In the age of YouTube, you never know who’s listening in. You may be speaking to the audience in front of you, you may be speaking to a small group, but there’s an unseen audience behind the camera. Many eyes and ears outside the auditorium are overhearing your every word.
There’s a little YouTube clip of Tremper Longman which is making the rounds of the Internet. For now I’ll comment on a few things which Jeremy Pierce has said in response to some of Longman’s critics:
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2009/09/longman-gen1.html
Longman has denies neither plenary inspiration of scripture nor inerrancy. What he has done is deny a view that many people here take to be implied by (a) inerrancy or the plenary inspiration of scripture together with (b) a certain view of what Genesis 1 and/or other texts of scripture, when interpreted correctly, actually teach.
If Longman is incorrect about the matters (b) describes, then his view is compatible with inerrancy but incompatible with the correct interpretation of scripture.
It’s true that there are various situations in which you can distinguish between a true statement and a true (or false) interpretation of a true statement. But as a general proposition, that distinction is far too facile.
Take Jim and Tim Baker. Jim and Tim are identical twins. Jim is a militant atheist while his brother Tim is a “conservative evangelical.”
Jim thinks the story of Abraham is false. God never called Abraham out of Ur. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of Abraham is metaphorical. God never called Abraham out of Ur. Rather, it’s a metaphor for the cost of discipleship. The story is true at a parabolic level. It’s not a question of whether the Bible is true or false, but whether our interpretations are true or false.
Jim thinks the story of the Exodus is false. That never happened. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of the Exodus is metaphorical. It never happened, in the “overly literalistic” sense of the word. But it symbolizes our deliverance from sin.
Jim thinks the story of the manna in the wilderness is false. God never fed manna to the Israelites. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of the manna is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the story of the miracle at Cana is false while Tim thinks the same story is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness is false while Tim thinks the same story is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the feeding of the five thousand is false while Tim thinks the same account is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the Crucifixion is false while Tim thinks the Crucifixion is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the Resurrection is false while Tim thinks the Resurrection is metaphorical.
Every reported event which Jim says never happened, Tim says never happened. Every Biblical figure which Jim says never existed, Tim says never existed.
Ah, but there’s a world of difference, right? For Jim, that’s a factual question, but for his brother, that’s a hermeneutical question.
In principle, you could maintain this theoretical distinction every step of the way, but by the same token, what’s the practical difference? What Tim the “conservative evangelical” believes has exactly the same exchange rate as what Jim the militant atheist believes. The two positions are functionally indistinguishable. The "believer" becomes the mirror-image of the unbeliever.
I get the sense from his language that he's more interested in recognizing that people can accept inerrancy and accept the conclusion of the consensus of science than he is at arguing that we ought to take any particular view of how to interpret Genesis 1.
i) That strikes me as incoherent. If we assume that a scientific theory like macroevolution is true, and if the question at issue is how a Bible story relates to scientific truth, then it’s not just a hermeneutical question, but a factual question. Is the Bible true–taking the scientific theory as the frame of reference? So that’s not just a question of how you interpret the story. That also goes to the truth or falsity of the story.
If the evolutionary theory of human origins is true, then can the Biblical account of human origins also be true in the same sense?
So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments.
ii) In addition, what about the hermeneutical question? Suppose Longman doesn’t believe that Gen 2-3 is literally true because he thinks that’s unscientific. So his objection to the literal truth of Gen 2-3 is a scientific objection.
However, Longman is an OT scholar who employs the grammatico-historical method. Even if modern science is an impediment to his own belief in the literal truth of Gen 2-3, that was no impediment to the author of Genesis or his target audience.
So shouldn’t he start by asking what it would be to them, rather than what it could mean to him? Isn’t the grammatico-historical method like a time-machine in which we try to leave our cultural filters behind us (as best we can) and reenter the mental world of the author or his target audience? Ask ourselves how they would have viewed the story?
If we do compartmentalize the factual question from the hermeneutical question, then we can’t allow the factual question (as defined by modern science) to infect the answer to the hermeneutical question.
So it seems to me that Pierce is oscillating between to contradictory approaches. Do we treat these as distinct domains, or does one inform the other?
There are ways to fit the non-individual approach to Adam to the other texts people are citing. It does mean a somewhat unnatural reading of a few statements (such as Paul's comparison of the one man Adam and the one man Jesus), but it's possible to take those statements as true while not referring to an actual one man Adam but to the one man Adam in the Genesis account. I don't think this is the most natural way to take either the Genesis narratives or Paul's statement, but it's possible to take the Genesis narratives as true in the sense parables are true and Paul's statement as true in the same sense that it's true that the Good Samaritan helped the man that other passersby ignored. It's true that the Good Samaritan did this. It's just truth within a story. The character in Jesus' parable did that. It's just that he was telling a parable and not implying the existence of a real person who did what the Good Samaritan did.
i) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are logically consistent ways to “fit the non-individual approach to Adam” to other Biblical texts.
Once again, though, if we’re going to cast the issue in hermeneutical terms, then what is logically consistent is hardly a sufficient hermeneutical condition.
A ufological interpretation of Ezk 1 might be logically consistent. But is that what the prophet thought he say? Is that what he meant to convey to his audience?
When we interpret Rom 5 or 1 Cor 15, is Pauline intent irrelevant to the correct interpretation? Is it sufficient to construe the text in a way that makes all the moving parts fit? Or do we need to take into consideration what Paul thought he was teaching?
ii) Apropos (i), for Paul, Gen 1-3 isn’t just true “within the story.” Rather, he thinks that he and his readers are part of the same story. We, too, are “characters” within the same continuous, unfolding narrative. The story has a real world referent.
