brick-a-brack 05/11/10

• So, Ken Schenck blogs on a the marks of a missional church
• While William Birch reprimands those glory seeking seminary students and pastors
• Uncle Stan writes a letter to students (HT)
• and Louis McBride thinks about the incarnational analogy of scripture and finds it lacking (HT)

have a good weekend, i'm off to the beach!

Food for thought

• Kim Fabricus challenges our understanding of what repentance really is.
• John Byron offers some pertinent thoughts on inerrancy
• Paul Windsor takes a look at the biographies of his dad and Don Carson's dad
• Richard Beck discusses Romans 1 and "nature"
• Scot McNight ponders the "Historical Jesus"
• And Roger Olsen makes an irenic plea for historic premillenialism

Today!

Today I have printed off my thesis for submission and spiral bound it, I feel giddy.
Today I also entered the illustrious ranks of the Biblioblog top 50 at no.33, making me even giddier.
(and yes Jim you are still #1, but Jesus is #1 in my heart)

Not only that but don't miss

• The way language affects thought
• The need to actually know the Bible
• The August Biblical Studies Carnival
• Hurtado on historically conditioned scripture
• A priceless Gordon Fee quote on Revelation
• A deeper than you think rant on contemporary (sic) worship

badgers, mushroom, and links

• Fighting the dehumanisation of the shopping queue, HT
• Luther on Innerancy, while Biologos starts a new series on literalism
• A wonderful meditation on eschatology and time travel
• The peer review/online review conversation continues, HT
• Someone asks if believing in God is evolutionarily advantageous?
• Kevin Vanhoozer lectures on the redramatisation of theology
• Tim Keller lectures on preaching Christ in Postmodernity

Quote of the Day: Olsen on Inerrancy

When I deny inerrancy I am not necessarily denying anything many inerrantists believe.  It may be, and I think is the case, that I am only denying that the word “inerrancy” is the most helpful or accurate term for what they and I believe in common.

 Go here for the full article, well worth a read, HT Chris T.

Jesus is Lord of the Bible Too

Continuing to reflect on differences between Christianity and Islam (for background see previous post) I've been struck by the fact that although Christians often say that they "start with the Bible" they really don't.  At least, most of them don't, and those that do are usually a little unhinged.  This is because the Christian faith starts for most of us with an encounter of Christ through his Spirit and/or through his community and/or through his word.  We are not called as Christians primarily to submit to a book, however inspired, but to submit to Christ.  It is not that Muslims submit to a book, per se, but their submission to Allah is controlled and completed by their adherence to the Q'ran.  That is because the Q'ran was written to codify a religion, in Muslim belief dictated by the angel Gabriel to Mohammed.  In many ways while there might have been muslims, there was no religion of Islam until the Q'ran was written to codify it (I realise that the Q'ran was received over time, but the essence of what I say is, I hope, correct.  If it is not please correct me).

But because Christianity, while "a religion of the book," is first and formost a religion of a person: Jesus the Christ, it is more than possible to be a Christian without knowing or having access to the Bible.  Indeed, many Christians throughout history and even today had and have no access to the scriptures.  The New Testament was collected subsequent to the emergence of Christianity, and most of the documents it contains are not self consciously intended as scripture.  The works that comprise the New Testament were collected and recognised only on the basis of their adherence to an unwritten "rule of faith," that is the oral testimnoy and teaching of the apostolic and sub-apostolic church about Christ.

So here is another fundamental contrast in Islamic and Christian approaches to their scriptures.  For the Muslim Mohammed was the receiver of the the Q'ran, and consequently the greatest and seal of all the prophets.  But Christ did not give Christians the Bible, it was written about him, to testify to him.  Mohammed's authority came from the Q'ran as Allah's dictated word.  But, in Christian belief, Jesus does not derive his authority from the scripture but the other way round.  Scripture is only authorative as and in that it testifies to Christ.  This is important and true, for Christians, not just of the New Testament, but of the Old also.  For when Christ talks of fulfilling scripture, or the NT describes ways in which he does, it is not meant that the OT has prescribed who and what Jesus must do to be the Christ, but rather it describes the one who is to come, whose reality gives shape to all creation and the whole story of God's salvation.

