No, I’m not talking about my former denomination, the Seventh-Day Adventists. In this case, it’s Erskine College and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Let me make clear that I believe a denomination has the right to do what it wants to do with its institutions, always assuming that they uphold existing contracts. For example, if they contract to do one thing and then change their mind, I don’t think they are less liable for their contractual obligations than any other person or business. But apart from that if they want a doctrinally narrow faculty and even student body, that is their prerogative.
It is also, however, the prerogative of accreditation boards to take all of this into consideration, and outsiders can comment on the resulting educational quality. I would like to add one note, however, which I have gleaned over time. It is possible for informal structures to be as restrictive as formal ones. An academic department or institution can become very narrow without enshrining that narrowness in regulations.
I make this side-comments to introduce an excellent article on academic freedom, titled The Nature of Academic Freedom, from Tony Mitchell. It’s well worth reading and discussion. So go read it and discuss already!
My reading today in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, X, Hebrews was unusually rich, commenting on Hebrews 10:1-11. This is the first of three extracts. As usual, I’m taking these from CCEL and I urge you to support them as you can.
The way, then, as it appears to us, in which we ought to deal with the Scriptures, and extract from them their meaning, is the following, which has been ascertained from the Scriptures themselves. By Solomon in the Proverbs we find some such rule as this enjoined respecting the divine doctrines of Scripture:
“And do thou portray them in a threefold manner, in counsel and knowledge, to answer words of truth to them who propose them to thee.” [reference to Proverbs 22:20-21, but the usage is a bit obscure-HN]
The individual ought, then, to portray the ideas of holy Scripture in a threefold manner upon his own soul; in order that the simple man may be edified by the “flesh,” as it were, of the Scripture, for so we name the obvious sense; while he who has ascended a certain way (may be edified) by the “soul,” as it were. The perfect man, again, and he who resembles those spoken of by the apostle, when he says, “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, but not the wisdom of the world, nor of the rulers of this world, who come to nought; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God hath ordained before the ages, unto our glory,” (may receive edification) from the spiritual law, which has a shadow of good things to come. For as man consists of body, and soul, and spirit, so in the same way does Scripture, which has been arranged to be given by God for the salvation of men. …
(On First Principles 4.I.II)
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… like right there!
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(HT: Language Log)
Via Dave Black Online and Nick’s blog I found that biblioblogger Nick Norelli’s church, Harvest of Souls International Ministries, has a new web site.
Now why do I link to this particular church web site at this moment? Is it merely to congratulate them? Well, I do congratulate them, but I had something more specific in mind. Recently I’ve been going back to one of my favorite topics, Christian essentials. One of my hopes in this area is that Christians will spend more time thinking about this topic. (Bob MacDonald has written a very interesting post that takes a substantially different view than I do, and I want to link that here.)
I want to call attention to the Harvest of Souls page regarding their beliefs. I really like this page, even though it expresses beliefs that would probably mean I would never become a member there. We start out explicitly stating the basic position, and then defining what is essential. Following that we have a list of more detailed doctrines. It is in these more detailed doctrines that I would find some significant disagreements.
But based on the second paragraph, I find it easy to believe that I would be comfortable as a brother in Christ in working with folks from that congregation even if we tended to disagree enough regarding the second rank doctrines that we might not fit in the same congregation.
I find this outline for a belief statement to be very admirable. It lets the reader get a clear idea both of what’s most important to the particular church family, but also what they hold to be important, though not essential. I’m again reminded of my friend Alden Thompson’s illustration of the castle. There’s a keep, a courtyard, and there’s “outside the walls.” In the keep are essentials, in the courtyard are things that are important to us, but not critical, while outside the walls are all the issues that we really aren’t taking a position on. As Nick notes in his blog post, he can “can affirm the statement of faith with one or two small variations, none of which concern any of the major doctrinal tenets set forth therein.”
The issue I’m raising right now is not whether we agree on the list, but whether we have thought about what beliefs (if any) are critical for each of us and for our respective fellowships.
So both congratulations and “good job!”
Well, it may not be as spontaneous as all that. And with that, commercial warning …
My company, Energion Publications, is sponsoring a contest and inviting people to blog about Christianity during Consider Christianity Week, (March 21-27) which is the project of one of my authors, Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. You can get full details on Energion.net.
For the blogswarm, we will link to each post of which we are notified that fits into a Consider Christianity Week topic from both the company blog and from Energion.net. This means at least two links for each post. In addition, I personally will be trying to link to each from this blog and my Threads blog with some sort of classification and a bit of commentary.
Please note: This isn’t just for Christians. We will link to posts opposing Christianity as well as to those supporting it. When I link here, my preference will be for posts which are in conversation with one another.
The contest involves one particular question, with a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card to the best (by popular vote) post in the affirmative, and another to the best post in the negative. Again, see Energion.net for details.
I know the fact that this is company sponsored may keep some folks away, but I would certainly appreciate any publicity you can give. I’d like to see a good number of posts on Christianity linked together.
I’ve previously expressed my surprise about what some people can believe about the Bible and yet call their belief “inerrancy.” As an example, I responded to Earnest Lucas’s excellent commentary on Daniel in which he maintains that one can hold both inerrancy and a late dating of Daniel. I think a good one sentence summary of the approach is to say that what is asserted by a text differs by genre, and that inerrancy refers to what the text is actually asserting.
