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.
Steve Hays: "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."
ReplyDeleteThat is the, THEEEE, money quote in this terrific analysis.
"So it seems to me that Pierce is oscillating between two contradictory approaches."
Jeremy's a very, very sharp fellow. But yeah, he was oscillating. And not in a helpful or edifying way. Unless it was his intent to help or edify those who downplay the significance of Adam's historicity.
P.S. Steve, did you see my comment to Jeremy about Article XXII in the Chicago Statement on Hermeneutics?
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.
Evan: "Excellent analysis, one which I agree with in almost all ways."
ReplyDeleteI suppose you agree with Steve (and me) about this part:
"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."
Jeremy,
I'll let Steve clarify the "oscillating" description.
But I do think Steve nails this problematic aspect of your post with this remark:
"So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments."
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.
If I have misunderstood you, please understand that I'm not trying to misrepresent you. Will you please clarify?
My question actually delves into the essence of Steve's point above about how inerrancy and hermeneutics cannot be separated out as airtight compartments as your post seems to suggest.
Pax.
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.
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to wrap my brain around your argument. Which in a rough nutshell is something like: "I may have a bad hermeneutic, but I can still lay legitimate claim to the mantle of holding and affirming (CSBI) inerrancy."
Your argument and position honestly seems goofy to me. Anyways, I did a search on your blog using the word "inerrancy" and I found this post which you wrote, titled "The Broadness of Inerrancy." I see that your post on Longman is utterly consistent with your blogpost argument back then.
I'll have to defer to Steve, if he so chooses, to examine your arguments for rhetorical and/or substantive defects (of a fatal nature).
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI decided to renew my search on inerrancy on your blog. And I found this nearly four-year old post titled "Tremper Longman and Inerrancy."
And in the comment thread he thanks you for defending him as an inerrantist.
So I see that this has been an ongoing thematic argument of yours whereby you do hold to, for lack of a better term, an airtight compartmentalization between hermeneutics and inerrancy. A firewall so to speak.
To be transparent, I don't buy it. But I know that you do. Oh well. I'm still edified by exploring your arguments even though I don't accept them.
Pax.
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.
Steve Hays: "It's possible for two people to deny all the same things, 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?"
ReplyDeleteIf I understand Jeremy correctly, the line, if you can use that metaphor, is that the one who says it's a matter of hermeneutics can still proudly wear the badge of being an (CSBI) inerrantist.
Seems to me to have eviscerated the meaning of Inerrancy. And another byproduct of Jeremy's argument is a shift (perhaps unintentionally) and an emphasis from Objective Inerrancy to Subjective Hermeneutics or Subjective Interpretation. And perhaps Tremper Longman III is also making this same argument.
Troubling.
Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteHow would you refute an unbeliever who holds to and affirms the (CSBI) inerrancy of Scripture?
Assuming that you think you could and would based on your previous arguments?
I mean, as far as I can see based upon your argument, there is nothing to logically prevent an unbeliever from saying something like the following:
"Sure, I think the Bible is without error, but in my interpretive grid many of the stories in the Bible are just didactic fiction. Roughly speaking, I'm just like a Rudolph Bultmann who holds to CSBI inerrancy."
Verification Word (I kid you not):
pholly
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.
Jeremy: "If we're concerned about historicity, we should emphasize historicity issues rather than narrow inerrancy."
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I truly do believe (although I could be mistaken) that *you* were the one who brought up the issue of inerrancy in your defense of Longman.
I had thought the issue was the historicity of Adam, but *you* expanded the issue to inerrancy when you wrote in your post (in your very first point):
"1.Longman has denies neither plenary inspiration of scripture nor inerrancy."
So, with all due respect, it was you who detoured and lead the discussion into inerrancy. And now you're complaining about it.
That doesn't seem right.
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.
ReplyDeleteHi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteWould it be okay with you if I checked in with Tim Bayly to confirm and verify that he indeed made those allegations of Tremper Longman?
And while I'm at it, I might as well ask him for his input on this blog post and thread.
