a response to dr. lillback’s essay

Recently Westminster Theological Seminary released documents that were written surrounding the debate over Pete Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation (hereafter I&I). The last document in that large packet was an essay written by Dr. Peter Lillback, president and professor of Church History at Westminster, entitled “”The Infallible Rule of Interpretation of Scripture”: The Hermeneutical Crisis and the Westminster Standards.” The main focus of Dr. Lillback’s essay was to show how Peter Enns’ work falls outside of the Westminster Standards (at the end of the essay he “shows” how Enns violates the Standards in 7 different ways).

I have thought of different ways to respond to this essay, from an overview to a point-by-point review, and have decided to simply follow the flow of Dr. Lillback’s essay and object where objections need to be made. I would encourage everyone to read Dr. Lillback’s essay first, and then read this response. If you have not read the essay by Dr. Lillback, please do not throw in your two cents regarding this response. In my opinion, if you aren’t going to take the time to actually read the documents, then you don’t have the right to comment. I also want to apologize for the length of this post,

 

More WTS Documents Available

Westminster has now made available further documents: the Historical Theology Field Committee précis and the Hermeneutics Field Committee précis.

Happy reading…

UPDATE: The document linked above as the “Hermeneutics Field Committee precis” is now the correct document. (The Westminster site had inadvertently posted a summary document at first.)

 

Discussing the Documents Released by Westminster Pertaining to the Current Situation

As many are aware, the faculty and administration of Westminster Theological Seminary recently released (see post below) several documents pertaining to the current situation at Westminster.

 

It is our intention on the Connversation blog to post several interactions with various of these documents and to discuss both the documents and our posts on this blog. Some of us are in the process of preparing these posts. One of our members is composing a review of the essay by Peter Lillback in which Lillback argues Peter Enns resides outside the Reformed tradition. I am in the process of writing a couple posts but am taking extra time as I wish to converse with some of the authors of the various documents (1) to make sure I have understood them correctly and (2) to bring my criticisms and comments to their attention prior to making them public. Others on this blog are also thinking up and typing posts.

 

All this is to say that we are interested in pursuing some (hopefully) edifying discussion of these documents. We hope you will join us in these discussions in the coming weeks. We would appreciate your prayers as we go about typing and interacting with these documents and those who wrote them.

 

Also, we strongly encourage everyone to read all the documents in their entirety. We especially encourage reading the Historical Theology Field Committee (HTFC) paper and the (lengthy) reply to the HTFC paper by the Hermeneutics Field Committee (HFC: Dan McCartney, Doug Green, Steve Taylor, Peter Enns, Mike Kelly, Elliott Greene, and Adrian Smith). We realize reading the documents represents a substantial time commitment. Part of the function of our posts will certainly be to provide some basic outlines of the documents for those who have not the time to read them. But, again, we primarily hope to interact with them and to facilitate discussion of them—and reading the documents will help immensely in orienting everyone for fruitful discussion.

 

For now, I would direct readers to Joel Garver’s outline of and reflections on the documents on his blog.

 

Thank you for your patience and prayers.

 

Presidential Politics and Westminster?

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer features an op-ed piece entitled “Conservative Christianity wanes in a shift to center” by Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas.  Read it in its entirety here.

Hamilton is interested primarily in what he regards as a decline in political influence by conservative Christianity.  However, the lead example in his argument certainly took me by surprise:

One of the most obvious signs of this is the change in political fortunes for conservatives, but I see it anecdotally in many other places as well. At one of the leading conservative seminaries in the United States, students question the doctrine of inerrancy (while the school continues to officially embrace it).

This sound bite characterizing the division at Westminster isn’t precisely accurate, but his application of the seminary’s crisis to his thesis is a stunning reminder of the ripple effect.  It’s already being interpreted in ways that the participants would hardly recognize.  It’s ironic that for all the theological richness housed within the walls of today’s Westminster, its relevance to the secular world is not about the way in which it drives the gospel forward, but its utility as a harbinger of changes to the American political scene.     

 

wts documents released

The documents that were prepared by the Historical and Theological Field Committee against Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation as well as the response to their report by the Hermeneutics Field Committee (in favor of Enns) were handed out to interested students yesterday. Today, they have been released on Westminster’s website.

Along with these reports are also the Edgar-Kelly Motion, the Faculty Minority Report, and an essay by Dr. Peter Lillback.

These documents are extremely enlightening. We’ll be sure to weigh in on them in the near future.

 

Kenton Sparks on being too Conservative

Before our mishap on the Connversaton blog (in which we accidentally deleted a couple months worth of posts and comments) some lively discussion took place concerning Kenton Sparks’ new book, God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. When I sat down the other day to read the first hundred or so pages of Sparks’ book I ran across the following comment, which I thought would be interesting to post here and might lead us into some edifying discussion:

 

“In essence, the old-school evangelicals have been so sure that they are right that they no longer consider seriously the possibility that they are too conservative; ‘conservative,’ not in the sense of theological orthodoxy, but in the sense that they are unable to really think critically about whether their traditions are intellectually adequate and spiritually healthy.” (p12-13).

 

This comment struck me when I read it. I have long been concerned that in our zeal to fight off being too liberal, we forget that it is equally dangerous to be too conservative. This danger appears to remain essentially unrecognized amidst many of the struggles in our circles now. Such a tendency (being too conservative) has many unedifying outworkings. Sparks has hit on one of them here.

 

In the context of Sparks’ discussion this comment comes as he brings up how traditional American Evangelicals have been chiefly concerned with defending against views that might undermine the authority of Scripture. In this particular pursuit another danger fell from view: “…that their [traditional evangelical scholars] version of the Christian faith might harbor false ideas and beliefs that, because they are mistaken, serve as barriers to faith for those who see our evangelical errors.” In this zeal against “liberalism,” many conservative scholars missed the danger of being too conservative…(now, see the quote above). Sparks thus brings up a pastoral concern. What about the danger of setting up stumbling blocks other than legitimate Gospel stumbling blocks?

 

Sparks broaches here one outworking of a larger issue: the danger of being too far to the right, if you will. I generally focus on other aspects and outworkings of this danger and I hope to bring up some of these. But, for now, I put forth Sparks’ helpful comment. Any thoughts?

 

Nine Marks of (against) Inerrancy? (A repost of one that was lost, original author Stephen Young)

Please forgive the play on the title of Mark Dever’s well respected book. About a month ago I posted a reply to Tim Challies’ three posts on inerrancy. A fairly lively discussion ensued both on this blog and on Challies’ blog (1 & 2). In the midst of discussion on one of his threads I decided to answer a call for examples within the Bible that pose problems for a more traditional American-Evangelical understanding of inerrancy. I quickly typed out nine examples from off the top of my head.

Now, about a month removed from the inerrancy discussion both here and on Challies’ blog, I thought it might be fitting to re-visit some of the issues in question. Discussions about inerrancy, what it means, why it is so important to us, what the implications of the doctrine are for how to read the Bible, and what we are really trying to defend through the doctrine, etc—these questions occupy a prominent place our American Evangelical and Reformed consciousness right now. If this is news to you, feel free to ask what I am talking about. As I pondered how to re-visit inerrancy and how to spark some discussion of it and the many related issues, the idea of posting the examples I gave on Challies’ blog about a month ago seemed fitting. So, below I have posted those nine examples…

There are many questions or thoughts I would like to leave in your minds as you set out to read these examples—too many to mention here. I hope they come up in discussion in the comments. Most of these questions and thoughts appear in my lengthy original response to Challies. I hope we can have an edifying discussion of these examples and how they might be windows in on ways we might nuance our understanding of what it means that the Bible is God’s Word. Just to get it out there, I believe the Bible is fully inspired by God and that everything in it is inspiredly doing exactly what God wants it to be doing. This still leaves us with the question, what did God actually do when he gave us the Bible; what are the writings and details of the Bible actually doing? If our impulse is ‘to explain’ these and other such examples away—‘to explain’ them in ways that make us more comfortable—why do we have this impulse? Is it possible that the Bible actually does things that do not square with a more traditional conception of inerrancy?

