Your points are always good for my thought and humility. Well put.
But doesn’t the opposite stance–that we must have inerrancy–stand on something like Mohler’s prima facie error that we have to have this because we need the definition? Isn’t there a middle ground? Greg Boyd, though I don’t agree with him in all points, argues there is one–I look forward to an easy going discussion (there is much too much to swallow on a week’s overview–this may take a while). Thanks for your discussion.
Addendum: “Inspired,” by Rachel Held Evans, is a book on the same topic that I’m going to re -listen to; I don’t think I absorbed enough to comment well the first time round. She was a bit less conservative than Boyd.
I suggest that this is exactly what Dr. Enns does and promotes - take it [prior Scriptural understandings] with a grain of salt. Especially when the Spirit [Christ himself] leads in doing this: “You have heard it said … but I say unto you …” [which is not to reject scriptures any more than Jesus did. It is to engage with scriptures; indeed, to wrestle with them.]
Let me ask you this: Do you believe, then, that killing human enemies is at the heart of what God is all about?
My own suggestion is shorter than a book and freely available. Matt Lynch, one of the co-hosts of the OnScript podcast, has a 7-part series of blog posts about the violence in Joshua. Here’s the second-last post, which has links to the earlier ones so they can be read in order:
And here’s the final one. It also interacts with Boyd’s work in a general way:
Awesome! I likeOnscript; I did not know of Matt Lynch’s blog post. I read that he teaches at Westminster and one of his focuses is divine violence. I’ll look into that. Thanks for the reference!
That interpretation of the sermon on the mount I simply will never share… Jesus goes to such great lengths to qualify what he’s about to say to clarify in case anyone may miss his point that he is not abolishing the law, and that, in his perspective, the law is intended to last forever… that I can’t embrace the idea he is suggesting I take “do not commit murder” or “do not commit adultery” worth a grain of salt. He plans on deepening them and further qualifying, but goes out of his way to clarify he’s not changing or disregarding, rather goes out of his way to specify that anyone who relaxes the least of these commands will be called least in the kingdom… I don’t find that compelling evidence that Jesus wanted us to take those commands worth a grain of salt.
Certainly not. I’m a biblical literalist fundamentalist, after all…
“I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked…”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten, that whoever believes in him would. It perish.”
“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
I would never say that God’s judgement or wrath is the core of who he is, or that it is the central message of the gospel or Scripture. God is most certainly far more than that in more ways we can imagine, and his glory as expressed in his kindness, sacrifice, long suffering mercy and love are the central theme of the Bible. I have no issue with any of that, of course. The gospel shows the stunning lengths he was and is willing to got onto save his enemies from said wrath and consequences of justice.
So yes, God is far, far, far more than wrathful, I have no disagreement there. My objection is only when it is suggested, against overwhelming, obvious, and pervasive biblical teaching, that he is less that wrathful, or that he is never wrathful.
I encourage you to look close at those “great lengths.” I don’t think they say what you think they say.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” The way the statement starts leads us to expect something like “not to abolish but uphold.” But Jesus ends with a surprise: he has come to fulfil the law and prophets. To fulfil something, you take precedence over it. In this claim, Jesus both denies that he’s doing away with the Scriptures and relativizes those Scriptures beneath himself.
“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Jesus embeds standard words of Jewish piety between two “until” clauses that subvert the whole sentence – especially since the law being accomplished sounds sneakily similar to the law being fulfilled. Jesus moves the focus from the perfect preservation of the law to its eventual eclipse. By contrast, Jesus later declares that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” It’s almost like a schoolyard argument where “for a bazillion years” gets countered with “to infinity plus one!”
“Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Disobey one of the laws, and you’re least in the kingdom. But if you don’t surpass those most religious about following the law, you won’t get in at all. As the end of his sermon demonstrates, obeying Jesus – not the law – is what determines who’s in and who’s out. And then, later on, Jesus turns around and says even the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist! Least and great are chimeric categories in Matthew.
In these verses, Jesus provides his justification for giving a word that goes beyond the law. But to read these introductory words as propping up the law or claiming it will last forever or be the litmus test of the kingdom is to ignore both the words themselves and the shocking teaching that follows. That teaching probably necessitated the defense. Jesus probably wouldn’t have said “I have not come to abolish the law” if his radical approach to the law hadn’t led some pious Jews to conclude that a law-abolisher was exactly what he was.
