Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • A Static and Authentic Christianity?

    In a previous post, I promoted some comments in which Barry Jones of The Village Atheist web site questioned whether my version of Christianity was authentic. In particular, he believes that Christianity should be based on the Bible and should be singular.

    This post is not in direct response, but I will say a number of things here that are fundamental to my view on this issue. There is no way that I can deal with all elements of this debate in a single post, and the main reason I have decided to carry on the discussion is that it will be such a fruitful place for me to post on my own view of Christianity. Some terms simply beg for further definition, such as just what “Bible based” actually means. Since the Bible contains no constitution for a church congregation, but rather stories about and letters to various churches, just what singular church administrative structure should be used? This, along with many other things, has come about by tradition–often by a scripturally informed tradition, but tradition nonetheless.

    But the issue I want to begin to address today is this. What validity would there be to a Christianity which is singular both now and through time? Would such a Christianity be possible, and would it be authentic?

    What I have a hard time seeing as authentic is a static Christianity. The fact is that Jesus came in and spent his time doing anything but trying to conform to a common definition of Judaism. In fact, he proposed some rather challenging ideas. Now one might claim that he was going back to an earlier time historically, but I think one would be hard pressed to find the time that Jesus was pointing back to.

    This type of approach to religious ideas is actually very common. People frequently assume that the oldest source is the most reliable in terms of theology. If we can get back to the authentic words of _____, we will just have the truth once and for all. In most discussions of authentic Christianity, there will be a common acceptance of the view that we should get as close to the apostolic church as we can. The debate is simply about just what it was, and how close we can get to it under our circumstances. The person who challenges this assumption is often the odd man out.

    But the challenger will have the historical advantage. There was no singular, unquestioned apostolic church that passed on a singular tradition. That was why debates had to take place in the early church. If one could pick up a unified theology simply by reading the Bible, we would not have needed church councils to define doctrinal positions. But the fact is that without such church councils there wouldn’t even be a “Bible” from which to derive those doctrines. Those councils had to define what would be regarded as authoritative and what would not.

    The interesting thing about this apostolic church is that it grew out of the ministry of a man who challenged much of his surrounding culture (though he remained Jewish throughout), who was definitely pushing for something new and different. The Sermon on the Mount with it’s “you have heard that it has been said . . . but I say unto you” statements is not one that would be preached by someone intent on maintaining tradition and the status quo.

    But once that ministry was complete this apostolic church moved forward with wrinkles and debates, with agreements and disagreements, in other words, it wasn’t static either. So why is it that we can see a modern church as credibly apostolic if it does not itself have a lively theological dialog going on?

    Now my area of expertise is not church history, though obviously I have to spend some time there. I studied the ancient near east. My approach to Biblical studies was from ancient near eastern languages and literature. From that approach I would maintain that Judaism was no more static than Christianity was, and indeed changed greatly over time. We tend to miss this because we have in scripture a collection made over a fairly short period of time. We don’t have much documentation on the losers. What we have is documentation of the stream of tradition that became dominant.

    Now there was no absolute suppression involved. There are plenty of tracks left in Hebrew scripture by which we can tell that there was development in the thought of Israel. If we add the deutero-canonicals into the mix, we see an even more diverse mix of thinking. (Which relates to another question I ask about “Bible-based Christianity.” Which Bible?) Thus we have a new movement (Christianity) growing out of an existing diverse movement, and developing immediate diversity of its own.

    The question is this: Where is the static point in the past that should be preserved by all modern, authentic Christians? I don’t see it. I can see the drive to get at the pure words of Jesus, but even though I believe fully in the incarnation, I cannot see how Jesus would or could define a static point for all history. Whatever divinity was there still had to communicate with finite humanity, and thus those statements also are conditioned by time, place, and culture. They are extremely important, indeed foundational, to my own thinking about Christianity, but there are far from complete in answering questions.

    So what is that point? Let’s have a time slice in history that should define what a singular Christianity should be, and then consider why that point/period should be accepted as definitive.

