Appreciated - while I obviously do not agree, I find that a logically consistent position, in general - it is perfectly appropriate to acknowledge one’s lack of knowledge on a subject.
My only concern or objection would be is if one were to maintain agnosticism in the face of evidence or opportunities for knowledge that could lead to such religious knowledge, or to claim certainty that we have no access to such knowledge. It is one thing for a person in 1491 to claim ignorance (geographic agnosticism?) about whether there were a continent across the ocean west of Europe. In 1499, however, if someone was maintaining such agnosticism, they would be doing so in spite of increasingly sufficient evidence.
In other words, if you don’t mind me asking… do you know (with certainty?) that God or ultimate reality outside of our physical/empiric world is unknowable?
It seems like you are conflating inerrancy and inspiration. Plenty of people who can’t affirm inerrancy (I think Enns is one of them) still affirm that the Bible is inspired and that it is divine self revelation. You don’t need inerrancy to affirm those things, you just need to believe God is, in some way, the source of truth in Scripture. I don’t believe Boyd or Enns would ever say anything close to “The Bible is just a human account of experiences people thought were with God.” Yes, of course there are truths revealed in the Bible that we can only know from reading the Bible. It is revelation. No one is saying it isn’t divine revelation. But divine revelation is not the same thing as inerrant.
I think this is a patently wrong characterization of what they actually say.
I’m still struggling to understand which two packages of beliefs you are contrasting. Is it a choice between viewing the Bible as fully inerrant or fully errant? Sometimes this seems to be the case, as if rejecting inerrancy necessitates that every statement in the Bible is false. But other times, the choice seems to be between accepting that there are at least some inerrant truths in the Bible or not accepting this. This choice lends itself more easily to a dichotomy, but it results in Pete Enns and you on the same side, so I doubt it’s what you intend.
Perhaps this only looks like inconsistency to me because I haven’t understood why, to you, a fully inerrant Bible and a Bible containing a few inerrant truth claims among plenty of other material is pretty much the same thing. Likewise, you seem to view rejecting inerrancy as akin to saying there is no revelation from God and so there is nothing in the Bible we can trust as being true.
I can see how this would make sense given one more assumption: the Bible is the only way God has spoken. If this is the case, then either the Bible contains inerrant revelation (to some degree) or we are left with nothing. So all those who reject inerrancy, even in a diluted form, seem to be left with nothing.
If this is the case, let me assure you that rejecting inerrancy does not mean rejecting that God has spoken. I believe God spoke most clearly in Jesus, but also spoke to many others before and after. The Bible is the church’s collection, canonized through God’s delegated authority, that conveys that revelation.** Even if the Bible only contains fully human accounts of how people experienced God (a slightly different perspective than my own), it provides human accounts of divine revelation. If a fully human process of relaying that revelation renders it nonexistent, we’re in trouble, since the processes of textual transmission, translation and interpretation are also fully human (even accepting that God’s Spirit is providentially at work through them).
I know you also believe that God really spoke in ways that go beyond the inspiration of Scripture. But perhaps, in the desire to form a dichotomy that makes inerrancy essential, you neglected that Christians on the other side also believe this?
** No, I’m not assuming the church’s infallibility, but I see wisdom and God’s leading in the process of canonization, even if there is some blurriness at the edges (such as slightly different canons in some portions of the church). I think the move to the church’s infallibility and the Bible’s inerrancy were parallel reactions to modernism and its deification of empirical, scientific truth, both unhelpful.
Christy, I’d never intentionally mischaracterize. Having never read Boyd, I could not comment. Having read Dr. Enns extensively, however, I truly think I am being quite fair and accurate in my understanding and characterization. For instance…
words like “inspiration” and “revelation.”… "However we define these terms, the Bible is not something dropped out of the sky. Rather these writings unambiguously reflect the various cultural moments of the writers. The Bible speaks the “language” of ancient people grappling with things in ancient ways… The incarnation leaves no room whatsoever for the idea that Jesus in any way kept his distance from participating in that particular humanity. That means, among other things, that Jesus was limited in knowledge along with everyone else at the time… that may sound irreverent or offensive, but it is an implication of the incarnation . Jesus wasn’t an omniscient being giving the final word on the size of mustard seeds, mental illness, or cosmic and biological evolution. He was a 1st century Jew and he therefore thought like one.