(1) Mark 12.9 attributes words to Jesus that Matthew’s version of the pericope attributes to the crowd (Matt 21.41). For another fun synoptic ‘who said what’ instance compare Matt 19.16-17 with Mk 10.17-18. In Mark the man said to Jesus ‘Good teacher.’ In Matthew the man says uses good with reference to the deed in question. What is going on here? We could multiply examples such as these from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) almost endlessly. The Matt 19 and Mk 10 example has an interesting history of discussion in Westminster circles. Both E.J. Young and Ned Stonehouse treated it at some length. Young essentially harmonizes while Stonehouse refuses to do so, looking at how the differences reflect the freedom and creativity of the author and as such serving as windows in on the theology of the writings in question.

(2) The Synoptics portray Jesus as eating his last supper with the disciples as a Passover meal (Thursday night), being arrested that night, and being crucified Passover day, Friday (c.f. Mk 14.12 / Lk 22.15; then follow the narratives). John portrays Jesus as eating supper sometime prior to Passover and then being crucified on the eve of Passover precisely when the Lambs are being slaughtered for the Passover meals for the Jews (see John 13.1-5; 19.14-16). It seems that John has a rich theological reason for what he is doing—Jesus being killed with the Passover lambs fits in nicely with his emphasis of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1.29; cf. 1.36). Or, perhaps the Synoptics were motivated in their chronological presentation to cast the last supper (eucharist?) as a new Passover meal? It seems we have the authors of the Gospels (or at least one/some of them) modifying the ‘facts’ for their theology.

(3) Does Jesus tell the disciples to take a staff (Mk 6. or not (Matt 10.10)? I have heard it suggested that the only way to ‘deal with’ this is positing autographs that did not have this problem—therefore this issue arises from corruption in the transmission history of either Mark or Matthew. This would seem like an extreme case of ‘special pleading.’ What do you all think?

(4) Do you mind if I mention a canon ‘issue’? Jude quotes the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36; a Jewish apocalypse of the 3rd century BCE) as Scripture, Jude 14-15. The way he introduces it corresponds to ways other parts of our Bible (and contemporary Jewish literature) cite what the authors in question would consider Scripture. Such a view of the Book of the Watchers for Jude makes sense since the Book of the Watchers—along with many of the other writings making up 1 Enoch—were viewed as Scripture by Jews in many (most?) strands of Early Judaism in the centuries prior to Jesus and around his time. In fact, the view of 1 Enoch as Scripture continues in the early church as early church writers cite 1 Enoch as Scripture (see, for example, the Epistle of Barnabus with its 3 citations of 1 Enoch with scripture citation formulas!). I am not claiming 1 Enoch or some of the writings in it should be in our canon—but rather that this material makes the Bible messier than we would like.

(5) What did Jesus say on the Cross? You could put all the Gospels on this together and have our ‘7 last words of Jesus’ sermon series. But, that distorts the different theologies of the death of Jesus that each Gospel has. This is especially true if you conflate Mark and Luke on the death of Jesus. They have different views on the death of Jesus and his approach to it—which can be very theologically enriching (after all, it is the Bible) if we do not flatten them out.

(6) Deuteronomy (10.1-5) has a different understanding of where the ark came from than Exodus.

(7) Who failed to dislodge the Jebusites from Jerusalem, Judah (Josh 15.63) or Benjamin (Judg 1.21)? Note, it is exactly the same verse, except that Judges has modified the material from Joshua to fit in with its, basically, anti-Benjamin ideology/theology seen throughout the book. If you delve into this further, you find this to be a window into some rich theology in Judges. But, if you flatten this out, you start to miss something God was saying through Judges.

( Was Hiram/Huram-abi’s descent from the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kgs 7.14) or Dan (2 Chr 2.13-14)? Perhaps one could harmonize this, but then you are missing out on the Chronicler’s rich theology of Solomon and Hiram/Huram (in the building of the Temple) as the new Bezalel and Oholiab (who built the Tabernacle). As the Chronicler draws on his sacred scripture and traditions, he brings out this parallel between Huram and Oholiab by, among other things, giving Huram the same tribal affiliation as Oholiab (see Exod 31.6, 35.34, 38.23). All this has a very important function in the Chronicler’s overall message and theology. But, again, to harmonize this is to get in the way of understanding what God is saying and doing through Chronicles.

(9) Is it ok for a Moabite to enter the assembly of the Lord and be part of Israel (the book of Ruth) or not (Deut 23.3-6)? See also the general theology of Ezra-Nehemiah on foreigners, Israel, and marriage.

As I have mentioned above, some of these may seem to be harmonizable. But, in such cases we are losing the theology and message God is speaking through the text(s) in question. I often hear that to deny or to question inerrancy—or to read the Bible in a way that might lead to a challenge for inerrancy—is to have ‘a low view of Scripture.’ To put another question out there, is it a low view of Scripture for people such as myself to hold up such examples (and endless others in the Bible) and see them as somehow challenging a traditional conception of inerrancy?

I hope this is ultimately edifying and helpful for all of us. What does everyone think? Can such examples nuance what we understand inerrancy to mean?

 

