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The great British missionary to India for over forty years, Leslie Newbigin, wrote,

Fundamentalists are often dismissed as obscurantist or crazy fanatics, and some may be. Whatever their defects, they recognize the problem. If we cannot speak with confidence about biblical authority, what ground have we for challenging the reigning plausibility structure? But the fundamentalist case has been flawed. If the bible is treated as a compendium of factually inerrant propositions about everything in heaven and earth, then it is impossible to explain both the contradictions between parts of the Bible and things we certainly know as the results of the work of science, and also the obvious inconsistencies within the Bible itself on factual matters. Even the most convinced fundamentalist who lives in the modern world has to rely at innumerable points on knowledge provided by science and not by the Bible. In fact this way of looking at the Bible is nearer to the Muslim way of looking at the Qur'an and prompts the question: 'Why, then, did Jesus not write a book as the Prophet did?'(97)

The fundamentalist's basic aim in their interpretation of Scripture should not be discounted, but admired. They see the Bible as the Truth itself, whereas moderates tend to see the Bible as the revelation of the Truth. Nevertheless, the fundamentalist hermeneutic ought not be summarily discounted, but reckoned with honestly and critically. It is not their commitment to Scripture that I find heretical, but their dogmatic bibliolatry.

Doug Pagitt has prophesied that 2005 will be the year in which the 'battle' will begin over the veracity of Emergent's theological amendments to the evangelical agenda. Doug offers an approach that I will attempt to employ in my own 'battles'. What saddens me the most about my fundamentalist friends is that they fight so hard out of fear that they might be wrong. They can't allow truth to be truth, they feel as if they must fight for their interpretation of the truth. One need extend only a cursory glance at the fundamentalist's Magna Carta to see this.

Newbigin continues, "What is unique about the Bible is the story which it tells, with its climax in the story of incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. If that story is true, then it is unique and also universal in its implications for all human history" (97). I hope that Doug is wrong and that fundamentalists, conservatives, moderates, liberals, post-evangelicals, post-liberals, everyone will find a way to be Christian (read: Christ-like) about our disagreements. I suggest every liberal to go out and make friends with the most ardent fundamentalist you know. Likewise, my fundamentalist friends out there should enter into genuine, loving dialogue with a liberal. If you consider yourself a moderate, then become a friend to both a fundamentalist and a liberal. I think that most everyone with whom I dialogue can affirm the Newbigin quote on this paragraph. I want to press my fundamentalist friends to rethink the doctrine of inerrancy and to consider whether it is so important that they are willing to spread further animosity and discord because of it. (In a little while I will offer a criticism of my liberal friends' understanding of the Bible as well--I want to be a moderating voice on this blog, even though the community to which I have been called is primarily comprised of fundamentalist/conservatives). Let us all be fundamentalists about this instead!

The Heresy of Inerrancy (Part 2)

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