It is apparent that both the O.T. and N.T. give the impression that the Christian God must be two-faced like the Roman god , Janus–wrathful when required for Justice, and yet like a loving and forgiving Father to the humankind He had created. The reality that humankind, like all animal life, was created through a process we call Darwinian evolution gives us another option for a theological interpretation that obviates the ‘Janus necessity’ for God’s love to triumph over wrath. The nature of evolution that operated for at least a billion years on earth depended largely on competition and selfishness. And it was amoral, and thus NOT evil even when it developed predation, parasitism and disease. God may well have been pleased when evolution (accidentally) also developed examples of symbiosis and empathy. When the Homo sapiens brain was sufficiently developed to operate as Mind and Conscience, God allowed them the freedom to choose (or refuse) Godly ways–freedom to aspire to His Image, even IF that choice did NOT maximize individual survival (as the ‘fittest’).
The passages in Scripture that leave us struggling to understand a seemingly Janus-like God were written for an audience that lacked the knowledge we now take for granted. To them, God’s actions often seemed two-faced. But that is what science is good at; explaining what at first seems irreconcilable; such as light consisting both as waves and as particles.
At this point in time, it seems that science (& technology) may be winning out as the source of Truth for the younger generation. To make sure that Faith continues as an equal partner in the search for truth, it may be necessary to give a more ‘liberal’ interpretation of Scripture–as liberal as abandoning Original Sin.
Al Leo
Dear Randy,
You opened up a real can of worms when you recommended “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, regarding inerrancy and other doctrines. .
First off, it does a good job of showing that naturalism in its current state, does not explain the universe. But, it does not provide a neutral hypothesis that fulfills the criteria. It uses the failure of naturalism to imply that Christianity must be correct.
I have been working my way though it and just finished testing its proof of the trinity. The book claims “Considered in their entirety, these passages of scripture proclaim one eternally existing God as three distinct persons: Father, Son and the holy spirit each being fully divine.” I find it very curious that the 40 passages referred to here demonstrate the opposite of the trinity. They describe an eternal Father, an only begotten Son who had a beginning and multiple holy spirits that act in various capacities for the Father.
Not sure if I will spend too much more time on this one,
I think it had some fairly good basics for the manuscripts. I think it might be good to get into the apologetics, but on another thread (unless it has directly to do with inerrancy and mass slaughter).I have only read the older edition–I understand that the newer one was better, but I did benefit from it in starting to reason with more logic and structure. Thanks.
Mr Fisher, I would be happy to discuss the Matthew Lynch posts rather than Greg Boyd’s book at this point, if you like (though the book would be very good to discuss down the road).
Excellent observation. Yes, it may appear that I am making the same error that I chided Dr. Mohler for making… that he was defending inerrancy in the basis that, “if we didn’t have inerrancy, we couldn’t believe cherished doctrine X.”
In my defense, I would point out that would would never (intentionally) defend the doctrine of inerrancy on such a basis. My belief in inerrancy is the result of an entirely different train of reasoning, none of which involves, “but I want to continue to believe doctrine X.”
Having arrived at my belief in inerrant revelation on other grounds, however, at that point I can examine various other logical consequences of that belief… one being that my position on inerrancy, alongside such God-inspired writings as Lamentations, etc., logically leads to and consistently and soundly entails the belief that “God, in true fact, actually and literally and personally invites us to passionately wrestle with him.”
More of what I was attempting to do above, however, is to point out the vacuity of Dr. Enns position on the subject. He seems very badly to want to support the idea that it is legitimate for us to wrestle deeply with God, with our doubts, pains, heartaches, etc. in similar honesty as in Lamentations or Ecclesiastes.
I am simply observing that his position on inspiration of Scripture does not allow or logically entail a belief that God invites us to so wrestle with him. Rather, it precludes such belief entirely. If he is consistent, then the most he can say is that some ancient people (of the same ilk that invented those horrendous Canaanite massacres), for their personal or cultural needs, invented the idea out of whole cloth that God invites us to wrestle with him. This is a “reimagining” (on their part) of who God is based on their preferences, needs, and cultural situation… it does not reflect in any eternal or finally true sense who God really is. Is this who God really is? Who knows? God never communicated this to us as if we have the “teacher’s manual” that says so with some kind of final word. It is baseless speculation, of the same sort as anything else Scripture claims about God.
So no, I am not trying to defend inerrancy on the basis that it allows us to believe certain doctrines… but I am trying to make clear that one most certainly cannot believe certain doctrines (consistently) while rejecting biblical inerrancy in the way that Dr. Enns does.
Precisely… so either he was lying and being deceptive, in the manner of various politicians, denying what he knew very good and well he was about to do anyway… or he really meant what he said, that he was not abolishing the law and the prophets, and any additions, clarifications, or deepening he was about to give them ought not be interpreted as abolishing.
Either he was in fact a law-abolisher (as Dr. Enns and others seem to want to believe) and Jesus was merely placating them with deceptive words worthy of modern politicians that “I have not come to abolish…” (“you can keep your doctor…”?) or I stand by my basic understanding… that the language of “you’ve heard it said, do not commit murder, but I tell you…” does not mean he thought and wanted to teach that the command to murder was somehow arbitrary, open to or reinterpretation, or of being discarded or rejected as we invent a new morality.
