One of the latest wave-making academic books within evangelicalism is Kenton L. Sparks’s God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008).
Today the Old Testament Department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School had a stimulating “brown bag seminar” for an hour during lunch to discuss this book. I left that meeting thanking God for Trinity’s gifted OT faculty.
- Dennis Magary moderated.
- Dick Averbeck summarized and evaluated.
- James Hoffmeier summarized and evaluated.
- Willem VanGemeren summarized and evaluated.
- Lawson Younger offered comments.
- John Monson (who was friends with Peter Enns while they both studied at Harvard) offered comments.
I don’t feel at liberty to publish my notes or their handouts online, but suffice it to say that the OT faculty agrees that Sparks’s book is deeply flawed and dangerous. (I’m paraphrasing, not directly quoting.)
Sparks uncritically accepts critical views and is overconfident in his conclusions while severely criticizing evangelicals like D. A. Carson, Robert Yarbrough, Kevin Vanhoozer, and James Hoffmeier. Sparks takes the debate beyond Peter Enns’s Inspiration and Incarnation. The book’s subtitle should not include the word “evangelical”: God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.
More reviews of this book are forthcoming. (For example, look for one by Bob Yarbrough in the next issue of Themelios.) Here are a couple of others already published:
- The enthusiastic RBL review by Arthur Boulet, an M.A. student at Westminster Theological Seminary and an ardent supporter of Peter Enns, is sad. A sharp friend of mine who is working on a PhD elsewhere emailed me this after reading it: “This review makes me want to cry. May God grant grace.”
- The review by Kevin Bauder is a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Updates:
1. S. M. Baugh reviewed Sparks’s book for Reformation21 in August 2008.
2. Gary L. W. Johnson comments on Sparks’s book in the introduction to Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (ed. Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald L. Gleason; Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 23n21:
Sparks in particular paints contemporary defenders of inerrancy in very unflattering colors. Old Testament scholars such as R. K. Harrison, Gleason Archer, and E. J. Young are accused of sticking their heads in the sand to avoid dealing with the real issues raised by critical Old Testament scholars (133ff ) while New Testament scholars such as D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo are said to be guilty of deliberately dodging the issues of New Testament critics (167). Even greater disdain is heaped on Carl Henry, who had the misfortune of simply being a theologian and not a biblical scholar (138). However, the most reprehensible aspect of Sparks’s work is the facile labeling of all defenders of inerrancy as Cartesian foundationalists. Sparks declares Cornelius Van Til, and his presuppositional apologetics, to be Cartesian because Van Til underscored the importance of certainty, which to Sparks’s way of thinking automatically makes one a Cartesian (45). If that is the case, then we must place not only the Reformers and the church fathers in that category, but Christ and the apostles as well! Van Til was no Cartesian. His apologetical approach was rooted in classic Reformed theology, especially in the Dutch tradition of Kuyper and Bavinck, stretching back to the noted Dutch Protestant scholastic Peter Van Mastricht (1630–1706), who was an outspoken critic of all things Cartesian. As Richard Muller notes, “Mastricht’s consequent stress on the necessity of revelation for Christian theology (theology defined as ‘living before God in and through Christ’ or as the wisdom leading to that end) led to an adamant resistance to Cartesian thought with its method of radical doubt and its insistence on the primacy of autonomy of the mind in all matters of judgment.” Richard Muller, “Giving Direction to Theology: The Scholastic Dimension,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 28 (June 1985), 185.
3. Robert W. Yarbrough, “The Embattled Bible: Four More Books,” Themelios 24 (2009): 6–25.
4. A Book-Length Response to Kent Sparks
5. “Scripture: How the Bible Is a Book Like No Other,” in Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day 
(ed. Kevin DeYoung; Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 59–69.
cbovell:
That’s just it. Without a sturdy view of inerrancy there is no reliable Christ or gospel of Christ left for anyone to believe in. Nothing is left. On the contrary, the more the Spirit of Jesus works to transform us, making us childlike (a prerequisite for entering the kingdom), the less inclined we are to accuse Scripture of unreliability and the more inclined we become to humbly bow, worship, and learn. My prayer is that those who embrace this departure from inerrancy and lead others astray would turn and become children again. Remember Lucy, who alone could see Aslan when her more sophisticated siblings couldn’t?
“Without a sturdy view of inerrancy there is no reliable Christ or gospel of Christ left for anyone to believe in.”
There is a huge jump in this line of reasoning. You should read my book, the jump is a non sequitur. It should not take a non-evangelical to point this out to people.
First, I note no direct response to most of what I observed. That’s your prerogative, of course.
But — yet another invitation to read your book(s)! An incautious soul might get the impression that this is your major concern! Although, it’s odd — you say that concern over rejecting God’s Word as God’s Word is making a mountain out of a molehill. Such a trivial matter, then, hardly warrants the purchase of a whole book on the subject.
As I’ve already said, and said, no doubt your breathlessly-presented tomes are The Latest Assured Scientific Findings on the Errancy of the Bible — as has been every seduction to defection since the Serpent’s first monograph on The Insufficiency and Errancy of the Verba Dei.
As has been every attempt since, during their passing crazes.