It is one thing to concur that Jesus was limited in knowledge - another to affirm he was just as limited as any other first century Jew. I can only presume that a first century Jew thinking like one could similarly not give the “final word” on our final resurrection or eternal life. Everything I’ve ever heard Dr. Enns say or communicate says essentially this - neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor anyone else in the Bible was giving any kind of revealed truth that can in any sense be an absolute or final truth. I would never intentionally mischaracterize, so everything I’ve said about Dr. Enns is precisely what I understand him to have said and meant having read him extensively.
But I have not read his entire corpus, and it is impossible for me to prove a negative, so I cannot prove that he has never affirmed anything like “there are truths revealed in the Bible that we can only know from reading the Bible.”
So I stand to be corrected - if you or anyone can point me to a place where Dr. Enns affirms the revealed nature of any particular such religious truth (that there is some truth that came in some sense from a “teacher’s manual” of sorts), I will certainly take back my characterization.
But a “fully human” Bible does not mean “just a human product” any more than the affirmation that Jesus was “fully human” means he was “just a human.” I don’t think this passage you quoted supports the view you took away from it. Like Pete Enns, I also think that you cannot somehow extricate God’s word from its “humanness” and distill it into some kind of a-cultural, a-historical, pure truth elixir. But that in no way means I think the Bible is “just a human product” or not the word of God, or not God’s revelation of divine truth.
I, like Enns, believe that the Son incarnate only had access to the mind of God through the Spirit, the same access we other humans have. But his ability to hear and obey and speak for the Spirit would be less muddled and confused than our own, given his complete righteousness. That connection to the Father through the Spirit is what allowed the Son, as a first century Jewish human limited in knowledge in some ways, to nonetheless speak with heavenly authority on matters of eternal truth.
Yeah, then I think you have really missed some stuff.
I appreciate the assertion, but I would prefer a demonstration.
So, as mentioned, I am standing by and ready to take back my characterization if you can show me an example where Dr. Enns affirms some place, or some truth, in the Bible that is a revealed truth of something we could not otherwise know, something that is more than human invention, that can in some sense be understood as an absolute or final truth?
I believe Enns’ position is that God reveals himself, humans interpreted that revelation and recorded Scripture, and we (filled with God’s spirit and open to God’s own ongoing self-revelation) wrestle with the interpretations of God in Scripture in order to learn what God wants to reveal through it and what we are to do with it. So I think he would probably argue that going to the Bible for absolute truth nuggets is the wrong way to approach the Bible and the wrong way to approach God. But that in and of itself does not equal “the Bible is just a human product” or “the Bible is not God’s revelation” or “there is no truth in the Bible.”
Obviously Enns does ultimately get final truth out of the Bible, since he affirms the creeds that distill the major truths of the Christian faith, which are based on biblical truth claims. How else do we know that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, or where he is seated?
Let’s take it entirely outside the realm of theology and Bible for a moment, and see if you follow my basic reasoning, or perhaps could point out where my own understanding is faulty. Below are a collection of a few actually true truth-claims among plenty of other untrue claims…
I have been to Egypt
I have been to France
I have been to Germany
I have been to Japan
I have been to Indonesia
I have been to India
I have been to Israel
I have been to Malaysia
I have been to Mongolia
I have been to Portugal
I have been to Russia
I have been to Vietnam
OK, so there are a few actually true statements among plenty of other false claims. So, what can you tell me about my travels? What specific countries have I visited in my life? Where have I not gone? After giving you this list that contains “some” truth amidst a collection of other untruths, I believe you have no better idea of what specific countries I have visited before I gave you that list (beyond the obvious deduction that I have travelled to at least a “few” foreign countries).