Thus if Jonah is fictional, it is not trying to assert an actual size for the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3:3), thus this is not an error, even if that information is incorrect. Jonah is not a book about the sizes of cities, but rather a fictional account designed to deal with other issues. (Which those are is not important right now.) If Daniel relates a history of the Babylonian Empire which does not conform to history, that is not a problem, since it is a pseudonymous work of apocalyptic, and this was a common practice in apocalyptic. If Genesis does not relate well to science, it is not a problem, because Genesis is not a science textbook.
Now I have no problem with any of those statements as such, but I do have some problem with their relation to the doctrine of inerrancy, though not in equal measure. But before I discuss why I have this problem, let me refer to a post today by John Hobbins on inerrancy. In this he is discussing people with relatively similar views about the inspiration of scripture, but a disagreement about the words. (The views are not identical, but they are close enough for my purposes.)
In fact, I agree with most of what I read about inspiration on John Hobbins’ blog. I think in some cases he comes out more liberal on the issue than I am, as in this post on legend and history. It seems to me that he and some others are trying to assert that they can believe both in Biblical inerrancy and also that the Bible is a collection of myths and fairy tales.
Now I think that “myth” and “fairy tale” are actually quite complimentary terms. I have no problem with finding myth in the Bible. In fact, for many purposes I find it to be a more admirable form of literature than some sort of pure, objective, narrative history. Each has its place, but we tend to treat history as good and myth as bad.
And therein beings the problem. I must note in passing that I don’t think that the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says quite what some folks are saying it says. I keep getting told that it allows for all this flexibility, but when I go back and read it, it doesn’t look that way to me. But that is a side issue for me.
I find it odd that people who can recognize the changing meanings of words in a translation context fail so miserably in seeing the “street” meaning of a word in current usage. Apart from a few people who are trying to save the word “inerrancy” for their own use, almost nobody understands inerrancy to mean that a Bible book that claims to come from Paul might have been written by someone else after Paul was dead, or that a book can claim one author but have been written by quite a different author.
Thus when someone claims to believe in inerrancy and then writes a commentary on Daniel, for example, it is not expected that the commentator in question will say that Daniel did not write the portions attributed to him in the text. Similarly, it will not be expected that a commentary on Ephesians written by someone who espouses inerrancy will suggest that it was not written by Paul.
John Hobbins suggests a solution:
To which I would say, where evangelicalism rules the landscape, it is time for saner voices to take courage with two hands and patiently, ever so patiently, advocate for a broader and safer use of the word “inerrancy.” This is precisely what I see Michael Horton doing, and I commend him for it.
I would suggest that this is a fool’s errand. People who consider themselves intellectual leaders are constantly trying to save one or another term from the people who use it. It rarely works. If one salvaged inerrancy from those who use it, one would just have to invent another term to distinguish one from of belief in inspiration from another.
I should note that I believe that the “rescuers” of the word inerrancy have another problem, which is that I don’t think it meant quite what they claim when it was first used. But that would take a different blog post and a number of additional references, so I’m going to leave it aside for now.
For what it’s worth, my own view is that God always speaks his Word into a human matrix, to be understood by humans according to their knowledge and referents at the time. I believe that God’s Word in a situation is always true and that the Bible is precisely what God wanted it to be. But at the same time, that human matrix was not inerrant, and it impacts the message. I’m quite certain, for example, that early hearers of the story of Genesis heard it as a literal week, evidenced by references in Exodus 20, though not in the liturgy of Genesis 1. (Nonetheless, worshipers using that liturgy would not have distinguished the liturgical presentation from the historical events as I do.)
That means that the message God sends to me is different in some way from the message that was first heard. Hearing God’s message requires prayerful care and interpretation. Once you have heard God speak, that is truth. In addition, I believe that if we knew all that God knew about those to whom he first spoke, we would understand why things were said as they were.
It appears that some call that inerrancy. I think I would deceive most who heard me were I to do so.
I’ve written before on what citizens owe their country, and blind support is not patriotism in my view. I think that a blind support, my country right or wrong, would be analogous to suicidal tendencies in a person. I wrote on this before, amongst others in my posts Patriotism: What Do I Owe My Country? (2008) and My Country, Right or Wrong? (2009).
I would still stand by both of those posts, but I want to link to some newer discussion. The issue has come up again in connection with attorneys who represented people accused of terrorism, and the suggestion that they should not serve. Robyn Blumner discusses that here and I agree.
There is an unfortunate tendency to treat “accused” as guilty, so criminal defense attorneys are automatically trying to get bad guys off. But the integrity of the justice system requires their service in this fashion, and they should be congratulated and rewarded, not demeaned.
I found the Blumner post via Dave Black Online, and since his blog doesn’t divide into posts, I’m going to quote his take on patriotism here:
- True patriotism is love of country, not love of government. Neo-patriotism is mindless worship of the state.
- True patriots refuse to honor government above God. Neo-patriots gladly deify government.
- True patriots understand loyalty as adherence to the ideals upon which the country was founded. Neo-patriots believe in blind submission to the bureaucrats currently running it.
- True patriots believe that eternal vigilance is necessary to keep politicians under check. Neo-patriots are willing to entrust their lives to politicians thinking this means loyalty to the ideals spelled out in the Constitution.
- Neo-patriots think that if you criticize U.S. foreign policy or the country’s obsession with security you are “unpatriotic.” True patriots believe that the exercise of critical judgment is absolutely necessary to any civilization that is to stand or forge ahead, and that it is both their right and duty to criticize their government.
In the final analysis, I concur with President Theodore Roosevelt who said, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”
Just so!
