An old gem of a book

Where were all these dissenting voices when I was being taught about the inerrancy of scripture? I guess they didn't get approved for the lists of recommended reading. I recently picked up Paul Seely's old gem of a book:

"When Norman Geisler admitted that 'the Scriptures do not clearly and formally teach their own inerrancy,' he was paralleling the confession of Ludwig Ott that the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary...'is not explicitly revealed in Scripture.' Yet it is evident that the absence of these doctrines from Scripture in no way inhibits the respective religious groups from believing in them. Rather the socio-ideological milieu of the religious group and its past religious conditioning guarantee that these doctrines will be received as necessary to true faith; and, any rationalizations developed to defend them will be received as ceratinly valid. Yet because these rationalizations are intrinsically invalid they are only convincing to those conditioned by the past and pressured by the present to believe in them. Thus rationalizations on behalf of Roman Catholic doctrines which leave conservative Evanglicals cold seem quite convincing when adduced mutatis mutandis on behalf of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The difference is not in the reasoning, but in the tradition and socio-ideological structure which they support." (P. Seely, Inerrant Wisdom, 168-169)

The real slippery slope

The time could not be better for James Dunn to decide to publish a second edition of his The Living Word. Whoever did not get around to reading the first edition should make sure they get their hands on a copy of this updated work!

"...[T]hose who want to hear the word of God in and through scripture need to think long and hard about how they hear that word, before attitudes become hardened and decisions become irrevocable which do lasting damage to the church as the body of Christ, to the gospel as good news of liberation, and to a common concern for the truth of God. The crisis over scriptural authority within Christianity is a particular case of a more widespread malaise afflicting both religions and, because religions often affect poltics, also national and international politics. I refer to the fact of fundamentalism and to the often baleful effects fundamentalist views and fundamentalist-inspired policies have been having since the turn of the millenium...[A] primary feeder of fundamentalism is the lust of certainty and security. It is the certainty that God has spoken in particular words and formulations which are clear-cut and fixed for all time, which alone gives the fundamentalist the security (s)he craves for...

The ecumenical and political tragedy is that the craving for such certainty becomes itself a slippery slope which can quickly lead to disaster. The fundamentalist knows the truth in clear-cut terms. He or she sees issues in black-and-white terms...there is no room for disagreement or compromise. For the fundamentalist, I cannot be right unless you who disagree with me are wrong; those who compromise are blind and traitors...from a fundamentalist perspective, those who disagree with the fundamentalist position on any subject disagree with God. They are enemies of God. They are not simply wrong; they are evil. And if evil, opposed to God, then they are demonically motivated and should be opposed with the ruthlessness with which good must oppose evil. They can be treated with inhumanity because they have set themselves against God's truth for humankind. We don't have to go down that slippery slope before we come to the burning of heretics, the hanging of witches, and (who thought it possible in the twenty-first century) Guantanamo." (J. Dunn, The Living Word, vii-viii)

Is your conservative evangelical or Reformed school coming to mind?

Inerrancy is brought to the Bible

"One is faced, in the end, with the question about the theological usefulness, as well as the validity, of the conservative doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture in its original autogrpahs. It is clear enough that such inerrancy is not a central, or even peripheral, concern of Scripture itself. No definition of the inerrancy of autographs is offered in the Bible, nor does any author deal with it in terms of his own work, or even hint at it. It is easier to find hints of fallibility on the part of biblical authors (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:14-16) than any indication that what they wrote is without the slightest error in the kind of detail that worries adherents of the theory of inerrancy. The idea of the inerrancy of scriptural autographs is therefore brought to Scripture, it is not derived from it, in itself a telling comment on the way this conservative doctrine has developed." (Paul J. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, 61)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend / Beale replaces Enns at WTS