Do you see that, because the truth(s) are hidden among a sea of other untruths, and you have no way of determining the one from the other, that although my list “contains” some true statements, it is still essentially useless for communicating anything specific about my travels to you?
In this thread, you’ve shared much more about yourself than where you’ve traveled. I haven’t tried to corroborate your statements other ways, and for most I probably couldn’t if I tried. Do you think I would be wise to dismiss absolutely everything you’ve said about yourself because you are obviously capable of making false statements?
I think the Bible is more analogous to your normal way of sharing your experiences than to a list of statements through which a person aims to deceive.
I don’t understand how you think this is at all parallel to what Enns and other say goes on with the Bible. You weren’t even trying to reveal yourself. A more parallel example would be if we went out for dinner and you told me all about yourself in a language that was not my native language, but I spoke well, and you gave lots of examples that revealed your character and motivations and plans, and then I sat down with someone else and tried to explain in my native language, in the most truthful way I could, who you were and what you wanted in life. I might add some nuance you didn’t intend. I might have misunderstood some things. I might project some of myself onto you to fill in some blanks. But I would not in any scenario, list some things that were facts and some things that were lies and tell my hearer to try to figure it out. How would that count in any way as revealing you? How could I possibly claim to be speaking on your behalf?
My view of the Bible is closer to Enns than yours. I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for myself. I think God revealed truth to people. Those people were human and culturally conditioned in certain ways and limited in their knowledge of some things and biased by their experiences and frames of reference. God was limited in what he could reveal because he had to “translate” into their human language, which is limited not infinite. Their presentation of what God revealed is always to some degree subjective, and maybe even in some details off the mark. But they are recounting the true story of how God revealed himself to them. They are not simply listing facts with discrete truth values. They are not recording math problems and giving some correct solutions and some incorrect solutions. I don’t know anyone who sees the Bible as God’s revelation through human eyes who looks at the Bible as a list of facts or claims to be sorted through and assigned a truth value. If that were the task before us, then yes, inerrancy would be more important. The task before us is to discern important truths about God and his world by watching God act in human history and listening to him communicate with people. Those stories of God acting and communicating are told from human perspectives, yes, but they are stories that are about God and that we believe reveal truth about God because relationship with God is the source. And we test the truth we discern from them in our own relationship with the same God.
This topic is of intense interest to me, because I see it as the basis for the shameful divisions amongst those who profess Christianity–divisions that the Council of Nice tried, but failed, to put to rest. In the search for Truth, we can easily forget that Truth is an Idea, a “meme” that competes (and evolves) with other ideas in the Noosphere with the ‘winner’ being the one that can best be symbolized in the prevailing human language. It is extremely important to realize that, in a religious context, the Truth that we should search for is that which maximizes fulfilling the purpose that God has for us in this life. So, can that 'kind of truth’ be distilled in some dogma or creed that defies the ravages of time?
Christy, as someone skilled in linguistics, you are surely aware of how rapidly symbols evolve. We Catholics still celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. I can still respect the fact that in the past the word ‘kingship’ bestowed an honor. But for me, it no longer does. (King Abdullah II of Jordan is the only contender today.)
When I say the Apostle’s Creed: "Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and sits at the right hand of God the Father in heaven" the Truth conveyed to me has nothing to do with (1) How He was conceived (sperm/egg; parthenogenesis, etc), but Why. (2) As the risen Christ, Jesus is present throughout the entire universe (to me) and does not “sit” alongside some heavenly throne. My lips may repeat the words of the creed, but my heart translates them in symbols meaningful to me in the 21st century.
So, as you have frequently pointed out, the language used by the authors of Scripture gave substance to certain inspired ideas. As languages have evolved and the “memes” associated with words change, we should not assume there was ‘error’ involved from the beginning.
Pontius Pilate has not fared very well in history, but he asked a very pertinent question that has not been answered satisfactorily two millennia later: What IS truth?. Can humans ever express it in language; i.e., from the Mind? Or must an important component come from the Heart?