  • Is Liberal (or Moderate) Christianity Authentic

    Barry Jones of The Village Atheist has suggested a discussion with me on the issue of the whether my sort of Christianity is authentic. He doesn’t believe it is. After the exchange of a number of comments, we’re going to discuss this here on this blog. He’ll be putting his notes in the comments, but I will promote many of those comments to full posts so that his points get equal attention.

    If anyone spots items that have gotten lost in comments and that should be placed in a regular post, please let me know. Since Barry doesn’t have a blog I would like to make sure that all of the debate gets as close to equal billing as is possible.

    This won’t be a formalized debate. We’re just going to discuss publicly on this blog. Anyone is welcome to join in via the comments, or from your own blogs with trackbacks. I will promote any links to or trackbacks from relevant posts from the comments into a regular post so that you get your incoming links numbers up as well. Note that I will only promote relevant posts.

    I’m going to start by entering three comments from the previous post, the first from Barry, my response, and his response to that. Probably tomorrow, I will respond further to this exchange in a new post.

    First from Barry:

    I genuinely don’t understand why you are so annoyed at the actions of these “Minutemen” in their condemnation of the church’s accommodation of homosexuals. No-one can deny that the Bible, and by inference God himself, is violently opposed to (male) homosexuality (despite the fact that, by creating Man, he must also have created homosexuals.)
    Are not these Minutemen simply obeying God’s proclamations, and is it not hypocritical of you and other Christians to pick and choose which parts of the Bible you wish to observe and which you will sideline? Surely, God’s word is absolute, and if he wished his rules to be modified or muted for the modern world he would have let you know?
    Although I find the anti-gay sentiments of the Christian fundamentalists quite obscene, I have some grudging respect for their willingness to stick to their guns, where you and others like you try to weasle out of what your God actually said, and invent your own version of sanitised Christianity.

    My initial response (backquotes are in italics):

    I genuinely don’t understand why you are so annoyed at the actions of these “Minutemen” in their condemnation of the church’s accommodation of homosexuals.

    The question is, “Which church’s condemnation of homosexuality?” They have a church that does, but the two churches they are protesting disagree.

    No-one can deny that the Bible, and by inference God himself, is violently opposed to (male) homosexuality (despite the fact that, by creating Man, he must also have created homosexuals.)

    No one can deny? That’s interesting, because it appears that there are at least two churches in Columbus, OH, who apparently do deny it. There are several disconnects. First, that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong. There are certainly people who deny this. Second, that by inference, if something is stated in the Bible, it must also be what God thinks. There are those who believe that and those who don’t.

    One of the differences between streams in Christianity is whether theology is founded solely on scripture. The larger portion of the Christian faith does not hold to a purely scriptural foundation.

    Are not these Minutemen simply obeying God’s proclamations, and is it not hypocritical of you and other Christians to pick and choose which parts of the Bible you wish to observe and which you will sideline?

    There is nobody, and I repeat, nobody who actually obeys all the commands of scripture. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that I kept all the commands of scripture and then not to do so. It would be hypocritical of me to accuse someone else of failing to obey scripture, while failing to obey it myself, but since I have done none of those things.

    The charge of hypocrisy must be based on my claimed beliefs. That I fail to live up to someone else’s standards is not a basis for a charge of hypocrisy.

    Surely, God’s word is absolute, and if he wished his rules to be modified or muted for the modern world he would have let you know?

    And why is it that God’s word, in this case as reflected (if they are) in the Bible, must be absolute? Further, why should my understanding of them be absolute?


    Although I find the anti-gay sentiments of the Christian fundamentalists quite obscene, I have some grudging respect for their willingness to stick to their guns, where you and others like you try to weasle out of what your God actually said, and invent your own version of sanitised Christianity.

    It’s quite silly of you, who are not a Christian, to decide what should be my authentic faith. Apparently you have decided that only Biblical literalists who teach “sola scriptura” are to be regarded as authentic Christians. I will assure you that is not so. But more importantly, I follow my faith as I understand it, not as the fundamentalists understand it, nor as you understand it.

