Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: inspiration

  • Joel Watts on Theopneustos and Theosis

    Joel Watts has started a discussion on the nature of inspiration, comparing the breathing of the Spirit into the text of scripture with the coming of the Holy Spirit into the church and the individual.

    Thus far he has gotten little discussion, and he think his ideas deserve some further discussion. This reminds me of a couple of paragraphs I wrote for my book When People Speak for God (which this web site supports):

    . . . 2 Timothy 3:16 provides us with the word “theopneustos” or “God-breathed” which has been made to carry a great deal of freight. But when God breathed into Adam he didn’t make him inerrant, he made him alive. What exactly is the content of a text that is God-breathed? But this issue applies much more to verbal inspiration. The evidence against verbal inspiration is very strong in the text and the history itself. There are certainly words that are attributed to God, but there are also words that are clearly not attributed to God. The synoptic problem presents us with clear evidence that the gospel writers copied from one another, that there are different sources in the Pentateuch, Samuel, and Kings, just as examples (237, 238).

    The breathing of the Holy Spirit finds its roots, I believe, in this earlier breath of God and thus both provide an excellent analogy for the breathing of scripture. Theopneustos itself requires more definition; it doesn’t provide an adequate definition for inspiration in and of itself.

  • On Joel Watts on Inspiration

    I put a note on the web site for my book When People Speak for God.

  • Jesus Creed: Does God Still Speak?

    Scot McKnight has a post asking this question, starting from a book he’s read. This is a few days old, but that just adds more discussion in the comments!

    Just in case anyone wonders, my position–the position I argue for in my book–is that God still speaks today. In fact, my aim in the book was to provide a coherent and simple theology for understanding how God speaks at any time and place.

  • Inerrancy is to Evangelicalism as Inspiration is to Christianity (or Not)

    Michael Patton has written a post arguing that inerrancy is not the linchpin of evangelicalism. This post should make me happy, and indeed I am glad that someone is making this claim. Further, Patton makes some very interesting points, including noting that we don’t throw anything else out completely just because of some error in detail, particularly if we’re dealing with eyewitness testimony.

    There is a certain conflict when we argue for both any form of verbal dictation, or even verbal plenary inspiration, and at the same time try to support the historicity of events in the gospel by claiming they contain eyewitness testimony. If the Holy Spirit is dictating the words of the gospels, or even protecting them so they are not merely the Word of God, but are words of God, then the truth of those words would not be dependent on eyewitnesses. We’d have precisely one witness in the gospels, and that would be the Divine witness.

    But that isn’t either the most common claim in favor of the historicity of the gospels, nor, indeed, is it the claim of the New Testament documents or of the early church regarding Jesus. The claim is not that the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are correct because they were revealed (or dictated) by the Holy Spirit, but rather they are the words of people who saw what happened and reported what they saw.

    Thus minor differences in the accounts are to be expected if the claim is true, since eyewitnesses don’t generally agree absolutely in all details. Whether we admit just differences in perspective or accept outright errors of fact may well depend on what we expect. Patton says that finding such an error would not impact his faith in Christ. He says: “However, if I were to find something that I believed was a legitimate error in the Scripture, I don’t think my faith would be affected too much. Why? Because the central truths of the Christian faith are not affected by inerrancy.”

    Patton believes in inerrancy, and I do not, but I would say much the same thing. I have no great desire to locate errors in scripture. In fact, I’d say that while I don’t accept the doctrine of inerrancy as stated in the Chicago Statement, for example, I don’t believe there is anything in Scripture that is there by error. Scripture is precisely what God wanted it to be. Finding errors of fact or contradictions doesn’t impact my faith because my faith didn’t come into existence based on the number of errors present or not present in the Bible.

    I must note here that I sometimes frustrate opponents of inerrancy as well, because I don’t really want to make lists of errors in scripture. I think that’s entirely the wrong way to go about it. It’s much more a process of interpretation. The question is always this: What (and where) is the message God is presenting through this passage? So I don’t compare Genesis 1-2 with science as we know it today to find what is correct and what is in error. If Genesis is written with a different cosmology than we have today, I would both admit it is not scientifically accurate and also claim it is not in error. Rather, we have God’s message set in the cosmological knowledge of the time. As we continue to live in God’s world, we can reset that message in the context of the cosmological knowledge we have today. If the world is still here in 200, 2000, or a few million years, I expect our understanding of cosmology will have changed, and we’ll have to see God’s message in another set of ideas about cosmology. Why would we assume that the early 21st century has the final answer on this?

