Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 3 - Mike Bird

There is little doubt that the inerrancy of the Bible is a current and often contentious topic among evangelicals. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy represents a timely contribution by showcasing the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy, facilitating understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge.

Each essay in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy considers:

• the present context and the viability and relevance for the contemporary evangelical Christian witness;
• whether and to what extent Scripture teaches its own inerrancy;
• the position’s assumed/implied understandings of the nature of Scripture, God, and truth; and
• three difficult biblical texts, one that concerns intra-canonical contradictions, one that raises questions of theological plurality, and one that concerns historicity.

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy serves not only as a single-volume resource for surveying the current debate, but also as a catalyst both for understanding and advancing the conversation further. Contributors include Al Mohler, Kevin Vanhoozer, Michael Bird, Peter Enns, and John Franke.

* * * * * * * * *


Scott McKnight begins a discussion of Inerrancy to which I will add
occasional emendation, notes, links, and resources. - R.E. Slater, August 4, 2014

Is Inerrancy a Game Only Played by American Evangelicals?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/08/11/is-inerrancy-a-game-only-played-by-american-evangelicals/

by Scot McKnight

Aug 11, 2014

Comments

America exports its goods giving it a worldwide influence, including its sports — basketball and (American) football and baseball. Of course baseball is played elsewhere, and baseball in the Dominican is special, but these are American-shaped sports. But would a Dominican say baseball is an American sport? (Not on your life.)

Is inerrancy a game American evangelicals play? Mike Bird, in his essay “Inerrancy is not necessary for evangelicalism outside the USA” in the book Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy, thinks so. It is fashionable for Europeans and Australians to take shots at all things American, it is a safe critique, it is politically correct, it is sometimes right, but on this one Bird’s claim distracts from the reality: Bird’s view of Scripture is how many, if not most, American theologians understand inerrancy. 

Bird affirms the more generous theory of inerrancy held by many in America but equates a rigid view with the American view. I understand why he does so, and I tend to agree with him, but I also know of a more generous inerrancy (American) tradition.

Now an opening claim from me:

Many prefer “infallibility” for social reasons. To claim “inerrancy” means you are connected to “those guys” and “that group” while “infallibility” has much less of a social profile. Those who are most concerned about affirming “inerrancy” are, in other words, fundamentalists while those who use “infallible” are more generous evangelicals.

I confirm then much of Bird’s big problem: this term is connected to a group, to a method, to a profile that problematizes the term. [sic, which Peter Enns was getting to in Part 2 - r.e. slater]

His opening salvo:

… the American inerrancy tradition, though largely a positive concept, is:

• essentially modernist in construct,
• parochially American in context, and
• occasionally creates more exegetical problems than it solves (145).

It is odd then that the single-biggest critic of inerrancy and fundamentalism in the 20th Century was a Scotsman, James Barr, and his target was J.I. Packer, an Englishman, and much of what he was after he learned on English soil. I’m not saying that Bird’s got it all wrong; I’m saying that there are variants on what inerrancy means but the core idea is not American.

It is historic in origins — the Bible is altogether true — yet articulated in various contexts in response to various threats, and here the American fundamentalism tradition has an important role to play as it was a response to the invasion of Germany’s historical critical method in American universities and seminaries.

More positively, Bird says outside the USA (and plenty in the USA and Canada, too) the words “infallible” and “authority” are the operative words. If we limit the idea of inerrancy to the term, Bird’s spot on; if we don’t, there’s a bigger story to tell.

---

It should also be observed that many branches of American evangelicalism also get along fine without inerrancy. American evangelicalism, in fact, is quite diverse — theologically and politically. There is a kind of American evangelicalism with a kind of American inerrancy that Bird himself affirms in this essay, and there are plenty who have a view that Bird finds problematic.

Once again, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the articulation of inerrancy that he analyzes.

1. CSBI has a “defective view of the genre of the biblical creation and its relationship to scientific models” (147). He thinks it may be too committed to a seven day creation theory and a young earth theory. Bird may have numbers on his side but CSBI’s “teaching of Scripture” would permit some wiggle room to discern what that teaching might be. John Walton, I suspect, can sign on to CSBI here. And some signers of CSBI did not affirm the 7-day-young-earth-theory.

2. Biblical veracity hinges on harmonizing discrepancies. Yes yes yes, for some, but not all, and this has been part of the debate. A more genre-specification kind of inerrancy, which permits genre to determine truth claim, and a kind of generic assumption that all things that sound like history are in fact history.

3. A revisionist view of the history of the church’s understanding of bibliology permits CSBI to think the great tradition affirms inerrancy. Bird is right, in part. Yes, the term is not been in use until much later; but is the fundamental idea that all of the Bible is true and none of it wrong, when interpreted properly, been a part of the church’s great tradition? And when it arose was it only the more rigid type?