Pax.
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.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhhhhh. I see your point now. I had forgotten about him making that comment.
ReplyDeleteStill, might it still be worthwhile for him to expand upon his comments, much like you did with this thread?
Jeremy: "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 ..."
ReplyDeleteIn a way, you're making my point for me.
*Your* argument (the "airtight" bifurcation between inerrancy and interpretation and never the twain shall meet) cannot refute the moron who claims he's an inerrantist.
If your argument cannot refute the moron, well, um, doesn't that make your argument ... worse than a moron?
"... but it's underhanded mainly because inerrantists have taken inerrancy to be a broader view than the term really justifies."
Actually, I think it's underhanded because of what you've artificially constructed.
You've repeatedly painted the doctrine of inerrancy with the adjective "narrow". In doing so you are casting it as being an extreme; in effect, marginalizing it.
BUT, in an intense effort to distance yourself from this extreme you've gone to the other extreme (and perhaps without realizing it).
As Steve originally pointed out: "So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments."
Your "airtight compartments" is the other extreme away from "narrow" inerrancy.
And so actually, I would submit that any "underhandeded" action by a historicity-denying moron claiming to be an inerrantist is due more to your construction of "airtight compartments" than to any claim that inerrancy is "narrow".
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.
Brian: "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)?"
ReplyDeleteDear Brian,
You are refuting a claim that I never made. Otherwise popularly known as burning down a strawman.
The crux of the argument in play is this (Quoting Steve):
(1) "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."
(2) "So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments."
(3) "Do we treat these as distinct domains, or does one inform the other?"
Dear Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI wasn't clear how you addressed Justin Taylor's question. Could you explicate it again, please?
Jeremy,
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
I agree with your general thoughts with regard to inerrancy. But the trickier part is what to do with the authorial intent of the NTers. E.g., if we grant (a) that Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam, and (b) that they intended to convey this in citing God's dealings with Adam (re: marriage, divorce, male headship, creation, Adam-Christ federal headships, etc); then wouldn't (c) the denial of such historicity amount to (d) the denial of inerrancy--namely, that Jesus and Paul's intended meaning was factually incorrect?
JT
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"?
Hi Brian,
ReplyDeleteMiscommunication and misunderstandings occur frequently. Thanks for your request for clarification.
What I'm saying is that it is actually Jeremy's extreme bifurcation between inerrancy and hermeneutics which is what allows for the underhanded morons to claim the mantle of being inerrantists rather than his claim that it's the doctrine of Inerrancy that is too "narrow."
So when I say "can't refute the moron" I mean that it's Jeremy's argument which not only opens the door to let the moron in, and then doesn't even have the intellectual strength to boot the moron out.
Dear Jeremy and Brian,
ReplyDeleteIn reflecting further about this issue it dawned on me that a test case might be construed from the recent past in the Evangelical Theological Society with respect to Pinnock and Sanders.
Google research locates this snippet:
"The society was divided during several meetings earlier this decade over whether to expel theologians Clark Pinnock and John Sanders from the group for their views of God's foreknowledge. The votes to expel them failed in 2003. Twenty years earlier, in 1983, Westmont College New Testament professor Robert Gundry was expelled for arguing that some events in the gospel of Matthew, such as the visit from the Magi, were not historical.
At issue in all of the cases was whether the scholars violated ETS's doctrinal basis, which reads in its entirety: "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory." The language on the Trinity was added in 1990."
As an aside, neither Pinnock nor Sanders were booted out of ETS.
Yet Gundry was booted because by denying the historicity of certain Gospel events, he was also seen by the majority of the voting membership to have also denied inerrancy.
But according to Jeremy's extreme bifurcation argument between inerrancy and hermeneutics the decision to boot Gundry was a mistake by the ETS membership. Because after all, Gundry could still have used a bad hermeneutic but still been an inerrantist in good standing (according to Jeremy's arguments).
Let's continue "Iron sharpening Iron."
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.
Jeremy Pierce: "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."
