A new faith paradigm -- Part II

Second in a series inspired by Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture. 

First post here.

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Okay. Another email I sent to my family just a few hours ago.

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I have been struggling with how to continue this series on my “new paradigm.” I feel the need to continue because I sense I need to attempt to summarize or “wrap up” what I have been thinking. At the same time, I realize that I am highly reluctant to state things in such a way that I somehow give the impression I am “locked in” to my new position, unwilling to listen to additional input.

Still, I am also unwilling to let myself be so “squishy” that I come across as “riding the fence” or something. (Or, if I may refer to something InterVarsity’s His magazine, back in the ’60s, quoted from G.K. Chesterton (and, yes, I have remembered it from that time, though I looked it up just now to find the attribution and to ensure I had remembered it accurately!): “The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to close it again on something solid.” Seeking diligently to be as open-minded as I have been, I do want to close on something solid!)

In what follows, you will find two lengthy side notes. If you want the gist of this message, I think you will do just fine to skip the side notes. But I thought they were relevant and possibly helpful to at least some of those who will read this message.

Side note: About why I couldn't let this issue go

Over the years I have had many people say, "What you are talking about (whatever issue in life is bothering me at the moment) is simply not a problem for me." Put another way: "I don't worry about these kinds of things."

I have heard that kind of comment a lot. And that is fine. I find no fault with such people. If they mean it to say, “Please don't bother me with your problems,” I am happy to oblige. (And if that is the case here, with my emails, then please tell me. I don't want to bother you.)

If they mean, “Look, it doesn't bother me and (therefore) it shouldn't bother you”: With that I do have a problem. I understand that some things may bother one person and not another. But just because something doesn't bother one person doesn't mean, therefore, that pursuit of solution to a problem is invalid.

Among the people to whom I am sending this series of emails, I don't expect anyone to be in the latter camp. I think you understand that something may not bother you but it could be of deep concern to another person. And I thank you for your indulgence.

Let me note, however, that this problem of inerrancy was not something for which I looked at all. I have felt it has been forced upon me.

I was never a “strong” inerrantist, in the sense of a leader in the movement or a strong advocate for such a position.

Rather, I was and have been someone who has “gone along with” the perspective because that is what I was taught . . . and because it made sense to me . . . because the Scriptural evidence presented and the “good and necessary consequences” deduced therefrom led me, indeed, to agree: the Bible must be inerrant.

And I went merrily along with that position for many years until I had my nose pressed against the grindstone by some rabid young earth creationists—especially Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and people in the Christian homeschool movement who follow him/them.

As most of the recipients of this email are well aware, I was, until (now going on) five years ago, closely associated with Sonlight Curriculum. I helped write the curriculum. And so I was confronted by questions about that curriculum. Many of Ham’s disciples asked me (in the form of “us”):

“You claim to be Christian. You claim to believe the Bible. And you claim to teach history. So why does your history program not begin where the Bible begins? Why don't you start your discussion of human history with the creation in [more or less] 4,000 BC?”

Or,

“Why isn't the Bible fully integrated in your history and science programs?”

Or,

“Why do you present biblical history as, in some ways, separate from the flow of ‘secular’ history?”

And so on and so forth.

(I should probably note, in fairness to Sonlight Curriculum: I don't think any of us who wrote the curriculum sought, intentionally, to keep the Bible and science or history apart. It was “just” that, when studying human history, we have certain information about and fragments from the earliest civilizations in Mohenjo-Daro and early China, etc., and no one has any coordinating evidence of where those come in comparison to the earliest chapters of Genesis in the Bible. And, moreover, frankly and honestly, I was raised in the church, but no one in any of the churches with which I was familiar had ever taught me to think about or to attempt to do what Archbishop Ussher attempted back in the 1600s when he attempted to calculate the age of the earth and of all humanity based on the genealogical records in the Bible. . . . So the attempt, even, to make some kind of coordination between biblical records before about 1000 BC had never even come up. . . . But then the questions started coming, as I have indicated.)

Suffice it to say: I couldn't escape the question. I couldn't leave it alone. It was constantly being shoved in my face.

How could I say I believe the Bible or take the Bible seriously if I hold any doubts about the historicity and accuracy and, based on the genealogies in the Bible, the calculability of the dates of different events and people mentioned in the Bible?

