Guide to Class 12 of Inspiration and Authority of the Bible

Transcription

1 Guide to Class 12 of Inspiration and Authority of the Bible I. Last Time George F. Beals (Preliminary) Apr 7, 2011 Last time we looked at Jack Cottrell s 1988 article titled, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Inerrancy. Cottrell s article addresses two main topics: (1) Is Inerrancy a New Doctrine and (2) Test of Fellowship or Test of Leadership? Cottrell showed that the claim that inerrancy of the Bible is a new doctrine (which some connected with the restoration movement are saying) is false. Among those who do not hold to inerrancy is the long-time liberal Leroy Garrett. Cottrell says, Leroy Garrett calls inerrancy a modern theory because it is nowhere implied in Scripture, was not believed by the early church, and is found in none of the ancient creeds of the church. It was born of modern Fundamentalism. Jack Cottrell, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Inerrancy. 71. Refers to Leroy Garrett Are There Errors in the Bible? Restoration Review (Apr 1987), pp Garrett s full article is online at Also last time, we spent a fair amount of time talking about the non-propositional view of Bible revelation (sometimes called by the German word, heilsgeschichte, salvation-history). II. Tonight (and Next Week) Tonight, I want us to finish up the topic Challenges to Biblical Inspiration, and next time begin our discussion of The Authority of the Bible. (For next week, please read my two articles on the web site.) I aim at two subtopics tonight: First, go over some challenges to the inerrancy of Scripture that has been going on in the so-called evangelical world (the conservative Protestant world). To be forewarned is to be forearmed. o Note: For information on who evangelicals are as well as some helpful material in the inerrancy subject, see the downloadable article that I mentioned last week: The Th.D. dissertation titled, Redaction Criticism of the Synoptic Gospels: Its Role in the Inerrancy Debate Within North American Evangelicalism, by Randolph Terrance Mann (Univ. of So. Africa Thesis June 2007). You can obtain a free download of a PDF of this document at the following website: o Second, look at several alleged discrepancies of the Bible addressed in Geisler and Howe, whose pages I mentioned last week. 1

2 A. Challenges to Biblical Inerrancy (Cont d) 1. Information from Greg Beale G. K. Beale in 2007, wrote, The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: [T]wo things have contributed significantly to this reassessment. First, the onset of postmodernism in evangelicalism has caused less confidence in the propositional claims of the Bible,, Scripture is not some dry set of impersonal propositions but a living communication from God himself,. (Karl Barth s view of Scripture has seen a revival of interest. ) A second factor leading to reassessment of the traditional evangelical view of the Bible s inspiration is that over the last twenty-five years there has been an increasing number of conservative students graduating with doctorates in biblical studies and theology from nonevangelical institutions. 20 The aims of this book are limited. I want to focus on a specific debate that bears upon the broad issue of biblical authority that has arisen recently in evangelicalism. In particular, this is a debate that I have had with another biblical scholar, who has posed what I consider to be some new challenges to the standard evangelical view of biblical inerrancy. In 2005 Peter Enns published a book titled Inspiration and Incarnation (Grand Rapids: Baker). 21 From Appendix 3: Selected quotations from Karl Barth s Church Dogmatics on the Fallible and Errant Nature of Scripture: I am including an appendix on some of Barth s quotations about the infallible nature of the Bible, since some evangelicals appeal to his overall view of the Bible s authority as representing a biblical perspective that should be held. The point of this appendix is to show that Barth believed that Scripture contained errors but that, nevertheless, God could communicate his message even through such fallible parts of the Bible. Likewise, some of the quotations reveal that Barth did not identify God s Word with the Bible but that the Bible is a witness to the Word. 281 Book I, 2; p. 507 The men whom we hear as witnesses speak as fallible, erring men like ourselves. What they say, and what we read as their word, can of itself lay claim to be the Word of God, but never sustain that claim. Book I, 2; p. 509 But the vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its capacity for error, also extends to its religious or theological content. Book I, 2; p. 509 There are obvious and overlapping contradictions e.g., between the Law and the prophets, between John and the Synoptists, between Paul and James. 2

