Re: NT inerrancy??

It is interesting to watch this discussion from over the pond.
The tragedy is that some of the most strident efforts to defend the truth of
the Bible are most effective in destroying it. The popular understandings of
Inerrancy (as opposed to those of Hodge, Warfield or John Stott) make the
Bible to be a textbook of science, a detailed prediction of the future and
as literal as an engineer's handbook. As a result as soon as an intelligent
and critical person reads the bible the claims made for it will simply
collapse like a pack of cards - not only Genesis but Paul's inaccurate
figures from Exodus, the variety of the versions of Paul's conversion in
ACTS, problems in comparing the Gospels and so ad infinitum.
And then many good little evangelicals have an iconic view of the inerrancy
of scripture - they hold views about it, read it like a pelican scooping up
fish from a lake but never studying it. That is they get atomised spiritual
texts but never the whole drift of scripture.

Yes, we do start from Jesus but ultimately must go back to scripture to
learn about Jesus - and everything else about our faith. But we need to see
scripture as normative and not formative and that is the weakness of the
popular bible teacher with a funny view of sola scriptura. Then we need to
consider how the bible is written and what kind of writing. Here many simply
adopt literalism - very simple and of great appeal and rhetorical power but
there is a variety of literature. (for a basic introduction to
interpretation etc read Fee and StuartHow to read the bible for all its
worth). The bible was written according to the thought of the day and the
world picture and as a good Calvinist we must see the bible as accomodated
to human thought forms of the day and that includes cosmogony and way of
writing history - hence difference of history writing in the OT NT and
today. Now that does not mena that the bible is non-historical but written
in adifferent way. We need to ask "what is it trying to say" rather than
proving every last detail.

And then Jesus is THE revelation of God but the bible is also revalation and
the Judeo-Christian
> canon is in an elevated category totally different from the canonical
texts of
> all other religious communities. Sorry Howard but the logic of your
position is to have no effective Christian faith at all as you have no
grounds to have anything more than a vague generalised theism. Although I am
not an inerrantist, without giving the bible final authority in all matters
of faith and doctrine and ethics we cant say anything beyond what we feel.
And here note how the likes of Spong work on peoples' emotions as much as
any televangelist.

I have no problems at all about the final authority of scripture3 (but losts
of questions)

Michael

----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>
To: "wallyshoes" <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>
Cc: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: NT inerrancy??

> >From: wallyshoes <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>
>
> Two questions:
>
> >> > Are we all Bible worshipers or Christ followers?
>
> > In fact why are we Christians so adamant about infallibility when the
Bible
> > never comes right out and makes such a claim?
>
> Good questions, Walt. One cannot help but notice how much time and energy
is
> spent on this list to protect the (humanly crafted) concept of biblical
> infallibility and other propositions that serve to place the
Judeo-Christian
> canon in an elevated category totally different from the canonical texts
of
> all other religious communities.
>
> Howard Van Till
>
>
Received on Wed Dec 31 15:35:01 2003