14 Responses to “Nine Marks of (against) Inerrancy?”

1. goodnight moon Says:
   February 14, 2008 at 6:17 pm
   Stephen, it is helpful just to see all these examples listed out. In your spare time, do you think you could go through the whole Bible and list out all such “problems”? That way we could know what we’re dealing with.
   No, but really, it is helpful. Scripture was not written in 21st century America. When are we going to stop trying to squeeze it into our nice little boxes, and then ignoring the parts that don’t fit? If we truly believe Scripture to be inerrant, we have to take it for what it is, and if we don’t, how can we answer people like my uncle who know all the “contradictions” in the Bible and point them out as evidence of fallibility? How can we understand it the way the Lord intended it for us?
   Well, I’m no expert on this, but maybe I’m missing WTS more than I thought…
2. Craig V. Says:
   February 14, 2008 at 6:56 pm
   I’ll address some of the specifics later (beware of those who promise the theological equivalent of vapor ware), but one question needs to be asked in order to help frame the conversation. What is the doctrine of inerrancy supposed to do for us? In its historical setting there were those who sincerely claimed to believe in the inspiration and the authority of the Scriptures and yet denied that Jesus rose from the dead. Inerrancy is a response to this. That’s why saying that everything in the Bible does what God wants it to doesn’t do enough for me since one could consistently affirm a belief in inspiration and a belief that the Bible does what God intends while denying that Jesus rose from the dead.
3. Foolish Sage Says:
   February 14, 2008 at 8:39 pm
   Craig,
   Yes, one could do that, but one does not follow from the other. In other words, because one affirms that God can do whatever he wants in and with his word, it does not follow that it is logical or necessary to deny the resurrection of Christ.
   For those of us who believe the Bible but are uncomfortable with inerrancy as it is often formulated by contemporary evangelicals, the difference is that the Bible explicitly states that a historic, bodily resurrection of Jesus is absolutely essential to Christian faith. On the other hand, nowhere does the Bible say that belief in the first chapters of Genesis as a literal historical narrative in the modern sense is essential to faith. So the two are not equal in value in that regard.
4. JD Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 12:57 am
   I think asking what inerrancy does for us is getting the cart before the horse. We need to first ask whether such a doctrine even has biblical grounding. If the Bible has a inward-looking view of itself, and if that view is something for which the term “inerrancy” best approximates it, only then can we ask what it does.
5. Stephen Young Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 11:18 am
   Craig,
   I look forward to more specifics.
   Also, in this post I am not using my expression ‘everything in the Bible is inspiredly doing what God wants it to be doing’ as a definition of inerrancy so much. Though, as you are aware, I have used it that way in the past–and probably still would : ). In this post I use that phrase more to indicate how I think of the whole Bible–the ‘messy’ parts included–is truly God’s Word and doing exactly what he intended it to be doing. Negatively, I mean that phrase here against what Jason Kirklin described as an adoptionist view of Scripture: “…that God adopts humanity with all its humanness - to err is human! - and chooses to work through it to reveal what he wants to reveal in the Bible” [I should make clear that Jason does not agree with this view].
   I am not a fan of that sort of approach—that there are errors because God chose to work through sinful and erring man. From my point of view this inappropriately tries to distinguish between what is human versus what is divine about the Scriptures. I do not locate the ‘errors’ or issues I bring up with the Bible in their human aspect as opposed to the divine side of Scripture. Rather, I see them completely reflecting his whole Word, divine and human aspects—such messiness also is at the center of its inspiration. The issues I bring up with respect to inerrancy (’errors’), for me, pertain just as much to Scripture being divine as they do to Scripture being human. We only know it as God’s Word in its historical form. Furthermore, this human form is not some compromise by God, as though it was just the best option he had available. This human form of God’s Word and everything about it is inspiredly doing exactly what God wants it to be doing. We only encounter the divinity of the scriptures as it is bound up with their contingent and historical humanity. The so-called humanity of the Scriptures (where, perhaps, ‘errors’ might be located for many who engage in these discussions) are not a husk to be peeled away, leaving us a divine kernel. Again, this is part of what I am getting at when I say that everything in the Bible is inspiredly doing what God wants it to be doing.
   Again, I look forward to your further comments. What do you think of the Foolish Sage’s points?
6. Stephen Young Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 11:25 am
   JD,
   You bring up an interesting point, if the Bible has an ‘inward-looking’ view of itself and, if so, what is it (does it approximate inerrancy)? Could you say a little more here? I have some thoughts on this, but I would like to give you a chance to share your thoughts first (I imagine our thinking is somewhat similar).
7. garver Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 1:29 pm
   I took Craig’s reference to “what inerrancy does for us” as a historical claim about why the notion of inerrancy came to hold the place it does within evangelical doctrine of Scripture. That’s to say, it gave evangelicals a way to distinguish themselves from liberals who could claim to embrace inspiration, biblical authority, etc., but who countenanced errors in Scripture on the order of “Jesus didn’t rise from the dead” or “Moses never existed.”
   Now, of course, there were probably underlying disagreements that extended beyond the notion of “inerrancy.” For instance, I doubt that evangelicals and liberals really meant the same thing by “inspiration” or “authority” (which is why evangelicals came to qualify inspiration as “plenary, verbal” inspiration). Moreover, there were hermeneutical issues in play, with evangelicals and liberals both embracing a modern, somewhat reductionistic historical-grammatical exegesis, with evangelicals taking that in a more literalistic direction and liberals taking that in a more de-mythologizing direction (for lack of a better term).
   At any rate, there’s a certain sort of historical dynamic at work in these discussions, even if we should try to qualify and accommodate our notion of “inerrancy” (assuming we retain it at all) to the actual phenomenon of Scripture.
   So, the question I keep going back to (whether you want to call it “inerrancy” or not) is this: Is there a way of articulating a doctrine of Scripture that embraces Scripture as wholly divine as well as wholly human, that handles the phenomenon of Scripture as historical text with integrity, that maintains Scripture as exhaustively precisely what God intends it to be, and which approaches the text with humility and deference - a hermeneutics of trust?
8. Craig V. Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 2:17 pm
   First some responses and then let me try to move the conversation forward a bit with the some specifics.
   Foolish Sage
   I don’t think we disagree as much as you might guess. I certainly don’t believe that from Stephen’s view one could logically deduce a denial of the resurrection. I do think one could be logically consistent in such a denial unless we have some kind of a notion of the Bible’s relationship to truth in general and truth claims in particular. You bring this in, it seems to me, when you speak of things the Bible explicitly states as essential to the Christian faith. My point is that in its historical context, that’s what the doctrine of inerrancy is supposed to do. To believe the Bible is to believe it’s true. We may find a better way to talk about these thing, but it’s not enough to see inerrancy simply in terms of God accomplishing what he wants. There has to be some talk about truth or truth claims.
   JD
   I may be getting the cart before the horse. I don’t know if we’ll find in the Bible an inward-looking view of itself. What we will find is the claim that God speaks and that Scripture is an example of God speaking. When we claim that a text is Scripture, we’re claiming that it is at least an instance of God speaking. The doctrine of inerrancy never arises until we find theologians happy to agree that God speaks in Scripture and yet denying that Jesus rose from the dead. If we rip inerrancy out of that historical context we get a distortion. We find ourselves on a fruitless quest to prove that the Bible is consistent and historically perfect.
   Stephen
   I’m not too happy about some formulations of the divine/human in Scripture either. I do not think that the Bible is absolute truth in the sense of being truth from God’s point of view. I think this is where a lot (but not all) of the confusion comes in. To misquote a movie “We can’t handle absolute truth.” It doesn’t follow from this that the Bible is some sort of compromise (God wanted to give us absolute truth but we couldn’t handle it so he gave us the Bible instead). I’ll develop this more in my specifics.
   Specifics will follow (I promise) but I need to go to a meeting first (errrr).
9. c bovell Says:
   February 15, 2008 at 4:49 pm
   I regret to report that inerrantists are not under any epistemic pressure to respond to your nine points. If in the majority of cases, inerrantists feel that the biblical text supports their inerrantist program then they are free to suspend judgments on the exceptions and maintain in good faith that when all the facts are in their doctrinal formulations will be vindicated. Even if we forget about philosophy, in my experience very few people are ever convinced by the encyclopedia of difficulties approach. I know I never was. Change in belief in inerrancy is a complex affair. Difficulties alone won’t do the trick.
   Unfortunately, the unhappy position doubters of inerrancy may find themselves in is that they may have to expressly formulate inerrancy’s replacement before even they themselves can consider themselves actual non-inerrantists. Without an alternative “acceptably orthodox” position available to them, many doubting inerrantists duly become agnostics. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to approach inerrancy the way I did in my book.
10. Craig V. Says:
    February 15, 2008 at 5:47 pm
    Garver,
    I posted before I saw your comment, so forgive me for seeming to ignore you. You have caught my meaning and, I think, expressed it better than me. As far as your closing question, hopefully we can begin to develop something like that, on the theoretical level, as our discussion moves forward.
    The Specifics
    Let me start with Stephen’s (2). Let’s try two kinds of answers (neither of which is original with me) and then after discussion we may be able to determine if we’ve clarified our doctrines of Scripture. The first answer is to find a speculation which harmonizes the accounts without doing any violence to them. In this case most commentaries provide us with just such a speculation. What if the Passover was celebrated on two days? Perhaps the two days are the result of some dispute (like the later dispute between the western and eastern church) or perhaps it was an accommodation for the large numbers of celebrants in Jerusalem at that time. If this were the case then Jesus may have both celebrated Passover and have been crucified when Passover lambs were slaughtered. John takes full advantage of this historical oddity in order to reinforce his theological themes. Where’s the evidence for the two dates? If memory serves me there is some, but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there isn’t any. It’s pure speculation. What, then, have we gained? We’ve shown that there’s a way that both the Synoptics’ and John’s accounts can be true relative to the Passover and the death of Jesus. We haven’t tried to change either account. A while ago I decided to preach communion sermons from each Gospel. When I got to John I took my text from John 19 not John 13.
    Do we really need such a speculation. No doubt it makes us uncomfortable because 1.) We have no evidence for it so have no reason to believe it’s true, 2.) Some archeologist might find definitive evidence against our speculation and 3.) It feels somewhat dishonest since only one with a prior commitment to inerrancy (or some such doctrine) would have the need for such a speculation. The second kind of answer is a little more radical. It acknowledges that John (or the synoptics) has intentionally reworked the facts. It embraces such re-workings as valid in the presentation of a story teller or a witness. It may even go so far as to assert that one can’t really tell a story (a true story) without such a reworking. To attempt to do so would be to create something both useless and bizarre. At 5:00am the subject, Peter, awoke. At 5:02am the subject yawned. At 5:05am the subject relieved himself … At 4:02pm the subject said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” A narrative isn’t simply a bunch of information. It both tells and draws a listener into a story. To do this, it reworks facts. The question then is how far can a narrator go before we conclude that he or she has not given us a faithful account? How closely does the movie need to follow the book? The answer to this question may vary from culture to culture. It may be impossible to formulate it prior to interpreting a particular story. The doctrine of inerrancy need not answer this question. It need only affirm that the story is faithful.
11. JD Says:
    February 16, 2008 at 2:36 am
    Stephen: you have made my point
    Carlos: in my experience, I’d have to disagree. Tons of undergraduates I deal with lose their faith in inerrancy–and consequently the Bible and God altogether–when they’re confronted with the data. Not just the sort that Stephen mentioned, but others as well. I know I’m among those for whom the data convinced inerrancy wasn’t a viable option, though I didn’t follow the path of my students–in part, for the reason I prompted above, and which I led Stephen to explain. Of course, there are many other non-inerrantists who believers as well.
12. c bovell Says:
    February 16, 2008 at 12:25 pm
    JD:
    Why did your students lose faith and you did not? I think it’s more than just that you were privy to a believing option that others did not give proper consideration to. Philosophy of science has helped show how complex data-observing can be:
    “The knower is seen as a kind of conquerer, like Julius Caesar winning his battles according to the formula ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ A person who wants to know something, so he makes his observation or experiment and then he knows. Even research workers who have won many a scientific battle may believe this naïve story when looking at their own work in retrospect.
    At most they will admit that the first observation may have been a little imprecise, whereas the second and third were ‘adjusted to the facts.’ But the situation is not so simple, except in certain very limited fields, such as present-day mechanics, in which there are very ancient and widely known everyday facts to draw upon. In more modern, more remote, and still complicated fields, in which it is important first of all to learn to observe and ask questions properly, this situation does not obtain—and perhaps never does, originally, in any field—until tradition, education, and familiarity have produced a readiness for stylized (that is, directed and restricted) perception and action; until an answer becomes largely pre-formed in the question, and a decision is confined merely to ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ or perhaps to a numerical determination; until methods and apparatus automatically carry out the greatest part of our mental work for us.” (Ludwig Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, 84)
    If observing scientific facts is such a complex activity, how much more so is observing biblical data?
13. Rhology Says:
    April 4, 2008 at 10:17 pm
    Hi Stephen Young,
    I know this is a long time after the fact but I saw your comment on GreenBaggins and wanted to ask a few questions. Hope you don’t mind that they’re from an inerrantist.
    1) What does this mean as far as your position on other “contradictions” in the Bible that skeptics apparently spend so much of their time finding? Take G Archer’s “Encyclo of Bible Difficulties” or Geisler’s “When Critics Ask” or sthg like that; are the psgs that they deal with in those books, in your opinion, successfully harmonised w/o exception? With a few exceptions? With many exceptions? Did they fail totally?
    2) Should a book like one of those be written in your estimation? Is it useful for anyone?
    3) Normally books like that and inerrantist apologists have a standard battery of tests that they run a proposed conflict thru in order to find its harmonisability. I note that in, for example, #1, #3, #5, and #7, when such methods are applied, the harmony is easily found. Is there sthg beyond that that you just didn’t mention?
    4) Continuing on that same theme, why did you not mention the other non-Christian/Jewish sources cited in the NT? Was there some reason, or was Book of the Watchers simply the most obvious example? Either way, are you unaware of the standard “one citation does not make the whole of the work inspired” answer to things like that?
    5) In #2, here:
    -It seems that John has a rich theological reason for what he is doing—Jesus being killed with the Passover lambs fits in nicely with his emphasis of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
    you seem to go against what you said in the intro paragraph, namely:
    -I believe the Bible is fully inspired by God and that everything in it is inspiredly doing exactly what God wants it to be doing. This still leaves us with the question, what did God actually do when he gave us the Bible; what are the writings and details of the Bible actually doing?
    Am I just missing you on that?
    I hope you’ll find time to answer my questions b/c I’m quite interested in your view.
    Grace and peace,
    Rhology
14. Rhology Says:
    April 8, 2008 at 7:52 am
    Just FYI for other readers, this is just in as another response.
    Grace and peace,
    Rhology