The only difference: instead of hiding behind Marcion and Bultmann and Kant, you doubtless cite Stecknadelkopf and Ungläubiger and Bosh.
For my part, I’ll answer in the words of Spurgeon, from An All-round Ministry:
“I am frequently told that I ought to examine at length the various new views which are so continually presented. I decline the invitation; I can smell them, and that satisfies me. I perceive in them nothing which glorifies God or magnifies Christ, but much that puffs up human nature, and I protest that the smell is enough for me.”
Kent and Carlos,
I read both of your books as well as that of Peter Enns, and to put it bluntly, I was not impressed. I briefly interact with all three in B. B. Warfield: Essays on His Life and Thought (P&R, 2007) and Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservatives and The Emerging Church (Crossway, 2008). I am contributing a chapter to a forthcoming book that is due out in early 2010 that will go into greater detail. I am amazed that Sparks continues to stubbornly stand by his incredible claims about what constitutes Cartesianism. As VanTil would have pointed out, Sparks’s presuppositional affinities are so entrenched that he cannot subject them to revision even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary!
Dan:
I am not sure what I you expected me to respond to. You ask whether what I say is inerrant. I am happy to say no, it is not. I am not sure what that admission gains you. You mention that Jeremiah, God and Augustine have proven me wrong. I am not sure how they have done that or what you mean by saying that they have. You mention me saying “hath God said” as if every time this is ever asked that it’s some demonic impulse. I’d say we have a responsibility to investigate whether God has really said something and that we should do so at every opportunity we get. And if he has said something, how has he really said it and what does he mean when he says it? These are all very good and important questions to ask. Good-standing believers can ask these questions humbly, seriously and honestly in good conscience without being accused of “aping the serpent.”
GLW:
Might I respectfully ask how you were able to interact with Kent and myself briefly in a publication that predates the release of either of our monographs?
Dan,
If you want to criticize my book, then get a copy and read it carefully, considering its arguments a possibilities. You can get a copy from a library if you’re concerned that I might profit from your purchase.
I do wish that I had the time to endlessly debate issues on blogs, but few of us (save GLW!) have the time for that.
Kent
Dan:
About the Spurgeon quote, I understand that everyone has to pick which battles they are going to fight and perhaps this is not one you really want to get involved with. But to bandy the quote about as a general principle, a principle of pride no less, runs the serious risk of promoting anti-intellectualism and obscurantism among its adherents.
I was away from the internet for the weekend, but I did want to come back and comment on the what Carlos and Kent said to me on Friday.
Carlos objected to Scripture setting the ground rules for which interpretations are in and which are out of bounds. Why is this an unsupportable inference? Scripture regularly tells me what is in and what is out of bounds. Murder is out. Helping those in need is in. If Scripture can rule on behavior, why can it not rule on thought?
Now Kent’s response to this question is that the Bible has errors in it. So even if it bluntly asserted inerrancy, the readers would still need to evaluate that claim.
With this approach, how does one avoid setting himself up as an autonomous judge over God’s word? How does one avoid the serpentine “Has God really said?” How does one obey the commands of Proverbs 3:5-7?
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:5-7).
How does one confidently pray the promises of God like Peter in Acts 4?
“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit. . .” (Acts 4:24-25)?
To be sure there are Bible difficulties, but why should I presume that my failure to understand how they can be resolved means that Scripture is in error? This seems to take far to much upon oneself.
The review cited in the original post as a “breath of fresh air” assumes that the “appearance of age” in creation is only an “appearance” because the Bible tells us God created everything in six days. This is used as an analogy for scripture: even though it “appears” that human beings constructed scripture in human fashion over time, that “appearance” is wrong.
To me, this is the “sad” review. After all, we have to use the same human senses and the same human reason to figure out what we think the Bible says as we do to figure out how old the universe is or how the Biblical texts came to be. In the guise of offering certainty, this Omphalos perspective offers us a world in which anything could be “apparrent,” merely an illusion — including our perceptions about what the Bible is and what it says! Defenders of hyper-innerrancy aren’t preserving anything by advancing such arguments; rather, they’re eroding the epistemic basis of any human knowledge, including about God.
Brian:
I am still persuaded that everyone has to ask “Has God really said?” This must be an example that carries considerable cultural leverage among conservative evangelicals for Dan above similarly said I was “aping the serpent” by asking “Has God really said?” …as if I’m treading where a sensible Christian would not dare to go. But I’m afraid that whatever rhetoric lies behind the “Has God really said?” question is completely lost on me.
Everyone asks similar questions of a text when they read it and the Bible does not answer many of the questions asked of it. I gave the example above that scripture should interpret itself is not a dictate of scripture. Conservative believers are told to infer such a principle but when they do so they are inquiring into what God has said and HOW he has said it, much the same way I am. Some of these believers convince themselves it is more pious and faithful to say that scripture should be allowed to interpret scripture and some go on to say that God tells them that scripture should interpret scripture. But scripture doesn’t speak to such matters. In my book, I argue that scripture fails as an arbiter of these and other matter on several specific occasions.
So I’d like to say one last thing here and I’ll be off: it seems to me not a little contrived to tell people that scripture should always interpret scripture except when we ask the question of how we should intrepret scripture (because scripture doesn’t say anything about how we are supposed to be doing that).
