Saturday, December 12, 2009

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, :-)

2 comments:

  1. Is it fair to say that I don't really care? Does that make me an ignorant Christian?

    I guess that I just feel that it not all that important to me. Thanks for the blog though; interesting reading.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If it's true, it's a fair thing to say, I guess. I think a Christian not caring about theology of scripture is a bit strange though, it would be a bit a like a Hindu not caring about reincarnation. Revelation is central to Christian faith. I'm not suggesting you should care enough to follow all those links. But you should give it some thought.

    ReplyDelete

Jesus treats the Syrophoenecian Woman as a Disciple

[This is an extract from my essay "Breaking Bread: The Power of Hospitality in the Gospel of Mark" which you can read in full and ...