"The dark side of Scripture"

Arminian theologian Roger Olson, who’s the star contributor to the Society of Evangelical Arminians, recently posted a glowing review of Ken Sparks’s wholesale attack on the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/06/a-good-new-book-on-the-bible-reviewed-continuing-the-discussion-on-the-word-inerrancy/

I’m going to quote and comment on a number of his statements. Although he’s often summarizing the position of Sparks, this is a very approving review, and he’s using Sparks to voice his own position.

I’m sure this book will stir up a hornets’ nest among the neo-fundamentalist evangelicals.

That’s his pejorative label for Christians who believe the Bible.

No doubt others will also criticize it as it breaks some new ground, at least among evangelicals.

It’s a rehash of fin de siècle liberals like William Sanday, Samuel Driver, and Charles Briggs.

What’s especially interesting about the book is Sparks’ response to the Old Testament “texts of terror”—something we have discussed here quite a lot. If I understand his thesis correctly, it is very similar to what I have argued here—that the Old Testament must be interpreted in light of the New and that, at least occasionally, reports in the Old Testament (about what God commanded people to do) must be relativized in light of the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ who is the Word of God in person.

An obvious problem with that strategy is that it’s viciously circular and self-defeating. The NT can’t fulfill the OT if the NT invalidates the OT. By invalidating the OT you simultaneously invalidate the OT validation of the NT.

Scripture, as a book written by fallible human beings, is itself a book of theological discourse that that advances the truth but also stands in need of redemption.

To say the word of God needs to be redeemed is blasphemous. God’s words are holy. They reflect the holiness of the God who inspired them.

(By “verbal inspiration” here I mean the idea that God led the writers to the exact words he wanted them to use. By “dynamic inspiration” here I mean the idea that God led the writers to the ideas he wanted them to record but allowed their personalities and cultures and fallible memories, etc., to affect what they wrote.)

Olson is either ignorant or mendacious. He’s framed the alternatives inaccurately.

The standard orthodox theory of inspiration is the organic theory of inspiration (a la Old Princeton). This covers both verbal and plenary inspiration. In addition, God uses the personalities and cultural conditioning of Bible writers according to the organic theory of inspiration.

But using their personalities doesn’t entail fallibility, for a primary purpose of inspiration is to compensate for human frailty.

Sparks uses Deuteronomy 20 as one example. There, according to the text, Moses told the people of God that God commanded them to annihilate the inhabitants of the towns across the Jordan River. Then he shows how such texts were used by later “Christians” to justify genocide. For example, one American colonist wrote after annihilating a group of Native Americans “Sometimes Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings…It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, with streams of blood quenching it; the smell was horrible, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice.” (72)

Unless Sparks and Olson think Deut 20 is properly applicable to the American Indian Wars, so what? Why think that’s a valid extrapolation?

God didn’t command Europeans to colonize American. God didn’t command white settlers to kill anyone who impeded the Westward expansion. The white settlers weren’t ritually pure. The Indians weren’t ritually impure. America wasn’t the Holy Land or Promised Land. And so on and so forth.

Sparks quotes extensively from theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer to justify (or illustrate) his argument that Scripture’s writers were not only fallible but also fallen and that therefore some of what they wrote must be redeemed.

Bonhoeffer is rightly admired for his courage in confronting the Third Reich. He was, however, a Barthian, with a liberal view of Scripture.

Scripture not only contains factual errors; it also contains some records about God that simply cannot be embraced as sacred Word of God. They must instead be relegated (not stripped from Scripture) to the category of Scripture’s “dark side.”

And if God really said and did the things ascribed to him in Scripture, then Sparks and Olson are imputing a dark side to God. That’s sacrilegious.

This is why I keep arguing that “inerrancy” is a meaningless concept until it is explained clearly. And once someone does begin to explain it clearly one of two things happens. EITHER the explanation does not fit the actual phenomena of Scripture OR necessary qualifications (to make it fit the phenomena of Scripture) kill it so that it becomes a special use of “inerrancy” that fits no other context.

That’s a popular cliché, but Olson doesn’t begin to explain why the qualifications offered by scholars like Craig Blomberg, Vern Poythress, V. Phillips Long, or the dreaded Chicago Statement are ac hoc. Where’s the argument?

Fact is, inerrantists redeploy distinctions drawn by literary scholars (e.g. Robert Alter, Meir Sternberg) who don’t even believe in the historicity or inspiration of Scripture. So it’s not as if they’re concocting these distinctions to save face. They’re just making allowance for period literary conventions and rhetorical devices. That’s equally applicable to secular literature.

Like Randal Rauser, Roger Olson is just another Arminian Bible-hater. No doubt this is a useful backup plan. If Yahweh is too Calvinistic, just relegate that to the “dark side” of Scripture which must be “redeemed.”

It’s also a backdoor admission, by Arminian theologians, that Arminian theology is irreconcilable with Scripture. To tear down Calvinism, they must tear down the Bible. If the evidence goes against you, turn on the witness. Consign inconvenient evidence to the “dark side.”