BioLogos and Inerrancy?

His book Inspiration and Incarnation discusses this analogy. He seems to want to include a category for the Bible to have errors, chalking it up to the “human element” of Scripture. I haven’t read the entire book, but that’s the impression I’ve gotten.

That’s fine, we can use that. I still do not think that term necessarily implies inerrancy. And from another angle it says nothing about the works that were not in the cannon at time of writing.

If you agree that it is circular there is not much I can add on this point. Circular reasoning is just bare assertion. You are saying you know God through Scripture, which I am tracking. I’m not sure what you mean by transcendental circularity. Perhaps you just mean self-evident truth? Tied closely with revelation from the Spirit? I think there is a place for this. I don’t think this leads to inerrancy but I might have some notion of what you’re getting at, at a high level.

I’m not saying the Bible and the natural world are the same types of sources. The Bible speaks in way that nature does not. I’m not sure what you mean by nature not being God-breathed. This seems inherent to nature being real and not imaginary. Nature is inherently real and true. Sure, our understanding of it is not automatically true, but nature itself is true. I will clarify that science is by no means perfect. I would say that nature is a perfect source of truth (inherent to it being real), and inasmuch as our science legitimately uncovers parts of nature, then those legitimate discoveries are also true.

Why is truth uncovered by Scripture any more true than truth uncovered by science? How can one truth be more true than another? Perhaps you are fundamentally saying that we can’t know anything through science?

[quote=“AdCaelumEo, post:35, topic:5757”]
Not true. All truth is God’s truth, yes, but science is inductive by nature, and even secular folks have realized the problems with inductive reasoning. Scripture, on the other hand, is deductive and objective. It is more sure than science. [/quote]
I’m not saying science is automatically true (scientific conclusions). Nature is true by definition, and insofar as science legitimately uncovers nature, than the conclusions that science makes in those cases are also true. (Ex: existence of gravity or or ancient age of the earth. These things are as certain or more certain than any historical fact you will find in Scripture.)

I’m reading this last bit as fiat, followed by a mic drop(?).

@Eddie,

I think the Biblical support of the institution of Slavery satisfies your criteria …

Leviticus 25:44-46: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”

I think the great majority of the Christians of the world would agree that this is Erroneous teaching!!!

Though I suspect that @Swamidass would say this is an accommodation.

Yes, Enns is in no way an inerrantist. I posted this in another thread but will repeat it here since it was specifically asked:

However inerrancy may be defined—whether strictly or in its more nuanced, progressive varieties (both types are represented in this book)—however it is defined, in my opinion inerrancy doesn’t sit well with what I see when I open my Bible and read it.

From "inerrancy doesn't describe what the Bible does"-some comments from my ETS talk - The Bible For Normal People

@AdCaelumEo, great book. Enns in general I think spends alot of time deconstructing everything, which is very helpful sometimes. But I would love to hear more from him on how his faith is constructed from a positive/affirming angle. How and why does he affirm the faith that he affirms? This would round him out pretty well I think.

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@Eddie

Slavery was wrong then, now, and will be wrong in the future.

If the Parliament of the UK can stop slavery … but not the Lord of Hosts … then I think you have the wrong idea of the Lord of Hosts…

Then he’s reading it wrong. :heresy:

I’d be interested in hearing how Jay Nelsestuen and Eddie understand Phil 2:10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

I understand that the ancients believed that Sheol (the place of the Dead) was under the earth. The Apostle Paul appears to believe so also. I wouldn’t necessarily put this under the category of mistake/error but Paul appears to be operating within the ‘normal’ worldview of the people of his day. So too biblical authors as they write many, many other texts. Or puzzling texts like Psalm 139:15 where babies (or at least the Psalmist) are said to be woven together in the depths of the earth.

Or 1 Cor 10:4 with Jesus following the Israelites in the desert in the form of a moveable well. the notion of the movable well comes from later judaism not the OT. Paul uses the story in a midrashic fashion.

