48 Sermon Illustrations on Inerrancy

The first sign of creeping liberalism in the church is a softness on the inerrancy of Scripture. Much evidence in history. But equally dangerous is creeping rigidity due to lack of fellowship. Fellowship is not based on uniformity of thought and practice, but on acceptance of others who claim Christ as Lord. Rigidity has caused failure of drive to eliminate abortion on demand (Evangelicals and Fundamentalists couldn't compromise.) Mission strategy has also suffered.

Duncan quotes from versions other than the KJV. This has upset his supporters, which grieves him. Duncan believes other versions communicate more effectively today. The KJV itself was corrected in 1615, 1629, and 1762. Inspiration is not the issue. Some argue, "Inspiration without preservation is worthless." Duncan - God could have delivered the Bible down the ages in perfect, unchanging form, but He chose not to. As E.M. Bounds said, "God's method is men." No translation is perfect. Changes in the meaning of vocabulary in KJV is shown.

Good News Bible has problems, but is often attacked unknowingly. "Blood" was not left out completely, as some charge. It is left out of Col 1:14 in Good News and other versions because early Greek text omits it. (It is found in Eph 1:7.) At least 53 verses in the Good News NT uses the word "blood."

#390

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Admission made by liberal professor at Harvard University, Kirsopp Lake:

“It is a mistake often made by educated persons who happen to have but a little knowledge of historical theology, to suppose that fundamentalism is a new and strange form of thought. It is nothing of the kind; it is the partial and uneducated survival of a theology which was once universally held by all Christians. How many were there, for instance, in Christian churches in the 1700’s who doubted the infallible inspiration of all Scripture? A few, perhaps, but very few. No, the fundamentalist may be wrong, I think that he is. But it is we [liberals] who have departed from the tradition, not he; and I am sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a fundamentalist on the basis of authority. The Bible and the “corpus theologicum” of the church are on the fundamentalist side.”

Sermon in Why I Believe series. The Bible.

"WHY I BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS GOD'S WORD" Isaiah 46:9-10

I. Bible: God's Word or human document?

A. Crucial question, much disputed.

B. Not most important question in evangelism.

1) Don't have to prove Bible before witnessing.

2) Relationship with Jesus, not Bible, brings salvation.

C. Bible can be accepted before doctrine of inspiration is.

II. Reasons for believing in inspiration.

A. It claims to be inspired.

1) Direct statements.

a) Views of OT prophets.

b) Views of NT speakers.

2) View of Jesus.

B. Fulfilled prophecies.

1) Secular and religious prophecy.

a) Does not prophesy, or...

b) Fails at prophesy.

2) Biblical prophecy.

a) Ezekiel and cities of Tyre and Sidon.

III. Example of exact Biblical prophecy.

A. Sidon.

1) Ruin, but survival.

2) Fulfilled to present.

B. Tyre.

1) Total destruction.

2) Fulfilled over hundreds of years.

a) Nebuchadnezzar.

b) Alexander the Great.

c) Moslems.

IV. Conclusion.

A. Study of scriptures should lead to faith in Jesus.

[Preached from original manuscript of March 13, 1983.

#3316

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(Continuation of article on criticism and interpretation of Bible...)

But when we say this about eccentric revisionists, we should not imagine that Bible-believing Christians come to the Scriptures with unbiased blank minds, unaffected by their own context and presuppositions. To be faithful biblical interpreters, we must all become both self-conscious and self-critical about our prior commitments, subjecting them both to the searching light of Scripture itself and to the wider witness of the Christian family to which we belong.

Thomas Oden's clarion call for contemporary theology to return to the rich exegetical tradition of ancient Christian orthodoxy is one of the most encouraging developments of our time. It will not suffice merely to have our New Testament in one hand and the latest word from current biblical scholarship (even if it comes from our favorite evangelical press!) in the other. We must also learn to "read alongside" the church fathers, reformers, and theologians of ages past. None of their interpretations is inerrant, and we must subject them all -- along with our own -- to the divine touchstone of Holy Scripture itself. Still, the Holy Spirit did not abandon the church with the death of the apostles. As we prayerfully listen for what the Spirit is saying to us today, we will do well to heed what he has been saying to the people of God throughout the history of the church. The massive consensus of thoughtful Christian interpretation of the Word down the ages (and on most matters of importance there is such a thing) is not likely to be wrong.

The role of the community is crucial both in understanding how the Bible came to be recognized as canon and in appropriating its message today. The Enlightenment model of the Bible student as a Lone Ranger, out on his own away from the church as he seeks truth, inevitably leads to distorted, if not heretical, conclusions. A renewed appreciation of the Bible as the book of the church should make us more aware of our need to explore it in and with, rather than without and apart from, the larger Christian fellowship.

Those who seek wisdom in the Bible will not find it as long as they sidestep the Bible's declarations of fact and ignore what Scripture tells us about the world and its history as such. The Scriptures do not present themselves in a cultural-linguistic cocoon or as a self-contained aesthetic object to be studied and admired as one religious book among many. The narrative structure of the Bible itself, from Creation to the world's forthcoming end, makes the imperious claim to be the one true story in the light of which all other stories -- and indeed, the reality of the universe itself -- must be understood. The postmodern flight from the cognitive content of biblical truth, and the revamping of it as a system of symbols with subjective significance only, is a form of theological suicide that leaves the believer with nothing but a warm-tub feeling to present as "good news" to a lost world.

The reality of Jesus, in particular, cannot be reduced to a language game or a literary construct. The Word did not become "a text" but sarx, flesh, something unmistakably, historically concrete. Because this is true, the "story of Jesus," when canonically understood as including everything from Genesis to Revelation, is dissimilar from all other stories and cannot be explained as anything less than the last word about this world and God's plan for it.

Evangelicals have always insisted that the historicity of biblical events be taken seriously because the soteriological essence of Christianity demands this. As Geerhardus Vos, among others, has argued, if Christianity were a philosophical system aimed at the spiritual enlightenment of humankind, or a code of ethics to be used as an instrument of moral suasion, then it would make little difference whether its founder were born of a virgin, walked on the water, healed the sick, or rose from the dead.

AN OFFENSIVE MESSAGE

But the Christian message declares something altogether different. We confess, in the words of the Creed of Nicaea, that the Lord of eternity, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God...for our salvation came down...and was incarnate..." A space-time crucifixion of the incarnate Lord was followed by a space-time resurrection, a space-time outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and a space-time spread of the gospel and the church, which still goes on. Christianity must be seen as a historically continuous fellowship in which all enjoy a salvation that was won for them in Palestine on a certain date nearly two millennia ago. The historical claims of the Christian primary documents must therefore be acknowledged as true, and true not just "for me," but true for all persons everywhere.

Admittedly, this is an offensive message for a culture that magnifies local consensus above any notion of objective public truth and that prizes pluralism and relativism as the reigning orthodoxy of the day. But we should not imagine that the scandal of biblical particularism is a greater burden for us than it was for Elijah at Mount Carmel, Paul on Mars Hill, or William Carey in Calcutta. Because of who God is and what he has done, we can only say, on the basis of the commission we have received, "If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."

What is the ultimate alternative to a reverent, if also discerning and even properly critical, engagement with Holy Scripture as the message of divine achievement, promise, and command? It is the kind of intellectual nihilism that reduces the Christian faith to the sum total of our dreams, fantasies, and self-projections, "a God who looks like me," to quote the title of a recent book. Following the lead of Feuerbach and Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud described this outcome with glaring precision at the beginning of the present century:

Fundamentally, we only find what we need and only see what we want to see. We have no other possibility. Since the criterion for truth -- correspondence with the external world -- is absent, it is entirely a matter of indifference what opinions we adopt. All of them are equally true and equally false. And no one has the right to accuse anyone else of error.

Contrary to this outcome, evangelicals affirm that the Bible can be trusted to be totally reliable on its own terms: its history is historical and its miracles are miraculous, and its theology is God's own truth. But what is the source of such confidence in the truth-telling character of Holy Scripture? How do we know that the Bible is the Word of God? The Reformers of the sixteenth century faced this question. They could accept neither the magisterial authority of the Church of Rome, which made knowledge of the divinity of the Scriptures depend on ecclesiastical tradition, nor the radical individualism of certain mystics who were so enamored of the Spirit that they saw little need for the written Word. Luther and Calvin pursued a different path. They stressed the coinherence of Word and Spirit -- that is, the objectivity of God's revelation in Holy Scripture and the confirming, illuminating witness of the Holy Spirit in the believer.

The Belgic Confession declares that the Scriptures carry within themselves the evidence of their own divinity and authority (article 5). The self- authenticating nature of the Bible is an important principle for Christians to remember both in our witness to unbelievers and in our dialogue with skeptical critics. There is no neutral ground, no independent epistemological platform, on which we can stand and decide for or against the Bible. Skepticism about it is natural to our hearts, and only as God opens our eyes to discern divinity in Scripture do we ever come to trust it. Our assurance of its veracity comes only as the same Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles enlightens our minds and confirms the truths that have been revealed in these sacred texts.

There is a kind of evidentialist apologetic that overrates the receptive capacity of fallen human reason and plays down the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Calvin's words to those who demanded "rational proof" that Moses and the prophets were inspired are still relevant today:

The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For

as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the

Word will not find acceptance in men's heart before it is sealed by

the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who

has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into

our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had

been divinely commanded. (Institutes 1.7.4)

Thus the Holy Spirit, the divine author of Scripture, authenticates the prophetic and apostolic word to our consciences. Through the Spirit's illumination earnest believers find that the Scriptures are marked by what Huldrych Zwingli called "prevenient clarity" or perspicuity. Each day Zwingli began his Bible lectures in Zurich with the following prayer, which became a model for other ministers in the Reformed tradition: "Almighty, eternal, and merciful God, whose Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, open and illuminate our minds, that we may purely and perfectly understand thy Word and that our lives may be conformed to what we have rightly understood, that in nothing we may be displeasing to thy majesty, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

THE LUCID WORD

The doctrine of the Bible's perspicuity is one of the historic hallmarks of the evangelical understanding of Scripture. Fundamentally it means that, as was shown above, the Bible is not an obscure conundrum or cryptogram that must be decoded by a team of specialists before it can be understood and applied. On the contrary, in all matters that are necessary for salvation, the Bible is so lucid that laypersons as well as theologians, mechanics as well as academics, can sufficiently understand and appropriate its teachings. The acceptance of this principle underlies the widespread use of the so- called inductive method of Bible study and the high regard for the Scriptures from the church's earliest days as the communal treasure of the entire body of believers.

But the perspicuity of Scripture can itself be misunderstood in a number of ways. It does not mean, for example, that there are no difficult passages or "hard sayings" that continue to baffle the best and most spiritually alert students of the Bible. Not everything in Scripture is equally plain or evidently clear to all. Neither should this principle be equated with the "right of private judgment," where that motto is used to justify the kind of individualism that reduces biblical meaning to a matter of personal taste.

We should also guard against using the clarity of the Bible as an excuse to undermine rigorous and reverent scholarly work on the text. To be sure, vast numbers of evangelicals can relate to the question asked a hundred years ago by the English Congregationalist pastor Joseph Parker: "Have we to await a comment from Tubingen or a telegram from Oxford before we can understand the Bible?" No doubt there are many tributaries that spill into the reservoir of resentment against technical biblical scholarship. Anti-intellectualism and unreflective piety (substituting emotional fervor for disciplined thought) are two examples. And an even greater problem during the past 150 years has been the gaping chasm that opened in so many centers of learning between the academic study of the Bible on the one hand, and the life and mission of the church on the other. It is hard to overstate the destructive impact of "unbelieving criticism," that is, scholarship shaped by the ethos and presuppositions of the secular academy. To scholars of this bent we might well apply Jesus' description of the "experts in the law" of his day: "You have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not go in yourselves, and those who were on their way in, you stopped" (Luke 11:52, NEB). Such scholarship, unhappily, is with us still.

But it would be tragic if evangelicals spent so much time lamenting destructive criticism that they ignored the impressive achievement during the past half-century of Bible-believing scholars who are deeply committed to Jesus Christ and his church and who seek to be faithful ministers of the divine Word. Such men and women of learning and faith stand in worthy succession to the great English biblical scholar J. B. Lightfoot, who once said: "I cannot pretend to be indifferent about the veracity of the records which profess to reveal him whom I believe to be not only the very Truth but the very Life." The learning of exegetes and theologians such as this can only contribute to the building up of God's people.

A MEANS OF GRACE

Evangelicals today have a rich legacy of cherishing the Bible as the Word of God, defining its authority and defending its veracity against both secular critics outside the church and religious modernists of various types within. Over the past two generations, evangelical Bible scholars have moved beyond a defensive posture to engage the wider world of thought. Their careful research and interaction with current trends in biblical scholarship have made them a vital resource for the church as well as a significant presence in the academic world. At the same time, we must also confess that evangelicals have often worked in isolation from the wider community of faith, the body of Christ extended throughout time as well as space. We have frequently been bound more to the biases of our culture than to the unadulterated Word of God. And we have sometimes used the Bible as a hammer in our fractious conflicts with one another, forgetting, as Francis Schaeffer reminded us, that harshness does not equal holiness, and that we are always to speak the truth in love.