    But let me return from that rabbit trail. (I’m just as bad at staying on topic when I’m speaking!) Patton continues by claiming that inspiration isn’t actually necessary for Christianity.

    But I would also say Christianity is not dependent on the inspiration of the Bible either. In other words, the Bible does not even have to be inspired for Christianity to be true. We could just think of the eyewitness accounts in what we call the New Testament as twenty-seven ancient historical documents. . . .

    Here is where I disagree. Fundamental to the idea of Christianity is this: God acts in history. We may disagree radically on just how subtly or openly God acts. We may disagree about how he communicates and how much he protects that communication. But without God’s acting in history and someone recognizing God’s action, there would be no Christianity. So once these historical acts or events to which Patton refers have happened, there is inspiration. The only real question is how it is going to be handled. If God sends a message, that’s inspiration.

    Now it’s true that, in theory, the Bible need not have the kind of authority it has in the church. Inspiration and authority are not equal (Vick, From Inspiration to Understanding, pp. 156-163). We could give authority to the historical events rather than to the reports of them, but if God is communicating through them, they would be inspired in some sense. We can disagree about how that works, but without agreeing that it works in some way, I can’t see how Christianity could exist.

    Thus while I’m not certain if a particular description of inspiration (inerrancy) is essential to evangelicalism, I’m quite certain that some form of inspiration is necessary to Christianity.

  • Imperfections in Scripture

    Lee at The Dubious Disciple generously and kindly reviewed my book When People Speak for God. In that review, he included the following sentence:

    A discussion of inerrancy follows, and how Henry’s recognition of the Bible’s imperfections has not disturbed his reverence for God’s Word.

    Now before I discuss this line, let me emphasize that this is not a critique or rebuttal of Lee’s review. I’m not saying he misunderstood me. What happened is that his particular phrasing suggested some clarifications to me, and I want to write about them now.

    Let’s start with an analogy. Supposing I’m viewing a sunset with one of my grandchildren. I might discuss imaginary shapes suggested by the clouds, the beauty of the colors, and the gift of beauty that God has given us. Were a scientist to hear my description, and think I was teaching my grandchild about the technical aspects of a sunset, he might well consider that there were serious imperfections in my talk on the sunset.

    In turn, if I was explaining the technical aspects to the same grandchild, discussing refraction, the composition of the atmosphere, cloud formation, the rotation of the earth, and so forth, while the scientists might be satisfied, if my wife heard the lecture, and supposed I was watching a pretty sunset, she might well consider that there were imperfections in my discussion of the sunset, which she would doubtless point out to me.

    Each of these ways of talking about the sunset is good and appropriate in its proper setting, and each is severely deficient when used in the wrong context.

    Now let me turn to the Bible. One of the points I endeavor to make regularly is that we must observe what the Bible is, rather than trying to predefine what the Bible should be. Instead, we often use texts such as 2 Peter 1:21 and 2 Timothy 3:16 (and if we’re lucky, 17) and construct our doctrine of what the scripture should be, whereupon we set to work trying to demonstrate that it is what it should be.

    I think it would be better to observe how the Bible came to be, and determine from that just how God speaks through scripture and how it is that we should hear his voice. My primary suggestion would be that everything in the Bible starts from God acting, and people experiencing God in action. From there, the writers report God’s actions in history.

    This necessarily involves their perceptions and their cultural backgrounds. This comes very strongly into play as we interpret Genesis 1 & 2 along with other creation stories. On the one hand we have objectors who see the creation story as deficient because it doesn’t tell a scientific story. On the other we have those who believe it must tell a scientific story, so therefore it does tell one.

    My question is just how we expect God to communicate to those who wrote this story. Should he first provide them with all the various scientific theories and data that would allow him to tell a story that we would take as scientifically accurate? What would happen then to believers a couple hundred years in the future? Might they not regard such a story as ridiculously primitive and therefore not divine?

    It’s my contention that God spoke to those people in the context of their culture and their cosmology. If I look at this as a scientific treatise or an historical record, I will, indeed, see imperfections. The Bible is very imperfect at being what it is not.

    While these elements of ancient cosmology may look like errors to us, they are actually “intentionals,” i.e., they are intentional elements of the way God chose to communicate with people and also chose to provide scripture.

