After reading the introduction to Ehrman's book, we move on to his first chapter, "Divine Humans in the Ancient World." I don't know how this chapter would strike someone hearing it for the first time. I'm trying to react to the book from the perspective of either a) a "none," especially a millennial with no religious identification, and b) a young Christian who has never heard of the sorts of things in this chapter.
So what is in this chapter? I would say there are two main aspects to this chapter. The one is to continue the point that divinity was on more of a sliding scale at the time of Christ and the second is to show the various models of "divine humans." Humans who were also or who might become divine.
Ehrman gives three models of the divine human: 1) gods who temporarily become human, 2) demigods born of a god and a human, and 3) humans who became divine. The rest of the chapter basically consists of examples of these.
There is nothing new here and this is something I hope readers will recognize. The story of Baucis and Philemon, where the gods Zeus and Hermes come down and do some home visits? It's a well known story you only don't know because high school isn't what it used to be. Have you seen Clash of the Titans or Hercules? Then the idea that Zeus gets around and has children living among us... nothing new to see here.
The idea that a human might become a god after death or even before, that might be more of a new one to some. But not everything in the ancient world took these stories seriously. There's a great legend of the emperor Vespasian on his death bed joked about how he felt like he was becoming a god. (I'm planning on that one too on my death bed) Ehrman goes through the well known list: Romulus (legendary founder of Rome), Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor cult in general, and of course Apollonius. There is a story somewhere or another about all of these becoming or turning out to be a god.
So what are we to think of these parallels? How close are they?
A very important thing to keep in mind is that the books of the Bible were written in and for that world. Christians have a tendency to rip the Bible from its actual world and read its words as if they are timeless--which because most people have no sense of time basically means they think the Bible was a selfie taken with them in it. What they really mean without knowing it, when they say the Bible is timeless, is that they think it was written for them in their time and their place.
So it can be shocking to realize that the words of the Bible were written for the world that Ehrman is talking about. I remember when I went with a group to Greece and a pastor was a little troubled to find that the temple and sanctuary of the Bible was a little similar in structure to all the temples of the ancient world. I had an OT seminary professor who mentioned he had once had the same shock to find that Israel's temple was not completely unlike the Canaanite temples around them.
It shouldn't be shocking. Why? Because God was speaking to their world in the Bible, not directly to ours. We should expect parallels between the biblical world and the ancient world because it was written in and to their world, not directly to ours. The older I get, the more I feel like people in my circles need to be confronted more with the distance of the biblical world rather than (as might be needed in more liberal circles) confronted with the fact that the Bible is God's word for us too.
Is it possible that the imagery of the Bible has features drawn from the traditions of the ancient world? Absolutely. Here's the secret--that doesn't disprove God or Christianity. This is my word for the shallow ones who use things like this chapter to try to undermine faith. They are only undermining shallow versions of faith (and making themselves look stupid because they aren't aware of more profound versions that are more than aware of these sorts of parallels).
Also, as Michael Bird points out in his response book, the influence potentially goes both ways. When the story of Apollonius of Tyana is as much as a century later than the story of Jesus, it is quite possible that the story of Apollonius has been influenced by the story of Jesus, indeed even that it was modified to serve as a competing story to Jesus.
The way I look at it is this. Using sound historical method, even method that does not turn to the supernatural, there are certain likely core events to the Jesus story. It may be strange for a Christian to think in this way (and you don't have to), but if we look at the New Testament purely from a historical perspective and bracket the supernatural for a moment, I believe we will come up with certain core events as likely to the story of Jesus, including eyewitness reports to seeing him after his death and a likely empty tomb. These are concrete events with real people.
There is a big difference between legends that arise for political reasons (e.g., about emperors) or about the legendary past (Romulus) or at a distance (Apollonius) and Jesus. Jesus was crucified as a criminal. He was not an emperor where divinization was expected. Nor was he some remote figure begging for legends. He was a crucified "criminal" like many others, a concrete "revolutionary" like countless other crucified trouble makers. What was different about him, a nobody in that world, if Ehrman is correct? What was it about his situation that gave rise to such stories?
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some of the features of figures like this chapter accrued to the Jesus story as time went by. If so (and that remains to be seen), they arose as the shock waves of certain concrete events. If some of this imagery accrued to Jesus, it happened as Jesus' followers sought to explain unexpected, concrete events that took place before their very eyes.
