Trapped in the matrix

TRUTH UNITES... AND DIVIDES SAID:

“Do you think the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy creates false expectations?”

No. The Chicago Statement presents a nuanced statement of inerrancy which is designed to forestall wooden objections to the inerrancy of Scripture.

“I just read this morning this review by Professor James McGrath regarding Professor G.K. Beale's book on inerrancy. Would you say that McGrath is on the brink of apostasy, if not actually over the brink already?”

To judge by his favorite authors (e.g. Ward, Bultmann, J. A. T. Robinson), and his position on the empty tomb, I’d say he’s a standard issue liberal. Whether he’s an apostate, I can’t say, since I don’t know if he ever made a credible profession of faith. Clearly, though, his present position falls far below a credible profession of faith.

While we’re on the subject, let’s venture a few comments on his review:

“But surely, unless one wishes to posit a conspiracy to mislead and the gullibility of the students, then the study of the Bible at whatever institution ought not to have the results Beale suggests.”

i) There’s no such thing as a value-free study of the Bible. If, for example, you study the Bible with methodological naturalism as your axiom, then, by definition, you’ll end up rejecting all of the supernatural agents and supernatural events in Scripture.

ii) In addition, many students are very sensitive to peer pressure. They conform to make the grade–literally! That’s unfortunate, but predictable.

“In the chapter on the question of whether the book of Isaiah could have had multiple authors, Beale purports to be defending the Bible, but he is of course defending his doctrine of Scripture, and at times it becomes clear that he is determined to defend his doctrine of Scripture even from Scripture itself. Rather than allow the contents of this influential and powerful prophetic book to determine his conclusion, he is determined to force it into a straightjacket determined by his presuppositions about the Bible in general, and about the meaning of the New Testament when it refers to ‘Isaiah’ in particular.”

To the contrary, it’s a fundamental feature of Isaiah’s argument in chaps 40-48 that the true God, unlike the idolatrous gods of paganism, can foresee the future. If you treat the narrative viewpoint of Isaiah 40 and beyond as a vaticinium ex eventu, then you’re reading the text against the grain of the text.

“Beale regularly waves reference to ‘phenomenological language’ as though it were a magic wand that can make outmoded cosmological language cease to be a problem.”

That’s a caricature of Beale’s argument. Beale’s argument is not merely that Scripture uses phenomenological descriptions of the world, but–in addition–that some of the descriptions are–in some measure–symbolic. The use of architectural metaphors to foreshadow the tabernacle.

A symbolic depiction is not the same thing as a phenomenological depiction.

“But ultimately, the reason Beale draws the conclusions that he does is a lack of familiarity with ancient cosmologies. His discussion of whether the planets could have been embedded each in a separate dome, to account for their distinct movements, ends with the statement that ‘Such a view of multiple domes, however, cannot be found to have existed in the ancient world!’ (p.199). Perhaps not domes, but certainly complete spheres, made of ‘quintessence’, in which the planets and the sun and moon were embedded. Far from being unprecedented in the ancient world, this is the very ancient viewpoint, the Ptolemaic cosmology, that came to dominate much of Europe and Asia, and persisted until the time of Galileo. Since it takes very little research to become aware of this, I can only assume that Beale's interest is not in doing justice to questions of ancient and modern cosmologies and the Biblical context, but of defending his view of Scripture at all costs.”

It would be grossly anachronistic to construe the OT in light of Greek astronomy. That represents a fusion of naked-eye astronomy with Greek mathematics. To my knowledge, that’s quite alien to the concerns of OT writers. And it represents a historical development which you can’t very well retroject into the timeline the OT canon–unless he credits Isaiah with a prescient knowledge of Hellenistic astronomy.

“And yet, ironically, Beale is ultimately no friend of inerrancy. For in allowing that the Bible speaks about things as they appear, and not necessarily as they are, Beale has opened all the cans of worms he surely hoped to keep sealed up. If matters of cosmology can be described phenomenologically, then so can matters pertaining to our salvation.”

That’s completely equivocal.

i) To begin with, a phenomenological description is still a literal description. The phenomenon is not illusory. It simply takes into account the spatial perspective of the viewer–like the difference between aerial photography and ground-level photography.

ii) In addition, the distinction between appearance and reality has reference, in this case, to differences in sensory perception–depending on the position of the observer in relation to the sensible object. The fact, for example, that mountains look smaller at a distance.

That has absolutely nothing to do with matters pertaining to our salvation. For example, it’s not as though the Resurrection is dependent on the position of the observer–whether he saw the Risen Lord two feet away or ten feet away, saw him at eye-level or saw him while standing on a hill, looking down.

For someone who feigns intellectual superiority, McGrath’s little review is littered with basic conceptual blunders.

“Thanks for the comment, John! As you've already gathered, I think that the Chicago Declaration in particular defines inerrancy in a way that differs from what most laypeople would naturally assume the word ‘inerrancy’ to mean (the ‘death of a thousand qualifications’ I alluded to).”

That’s irrelevant to the grammatico-historical method. The only relevant question is how Bible writers would define inerrancy. What qualifications would they take for granted? That’s the real question.