Theology Thursday – Inerrancy is Wrong

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In this excerpt from the book Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, Peter Enns shares his initial thoughts about inerrancy from his essay, entitled, “Inerrancy, However Defined, Does Not Describe What the Bible Does.”1

The Bible is the book of God for the people of God. It reveals and conceals, is clear yet complex, open to all but impossible to master. Its message clearly reflects the cultural settings of the authors, yet it still comforts and convicts across cultures and across time.

The Bible is a book that tells one grand narrative, but by means of divergent viewpoints and different theologies. It tells of God’s acts but also reports some events that either may not have happened or have been significantly reshaped and transformed by centuries of tradition. It presents us with portraits of God and of his people that at times comfort and confirm our faith while at other times challenge and stretch our faith to its breaking point.

This is the Bible we have, the Bible God gave us. Redefining or nuancing inerrancy to account for these properties can be of some value, and some are no doubt content to do so. The core issue, however, is how inerrancy functions in contemporary evangelical theological discourse. This too varies, but when all is said and done, I do not think inerrancy can capture the Bible’s varied character and complex dynamics.

Though intended to protect the Bible, inerrancy actually sells it short by placing on it expectations it is not designed to bear—as evidenced by the need for generations of continued publications and debates to defend it. On a deeper and ultimately more important level, inerrancy sells God short. Inerrancy is routinely propounded as the logical entailment of God’s truthfulness, which for many inerrantists leads to the necessary expectation of the Bible’s historical accuracy.

The premise that such an inerrant Bible is the only kind of book God would be able to produce, or the only effective means of divine communication, strikes me as assuming that God shares our modern interest in accuracy and scientific precision, rather than allowing the phenomena of Scripture to shape our theological expectations. As I see it, the recurring tensions over inerrancy in evangelicalism are largely a byproduct of the distance between a priori theological assertions about God and about how his book should behave and the Bible we meet once we get down to the uncooperative details of the text itself.

When the Bible needs so much careful, persistent tending in order to preserve a particular doctrine of Scripture, we might wonder whether the doctrine is the solution or the very source of the problem. Put another way, inerrancy is a theory. The question before us is whether this theory can explain the phenomena of the text. If not, then inerrancy should be amended accordingly or, in my view, scrapped altogether.

The stark reality, however, faced by evangelicals who are critical of inerrancy is that inerrancy has been a central component of evangelicalism for its entire history, a response to the challenges of biblical higher criticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Inerrancy is encoded into the evangelical DNA, and conversations, however discreet, concerning its continued usefulness are rarely valued. In fact, considerable personal and professional fallout are well documented, and examples are not difficult to find. Inerrancy’s definitive—and nonnegotiable—role in forming evangelical identity in the face of modern challenges reached a defining moment in the framing of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978).

For more, see Enns’ essay (and others) from the book.

Notes

1 Peter Enns, “Inerrancy, However Defined, Does Not Describe What the Bible Does,” in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, ed. Stanley Gundry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013; Kindle ed.), KL 1354-1378.

Discussion

[CAWatson]

So the Bible was written as God influenced man by errant and sinful men who wrote from their perspective - from their point of view.

Perhaps before the subject of inerrancy can be tackled we need to first examine inspiration.

Did God only influence man, or did God breathe the very words themselves?

Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)

CAWatson, summarizing Enns, wrote:

Scripture is human and divine - and it is much more human than we actually understand it.

I think that this statement is very true and needs to be better understood by the masses. Our good scholars understand this, and so do many good pastors. But some, claiming to believe in verbal, plenary inspiration actually believe in dictation. As a matter of fact, I wonder if most laymen in our churches actually believe in dictation.

If you think about it, Scripture is very much like the Person of Jesus Christ. Could Jesus sin? Most of us would say, “No; even though His human nature could be tempted, His human nature is melded to His divine nature, and it is impossible for God to sin.” In like manner, the human side of inspiration is quite capable of error, but since the Bible is BOTH the Word of God and Word of man — parallel in this regard to the Hypostatic Union — the divine aspect of inspiration would over ride the human propensity to err.

"The Midrash Detective"

Millard Erickson’s discussion, in his systematic theology, of the various theories of inspiration is excellent. Anyone will benefit from reading it. To be honest, I’ve decided Millard Erickson has perhaps the most useful systematic out there. I appreciate it more and more as the years go by, and I’m glad Maranatha Seminary used it as the primary systematic theology text.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

[JNoël]

Perhaps before the subject of inerrancy can be tackled we need to first examine inspiration.

Did God only influence man, or did God breathe the very words themselves?

If you want to understand Enns on inspiration (although he wrote this book while at Westminster, and thus purposefully hid his views on inerrancy at the time), you should carefully read his book, Inspiration and Incarnation.

https://www.amazon.com/Inspiration-Incarnation-Evangelicals-Problem-Tes…

[Ed Vasicek]

CAWatson, summarizing Enns, wrote:

Scripture is human and divine - and it is much more human than we actually understand it.

I think that this statement is very true and needs to be better understood by the masses. Our good scholars understand this, and so do many good pastors. But some, claiming to believe in verbal, plenary inspiration actually believe in dictation. As a matter of fact, I wonder if most laymen in our churches actually believe in dictation.