 

Guest Post - To Err is Human: A Question about Christology (A repost of one that was lost, authored by a another person)

The following is a Conn-versation guest post by Kenton Sparks, Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University. Kent is the author of God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Scholarship (Baker 2008).

The work of Pete Enns has brought to the forefront a debate about using incarnational analogies to understand inscripturation. Before we tackle that debate, perhaps we should clarify the incarnation itself. If human finiteness inevitably leads to human error (e.g., I thought my car keys were on the desk, but they were actually in my coat pocket; I thought I saw Tom, but it was Bill), what’s the implication for Christology? And what does traditional Christian orthodoxy (especially the Chalcedon Definition) contribute to our discussion of this question?

 

One Response to “Guest Post - To Err is Human: A Question about Christology”

1. c bovell Says:
   April 10, 2008 at 11:40 pm
   The first thing to acknowledge, I think, is that not all error is sin or even stems from sin.

 

Inspiration and Incarceration: Westminster and the Problem of the Old Testament (A repost of one that was lost, authored by JD)

Yesterday the Westminster Board of Trustees and Faculty held an emergency meeting to decide the fate of OT Prof. Peter Enns’ career at the seminary. The question: whether his book Inspiration and Incarnation is heterodox, and therefore its author worthy of the can (for background info, Brandon Withrow has wonderfully collected the links).

Though the seminary had planned a special chapel gathering next Tuesday to only then divulge the results with the rest of the seminary, already Board Chairman Jack White has passed around the news:

March 27, 2008

Thank you very much for your prayers for the special meeting of the Board of Trustees that was held on March 26 to address the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns’ book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. After a full day of deliberation, the Board of Trustees took the following action by decisive vote:

“That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008.”

