Seven Problems With Inerrancy - Kyle Roberts

[♦ ficino ♦]

Kyle Roberts blogs on the progressive Christian channel on Patheos.  Here he gets into some of the questions we've recently discussed about inerrancy. 

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unsystematictheology/2015/05/seven-problems-with-inerrancy-leaving-evangelicalism-2/

 

I think he's right that "inerrancy" is a "political and 'power' word." Denominations use it to weed out people and views they don't like.

 

I don't find Roberts' essay satisfactory, though.  He seems to me to tip his hand when he recounts his job interview at an evangelical seminary.  He was asked, whether there's any qualitative difference between whether Elisha's ax head floated and whether Jesus rose from the dead.  It sounds as though Roberts took the non-fundy approach of saying yes, there is.  Jesus' resurrection is the centerpiece of the faith, but we don't have certainty that the text even intends to assert literally that the ax head floated.

 

To me, this boils down to: we need the Resurrection more than we need the ax head story, so we can find ways of fudging the latter, but we don't have anything left if we fudge the resurrection. 

 

But IS IT TRUE?  Did Jesus rise bodily from the dead the way the gospels say?  Or, I mean, the four ways the four gospels say? 

 

Roberts takes it on faith.  Fine for him.  Don't tell me the same conclusion is normative for everyone.

[Jeff]

Good post. The longer I'm out the weaker it gets

And this is largely fueled by the Christians themselves.

[LongWayAround]

Interesting article; thanks for posting.

 

I think there is a more important question than the ax head vs. the resurrection and that is whether the "fall of man" story recorded in Genesis is literally true.  Did a loving, omnipotent god really put a magic tree in the garden and a talking snake convinced the woman to eat fruit from the tree and resulted in the damnation of all mankind?  If this story is not literally true, then the whole reason for christianity falls apart.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Yeah, I think if the Genesis story is not literally true, it has to be allegorized so as to fit with St. Paul.  Those are big hermeneutical hoops to jump through, but mainstream ecclesiastics who are conservative but not fundies seem fine with it. 

[★ Citsonga ★]

To me, this boils down to: we need the Resurrection more than we need the ax head story, so we can find ways of fudging the latter, but we don't have anything left if we fudge the resurrection.

 

Ding ding ding!

 

I haven't had a chance to read the blog yet, but this is pretty much the way many Christians operate. It's not as much about what the book actually says as it is about what the believer needs it to be saying for his/her theological purposes. The resurrection is an "essential" of Christian doctrine while the floating axe head is not, so by necessity the resurrection can't be allowed to be allegorized the way the floating axe head can.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Exactly, Citsonga.  Here's a spot-on quotation I read just last night:

 

"In actual practice, the task of conservative interpretation is not to find the literal meaning, but rather to find that interpretation which allows one to continue to affirm the errorless nature of the passage, and of Scripture in general.  If a literal understanding is preferred, a nonliteral understanding (as in the case of 'day') will be quickly adopted when a literal interpretation brings the passage into conflict with some scientifically demonstrable fact. How could it be otherwise, if Scripture is understood to be errorless in all affirmations?  Clearly, on this understanding, if a statement appears to contradict scientific fact, it must have been intended in some way other than literal ...  the hermeneutical principle of conservative exegesis is Scriptural inerrancy, and no method or conclusion may be tolerated which would conflict with that principle ... the 'obvious meaning' of the text is taken to be the literal meaning only when such a meaning does not threaten the principle of inerrancy."