As a Jesus follower I puzzle at understanding these texts but find the use of inerrancy to somehow protect my theological musings puts too much weight/effort to protect a modern theological concept/system like inerrancy .

Larry Schmidt

Edit to add: https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR_1996_03_Enns_Well_1Cor10_4.pdf

Enns wrote a paper about the moveable well which I found quite fascinating

To think of slavery as having biblical endorsement much less imperative would be like thinking the Bible then must wholeheartedly encourage and affirm divorce since we find Moses making allowance and regulation for that too.

But parliament has not stopped slavery, George! Slavery is still alive and well today. I think you must have the wrong idea about human parliaments…

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@Eddie

Oh, please. And the Lord of Hosts doesn’t stop adultery either.

But he doesn’t Teach adultery, right? So why does the Bible have the Lord teach slavery? The human dimensions and limits of the Bible are clearly visible on the topic of slavery!

How do you figure? The Bible might be objective Truth in some abstract theoretical sense, but the process of getting meaning/truth out of Scripture is far from “objective.” It is riddled with just as many susceptibilities to the weaknesses of faulty human reasoning and presuppositions as science is. That is the problem. People confuse their subjective interpretations with some abstract concept of the infallible inerrant word of God.

How is “without sin” conflated with “without error”? Kenton Sparks in Sacred Word Broken Word asked the question, did Jesus ever, when he was learning the carpenter trade, measure wrong and have to throw out the board? Did he ever look across the way in bright sunlight and say, “Hey, James!” when it was really John? Those are errors. They are manifestations of human limitations. Humans don’t get everything perfect because their memories, senses, and learning are limited and finite and imperfect. If we can even imagine that Jesus, God incarnate, got some stuff wrong on occasion, why is it hard to imagine that biblical authors got some things wrong on occasion, even though they were inspired, and even though their words are God’s word “inscripturate”?

That would be a terrible idea. Inerrancy gives people hives. For all different reasons. I’m sure BioLogos gives some people hives already, but we don’t want that to become the trademark.

I think it is an accommodation, but I think the biblical authors were also wrong about some stuff, and it affects how they wrote Scripture. This to me is a bigger, more concerning and pressing issue for the inerrancy camp than “fixing” references to a solid firmament or the Hebrew’s travelling water rock. The slavery passages, the use and abuse of concubines, the genocide passages, the passage where a man offers his daughter as a human sacrifice to fulfill a vow to God and there is no indication that it was bad, the women as chattel passages, definitely seem to affirm things that make me more than uncomfortable, things I would say are wrong. Again Kenton Sparks made me think hard when he pointed out that the reason we are so uncomfortable with them and they strike us as so wrong is that we have a moral sensitivity shaped by the New Testament ethic. How can the Bible make us uncomfortable with the Bible unless there is some sort of redemptive trajectory going on and even parts of Scripture “stand in need of redemption”?

It was Jesus and the apostles who taught and modeled the very things that have shaped our moral consciousness to the point where we reject slavery, genocide, human sacrifice, and the subjugation and sexual exploitation of women. William Webb has written extensively on the redemptive-movement hermeneutic, and others have taken the narrative theology approach, and I think they are often much more useful (and less disturbing) than the concept of inerrancy when we are trying to figure out what God is saying through the Bible in history.

God did not stop communicating with us when the last letter was written. He is and has been working in history. He indwells believers. The Church is Christ’s body and has the mind of Christ. The Bible is not the only voice that has been delegated God’s authority on earth. If we had a better, fuller, perhaps more Trinitarian model of how God works and speaks authoritatively through his chosen voices, maybe we wouldn’t feel such a need for the crutch inerrancy provides. I don’t really understand what it is for, other than to prop up the Bible’s authority.

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What a fun occasion to be agreeing so much with @eddie =).