This is a different situation from predictable legends about far off, distant heroes.
Next week: Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism
Showing posts with label Michael Bird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Bird. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God: Introduction
I do not know how widely Bart Ehrman's new book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, will be read. There is a good evangelical response in a fine collection of chapters edited by Michael Bird, a book appropriately called, How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature--A Response to Bart Ehrman. There has also been some fine blog engagement with these books.
I've decided to walk through Ehrman's book as well. I'm also working through Bird's response book, but I don't want to compare the two books. I want to read through Ehrman's book as if I were a "none" who is not particularly interested in religion or as if I were a Christian who has never encountered ideas like Ehrman's before. My goal is thus not to write an apologetics piece like Bird but more to play the role of a consultant of sorts, thinking through it with the person for whom these are pretty much new ideas.
Introduction
"I do not take a stand on the theological question of Jesus' divine status," Ehrman says (3). In that sense, Ehrman at least suggests that his study might allow for faith in Jesus' divinity. At the same time, he is quite clear that he is "no longer a believer" (2). His professed point of view is rather that of a "historian."
On the one hand, there is a significant thing to consider here. Ehrman fully accepts that Christians came to believe that Jesus was God and that Christians have believed it from the earliest centuries of Christianity. You can thus, at least in theory, be a believer whether you prefer Ehrman's or Bird's sense of how that belief unfolded. You can take the path of Bird and conclude that Christians had this understanding from Christianity's earliest days. Or you can take perhaps a slightly modified version of Ehrman and believe that God turned on the lights of understanding about Jesus over the course of several decades.
On the other hand, the idea that Ehrman is just a "historian" is probably slightly misleading. While I reject as naive and ideologically promiscuous the idea that worldviews are large, total packages, I do accept that there are key presuppositions and operating rules that any so called historian inevitably assumes. When Ehrman does history, he inevitably would reject any supernatural explanation for an event. In that sense, if there is a God who is involved in the world, Ehrman's reconstruction of events can never be correct, because he specifically forbids any interpretation of events in which God is a factor.
By contrast, a historical approach that does not eliminate the possibility of the supernatural out of hand might try to interpret events in terms of normal cause and effect explanations as a default but be open to supernatural explanations if cause-effect seems lacking in some regard and especially if supernatural explanations are already in play.
Next week: Chapter 1: Divine Humans in Ancient Greece and Rome
I've decided to walk through Ehrman's book as well. I'm also working through Bird's response book, but I don't want to compare the two books. I want to read through Ehrman's book as if I were a "none" who is not particularly interested in religion or as if I were a Christian who has never encountered ideas like Ehrman's before. My goal is thus not to write an apologetics piece like Bird but more to play the role of a consultant of sorts, thinking through it with the person for whom these are pretty much new ideas.
Introduction
"I do not take a stand on the theological question of Jesus' divine status," Ehrman says (3). In that sense, Ehrman at least suggests that his study might allow for faith in Jesus' divinity. At the same time, he is quite clear that he is "no longer a believer" (2). His professed point of view is rather that of a "historian."
On the one hand, there is a significant thing to consider here. Ehrman fully accepts that Christians came to believe that Jesus was God and that Christians have believed it from the earliest centuries of Christianity. You can thus, at least in theory, be a believer whether you prefer Ehrman's or Bird's sense of how that belief unfolded. You can take the path of Bird and conclude that Christians had this understanding from Christianity's earliest days. Or you can take perhaps a slightly modified version of Ehrman and believe that God turned on the lights of understanding about Jesus over the course of several decades.
On the other hand, the idea that Ehrman is just a "historian" is probably slightly misleading. While I reject as naive and ideologically promiscuous the idea that worldviews are large, total packages, I do accept that there are key presuppositions and operating rules that any so called historian inevitably assumes. When Ehrman does history, he inevitably would reject any supernatural explanation for an event. In that sense, if there is a God who is involved in the world, Ehrman's reconstruction of events can never be correct, because he specifically forbids any interpretation of events in which God is a factor.
By contrast, a historical approach that does not eliminate the possibility of the supernatural out of hand might try to interpret events in terms of normal cause and effect explanations as a default but be open to supernatural explanations if cause-effect seems lacking in some regard and especially if supernatural explanations are already in play.