Someone could take Genesis' early chapters in a similar way, teaching about how we are all fallen and how we all do what Adam and Eve did, thus in NT terms taking there to be an explanation of why there's a need for a savior, without believing there was a real individual person whom the Bible calls Adam and a real individual person whom the Bible calls Eve.
The problem with that explanation is that Genesis and other Biblical passages aren’t merely citing the case of Adam and Eve to illustrate an abstract truth, the way a fictitious character can illustrate an abstract truth. They are more than illustrations. What Adam and Eve are said to have done is treated as a precondition of subsequent events.
If the Good Samaritan did not exist, the truth which his character illustrates would still be true. But if Adam and Eve did not exist, then the effect of their actions would not occur.
Adam and Eve do more than illustrate an abstract truth: they function as truthmakers.
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Well, that's a pretty unfair and uncharitable reconstruction of what I'm doing, but I'll respond anyway in the interest of truth.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said over and over again in the comment thread on my post, I'm not here justifying the view that Longman is making room for. I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying we should adopt such a view. I've indicated that I think there are good reasons from other parts of scripture to avoid such a view. All I'm doing is saying that inerrancy is a view about a very narrow matter, and this approach isn't at odds with inerrancy itself. Your argument doesn't touch that point. All it does is show that we should be more concerned with other issues than just inerrancy.
OK, so what? There are more important issues than the one narrow doctrine that people were wrongly saying Longman has abandoned. Does that mean we should give in to the falsehood that he's abandoned that particular view rather than whatever other view he might genuinely have abandoned? Challenge him where you think he's gone wrong, but don't misrepresent his view, and don't say he's abandoned something he hasn't really abandoned. It's much better to recognize a term that we've been using too broadly is insufficient to justify what we want it to do than it is to continue to use it too broadly while misrepresenting people.
As for this oscillation, I'm not seeing it. I have no idea what two things I'm oscillating between, and I read through your description of that several times. I see two approaches that you discuss, and you favor one more than the one you say I favor, but how am I oscillating between them? When am I using the one I don't favor? I don't get it.
Excellent analysis, one which I agree with in almost all ways. Of course I would draw different conclusions.
ReplyDeleteA few questions. In what way can Adam and Eve "act" in the sense that the Good Samaritan can act within a story, unless they also are acting within a story?
Secondly, if Adam and Eve are said to function as "truthmakers", how do they do this? Is there something other than textual evidence that allows this? If there is nothing other than textual evidence, how can one story of Adam and Eve be given priority over any other story of origins ... for example this one?
Evan, if the word 'truthmaker' is being used here the way I understand it (as a philosopher, since it is in fact a technical term in metaphysics), then the way that Adam and Even function as truthmakers is the same way any existent thing functions as a truthmaker for the sentence about it. I function as a truthmaker for the sentence "Jeremy is writing a comment". The thing that makes the sentence true is me (and my current action). Truthmakers are just ordinary objects.
ReplyDeleteWhere truthmakers get interesting is when something is true by some other means. The sentence "no ducks are mammals" is not true because of some ducks that are mammals that aren't existent. It's true because there isn't anything that is both a duck and a mammal. The truthmaker there might be all of reality (since of all reality none of it has both traits) or maybe just all the mammals (since all of them are non-ducks).
So what makes it true that Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi? It's not the actual Obi-Wan, since he's fictional. It's the fiction itself. Then what about the Good Samaritan? It's the parable itself that makes statements about the Samaritan true, and it's morality itself that makes its lessons true (if it's a parable with true moral lessons, anyway; someone could tell a parable to illustrate a false moral lesson).
So I think the idea is that Adam is the truthmaker for the truth of statements in the narrative about him, and that can't be unless there was an actual Adam. That's no argument, just a claim (actually, it was the conclusion of the argument that the entire post was making). But I think that's what that statement was supposed to mean. I'm not sure what it means to ask how they do it. They do it by existing and by there being sentences spoken about them.
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One thing I should add: Think about the exchange rate of thinking the fall was a whole generation vs. thinking it's two people (yes, two, not one -- so Paul's analogy already isn't exact).
ReplyDeleteThe exchange rate between Tim and Jim is pretty much 1:1. Is the exchange rate between a historical Adamist and a non-historical Adamist going to be 1:1? Probably not. But is it going to be drastically different? I'm not convinced that it is. Are there any key doctrines that you have to reject in terms of the things the Fuller view says about faith and practice, for instance? I can't think of any. Those aren't the entirety of what we should care about in a doctrine of scripture, but if it turns out how one lives one's faith isn't much different, compared to the very different impact you might have between a traditionalist about divine foreknowledge and an open theist who can never have 100% confidence that God is in control in every detail, then this issue shouldn't be as much of a priority as open theism should be among those defending traditional views.
Your argument, Jeremy, as I see it cashing out, is that one can have a hermeneutic (which denies the historicity of Adam or which denies the historicity of Jonah or which denies the Exodus or which denies the Incarnation, etc....) that's faulty, but yet they can still fully and legitimately claim to be (CSBI) inerrantists.
Yes, that sounds right. Another issue would be the late date of Daniel that precludes its prophecies from being genuine. John Goldingay holds such a view, and Ernest Lucas is open to such a view I don't consider that view tolerable in the least for an evangelical, but those who hold it can accept no errors in the book given how it was intended to be taken if they assume the book was never meant as a historical account of real people but a literary work affirming God's sovereignty. God only predicts it in the story but (in this case) not ahead of time. Within the story, God predicts, and that illustrates what God is like. An inerrantist can say this. The problem with it isn't a denial of inerrancy. It's a terrible view of the kind of scripture Daniel is, in my view, but it's not a denial of inerrancy.
