Re: [asa] Glenn's views

Inerrancy would be important only if the messages were always so clear that diverging interpretations would be an exception rather than the rule. That is, what good is inerrancy if you don't really know what the text means? The notion of total inerrancy IMO betrays too strong an emphasis on the text relative to the relationship.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Campbell<mailto:pleuronaia@gmail.com>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 9:44 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Glenn's views

> Except for one correspondent I have who insists on "total inerrancy'
> (of the KJV of course), I view the inerrancy claim to be without any
> usefulness. If only the "originals" are inerrant, and we don't have
> these, what difference does it make?

  It implies that the revelation as given by God was entirely correct.
  It also indicates that our best evidence as to the content of the
  originals is considered the best source of information as to the
  proper content of Scripture. The latter point goes against the claim
  of inerrancy for the KJV, for example, and so does have some practical
  implications.

  It's true that we don't have the originals, but the textual evidence
  is generally good enough to be fairly confident on most points. I
  don't know of any theologically important issue that's impacted by
  textual uncertainties (discounting the snake handling, etc. not only
  deriving from the doubtful ending of Mark but more importantly which
  misrepresents a promise of protection into a command to put God to the
  test.). On the other hand, numbers in lists (such as the antediluvian
  ages or the numbers returning to Jerusalem) are highly uncertain. Of
  course, there is speculation about source documents of very uncertain
  composition, but I think that the claim of inerrancy would be applied
  to the first edition of the books that we now have and that the
  authors were inspired to make right use of the sources, not that the
  sources were necessarily perfectly inerrant.

  --
  Dr. David Campbell
  425 Scientific Collections
  University of Alabama
  "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"

  To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu<mailto:majordomo@calvin.edu> with
  "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Jan 16 10:34:56 2007