Next week: Chapter 1: Divine Humans in Ancient Greece and Rome
Wednesday, May 07, 2014
The Sirens of Ehrman and Bird
I have been apathetically watching the flurry of back and forth posts in relation to the two books that recently came out in tandem:
Ehrman gives what was more or less the consensus forty/fifty years ago. It held that the early Christian sense of Jesus' divinity grew over time. This was still the consensus when I was entering biblical studies in the late 80s/early 90s. My sense is that Ehrman would generally fit within this older paradigm, and the work of my Doctor Father fit squarely within that consensus.
Then Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and N. T. Wright led a paradigm shift that our friends Bird, Gathercole, Tilling, Evans, and Hill have brought to the table in their response to Ehrman's book. Is it the consensus now? It may be. It's certainly seems to be what everyone wants to hear.
I do believe faith can fit with both. The initial inclination of those who have a more or less historic faith will no doubt want Bird and company to be right. But I believe faith can fit with both the "exaltation" and the "divine identity" approaches to early Christology. After all, there is general agreement on both sides about where Christian faith ended up. This is a debate about how it got there.
So, fine, I'll listen to the sirens. I don't know how much I will blog about the books. I just don't have the energy. If at some point I think there's something palatable to share, I will. The entire conversation depresses me on multiple levels...
- Bart Ehrman's, How Jesus Became God and
- Bird et al, How God Became Jesus.
Ehrman gives what was more or less the consensus forty/fifty years ago. It held that the early Christian sense of Jesus' divinity grew over time. This was still the consensus when I was entering biblical studies in the late 80s/early 90s. My sense is that Ehrman would generally fit within this older paradigm, and the work of my Doctor Father fit squarely within that consensus.
Then Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and N. T. Wright led a paradigm shift that our friends Bird, Gathercole, Tilling, Evans, and Hill have brought to the table in their response to Ehrman's book. Is it the consensus now? It may be. It's certainly seems to be what everyone wants to hear.
I do believe faith can fit with both. The initial inclination of those who have a more or less historic faith will no doubt want Bird and company to be right. But I believe faith can fit with both the "exaltation" and the "divine identity" approaches to early Christology. After all, there is general agreement on both sides about where Christian faith ended up. This is a debate about how it got there.
So, fine, I'll listen to the sirens. I don't know how much I will blog about the books. I just don't have the energy. If at some point I think there's something palatable to share, I will. The entire conversation depresses me on multiple levels...
Friday, November 22, 2013
A History of Inerrancy
A few quick thoughts on how I think the Bible's truthfulness has been conceived over time and has changed throughout church history.
Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.
Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.
Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.
The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.
It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.
Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.
We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.
In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now). Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.
My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.
Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries. If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.
Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.
Some thoughts after walking through the book...
Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.
Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.
Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.
The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.
It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.
Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.
We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.
In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now). Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.
My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.
Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries. If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.
Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.
Some thoughts after walking through the book...
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Inerrancy Book Review (Part 2)
Yesterday, I largely looked at the critiques of Al Mohler's understanding of inerrancy in Zondervan's new Five Views of Inerrancy. I had three major take-aways:
Kevin Vanhoozer
Vanhoozer is a class act. Like Franke, I don't think he goes far enough with the polyvalence of the biblical text. But V's version of inerrancy is brilliant in relation to the original meaning of the biblical text.
His fundamental insight seems completely indisputable: God did not just speak in the Bible to convey information. He spoke to communicate in several different ways (215). He is worth quoting: "God's Word can be relied upon to accomplish the purpose for which it has been sent, and when this purpose is making affirmations, it does so inerrantly" (223, italics his).
For V, infallibility is the broader category into which inerrancy fits. Inerrancy relates to those instances when God's purpose in the biblical text is to affirm cognitive truths. But God has many other purposes--commands, promises, perhaps even to give us an opportunity to lament or vent. Other words are more suitable to those purposes. Commands are authoritative. Promises are infallible. Laments are cathartic. Assertions are inerrant.
Vanhoozer here is appropriating the insights of speech-act theory. V advocates a "well-versed" approach to Scripture that "acknowledges that what is said is not always an affirmation" (220). Again, this seems beyond dispute. To limit, as C. F. H. Henry did, the basic function of language more or less to the cognitive and to making propositional assertions (214-15) seems almost an incomprehensible position today. Henry may have had a Spock-like personality, but he is clearly the exception among us mortals rather than the rule.
