Can I Have Your Autograph? CSBI Articles IX and X

"The BioLogos Forum" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. 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 Pete Enns. Pete Enns is a former Senior Fellow of Biblical Studies for The BioLogos Foundation and author of several books and commentaries, including the popular Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, which looks at three questions raised by biblical scholars that seem to threaten traditional views of Scripture.

This is part eleven in a blog series by Pete Enns (other parts can be found in the sidebar). In order to remove obstacles from the science and faith discussion, Enns carefully examines both the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics (CSBH), two documents that were developed by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The CSBI and CSBH were produced during three-day summits to which approximately 300 pastors from the Evangelical community came in an effort to defend and define biblical inerrancy. Despite their best efforts, there are still hermeneutical and theological shortcomings in the statements that pose road blocks to the progression of the science and faith discussion. Throughout the series, Enns looks at three main problems with the content of these declarations: inadequate genre recognition, a failure to appreciate how the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament complicates various Articles, and a failure to appreciate narrative developments within the Bible.

The two Articles we will look at today deal with falsehood in Scripture and the autographs. The first is an issue that CSBI returns to repeatedly, and so we will not spend much time there. The second issue, the well-known assertion that inspiration is only the property of the autographs, is key for CSBI and we will look at that more closely.

Article IX

We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

Article X

We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

CSBI is correct, of course, that inspiration does not guarantee omniscience on the part of the human writers, nor does human limitation (“finitude or fallenness”) imply “distortion or falsehood.” But, here again, everything depends on how these terms are defined, and, based on previous Articles, it seems that CSBI is frontloading these terms with weight they cannot—and should not—bear.

Scripture can be trustworthy and free from falsehood and speak in ancient idioms whose utterances do not correspond to contemporary standards of truth and falsehood—which CSBI presumes to be universally binding. So, saying the cosmos was created in six days is an ancient idiom and does not correspond to scientific or historical reality. But that does not mean that Genesis 1 is therefore false or distorted. It is simply ancient. But this is ground we do not need to cover again.

The question of the autographs is worthy of greater attention. We touched on this issue in a previous post, but here we need to probe a bit deeper.

The fact that CSBI limits inspiration to the autographs is a necessary concession. We know that the biblical text suffers from corruptions that have been introduced during the process of copying and transmitting manuscripts (as is the case with any ancient literature). Since, as the framers see it, such corruption is considered incompatible with divine inspiration, logic dictates that inspiration must have taken place at only a prior stage.

At first glance, this seems rational, but there are a number of difficulties with the autograph theory that have been brought to light over the years.

1. The study of textual-criticism (working backward from the copies to the hypothetical original text) has shown that an “original” is an elusive entity. In brief, we don’t know what the originals looked like and we most likely never will. In fact, the more manuscripts have been unearthed, the more complicated the entire matter has become.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 helped us see just how complex textual transmission is for the Old Testament, and alerted us to the diverse versions of biblical books that already existed before the time of Christ. As far back in time as we can see, there is more manuscript diversity, not less, and it is common among textual critics to have abandoned the prospect of uncovering the original altogether. In fact, the quest for an original is generally considered naïve.

2. Many question the theological logic of putting so much weight on the autographs when the Holy Spirit, who inspired them, has not seen fit to preserve them. What does this tell us about how important the autographs are to God? Are those who put such stress on the autographs truly exhibiting a high view of Scripture?

3. The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible was into Greek. This process began in the decades following the conquests of Alexander the Great (332 BC), which naturally lead to a linguistic change in ancient Palestine: Greek came to be the main language. This is also why the New Testament, the historical record of the rise of Christianity—a movement that sprung from Judaism—was written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic.

The earliest Greek manuscripts (that we know of) of the Old Testament date to the 2nd century B.C. The term for the Greek translation, “Septuagint,” reflects the legend that the translation of the Hebrew took place in seventy days by seventy-two Jewish translators (six from each of the twelve tribes). The fact, however, is that the Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible grew up at various places and in various times and that process was only streamlined after the time of Christ.

The point is that during the time in which the New Testament was written, the Old Testament of these writers was in Greek, not Hebrew (although at least some New Testament writers, like Paul, knew Hebrew). This is significant for two reasons: (1) the form of the Greek text was not yet finalized or stable. There was almost certainly no “one” Septuagint in existence during the time of Christ.

(2) The Septuagint is a translation, and, like all translations, it is far from perfect. Sometimes the Greek translators make mistakes in translating the Hebrew, other times they paraphrase and lose something of the impact that way. Still at other times the Greek translators are working off of a Hebrew “parent” text that does not match the Hebrew text that lies behind our English Bibles—i.e., they had a different Bible than we do.

It is striking that at the climax of redemptive history, the coming of Christ, that the Bible available to the New Testament writers, guided by the Holy Spirit, was a translation that didn’t quite get it right. This raises rather significant theological questions that cast serious doubt on the importance given to the autographs.

To be direct, one wonders whether God is as concerned about the autographs as the framers of CSBI are. The fact is that Greek was the language of international discourse. For the Gospel to spread, Greek was the language that had to be used. The Old Testament already existed in Greek, and so the spread of the Gospel fell on ears already prepared to hear it. God, in other words, seems less concerned about “preserving” the autographs than he does reaching people where they are.

The final point is more pastoral. By limiting inspiration to the autograph (which does not exist), people will begin to wonder whether they have any right to refer to the English Bibles in their hands as “inspired.” This raises a perennial question—that we can’t explore fully here—whether inspiration should be limited to original writings or whether even in the translational process, the Spirit is active—despite the problems inherent in any translation. These are just questions at this point, but the main point is clear: little is gained by limiting inspiration to a text no one has access to.

The issue of the autograph is a particularly telling example of how Scripture is called upon by CSBI in a manner that the evidence may not allow. It is possible to ask too much of Scripture, or at least to ask of it the wrong questions. In the evolution discussion, these are frequent obstacles with which evangelicals have to contend.