I've had a couple of people ask me how I can not believe in Biblical inerrancy. (One of them is a non-Christian, who is surprisingly upset.) I'm not going to talk about the actual proposed errors here, since what's at issue is the principle of inerrancy, and not any one specific passage. There have been discussions of a number of these passages in the past, and no doubt will be in the future. As I look at the way inerrantists deal with Scripture, I see four major issues: - where is the relevation? - the Bible as a source of guaranteed answers - the Bible as a rulebook - in what sense are the Biblical authors inspired? I. Where is the revelation? In a theoretical sense, the most basic disagreement between those who believe in inerrancy and those who do not is over the status of the Bible as God's revealed word. I believe that God showed himself to Israel, through Moses and the prophets, and through acts such as the exodus. I believe that God's supreme relevation was his Son. I see the Bible as the way we learn about these revelations, but not as a separate revelation in itself. This does not mean that I reject the idea that God guided the authors of the Bible. They were godly men, who no doubt had the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their endeavors. But inerrancy is not necessary to learn enough about God's action to be Christians, any more than inerrant writings are needed in learn about historical figures, science, or any other area. What is needed is what we have: documents that were produced by honest and competent people, who represent the best understanding of God that was available at the time. Some of the documents specifically report revelations to their authors (e.g. the prophets and some of what Paul says). But by and large what I expect out of the Bible is to let me see God's work with Israel and through Christ. And even in the case of revelation, I see some evidence that the people reporting it may not have fully understood what they were shown. In my view, the inability of the church to agree on eschatology has to be seen at least partly as being due to the nature of the Biblical accounts. Supposing that the prophets and John were given real visions of the future, how can you expect that they would understand everything they were seeing? II. The Bible as a source of guaranteed answers The arguments for inerrancy all turn out to be based on an assumption that is not itself in the Bible -- that God intends to supply us with guaranteed answers to our theological and ethical questions. Any view of the Bible that does not do this is rejected. When you watch inerrantists at work, it's clear that they share with some of our more conservative Catholic colleagues the desire to have a source of guaranteed answers. When you ask about ordination of women, homosexuality, the words to be used in Baptism, etc., everyone takes it for granted that there only a single view acceptable to God, and that if we only search the Bible hard enough we'll find it. In fact I think it's pretty clear that Peter, Paul, and the Johannine tradition differed pretty significantly. Instead of taking this as a sign that Christians can be united by Christ and still differ, we are required to interpret all of the books as saying the same thing. This effort seems doomed from the start. The "plain meaning" of Scripture is different to different people. Of course any given group can always say that their reading is obviously right and everyone else is just being obtuse. But this seems to me a very artificial view. The Bible is simply not the sort of document that God would have created if he wanted an unambiguous source of doctrines and ethics. The purpose of the NT is to point us at Christ, not at itself. III. The Bible as a rulebook Where I think things really come to a head is in ethics. Every time I make comments like this I am accused of wanting to "pick and choose" among the Bible's statements. There is some sense to this in the historical area. I do accept (at least in principle -- in practice I think many of the "critical" conclusions are not well justified) the historical/critical approach to the Bible, and that does in some cases choose certain accounts as being more reliable than others. However the accusation is normally meant in the area of morals, and there it is based on a misunderstanding of what I mean. The presupposition is that the Bible is a set of rules, and I'm rejecting some because I don't have enough dedication to be willing to follow them. In fact I reject the whole concept of the Bible as a book of rules. In this I believe I am following Paul. I see Paul's letters as valuable as our earliest witness to the Christ's message, and I find the way he deals with the problems of his congregations very instructive. But I do not attempt to turn his decisions into eternal rules, nor do I believe he would want us to do so. This is not the place for a complete discussion of my views on Christian ethics, as it would make this document too long. I do not take a position of complete relativism. I do believe Christianity has ethical implications. However I think these implications are worked out by the Church in reaction to Christ's teachings and other Biblical bases. It seems significant to me that Christ taught primarily in parables, rather than dictating legal codes. This has left the Church free to make its own decisions, and to change them as either circumstances change or we learn more about the implications of the Gospel. The typical example here is slavery, because this is an issue that is no longer sensitive. Paul accepted it as an institution whose authority he at least in some manner endorsed. In principle it is probably possible to have masters and slaves who also relate to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. However over time, Christians came to understand that it is impossible in practice, and that slavery is not the sort of human relationship Christians should have. There is some similarity of my position here to the Catholic one: I see the Church as having the responsibility to work out the implications of the Gospel. I differ from them in several ways: (1) I do not see an inerrant authority in the Church. I believe the Church may make errors, and may change it's mind. (2) I acknowledge