This just shows that inerrancy isn't the only thing we should care about if these other issues are important elements of our doctrine of scripture. But I would have expected that. Inerrancy is a very narrow view in some ways, and it's so basic that those who genuinely deny it are going a lot further than Longman's trying to allow room for. So this recognition actually heightens the importance of inerrancy in one respect, because it clarifies how limited and basic a view it is and how radical someone is for rejecting it.
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If the writer of Genesis didn't intend to convey the idea that Adam was a real historical person, I don't know about the original audience but he sure has had me fooled.
ReplyDeleteJEREMY PIERCE SAID:
ReplyDelete"The exchange rate between Tim and Jim is pretty much 1:1. Is the exchange rate between a historical Adamist and a non-historical Adamist going to be 1:1? Probably not. But is it going to be drastically different? I'm not convinced that it is. Are there any key doctrines that you have to reject in terms of the things the Fuller view says about faith and practice, for instance? I can't think of any. Those aren't the entirety of what we should care about in a doctrine of scripture, but if it turns out how one lives one's faith isn't much different..."
i) That misses the point. I'm simply working out your inerrancy/interpretation distinction at a more systematic level. It's possible for two people to deny all the same things (deny the same stories ever happened, the same figures ever existed), but one says that's just a matter of biblical interpretation whereas the other says that's a matter of biblical errancy. Where, if at all, do you draw the line?
ii) And by the same token, surely it goes without saying that many moderates and liberals, for tactical reasons, say this or that issue is just a matter of how we "interpret" the Bible, in place of an outright denial. It sounds better to put it that way.
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It just seems utterly obvious to me that the following two issues are about different things:
ReplyDelete1. Whether a text says something false.
2. Whether a text should be interpreted in such a way that it's affirming the existence of the things it speaks of.
Inerrantists have long assumed this exact distinction. It's the only way to respond to the ridiculous charge that Jesus spoke falsely when he told parables or that the Bible has errors because it reports people telling lies, which of course are not true.
It just seems to me that inerrantists who want to take this distinction seriously have to realize that people can apply it in other places, places where inerrantists have not wanted to apply it. Once they do that, and most inerrantists want to resist, it should become clear based on this distinction that the fundamental issue is not inerrancy but something else. It's a view about which portions of scripture should be taken in which ways, i.e. a view about hermeneutics. This dogged resistance to noticing that seems pretty dumb to me, actually.
Certainly the moron who wants to wink and claim the title of inerrantist while denying the historicity of the entire Bible is doing something underhanded, but it's underhanded mainly because inerrantists have taken inerrancy to be a broader view than the term really justifies. If we're concerned about historicity, we should emphasize historicity issues rather than narrow inerrancy. Longman and Kitchen's books on such matters do that, and I think it's much clearer. Are the gospels and the OT narratives historically accurate in what they report? That's a much clearer and more precise question than whether there are any errors.
The issue we're concerned with here is the historicity of Adam, not whether the text has errors in it. Whether it has errors depends on whether the author erred, which depends on what the author's intent was. Those who disagree on authorial intent then will have different views while not accepting errors in the text. I'm not sure how more utterly obvious it could be. Their disagreement is over whether Adam was a genuine historical figure, not over whether the author of Genesis made a mistake or got something wrong in his own narrative purposes.
As for where the line lies, I thought that was clear. If someone affirms errors, then it's a denial of inerrancy. The Fuller view does this. It says there might be historical inaccuracies where God didn't care to get the details right, but the divine purpose behind the narrative in terms of faith and practice came through anyway. A Fuller view won't allow holding that the Bible teaches complementarianism while affirming egalitarianism yourself (despite a prominent Fuller professor holding exactly that view), because that means there's an error in faith and practice. But it will allow holding that God didn't care to get the historical details right in a genuinely historical narrative. But those who insist that historical narratives get all the details right while denying that a certain text is historical at all is not denying inerrancy of the text but something else.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly true that someone can hold a small part of a general doctrine while denying the rest, and you've shown exactly how someone can hold inerrancy while being as far as possible doctrinally from most inerrantists. But this is true in lots of ways. Someone can hold to total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints while being a universalist. The only element of Calvinism they have to deny is limited atonement, and then it's possible for God to save everyone while maintaining the traditional views a Calvinist holds. But universalism is pretty far from standard Calvinism. That doesn't mean they're denying the TUIP of TULIP. It's L that they're denying. If you called such a person a Calvinist universalist, it would be informative (as a contrast with libertarian versions of universalism).
As for the claim that I'm endorsing a subjective view of interpretation, nothing I've said remotely approaches that. I'm assuming you mean by that that I think anything goes in hermeneutics. I've insisted all along that some hermeneutical stances are wrong, and we ought to resist them. Some of them are more wrong than others. I don't think Jonah is a parable, but if it turned out to be I don't think it destroys my view of scripture. My own criticism of Longman's take on Ecclesiastes is that I think his view eviscerates the book of its core teaching and attributes it to a secular pagan, much as the standard interpretation of Job does for Job's friends. I think that's a very bad way to take Ecclesiastes, whose teaching is complementary to the rest of the Bible rather than at odds with it as Longman thinks. But I don't think a view like his on Ecclesiastes or a view that denies Adam's historicity is anywhere near as disastrous as people are making it sound here. There are ways to arrive at pretty sound theology while taking those views. They involve unnecessary hoops to jump through that seem implausible, and in some cases you might lose the breadth of the full counsel of God, but it's not like the view that Jesus never existed or never rose and that the spiritual claim of the gospel is somehow still true anyway or the view that God doesn't know the future free choices of human beings, which there are ways to fit to an inerrant text if certain terms have vastly different meanings from our ordinary interpretation of them.