Al Leo
We have different views of truth. I don’t see truth as some kind of telos or destiny. I don’t believe “truth evolves.” I think truth is what corresponds to God’s reality. I believe some truths are timeless and unchanging because they are rooted in the unchanging reality of God himself and accomplished acts of God in the reality of human history. I don’t see how fundamental truth claims of Christianity, such as God the Father is the source of all that is, or Jesus died on the cross and opened a way of reconciliation between God and humanity can “evolve.” They either describe reality as stated or they don’t and if they don’t they are not true. Our interpretation of truth can evolve. Our application of truth can evolve. But truth itself?
So, yes, I believe that truth can be distilled into timeless truth claims, or dogma if you like that word.
Yes. Perfectly and objectively and absolutely? Maybe not? But sufficiently? I think so.
But that is essentially what I understand Dr. Enns to suggest about the Bible. In his lengthy discussion in “Bible Tells Me So” about the canaanites, he essentially argues that God is not as described in Joshua, not by a long stretch. Rather, what is described there is the result of (false) tribal attitudes projected onto God by those ancient people, attitudes that do not reflect anything God himself revealed.
“Christians—as well as Jews—over the centuries have had to come to terms with this tribal portrait of God and have moved on…Christians today, therefore, have an obligation not to “follow the Bible” here, not to allow the ancient tribal description of God in the Old Testament to be the last word.”
I can only understand that we ought to move on from such views, and specifically refrain from following the Bible in these cases, because the ancient tribal description of God is false.
Thus the Bible has significant sections which are simply and total “untruths” about God, that we must figure out which are true and which are false, no? That, unless I am radically misunderstanding (and if so please forgive and correct me), is what Randy is discussing… that all the numerous, pervasive parts of Scripture that reflect God as supporting, executing, or otherwise condoning retributive justice or related punishment are entirely and completely untrue, and must be carefully sifted and excised from the rest.
If we were trusting that the image of God and truth about him and his actions in Scripture are essentially correct, but that various minor errors crept in getting lost in translation or transmission or simply human error, then I wouldn’t have a significant disagreement. It would not be my position, but I wouldn’t take significant issue with the idea that God communicated various truth in various ways (visions, dreams, direct communication, etc.) to the various prophets, who relayed that truth in a generally reliable but not inerrant fashion, even perhaps putting their own cultural spin on their writings… they being generally reliable and faithful witnessed regarding who God is and what he had done, yet open to the errors and minor distortions common to men.
And perhaps this also addresses Christy’s concern… but Randy and I are talking about excising nearly half the Bible as presenting a completely faulty view of God as punishing people and exacting retributive justice. This isn’t a peccadillo, something minor lost in translation, or the like… this is essentially a claim that the Bible in almost its entirety is riddled with radically erroneous and perverse viewpoints, which are essentially complete lies and slanders, reflecting a near polar opposite view, over against God’s “true” character as one who would never in his wildest dreams ever do such a thing.
Do you think there is a difference between “God revealed himself to people, and in the retelling of their experience, misconceptions and sinful human attitudes crept in to the story.” and “God revealed himself, and people basically ignored it and went on to make up lies about God which they passed off as revelation from God instead.”?
I think there is a huge difference. I haven’t read The Bible Tells Me So, but the first one is my impression of the kind of things Enns says and the second one is my impression of your reframing of what Enns says, and I’m pretty skeptical that it’s accurate. I agree with you that if someone is claiming the second, that is problematic.
I personally do not believe anything in the Bible is lies people made up about God. I believe all of it, even the Joshua conquest, has a source in experience with God and revelation from God, even if in the transmission, people misunderstood some stuff and their humanity clouded their ability to perfectly represent God’s heart. I also don’t believe in throwing any of the Bible out because it seems like the authors got something wrong. I think there is value in wrestling with it, and trying to hear God through it, and trying to make sense of it, and gain wisdom from it. I think you can do all those things with the Joshua conquest, even if you don’t see it as an inerrant account of God’s dealing with Caanan, and even if you don’t walk away committed to some kind of absolute truth that at least some aspect of God’s character is that of a vengeful baby-killer.