And here we, the Christians, might start an argument for Jesus' divinity (and from there the Trinity), because it is the very shape of scripture that testifies that Jesus was not just a man who happened to fit the necessary mould to be the Christ, but that the whole of God's work of salvation, starting with God's promises to Abraham, has been moulded around Jesus Christ, predicated on his reality.  Jesus Christ did not come into being to complete the plan.  The plan came into being to express the reality of Jesus Christ.

Let me know what you think :-)

No, you don't just pick and choose

As I stated before this inerrancy discussion has plenty of legs left. Glenn responds to some criticism from Jeremy by asking why is a non-inerrantist more likley to allow personal preference to interfere in interpretation that someone who holds to inerrancy?  Glenn is quite right in pointing out that we all have to do the hard work of interpretation regardless of what our particular position is.  In fact I would go as far as to say that inerrantists have a harder time of it because of the need they feel to reconcile passages which (appear to) disagree in minor details.  For the non-inerrantist this is normally going to be a waste of time. 

But Jeremy seems to think that it is just a matter of opinion which "parts" of the of Bible are intended to teach truth and which parts are a result of the texts time and culture bound character.  Jeremy paints in his post a misleading charicature of those who do not hold to inerrancy.  No serious exegete that I know thinks you can just put a red biro around various parts of the Bible that you think might contain mistakes or errors or even just irrelevances.  Rather the whole text is inspired, and the whole text has a message.  The important thing is not to confuse the medium with the message.  The mistakes are not in the Bible (hence why I would never say the Bible is "errant" or contains errors - pace Glenn) but in the interpreters who think that the medium is part of the message. 

The clearest and most obvious example of this is Genesis chapter 1.  This passage clearly is teaching about God and the relationship of creation and humanity to God.  There is huge theological weight to every verse in Gen 1 and it is (in my belief) totally and utterly true in all that it teaches.  But there is no indication in the text that it intends to teach us about evoution (or lack of it) or the age of the planet (or lack of it).  Yes that is a hermeneutical decision you have to make, but you do not make those decisions based on preference, you make it based on the way the text demands to be read in its literary and historical context.  The poetic form, and seven days structure are the medium within which the message of God's creativity, sovereignty and grace are taught to us, not the message itself.

Jeremy also argues that because inerrancy now means almost anything given how widely it is qualified by different people that if you feel unable to affirm it then there must be something wrong with you.  My only answer to such a startling suggestion is that I don't believe we should just redefine words to suit us for the express purpose of fitting in with a certain group of people (in this case those who affirm inerrancy - regardless of what they actually mean by it!).  If anything he proves my earlier point that talk about inerrancy is just plain meaningless.

Around the blogosphere

after the Christmas and New Year lull the blogosphere is heating up like crazy.

There's much more on innerrancy even Enns joins in!
NT Wright in this video has annoyed John Hobbins.
Big-Ears makes an appearance without Noddy
Glenn Peoples wants to change the world (in NZ at least)
Alan Knox warns about glossing.
James McGrath rebutts the slippery slope and dances on a volcano instead.
Tim Bulkely preaches against certainty.
I get a guest slot to talk about preaching here.
And Antony Billington reflects on how theology of scripture affects interpretation of scripture.

Enjoy!   :-)

If that's what you mean then ok!

A statement of innerrancy I could live with?

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. It reveals the principles by which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.

The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message on the Scriptures cited by Ranger in the comments of yet another brilliant post on inerrancy by John Hobbins. 

Theology of Scripture in Ivanhoe

Sir Walter Scott, the inventor of historical fiction and writer of many a swashbuckling tale, has not, as far as I am aware, been subjected to a sustained theological examination. Given that his primary intentions in writing novels seems to have been to entertain and make money that is perhaps not surprising. I have read Ivanhoe a few times before and always enjoyed it (it is the only work of his I have read - will have to remedy that) but theological study does sensitise one to things that you might otherwise miss in the excitement of tale of chivalry and damsels in distress. One of those damsels, Rebecca the Jewish Healer, attempts to extricate herself from her predicament by appealing to the Christian faith of her amorous captor, the templar Brain Bois-Guilbert. The templar explains to her that any "lesser folly" than marriage can be "speedily absolved" by the Preceptory of his order and that the templar knights only follow the example of Solomon in their licentious behaviour. To which Rebecca responds with the rebuke:

If thou readest the scripture . . . and the lives of the saints, only to justify thine own licence and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most healthful and necessary of herbs.