-- Paul J. Achtemeier, The Inspiration of Scripture. Problems and Proposals, Philadelphia (Westminster Press) 1980, 56-59

[florduh]

My former church believed in inerrancy. Since the Bible is the basis of Christianity, seeing it (officially at least) as the inerrant Word of God is the only thing that makes sense if a Bible based religion is to have any validity. Otherwise, which verses do you believe and which do you discard? The problem with inerrancy, though, is that the book has internal conflicts which demonstrates it can't all be right. Of course the Bible still claims its inerrancy in this verse: 

 

2 Timothy 3:16-17English Standard Version (ESV)

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

 

Thus we have the birth of the rather disingenuous art of Christian Apologetics.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Actually, Florduh, here is a rare time when I don't agree with you.  2 Timothy does not bring up the problem of errors in scripture.  What that verse says is compatible with various takes on inerrancy.  As far as I am aware, the Bible does not actually claim inerrancy for itself.  There are even verses that correct other verses.  The closest claim to inerrancy I can think of is Jesus' saying that the scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35, literally, "untied"). I always thought this means that scripture can't be rendered invalid, but I may be wrong on that. Titus 1:2 says that God cannot lie, but it does not say that authors of scripture produce texts that are inerrant.

[florduh]

Actually, Florduh, here is a rare time when I don't agree with you.  2 Timothy does not bring up the problem of errors in scripture.  What that verse says is compatible with various takes on inerrancy.  As far as I am aware, the Bible does not actually claim inerrancy for itself.  There are even verses that correct other verses.  The closest claim to inerrancy I can think of is Jesus' saying that the scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35, literally, "untied"). I always thought this means that scripture can't be rendered invalid, but I may be wrong on that. Titus 1:2 says that God cannot lie, but it does not say that authors of scripture produce texts that are inerrant.

If all that is written in the holy text came from God Himself, how can there be any error in it? If there is error, how can it be from God?

 

If we assume that Scripture does contain errors, then we must choose which parts are wrong and why. I see that as an untenable position. Rather than admitting that they think this verse or that one is wrong, Christians traditionally employ various logical contortions to make it work. Given that there are verses that "correct" other verses, how is one to know if the correction is actually correct? Yet, "All Scripture is breathed out by (the infallible, unchanging, perfect) God." How can this be? Well, it CAN'T be if we apply logic, but when debating such things Christians use an internal logic peculiar to their inherently contradictory situation.

[♦ ficino ♦]

That's the funny thing.  Inerrantists argue from a priori assumptions about what they think should be true of scripture if it's going to be from God.  Despite the fact that - unless there's some verse I've overlooked - scripture itself doesn't claim inerrancy.  Inerrancy need not be a necessary consequence of scripture's being "God-breathed."  To infer that inerrancy is entailed by inspiration you need auxiliary premises, and none of them is articulated in any verse claiming inerrancy.

 

That's how much fundies are actually imposing their human reasoning on their beloved Bible - it's not only the liberals who bring arbitrary assumptions to scripture!

[florduh]

Inerrantists argue from a priori assumptions about what they think should be true of scripture if it's going to be from God.  Despite the fact that - unless there's some verse I've overlooked - scripture itself doesn't claim inerrancy.  Inerrancy need not be a necessary consequence of scripture's being "God-breathed."

 

I know there are other schools of thought to justify every possible take on the words in the Bible. I would even concede, for sake of argument, that the Bible itself doesn't claim to be without error. However, logic would dictate that information that originates with the god described in the book would be as reliable as the author himself. If said deity were to inspire men to write down the message from on high, what would be the point of that if any given part of that writing may or may not be correct? Is that the best this god can do when telling his story to his creation? The Bible claims to be the inspired word of God, and that implies that a perfect author must deliver a perfect message vehicle. Obviously that is not the case with the Bible, but I see the logic of an infallible god necessarily "breathing" an infallible Scripture.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi Florduh, I can't show up as false the proposition, "If it's inspired by God, then it's free from error" or the equivalent.  My point was just that, as far as I can see, that is not a proposition stated in scripture.  So Protestant fundamentalists, who pride themselves on deriving their belief system from scripture, actually base its foundation on assumptions that they impose on scripture, derived from logic or other sources.  Or so it seems to me.

 

Theology usually presents the Abrahamic God as omniscient, etc.  So how does the fundamentalist handle the discrepancy between verses that say that God repented of something vs. verses that say that God does not change?  Usually, the fundamentalist takes the latter set of verses literally and explains away the former set as figurative language or accommodation to human ways of thinking or whatever.  But where in scripture does the fundamentalist find a third set of verses that tells him/her to take "doesn't repent" literally and "repents" figuratively?  Nowhere, as far as I know.  How does the fundy know it's not the case that, in fact, the verses that say God changes his mind are to be taken literally, and the verses that present God as unchanging are figurative language or accommodation to human ways of thinking?

