Paul wrote:
> I agree. The longer statement gives at least a little room for the kind of
> nuancing that Terry mentions; but the actual articles adopted by the
> International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, which were signed by just about
> every evangelical group in the country, are something else. And, I think it
> is these articles which are the "high view of Scripture" to most people and
> especially Article XII:
>
> "We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from
> falsehood, fraud, or deceit. We deny that Biblical infallibility and
> inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes,
> exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny
> that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to
> overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood."
>
> Although some may affirm this article and then go to the interpretations of
> concordism to avoid such contextual historical-grammatical meanings as the
> sun being created on the fourth day and a universal Flood that killed every
> human on earth except the eight on the ark, the most natural course of action
> for a believer in this article would be to go directly to creation science.
However, one of the authors of that statement was J.I. Packer.
In an explanation of the statement Packer wrote:
"It should be remembered, however, that scripture was given to reveal God,
not to address scientific issues in scientific terms, and that, as it does
not use the language of modern science, so it does not require scientific
knowledge about the internal processes of God's creation for the
understanding of its essential message about God and ourselves. Scripture
interprets scientific knowledge by relating it to the revealed purpose and
work of God, thus establishing an ultimate context for the study of
scientific ideas. It is not for scientific theories to dictate what
Scripture may and may not say, although extra-biblical information will
sometimes helpfully expose a misinterpretation of Scripture." (J. I.
Packer, 1988, God Has Spoken, p. 170)
He has further stated:
"I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and maintain it in print, but I
cannot see that anything Scripture says, in the first chapters of Genesis
or elsewhere, bears on the biological theory of evolution one way or the
other. On the theory itself, as a non-scientist, watching from a distance
the disputes of experts, I suspend judgment." (J. I. Packer, 1978, The
Evangelical Anglican Identity Problem, p. 5)
Thus Packer seems to take the same kind of position as B.B.Warfield who
also defended inerrancy while being open to scientific descriptions.
Inerrancy seems to mean very different things to different people.
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 08 2002 - 15:29:03 EDT