that different Christian communities may come to different conclusions. (3) I still emphasize Scripture as the most basic source of knowledge. We may learn things that aren't in Scripture from experience. But Christ's teachings, life, and death still provide the key that we use to evaluate that experience. Individual Christians may also differ from their community. Changes often result when individual Christians have an insight that others do not. However individual judgement is dangerous, and must be properly safeguarded. Christians have generally rejected "situation ethics", the concept that one lives with no moral guidelines, and simply does what seems at the moment to be the most loving thing. People are very good at self-justification. If left to ourselves, our emotions and desires are likely to get the best of us. Thus changes in ethics are best carried out in careful discussions within a Christian community, in advance, not "on the fly". IV. In what sense are the authors inspired? I've already commented on historical accuracy: I see the authors are competent reporters, but not as inerrant. However the Bible has more than just historical reports. Those reports are intermixed with interpretations of the events, and of course books such as Paul's letters give various kinds of teaching and advice. Inerrancy per se may not be the issue for these, but clearly we have to ask in what sense their judgements can be relied on. I find it hard to give a simple answer, because I think that inspiration is at work in a variety of ways. On one hand we have prophets, who claim to have been given a specific message directly from God. On the other hand, Paul in one place specifically disclaims any direct inspiration. I think my answer is that all of the authors are inspired, but that inspiration comes in different forms. It seems that God's revelation is progressive. If we don't say that, then we end up thinking that the OT and NT have different gods. E.g., in the earlier parts of the OT, guilt is taken to be passed on from father to son. Ezekiel (I think) teaches that this is not the case. Much of the OT assumes that God punishes evil-doers in visible ways in this life. But the Psalms make it clear that godly people suffer, and Job is a more explicit argument against the older view. In much of the OT, God is seen as calling for the slaughter of people who worshipped other gods. We certainly do not believe that this is the right approach to non-Christian religions now. (I'm carefully not saying whether people in OT times misunderstood God's commands to keep themselves separate from others as commands to kill them, or whether God actually did tell his people to kill others because Israel was not yet ready to deal with things any other way. I simply don't know.) So what I would say is that the Biblical authors represent the way God's message was understood at the time they wrote. In some cases they are reporting direct inspiration. At other times I think they are representing God's message as it was understood at the time, which is based on Israel's reaction to what God had done for them, with the guidance of prophets and others to whom God revealed things more directly. As an interesting example take a look at 1 Cor 7:25, 7:40. This shows Paul making a distinction between where he has an explicit commandment from the Lord, and where he is giving us his own judgement. However he obviously has confidence that in making his own judgement he is being guided by the Holy Spirit. I think something similar can be said of the Bible as a whole: there are places where we have "thus says the Lord", and places where we have the judgements of the authors. In their own judgements, they are speaking as people who are guided by God. But I am not convinced that this means they have the final answers: what they have is what God has managed to reveal to his people so far. A number of commentators say about Job that it shows the deepest understanding of the problem of suffering in the OT, but that for Christians, the sufferings of Christ obviously give us a different approach to the issue. Conclusion It seems to me that the NT is well suited to help us come to know Christ, and to see examples of the early Church working out the implications of his message. In this sense, I see it as authoritative. The basic authority of Christians is Christ, and the Bible contains all of our primary sources about his life and teachings. But ultimately, what is really authoritative is God and Christ. The Bible is a window to let us see them, not something that is authoritative on its own. The Bible seems ill-suited as a source of inerrant doctrine and ethics. The NT is characterized by Christ's rather indirect teaching methods, documents from groups with differing views, and letters that are responses to specific situations rather than theological or ethical treatises. Inerrancy seems to me an alien theory imposed against the evidence. In my view, God's whole mode of operation seems inconsistent with inerrancy. If he valued unambiguous answers and guaranteed authority, one would think he would have given us a book with precise doctrine, and would have dealt with our falling away from him by strategically placed lightning bolts rather than sending his Son to be subject to other men. At least Jesus could have had the decency to teach a few classes in systematic theology. Path: christian Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian From: RexLex@linac.fnal.gov Subject: Re: Inerrancy _ Jere 36 Organization: Fermi Lab Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu >Why is that nobody is interested in seeing it from our (fundamentalist) point >of view? I am quite interested in understanding the conservative viewpoint. I've been reading a number of works by conservative scholars. My criticism was not about your presentation of your views, nor even your claim that other people were wrong. (After all, if two views are mutually incompatible, we have to believe that other one is wrong.) Rather I was upset at a posting that claimed to be bypassing doctrinal discussions, in favor of presenting what the Bible means to you, but continued to take pot-shots at people with other views. I have no opposition to doctrinal dicussion. I'm willing for you to continue making