvigorate a defense, become entrenched, or formulate more complex and subtle defenses of what we feel the Bible needs to be, but to teach future generations—in the academy, the church, and the world—better ways of meeting God in the Scripture we have.
I find "Bible-based" Christianity to be inadequate.
My view of inerrancy is that the Scriptures are inspired by God and true in every detail. Sometimes there is a difference of opinion about the use of figurative language. For example, some people seem to think that Jesus sitting on the 'right hand of God' refers to a physical place, whereas I would say that it means Jesus Christ possesses the complete power & authority of God.I very much doubt that poetry contradicts the concept of inerrancy.
My view of inerrancy is that the Scriptures are inspired by God and true in every detail. Sometimes there is a difference of opinion about the use of figurative language. For example, some people seem to think that Jesus sitting on the 'right hand of God' refers to a physical place, whereas I would say that it means Jesus Christ possesses the complete power & authority of God.
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I am not aware of anyone who takes a strictly literal interpretation of Psalm 114:4 (The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.)
Since I don't expect everyone to be a Bible scholar, I'm fine with "Bible-based" Christianity as long as a person's application of it includes a good understanding of hermeneutics and the felt need to show compassion and love for other people, especially for fellow Christians. Somehow, though, these two endeavors seem to be in short supply ...
2PhiloVoid
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