Clearly, if you want to allow for any hominids or humanoids prior to about 6000 years ago—or if you are willing to allow other believers to allow for such beings—then you've got some real problems with understanding and/or believing Genesis 1 and 2 (not to mention the other data in the genealogical records of the Old Testament) as straightforward, complete, thorough history. And if you're going to question the straightforward historicity of Genesis 1 and 2 (let alone the genealogical data), then you are questioning the factuality and trustworthiness of Scripture in general. . . .

But I am on a sidetrack, here. We will eventually have to deal with Genesis 1 and 2. But at this time I want to speak about Sparks.

Before we get to (possibly too-quick) “solutions” to what Sparks calls the "brokenness" of Scripture, I think it would not hurt any of us to permit him to dig the hole deeper. (!!!)

I thought the hole was deep enough when I began reading his book, but, actually, I found it almost a comfort to realize that he was not willing to shy away from probably the most difficult problems for anyone who wants to hold to the inerrancy of Scripture idea.

I expect what Sparks wanted to do when he wrote chapter 4 in his book is to completely shut the door on the standard "solutions" that inerrantists commonly want to bring to the table—even the “original autographs” solution.

Side note #2: Arguments for Inerrancy
Differences in Perspective –and– If only we had the Original Autographs, then it would all be clear!

Let me note that a common means inerrantists use to protect the idea of inerrancy is to speak of the Bible being inerrant "in the original autographs." This was an idea I often heard while “growing up” or going through seminary: “Well, yes, the Bible right now has some difficulties to it. But if a problem is not due to a (relatively easily) explained difference in perspective or choice of words between two witnesses, then it is almost assuredly due to some scribal error or other textual corruption. If we simply had the original autographs (the textual version the original author wrote), we would see that these problems would disappear.

And before I jump any further into my discussion, let me note what I am referring to when I speak of differences in perspective or choices of words.

An example: One text might say, “Paul and John had pulled themselves away from the crowd to speak privately. And Paul said . . . ” –Image: They were talking by themselves. Another text says, “Then Paul, John and Peter went off to a room to talk privately. And . . . ” –Well, which was it? Two men or three? . . . It could very well be three. No “error” on the part of the first narrator. He only mentioned Paul and John because there was no narrative requirement for him to mention Peter, since, for the sake of his story, the narrator doesn't need to quote Peter as having said anything. . . . Peter’s presence is irrelevant.

That’s a very reasonable “explanation” for the apparent discrepancy.

And much of the work of people who write about the apparent/supposed “errors” or “problems” in Scripture (“How can the Bible possibly be true? Look what it says here . . . and compare it to what it says there.”) . . . –people who respond to such questions spend a lot of time attempting to demonstrate how two apparently contradictory narratives are really not contradictory. They can both be true; we just have to see them in the right light.

Ultimately, however, there come certain problems where the apologists say, “Hey. We don't know. We have no idea how to solve the problem.” And then they will often say something along the lines of, “. . . But if we had the original autographs, the source of the apparent contradiction would become clear and we would understand that there is no contradiction.” Put another way, “The text has, somehow, become corrupted, and we just don't know how.”

What are some examples of "problems" that Sparks refers to that, he claims, make Scripture “broken”—i.e., untrustworthy in the sense of being “inerrant”? He speaks of: 

Tensions within the Bible Itself.

Just a few examples:

• Genesis 28:16 has Jacob addressing God as YHWH. Yet in Exodus 6:2-3, we read that God says to Moses, “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name YHWH I did not make myself known to them.”

• Deuteronomy 16:7 commands God's people to bashal the Passover meal; Exodus 12:9, however, explicitly forbids bashal’ing but, instead, commands tsaliy’ing.

• “One text says King David paid 50 shekels of silver for Israel's temple site, and another that he paid 600 shekels of gold (2 Samuel 24:24; 1 Chronicles 21:25).”

• “While Luke tells us that the apostle Paul went to Damascus and then to Jerusalem to meet the disciples immediately after his conversion, Paul’s explicit personal testimony is that he certainly did not go to Damascus or Jerusalem but proceeded instead to Arabia for a long period of spiritual retreat (Acts 9; Galatians 1:15-20).”

• “Some texts permitted Israel to sacrifice at many places before Solomon's temple was built while others did not permit this (Deuteronomy 12:8-14; Leviticus 17:8-9).”

