Biblical Inerrancy: Five Views - Counterpoints Theology | Study & Debate

IntroI bought this book after reading Enns' "The Evolution of Adam" and "When God Spoke Greek," two very recent works that significantly challenge the "traditional" doctrine of scriptural inerrancy. I've read about a dozen other books on the subject (as my degrees and career are in this area) as well. But since my own view of the subject is undergoing reconstruction, it was delightful to have this volume come in the mail. It was very helpful - and in fact, I just finished reading it about an hour ago (read it in two days straight, phew! Christmas breaks are great).The editors of the volume established an internal framework within which the contributors had to address: (1) the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, (2) the historicity of the fall of Jericho (case study 1), (3) an alleged contradiction in the book of Acts (case study 2). This helped limit the discussion a bit and keep things focused. It appeared to work well.What follows is a highly opinionated, but hopefully helpful review.Specific RemarksMohler - His essay was well written, and had little "new" to say on the subject from his perspective. But it was interesting to me that Mohler's case appeared to be the weakest argued (because he's a rather bright guy). A large portion of his essay was dedicated to describing the historical background to the formation of the Chicago Statement, and the consequences of denying inerrancy (e.g., the fall of evangelicalism as we know it). I realize that he is presenting the "classic case for inerrancy," but it was still a bit musty, and he kind of set himself up for a royal smack-down - which virtually every other contributor delivered, fair and square. My reaction to the essay was almost identical to those who responded to it in the volume: Mohler is very dogmatic, alarmist, and frames the whole debate in an "us"-"them" mentality, as if the Chicago Statement was a kind of modern day gospel. In fact, not once does Mohler concede that anything could be improved in the Chicago statement (even though GK Beale in his Erosion of Inerrancy and Kevin Vanhoozer in his online essay on inerrancy both suggest some improvements to the document!).He also reveals quite clearly that his version of "evangelicalism" is rather small (a white male American version). His critiques were nothing too special either - although his best was probably in response to Franke (it was probably the best critique of Franke, actually). I think the other contributors were too bewildered or out of their philosophical game to really attempt to refute Franke's epistemological argument, so bravo for Mohler's bravery there. But, to put it a bit harshly, Mohler often performed as one would expect a strong Southern Baptist fundamentalist seminary president to perform amidst those scholars who are encouraged (and allowed) to drink from larger academic wells: sort of beside himself. No doubt that those on Mohler's side would see this as "the man alone proclaiming the truth on a hill," but those who are more discerning may see it as it probably is: someone who is only widely read in a certain strand of evangelicalism and, almost like a fish out of his bowl, has trouble interacting with other universes of scholarship. That's not to say that Mohler didn't meaningfully interact with all views to some degree, he did; but his dogmatism (and political obligations of being a seminary president) limits his interactions to simplistic, aloof judgments, and to the "theologically correct" within his own constituency. But, like I said, that's what we might expect.Enns - Enns is Enns. Persuasively written. Intentionally controversial. Independently minded. Insightful...yet errant. His essay was particularly powerful, as we would expect: Enns went from being a professor at one of the most conservative seminaries in the country (Westminster East) to now perhaps the greatest critic alive of scriptural inerrancy. He knows all the weak spots, the arguments, the strategies, etc. His thesis is that there is no inerrancy, and he had little trouble tearing apart the Chicago statement and a number of typical evangelical inerrantist claims. He makes the interesting argument that errantists have prevented Christians from knowing the true God of Scripture via their doctrine of inerrancy - since it requires God to fit a certain mold that isn't right.Enns' approach, however, is worrisome to me (and other scholars) for several reasons: (1) he is brilliant in tearing apart the dogmatism of fundamentalism, and yet he shares the same kind of dogmatic attitude when it comes to Darwinism and the "scholarly consensus." Indeed, whatever the scholarly consensus is, Enns is right there; and he treats it the way fundamentalists treat the inerrancy of Scripture: it is not to be questioned. Only morons question common descent (I'm referring to his other works on this point) and the scholarly consensus on archaeology - just like (the right-wing would assert), only morons reject the inerrancy of scripture and the historicity of Jericho's fall. Contributors pointed out this poor methodology, and how (for example) archaeology is insightful, but it is continually corrected. I really hope Enns will be more critical of modern scholarship.