After his appreciative survey of the recent evangelical renaissance in biblical scholarship, Mark Noll wisely urged that Bible-believing Christians "move beyond the external examination of Scripture to an internal appropriation of its message." Committed as we are to the truth of God's Word, we should never for a moment imagine that the Bible is a mere compendium of neutral, albeit accurate, information about God and his dealings with humankind. The Bible, as vivified by the Spirit, is a divinely appointed means of grace, a medium of encounter with the living God. John Bunyan had this in mind when he asked, "Have you never a hill Mizar to remember? Have you forgot the close, the milk house, the stable, the barn, and the like, where God did visit your soul? Remember also the Word -- the Word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope."

The true measure of evangelical identity is that we delight in the Bible as fully as we believe in it. Where this is so, our congregations will be characterized by an atmosphere of hospitality to scriptural truth. Our pulpit work will be marked by faithful expository proclamation. The public reading of the Scriptures will again assume a place of honor in our corporate worship. And our personal devotional life will also be transformed. The standard fare of sound-byte spirituality will be replaced by what the Cistercians called "divine reading" (lectio divina), that is, the sustained reading of the Word of God leading to meditation, contemplation, and prayer. In each of these activities we shall approach the Bible, as the late Merrill Tenney put it, in a spirit of eagerness seeking the mind of God, in a spirit of humility listening to the voice of God, in a spirit of adventure pursuing the will of God, and in a spirit of adoration resting in the presence of God.

Thus, with all persons who love and cherish the Holy Scriptures as God's gift of revelation about himself, with all who recognize and adore Jesus Christ as the center and sum of the Bible, and with all who study the inspired words of Holy Writ seeking the illumination of the Spirit, we shall ever pray in the words of this Advent collect:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of Thy Holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou has given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.

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Timothy George is a senior adviser for CHRISTIANITY TODAY and dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine ctcurrmrj5TC0165A10

[for part A see #3478]

#3479

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The Bible is both divinely inspired (fundamentalists) and humanly produced (Karth Barth and neo-evangelicals). Fundamentalists have a danger of reducing the Bible to a legalistic code, while Barthians are in danger of separating the Word of God from the word of man, producing only a partial understanding of Scripture. Barth was especially weak when he insisted the Bible must contain falsehoods because error is essential to its full humanity.

1. Both views are open to danger.

2. Karth Barth on Biblical Authority.

3. Karth Barth on the humanity of Scripture.

4. What Evangelicals can learn from Barth.

5. Where Barth went awry.

6. What about Biblical criticism?

7. A redaction criticism?

8. Is authority limited to faith and practice?

"A consistent evangelical is open to accept any view of the critical origin of the books of the Bible except one that would flatly contradict the Bible's view of itself."

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Full text:

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One group of Christians points to the written text of Scripture and declares: "the Bible says." By contrast, another group affirms: "God speaks to us through the Bible."

BOTH ARE RIGHT

Both are biblical. Scripture means writing and Bible means book. The first group, the fundamentalists, can show many biblical passages beginning: "It is written,"; and clearly, if Scripture says it, that is supposed to settle the matter. For the Christian, the Bible is not like any other book. It has divine authority, and we are in danger if we ignore it. The second group, the "liberal" evangelicals, or, interchangeably, neoevangelicals, are equally biblical. They, too, can cite: "The Holy Spirit says," and "The Holy Spirit ... said through Isaiah." Again, the Bible is not just like any other book. In the Bible God communicates directly to the believing man or woman prepared to hear. Of course, the Bible is only a dead letter to some. By hardness of heart a person may read aimlessly and choose to hear only a wandering Hebrew preacher from the eighth century B.C.; understanding is limited to what such a person can glean from archaeological investigations of the ancient text.

But the "liberal" evangelical knows that God is active now in the hearts of men and women. The spirit transforms human words of Scripture into contemporary speech of the living God. The Bible then becomes a means of grace, and study of the Bible is no mere academic or literary exercise. It is a book best read and studied on our knees. We worship and adore our God as he speaks to us immediately out of its pages.

AND BOTH ARE OPEN TO DANGER

The historic view of the church encompasses both these approaches to the Bible. Yet unless each is carefully safeguarded it may also pervert the Bible's own view of its nature and function.

The danger for the fundamentalist is that he will respond to the Bible as a legalistic code. For him it will be only a set of true prophecies, divinely given by a past act of inspiration. Viewing the Bible as a legalistic code, he relates to it as he does to Euclid's geometry. He is committed to its propositions because that is the way the universe is; -no doubt God made it so by original creation. The Bible, likewise, is only God's ancient word, true because God said it, and binding upon us because he commanded obedience to it. We may then reverence the Bible as a sacred relic from the past on which we set high value, but the Bible does not bring us sharply into immediate contact with God. We are not now face to face with the living God.

Anyone who sees the Bible this way loses the mystery of the presence of God.

The fundamentalist must not be so fearful of dangerous error that he fails to listen to what the neoevangelical is saying about the living God who speaks to us directly in Scripture. For here the "liberal" evangelical is on solid biblical ground and stands with the faithful tradition of the church from the ancient Fathers through the Reformers and on down to the twentieth century. Even Charles Hodge has a beautiful section on the Bible as the present means of grace, though it is not in volume 1 on Bibliology and the Word of God, but lies tucked away, overlooked and almost forgotten, at the end of volume 3.

Yet the "liberal" evangelical viewpoint too often presents only a partial understanding of Scripture. Its crucial defect lies in that it seeks to separate the Word of God from the word of man.

To some in this group - more liberal than evangelical - this presents no problem. A Scottish theologian, John Baillie, for example, sees the Bible as a human book - a record of man's response to the God who shows himself not in the revealing of truth but only in wordless acts.

For such thinkers the Bible is neither the Word of God nor a trustworthy witness to the Word of God. It is the ancient prophet's response to God's act (truly miraculous or otherwise), seen, understood, and recorded by one who stood wholly in the cultural milieu of his own day. The Spirit of God uses this very human and very fallible record from the past to speak to us what he wishes to reveal to us today. The words of Scripture are

only the occasion that the Spirit uses to communicate what he has to say to each of us. Suppose we validly exegete a particular passage with proper attention to grammar, syntax, and cultural milieu. However, in spite of this, what the original author or his various redactors had to say when they wrote their words may not be at all what God wishes to say. Those ancient words are simply the instrument God here and now chooses to use to reveal himself to us in the form appropriate to us.

KARL BARTH ON BIBLICAL AUTHORITY

The more conservative among the "liberal" evangelicals are troubled by such looseness with the biblical text. They want to retain a divine authority for the written text of the Holy Scripture. No one struggled more earnestly with this problem than the famous Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. At Amsterdam in 1948, Barth publicly rebuked Reinhold Niebuhr for his selective attitude toward Scripture. Niebuhr and others at the conference, Barth affirmed, were picking and choosing out of the Bible the parts that supported their own views rather than going to the Bible to discover what it said, and then accepting it as determinative for their views. No one should approach the biblical writers as "a high school teacher authorized to look over their shoulder, benevolently or crossly, to correct their notebooks or to give them good, average, or bad marks." The very opposite is true. A theologian must agree to let the biblical writers look over his shoulder and correct his notebook. So Barth speaks boldly and often of biblical authority. We must test our theology by the word of the written text. Not one word of Scripture dare we set aside as irrelevant to the truth of God.

The importance of the biblical text to Barth has not been adequately recognized - especially by American evangelicals. We are grateful for Barth's strong defense of biblical authority. The written text of Scripture must stand in judgment over against us and our theology.

KARL BARTH ON THE HUMANITY OF SCRIPTURE

Yet Barth also insisted that we must give equal place to the radical humanity of Scripture. Barth himself struggled through the critical approaches to Scripture stemming from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He was trained in the radical liberalism of German universities at the turn of the century. He read deeply in the history of biblical criticism from Strauss, Baur, Wellhausen, Ritschl, Troeltsch, Harnack, Bultmann, and a host of lesser scholars. He accepted the basic outlines of their construction of Hebrew- Christian history. For him the humanity of Scripture lay so evident on every page of Scripture that to deny it would require a sacrifice of the intellect he is unprepared to make. He took the humanity of Scripture in the fullest possible sense, holding that every word of it completely reflects the culture of its time. He made no attempt to harmonize Gospel accounts, and freely admitted discordant elements in the record of the resurrection of Christ.

Essential to this full humanity of Scripture is error, and he found error not only in the historical and scientific but also in the theological teaching of Scripture. When challenged on this point, he once responded that if God is not ashamed of errors in the text, why should we be?

WHAT EVANGELICALS CAN LEARN FROM BARTH

Barth's rationale for this is easy to follow. In revealing himself to us finite, sinful human beings, God did not choose to invent a new language. He certainly did not destroy our humanity or eliminate our culture. Rather, he choose to reveal himself to us within the framework of our sinful, erring human culture. And so far from being the language of heavenly perfection, Canaanite Hebrew was the speech of one of the foulest societies ever to pollute God's fair earth. Every page of the Old and New Testament reflects the culture of which it is a part, with all the infelicities, inexactnesses, and even crudities (to our taste) that were part and parcel of that culture.

There is unity in the Bible, but it is not the facile unity that lends itself to easy harmonization. To take the humanity of the biblical text in all its full diversity drives us to a comprehensive understanding of reality, and above all to the mystery of the triune God. The discordant elements of Scripture simply reflect the complexity of reality and the variegated picture of the real God revealed in it. Barth writes, "The eternally rich God is the content of the knowledge of evangelical theology. Its unique mystery is known only in the overflowing fullness of his council, ways, and judgments."

It is possible to argue that every word of the Bible from cover to cover is so tainted by its sinful culture that it is less than perfect in the way it lays hold of the truth. Some philosophers (Thomas Aquinas, no less) argue that all human thought forms (and, therefore necessarily, all biblical statements) fall short of the perfect truth of God and in a sense are erroneous. They call this the analogous nature of all our human knowledge.

If this were all Barth meant, we would have no quarrel with him, because we heartily applaud the unequivocal way in which he recognizes the complete humanity of Scripture in every way. Indeed, evangelicals are grateful for Barth's radical insistence on the humanity of Scripture. In their earlier battles against liberals, fundamentalists so stressed the divine authority of Scripture that the reality and importance of its humanity was lost.

WHERE BARTH WENT AWRY

Hence it is not to the radical and all-pervasive humanity of Scripture that evangelicals object, but to Barth's teaching that the Scriptures must contain falsehoods because error is essential to their full humanity.

The simple truth is that in ordinary language we do call some statements true. It is possible for even finite, sinful human beings to make statements we call true. I sat in three courses of Karl Barth for half a year. I heard him refer to Rudolph Bultmann dozens of times, but I cannot remember that Karl Barth ever made a single approving reference to any writing of Bultmann. According to Barth, Bultmann's statements were false, and he hoped that we would not accept them as true. By contrast, Barth's own statements were in a different category-and Barth tried to persuade us they were true. Certainly his own statements were thoroughly involved in our twentieth-century culture. He spoke in no language of heavenly perfection, but in "schrift Deutsch" (with occasional asides in Bernese Swiss, to the dismay of all except Swiss students).

Now we ordinarily make a distinction between, on one hand, statements that are less perfect (reflecting the human culture of which they are a part) and, on the other hand, statements we call false. Barth believed he was not making this latter kind of false statement, but was stating what we ordinarily call the truth. Evangelicals insist that every sentence of the Bible is thoroughly human and fully reflects the human culture of its own time and place. Yet they also believe the Bible contains only the kind of statements Barth thought he was making-the kind we ordinarily call true-and not the kind Bultmann made, the kind we call false. Barth does so because he is convinced that this was the view of Holy Scripture held by his Lord Christ and taught by him to his disciples. And it is the Bible's own view of itself .

In his early years, Barth taught a Christology that was consistent with his bibliology. In his Incarnation, Jesus Christ took upon himself our sinful humanity. Even then Barth never accepted the radically -liberal view that Jesus performed sinful acts. Later he shored up his Christology to make clear that there were no moral imperfections in the character of Christ. Unfortunately, he never got around to similarly straightening out his bibliology. Still, though Barth continued to assert the presence of errors in Scripture, it is exceedingly difficult to locate any instances in his writing where he sets forth any particular error in Scripture. More and more he came to stress the radical humanity of Scripture and, at the same time, a complete trustworthiness of Scripture. And that is just what the church has always meant by its doctrine of the infallibility or inerrancy of Scripture.

WHAT ABOUT BIBLICAL CRITICISM?

Fundamentalists and evangelicals of all types have always acknowledged the legitimacy of "lower" or textual criticism, although they have vigorously disagreed over conclusions. The same is true of "higher" criticism, that is, historical criticism that deals with the background, origin, authenticity, and historical truth of the biblical text. In this area, however, the anti-supernaturalism that dominates the thinking of most liberals on critical problems places a sharp cleavage between -them and all evangelicals (both fundamentalists on one hand, and "liberal" evangelicals, also called neoevangelicals, on the other). Even so, there was no party line among fundamentalists and there is none today among evangelicals. For example, J. 0. Buswell, Jr., fundamentalist president of Wheaton College (1926-39) and former professor of systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, accepted B. F. Streeter's rather liberal view of the origin of the Gospels. Among other things, he taught an original Mark and "Q" used by both Matthew and Luke, who added much material on their own and arranged all to suit their own literary purposes.