The [original] autographs issue is a “red herring.” Bird finds the authority in the received text of the church (151). On this Bird courageously challenges a major platform that many inerrantists affirm: the autographs are the inerrant text, not necessarily the manuscripts we have. We don’t have the autographs, and only an approximation, so therefore we don’t have the inerrant text. That’s the logic that must be heard. He sees the solution in seeing inspiration as extending to the process of preservation so that God still speaks. This reminds me of Brevard Childs on the textual tradition.

4. There is theological colonialism at work in inerrancy theology. Churches that are evangelical and orthodox around the world have always had a high view of Scripture and have not affirmed inerrancy; instead, they are closer to infallibility. The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy is too North American, though he acknowledges Packer, John Wenham, and Roger Nicole.

He thinks Lausanne might be more representative, but I don’t know why he says that. Here is Lausanne — inerrancy is right there:

We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. We also affirm the power of God’s word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. The message of the Bible is addressed to all men and women. For God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God.

He pushes against Greg Beale as an example of paternalism. Then he takes silly pot shots at gun control, environmental care and universal health care — and Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and the Left Behind series.

5. Theological deduction is at work from God (perfection) to Scripture (perfection) but the text must be considered first. CSBI is American — Yes, Mike Bird, it was and is. The issue, once again, is not if it is American but if it is biblical.

6. He pushes to Carl Henry and Millard Erickson on their more deductive approaches: God, inspiration, Scripture’s inerrancy. I agree: Henry’s inerrancy theory was very deductive.

---

Bird begins to open up his own windows: God’s Word is true in God’s intent for it (this is Vanhoozerian). And I agree: the Bible’s focus is truth, not the term “inerrancy.” Bird then says the Bible accommodates but “never a capitulation to error” (and now we have what he calls an American version of inerrancy).

But Bird backs off a bit to say that there are “bits of Scripture… that do not agree in their precise details” (160). Bird is right in saying that proving historicity is too big of a game to play and too many inerrantists have claimed that is part of the inerrancy game. He’s right. At this point I see Bird moving into a generous inerrancy but he prefers the term infallibility. In my years at TEDS I routinely heard critique of the rigid view of inerrancy and a plea for a more generous theory, though the option was not the term infallibility.

Bird helps by showing how major groups — Anglican 39 Articles, Presbyterians Westminster, et al — have used other terms, like infallibility and truth and authority. That he uses TEDS statement illustrates a penchant: in requiring the term inerrancy to be present he assumes its absence means something other than inerrancy. I can tell you as a former prof that TEDS understood its statement to be about inerrancy with its “complete truthfulness.” The term may be a latecomer but the idea is present in each of these statements. This is a bit like saying the NT doesn’t believe in the Trinity because the term is not present.

Bird prefers “infallible” because, he urges, it has more to do with intent than with proving historical reliability. (I think that is a fair summarizing statement.) This is where Bird’s infallibility is actually different than the rigid view of inerrancy: if one pushes for intent and purpose, which is actually CSBI’s Article 13, then the rigid view has to open up some. A purpose- and genre-driven inerrancy, what I have called here a generous inerrancy, is much on the order of Bird’s infallibility.

There is a near absence of an ecclesiology in this essay, as was the case also with Mohler and Enns. Bird puts the doctrine of Scripture between Spirit and church, but I don’t think that is possible: it was the Spirit-shaped community that wrote the Scripture while that same Scripture spoke over against the church (perhaps that is why he puts it between Spirit and church).

I like this word of Bird: “I trust God the Father, I trust his Son, the Spirit leads me to that truth, so I trust God’s Holy Book” (165). This is not unlike NT Wright’s understanding of the authority of Scripture as the authority of God first.

---

Now to the test cases:

1. Jericho. Dating problems, the conquest was smaller than is often thought … the “jury will always be out” (167). Again, Bird sounds like American inerrantists on this one. An infallibilist is concerned with divine intent more than historical reliability.

2. Acts 9:7 and 22:9: now he sounds like an infallibilist. It’s about the “gist of events” (168) and genre.

3. God of genocide and Jesus. He is in need of a solution to this one. He almost moves into Webb’s redemptive trend. Moses is an “interim legal code” (170). In this one he fits in the redemptive movement trend. So Jesus reveals the fuller shalom of God.

Bird’s “infallibilists” are America’s more generous, genre-sensitive “inerrantists.” Bird assumes inerrantists are the most conservative sort, like Al Mohler.

* * * * * * * * *


continue to -

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 1 - Albert Mohler

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 2a - Peter Enns

Peter Enns - "Five Views of Inerrancy," Part 2b - Peter Enns Responds

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 3 - Mike Bird

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 4 - Kevin Vanhoozer

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 5 - John Franke

RJS - Inspiration? Yes! – Inerrancy? No.