Grace and peace.
Carlos,
But how does one avoid the serpentine “Has God really said?” In other words, even granting the appropriateness of asking the bare question, how does your approach avoid asking the question in a serpentine manner? Surely you would admit it is possible to ask the question in an inappropriate way.
Another way of stating the same thing is to ask the first question I posed in my immediately preceding comment: “With this approach, how does one avoid setting himself up as an autonomous judge over God’s word?”
(I’m interested in the answers to that question as well as to the others posed above.)
You assert that we are forced to infer that Scripture sets boundaries on which interpretations are admissible and which are not. It is true that we don’t have a statement in Scripture that says, “The Bible has no errors.”
But we do have 2 Peter 1:19-21:
“We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
It is hard to conclude from this passage that the human authors of Scripture wrote anything other than what God intended. Thus Peter is able to say in Acts 4 that God spoke through the mouth of David by the Holy Spirit. And the author of Hebrews is able to say of words from Psalm 95, “The Holy Spirit says” (Heb. 3:7). We truly have God’s word in human words. And because they are God’s words in human words, they are trustworthy words (Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18; John 17:17).
If they were not trustworthy words, then why are they repeatedly treated as trustworthy by other Scripture writers, and by Jesus himself?
I grant that, as in all systematic theology, logical connections are being made, and conclusions are drawn from observing a number of Scripture passages.
But how do you understand these passages differently? And in understanding differently how do you avoid autonomous thinking?
As to your final point, I’m not sure I follow you. I do think that Scripture should always interpret Scripture including when we ask the question of how we should interpret Scripture.
None of these pericopes say nothing about inerrancy. They say that scriptures can be trusted. Trusted for what? Certainly not for inerrancy. Inerrancy is not in view. We are the ones who are bringing inerrancy to the table and claiming that they are consistent with what it is written. But that’s not the same as claiming that inerrancy IS what is written. It’s not, not the word, not the concept. Now inerrancy can possibly be inferred, but errancy might also be inferred.
I’m not sure what the charge about autonomous thinking is supposed to accomplish. There’s a hermeneutical decision to make and anyone who makes it should take into account all considerations that they are privy to. Everyone’s autonomous here. Even people who think they are only listening to scripture are listening to their pre-understanding and their cultural expectations. Just because the inerrantist side likes to call everyone else autonomous doesn’t mean that they haven’t made a hermeneutical judgment all the same just like everyone else does who has given thought to this problem. I’m also inclined to say that there’s a very serpentine way of REFUSING to ask, Has God said?
My final point was simply that although you do think scripture should always interpret scripture, that very hermeneutical principle is not given by scripture. So the hermeneutical judgment which should be taken from scripture according to your procedure turns out to be extra-biblical.
Listen, although I want very much to continue this discussion. I have a lot of work that I have to get back to. I’ll probably stop back to read yours and others’ comments, but I’ll have to phase out of the conversation myself. I laid out a lot of what I think about inerrancy in my book. Maybe you can check it out of your library and peruse it.
All the best.
David Opderbeck has it exactly right. If all of the scientific evidence shows that the earth is really old and live emerged over the course of a long process, then we’ll simply have to believe it and try to understand how that fits with Scripture. Similarly, if Scripture really seems to be filled with all sorts of “apparent” human diversity, that’s probably a clue from God about the kind of book he’s given us.
As for the discussion between Carlos and Brian, I’d have to say that this whole issue of “authonomous” reading is a red herring. All readers interpret the texts they read. And to interpret is nothing other than passing a judgment on what the text says and means. So Brian, and Carlos and Kent–and everyone else–passes “judgment” on Scripture. Hopefully, we do it well … but sometimes we don’t. I don’t God holds us culpable for innocent mistakes in reading … but if we twist Scripture to our own ends, then I suspect we’ll be culpable.
The epiphany for me (I mean that literally!) was … a shock really … when I realized that I was twisting Scripture all over the place to “prove” my view of inerrancy. The NIV translators did this often, rendering texts in ways that have no relation whatever to the Hebrew or Greek text itself. A particularly egregious example is Gen 2:19, which turns God’s creation of the animals into a past event by using a plupurfect (“the animals that God had made”), which is great violence to the Hebrew that just preceeded the sentence with an imperfect: “God said … I WILL make for him [the man] a helper corresponding to him.” He then makes the animals and finds that these do not correspond, at which point he makes the woman. So, though its quite true that the perfect can sometimes be translated as a pluperfect in Hebrew, one simply can’t do it on the heals of an imperfect that introduces the perfect action.
Obviously, the motive of the translators was to remove the contradiction between the order of creation in Gen 1 and Gen 2. But paradoxically, they only managed to achieve it by ignoring what God has actually written.
My point: everyone’s in the business of telling God what he should be saying at some point or other. Be we should try to avoid it as much as possible.
