The Chicago Statement: The Good, the Bad, and the “wish it had said more”
By MSH | July 9, 2008
The title pretty much sums up my feelings about the Chicago Statement. Below I have pasted its (sort of) preamble, and then its affirmations and denials. I’ve interspersed a few comments (blocked off).
I. SUMMARY STATEMENT
1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.
I have to wonder what is meant by “in all matters upon which it touches.” Just what kind of “touching” is meant?
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited of disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.
II. ARTICLES OF AFFIRMATION AND DENIAL
Article I.
We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God.
We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.
Article II.
We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.
Article III.
We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God.
We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.
Article IV.
We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.
We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.
Article V.
We affirm that God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive.
We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.
Article VI.
We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.
We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.
I think the Westminster crowd needs to read this one. How can one affirm verbal, plenary inspiration (the words and every word), and KNOW that this includes, for instance, (1) synoptic divergences; (2) subtle alteration of OT statements in quotations by NT authors; (3) deliberate and transparent agendas on the part of the writer (e.g., the “problem of the Chronicler”) and then DENY that Scripture is also the product of men? Good grief.
Article VII.
We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.
We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.
Article VIII.
We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
The Westminster addendum: “We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared — but for sure Scripture is not a product of their handiwork; it is only the product of God. Why he chose human agency but didn’t allow it to accomplish anything or show itself evident is a mystery.”
Article IX.
We affirm that inspiration, through not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
We deny that the finitude or falseness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.
I have problems with this one (the wording). “True and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write” - like a woman’s hair being part of her fertility? Huh? Like the skies being spread out as hard as a cast metal mirror (Job 37:18)? Etc., etc. This language is more inappropriate than the “affirming” weasel-wording we’ve chatted about already. But the last part is even worse — it can be read as a denial of divine condescension in such matters.
Article X.
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.
Article XI.
We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished but not separated.
“All matters that it addresses” - sounds like the affirming weasel-wording. Is this phrase supposed to be consistent with the one in article IX?
Article XII.
We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.
Despite the wording here (which I think is ill-advised), I think this could be (pardon me) “affirmed” by someone who relegated bad science in Scripture to divine accommodation. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part.
Article XIII.
We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.
We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.
I like this sentence: “We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose.” Great — How come the writers of the Statement didn’t seem to see that this sentence stands opposed to some of the other parts I’ve noted (or at least isn’t completely in line with them)?
Article XIV.
We affirm the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.
We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved violate the truth claims of the Bible.
Article XV.
We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.
We deny that Jesus’ teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.
Well, I’m guessing I’d agree with this language, but I’d still argue in favor of divine accommodation in other areas besides Jesus’ “teaching about Scripture.”
Article XVI.
We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history.
We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.
Article XVII.
We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God’s written Word.
We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.
Article XVIII.
We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads or relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims of authorship.
Hard to believe hard-line non-dispensationalists would go along with this one. It just goes to show you that the notion that subscribers to the Statement could sort of define these dicta as they needed to was (and is) alive and well. And I’m not really opposed to that.
Article XIX.
We affirm that a confession of the full authority, infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm that such confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.
We deny that such confession is necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be rejected without grave consequences, both to the individual and to the Church.
END of excerpts.
A lot to like here, but I think it can (and must be) improved.
Topics: Bibliology | No Comments »
Taking on that Crazy Ivan! Views of Truth and Inerrancy
By MSH | July 6, 2008
No, I’m not talking about The Hunt for Red October, and Ivan really isn’t crazy. Frankly, he’s a breath of fresh air.
To help readers avoid the task of going back through Ivan’s comments, I’ve quoted a number of them here and offered some brief responses. At the end I’ll give you a bit of a sense of direction for where I’ll take this discussion next.
Ivan wrote:
“We glibly say that “Jesus says X” when saying “Matthew says that Jesus said X” would be more accurate. We do this for the sake of expediency, but also because doctrines such as inspiration and inerrancy fool us into believing that Matthew’s presence in the equation neither adds nor takes away. However, as readers, we cannot relate to people, places, and events, but rather characters, settings, and plots. Points of correspondence between a literary reality and the reality-qua-reality that it exposes may be many or few, but the two are NEVER one and the same. Congruent, but not equivalent.