V quotes with approval David Dockery's 1986 definition, which presumably stands behind the wording of inerrancy that Asbury Seminary seminary uses: "The Bible, in the original autographs, properly interpreted, will be found to be truthful and faithful in all that it affirms concerning all areas of life, faith, and practice" (207).
Dockery and Vanhoozer are making a crucial distinction here. Not everything "mentioned" in the Bible is the point, what was being affirmed. Let me provide my own example. The point of Paul saying he was taken up into the third heaven was not to make a statement about the structure of the universe. Frankly, the point was not even to say that Paul was taken into the presence of God. What the passage was affirming was that no one has the right to boast before God, and though Paul could boast more than his opponents, even he was nothing next to God.
To me, this is a far more defensible version of inerrancy than Mohler's. I'll leave V there. He has some other valid clarifications to make. For example, to take the Bible literally is not the same as literalism. To read the Bible literally, to V, is to read it in terms of what the author was actually doing with the text, which might not actually be literal.
Michael Bird
I think one of the biggest purposes Bird had in mind in his chapter was to put American cultural myopia in its place. His basic point is that global Christianity has been doing just fine with its own affirmations of the Bible's truthfulness and doesn't need to import America's baggage to become more informed and holy.
He spends a couple pages going through a host of affirmations about the Bible used in global Christianity. None of them use the word inerrant. Even the Westminster Confession, the cornerstone of Reformed faith, affirms the "infallible truth and divine authority" of Scripture (161). The Lausanne Conference comes closest, "without error in all that it affirms" (162). Most, he says, use words like "infallible" and "authoritative."
He does not consider "infallible" a retreat from confidence in the Bible's truthfulness any more than Vanhoozer does. Rather, it takes "a view to the purpose for which God has revealed himself" (163). For Bird, that focus of revelation primarily has to do with Christ and God the Father. "The Bible was intended to impart knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer, and under that premise, the Bible is completely true in all that it says" (163).
The actual word, "inerrancy" is a relative latecomer on the theological scene. J. I. Packer suggests it was not regularly used in this connection until the 1800s (162-63). Bird can live with it, although he agrees with Donald Bloesch that it is not the preferable word (172). He doesn't see a material difference between it and infallibility (163).
He clearly considers it rife with Americanism and takes a few opportunities to mock us for peculiarities we don't know we have. "Only American evangelicals use Scripture to argue against gun control, against environmental care, and against universal healthcare" (156).
He notes that we have transported our myopia here and there around the world with our enculturated missionaries: "I have met some peculiar Christians from Africa and Europe with oddly American beliefs about taxation, end-times theology, the King James Bible, and prescribed styles of worship" (145 n.2). He excludes these transplants from his description of the global church.
He has no interest in our debates over inerrancy. He sees it used primarily as a weapon in American circles, "a way of forcing conformity to certain biblical interpretations, and to weed out dissenters in denominational politics" (157). "Inerrancy is primarily a weapon of religious politics to define who is in and who is out."
In the end, like John Stott, he is not so much interested in formulas of subscription as in practical submission (165). "How we live under the Bible is the ultimate test of what we believe about God and the Bible." By the way, elsewhere in the book, Vanhoozer notes that Stott, a British evangelical, was uncomfortable with the word inerrancy because it seemed to reduce the Bible to a set of propositions (200 n.2).
I hope to finish up tomorrow with Enns and Franke.
- Christians throughout the centuries have always affirmed the complete truthfulness of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
- However, the way in which Christians have affirmed the truthfulness of Scripture throughout the centuries is not exactly the same as the way the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) affirms it. Most of the authors in this book affirm inerrancy without equating it exactly with CSBI.
- The CSBI is a product of twentieth century American evangelical culture. It has cultural features.
Kevin Vanhoozer
Vanhoozer is a class act. Like Franke, I don't think he goes far enough with the polyvalence of the biblical text. But V's version of inerrancy is brilliant in relation to the original meaning of the biblical text.
His fundamental insight seems completely indisputable: God did not just speak in the Bible to convey information. He spoke to communicate in several different ways (215). He is worth quoting: "God's Word can be relied upon to accomplish the purpose for which it has been sent, and when this purpose is making affirmations, it does so inerrantly" (223, italics his).