Evangelicals are pretty much united that the pastoral and Petrine letters were at least in some legitimate sense authored by the apostles Paul and Peter. But the particular sense in which these two men are to be reckoned as the authors is certainly not a part of this consensus. They are also agreed that the Book of Daniel stands from an early sixth-century date and represents predictive prophecy, not merely an imaginative exhortation to discouraged Jews of the Maccabean period.

The basic principle that guides evangelicals is that which has guided the orthodox church down through the centuries. This was brilliantly stated by E. J. Carnell: a consistent evangelical is open to accept any view of the critical origin of the books of the Bible except one that would flatly contradict the Bible's own view of itself.

A REDACTION CRITICISM?

Robert Gundry tied the conservative Evangelical Theological Society in knots last Christmas by defending redaction criticism as a legitimate tool for understanding the Gospel of Matthew. (According to this criticism, the sayings of Jesus and the events recorded in the Gospels were worked over [redacted] by the biblical authors to meet the needs of the early church, and often tell us more about the message of the biblical writer than about Jesus.) Among other things, Gundry argued that Matthew did not intend that stories in historical format need always be taken as actual events, but only as an effective way to make a theological point. While asserting his adherence to inerrancy, he ascribed the Trinitarian formula to Matthew, not to Jesus (Matt. 28:19), and on exegetical grounds contested the factuality of the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem. -

Other evangelicals noted that such methodology, if applied to the bodily resurrection of Christ, would allow us to understand it merely as Christ's continuing spiritual existence. And likewise, by this line of thought, the Virgin Birth could simply be an honorific title! Yet, however misguided his exegesis, Gundry is not arguing with what he thinks the text really says. Evangelicals must answer him on their common premise - the truth of the text. They must show why, fairly interpreted in light of history and grammar and cultural data, his interpretation really misses the true meaning of the author.

IS AUTHORITY LIMITED TO FAITH AND PRACTICE?

According to one view, inspiration guarantees the truth of biblical statements only in the area of religious faith and ethical practice. On the surface this has considerable attraction. The Bible is not a book of history and science. It is a religious book to teach us about God. We do well to go elsewhere for what we need to know in history and science.

Of course, this view runs completely counter to the basic argument of Barth against inerrancy. If error is essential to the full and free humanity of biblical writers, then the Bible will err in its theological and ethical statements just as much as it will in its history and science. Barth saw this clearly and accepted its consequences by insisting that there were theological and ethical errors in the Bible as well. But his contemporary followers are seldom so clear-sighted.

Our doctrine of Scripture, like all other Christian doctrines, is based on the teaching of Scripture, but the Bible knows no such distinction as that between faith and practice on one hand, and history and science on the other. In fact, the biblical teaching is that the Bible is trustworthy of all that it really teaches, including its facts. The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 caught the biblical sense: the Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms. Of course, evangelicals do not insist that biblical grammar is perfect, but rather that its statements are all true. Each portion of the Bible is imbedded in its own culture and, indeed, is part of that culture. Its vocabulary may be drawn from mythological and unscientific views. It is certainly inexact and general beyond what we approve of today in our twentieth-century scientific world. The biblical authors speak loosely and popularly. Their language is certainly not scientific. We cannot take the words of the Bible and assume that the biblical author means what we would mean were we to use those same words in our twentieth-century Western context today. But the biblical statements are always true and never false.

It should be added that when evangelicals describe the biblical statements as true, they are using the word "true" in its epistemological sense as describing a statement that conforms to reality in a meaningful way. "True" is contrasted with "false." The biblical statements are always true and never false. Some writers today are unwilling to admit that in their view the Bible is false or untrue in this sense. They continue to describe the Bible as true, but shift the meaning of "true" to its ethical sense. The Bible conforms, they say, to what is good or ideal. On occasion, we use the English word "true" in its ethical sense. But in ordinary language, when we apply the word to statements, we use it in its epistemological sense. The evangelical is not playing with words. He means that the Bible is true in this particular sense. Our interpretations of the Bible may be, and often are, false. But the Bible is always true and never false.

On the practical side, moreover, the evangelical points out that faith and history are closely related, and so are faith and the facts of science. If the Bible is not entirely trustworthy, it loses its authority for us unless we are able to distinguish what in it we have a right to trust and what not to trust. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any clear line we can draw between important history and unimportant history, or between important fact and unimportant fact. The end result, if we do this, is that we build a theology not on the whole teaching of the Bible but rather on our own very selective use of what we choose to take from the Bible. We then stand in judgment over the Bible. The Bible does not stand in judgment over us. And we are back once again where even Barth does not wish to take us: having to pick and choose from what the Bible affirms to be so. We find ourselves looking over the shoulder of the biblical text to correct, reject, or approve it as the case may require.

No doubt there are problems with holding both to the radical humanity of the Bible, and the truth of all it affirms or says. But surely we do not have to solve all problems before we may legitimately accept it as our own conviction. If we were to clear up every difficulty before we believe anything, science would be chaos and history meaningless. Therefore, in spite of problems, we choose to turn to the Scripture just as our Lord directed. In its pages, we find his instructions; through its words, inerrantly inspired long ago, our living Lord speaks to us today his word of grace and truth. And where we now see only dimly, we humbly pray for more light.

#4371

*

Furman Kearley tells of reading about a university football game in the morning and afternoon papers of his hometown. The morning paper reported 51,730 people had attended; the afternoon paper said 53,255. Which was correct? Actually, both were! The smaller figure was the actual ticket sales. The higher figure was the turnstile count which included many people who got in with free passes. Many Bible difficulties can be resolved when all the facts are known.

In 1988 a Gallup Poll on religion asked the following question--"Which statement do you feel best

describes your understanding of the Bible?

The Bible is ... a. Actual word of God to be taken literally, word for word (31%); b. Inspired word of God; it contains no errors, but some verses are to taken symbolically rather than literally (25%); c. Inspired word of God--may contain historical & scientific errors (22%); d. Ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts (10%); e. Not inspired by God--represents man's best understanding of God (7%); f. No opinion (6%).

J.W. McGarvey, a famous Restoration preacher of a century ago, compared inspiration to driving a well-trained horse. You pull the rope to the left or right as you see the horse needs guidance; you slow him down when he goes too fast; you speed him up when he goes too slow, but most of the time you just let him go on his way. Your hand is always on the rope and the pressure of your hand is always felt by the horse.

The following comment is from a popular study Bible and sums up the situation quite well: "Not many years ago all one had to say to affirm his belief in the full inspiration of the Bible was that he believed it was `the Word of God.' Then it became necessary to add `the inspired Word of God.' Later he had to include `the verbally inspired Word of God.' Then came the necessity to say `the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired Word of God.' Today one has to say `the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired, and inerrant-in-the-original manuscripts Word of God.' And even then, he may not communicate clearly!"

Some say that archaeologist Bryant Wood does his research a bit backwards. He looks first to the Bible, then tries to line up the archaeological evidence with the scriptural account.

Wood, though, believes he is doing God's will. Best known as an archaeologist with the Associates for Biblical Research, as well as the editor of Bible and Spade magazine, Wood talked about his view of archaeology during a lecture series Sept. 25-27 at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Wood lectured on such biblical stories as the destructions of Jericho and Sodom and Gomorrah, then showed that archaeological evidence does in fact complement the biblical accounts.

He acknowledged that he is in the minority among his peers.

"When there seems to be this discrepancy between the findings of archaeology and the Bible, almost all scholars will say, 'Well, archaeology provides us with scientific evidence, and so there must be a problem with the Bible.' That gives rise to the idea that the biblical story is some kind of a myth or legend," he said.

But Wood argued that close scrutiny of archaeological evidence always shows that Old Testament stories are indeed historical fact. Wood holds to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture.

"When the evidence is in and we have the archaeological findings before us, they support the truth of Scripture," he said. "Places that scholars said never existed, in fact existed."

It is important to have conservative scholars within the archaeological community, Wood said, because many archaeologists discredit and mishandle Scripture. This elevation of archaeology above the Bible has led some scholars to suggest that the Israelites never fled Egypt and never conquered Canaan. In fact, these same scholars argue that instead of the Israelites being one common people group -- and descendants of Abraham -- the Israelites were formed when several groups of people with common interests simply came together over a period of time.

"If the biblical account isn't true, then how do we explain the people of the Israel, the nation of Israel?" he asked. "... They, in fact, are saying that there was no conquest, so right away you have to throw away the book of Joshua. But if they didn't come in from outside, [then] obviously there weren't any wilderness wanderings. If there were not any wilderness wanderings then there was no Exodus. There were no patriarchs. This emergence theory as it's called, really does [do] away with the first six or seven books of the Bible. Some of the greatest events in human history that are recorded there, these scholars are saying, are all mythology and folk stories.

"That's why I think it's very important for us as evangelicals to look at this archaeology evidence, to analyze it and to come up with a proper interpretation."

Wood said he simply looks at both the biblical account and the archaeological evidence, then tries to line up both sides.

"That's what the Lord has laid on my heart -- to correlate the findings of archaeology with the Bible," he said. "Most scholars in archaeology are very reluctant to do that, because they're accused of trying to prove the Bible. That's the last thing they want, because then they'll be considered a fundamentalist.

"I guess I'm the point man in this area, and I'm taking all the flak when I do these kind of correlations. I think they're real and valid. We have the biblical record on one hand -- an ancient document that talks about these things -- and we have the archaeology findings on the other hand. They fit and they relate and they seem to go together."

______________

The Bryant Wood lectures can be heard on the seminary's web page at http://www.sbts.edu/bryantwood.html

*

Beginning in Sunday school, children are taught a catchy song about Joshua and the battle of Jericho.

As the story goes, the city's wall collapsed after Joshua and his troops marched around the city, blew their trumpets and let out a great shout.

Some scholars contend that it is simply a myth, but one Old Testament archaeologist, Bryant Wood, argues that archaeological evidence in the Palestinian region lines up precisely with the Old Testament story. Wood, an archaeologist with the Associates for Biblical Research and the editor of Bible and Spade magazine, gave a series of lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Wood contended that not only does archaeological evidence match the story of Jericho, but it also agrees with the biblical story of the city of Ai, which is found in the book of Joshua.

"Most scholars in the field of archaeology - and even in Old Testament studies -- tend to put the findings of archaeology above what the Bible says," he said. "So if there's a discrepancy, they will say, 'Well, it must be that the archaeology is correct and the Bible is wrong.' That's basically what you'll read in most books - that the biblical story evidently never actually happened. It must simply be a legend or a folk tale."

Wood, who holds to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, said that the Bible should be the starting point for any archaeological expedition.

The controversy surrounding Jericho is over the date of the city's existence and destruction. Biblical evidence would place the city's destruction at 1400 B.C.

However, some scholars argue for a earlier date, leading them to conclude that the biblical narrative is wrong. In the 1930s, archaeologist John Garstang completed a dig at the sight of the ancient city and concluded that the evidence pointed to the biblical date. Years later, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon examined Garstang's findings and dated the city's destruction at about 1550 B.C. - some 150 years before the time of Joshua. Kenyon based her conclusions - which have established the standard academic position - on a type of pottery missing from the site.

But Wood said Kenyon's revision of the dating was based on a superficial foundation at best.

"She based her dating not on what she actually found, but on what she didn't find ... a certain type of pottery which was not there," he said. "So she concluded that nobody lived there [at Jericho] in the 15th century but admitted that the dig was in a poor [economically] part of town."

Wood, an expert on certain types of pottery from this age, pointed out the unlikelihood of finding this particular type of pottery in a poorer section of the city.

Pointing to other evidence, Wood cited Joshua 6:20-24, which depicts the city as having been burned. Kenyon, he said, also found evidence of the city being burned.

Archaeological evidence also exists for the existence of Rahab's home, Wood said. According to the Bible, Rahab and her family were the lone Jericho residents allowed to live; her house was on the city wall. Wood said German archaeologists found evidence in 1907 that is consistent with the biblical description of her house.

Wood said both Kenyon and Garstang unearthed signs of an earthquake that toppled the city walls. This order coheres with the scriptural account of Joshua in which the walls of Jericho tumbled down by an act of God.

One key find came when archaeologists discovered at Jericho clay jars filled with grain, which was a valuable commodity in this region during biblical times. Scripture places the Israelite attack on Jericho during the harvest season. The grain offers perhaps the most compelling evidence of the truthfulness of the Old Testament account, Wood said.

"Grain was valuable and was never left in the city but was plundered," Wood said. "The Bible says God commanded the Israelites not to plunder the city but to offer it to the Lord, and they left it. The siege of the city was during harvest time, so this agrees with biblical timing."

Regarding Ai, the controversy surrounds its location. Ai was one of the royal cities of the Canaanites. It was the second Canaanite city taken by Israel according to the account in Joshua 8.

Archaeologists of the Associates for Biblical Research [ABR] have spent many years trying to determine the controversial sites of both these ancient cities. ABR is currently excavating Khirbet el-Maqatir - a site 10 miles north of Jerusalem - as a possible location of Ai. This excavation began in 1995.

Most archaeologists, however, disagree with the conclusions of Wood and ABR and argue that Joshua's Ai was at the present-day site of et-Tell, some six- tenths of a mile from Khirbet el-Maqatir. Excavations have revealed a city gate and wall system. ABR is continuing to excavate these features as they uncover the layout of this 15th-century B.C. Canaanite fortress, Wood said.

Wood gave two lines of evidence for placing Ai at el-Maqatir: the topographical witness found in Joshua 7-8 which is consistent with the lay of the land there, and the archaeological research which coincides with Scripture.

