After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age, Part 1
"The BioLogos Forum" is pleased to feature essays from various guest voices in the science-and-religion dialogue. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.
Today's entry was written by
Kenton Sparks.
Kenton Sparks is professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University and author of several books, including his latest God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship
This is the first entry of a seven-part series, which has been adapted from a Scholarly Essay of the same title. Some footnotes have been removed, but can be found in the full essay.
“We must read this book of books with all human methods. But through the fragile and broken Bible, God meets us in the voice of the Risen One.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Reflections on the Bible
Introduction
I write for Evangelicals who either believe or suspect that our tradition has painted itself into an intellectual corner. The Church has been down this road before. In the 16th and 17th centuries it mistakenly criticized Copernicus and Galileo because their scientific views were clearly “unbiblical.” And just as the evidence finally came crashing down on Church dogma in those days, so in ours, the facts are stacking up quickly against fundamentalistic beliefs in “creation science” and in the kind of “biblical inerrancy” that supports it.
While there was perhaps a period in history when Evangelicals could deny the substance of these new theories because the available evidence seemed thin, it seems to me that we’ve now crossed an evidential threshold that makes it intellectually unsuitable to defend some of the standard dogmas of the conservative Evangelical tradition. Holding fast to these old dogmas merely perpetuates the “intellectual disaster of Fundamentalism” and the “scandal of Evangelical Mind.”1
The intellectual cul-de-sac in which Evangelicalism finds itself can be traced back to many causes. But it seems clear, at least to me, that a fundamental cause of the scandal is its doctrine of Scripture. Often this doctrine involves a strict adherence to “Biblicism” … to a belief that the Bible provides inerrant access to the truth about everything it touches on … from biology, physics and astronomy to psychology, history and theology. In more progressive Evangelical circles inerrancy is sometimes defined more delicately, in a way that allows the non-biblical evidence to carry more weight in our reflection, but even here the subtle influence of inerrancy often engenders poor, or at least inferior, judgments about science, history, human beings and theology. In the pages that follow I will briefly explain why conventional Evangelical understandings of Scripture simply cannot be right. I will also survey some of the important resources that can help the Church get its bearings in a world without Biblicistic inerrancy.
Dogmatic Assumptions
In all my writing here, I will assume the basic legitimacy and cogency of the traditional Christian orthodoxy. That God exists and is good … that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, both divine and human … that the Bible is the word of God and hence authoritative for Christians … that there are such things as orthodoxy (right religious beliefs) and heresy (wrong religious beliefs) … all of these are matters of dogmatic theology that I will treat as finally settled.
Many Evangelicals would like to include Biblicistic inerrancy in any list of dogmatic assumptions, but Biblicistic inerrancy is neither a standard view among Christians at-large nor is it theologically sensible in light of the strong evidence against it.
The Tensions Within Scripture
Evangelical tradition commonly holds that God, in giving us Scripture, shielded it from the errant influences of its finite, fallen human authors. While this commitment to Scripture’s divinity and veracity is laudable and in many respects traditional, it does not come without an apparent intellectual price. The evidence against this view either is or appears to be very strong.
Let me begin with one brief, clear and fairly innocuous example of the problem that confronts Evangelicals. My example comes from the life of Judas, the man who betrayed Jesus. Consider the two accounts of his death provided below:
It is easy to see the differences in the two accounts. While it’s quite possible that one of these stories is right, or that both are partly right, I don’t see how they can both be historically right in every respect.
The difficulty that I have just cited involves a tension within the Bible between two different texts. Another sort of tension appears when the Biblical text does not square with evidence outside of the Bible, as is the case when biblical and scientific evidence do not cohere.
The Tensions Between Scripture and Observation
A long-known example appears in Genesis ch. 1, where God is said to create a “firmament” or “expanse” in the sky to hold back the waters above it (see Gen 1:6-8). As the great Christian exegete John Calvin said long ago, “it seems impossible and opposed to common sense that there are waters above the heavens.”2 Calvin admitted, nevertheless, that this is what the text says. He further concluded that this was not correct and probably reflected how ancient, uneducated Israelites understood the structure of the cosmos. His surmise has turned out to be right, since ancient texts and pictures discovered by modern scholars confirm that all of Israel’s neighbors—even the advanced societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia—believed that there were waters above the heavens … The sky is blue because there is water up there.3
The list of similar “tensions” and “contradictions” in Scripture is very long. A long list of examples is given in this portion of my scholarly article.