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have any way of knowing, but I'd like to think that the ETS folks who voted to remove Gundry did consider the arguments your espousing now back in the day, and upon having carefully considered them, they ultimately rejected them as being unsound.
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.
ReplyDelete"While Gundry doesn't deny inerrancy, he certainly doesn't maintain an evangelically-orthodox view on historicity."
ReplyDeleteJeremy,
This gets back to what was posted before. Could you address the following a bit more directly:
The crux of the argument in play is this (Quoting Steve):
(1) "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."
(2) "So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments."
(3) "Do we treat these as distinct domains, or does one inform the other?"
-----------
Do you agree with Steve's claim that "inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments" in your framework?
Do you treat them as distinct domains or does one inform the other?
Addendum. I'm aware that you hold the doctrine of inerrancy as being part, a critical and essential part, of a more comprehensive understanding of Scripture. I.e., that it should not be extended to say more than it should or ought to say. I.e., that you feel that some inerrantists do precisely that - they stretch or misapply the doctrine of inerrancy into areas it shouldn't.
I agree with you to an extent, but I remind you while the various doctrines of Scripture are distinguishable, they are also inseparable.
An analogue would be if you argued with a staunch TULIP Calvinist. S/he would argue that all 5 doctrines are inseparable and logically imply each other.
In the same way, Inerrancy informs and is informed by the Authority, the Clarity (or Perspicuity), and the Sufficiency of Scripture, etc....
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.
Thanks for the reference to your TULIP post.
ReplyDelete"The fact is that there are all sorts of ways of holding an orthodox doctrine together with an unorthodox doctrine."
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.
With regards to the following:
Do you agree with Steve's claim that "inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments" in your framework?
Do you treat them as distinct domains or does one inform the other?
Do you think they merit a separate post on your parableman blog? If so, please let me know. I'd love to read your thoughts on the matter.
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.
"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."
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot to unpack here.
Here's a small, minor point: Steve's post was addressing your defense of Tremper Longman. He has hitherto, said nothing with regards to Gundry. Gundry was introduced as an historical example of the close interrelationship between inerrancy and historicity (which you deem hermeneutics).
I think his claim is true that he holds to inerrancy.
Obviously, the ETS voters who voted Gundry out disagree.
The problem with his approach is that he thinks he's being faithful to the evangelical tradition by maintaining inerrancy but by rejecting the historicity of Matthew.
Let's update this sentence to apply it to Longman: "The problem with Longman's approach is that he thinks he's being faithful to the evangelical tradition by maintaining inerrancy but by rejecting the historicity of Adam."
The argument and reasoning which was used to vote Gundry out is applicable towards Longman as well. And folks would argue that the historicity of Adam has Gospel implications as well.
He's playing games.
So is Tremper Longman. And that's why Justin Taylor was right to put it on his blog for public notice.
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.
ReplyDeleteJeremy Pierce: "All he said is that someone who does reject that might still affirm inerrancy. He didn't put himself in that category."
ReplyDeleteIn this thread I asked Fred Butler for his thoughts about that and he commented thusly:
"I personally think to deny the historical Adam one cannot hold to inerrancy, at least with any honest consistency."
"I 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."
In the same thread:
"I would imagine John [MacArthur] would disagree with it. [I.e., that the historicity of Adam has little to no Gospel implications or impact]. Simply being is that the Christian faith is built upon the historical reality of what Adam did. He had to have been a real person or there just isn't a need for a real savior in Christ."
---------
Jeremy, perhaps we're at an impasse. I think I've read the best arguments you can muster and I'm still not just unconvinced, but instead remain opposed to the arguments you're advancing.
I think Steve said it best in his initial analytical review of your blog post:
"So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments."
Pax.
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.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"I'm just having trouble seeing what the objection is."
ReplyDeleteFair enough. Let's revisit a series of helpful examples that Steve provided to see if they might help you clearly see what the objection is (with one small addition):
Take Jim and Tim Baker. Jim and Tim are identical twins. Jim is a militant atheist while his brother Tim is a “conservative evangelical” [who professes to affirm inerrancy].