3 Book I, 2; p. 529 The prophets and apostles as such, even in their office, even in their function as witnesses, even in the act of writing down their witnesses, were real, historical men as we are, and therefore sinful in their actions, and capable and actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word. Book I, 2; p. 530 Yet the presence of the Word of God itself, the real and present speaking and hearing of it, is not identical with the existence of the book as such. Book I, 2; p it is a mere self-will and disobedience to try to find some infallible elements in the Bible. Book I, 2, p. 533 We must dare to face the humanity of the biblical texts and therefore their fallibility. 2. Information from Harold Lindsell In 1971, Harold Lindsell published a book titled The Battle for the Bible. (Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1971)).At the time, Lindsell was editor of Christianity Today, a conservative evangelical periodical. Lindsell had served as a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasandena, CA, at Columbia Bible College in Columbia, SC and at Northern Baptist Seminary in Chicago. The book defends the inerrancy of the whole Bible and names several leaders among the evangelicals, with quotations from them, who were denying the inerrancy of the Bible. This caused quite an uproar. Notice these chapter headings in this 218-page book: 1. Inerrancy an Evangelical Problem 2. Inerrancy a Doctrine of Scripture 3. Infallibility in the Church [This documents the fact that inerrancy has been affirmed throughout church history, similar to Cottrell s article, ] 4. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Battle 5. The Southern Baptist Convention 6. The Strange Case of Fuller Theological Seminary 7. Other Denominations and Parachurch Groups 8. Deviations That Follow When Inerrancy Is Denied 9. Discrepancies in Scripture 10. How Infection Spreads 11. The Conclusion of the Matter Harold Ockenga, then President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, wrote the Foreword. Ockenga said, The perplexing question of the inspiration of the Scripture is endangering the unity of the evangelical movement. Two prominent views are emerging. 3

4 The first view considers all of Scripture to be inspired and true, including the historical, geographical, and scientific teaching. The second view holds that only the Bible teaching on salvation-history and doctrine is true. 9. It is helpful to go through some of what Lindsell has to say in this book. For anyone who professes the Christian faith the root question is: From where do I get my knowledge on which my faith is based.? 17 Lindsell says his book is about this question: Is the Bible a reliable guide to religious knowledge? Posing the question another way, people ask, Is the Bible trustworthy? There are only three possible answers to this question. The first is that the Bible is not at all trustworthy. The second is that it can be trusted as truthful in all its parts. The third is that the Bible contains some truth and some errors Belief in an infallible Scripture is not necessary to salvation. 20 < True? Could be discussed. Colleges, seminaries and denominations continue to give the impression that they stand on the old truths even though change has come and the Bible no longer is regarded by some of their people as infallible. 23 When one surveys the current scene in places where errancy has gotten a grip, it soon becomes obvious that there are few champions of inerrancy ready or willing to challenge the new reality. 25 Lindsell sees no difference in the meanings of infallible and inerrant. 27, footnote. Under the heading Wrong Notions of Inspiration, Lindsell mentions these (pp.32-33): Mechanical dictation The thoughts of the Bible writers were inspired but not their words Inspiration meaning as in great writers: Shakespeare, etc. All Christians are as inspired as Bible writers were Partial inspiration, thus saying the Bible contains the word of God Emil Brunner says that what speaks to him is the Word of God and what does not speak to him is not the Word of God. 33 4

5 a. Errancy held by some in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Lutheran bodies confess and use the Augsburg Confession of faith. 74 This does not have a specific section in it about the doctrine of Scripture. This is because Luther and the Roman Catholic Church agreed that the Bible is the word of God. In 1932, the Missouri Synod adopted what they call the Brief Statement. Its first article includes these words: Since the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, it goes without saying that they contain no errors or contradictions, but that they are in all their parts and words the infallible truth, also in those parts which treat historical, geographical, and other secular matters, John 10: Member Paul G. Bretscher, in After the Purifying, redefines the Word of God as no broader than the Gospel or Law and Gospel. Lindsell says that his obvious meaning is that the rest of the Bible can have errors in it. 77 Lutheran professor Walter E. Keller says that since Adam and Eve are in a part of the Bible other than Law and Gospel, whether or not they are historical characters is an indifferent matter. 80 Lindsell tells of how the President of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, President Tietjen, defended faculty members there who were using the historical-critical method in biblical exegesis. But one faculty member, Robert Preuss said that the method leads to the rejection of several Bible miracles. Lindsell says that the historical-critical method and orthodoxy are deadly enemies. Conservative J. A. O. Preuss became president of the of the Missouri-Synod in 1969, he went to work on the seminary. Tietjen and his supporters regarded this as persecution, whereas Preuss believed he had a mandate to clean up the problem. 84 b. Errancy Held by Some among the Southern Baptists (SB) i.e., churches of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) These were not affected as much by the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy of the early twentieth century. Several reasons for this were Not many of their college and seminary teachers had received doctorates from overseas or northern USA schools. The SBs were so large that all the educational tools were within it. They were mostly conservative and pushed this from boards and denominational agencies. Basically, they hold to the New Hampshire Confession of Faith. On Scripture, this says that the Bible has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of err, for its matter. 90 5