In order to provide the entire Westminster community with a more complete understanding of the Board’s decision and to offer an opportunity for questions and dialogue, the Chairman and Secretary of the Board will join the President on campus for a special chapel on Tuesday, April 1 at 10:30 am. Students and staff are encouraged to attend and participate. Following that special chapel, they will hold a separate meeting with the faculty.

Our concern is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and assure a faithful witness for Westminster for years to come. To that end, please pray for everyone involved during the next two months.

Jack White
Chairman of the Board

So I guess the ends justify the means.

 

13 Responses to “Inspiration and Incarceration: Westminster and the Problem of the Old Testament”

1. Esteban Vázquez Says:
   March 27, 2008 at 6:25 pm
   One of the glories of Westminster was that its Government by Faculty Vote mirrored the Presbyterian system of church government that each Faculty member swears to uphold.
   Yesterday, the Presbyterian character of Westminster Seminary was murdered by its Board of Trustees. This is a new reorganization, not unlike that of Princeton Seminary in the wake of the Auburn Affirmation–but this time, perpetrated by fundamentalist elements. Well, Princeton is dead, and so is Westminster. Long live Old Princeton and Old Westminster!
2. Matt Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 12:45 am
   Actually, in this case, I think the Enns justifies the means.
3. A sad day for Westminster (Peter Enns) « Ben Byerly’s Blog Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 2:24 am
   [...] sad day for Westminster (Peter Enns) Peter Enns will be suspended: Conn-versation; Shibboleth; Christianity Today [...]
4. Anonymous Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 8:32 am
   Esteban,
   We should trust the decision of the board. Afterall, they had a ‘full day of deliberation.’ Clearly they were more informed and theologically sensitive than the faculty, so much so that after their ‘full day of deliberation’ they could overturn the decision of the faculty that came after 2.5 years of discussing things!
5. c bovell Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 9:25 am
   Anonymous:
   I can understand someone saying, “We SHOULD accept the decision of the board,” but there’s no reason for anyone who disagrees with the board to “trust” the board’s decision. A full day of deliberation is neither here nor there: after a full week of thinking about it, they might still be mistaken.
   Perhaps the sentiment for those who disagree should be: “They have been granted the power to do this; we genuinely wish it were otherwise.”
6. Ben D. Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 9:27 am
   I am pretty sure anonymous was being sarcastic.
7. JD Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 9:32 am
   The ends/enns thing is getting pretty old. Pete’s probably heard that joke incessantly since he was 6.
8. CP Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 9:36 am
   Esteban
   You are laboring under a factual misconception. The Constitution and By-Laws give the Board of Westminster the clear right to hire and fire the President and any member of the teaching staff.
9. aboulet Says:
   March 28, 2008 at 4:10 pm
   CP: How are you privy to the bylaws and constitution? I am under the impression that they are closed documents to those who are not on the board or faculty.
   Please explain how you came across such information. If you are faculty or board member, that is one thing because you are privy to those documents. If you are not, I would be curious as to how you have gotten a hold of those documents, since you are presenting yourself as having first hand knowledge.
10. Peter Enns Round-Up « Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth Says:
    March 29, 2008 at 11:10 pm
    [...] comment led me to a post on his blog ’Conn’-versation from his blogging partner, JD, in which he links to Brandon [...]
11. Enns, bloggers, and explosions « Random Bloggings Says:
    March 30, 2008 at 3:56 pm
    [...] issue of Peter Enns’ suspension (I’m sorry, I ran out of adjectives or other ways to lengthen my already over long [...]
12. Hit and Run: Peter Enns and blogging | the blog of brandon withrow Says:
    March 31, 2008 at 1:35 pm
    [...] Conn-versation calls Jack White’s statement as a case of believing “the ends justify the means.” [...]
13. Esteban Vázquez Says:
    April 3, 2008 at 4:19 pm
    Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak:
    “[L]et me state the following: I recognize and affirm that WTS is a faculty run school, particularly so in the theology that it teaches and the curriculum it employs…” (Mr Lillback)
    See here.

 

Sparks on Evangelical Objections to Accomodation in Scripture (A repost of one that was lost, written by one of our members)

I’m in the home stretch of my reading of Kenton Sparks’s new book from Baker Academic, God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Biblical Scholarship. In chapter 7 Sparks explores the various ways Christians have conceived and explained the divine aspect of Scripture. He spends a good deal of time on Calvin’s idea of accommodation. Like many scholars since ancient times, Calvin thought that Scripture as the product of an inerrant God must be in some way inerrant, yet he (like other ancients) observed that Scripture obviously and undeniably contains errant human views of science, history, and other areas, as well as diverse theologies. Calvin was content to affirm both some kind of inerrancy (though he never that word) and at the same time that the Holy Spirit sometimes adopted the human finitude of the human authors of Scripture. Calvin compared this to the way human parents simplify facts the know to be quite complex when trying to explain something to a small child.

Yet, Sparks notes, many conservative evangelicals today, because of their commitment to a modern, Enlightenment-defined kind of absolute inerrancy, are uncomfortable with any such suggestion of accommodation. He zeroes in on one particular objection:

If we admit  that current human perspectives sometimes appear in the pages of Scripture, does this not imply that our biblical interpretations lack something solid upon which  to find theological traction? What prevents Scripture from becoming a wax nose that one shapes and molds as one wishes? Could one not eliminate the testimony of an biblical text that one shooses simply by labeling ti “accommodation”? …[A]t this point let me offer a brief and straightforward response to the question. Every serious reader of the Bible manages to pursue theological coherence by  strategically picking and choosing the texts  that speak with greatest clarity and authority. We set aside on text that allows us to beat slaves (Exod. 21:20) out of deference for another that enjoins us to love others as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18; cf. Luke 6:27). [Sparks gives several other similar examples.] In doing so we are navigating in an implict and sometimes unconscious way through the very real diversity of Scripture.

It follows that Scripture’s theological diversity is already implicit in all theological approaches to the biblical text, even in very conservative evangelical approaches. Accomodation is simply an explicit theological rationale for what we already do. It explains why the biblical texts that we subordinate as less complete or less accurate–such as those that permit slavery and those in which God changes his mind–ended up in God’s Word. These texts are, as tradition has suggested, God’s rhetorical accommodations to our human context and viewpoint. For the serious student of God’s Word, this reality does not make the Scriptures a wax nose, because the ultimate goal of interpretation is to hear God’s voice, not to make God say what we wish he would say. Nevertheless, it is undoubtledly true that some readers of Scripture will employ accommodation as yet another ploy for evading the authoritative reach of God into human affairs. This reality is unfortunate and even tragic, but there are no hermeneutical formulas that can prevent it. Admitting the humanity of Scripture’s authors does not negate the objective and authoritative voice of Scripture, but it does mean that Scripture’s authoritative words are best understood when we fully account for the humanity of its authors. Our readings of Scripture therefore find their theological traction in a God who never errs rather than in human authors who do. (pp. 256-7)

A recognition that something like the above is the way we must approach Scripture, even if we want to strongly affirm inerrancy, appears (it seems to me) at points in Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.’s recent small book God’s Word in Servant Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and the Doctrine of Scripture (a reprint with minor updates of a WTJ article from the early 1980s). The stated purpose of the book is to refute the assertion of some critics that Kuyper and Bavinck were not inerrantists. In his conclusion Gaffin states:

