Comments on: Why Not Inerrancy?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:10:57 +0000

Thank you for the careful explanation. I think I see the story you're trying to tell, and I even agree with some of your points — for example, that Jesus was righteous because of His character, and without His character it would be impossible to be the Messiah. It's certain that many of His disciples were drawn to him because of his character; others because “he taught as one having authority”.
The conclusion might serve as a useful warning to bring humility in those whom knowledge has puffed up, but honestly, the tone and wording of the message must be changed if it's to serve as anything but a groundless, truthless insult. Please reconsider.
The specifics of your argument I just don't follow. Nobody would expect to recognize the Second Person in the Trinity as such; if we know Christ, we know him as a single person. But if you don't (1) know Christ as a Person, and (2) know God the Father as a Person, and (3) know them as distinct Persons and yet one God, you don't actually know either one. If you don't know God, you haven't known Christ either, because Christ's ministry is to glorify His father.
I'm not saying that the trinity must be affirmed in order to be saved, or in order to know Christ. I'm saying that according to the revelation God has given us, the trinity is how we will experience God. To slightly alter your quote, *when* (not if) Jesus of Nazareth does appear at the appointed time, He will be recognizable as Himself, and He will glorify the Father.
We have a certain amount of “agree to disagree” here. I think I can read your justified rebuke of a pride of knowledge and a willingness to sit in judgement of God's works, and agree. I can't agree to lay aside the revelation God has given us.
-Billy

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:42:20 +0000

The priestly establishment in Jerusalem had their own ideas of the divine will and saw themselves as its expression. The followers of Jesus took a contrary view and saw him as embodying and projecting the divine will.
The Jerusalem of Pilate and Herod Antipas became a stage where two opposing points of view based on two opposing sets of values was played out. (This collision of values is dramatised in John's gospel)
It is a truly 'divine' paradox that the Christian churches ostensibly preach Jesus of Nazareth while, at the same time, through their doctrine, they misrepresent the man who lived and died for 'truth' as is evident by his words to Pilate.
The priestly establishment of Jerusalem asserted that Jesus could not be the representative Israelite, the 'chosen of the Lord,' because he did not meet with their approval or measure up to their interpretation of Old Testament 'messianic' criteria. They laboured under the delusion that the choice was a matter for them!
The churches of 'Christendom' are labouring under the same delusion. They, in turn, assert that the 'chosen of the Lord' must meet with their approval and measure up to their interpretation of the New Testament as proclaimed through their doctrines.
If Jesus of Nazareth were to appear today, he would be unrecognisable in terms of the 'trinity' and the 'miraculous incarnation' – doctrines supposedly based on the New Testament.
Our predicament would mirror that of the disciples who had to choose between the teachings, authority and weight of tradition represented by the priestly establishment, and the weight of moral authority represented by the values and principles espoused by Jesus.
They chose Jesus and what he represented over the priestly establishment and what it represented. They recognised that there is only one criterion for messiahship – the man destined to rule the world in righteousness must be a man who possesses certain qualities of character. All the rest of the criteria first imposed by the Jerusalem establishment and now by Christian church doctrine add up to nothing.
Perhaps all of us may one day be faced with a choice similar to that of the disciples.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:28:09 +0000

I was harsh; I'm not the first to be harsh when dealing with an offensive statement which appeared to be a falsehood. I may have misunderstood you (I hope I did!), but I have not deliberately misrepresented you (and due to the closeness of the context, you can't claim that any misrepresentation would harm you; it would simply make me look foolish). You yourself chose to make your FIRST paragraph the single sentence “The concept of 'inerrancy' of Scripture led to the crucifixion of Jesus.”
The only explicit argument you present is the paragraph:

But therein lay the basic fallacy! The opponents were relying first on words and events to lead them to their 'messiah'. Jesus' supporters relied first upon fundamental values, then adduced words in their support. For them, he was the 'spiritual' fulfilment of the Israelite hope.