6 But changes are taking place (1971). Lindsell interprets this Confession as denying limited inerrancy. For [l]imited infallibility means that not all of Scripture is infallible, but is mixed with error; and those parts that have errors in them constitute inspired error allowed by the Holy Spirit, or parts of Scripture that are not inspired at all. 90 Robert S. Alley, a professor at the University of Richmond in VA, and says he is a member of the SB Convention. In his 1970 book, Revolt Against the Faithful, Alley explains that the inerrancy of the Bible contention should be heard with a smile and incorporated in the bylaws of the flat earth society. 92 He claims that W. A. Criswell, former SBC president, as holding to the mechanical dictation theory, which Lindsell says he does not. Alley also speaks of Adam, Eve, Noah and Jonah as fictitious people. William E. Hull was a long-time professor at the SB Seminary in Louisville. In his 1968 inaugural address as Dean of the School of Theology there acknowledges indebtedness to Rudolph Bultmann, whose demythologizing theory denies biblical miracles. Hull argues that the humanity of the Bible writers results in imperfections in their writings. Another, Jack U. Harwell, an editor of the Christian Index, an SB publication out of Georgia, wrote, I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I do not use the word infallible because the Bible is written by men. 97 c. Errancy in Fuller Theological Seminary Founded in 1947 by the efforts of Charles E. Fuller of the Old Time Revival Hour. Started out affirming the inerrancy of the Scriptures. The school opened its doors with four faculty members who affirmed inerrancy: Harold John Ockenga (then minister in Park Street Church in Boston), Wilbur Moorehead Smith, Carl F. H Henry and Harold Lindsell. Eventually, the school formulated a statement of faith, which affirmed inerrancy. Over time, faculty and board members came in that denied the inerrancy of the Bible. According to Lindsell, not everyone was upfront about this in that the school gave the impression in its catalog that all was well. d. Dewey Beegle Dewey Beegle, Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1973) At the time, Beegle was Professor of Old Testament in Wesley Theological Seminary. This book is a revision of an earlier work Beegle authored ten years earlier titled, The Inspiration of Scripture. In his foreword to the 1973 publication, F. F. Bruce said, Dr. Beegle s first edition was largely a demolition job. Here he has rearranged and amplified his material and struck a more 6

7 positive note Unfortunately, Bruce, who in his own writings is often superb in what he says, in this foreword writes, I endorse as emphatically as I can his deprecating of a Maginot-line mentality where the doctrine where the doctrine of Scripture is concerned. 10 Lindsell, in The Battle for the Bible, says of this, Apparently, F. F. Bruce thinks that for one to hold to biblical inerrancy is to display a Maginot-line mentality ( The Maginot Line named after French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defences, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in light of its experience in World War I, and in the run-up to World War II. The French established the fortification to provide time for their army to mobilise in the event of attack, allowing French forces to move into Belgium for a decisive confrontation with German forces. The fortification system successfully dissuaded a direct attack./on Apr 7, 2011 from In Chapter 8 of his book, Beegle looks at several Bible passages and claims they makes mistakes. In Chapter 2, Scripture as Revelation, Beegle has a section titled, Revelation and Propositional Truth. Here he writes, The words of Jesus are spirit and life, but they qre eternal, and they are indispensable for true faith, but they are mere words without the energizing and vitalizing influence of the Holy Spirit. Response can never become a reality by the sheer force of the written page. No doctrine, no matter how rationally and logicall presented, can elicit true faith. 48 In chapter 8, titled Inerrancy and the Phenomena of Scripture, Beegle cites several Bible passages and says they include errors. In Chapter 13, the last chapter, titled, A Comprehensive View of Scripture and Tradition, Beegle writes, The fact that insights of one generation are rooted in and educed from the revelation of the fathers means that inspiration continues throughout the flow of the generations. 307 At first, the witness to revelation from God was usually in the form of oral report. In due time some of these reports were reduced to writing, especially the key redemptive, historical events and the compelling word of Yahweh that come to the prophets. The pattern of oral tradition followed by written records was equally true of the New Testament. In this whole process of transmitting, recording, and compiling the deeds and words of God, the Spirit of God was active in the hearts and minds of God s mission, either oral or written, and neither did it guarantee an absolute inerrancy of the original documents. What the Spirit s activity did guarantee was selectivity of events and accuracy of reporting and interpretation sufficient to achieve God s purpose for each generation as well as the basis for extrapolating into the future. 7

