Re: [asa] Question on inerrancy

I certainly wouldn't deny the idea of "inspiration" to the work of
scientists, poets, artists, political leaders &c. The activity of the Holy
Spirit is not limited to the domains of the church, a point that the
Orthodox keep trying to remind those of us in the west about. When the
Nicene Creed says that the Spirit is "the Lord and giver of life" it means
all life, not just some kind of religious existence - cf. Ps.104:29-30. &
the inspiration of "secular" ideas, effort &c is part of that.

Of course inspiration in that sense can be hit & miss. Schrödinger's
"derivation" of his equation was "inspired" but of dubious rigor - starting
out with an equation that was 2d order in time & managing to end up with a
1st order one. Of course that's hardly surprising since there's no way to
rigorously "derive" quantum mechanics from classical.

In any case, the sense in which scripture is "inspired" has always been
understood as something special, not reducible to the inspiration of secular
works or even other Christian works. A preacher's sermon may be "inspired"
but it's not in the same category as the Gospel of Mark. In the creed, "who
spake by the prophets" is in addition to "Lord and giver of life."

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>; "ASA list" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 4:50 PM
Subject: 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.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun May 18 12:04:50 2008