In some cases these apparent contradictions and problems can perhaps be “harmonized” in some way or other. For instance, some scholars have suggested that one of the conflicting accounts of Judas’ death (the account in Matthew) was written according to the fictional conventions of Jewish “midrash” rather than the conventions of biography or history.4 If this is right, then there is no real historical conflict between the two biblical stories. But it’s very doubtful—in fact, I would say quite impossible—that all of the problems have workable, convincing solutions. If we take the Bible’s explicit content with any seriousness, then it is clear that its authors were not wholly consistent with each other, and it does not appear that they were wholly right about all matters of science and history.
So like any other book, the Bible appears to be a historically and culturally contingent text and, because of that, it reflects the diverse viewpoints of different people who lived in different times and places. In other words, Scripture is tradition. Perhaps authoritative tradition … but tradition, nonetheless.
I realize that for some Christians these observations make the Bible, as the word of God, look all too human. I will address these concerns in future blogs.
In his next post, Sparks will extend the list of Scriptural “tensions” to include ethical matters.
Notes
1. My language is taken from the classic discussion of Evangelical intellectual history by Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
2. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses, called Genesis (trans. John King; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847-1850), 1.79-80.
3. See Kenton L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2005), 321, 325, 337.
4. Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974); Robert Gundry, Matthew, a Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982).
For the latest comments, subscribe to our Comment RSS feed. See a comment that violates our Commenting Guidelines? Use the "Report Inappropriate Comment" tool in the upper-right corner.
June 8th 2010
Got your point, Bryan. I was referring to your comment that: “actually we don’t have humanity in the person of Christ.” I don’t think that’s Nicean or Chalcedonian ... after the incarnation, the second person of the trinity is and always will be human. But I was more interested in where your argument went ... we head in a docetic direction if we forge our doctrine in order to avoid conclusions that paint Jesus in human colors, such as the natural error of human judgment.
But that said, it seems possible to me that details of theology were communicable from his divine to human nature (though these would have to be contextualized within the human horizon) and that this could have prevented theological errors to some extent. Whether that’s the actual case would depend upon whether one senses theological diversity in the teachings of Jesus and in the reception of those teachings by Christians, particular in Paul.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
Kent, There is a difference between God punishing children for the sins of their fathers and God ‘visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children.’ In the former case, God delays judgment by withholding it from a wicked person, then pouring it out on his children. God doesn’t do that, but because we live in a moral universe, He does permit children to suffer, along with their parents, the consequences of their parents’ sins. That is not even an article of faith; it is an obvious fact of human experience. The children of criminals who are incarcerated suffer by being passed from one foster home to the next. They suffer on account of their parents’ sin. So, too, the children of the Canaanites suffered death on account of their parents’ sin of idolatry and rebellion against God. God did not permit them to live and grow up within the Israelite community, because of the threat they would pose to that community. The knowledge of their Canaanite origin and the execution of their parents by the will of God would engender in them a spirit of disloyalty to the God of Israel, threatening the life of the community. That is why they had to perish along with their parents—on account of their parents’ hatred of God.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
Thanks, Kent.
Psalm 137 is of course poetry, not narrative prose, and therefore contains the excessive language typical of poetry: also, it is contemplating a hypothetical situation, not a past event, and the action contemplated is not attributed to God, so the case is not exactly parallel.
You give no precise reference for Gregory of Nyssa’s comment, so I can’t read the whole passage in context. But assuming Gregory means exactly what you suggest, he’s reading the OT selectively, because elsewhere the OT says explicitly that God *does* visit the punishment of the fathers on the sons, unto the fourth generation. In any case, the Exodus passage in question is clearly not “allegory”, and for the most part allegory is an utterly inappropriate mode of OT interpretation.