And that of course I have no issue with. But going beyond the law to expand, clarify, or deepen is different than taking away from, denying, or otherwise abolishing the law. He in no way undermined, abolished, ignored, or minimized the importance of the command against murder by going beyond it and exposing the evil of the roots of murder in our hearts.
I think I’d like to focus on Boyd’s… you seem to see significant merit in his overall approach, and thus I’m curious to understand it better… it sounds well researched, so if no major objections, that is where I’d like to start, I may have a bit of time today and tomorrow will start to read through Boyd’s “Cross-Vision.” And after that I’d be happy to take on others as time permits.
Re inerrancy above–would you consider re clarifying your reason for claiming inerrancy (as opposed to Mohler)? I’m sorry if I missed it. Thanks!
Below is a brief (and incomplete; I can see some problems with it) overview of a post by Boyd–but ti’s a conversation helper.
Thanks.
I do think that Boyd adds a lot to the conversation. You would enjoy his story–“Benefit of the Doubt” outlines it–how he came to Christ from atheism, but struggled with a house of cards from his initial evangelical impressions; to finally come back to Christ alone.
I’m typically a bit suspicious of theological conclusions that depend on us being scientifically smarter than the ancients. Theologically more informed, yes - thanks to Christ’s revelation and teachings - but theologically smarter - might also be an open question in my view.
This may well be true - but only because so many have been erroneously brought up to think of it as a zero-sum competition between religion and science. Under such a delusional dichotomy, they are trying to reduce theology to a mechanically predictive tool to be verified or rejected using the same measuring sticks science uses. This would be like comparing “life questions and theories” (analogous to religion) to “arithmetic” (analogous to science); and pretending that the two are in competition with each other. We notice that arithmetic always gets its sums correct, or is easily corrected when it doesn’t. The much more complicated “how to live life” category is much more difficult, messy, and often seemingly wrong or not verifiable in any case. So we decide that arithmetic “wins” and we should jettison our engagement with life questions. And so the bankruptcy of the competition model is revealed since it was a silly notion to begin with. One does not avoid “life questions” and dwell solely on arithmetic; rather they enlist arithmetic as one part, among many things, of what helps them out in life. Religion is no more in competition with science than your entire body is in competition with its own kidneys. I think Biologos is helping to bring light to this situation and helping to call into question the very creationist narratives that are unwittingly helping to fuel this cultural delusion.
I’m not so sure that rejection of that is so “liberal”. There are those who make the compelling case that prior to St. Augustine, there wasn’t any “original sin” - at least not in the way it’s been built up into a doctrine of genetic transmission today. So I would characterize it instead as a necessary shedding of an historical accretion that was mistakenly added onto the message of the apostolic church.
Those were good thoughts, Al, and I’m sorry if I let them provoke me in directions you didn’t intend. I think we still (as evidenced in this very thread!) struggle with the apparent “two-facedness” of God because we have this persistent inclination (and rightly so) that God is One, when it comes to justice, mercy, love, and yes - even wrath in its subordinated status to those prior attributes (but no less fearsome if that is only face presented us when we persist in our wicked ways.)
I think it does. Even if all the stories and poems are fully human, if they are what God gives us to draw us into relationship, then their diversity and intertextual wrestling strongly suggest that God invites our wrestling. If God didn’t want wrestling, we’d expect to get a book with a single account of Israel’s history, a single gospel, a single view of why bad things happen, and a single perspective throughout.
The belief that God invites our wrestling depends on God choosing a rich, multivalent book as the means of divine revelation, not on the book providing inerrant accounts of actual, literal, personal wrestling with God. (Though those accounts can also factor in, even if one views them without inerrantist lenses.)
Perhaps so, but I don’t see how that’s the case. In the case of Lamentations or the lament psalms, I’m not even sure how inerrancy factors in. How are statements like “How long, O Lord?” judged errant or inerrant? For those portions of Scripture, it would seem that even an inerrantist moves to something closer to Enns’ view, where Scripture contains the honest human perceptions of God (or even of God’s absense).
As for the accounts of humans directly wrestling with God, such as Abraham or Moses arguing with God until God changes course, I doubt most inerrantists read these texts as revealing that God changes course due to human input. And if we can’t trust the texts to accurately tell us about God’s side of the encounters, why should we trust them to tell us accurately that it’s okay to wrestle with God? If it only looked like a change of mind, maybe it only looked like arguing. If the revelatory value is all-or-nothing, then there doesn’t seem to be a way to get an endorsement of wrestling out of texts where God seems to do what one’s systematic theology prohibits.