 

The fundy relies on logic or something other than the text of the Bible to make the decisions described above.  The skeptic, on the other hand, has no problem saying that different mentalities from different times and milieux get jumbled together in those ancient texts.

 

Fundies like to accuse "higher critics" of importing extrabiblical assumptions into their handling of the texts, but fundies themselves import extrabiblical assumptions, too.  I think you and I will agree on what sort of assumptions do more justice to ancient texts.

[bleedblue22]

If you don't accept inerrancy, even beyond the miracle stories, how could you know what Jesus actually said as opposed to what people added or changed from his words in constructing the gospels with whatever agenda they had? What if the part about having to believe in Jesus for salvation is just an interpolation? Once you let go of innerancy, you don't have much of a religion anymore and any doctrine is up for grabs it seems. At least thats my opinion

[★ Citsonga ★]

If you don't accept inerrancy, even beyond the miracle stories, how could you know what Jesus actually said as opposed to what people added or changed from his words in constructing the gospels with whatever agenda they had? What if the part about having to believe in Jesus for salvation is just an interpolation? Once you let go of innerancy, you don't have much of a religion anymore and any doctrine is up for grabs it seems. At least thats my opinion

 

That's why my consideration of liberal Christianity during my deconversion didn't last long. I wanted to retain the religion, but it just wasn't tenable when one can pick and choose what one wants from the book and essentially create his own truth. How can that have any real authority? The very foundation of the religion really is destroyed when the Bible is jack-hammered to smithereens.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Same here, bleed and citsonga.

 

The people who restrict inerrancy to claims about theology and morals, but not to historical or scientific matters, create a lot of fudge room for themselves but fall into the problems you guys point out.

 

As I've said in other posts, some Catholics take the above position, while others say it's a sell-out.  The Catholics who restrict inerrancy to statements about doctrine and morals feel they can do this because they rely directly on Church pronouncements for those things.  They don't go directly to the Bible and try to get them, since the Bible is part of Tradition, etc. etc. In that way, they try to avoid the "create his own truth" consequence that you point to, citsonga.  But then, how do they show us that the Church as a whole isn't a bunch of guys who over centuries created their own truth?  Why should I care about Paul's or a group's or a first century "community's" theological musings and taboos, and why are the results normative for everyone in the world?

 

The only approach I can see for Protestants who want to limit or even deny inerrancy is to appeal somehow to the Holy Spirit guiding "the community."  But the circularity of such an approach is obvious.

 

Still, for what it's worth, I think that the Bible doesn't have any verses that claim inerrancy in the sense that fundies understand it.  II Timothy in fact only talks about scripture in the context of building up one's faith, not in the context of a discussion of an overall standard for all truth in every domain of knowledge.

[florduh]

To claim the Bible is the Word of God, that it is "God-breathed," the inescapable implication is that as God's own work it must be inerrant. This is the dilemma faced by Fundamentalists because obviously there are some big problems within the Scripture. Such problems do not arise if one takes the book as mythology and morality tales, though that guts the power and authority of the religion. How can the True Religion be based on inaccurate Scripture?

[♦ ficino ♦]

The Methodists, Evangelical Covenanters, and some other protestant groups, I think in the Wesleyan tradition, say in their official documents that the Bible is a witness to revelation.  Here they differ from more Reformed groups, who say that the Bible IS revelation.  Episcopalians generally would go along with the "witness to revelation" take.  I think Methodists and Episcopalians actually say that "reason" is a source of truth, parallel to the Bible and traditions.  A friend of mine is a life-long born-againer, teachers at an Evangelical Covenant seminary, and doesn't get into inerrancy arguments.  He just says that the gospel is based on the testimony of the witnesses to Jesus' ministry and resurrection, and all the rest of the faith falls into place behind that starting point.