An Analysis of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy by Peter Enns

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 6 - Scot McKnight

Roger Wolsey - 16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 2a - Peter Enns

Introduction

Today continues another article by evangelics that have had a change in attitude towards the church's (creedal) confession to "biblical inerrancy." A construction created in the 1980 Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) that poorly describes how to properly read and study the bible. Why do I say this?

It is this writer's opinion that "not holding to inerrancy is to have a more profound Bible than if holding on to inerrancy's unnecessary language and resultant dogmas." Put another way, sometimes you can say more about a subject by saying less. By attempting to further circumscribe God and His Word by adding additional words and languages of the church's religious expectations is to approach the biblical text with more philosophic boundary layers that distance the reader from God and His Word.

In essence, inerrancy would create boundaries of discussions that lead to false inferences and suppositions about God and His Word. More pointedly, it betrays us as fallible readers by causing us to feel infallibly about subjects that need better questions, not less. It prevents valuable insights that can be too easily covered up by a more "layered" approach to biblical studies such as that presented to the theologian when approaching the Bible as "inerrant" rather than as "authoritative and infallible but not inerrant." Peter Enns is one such theologian who says the 1980 CSBI confession would be better off stricken from the evangelic records. With him I say, eh verily, Amen and Amen.

R.E. Slater

August 11, 2014

* * * * * * * * *

There is little doubt that the inerrancy of the Bible is a current and often contentious topic among evangelicals. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy represents a timely contribution by showcasing the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy, facilitating understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge.

Each essay in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy considers:

• the present context and the viability and relevance for the contemporary evangelical Christian witness;
• whether and to what extent Scripture teaches its own inerrancy;
• the position’s assumed/implied understandings of the nature of Scripture, God, and truth; and
• three difficult biblical texts, one that concerns intra-canonical contradictions, one that raises questions of theological plurality, and one that concerns historicity.

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy serves not only as a single-volume resource for surveying the current debate, but also as a catalyst both for understanding and advancing the conversation further. Contributors include Al Mohler, Kevin Vanhoozer, Michael Bird, Peter Enns, and John Franke.

* * * * * * * * *


Scott McKnight begins a discussion of Inerrancy to which I will add

occasional emendation, notes, links, and resources. - R.E. Slater, August 4, 2014

The Inadequacy of the Inerrancy Model (Pete Enns)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/08/06/the-inadequacy-of-the-inerrancy-model-pete-enns/

by Scot McKnight

Aug 6, 2014

Comments

I was at Tyndale House in the early 80s when a well-known evangelical theologian came by to speak about the importance of inerrancy. It was a good and encouraging address, but after the paper a veteran NT scholar leaned over to me and said something like this: “It is easy for systematicians to claim inerrancy because they don’t have to live with critical scholarship on the Bible.” The veteran scholar here was not an Old Testament scholar but a NT scholar, and he didn’t specialize in the Gospels either. I have since appreciated any view of Scripture that works from the ground of the texts up.

Peter Enns, in the volume Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, has a chapter with a descriptive title: “Inerrancy, however defined, does not describe what the Bible does” (I deleted the upper case letters for a chp title). And that is what the chapter is all about.

Enns’ essay is largely critical of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI), which he chooses as a paradigm of how inerrancy is understood and preached about, though the essay by Paul Feinberg on the “Meaning of Inerrancy” in N. Geisler (ed.), Inerrancy, would have been a better paradigm — even if one might say most haven’t read him and many do tend to parrot the rougher edges of the CSBI statement. I could have wished for a more positive constructive theory of Scripture. Further, he [Enns] seems intent on pressing "how inerrancy is used for ill" in interpretive moves rather than defining what inerrancy means and how his approach to the Bible frames a doctrine of Scripture and its authority in the church. I can’t see that the tradition of inerrancy requires how to interpret a text but only that, when interpreted aright, it is true.

Enns’ own model of Scripture is called the “incarnational” view, a view he articulated in a book called Inspiration and Incarnation, a book that more or less got him onto the hot seat at Westminster Theological Seminary and he was eventually pushed off the hotseat to find another job. (That’s another conversation.) Enns also has a book about to come out with the cheeky title The Bible Tells Me So . This essay reflects his continuing reaction to his WTS days. But, once again, he wants to press us all to let the Bible be what it is. I applaud any effort to do just that.

OK, now to his essay. Other than to say it is jarring to move from Mohler’s overly a priori approach to Enns’ overt reaction to inerrancy. In fact, it is indeed odd that Enns has a chapter here — he doesn’t embrace inerrancy — but he does keep the other essayists a bit more on their toes.

What is clear in Enns in comparison with Mohler is that focus Enns gives to the problem passages assigned. Enns, in fact, builds his view of Scripture on such passages.