    And, if it matters to you, the issue I raised was one of courtesy. Even believing that homosexuality is evil does not give people the right to invade other people’s worship service and disrupt it.

    And finally Barry’s response to that:

    You ask “Which church’s condemnation…”

    I mean, the Church that bases its teachings on the Bible, which I take as the basic definition of “Christian”.

    Yes, you are correct, I do take the view that “only Biblical literalists who teach “sola scriptura” are to be regarded as authentic Christians.” How else can one make a definition of “Christian”, considering that the very name derives from a character in the book? Consider this – what would be the tenets of your faith if there were no Bible? You may well believe in some kind of creator God, who listens to prayers, performs miracles and grants an afterlife to those she deems worthy. But you would have no knowledge of Jesus Christ, or his resurrection, or the Ten Commandments or any of the other Bible stories that sustain your faith. No different, really, to the thousands of other religions around the world, past and present, who believe(d) in similar gods. What distinguishes the Christian faith from all others is its unique holy book, the Bible. This book is where the Christian faith originates; this book defines Christianity.

    For centuries, up to and including this day, the Bible has been promoted by the religious establishment as being the “inerrant word of God” (or some similar phrase), meaning that the Bible – ALL the Bible – is sanctioned by God. Those who wish to dispute this, and argue that certain passages are untrue or irrelevant, should, in my opinion, find a new name for their belief set, and then explain the origins of this “new” religion.

    You say there are questions over whether theology is founded solely on scripture, and that the larger portion of the Christian faith does not hold to a purely scriptural foundation. I dispute this, unless you are talking purely of the Christian “intelligentsia” (who number probably less than 1% of the total). I submit that the average Christian believer, sitting in a pew in Biloxi, or Rio, or Rome , or Seoul, believes 100% that Christianity is founded solely on scripture. However, it as a very restricted subset of scripture that they are exposed to, and a very pervasive and oppressive system that has drummed it into them probably from childhood, carefully skirting over any parts that might give rise to doubts.

    Returning to the central point of the original post, the two churches in Ohio that you mention do not “deny” that the Bible and God are opposed to homosexuality – they can’t, because it’s there in black and white for anyone to read (”If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Lev 20:13). They simply try to ignore it, and try to deflect criticism by emphasising other Bible passages that promote love for all. But the elephant in the room will not go away.

    In closing, I would say that I would not presume to decide for you what should be your faith – that is a personal matter for you. And I do agree that rudeness is never to be condoned, no matter what one’s beliefs.

    . . . and . . .

    One more point I forgot to make:

    You ask: “Which church’s condemnation of homosexuality?”

    You mean there’s more than one Church?? Why?

    I will begin my response from this point in a post, hopefully tomorrow.

  • Pivar Suit Against PZ Myers Withdrawn

    According to Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars), the suit has been withdrawn. Brayton also makes a number of remarks on this that are totally on point. I agree with him completely as to the nature of the suit and the characters involved.

    My previous comments were here. PZ’s very own commentary is here.

    Of course, to wish Peter Irons well in dealing with the threat from Pivar’s attorney, Michael Little, would be superfluous.

  • Notes on Mark 12:41-44

    Translation and Notes

    These notes relate to and expand on my podcast Seeing Stewardship as God Sees It.

    41And he sat down by the treasury, and he was watching how the crowd threw money into the contribution box. And many rich people threw in lots!

    Treasury . . . is apparently the hall named from the chest with a trumpet-shaped tube into which were dropped coins for the support of the temple worship; this was something like a church “poor box,” as these offerings were purely voluntary, and perhaps not in very large amounts–though the rich cast in much. H. J. Holtzmann has called this “the Peter’s pence of the Jews.” — IB on Exegesis on Mark 12:41

    Mar 12:41 – He beheld how people cast money into the treasury – This treasury received the voluntary contributions of the worshippers who came up to the feast; which were given to buy wood for the altar, and other necessaries not provided for in any other way. — John Wesley

    This was the sort of place one would want to go for show. There was no great benefit to be gained in terms of public opinion and reputation from doing the things that were mandatory, but voluntary gifts showed off one’s generosity to the greatest effect.