 

If the Bible is a witness to revelation (the Revelation is Jesus himself and God's work blah blah), and is not revelation itself, then these guys try to create wiggle room so they can discount what they consider as discrepancies between accounts, scientific and historical statements that aren't literally accurate, etc.  They think the truth sphere of scripture should be faith and morals, what pertains to salvation. 

 

So Florduh, I guess they would reply, the true religion is based on Jesus, and God preserves the basic truths about him within the humanly produced documents.  To me, this just collapses into assertions.

 

I think the resurrection account is problematic enough that it itself has to be accepted as a faith commitment.  So I don't think any of the above, non-Reformed approaches really do the job.  Maybe that's why people are drifting away from those churches even faster than they're drifting away from full-blown fundy churches.

 

----------adding:

 

Florduh, this has been brought up before, but another defense against your attacks might be to say that Scripture is inerrant in all it asserts, and then deny that what seem to be errors are intended to be literal assertions on a modern understanding of science or history.  We've batted around the weaknesses in that approach.  If the whole fucking Exodus story is myth, well... holy fuck, even if I allow that myths express deep truths, why should anyone be bound by what a character in a myth is portrayed as saying?

[Storm]

Exactly, Citsonga.  Here's a spot-on quotation I read just last night:

 

"In actual practice, the task of conservative interpretation is not to find the literal meaning, but rather to find that interpretation which allows one to continue to affirm the errorless nature of the passage, and of Scripture in general.  If a literal understanding is preferred, a nonliteral understanding (as in the case of 'day') will be quickly adopted when a literal interpretation brings the passage into conflict with some scientifically demonstrable fact. How could it be otherwise, if Scripture is understood to be errorless in all affirmations?  Clearly, on this understanding, if a statement appears to contradict scientific fact, it must have been intended in some way other than literal ...  the hermeneutical principle of conservative exegesis is Scriptural inerrancy, and no method or conclusion may be tolerated which would conflict with that principle ... the 'obvious meaning' of the text is taken to be the literal meaning only when such a meaning does not threaten the principle of inerrancy."

-- Paul J. Achtemeier, The Inspiration of Scripture. Problems and Proposals, Philadelphia (Westminster Press) 1980, 56-59

This is Motivated Reasoning in its most pure form.

[★ Citsonga ★]

II Timothy in fact only talks about scripture in the context of building up one's faith, not in the context of a discussion of an overall standard for all truth in every domain of knowledge.

Another aspect is that there was no "New Testament" at the time that II Timothy was written. The Bible was not complete yet, so it clearly is not referring to all of the Bible. In fact, when the statement is taken with the verse preceding it, it becomes clear what "scripture" is being referred to:

 

II Timothy 3

¹⁵ And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

¹⁶ All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

What were the "holy scriptures" that Timothy knew "from a child"? This is clearly talking about the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament).

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi guys, I may simply have lost perspective, but I am bugged by this whole inerrancy question as we ex-fundies debate it.  Am I right in guessing that most of us who have discussed inerrancy on here in the last month or so are ex-fundamentalists?

 

I feel as though we think, if we can show biblical contradictions or historical or scientific inaccuracies in scripture, that Christianity is pretty much refuted.  I may be getting everyone wrong.  But I think it very important that we don't engage a straw man.  There are many influential Christians who seem never to have held an inerrancy view like that which we in the USA hear from evangelicals.

 

For example, in the comments on this blog post by Rachel Held Evans, people quote C.S. Lewis' letters.  Lewis was fine with asserting that the bible isn't meant to teach history or science, that it contains myth, etc. but is nevertheless authoritative. 

 

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/bible-series

 

I know many of us like to dismiss Lewis as muddle-headed.  But what about St. Jerome saying that the Genesis account of creation 'was done after the method of a popular poet'? 

 

I am trying to get my head around this.  Are we only to say that religionists have not proved their case?  Or do we go further to claim that Christianity as a whole is falsified by the Bible's discrepancies and historical/scientific inaccuracies?  Can we really make a charge of "lying" stick, or are we instead dealing with a system whose claims simply are not falsifiable - so therefore, not credible?