ReplyDeleteMy defense of Longman isn't that his views on these things are correct or that this is a perfectly kosher view to have. It's that (1) this isn't strictly a denial of inerrancy but actually a denial of hermeneutical assumptions, some of which may be true and important and (2) it isn't necessarily as disastrous to Christian theology and doctrine to take such a position, depending on the details of how it's worked out. I'm convinced that Longman's theology proper is orthodox, and I think it's disastrous to the body of Christ to pretend otherwise. There are plenty of things he stops short of saying that I'd worry a lot more about if he did say.
But to get back to the objective inerrancy issue, I would insist that the term itself shows that there are two issues. One is whether the text is inerrant, and the other is what the objective meaning of the text actually says. We ought to care about both. Separating the two on a theoretical level doesn't mean we can't recognize when someone has gone wrong on either one, and what you've shown is that someone can go wrong on either one while ending up with a view very similar to someone who has gone wrong on the other. But the difference between those views is real, even if it doesn't have many practical differences.
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Both the post from a few years ago and my recent post were in response to charges that I'd heard people making against Longman. In the first case I wasn't sure why anyone thought he was not an inerrantist, and I had to supply the possible context of such charges and then give a response. In the second, some outright charges in the comments on Justin Taylor's post claimed that he was denying inerrancy, which I don't think he was doing. So no, I was not the one who introduced the issue. Tim Bayly first introduced the claim that Longman denies the plenary inspiration of scripture and inerrancy, and I think he does no such thing. I note that almost in the same breath he insinuates that Gordon Fee does the same thing by being an egalitarian, which almost makes my point for me. It's crazy to claim that Fee denies plenary inspiration, even if his view on gender roles is wrong (as I think it is). So I thought it was worth being more precise and accurate, so I responded. That doesn't make me the one who raised the issue.
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You shouldn't need to check with Tim. He left a public comment saying exactly that. Unless you're worried that maybe someone was impersonating him, I think it's pretty clear.
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As I understand Jeremy's argument, Truth Unites, he affirms that there are many ways one can go wrong with respect to one's view of the Bible.
ReplyDeleteDenying inerrancy is sufficient, but not necessary, for having gone wrong with respect to one's view of the Bible.
It isn't necessary, because there are (obviously) other ways to go wrong: for instance, one may affirm inerrancy while subscribing to an interpretation of (a part of) Scripture that is false, inaccurate, baseless, inconsistent, ad hoc, or in some of many other ways deficient. Thus, the person who claims that the Bible teaches that the earth has four corners has gone wrong in some way, but not (necessarily) with respect to inerrancy.
So why would you expect that a proper view of inerrancy would be sufficient to "refute the moron" in every case, given that one can be "moronic" with respect to one's view of Scripture in many different ways (including many that do not have to do with inerrancy)? The way to refute the "underhanded moron" you're worried about is not by showing that he has violated the requirements of inerrancy, but by showing that he has violated one of the many other necessary conditions for having a proper view of Scripture, e.g. a plausible hermeneutic.
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Forgive me if I've misunderstood your view. You said:
ReplyDelete"*Your* argument (the "airtight" bifurcation between inerrancy and interpretation and never the twain shall meet) cannot refute the moron who [denies the historicity of the entire Bible and yet] claims he's an inerrantist.
If your argument cannot refute the moron, well, um, doesn't that make your argument ... worse than a moron?"
I took your position to be as follows. In your view, the "moron" under consideration needs to be refuted - to be shown that he is wrong. But Jeremy, on his view of inerrancy, cannot show that the moron is wrong, because he cannot show that the moron violates the conditions of inerrancy.
I thought that this last inference - that if Jeremy's view of inerrancy cannot show the moron to be wrong, then the moron cannot be shown to be wrong (by Jeremy) - was obviously false. Hence my response: Jeremy seems to agree that the moron in this case cannot be shown to violate inerrancy, but one can still "refute him" quite easily - one can show that his interpretation of Scripture is woefully inadequate.
But perhaps your comment above was intended differently. Perhaps you meant to suggest that it ought to be possible to show that the moron who denies the historicity of the entire Bible has violated inerrancy, and that any account of inerrancy that cannot refute this moron by showing that he violates inerrancy is a deficient account.
Is that closer to what you meant? If so, then it strikes me as fairly straightforwardly begging the question against Jeremy's view - or at least, you'd need to give some reason for thinking that this kind of moron's mistake entails a denial of inerrancy instead of (or in addition to) some other error.
If I've misunderstood you, please clarify what "refuting the moron" amounts to: does it mean "showing him to be wrong with respect to his view of Scripture," or something more specific like "showing him to be an inerrancy-denier"?
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I got distracted by other things, but I wanted to record my thoughts on the conversation as it developed since my last visit, even if it's now several weeks dead. I want to say that Brian has me exactly right, and I agree with everything he's said in defense of my comments.
ReplyDeleteMy response to Justin's question is that he's slipping between two things. A de dicto statement is made about the actual sentence being said. A de re statement is about the thing the sentence is talking about.
When you say that someone holds to inerrancy about a particular passage, you might mean it de dicto or de re. You might mean that they hold to the view that inerrancy holds of that passage (de dicto: they affirm the view), or you might mean that the person holds that the particular and correct meaning of the passage (de re) is inerrant.