I need to go do work, but I can’t seem to get away. I’ve been thinking about your question about how to tell whether one is being too critical about the Bible. Well, I think this is going to depend and be a person by person scenario. It’s like asking how do you know whether one is an alcoholic. A lot of conservatives think that no believer should ever drink. Why? Because drinking leads to alcoholism. Some go so far as to root this kind of thinking in scripture by claiming that Jesus never drank. Now I think this is a pretty good analogy. There is no reason to declare that all people everywhere should never have any alcohol because alcohol can lead to alcoholism. Some people can drink without a problem and some can even drink with benefits (to their cardiovascular, etc.) Now if someone can’t handle the pressure of not knowing how many drinks is too many so they decide not to drink at all, should they be able to mandate that everyone everywhere should never drink ever, just because that person can’t handle the precariousness of being permitted to drink under the auspices of personal judgment?
Inerrancy is the equivalent of the no drinks anywhere at anytime position. Inerrantists are afraid to drink because there is no hard and fast way to tell whether one is an alcoholic or not and drinking habits are going to differ from person to person. What do you think of this analogy?
Hi Carlos et al.
I think that in the end, one has to decide whether the Bible was given through a normal, finite, fallen human horizon or was somehow given in a way that insulated the Bible from this. Obviously, I think that the evidence–philosophical, theological and biblical–is overwhelmingly on the side of a VERY human Bible. Jesus, too, was VERY human, but in the case of the Bible we’re not dealing with the sinless savior … we’re dealing with the good but sinful Paul et al.
Once I admit that the Bible speaks from an everyday human horizon, then I can no longer put the brakes on what it might contain. After all, the Bible does tell the Israelites to “Kill the Canaanites”–men, women, children, animals!–because the Canaanites have the wrong religion and might influence Israel. If that can get into the Bible, then there’s no end to what it might contain …
Scripture is divinely given insight received by and passed on by finite, fallen human authors to finite, fallen human readers … Nothing more, nothing less … but plenty good enough.
Show of hands:
How many really don’t see a difference between questioning whether a truth-claim is really a Biblical assertion (as every Christian/inerrantist is bound to do), and challenging the truthfulness of Scripture itself?
Errancy means that Scripture contains, teaches, and affirms error, or it means nothing.
Actually, I think what I already said proactively anticipated everything that followed.
But what the heck, let’s have one more show of hands: how many see Charles Spurgeon as an ignorant obscurantist anti-intellectual? I mean, who actually know anything about Spurgeon?
For purposes of clarity, I should add that my book DOES defend a version of inerrancy, but it distinguishes between divine errors (which I take as impossible, by definition) and human errors (which I take as inevitable, by definition). My approach is based on insights gleaned from classical Christian sources (patristics and Calvin) as well as from modern philosophy (especially, postmodern practical realism).
Under no circumstances do I allow that God errs in Scripture.
So, to respond a bit to Dan’s comment that “Errancy means that Scripture contains, teaches, and affirms error, or it means nothing.” I agree with Dan, but the problem is that Dan conflats God with Scripture’s human authors. It is possible–as has long been recognized in Christian theology–for the Bible to reflect human errors that are God’s accommodations to human frailty, in which case God himself does not err.
Some evangelicals can disagree with this, but they will be disagreeing with lots of church fathers and John Calvin.
(BTW, it is customary [in my experience] for GLW Johnson to show up at this point and argue that Calvin said no such thing. This is because he badly misreads Calvin, in a way that is foreign to Calvin and to scholars who know his work well. Read Calvin for yourself in his Genesis commentary).
Carlos, I think the analogy underestimates the seriousness of the questions posed. The concern is not merely there is the possibility of someone getting a bit tipsy. The concern is that you know some, in fact most, of the drinks have been laced with a colorless, tasteless poison that will make you gravely ill. Now you think you can safely pick out the glasses without the poison and enjoy the drink. The rest of us think that pretty foolish. And what’s more, we’re trying to tell you that, in fact, all the drinks have been laced with the poison.
Kent, while the Bible makes clear that humans wrote the Scripture, it regularly assigns what they say to God or to the Holy Spirit or even to “Scripture says.” What Scriptural warrant do you have for putting asunder what God has united? I can handle disagreeing with the Fathers (though I greatly enjoy reading them) and even from Calvin on occasion (though, having read a fair bit of Calvin, including a good bit of his Genesis commentary, I’m going to side with GLWJ on that one), but I have a hard time disagreeing with the Scripture. Are Scripture’s claims that when Scripture speaks, God speaks another instance of error in Scripture?
Dan — what I find frustrating about the point you raise is what seems to me an element of prevaracation in many presuppositional inerrantist readings of the Bible. Take something like Lev. 11, which asserts, incorrectly, that rabbits chew the cud.
If you approach this text with the presupposition of strict inerrancy, you have to say something like, “well, this text isn’t really intending to teach that rabbits chew the cud. It’s intending to teach that the Hebrews should eat rabbits, which appear to them to be cud-chewers.” The statement about rabbits chewing the cud is phenomenological, just like statements about the sun “rising” or “setting,” and thus isn’t “error” — after all, one can’t be in “error” when describing how something appears to him / herself.
Really? Or at this point are you just making stuff up to justify a presupposition that isn’t borne out by the evidence?
In any event, be consistent. Perhaps it’s also not “error” for a redactor to incorporate source texts into the canonical text that “appear” accurate to the redactor but are in fact incorrect given modern historiographic or scientific knowledge. There doesn’t seem to be any principled reason to allow one form of inaccurate phenomenological observation and not an analogous inaccurate observation about the apparent veracity of a source text.