If one adds that the Bible with all its diversity suggests that God is not averse to our wrestling, I think we reach firmer ground from which to make that claim.
I have often wondered if the expression “wrestling with God” is just another way of expressing my belief that God calls humankind to “rise above their (God-given) animal instincts” to expand upon the moral goodness so seldom manifested thru our Selfish Genes. This view accepts the premise that we humans cannot participate in the true co-creation that God offers us unless we accept both the sacrifice and hardship it requires.
Al Leo
I think we aren’t too terribly far apart at this point. But A few clarifications…
But how do we know that these texts are God-given in order to do exactly that? Now we’re getting into questions of canon, it I think it an important question… How do we know that Ecclesiastes should or should not be included in “what God gives us”? How do we know God isn’t more like what we would read strictly from Proverbs and Deuteronomy, and that God doesn’t detest the attitude shown in Lamentations and Job? Why not the Koran for that matter? If canon only reflects our preferences, then again, they tell us nothing about God in himself. Dr Enns view as I understand it is that these aren’t books that “God gave” us, as if a list of books in the canon dropped out of the sky… rather he sees these books as those our religious community selected for their own needs based on their own cultural preferences and agenda. If so, even the diversity you observe here reflects, to rephrase your words…
“their diversity and intertextual wrestling strongly suggest that ancient people invite our wrestling.”
Again, I come back to the basic point… if these are all simply and solely human inventions, human ideas projected into God, and if the Bible is a collection selected strictly by human preference based on our various cultural needs across time as we invent and reinvent the deity in ways that seemed right to us at the time… Why is Lamentations categorically any different than the Koran, Enuma Elish, Baghivad Gita, or Mein Kampf? Or the recent horoscope in yesterday’s newspaper, or the most recent written sermon from Westboro Baptist, for that matter? These are all “pictures of how various humans experience God,” and we could embrace them all, as valid portraits requiring us to even further diversify our understanding of God, no? Why could we not say that God “gave” all these writings to us to draw us into an even greater experience of diversity and intertextual wrestling? Unless some are inherently more true, or dare I say, less “erroneous” than others, from God’s perspective?
If the Bible is essentially what Enns says it is, then none of these “pictures of how various humans experience God” can be any more valid or invalid than another.
Fundamentalist that I am, I insist that some manners and beliefs in the experience of God are valid, some are not.
I concur, and here is one prime example why “inerrancy” is a singularly inept and inadequate word.
But following on from above, I can observe, for instance, that there are right and valid ways of complaining to God, of crying out, of wrestling., and they are very raw and brutally honest. There are, if I trust scripture, however, ways of complaining (or grumbling) that he will not tolerate.
Thus, Lamentations, psalms of lament, confessions of sin, and the like are “inerrant” only I’m the sense that, if they are God’s inspired prayers, inscripturated songs, they are demonstrations or templates of how God invites his people to pray, not categorically unlike the Lord’s Prayer in that regard. invites they demonstrate a true, valid, “God-approved” and appropriate way and example and demonstration of not simply that, but how, he invites his children to wrestle.
I’m not a fan of the word “inerrant” for this very reason. I see it’s unfortunate necessity, but yes, this very area shows it’s greatest flaw.
I owe you a much more thorough response before too long. But one quick observation to focus our discussion… as I just noted to Marshall, inerrancy is a singularly inept and unfortunate word. It describes a subset and consequence of my actual and more core belief, that of being the idea that God actually, in fact communicated, and communicated discreet, actual, concrete truth-content, truths about things that we simply could not know had God himself not revealed them.
Do angels exist? Does God get angry? Does he punish? Is he involved with this world at all? Does he actually love? is it true that we will be resurrected toward eternal life? There is no way we could know this, or have a clue about it, unless this was revealed from “beyond the veil.” These I think actual, discreet “truth claims” that were, in some form or fashion, communicated by God into this world for humanity to grasp and capture and understand.
If God has not so communicated, or has “communicated” only in the vague, mysterious way that only gives us feelings, impressions, experiences, etc., then we have nothing but our vague impressions. If that is what some believe, fine… but we ought have no confidence in so discreet and concrete a truth-claim as physical future resurrection from the dead. Resurrection at that point becomes one more example of baseless speculation if long dead ancients who were inventing and reinventing truth for their own needs based on their own experiences. No different, essentially, than the folks at Westbrook Baptist seem to be doing.
But if God has so communicated any such discreet facts… then we evangelicals presume that what he communicated, at the point he communicated it to humanity, is in fact “true.” And true, in the context I mean it, means “not false.” Not false” meaning “not erroneous”… and you see where I’m going.
If God has actually, in fact communicated discreet facts, then it is at least one reasonable deduction, I think, that said facts that God so communicated can be depended on as “true.”