If by “following the Bible” people mean villainizing foreign people groups and justifying war with holy mandate, don’t you agree we should “move on” from that? Isn’t moving on from that actually commanded in the same Bible by the same God? I don’t understand the obsession with true and false. I don’t think of the Joshua conquest as false. It’s a story. It’s from a perspective. Can protagonists and antagonists be true or false? If you can’t unravel the human perspective from the story, those elements of “ancient tribal depiction of God” that were imposed on it, then you may come away thinking false things about God. False is not a word I would apply to a story; it’s slanted, incomplete, potentially misleading, maybe.
Several years ago some progressive Christians kicked up a big fuss about penal substitutionary atonement. The way they told the traditional story of the cross, God was an angry, dysfunctional parent who for his own egomaniacal reasons, needed to brutally abuse his child and watch him suffer and die before he would extend forgiveness to others. It was an ungracious, but not too inaccurate portrait of what some people have taken away from what the Bible says. Was their telling of this interpretation “lies?” I don’t think so. I think it was slanted and incomplete and laden with some misconceptions about God. But the source was true revelation and true history. My point is the Bible has always had sections which when put through our human grid of understanding can be accused of getting God wrong. So should we chuck the whole thing as unreliable because we in our humanity aren’t very reliable interpreters? No, I think it’s just a call to continue to wrestle with the hard parts and ask God for wisdom because he promises to give freely to everyone who asks.
Do you believe you can rightly understand God as revealed in Scripture outside of a relationship with God? Because it seems throughout this conversation that you are looking for verification of an objective approach to the Bible that allows someone make judgments about “true” and “false” and “fact” and “lie,” presumably to know what is true about God. I don’t think having some perfect approach to the Bible or having an inerrant Bible is how we know God. I think relating to God; loving, serving, listening, obeying, asking, following, arguing, complaining—that’s how we know God. The Bible informs our relating, but we don’t relate to the Bible we relate to the Person the Bible shows us.
I don’t know what Enns and Boyd say. For me personally, it is not the case that any story in Scripture must be sifted out and excised from the rest. I think it is all useful for teaching and training in righteousness. I do think that sometimes human bias and cultural misconceptions in the telling need to be evaluated as we are deciding what takeaways we are going to get from it.
If what you are saying is that we don’t get to stand over Scripture and decide that the parts we don’t like aren’t really from God and we can ignore them all, then I agree with you. I’m not sure that is a fair characterization of what Enns and Boyd are doing, but I’m also probably not going to read their books, so whatever, if that’s your impression, that’s your impression.
Again, I welcome correction… if someone wants to demonstate that Dr. Enns does not in fact believe that Scripture contains wholesale untruths about God invented and fabricated entirely by humanity, I will of course retract my mischaracterization.
But as it is, I don’t think my reading comprehension is that poor…
God never told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The Israelites believed that God told them to kill the Canaanites.
“How could God order the Israelites to do such a thing?” He didn’t. The Israelites just said he did. Problem solved.
Why would the Israelites write a story about God that isn’t true—and what are we supposed to do today with a Holy Bible that makes up lies? At least that’s how some might ask the question. Still, it’s a good question.
I can only understand these words to mean that the Israelites erroneously believed, and subsequently wrote, these entirely false claims about God. While Dr. Enns uses the word “lies,” I would not impute those words to him myself, he qualifies it a bit more. But it is hard for me to understand his words in any other way, being as generous as I can. They embraced false beliefs about God’s action and commands - false beliefs that originated entirely from their own tribal world view, and projected this onto God. But nonetheless it stands… the command to execute said conquest was, according to Dr. Enns, a complete fabrication on Israel’s part… God never said or revealed any such thing in any way. This command was simply never given by God, it was fabricated by the Israelites.
