What Kind of “Progress” Does Scripture Make? CSBI Article V

"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 nine 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.

Article V

We affirm that God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive.

We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.

As with a number of other Articles, the view expressed here is on one level wholly unproblematic. We read here that Scripture is progressive, but (1) such progress does not extend beyond the Bible, namely past the completion of the New Testament, and (2) at no point in the progress of revelation does later revelation contradict or neutralize earlier revelation.

On the first point, the progress of revelation ceases with the closing of the New Testament canon, meaning the subsequent writings (like the Gospel of Thomas, for example), however interesting they may otherwise be, add nothing of revelatory content to the biblical message. On the second point, the framers mean that the parts of Scripture are not at odds with each other, a point that deserves further elaboration and that we will return to in a moment (and when we discuss Article VI in the next post.)

But generally speaking, by referring to revelation as progressive, the framers wisely acknowledge that Scripture is not a “flat” text but has movement. Although the framers do not use this analogy, the Bible behaves like a grand novel, with complex and diverse pieces, and the further along one reads, the more clarity one has in where the story is going. Then with the climax, the story is resolved and the pieces come together.

It is quite common for Christians to think of the Bible as a work of progressive revelation. The Bible is a grand narrative that has a basic plot that begins with Israel’s story and moves forward toward a climax—which is the death and resurrection of Christ and the formation of the church by the power of the Spirit.

But even the apparently straightforward assertions made in Article V are not without their problems, which comes down to this: any meaningful notion of progress—by its very definition—implies a “going beyond” quality. In fact, the gospel requires a going beyond—and even leaving behind—dimension.

What is the gospel, after all, if not the new wine that the old wineskins (the Israelite/Jewish tradition) cannot hold (Matthew 9:17 and parallels)? One need only think of things like Jesus nullifying Israel’s dietary laws (Mark 7:19), or the inclusion of Gentiles into the family of God rather than requiring that they first become Jews by circumcision (Galatians 3:26-29), or Jesus telling the crowd not to stone the adulteress even though the Old Testament penalty is clear (John 8), or Jesus claiming to replace the need for the temple (John 2).

Progressive revelation is an authentic and vital component of Scripture, but we do a disservice to its very progressiveness if we say that later revelation does not “correct” earlier revelation. I realize, of course, that speaking of parts of Scripture correcting other parts is problematic. But here the source of the problem is the words the framers chose to express themselves on this matter.

It may be better to say that progress in revelation clearly includes some sort of “change” or “movement” from old to new, which, according to the examples above, includes moving in wholly different directions. Otherwise, there is no progress. One would be hard pressed to think of any type of progress that does not necessarily entail truly leaving behind something of the old.

One can debate the language used, whether the new “corrects or contradicts” the old, or “moves past” and “nullifies” the old. But the point remains: the gospel requires that Israel’s story in the Old Testament be transformed in light of Christ. Otherwise we are left with a gospel that is merely the easy continuation of Israel’s story, which it clearly is not (given the views on law, sacrifice, and many other things articulated by the New Testament authors.)

Put another way, progressive revelation implies that one should not expect the whole of Christian doctrine to reside at one point in that grand narrative—especially in the Old Testament, and even more especially in the opening chapters of Genesis.

There are many reasons for drawing this out, but let’s stay focused on the science/faith issue. One possible application of Article V is to insist that Paul’s view of Adam (in Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15) must necessarily be fully in line with what we read in Genesis 2-3. Now, it may be that the two are to be completely aligned, but that must be decided on exegetical grounds.

It could just as easily be the case that Paul’s Adam has a “going beyond” quality to it—for example, Genesis speaks of Adam as part of Israel’s origins, not the origins of humanity; or Adam in Genesis is “everyman,” a symbol of the universal tendency to reject God’s wisdom and follow one’s own path.

So, the question to be asked is whether the notion of progressive revelation articulated in Article V allows in principle these sorts of exegetical possibilities, or if it precludes any such possibilities on the basis of later revelation not correcting or contradicting earlier revelation. These sort of issues need to be addressed on an exegetical level. Theological and hermeneutical pre-commitments that close off that discussion are unfortunate.

Another possible misapplication of Article V is to marginalize extrabiblical evidence (science and archaeology) with respect to interpreting Scripture. The grounds for this would be the notion that, for extrabiblical evidence to determine how Scripture is interpreted, one would have to accord such evidence a quasi-revelatory role.

Putting the issue this way may seem a bit extreme, but think about it. If for the first 1800 years of its existence the church has understood Adam as the first human being, created directly by God, but now scientific and archaeological evidence comes to the surface to challenge that, and if one allows such evidence to affect how one interprets Scripture, that evidence is being given a tremendous amount of weight—almost more weight than Scripture itself.

Some could read Article V as rendering null and void any such quasi-revelatory function to extrabiblical evidence for “progressing” the church’s understanding of Scripture. The problem with this way of thinking, however, is that it fails to embrace how the utterances of Scripture are revelatory, but are so in their ancient historical contexts. Extrabiblical evidence does not necessarily get in the way of biblical interpretation; it may actually help us gain clearer knowledge of how the Bible is to be handled.

Of course, all of this would need to be discussed at length on a case-by-case basis. My concern here is whether Article V prematurely renders out of bounds elements of that discussion.