    I would add further that the way in which the Bible was transmitted also points away from this kind of accurate fulfillment of our modern desires. I’d love to have good material on which to base precise dating of the kings of Judah and Israel. But if you try to line up those numbers you’ll find they don’t work so well. A massive effort of proposing co-regencies and various differences in recording accession years can bring much of it into line, but even Edwin R. Thiele (The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 1994) had to suggest that some of the final records of the northern kingdom had been lost. (I don’t have the page number, but I’ll hunt it down if anyone requests it.)

    The message of the books of Kings is not lost, however, because I can’t satisfy my curiosity. Thus what is an imperfection from my perspective is not an imperfection from another.

    I know this presents problems for some Christian apologists. The eternal effort to prove the Bible’s truthfulness, or at least make it highly probable, is very important to some. But the question is whether that enterprise matches God’s intent in scripture. As I mentioned earlier the benefit of 2 Timothy 3:17, which doesn’t say, “that the man of God may know history” or “that the man of God may know science.” Of course our understanding of how scripture is presented and how it came to be will impact the way we read that passage as well!

    Now just because the Bible is aiming to teach those subjects doesn’t mean it doesn’t have information on those topics. That is a separate investigation. What it does mean is that if we try to evaluate the Bible as a history or science book, we’ll find imperfections, since “perfect” always relates to a goal or standard. If we’re using the wrong standard, we’ll be misled.

  • Revelation and a System of Doctrine

    I really enjoy the last few days of work on a pending book release, because I include an opportunity to read the final form of the book at a more reasonable pace and without the constant distraction of working on editorial changes. Well, I should confess that I’m also always going crazy with production issues, but we’ll leave that to one side.

    Right now I’m doing my final run through From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully by Edward Vick. It’s an enjoyable process. I’m going to comment on it a bit more later. Today I’m just going to use one quote, regarding revelation.

    But the meaning of the Bible is not exhausted by being made the basis of a system of doctrine. There is much that escapes when ‘Bible’ and ‘system of doctrine’ are conflated. In fact, while by no means denying the importance of doctrine (why should a theologian do that?), one must say that if the importance of the Bible is made to consist in its being construed as a source of doctrine, it is being severely reduced, misunderstood, and indeed distorted. Revelation is not reducible to the communication of propositions, and faith is not identical with assent to propositions, in this case propositions repeating biblical statements, or being inferred or worked out from them (emphasis mine).

    Note that Dr. Vick is not suggesting, as the context makes even more plain, that there are no propositions involved or that propositions have no value. Rather, revelation is much more than and other than that.

  • More on Inerrancy the Term

    I found this post by Roger Olson via my reader (HT:  Chrisendom) and it reminded me of my own recent post Inerrancy – Romancing the Term.

    Though my experience is largely outside of academia, I can relate to much of what Dr. Olson says.  Inerrancy is not understood in the pews of any church I know in the same way as it’s defined by evangelical scholars.  I often find that when I discuss with someone who affirms inerrancy I’m even arguing a more conservative position than theirs, which always feels odd.

    In any case check out Dr. Olson’s comments.

  • Peter Enns Writes on Inspiration and Incarnation

    Earlier this year I commented twice on Dr. Peter Enns and the actions by WTS regarding his theology and writings. Now he has posted some additional information on his views and some responses to prior reviews of his work. (HT: An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution, though I should note that this does not have to do with evolution.) I think it’s appropriate for me to provide a link to this newer material as well.

    You can find a collection of links to material he has posted at I&I – Inspiration & Incarnation. This material was extremely important for me in clarifying his views, since I have not yet managed to read his book, though I very much intend to. I found this response to a review particularly helpful, after reading all of the five essays he presents on I&I.

    I do want to respond to part of his statement on inerrancy, since I have written some on that subject myself (see my book When People Speak for God). He says:

    I affirm that I am committed to the Bible’s inerrancy as a function of its divine origin. If I may offer a thumbnail definition, the Bible as it is is without error because the Bible as it is is God’s Word.

    To get directly to the point, if this is inerrancy, then what is there to argue about? I do not affirm the doctrine of inerrancy, yet I could say pretty much the same thing. I usually phrase it as “the Bible is precisely what God intended it to be.” Perhaps some of my readers could tell me if I’m missing something here, after reading all of Dr. Enns’ referenced essay, of course. (For more of my view without having to pay for it, see Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy.) Looking at it from clearly outside the inerrancy camp, that doesn’t look to me like what most people who espouse Biblical inerrancy are saying, however.