So Enns is no longer at WTS but that does not seem enough to contain the damage that he did while there, at least according to the powers that be. There is also the matter of sending a powerful political message to anyone concerned for WTS's commitment to narrow, Reformed orthodoxy. The message is that WTS is so committed to narrow, Reformed orthodoxy and so against anything that Enns says in Inspiration and Incarnation that they have arranged to have Gregory Beale---who recently compiled his published objections against Enns into a book, The Errosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism---teach one of Enns' former classes. Beale will not be teaching OT Wisdom, a class on Exodus, or Old Testament Introduction, areas of specialization for Enns. Rather, in fall of 2009 he's scheduled to teach Enns' New Testament Use of the Old course, another of Enns' acadmic pursuits and a class he co-taught with NT professor Dan McCartney---who coincidentally is leaving WTS-Philadelphia after teaching there 25 years.

Lest anyone be worried that WTS has suffered a loss with respect to academic and scholarly standing by ousting Enns (Enns earned his PhD at Harvard University, was seen as an OT scholar who was obviously and fruitfully in contact with non-evangelical academia, and was also asked [and accepted the invitation--at least from what I remember] to teach a course at Princeton Seminary while at WTS), the write up on Beale emphasizes:

"Professor Beale is a respected evangelical leader and renowned scholar. He has published both for the evangelical constituency, with monographs for Baker, Crossway, InterVarsity Press, and Eerdmans, and for the mainstream academy, with a monograph for Sheffield Academic Press...Indeed, Dr. Beale is a scholar with a heart for the church and the desire and the ability to interact outside of the normal boundaries of broad evangelical discourse and publishing." (See http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/view.html?id=395)

So there you have it: strict, narrow, Reformed orthodoxy and scholarly, academic respectability. Who could ask for anything more? I think the move is brilliant. Students who may have taken this class with Enns can take it again with Beale to have what he taught them corrected. Students who may not have taken the class with Enns but have nonetheless been exposed to I&I's "heresy" can take the class with Beale and undo any damage. Yet it seems to me that the most significant fallout of assigning Beale Enns' NT use of OT class is an undeniably clear public statement to the effect that the cancerous effects of the Inspiration and Incarnation era at WTS has not only come to a definitive end but has been furthermore put into absolute and permanent remission via this symbolic replacement of Enns with his congregationalist public disputant. Now people who may have had some reservations about WTS's claim to orthodoxy can feel a little better about giving them money again.

The only way the OT could be so cultural is that the devil gave the ANE a head start

"But how are we then to understand the similar claims of divine guidance made by Thutmose III [to King David in 1Chron 28]? It would be most bizarre if an Egyptian who predated David by centuries made an almost identical claim to divine guidance for making temple furnishings for his god and made that claim by coincidence. Or, to put it another way, the true God just happened to do to David what Thutmose claimed his god did for him a few centuries earlier. The parallels we have explored in this book are of this sort. We have concluded that they cannot be explained as cases of biblical dependence on ancient Near Eastern theology. We also conclude that they cannot be explained as coincidences, if only because the accumulation of such coincidences sooner or later strains credibility. Our belief need not be strained, however, because the Bible itself gives us the reason for such parallels...Demonic inspiration of false religion (which produces the sort of parallels we have considered, including the major paradigm in its pagan articulations) is one of the things that the Bible teaches quite clearly in the passages noted." (J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology, 179.)

I am sorry to say this but my belief is strained.

A word to the wise from Sparks' book

Unfortunately, I haven't time for composing posts, but I have come across a number of excerpts that are relevant to the themes of this blog. So I will periodically post them for those who might be interested. Kent Sparks' book is beginning to make its rounds so I'll start there:

"More specifically, when it comes to biblical exegesis and theology, informed pastors and teachers will wisely avoid numerous errors. They should certainly avoid any rhetoric that hitches the Christian faith to a fundamentalistic notion of biblical inerrancy. It will be enough to teach that God does not err in Scripture and to show, by how we work, live, and do our theology, that we take the Bible seriously as the authroitative Word of God. But to insist on an inerrant Bible in a naive sense, which denies the full humanity of Scripture, will only paint the evangelical church and Christian scholarship into a corner..." K. Sparks, God's Word in Human Words, 362.