Kudos to John Hobbins for directing attention to the recent thoughts of others (and back here) on this issue. Read John's post, "Breathing New Life Into the Doctrine of Inerrancy" and follow the links.
Editor's note: Content of the blog post is reproduced below, with some broken links removed.
From Breathing New Life into the Doctrine of Inerrancy - Ancient Hebrew Poetry, originally published March 10, 2009.
Breathing New Life into the Doctrine of Inerrancy
It is certainly possible to work out a doctrine of Scripture and avoid the language of inerrancy. It's also possible to develop a soteriology in which justification by faith through grace plays little or no role. The language of the "new birth" may also be left to sappy revivalists, and the language of atonement confined to Fanny Crosby hymns.
But this cannot be the route of a theology which treasures the heritage of the Reformation. It is not the route that the Catholic Church has taken either. With respect to Catholic use of the language of inerrancy, go here and here for details.
Evangelicalism is burdened by the currency it gives to intellectually indefensible definitions of inerrancy. Nonetheless, that same movement remains a place in which God’s Word is a lamp unto the feet of believers, a light unto their path. Too often, practically speaking, this has not been the case in other branches of the Christian movement. Roman Catholics and eastern Christians are not shy, usually, about admitting this. Massive efforts are underway in any case to make the reading of Scripture a constant, not only in collective worship, but in group Bible study and personal devotion. If we set to one side the tendency of some Christians to privilege a reading of the Bible based on a hermeneutics of suspicion (I hasten to add that there is a place for that, but it does not have to crowd out reading the Bible in faith, hope, and love), there is an almost universal consensus that Scripture is the norma normans of Christian thought and practice, the norm which norms all other norms.
Online, I would point readers to excellent posts on the topic by Michael Pahl and Michael Bird. Michael Heiser has dedicated great energy to developing a reasoned doctrine of scripture. Chris Tilling has explained why "inerrancy" is a doctrine to uphold, in a theologically and intellectually compelling version. Peter Enns has blogged about inerrancy and argued for a qualified use of that language. I have agreements and disagreements with each of the above authors. Two things are certain: they are asking the right questions, and their proposals deserve careful consideration.
In the tradition of the church before rationalism seeped into the groundwater of the debate, the language of inerrancy was doxological first of all. It is praise-language for the words of life God gives, identified with the words of scripture. This is clear, for example, in the writings of Zwingli. These words of the reformer of Zurich deserve to be more widely-known:
Finally, we conclude in the hopes of giving an answer to one and all objections – this is our opinion: that the word of God is to be held by us in the highest honor – by word of God is alone meant, what comes from God’s Spirit – and no word should be accorded the same faith as this one. For it is certain, it cannot err, it is clear, it does not let us go errant in the darkness, it is its own interpreter and enlightens the human soul with all salvation and all grace, makes it confident in God, humbles it, so that it abandons and throws away its pretensions, and places itself in God's hands. In it, it lives; toward it, it turns. It doubts all creatures, and God alone is its trust and security. Without it, it has no rest, and in it alone it finds rest. (German here, with discussion).
The example of Zwingli demonstrates - though his approach to the nexus between Word and Spirit has problems of its own – that the doxological use, not just of inerrancy language, but of other forms of "love-language" for scripture, is the sign of a healthy theology, full of comfort and praise.
Examples of praise-language in reference to the word of God are numerous in Scripture. Isaiah 55 and Psalms 19 and 119 make excellent points of departure.
To the oft-repeated question: what do we do with the appalling passages in the Bible, Psalm 137 for example, with its desire for revenge? How is it the word of God for the people of God? I’ve suggested how before. In some ways, the best avenue of approach to Psalm 137 is through Bialik’s “On the Slaughter,” as I discuss here.
There really are cogent reasons for retaining the language of inerrancy and qualifying it properly. It makes no sense to set aside traditional vocabulary because it is subject to misunderstanding. If that is a sufficient reason, let's do away with other traditional frameworks of understanding, such as justification, atonement, the Lordship of Christ, predestination, the Trinity . . .
Oh wait: all this and more is just what some people think the doctor ordered.
For a Christian, this amounts to giving up one's birthright for a mess of Unitarian pottage. It is also, I dare say, a sign of intellectual laziness. Every generation has to appropriate and re-contextualize the language of the classical tradition. That includes, it seems to me, the language of inerrancy.
This post is in response to a recent post by James McGrath. Thank you, James, for not letting go of this topic.
March 10, 2009 | Permalink
Thanks michael.
and.. Google Chrome trumps Firefox :)…. notwithstanding some “IE ONLY” sites