    There are those who hold that the issue here was proportion—that the giving that God approves is giving that involves sacrifice. I don’t agree with that. I think the issue was one of dedication. The money brought by many rich donors was not dedicated to God, but rather was dedicated to building their reputation. They were not giving to support the temple. They were investing in their temporal well-being by being seen while giving. If someone rich had stepped up and given money for the purpose because of generosity, I’m sure he would have met with approval from Jesus.

    If I’m right about this, why did Jesus pick someone who gave very little, but nonetheless a gift that was very large in proportion to her income? Jesus is, as usual trying to turn our perceptions around. We tend to measure the gift against the need that it will fill. For example, a gift might be added to the money collected for a building drive. But God is the supplier of all need. He’s more interested in the spiritual state of the person giving the gift than in its size, proportional or otherwise.

    The widow was a person with nothing to gain, giving a freewill gift that showed she was trusting God for her provision. She was a good example of giving.

    42Then one poor widow came and threw in two small copper coins about the equivalent of a penny. 43And he called his disciples to him and he said to them, “Truly I tell you that this poor widow has thrown in more than all of those who have thrown money into the contribution box.

    Mar 12:43 – I say to you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all – See what judgement is cast on the most specious, outward actions by the Judge of all! And how acceptable to him is the smallest, which springs from self – denying love! — John Wesley

    44For they all threw in from their abundance, but she gave everything she had from her lack, all of her living.”

    I would be surprised if someone didn’t think this verse contradicted my comments on the preceding verse. But I believe that the giving of “all her living” was simply the indication of her trust in God and commitment to him. Everything she had was dedicated to God so there was nothing to be gained and nothing to be lost from this action.

  • Notes on Mark 12:34-40

    Translation and Notes

    The notes below relate to and expand my podcast Jesus Strikes Back.

    35In response Jesus began to teach in the temple this way: “How is it that the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? 36David said by the Holy Spirit,

    The Lord said to my lord
    Sit at my right side,
    Until I place your enemies
    as a footstool under your feet.

    This is a hard saying for a modern exegete, because it seems not to follow any sustainable principles of Biblical exegesis. Psalm 110 is not all that likely to actually be composed by David and it was not likely in its original intent Messianic. But all of that is unimportant. What is important is that Jesus knew that his hearers accepted this as a Messianic passage, and based on their view of the passage it creates quite a problem.

    The ancestor should be greater than the descendant in this case. David is the one who gives the name to the family. But here David is quoted as calling him Lord. How can this be?

    Jesus was not denying that he was the son of David. He was, however, suggesting that he was more than that, more than the ancestor who had received the promise of a returning Messiah. He could indeed be both David’s son and his Lord. The theology of that would take some time to work out, but here it was in seed form.

    37If David himself calls him ‘lord’ then where does he become David’s son?”
    And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.

    The crowd loved what Jesus was doing because they were described by these same important people whom Jesus was putting to flight. We often think that the most important thing about our presentation to other people is that we are right. But there is also the issue is whether we, personally, are believable. I think the crowds were drawn to Jesus partially because his life showed that he meant what he said. It also showed that he was connected to them. Thus they were receptive to what he had to say.

    Too often a preacher or teacher presents a topic faithfully and accurately, but does not frame it in such a way that an audience can receive it.

    38And as he was teaching he began to say, “Beware of the scribes who want to walk about in fancy robes and to receive greetings in the marketplaces

    Mar 12:38 – Beware of the scribes – There was an absolute necessity for these repeated cautions. For, considering their inveterate prejudices against Christ, it could never be supposed the common people would receive the Gospel till these incorrigible blasphemers of it were brought to just disgrace. Yet he delayed speaking in this manner till a little before his passion, as knowing what effect it would quickly produce. Nor is this any precedent for us: we are not invested with the same authority. — John Wesley

    John Wesley makes a good point. We are tempted to use this passage in two wrong ways. First, we see it as a license to criticize the Jews, because Jesus is hear criticizing the Jewish leadership. But we must remember that whatever Jesus said to other Jews, he said as a Jew. As gentiles, we don’t have the same freedom. Second, we see it as a license to judgment, something to which we are not called. We have to be sure to be constructive in our rebuking.