8 By the hearing, reading, and study of Scripture, revelation, inspiration, and authority become realities in every earnest heart through the agency of the same Spirit who watched over Scripture s recording and transmission. 307 The whole history of God s redemptive activity is one in which the Holy Spirit has worked through imperfect means, both men and Scripture, without the means being a handicap. Fallible ministers with many imperfect notions have been God s messengers throughout the history of the church. 308 Lindsell comments on Beegle: The heart of Beegle s argument is that inerrancy and infallibility apply only to God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as Scripture has been given, transmitted, and interpreted through human agencies, it is bound to bear the marks of that humanity. Nevertheless, God is not restricted by this self-imposed limitation. Dewey Beegle puts it this way, Difficult though it may be to understand, God chose to make his authority relevant to his creatures by means that necessitate some element of fallibility. 170 (This last quote is from Dewey s chapter 12, Inerrancy, Infallibility, and Authority, where he also refers to other authors: I do not care to put all my hope of heaven in a theory of inerrant inspiration, so that if a hole were bored in it the great ship would founder. and Is not God s strength always made perfect in man s weaknesses? 3. Inerrancy and the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) Now, to see what has been happening in the Roman Catholic Church on Inerrancy of the Bible, we turn to other sources. a. Divine Afflante Spiritu Here is from RCC Monsignor Ricardo Bass in the Detroit, MI area to me recently. The reference is available as indicated by the link below. (An internet site says, He has been a judge on the Detroit archdiocesan tribunal and even served as the judicial vicar, or chief judge, for a while. He is pastor of Prince of Peace Parish in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and has been Cardinal Adam Maida's delegate since 2005 for cases of misconduct involving the clergy. He also advises the cardinal on finances and other matters as one of the archdiocese's seven consultors. ) To: gbeals@aol.com Sent: Sun, Jan 30, :39 am Subject: Re: Higher Criticism Authorized George, Thanks for the . It is always good hearing from former students - and I am glad you are putting your talents to use in such a creative and educational pursuit. I may be mistaken, but I believe you are referring to an encyclical of Pope Pius XII in 1943 and entitled "Divine Afflante Spiritu" - I believe if you put that in your search engine and google it - it will lead you to various English translations. It was indeed the first statement leading toward modern biblical exegetical methods in the study of Scripture. 8

9 I may not always be able to answer your questions - but I certainly always welcome them. Rick b. Clark Pinnock, in his Biblical Revelation (Chicago: Moody, 1971), observes, needless to say, verbal inspiration and biblical inerrancy are the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The fourth session of the Council of Trent declared itself on this matter by stating that Scripture was divinely authored and dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Ghost. The inerrancy of Scripture was later strongly reaffirmed by Pope Pius X in Lamentabili on July 3, 1907, and especially Pascendi Domenici gregis on September 8, 1907, and Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus on September 15, Roman Catholic biblical scholarship of late has been moving toward evasions of inspiration. The turning point was the Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943, Pope Pius XII) which took note of advances in critical studies, and suggested that a knowledge and careful appreciation of ancient modes of expression and literary forms and styles will provide a solution to many of the objections made against the truth and historical accuracy of Holy Writ. It was the opportunity that liberal Catholics were waiting for c. Pinnock, in Chapter 6, titled, Limited Inerrancy: A Critical Appraisal and Constructive Alternative, in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., God s Inerrant Word (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1973), writes, The tradition of inerrancy in Catholic theology of recent times makes a fascinating study. It is the dramatic story of a shift from the absolute to the limited inerrancy of the Bible. 145 Vatican Two represents a turning point in the history of Catholic dogma on this matter. What is said about the nature of Scripture should make us very hesitant in repeating the cliché, Rome never changes. The original draft scheme on revelation which was offered to the first session of the Council by the theological commission expressed the old view. It stated that Scripture is absolutely immune from error and was phrased in the language of the old curial Catholic theology. The Council rejected it outright, not even accepting it as the basis for further discussion. The commission was enlarged and went to work on a fresh statement. After much debate, the fifth draft was finally approved and promulgated by the Council. The crucial sentence reads: Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted to put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation. (Divine Revelation, 11) 9

10 This statement, like so many other at the Council, is a compromise. It is deliberately ambiguous so that the old and the new views of the Bible can alike appeal to it. The Bible is no longer held to be inerrant in all its assertions. It is certain only when it serves as the vehicle of divine salvific intention. In this way, the Council effectively repealed the earlier Catholic view of complete inerrancy d. For more details, see Montgomery s appendix in this book. He adds, referencing the above words which Pinnock calls the crucial sentence: Explains the commentator, The Bible was not written in order to teach the natural sciences, nor to give information on merely political history. It treats of these (and all other subjects) only insofar as they are involved in matters concerning salvation. It is only in this respect that the veracity of God and the inerrancy of the inspired writers are engaged. 269 Montgomery adds later in the appendix, Rome s ultimate standard of religious truth is Rome itself: and by Rome is not meant a static body of historical creeds which impose their objective authority upon later generations, but rather a living organism which, as the extension of Christ s incarnation in time and as the vehicle of God s Holy Spirit, can creatively reshape its past. 272 Montgomery also observes, It is vital to note that from the Roman Catholic viewpoint, no changes in doctrine actually take place. Once the Magisterium reinterprets a teaching, then all previous authoritative expressions of the teaching are held to have this meaning. 274 B. Discussion of alleged discrepancies. See Geisler and Howe, Making Sense of Bible Difficulties, pages: (both passages) &57/ /198 (on baptism) 10