CSBI is not the best example (I think Feinberg’s essay is, to repeat the point). A friend of mine, however, once told me you can drive the standard Errancy Mack Truck through Article XIII, which reads:

WE AFFIRM the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

WE DENY that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

And notice this clarification by the CSBI members:

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining what the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the most careful attention to its claims and character as a human production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture and conventions of His penman’s milieu, a milieu that God controls in His sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.

In other words, common accusations against inerrancy are bracketed as not constituting error. In particular, most issues can fit inside the “according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose” — and one would then have to bring in historical context. Which leads Enns precisely to the point Mohler doesn’t want: using ancient standards to assess “purpose” or “intent” in the text. Maybe I’m attributing to much to Enns, but that’s how I read this one. The text, they are claiming, is true when interpreted properly.

This post could get long easily and I’ll do my best to stay within normal boundaries for my posts. Enns thinks “inerrancy” has become rhetorical and political, a term used to assess others and to draw lines. He’s right in how many have used it. The term has value if one is doing some disinterested theology.

More important to Enns is this: the tensions over inerrancy are created by “the distance between a priori theological assertions about God and how his book should behave and the Bible we meet once we get down to the uncooperative details of the text itself” (84). In other words, “God” is understood to have composed the Bible in a way that conforms to how God is understood. God is perfect, therefore God’s Word is perfect. Simple a fortiori logic. The problem is that there is no reason to assume if God is perfect God had to have a perfect Bible. There are other views of inerrancy and many are not so deductive in logic. I suspect Bird and Vanhoozer will move in these categories.

Enns focuses on the CSBI and presses it hard for the image of the Bible it creates, though I’m not so sure Article 13 is as inflexible as Pete suggests. He wants more on “the manner in which God speaks truth, namely, through the idioms, attitudes, assumptions, and general worldviews of the ancient authors” (87). Again, maybe Article 13 does this? I have always read it that way.

Literalism is the default mode of interpretation; very true. Joshua 6 says the walls fell; therefore the walls fell. And he points to the common slippery slope logic often used in connection with inerrancy. He sees “emotional blackmail” (89). Inerrancy, he thinks cannot be nuanced to cover the problems.

His study on Joshua 6 places on the table the well-known conclusions: an early date for the exodus (15th Century BC) is not confirmed by the evidence of Jericho, and a later date (13th Century) is strained too much. So he suggest the moderate inerrantists say there is a historical core that may have been mythologized. At the time of the exodus Jericho was “at most a small settlement and without walls” (93). So he thinks the approach of folks like James Hoffmeier of mythological features in the exodus is used to give possible help to Joshua 6. If a core is history with some mythologization is within inerrancy’s boundaries, would he embrace the term?

In my judgment, the only way to counter this is for the inerrantists to prove that the historical and archaeological evidence supports that account as it is in Joshua 6. So folks like Richard Hess have proposed erosion, which is probably a step forward in that it affirms more the archaeological evidence.

Here is [Enn's] pungent conclusion: “A defense of inerrancy that rests on the impossibility of disproving the possibility of historicity, in my view, is entirely circular and therefore demonstrates the implausibility of the premise and is its own refutation” (95).

Another one: “For inerrantists [at least some], an ‘errant’ Bible is a greater theological threat than a God who orders the extermination of an entire people, since an entire theological system rests on the former” (105).

I will avoid fuller descriptions… read the essay yourself. But I have a methodological approach I’d like to toss out. We should be historically responsible in assessing the archaeology and go with the evidence; if it proves our interpretative history of Joshua 6 untenable, can we not at that point reconsider our interpretation? What’s wrong with that?

Sometimes those who defend inerrantist interpretations, however ironic, make the Bible flat-out wrong. In other words, a text that appears to be teaching one thing (a parrot bird) might actually be something else.

Enns says inerrancy can function as a good term if it is descriptive of what one might find in the Bible but not prescriptive of what must be there. Bird and Vanhoozer will probe this.

* * * * * * * * *


continue to -

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 1 - Albert Mohler

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 2a - Peter Enns

Peter Enns - "Five Views of Inerrancy," Part 2b - Peter Enns Responds

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 3 - Mike Bird

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 4 - Kevin Vanhoozer

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 5 - John Franke

RJS - Inspiration? Yes! – Inerrancy? No.

An Analysis of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy by Peter Enns

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 6 - Scot McKnight

Roger Wolsey - 16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 15 - Anonymous

“aha” moments: a pastor tells his story (15): anonymous

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/08/aha-moments-a-pastor-tells-his-story-15-anonymous/

by Peter Enns

August 11, 2014

Comment

I have long thought that the #1 factor in bringing about theological change is that “life happens”–new experiences that cannot be held in old containers.

Many (but not all) of the “aha” moments posted thus far, including my own, have centered on some moments of intellectual clarity concerning Scripture that led to rethinking one’s view of the Bible, faith, and life.