    39 and the best seats in the synagogues and best places at feasts, 40 who eat up the households of widows and make a show of long prayers. These will receive the greater judgment.

    This preoccupation with prominence is an inevitable result of the lack of any significant “inside.” The great sin of the scribes, and of all pushers to front seats, is a lack of love. The way of salvation is to be found in the acceptance of another and higher standard. Jesus proclaimed it again and again. The road to greatness is still the way of service. What would an edition of Who’s Who be like if it were published, not in Chicago or London, but in heaven? If it contained the names of the occupants, not of the chief seats of earth, but of the kingdom of God? A strange book, truly! It would be a “servants’” directory, as Jesus used that word “servant.” In the very next paragraph he awards an honored place in God’s Who’s Who to an unknown in Jerusalem, a widow who put a penny in the alms box. — IB Exposition on Mark 12:37-40

    It’s interesting how many of us think we would like to be in leadership. Sometimes we then get into leadership and wonder why we ever wanted the position. They will receive the greater judgment is a warning to all of us. For me it always combines with James 3:1—not everyone should want to be a teacher! The point is that greater knowledge and greater authority bring greater responsibility. And when you abuse your greater responsibility you become subject to greater judgment.

    This shouldn’t keep you from answering God’s call, but it should make you answer that call prayerfully and carefully.

  • Christian Carnival #187

    . . . has been posted at Mandi Kaye.

  • Reading Part 6 (On Inerrancy)

    I somehow got the idea that the inerrancy series to which I linked yesterday was in five parts. A comment from the author let me know that I was wrong on that point, and how I got the idea I do not know, consider that the statement “*Part 6 will conclude with reflections on why the doctrine of inerrancy is important.” occurs at the end of the notes to part 5. But such is life in the blogosphere.

    You can now read part 6, and it does tie the package together. I would like first to quote portions of the author’s comment to my previous post here to set the stage. After gently reminding me of the sixth part, he said:

    I don’t want to give the impression that some people, such as yourself, are “too far away” to connect with. This was a paper I wrote for seminary last year, and given the space limitation I had to narrow down my argument rather strictly. To engage every possible position on inerrancy was not possible within the scope of the paper, but I believe I had something original to say to those who claim some sort of “limited inerrancy.”

    This is a good point which I did note. Now I don’t find that the premises he lists at the beginning of part 6 catch me. When he says “The Bible’s claims about its own integrity are a matter of faith and practice” as the second premise, I’m not sure I’d agree, but then I’m truly not one of the limited inerrantists whom he is addressing, and thus I might not evaluate that statement properly. I reject inerrancy in all its forms and I have problems with the term “infallibility” in many contexts. I’ll write more about that below.

    I have been frequently shocked by positions held by people who do claim to accept inerrancy. There seem to be people out there who profess some form of belief in inerrancy who are more liberal in their handling of the scriptures than I would be able to accept. One of these points is the late dating of the book of Daniel, which I have grave difficulties reconciling with inerrancy. I commented on this point in Earnest Lucas’s fine volume in the Apollos Old Testament Commentary series, in which he doesn’t specifically affirm a 2nd century date for Daniel, but does argue that one can affirm inerrancy and yet hold to a late date. I’m supposed to be the liberal on this issue, and I accept a mixed dating, with a historical Daniel and some fairly old stories supplemented by later Hebrew additions.

    You said “it’s a bit odd to use either a proof-texting approach or the approach of systematic theology to determine what the Bible must be.” I’d like to clarify that the argument I presented makes no claims to what the Bible must be (or must not be). My argument is more modest in that I’ve only argued what the Bible claims to be. Whether or not the Bible is what it claims is an entirely different point, and I’ve yet to present any argument regarding that.

