In The Nick of Time

They say that any publicity is good publicity, but that may not be true. Pillsbury Baptist Bible College has recently received some rather unwelcome attention. First, a prominent pastor in Indiana has publicly narrated a pejorative but largely fictitious account of his expulsion from Pillsbury during the 1970s. Then a blogger from back East published a negative report complaining that the campus coffee shop wasn’t open at night and he was bored while visiting the college.

This series of essays began by discussing the usefulness of logic as a tool for discovering biblical truth. Until now, the question has been whether necessary inferences from the Scriptural premises are somehow less authoritative than the original premises. These essays have argued that whatever Scripture necessarily implies is just as authoritative as what Scripture actually states.

All cats are dogs.
All dogs are quadrupeds.
Therefore, all cats are quadrupeds.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine that you are given access to a banking machine, and told that you may withdraw in one transaction up to 500,000 dollars. You are also permitted to make subsequent withdrawals, but no withdrawal can amount to more than half of the previous withdrawal. How many withdrawals will you have to make before you have a million dollars?

I have been arguing against a philosophical theory that denigrates reason by stating that inferences drawn from Scripture are always lower in authority than the straightforward declarations of Scripture. I have attempted to show that this theory is bad philosophy, bad exegesis, and bad theology. Necessary inferences drawn from Scripture are just as authoritative as the Scriptures themselves.

Whatever Scripture affirms is absolutely authoritative. Many of the biblical affirmations imply other affirmations. The question is, how authoritative are the affirmations that Scripture implies?

The writer to the Hebrews was distressed by the spiritual immaturity of his readers. He wanted to discuss theology with them—specifically, the calling of Christ as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:10‐14). He made it clear that the Hebrews had been saved long enough (“when for the time”) that they ought to have mastered this topic (“ye ought to be teachers”).

Within the final week of His ministry, Jesus announced Himself as the Messiah and took possession of the temple in Jerusalem. During the buildup of hostilities that led to the crucifixion, He was confronted by each faction of the Jewish leadership. The confrontation with the Sadducees(Matt. 22:23‐33; Mark 12:18‐27) is especially instructive.

While verbal inspiration is not dictation, it nevertheless implies that what Scripture affirms, God affirms. Inspiration did not obliterate the human personalities of the biblical authors, who certainly made free choices about what they would write and how they would write it.

The two latest installments of Kevin Bauder’s In the Nick of Time, “Shall We Reason Together?” parts one and two, raise interesting questions about the relationship between Scripture and logic.