Dec 16
In errant postscript – a theopedia
I have discovered how to encourage people to read this blog in a hurry. Insult someone in the title of a post. I do not, in fact, believe that John Hobbins is a fundamentalist, nor an inerrantist, nor a Calvinist, despite his protestations of so being. He’s far too erudite and thoughtful. (Oops, 
I don’t mean that quite the way it comes out!). I think we shall have to agree to disagree over the appropriateness of the language of inerrancy to describe a position a million miles away from that adopted by those who badge themselves up in this way.
However, while looking around for what card-carrying everyone-else-excluding inerrantists really were about, I stumbled across a site I’d never heard of before — Theopedia. (Perhaps I’m just thankfully late to this particular party.) I feel obliged at the very least to draw this to Jim West’s attention, since I know how much he relies on wiki sites for accurate, scholarly information. Such as the following:
- The Bible is the sacred book of Christianity, a collection of ancient writings inspired by God which comprise the sixty-six books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. No debate about the number of the books there.
The Reformation brought a renewed emphasis on the fact that Scripture is the “only rule of faith and practice.” Love that “fact”. - Inerrancy is the view that when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrines or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences. See, John, that’s why you’re not an inerrantist.
To be fair, while the site is overwhelmingly conservative and evangelical, it is quite variable in just how biased it is. The articles on creation and evolution are nowhere near as bad as one might have feared, and are broadly descriptive of views held among evangelicals, as well as citing resources for and against particular views. On the other hand, the featured (today’s featured?) article on the Emergent Church carries, I think, a clear slant towards warning that it might be a slippery slope away from real Christianity.
Want to join in? Well you have to negotiate the hurdle of their statements of faith. Yes, that’s statements, plural. The one you have to personally accept is a fairly standard conservative evangelical one, but you also have to agree that what you write, though not your personal belief – a strange dichotomy – accords with a second statement of faith. Any entry must (among other things):
- hold to plenary verbal inspiration
- accept the historicity of biblical events (which may mean less than they intend it to)
- believe in penal substitution
- be a complementarian
- believe you can do nothing to affect your salvation which is based solely in God’s eternal decrees
- agree that justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls
and, generally be a Calvinist. Finally, “In doctrinal matters unspecified here, content will conform to traditional, evangelical Protestantism”. The link to all this is tucked away in small print at the bottom of the page. The big print just says it’s an encyclopedia of “Biblical Christianity”. No doubt this is a Protestant application of Newman’s doctrine of reserve.
December 16th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Doug,
To thoughtful to be a Calvinist? Why insult someone just in the title, huh?
I’m somewhat surprised you have seen Theopedia before. It used to be open to editing like Wikipedia - even anonymously - and then they changed to their crazy locked-down version. I accidentally made an edit or two before I realized that I was barred from doing such by my beliefs. Instead, I went back to OrthodoxWiki.
-JAK
December 16th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
By the way, I actually found it somewhat controversial to say how many books there are in the Bible (the Apocrypha, arbitrary divisions in the First Testament - e.g. Ezra/Nehemiah, etc.)
-JAK
December 16th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
John Hobbins is certainly not a fundamentalist, nor an inerrantist, nor a Calvinist, in the pejorative sense of any of these three words. He deserves no pejorative epithets. Whether he is any of these in the more neutral and technical senses is perhaps more debatable.
December 16th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Indeed, Peter, I was only pointing out that he by an act of hermeneutical prestidigitation has described himself at various times with these adjectives! I do not believe they are accurate descriptions of him (which was the point of both my posts on this topic).
December 16th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Theopedia is just the Fundamentalist version of Wickedpedia. And Hobbins is a fundamentalist and inerrantist- but not a Calvinist. No authentic Calvinist is an inerrantist.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I love you all, including Jim West, but surprise, surprise, I’m not going to back down on this one.
I’ll respond on my blog to this thread.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:00 am
I have encountered Theopedia before, but I didn’t know they were that conservative. I must say, it deeply offends me that “complementarianism” has now been added to the other tests of orthodoxy put forward by those folks.
I can understand taking a stand on inerrancy or conservative sexual mores or a bodily resurrection. But the fundamentals now include keeping women in their place? &mash; sick, and sickening.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
You’ve discovered the secret of fundamentalism- and its fatal flaw- it is utterly andro-centric. Fundamentalists require more and more of you until your salvation is utterly dependent on the ‘work’ of adhering to their never ending propositions.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
By the way, speaking of fundamentalism, a forthcoming book will be of interest to your exceptionally intelligent readers-
This volume shows that the Bible does not support biblical fundamentalism. Biblical fundamentalists regard themselves as ‘Bible Christians’, but they ask the Bible to be things that it is not. Some call it the ‘cornerstone’ or ‘foundation’ of our faith; terms which scripture itself reserves for Christ. In Muslim understanding, when you hear the Qur’an read in Arabic, you hear the voice of Allah. There has never been an equivalent claim in Christianity, but the fundamentalist doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration comes close. Most fundamentalists also expect scripture to be plain-meaning and factually inerrant. The chapters in this book set out to show that such views of scripture fall outside of orthodox Christianity, and can be held only by distorting the nature of the Bible.
http://www.equinoxpub.com/books/showbook.asp?bkid=167
July 7th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Theopedia according to the company Alexa is currently getting about 1.2 page views per visitor. It is not a very well done wiki in regards to presenting the evangelical view in a scholarly way. There are much better websites in this regard.