For others, like today’s anonymous author, “aha” moments originate in painful personal experiences that drive one to go back and re-examine one’s theology.

I’m sure many readers will resonate with the author’s story–it is tragically common–and you will see the wisdom of his request to remain anonymous. I honor the author for wanting to tell his story and am privileged that he asked if he could post it as part of this series.

---

I am a pastor. I wish I had been a scholar and could have gotten my a-ha on with study and consideration. My a-ha, sadly, began with oh-no.

From the time I was a teenager I was taught that the Bible was “the Maker’s Manufacturer’s Instruction Manual.” I remember my parents having a sign that read: “God said it, I believe it, That settles it” in our car.

I was taught that the Bible “was” God’s Word and that was very different than the Bible “containing” God’s Word.

It was made obvious that everything in the Bible could be supported by everything else in the Bible without one single contradiction.

I was taught that everything needed a chapter and verse and then you were golden.

It was with the wooden-literalism of what is today being called Biblicism that I was taught to:

• Follow exactly, the Matthew 18 model of confrontation — being sure to get the math exactly right (just two, take two, between two and three, etc.) “Have you Matthew 18’d them yet?”

• Keep women out of the pastorate as they were to keep silent in church (because only the modern-day pastoral vocation was in mind in 1 Timothy 2:12) and we needed them in Sunday School, up through Junior High, anyway.

• Always have all the children in all the worship services, per Matthew 19:14 “let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.”

• Stop and unleash all bad thoughts I’d had about a person to them and ask for forgiveness (Matthew 5:23 “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you…) I was also taught that only Catholics had altars and they weren’t Christians.

• Demand head coverings for women (1 Corinthians 11:6, If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head.) Okay, we did eventually find a workaround for that one.

• Oh, and of course, to not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. (1 Timothy 5:19 says: Do not.)

I was taught not to be a liberal, to have a high view of Scripture, and to stay off of slopes that were slippery by sticking with those who were right and taking the Bible seriously because they were taking it literally.

---

In our church there was a lady who brought an accusation, of sorts, about an elder. She had an uneasy feeling about him that she couldn’t identify. I told her she should talk to him as they were family friends. We prayed. She did. We Matthew 18’d him.

She returned to me much later with the same feeling, indicating that it was a feeling she had about him with my young daughter. We prayed. I went to him.

No one else had said a word, so when the woman returned much later, and the two of us prayed, and then went to him, and then to he and his wife, I was staying well within 1 Timothy 5.

Then the two of us with another elder prayed, and went to him when she came to me the next time. She couldn’t identify the problem, and though some instances could be seen where there wasn’t always the greatest maturity being shown by this man, there was nothing suspect.

No one was bringing a specific accusation against this guy, and up until this time only one woman had a weird feeling. We kept 1 Timothy 5:19 in clear view.

Over time, as her feelings and paranoia increased (to the point that she came to believe she might even be dealing with mental illness), things began to change and the elder-in-question’s behavior became very strange and erratic. In a tumultuous series of events it came out that the man had been molesting my daughter for several years.

Oh-no. Actually, far, far worse than that.

---

In an instant, those (years now of the) woman’s suspicions came into complete clarity. In an instant, the Bible, and the God of the Bible, came crumbling down around me. 1 Timothy hadn’t righteously protected us; my literalizing of it had, instead, destroyed.

At first, the only thing that made any sense was working to protect my daughter, my family, and then the church. It was oh-no for years, and we all did the best we could. That was the only important thing to begin with and God’s graciousness, over time, did, and has done much healing and restoration.

But, though a lesser issue for me at the time however significant, I didn’t completely realize in those days that God had, in a sense, died to me.

Well, at least the God I thought I knew, and my understanding of the Bible He had given me had died.

The God I had known, and the Bible I had were somehow magical, and faithful adherence to them, alongside the certain and truly faithful, could never have brought about this result— even though I was told by several that this was God’s will for my daughter, and that she needed this for her discipleship. I think they needed to be certain about something.

Fortunately, when I came to the end of myself in all this, I somehow still knew one thing “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The oh-no was terrifying and tragic. But it was also watershed, and gave birth to a-ha.

Backtracking from 1 Timothy 5:19 — because of pastoral experience and not because of scholarly consideration — I began to divest myself of everything I thought I had known about the Bible. It was like a big reset button had been hit.

The underlying programming was there, Jesus and him crucified, but otherwise the hard drive had been wiped clean. It wasn’t easy as I remained a teaching pastor during the entire time.

Along the way I uncovered multiples of untruths purported as absolute truth, and in some cases flat out fabrications of facts by noted scholars, apologists and pastors, with the supposed intent of keeping me safe from the slippery slope of liberalism and disbelief.