If this is supposed to explain a fallacy (which it claims to), it fails. There is no logical fallacy in “relying first on words and events”. It might be bad understanding of revelation — or it might not. It might not even be the concept of revelation used by the Pharasees and Saducees (you give no evidence, and I don't recall at the moment whether the similarities between the sects extended to their hermeneutics/concept of revelation). Other people claim that the Jewish leaders' resistance to Jesus arose from other causes, such as their desire to hold on to power, or their emphasis on the triumphant messianic prophecies but not on the humiliating ones.
In any case, there's no support in your post for your up-front claim that “the concept of 'inerrancy' of Scripture led to the crucifixion of Jesus.” You'll have to do more than calling a different hermeneutics a “fallacy”; in order to support what appears to be the main claim of your post, you'll have to show that both the people who agitated for Jesus' crucifixion and modern inerrantists share the same philosophy on that point; and that this philosophy (and not some other unshared one) led to the call for crucifixion. I think you'd also have to indicate that it's morally wrong to hold that philosophy as well, since it's possible that some of the things that led to Christ's crucifixion and which are shared by both groups are actually innocent (for example, inhaling before a shout). Simply showing that the philosophy causes one to come to the wrong conclusions occasionally isn't enough (every philosophy does THAT).
In conclusion, if you want to present an argument, do so. What you actually presented appears to me to be simple ad hominem.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:20:04 +0000

“…you wouldn't be justified in labelling evangelicals as Christ-killers.”
You have grossly misrepresented me and set up a 'straw man' in order to draw attention away from the substance of my argument against 'inerrancy'.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:08:07 +0000

You're saying that the concept of inerrancy led to Christ's crucifixion? Are you sure it wasn't God's plan for redeeming a fallen world? Or human sin in general? MUST it be some failing of your philosophical opponents?
And frankly, your justifications for this deadly chain of logic are weak at best. Even if you proved philosophical commonalities between Pharasees and evangelicals it wouldn't show that those commonalities are the bad ones — and as I said above, even if you managed to show both you wouldn't be justified in labelling evangelicals as Christ-killers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:36:31 +0000

Tim does the definition that the inerrantists use of inerrancy account for the discrepant accounts of the people at the tomb?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:04:18 +0000

My point exactly.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:38:43 +0000

Roger, you asked “What arguments do find compelling against inerrancy?”
The concept of 'inerrancy' of Scripture led to the crucifixion of Jesus.
The New Testament writers claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was the man chosen from among the people and appointed by God to rule the world. They claimed that he represented the true values of God and that his opponents had judged him by their own false standards. They also claimed that he had fulfilled the 'scriptures' predicting his death.
Yet the opponents of Jesus searched these same 'scriptures' but could not relate the writings to the man. On the surface, this seems understandable – there were particular and exact statements by the prophets that when the 'anointed' of God appeared, the fortunes of Israel, then at their lowest ebb, would be restored.
But therein lay the basic fallacy! The opponents were relying first on words and events to lead them to their 'messiah'. Jesus' supporters relied first upon fundamental values, then adduced words in their support. For them, he was the 'spiritual' fulfilment of the Israelite hope.
The Jerusalem priests thought that the Old Testament was 'inerrant.' By concentrating on words, personality and events and ignoring basic values, they demonstrated their flawed thinking.
Unfortunately, the doctrines built up around the personality of Jesus of Nazareth reflect the same attitudes and display the same flawed thinking as the priests of Jerusalem.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:29:55 +0000

Thanks KA. I was aware that the ideas of inerrancy and infallibility with regard to Scripture are from the last couple centuries, which is why I said the anachronistic comment. My question is more for us debating how we view Scripture. How do we jive our inerrant, infallible, authoritative, etc. views with the canonization process? What does that long and hardly uniform enterprise have to tell us about how we should view Scripture? And how has canonization fit into the inerrancy debate historically?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:12:51 +0000

Sorry for the second post. I intended to reply to Tyler, but forgot.
Tyler,
The issue of defining inerrancy was only an issue in 20th century Amrican evangelicalism. The church councils did not set out to select books that were infallible or inerrant, they were looking for issues like authorship and coherence with accepted doctrine. They were pre-modern, so for them they believed what they believed because of their identification as people of the Book! (I don't mean to oversimplify the epistemology of pre-modernism, just that they didn't ask the same questions).
Inerrancy became a “fundamental” as a response to German liberalims in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was here that conservatives needed to “defend” the authority of the Bible by saying it could pass the rationale tests of certainty through scientific methods. There is an article on quodlibet that explains the issue pretty well in this regard (http://www.quodlibet.net/perry-inerrancy.shtml). The point is, the reason Roger is having trouble finding current articles/books on the topic is it has become a non-issue (so to speak).
Hope that makes sense. My wife tells me I tend to ramble!