http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/2011/nuts-and-bolts-010-theological-liberalism/
I'll make a few quick comments:
1. He doesn't give any citations from Luther or Calvin.
2. The Luther/Calvin issue came up the last time evangelicalism had a "battle for the Bible" in the 70s. Luther's commitment to inerrancy was defended by Lutheran scholars like Robert Preus and John Warwick Montgomery, while Calvin's commitment to inerrancy was defended by Reformed scholars like Roger Nicole.
J.W. Montgomery:
R. Preus, "Luther and Biblical Infallibility," in Inerrancy and the Church.
ed. John Hannah. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984, 99-142.
Roger Nicole:
3. There's such a thing as the progress of dogma. Theological formulations are frequently sharpened in the face of controversy. Take Christology.
4. His statement about Warfield is just a blunder.
i) He misattributes a statement to Warfield which was actually made by Chas Hodge.
ii) He misconstrues the statement which he misattributes to Warfield:
5. Maybe he's too young to remember and too ignorant to know, but Stott's position was quite controversial when it first surfaced. For instance:
As a matter of fact, this is a soft spot for a number of UK evangelicals.
To touch on some of Glenn's later claims:
ReplyDelete"Part of the debate over inerrancy is over the fact that while historical figures like Calvin or Hodge do talk about infallibility (in the sense that the teaching of Scripture is all true), inerrancy is a much stronger claim."
This is Glenn's made-up redefinition of terms. And if one wishes to set up a contrast, then the contrast is just the opposite: inerrant is without error whereas infallible is without possibility of error. Therefore, infallibility is the stronger claim.
In any case, I think both terms are commonly used synonymously. "Infallible" is the older term, a Latin loanword.
I suspect "inerrancy" is currently more popular than "infallibility" simply because a 4-syllable word is easier to pronounce than a 6-syllable world.
"He freely claimed that the numbers of people involved in battles in the Old Testament were not correct, and had been greatly exaggerated. 'When one often reads that great numbers of people were slain – for example, eighty thousand – I believe that hardly one thousand were actually killed.' (Luther’s Works (Fortress Press), vol 54, cited in Donald Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Interpretation and Inspiration(Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994), 90.)."
Of course, this is Luther filtered through Bloesch. So we don't know the original context.
But on the face of it, Luther is simply claiming that the numbers are hyperbolic. However, hyperbole is consistent with inerrancy.
"In his commentary on Matthew chapter 2, Calvin offers a brief comment on the star that the Magi followed. 'It is more probable that it resembled a comet, and was seen, not in the heaven, but in the air. Yet there is no impropriety in Matthew, who uses popular language, calling it incorrectly a star.'"
i) This is an English translation of Calvin. We'd need to know how he worded his statement in the original.
ii) Even if we take it as is, to say that Matthew deliberately employed idiomatic linguistic conventions is consistent with inerrancy.
"A stronger example from Calvin is in his commentary on Matthew 27:9, which cites a prophecy and claims that it comes from Jeremiah. Calvin says:
“Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet.” How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess that I do not know nor do I give myself much trouble to inquire. The passage itself plainly shows that the name of Jeremiah has been put down by mistake, instead of Zechariah, (11:13) for in Jeremiah we find nothing of this sort, nor any thing that even approaches to it."
This is ambiguous, but from what I can tell, Calvin is alluding to a scribal error. An error which was introduced into the text at some point down the line.