[page 187 of the 1995 Wordsworth edition]

Which I think is a wonderful narrative exposition of a principle that must surely be included within any true theology of scripture, that the reader who reads not to seek God and God's will but for the sake of some other agenda will, regardless of the inerrancy or otherwise of the text, find what they want. But in doing so they act as atheists who deny God's word and bend the text to their own ends.

In the story of Ivanhoe an ironic twist is given to this tiny thread when the grand master of the templars tries Rebecca for witchcraft he examines one of her medicines,

after crossing himself [he] took the box into his hand, and, learned in most of the Eastern tongues, read with ease the motto on the lid - The Lion of the Tribe of Judah hath conquered. 'Strange powers of Sathanas,' said he, 'which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!'

[page 313]

So Rebecca the healer is accused of turning scripture into poison, the very thing she rightly accused Bois-Guilbert of. All the while the real blasphemy is the show trial the grand master templar presides over in God's name and by which he attempts to have Rebecca burned at the stake. But, and this is one reason why I love this novel, God gets the last word. But you will have to wait for another post to find out what it is . . . or read the book yourself.

Let me know what you think, :-)

Inerrancy: A Short Blogography and 2 Points

I started writing a further post on Beyond Inerrancy, but the next step is to expound a Christ centred hermeneutic, and that just seemed beyond me this weekend. See my essay on preaching the OT if you'd like to see the beginnings of my thinkings on the subject (BTW it's not my finest moment but it got the job done). So, in lieu, here are some of the blogs on the subject that I've enjoyed:

Chris Tilling has an extensive series of blogs on the subject, and he was the first guy to get me thinking about it. Well worth the time to read.

Then there is Kiwi Blogger Glenn's take and the equally Kiwi Thinking Matters response.

From a different angle Tim resists the urge to become an inerrantist for the cause of monogamy (by the way the conversation in the comments is where it gets really interesting). Tim's conversation partner in the last link, John Hobbins, lets loose here and cautions all who too easily cast aside their theological heritage here.

While Steve at Undeception has more posts on the subject than one can shake a stick at. And then of course there is Peter Enn's entire blog.

And if you follow those links they will take you to many, many more.

One observation is the way that someone's context radically affects the way people view these terms. Those who feel the bigger threat to the church's health is Bible denying liberals will want to champion inerrancy, while those who feel it is the proof-texting fundamentalists who are the bigger danger are more likely to want to brush it under the carpet. But then no surprise. As I've argued before, all Christian theology is contextual.

One clarification I feel I need to make is to point out that in my posts I have avoided saying "the Bible is not inerrant," not least because I would not be willing to say "the Bible is errant." This is why I didn't resonate with Glenn's approach, it seemed to be more about pointing out scripture's failure to meet the criteria than the unsuitability of the criteria itself. Again this could well be a contextual issue, it is quite possible that in different circumstances inerrancy would be much more meaningful to me, I just don't know what they are yet. :-D

Either way I think this conversation has got plenty of legs left.
Let me know what you think, :-)

Beyond Inerrancy: Towards a Meaningful Theology of Scripture

So if Inerrancy is meaningless (see previous post) how can we express a "high view" of scripture without it? Well I would suggest that the two things wrong with inerrancy need to be two things right with any other proposal, namely that the Bible we have now must be shown to be the word of God and that word must be guarded against the claims of any "authoritative interpreters."

The place I would start is Isaiah 55. This text affirms a number of things forcefully and beautifully.