MSH: Agreed.
Ivan wrote:
This is why secular postmodernist literary theorists say that you cannot “know” or “experience” the reality that lies behind a story, but only the story itself. Why? Because the author interposes himself, selectively revealing or obscuring as it suits his purposes, using words to manipulate the imaginations of his readers. In fact, in narrations, you cannot know the author, because he distances himself through the narrative voice he adopts, which may be a construction, wholly or in part. Furthermore, the reader is immediately present in the text, participating in recreating the events in his own mind, construing and misconstruing the author’s intent, and arriving at a model of reality that is unique to himself; but he is not present in the world behind the text, and can have no influence on it. Therefore, in any communication there is a barrier between the sign (the text) and the signified (its subject), a distance which cannot be crossed by reading alone.
MSH: True enough, but I’m not sure this is as “disturbing” for a discussion of inspiration or inerrancy as you suggest. Neither theological term is ever purposefully articulated as referring to the event - both refer to the record of the event. We can still engage the text (the “artifact” as it were) and discuss the notions of inspiration and inerrancy in light of the text. These doctrines are not attempts to describe our ability to re-discover past reality; they refer to the text as produced and received. That said, it’s certainly true that some people don’t comprehend the distinctions you are drawing.
Ivan wrote:
This is where my hermeneutic gets off the pomo train: What differentiates the Bible from The Brothers Karamazov or Catch-22 (which also happen to be “true” in much that they “affirm”) is that the Signified, to which all biblical typology points, is able to pierce the sign-signified barrier and make a personal encounter with believers as a real individual and not a literary construct. You CAN know Christ through the text, not because of anything the text does, but what God accomplishes through the work of the Holy Spirit.
MSH: Yes, although without the text you couldn’t know Christ the same way, or as well, or perhaps even at all (How would we know about the work of Christ without a written revelation? Personal encounter without the more objective (not perfectly objective, just “more”) is inherently (and wildly) subjective.
Ivan wrote:
Put another way, the text is not the truth, but points to it. We do well to realize the distinction, since even if we rescue some form of inerrancy, we have still not gained as much as we may think.
MSH: I think this is correct, but overstated. The text “is” the truth in some way, as it is able to reflect the reality to which it points. That is, the truth and the text are not altogether separable, but they are distinct.
Ivan wrote:
Further to author-as-author: Any formulation of inerrancy must deal the human element in inspiration. Westminster says in response to Peter Enns that the Bible is production of God, not man. The first part is obvious; the second unnecessary. And demonstrably false.
As I wrote previously, readers encounter Jesus the character, not Jesus the person. The evangelists stand between us and Christ, filtering, shaping, arranging, sometimes changing (!) what Jesus said to suit whatever purposes they had in writing the gospel in the first place. No one sits down to write a book that might get him executed without having some kind of agenda! The gospels are literature, biography, history, revelation, propaganda - texts that define the boundaries of a counter-cultural community and bind it together - but they aren’t transcripts, nor even journalistic accounts. They are cast as drama, based on actual events, but fairly bristling with the thoughts, emotions, intents, and biases of their human authors - to say nothing of grammar and diction. Read Luke and then John, in Greek, and tell me that the Bible is not the production of God AND man!
Put another way: Does God swing the hammer, or the man who holds it?
Any doctrine of inspiration that tries to write the human authors out of the picture is hopelessly impoverished.
MSH: Agreed - and well said. Westminster’s statement is startlingly naïve.
Ivan continued:
As a simple example, consider the very real differences between the character of Christ in the four gospels:
- Mark’s Jesus is an impenetrable stranger, the ultimate “alien other”, walking among us but is not really one of us, disclosing of himself what he sees fit to whom he sees fit, come to do a great work (in secret!), knowing that he will be misunderstood, persecuted, and rejected. Who is this who teaches with authority? Who is this that demons flee before him? Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? Who IS this? (I am content to let chapter 16 end at verse 8. It is perhaps an unsatisfying ending, but consistent with the themes of the gospel as a whole.)