The Bible is without error. Since all error, unintentional mistakes, as well as deception, results from sin, it would be misleading at best to speak of errors in Scripture, either in form or content, in any sense. To find error in Scripture would be to fault its primary author an undermine his authority. The truth of Scripture is not notarially precise or scientifically exact. Ultimately, this nontechnical, impressionistic quality is appropriate to and explained by its unique divine authorship and specific, incarnate character, not the involvement and limitations of human authors. Unlike Kuyper, Bavinck does not speak of the errorlessness of Scripture. In the material we have examined he does not even use the word infallibility. But every consideration leads us to supposed that he would not object nor find it inappropriate to speak of the inerrancy of Scripture, provided that, like Kuyper, we understand that in an impressionistic, nontechnical sense. (p. 102, emphasis added)

Nowhere in the book (that I can find) does Gaffin explain or try to deal with the two major qualifications in bold above. To be fair, that would take him away from his main thesis. However, as they stand, they seem to me to allow for (perhaps even demand) the kind of honest accommodationism called for in various ways by Calvin, Kenton Sparks, and Peter Enns. I admit though, to being somewhat befuddled by Gaffin’s insistence that an acknowledgment that Scripture is “not notarially precise or scientifically exact,” while explained in part by its “specific, incarnate character,” this “incarnate character” has nothing to do with the “involvement and limitations of human authors.” I admit it may be my own human limitation, but I can’t make any sense of how those two statements work together. How does Scripture have an “incarnate character” yet without “human involvement”? What exactly, then, is its “incarnate character”?

 