• “There are texts that promise judgment on the children of sinners, and those that say God certainly does not harm children for the sins of their parents (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 24:16).”

• “We have a text that says that idol worshipers are without excuse, but another that excuses them (Romans 1:18-23; Acts 17:29-31).”

• “We have a text that claims God is not willing for anyone to perish, and another that seems to say he predestined some human beings to eternal judgment (2 Peter 3:9; Romans 9:1-24).”

• In Matthew 5:43-45 Jesus commands us to “Love [our] enemies and pray for those who persecute [us], so that [we] may be children of [our] Father in heaven.” Yet in Deuteronomy 20:16-18, we read that God commanded the Israelites to annihilate the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hittites and the Jebusites. Not only so, but in Deuteronomy 7:2 the Israelites were “specifically commanded . . . to resist the natural tendency to ‘show mercy’ to their human enemies; compassion was to be avoided at all costs.” So which is it? What kind of God do we serve?

Sparks lists many more of these kinds of internal-to-the-Bible difficulties. I attempted to focus on those that, in my mind, were least likely to be malleable to either the “different perspective” solution or the “original autographs” solution.

“Does not compute” problems.

In order to keep this email shorter than it would otherwise be, I will share just one such problem. It’s from Titus 1:12-13. And Sparks doesn't bring it up in Chapter 4. But he does bring it up in the book, and I think it is worth considering. ETA on 11/10, based on feedback I have received from a few readers: Please know that the following discussion is not based on any direct quotes from Sparks. The words (except when quoting from Scripture) are mine, and the reasoning is mine based on my personal attempts to integrate Sparks' discussions with my own thinking. Let me say, further, that my thinking, itself, has been deeply impacted by years of interaction with hyper-literalist/inerrantist homeschooling parents. I am writing with the thought that I need to speak to those same homeschooling parents: devout, serious-minded, studious and studied (but not necessarily scholarly) students of the Bible who are intent on obeying the word of God and teaching their children to obey as well: "Cut out all unnecessary theorizing. How are we to apply what we read?"

Titus 1:12-13 is part of Scripture. It is in the Bible. But I agree with Sparks that the following comment poses real problems for anyone who wants to claim that this Scripture, this word of God, is an unbroken, inerrant, fully authoritative-for-all-time word. It is a problem for anyone who wants to claim that, because it is from God Himself, it is not also—and, in many ways, more fundamentally—a word from a man and, as such, may be (indeed, by most of us will be judged to be) subject to (and/or the result of) sin, error, misjudgment, misspeaking, or some other human failing.

As I paused in my previous letter, let me pause here as well. Those are remarkable words. Horrifying words. Horrifying to me, anyway, as I think of where I am coming from, where I have been.

One doesn't say such things about God’s word! One doesn't say such things about the Bible! The Bible is perfect! How dare we—any of us—suggest that any portion of Scripture (I am referring to the way in which Scripture is written, not to the subject matter addressed!) might be tainted by sin, error, misjudgment, misspeaking, or some other human failing!

How dare we? How dare I?

But it is that question that Sparks urges us to ask with respect to passages like Titus 1:12-13. And so I dare to ask you to consider it as well:

Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true.

Catch that?

From an inerrantist perspective that last brief sentence ought to be a clincher. Boom! Stamp of approval. Scripture. God’s word. It has to be true; we must trust it . . . and we should act upon its factuality: “This testimony is true: Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”

Yes?

Or no?

If not, then what?

If you don't see the problem, let me note:

• This statement about Cretans by a Cretan suffers from the obvious awkward logical difficulty of having a man who, according to his own testimony, is “always [a] liar.” . . . If this is God’s word, then do we not have God telling us that this “always lying” man is telling us something that is true? But, logically, how can that be? [I can imagine someone trying to wriggle out of this particular question: “But the man Paul quoted didn't say Cretans always lie. He ‘merely’ said, Cretans are always liars. So people who are habitual liars can sometimes tell the truth!” . . . –Oh. Okay. So he is “merely” casting an aspersion on the character of all Cretans. Okay. . . . So . . .]

Ignoring that problem:

• In your heart of hearts, do you believe God wants us to believe that Cretans—all Cretans—are ALWAYS liars? ALWAYS evil brutes? ALWAYS lazy gluttons? This is a word from God? An inerrant word good for all time?