(2) As contributors also pointed out, Enns has virtually no positive construction of the doctrine of inspiration and Scripture's truthfulness. It amounted to a quote from CS Lewis and a sentence about being in the presence of God's wisdom. That's it? Now, we should give grace to Enns in that his view of Scripture is still under construction. Actually, after reading alot of his stuff, I'm convinced that Enns has no idea what to really make of the Bible - he just knows that it isn't the conservative right wing stuff of his former career. Perhaps he shouldn't even be contributing to the volume for that reason; he only manages to tear everything down without offering much in return (this is almost indicative of the post-modern deconstructionist nihilism of our culture in general). Indeed, he has successfully destroyed much of Mohler's view and the Chicago Statement (though certainly not all of it, in my opinion), but there is almost nothing left to put back together.In short, Enns doesn't realize the toxicity of his line of thought; Bird pointed that out as well with regard to the resurrection (can we really just say the resurrection - like the Exodus and Jericho - was made up and that wouldn't affect our faith? On the contrary, our faith would then "be in vain"). One cannot simply wholesale reject the historicity of massive chunks of the OT and expect that not to eradicate the Christian faith and the trustworthiness of Scripture and its authors. Enns needs a reality check. He is offering evangelicals this: get rid of your inerrancy (and even moderate infallibility doctrine), and embrace the fact that the OT is nothing more than a collection of fictional epics that a bunch of sinful Jews pulled out of their asses "to make a theological point" - which in turn became the backdrop to the Incarnation of God. But one wonders - a bunch of tales about events that never happened is supposed to magnify the coming of Jesus? If the ancient world was so free to fabricate huge stories to fit their theological purposes (as if they were so gullible and didn't know fact from fiction! And as if all of this is an "ancient view"! Michael Krueger's critique of Enns is appropriate here), then we have no idea what the truth really is, and Christianity is as good as any other religion. Enns is only a few inches away from being the next Bart Ehrman.Nevertheless, for what bleak picture Enns paints and what little he offers positively, his critiques were all very good - though the one on Franke's was bland. Maybe that's because he writes so passionately and energetically elsewhere that I was expecting something more.Bird - Now I admit that I came to this book with bias against Bird. I just scanned through his new systematic theology and found it boring and generally unhelpful. But, shame on me for such quick judgmentalism, because Bird did (what I believe) the best job in the entire volume. First of all, he kept it light-hearted. I really appreciated that: strong academic scholarship without the boringness of it. I found his jokes hilarious given the context, and that made everything else a bit more readable.Second of all, Bird was very persuasive in his argumentation against problems in the Chicago statement and yet in favor of the infallibility of Scripture. Part of his argument was that the vast majority of Christians throughout the world and history have gotten along fine without the modern formulations of the inerrancy of Scripture; why press it so hard as if the rise and fall of Christianity depends on it? Scripture is truthful and infallible; we should not set it up to provide more than it can actually deliver. I'd explain more but it's frankly hard to do given various nuances of Bird's position. I'll just say that Bird's approach is the most balanced, understandable, and I think persuasive to the average evangelical Christian. It also resonates the most with church history.Best of all, is that Bird does what no other contributor really did but should have: thoroughly addressed the nature of the "autographs." That is, after all, all that is considered "inerrant" in the first place! It was only about a page worth, but Bird took the Chicago Statement to task by pointing out (a) the problem of the autographs in general (what qualifies? There were multiple "original" writings of some books of the Bible - e.g. Jeremiah; the process was a process, not sessions of writing down fixed oral material, ect.), (b) the problem that Jesus and the rest of the NT authors don't seem to care about the autographic text, but cite from the Hebrew, the LXX, combinations of both, and simply don't care about exact wording. Where Bird could have benefited also in this argument is the discussion of form criticism - and how inerrantist evangelicals have (and continue) to waffle back and forth between what consists of the "autographs" - the original writings, or the original writings intended to be read by the church from the original authors (ie their canonical form). They are not the same. The NT authors didn't sit down and write Matthew, Mark, Lk etc., but likely collected several groups of notes and oral traditions together into a coherent whole (possibly several times!) which was then distributed (possibly several times!) to the churches for reading and teaching. Peter Davids in the intro essay in the book Interpreting the NT argues that what is "inerrant" and "inspired" is this second form - the *canonical* form of the writings, not the *original* form of the writings, thus posing a challenge to traditional understandings of the Chicago Statement. Porter, in contrast, say that we should focus on the original *published* form of the writings in How We Got the NT. In any case, while Bird didn't get into many of these details, he was wise to bring up the topic as to the theoretical "originals" (and Enns rightfully commended him on that point).Now, for the record, I am not saying that earlier forms of the writing are irrelevant, and