I'm an amillenialist. So if I'm wrong about Rev 20, and it turns out that the correct meaning of Rev 20 is premillenialist, the way to take Justin's conclusion is that I don't hold to inerrancy about Rev 20. That's true if you mean it de re. It's false if you mean it de dicto. I affirm inerrancy, but I've got the wrong interpretation of that passage given that premillenialism is what it actually teaches and that I'm an amillenialist.
ReplyDeleteBut it would be crazy to deny that I'm an inerrantist for that sort of reason. It's de dicto belief in inerrancy, i.e. belief that the Bible is inerrant, that matters for whether someone is an inerrantist. There are people who deny the actual inerrant teaching of the Bible (but don't realize they are doing so) who are still inerrantists. In fact, it's probably true of all of us. The fact that someone does it with a more central doctrine doesn't change whether they're an inerrantist. It just means they deny a more central doctrine, and if we want to resist their view we should do so on that ground and not by pretending that their problem is a denial of inerrancy, a view they actually affirm.
So Justin's argument is fallacious because it equivocates on the de dicto/de re distinction when saying someone denies the inerrant teaching of scripture. It takes someone to be denying inerrancy when the person is merely denying what happens to be the inerrant teaching of scripture in the de re sense.
I think it's definitely important as a test for orthodoxy to include certain views in a statement of faith that someone could deny because of a bad interpretation even while maintaining inerrancy. I don't think the ETS was right to make the issue about inerrancy for Gundry. They could have said he was denying the plain teaching of scripture. Maybe they could have said he was saying something that implies the denial of inerrancy. But they were wrong to say that he himself denies the inerrantist statement itself. That's not where his problem lies. His view seems to me to involve a pretty ridiculous view of the way that the Gospel of Matthew is true, but it doesn't involve the view that it's not true.
As for the claim that I can't muster the intellectual strength to boot the moron out, that's patently false. I've been saying all along that we need to care about more issues than inerrancy. All that you can say is that my statements about inerrancy itself can't boot the moron out, but I've already been saying that. So that's no criticism of me. You'd have to find no way to object to such a view besides saying that it violates inerrancy. But since the best way to critique it is to explain why it's hermeneutically impossible and a pretty clear denial of the vast majority of biblical interpretation, it's pretty easy to show how radical and revisionist such a view is without trying to claim that it's a denial of inerrancy.
If the historicity of certain gospel events is important for being counted as an evangelical, then make that a plank of the statement of faith or include a plank that implies it. I don't think the ETS statement does, so I think they should have revised it in order to explain why Gundry violates it. That's how the church all along has done things. The creeds are a long process of adding statements to exclude innovative ways of revisionist thinking that technically fit previous definitions of orthodoxy. This seems to me to be another example of exactly that.
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Actually, from what I've been able to tell they realized they had to supplement the statement of faith with some other documents to clarify their standards of membership. There are some indications of that in this story. I think they were right to do that. While Gundry doesn't deny inerrancy, he certainly doesn't maintain an evangelically-orthodox view on historicity.
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Actually, I'm a staunch TULIP Calvinist, but I don't think the different doctrines imply each other. I explain exactly how in TULIP: Do the five points stand or fall together?
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that there are all sorts of ways of holding an orthodox doctrine together with an unorthodox doctrine.
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I should say that I think Steve is right, at least up to a point, in the following way. Gundry says he holds to inerrancy, as if that's enough for him to maintain his evangelicalcredentials. I think his claim is true that he holds to inerrancy. The problem with his approach is that he thinks he's being faithful to the evangelicaltradition by maintaininginerrancy but by rejecting the historicityof Matthew. I don't think a view as radical as his counts as within the mainstream of evangelicalism, at least. He's playing games. In that, I agree with Steve. But I don't think that makes the distinctionitself facile. The distinctionitself is just a way of trying to be precise about which propositions we're considering. People don't often do that, and I think Geisler's way of trying to reinstate the charge against Gundry is guilty of imprecision. Making proper distinctions is part of our divinely-instituted responsibility of safeguarding the truth of the teaching handed down to us, so it's important to criticize wrong teaching for what's really wrong with it and not for some other issue that is nonethelessalso important. That's one reason I went into philosophy.It provides the tools for precision of analysis.
ReplyDeleteMost evangelicals can see that Gundry's view is wrong and that his claim to hold to inerrancy as a way to maintain his evangelicalcredentialsis trickery. Where I think a lot of people go wrong is in seeing that trickery in his claim to hold to inerrancy, where I'm saying the trickery is in his claim that his mere inerrancy is enough to count as holding to evangelicalviews on the nature of scripture. Evangelicalviews on the nature of scripture go beyond mere inerrancy and also involve the claim that the gospels are historically-reliable accounts of what Jesus actually did.
I'm not sure what "inform one another" means, actually, so I don't know how to answer that question. If the question is whether mere inerrancy guarantees certain views on the historicityof certain books or passages, I think the answer is already obvious. I don't think that's true.
ReplyDeleteI do think views on historicityinform whether inerrancy is true. If all of Matthew is historically accurate, then the historical statements are without error. Inerrancy also requires theologicalaccuracy, and so on, but the truth of historical statements is part of inerrancy.
If the claim is epistemological, then they might well inform each other. If you're more sure of inerrancy, then concluding that some historical event didn't happen might lead to reinterpretthe genre of a book. If you're more sure of the genre of the book, you might give up or affirm inerrancy depending on how you judge the historical event from history or science, say. If you have the more moderated view that I recommend on at least some issues, then you might conclude that the best exegesis and the best science or history conflict with each other but be open to some less likely exegesis being true or some less likely scientific or historical conclusion being true, without necessarilytaking a stance on which one is correct. Such an agnostic position seems to me to be the best way to handle possible harmonizations of science/history and scripture when you are more sure of inerrancy than of either the genre/interpretation or the scientific/historical conclusion.