In this sense, I think the hermeneutical tactics strict inerrantists have to employ really do collapse into the accomodationist approach. The strict inerrantist simply moves the goalposts concerning what “error” ordinarily means.
Brian:
I don’t think that there’s poison here at all. The poison talk is part of a mythic storyline that keeps coming up in our discussion. Some of the commentators here on this site keep wanting to introduce poison and danger to the discussion of inerrancy, but in my view, God is much bigger than any errors that we may find in the Bible; his status as God is not in jeopardy just because we find errors in scripture. He does not die because scripture is not inerrant, and neither do we, the faith still survives, God still loves us. It’s conservative evangelical culture (and not the Holy Spirit) that promulgates this myth about poison and danger to help draw social boundaries and preserve cultural identity. To my mind one’s belief about scripture should never be what people depend on to stay in the faith. That seems to me to make scripture into god, a construal that inerrantists incessantly disavow.
Lots of inerrantists like to make it out so that everything is on the line over the inerrancy question, a bit of spiritual scare tactics if you ask me, but this all-or-nothing gambit is not necessary and can actually be hurtful to a lot of good people who are just trying to figure out what’s a good way to understand what scripture is and what scripture is trying to do for Christians. I think all the poison talk evinces a needless fear that enacts a superficial taboo where there ought not be one.
Kent:
That part about scripture not corresponding to Jesus but rather corresponding to Paul is one of the most helpful things I’ve ever been taught. Steve Taylor recommended such a view in his NT Intro class. I have always found this helpful.
Brian,
Jesus is both divine and human, and those two natures do not “mix.” Do we agree? With that in mind, what does Scripture mean when it says that Jesus didn’t know when the end would come, and that he “grew in wisdom and stature?”
Kent
Brian,
Just to make my previous comment clear, I am about to make a point in response to your comment “What Scriptural warrant do you have for putting asunder what God has united?” I do not put what is united asunder. However, my understanding of the unity is different from yours and,I would argue, more orthodox as an understanding of the relationship between humanity and divinity.
I am quite reluctant to use the incarnation as a model for scripture, but if I were to try I think there is ample room for two seemingly contradictory traits such as those (I think) Kent is proposing: “as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten.” To paraphrase for our purposes: as regards its divine inspiration there are no errors in scripture, but yet as regards its human authorship there are errors.
Indeed, Carlos, I think that you are right. As I point out in my book, the incarnational analogy does not work precisely. However, there is much to be learned from the incarnation itself (as the union of the divine and human) that helps us understanding the “union” present in Scripture. But I would like to see Brian’s response before I follow up with that.
As for your summary of the situation, I agree with you … no divine errors, but human errors.
Kent
So, Kent who determines the wheat from the chaff in the Bible? What is the criteria one uses to do this? Is there a canon within the canon? In addition to being an authority on Descarte you are also one on Calvin as well? Hmmm.
Kent,
I’m not sure the incarnation is a good model to explain the divine and human authorship of Scripture. There is too much difference. The union of two natures in one person is very different than human authors working under the superintendence of God so that the words can be said both to be the work of the human and to be breathed out by God.
If I were forced to make use of the incarnational analogy, however, I would draw an analogy between Jesus’ sinlessness and the inerrancy of the text. If I was forced to draw a parallel between Jesus growing in wisdom and stature, I suppose I would point to the progressive nature of revelation.
But, as I said, I’m not sure the analogy is super helpful. What confuses me is when people appeal to it as if it settles the issue of inerrancy.
Also, I’m not clear on how you aren’t denying the Scripture claim that when Scripture speaks God speaks.
Again, I’m waiting for what’s new — other than the attempt to prostitute the word “evangelical.” But even that’s not new.
Trying to enlist the fathers and Calvin against the inerrancy of Scripture? Yeah… like Rogers and Kim did, 25 years ago. FAIL.
Alluding to the Incarnation, as if that somehow favors inerrancy? To make your case, you must prove that Jesus taught and affirmed untruth, deception, error. Do that, and you both win your case, and discredit Jesus as Truth incarnate. FAIL.
So what burden would I rather bear? The (I gather) horrible and crushing existential burden of trying to figure out precisely what Moses meant by “chew the cud”?
Or matching my spiritual and moral judgment against that of the Lord Jesus, who insisted on the complete truthfulness and divine authority of all of Scripture, while at the same time trying to call myself in any meaningful sense a Christian?
Quite a conundrum!
(Not.)
Hi Brian,
I wasn’t drawing the analogy. I was asking a theological question. To repeat:
Jesus is both divine and human, and those two natures do not “mix.” Do we agree? With that in mind, what does Scripture mean when it says that Jesus didn’t know when the end would come, and that he “grew in wisdom and stature?”
Kent
Hi Dan:
“Trying to enlist the fathers and Calvin against the inerrancy of Scripture? Yeah… like Rogers and Kim did, 25 years ago. FAIL.”