    On this point, I understand the objection to my comments, but in the broader picture, the doctrine of inerrancy seems to me to result from systematic theology more than it does from observation of the Bible. In fact, the claim of inerrancy produces a considerable effort in explaining those elements of the Bible that don’t appear to fit the picture. I’m not only talking about explaining errors or reconciling contradictions, but also looking at the process. The synoptic gospels, for example, display signs of copying from one to another. The simplest explanation for stories with slight variations is that they are the same story remembered or passed on with slightly different details. The doctrine of inerrancy forces one to explain how the details really worked. An extreme version of this is Lindsell’s explanation of the cock crowings and denials that reconciled the stories in the gospels. Now one can’t be absolutely certain that Lindsell was wrong, but it seems very improbable that he was right. (I see a reference to this here. I don’t have a copy of The Battle for the Bible on hand to check the accuracy of that reference, however.)

    My preferred approach is to sit down with the Bible and ask, “Just what does this book appear to be, and what does it appear to do?” Having gotten a start at answering that question, I will move on to what precisely it is, and then I have some basis on which to interpret and apply statements such as 1 Timothy 3:16-17 (which winds up being very important in my view of inspiration as well) or 2 Peter 1:20-21.

    Welll, I started this post with “Biblical inspiration” fatigue, as in I’ve written way too much on the subject recently. But I should still say something about what I do believe. (Note that this is not in response directly to Roger’s series. I simply feel that I should make a positive statement to connect with any criticisms, thus giving people equal opportunity to criticize my views.)

    First, I do not think a doctrine of scripture, apart from a more general doctrine of how one discovers God’s will is likely to be valid. That is sort of like a view of how a house will be laid out sole by expressing the accuracy of the measuring tape. In such a case the measuring tape can be 100% accurate, but it’s practical accuracy is limited by the people who receive the information.

    This leads to my second point, which is that as human beings, we are always speaking of God’s word as we receive it. God’s word in God’s mind is always true and absolutely accurate. If we believe that God is infinite, his word in his mind is also without perspective, or perhaps more accurately with absolute perspective. We, on the other hand, never comprehend something without perspective, and those moments in God’s presence that simply hint at God’s absolute perspective are overpowering.

    Third, I hold that this perspective issue applies to the prophet who initially receives the revelation as much as to any other human. He will not absolutely comprehend the message, and based on recorded statements in scripture as well as observations of the written product, I see no validity in the idea that God’s inspiration involves dictation. (Now please don’t assume that I think inerrancy necessarily involves verbal dictation. The vast majority of inerrantists I know do not.) My particular point here is that the prophet understands and expresses the message as a human, and thus the received communication is itself limited. I would argue further that the received message is imperfect, but I have little time to follow that trail.

    Fourth, this results in the possibility of error at any stage of the transmission other than the thought in God’s own mind. The possibility of error applies to everything that is communicated because everything communicated goes through a human mind, is then copied by a human mind, and is later interpreted and applied by a human mind–all imperfectly.

    Inerrantists of my acquaintance accept that interpreters are all fallible, and certainly fallible in faith and practice as well as history and science. They accept that copyists may have made errors, though they would maintain those are few and of small import. I simply extend that one more step. Any human mind that transmits the word of God will do so in a limited way, i.e. imperfectly.

    So why read and depend on the Bible? Well, first, I don’t “depend on” the Bible as such. But generally this question tends to make me crazy. I depend on potentially fallible materials in my daily life. I am a fallible person who makes imperfect decisions, many of which I now know, from the eminence of 50 years (!) to have been really, really bad. I deal with imperfection. It is important to me that God is perfect, but I see no need for any human to be perfect.

    Now the Bible is a core element in my reception of God’s word, but by itself it is words on paper. I must bring all elements of God’s revelation together in order to have the faintest prayer of a chance of getting anything right. And that “prayer” of a chance is precisely what I do have. For me the Bible comes in a Spirit-filled community and is guaranteed to me not by the factual content of the text, on which I may change my mind in the next several seconds, but rather on the Spirit and the community with all the gifts and wisdom that God can give us. Even so I know that we will be in error from time to time.