So yes, as far as I can tell by the most fair and generous reading I can of his numerous blogs and books I’ve read, I understand his words to mean “God did not reveal himself, Scripture is people projecting their beliefs about God onto God which they passed off as revelation from God instead.”
I’m not so much engaging with either author on that point… I’m specifically engaging with Randy’s suggested approach (unless I have radically misunderstood him), that he would object to any death in the Bible that occurred at the hand of either God, man, or angel, if that “death occurred as a punishment.”
Mr. Fisher, thank you for your comment. I don’t think that I meant that. I strongly believe that God will not command the death of the Innocents. It’s been a very busy week, and I’ve enjoyed reading your posts. However, both because my brother is back from Africa visiting from the mission field, and because work has been very busy, I’ve not been able to post thoroughly. I apologize. I am formulating a comment, but I probably won’t get to that until later this weekend or perhaps a bit later. We are on our way to visit him. I do keep coming back to the idea that whatever we think, God is just. CS Lewis’s book, The Great divorce, also argues that he came to terms with the idea of Heaven and Hell through the portrayal made by George MacDonald, which is a later understanding than his quotes above I think. Thanks.
I lied (or rather I did not speak inerrantly in my fallible human recollection, depending on how you characterize it), I did read The Bible Tells Me So a while back and immediately forgot most of it. I don’t think you can extend Enns view of the Joshua conquest to all of Scripture. I don’t think he would characterize all of Scripture as people passing off their fabrications about God as divine revelation in the absence of actual revelation from God. If someone did think that, I would grant other Christians the right to tell them they did not have much of a theological leg to stand on and that is a pretty low view of Scripture.
He prefers the term “re-imagine God”, rather than “fabricate,” but I confess I simply don’t see a difference. The ancient Israelites imagined God as they needed him to be, Paul “reimagined” God according to his culture and religion’s needs and preferences. And this gives us precedent to continue that process… to continue to “reimagine” God as we want/need him based on our own culture’s needs and concerns. Again I’m open to correction, but I can find no hint of any claim of a God actually revealing anything substantial whatsoever about himself:
“The Creator is being reimagined all the time and can be reimagined through the lens of any culture, of any time and place.”
Mr Fisher, back to Post #217, Thank you for your note. I’m sorry, but I still don’t grasp your reasoning for embracing inerrancy, other than to say that one can’t be sure of what is true otherwise–which parts of the Scripture we can take. It still sounds like a leap of faith to me–same as Dr Mohler’s leap.
It sounds to me like Enns’ post about recycling brings things back to basics–if one posits a God that is just, then one searches for Him, as the Israelites and others did.
However, there is merit in this, too. Many evangelicals (not least of all Lewis) believed that God interacts with all of Creation based on their knowledge. From the story of Emeth in The Last Battle, we see that Lewis suggested that even though someone interacted with what they thought God (Tash in name, but in actuality Aslan) erroneously in detail and name, they started based on the internal knowledge of truth, honor, and repentance, with which rules he (and all humanity) are born. Thus, if God exists, He is truth, justice, and mercy; otherwise, He is not God; he is a Devil.
Thus, in a way, Enns’ post is extremely humble; he realizes that we don’t all get it right, but God knows the heart.
In reading as a family George Macdonald’s “The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman” the other day, the pastor Bannerman talked with his son about doing the will of God. He emphasized that the will of God is not something abstract, but that we start worshiping Him and doing it immediately upon performing the service to someone else that is at hand–serving your mother, brother, or sister. On his son asking him if we should do it in reading the Bible or praying, he responded that it was good to do with the goal of serving others and God–not for the sake of the act of reading or praying themselves, because that is what the heathen do, for vain repetition. It was encouraging for us to review with our kids (11, 8 and 5) what they had done that very day to worship and serve God–by serving their mom (my wife), their siblings, grandparents, and others.
It seems to me that God does not limit His interaction with mankind to us simply, but also to others.
