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Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy QUOTES

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy QUOTES

1 " First, in many cases, conservative American evangelical biblical interpretation is not only parochial but also weird and whacky. Only American evangelicals use Scripture to argue against gun control, against environmental care, and against universal healthcare.28 Second, while there is a great blessing in American evangelical scholarship, one I’ve benefited from immensely (not least of all from Beale’s brilliant Revelation commentary), we do not need Americans to teach us that the Bible is authoritative and how to do text-based interpretation. Here’s the thing: we already knew that; in some cases we knew it a millennium before the Americans, and why do Americans presume to teach us a proper doctrine of biblical authority and biblical interpretation when they live in the same country as Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and the Left Behind series! "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

2 " The problem is that Mohler wants to interpret nature and history in light of Scripture, but not Scripture in light of history or nature. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

3 " Placing inerrancy at the outset of doctrinal statements seems to teach that Christian beliefs are of the order of facts. As we have suggested, facts can usually be assimilated into the self without much modification of the self, without a deep existential and moral reordering. Consequently, the Christian is taught that becoming a Christian is about learning the right information rather than submitting to the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

4 " Thus, I argue not only that the inerrancy of the Bible is true but also that it is necessary. Without it, we are left with the unavoidable admission that it is something less than, or other than, inerrant. And that concession would mean that the Bible contains at least some texts that are not fully trustworthy and authoritative. In the wake of that recognition, the church is left with the task of determining which texts, if any, are true and trustworthy and authoritative—and to what extent. The consequences of that confusion would be disastrous to the church and to individual Christians. Furthermore, this confusion would unavoidably reach the very heart of the church’s message—the gospel of Jesus Christ. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

5 " In my opinion, the distance between what the Bible is and the theological hedge placed around the Bible by the CSBI has been and continues to be a source of considerable cognitive dissonance. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

6 " The article mentions specifically that no “scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.” The implication is self-evident: inerrancy means, first of all, that literalism is the default hermeneutic of the CSBI, "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

7 " Without the Bible as the supreme and final authority in the church, we are left in what can only be described as a debilitating epistemological crisis. Put bluntly, if the Bible is not the very Word of God, bearing his full authority and trustworthiness, we do not know what Christianity is, nor do we know how to live as followers of Christ. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

8 " That is because the American inerrancy tradition, though largely a positive concept, is essentially modernist in construct, parochially American in context, and occasionally creates more exegetical problems than it solves. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

9 " Matthew’s Jesus supersedes Moses, which leads to the following point: Jesus’ call to love and pray for one’s enemies cannot be lined up neatly with the Old Testament and judged to be a simple extension or revealing of what the Old Testament really says. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

10 " It is just here where we see the schizophrenia that inerrancy forces upon evangelicals: we are free to benefit from the advances of modern science and critical study and can even participate in these fields, yet when it comes to that which is most central to our faith and understanding of the world—the Bible—we are told that scientific study constitutes a threat and is contrary to faith in God, that we must simply believe that the Bible is accurate, even if a preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise. From my perspective, while this "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

11 " However helpful some might find the formulations continued in the CSBI, when given prescriptive force, it obstructs the kind of critical dialogue clearly surfacing within evangelicalism, and therefore threatens to neutralize self-criticism, a necessary quality of any healthy intellectual pursuit. At such times, evangelicalism appears intellectually dishonest, thus forfeiting intellectual witness to our culture and creating spiritual stumbling blocks for its own members.2 "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

12 " To the minds of many, maintaining inerrancy requires that perennially nagging counterevidence from inside and outside of the Bible must be adjusted to support that premise rather than allowing that evidence to call the premise into question. In my opinion, the distance between what the Bible is and the theological hedge placed around the Bible by the CSBI has been and continues to be a source of considerable cognitive dissonance. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

13 " This premise of the CSBI should not be given a free ride, for to leave it as is implies that people who wish to critique inerrancy on exegetical and theological grounds stand in opposition to God himself. In a "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

14 " What should be brought explicitly to the forefront here is the manner in which God speaks truth, namely, through the idioms, attitudes, assumptions, and general worldviews of the ancient authors. "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

15 " To take up another issue, I don’t understand how Mohler can claim to be a confessional evangelical and yet criticize Fuller Seminary for a doctrinal statement on Scripture that looks remarkably like what the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) and London Baptist Confession (LBC) say about Scripture. If Fuller was so reprehensible for changing “free from all error” to “trustworthy record,” then what are we to say about the WCF and LBC, which do not ever say that Scripture is “without error”? "

― , Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy