An International Journal for Pastors and Students of Theological and Religious Studies
An International Journal for Pastors and Students of Theological and Religious Studies
The doctrine of inerrancy has been a watershed issue among evangelicals in the West, perhaps now more evident than ever.1 While the inerrancy debate never entirely dissipated from its last spell in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it recently surged to the forefront of discussions about an evangelical doctrine of Scripture both in North America and abroad. This transpired with recent events in the Evangelical Theological Society (hereafter, ETS) dealing with inerrancy2 and fresh publications of at least a dozen books, articles, and reviews.3 With this new rally, one might say that evangelicalism is in the third wave of the inerrancy debate.4 Few signs indicate that the discussion will subside any time soon.
This essay hopes to offer a small contribution to the discussion by answering the title question, “How Far Beyond Chicago?” By “Chicago,” this essay refers to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (hereafter, CSBI) and not subsequent statements from 1982 or 1986. The rationale behind upholding CSBI as a relevant touchstone today and basis for any further conversation on inerrancy is as follows. (1) It is the most recent, wide-ranging, definitive attempt made by a relatively unified group of evangelicals seeking to understand and articulate inerrancy in light of non-inerrantists discounting Scripture’s authority. (2) Concerning the first meeting of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (hereafter, ICBI) in 1978 with over three hundred scholars and leaders, J. I. Packer noted that over ninety percent of the delegates present signed CSBI, which caused him to conclude, “in view of this broad representative base of support it should be able to function as an agreed platform and reference point for the debates of the next generation.”5 (3) CSBI is the reference that the executive committee of ETS and the overwhelming majority of recent ETS members set forth as what is meant by “inerrancy” in 2004 and 2006. (4) Arguments made today from those opposed to inerrancy are similar and often the same as the previous generation’s critics of inerrancy, which resulted in CSBI. (5) Greg Beale, the latest respondent to inerrancy’s critics, has set forth CSBI as the positive course forward, showing how the debate may build on CSBI as a foundation.6 (6) After his extensive study on the doctrine of inerrancy, Jeffrey Oldfield concludes, “I have yet to find an inerrantist who has argued against the Chicago Statement. For this reason I have used the Chicago Statement as the definitive statement concerning inerrancy.”7
The inquiry that follows is animated by three questions related to CSBI: How far does CSBI allow movement beyond itself? How far beyond CSBI have people already gone? And how far should those who agree with CSBI go beyond it? The study unfolds in three parts. The current state of the inerrancy debate is assessed, along with a brief sketch of its history and ethos. Recent works will then be considered, including efforts to restructure the debate. After this, suggestions will be made for moving forward in the defense and construction of an evangelical doctrine of Scripture in the current context.8
Insight into the inerrancy debate’s pedigree is necessary at this point. The present section gives a brief sketch of its historical lineage, followed by indications and causes of ambiguous aspects, along with the tone that has marked the debate’s culture.
Inerrancy’s current canvas spans 150 years.9 While the debate may have a transatlantic element, its configuration is largely an American phenomenon.10 This does not negate that many throughout church history, including some church fathers, scholastics, and Protestant theologians held the Bible to be without errors,11 nor does it mean that this discussion has been totally confined to the US. So where did the recent view of inerrancy come from? An inspired and inerrant Scripture was commonly held in the US and Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is seen in John Wesley 12 and in the US with The New Hampshire Baptist Confession (1833).13 Yet in the midst of this, “there was no attempt to elaborate any theory of infallibility or inerrancy.”14 Nevertheless as H. D. McDonald helpfully summarizes, “Prior to the year 1860, the idea of an infallibly inerrant Scripture was the prevailing view.”15
November 1859 saw Darwin’s Origin of the Species released, indicating a time of considerable shift for how the church viewed the Bible. Within a growing evolutionary environment, “the idea of an inerrant Bible was being discarded.”16 Yet in the US, the Bible’s inerrant inspiration remained the dominant position for some time yet.17 It was this scenario into which Charles Briggs introduced his view of an inspired yet errant autographical text of Scripture in the early 1880s, prompting Hodge and Warfield to articulate what was meant by inerrancy in the autographs. Briggs was eventually defrocked from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the US in 1893, marking the climax in the first wave of the inerrancy debate. 18
The majority view continued to pulse within evangelicalism,19 living on in American fundamentalism and into mid-twentieth century “neo-evangelicalism,” which gave birth to organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals (1942), Fuller Seminary (1947), ETS (1949), and Christianity Today (1956).20 During this time, E. J. Young recognized that there were few definitions for the terms, and he seems to be the first evangelical to distinguish between “infallibility” and “inerrancy.”21 Packer’s treatment came one year later, relying on the term’s cognate origin.22 This nuanced treatment of inerrancy came into evangelicalism with little significant notice—until the debate’s second wave in the 1970s. Controversy had been brewing at Fuller Seminary, with faculty publicly denying inerrancy in 1962, while the inerrancy clause was not officially removed for another decade.23 At this time, extensive work began to emerge providing nuanced views of inerrancy and its importance.24
The second wave of the debate reached a climax with the 1976 publication of Lindsell’s Battle for the Bible, to which Fuller President David Hubbard summoned Jack Rogers for a response in kind.25 Around this time, ICBI formed and held its first meeting in Chicago.26 However success for ICBI is defined, its publications were voluminous, and its influence reached far and wide.27 It established the ethos that holds at least among ETS into the present.
This leads up to the contemporary third wave of the inerrancy debate.28 Clearly, American evangelicalism, whose self-critique has been termed “alarmist,”29 has generated and nurtured inerrancy’s current structure. And while it may have been Enns’s 2005 work that threw a rock at the hornet’s nest (though perhaps it was the subsequent stream of argumentation from Enns and others), evangelicals once again have the opportunity to engage fruitful debate that will bring them toward a God-glorifying view of Scripture in the present context. But at least two initial factors hinder this progress.
In this debate, rhetoric seems unending, and half-baked understandings of one’s interlocutors abound. An example is the reading of select theologians and exegetes in church history, a case-in-point being Calvin.30 Another example concerns readings of Warfield, often mistakenly identified as having invented the doctrine of “inerrancy of the original autographs,”31 an idea that many find illogical and meaningless.32 But though oft-quoted, one is hard-pressed to find someone who understands Warfield’s views here on his own terms, which assert inerrancy for the autographic text, not the codex.33 Others have given unfair interpretations of opposing views, unwilling to recognize others’ positions on their own terms and instead illegitimately reading into their views more than what they have explicitly stated.34
The debate’s terms also cause difficulty, creating the challenge of determining when a term refers to a particular concept in the debate’s vast context.35 When each does what is right in his own definitional eyes, ambiguity abounds.36 An example of this is E. J. Young’s and Packer’s desires to nuance “inerrancy” and “infallibility” while Lindsell wished to swallow them back into one sweeping definition.37 In the present context, there seems to be little consensus that each understands the other’s positions. The recent example here is the Enns/Beale debate(s), with a running total of six articles and two books in three years covering much of the same issue. Before any forward progress can take place, some consensus on terms must be located. Along with this, a serious attempt at a comprehensive understanding of the history of this debate (without bowing to the often-sought question, “Did they take our view?”), replete with all the arguments set forth, needs to be made and is due to the evangelical community. The debate’s scope is massive and its materials nearly incalculable. The three waves are not statically linear either, as the climaxes might lead one to think, since even the non-eruptive times had evangelicals still working with and aiming toward a high view of Scripture. But clarity is not all that is needed.
Much can be learned from Orr and Warfield a century ago. While their views differed, their deep regard for one another did not wane, as seen by Orr contributing to The Fundamentals and Warfield contributing the well-known article on “Inspiration” to the ISBE, over which Orr served as general editor.38 Henry’s wisdom from a generation ago is also outstanding. For while he ardently defended inerrancy on theological grounds, he renounced reactionary approaches and saw “the ongoing campaign to make inerrancy the watershed of true evangelicalism as bad politics.”39 Learning from these men will mean that at various points, one must admit that certain ground in one’s position may also at times need to be given up.40 Modifications and amendments may need to be made since rigorous thought and serious engagement in understanding, developing, and articulating a Scripture principle is an ongoing task of the church.
Inerrantists are not asking whether the Bible is inerrant. They believe it is, and the answer is not up for grabs unless one is developing a purely bottom-up Scripture principle. In that case, one would not need divine revelation, or anything besides one’s logic, and whatever system informs one’s view of reality (e.g., Cartesian Realism, Darwinism, or forms of postmodernism). But if the inerrancy view is sustainably the best view, the burden belongs to the inerrantist for gracious, sound argumentation, not only in constructing the doctrine further, but also in dealing with voices that have entered the debate, even challenging the status quo. Recent cases of this will now be considered.
This paper has so far sought to establish that the debate about an inerrant Scripture is not held in a vacuum. American evangelicalism has a story, and inerrancy is a major character in that story. At different times, some have tried to write inerrancy out of the story. Others have tried to rewrite its role or the context in which inerrancy’s part is played. Looking to the current canvas of the inerrancy debate, this section considers six of the most recent contributions, each participating in the attempted redaction. Revolving around stated or unstated relationships to CSBI, which marks inerrancy’s received history in American evangelicalism, two categories give the groupings of these contributions as those either seeking to revise or reinforce the doctrine of inerrancy.
The first five works make attempts to establish new frameworks for the debate. Two are from theologians, one is by a young evangelical student, and two are by biblical scholars. A few smaller contributions will also be considered. These efforts do not claim to be a conspired, collaborative effort, but seem genuinely offered in attempt to think carefully through critical aspects of an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. Full reviews cannot be given here, leaving assessments only to a few germane observations. However, a summary appraisal will be given after all the revisionist treatments are presented.41
This work42 made no small waves among Reformed people on both sides of the Atlantic. Seeking to move away from what he describes as a “somewhat mechanical,” “rationalistic,” inerrantist (“American”) approach, he opts for a “more dynamic (or organic)” (“European alternative”) view of authority that he finds in “infallibility.”43 He prefers to discard the inerrancy debate altogether44 and looks to Orr and particularly Bavinck for guidance in developing his “third option.”45 While believing that a Scripture principle46 cannot be divorced from one’s tradition, McGowan develops a principle of “spiration” and “authenticity,” situating Scripture “in the context of the knowledge of God that comes by revelation through the Holy Spirit.”47 He asserts that this approach not only lends to preaching, but adequately recognizes the genuine “humanness” of Scripture’s authors, to which McGowan opines that inerrantists pay mere “lip service.”48
Aspects of this work are commendable. A bottom-up principle that gives adequate weight to Scripture’s top-down aspect is helpful, as is his fresh reading of Bavinck.49 However, his desire to read early theologians into today’s context is misplaced at times (and vice versa).50 He indicts inerrantists for binding God to a certain mode of revelation,51 but cannot avoid self-indictment when speaking of what God “is able” to do with Scripture because of certain preconditions.52 McGowan’s organic view of Scripture has at least two significant problems. First, it does not distinguish Scripture’s substance from its end.53 Second, whatever presence from God that was specially lent to the writing of Scripture as God’s revelation, distinction should be made between it and God’s presence lent to the acts of reading, interpreting, preaching, and applying the Bible.54 McGowan’s liquid view of Scripture does not allow for this characteristic in the Spirit’s activity.
This 2007 PhD thesis charts new territory for understanding theological truth while seeking common ground for inerrantists and non-inerrantists to understand biblical authority. With no desire to disprove or dismiss inerrancy, he enters the debate questioning its role as a primary doctrine in the church.55 Examining Warfield’s and Henry’s philosophical bases, he finds their approaches to truth and inerrancy lacking56 and argues that presuppositions about revelation and theology’s objective, scientific nature bring Henry to a rationalistic view of Scripture that logically deduces an errant text’s incompatibility with authority. This, then, according to Oldfield, forces Henry to hold inerrancy rather than authority as his highest Scripture principle.57 Oldfield thus cannot accept Henry’s definition of truth and authority, which seem to him to be based entirely on the past action of the Spirit.58 He prefers something more like a nonfoundationalist structure that, like McGowan’s pneumatological emphasis, depends on the Spirit’s present work of establishing Scripture’s present (not just past) authority and for bringing about God’s purposes.59
Henry’s view of the Spirit’s role in the Word of God’s reception is more robust than Oldfield shows and could have been represented better. Oldfield does not acknowledge Henry vis-à-vis his detractors (e.g., Loewen and Barth), whom Henry sees making revelation’s qualities highly inner and subjective.60 This is cause for pause in a hasty dismissal of Henry. For while confronting views like these, he argued for the text’s objective authority, similar to that proposed by Grenz and Franke, though they represent a nonfoundationalist or softer way.61 Oldfield pays little notice to how CSBI emerged as a response to inerrancy’s detractors from the previous wave, who advanced arguments that appear to be just as rationalistic and foundationalist as Henry’s are said to be. In his own context, Henry’s construction should be at least adequate, especially if one recognizes the contextual nature of theological constructs. Henry’s weakness, admittedly, is seen when his commitment to inerrancy effectively drifts into becoming his primary principle.62 When focusing on any doctrine in debate, it can inadvertently become primary, though it seems preferable to speak of inerrancy as a distinguishing aspect of an evangelical Scripture principle rather than the primary one. For when one allows inerrancy to be a part (however significant, but still a part) of a Scripture principle in today’s theological context, it effectively says most and speaks loudest of one’s view of Scripture.
Bovell advocates the need for critical scholarship to inform evangelical philosophy and theology, especially a Scripture principle, and especially for the next generation.63 He desires that critical scholarship and theology talk to each other, while the end result will never be inerrancy. His program intends to develop insight for understanding how the inerrancy doctrine is psychologically damaging and harmful for younger evangelicals’ spirituality.64 He asserts that if inerrancy is not plain wrong, it is “not for everyone today”65 and definitely not for him.
While there might be some virtue in the desire for a contextual theology seeking “new evangelical dogmas of Scripture,”66 this book’s other merits are hard to find. Although various parts may stand alone (papers and articles spanning three years), the book’s form and structure are highly-disjointed, leaving very poor argumentation.67 In the general summaries throughout, he claims to have an objective desire to “nudge readers to respond” in one way or another,68 though he clearly wishes to influence them away from inerrancy. But while he does this, he provides no alternatives for them beyond a footless polemic against evangelical teachers, scholars, and inerrancy.69 Accordingly, he leaves readers in the same position he claims inerrancy left him. His interaction with nonevangelicals is good and substantial, but he never permits evangelical scholars to answer his concerns. Although his view of an evangelical is inseparably linked to CSBI,70 he shows no real knowledge of the document or its contemporary relevance within the evangelical community. He is therefore too sweepingly dismissive and not as sensitively constructive and thoughtfully creative as he purports to be. He paints evangelicals as unwilling to recognize problems with doctrines like inerrancy, but this simply does not represent reality.71
In his book, Allert seeks to reframe the inerrancy debate through exploring “how a historical understanding of the formation of the [NT] canon should inform an evangelical doctrine of Scripture.” He takes this understanding and seeks to locate its “implications for the way evangelicals have understood the nature and function of the Bible in our own traditions.”72 After surveying American evangelicalism, with its “defensive posture,” he notes the impact of “traditionalism”73 and then argues that the way evangelicals understand the reception of inspired texts and canonicity is “anachronistic,” ultimately lending to an inerrantist view that does more bad than good, as in the case of the pressure on Robert Gundry to resign from ETS in 1983. Before coming back to inerrancy, he labors through an understanding of canon that sees “the indispensability of the [institution of] the church,” which he claims gave birth to the Scripture as the “embodiment of the canonical tradition of the church.”74
Evangelicals can certainly benefit by informing their Scripture principle with canon formation, moving away from an occasional traditionalism,75 but Allert’s base here is faulty, claiming that after The Fundamentals, evangelicals lost a theological framework.76 In this case he entirely misrepresents evangelicalism, since one can be assured that major evangelical leaders lost no framework whatsoever inasmuch as Warfield remained a Calvinist and Torrey a dispensationalist. Here and in his canonical views, Allert is as guilty as he claims his opponents are of “anachronism” and of imposing a “twenty-first-century perspective” onto the issues.77 This is further seen in his view that biblical data are “surprisingly vague” on a theory of inspiration. By saying this he anachronistically assumes that the biblical writers gave technical precision by today’s standards.78 Allert also offers conjectural arguments derived from silence and from a pre-commitment to late canonical formation. As a Protestant, he admits to having no fixed canon79 and sees it as open and “fluid” into the fourth and fifth centuries, though Allert fails to note that the inspired text was not open to change.80 Although some fathers also may have viewed noncanonical books as “scripture,” they were not deemed to be θεόπνευστος in the same manner as γραφή in 2 Tim 3:16.81 Unfortunately, in Allert’s view there is no room for canonical books to be “self-authenticating” or for the canon to be “self-establishing,” which are inseparable for an evangelical view of Scripture. Allert will not allow God’s Word to demonstrate itself as such.82 His view of Scripture, therefore, is far too low.
This book is the latest work seeking to reframe the debate. Broad in scholarly engagement, it is written by a self-identified evangelical for a scholarly evangelical audience. Sparks makes a case for believing historical-criticism that will benefit the church, giving her a “biblically informed worldview.”83 With strong aversion to “Cartesian” philosophies, Sparks moves to integrate faith and criticism, which, he asserts, offers the best in Christian scholarship.84 He notes advances in critical scholarship that will aid the study of the Bible through the academic expertise of intellectually gifted scholars.85 Considering postmodern epistemology, he identifies himself as a “practical realist,”86 opining an appropriate definition of historical-criticism as “reading texts contextually.”87 He then makes a case for the orthodox view of God’s inerrancy and that “God does not err in Scripture,” while yet paradoxically maintaining errors in the Bible attributed to the human authors.88
Serving in the broad academic arena is good for evangelicals, breeding rigorous scholarship in demanding contexts. But one wonders if Sparks is really willing to be tested there. Specifically, the question begging to be posed to historical critics who adopt serious engagement with postmodern epistemology is whether their discipline can be performed with any confident relevancy at all. Can one rely on critical scholarship while still seeking to be dislodged from constraints by modernism? Does a postmodern or nonfoundational historical-criticism really exist? Or is “reading texts contextually” from a tamed practical realism (with little criteria to determine this and no description of how this might work) simply unrealistic? Further, with the seeming absence of little if any argumentation from recent critical scholarship, this book could have easily been written ten years ago.89 What if historical criticism becomes passé as a modern, rationalistic, Cartesian edifice built by nineteenth- and twentieth-century German scholarship? Does Sparks have a backup plan?
At the end of the book, Sparks tries to synthesize criticism with theology.90 Here it seems that theology is the only means by which any sort of critical methodology might be redeemed for biblical studies.91 He observes that not all criticism is healthy and helpful, referring elsewhere to that which acknowledges Scripture’s authority “in word but not in deed.”92 He employs “accommodation” for understanding differences between divine and human accounts in
Scripture,93 though never explaining how to determine which is which or what might decide an accommodation. It seems, frankly, that whenever normal interpretation yields something unexplainable to the reader or some presumed error based on a critical-realist reading of the text, “accommodation” then becomes the “theological explanation for the presence of human errors in Scripture.”94 So, does a literal hermeneutic guide this process for determination? If so, then in the “inerrant” parts about the “inerrant God” (wherever they may be), does Scripture speak univocally of him, allowing the reader to judge empirically whether God is in error?95 If so, problems have shifted from a doctrine of Scripture to epistemology, theology proper, and doctrines of man and sin.
One wonders what a “practical realist” reading of Scripture looks like for Sparks, and what criterion might exist for determining where an error is not. A better position seems to be, rejecting any docetic notions, that Scripture is both human and divine; where one ends and the other begins is impossible to know, for they are inseparable. Had these matters been clearer in Sparks’s work, he might have had more to contribute to the inerrancy discussion.
Other recent noteworthy contributions remain for an evangelical doctrine of Scripture, each wanting to see the debate reframed. Roger Olson rejects inerrancy as the best word to determine one’s views of Scripture,96 though he does not suggest how American evangelicals should get past the term’s indelible history.97 Witherington suggests moving past the terms “infallible” and “inerrant.”98 Steve Holmes has set forth principles for an evangelical view of Scripture in a transatlantic perspective, perhaps even maintaining inerrancy in a more functionally sustainable role.99 Peter Enns continues to contribute to the debate100 and may perhaps yet offer more refined attempts to explain inerrancy.101
In summary, the contributions to the debate offered by the above authors are found primarily in their due emphases on the humanness of Scripture, reckoning that evangelical scholarship apparently neglects the matter.102 That this neglect exists is questionable. Everyone assumes that the biblical documents are written by humans; there is nothing unique about that. What is unique is that inspired canonical Scripture is of divine origin. That is most unusual and what should be emphasized, for the other is so easily observed. The Bible’s divine status catches one’s attention. Human writing is very ordinary, whereas God’s communicating in writing is extraordinary. This is why the Bible and current evangelical theology place emphasis here, not to neglect its humanness (which is not emphasized in the Bible either), but to revel in its status as God-inspired and not merely the words of mortal man. These detractors, however, do raise the need for continued discussion of how the Bible works (from inspiration [in writing] to reception [in reading] to ethics [in application]), including the need to be honest about problems, whether historical, moral, philosophical, theological, or epistemological. Beyond this, they issue a clarion call to consider both canonical and historical critical elements in the formation of an evangelical Scripture principle.
While each of the previous works makes genuine contributions to the debate, they each seem to create more problems than they solve, which seems to be the tenor of the debate’s recent wave. Though data from scholarship grows deeper, arguments become more complex, and new discoveries are incorporated into the conversation, how they may integrate into and inform an evangelical doctrine of Scripture is the lingering question. While questions posed, issues raised, and proposals offered should not be minimized, none of the aforementioned contributions crafts an acceptable Scripture principle for American evangelicals. This is mainly because American evangelicals must do more than pay scant or pitiable attention to CSBI. For it seems strange that American evangelicals attempting to reframe the debate often misunderstand the very heritage from which they come. And when engaging a Scripture principle, they have little or no knowledge of the history of this debate in American evangelicalism and therefore make no reference to CSBI. But a discussion about inerrancy cannot be held without acknowledging and relating to CSBI somehow.103 Moreover, CSBI must be part of the ongoing conversation (as displayed by ETS and Greg Beale’s efforts) since it is a major part of the previous wave of the debate.
While significant critique can be offered of Greg Beale’s The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism, evaluation cannot be made here.104 The relevant question concerns how the book informs the inerrancy debate. His stated aim is “to focus on a specific debate that bears upon the broad issue of biblical authority that has arisen recently in evangelicalism,”105 namely, the one with Peter Enns. Beale holds the standard inerrancy view in his interaction with Enns and theological interpretation,106 both in opposing Enns’s views and offering alternate interpretations of Scripture. He sees no need to present innovative definitions of inerrancy as a Scripture principle but instead simply gives a theological and exegetical treatise that offers only CSBI for his positive course.
The book, however, offers something constructive to the inerrancy discussion. While Beale himself does go beyond CSBI, though only minimally,107 he simultaneously yields a relatively consistent use of CSBI. Seeking to construct an exegetical theology by theological exegesis, he continually emphasizes the Bible’s authority while adhering to CSBI as his major reference point. Beale’s work makes the first substantial defense of the inerrantist position in perhaps over twenty years. It is a determined, reasonable, theologically-oriented response to current elements in the debate,108 entering the discussion from a forthright commitment to inerrancy as articulated in CSBI. By this, Beale has skillfully shown that inerrancy provides a platform for confidently resting in Scripture’s authority so that serious exegesis of the inspired text and the resultant theology can be performed in constructive (not de[con]structive) ways. Evangelicals must learn from this step he has taken in a positive direction of offering a chastened reconstruction of inerrancy without replacing or abandoning the Scripture principle that has marked American evangelicalism and ETS for sixty years.
Those who easily dismiss the place of CSBI within American evangelicalism are seeking to do theology either in a vacuum109 or with a presupposition against inerrancy. Recent revisionists reflect little willingness to consider CSBI with any semblance of objective openness; when they do consider it, it appears to be a deeply upsetting matter to them. Though assessments of the first and second waves of the inerrancy debate are becoming more acute, there still seem to be no new positions, and few new arguments on the table.110
Challenges from revisionists, however, should be heard, but this should be reciprocal, with all evangelicals willing to recognize problems in their views. Biblical scholars (canonical and historical critics) must be informed by theology (not divorce their discipline from it), and theologians need to interact with a theology of the Spirit’s role in the text’s origin, development, and contemporary reception.111 Inerrantists should interact with pertinent data demarcating distinctly human aspects of Scripture, either in the historical context or in the formation of the canon. Evangelicals of all kinds from both groups need grounding, both theologically and historically. Whether this dialogue can actually occur between the two disciplines (historical criticism and theology) and between divergent evangelical groups remains to be seen. It may come down to whether critical scholars are truly willing to converse with inerrantists, even to the point of considering the integration of aspects of the inerrantist position into their views of Scripture. CSBI should be the starting point for an inerrancy discussion in the present context, and a commitment to it as a significant factor allows evangelicals to interact with recent scholarship while offering new constructions that do not abandon dearly held commitments. Quite positively, these new constructions of inerrancy bring those dearly held commitments to a new conversation that echoes a 150-year-old debate.
At this point, with so many claiming to take the Scriptures “seriously,”112 charting the way forward is no easy task. Suggestions here flow from a desire to cultivate dialogue, not solve every problem for inerrancy. What is hoped for is a theologically grounded, astute,113 and modifiable view of inerrancy that builds upon the current conception of the doctrine with great care. The final section of this paper raises three factors for a move forward. It reconsiders the theological and contextual development of inerrancy’s framework, followed by inerrancy’s intellectual defensibility. Suggestions are then made for moving beyond CSBI with constructions that do more than “pay lip service” to the faithful, courageous work done a generation ago in CSBI.
All theology is done in a context. While the contextual, corporate effort of inerrancy’s development may be contested114 and unwelcomed by some,115 its present coming of age cannot be denied. But what does this mean for evangelical scholars today?
No evangelical group is an island, and theology neither starts nor stops with any individual or group. As such, evangelicals cannot dismiss the current context in which all three waves of the inerrancy debate occurred nor its reception as an important doctrine. And though the degree of its importance may be debatable, evangelicalism has been deemed a movement marked by “theological emphases that are largely determined by context.”116
The inerrancy discussion happened primarily within American evangelicalism over the past 130 years. Those wishing to have an informed Scripture principle must understand arguments therein. While desiring to include those abroad who wish to engage in “some serious transatlantic scholarship”117 on the issue, the British (and European) heritage is not marked by inerrancy as acutely as the American. Therefore limitations and difficulties will be part of the conversation.118 Nevertheless, American evangelicals should dialogue with challenges that have been offered by their evangelical counterparts across the Atlantic.119 Indeed, while seeking to locate the debate primarily in the US, how does this bode not just for a transatlantic, but for a global view of Scripture? These questions are beyond the reach of this paper. Currently, in one form or another, inerrancy is held by many in the US,120 and a voluminous number of articles and books by reputable scholars have been written in support of the doctrine. While this article is unable to explore unique challenges of inerrancy’s incarnation outside the US, the point is largely moot since the debate regarding the nature and essence of inerrancy belongs primarily in the American arena.
The received tradition that American evangelicalism inherited from the inerrancy debate is at least CSBI. Lest some think that inerrancy can be swiftly discarded, it still contains a doctrine adhered to by many if not most evangelicals.121 Further, CSBI is set forth as the reference point for evangelicals to look to, vis-à-vis ETS, when beginning to wrestle through what is meant when speaking of the Bible’s authority. For them, the Bible’s authority is reflected through a commitment to the doctrine of inerrancy.
Inerrancy is relevant for coming generations who want to locate their doctrine of Scripture historically, especially in American evangelicalism. A discussion on defining what doctrinal constructs classify as “time-transcendent” cannot be had here, but suffice it to say that the term has not fallen into disuse, especially in the US, in spite of challenges to its relevancy.122 One good reason for this might be that inerrancy was deemed most conducive to the gospel’s advancement as the message that truly saves sinners, who are located in real-time-space present and are looking to a real-time-space Savior whose work in both creation and redemption is not subject to any passing cultural or ideological whims since he stands outside of them.123 Ideologies, philosophies, or systems trying to muzzle it will find the gospel’s rays of divine light bursting through to communicate the message written for all peoples in all generations, completely sufficient for salvation. Here is the significance of a high view of Scripture that affirms the Bible as inspired, inerrant text, which is able to break through all hermeneutical barriers when Spirit-effected and believingly read, since it is the penetrating Word of God.124
Forward progress in the inerrancy debate will mean that the American construct and context must be understood. At points, it was a debate held in the context of Scottish-realist philosophy, and at points with language of other theories of truth. Scholars must know what was said, and if one’s position resembles or mimics a previous idea, then one is located in that line and should appropriate that doctrine for the church today where appropriate. A better definition of the doctrine is still in order, as Paul Feinberg stated a generation ago.125 If evangelicals believe themselves to be part of a Spirit-led movement, it seems wise to acknowledge God’s work within inerrancy’s development and in CSBI for seeking to pick up the task of an evangelical Scripture principle today.
Being forged in the fires of American evangelicalism, the doctrine of inerrancy provides the platform for a gospel-advancing movement and a defensive strategy to ward off invaders.126 Each proponent of inerrancy must be understood in context. In the present context, a line (albeit of varying shades) is traced to CSBI, which is an inextricable part of evangelicalism and therefore what evangelicals today have inherited. This means that evangelicals currently attempting to reframe the debate misunderstand the very heritage from which they have derived and developed and from which they are drawing historically and theologically.127 But how does inerrancy fare in the marketplace of ideas?
First, inerrancy responds appropriately to historical-criticism and has been described as “modern language responding to historical-critical controversies.”128 Developed in nineteenth-century Germany, historical criticism “approached the Bible with [the] presupposition of skepticism” to miracles and to the historical Jesus, “[i]n the name of scientific objectivity.”129 It was thus a means of muting divine accounts of Scripture. This, for Christians, posed a threat to faith in Scripture and in Scripture’s God.130 Today, historical-criticism and its negative effects seem like a far-removed, academically disastrous ideology whose shelf-life nears extinction.131 As such it may be a dying field groping for ideas like postmodernism to survive (which only then yields equivocating constructs like the flaccid “practical realism”), while confused on what to do with it.132 What about historically-oriented referents and lucid statements Scripture makes about specific historical events about which archaeologists, for example, have garnered clear and ample evidence for today?133 What about the need for some kind of view on essential history?134 There are major implications for holding or not holding to the historicity of texts of Scripture that claim to be from God and appear to reflect essential history,135 and major repercussions for rejecting other aspects that a doctrine of inerrancy addresses.
Second, inerrancy responds appropriately to postmodernism. At least one evangelical has developed an approach to Scripture that seeks to be sensitive to issues raised by postmodernists.136 One is hard-pressed, though, to find a work sensitive to postmodern issues that works directly from and relates consistently to CSBI. Operating from the base of the inerrantist position, however, seems to be at least one good way to keep one’s doctrine of Scripture from being swallowed by postmodernism.137 It is only non-inerrantists who enjoy the free liquidity inherent in postmodernism that allows them to emphasize whatever they want in a doctrine of Scripture.138 Some temporarily use empiricism to dismiss inerrancy while inconsistently using it in their other theological formulations and commitments.139
Inerrancy also accounts for the humanness and divine inspiration of the Bible. Precisely because the Bible is not only God-breathed but equally human, there is a need to say something about its authority since it has been touched by human hands. Inerrancy is a term that precisely does this, speaking of Scripture’s accuracy and inability to be eclipsed by the potential corruptness that would have naturally occurred in Scripture’s original writing. This, in turn, informs how evangelicals discuss canonical issues and why certain nuanced descriptions would be attributed to the autographic text. Other views of the Bible besides the evangelical inerrancy description (as embodied in CSBI) seem to loosen their views on one aspect of the Bible’s origin when placing emphasis on the other (leaving either humanity to trump divine-inspiration or vice versa).
Inerrancy adequately expresses a significant point of an evangelical Scripture principle. Revisionists have attempted to adjust terms of the inerrancy debate,140 but this seems like a sure way to breed more confusion. There is much more to be gained in working with the established terms (i.e., inerrancy and infallibility), which have a deep history and need to be understood in previous contexts before being applied in the contemporary context, none of which is conducive to lazy scholarship. Abandoning historic terms is unnecessary, especially when suggested by those having no desire to understand the terms’ historical-theological pedigree and contemporary relevancy. In such cases, some other agenda might be taking precedence. These pertinent terms have been used for centuries, although some understanding of their cognate meanings, etymological developments, and definitional gradations will certainly aid in the understanding of the terms. Moreover, this is just the way people talk.141
Finally, “inerrancy” belongs as an ancillary under “authority.” While one may be hard-pressed to find an evangelical inerrantist who does not locate inerrancy under Scripture’s authority,142 this is not usually the practical outworking of inerrancy’s articulation. Inerrancy often ends up becoming the fulcrum of any discussion on an evangelical Scripture principle, which is a reminder of the practical nature of theology: what is emphasized becomes what really matters, however inadvertent, and thus what gets published, discussed, and shapes theology for good or ill. Care must be taken then on the matter of inerrancy’s subordinate, supportive, and complementary role to authority. While being the tension point in a contemporary doctrine of
Scripture, inerrancy is a construction that was intended to serve the Bible’s authority for the church and the world. This needs to be recovered explicitly. If inerrancy does not serve the Bible’s authority, it runs the risk of becoming a useless doctrine in the life of the church with little relevancy. Yet if inerrancy is established, there seems to remain little quibbling with the Bible’s authority.
Searching for precise wording is a constant pursuit in theology. Precision in articulation is the least that can be done when it comes to speaking about doctrinal truths, especially when seeking to lay them before God’s people for their edification. It should be acceptable to have a theologically-driven, developed and developing, presupposed, driving view of Scripture.143 For this is one of the quests of evangelical scholarship that is committed to academic study of the Bible within a confessionally Christian framework.144
But how does one go about this? How might inerrancy stand up in the academy as part of a doctrine of Scripture? It is not without problems yet is seemingly the best view, both within the academy and without. Inerrancy is best posed to deal with conflicting views of Scripture. For example, if Barthian components are being employed,145 then engaging these various points provides a base for healthy, coherent dialogue. Evangelicals also need to expand thinking and writing about how Scripture does not merely witness to God’s self-disclosure, but is his own self-interpreted, economically oriented, pro nobis, verbal extension of his own mind and heart.
Inerrancy has stood the test of time. While one should not minimize difficulties that have arisen because it was misunderstood, misrepresented, or misapplied, it is a good doctrine that says much about a high view of Scripture. It upholds the gospel, affirming that God really worked then in Scripture and is working now in the contemporary context, which leads to a final consideration for the way forward.
While noticeable divergences of opinion exist on the nature of inerrancy and how the doctrine is defined, the nuances are nothing new,146 though they seem to be found in increasing variety.147 What is hopeful, however, is that evangelicals from a broad spectrum are engaged at different levels in a renewed discussion of inerrancy, which should alert one to the practical nature of this doctrine’s helpfulness in cultivating dialogue about a Scripture principle. With CSBI as a referential starting point, something close to the robust Isaianic view of Scripture (Isa 66:2) seems to be indelibly in the warp and woof of an evangelical Scripture principle, where humility, contrition, and trembling mark those who come to God’s Word. Consider the tone and the open invitation to dialogue, expansion, and furtherance of understanding the inerrancy principle as expressed by CSBI’s preface:
We offer this Statement in a spirit, not of contention, but of humility and love, which we purpose by God’s grace to maintain in any future dialogue arising out of what we have said. We gladly acknowledge that many who deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the consequences of this denial in the rest of their belief and behavior, and we are conscious that we who confess this doctrine often deny it in life by failing to bring our thoughts and deeds, our traditions and habits, into true subjection to the divine Word.
We invite response to this statement from any who see reason to amend its affirmations about Scripture by the light of Scripture itself, under whose infallible authority we stand as we speak. We claim no personal infallibility for the witness we bear, and for any help which enables us to strengthen this testimony to God’s Word we shall be grateful.148
It is rarely observed, unfortunately, that evangelicals who framed CSBI were epistemologically humble in that while they passionately upheld inerrancy, they recognized that their doctrine of inerrancy was not inerrant. Therefore, as an evangelical doctrine of Scripture is still in progress, so also is the structure and articulation of the doctrine of inerrancy, with a variety of features taking place on how to engage and express this doctrine in light of other fields of integrative thought.149
At this point, some fallacies should be debunked.
Other factors also come into play for a further extension of a Scripture principle.
In attempting to answer the title question, this paper has examined how far evangelicals have gone from CSBI’s understanding of inerrancy and argued that the current discussion should relate to CSBI with more attentiveness than recent efforts have but should also search for ways to extend beyond it. A major point underlying this paper is that the doctrine of inerrancy seems to be here to stay for evangelicals. It recognizes the strong Scripture principle that has been a part of the particular life and history of evangelicalism, and it contributes effectively to the articulation of the Bible’s authority in the current context.
The Bible is God’s Word. As such, the church must look for ways to hold it and its message out as God’s steadfast truth in a time of great error. It is a rock because the God who attributes to it His very own authority is a solid rock in an age where every other ground is sinking sand. The proposal, then, offered in this paper for a constructive approach to an evangelical Scripture principle is submitted humbly yet urgently, looking to the future with great hope while not neglecting the rich heritage that exists in the evangelical view of the Bible’s inerrant authority.158