It is possible that two historical cities -- one mentioned in Genesis, one mentioned in Joshua -- could have shared the name "Ai," he said.

"It was not uncommon for cities to move around," Wood said.

___________________

The Bryant Wood lectures can be heard on the seminary's web page at http://www.sbts.edu/bryantwood.html

*

In the 1960s, Clark Pinnock was a young professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary who took on the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention for its lack of commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture. Now, Pinnock is once again turning sights on Southern Baptists, but this time from the left. What is most surprising about this transformation is not that Clark Pinnock has changed his mind; it's that Pinnock now thinks God changes his mind too.

For several years, Pinnock, professor of theology at Canada's McMaster Divinity School, has advocated a view known as the "openness of God." This perspective holds that God does not know the future decisions of his creatures. Therefore, Pinnock argues, God sometimes changes his mind, moving from Plan "A" to Plan "B" as God gains new information about the unfolding of history. Pinnock's newest book, "Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness" (Baker Book House) seeks to explain further exactly what Pinnock means by this.

In developing this new view of God, Pinnock devotes much space to lamenting the stance taken by the Southern Baptist Convention in affirming the traditional view that God knows everything. Pinnock specifically takes aim at the SBC's 2000 Baptist Faith and Message confessional statement, which explicitly repudiates "open theism." The BFM 2000 instead states that God is "all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures." Pinnock further laments that the SBC passed a 1999 resolution, authored by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr., which affirmed the classical view of God as omniscient and omnipotent.

Pinnock contends that the Baptist Faith and Message's statement on God is linked to its further statement that the Scripture limits the pastorate to qualified men, and that husbands are to lovingly lead their homes.

"I get suspicious when the same people who want to protect God's sovereignty also want to keep women in their subordinate place," Pinnock writes, pointing to the 2000 BFM. "Why do they not see that the Father whom they claim to exalt is not the 'father' of patriarchal power but the God of Jesus Christ who woos us through his self-giving love?"

Additionally, the conservative theologians Pinnock engages in the book are, almost to a man, Southern Baptist scholars. Pinnock takes particular issue with Mohler and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor of Christian theology Bruce A. Ware. Ware's most recent book, "God's Lesser Glory," is a defense of the orthodox doctrine of God's knowledge against the revisionist view asserted by open theists such as Pinnock, Gregory Boyd and John Sanders. Pinnock acknowledges that Ware understands and fairly states the open view, but Pinnock vigorously disagrees with Ware's contention that the open view is blatantly unbiblical.

Although most of Pinnock's volume is a restatement of the "open" view of God already articulated by him and others, the book does include several surprising new arguments. For example, Pinnock reveals just how far his doctrine of Scripture has evolved. While on the faculty of New Orleans Seminary in the 1960s, Pinnock traveled the country calling Southern Baptists to a "new reformation" of belief in the words of Scripture as totally true. His most far-reaching influence, however, may have been in the classroom where he taught the importance of biblical authority to students, many of whom would later lead the conservative resurgence in the SBC.

Having years ago abandoned this conservative view of Scripture, Pinnock goes so far in the pages of Most Moved Mover that the biblical writers sometimes simply disagree among themselves, even on the question of what God knows.

"The Bible does not speak with a single voice; there is a dialogue between the different voices," Pinnock argues. "The writings contain a long and complex search for the mind of God and in this struggle various points of view compete and interact."

Pinnock also makes the frank claim that God's limited knowledge of the future causes him sometimes to get prophecies simply wrong. Noting that evangelicals "might not like to admit it," Pinnock recites a litany of prophecies that turned out to go unfulfilled. Pinnock suggests that John the Baptist was wrong when he prophesied that Jesus would cast the wicked into the fire, and that "contrary to Paul, the second coming was not just around the corner." Perhaps most startlingly, Pinnock claims that Jesus was wrong at one point because "despite Jesus, in the destruction of the temple, some stones were left one on the other (Mt 24:2)."

"God is free in the matter of fulfilling prophecy and is not bound to a script, even his own," Pinnock argues. "The world is a project and God works on it creatively; he is free to strike out in new directions. We cannot pin the free God down."

Pinnock further "strikes out in new directions" of his own when he suggests that there is another issue "that has not been raised yet in the open view of God," namely the question of whether God has a body. While classical Christian doctrine has always insisted that God the Son does indeed have a body, having taken upon himself human nature in the Incarnation, orthodox Christianity historically has maintained that the Father is a spirit, a consensus Pinnock asks Christians to reconsider.

The publication of Pinnock's book comes as the debate over the "openness of God" reaches the boiling point in evangelical life. In its November meeting in Colorado Springs, the Evangelical Theological Society is expected to vote on whether open theists may remain as members of the professional organization for conservative theologians and biblical scholars.

Pinnock's book also highlights the role of the SBC in this discussion. Not only has the nation's largest Protestant denomination taken a confessional stance on this controversy, the revised statement of faith also ensures that SBC seminary faculties and publications are to reflect the convictions of Southern Baptist churches that God's knowledge is unlimited.

Not all Baptists agree with this stance. A leading defender of the evangelical authenticity of the "open" view is Roger Olson, professor of theology at the Baptist General Convention of Texas' George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Olson has endorsed books promoting open theism by authors such as Bethel Seminary professor Gregory Boyd and has declared himself "open" to open theism.

_____________________

Moore is instructor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he also serves as executive director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement.

*

In the ongoing culture war in American life, the Religious Left is jockeying for a voice in the debate.

This loose-knit cluster of organizations is predominantly composed of mainline Protestants, liberal Jews, reformist Catholics, and progressive Muslims. Their mission is to provide politically active “people of faith” with an alternative to the conservative values of most evangelicals and traditional Catholics.

These folks are not that new to political action. In fact, this coalition has always been around, though it has normally operated outside the purview of many cultural commentators.

Not everything advocated by the Religious Left is patently wrong. For example, they make a strong statement about the need to battle poverty. The merits of a welfare system are debatable, but most evangelicals probably would agree about the obligation we have to address the needs of the poor. Many conservatives are committed to seeking to alleviate the plight of those in poverty while also preaching a gospel that clearly discriminates between the Good News of Christ and American middle-class consumerism.

The Religious Left also is an advocate for racial equality. Again, while many conservatives would differ with the methods of liberals regarding racial justice, most religious conservatives would agree that racism is still a problem in many places in America.

Peace, with a special emphasis on the Middle East, is a key theme with the Religious Left. Conservative believers desire peace as well; we simply disagree with liberals concerning the appropriate process for securing peace.

Still, while the Religious Left may have some noble goals, they suffer from a fundamental problem that prevents them from having the prophetic voice in American culture that they so desperately desire. Simply put, religious liberals deny the sufficiency of Scripture. (A note: at this point I am referring primarily to mainline Protestants, leftist evangelicals, and liberal Catholics, though the principle also applies to Jews and Muslims who devalue their sacred writings).

Most religious conservatives (and some religious progressives) affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, meaning that when the Bible speaks, it speaks truthfully. It only follows that if the Bible is inerrant, then it is sufficient to guide the decisions believers make, be they spiritual, familial, or political.

The Religious Left displays a basic disbelief in the sufficiency of Scripture when it endorses secularism, radical feminism and the homosexual agenda.

Religious liberals often champion “homosexual marriage,” arguing that they “personally” disagree with homosexuality, but that it is wrong to deny homosexuals the benefits of marriage. This is outright rejection of the scriptural model of marriage, which is a lifelong union between one man and one woman.

Theological liberals also rebuff scriptural teachings about the value of human life, supporting the killing of human embryos for stem cell research in direct opposition to biblical instruction about the preciousness of each of God's creations. Even more troubling is the excuses these same liberals use to defend their support of abortion. Recently, John Kerry, Democratic candidate for president and a liberal Catholic, claimed that he disagrees with abortion “because of his religion,” but would not allow his religion to dictate his politics. Indeed.

That's ultimately the problem with the Religious Left. Though many of them claim to be more or less orthodox in their beliefs, there is a distinct disconnect between their purported religious beliefs and their actions. Moreover, most of them claim to be defenders of the First Amendment, yet argue for exclusion of religion from the public square -- a perverse interpretation of religious liberty that rejects the sufficiency of Scripture to guide every aspect of human existence.

In essence, the Religious Left, in the name of tolerance and pluralism, attempts to disallow the Bible any influence over contemporary culture, proving that, at least in the political arena, they are much more left than they are religious.

*

I was in front of a group of Christians fielding questions about the nature of Scripture recently -- what the Bible is and why it matters. I was struck by how many in the group, though they believed and appreciated the Bible, lacked sufficient grounding in the Holy Scriptures. They did not really grasp what the Bible is and why it matters. Do you?

While most Americans grant the Bible unique status, and most churchgoers think of it -- to some degree -- as a book from God, confessional evangelicals believe the Bible is much more than that. We believe it is God’s Word.

The Bible is unlike any other book -- it is God’s written revelation to man. By it, we can know God and truly know ourselves. More importantly, by it we can know Christ and the way of salvation.

The sad reality is that many who serve churches and fill pulpits do not believe the Scriptures, and the sadder reality is many who sit under their ministries are not equipped to detect it.

Exactly how should we think of the Bible? In what way is it unique? How should Christians view the Bible? Let us look at five ways that helpfully describe the nature of Scripture.

The inspiration of Scripture

Drawn from 2 Timothy 3:16, where the apostle Paul states, “All Scripture is inspired of God,” inspiration literally means “God breathed out the Holy Scriptures.” They come from His innermost being. Operationally, it means God superintended the authors of Scripture in such a way that the words themselves, not just the authors, were inspired.

Inspiration is the most common and historic descriptor for the Bible, but it has proven to be an insufficient one. Historically, inspiration also implied truthfulness and authority and functioned as a catchall descriptor for the Bible as God’s Word.

Liberal theologians commandeered the term and severed it from its original usage. Their practice of “using our vocabulary, but not our dictionary” left an insufficient doctrine of inspiration, where the authors -- much like Shakespeare or Bach -- might be inspired, but not the text itself.

Confessing evangelicals understand inspiration to be both verbal and plenary. Verbal means the words -- not just the author or the sentiments behind the words -- are inspired, while plenary means all of the words of Scripture, not just a subset. Literally, each and every word of the Bible is fully inspired of God.

The infallibility of Scripture

As the word inspiration became insufficiently clear in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “infallibility” entered the confessing church’s lexicon. Infallibility means the Word of God accomplishes all it intends and is incapable of error or untruth. Thus, the Bible is infallible.

By the second half of the 20th century, infallibility, like inspiration, had been weakened of its original force. This hollowed-out version of infallibility became something much narrower: The Bible was infallible in matters of faith and practice, thus implying the Bible may not be true when it spoke to more technical, less spiritual matters like science, historical records or genealogies. Another more forceful and unambiguous term became necessary, hence the word “inerrancy.”

The inerrancy of Scripture

Now, in the 21st century, the most robust designation for the Bible is “inerrancy.” Inerrancy asserts the original manuscripts were without error, real or perceived. Inerrancy applies to the entire Bible, including scientific references and historical accounts. Though the Bible is not primarily a book of science or history, when it does reference such matters it does so truthfully. In its original usage, infallibility meant the Bible, in theory, could have no errors. Inerrancy means that the Bible indeed has no errors.

Inerrancy does not mean there are no challenging texts, apparent contradictions or human mistakes in translation. Rather, it points all the way upstream and asserts that the Bible’s original sources and texts were error-free in every way. In fact, inerrancy holds up even in light of modern scholarship, when textual variants and other ambiguities of transmission are taken into consideration.

Inerrancy became the delineating issue in the controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention in the last quarter of the 20th century, and it remains the most defining and clarifying referent to the nature of Scripture. Inerrancy is built on this simple logic: If the Bible is errant at any point, it may be inaccurate at any point. For a more thorough explanation of the doctrine of inerrancy, consult the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

The authority of Scripture

As God’s revelation to man, the Bible comes with binding authority. From how to live the Christian life, to doctrines we must embrace, to how the church should order itself, Holy Scripture is an authoritative Word, requiring Christians to obey.

The Bible’s self-attestation assumes this. Throughout Scripture, those who believe and live the Bible are affirmed as wise, faithful and genuine followers of Christ.[1]

As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell -- and great was its fall.”[2]

The sufficiency of Scripture

Finally, as the living Word of God, the Bible is sufficient for Christian ministry and living. As Paul reminded Timothy, since the Holy Scriptures are inspired of God, the Bible itself makes us “adequate, equipped for every good work.”[3]

Christians need not look to second blessings, mystical experiences or other human authority. We have a more certain and more powerful word, the Word of God.

Each one of these aspects of God’s Word are interlinked and interdependent. They form five links in the chain of God’s revelation to man. Only an inspired book can be infallible and inerrant, and a book that owns these three strengths is authoritative and sufficient.

The Bible is truly unlike any other book. It is God’s written self-disclosure to humanity. As such, we must read it, study it, teach it and live it.

________

[1] Hebrews 4:12, Psalm 19:7-11, John 8:31-32, Joshua 1:8, 2 Timothy 3:16-17

[2] Matthew 7:24-27.

[3] 2 Timothy 3:17.

Jason K. Allen is president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. This column first appeared at his website, www.jasonkallen.com.