- Matthew’s Jesus is teacher and fulfiller of the Law, come like a prophet of old to denounce the wayward practices of the day and call the children of Israel back to their former glories and beyond, to re-establish their connection with Holy God and inaugurate his eternal Kingdom through a paschal self-sacrifice. He is a reformer, come to tear down the old institutions and bring in the new.
- Luke’s Jesus reads more like a Greek philosopher, a paragon of divine virtue, a great physician dispensing both wisdom and random acts of kindness, brimming with compassion, caring for the needs and ailments of his people, a tragic hero who lays down his life for the salvation of the world.
- John’s Jesus is the strangest of all: A walking, talking paradox, he is both tangible, palpable, and all-too-human - we find him tired, hungry, thirsty, frustrated, angry, weeping for a dead friend, letting Thomas fondle his wounds - but at the same time he is the Pantokrator, god-in-flesh, a full and perfect manifestation of the Old Testament God, equal parts love and fury, barely contained within the flesh he pours himself into. John’s Christ is a cosmic phenomenon, but on a human scale.
Granted, these are caricatures - each gospel is complex in its own way, and themes and episodes are freely swapped between them, often transformed in the process. But the differences in characterization arise from the literary conceits of their respective authors, a certain amount of “spin” applied to the narratives to achieve a unique purpose: Mark intends to tell the good news of Jesus, plain and simple; Matthew intends to demonstrate Christ as fulfillment of Scripture; Luke intends to set down an orderly account so that his readers may feel secure in their knowledge of the truth; John intends to give you a sign that you may believe.
These conceits rest upon a very real underlying historical event (1 Corinthians 15:12-18 means what it says!) but they are literary productions nonetheless, and subject to the demands of Story as much as to Accuracy, subject to the whims of their human authors in submission to and in participation with the will of God.
If we fail to recognize this and account for it, we fail.
MSH: Agreed again
Ivan wrote:
We ought to be honest about what we mean when we use various terms. Let’s start with “truth”.
Do we take a correspondence view of truth, where the truth value of any statement is only legitimately evaluated with respect to the world? Or do we take a coherence view, where the truth of any statement is evaluated with respect to other statements? Does a true system necessarily have to correspond to observable, knowable facts about the world (correspondence)? Or does it merely have to internally consistent (coherence)? Put another way, does truth arise from the propositions within a system (correspondence)? Or may it only arise from as a gestalt property of the system as a whole (coherence)?
As I understand it, Dr. Heiser opts for a correspondence view of the truth, which means that in order to hold the Bible inerrant, he must admit to realities that are both real and unobservable. This is a defensible position, although requiring some exertion, but it is consistent with a state of affairs that should be self-evident to all but the most hardened empiricist/positivist/materialist/nincompoop, namely, that we are unable to observe All Things.
MSH: By “correspondence view of truth” I refer to my desire that one cannot accept something as true if it does not correspond to reality as we are able to comprehend or detect it. I freely accept that there is reality beyond what we can discern with our senses or our science (e.g., the divine reality).
Ivan adds:
For my part, I opt for a coherence view of the truth, which means that I can hold the Bible inerrant if all of its statements form an extensive body of consistent propositions, some independently verifiable and some not. This is easily defensible - I can clear vast swaths of jungle by declaring all questions that boil down to “Come on, none of this nonsense actually ever happened, did it?” as moot - and causes me great glee because it gives positivists and materialists severe indigestion. I can ask a positivist, “But how do you know?” all the way back through the chain of evidence until he must finally admit, “Because I think I must know”, and then I have him right where I want him, stuck in the morass of his own perception. It’s all just a big appeal to authority, isn’t it? Huh? Huh? Why do you think your authority is better than anyone else’s? Huh? Huh? In the meantime, those who hold a correspondence view of the truth have to slug it out on the merits. Boring!
MSH: I don’t think a properly-qualified correspondence view omits this kind of defense.
