Recently I have posted on inerrancy, on theology and history in biblical narrative, and on the anointing of Jesus’ head/feet by the (sinful) woman (Mary). Each of these has raised the question of what sort of history we have to have in the Bible in order for it to be a trustworthy book. Or, perhaps better put: each has raised some concern that by not viewing certain incidents as historical in accordance with modern conventions, or by not affirming inerrancy’s way of parsing the data, that I have surrendered biblical authority.
I want to come back to the idea of how the Biblical writers write history, with some of the concerns expressed here and elsewhere on the web in mind. So let’s start with what I do think the Bible is.
One of the most important things I have to say to folks who do affirm inerrancy or otherwise hold to what in our world would be a 
more “conservative” doctrine of scripture is this: Lots of Christians do, in fact, hold to the Bible as the word of God, the only rule of Christian faith and practice, without ascribing to inerrancy.
Somewhat surprisingly, what people think the Bible is and what people do with the Bible does not produce the results that many inerrantists presuppose. Those to my right will often argue that without inerrancy there is no receiving of the Bible as the word of God. But this is not true to the history of theology or practice in the church.
The alternatives are not “inerrancy” versus “relativism,” but instead various ways of describing what the Bible is by people who all agree that it should function normatively in the life of a Christian community.
But the equation of “inerrancy = respect” with its corollary, “non-inerrancy = relativism” fails to accurately represent both sides of the debate.
Not only can a theologian such as Karl Barth both back away from anything that looks like “inerrancy” and yet build his entire Dogmatics by coming back to the authority of scripture again and again. Folks who hold to inerrancy often do not base their theology on good readings of the Bible. Some inerrantist Presbyterians literally make “biblical” arguments by quoting the Westminster Confession of faith; some inerrantists make “biblical” arguments based on whimsical etymologies that have no basis in either linguistic reality or the sentences in which the words were found.
A second important point is that those of us who do not hold to inerrancy, but still give scripture primacy of place in our discussion of how to faithfully enact the story in our own time and place, tend to build our “doctrines” of scripture from the data that encounters us there, and then figure out what this means about the generalizations scripture seems to make about itself, rather than extrapolating on the generalizations and then insisting that the actual data will fit what we understand to be the claims of the generalization.
In other words, “inerrancy” is a theology of the Bible from above; my “functional word of God” theology of the Bible is built from below. And, because it starts with the data rather than the conclusion, I think it does a better job making sense of the Bible we actually have.
So, what about the Synoptic Gospels and how they write history and what sorts of harmonizing we should or shouldn’t do if we’re trying to honor the way that they each tell the story of Jesus?
Come back tomorrow, I’ll step back into that discussion about the Gospels as history that got kicked off last week.
I have always considered the scriptures inerrant related to it’s ideology, especially with the numerous translations and re-translations viewed throughout history. (I am anything but a scholar though)
I look forward to part 2
thanks for sharing!
John, help me understand. The first thing you’re affirming is that scripture’s own theology is inerrant? So, for example, it might use inerrant theology to tell a story that’s not historically or scientifically plausible?
I’m not entirely sure where the translation issue comes in. We have very old Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, so we’re not just retranslating old translation mistakes. I’m not sure what the point is here?
I’d like to hear a bit more.
Thank you for the follow up. I like your example and agree (I think). I am not a biblical scholar by any stretch but I love reading and wrestling with your writings.
When I use the word “theology” I am speaking of what I learn when I read the scriptures. Of course, that could be wrong, but there it is, and I currently have no reason to consider it errant (but maybe I will learn and change my mind)
So that being said, if one book (or story) is not historically plausible, I still consider it’s teaching valid when juxtaposed to another, presumably more plausible book. Therefore, I consider the entirety of scripture inerrant.
Regarding the translations, again, forgive me as I often find it difficult to articulate in a few lines what I think. Whether I was taught or I happened to suppose on my own accord, I have always figured (read: assumed) that as translators learned more about archaeology, history, sociology, and linguistics, they determine better translations of the ancient text. So when I think of scriptural inerrancy, I tend to think of theology versus semantics.
Does that make sense?
Either way, I did not set out to make a a point, or to challenge, but merely think aloud as I read your article.
Thank you very much!
-J
I think I’m tracking with you, John. On the latter point, the idea is that since translations are always changing and being updated, that even if there was some sort of “inerrant” Bible, we don’t see much evidence that we actually have access to it?
Thanks for joining the conversation. You’re welcome to challenge (though I didn’t take it that way) or other wise contribute. This is all helpful!
I think a necessary precursor to this discussion is always going to be the messy investigation of how the NT was formed (or came to be formed). I think when we do this, we will begin to see some things that inform our discussion. Let me explain (and I’m no expert so please correct when necessary!).