When I ran into some of those that happened to bring my former university under fire, I returned to campus after many years to talk with a faculty member about his less-than-literal Genesis views. It was a warm day, during summer break, and this professor — whom I had never met before — spent more than five hours with me to talk me through what he really believed, what he contended the Scriptures are, and what the university held to.

I discovered there really were other honest ways to read the Bible. I walked away from that meeting knowing that one of the hell-bound liberal Bible scholars I had been warned about for years, was in every right and best way, my brother in Christ.

Oh-no, had progressed to a-ha, and finally, climatically became A-HA! I felt like the little Who named JoJo, in “Horton Hears a Who” who finally discovers he can YOPP!

In the face of great tragedy, I remain thankful for Paul’s example and that I too resolved to know nothing except a crucified Jesus. Those events are now many years in the past. My family and congregation continue to heal, and my daughter has married and even given me grandchildren.

And, I am thankful for the fruit of the trauma, even if I could never be thankful for the trauma itself. Which, yes, means I don’t think 1 Thessalonians 5:18 means what I was once taught it meant:

"18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God 

in Christ Jesus for you. (NRSV)"

* * * * * * * * * *

Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Peter Enns

Part 3 - John Byron

Part 4 - Daniel Kirk

Part 5 - Michael Pahl

Part 6 - Charles Halton

Part 7 - Christopher W. Skinner

Part 8 - Christopher M. Hays

Part 9 - Michael L. Ruffin

Part 10 - Athony Le Donne

Part 11 - Chris Tilling

Part 12 - Megan DeFranza

Part 13 - Carlos Bovell

Part 14 - Lindsey Trozzo

Part 15 - Anonymous

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 14 - Lindsey Trozzo

Lindsey Trozzo

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (14): Lindsey Trozzo

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/08/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-tell-their-stories-14-lindsey-trozzo/

by Peter Enns

August 8, 2014

Comments

Today’s “aha” moment is by Lindsey M. Trozzo (BA, Biola University, Biblical and Theological Studies; MA, Talbot School of Theology, NT). Trozzo is ABD in her PhD work at Baylor University, where she is writing her dissertation is on ethics in John’s Gospel and utilizing Rhetorical Criticism to uncover John’s non-propositional ethic. Trozzo is also working at Texas Christian University as the Research Assistant to the Bradford Chair (David Moessner), where, along with researching and teaching, she is coordinater the Second Century Seminar and manages subscriptions to Novum Testamentum Supplement Series (Brill).

---

I often think that students take the view that one of my jobs as a professor is to reassure

them that the Bible does not say anything that they do not already think, and to show how

when it says something outrageous it does not mean it.

~ John Goldingay

This was certainly my mindset when I began my biblical education. “I’m not sure,” was a phrase I avoided like the plague. For as long as I can remember, I have been driven to say, “I know. Now let me show you why.”

At home, at school, and at church, I worked as hard as I could so that I would be able to raise my hand with the right answer. “I’m not sure” was a bad place.

This inclination toward certainty extended into my academic life: K-12 Christian school, B.A. in Biblical Studies from an Evangelical university, M.A. in NT from an Evangelical seminary, PhD program in Biblical Studies (in progress). I met success in academic life.

And for a good while, my accumulation of answers was quite empowering.

At first (as the joke goes) seminary “taught me just enough to make me dangerous”— meaning, my seminary-trained and self-inflated ego could out-argue others on a given Bible topic. This wasn’t only a fault of my particular educational system. Broadened scholarly horizons, on their own, would simply fuel me with different data to make different arguments – but for the same problematic purpose.

As a professor of mine has joked, “You can make the data say anything you want – if you’re smart enough.” So my “aha moments” aren’t necessarily about escapingconservative dogmatism.

They are about escaping dogmatism on all sides.

I would say I am experiencing an “aha evolution,” one still in progress, where I’m learning to identify my tendency to look to the Bible to affirm things I think I already know (rather than looking to the Bible to learn something new).

This evolution is about learning to live somewhere in the middle, about becoming more comfortable saying, “I’m not sure.”

The most significant moments in this evolution have not come from my own close readings of Scripture, nor from grating tensions encountered in a conservative classroom or church setting, nor from a moving and persuasive article or essay.

Certainly scholarly arguments have transformed my views about very important issues. Certainly my own close readings of the text have led me to concede that the “biblical stance” on any given topic is not as straightforward as I would like to admit. Yet still, I attribute my personal evolution to something much simpler:

I started listening to people who were different than I was.

In many ways, I am grateful for the conservative context in which I grew up. I was well-loved, and my own conservative community was of the gracious variety. But one detriment of growing up in a close-knit Evangelical faith community (at least in my experience) is that everyone agrees on everything – or at least on the important things.