ISN’T THE BIBLE FULL OF ERRORS?

In answering we need to ask why and when our friends think the Bible has been changed? There are four separate questions here:

1. Did the events really happen in the way the eyewitnesses claimed they did?

(Are there errors of fact?)

If the eyewitnesses did not relate the events as they originally occurred, then there are only two possibilities. Either they were mistaken or they deliberately lied.

Individuals may suffer from errors of perception but not whole groups. Unlike the ‘revelations’ of contemporary cult leaders many of the events described in the Bible were witnessed by more than one person. On examining the accounts we find a remarkable degree of consistency. Consider for example the parallel histories in Kings, Chronicles and the Prophets, the biography of Jesus in the four Gospels or the 500 who were said to have seen Christ after the resurrection. (1 Cor 15:6)

On the other hand would the authors deliberately lie? According to tradition, eleven of the twelve disciples of Jesus met a violent death on account of their belief in his resurrection. Would they really have put themselves through such suffering for a faith they knew was false? (1 Cor 15:15-19; 2 Cor 11:23-29)

2. Did the story change before it was written down?

(Are there errors of verbal transmission?)

Many people in our twentieth century world of wordprocessors, photocopiers and faxes disbelieve that verbally transmitted information could ever remain uncontaminated. An examination of the way stories are passed on in contemporary non-literate societies quickly puts paid to this kind of cultural arrogance. Oral traditions are composed in easily memorable format and are constantly repeated and checked. Some early Muslim converts memorised over 6,000 verses of the Qu’ran accurately! The capacity of the human memory is astounding as any mother who has read to her children knows.

Despite this, there was no chain of verbal transmission before much of the Bible was committed to writing. The words and deeds of Jesus were clearly recorded by eyewitnesses (2 Pet 1:16; 1 Jn 1:3, 19:35) or at least by those who carefully interviewed them (Lk 1:1-3). The meticulous detail in some of the observations proves their authenticity (Jn 19:34-5; 20:6-7).

3. Is what we have now what was originally written down?

(Are there errors of written transmission?)

Scribes who copied Scripture were meticulous in their attention to detail. One has only to look at old manuscripts like the book of Kells in the Dublin Trinity College library, or some of the scrolls in the British Museum to see the truth of this. Even if we doubted this fact there are enough early copies of both Old and New Testament documents to show that they have not been changed over the course of time. Entire copies of the New Testament in Greek dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries (Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus) can be viewed today. Some of the earliest fragments (eg John Ryland) date from the lifetime of those who knew the apostles personally. Until this century the earliest Old Testament in Hebrew which we possessed was the Massoretic Text (cAD900). However, the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in the 1940s, (which contain parts of every Old Testament book save one) are 1,000 years older and virtually identical.

When comparisons are made with other documents of antiquity the Bible documents stand alone in terms of authenticating evidence. We know about Julius Caesar (whose existence no-one doubts) from less than a dozen copies of the original documents, the earliest of which post-date his death by 1,000 years. By contrast there are over 24,000 records of the life of Christ surviving from the first two or three hundred years after he walked the streets of Palestine.

Apart from the New Testament documents, early Jewish and Roman literature also makes mention of Christ: his teaching, miracles, crucifixion under Tiberius and even the three hours darkness at the time of his death. (see Tacitus, Lucian, Josephus, Suetonius, Pliny and Thallus)

Archeological discoveries have repeatedly confirmed that those who wrote the Bible were consummate historians of the first order. (eg Ezra 6:13-16; Lk 3:1-2)

4. Are there contradictions?

Those who make reference to the ‘thousands’ of contradictions in the Bible are usually unable to name one. Most genuine contradictions can be attributed to minor errors in hand copying of individual letters or numbers (eg 2 Ch 36:9 cf 2 Ki 24:8) or to verses being taken out of context (eg Mt 7:8 cf Pr 1:28). Others arise when the same story is told from the perspective of different observers (eg Lk 24:1-2 cf Jn 20:1) This is what we would expect. If serial witnesses in court give identical testimonies, one might suspect that the evidence has been fabricated. Some contradictions may seem at first difficult to account for, but can be explained satisfactorily (eg Judas’s mode of death Mt 27:5 cf Acts1:18 and Jesus’s genealogy Mt 1:6-16 cf Lk 3:23-31.) We need to develop reasoned defences for those most commonly raised, while accepting that there will always be mysteries. Apparent contradictions confirm rather than cast doubt on the Bible’s authenticity. They would be carefully edited out in a fake. The fact remains that there is not a single error in the Bible which casts doubt on any significant historical biblical event or doctrine.

Throughout the last two thousand years the Bible has withstood vociferous criticism with flying colours. Those who are most vocal in questioning it generally either approach it with presuppositions (eg that miracles cannot happen) or are unwilling to accept the personal implications of its teaching.

===============================================

BIBLE REFERENCES

1. DID THE EVENTS REALLY HAPPEN IN THE WAY THAT THE EYEWITNESSES CLAIMED THEY DID?

1 Cor 15:6

After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

1 Cor 15:15-19

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

2 Cor 11:23-29

I have worked much harder, been in prison...flogged... exposed to death again and again...five times I received the forty lashes minus one...three times I was beaten with rods...once I was stoned...three times I was shipwrecked...I spent a night and a day in the open sea...in danger from rivers...bandits...I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked...

2. DID THE STORY CHANGE BEFORE IT WAS WRITTEN DOWN?

THE WORDS AND DEEDS OF JESUS WERE CLEARLY RECORDED BY EYEWITNESSES

2 Pet 1:16

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

1 Jn 1:3

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Jn 19:35

The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.

OR AT LEAST BY THOSE WHO CAREFULLY INTERVIEWED THEM.

Lk 1:1-3

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus.

THE METICULOUS DETAIL IN SOME OF THE OBSERVATIONS PROVES THEIR AUTHENTICITY.

Jn 19:34-35

Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

Jn 20:6-7

Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

3. IS WHAT WE HAVE NOW, WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DOWN?

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES HAVE REPEATEDLY CONFIRMED THAT THOSE WHO WROTE THE BIBLE WERE CONSUMMATE HISTORIANS OF THE FIRST ORDER.

Ezra 6:13-16

Then, because of the decree King Darius had sent, Tattenai, governor of Trans-Euphrates, and Shethar-Bozenai and their associates carried it out with diligence. They finished building the temple according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia. The temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.

Lk 3:1-3

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar - when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene - during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.

4. ARE THERE CONTRADICTIONS?

MINOR ERRORS IN HAND-COPYING OF INDIVIDUAL LETTERS OR NUMBERS.

2 Ch 36:9

Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for three months and ten days.

2 Ki 24:8

Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for three months...

ERRORS WHEN VERSES ARE TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT.

Mt 7:8

For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Pr 1:28

‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me.’

THE SAME STORY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DIFFERENT OBSERVERS.

Lk 24:1-2

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb..

Jn 20:1

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

JUDAS’S MODE OF DEATH.

Mt 27:5

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Acts 1:18

With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.

What did Jesus believe about the accuracy of Scripture? As a part of our discipleship, we who seek to follow the Lord Jesus desire to believe what He believed. It would be odd for one to claim, on the one hand, to be devoted to Jesus as Lord and, on the other hand, to simply set aside as false or irrelevant a view that, arguably, Jesus believed and taught. Even if we fall short of actually believing what Jesus did with the assurance He believed it, it is surely our aim to grow in conforming our beliefs to His.

Nowhere is this more important than Jesus’ belief about Holy Scripture. If we can ascertain Jesus’ bibliology, we should do all we can to make it our own. With that in mind, I want to do two things in this two-part series:

• Clarify Jesus’ view of Scripture

• Show how I would defend it as true in the broader, secular context

I cannot do justice to this topic in the space I have, but bear with me as I try to offer a simple but, hopefully, not simplistic summary of a massive topic.

JESUS’ VIEW OF SCRIPTURE

It is no accident that for nearly 2,000 years the church has believed and taught what is called a verbal, plenary view of the Bible’s inspiration. Most of us are familiar with the more recent term, “inerrancy,” but the concept is quite old.

The church has taught that verbal, plenary inspiration is what one discovers upon close inspection of Jesus’ own teachings about Scripture. When we say the Bible is verbally inspired, we mean that the inspiration of God does not reside in the general ideas of Scripture. Rather, it goes so deep that the very choice of words (in the original Greek and Hebrew text) is inspired. When we say the Bible is plenarily inspired, we mean that every part of the Bible is equally authoritative. Thus, for example, the books of Moses or the Gospels are not more inspired and authoritative than Nehemiah or the book of James. Here is a definition of this view:

The inspiration of Scripture is God’s superintending of human authors so that by using their own individual personalities, they wrote without error in the original text His revelation — His inspired truth.

Inspiration implies inerrancy (that is, included in what the Bible teaches about its own inspiration is the idea that the Bible is inerrant — inerrancy is part of what it means to say the Bible is inspired). To claim that the Bible is inerrant is to claim that, when properly interpreted, everything the Bible teaches to be true is true. The Bible contains no errors, including errors of fact, ethics or doctrine.

This definition comports well with three aspects of Jesus’ implicit and explicit view of Scripture. First, Jesus held that Scripture’s assertions are true. This is nicely illustrated in two texts. John 10:35, NIV says “the Scripture cannot be broken.” In context this means that it cannot be found to assert a falsehood.

Jesus is arguing that if people in Old Testament times were called gods (in the sense of judges who stood in God’s place), then the people should not react if Jesus (who is greater than people who served as judges in Old Testament times) calls himself the Son of God. He should be given the chance to clarify and demonstrate His claim. Now His argument depends on the fact that in ancient days people were really called gods in the limited sense just mentioned. He is confident of this because Scripture says so (cf. Psalm 82:6) and “Scripture cannot be broken;” if it says something happened, it happened.

The underlying assumption is that everything Scripture asserts is true.

Similarly, Jesus taught that all (each and every) things taught about Him had to happen (Luke 18:31; 24:44). Why all of them and why did they have to happen? The underlying assumption is that everything Scripture asserts is true. Thus, Jesus can simply claim, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Jesus did not believe the Bible is completely exhaustive — that it contains all the truth we can know about God, the creation, morals, the family and so forth. For example, He thought we could learn about God by observing the sun and rain (Matthew 5:44-45). Nor did Jesus believe all commands of Scripture were equally weighty; there are, He said, lesser and weightier matters of the Law (Matthew 23:23). But Jesus did believe all teachings of Scripture were equally true.

TO THE LAST LETTER

Second, Jesus held that inspiration characterizes Scripture down to its morphemes — the smallest units of language that convey meaning. For example, the ‘a’ in ‘atheism’ is a morpheme — it’s a prefix that conveys a specific meaning. Thus, inspiration is not a mere feature of paragraphs, sentences or the general drift of a passage. Within the proper framework of interpretation, the very words themselves (in the original Hebrew and Greek texts) were inspired.

In the heat of theological debate, Jesus defended views in which His entire case turned on an implicit tense of a verb. For example, see Matthew 22:32 where Jesus emphasizes that God IS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so they must still be alive in the afterlife. He was arguing against the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. This is why Jesus did not say that God WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which would allow for the fact that God is no longer their God since, according to the view of the Sadducees, they are now extinct.

The choice of a single word is also crucial. In Matthew 22:43-45 Jesus focuses on David’s use of the word “Lord” to refer to the Messiah, the Son of David, implying that the Messiah would be greater than David himself because the Messiah was the Lord God Himself.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that even the smallest letter or stroke of God’s Word would be fulfilled (found to be true). The smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet is a yodh, roughly equivalent to the size of a comma when compared to ordinary letters in English. A stroke was tiny little dash mark that distinguished a Hebrew “r” from a “d.” These are morphemes in Hebrew.

EQUALLY INSPIRED

Finally, Jesus held a plenary view of inspiration (that is, that all the components of the Old Testament were equally inspired). This set Him apart from some (for example, the Sadducees) who accepted only the inspiration of the Books of Moses and others who held that the Law was more inspired than, say, the prophets. Not so for Jesus.

In Luke 24:44 Jesus uses a widely employed threefold division to refer to the inspired canon of Scripture — “the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms” — a canon that includes the 39 books of the Protestant Bible and excludes Intertestamental writings. However, in Matthew 5:17-19 Jesus uses an odd, lesser-used phrase to refer to the same canon — “the Law or (not and) the Prophets.” In so doing, Jesus means to place the “Prophets” (the rest of the Old Testament) on an equal footing with the Books of Moses.

YET TO COME

As we can see, Jesus taught Scripture and believed it to be true. But how can we respond to and argue this viewpoint in a way that is effective and non-circular? [see #35473 for part 2]

________

J.P. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and director of Eidos Christian Center.

Copyright © 2007 J.P. Moreland. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

In part one of this article [#35473], I talked about Jesus’ high view of Scripture. But how do we combat counterarguments to this view? That’s what part two is for.

RESPONDING TO A COUNTERARGUMENT

It has been argued that Jesus did not hold to verbal inspiration because He often quoted from the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament produced more than two centuries before Christ) and not the Hebrew Old Testament, thus, disregarding Hebrew morphemes and specific word choices. However, as we saw in part one, (Jesus’ conviction that since inspiration obtains down to the level of choice of words, He could base an entire argument on the tense of a verb or the choice of a single word), this claim flies in the face of Jesus’ own statements and practices.

