Debatable Assumptions: CSBI and Summary Statement 5

"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 five 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.

As we have seen in the previous three posts, the Summary Statement of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) comprises five declarations that summarize the content and general disposition of the Articles of Affirmation and Denial that follow. In brief, they set up an understanding of inerrancy that the framers consider axiomatic for their more detailed thoughts to follow.

Thus far we have seen that, as worded, these statements reveal certain debatable assumptions regarding the nature of Scripture, what inspiration necessarily entails, and the implications of a non-literal reading of creation and other issues for matters of salvation. We have also seen that some of the language used (particularly in statement 2) is ambiguous, but seems to be invested with meaning that distracts from constructive dialogue between science and faith.

I want to remind our readers that my purpose in this series is not to evaluate the CSBI in general, but to see how this statement can affect the science/faith dialogue, particularly since it has been an influential statement of Evangelical theology for over 30 years. Toward that end, my point of view is that CSBI does not encourage such discussion but hinders it significantly—not because it maintains a high view of Scripture that is antithetical to science, but because it promotes a view of Scripture that lacks necessary nuance and subtlety on many key points.

As I engage CBSI, I am also well aware that the nature of the science/faith dialogue has shifted significantly in recent years, and we cannot complain that CSBI fails to take those developments into account. All theological statements, including CSBI, need to be understood in the context of the historical moment out of which they arose—a courtesy we extend to Scripture as well!

All of our theological iterations are “works in progress,” ever open to adjustment, change, and, if need be, abandonment. The CSBI statement is no different. In fact, the true Protestant Evangelical spirit out of which this statement grew demands critical self-reflection, and it is in that spirit that I offer my comments here.

The fifth and final summary statement lays out more clearly the framers’ understanding of the implications of failing to assent to their view of inerrancy.

5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

If we read statement 5 in view of statements 1-4, we will see that the conclusion reached here is virtually inevitable. Given all that has gone before, there is really no choice but to conclude that the authority of Scripture will be compromised to serious individual and corporate detriment if Scripture is not inerrant in all that it “touches” or “affirms” (etc.), which, as we have seen, includes for the framers matters of creation and history.

The problem, of course, is that the conclusion is convincing only if the premise is granted—namely that without inerrancy, as the framers understand it, the Bible ceases having any meaningful authority. The question really is what kind of authority we are to expect from the Bible and how one is to make that determination. To ask these questions is to question the premise of CBSI, which is precisely what is needed to move the science/faith dialogue forward in an Evangelical setting.

In others words, as is mentioned in earlier posts and bears repeating, this entire matter is an inescapably theological and hermeneutical one, not simply of appealing to what the Bible “clearly” says on matters of creation (see statement 4) and then proceeding on that basis to dialogue with science. If that is the case, the entire dialogue, so sorely needed in our world, is over before it begins.

What is missing in CSBI, and summarized so clearly here in statement 5, is hermeneutical self-consciousness, which is to say, an awareness that “what the Bible says” is itself the subject of careful, deep, nuanced, theological and hermeneutical reflection, which from the early church on has been part and parcel of the Christian task.

It may be presumed by the framers (and I strongly suspect that it is) that the CSBI view of Scripture is that of the historic church throughout the ages. That claim, however, would need to be established rather than assumed, and those efforts would, in my opinion, bear little fruit. The way that the inerrancy issue is framed in CSBI is in direct response to factors that were largely unknown for about the first 1700 years of the church’s existence.

CSBI certainly sees itself as applying the church’s historically unanimous view of Scripture from the past to pressing matters of the present, but the framers’ own understanding of the past is no doubt colored by their own present intentions, namely to defend and explicate their doctrine of Scripture in our day and age. CSBI is hardly unique in that regard, for reading one’s present into the past is a universal theological tendency. Careful theology, however, is ever vigilant to account for that factor and proceed accordingly.

This is precisely what I aim to do in the post that follows, where we will look at the Articles of Affirmation and Denial.