Dissenting voices are treated with a special brand of caution. Even in the most gracious communities, those dissenting voices are certainly not given the same space as the voices of insiders. For me, this dynamic continued into my academic context as well, since I chose to attend a university and a seminary that resembled the conservative setting of my upbringing.

Though such an approach was never directly prescribed, reading in such a community fueled my tendency to treat the Bible as a means to affirm my stalwart doctrinal positions. Reading in such a community strengthened my sense that “I’m not sure” was a bad place.

It’s not for me to say whether other members of this reading community had the same motivations – perhaps some were actively trying to disengage their presuppositions and see whether some long-held beliefs might be challenged by the voice of the text. But that was not my approach at the time.

Slowly I began to feel a growing chasm between my close-knit Evangelical scholarly community and the diverse community with whom I lived everyday life. I began to see how the positions I had become so equipped to defend simply did not line up with the common human decency I saw expressed by those whom I would have called ill-informed, untrained, or even heretical.

Good people with amazingly powerful common sense had me wondering, “What if we are wrong? What if I am wrong?” It was this, the laying aside of “I know” and the taking up of “I’m not sure,” that invited the conversations that would shape a new perspective for me.

Reading and discussing the Bible within a diverse community (and mostly listening), I gradually learned a more generous approach to the Bible, to others, and to myself. A few members of this diverse community stand out (though there are many others):

• My profoundly “liberal” freshman roommate who lived a Gospel that extended unquestioning love to those our community excluded and judged most.

• My upstanding, inspiring, charitable twin brother whose fearless vulnerability and courageous pursuit of accepting himself and others as the image of God challenged my own deep-rooted prejudice.

• My unique and freethinking husband whose unconditional love for me and openness to every person I’ve seen him encounter stood in stark contrast to my own principled self-importance and need to be right.

Listening to these voices resulted in new questions and led me to more flexible answers than I had previously been able to see in the text.

Becoming an observer of my tradition and myself, I began to realize the inconsistency of interpretation among many Christian communities who adopted a stricter hermeneutic on some issues and a more flexible hermeneutic on others.

Mostly, this community helped me to acknowledge where I was making the text say more than it was really saying, where I was forcing the text to take a stronger position than it really took, where I was overlooking complications and complexities in the biblical witness.

Scholarship has since affirmed that "evolution" that was birthed in experience and community. I was pleased to find that these more flexible ways of reading has long-held a place in the wider world of biblical scholarship—beginning with premodern communal interpretation, continuing with the rise of liberal theologians, and extending into the academy today.

I am happy that our postmodern context allows similar “concessions” for those of us who read the Bible from a theological standpoint. For me, self-reflective and self-aware reading is only possible when I ground myself in a diverse community.

We still all read from a subjective standpoint, and this is something I’m not sure we can escape. But by reading in community, deliberation can free us from dogmatism. I hope that I will continue to listen to my friends who will help me to read reflectively and engage deliberatively, to err on the side of love, and to readily admit “I’m not sure.”

Some resources on reading in community (thanks to my own community for these):

The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, Scot McKnight

Whose Community? Which Interpretation?: Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church, Merold Westfall

Hermeneutics: An Introduction, Anthony C. Thistelton

The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, James K. A. Smith

The New Testament and the People of God, NT Wright

Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, Marcus Bockmuehl

Practicing Theological Interpretation: Engaging Biblical Texts for Faith and Formation, Joel B. Green

Reading In Communion, Stephen E. Fowl

Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture, and the Moral Life, Allen Verhey

Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom: Scripture and Theology, eds. David F. Ford and Graham Stanton

The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, eds. David F. Ford and C. C. Pecknold

Scriptural Interpretation: A Theological Exploration, Darren Sarisky

Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction, or Reading Scripture Together on the Path to God, Peter M. Candler, Jr.

Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Peter Enns

Part 3 - John Byron

Part 4 - Daniel Kirk

Part 5 - Michael Pahl

Part 6 - Charles Halton

Part 7 - Christopher W. Skinner

Part 8 - Christopher M. Hays

Part 9 - Michael L. Ruffin

Part 10 - Athony Le Donne

Part 11 - Chris Tilling

Part 12 - Megan DeFranza

Part 13 - Carlos Bovell

Part 14 - Lindsey Trozzo

Part 15 - Anonymous

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 13 - Carlos Bovell

Carlos Bovell

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (13): Carlos Bovell

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/08/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-tell-their-stories-13-carlos-bovell/

by Peter Enns

August 4, 2014

Comments

Today’s “aha” moment is brought to you by Carlos Bovell, a frequent contributor to this blog (for his last post go here and work backwards). Bovell is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary and The Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. He is the author of Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals (2007), By Good and Necessary Consequence: A Preliminary Genealogy of Biblical Foundationalism (2009), an edited volume, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Authority of Scripture (2011), and Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear (2012).