Ivan adds:
That said, I can “coherently” argue that Paul’s appeal to nature in 1 Cor 11 is true, because if we adopt the same framework that he has adopted (so far as we can tell, a Hippocratic theory of physiology coupled with a to-some-extent Hellenized flavor of second-temple Judaism), none of his statements contradict. It all hangs together as a coherent whole, and the whole truth that emerges as being greater than the sum of its parts becomes readily apparent. His argumentation is sound, his propositions reasonable, and his conclusions justified, even though some of his premises are now known to have negative correspondence with the real world (but were not so known at the time). As a matter of truth, they are coherent, but not correspondent. Deal.
MSH: There’s something about this I don’t like. It seems an inadvisable retreat to adopt a scientifically-flawed framework (in terms of how that might be used against us later on in other areas). I get Ivan’s approach, but someone might come along and ask us why we don’t adopt a framework that includes the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause and argue accordingly. That said, Ivan’s approach seems related to my own thoughts on just admitting the obvious: biblical writers are part of a pre-scientific culture, and this in turn explains why their writings reflect pre -(un)scientific ideas. I said earlier in some place something to the affect of not judging them unfairly for this, which seems akin to what Ivan is saying-but I don’t want to “adopt” their framework. This takes me back to what has become a touchpoint for this whole discussion: What was the point of the exercise of God revealing truth to us through flawed and limited humans in writing?
Ivan writes:
Of course, all of us will wander back and forth between the two viewpoints. I agree with Paul by saying, “Well, yeah. That resurrection thing really happened, because if it didn’t, man are we screwed!” which forces me, for the sake of my own skin, to adopt a correspondence view of the truth, at least for that proposition. On the other end, I doubt if anyone really wants to take a full-on correspondence view of, say, the Apocalypse of John. Really? The locusts in Rev 6 have to be real locusts with people-heads and not blackhawk helicopters. Still interested?
MSH: These interpretive choices have little to do with a correspondence view of truth (witness the Van Til crowd - champions of the correspondence view and vehemently amillennial).
Ivan writes:
Surely I jest, but given how much of the Bible is cast in mythopoetic rather than empirical terms, we will find ourselves fairly often dealing with a coherence view of truth rather than a correspondence one. A correspondence view of truth could make the entire book of Ecclesiastes into a house of cards, for two reasons: First, it’s filled with speculation, rumination, hypotheticals, and general cases. Very little to accord with reality in the first place.
MSH: I get what Ivan is saying, but don’t agree that his conclusion follows. Since when does genre consideration require a choice between these two views of truth? Seems either can state the obvious: this is wisdom literature, and wisdom literature is by nature characterized by such things. I don’t buy this point at all. This caricatures the correspondence view as though it is ignorant or afraid of genre considerations.
What next?
Well, two things - I could post these now, but this one is already long. Look for these two posts, one each in the next two days:
1. I’ve been collected some phrases and ideas from the posts and comments (mostly Ivan since he’s the windiest 
), and I’m going to post them. I think they reduce some of the problem areas to manageable propositions (there you go, Ivan) or concisely-put “issues with which to take account” in the discussion. I will suggest one as a targeted discussion point.
2. The Chicago Statement has surfaced in the discussion. I’m going to reproduce its affirmations and denials in a post and then target a few for specific critique.
This may have a convoluted sort of feel right now, but this is how it usually feels when you try to go beyond statements and confessions that don’t deal with their blemishes. It’s useful, but it will take time. I’m in no hurry for this one.
Topics: Bibliology | No Comments »
Back from vacation tonight - blogging to resume
By MSH | July 1, 2008
I’ll be back tonight from vacation. I was (literally) in one of the most unwired places in the US (only dial-up, and even that was rare). Thought I was ready for that, but my pre-planning went awry. It was like a Dilbert cartoon!
I’ll be posting and answering comments starting tomorrow!
Mike
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On vacation
By MSH | June 24, 2008
Just a note - I’m on vacation with limited online access. I’m sure I’ll fall behind on posts and comments. Back July 2.