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."
Jeremy, does this help you see the objection more clearly?
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.
ReplyDelete"No, it's a factual question period. If Tim [the “conservative evangelical” who professes to affirm inerrancy] says it's a hermeneutical question, then he's wrong."
ReplyDeleteExactly. And the same line of reasoning which you use to forcefully state the above is equally well-suited to Steve's title question "Was Adam real?"
Further, I want to draw in one of your own comments from this thread. You wrote:
"If you can’t get a hermeneutic from a text, then you can’t get it from a hermeneutics textbook. Since that seems obviously false, you better be able to get it from another text too. In fact, the Bible does offer plenty of exemplars of hermeneutics, including the epistles’ statements on how to interpret the OT, Jesus’ own interpretations and how he applies them, quotations and allusions from earlier portions of scripture, etc. Deuteronomy in some cases continues, expands, or supercedes earlier laws. Prophets extend Pentateuchal laws to further situations, most notable when Jesus does so in the Sermon on the Mount. But Jesus also gives significant guidance on what his followers are not to take from the OT, and Paul gives explicit continuation of some particulars from the OT. So the claim that you can’t get hermeneutics from the Bible is simply false. You might not be able to get all the details of how you should take every case, at least not with Cartesian certainty, but there’s plenty of hermeneutical guidance already within the scriptures."
Yes! And the hermeneutical guide within Scripture clearly declares the historicity of Adam.
--------
Forgive me for being too forward, Jeremy. I think you're a superb thinker and a wonderful brother in Christ. Having said that, the concern (or the objection) is that you're providing intellectual and moral cover for folks like Tremper Longman to claim that folks can still be inerrantists in good standing while simultaneously denying the historicity of Adam.
And the adamant response is: "No, you can't."
If you're going to be a honest, consistent inerrantist, then you're going to affirm the historicity of Adam.
If you're going to deny the historicity of Adam, then it's perfectly legitimate for folks to deny your claims that you're an inerrantist.
That's basically it.
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.
ReplyDeleteDear Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteYour last comment is probably the closest I'll ever get to seeing you cry "Uncle!"
;-)
Seriously, your reputation as a sharp Christian thinker is well-known. Folks who know you or know of you will not want to trifle with you without cause. But when you take a position whereby even folks who agree with you the vast majority of the time take respectful exception to your claim (that one can deny the historicity of Adam while still claiming to be an inerrantist), folks such as Steve Hays and Justin Taylor, don't you think you should reconsider the logic of your argument to see why it's not seen as sound or persuasive?
Look at Justin Taylor's question to you:
"But the trickier part is what to do with the authorial intent of the NTers. E.g., if we grant (a) that Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam, and (b) that they intended to convey this in citing God's dealings with Adam (re: marriage, divorce, male headship, creation, Adam-Christ federal headships, etc); then wouldn't (c) the denial of such historicity amount to (d) the denial of inerrancy--namely, that Jesus and Paul's intended meaning was factually incorrect?
JT"
Do you grant JT's point that both Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam? Remember, you wrote: "If you can’t get a hermeneutic from a text, then you can’t get it from a hermeneutics textbook."
-----
The reason why your last comment elicited a chuckle from me as being tantamount to an implicit cry of "Uncle!" is that it's essentially a non-sequitur response to what I wrote very plainly before:
"If you're going to be a honest, consistent inerrantist, then you're going to affirm the historicity of Adam.
If you're going to deny the historicity of Adam, then it's perfectly legitimate for folks to deny your claims that you're an inerrantist."
Basically, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Now whether there is a more serious error elsewhere (which is what your immediately previous comment is noting and doing) has nothing whatsoever to do with folks who claim that they can deny the historicity of Adam and still remain honest inerrantists.
NO, THEY CAN'T.
(And whether there's some other more serious error is utterly beside the point.)
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.
"If there's intellectual dishonesty,it's not in affirming inerrancy while denying Adam."