In vs1-3, God calls us to come to him and listen to him for our salvation, but in vs6-7 we are told to call on God and seek him. Thus the word of God is shown to be dialogical. It both represents God's word to us and calls us into conversation with God and searching for God through that word. Then in vs8-10 the nature of God word to us is expounded. It is both alien and beyond us (vs8-9) but also purposeful, dynamic, and effective (v10).

We could then heuristically apply this as framework for our own understanding of scripture. This might have the following results:

1. Because God's word is a dynamic communication it is not stored in static historical documents no longer extant, but comes to us through the various traditions of scripture including the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, the KJV, the Luther Bible and the Paipera Tapu (to name but a few). The changing and varied nature of these traditions are evidence of God's dynamic communication with the world, not the second best option to having the "original manuscripts."

2. Because God's word is beyond human thought no human is permitted to set themselves above the text to give an authoritative interpretation. Instead we are all called into humble searching dialogue with the text, confident that God will achieve what he wills through it (perhaps provided we "give ear" and "hear" (v3) rather than come to the text with our own assumptions) but conscious that any ultimate grasp of it is beyond our reach.

Let me know what you think :-)

P.S. This approach might also spare us from needing to talk about the "preservation of scripture" (which makes it sound like a fossil) and the "perspecuity of scripture" (which is another strong tower for those who use the Bible to beat others over the head).

2 Reasons Why Inerrancy is Meaningless

Over at Thinking Matters there is a discussion about the doctrine of Inerrancy, the teaching that the Bible is without error. This is given its fullest and most recent form in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

The first reason this statement is meaningless is that it carefully specifies which Bible it refers to, and it is not the NJV, or the NIV or even Nestle and Aland 4th Edition, but the "autographic text of Scripture." Which is just nonsense. While some of the books of the Bible, especially the NT epistles could be said to have had autographic texts, many are the product of sustained development and/or combined traditions. Were these traditions or earlier forms inerrant also? And at what point did the scriptures cease to be inerrant, i.e. the diverse traditions that we have now? More to the point, even if at some stage the "original manuscripts" did exist at some time in some pristine inerrant form, it does us no good whatsoever as they are no longer extant. In Article 10 the authors of the statement preempt my objection.

We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

That final denial changes nothing. The doctrine of Inerrancy given here is about a set of documents that no longer exists and never existed as a set. Not only that but because we don't have the originals to compare we can never be sure which copies and translations are the word of God (according to this statement). This doctrine actually takes the Bible away from us as God's word, instead of reasuring us of its character as divine revelation.

The second reason Inerrancy is meaningless is that even if we had before us a pristine inerrant text (which we don't) it would still require an inerrant authoritative interpretation for its inerrancy to be any good for us. As I understand it, the root of this sort of inerrancy talk is actually found in the Roman Catholic church during the Reformation, for exactly this reason. They wanted to hedge the Bible in from the reformers and so argued that only the church could give an authoritative interpretation of the inerrant document. How this control freak tendency manifests itself now is painfully apparent over at the Thinking Matters website where the authoritative interpretation is appears to be in the hands of whoever is asserting inerrancy most vehemently. In the comments of his post Bnon is able to appeal to the "clear" sensus plenior* (comment at 3:47 on 20Nov) and also use his clearly limited (not to mention inaccurate) understanding of Koine Greek to browbeat an opponent without actually explaining what he means** (comment at 11:31 on 20Nov). The fact that he feels able to do this is presumably the result of understanding himself as that authoritative interpreter of the inerrant documents. At least I can't think of any other good reason.

Don't get me wrong, I have a high view of Scripture, high enough to have devoted the last 10 years of my life to teaching and studying it. But talk of inerrancy doesn't do the Bible any favours, it's just power games and nonsense.

Let me know what you think :-)


* The Sensus Plenior is characterised by it being something beyond the literal meaning of the text and therefore something not at all "clear."
** In Koine Greek, as in modern English, it is perfectly possible to refer to the same thing with two different words, e.g. "My running-shoes are on my feet, yes my trainers." Which is beside the point as both Heb 4:12 and John 1:1 use logos. (Of course that doesn't mean Heb 4:12 and John 1:1 are referring to the same object, only that they are not necessarily not doing so on the basis of the words used.)