• If you don't believe it yet you claim to believe in an inerrant word of God—and that the Book of Titus is part of that inerrant word—then how do you justify ignoring God’s word in that way?

• If you don't want to believe it—because, in truth, it really “doesn't make sense” to you—but you feel “duty bound” to affirm it because, after all, “it is in God’s word, and God’s word is true and, therefore, I must believe it because if I give in on this point, then my whole Christian faith crumbles, since, where else am I to go than to Scripture? . . .” [And then you are likely to use a kind of sophistry with which I am very familiar from my years in the inerrantist camp: “Well, what that one ‘prophet’ Paul quoted said about Cretans, he could just as well have said about all people! We are all liars! . . .” —And  I would respond: “I'm afraid your attempt to salvage a ‘perfect word of God’ is destroying the meaning of language.” . . .] —We will deal with all of these things more, later. In the meantime, I would like “simply” to encourage you: I believe Sparks has shown us “a more excellent way” (with intentional allusion to 1 Corinthians 12:31!).

Problems of what Sparks calls “ethical diversity.”

I've actually addressed some of what Sparks would refer to in this manner in some of the bulleted “internal tensions” points above. But Sparks brings out “ethical diversity” for special attention.

[The most serious] problem in Scripture . . . touches on the very heart of the gospel message. I refer . . . to the Bible's ethical and moral diversity, to the fact that Jesus summed up the law and Gospel in the words, "Love God and love your neighbor," and that this summation of Scripture—with its concomitant responsibility to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to pray for those who persecute us—stands in glaring contrast to texts that list women as property, but praise God for smashing infants against rocks, that allow slaveowners to beat their slaves, and that present God is commanding the extermination of ethnic and religious groups. [Footnote from book: “The relevant texts (respectively) are Exod 20:17; Ps 137:9; Exod 21:20-21; Deuteronomy 7.”] . . .

There is a tendency among more conservative Christians to imagine that the ethical problem referred to here is really an illusion created by misplaced modern sensibilities, that this is just another case in which "contemporary human ethics" arrogantly presume to be better than "God's biblical ethics." . . .

Anyone familiar with the history of Christian theology will know how much early Christians struggled with the Bible's ethical diversity. Consider these comments from the pen of the great Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395), who was deeply troubled by God's execution of Egyptian children in the Passover story of Exodus:

The Egyptian [Pharaoh] acts unjustly, and in his place is punished his newborn child, who in his infancy cannot discern what is good and what is not. . . . If such a one now pays the penalty of his father's evil, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness? Where is Ezekiel, who cries . . . “The son should not suffer for the sin of the father”? How can history so contradict reason?

Gregory concluded that, ethically speaking, the Passover story simply could not pass as literal history.

Sparks’ conclusion: “[Gregory’s] fourth-century comment shows that the ethical problems in Scripture are not the result of modern imagination run amok.” And, “I do not believe that the whole problem of Scripture can be blamed on the skeptics; still less can we embrace the Canaanite genocide as a wholesome portrait of moral action.” And so,

I take it that any Christian readers, both liberal and conservative, will find themselves somewhere between the extremes represented by fundamentalism and skepticism. They embrace the Bible as God's word but are somewhat troubled by the difficulties in Scripture. . . . In the pages that follow, I will try to suggest a way forward that engages Scripture as God's word while admitting, at the same time, that the ethical diversity that it displays is a factual problem. . . .

[And, finally, i]f we acquire robust strategies for engaging the Bible's ethical diversity, then presumably will be better positioned to address Scripture's diversity unless pressing matters, such as science, history, and theology.

Those are the words with which Sparks concludes Chapter 4.

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Before I sign off, let me note how Sparks begins Chapter 4. I found these words encouraging:

[I]n my opinion, there are potential downsides of a focused discussion of Scripture's “problems.” In any inquiry into the 'problems' of something, even of something otherwise very good, there is a danger that hyper-focused attention on difficulties and weaknesses will create or foster the wrong impression. . . . The best perspective on our world is fostered through a balanced experience with what is good about it and what its problems are.

I believe Sparks has attempted to maintain such a balance.

Okay. Enough for one email [and, now, one post]!

Till next time.