@gbrooks9, in your slavery tangent, the teaching of Jesus about divorce is helpful. Jesus says that divorce is hated by God, but allowed because of the sinfulness of our hearts. The mistake that some were making was saying that because God’s law allowed it, that God endorsed it. This is certainly not the case about divorce. Jesus tells us clearly that the laws about divorce were about accommodating our fallenness, but were in no way to endorse or teach divorce as good. In the same way, I see the Bible accommodates ancient Jewish slavery, even though He does not endorse or teach it.

Also, in the case of slavery, there is a language gap. Ancient jewish slavery was nothing like modern african slavery. (1) it was not determined by race, (2) it was often temporary, and (3) it did not extend to the children of slaves. Of course the cultural experts can correct me here. So, it is a bit of an anachronism when we read our modern day understanding of slavery back into the bible. Thinking of it as “servitude” is probably more accurate for the modern reader.

In the end, it is wholly false to say that the Bible endorses modern slavery. It does not, and never did. There is no error in the verses, but the pro-slavery movement certainly made several interpretive errors in the efforts to justify slavery. I place the error on them, not on the Bible.

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What? Not determined by race? George has already pointed out these verses:

Leviticus 25:44-46: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”

There are even verses on how Hebrews can beat slaves.

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George is over arguing his slavery case and making a category mistake. However, it certainly can look a bit like the biblical narrative if not endorsing at least tolerates slavery.

William Webb’s book called “Slaves, Women and Homosexuals” lays out what he called the trajectory hermeneutic. Essentially, the Hebrew slave laws when compared to their neighbours come out as stellar slave owners, although, beagle lady’s post is correct. the NT moves along on a similar trajectory.

Christy,

Excellent post. I’d add that inerrancy statements are meant to not only prop up the Bible but also to Prop up theological systems, identify who gets to belong to certain clubs/tribes and if we let them who gets to define who is or isn’t an evangelical and in some cases who gets to be in charge.

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I agree. But I don’t think that saying slavery wasn’t so bad back then gets the Bible off the hook in lots of people’s minds for some of its slavery passages. I think the knee-jerk defense of inerrancy has led to a lot of tone deafness in the Evangelical community when it comes to how we talk about the Bible with non-believers.

In Deuteronomy 21:10-14 we basically have God regulating the use of female war captives for sex. Even with the idea that God was just accommodating their awful tribal practices and trying to inject a new level of humanity into their barbaric customs, I completely understand why people don’t get excited about the fact that this was a better situation for the women than the customary getting raped and then sold into slavery. Are all the feminists supposed to rejoice that the girl was granted the honor of marriage to the person who took part in the slaughter of her loved ones, and that she got the privilege of grieving the loss of her old life before she was forced into a marriage that ended as soon as the man got tired of her? I think for many people, when they point out those passages and ask how it fits with God’s word being perfect and inerrant, and when we “defend” God’s word as perfect and inerrant and authoritatively communicating timeless absolute truth (by coming up with some kind of contextualizing that makes it not as bad as you might think), what they hear is us justifying, minimizing, and rationalizing a situation that was clearly wrong on many levels. What amounts to the trafficking of female prisoners of war clearly has no place in the Kingdom, and should be denounced in the strongest terms, but many Christians seem to think that God would be more honored if we make sure everyone knows his word is perfect than if we make sure everyone knows God hates all situations that hurt and debase women, whom he loves with indescribable love.

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There are even verses on how Hebrews can beat free civilians.

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@Eddie

It doesn’t follow that Yahweh has to abolish slavery. But it does follow that he should not teach it.

@Swamidass
Slavery in Israel was certainly racial … or, shall we say, ethnic:

Leviticus 25:44-46: "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you;
^^ [this means non-Israelite!]

from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.

You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."
^^ The implication is obvious … you can rule over non-Israelite slaves ruthelessly!"

[@beaglelady, I just got to your post … which makes my post here totally redundant… good job! You read… Dr. Swami didn’t…]

:monorail::mountain_cableway::european_castle::articulated_lorry::movie_camera::boot::kimono:

@Larry

I think you haven’t read Leviticus 25 very closely…

Leviticus 25:44-46: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”