 

Raymond Brown, renowned late Catholic biblical scholar, at least was honest enough to say explicitly that to affirm that the Bible is "the word of God" (Brown's emphasis) is a faith commitment.

[florduh]

If we don't know what parts of the Bible, if any, are true then why would we embrace as factual its most outrageous claims of Heaven and Hell or the Jesus miracles and resurrection? Why are those parts true and other parts are simply mythology, are in conflict with known fact, or are simply in error?

 

A funny thing, this religion.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Florduh, you're pointing out that Christianity has no credibility.  Do you take the further step to say that it can be falsified?

[florduh]

Florduh, you're pointing out that Christianity has no credibility.  Do you take the further step to say that it can be falsified?

I really haven't thought about it. Can any thought system or philosophy be officially falsified? My first thought would be "no." 

 

Can I "prove" that Christianity is false? I don't think so, perhaps someone else can. I have not been enamored of philosophical debates and definition wars since I smoked pot as a freshman. All I can say is I know Christianity is based upon faulty information and therefore false in my estimation. Is there still a kernel of truth to the Jesus story? To me it's possible in the sense that gnomes and fairies are possible; I can't prove they don't exist either. But there is no evidence so I treat a virtually nil possibility as one would treat a verifiable falsehood.

[♦ ficino ♦]

A system of thought or philosophy can be falsified if it entails contradictions.  The problem with Christianity, as we've been discussing, is that Christians give themselves huge license to wiggle out of contradictions, by:

 

-- interpreting words/phrases in non-literal senses

-- claiming that an apparent assertion is not an assertion but some other speech act

-- imagining a historical situation, of which the biblical writers each give only partial descriptions (I read one guy who held that Peter denied Christ six times, because of two versions of when the cock crowed)

-- appealing to supposed errors in manuscript copies

 

or they just wave off contradictions by saying that the item is unimportant

 

Perhaps we can conclude that the number of times they must resort to such strategies at least upends fundamentalism as a viable system.

 

Two thoughts about possible arguments that the whole religion is false:

 

1. failure of answers to prayer to meet the NT promises of what will occur when Jesus' followers agree in prayer under the stipulated conditions.  I don't think the "God has three answers: Yes, No, and Not Yet" meme is biblical.  The fudging strategies just amount to admissions that the promises are false.

 

2. Jesus' prophecy of his return within the lifetime of some of his hearers did not come true.

 

I don't see how a fundy can hold to a strict inerrancy doctrine and fudge 1 and 2. 

 

As to a sophisticated attempt to fudge #2: someone may say that, like other prophecies, Jesus' prophecy does not have predicting the future literally as its true intention. Instead, its direct intention for us is theological/moral, to call us to live with the Faith of Jesus' Return in our hearts. 

 

That strategy has been used to defend, for example, the failure of Ezekiel's prophecies against Tyre, which did not become totally uninhabited as the text foretells. Modern critics say that the genre of OT prophecy puts theological, moral and political rhetoric into the language of predicting the future, but the true, intended meaning is theological/moral/political, not prediction.

 

I don't think this expedient works when applied to Jesus' prophecy of his imminent return, but I fear that an attempt to push this point might just elicit the old tactic of taking phrases to mean something other than they mean.

 

So maybe at least a falsification on a practical level. 

 

BAA argues that Christianity as a whole is falsified by the scientific errors in the beginning of Genesis.  I think sophisticated Christians can invoke genre and other notions to try to get around that, though their result turns out to lack credibility.

[EyesOpened]

One issue that raises a red flag about the bible to me is that it is incomplete. There are missing books that were withheld because over the years, different people in charge of the Bible either felt that those books withheld, were either not important, or just didn't belong for one reason or another.

 

My question is: Are these missing books a means to disprove all of it?

 

It seems to me like a cut and paste book to try to make everything work but the problem is the people involved never counted on History or Science to be hold up to it, to scrutinize if you will.