ReplyDeleteIs that more the issue you had in mind?
Well, that's exactly the issue under discussion. And also why Gundry was booted out of ETS. They did not believe that his "way" of holding to the orthodox doctrine of inerrancy while simultaneously denying the historicity of some events in Scripture to be valid or sound.
ReplyDeleteI'm agreeing that he should have been booted. I'm agreeing that his combinationof views didn't belong in the ETS. I wouldn't say that it's because of his view of inerrancy, though. It's because his denial of historicity is too radical. Someone might do the same with Job or Jonah, and I wouldn't have the same problem with it. Both involve, in my view, wrong judgments about the genre of a book while maintaininginerrancy. But those books don't have the gospel implications of questioningthe historicityof the first gospel.
Gundry's position is consistent,though. When you say it's not valid or sound, I'm not sure what you mean, because those are technical terms for arguments, not for views. A valid argument means the premises logically entail the conclusion.A sound argument is both valid and has true premises. I'm sure Gundry's arguments are unsound, but the issue is not over his reasoning but over his view. That view is consistent.That's not what's wrong with it. What's wrong with it is that it undermines too much of biblical teaching, and I think that's true even on the views of some who deny inerrancy. His view is more radical than those of many who deny inerrancy.
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Longman didn't reject the historicity of Adam, though. All he said is that someone who does reject that might still affirm inerrancy. He didn't put himself in that category.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Adam issue has the gospel implications being claimed, as long as an entire generation sinned at once. You have to take Paul's language to be symbolic, but someone might do that and maintain inerrancy, and I don't see how it threatens the gospel. It's an entirely different issue. If you question the historicityof an entire gospel (with the implicationthat the same could be true of other gospels), you have problems with believing in the resurrection. Completely different animal.
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I'm just having trouble seeing what the objection is. You say they don't occupy airtight compartments,and you say that I say they do. If by airtight compartments you mean that they are separate issues based on a legitimate distinctionbetween two different acts someone might engage in, I agree. If you mean that what you say about one can never have any influence on what you say about the other, I don't. But it seems to me that your reasons against seeing them as airtight all have to do with the latter, which is the sense in which I don't see them as airtight either. So I'm not sure what the objection is even supposed to be unless it's just a flat-out denial of a distinctionthat seems pretty obvious to me.
ReplyDeleteOn the Fred Butler quote, I can see how someone would say that it's impossible to be honest about what scripture says and what its implications are and then to deny Adam's historicitywhile affirming inerrancy.
ReplyDeleteThe MacArthur thing seems just false to me. I can think of all manner of ways the fall could have been a genuine fall without it being just one person or one couple. What if people had been perfect, but then the Tower of Babel happened? Wouldn't that count as a mass fall? To make sense of the theological need of a savior, you have to believe in a historical fall, but you don't have to think it was one actual couple. It may be that you have to be intellectually dishonest or simply uncareful in interpreting Paul to think such a view is consistent with Romans (I'd have to do some closer exegesis of the relevant passages on that), but that's not the same thing as saying the need for a savior requires one historical Adam. I don't think that's true at all. There are lots of other ways a fall could have occurred that would still need salvation in the same way.
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No, it's a factual question period. If Tim says it's a hermeneutical question, then he's wrong. Jim has a view of scripture according to which you can gain knowledge of whether it happened by reading scripture, and thus you can rely on scripture to learn facts about the period of time the scriptures speak of. Tim, on the other hand, has a different view of scripture, according to which you can concoct an extremely unlikely hermeneuticthat the original authors could not plausibly have intended, in order to say that it doesn't matter whether it happened for scripture to be true. But the questions you list are factual questions on either view.
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But someone who wonders whether Adam was real but who accepts all the important theological claims about the gospel is a far cry from the atheist who denies most of the Bible while affirming inerrancy. The issue that matters for me is whether the error in interpretation is serious. To misinterpret Paul's argument about the one Adam and the one Christ by thinking it could be referring to an entire generation and Christ might well be a mistake. As I've said, I'd have to look more carefully at those texts to be 100% sure of even that, although that is where I lean. But the question is how serious a mistake it is. It seems to me that there are plenty of mistakes in interpretation that aren't very serious. Thinking Paul's statement is compatible with Adam representing an entire generation doesn't seem to me to be all that grave an error. Would you say someone denies inerrancy for taking the wrong view on the role God plays in initiating salvific faith? If I took your arguments seriously, I'd have to say that Arminians deny inerrancy for taking a view that seems to me to conflict with the plain meaning of scripture. Yet that seems to be entirely the wrong thing to say about that, even though that issue is far more fundamentalto my mind than whether the one Adam in Paul must mean one Adam or could mean an entire generation whom the one Adam stands for literarily.
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I think it's most likely that Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam. It's much more certain that Matthew intended to be giving a historical chronicle. But in both cases someone could get it wrong on that issue and maintain inerrancy consistently. I would not claim that either denies inerrancy, just as I would recognize that your hypothetical athiest does not deny inerrancy. The question is what each does deny and how serious it is as to whether it would be worth the ETS making an issue of it.
ReplyDeleteI think it's clear that atheism is incompatible with ETS theology, apart from the inerrancy issue. Historicityof the gospel accounts should also be important, because those tell the accounts of what our Lord actually did. Whether Paul believed the fall had to have come from one person or whether his statements can be true because of one larger generation falling is not so central an issue to make as big a deal out of it, even if I were 100% sure that the biblical texts require one Adam, and I'm not. I just think it's very likely.