Rogers and Kim misunderstood certain things that Calvin said and misrepresented him as a supporter of errancy. In fact, Calvin was an inerrantist, as am I. The point of my book is that Calvin’s view of inerrancy (and mine) are different from what post-Cartesian inerrancy usually entails. The major difference is that Calvin allowed for accommodated human errors in discrete cases, whereas I would simply say that all human viewpoints (even the best) are in some ways errant.
But in the end, I doubt that either of us is matching our spiritual wisdom against Jesus. Hopefully, both of us are trying to understand his wisdom so that we can think and live accordingly. You are free to disagree with me, but were I you, I would not get into the business of judging the spiritual dispositions of other people. Remember, in any theological debate, either of us might turn out to be Job’s friends …
GLW:
We are in very different places and have had this conversation elsewhere. But for the benefit of others …
If you’ve read my book and understood it, then you’ll know that you’re question isn’t even possible in my theology. All of Scripture is God’s word, not parts of it. But indeed, parts of it are not his final word but only provisional insofar as they are adjusted or replaced by later revelation. In some instances, the difference between older and more recent revelation is best explained by accommodations to the perspectives of the finite, fallen human audience.
kent
You look like someone trying to walk across a newly waxed kitchen floor in their socked feet. And, you did not answer my questions as you were flailing away trying to keep your balance. So, who do we look to in order to really know the errant parts from the inerrant?
GLW:
“You look like someone trying to walk across a newly waxed kitchen floor in their socked feet.”
Again, my answer only looks like that to you because, though you’ve apparently read my book, you’ve not really understood very much of it.
God never errs, so in all of Scripture–every page–he never errs in his discourse. However, because God accommodates his speech to us through human beings who inevitably err, there not a single page of Scripture that is entirely free of human error.
I’m not in the modernistic game of securing perfect discourse and inerrant human knowledge … the Bible offers adequate human discourse, which is God’s perfect solution for finite, fallen human beings.
But again, so far, in all of your many questions over the past few months you’ve never shown any real understanding of my viewpoint but always read it through your own modernistic view that inerrant human interpretations are both possible and necessary. If (for the sake of argument) you simply embrace my assumption that the best of human knowledge is adequate and never inerrant, then you’re questions will at least be on the same playing field.
Kent
Well, I know this much from reading your book- when it comes to subjects like Descartes and Calvin, you are a very unreliable guide.
Kent,
There are a number of explanations of Matt 24:36 and Mark 13:32:
(1) The Cappadocian fathers said it pertains to the Father’s priority in the Godhead, in knowledge as in relations.
(2) Augustine seems to have held that this refers to “official knowledge” that he was not at liberty to declare. He know “unoffically” but not “officially.”
(3) Calvin attributed this to the limitations of his human nature.
(4) Erickson says that it pertains to his conscious access of possessed omniscience.
(5) Packer says it pertains to his epistemological submission to the Father.
Some of these responses are more persuasive/less problematic than others. In any event, if the direction you’re going is to use an interpretation of these passages to develop a view of Scripture, I think you’re on pretty shaky exegetical and theological ground.
If that’s the direction you’re going, what gives you confidence that passages like these should play a significant role in developing a doctrine of Scripture and that passages of Scripture that speak directly to the issue should be dismissed?
What do you think, Brian?
I’ve not yet made up my mind. This is a tough one (as evident by the variety of proposed solutions). When I encounter these kinds of issues, I see no reason to rush to judgment. I let the ideas percolate. Often as I’m studying other issues, I gain insight on the problems simmering on the back burner, as it were.
What do you think?
There’s less variety in the tradition than your answer suggests. Calvin reflects the standard reading, going back especially to Athanasius, that these texts prove the Docetists wrong: Jesus was truly a human being, not merely like a human being, and differed from us only respecting sin.
The weakest answer is from Erickson: “it pertains to his conscious access of possessed omniscience.” That’s like saying that Jesus didn’t learn Hebrew, or anything else, from his culture but rather from God. Erickson is on the verge of trying to make Jesus omnisicent in his human nature, which is impossible because there aren’t enough synapses and neurons in a finite human brain to keep track of all of the electrons in the universe. Erickson doesn’t seem to reflect an awareness of the long-standing distinction between communicable and uncommunicable attributes (i.e., righteousness is a communicable attribute, but omniscience is not).
If Erickson is right, then he is taking away two of the most important texts used by the orthodox to show the Docetists that they were wrong. In fact, I’d describe Erickson’s view as proto-Docetic in certain ways.
But going back to Calvin and the tradition, this will mean that Jesus was omniscient in his divine nature (and hence, he did not interpret but had “immediate knowledge”) but finite in his human nature (hence, like anyone else, he “interpreted” to know the world around him; he “learned” Hebrew).
Your thoughts?
I should point out that my previous comments depended on Brian’s characterization of Erickson’s view. Erickson’s a good theologian, so I’m a little surprised by his answer, which really does strike me as foreign to the Christian tradition. But regardless, I certainly don’t agree with Erickson’s view if this is what it is.
As I said before, I’ve not settled on an interpretation.
Here are some of the issues that, to my mind, need to be settled:
I’m interested in how to correlate this passage with passages like Mark 2:8; John 1:48; 2:25; 6:64; 16:30; 21:17. In other words, it appears that Jesus did know things that he would not have known without drawing on his divine omniscience.