For V, infallibility is the broader category into which inerrancy fits. Inerrancy relates to those instances when God's purpose in the biblical text is to affirm cognitive truths. But God has many other purposes--commands, promises, perhaps even to give us an opportunity to lament or vent. Other words are more suitable to those purposes. Commands are authoritative. Promises are infallible. Laments are cathartic. Assertions are inerrant.
Vanhoozer here is appropriating the insights of speech-act theory. V advocates a "well-versed" approach to Scripture that "acknowledges that what is said is not always an affirmation" (220). Again, this seems beyond dispute. To limit, as C. F. H. Henry did, the basic function of language more or less to the cognitive and to making propositional assertions (214-15) seems almost an incomprehensible position today. Henry may have had a Spock-like personality, but he is clearly the exception among us mortals rather than the rule.
V quotes with approval David Dockery's 1986 definition, which presumably stands behind the wording of inerrancy that Asbury Seminary seminary uses: "The Bible, in the original autographs, properly interpreted, will be found to be truthful and faithful in all that it affirms concerning all areas of life, faith, and practice" (207).
Dockery and Vanhoozer are making a crucial distinction here. Not everything "mentioned" in the Bible is the point, what was being affirmed. Let me provide my own example. The point of Paul saying he was taken up into the third heaven was not to make a statement about the structure of the universe. Frankly, the point was not even to say that Paul was taken into the presence of God. What the passage was affirming was that no one has the right to boast before God, and though Paul could boast more than his opponents, even he was nothing next to God.
To me, this is a far more defensible version of inerrancy than Mohler's. I'll leave V there. He has some other valid clarifications to make. For example, to take the Bible literally is not the same as literalism. To read the Bible literally, to V, is to read it in terms of what the author was actually doing with the text, which might not actually be literal.
Michael Bird
I think one of the biggest purposes Bird had in mind in his chapter was to put American cultural myopia in its place. His basic point is that global Christianity has been doing just fine with its own affirmations of the Bible's truthfulness and doesn't need to import America's baggage to become more informed and holy.
He spends a couple pages going through a host of affirmations about the Bible used in global Christianity. None of them use the word inerrant. Even the Westminster Confession, the cornerstone of Reformed faith, affirms the "infallible truth and divine authority" of Scripture (161). The Lausanne Conference comes closest, "without error in all that it affirms" (162). Most, he says, use words like "infallible" and "authoritative."
He does not consider "infallible" a retreat from confidence in the Bible's truthfulness any more than Vanhoozer does. Rather, it takes "a view to the purpose for which God has revealed himself" (163). For Bird, that focus of revelation primarily has to do with Christ and God the Father. "The Bible was intended to impart knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer, and under that premise, the Bible is completely true in all that it says" (163).
The actual word, "inerrancy" is a relative latecomer on the theological scene. J. I. Packer suggests it was not regularly used in this connection until the 1800s (162-63). Bird can live with it, although he agrees with Donald Bloesch that it is not the preferable word (172). He doesn't see a material difference between it and infallibility (163).
He clearly considers it rife with Americanism and takes a few opportunities to mock us for peculiarities we don't know we have. "Only American evangelicals use Scripture to argue against gun control, against environmental care, and against universal healthcare" (156).
He notes that we have transported our myopia here and there around the world with our enculturated missionaries: "I have met some peculiar Christians from Africa and Europe with oddly American beliefs about taxation, end-times theology, the King James Bible, and prescribed styles of worship" (145 n.2). He excludes these transplants from his description of the global church.
He has no interest in our debates over inerrancy. He sees it used primarily as a weapon in American circles, "a way of forcing conformity to certain biblical interpretations, and to weed out dissenters in denominational politics" (157). "Inerrancy is primarily a weapon of religious politics to define who is in and who is out."
In the end, like John Stott, he is not so much interested in formulas of subscription as in practical submission (165). "How we live under the Bible is the ultimate test of what we believe about God and the Bible." By the way, elsewhere in the book, Vanhoozer notes that Stott, a British evangelical, was uncomfortable with the word inerrancy because it seemed to reduce the Bible to a set of propositions (200 n.2).
I hope to finish up tomorrow with Enns and Franke.
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