RE: [asa] Question on inerrancy

Could it be that the inspiration of Schrödinger to write his equation and that of Maxwell to write his is of the same nature as that of the inspired word in Scripture? After all, these mathematical physics equations go much beyond the intent or knowledge of their originators.

 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of George Murphy
Sent: Sat 5/17/2008 3:53 PM
To: ASA list
Subject: Re: [asa] Question on inerrancy

Without prejudice to the question of who or what may have been responsible for previous superficiality or trivialization -
 
Yes, that's precisely the question: Is it true that the inspiration of scripture implies its inerrancy? & my earlier argument was just that to assume that is precisely an assumption that depends on more general assumptions about the way God must operate. My purpose in suggesting a connection between that assumption & the belief that God had to have created a perfect world was not to say that those ideas are the same but that they belong to the same category of beliefs about how God must work in the world.
 
I do not see any reason to make that original assumption - i.e., that the inspiration of scripture implies its inerrancy. I also think that there is good (though not logically compelling) reason to think that it's false. If the divine kenosis spoken of in Phil.2:5-11 is characteristic of God's activity in general, and if the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the biblical writers shared that characteristic, then in view of the undisputed limits of human knowledge of the world and the fallibility of human reasoning we should not be surprised if the inspired scriptures, limited by the conditions of the human writers, were sometimes in error in what they say about the world.
 
Please note that - as should be clear from my use of a phrase like "we should not be surprised" - I don't pretend this as a proof that scripture is not inerrant. But when we encounter statements in scripture that could be made compatible with the idea of inerrancy only in forced & artificial ways which distort the natural sense of the text, we do have reason to say that they are in error.
 
& again if I may, here's the link to my short Covalence article on the subject -
http://archive.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/default.asp?Copyright=06-03-15&Author=Murphy&Pages=2 .
 
Shalom
George

http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
 
P.S. Apologies if people are getting multiple copies of my recent posts - or none.
 
>In is an interesting discussion. I was trying to make the point on the other thread that inspiration and inerrancy are inseparable, but unfortunately that discussion got >diverted by attempts to trivialize the inerrancy position. Perhaps it could be resumed, narrowly focused on whether a passage of scripture can be inspired by God in the >sense of 2 Tim 3:16 and yet be in error.
 
>David Heddle

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:13 PM, George Murphy <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com> wrote:

        Dick -
         
        Note that I said, 'God "accomodated" to the human condition in inspiring the text.' I believe that the Genesis account Inspiration is inspired but inspiration and inerrancy are 2 different concepts. That's the point I tried to make about II Timothy 3:16 but it unfortunately got buried by superficiality. The argument that because God inspired a biblical text it can't contain any errors is precisely what has to be questioned.
         

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Received on Sat May 17 16:51:48 2008