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Sunday, July 01, 2012

"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:


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.”  

9 comments:

  1. Great article! I had to share this on Facebook. Clearly, Olsen is trying to "Jimmy" the Word of God...not a good thing to do.

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  2. "The NT can’t fulfill the OT if the NT invalidates the OT."

    Depends what you mean by "invalidate".

    Matthew 5:38-39 "You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

    Shortly after:

    "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

    This seems to say that the moral framework of the Old Testament is no longer valid, yes?

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    Replies
    1. I addressed the Sermon on the Mount recently. You're behind the curve.

      Moreover, Jesus never suggested that the OT misattributes actions or sayings to Yahweh.

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    2. Nope. Not even close. Jesus was refuting errors people had spread about the moral framework of the Old Testament. One of them was that it was okay to hate your enemy. Utilizing hyperbole, he reiterated its spirit, which is exemplified in OT law and in OT example towards non-Israelites. It had nothing to do with saying, "It used to be perfectly moral to hate your enemies, but now it's totally evil and instead you have to love your enemies." In fact, Jesus started off Matthew 5 by saying that not one jot or tittle of the law would pass away. It makes no sense, contextually speaking, to say that he then followed up those words by completely throwing out the entire OT code of conduct.

      The OT and NT aren't two flip sides of the same coin, and we're on heads now instead of tails. Indeed, invalidating OT law would involve trade-offs of various kinds. If the OT law about helping your enemies with his ox is now invalid, then that would mean we must avoid helping our enemies with their animals(/cars?) since that law would also be invalid- which, however, would militate against an unqualified mandate to love your enemies.

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    3. Sorry, Steve. My reply was directed towards James. I was editing it when you posted your comment.

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  3. "God didn’t command Europeans to colonize America. 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."

    So if all those conditions were met, doing something like what the settlers described would have been good?

    I can't disown any part of Scripture as Sparks or Olson do, but I cannot be sanguine about those parts of the Bible either. I've read a lot of what you've wrote on how to make sense of those passages, but they're still difficult.

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    Replies
    1. JD Walters

      "So if all those conditions were met, doing something like what the settlers described would have been good?"

      Under those circumstances, it would be morally justified. Not that God's bare command is what makes something right. Rather, God's reasons for what he commands makes it right (whether or not he reveals his reasons).

      "I've read a lot of what you've wrote on how to make sense of those passages, but they're still difficult."

      Yes, they're still difficult.

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  4. Olson's quest to make the Almighty and Holy One look like us, but than bigger and greater, is the trajectory that follows out of violation against the first and second of the ten commandments. A trajectory that inevitably must lead to destruction. "Christians" who are willing to lean an ear to folks like Olson and Sparks should read Judges 17 and 18 as a whole and then they should try to find the tribe of Dan in the list of "sealed" tribes of Israel in Revelation 7. I hope they will find an application there for sinful people who are not willing to bow down for the God of all of Scripture and in there tells us who He is and not the One who we want Him to be.

    Sjoerd de Boer

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  5. 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.”

    WHOOMP THERE IT IS!!!

    ReplyDelete