Inerrancy Fatigue?
— Monday, October 26th, 2009 —
I’ve suspected the “battle for the Bible” was lost ever since my Microsoft Word spell-check started suggesting the word “ignorance” every time I type the word “inerrant.”
Texas pastor Bart Barber posts this morning one of the finest, and most charitable, explanations of inerrancy I’ve seen in a long, long time. I suspect he’s right that there’s a sense of “inerrancy fatigue” among some evangelicals, including perhaps some within my Southern Baptist denomination. His response to the theologian-in-residence at the Baptist General Convention of Texas is strong, comprehensive, and merciful.
The outside world won’t hear our inerrant Bibles until we start displaying how corrected we are, personally, by it (I’ll write more on that later).
Barber’s post is a good model of someone who is talking to regular people (those able to cross list arguments and counter-arguments by Barth, Henry, and Lindsell are not who will decide this matter), showing why it matters, and why it doesn’t make one ignorant.
My biggest frustration coming out of SBTS was inerrancey. I found myself presenting the concept of it with great praise, the problem always came with the following application of those inerrant words. Inerrancy is best taught through obedience. It was really a shock to come across responses like “preacher don’t bring the Bible into this” or “well brother I know what the Bible says but…” from “leaders”. The crisis for inerrancy is a much deeper issue than a statement of faith, we have lost within our churches the desire to “apply” inerrancy. I believe pastors deal with great opposition when they present the words of God as something that will directly influence Baptist life, even in “Conservative” Baptist churches. It is disheartening to see the same people that knod and smile in the pew when inerrancy is taught, be shocked and confused at a table in my office because the scripture is clear on some point that won’t be compromised.
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Sorry folks, I should have proofread my post. I think I had spelling fatigue.
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To be honest, I don’t think Bart showed at all “why it matters… to regular people.” Sure, he talked about arguments for and against inerrancy, but as far as “why it matters”, he simply made a rather conclusory statement: “there is no room in the Southern Baptist Convention for people who do not agree regarding the inerrancy of the Bible.”
It may matter to who him, as far as who he is comfortable being around and who he wants to divide himself from. However, practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter much at all. The entire purpose of reading thet Bible is to learn about God so we will know what He would have us do. Once you acknowledge (as Bart does) that the Bibles we have today have an unknown number of errors in them due to, at the least, manuscript copying errors…. then practically it doesn’t matter whether you think the original authors made errors, or later ones. Either way, our guidebook has errors.
To me, what matters is whether or not you think the Scriptures are useful to equip us, with the Holy Spirit’s help, for the good works we are supposed to do. Jesus and the disciples obviously cited the Scriptures a lot too, and they had manuscripts that no doubt had errors also. To me, what matters the most is if you believe, like they did, that God our Father has preserved the Scriptures enough so they are still useful to equip us for what we are to do here on earth. Thankfully, all the evidence seems to indicate that there are not very many errors in our Bibles. The manuscripts, for the most part, are very much in agreement with one another.
I believe God does things for a reason. That means he allowed errors into our modern Bibles for a reason. If anything, the fact that God has allowed errors in our modern Bibles should teach us that none of us can be certain we are right. Therefore, we should be more than willing to cooperate with those we may be uncomfortable being around. Sadly, Bart doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson yet.
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Thanks for the link, brother. Not since the days of Basil Manly Jr. have such “kind words” come from Louisville. :-)
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The first thing I liked that he said was, “If these flaws so deeply damage the utility of the word ‘inerrancy,’ then why do they not bother Denison in his use of the term ‘trustworthy’?” I made a little notation next to this that says, Trustworthy will become another word with different definitions and qualifications. In other words, he is just using a new word that already suffers the same fate he accuses inerrancy of.
Another really good part was when he spelled out the three options and said the following: “Which of the other two options has Denison chosen? Either he believes that the Bible from which he preaches each Sunday is trustworthy where the translators have chosen the right readings and not trustworthy where they have not (second option), or he believes that his Bible is not trustworthy anywhere (the third option). Denison seems not to choose the third option, so we can presume his affirmation of the second option.” This is just good ‘ol fashion deductive reasoning, and it pins Denison to the floor…. Read More
A good concise criticism of Denison’s belief that inerrancy is illegitimate due to it’s late arrival as a vocabulary word can be summed in this sentence: “His standard for judging Christian History would cause any view of the nature of the Bible to fail, including his own.”
I also liked this well stated clarification: “It is not that affirming inerrancy is important because it makes me a good interpreter of the Bible; interpreting the Bible is important because I affirm inerrancy.” I’d like to co-sign on this by adding that affirming inerrancy is a starting place, and mistakes made after do not negate the starting place. You can have a solid and irrefutable starting place for mathematics and still make mistakes in your calculations, leaving the starting place unharmed and intact.
And finally, the following quote really struck a chord with me and made me think of the people I’ve seen apostatize… “history demonstrates a clear statistical pattern of people who first reject biblical inerrancy and then reject other important Christian doctrines.” I simply wrote down that it seems to be the common starting place with people I know.
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