All that matters is that the quote is an accurate representation of the original for the purposes of the citation.

And there is a better explanation for Jesus’ frequent use of the Septuagint: It was a text with which the public was familiar, and Jesus clearly assumed that the Septuagint preserved the inspired meaning of the Hebrew Old Testament in a way adequate for the purposes of His quotation.

When a person quotes a source, that person has a purpose, an intention for his own communication that he uses the quote to realize. Many times, what matters is not the detailed word-for-word accuracy of the quotation per se, but the accuracy of the quotation at a level appropriate for the specific purposes of the quoter’s own utterance.

If I paraphrase the President’s recent speech to give a friend an accurate sense of his general strategy for the economy, it doesn’t matter if I don’t cite him accurately word-for-word since my purpose is appropriately accomplished by a paraphrase. The paraphrase must accurately reflect the President’s views in keeping with the GENERAL, not DETAILED or SPECIFIC point I am making.

Thus, each gospel writer paraphrases Jesus’ speeches a bit differently for different purposes and audiences. The New Testament often paraphrases citations of Old Testament texts that are not word-for-word, and Jesus’ use of the Septuagint follows this pattern. All that matters is that the quote is an accurate representation of the original for the purposes of the citation. After all, not every detail of the original source is relevant for the speaker’s purposes, and he is free to paraphrase in such cases.

Thus, in all three cases — the Gospel writers and Jesus’ original speeches, New Testament quotations of Old Testament texts, and Jesus use of the Septuagint — the use of a citation that does not match the original word-for-word does not undermine the fact that the one citing the earlier source believed in its word-for-word inspiration.

A NON-CIRCULAR DEFENSE OF THE VIEW

How would I defend this doctrine against skeptics so as to avoid arguing in a circle by assuming inspiration to prove inspiration? Briefly, I would use historical evidence to establish the high probability of the general historical reliability of the New Testament manuscripts. I would argue that on this basis we can justifiably believe two things: 1) Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead and, as God, speaks truth and only truth; 2) Jesus held a view on the nature of Scripture that is now called verbal plenary inspiration.

Note three things.

First, the case is inductive and the conclusions are rationally justified to the degree the evidence warrants. In an inductive argument, the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Rather, the truth of the premises supports the truth of the conclusion to some degree or other depending on the strength of the evidence they provide.

Second, while I cannot go into detail here, I believe the historical evidence (e.g., for the Resurrection, the early dating of the gospels, for their reliable transmission in an oral culture, etc.) strongly supports both of these beliefs — that Jesus was God and speaks the truth, and that Jesus taught verbal plenary inspiration regarding Scripture.

Third, nowhere have I assumed the inspiration of Scripture in my argument. On the basis of these two beliefs, we are justified in believing verbal, plenary inspiration. We believe this because Jesus did. This is established by premises that do not include this view of inspiration to avoid arguing in a circle by assuming the thing we are trying to justify — verbal, plenary inspiration — in the premises used to justify it. In other words, we do not assume inspiration to assure us that Jesus’ views are true, then conclude that the Bible is inspired because Jesus taught it. This is a bad argument because it argues in a circle, (i.e., it assumes (inspiration) the very thing one is trying to prove (inspiration) as a premise in the proof!)

We do not believe in Jesus’ divinity and truthfulness because we already accept the inspiration of Scripture. On the basis of solid, highly probable historical grounds, we are reasonable to believe that the New Testament documents are generally reliable historical sources of the deeds, person and beliefs of Jesus. We also learn that He believed in the inspiration of Scripture.

INSPIRATIONAL!

Finally, we are justified in believing He did miracles, rose from the dead and was, therefore, the Son of God who speaks the truth. We then conclude that the Bible is indeed inspired.

________

J.P. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and director of Eidos Christian Center.

Copyright © 2007 J.P. Moreland. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Bart Ehrman’s career is testament to the fact that no one can slice and dice a belief system more surgically than someone who grew up inside it. Raised as a not particularly devout Episcopalian in 1950s Kansas, the best-selling Bible scholar had a “born-again” experience as a high school sophomore and asked Jesus into his heart. Eager to study Holy Scripture full-time, he entered the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago -- motto: “Moody Bible Institute, where BIBLE is our middle name” -- where every professor and student had to sign a statement attesting that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, a divinely inspired document from its first page (Genesis 1:1) to its last (Revelation 22:21).

But almost immediately, Ehrman ran into a problem. It was an intellectual problem at first, but it soon became larger and harder to quarantine. In one of the first classes he took at Moody, he learned that none of the original texts of the New Testament exist. All we have are copies, made years later -- usually, many CENTURIES later. In fact, the copies are copies of copies, and they’re filled with errors or intentional changes made over decades or centuries by scribes. Burning with fervor to discover the true word of God, the authentic divine voice that had been obscured or changed by all-too-human writers, Ehrman decided to begin a serious study of the New Testament. He completed his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College, where he began studying ancient Greek, the original language of the New Testament. But there was still no answer to his original question: How could we know what the word of God was if all we had were error-riddled copies?

So Ehrman decided to plunge all the way in and immerse himself in the academic study of the texts of the New Testament. He entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, home to the world’s leading authority in the field, Bruce Metzger. His literalist faith in and his devotional approach to the Bible were under increasing strain, but he managed to hold onto them for a while -- until a professor jotted a casual comment on one of Ehrman’s papers. Ehrman was attempting to explain a passage from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus refers to an event that took place “when Abiathar was the high priest.” The problem is that the book in the Old Testament that Jesus is referring to states that not Abiathar but his father Ahimelech was the high priest. Ehrman came up with a convoluted argument to reconcile the contradiction, using Greek etymology to prove that Mark did not mean what he apparently said. Ehrman believed that his professor, a beloved and pious scholar named Cullen Story, would appreciate his argument as a fellow believer in biblical inerrancy.

Story’s response, Ehrman wrote in his best-selling 2005 book “Misquoting Jesus,” “went straight through me.” “Maybe,” Story scrawled at the end of Ehrman’s paper, “Mark just made a mistake.”

Story’s comment proved fatal for Ehrman’s belief that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. Realizing that his own argument was unconvincing, he was forced to acknowledge that yes, maybe Mark DID make a mistake. “Once I made that admission, the floodgates opened,” Ehrman wrote. “For if there could be one little, picayune mistake in Mark 2, maybe there could be mistakes in other places as well. Maybe, when Jesus says later in Mark 4 that ‘the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds on the earth,’ maybe I don’t need to come up with a fancy explanation for how the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds when I know full well it isn’t. And maybe these ‘mistakes’ apply to bigger issues. Maybe when Mark says that Jesus was crucified the day AFTER the Passover meal was eaten (Mark 14:12, 15:25) and John says he died the day BEFORE it was eaten (John 19:14) -- maybe that is a genuine difference.”

The dike of Ehrman’s literalist belief had been breached, and no divine intervention would turn back the floodwaters. He came to believe that the Bible was “a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own understandings, their own theologies ... Mark did not say the same thing that Luke said because he did not mean the same thing as Luke.”

Ehrman’s demolition of biblical literalism in “Misquoting Jesus” is neatly summed up by an anecdote. “Occasionally I see a bumper sticker that reads, ‘God said, it, I believe it, and that settles it.’ My response is always, What if God DIDN’T say it?” A lucid, accessible and entertaining guided tour of biblical scholarship, “Misquoting Jesus” makes it indubitably clear -- unless one simply decides in advance that all logic, scholarship, rules of historical evidence and rational thought do not apply to the Bible -- that God did not “say it.” A bunch of human beings said a lot of different things over hundreds of years, a bunch of other human beings wrote down different versions of what they said, and yet another bunch of human beings decided -- also over hundreds of years -- which of these writings should be part of the Holy Book and which should not. This is simply the historical truth.

We are entering a new phase in the battle over the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. We should at least be thankful for undisguised arguments coming from the opponents of biblical inerrancy, even as we are ready, once again, to make clear where their arguments lead.

________

Back in 1990, theologian J. I. Packer recounted what he called a “Thirty Years’ War” over the inerrancy of the Bible. He traced his involvement in this war in its American context back to a conference held in Wenham, Massachusetts in 1966, when he confronted some professors from evangelical institutions who “now declined to affirm the full truth of Scripture.” That was nearly fifty years ago, and the war over the truthfulness of the Bible is still not over — not by a long shot.

From time to time, the dust has settled in one arena, only for the battle to erupt in another. In the 1970s, the most visible battles were fought over Fuller Theological Seminary and within the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. By the 1980s, the most heated controversies centered in the Southern Baptist Convention and its seminaries. Throughout this period, the evangelical movement sought to regain its footing on the doctrine. In 1978, a large number of leading evangelicals met and adopted a definitive statement that became known as “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.”

Many thought the battles were over, or at least subsiding. Sadly, the debate over the inerrancy of the Bible continues. As a matter of fact, there seems to be a renewed effort to forge an evangelical identity apart from the claim that the Bible is totally truthful and without error.

Recently, Professor Peter Enns, formerly of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, has argued that the biblical authors clearly erred. He has argued that Paul, for example, was clearly wrong in assuming the historicity of Adam. In INSPIRATION AND INCARNATION: EVANGELICALS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, published in 2005, he presented an argument for an “incarnational” model of biblical inspiration and authority. But in this rendering, incarnation — affirming the human dimension of Scripture — means accepting some necessary degree of error.

This argument is taken to the next step by Kenton L. Sparks in his 2008 book, GOD’S WORD IN HUMAN WORDS: AN EVANGELICAL APPROPRIATION OF CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP. Sparks, who teaches at Eastern University, argues that it is nothing less than intellectually disastrous for evangelicals to claim that the Bible is without error.

His arguments, also serialized and summarized in a series of articles, are amazingly candid. He asserts that Evangelicalism has “painted itself into an intellectual corner” by claiming the inerrancy of Scripture. The movement is now in an “intellectual cul-de-sac,” he laments, because we have “crossed an evidential threshold that makes it intellectually unsuitable to defend some of the standard dogmas of the conservative evangelical tradition.” And, make no mistake, inerrancy is the central dogma he would have us let go.

GOD’S WORD IN HUMAN WORDS is an erudite book with a comprehensive argument. Kenton Sparks does not misunderstand the evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy — he understands it and sees it as intellectually disastrous. “So like any other book,” he asserts, “the Bible appears to be a historically and culturally contingent text and, because of that, it reflects the diverse viewpoints of different people who lived in different times and places.” But a contingent text bears all the errors of its contingent authors, and Sparks fully realizes this.

The serialized articles by Sparks appear at the BioLogos Web site, a site with one clear agenda — to move evangelicals toward a full embrace of evolutionary theory. In this context, Sparks understands that the affirmation of biblical inerrancy presents a huge obstacle to the embrace of evolution. The “evidential threshold” has been crossed, he insists, and the Bible has come up short. The biblical writers were simply trapped within the limits of their own ancient cosmology and observations.

But Sparks presses far beyond this argument, accusing the Bible of presenting immoral teachings, citing “biblical texts that strike us as down-right sinister or evil.” The Bible, he suggests, “exhibits all the telltale signs of having been written by finite, fallen human beings who erred in the ways that human beings usually err.”

When Peter Enns and Kenton Sparks argue for an incarnational model of inspiration and biblical authority, they are continuing an argument first made long ago — among evangelicals, at least as far back as the opening salvos of the battle over biblical inerrancy. Sparks, however, takes the argument further. He understands that the incarnational model implicates Jesus. He does not resist this. Jesus, he suggests, “was a finite person who grew up in Palestine.” While asserting that he affirms the historic Christian creeds and “traditional Christian orthodoxy,” Sparks proposes that Jesus made routine errors of fact.

His conclusion: “If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, [and/or] John wrote Scripture without error.”

That is a breath-taking assumption, to say the very least. But, even in its shocking audacity, it serves to reveal the clear logic of the new battle-lines over biblical inerrancy. We now confront open calls to accept and affirm that there are indeed errors in the Bible. It is demanded that we accept the fact that the human authors of the Bible often erred because of their limited knowledge and erroneous assumptions about reality. We must, it is argued, abandon the claim that the Bible is a consistent whole. Rather, we are told to accept the claims that the human authors of Scripture were just plain wrong in some texts — even in texts that define God and his ways. We are told that some texts are just “down-right sinister or evil.”

And, note clearly, we are told that we must do this in order to save Evangelicalism from an intellectual disaster.

Of course, accepting this demand amounts to a theological disaster of incalculable magnitude. Rarely has this been more apparent and undeniable. The rejection of the Bible’s inerrancy will please the evangelical revisionists, but it will rob the church of its secure knowledge that the Bible is indeed true, trustworthy and fully authoritative.

Kenton Sparks and the new evangelical revisionists are now making some of the very arguments that earlier opponents of inerrancy attempted to deny. In this sense, they offer great clarity to the current debate. Their logic is clear. They argue that the human authors of the Bible were not protected from error, and their errors are not inconsequential. We are talking about nothing less than whether the Bible truthfully reveals to us the nature, character, acts, and purposes of God.

As Dr. Packer said years ago, “[W]hen you encounter a present-day view of Holy Scripture, you encounter more than a view of Scripture. What you meet is a total view of God and the world, that is, a total theology, which is both an ontology, declaring what there is, and an epistemology, stating how we know what there is. This is necessarily so, for a theology is a seamless robe, a circle within which everything links up with everything else through its common grounding in God. Every view of Scripture, in particular, proves on analysis to be bound up with an overall view of God and man.”