    As an example, I say that God speaks into the cultural matrix of the people who are addressed. He will work with what they believe on everything other than the truth he is trying to add. For a simple example, if one or both of the genealogies of Luke and Matthew are in error, one explanation could be simply that the communities involved would believe those particular genealogies and get the point–Jesus as human son of David and Adam. If one ancestor were wrong, for example, it would be harder to add something like, “Well, your genealogical records are incorrect, and the Holy Spirit is telling me to correct them.” That would uproot the teaching from history in the minds of the readers/hearers.

    Now please note that this is not something I am attributing to Dr. Enns–this is something I am saying. I’m simply not seeing where it would contradict his statement of inerrancy, yet I’m pretty sure that most who espouse the doctrine of inerrancy would find my explanation unacceptable.

  • Peter Enns, Incarnational Inspiration, and Seminary Authority

    In 2005 Peter Enns, a professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, published a book titled Inspiration and Incarnation, and it is likely going to cost him his tenured position. I’m writing about this on this blog because of the implications of his incarnational view of inspiration for Biblical interpretation. I have not yet read this little book. I found out about it through this controversy. Let me comment to you the Christianity Today news article, and this review in JETS by G. K. Beale. The review is not particularly favorable, but it follows the kind of standards for writing and citation that would suggest it’s fair. (HT: Everyday Liturgy)

    What am I writing about, if I haven’t even read the book? Primarily I’m writing because of the impact on good education of seminary policies such as this one. Secondly, I know of other cases in which discussion of inspiration leads to this kind of reaction, to the detriment of serious consideration of the issues. Often the people in the pews are left without any sort of answers, or better any sort of structure in which to discuss answers because the theologians are avoiding them. Thirdly, I publish a book that uses the incarnational metaphor, Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?, by Dr. Alden Thompson, who has also elicited some controversy due to his view of inspiration. Finally, I hold an incarnational view of inspiration myself, as espoused in my book When People Speak for God.

    If you were to take the quotes and summaries by G. K. Beale in his review, not do any contortions to try to put a good face on them, i.e. take the more liberal interpretation, then you would have something like my own position. I will have to see when I get a copy of the book myself whether I think these things are fair with reference to Dr. Enns. I would simply note at this point that none of the material quoted appeared at all shocking to me, but then I’m not an evangelical.

    The problem I have here is with the seminary. First, let me say that I fully accept that a seminary belonging to or sponsored by a confessional body, has every right to control what is taught there. At the same time, the rest of us have every right to criticize their choices. The value of that criticism has nothing to do with changing the seminary. They’re not going to listen to me, and I wouldn’t even argue that they should. I’m not evangelical, I’m not Calvinist, and I don’t like the Westminster Confession.

    I criticize nonetheless because I believe we need to be aware of the problem of education that is constrained by a specific confession and that won’t allow anyone to question or work around the boundaries. The area of inspiration is one that has many lay members confused, and it is one where our young people who go to secular universities find themselves generally unequipped. When we constrain the playing field so thoroughly that we can’t discuss the type of issues that Dr. Enns raises, then I question the quality of the education that results.

    There is here a great gulf fixed between a secular, academic education, and an education at a confessional institution. I’m not sure how one should draw the boundaries if one belongs to a confessional church, but if one’s convictions are to be sound I think one has to have honestly explored alternate possibilities without the fear that stepping across the line will ruin one’s life.

    The combination of those elements is very difficult, and perhaps even impossible for a very confessional church, which is why I avoid such a thing. I am jealous of the ability to explore, to be wrong, and perhaps later to correct my course.

    In the final analysis, however, those who want to explore real answers to questions of inspiration will probably have to break the bonds in a more serious way, finding a less constrictive environment. The problem for many is that they have a firm faith and a strong commitment to their faith community, so it is hard to just move on. Such is the tragedy of the right of the seminary to manage itself, versus the need for thinking people to explore.

    While I found it necessary to step out of the community in which I grew up, I understand those who find that difficult, and who then spend years or decades in conflict with a community that they love.

    One final note–these are the folks who want to “teach the controversy” in public universities and in our high schools. The real goal is to put science within confessional boundaries, a straightjacket that will certainly not fit it.

  • Speaking from God – 2 Peter 1:16-21

    This passage in 2 Peter is one of the most commonly cited in discussions of Biblical inspiration, along with 2 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 4:12 and Psalm 12:6. One of the interesting things that I notice about them all is that they are often used as though they obviously say something that, on closer examination, they don’t actually say.