I agree with you that “any thoughtful person can see the problem”. I’m not denying that some Fathers saw the problem. What I was looking for was any evidence that the Fathers solved the problem by outrightly denying that God performed actions or gave commands explicitly attributed to him by the OT narrator. You’ve given one example, not fully sourced. Have you got any others? (continued)
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
Kent (continued):
Just to avoid confusion, since some of my points may sound like Martin’s, I’d like to distinguish my position from Martin’s. I sometimes agree with Martin about what the Bible *means*, but evaluate it differently. For Martin, every word of the Bible comes more or less directly from God, and is true (allowing for obvious figures of speech) on the literal level. This puts the statements about divine action offered by the Biblical narrator beyond criticism. For myself, the words come from man, partly inspired by God, and the divine/human proportion varies from book to book, with “the divine part” almost receding out of sight in some passages, and “the human part” dominating, and vice versa. I see many of the military passages about the conquest of Canaan as displaying Israelite chauvinism, whereas I see the dialogue between God and Abraham over Sodom and the story of David and Bathsheba as filled with divine truth. I simply don’t expect to find Christian truth in some parts of the Bible. Thus, I think Gregory of Nyssa willfully misread Exodus, and that his exegesis cannot be allowed, though I’m sympathetic with his motivation for the misreading.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
Hi Kent,
I just wanted to jump back in to clarify this important point. The orthodox doctrine of Christ never sees the Son as a human person, ever. Not before the incarnation, and not after the incarnation. Person and nature are two completely different things. That’s why you can be a person and an angel can be a person, but you can have two completely different natures. Christ takes upon Himself a full human nature. This is where I think your incarnational analogy (and the incarnation in relation to the possibility of Christ speaking theological error) may be confused. Docetism is in respect to Christ’s natures, not His Person. He always a divine person, before and after the incarnation. The human nature allows His Person to do human things, but He never, at any time, is a human person. A human nature is unified to His Person which is eternally unified with His divine nature already. Otherwise, as said before, you enter into Nestorianism (two persons) or Monophysitism (a mixture of two persons becoming one). (cont.)
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
This is important because the claim that those who see a purity in the divine-human union cannot be dismissed so easily by claiming that they are falling prey to Docetic tendencies in their view of Scripture. As said before, however, it may simply be that the analogy doesn’t work between the two, and at that point, all bets are off.
Reply to this commentI’m glad that you acknowledge that it may be that the divine has some impact on the human; but the comment concerning forging doctrine in order to paint Jesus in human colors does beg the question as to what those human colors look like in a divine person who also has a divine nature. We should also be careful about forging our doctrine assuming this point in an effort to avoid Docetism and end up having our speculations bring us to something consistent with Arianism, monophysitism, or adoptionism instead. Thanks again for the discussion.
June 8th 2010
Bryan Hodge,
In regards to the humanity of Jesus, how do you understand this:
Reply to this commentAnd about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
June 8th 2010
R Hampton:
I’m not sure how this is meant to oppose the orthodox doctrine? Jesus had two wills, was a distinct person from the Father, had full humanity with full human emotions and thoughts, etc. However, the exact phrase is meant to recall the suffering Messiah of the Psalmist, who sees God as forsaking him, but still trusts in him. The Jews know the Psalm, and know that the cry of the Psalmist is only a perception. God didn’t really forsake David at all. He just allowed him to go through suffering and make it look like he was forsaken. But, again, I’m not sure how an alternate interpretation would negate the orthodox teaching of Christ.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
Bryan Hodge,
...the [Catholic] Church firmly professes and proclaims the truth that Christ is the God-Man, true God and true man. He is the one divine Person of the Word in two natures, divine and human, as the catechism teaches. It is a profound mystery of our faith, faceted with so many lights.
Jesus had a body subject to fatigue and suffering, a mortal body, a body that finally underwent the torture of martyrdom through the scourging, crowning with thorns, and eventually crucifixion. During the terrible agony when dying on the cross, Jesus uttered the words, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28). These words contain a final, sorrowful and moving expression of the truth of his humanity.