I also want to make sure that if I were to ascribe Jesus’ ignorance of the day or hour to his humanity, that I’m not wrongly distinguishing between nature and person.
Furthermore, I’m interested in whether there are (or are not) pneumatological implications to the statement “the Father only.”
And this must all be resolved in such a way that the omniscience of all persons of the Trinity is upheld.
Which leads me to say again, if the direction you’re going is to use an interpretation of these passages to develop a view of Scripture, I think you’re on pretty shaky exegetical and theological ground.
I still wonder (if that’s the direction you’re going), what gives you confidence that passages like these should play a significant role in developing a doctrine of Scripture and that passages of Scripture that speak directly to the issue should be dismissed?
To clarify, the passages I refer to are passages like:
2 Peter 1:19-21:
“We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Or Peter in Acts 4 saying that God spoke through the mouth of David by the Holy Spirit. Or the author of Hebrews about Psalm 95: “The Holy Spirit says” (Heb. 3:7).
In these passages, the words of the human authors of Scripture are taken to be the very words of God. They’re understood as completely reliable. Acts 15 demonstrates that these words can be appealed to definitively settle controversy.
These and similar passages should form the core of any doctrine of Scripture.
Brian:
It’s not apparent to me what special traits you think these particular texts portray that have convinced you they must “form the core.”
I’m not an NT specialist but from what I can see 1 Pet says:
16We 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.
What I get from this is that the story of Christ was not invented, it was witnessed.
18We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.
What I get from this is that the uniqueness of Christ was not made up: a voice was heard.
19And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it…
And here I understand that the prophets’ words are made more sure since they now have a specific set of events that appear to back them up. The point, at least as I understand it, is that although readers cannot now see or hear what the author of 1 Pet claims to have seen and heard, they still ought to interpret the prophets the way the author of 1 Pet is suggesting they be read.
I don’t see inerrancy coming up here at all. As far as a doctrine of scripture goes, I see an exhortation to the effect that the prophets (whatever that is referring to) can be interepreted in a Christian way and a specific set of events helps make a Christian reading of the prophet even more certain.
If you have some time, please help me see how this text can be so singular for the inerrantist case. The way I see it, an inerrantist case can hardly be made from this text. In fact, it seems to me a case in point of how inerrancy must definitely be imported from other places (i.e., the Enlightenment) and applied to interpretations of the various texts.
[That should be 2 Pet above]
The realization that the prophets were speaking of Jesus Christ is a conclusion that requres revelation. This is the main thrust, I think, of the 2 Pet passage.
“no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation” seems to me to the justification for attaching redemptive significance to the Christ story. I think it’s a big jump to go from this point to a claim that says that everything that appears in the Bible is given by God and not to be critically questioned.
“to the justification” should read “to refer to our justification”
Carlos,
There’s not anything special about the texts that I’ve noted other than they’re actually speak about Scripture. With Matt 24:36 and Mark 13:32, one has to make inferences from theologically complex and debated texts that aren’t about Scripture. I have trouble understanding why you object to making texts that explicitly deal with the issue of Scripture a central part of understanding Scripture’s teaching about Scripture.
Regarding 2 Peter 1, I’m not claiming that the entire doctrine of inerrancy can be found there, but I would find it making a significant contribution.
A few points on your interpretation of the passage:
(1) This is somewhat minor, but I favor the TNIV’s “something completely reliable” over the NIV’s “made more certain.” Bauckham’s commentary has a helpful discussion of this issue.
(2) Peter is concerned that his readers not consider the apostolic testimony about Christ to be a “cleverly devised story.” At the very least this means Peter objects to moving the apostolic testimony about Christ from the realm of history to the realm of myth. I think we should also ask why Peter would object to this. Does his objection have relevance to other parts of Scripture?
(3) Peter advances two lines of argumentation for regarding the apostolic testimony about Christ to be factual. First, he appeals to the apostles as eyewitness. Second, he appeals to the reliable prophetic message. This refers at the very least to the OT prophets. I think it is more customarily taken to refer to the OT as a whole. In light of 3:16, there’s the possibility that Peter is including NT writings as well. In any event, he is referring to some portion of Scripture. This Scripture he identifies as reliable, and he encourages his readers to pay attention to the Scripture. One of the reasons he gives for paying attention to the Scripture is that it finds its origin in in the will of men—humans aren’t just writing what they wish. Scripture finds its origin ultimately in God.
The reason I raised this passage was not to present a full blown explanation of inerrancy. My point was to raise a problem passage for the claim that God speaks inerrantly but that the humans authors wrote errantly.
Peter argues for a completely reliable Scripture, and part of his argument is that the human authors weren’t simply writing what they wished to. In their writing they were borne along by the Holy Spirit so that they are writing precisely what God intended to have written.
This is such that in other parts of Scripture a one human author can quote another with the phrase “the Holy Spirit says” or “Scripture says.”
