Monday, February 03, 2020

A priori inerrancy

Lydia McGrew continues to do presentations and interviews on her recent book The Mirror or the Mask:



In the webinar, Lydia draws a distinction between two different approaches to inerrancy: a priori and inductive (1:41-42 min.)

She rejects both, but she's more sympathetic to the inductive approach. That's consistent with her evidentialist epistemology. I think it's safe to say that if she was an inerrantist, she'd be an inductive inerrantist rather than an a prior inerrantist. She draws a similar distinction in The Mirror and the Mask:

Most of the time the term "inerrancy" refers to an a priori approach in which one assumes for theological reasons related to the doctrine of inspiration that the biblical documents are inerrant (in their original MSS). That certainly doesn't describe me. I think we have to see whether or not there are errors by investigation (52). 

What's striking, though, is that she's not opposed to a priori inerrancy in principle. In her interview with Phil Fernandes, she says


I don't think Jesus was mistaken about anything. Jesus was God, so I never say Jesus just made a mistake (1:15-16 min).

So here she takes the position that Jesus is inerrant by virtue of his deity. But that's a priori inerrancy, which assumes for theological reasons related to Christology that the teaching of Christ is inerrant. 

Yet that raises the question of why a priori inerrancy is consistent with evidentialist epistemology when indexed to the person of Christ but inconsistent when indexed to Scripture. Why does the deity of Christ entail or warrant a priori inerrancy but divine inspiration does not? 

It's true, of course, that God uses human agents in the process of inspiration, but by the same token, God uses human agency in the Incarnation. In both cases there's a human medium, as well as divine agency behind the human medium, operating through the human medium. 

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