John

A new faith paradigm -- Part I

I want to quote, with very slight emendation, an email I sent to my family yesterday. I may regret being quite so open about this, but I figure I should plunge ahead anyway. I am hoping my "testimony" will be helpful to someone who might not otherwise find any way to hold onto the faith they once received and laid hold of with joy. . . .

I am praising God right now. I have just finished reading one of the most liberating (for me) books I have ever read. Twelve or thirteen years of miserable “wandering in the darkness” with respect to Scripture (especially), but with respect to an awful large portion of the rest of my faith as well: I sense it may be coming to an end.

About a month and a half ago [no; I just looked it up: I bought the book on July 23!]—I don't know how I found it, but, somehow, I came across Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture. I read it after having read (not necessarily in this order; I do not remember in what order I read these books, but I read them all in the last year to year and a half): Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns, God's Word in Human Words by Kenton L. Sparks, and The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith. These books, themselves, came on the tail end of two or three others that I read several years ago: Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma (read back in late 2008 . . . which actually gave me hope), Evolutionary Creation by Denis Lamoureux (finished in mid-2009), and, finally, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden (finished reading in May of 2011).

All of the other books certainly contributed, in some fashion, to my willingness or ability to read Sparks’ latest book (Sacred Word, Broken Word), but it is this book, in particular, that, in my opinion, completely shattered an intellectual logjam or ice wall that has held a huge reservoir of deep anxiety for me.

Before I get into the details of the book itself, let me note that the logjam or ice wall was my growing conviction (that I absolutely did not want to embrace) that the doctrine of Scripture with which I was raised and that I was taught at seminary was untenable. Put most starkly: I was losing hope—even as I attempted manfully to hang onto hope—that the kinds of doctrines of Scripture promoted by the churches in which I grew up—the doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy and the doctrine of Sola scriptura, the doctrines taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, promoted by Harold Lindsell in his 1976 bombshell The Battle for the Bible, and carried forward by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and its 1978 document called The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy . . . –I was losing hope that these doctrines were really tenable. (If you want to see the details of the doctrines I am talking about, I urge you to read my lengthy post titled Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden? –Part 1 and Part 2.) Basic ideas:

• The Bible “in its entirety is inerrant, being free from falsehood, fraud, or deceit.”
   
• Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are not limited to “spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes.” Rather, they also apply to “assertions in the fields of history and science.” Therefore, for example and preeminently, scientific hypotheses about earth history may not “properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.”
   
• The Bible “speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else.”
   
• While “in some cases extrabiblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations,” such data can never “disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it.”

If you spend a few minutes thinking about some of these statements, you might understand some of my angst. The problem comes down to defining “what the Scripture teaches” and/or, actually, what the Bible even “touches on.”

In my “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” posts, mentioned above, I go into detail on the kinds of conservative statements of faith I believe I was raised on . . . and the problems they engender. But here are just three minor illustrations of how these statements of faith can cause problems (taken directly from the second “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” post):

• When the Bible speaks of us being "knit together" by God in our mother's wombs (Psalm 139:13), is it not touching on a matter pertaining to nature? Is it, then, not speaking truth? So, then, on what grounds--what biblical grounds--can we be sure that it is acceptable for medical personnel to teach us of sperm and eggs, mitosis and meiosis, and all the other details of what they call the "birthing process"? If we listen to them, how can we be sure we are not permitting their scientism or their extrabiblical views to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it"?
   
• Or in the case of meteorology: When the Bible speaks of the storehouses for rain and snow and wind and the windows of heaven and so forth (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Job 38:22; etc.) . . . and when it tells us how God controls these storehouses and windows (Job 38:22; Jeremiah 10:13; and so forth), is it not touching on matters pertaining to nature (as well as, on occasion, history)? And assuming this is the case, then when meteorologists speak of high- and low-pressure systems and evaporation and transpiration and sublimation and precipitation, are they not attempting to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or or (to have their extrabiblical views) hold priority over" Scripture? If someone wants to say that this is surely not the case, then I would like that person to explain, on Scriptural grounds alone, how and why he or she is right and I am wrong!