Brian:
This is really great. Thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate the time you put into your responses. By way of reply, I think scriptural texts that speak about scripture must always be given serious consideration, but I don’t think these should automatically be given primacy. I think such texts must be approached and understood in light of what other contemporary holy texts say about themselves and how those texts also tend to talk about prophecies found in the Hebrew scriptures (and elsewhere). One thing to consider when observing that scripture says here or there “the Holy Spirit says” referring to another part in scripture is that it might be a convention prevalent in the culture, a convention that other authors followed in second temple Judaism in order to achieve desired effects. Such remarks can also reveal a particular biblical author’s understanding of inspiration. In my view, a biblical author’s understanding is not always right about what they talk about, including scripture. When such authors are writing literature of various sorts and parts of what they write ultimately find their way into our canon, the writings do not lose the sociology and culture that comes with being human just because the divine is also present. There are erroneous ways of understanding things in culture and sociology evident in the texts that God was able to redemptively accomodate and still achieve his purposes.
Another thing I think we might still profitably talk about is what “completely reliable” might mean. I believe the scriptures are completely reliable but I don’t agree that they are inerrant. Someone or something can be completely reliable for a very specific function and then only moderately reliable when it comes to other functions. I’m afraid I’m missing the problem that the passage we’re talking about is supposed to raise for the accomodation of errors position.
Lastly I’d still want to suggest that when Peter talks about how prophecies of scripture found their origin in God, it is “the interpretation of things” that he’s emphasizing, which I understand to mean the interpretation of Israel’s national story as part of God’s cosmic redemptive plan. That Jesus should be made the focus of this story, the story of God’s redemptive plan, is the message that readers can trust as completely reliable. Peter thinks it is utterly reliable because that gospel message comes ultimately from God. This gospel message is what Peter refers to (at least as I understand it), not the biblical text itself.
Carlos,
I agree that βεβαιότερον doesn’t necessarily equal inerrant. But in what way is the Scripture reliable if its own statements can be dismissed as social convention and thus erroneous? Why should I conclude that Peter’s view of Scripture is unreliable? If that is unreliable, how do I know his interpretation of Israel’s national story as part of God’s cosmic redemptive plan is reliable?
As to your last point, why are you limiting “the interpretation of things” to the interpretation of Israel’s story in the cosmic redemptive plan? Twice in these verses, Peter uses the universal “no prophecy.”
Brian:
As I argue in my book, it’s not all or nothing, everywhere reliable or no where reliable. Kent Sparks, too, deals with these types of questions in his book.
In fact, he writes above among his several comments: “I quite agree that Scripture’s testimony about itself must be taken seriously, but it seems to me that Scripture’s testimony has to be weighed along with Scripture’s actual features. Even if we find a biblical text that says something like, “God’s word in the Bible never communicates any errant human viewpoints” (not something we’ll find, but for the sake of discussion), that biblical word will not be God’s final word on the subject if the Bible has human errors in it.
Again, and I don’t mean this with any arrogance at all: If to be a Christian is to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible’s human authors, then to my mind Christianity has been proved wrong a hundred times over. I am still a Christian because of the sorts of things I write in my book; if anything, Archer’s “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties” and the books of conservative evangelicals only drive me farther from the faith.”
To your last question: “Why are you limiting “the interpretation of things” to the interpretation of Israel’s story in the cosmic redemptive plan? Twice in these verses, Peter uses the universal “no prophecy.””
Sure, every prophecy is useful if it’s been given by God and readers are not going to help trying to find interpretations of prophecies that are imminently meaningful and immediately applicable to them. Just look at the DSS. In my view, what Peter is saying is that the specific Christian interpretation that he teaches is the most certain interpretation, the one God intends, as it were, because of the reasons he adumbrates in the passage.
Carlos,
Sorry to be so tardy in reply. My computer died last week, and I’ve been busy getting my new system set up.
I realize that you don’t hold the Bible needs to be everywhere reliable if it is to be correctly labeled reliable. What I’m trying to figure out is how you determine what is reliable and what is not reliable.
To use the quote from Kent that you cite above, by what standard does one judge the Bible’s claim (hypothetical in his quote) to be erroneous? Or, by what standard do we determine that Peter’s claim in Acts 4:24-25 that David wrote by the Holy Spirit is simply a cultural encrustation to be dismissed?
Second, I’m interested in learning how you square your teaching of errant human authors with Acts 4:24-35 and Hebrews 3:7 which both indicate that what human authors wrote is what the Holy Spirit led them to write and with 2 Peter 1 which says: “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
As to Archer’s book, I’d say that inerrancy—and more importantly, Christianity—doesn’t rise or fall on one man’s ability to provide convincing answers to seeming discrepancies. I suppose one classic “discrepancy” is the difficulty in relating the genealogies in Matthew and Luke.
Consider Pummer’s response to this difficulty:
“The various attempts which have been made at reconciling the divergences, although in no case convincingly successful, are yet sufficient to show that reconciliation is not impossible. If we were in possession of all the facts, we might [better: we would] find that both pedigrees are in accordance with them. Neither of them presents difficulties which no addition to our knowledge could solve.”
Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel of S. Luke, 6th ed., International Critical Commentary, ed. Alfred Plummer, Samuel Rolles Driver, Charles Augustus Briggs (New York: Scribners, 1903), 103.
The lack of a solution does not mean there is an error in Scripture. It simply means that we have been unable to discover the solution. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.