15 Responses to “Sparks on Evangelical Objections to Accomodation in Scripture”

1. garver Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 11:08 am
   With regard to your question, I suspect it’s a “from above” vs “from below” sort of distinction, intersecting with an ordo essendi vs ordo cognoscendi distinction.
   For Gaffin, the incarnate character of Scripture is a matter of the God’s manifesting himself in and through the human, not God’s raising up the already human into the divine. The direction is first God’s moving towards us, not God’s drawing us towards him, except as something that occurs within God’s prior move towards us.
   That’s to say, first of all, when we’re talking about the essential character of Scripture, we’re talking about the ordo essendi of Scripture. While we cognitively encounter Scripture as a contingent, culturally-embedded human artifact (in terms of the ordo cognoscendi), once we recognize it to be God’s own self-manifestation to us, we then know it as a divine word to us - God’s own word in human words.
   But when some views of Scripture speak in terms of “accommodation,” they seem to primarily think in terms of God’s taking up flawed and limited human strivings towards God, with all their errors and misconceptions, as a vehicle of divine disclosure. Not only the ordo cognoscendi, but also the ordo essendi, with regard to Scripture, is seen as essentially “from below.” The fact that God remains partly hidden within such self-disclosure by its sheer humanness can even be given value as a disclosure of transcendence. But that leans in a neo-orthodox direction.
   An incarnational model, on the other hand, suggests that the humanness of Scripture remains essentially posterior to and in service to the divine. Scripture is about God’s moving towards us, coming into a humanity that he prepared suitably for himself as the vehicle and medium of his self-manifestation. The ordo essendi then is “from above,” even if our apprehension of it comes “from below.”
   Perhaps there’s a better way of expressing all of this, but I think this must be the sort of distinction that Gaffin has in mind.
   For what it’s worth, I think Enns is actually on the same page as Gaffin here, even if occasionally his language might suggest otherwise.
   I’d be interested in knowing whether Gaffin explains or defends his premise that “all error, unintentional mistakes, as well as deception, results from sin.” I find that to be an interesting contention.
   Is it really the case that, say, unfallen humanity would be free from all error and mistake? That the progress of knowledge would not proceed by trial and error (or is that using “error” in a different sense)? What sort of epistemology does that presuppose? Does that apply to “practical know how” as well as “propositional knowledge”?
   There’s a whole host of questions and assumptions packed into Gaffin’s sentence that could be teased out and explained. I think Gaffin’s premise is defensible (and I happen to agree with it, rightly qualified), but it’s a much trickier matter than one might think.
2. Foolish Sage Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 11:30 am
   Garver wrote:
   “Is it really the case that, say, unfallen humanity would be free from all error and mistake? That the progress of knowledge would not proceed by trial and error (or is that using “error” in a different sense)? What sort of epistemology does that presuppose? Does that apply to “practical know how” as well as “propositional knowledge”?”
   I think that this question of what we mean by “error” is the all-too-easily-overlooked fundamental question in what we mean by “inerrancy.” If, for example, we acknowledge that the cosmology presented in chapter one of Genesis is not scientifically valid (from our modern perspective), does that necessarily mean that it is in error? Or is it simply the view of the universe that “worked” at the time the Old Testament was being formed?
   We can fret all day about essendi vs. cognoscendi, but at the end of that day, it is still undeniably the case that the Scripture that God actually gave us contains many such affirmations that because of modern science and historiography we can no longer affirm as correct. So I don’t see any way out of some kind of accommodationism. Things such as the Gen. 1 cosmology are very human, time-contextualized points of view, and the Holy Spirit chose to include them in inscripturation.
3. D G Hart Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 11:57 am
   Mark, I’ve still not figured out why Enns would appeal to the incarnation as a model of some kind for accommodation. He concludes that theology must be provisional and limited — never final — on the basis of its scriptural basis. In other words, because Scripture is diverse, our theologies need to be conversations; traditions interacting with other traditions openly and humbly.
   My question is, and maybe you can answer, that the doctrine of the incarnation stands as one of the least provisional and most definite articles of the Christian religion. Lives were lost over Chalcedon, churches excommunicated, conversations stopped. Why would appealing to the incarnation be a model for the kind of theological enterprise Pete wants? Even if you can’t answer for Pete, what about for yourself. The title of Pete’s book stands in direct contrast to his conclusion of provisionality. I wonder if you see that tension because you seem to be in sympathy with Pete’s call for openness and against narrowness.
4. garver Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 4:13 pm
   Isn’t incarnation as a model and analogy of accommodation pretty standard, going back to the Fathers (Maximus and John of Damascus come to mind)? Certainly most of the secondary literature on Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation see it as tied to the incarnational analogy.
   So, it would seem the more pertinent question here isn’t so much one of, “Why the incarnation as an analogy for accommodation?” as it is, “How does the incarnational analogy entail the provisionality and limitedness of theological discourse, especially given the sharp contours of the orthodox doctrine of incarnation itself?”
   I’m not sure how Enns would answer that (and I don’t have his book in front of me to check), but it seems to me that one line of response would be to point out how the orthodox christology of Chalcedon, while clarifying some basic boundaries, also threw the sheer mystery and incomprehensibility of the incarnation into sharp relief.
   Since Chalcedon theologians have continued to wrestle with the character of the incarnation, what precisely Chalcedon means, and how the trajectories of Chalcedon might help us further fill out our theologies (e.g., the debate over monotheletism and it’s implications for synergism/monergism debates, how the incarnation functions as a eucharistic analogy, the implications of Chalcedon for how we conceive of the immanent Trinity).
   It is a fairly common notion in Christian theology that the greater the light of revelation, the more we recognize our own limitations and the more we are driven to humility about our own theologies constructed within the clarity of that light.
   So, it would seem that, on such a perspective, it is precisely the bright light provided by the least provisional and most definite articles of faith concerning the incarnation, that entails the all the greater provisionality and openness of everything that goes beyond that point.
   That, at least, might be one way of approaching the question.
5. garver Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 4:32 pm
   Mark, hmmm, perhaps my point got lost amidst the verbiage. Here’s the brief version:
   You can have a “from above” sort of accommodationism or a “from below” sort of accommodationism, speaking in terms of ontology. Gaffin argues for the former, whilst some theologians prefer the latter.
   If one’s going to press the incarnational analogy, the former (”from above”) represents a Chalcedonian model of accommodation, whilst the latter (”from below”) is something more like an adoptionist model of accommodation.
   I’m not sure how to put it more clearly.
   At any rate, it doesn’t seem to me that settling the right way to conceive the analogy resolves the actual issues entirely, though it may draw the boundaries around possible acceptable resolutions in different ways.
6. Craig V. Says:
   March 21, 2008 at 6:59 pm
   garver
   I thought I understood you until the reference to adoptionism. That seems to me to be taking the analogy too far. What I thought you were after was more something like this: Scripture is not the result of a process where God’s pure and perfect communication is combined with the limitations of human authors to produce something less pure and perfect. Scripture is, however, the result of God using human tools in order to say exactly what He wants. I suppose the difference would be something like the difference between making a black and white film because color hasn’t been invented or because black and white as a medium is a better tool for the film. Put another way, the Genesis creation account would not be improved if we re-wrote it to make it more compatible with modern science. The result of such a re-writing would be less than what God gave us.
7. c bovell Says:
   March 22, 2008 at 9:51 am
   I am not sure I understand how readers can be so quick to ask of Sparks’ text, “Ok, so what precisely does this mean for my doctrine of scripture?” That may indicate that scripture has become too much of a pillar for the faith. I for one do not think we are in a position to begin formulating an answer to that question that can be offered to the next generation of believers.
   Sparks explains, “I have allowed Scripture itself to set the agenda for my theology of Scripture…
   If evangelicals are to join other Christians in representing Christ in the broader academy, then it will be absoulutely necessary for them to be honest–sometimes painfully honest–about the biblical and historical evidence, and about the direcetion in which this evidence points.” (355, 356)
   I hear Sparks and Enns (and even my book for that matter) saying, “Have you seen this evidence? Teachers and institutions have been programmatically turning blind eyes to it. Have you seen the kind of evidence the Bible itself is giving us?”
8. D G Hart Says:
   March 23, 2008 at 7:35 am
   The project of reconciling church and academy is old and its teeth are getting even longer. For those who still think such reconciliation is possible and desirable I recommend the op-ed piece by R. R. Reno in the current issue of First Things. It is about James Kugel at Harvard, the man with whom Enns studied (I presume).
   Reno writes: “Kugel has spent his adult life trying to live as an Orthodox Jew and read as a modern scholar. It has not been easy. He sees that the modern tradition of scholarship does little to help him make sense out of the Bible that he chants as Scripture at synagogue. And yet he finds many results of historical study compelling.” Kugel believes that confronting biblical scholarship and retaining sacred Scripture can be done as long as you “keep you eye on the ancient intepreters.”
   And yet, Kugel finally concludes that “Modern biblical scholarship and traditional Judaism are and must remain completely irreconcilable.” Reno explains with the help of Kugel, “There is a spiritual parting of the ways . . . that separates ancient from modern traditions of interpretation. The old ways of reading involve ‘learning from the Bible,’ while modern critical approaches end up ‘learning about it.’ Ancient interpretation teaches us to live inside Scripture; modern reading keeps its distance.”
   Reno concludes this way: “These days it is plain to see that a modern tradition of interpretation does not train readers to hear the Word of God in the Bible, even in its darkest corners. One reads purely and proudly as an outsider. This sensibility, this interpretive stance, is irreconcilable with the path charted by ancient readers.”
   If modern scholars like Kugel can see this, and if modern believers sense this when reading books like Enns’, why do folks who advocate Enns continue to think that harmonizing modern scholarship and conservative Protestantism is possible and that no one should be upset with efforts at such harmonization?
9. c bovell Says:
   March 23, 2008 at 8:08 am
   I don’t think it’s a matter of harmonization, or at least I’m not after harmonization. I can only speak for myself, but I just want people (my teachers) to admit to me candidly that historical scholarship has produced some results that can’t be explained away. In fact, the results seem to be true and are in incredible tension with our tradition.
   That’s it. Where one goes from there is up to them. But don’t consistently turn a blind eye or tell me outright that historical scholarship is unbelieving and not true in order that the WCF tradition or whatever tradition can be perpetuated. I’d rather someone tell me the two truths belong to different spheres or should be invoked at different times in different places. I can’t seem to existentially bear the silence or on the other extreme the overly optimistic hope that all truth is God’s truth and there’s a place for all of this in one unifying schema. At the moment, I am finding that hope to be beyond my limit of credulity.
10. Theological Mom Says:
    March 23, 2008 at 9:16 pm
    This is probably too long for a comment, but here goes . . .
    In invoking Kugel, it’s helpful to have some background on Orthodox Judaism. (My comments below draw heavily from the prolific writings of Jacob Neusner.)
    Historically, Orthodox Judaism has its roots in first century Rabbinic Judaism. The destruction of the Herodian Temple in AD70, and with it, the cult and sacrificial system, was catalytic and crystallizing in the development of what became Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisees, who were more elastic in their handling of Scripture than either the Sadducees or Essenes, were instrumental in pushing forward with what they had left: the Torah. With memories of the Exile in the background, they derived an array of observances, rules, and behaviors from it using Levitical categories. These began to take on formalization at a pivotal gathering of rabbinic sages in AD90 at Jamnia, in Judea. There, they set the future course for Judaism as a religion of the synagogue with a prayer liturgy and a Torah focus.
    The definition of Torah is highly significant. Although specifically, Torah referred to the five Mosaic books, during this period where so much had been lost, Torah became the broadly comprehensive name for something much larger – an entire way of life. The Torah scrolls, which had pride of place in the synagogues, over time became themselves sacred symbolic objects. As the rabbis developed their system of religion, while Torah as Scripture remained nominally at the center, it was quickly joined by a rapidly stabilized inherited tradition with inherited hermeneutic principles which developed especially during the Second Temple period. These were deemed necessary to answer the questions that the Torah left unaddressed, an impetus which only grew in the absence of the sacrificial system. By the end of the first century, in this broad definition, Torah was well on its way to becoming a model for pleasing God as understood and mediated by an already significant historic chain of rabbis.
    Scripture for Orthodox Jews is a much broader concept than the Tanakh – the Jewish ordering of the law, the prophets, and the writings which comprise the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish Bible, and particularly the Torah (the five Mosaic books are in view here), form a cornerstone of Jewish belief, but ultimately more important than the Scriptures is the Talmud, that combination of the Mishnah, or Halakah, referred to as the “Oral Torah,” and the Gemarah, the commentary on the Mishnah. Although these were only committed to writing over a several hundred year period beginning in the late second century, they are based on an intricate history of oral tradition which purportedly extends back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Mishnaic traditions, though not yet committed to writing, had long had authoritative standing by the first century.
    Although their authority was based on their antiquity alone, a story of origins was developed over time that claimed God had given Moses the Oral Torah along with the written Torah. It’s been credibly suggested (by William Scott Green in a chapter of Jacob Neusner’s Rabbinic Judaism), however, that these traditions are best understood in light of the demise of the Temple, and were the actually the product of a politically ambitious and homogenous group of pseudo priests who were eager to develop something to replace the cult. By claiming divine origin for the Oral Torah handed down through the rabbinic establishment, this group suggested persuasively that holiness without a temple could be achieved for Israel by following them.
    Consistent with Green’s theory, the Oral Torah makes no internal statement of divine origin, prophetic significance, or validation as a text on par with Scripture, nor does the written Torah allude to its existence in any way. But, a restatement of the divine origin tradition of the “Dual Torah” based on Gemarah references to it in both Talmuds – Jerusalem and Babylonian – was elaborated fully in the ninth century letter of Sherira, which solidified the divinely authoritative stature accorded to the Oral Torah alongside the written.
    The content of the Oral Torah (the Mishnah) is a codification of details not contained in the Hebrew Bible. At its most basic level, this was transmission of the meaning of words – for example, the identification of plants named in Scripture with specific botanical species. This quickly grew, however to the association of Scriptural laws with certain customs and to include extensive interpretive information for application of the law in specific situations. As the number of rabbinic schools increased after the destruction of the Temple, a vast amount of new material was created as each sage introduced idiosyncratic understandings and formulations. Not surprisingly, new subjects were introduced that had little or nothing to do with Scripture. By the time of its codification, the Mishnah was so large that it required its own interpretation, and hence, the Gemarah.
    Recognizing that Kugel is dealing with the dual Torah as an Orthodox Jew puts a different spin on the comments made by Reno. Modern scholarship can’t help but challenge the notions included in the Oral Torah, which even occur in my summary above. That’s certainly one reason why Kugel favors the ancient interpreters. But understanding that Oral Torah is very much in his picture, the issues he’s struggling with are not the same as those discussed by Sparks, Enns, and other academicians who are trying to make sense of traditions about the written Scriptures themselves. They are reading the Old and New Testaments Christotelically, and testing the traditions about them against them. Modern scholarship is one of their tools.
11. D G Hart Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 5:57 am
    C Bovell: I wonder if you are really content with no harmonization. Surely modern scholarship raises a host of concerns that challenge a Christian’s faith. Modern scholarship says that virgins don’t give birth, that men don’t rise from the dead, and that men who think they are god should at least be homeless. Surely you try to harmonize the Bible with these assured critical results. (I know I do.) If you think these too NT, how about the no-no of jihad and conquest in the OT. Modern scholarship sure has opinions about that.
    Theological mom: exactly, Kugel did not have to reconcile his scholarship with the first chapter of the Westminster Confession or recent evangelical writing on inerrancy. But you’re not really saying that reconciling scholarship and tradition is any less consequential for conservative Protestants, are you? If so, could it be a failure of imagination to see the dilemmas that modernity poses for all believers?
12. c bovell Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 7:45 am
    Perhaps I should say harmonization is not a priority for me. I am content with as little harmonization as possible. Mr Hart, I detect in your remark an implicit dichotomy between accepting all of modern scholarship or none. Or perhaps your remark is a nudge, encouraging me to realize just how “unbelieving” critical scholarship can be. I admit that I am probably willing to concede much more to critical scholarship than most evangelicals but I am not sure what is gained by pointing out to me that I would not accept every postulation that modern scholars put forth; I don’t even think secular Bible critics would accept all that their colleagues are saying.
    Moreover, I protest conducting our conversation under the pretenses that this is purely a matter of “the Bible” vs “modern scholarship.” Implicit in this dichotomy is that “we” are on the side of the Bible. I believed this for many years but am now less inclined to interpret scholarly debates in this way, having found a number of evangelical scholars affirming various contentions that the unbelieving modernists have been making all along (e.g., Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch, there was no worldwide flood, the earth is billions of years old, there is little to no evidence for an exodus [NOT to say that the exodus didn’t happen, simply that we can’t say where or when]).
    Yes, critical scholarship presents challenges, but I am no longer going to insulate myself from interaction with it, much less declare a wholesale denial of its results, simply because I may have to rethink the faith. I can no longer go through the motions of pretending that all is well on the evangelical front while critical scholarship showing us true things about scripture that are in contradistinction with common evangelical beliefs.
    [Mr Hart, could you provide me with your email by sending me an email at j1234@closecall.com? I have something I would like to ask you.]
13. Craig V. Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 5:35 pm
    c bovell,
    I’m not sure what you’re asking us to do beyond wringing our hands (forgive me for being a bit slow). For myself I think I can say that I’ve seen enough of the evidence to know that the problems are not trivial. You say you want people (your teachers) to admit candidly that historical scholarship has produced results that can’t be explained away. That’s an odd thing to ask of a blog. I can’t speak for your teachers (I’m quite sure they wouldn’t want me to) but I’m willing (as candidly as I know how) to admit that there are legitimate questions for which I lack good answers. What’s not clear is where this mea culpa is supposed to take me (or us).
    It seems to me that what’s needed is a structure that at least gives us a starting point for relating Biblical research to theology. Such a starting point will more than likely prove to be inadequate (the cost of attempting a constructive work), but we need to start somewhere. On another thread I suggested a built in tension (constructive tension?) between Systematic Theology and Biblical research. Ignoring either side of the tension leads to a collapse. If we ignore Biblical research we lose our connection to the Scriptures. If we ignore Systematic Theology we lose all Biblical content.
14. c bovell Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 8:10 pm
    Craig V
    I didn’t have the blog in mind when I wrote what I wrote. I had more in mind what Mr. Hart was talking about: academic freedom. I don’t understand the problem as you do in terms of theology and biblical studies interacting more fruitfully. My grievance is with what material the evangelical academy (by which I mean evangelical and Reformed seminaries and universities) decides to present to its students and what it decides to keep from its students.
    See, I’ve always intuited from my teachers that historical scholarship–the “higher criticism”–is unbelieving and in its unbelievingness it did not want to handle the evidence correctly. Gradually I discovered–on my own, that is–that enough of the critical scholarship was in fact right all along–and good evangelical researchers are even admitting this–it just turned out that some academicians did not(and still do not) think people are ready to hear this. They do not know how to tell the church what scholarship has found. They are unsure how to begin preparing the church for the revelation that the unbelieving critical scholarship that we’ve been arming ourselves against all these years actually got not a few things right. The fear is that the faith will lose credibility. Well, by not telling the faith has lost a good deal of credibility.
    Personally, I have a real problem with the way this whole set up plays itself out(re: academic freedom).
15. aboulet Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 8:37 pm
    The fear is that the faith will lose credibility. Well, by not telling the faith has lost a good deal of credibility.
    Very well stated. I believe the very same thing.
    Dr. Hart:
    why do folks who advocate Enns continue to think that harmonizing modern scholarship and conservative Protestantism is possible and that no one should be upset with efforts at such harmonization?
    I can only speak for myself (I have not read everyone who ‘advocates Enns’), but I do not see Enns seeking a harmony between critical scholarship and confessional orthodoxy.
    Instead, I see Enns dealing or confronting critical scholarship from a confessional standpoint. There are places, like c bovell has said, where critical scholarship has got things correct and need to be taken account of from a confessional standpoint. There are also things where critical scholarship has erred greatly. These errors are also taken into account by Enns and pointed out by him from a confessional standpoint.
    I know you probably don’t see Enns as confessional, but that is a conversation for a different context.
    The point is that Enns is not simply opening his arms to critical scholarship and accepting it while still attempting to hold onto the Confession.
    Rather he is working from a Confessional viewpoint and seeing how critical scholarship informs our understanding of Scripture. It is not a harmonization in that he is attempting to take all of critical scholarship and make it conform to the Confession. I don’t think it can, and I think Enns knows that. He is simply taking seriously the data we all have before us and seeking how to correctly and discerning understand that data from a confessional viewpoint.