Jun 15
Inerrancy - a mad, mad word
Why, oh why, oh why? Chris Tilling starts a short series working towards a definition of biblical inerrancy. As far as I can see, what he’s really after is a doctrine of scripture that encourages, promotes and facilitates healthy reading practices. Great, we need some of that.
But it’s all badged up in the weird word inerrancy, which as far as I can see does two things:
- It acts as a shibboleth to divide one person and tradition from another, a badge of neo-puritan rectitude that paints a scarlet letter (A for adulterator of God’s word) on all those who won’t sign up for it.
- It says to everybody who is outside the magic circle of whatever charmed and convoluted definition is accepted by the in-group that “We believe the Bible has no mistakes in it, literally — of any kind, whatsoever.” Everybody outside the circle is most of the people living on the planet, who when they hear “inerrancy,” think that what is being talked about is the most fundamentalist, obscurantist, anti-intellectual definition you can come up with. However theologically erudite, supple, genre-sensitive, and non-literal the definition, that’s not what people will hear.
There is something profoundly ironic in working at a definition of scripture that encourages people to receive God’s communication through the words of human communication, when it is wrapped up in such a strong non-communication as the word “inerrancy.”
June 15th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Can we redeem the word ‘inerrancy’? My post is at least an attempt at this. Thanks for your thoughts.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
When challenged whether I believe the bible to be inerrant, I ask, ‘How can it not be?’ This is not a cop-out. If it’s a biblical fundamentalist seeking out a fellow-traveller, I have probably avoided a fruitless argument. It could have been an intellectually stimulating half hour, as one has entertaining JWs on the doorstep, but probably fruitless since it would create disengagement rather than productive dialogue. If the biblical fundamentalist pushes me, we have half a chance of a useful discussion, even though we may agree to disagree.
If the person asking is not a biblical fundamentalist and takes up the argument, I am inclined to work from a post-modernist point that truth carries a measure of self-authentication so that truth is so defined as being truth even though others may not hold it to be so. I then reverse poles and apply that argument to what my questioner offers against biblical inerrancy. It’s a process that exposes weakness all round and provided that the conversation moves within reasonable bounds of apologetics it can be fruitful.
As to copping out of arguments, I got asked over lunch the other day what I though of premillennial dispensationalism. I followed the line adopted by a visiting preacher in the USA about whom I had heard, and who was definitely ‘against’ the argument in its favour. He responded, ‘Gee, how good to be in a fellowship of sisters and brothers where these matters are so treasured!’ They all took it as a pat on the head, and he got on with his lunch without being disfellowshipped and asked to leave before the pudding.
The fact (and I am being inerrant here!) is that any exegesis may become dubious immediately it is expressed. Words on leaving my mouth are subject to the mish-mash of understandings, experience, prejudices and loves that are me as they are for my hearer’s life’s experiences. Therefore, when I preach, the words that I use can make fallible that which has come from God, which is infallible. The problem seems to come from not recognising that within scripture there are statements we take as coming from God about good and evil, his revelation of himself in created order and salvation. Misapplication of the texts that place those words in context creates the confusion. Add to that assertions that the bible is a validated scientific text or wholly trustworthy historical record when it patently is not sadly ruins the argument for scriptures that are revelatory of the nature and being of God.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
First to Chris
I appreciate what you’re trying to do and half-hope you succeed. My own view is that it can’t be done. I think that the “common-sense” meaning of the word outside the church, and the meaning very conservative people want to give the word overlap. Thus for most non-theologically literate people, it is heard plainly and simply as saying “without historical and scientific errors” and embraces a six-day creation, the sun standing still over Gibeah, Jonah getting swallowed by a big fish etc.
If you do succeed (and this responds to Peter as well) in rescuing the word in some way, then those who promote it most earnestly will change their defintions to exclude you anyway. And in the meantime what we are heard to say by the “cultured despisers of religion” will be at best a slippery Humpty-Dumpty use of words, and at worst intellectual suicide.
That’s why I think the only thing to do is to refuse to play the game.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:31 am
[...] Jim and others will know that I think belief in inerrancy is simply wrong. But I don’t think this definition works. There are plenty of people who wish to maintain the [...]