    But even more importantly, I think we spend most of our times in the questionable areas, things on which we can quite reasonably disagree, while most of our actual problems come in areas on which we know what is right, and yet aren’t doing it. But again, that’s another point.

  • A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy

    Since I have staked out a pretty firm position as an opponent of Biblical inerrancy, I was interested in the series A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy on The A-Team Blog. The series comes in five parts:

    1. Part 1
    2. Part 2
    3. Part 3
    4. Part 4
    5. Part 5

    Some might expect me to go into a blow-by-blow refutation of such a post, but having recently written on it extensively in my book When People Speak for God (though that wasn’t my central topic), I really only want to call attention to it and highlight a few points.

    This series is well written and very clear, though some may be concerned that the author has covered a great deal of ground in large leaps. That is, however, the nature of essays and blog posts as opposed to multi-volume works on systematic theology. He defines inerrancy as he sees it very clearly. I suspect he would not include someone like me who denies inerrancy completely in the group he was addressing. As he notes:

    Even though the paper states so, I would like to make it clear that my argument is directed to those Christians who hold that the Bible is inerrant only in some areas (such as faith and practice), but not all areas in which it makes affirmations.

    Since I don’t view the Bible, as such, as inerrant in any area, perhaps I’m simply too far away from his point of view to connect at all. The standard difficulties occur. First, as I argue in my book (p. 16ff), it’s a bit odd to use either a proof-texting approach or the approach of systematic theology to determine what the Bible must be, when we have the Bible itself which we can examine, asking questions like just how it came together, how the prophets or other authors got the words that they wrote, how much those words are impacted by the surrounding culture, and so forth. The text of scripture itself tends to deny the results of systematic theologians; the Bible simply doesn’t operate the way they seem to think it should. How, for example, should one believe that all the words in the Bible are the words of God when the Bible clearly identifies many of them as the words of other people, often people who should not be believed? I know that sounds like an unsophisticated response. The inerrantists are sure to point out that they are not so stupid as to assume that when the inspired writer says that Satan, for example, says something, that must be true. It must, of course, be true that Satan said it. But even so that points to the Bible being something quite different than “the words of God” and suggests a more sophisticated approach.

    Second, the procedure of taking any Biblical text and applying it to all of the Bible, such as the usage of the favorite 1 Timothy 3:16-17, is questionable at best. Roger, our A-Team blogger, avoids this, but only partially, claiming that 1 Timothy 3:16-17 would apply to the Old Testament. I assume then that he would extend that application to the New Testament in forming his doctrine.

    But the process of canonization was not complete, even for the Old Testament at the time 1 Timothy 3:16-17 was written, so the assumption that the statement can be applied to the entire corpus of scripture is just that–an assumption. It happens to be an assumption that I would tend to agree with, though I understand God-breathed differently, but it is an assumption nonetheless. And would I agree with it in reference to the same canon? That is hard to tell.

    I would point out also that it is not primarily textual criticism that has brought inerrancy into question, but in one major way I think it should. In general, other higher critical methodologies are more of a challenge to inerrancy, as is historical study of the ancient near east. Because inerrancy as commonly defined applies to the autographs, textual criticism doesn’t really impact that definition.

    Or does it? I find it very odd that inerrantists claim that in order to have authority the Bible must be 100% without error. Even a slight error as the original author writes that autograph is fatal. Yet “essential accuracy” is what is required of those versions of the Bible that we have today. So apparently if manuscripts of the book of Acts differ by 10%, as the western text does from the Byzantine and Alexandrian texts, that’s OK. It’s textual variation. Through textual criticism we know what the text was to a very high degree.

