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The Heresy of Inerrancy (Part 3)My buddy, Jason, sent me an article today that I found rather interesting. It is a 1968 essay by Daniel Fuller (the son of the founder of Fuller Seminary) offering a subtle critique of B.B. Warfield's view of biblical inerrancy. I must confess, although I walk past his house almost every day I have not seriously wrestled with Warfield's view of inerrancy. My work has been more with the hermeneutical work of Warfield's progenitors (Luther, Calvin) and his predecessor (C.F.H. Henry).Fuller, as I understand him, tempers Warfield's plenary-verbal doctrine of inerrancy and instead contends that the Bible is inerrant with regard to matters of salvation and not necessarily to matters of botany, cosmogony, history, etc. because, in these contexts, God is presenting humanity with non-revelatory matters. Nevertheless, Fuller maintains Warfield's insistence that Scripture is self-testified as inerrant. In other words, the Bible is to be viewed as inerrant because Scripture itself is divine! Now, I'm not a theologian or a church historian, but I am pretty sure that that is a heretical statement. By elevating Scripture to divine status we are supplanting Jesus (as in the second person of the Trinity) with Jesus as interpreted by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul and then reinterpreted by modern day readers. I have many problems with this and will tackle only one for now. Warfield and Fuller presuppose that the Bible is divine and hence deduce that the biblical writers are trustworthy. Warfield's insistence that his view of inerrancy is not an a priori conception is logically flawed. He writes,
posted by Jake at 1/22/2005 08:09:00 PM  
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After reading your post I couldn't let go the stance you have taken on the Bible. Lets first look to the definition of inspired. It means "To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence". Its seems as if you are saying that the scriptures are not inspired, which would also make them in your opinion not divine. With believing in the Trinity, the intervention of the Holy Spirit would also be the Word of God just as the words of Jesus would be.
I too am not a theologian, historian, or even a scholar for that matter but I do know that your (a believer in Christ) faith involved with believing the Scriptures are inspired is a crucial foundation when wrestling with the sensitive issues of inerrancy.
Your post reminded me of something I dealt with in a historical theology class at Wheaton. The prof was an Edwardsian-Piperian Calvinist (context) and he assigned a short paper on Barth / Neo-Orthodoxy. In his lecture on the same topic, he argued that Barth (and neo-orthodoxy) confused inspiration with illumination. In my paper, I argued against this and instead contended that Evengelicals confuse inspiration with incarnation. That gets at what you are saying.
Anonymous, thank you for your comments. I think that the descrepancies between our differing views of "inspired" involves where one places the emphasis in your definition of "Divine influence". I think that we would both agree that the Divine (God) has played some special part in the formulation of the 66 books of the canon. Perhaps we disagree on the conceptualization of the second word: "influence". I challenge Fuller, and by extension Warfield, on the plenary-verbal view of inspiration. If this is true then God has some serious communication impediments. But since I don't think that's where you are either, I will not digress any longer on this point. I believe that the Bible is inspired by God. This view is even more strenuous than the often quoted, seldom understood 2 Tim. 3:16 (which would have realistically applied to the Hebrew Bible and possibly some pseudepigraphical works as well). But let's not split hairs about that. My view of inspiration extends farther than what I assume, if you are who I think you are, your conceptualization is--that the words are exactly the words that God wanted but with the distinct flavors of each author's personality shining through. This, in my perception, does not account for the many discrepancies (historical, cosmological, botanical, etc) found in Scripture. Furthermore, my work with the texts in their original language leads me to deem the rather weak, yet tenaciously defended, argument that the textus receptus suggests inerrancy in the original manuscripts to be altogether unfounded and unhelpful. Fuller, Warfield, and I presume you, seem to be operating from a conceptualization of history/Truth/fact that was conceived in the Enlightenment project. Such a view would have been altogether absurd for the original authors. What I am pressing for is that we rethink the doctrine of biblical inerrancy (not inspiration) for a less Decartian view of texts. This means that you will have to dig down deep and shed the skin of post-Enlightenment logic to understand how culturally-dependant your hermeneutic really is. I would love to dialogue with you further about this later. Peace!
Travis, I would love to hear more about this paper. It sounds like the distinction you drew in your study would be particularly helpful for my purposes here. Peace.