postings of that sort. However I'd like to encourage some non-confrontational postings as well. I'd like to see both liberals and conservatives share what their faith means to them. But if they are going to do this, it would be helpful in those presentations to avoid interspersing their views with condemnations of others. One thing that is very clear is that when postings mix controversial doctrinal issues with anything else, it's the doctrinal issues that everyone sees. >It's not me who is rebuking you, its the inspired Word of God. If you >won't listen to what God says in the Scriptures, then where do you listen to >him specifically? Hebrews opens with the statement that in the past He has >revealed His will and Himself by means of the prophets in many ways and many >times. But now we have had His Son express Himself by means of the >incarnation. How do we learn from his incarnation and his teachings but from >the Scriptures? Where on earth do we come to know the will of the Son, isn't >it primarily through the Scriptures? If you put them forth as to being >errant, then how can you be faithful to His will for your life? You have no >reliable guide to follow. I generally characterize myself as being just epsilon on the other side of inerrancy. I believe the Bible contains accounts which are accurate enough for purposes of faith. We base all kinds of decisions on data which is not in principle inerrant, but which we think is sufficient. People are convicted of capital crimes; they decide that someone they care about loves them; they decide that a particular cause is worth dying for. They do all of this without evidence that is inerrant, but which they believe is sufficient. I believe the Bible is the product of people who were competent and inspired, but not perfect. Fortunately, in the areas that are most important to Christians, we have accounts from several different perspectives. This allows us to cross-check the sources, and gives us somewhat better confidence in the results. The fact that we have slight variations in accounts of the resurrection (a fairly typical example of the issues) shows me that the accounts are not inerrant. But they look to me like the sort of variation I'd expect to see in accounts of something that really happened. That this isn't just a legend that somehow got added later is quite clear: it's at the heart of every one of the half-dozen or so different traditions represented in the NT. I do suspect that there are occasions where the Biblical authors tended to be a bit credulous about the miraculous. I do think some stories in both the OT and NT grew in the telling. But I'm not convinced that this ever went to the extent of having any substantial impact. My disagreements with you are not primarily on issues of fact, but issues of interpretation. Examples of ones that show up most commonly: 1) disagreements over genre. A non-threatening example is Jonah. I see this as a novelette. The fact that I don't think a Hebrew prophet actually converted Nineveh doesn't mean that I'm rejecting the authority of the Bible. Rather, the question is the purpose intended by the author. I see it as a rather biting satire on the way people were identifying God with their own nation: Here's a prophet who manages to convert a whole nation to God. Is he happy? No! He wants to die. The people at the time it was written would have realized quite well that the story wasn't history. Consider the cultural equivalent: Everyone would know that such a story was not history. But its point would be quite clear. I do not think it is challenging the authority of the Bible to believe that books like Jonah and Job are not literally true. Somewhat more controversially, I think the earlier portions of the historical books contain a good deal of legendary material. In particular, I think Gen up to chap 11 is almost entirely legend, and that a certain amount of legendary material continues up to the point where the writers start citing historical sources. I don't think this particularly affects the authority of the accounts, as long as we don't think that the author intended us to regard them as exact history. I don't see anything wrong with an account of Israelite religious history including their creation myths and other early legends. These sorts of stories show us a lot about how people see themselves, and their relationship with God. In my view the fact that two creation stories are given, and that other parallel material is included later, shows that the authors understood that they were not dealing with the same sort of historical material as later where they could refer us to the historical records of the kings. I see the debate over the creation story, not as a debate over whether we believe the Bible, but over whether the editors included only what we would now regard as history. I see no reason in principle to think that they would limit themselves in this way, and I see good reasons to believe that much of the material is in fact legendary. How does this affect our conclusions from it? I'm not sure. I believe in original sin, even though I don't think it came from a literal Adam eating an apple. I believe in the concept of a covenant between God and humanity, even though I don't believe in the literal accuracy of the account of Noah. As far as I can tell, this is what the editor of Genesis intended -- his people did their theology in the form of stories, so that's the way he gave it to us. We seem to get into "slippery slope" arguments here. How can we think that there's any legends in the book without turning it all into fiction? But there are clear limits on this. For one thing, at some point the editors start referring to historical sources in such a way that it's clear we're not dealing with legends. That's for the OT. And for the NT, things like the preface to Luke's Gospel, and Paul's comments on the importance of the resurrection, make us realize that Jesus' life is not a legend. There may be some ambiguity. I'm not entirely sure how much historical content there is to some of the accounts of the patriarchs. But I'm also not sure what difference it makes. This is an area where I'm happy to allow archaeologists and other historical types to advise us. 2) questions about how to use Paul's letters. Again, this is