    Now that is an assumption as well, because we have applied generally good principles of textual criticism and come up with the text that we have, but what about the poor early Christians who had the wrong text. Was it important that various Christians had differing texts for the book of Acts? Generally, inerrantists tell me know, pointing out that the variants are not doctrinally important. That’s a questionable point in itself, but is not critical here. The argument is that as long as it wasn’t done by the author, that 10% variation is not important. Even though it’s important that there was an inerrant autograph somewhere, nobody actually needs that inerrant autograph in order to have the truth–according to the inerrantists own arguments. I admit I just don’t get that argument.

    So let’s take a specific variant. According to 2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he began to reign. According to 2 Chronicles 36:9 he was 8. Now I like this variant because it is so obviously trivial. But it’s an interesting one from the point of view of inerrancy. In both Chronicles and Kings we are probably dealing with a compiler/editor who created the autograph. According to the doctrine of inerrancy, this variant is unimportant if it is the result of a copyists error. But supposing that the compiler of Chronicles, the one more likely to be wrong in this case, actually slipped up and wrote eight rather than eighteen in the autograph. Would that invalidate the truth of all of scripture? I find it astonishing that one can suggest that it’s critical if the error was made by the author, but unimportant if made by a copyist. The result in terms of the Bible I read, is the same.

    Obviously, I’m brushing past huge amounts of the argument in the series. I did want to call attention to it, however, because I think it’s a good summary of the other side on this issue.

  • Some Things that Caught my Eye Today

    OK, I don’t do a links post often, but there were a few things that caught my eye that don’t require my long-winded comment. OK–shutting up now!

    Have fun!

  • Education as a Priority and Teacher Quality

    Way back in the pre-blog days for me (April, 2005), I wrote an essay for my Energion.com web site titled Make Education a Priority. You can type that rather uncreative title into a search engine and you’ll find that many dozens of politicians are using it as a slogan, but I don’t see that priority on the campaign trail being translated into real improvements at the classroom level. In that article I put first on the list of my suggestions: High quality, motivated, and informed teachers.

    I want you to understand that I don’t believe in minor, incremental changes in education. I think that we need to recognize that education is an investment in infrastructure–people. Spending on good education is not money down the drain. It is going to produce in less costs in other areas, such as welfare and crime, and it’s going to pay in greater economic productivity. Unfortunately, the American people generally don’t want to pay for good education, so they don’t get it.

    Now I know some folks are going to talk to me about waste, or lack of accountability. Those are good topics. Unfortunately, the people who talk about them generally (not always) don’t want to pay for a top notch educational system. They want to get the biggest apparent bang for the smallest investment possible. I believe strongly that we should make teachers one of the highest paid professions, that we should make schools be among the best built and best maintained facilities, and then and only then we should hold the educators responsible for providing us what we pay for.

    Right now we’re treating our teachers much like our soldiers overseas. We argue about their funding, we send too few of them to accomplish their mission, we can’t make up our minds about the goals, yet we expect them to produce. In both cases, our military and our teachers, they do produce to a remarkably high standard despite the problems.

    I still believe that this high quality educational system, led by highly trained, motivated and compensated teachers would be the most important single thing we could do for the future of this country. Thus I was gratified to encounter the article The Blackboard Bungles, subtitled “Three authors take us inside today’s classroom. These flies on the wall reveal how we might fix our schools” on MSNBC/Newsweek.

    From the first author, a teacher writing about his rookie year:

    It’s not good for kids. (“I would not want my kid in my class,” Brown writes.) It’s not good for teachers or the school. Brown does try, but struggles to control his class and resigns after a year. In his book, we see that good teachers are the linchpin to solid reform. Too often, poor schools become dumping grounds for green teachers. And children are the ones who pay the price.

    From the second, a journalist:

    Teachers spend most of the year drilling kids in order to help them perform well on exams.

    I believe we need teacher accountability, but there’s a key to effective accountability–you need to test the results you want to have. If you want your kids to be good a multiple choice tests, training them for the tests is a good idea. But life rarely comes at you in the form of multiple choice tests.

    I commend this entire article. This is a topic we really need to get working on. We need to insist that “make education a priority” becomes not just a campaign slogan, but a reality in government.