ReplyDeletePlenty of folks, including myself, would firmly disagree with you.
They'd say the opposite:
"If there's intellectual dishonesty, it's in affirming inerrancy while denying Adam."
"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."
No, it doesn't. But as an aside, I have read that a number of egalitarians (not all, mind you) are abandoning inerrancy in order to hold onto egalitarianism.
Furthermore, here'a nuance that you seem to have missed: Arminianism and Egalitarianism are doctrinal issues. Historicity of Adam is not doctrinal in the sense that Arminianism and Egalitarianism are.
Jeremy Pierce: "I think it's most likely that Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam."
ReplyDelete""If you can’t get a hermeneutic from a text, then you can’t get it from a hermeneutics textbook. Since that seems obviously false, you better be able to get it from another text too. In fact, the Bible does offer plenty of exemplars of hermeneutics, including the epistles’ statements on how to interpret the OT, Jesus’ own interpretations and how he applies them, quotations and allusions from earlier portions of scripture, etc."
From here:
"Walton does say in the book (p. 139)that “the biblical text treats [Adam and Eve] as historic individuals (as indicated by their role in genealogies)” and he uses the phrasing “the creation of the historical Adam and Eve”."
C'mon Jeremy. An honest inerrantist *must* affirm the historicity of Adam.
Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI saw this comment of yours in your blog post titled "Two Mistaken Searches."
Excerpts: "Let me give you an example from the Exodus commentary by Peter Enns that shows why what he says might be a threat to inerrancy if followed to its natural conclusion.
...
Now an example I found when reading the Exodus commentary is the naming of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter. I was sorely disappointed when I read what he had to say about that....
Ultimately I don't think an inerrantist can maintain such a view consistently when it's pushed to its logical conclusions. He apparently (but he doesn't say so in the commentary, so I'm guessing) wants to take the speech act of saying that she said it as really just communicating that some have said it. I think this is like those who deny the obviously attributed authorship of certain NT epistles but say that the audience would have known the indicated author didn't write it. This is supposed to be wiggle room to allow an inerrantist to hold such a thing, but it relies on such a thoroughly implausible view of the psychology of the reader and the literary patterns of the time that I describe it the way I did. If what he says is taken seriously enough, it amounts to denying inerrancy."
Two things come immediately to mind when reading that comment in light of your arguments that you've made earlier in this thread:
(A) The argument that you're making that the argument that Enns is an errantist is a reasonable charge is easily adaptable to the case against Longman.
(B) Earlier in this thread, you wrote the following:
"The issue that matters for me is whether the error in interpretation is serious."
And you used this as a basis to state, more or less, that denying Adam's historicity is not a serious error of interpretation [because you don't think it has an impact to the Gospel] and thus, according to you, an inerrantist could deny the historicity of Adam and still be honest and consistent.
Hah! Now we see you arguing that Enns' interpretation of the issue of Pharaoh's daughter naming Moses as Moses amounts to saying that he denies inerrancy, "if what he says is taken seriously enough."
C'mon Jeremy. The historicity of Adam is a bigger deal than Pharaoh's daughter naming Moses Moses. And if you're going to make a case against Enns denying inerrancy based on that, then you need to be logically ocnsistent, and do the same thing for Longman (and any other person professing to be an inerrantist):
You cannot be an honest and consistent inerrantist if you deny the historicity of Adam.
Shake my hand. Check and mate.
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.
"You cannot be an honest and consistent inerrantist if you deny the historicity of Adam."
ReplyDeleteDo you affirm this, Jeremy, or do you deny it?
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.
Impasse!
ReplyDeleteMe: "You cannot be an honest and consistent inerrantist if you deny the historicity of Adam."
Jeremy Pierce: "You can be honest and consistent while holding to inerrancy and denying the historicity of Adam."
-------------
Thanks Jeremy for the engagement. Although neither one of us has moved an inch, I still found the virtual arm-wrestling invigorating.
Pax.