not really a question about error. I haven't seen any places where Paul teaches any ideas that I doubt or tells anyone to do anything that I think was wrong for them. Rather, it has to do with how much allowance we are prepared to make for changes in circumstances between the 1st and 20th Cents. As I've tried to say in the past, *everyone* makes some allowance, or we'd still have slavery and separate sets of banks for Jews and Christians (with banks for Jews run by Christians and visa versa). I'm a great admirer of Paul. But what I expect the modern church to do is to use the same Gospel and the same methods he did, but not necessarily come to the same conclusions. I really find it quite ironic that Paul -- who in his time was a flaming radical -- ends up being used to support a reactionary agenda. That's not to say that I agree with all liberal interpretations of Paul. As I think I've made clear in other comments, we need to take seriously his call for a church that is a model of moral probity. I do regret the tendency for moral laxity in portions of the church. This is really an issue of genre again, in some sense. I see Paul's letters as *letters* -- sent to specific communities with specific problems. When he told a group of women in Corinth who were disrupting the church to shut up, he would have no way of knowing that somebody 1900 years later would take this as a prohibition of women ever speaking in church. 3) how we deal with accounts in the OT. It's often been observed that God looks rather different in the OT and the NT. How can we really believe that God wanted the Israelites to slaughter all those people? Frankly I don't have a complete answer here. I'm convinced that God was leading them into Israel. No doubt he knew that this was not going to be bloodless. Furthermore, the dangers of idolatry were such that a careful separation had to be maintained. I find it barely plausible that at that state of their development, there was no alternative to the warlike approach we see in the OT. However I can't help thinking that there are some occasions where people who called for slaughter in his name were going further than he intended. I believe the OT reports substantially what happened (though there is at least some reason to think that parts of the history have been a bit oversimplified or idealized). But this does not necessarily mean that everyone who claimed God spoke to them was right, or that they heard exactly what he intended. While there are times that the editors of the OT make their views clear, they often simply report history and let us make of it what we will. This is particularly true in Joshua and Judges. They tend to content themselves with a general comment: "This is what happens when there's no Godly king." This means that I don't even know that I would disagree with them. I'm not sure what I can say about our disagreement. In most cases, I think I'm taking Scripture as the writers would have intended it. What is clear is that my style leaves more room for judgement than yours. This seems to correspond to our rather different ideas of God's intention. I believe he intended to leave room for human judgement. If this weren't his intention, he went about it in a strangely incompetent way. The Bible is not the sort of document anyone would produce if he wanted to supply us with ready-made answers that everyone could agree on unambiguously. I do believe that Jesus, Paul, and James are broadly consistent with each other. But their consistency certainly isn't obvious, and people have come to rather different conclusions in trying to reconcile them. Then look at the overall approach. The Bible is basically not doctrinal. The OT authors and Jesus taught primarily through stories. This is one reason Paul assumes so much importance for conservatives: he's almost the only writer in the Bible who did anything that can be made into doctrine. So everybody gravitates towards him. The Bible does not look to me like it's the product of someone who is trying for unambiguous doctrinal or even ethical teaching. I think it's well suited for pointing us to God. I think it's ill suited to being used as a grab-bag from which we expect to extract authoritative answers to all our questions. My problem with Shaeffer and people like him are that I think they're hung up on "propositional truth". I do have some appreciation for their point of view. There has been a tendency for liberal Christianity to get vague. Bultmann and that whole movement didn't seem to understand the importance of the fact that Jesus was really resurrected. I agree with Paul that without that, we don't have anything. Even with Barth, I get this sort of vague feeling that I'm never sure whether he thinks the whole thing is a sort of metaphor. But one can go too far in the other direction. Yes, there are propositions that are important. But they aren't the only thing. The most important thing is love for God, and commitment to him. I think the most important role of the Bible is to help us come to appreciate Christ. Pure history is not necessarily the most important thing in that. Some historical knowledge is important. But we also need personal insight. For that it's more important to get portraits by people who knew him (some more directly than others), even if their accounts might not meet all the criteria of modern historians. For me, the conservative view comes down to an insistence that God has to work in the way that you want him to: he has to be giving you unambiguous answers to the questions that you want to ask. Often I'm afraid there simply isn't an explicit Biblical answer to our questions. That doesn't mean the Bible has nothing to say to us -- but we may have to do some thinking and praying. We can see how Paul approached similar problems. But we may be asked to do some work for ourselves. It's very bothersome to see people trying to find some way to coerce the Bible into answering questions that as far as I can see were never asked. That doesn't mean it has nothing to say. But it may be in the form of general principle from which we will have to draw our own conclusions. (I'm intentionally not being very specific here, because the examples I'm thinking of involve issues like abortion and homosexuality, which I do not want to deal with.)