---

I can very definitely remember that “aha” feeling in my spiritual journey. But truth be told, I doubt it was really just a moment, or if it was, it had to be a moment that was years in the making.

Before attending Westminster Theological Seminary I audited courses in Old Testament studies at Philadelphia College of Bible (later Philadelphia Biblical University, and now Cairn University). I eventually graduated with a math degree at The College of New Jersey, but I had had a life-changing religious experience before enrolling here, which is what prompted my sitting in on courses at PCB. I enrolled as an M.Div. student at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. It was as a result of studying at PCB and Liberty that I had learned a really valuable lesson.

(Side note: My spiritual counselors at both PCB and Liberty insisted "I disregard my religious experience—even though it changed my life—because God doesn’t do those kinds of things anymore. He rather makes provision for us through holy scripture.")

While at PCB my OT professor, Brian Toews, was teaching us about the “canonical approach” to scripture of late Yale professor Brevard Childs. To help us understand how it would look when done by evangelicals, my professor had us work through numerous readings by John Sailhamer–a well known inerrantist OT scholar who had taught briefly at PCB but moved on to Western Seminary by the time I took classes there.

A quote from Sailhamer’s Introduction to Old Testament Theology: A Canonical Approach illustrated for me just how much preliminary work a student of the Bible is actually doing, philosophically, before thinking about how and whether the Bible is inerrant:

Thus the world that one stands before as a reader is never more than a representation

of the “real world.” In the case of the Bible, the text is a true representation and an

accurate representation. However, no matter how true or how accurate the text is, the

accuracy of the Scriptures should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the text is,

in fact, a representation of those actual events.

Now I should make clear that “what the Bible represents it always represents accurately” was not something I had any interest in criticizing at the time. I had wholeheartedly believed that. It was just that there was something about the way Sailhamer mentioned it here that seemed forced, contrived. What is he so worried about here?

Then, after spending a semester studying at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, I read a book by Liberty faculty that talked about the nature of Christian scholarship. The book was a compilation of essays and bore the title, Opening the American Mind: The Integration of Biblical Truth in the Curriculum of the University.

Each chapter gives an overview of a specific university discipline and was written by a professor who was active in that specific field so that the mathematics chapter was written by a mathematics professor, the economics chapter by an economics professor, the arts chapter by a music professor, and the biblical studies chapter by . . . a philosophy professor!

What’s wrong with this picture? Why is it that for every other field a practitioner of that field can explain how it relates to faith, but when it comes to biblical studies, a philosopher (none other than Norman Geisler) has to be called in to tell students in biblical studies what biblical studies must ultimately look like?

Both the Sailhamer assignments and the Liberty book got me thinking more intently about evangelical spirituality—particularly how it is shaped by evangelical philosophy—and cumulatively contributed to an “aha” moment for me: evangelicals, at least some, use philosophy to shield them from the “threats” of biblical studies.

Why the need to emphasize what inerrancy “requires” from biblical studies—ahead of time—before actually doing any biblical studies? I found this to be a very troubling question. Why are inerrantists going to settle matters for students before they gained some familiarity with the discipline of biblical studies?

It seems that the reason is to protect students from drawing “dangerous” conclusions. Even Sailhamer, a biblical scholar, felt the need to put on his philosopher’s hat while he did his biblical studies.

This raised a larger question for me: Where does biblical studies begin and inerrantist philosophy end? Is inerrantist philosophy driving the evangelical engine?

As much as I did not want to, I had to answer this question with a “yes.” An inerrantist historical Jesus scholar, for example, is not able to say that the early church put words into Jesus’ mouth in various portions of the Gospels, or that a number of events recounted in the Gospels never really took place, being made up by a later generation of well-meaning disciples. Evangelical philosophy will already have decided these matters ahead of time. Thus evangelical, historical Jesus scholarship would have no choice but go through the motions of “discovering” that the Gospels are actually “true.” And this pattern carries over to other aspects of biblical studies.

I sensed a clear and widespread pattern among evangelical writers:

The Liberty book I read thought that it would be best for an inerrantist philosopher to explain to students what biblical studies is and what it cannot find.

Sailhamer wanted students and others reading him to know upfront that their researches in biblical studies would never come into conflict with inerrantist philosophy.

What I came to understand is that when inerrantist, philosophical pre-commitments of this kind are at work, the kind of scholarship needed to be done most by evangelicals would never get done from inside of evangelicalism.

Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Peter Enns

Part 3 - John Byron

Part 4 - Daniel Kirk

Part 5 - Michael Pahl

Part 6 - Charles Halton

Part 7 - Christopher W. Skinner

Part 8 - Christopher M. Hays

Part 9 - Michael L. Ruffin

Part 10 - Athony Le Donne

Part 11 - Chris Tilling

Part 12 - Megan DeFranza

Part 13 - Carlos Bovell

Part 14 - Lindsey Trozzo