But it just seems crazy to me to say that someone who thinks there are no errors in the Bible is not an inerrantist, even if their interpretation of the scriptures is so wacky as to deny its plain meaning. It's not inerrancy that's the issue with such people. It's their wacky view of the genre, meaning, and so on, their view of what makes the Bible true or in what way it's true. Justin's argument really does require him to say that Arminians aren't inerrantists and that egalitarians aren't inerrantists. There are those who say such things, but Justin doesn't seem to me to be that type.
When I said you can get a heremeneutic from a text, I was objecting to a flat-out false claim that you can't. I wasn't claiming that you can derive the correct hermeneuticentirely from the pages of scripture. There are some things you can get from scripture and some things that have to come from thinking about the nature of language, the particular biblical languages, cultural and social facts, anthropological and archeological discoveries, and so on.
There's a funny element of how you worded your conclusion.You speak of honest inerrantists. Honesty may be a factor. Is Gundry intellectually honest? Maybe not. Is it because he can't consistently hold inerrancy with his denial of Matthew's historicity? That's your contention.Rather, I think his dishonesty is in thinking his hermeneuticfits with the literary discoverieswe've made about the genre and historical issues involving the gospel of Matthew. It may well be that Gundry isn't honest, but it's not b because he holds contradictory views in affirming inerrancy and then denying historicityof Matthew. It would be a dishonesty in interpreting Matthew. The same goes for the denier of Adam's historicity, I would say. If there's intellectual dishonesty,it's not in affirming inerrancy while denying Adam. It's in how the text is read and interpretedand what assumptionsare brought to that process.
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There are two issues. One is the general philosophical principles Enns states. On those, I said that what Enns says, if meant seriously and literally in terms of their natural conclusions, would amount to a denial of inerrancy but that Enns doesn't really mean those things the way he says them.
ReplyDeleteThen there's the particular example of the naming of Moses, which I take it is where you're pressing me. I claimed that this example is so ridiculously implausible as to be a front. He's technically able to present a view that maintains inerrancy but denies something obvious to all.
Is that true of those who take a more literary approach to Gen 1? I doubt it. I'm sympathetic to those approaches myself, so you're not going to see me rejecting them as ridiculously implausible. It takes connecting it with NT claims to see any issue at all, and I'm 99% sure that Longman wasn't thinking of the NT when he made his statement. He was simply commenting on whether someone could take the OT narrative to be inerrant but deny the historicity of Adam. It strikes me that he was simply correct in that judgment. If you know of him discussing NT passages, please make me aware of that, but that wasn't the sense I got from his comment.
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You can be honest and consistent while holding to inerrancy and denying the historicity of Adam. Longman's hypoethetical inerrantist Adam-denier would hold a view that I think doesn't fit with the most likely interpretation of Paul, but it's not one that involves serious theological revision, and it's not so thoroughly implausible as to be an obvious ploy. I also happen to think Longman doesn't hold the view and wasn't seriously considering the NT texts when he said this.
ReplyDeleteWhat Enns does with Moses' naming seems to be so thoroughly implausible that it's hard for me to take it seriously. What the inerrantist atheist you imagine is doing is of the same kind but much more thoroughgoing with it, not to mention involving some of the most serious theological error imaginable.
I'm of mixed feelings about open theism, since I think that is serious theological error but much less plainly at odds with the texts (because there are actually texts that seem on the surface to support it, even though a careful interpreter should realize that insisting on such a view is as bad as insisting on a geocentric solar system because Joshua says the sun stood still).
Gundry seems to me to be of the too-implausible-to-take-seriously category. It seems like a ploy in his case that it's hard to take as genuine, because his approach is so at odds with any serious claim about the genre of Matthew.
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Given the source, I was reluctant to check it out, but I did, and my initial hesitations were confirmed: overly simplistic, uncharitable to those who disagree (to the point of straw man mischaracterizations), insensitive to proper distinctions, and full of false disjunctions and false dilemmas. In other words, typical Phil Johnson stuff.
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I tend to think of the Pyromaniacs as representative of what could loosely be called hyper-Calvinism, meaning not the particular kind of hyper-Calvinism that was called by that term initially but any kind of Reformed view that goes too far. I tend not to like the combative style of some of them. I think the historic Reformed position is often more correct than where they go (and in some instances a more moderated newer position is closer to scripture).
ReplyDeleteI took a glance at what's been showing up on that blog recently. Some of what they say about Genesis and BioLogos is all right, but a lot of it strikes me as going way beyond what we should be sure of (not to say that we should endorse the other side), and a good deal of it is far too divisive for my comfort on issues that are not gospel issues. I think on the most substantive issues we might agree a lot more, but on what they're choosing to write about, and what others are choosing to link to, it's been hard for me to find a lot to hold in high regard.
I say that as someone who doesn't read the blog regularly, but it's because what I have read comes across this way to me so often. My Arminian charismatic second-cousin at Boston Bible Geeks is much more in line with my interests, my approach, and what I find profitable in biblical blogging. On the issues that really drive Pyromaniacs, I may actually be closer to them doctrinally, but they make them central, and I don't think the scriptural treatment of them does.
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My congregation would never allow this sort of thing. We've got six-dayers, old-earthers who deny common descent by natural selection and divine guidence, and old-earthers who accept natural selection as a means of divine guidance for human origins. These people don't all know about each other, but some of them do, and it's never stopped them fellowshipping with each other, because they know this isn't a gospel issue. Anyone in the congregation who sought to make it an issue would rightly be dealt with as a disciplinary matter. Division over this sort of thing is dangerously close to the kind of thing that the apostles excommunicated people over. It's one thing to offer a criticism as a matter of truth, but Johnson is declaring specific people to be heretics and even almost-atheists, not because of a denial of anything the gospel itself says.