that (like Parker, Ehrman, Epp, etc.) we should wholesale abandon search for the "original." But we simply cannot be dogmatic about such "originals" since they were multiple, we are uncertain which ones they were, and they are simply inaccessible to us - and have been to most Christians throughout history (remember the earliest texts of the NT were discovered in only the last 400 years). Thus, Christians should nod their head to denominations and seminaries that have the phrase "as originally given by God" in their statement of faith about the Bible, but shake their head when finding the phrase "inspired in the words of the original autographs" in similar documents.Bird also delivers a critique of ICBI that (to my knowledge) is the only major concession made by Mohler: the international council on biblical inerrancy was NOT international. Most contributors made the same point, and Mohler had to bend ("point taken," in his words). But, Mohler didn't seem to actually get the point that Bird was making: that attitude behind the movement of the Council; they consider themselves so advanced and high on the horse that they can make a claim to "international" status *fully knowing that they are only representing about 5% of the world's evangelicals*. This proves the charge of dogmatism and narrow-mindedness in contributors' critiques of Mohler's position. Like so much of American evangelicalism, the Packers Pipers MacArthurs Driscolls Carsons Mohlers Grudems etc. are the dominating voices of "evangelicalism" - fooling countless pastors into thinking that they represent "standard orthodox evangelical Christianity," when it is anything but that. Thus, as several contributors note (esp. Bird), Mohler and American Evangelicals have a hard time thinking critically about their own theological positions because they see themselves as having the monopoly on evangelical Christianity (or truth in general! ack!) - consequently causing countless Christians behind and under the movement to demonize and reject any variants (e.g., insights from Enns, Bird, etc.), regardless of how true they are. This is really sad. "Conservative" pastors these days gauge your orthodoxy on the basis of the Chicago Statement - something which 99% of the Christian world has never heard of, never will, and would probably never benefit from anyway. I like confessions and creeds, but really?Vanhoozer - Vanhoozer's critiques were as good or better than Bird's. Clever, precise, penetrating. Oddly then, his main essay was somewhat of a disappointment. It was basically a regurgitation of Mohler's view, but with an emphasis on speech-act theory and literary stuff of his area. Most contributors pointed that out in their responses. That's about all I have to say: great refutations, but a confusing, disjointed, unpersuasive essay.Franke - If Mohler was a fish out of water, then Franke was a fish out of the wrong planet. Unlike other approaches, Franke pulls up the rug from underneath the whole discussion and says we all have the wrong (foundationalist) epistemology. We need to have a pluralist view of truth, and acknowledge that truth comes through the diversity of the Scriptures. There's certainly some truth to that; in textual criticism, Franke resonates with Epp who said (intro to his book on Junia) diversity in textual readings provide more insight theologically. Maybe so. But Franke's argument goes way farther than this. He argues against any "universal theology," and basically chucks the idea of systematic theology in general out the window. He says the point of Scripture is to build community (missiological). So, really everybody is wrong because the idea of inerrancy has been ill-conceived. He redefines it in a nuanced philosophical way that need not be summarized here.His argument is so lofty and abstract that it is unclear what Christianity even is in his view; after all, if there can be multiple theologies in Scripture and multiple theologies of Christianity throughout the world, what is Christianity, really? Whatever someone wants it to be? Is there only perceptions in Franke's world? Bird is right to point out the faulty pragmatic attitude behind Franke's position. Can we really just say that the purpose of Scripture is to build community with little to say about who Jesus is - universally? Vanhoozer also makes the clever refutation of pointing out the foundationalist claims in Scripture. What does one do with those?Like Enns, Franke doesn't know the toxicity of his own argument. Where does it end? Where does knowledge begin? And if Jesus claims to be the only "way truth and life," how can we resist singular truth claims that are universal? If the plurality of truth view is all that it is cracked up to be, why not accept both coherence theory and foundationalism? Franke is self-contradictory in that respect; if he was consistent, he wouldn't present his theory as if it was *the* theory to have. If we are to take him at his word, basically we can dismiss his view as being no better than anyone elses. In brief. Franke tried to de-dogmatize and open up people's eyes, but his post-conservative theology (which was not problematic in and of itself) ended up being more (or less) than that, and to his own argument's detriment.All of this stirred the pot a bit. Enns' response to Franke was, well, kind of hilarious in context. It was total change of tone; no more confident "I'm the radical guy around here and proud of it" attitude. It was almost like Enns is the shark swimming around the pool trying to eat everyone with a smile on his face, but then Gandalf (Franke) floats over and turns the whole pool