The rejection of biblical inerrancy is bound up with a view of God that is, in the end, fatal for Christian orthodoxy. We are entering a new phase in the battle over the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. We should at least be thankful for undisguised arguments coming from the opponents of biblical inerrancy, even as we are ready, once again, to make clear where their arguments lead.

________

J. I. Packer, “Thirty Years’ War: The Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” in PRACTICAL THEOLOGY AND THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH, 1952-1984: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF EDMUND P. CLOWNEY, ed. Harvie M. Conn (P&R Publishing, 1990), pp. 25-46.

J. I. Packer, “Encountering Present-Day Views of Scripture,” in COLLECTED SHORTER WRITINGS OF J. I. PACKER, VOLUME 1: HONOURING THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD, (Paternoster Press, 1999), pp. 3-22. [quote here from p. 3]

Peter Enns, INSPIRATION AND INCARNATION: EVANGELICALS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, (Baker Academic, 2005).

Kenton L. Sparks, GOD’S WORD IN HUMAN WORDS: AN EVANGELICAL APPROPRIATION OF CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP, (Baker Academic, 2008).

Kenton Sparks, “AFTER INERRANCY: EVANGELICALS AND THE BIBLE IN A POSTMODERN AGE,” BioLogos.org, a series in seven parts, July 5-16, 2010.

There is a lot of debate in some sectors of the church about the nature of Scripture, especially in the categories of inerrancy and infallibility. Invariably this discussion turns to the nature of prophecy, and the theological implications various ways of understanding Scripture have on how prophecy should be viewed.

In most cases, the discussion ranges widely, but largely outside the biblical text itself. That is, the actual narratives, oracles, and sermons from the prophetic books are not closely examined, or often even referenced, in relation to these debates. The doctrinal positions are too often drawn up and assertions made about the Bible from assumptions and in contexts apart from Scripture without looking closely at the biblical evidence itself from a variety of perspectives (see The Modern Inerrancy Debate). The result tends to produce positions that sound good as doctrinal statements, but which do not correspond to the features of the biblical text.

I simply think that positions about the nature of Scripture ought to be developed in dialog with the text about which the assertions are made, as well as with various methods of understanding that text. If they do not, there is great risk that the assertions will be comforting, but will be about something other than Scripture. I offer the following as a short example of a particular feature of prophetic writing that I think needs to be taken seriously in how we develop, articulate, and defend our views of the nature of Scripture.

The example to consider is from the book of Ezekiel. The middle section of Ezekiel contains a series of what are known as “Oracles Against Foreign Nations” (chs. 25-32). All of the major prophetic books contain these. They are indictments against surrounding nations, often listing their crimes against humanity and sins against God, as a way to universalize accountability to God. They are highly stylized and poetic, but often contain specific predictions of the judgment of God against those nations for their self-sufficient arrogance, pride, and worship of false gods. Often the nations are evaluated specifically in terms of how they have treated Israel as God’s people.

An unusual feature of these oracles in Ezekiel is that they are dated, rather than simply being stereotyped and stylized generic judgment speeches. This relates these prophetic oracles to particular historical circumstances, which also explains why so many of them are very specific in terms of historical predictions. Ezekiel was clearly interpreting history as it was unfolding in front of him in light of what he understood about God.

The oracles fall between 588 and 586 BC, with one dated 571 BC. This was an extremely traumatic and pivotal time in Israel’s history. There was a lot happening, but a brief summary will serve our purpose (see The Rise of Babylon and Exile). The Babylonians had consolidated their empire through a series of strong leaders, and were in the process of incorporating most of the Eastern Mediterranean into that empire, with dreams of extending their control into Egypt.

Israel lay between Babylon and Egypt and was in great peril. Compounding the fact that Israel was far outclassed militarily, there had been a series of weak and godless leaders since the aborted attempt at reform by Josiah in 621 BC. This had undermined the nation’s commitment to God, and allowed a false sense of security to develop that prevented them from hearing prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel (“[they] have ears, but do not hear,” Jer 5:21, cf. 25:4).

The Babylonians destroyed the Assyrian empire in 612 BC, and pushed south toward Egypt, and Israel. Because of failed political maneuvering, Israel became a vassal state of Babylon in 605 BC. There was discontent and simmering nationalism, however, which led to rebellion against Babylonian control. After years of struggle, the Babylonians took Jerusalem in 598 BC, deported a number of Israelite leaders to Babylon, and set a puppet king over Israel. Unrest continued with political intrigue that included rebellion prompted by attempted alliances with several surrounding nations.

Finally, in 586 the Babylonians sent a large army into Palestine to put an end to the rebellions. As a result Jerusalem was totally destroyed and a second wave of deportees was taken to Babylon. Several other nations were also disciplined for their part in the ongoing turmoil.

Ezekiel was among the first deportees and probably wrote much of the book from the perspective of exile in Babylon between the first deportation in 598 and the destruction of Jerusalem in 586. The oracles we are looking at came from the period immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem as Nebuchadnezzar marched south from Assyria along the Mediterranean coast via Tyre and Sidon before he turned toward Jerusalem on his way to Egypt.

The specific oracle under consideration is against the Phoenician city of Tyre in Ezekiel 26, and is dated 586. To understand this oracle, we also need to know a little about Tyre. Tyre was a major seaport for the world renowned sailors and merchants, the Phoenicians. It was a wealthy city since it was the primary commercial seaport in the Eastern Mediterranean linking shipping to Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain, and North Africa with land caravans from Arabia, Babylon, Persia, and as far east as India.

At this time, the main part of Tyre was an island city about a mile off the coast of what is now Lebanon. There were smaller villages on the mainland, called “daughters of Tyre,” but the city itself was an offshore seaport. Because of its location, it could be easily defended and could be re-supplied from the sea.

Now, note Ezekiel’s prediction about the destruction of Tyre at the hands of the Babylonians.

26:3 therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. 26:4 They shall destroy the walls of Tyre, and break down her towers; and I will scrape her soil from her, and make her a bare rock. 26:5 She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets; for I have spoken, says the Lord GOD; and she shall become a spoil to the nations; 26:6 and her daughters on the mainland shall be slain by the sword. Then they will know that I am the LORD.

This is a rather unambiguous prediction. The city will be totally destroyed, including the city walls and defensive towers. The city would be leveled like a rock. In typical prophetic fashion, there is an interesting word play here, since the Hebrew word for Tyre means “rock,” the city of “Rock” will become a bare rock. The mainland villages (“her daughters”) will also be destroyed. This is all put under the rubric of the prophetic word that comes from God: “I have spoken” and “says Yahweh.” All of this will be a sign that God is indeed God.

But the oracle goes on:

26:7 “For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will bring upon Tyre from the north Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, and with horsemen and a host of many soldiers. 26:8 He will slay with the sword your daughters on the mainland; he will set up a siege wall against you, and throw up a mound against you, and raise a roof of shields against you. 26:9 He will direct the shock of his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers. 26:10 His horses will be so many that their dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the horsemen and wagons and chariots, when he enters your gates as one enters a city which has been breached. 26:11 With the hoofs of his horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people with the sword; and your mighty pillars will fall to the ground. 26:12 They will make a spoil of your riches and a prey of your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; your stones and timber and soil they will cast into the midst of the waters. 26:13 And I will stop the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more. 26:14 I will make you a bare rock; you shall be a place for the spreading of nets; you shall never be rebuilt; for I the LORD have spoken, says the Lord GOD.

In case there was any ambiguity in the first oracle, this one is even more specific. It is not just “many nations” who will plunder Tyre. It will be a specific nation, Babylonia, and a specific king, Nebuchadrezzar (sometimes called Nebuchadnezzar). It seems fairly obvious here that Ezekiel had heard reports of the Babylonian march southward, and he predicts, as a prophet of God, what will unfold as Nebuchadnezzar’s army punishes the nations for their rebellion. They will lay siege to Tyre, take the city and destroy it, kill its inhabitants, and loot its riches (which was a way to pay soldiers in the ancient world). He goes so far as to say that after its destruction, Tyre will never again be rebuilt. There are actually a series of such oracles that continue through chapter 28.

So, here is a very specific prediction coming from a particular historical circumstance, but couched in all the traditional prophetic formulae that say this is a “word” from the Lord. The problem is that very little of this actually came to pass! In fact, it badly missed how history actually unfolded.

We know from other historical records, including the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, that Nebuchadnezzar did, indeed, take and destroy the mainland part of the city, and then lay siege to the island city of Tyre. However, the Babylonian army was a land based army with no ships, which made it very difficult to lay siege effectively to an island fortress that had an armada of ships at its disposal. Nebuchadnezzar spent 13 years in the siege of Tyre and was never able to take the city. He finally abandoned the attempt sometime in 573/572 and put his resources into the invasion of Egypt, having already destroyed the Israelite stronghold in Jerusalem.

The city of Tyre did pass into Babylonian vassalage, but that was the result of a negotiated settlement that required tribute, a form of taxation (or extortion). The city of Tyre was not destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar or the Babylonians, and in fact continued to thrive as a commercial center.

Now, some who want to maintain the absolute inerrancy of biblical prophecy point to the fact that Tyre was eventually destroyed, and so the accuracy of Ezekiel’s prophecy is vindicated. Tyre was, indeed, destroyed in 332 BC by the Greek Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great). He used the ingenious tactic of using rubble from the destroyed mainland settlements to build a causeway to the island, providing a land bridge for his troops. Since that time, Tyre has no longer been an island, now connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus.

So, the inerrantists would claim, the prophecy was really a long range prediction even though Ezekiel himself thought it was a short range prediction. But this raises another whole series of serious problems, and sounds far more like the rationalization of a position in spite of contrary evidence than it does a careful analysis of the biblical text. There are still several aspects of the Ezekiel prophecy unresolved.

1) Even though Alexander did, indeed, destroy parts of the city of Tyre, it was immediately rebuilt and became an important Greek, and later Roman, seaport. It still exists today as a resort city of Lebanon. This clearly violates Ezekiel’s judgment that it would never be rebuilt and become a bare rock upon which to dry fishnets.

2) There is no internal rationale for changing the specific reference to Babylonians and assume that it really means Greeks, or to change Nebuchadnezzar to Alexander. If the text were inerrant in the way that many claim it to be, then we should be able to read “Greeks” and “Alexander” here. Again, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to preserve a certain view of prophecy that the evidence will not support.

3) There are serious implications about the nature of Scripture and revelation (and God!) involved here. To maintain the “long range” view, Ezekiel, facing one urgent historical situation for which the people needed an immediate word from the Lord, actually and unknowingly addressed a situation 250 years in the future, spoke of a nation that had not yet emerged on the scene of world history, referred to persons and events for which he could have no direct knowledge, and predicted world events that involved huge shifts in how history unfolded from his own time. In other words, the only way this position can be maintained is to affirm both that history is predetermined, and that Scripture is verbally given to the prophet without any awareness on his part of the actual meaning of what he was being told (100% God!). In fact, it even deceives him into thinking he was actually talking about his own situation when in fact he was talking about a situation centuries in the future. This, as it often does, assumes a certain theory of inspiration of Scripture in order to maintain its inerrancy, which is then used in a circular fashion, to confirm the same theories of inspiration (see Revelation and Inspiration of Scripture and God’s Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Human Freedom).

4) Even beyond that, there is some sense that Ezekiel was himself worse than in the dark about his own prophecy. He seems to have rather badly misunderstood his own message, because he seems to believe that he is talking about the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar, when in reality, according to this view, he is talking about the Greeks and Alexander. This raises other serious questions about how we at any time in history can understand God’s work in the world. This seems to make Scripture more obscure than it makes it more authoritative.

5) What good is a prophetic word, or Scripture, if it has little or no meaning for 200 or 1,000 or 2,000 years when the precise “fulfillment” finally comes about? This reduces God’s word to a puzzle to be solved, or something that has little relevance to ordinary living because there is no way to tell, until after the “fulfillment,” whether it has any meaning for today or not. It is not a living word that shapes how God’s people live their life as His people now, but is, at best, only a pregnant word with some potential that we may or may not understand, and may never live to see. The word of God is not redemptive for God’s people in on ongoing way, but is reduced to the level of proof to bolster our own criteria of validation.

All this says that to attempt to relate this prophecy to events 250 years later simply to vindicate a certain view of prophecy is not valid, and borders on not dealing with the biblical text honestly.

But there is even more compelling evidence from within Scripture itself, indeed, from Ezekiel himself, that this view is deficient. In 571 BC, two years or so after Nebuchadnezzar abandoned the siege of Tyre and it had become obvious to everyone that he would not be able to destroy the city, Ezekiel gives another prophecy concerning Tyre.

29:17 In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 29:18 “Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre; every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare; yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had performed against it. 29:19 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army. 29:20 I have given him the land of Egypt as his recompense for which he labored, because they worked for me, says the Lord GOD.

Here, Ezekiel rather frankly acknowledges Nebuchadnezzar’s failure to take Tyre even though he labored hard trying to do so (13 years!). So Ezekiel, seemingly without any embarrassment at the failure of his original prophecy, simply changed it after the fact to fit the historical situation as it had actually unfolded.

Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw the Babylonian invasion as part of the out working of the consequences of Israel’s sins and repeated failure to serve and trust God. While God had fought for Israel in the past, both prophets vigorously proclaim, “Not this time!” So the Babylonians are unwittingly serving the purposes of God in the world, and the prophets conceptualize them as actually in the employ of God. And if they are working for God, God needs to pay their wages. Since they did not get anything from Tyre for their labor, Ezekiel affirms that God will allow them to be paid from the riches of Egypt (29:20).

Now, we do not know from historical records whether the Babylonians ever sacked Egypt. History is silent on this point. But it doesn’t matter. The issue was never whether or not a certain historical event would unfold exactly in the specific way any particular prophet predicted that it would. History simply does not work that way, and that is not really the task of a prophet. The issue had always been the truth of what Ezekiel was proclaiming to the people about God and their responsibility and accountability to Him as their covenantal God. The prophet’s role was to help the people respond faithfully to God in their own time. So, Ezekiel could change his prediction, and even admit that he got it wrong, because, finally, the historical prediction was not his message!

What is even more amazing is that the community of faith, perceptive enough to know that this failure was in the Ezekiel tradition, did not attempt to gloss it over or change it to fit some modern ideas of inerrancy and the absolute infallibility of prophetic prediction to fit within a certain view of how God orders the world. In other words, the community of faith who collected together Ezekiel’s writings and oracles saw no problem in preserving this failure, even though they most likely knew about the criteria in Deuteronomy (18:22). They saw no problem because, I suggest, they understood that “prediction of the future” is not primarily what a prophet does, is not the final or only or most important test of a prophet of God, and because they had no need to establish or maintain any dimension of inerrancy.

And the important fact is, Ezekiel was right! He was not right about all of his historical predictions. But he was right in that the message he proclaimed about the nation of Israel, its responsibilities to God, and the consequences of their failure to respond to God in faithfulness was proven true in the flow of history (which is the heart of the Deuteronomy 18 passage). That is, the community could look back at Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, and understand that they had faithfully borne witness to God, even though virtually no one listened to them at the time. They knew that not every historical prediction, or even most of them, directly corresponded to some specific historical event. But the community understood Ezekiel’s proclamation about God and His work with humanity, as they verified it in their own historical experience, to be a faithful witness to God.

There are other examples of prophecy that could be used here. And there are other theological implications of this particular sequence. But perhaps this is enough to evoke some thought about how we develop views of Scripture, and prophecy in particular, that takes seriously the evidence within Scripture itself.

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Copyright © 2011, Dennis Bratcher, All Rights Reserved

Unless otherwise attributed, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

What did Jesus believe about the accuracy of Scripture? As a part of our discipleship, we who seek to follow the Lord Jesus desire to believe what He believed. It would be odd for one to claim, on the one hand, to be devoted to Jesus as Lord and, on the other hand, to simply set aside as false or irrelevant a view that, arguably, Jesus believed and taught. Even if we fall short of actually believing what Jesus did with the assurance He believed it, it is surely our aim to grow in conforming our beliefs to His.

Nowhere is this more important than Jesus’ belief about Holy Scripture. If we can ascertain Jesus’ bibliology, we should do all we can to make it our own. With that in mind, I want to do two things in this two-part series:

• Clarify Jesus’ view of Scripture

• Show how I would defend it as true in the broader, secular context

I cannot do justice to this topic in the space I have, but bear with me as I try to offer a simple but, hopefully, not simplistic summary of a massive topic.

JESUS’ VIEW OF SCRIPTURE

It is no accident that for nearly 2,000 years the church has believed and taught what is called a verbal, plenary view of the Bible’s inspiration. Most of us are familiar with the more recent term, “inerrancy,” but the concept is quite old.

The church has taught that verbal, plenary inspiration is what one discovers upon close inspection of Jesus’ own teachings about Scripture. When we say the Bible is verbally inspired, we mean that the inspiration of God does not reside in the general ideas of Scripture. Rather, it goes so deep that the very choice of words (in the original Greek and Hebrew text) is inspired. When we say the Bible is plenarily inspired, we mean that every part of the Bible is equally authoritative. Thus, for example, the books of Moses or the Gospels are not more inspired and authoritative than Nehemiah or the book of James. Here is a definition of this view:

The inspiration of Scripture is God’s superintending of human authors so that by using their own individual personalities, they wrote without error in the original text His revelation — His inspired truth.

Inspiration implies inerrancy (that is, included in what the Bible teaches about its own inspiration is the idea that the Bible is inerrant — inerrancy is part of what it means to say the Bible is inspired). To claim that the Bible is inerrant is to claim that, when properly interpreted, everything the Bible teaches to be true is true. The Bible contains no errors, including errors of fact, ethics or doctrine.

This definition comports well with three aspects of Jesus’ implicit and explicit view of Scripture. First, Jesus held that Scripture’s assertions are true. This is nicely illustrated in two texts. John 10:35, NIV says “the Scripture cannot be broken.” In context this means that it cannot be found to assert a falsehood.

Jesus is arguing that if people in Old Testament times were called gods (in the sense of judges who stood in God’s place), then the people should not react if Jesus (who is greater than people who served as judges in Old Testament times) calls himself the Son of God. He should be given the chance to clarify and demonstrate His claim. Now His argument depends on the fact that in ancient days people were really called gods in the limited sense just mentioned. He is confident of this because Scripture says so (cf. Psalm 82:6) and “Scripture cannot be broken;” if it says something happened, it happened.

The underlying assumption is that everything Scripture asserts is true.

Similarly, Jesus taught that all (each and every) things taught about Him had to happen (Luke 18:31; 24:44). Why all of them and why did they have to happen? The underlying assumption is that everything Scripture asserts is true. Thus, Jesus can simply claim, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Jesus did not believe the Bible is completely exhaustive — that it contains all the truth we can know about God, the creation, morals, the family and so forth. For example, He thought we could learn about God by observing the sun and rain (Matthew 5:44-45). Nor did Jesus believe all commands of Scripture were equally weighty; there are, He said, lesser and weightier matters of the Law (Matthew 23:23). But Jesus did believe all teachings of Scripture were equally true.

TO THE LAST LETTER

Second, Jesus held that inspiration characterizes Scripture down to its morphemes — the smallest units of language that convey meaning. For example, the ‘a’ in ‘atheism’ is a morpheme — it’s a prefix that conveys a specific meaning. Thus, inspiration is not a mere feature of paragraphs, sentences or the general drift of a passage. Within the proper framework of interpretation, the very words themselves (in the original Hebrew and Greek texts) were inspired.

In the heat of theological debate, Jesus defended views in which His entire case turned on an implicit tense of a verb. For example, see Matthew 22:32 where Jesus emphasizes that God IS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so they must still be alive in the afterlife. He was arguing against the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. This is why Jesus did not say that God WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which would allow for the fact that God is no longer their God since, according to the view of the Sadducees, they are now extinct.

The choice of a single word is also crucial. In Matthew 22:43-45 Jesus focuses on David’s use of the word “Lord” to refer to the Messiah, the Son of David, implying that the Messiah would be greater than David himself because the Messiah was the Lord God Himself.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that even the smallest letter or stroke of God’s Word would be fulfilled (found to be true). The smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet is a yodh, roughly equivalent to the size of a comma when compared to ordinary letters in English. A stroke was tiny little dash mark that distinguished a Hebrew “r” from a “d.” These are morphemes in Hebrew.

EQUALLY INSPIRED

Finally, Jesus held a plenary view of inspiration (that is, that all the components of the Old Testament were equally inspired). This set Him apart from some (for example, the Sadducees) who accepted only the inspiration of the Books of Moses and others who held that the Law was more inspired than, say, the prophets. Not so for Jesus.

In Luke 24:44 Jesus uses a widely employed threefold division to refer to the inspired canon of Scripture — “the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms” — a canon that includes the 39 books of the Protestant Bible and excludes Intertestamental writings. However, in Matthew 5:17-19 Jesus uses an odd, lesser-used phrase to refer to the same canon — “the Law or (not and) the Prophets.” In so doing, Jesus means to place the “Prophets” (the rest of the Old Testament) on an equal footing with the Books of Moses.

YET TO COME

As we can see, Jesus taught Scripture and believed it to be true. But how can we respond to and argue this viewpoint in a way that is effective and non-circular? [see #35473 for part 2]

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J.P. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and director of Eidos Christian Center.

Copyright © 2007 J.P. Moreland. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Bart Ehrman’s career is testament to the fact that no one can slice and dice a belief system more surgically than someone who grew up inside it. Raised as a not particularly devout Episcopalian in 1950s Kansas, the best-selling Bible scholar had a “born-again” experience as a high school sophomore and asked Jesus into his heart. Eager to study Holy Scripture full-time, he entered the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago -- motto: “Moody Bible Institute, where BIBLE is our middle name” -- where every professor and student had to sign a statement attesting that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, a divinely inspired document from its first page (Genesis 1:1) to its last (Revelation 22:21).

But almost immediately, Ehrman ran into a problem. It was an intellectual problem at first, but it soon became larger and harder to quarantine. In one of the first classes he took at Moody, he learned that none of the original texts of the New Testament exist. All we have are copies, made years later -- usually, many CENTURIES later. In fact, the copies are copies of copies, and they’re filled with errors or intentional changes made over decades or centuries by scribes. Burning with fervor to discover the true word of God, the authentic divine voice that had been obscured or changed by all-too-human writers, Ehrman decided to begin a serious study of the New Testament. He completed his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College, where he began studying ancient Greek, the original language of the New Testament. But there was still no answer to his original question: How could we know what the word of God was if all we had were error-riddled copies?

So Ehrman decided to plunge all the way in and immerse himself in the academic study of the texts of the New Testament. He entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, home to the world’s leading authority in the field, Bruce Metzger. His literalist faith in and his devotional approach to the Bible were under increasing strain, but he managed to hold onto them for a while -- until a professor jotted a casual comment on one of Ehrman’s papers. Ehrman was attempting to explain a passage from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus refers to an event that took place “when Abiathar was the high priest.” The problem is that the book in the Old Testament that Jesus is referring to states that not Abiathar but his father Ahimelech was the high priest. Ehrman came up with a convoluted argument to reconcile the contradiction, using Greek etymology to prove that Mark did not mean what he apparently said. Ehrman believed that his professor, a beloved and pious scholar named Cullen Story, would appreciate his argument as a fellow believer in biblical inerrancy.

Story’s response, Ehrman wrote in his best-selling 2005 book “Misquoting Jesus,” “went straight through me.” “Maybe,” Story scrawled at the end of Ehrman’s paper, “Mark just made a mistake.”

Story’s comment proved fatal for Ehrman’s belief that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. Realizing that his own argument was unconvincing, he was forced to acknowledge that yes, maybe Mark DID make a mistake. “Once I made that admission, the floodgates opened,” Ehrman wrote. “For if there could be one little, picayune mistake in Mark 2, maybe there could be mistakes in other places as well. Maybe, when Jesus says later in Mark 4 that ‘the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds on the earth,’ maybe I don’t need to come up with a fancy explanation for how the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds when I know full well it isn’t. And maybe these ‘mistakes’ apply to bigger issues. Maybe when Mark says that Jesus was crucified the day AFTER the Passover meal was eaten (Mark 14:12, 15:25) and John says he died the day BEFORE it was eaten (John 19:14) -- maybe that is a genuine difference.”

The dike of Ehrman’s literalist belief had been breached, and no divine intervention would turn back the floodwaters. He came to believe that the Bible was “a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own understandings, their own theologies ... Mark did not say the same thing that Luke said because he did not mean the same thing as Luke.”

Ehrman’s demolition of biblical literalism in “Misquoting Jesus” is neatly summed up by an anecdote. “Occasionally I see a bumper sticker that reads, ‘God said, it, I believe it, and that settles it.’ My response is always, What if God DIDN’T say it?” A lucid, accessible and entertaining guided tour of biblical scholarship, “Misquoting Jesus” makes it indubitably clear -- unless one simply decides in advance that all logic, scholarship, rules of historical evidence and rational thought do not apply to the Bible -- that God did not “say it.” A bunch of human beings said a lot of different things over hundreds of years, a bunch of other human beings wrote down different versions of what they said, and yet another bunch of human beings decided -- also over hundreds of years -- which of these writings should be part of the Holy Book and which should not. This is simply the historical truth.

A majority of clergy from mainline Protestant denominations are much more likely to identify as liberal than conservative, according to a 2009 in-depth survey.

Almost half (48 percent) of all surveyed clergy from the seven largest mainline denominations say they are liberal while 34 percent identify as conservative. Clergy from United Church of Christ (74 percent) and the Episcopal Church (66 percent) are most likely to say they are liberal.

According to survey results, two-thirds of mainline clergy disagree that “the Bible is the inerrant word of God, both in matters of faith and in historic, geographical, and other secular matters.” Only 29 percent of mainline clergy agree with the statement.

A majority of clergy in every denomination except the American Baptist Churches USA do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, with clergy from the Episcopal Church least likely to believe so.

Other findings:

• 51 percent of all mainline clergy support the legality of abortion in all or most cases

• 65 percent support either same-sex marriage or civil unions

• 54 percent do not support the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public school biology classes

• 43 percent disagree that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life on earth

• 78 percent agree that the federal government should do more to solve social problems

• 67 percent agree that government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes

• 65 percent agree that the U.S. should maintain a strict separation of church and state

• 81 percent say they often publicly expressed their views about hunger and poverty in the last year.