If you think about it, Scripture is very much like the Person of Jesus Christ. Could Jesus sin? Most of us would say, “No; even though His human nature could be tempted, His human nature is melded to His divine nature, and it is impossible for God to sin.” In like manner, the human side of inspiration is quite capable of error, but since the Bible is BOTH the Word of God and Word of man — parallel in this regard to the Hypostatic Union — the divine aspect of inspiration would over ride the human propensity to err.

I would agree with what you have said here concerning the incarnational nature of Scripture in parallel to the Hypostatic Union. Enns wouldn’t.

I appreciate your “trying to be fair to Enns and his beliefs,” but I think you may have misunderstood my statements.

[CAWatson]

I don’t think that you have fairly represented Enns. Enns believes in God, and believes that God has spoken to people in a way that they understand.

I never proposed that Enns doesn’t believe in God, I said he “misunderstood the nature of God.” I stated that in response to his statement that challenged those who hold to inerrancy as being wrong about the “premise that such an inerrant Bible is the only kind of book God would be able to produce.” Enns is saying by implication that the truthful God could produce a book that is not true, since truth is inerrant.

So I was not addressing Enns’s belief in God, but a belief he apparently has about God—that God can produce a false book.

Regarding the next point about Enns:

And I also do not think that you have represented his understanding of inerrancy fairly. Of course there is phenomenological language used throughout the Bible - Enns would agree with that. But he would disagree that the Bible actually says anything that can be solved and demonstrated scientifically. He mocks creation science. He doesn’t appreciate the apologetic work done in OT studies by Gleason Archer, as well as some of his predecessors at Westminster (before he was fired). There IS a scientific element to inerrancy - that what the Bible says propositionally, even in areas that we would call “science” is true.

It was Enns who was charging those who hold to inerrancy as “assuming that God shares our modern interest in accuracy and scientific precision, rather than allowing the phenomena of Scripture to shape our theological expectations.” I was responding to the fact that he misrepresents at least some inerrancy positions that do not exclusively hold that “God shares our modern interest in accuracy and scientific precision,” but that phenomenal language can reflect truth. To me, he was falsely charging inerrantists with being only about scientific precision in the Bible’s language. So I was playing off his call to observe Scripture (“the phenomena of Scripture”) by pointing out that inerrancy is not only about scientific precision in language, but observational language as well.

So I was not really addressing Enns’s view of inerrancy directly in my statement, but rather his characterization of the inerrancy position.

I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say. I have not read much of Enns, so I’m only basing those observations on that one quoted section from the above work.

Scott Smith, Ph.D.

The goal now, the destiny to come, holiness like God—
Gen 1:27, Lev 19:2, 1 Pet 1:15-16

[CAWatson]

ScottS wrote:

Enns says:

The premise that such an inerrant Bible is the only kind of book God would be able to produce, or the only effective means of divine communication, strikes me as assuming that God shares our modern interest in accuracy and scientific precision, rather than allowing the phenomena of Scripture to shape our theological expectations

From that quote, Enns appears to misunderstand the nature of God and/or truth (“let God be true, but every man a liar,” Rom 3:4; Jn 3:33), as indeed truth is the only kind of book God “would be able to produce.”

But also he misunderstands the position of inerrancy. It is not about “scientific precision,” and can indeed include truth from a phenomenal perspective (e.g. from the perspective of one here on earth, that “the sun rises” [2 Sam 23:4, Ps 104:22, Nah 3:17] is a truthful phenomenon that occurs, even if scientifically one may understand that the earth is rotating three dimensionally in space and the sun is not actually “rising” as it appears). So it is not an either/or situation. Something can be true from differing perspectives, and still be absolute truth (not watered down to merely relative truth) in both cases, because God can affirm something is true from either perspective (or declare the statement false based on perspective). In a Christian perspective, absolute truth is defined by whether God can affirm a statement as true or not.

I don’t disagree with your theological statements here. However, I don’t think that you have fairly represented Enns. Enns believes in God, and believes that God has spoken to people in a way that they understand. As Christ is both human and divine, Scripture is human and divine - and it is much more human than we actually understand it. So the Bible was written as God influenced man by errant and sinful men who wrote from their perspective - from their point of view. Hence, the Canaanite genocide is an evil, not a good - and was written by sinful men who desired to cleanse the land - it doesn’t match with the ethic of Jesus. So the Bible is true in that it is a confusing reflection of both God and sinful humanity - all bundled up together.

And I also do not think that you have represented his understanding of inerrancy fairly. Of course there is phenomenological language used throughout the Bible - Enns would agree with that. But he would disagree that the Bible actually says anything that can be solved and demonstrated scientifically. He mocks creation science. He doesn’t appreciate the apologetic work done in OT studies by Gleason Archer, as well as some of his predecessors at Westminster (before he was fired). There IS a scientific element to inerrancy - that what the Bible says propositionally, even in areas that we would call “science” is true.

Note: I do not personally agree with Enns as I have attempted to understand him. I am simply trying to be fair to Enns and his beliefs.

To understand Enns’ view of Scripture on a popular level, just read The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read it. It is a snarky attack on the Bible from beginning to end.

Oh, and Andy Stanley tweeted “thanks” to Enns referencing the book when it was published, and had Enns speak to his staff. When you read this book you understand what Stanley is doing and where he is going, although he is careful not to say everything Enns says (and in the way he says it) in order to walk that evangelical line.

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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University