into jello, leaving everyone stunned and speechless...Enns critiques status quo on inerrancy; Franke one-ups by critiquing the status quo on...everything that everyone thinks they know. Well anyway. Franke's responses were all very meaningful and well-written.General RemarksGreat book, credit to the editors for putting it together. But, man, it's not finished. Lots of typos:1. "(p.000)". This is found 3 times in the volume from multiple authors (e.g. page 77). I imagine the editors were supposed to fill in these page numbers after the final draft was complete.2. Several periods were bold, making them larger than normal periods. Again, remnants from earlier drafts.3. Some reference typos.Fortunately, they weren't so prevalent that it was distracting.I thought the first half of the closing editorial remarks was...odd and off-topic. Felt like I was reading another book about something else.As far as advancing the discussion, the debate on inerrancy would have used alot of more basic argumentation such as:1. What qualifies as an "error"? This seems so central, and yet, only one author really got their hands dirty in trying to define what qualifies. Others addressed it briefly in passing, saying how (for example) we shouldn't expect precision beyond authorial intent, etc. But as far as a real, substantive discussion about the nature of error, not much there.2. What qualifies as "autographic text"? I mentioned his earlier in this review. Even those who adhere to the Chicago Statement have no real idea about what qualifies as "autographs"; form criticism and the differences between the Hebrew and LXX, and the Bible of Jesus and the NT authors (version of LXX and versions of Hebrew), differences between "canonical"/"published" text, etc. loom large in this discussion. (It is absurd that the ETS and EPS societies require all members to embrace the "inerrancy of the autographs" - the equivalent of requiring academics to believe in Santa Clause. [And evangelicals wonder why the outside world of scholarship thinks they're weird!])3. What qualifies as "Bible"? Again, the term is used in countless ways and it is rarely defined. Which Bible? The Hebrew OT (which one?) The LXX (which one?) The OT of Jesus and the NT authors (which one?) The Greek NT (which readings?) The Latin translations? (which one/how much?) English translations (which one/how much?) The Protestant canon (or Ethiopic, Eastern O. or Roman Catholic?) One cannot talk about the inerrancy of the "Bible" without agreeing on what the Bible is. And, oddly, this was only addressed meaningfully in Bird's discussion about the autographic text and longer ending of Jeremiah. It is too easy - and yet utterly unmeaningful to say "the autographic text of the Protestant canon," for it begs the question.4. Doesn't one's view of inerrancy depend upon the purpose of Scripture? This is something that could use ALOT of attention. It only came out clearly once: in Franke's essay. He says the ultimate purpose of Scripture is really to build a community. Everyone else never really clearly stated what the ultimate purpose of Scripture was. This is importance BECAUSE IT DETERMINES what qualifies as an "error." If God only intended to clearly communicate the way of salvation, then errors not having to do with that salvation message are utterly irrelevant. If God intended to communicate the way of salvation and historical details, then historical errors would undermine the doctrine of inerrancy. If God only intended to reveal accurate information about Jesus, than errors about everything else are irrelevant. And on and on it goes.In other words, the scope of "truth and error" is determined by the authorial intention of God as the primary author of Scripture - *and that is precisely what none of the authors in the volume agree on.* Why? Because the Bible itself does not clearly and definitely state what it's ultimate (and limited) purpose(s) is. There is no consensus on what Scripture is ultimately given for - and proof of this is given in the seminary and church statements of faith about the BIble (some say "in matters of faith and practice," others "matters pertaining to salvation," others "in all things it asserts," in others "for Christian life and communion with God," etc.). Granted, all (Christians) agree that it is to reveal who Jesus is (and consequently who God is) and the way of salvation, but beyond that, there is endless disagreement - and consequently, endless disagreement about what "inerrancy" is or should be.Conservatives (Mohler etc.) will undoubtedly repeat the mantra about how Scripture is true in "all that it affirms," but that doesn't answer the question at all: that book A B or C affirms X Y Z does not establish what Scripture, as a whole, has been provided for - from a divine perspective. If God's intention was never to provide an inerrant Bible as conservatives see it - a "final standard for all truth claims" but to provide (for example) a trustworthy account of God's work in redemptive history, the life/death/res. of Jesus, and the fulfillment of various promises (e.g., concerning Spirit's outpouring, etc.) in the church, then (as Enns and Bird rightfully and compellingly argue), formulating additional, artificial standards/attributes of Scripture is what is harmful to Christianity and the church, not to those who acknowledge what Scripture *actually is*.So again, the question goes back to what the Bible actually is, and what it's ultimate purpose is. This is, in my perspective, what gives rise to the entire debate of view of inerrancy - not so much hermeneutics, epistemology, challenges of modernism, etc.