The gospels seem to have been written initially as documents that the given community could use as a stand alone record of Jesus (Gamble, The New Testament Canon, 24). It seems, then, that for whatever reason we have different communities writing and using stories of Jesus that are similar in some instances, but also quite nuanced in others.
But it seems that only because we’re dealing with a canon that has a four-fold gospel account do we have this problem. So, I would say to your question: to try and harmonize (at all) is going to lead us down a treacherous path.
Also, something I was just discussing with a professor today dealing with this issue (he strongly disagreed): the virgin birth. I’m not denying the virgin birth, but I do want to ask the question: could it be possible that Matthew and Luke wrote this “history” for theological significance?
Joshua, I think you’re wrestling with all the right questions.
I’ve found the work of V.P. Long helpful in many of these areas, most notably his framework for understanding and appreciating the different aspects of biblical historiography: the historical, the literary, and the theological.
I think it is helpful to think of the Gospels as paintings rather than photographs. They are shaped in order to communicate theological truth to the church. This doesn’t mean they are a-historical, but that their primary concern is not the recording of “brute fact.” The issue is still a messy one, though. How historical are they? How literary are they? How historical are they? How do we balance these aspects? It is difficult to find many Christian scholars thoughtfully engaging with these questions and setting forth a tenable framework for understanding.
This is an area I am especially interested in, and will look forward to your follow up posts!
Ben, I think that Phil Long is very helpful on historiography, as was Ray Dillard before him, and Pete Enns after them both. That stream of tradition–with its willingness to take the theological shaping of the texts with utmost seriousness–was one thing that enabled me to hang on to “inerrancy” much longer than I probably would have otherwise. In fact, I think they opened up a way to think about it in a way that provides the possibility of thinking through biblical/critical issues with integrity while still holding onto the idea of inerrancy (not all ways of articulating inerrancy can do that, as I see it).
That stream of tradition was willing to build its theology of the Bible from the messy data, something that is too often missing in more recent discussions.
hi daniel ~
can you please explain the phrase, “Any book that purports to be a historical Jesus book but does not ever declare anything in the Gospels as ‘unhistorical’ seems to me to be a category mistake”, which you said in your post on minimalism.
do you just mean that history is always interpreted?
thanks.
—jacob
Jacob, I mean that the point of writing a historical Jesus book is to determine what the Jesus behind the text actually did in order to give rise to the texts we posses today. NTW’s book, instead, gives us readings of the Synoptics as they would have been understood by a first century Jew. To say “it’s a plausible C1 Jewish story” is not to have shown that “it actually happened in history”.
Thank you for using “inerrant” when so many improperly use “infallible” to describe their bible.
I believe the Bible, as the word of God, to be inerrant of course. I’ll be following your posts quietly from the sidelines.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Veritas. I know that many people use ‘inerrant’ to describe the Bible. It’s not a description I agree with, and actually find ‘infallible’ to be closer to the mark. But hopefully we can describe both charitably, and both sides can recognize that the other is still capable of submitting to the Bible as the word of God.
Whether one conceives of their approach to Scripture as being from the top down or from the bottom up, what seems to me to be at issue is the inability of either camp to move all the way in the other direction. This seems to be your complaint against the inerrantists – they begin with the broad theological claims about Scripture in Scripture and then basically run roughshod over the messier details those descriptions don’t make very good sense of. They begin with a view of the Bible as God’s revelation and fail to move from that top position all the way down into the nitty-gritty historical messiness we find when we actually read the texts.
On your side, however, I think the same charge can be made. If you want to start with the complex realities of human history in Scripture, when do you then move all the way up where your handling of Scripture is self-consciously the handling of God’s address to us as his church? When does our concern for all the minutia generated from grammatico-historical analysis of the text get us to where we understand Scripture as a vehicle through which God speaks by the Spirit of his self-revealing and self-giving in Jesus Christ? If hearing the story of Jesus Christ is the reason we read Scripture, and the meaning of that story is one God gives to it, then our interest in what Scripture is, how it came to be, and how we ought to read it has to be theologically informed and shaped – to talk about Scripture we have to be talking about God, not just the interests and perspectives of the various writers in their relative historical-cultural distance from us as modern readers. The latter is important, but we really haven’t started reading the Bible as Sacred Scripture if our concerns never push beyond and above that to ask how God is revealing himself through Scripture’s authors.