    In fact, they are quoted in support of just about every view of inspiration that there is, and frequently supporters of one view or another simply quote these passages and then look expectantly at you, expecting you to acknowledge that the text completely states their doctrine. But no single text does, and it would be difficult for one to do so by itself. Even more, however, we need to look at how prophecy functioned in practice in scripture when we want to work out the details, rather than looking for doctrinal statements and then assuming that it works according to our interpretation of those statements.

    That general statement of method, of course, requires further discussion, and I do discuss the method extensively in my book When People Speak for God. Here, I simply want to look at this text from that point of view. The key question here is what does Peter (or the pseudonymous author of 2 Peter, if it was not written by the apostle himself) wish to convey? In other words, why is he talking about prophecy here? We can see rather immediately that his point is not to expound a doctrine of prophecy, but what is he doing?

    As an aside, let me note that the authorship of 2 Peter would be problematic under the doctrine of inerrancy. I have left the possibility that this is a pseudonymous letter rather than written by the apostle himself, yet if one holds the doctrine of inerrancy, this very passage would be in error, since it relies on the notion of eyewitnesses, and specifically an eyewitness who was on the mount of transfiguration. No person other than Peter, amongst potential authors of the book, suits that text.

    The key here is the reliability of the prophetic word in general, but more specifically about Jesus Christ. To restate this in a slightly less convoluted way, Peter is saying that he saw the prophecies about the coming Messiah fulfilled before his very eyes in Jesus. In particular, I believe, he’s invoking Exodus 24 and the image of Moses on the mountain as the type which met its antitype in the transfiguration. Because of this reliable connection, established by eyewitness testimony–that of the writer–the readers do well to pay attention to the prophetic word as it comes through those apostles and their successors.

    There are two subtexts to this. First, scripture does not come by human will. Second, scripture is not the result of, or the property of individual speakers of interpreters. I think these are critical things for us to notice today. One of the things I emphasize in my method of Bible study is sharing, and sharing in turn simply means that you do your Bible study in community. There is, of course, always a tension between one’s individual opinions and the community, but as long as there is contact, there is an additional measure of safety. The individual who goes off in a corner and feels unable to, or is unwilling to express his views is in much graver danger of error.

    To back this up a bit, here is my draft translation and notes. You will, of course, want to read other translations and compare. When one is expressing a particular interpretation of a passage, one is more vulnerable than usual to translating according to the interpretation. (Greek transliteration throughout is very loose as I’m not depending on grammatical details.)

    16It was not by relying on cleverly contrived tales that we told you about the power and the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. We witnessed his majesty with our own eyes.

    The key word in this passage is epoptes, referring to an eyewitness in this case. It occurs only here in the New Testament, though it does occur in the LXX a number of times. The term can also refer to an initiate (which might cover the apostle Paul) or to an overseer, though the latter two meanings do not fit the context here. Megaleiotes, used here for “majesty” can refer to things varying from grand to sublime or a combination thereof.

    The combined idea is that those who preached the message had seen the real thing with their own eyes, being allowed to watch Jesus through his ministry.

    17He received glory and honor from God the Father, and a voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved son. I’m well pleased with him.” 18And we heard this very voice coming from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain.

    That there was a voice is not quite the focus. That those who preached had heard the voice–that’s the key. They heard God affirm Jesus as His Son.

    19Now we have a more secure prophetic word, and you would do well to attend to it as a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts.

    The security does not exist in isolation. It is intended to make the believers hold on until the appearance of Christ.

    20Knowing this first, that no prophecy in scripture came as a matter for private understanding.

    “Understanding” could be, and often is translated as “interpretation.” Between verses 20 and 21 scripture is clearly declared outside of realm of the individual and personal, and placed as part of a community operating in the will of God.

    21For no prophecy came by human will, but carried forward by the Holy Spirit human beings spoke [a message] from God. — 2 Peter 1:16-21

    People regularly use this passage to imply some form of verbal dictation, but the Greek simply says “spoke from God” and we must supply the object–what is being spoken. I would argue that the correct object is the message, the more sure word of Jesus come in the flesh and affirmed by God in fulfillment of scripture. This makes no comment on whether words are verbally dictated. A better place to discover the method at that level of detail is to look at actual scriptures. There we will find words that seem to be almost totally the creation of the writer, and also words that are the very words of God.

    Thus people are apparently carried along by the Holy Spirit in many different ways, not just a single one.