ReplyDeleteMy position on this has been consistent. I think there are views that, when taken to their logical implications, are extremely hard or even impossible to reconcile with gospel implications. Open theism is one of them, but so is Arminianism. I think an argument can be made that a denial of inerrancy is as well, but so is And Can It Be, which non-heretical evangelicals sing all the time without endorsing any heresy. Denial of an individual Adam may well be one of these too. I'm not going to insist that someone has actually denied the gospel merely because they've endorsed a view that, when taken to its logical implications to places they have not taken it, the gospel will have to be denied if they are to remain consistent.
There are several things to distinguish here:
1. Not realizing the implications of your view that conflict with implications of the gospel.
2. Accepting your view's implications but not realizing the inconsistency with gospel implications.
3. Rejecting the implications of the gospel but not realizing that one has rejected implications of the gospel.
4. Rejecting gospel implications and explicitly recognizing their conflict with teachings that are actually crucial for the gospel (whether or not you call them the gospel).
I see no reason to think anyone at BioLogos has moved below stage 1, and I see no reason to assume most people at BioLogos have even done that. One author that I know of has tried to suggest a possible way of fitting a view without a single Adam and Eve to scripture. I'm not sure that author has endorsed such a view even. That instance I can see objections to but not deserving of the kind of divisiveness that Johnson is engaging in. But some of the other stuff, like Waltke, I don't think has even gotten to step 1. All Waltke did is say that he thinks views involving old-earth common descent can be fit to scripture without heresy (without taking such a view himself). I see no gospel implications of that whatsoever, and anyone saying there are is the one I'd have harsh words for.
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ReplyDeleteOK, that comment was based on your quote. I went and read Johnson's whole post, which linked to some BioLogos stuff that goes well beyond the Waltke and Enns stuff that we've discussed before.
ReplyDeleteThis Kenton Sparks piece starts out well, but it quickly devolves to something that I do consider an outright denial of the core basis of inerrancy. He says that the author of Deuteronomy presents a warped view of God in saying God commanded the slaughter of people. He seems to be treating this as if the distance between the human author's meaning and God's is very great, but he won't specify what God's meaning is.
Now I do think you could technically be an inerrantist and say such a thing, but this is far beyond taking Job to be a fictional dialogue illustrating theological truths. It's taking Deuteronomy to be a fictional account of God's words to Israel through Moses. If God didn't actually command the slaughter of the Canaanites, hen we can't trust anything Deuteronomy says God said. Not only is it bad hermeneutics (because we don't, as he claims, know from elsewhere in the scripture that this is a warped view of God, since it's entirely consistent with the rest of scripture), but I consider this to be a truly dangerous approach to the scriptures. It would be grounds for removal from a teaching position, I would say, whereas Waltke's being dismissed (not that they publicly portrayed it that way) is, in my view, an opposite case where it's the seminary that was in the wrong for supplying any pressure at all against him.
I'm not sure I agree with him that the post he links to as indifferent to original sin is actually doing that. It might be indifferent to the doctrine that original sin is literally inherited, but it's not indifferent to original sin as determined by Adam and Eve's standing in a relationship of representation toward all humanity, which I think does not interfere with the gospel in any direct way and does not uncontroversially conflict with genuine gospel implications.
Either way on that, there's no conflict with a doctrine of original sin that simply has it that we are all sinners due to our own imperfection, and Adam's role is simply as an example of what's true of all of us. There's a conflict between that view and the view that an actual fall changed the original creation, and I will not therefore endorse such a view. But in terms of the actual gospel message, I don't see a problem with an outright contradiction as long as you're careful. And some of these people might not even recognize a contradiction if it's there, and they may remain at level 1 from my previous comment.
I have strong resistance, therefore, to the Enns view that Adam is merely a literary representation of Israel. You need something that makes all humans sinners and responsible for their sins. But Enns doesn't deny that. He just doesn't find the Adam account to be the ground of it. He may be fine, as far as I know, with seeing such a thing in the early chapters of Romans, and thus he might not be denying anything central to the gospel.
He's inaccurate about Boyd, also. Boyd doesn't deny foreknowledge. On Boyd's view, God knows every truth about the future. It's just that only necessary truths about the future exist. The more accurate way to depict Boyd's view is to say that there aren't contingent truths about the future. God's knowledge isn't limited compared with what's true. It's truth about the future that's limited. On Boyd's view, all continent statements about the future are false.
ReplyDeleteJohnson then goes on to use Greg Boyd's open theism as if it affects these other issues (which it may or may not do, but he gave no argument that it does) and is if BioLogos as a whole accepts his position on such matters (which I doubt most of them do, since I'm pretty sure its founder accepts complete divine foreknowledge about contingent truths).
He says scripture is rarely defended, when one of their chief goals is to defend scripture against the claim that scripture is incompatible with the accepted claims of our best science. They're all about defending scripture. They're just not all defending the actual teachings of scripture. But that's not the same as not trying to defend scripture. They're quite obviously doing that.
He's got a funny postscript that engages in a pretty awful equivocation. He says they reject original sin (which as I've argued they haven't really done) but then says original sin comes with much empirical evidence. Is there any reason to think they've denied the doctrines that the empirical evidence supports, though? Have they denied that we're all imperfect? Have they denied the impossibility of living a perfect life without Christ? Surely not. They've given alternative accounts of why such things, as taught by scripture, might be true. But they have neither denied original sin nor disputed anything the empirical evidence he's referring to might lead us to conclude.
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