I think our approach to Scripture has to follow the way God has taken in revealing himself to us which is neither top-down nor bottom-up but a two-way movement of above to below and below to above. That two-way movement IS Jesus Christ, God’s revelation to humanity AND the authentic humanity lived in loving service to God and faithful reception of his revelation. Scripture is Spirit inspired-testimony to that two-way movement in Christ and so our understanding of it will always be partitive and insufficient if we approach it in a dualist way and try to move from one pole of that above-below dualism to the other – we have to understand it from both sides simultaneously as we have to understand Christ. We have to understand Scripture as at the same time God’s perspicuous Word to humanity AND very human testimony existing under the conditions of tension and ambiguity of all ancient historical records.
Adam, I give some reply in today’s post. But I am a bit puzzled by what you see as a deficiency in my position. When you warn about never pushing beyond to ask who God is revealing himself through Scripture’s authors, isn’t that what I do just about every time I engage a passage of scripture on this blog or preach a sermon, for example? Just looking over some recent things, I’d assume that I do just that here:
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/09/19/the-cross-putting-it-all-together/
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/09/16/show-me-the-money/
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/09/14/the-centurion-the-mission-of-god/
Maybe even here: http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/09/13/ayn-rand-you/
Aren’t these theologically engaged readings of the text, even if informed by historical critical scholarship? I’m just not sure what you’re getting at.
You ask, “when do you then move all the way up where your handling of Scripture is self-consciously the handling of God’s address to us as his church?” Isn’t this blog a running answer to that?
I see the genealogy in Matthew 1 as a lesson in how to interpret scripture. I don’t think for a second that the writer didn’t realize that he skipped some generations in the genealogy. And so what if some of the names are not historically accurate (e.g.. NRSV Asa/Asaph).
To him, it doesn’t matter. It’s 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile, and 14 form David to Jesus (even though he lists 13).
To me the fuzzy counting and fuzzy genealogy tell me, “look at the big picture, don’t get hung up on harmonizing everything!”
And, compare and contrast with Luke and the point is even sharper.
I think talks like this are important, but too often they are cause for scandal, especially for those who don’t know the Bible that well and hear this stuff and go away thinking the Bible has all these contradictions but “that’s ok, we’ll still go on believing it.” It’s this type of thinking that causes otherwise intelligent folks to (logically) conclude Christianity is for folks who believe in superstition in light of plainly obvious logical deficiencies.
As a Catholic, I believe Christ instituted a perpetual Magisterium to guard the Deposit of Faith. This means in a very real sense, the Christian is protected from errors/heresies in which they might otherwise not have realized. As Pope St Pius’ X Syllabus of Modernist Errors begins: “In the name of higher knowledge and historical research (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.” Part of the propositions condemned were those that sought to de-historicize Scripture at one’s whim such that many “scholars” came to (wrongly) conclude “the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith” (Error #29). In other words, the Gospel writers were not so much interested in the “historical Jesus” as they were writing a story of the Legend of Jesus.
What scares me about the Protestant end of things is that no such teaching authority exists, so ultimately the one’s controlling the ropes are the Protestant scholars, who are simply subject to whatever the latest theological fad is being taught to them. This is not to ‘bash’ anyone, only to say from my perspective, it’s a house on a moving foundation or a ship without an anchor.
Now, from there I think one issue to be addressed is how we believe these documents came about. The traditional camp of Christians hold these documents were immediately and directly inspired by God, such that as they wrote, they were communicating what God wanted them to say. The ‘modern’ camp holds a more minimalist view of inspiration, with something more along the lines of a human author sat down one day with pre-existing manuscripts and guided by God used these documents to tell their own story. So rather than knowing through inspiration, this author was essentially limited to whatever writing was available, and in this case the inspiration was limited to core theological points rather than general facts (e.g. real history).
Your post seemed to be built on this very distinction: theological inerrancy versus total inerrancy. The problem with this approach is that if it’s admitted something such as history is ‘not necessarily true’ if not downright made up, one is put on a slippery slope to question just what else is ‘not necessarily true’. And this is precisely how many folks slip right down into the conclusion the Bible is a document of merely human origin, which nicely explains why there are so many “contradictions” in it.
But the danger of this approach is plain, and the lamentable consequences have been witnessed in core subjects such as The Resurrection. If the Resurrection never happened, then Christianity is false by definition (1 Cor 15:17). Now someone claiming not to hold to (total) inerrancy but simply primacy is in a bind. They know there are some (apparent) difficulties in the historical Biblical accounts the event of the Resurrection, but they’re stuck between: (a) holding to the idea this event is historical while simultaneously holding the Bible as a whole is not inerrant historically, and (b) holding the “real history” of the Resurrection is irrelevant to the dogma (meaning the Resurrection is independent of actual world history). The former approach is not coherent, while the latter approach slips into believing Jesus didn’t really Resurrect and rather this is one giant theological “lesson” in leaving any troubled past behind and spiritually waking up to a fresh start on life.
So the question on the table is, was the Resurrection a true historical event accurately recorded by Scripture?