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Pre-Scientific Worldview “Problem” and Inerrancy
By MSH | June 20, 2008
Taking off on Chet’s lengthy response to my “Definitions of Inerrancy” post:
The first thing I’d like to pursue is Chet’s criticism of the word “affirm” — I also think it’s a weasel-word. You quote 1 Cor. 11:14, which says, “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him?” Here Paul makes a specific statement about nature–it’s clearly a comment on the natural world and a truth that Paul believes the natural world communicates or points to. Having read the article in the readings list, it is quite clear that Paul’s statement is rooted in an absolutely non-scientific worldview. His statement is scientifically false. I’d say he’s clearly “affirming” something about nature here and then extrapolating to his more significant point. So, I think we need to dump this “affirming” language as some sort of safeguard (read: weasel-word) for defending inerrancy. Here’s what I’d like your (and others’) thoughts on:
1. Paul is clearly in error in terms of his understanding of nature on this point (he’s a pre-scientific man). Does that matter? Although Paul believed this, is he putting forth this belief as something his readers must believe? that is, while his contemporary readers no doubt believed what he believed, should be view this belief as something that we must believe? Is this the way this statement is cast? Put another way, when I read this passage, is Paul’s belief about hair what I am supposed to embrace as truth from this passage? I don’t think so, and I think you’d agree. But I also think it would be silly to say Paul isn’t “affirming” the particular erroneous belief about hair. He believes it.
2. Should we give Paul a pass? I’d say, of course — how is he supposed to know anything else? The science of his day was primitive by our standards.
3. What ARE we supposed to embrace from the passage? What is Paul teaching? I don’t think he’s teaching us about biology or sexual reproduction–though he presupposes some beliefs about those things that are erroneous when making his argument. If he’d said “this is what God wants you to believe about how we get babies,” the inerrancy issue would be a dead one-inerrancy would be untenable. But is it coherent to say that a speaker or writer’s conclusion or position cannot be correct if his arguments are not always correct? Obviously, the answer to this is no. People are right about X all the time when their reasons for thinking they are right are bogus. We all know that. But in this passage of Scripture this leaves us with a problem: How are we to correctly discern WHAT Paul’s point is (the thing that can still be correct) if the argument he’s using is wrong? That’s a problem, but I think it’s not an issue of inerrancy so much (as stated) as it is an issue of interpretation.
I say all the above to say this: perhaps in our understanding and articulation of inerrancy we should make it clear that taking the Bible on its own terms means not expecting more from the culture that produced it than is fair. I don’t think it’s fair for us to judge Scripture by standards foreign to the people who produced it. God chose to come to people of a particular culture, a particular region of the world, at a particular time. He used what he had at his disposal once he made that decision-some people who didn’t know squat about a whole host of things (and we’d have to say that about ourselves were we the people God chose to communicate through). God wasn’t trying to teach us science in the Bible precisely because he wasn’t teaching its authors science. They wouldn’t have understood it, and even if correct science was dictated to them, their readers wouldn’t have understood it. That would sort of defeat the purpose of dispensing revelation, wouldn’t it? (”I’m going down there and telling them lots of things they can’t grasp-and then hold them accountable for it” Huh?). To use the weasel-word, I’d say the Bible specifically does NOT “affirm” anything about science because God didn’t have anyone at his disposal sufficient to the task. So, I don’t care if Paul is wrong in his science; God didn’t care either.
But while Paul’s science shouldn’t be embraced by us as truth, can’t we still embrace what he says in this passage outside of science? I don’t think the hermeneutical gap in this instance (1 Cor 11) is that wide, either. I think we can get a pretty good idea of what Paul meant, however odd or wrong his reasoning process was. I’d say we CAN discern the truth item God wanted him to communicate while allowing Paul (even directing Paul) to make that point on the basis of his worldview’s bad science. The original audience wouldn’t have been able to understand it any other way. Our task is to recover his worldview and THEN judge the ends to which he’s arguing, not necessarily the means.
So, I just don’t think the pre-scientific worldview issue forces me to not hold to inerrancy. It DOES force me to not word what I believe the way the earlier definitions are worded (at least with respect to the “affirm” wording). I’d like to do better.
Not sure this helps (me or anyone else).
Topics: Bibliology | 38 Comments »
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