After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age, Part 5

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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 , in which he argues that evangelical biblical scholarship has largely failed in not appropriating critical scholarship as it should.

This is the fifth of a seven-part series, which has been adapted from a Scholarly Essay of the same title. The first entry can be read here.

In his previous post, Sparks pointed out the implications that Christ’s human nature should have on our understanding of Scripture. In today’s blog, Sparks relates the falleness of Creation with the non-Biblistic inerrancy of Scripture.

A Key Analogy: The Problem of Creation and the Problem of Scripture

The accommodation theology of the Church Fathers and Calvin holds that Scripture is God’s word expressed by human beings and that, where errors exist, these are not God’s but rather his accommodation or condescension to the finite, fallen human condition. If we then set to one side these instances of accommodation, we can embrace the rest of Scripture as truth that leads to a coherent understanding of God and God’s voice. This is the accommodationist approach, in a nutshell.

Two problems persist in this hermeneutical tactic. First, accommodation does not adequately address the so-called “dark side” of Scripture. In the case of biblical genocide, for example, it would have to argue that God “accommodated” himself to the ancient view that enemies should be slaughtered wholesale. I don’t think that this solution is much more satisfying than a solution that simply says God teaches us to slaughter our enemies.

The second problem is that accommodation errantly imagines that the problems in Scripture arise only in discrete circumstances. But if the insights of Practical Realism and traditional orthodoxy are right, then it follows that all human viewpoints in Scripture (not merely a few here and there) are miss-shaped in some ways or others by the broken human condition. So, though the patristic use of accommodation provides an important clue for our theological work, respecting the problem of Scripture it is not a solution that wholly suits our postmodern situation. We will have to move in the patristic direction but travel the path farther than they did.

Let us begin with God’s creation. It is beautiful … in fact, unbelievable beautiful. Yet it also includes terrors and evils that are unspeakable … rapes, murders and wars … famine, disease and disaster … pain indescribable. Given that God has created everything that exists, how do Christians avoid the possible (some skeptics would say inevitable) implication that the blame for creation’s evils and horrors can be pinned on God? Following Paul’s lead in Rom 8:20-22, Christians dogmatically assert that the cosmos is broken because of human sin.²² So it is not God, but human beings, who are finally culpable for the messy side of creation. Creation is good and beautiful because it is God’s creation, but warped and broken because of human influence.

To make the point clearer, imagine with me a beautiful painting by Renoir or Monet. And then imagine that someone seizes the painting, rips it from its frame, crumples it up and stomps on it for about ten minutes. What does one end up with? One ends up with a beautiful painting that is everywhere warped and twisted. In some places the former beauty of the unmolested painting is more visible than in others, but there is no quarter of the painting that has escaped the damage. This, I would say, suitably describes God’s creation. It is beautiful but also broken, and in such a way that one cannot really separate what’s beautiful from what’s not. Because it is the good thing itself that is warped and damaged.

And now my main point in this part of the paper. Just as we can maintain the created order is God’s good creation warped by the fall, in a similar way we can maintain that Scripture—given through and to a fallen world through fallen men—is both beautiful and broken. No less than the creation, Scripture’s human authors, and the book that they wrote, stands in need of redemption.

The Redemption of Scripture: Biblical Examples

Scripture is a casualty of the fallen cosmos. I have adduced evidence for this assertion by highlighting numerous tensions and contradictions in the Bible, including ethical tensions, and also by demonstrating the some of the best-known Church leaders in history have admitted that Scripture indeed reflects divine accommodations to humanity’s fallen condition.

But if these assertions are theologically valid, then we should be able to adduce direct and explicit biblical evidence that Scripture is in need of redemption and that God is working to redeem it. I believe that this evidence is readily available in Scripture. There are numerous examples that I could site, but here I will refer to only one, from the New Testament. (I give an example from the Old Testament in my essay.)

Consider these examples from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt chs. 5-7):

It was also said [by Moses], “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt 5:31-32).

You have heard that it was said [by Moses],”'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also (Matt 5:38-39).

You have heard that it was said [by Moses], “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:43-44).

In all three of these instances, Jesus quotes the law of Moses and then offers, as his own teaching, something that negates it or even amounts to its opposite. He takes a particularly strong stand against the Law’s violent streak, such as its legal demand that Israel return evil for evil by killing its Canaanite enemies.

The sermon appeared so contrary to the Law that Jesus had to add a word of clarification: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). Though we are Christians and of course believe him on this point, we cannot help but ask: How can it be that Jesus fulfills the Law by reversing its teachings?

We are able to get an answer to this question by attending closely to other texts in the same gospel, the gospel of Matthew. We are particularly fortunate that, in one of his confrontations with Jewish leaders, Jesus repeats and expands on his teaching that divorce should not be permitted as the Law of Moses suggests. We have at our disposal both the challenge of Jewish leaders and Jesus’ thoughtful response to them:

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

According to Jesus, in this case, at least, the Law of Moses did not offer the Jews a proper path for healthy living. It offered instead a regulation designed and suited for hard-hearted, unspiritual persons. So it follows that the fulfillment of this law amounted to what Keith Ward has called sublation … to its reversal or negation. For unlike Moses, Jesus did not permit divorce for any and every reason.

The Bible, with its two Testaments, plays a vital role in God’s redemptive work. Taken as a whole, it is a steady and valuable guide for God’s people as they seek to know him and to love their neighbors. But ultimately, the redemption of both Testaments, and of the cosmos and humanity, is accomplished by the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and return of our savior, Jesus Christ. Until that final day comes, we shall continue to struggle with the problems of pain and suffering, and with the problems in Scripture. These are our problems that Christ has graciously taken upon himself.

In his next post, Sparks will discuss how to approach Scripture in light of this revised understanding of inerrancy.

Notes

1. Santmire has argued that two early Christian theologians, Irenaeus and Augustine, denied that the created order was fallen. This would not be a surprise given that both were engaged in heated debate with Gnostics who held that the creation was actually evil, but in the end I don’t find Santimire’s argument wholly persuasive. And, even if he is right, the views of Irenaeus and Augustine have not substantially influenced traditional Christian thinking on the creation. See H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 31-73. For the standard view, see article III.400 in Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), 101