Only a true man could have suffered as Jesus suffered on Golgotha. Only a true man could have died as Jesus truly died. This death was observed by many eyewitnesses, not merely from among his friends and disciples. St. John’s Gospel tells us that the soldiers “came to Jesus, and seeing that he was already dead, did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out” (19:33-34).
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
R Hampton,
Amen.
Please go back and reread what I said if you think I said anything that contradicted this statement. I fully affirm it. I think you’re confusing nature and person as well here if you think I said anything contrary to this.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
R Hampton:
Nothing in your quotation undermines anything that Bryan Hodge has said. Your quotation expresses the teaching that Christ shared in human *nature*; Bryan’s point was that the second *Person* of the Trinity remains divine, while partaking in human *nature*. Bryan, like the Roman Church, properly distinguishes between “Person” and “nature”. You are not grasping this distinction. This is rather odd, as it’s made clearly in the second sentence of the passage you quote above: “one divine Person of the Word in two natures, divine and human”—exactly what Bryan has been saying.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
“The Divine and human natures do not bear the same relation to the one Divine Person, but
the Divine Nature is related first of all thereto, inasmuch as it is one with It from eternity; and afterwards the human nature is related to the Divine Person, inasmuch as it is assumed
by the Divine Person in time, NOT INDEED THAT THE NATURE IS THE PERSON, but that the Person of God subsists in human nature. For the Son of God is His Godhead, but is not His manhood. And hence, in order that the human nature may be assumed by the Divine Person, the Divine Nature must be united by a personal union with the whole nature assumed, i.e. in all its parts. Now in the two natures assumed there would be a uniform relation to the Divine Person, nor would one assume the other. Hence it would not be necessary for one of them to be altogether united to the other, i.e. all the parts of one with all the parts of the other.” (Summa IIIa q. 3 a. 7).
Aquinas here is dealing with a different subject, but I wanted to point out the distinction between person and nature and how they may relate to one another.
Reply to this commentJune 8th 2010
I guess I could have been more clear, but I would suggest that the last hours of Jesus (as but one example) does begin to answer the question: as to what those human colors look like in a divine person who also has a divine nature.
Reply to this commentJune 10th 2010
First, thank you for posting this. I think this perspective and conversation are necessary and helpful to the continuing development of evangelicalism and its public discourse. However, I have some thoughts that relate to hermeneutics. First, I am not sure that we are asking the right questions of the Biblical texts. It seems that we often look past the words to the “history” that the words reflect. When that doesn’t look right to us, we marginalize the words. Young earthers do this all the time, when they start talking about dinosaurs on the ark. But, so do old-earthers when they start talking about firmaments and such. Perhaps we all - especially those of us who believe in inerrancy, as I do - should spend more time on what the words are saying, instead of looking “past” them. For example, the account of Judas hanging himself would have important meaning in second temple Judaism. Both suicide was cursed, as was hanging. To hang one’s self is an act of self-damnation. Did Judas hang himself, or did he fall headlong? Or both? I don’t think that is the point of the text. I would like to see this conversation to take hermeneutics and theological method more seriously.
Reply to this commentJune 25th 2010
I was very surprised about the remark about John Calvin thinking the Bible is in error and so I just went and looked up what he actually said (see his commentary on verse 6 here http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.vii.i.html). I do not think it is accurate to claim Calvin thought the Bible is in error. He is not saying the Bible is in error, rather he is saying that it uses the language of ‘rude and unlearned’ men to describe phenomenon, (i.e. describing clouds as ‘waters’ above the firmament) rather than more precise terms.
How Kenton Sparks confidently construes this as Calvin thinking the writer was in error seems a little dishonest.
Reply to this commentAugust 16th 2010
I just looked up Calvin as well (before reading through the comments above) Clearly, Calvin is not affirming errors in the Bible, but sees Moses as speaking phenomenologically. Calvin speaks of Moses’ conscious intent as the determiner of the text’s meaning and criticizes those who read the passage “not in accordance with the design of Moses.” Calvin writes, “We see the clouds suspended in the air, which threaten to fall on our heads, yet leave us space to breathe.”
Reply to this comment