Just read an article today by Albert Mohler about apostate pastors that had an excerpt that touched upon the topic of this post. Here it is:
ReplyDelete"Wes, a Methodist, lost his confidence in the Bible while attending a liberal Christian college and seminary. "I went to college thinking Adam and Eve were real people," he explained. Now, he no longer believes that God exists."
From: Clergy Who Don't Believe: The Scandal of Apostate Pastors.
Anthony Scaramone at the Evangel blog posts the following:
ReplyDelete"What, exactly, is inerrant when we speak of the authority of Scripture? The words must mean something before we can speak of their being true. And the texts must relate one to the other in a certain way, with a certain through line of consistency and intention. They have their own history, intrinsically connected to a history of a people. What did the biblical authors intend when they set pen to paper (so to speak) informed by and rooted in that history? If you don’t have an answer to that question, then defenses of biblical inerrancy become directionless.”
My response in comment #1:
"(On one subpoint) To answer the boldfaced question, Moses intended for his audience to understand that the account of Adam and Eve is historical fact-narrative.
To deny that is to deny inerrancy. And I affirm what you say, if folks can’t even affirm a historical Adam or that Adam was real, then their defenses that they hold to biblical inerrancy and to the Authority of Scripture is directionless."
See Here.
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteHere's a post by Phil Johnson of the Pyromaniacs that touches upon the historicity of Adam and what the Biologos crowd is doing. Phil Johnson does mention the doctrine of inerrancy in passing.
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.
ReplyDeleteOkay.
ReplyDeleteI was laboring under the mistaken impression that you held Phil Johnson and the other Pyromaniancs in high regard.
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.
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI read your last comment with keen interest. FWIW, while I've had deep disagreements with all of the Pyromaniacs (Phil Johnson, Daniel J. Phillips, and Frank Turk), by and large I'm in agreement with the Pyros. As well as with the Triabloguers. And many folks regard Triablogue as being more divisive than TeamPyro.
You wrote: "a good deal of it is far too divisive for my comfort on issues that are not gospel issues" and you reaffirmed it with "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."
You didn't mention what issues they specifically are, but let me instead ask you something of a more general sort:
Do you think that an issue that's technically "non-Gospel" could (or actually does) have a great impact (usually negative) on an issue which is technically a "Gospel issue"?
I.e., could your intellect imagine how a purportedly 2nd-order issue (or an even lower-order issue) could have deep ramifications for a 1st-order issue?
Jeremy Pierce: "... 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."
ReplyDeletePhil Johnson in his post Socianism in Lab Coats:
"Whatever BioLogos is peddling, it isn't Christianity. It isn't faith of any kind. It's scientism masquerading as faith—but lacking in spiritual, philosophical, and intellectual integrity.
To be more precise, it's a sterile hybrid of scientism and Socinianism.
On close examination, BioLogos looks very much like a campaign against Christianity, funded by a hefty Templeton grant. In effect, that's precisely what it is.
And this is the key point: You can't legitimately claim to be trying to reconcile science and the Christian faith if your methodology entails systematically dismantling the very foundations of Christianity."
Hi Jeremy,
I don't know if you agree substantively with Phil Johnson's rebuke of BioLogos, but I'm interested in a reply to my last question to you:
I.e., could your intellect imagine how a purportedly 2nd-order issue (or an even lower-order issue) could have deep ramifications for a 1st-order issue?
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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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
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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.
Jeremy Pierce: "My congregation would never allow this sort of thing."
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind sharing, what congregation would that be?
"Anyone in the congregation who sought to make it an issue would rightly be dealt with as a disciplinary matter."
Jeremy, if you happen to be in the know, what disciplinary matters has your congregation had to exercise, if it's exercised any at all?
"There are several things to distinguish here: ..."
That 4-part section was very good. Thank you.
"I see no gospel implications of that whatsoever [Waltke's writings on old earth common descent], and anyone saying there are is the one I'd have harsh words for."
You'll have harsh words for quite a few people, Jeremy.
;-)