Finally (for the sake of this post),

• When the Bible speaks of a tree reaching up into heaven so it can be seen "to the end of the whole earth" (Daniel 4:10-11), and when it tells us that Satan took Jesus to a high mountain so that he could show Him "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" (Matthew 4:8), is it not "touching on" something ("matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else")? And, to use the language of the Westminster Confession, must we not, "by good and necessary consequence," conclude that it is teaching that the earth is flat? For how else might a tall tree be seen reaching into heaven? It matters not how tall a tree might be on one side of a globe: people on the other side will never be able to see it; its height makes no difference. And, similarly, it matters not how high the mountain might be: if the earth is globular, no one could possibly see "all the kingdoms of the world." So, therefore, must we not oppose those who, on extrabiblical grounds, insist that the earth is anything but flat? If not, why not? On what grounds can we be sure we are not permitting extrabiblical views to hold priority over Scripture?

By raising questions such as these, am I making mountains out of molehills?

I think not. Not when I have—personally—been caught in the ripsaw of Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (who is convinced—and seems to have convinced the majority of Christian homeschoolers—that any interpretation of Genesis 1-11 that doesn't accord with his own view is the result of an unbiblical practice of permitting man’s wisdom to hold priority over Scripture). Nor when I and the company of which I am a part owner have been thrown out of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado convention because that organization’s faith statement about the Bible (“The Bible, in its original autograph, is without error in whole or in part; including theological concepts as well as geographical, historical and scientific details.”) leads it to reject any company from its convention hall that includes any materials in its curriculum that fails to deride evolution as a foolish, ungodly, man-inspired idea. If you don't teach with conviction that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old at the most, then you're letting man’s ideas hold sway over the Bible.

[Of course, as I have argued elsewhere, to use their logic, they haven't gone far enough. But for some reason, as far as I have been able to discern, they permit “man’s wisdom” to overcome the “obvious” biblical teaching against Copernicus. (Do a search on the word Copernicus when you visit my Young- and Old-Earth Creationists: Can We Even Talk Together? Article to see what I am talking about.)]

But all of what I have said so far is mere background to what I wanted to say about Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word. Sparks has shattered the logjam in my mind about how to honor the Bible as being truly God’s Word and authoritative in life and faith and practice (“Sacred”) even while it is full of contradictions, errors, foolishness and worse (“Broken”).

Let me stop here for a moment so you can catch your breath.

In some ways, I "can't believe" I just said what I did! How dare I? Coming from where I am coming, what I've just said is tantamount to blasphemy. You can't have a truth-speaking God inspiring a Bible that has one contradiction, error, or foolish teaching (let alone "worse" teaching!) in it. Can't be done. If God is God, then his word must be perfect, without error, without contradiction. . . .

But.

Anyone who has read the Scriptures seriously for any length of time is familiar with the “problems” of the Bible. There are books that seek to explain these difficulties away so that conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists can hold onto the kinds of doctrinal statements I have mentioned above. But, frankly, there comes a point where one has to exert some serious effort to “suspend one’s disbelief” in order to continue holding. And though I have exerted those efforts for all of these years, I must say that I found the efforts rather exhausting and enervating and joyless–not exactly the kind of words one would want to use to describe one’s Christian life!

But I have “held on,” nonetheless. What other option do I have if I am to remain a Christian? It’s the only way, isn't it? If you want to be a true Christian, you have to “stand alone on the Word of God,” the “inerrant, infallible, perspicuous, perfect-in-every-regard-down-to-the-very-jot-and-tittle” Bible. Yes?

I hated the intellectual position. But I wanted my God. And so I have been holding on. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. And, every now and then, looking to see if I might find some way out of my quandary.

Was there—is there—no way out?

It was one chapter in Sparks’ book that shattered the logjam or ice wall—the blockage—for me: Chapter 3: “The Contribution of Christology.” There was a lot of cleanup that had to take place after the initial breakage, but just to see the glimmer of a way out gave me unbelievable hope.

So what did this amazing chapter do? It teased out, in the space of 6 1/2 pages, the key contours of the primary issue that faces us, I believe, in the doctrine of Scripture: What is the relationship between the human and the divine in the Bible?

Sparks begins the chapter by talking about the doctrine of Christ.

He notes that early on in the church's history, the church rejected two—what it viewed as—extreme and too-narrow positions and adopted a third view that embraced both of the extremes at one and the same time. The two extreme doctrines are known as Docetism and Adoptionism.

• Docetism, in essence (“close enough for government work”): Jesus was God and not human; he was God pretending to be human.
   
• Adoptionism, in essence: Jesus was human and not God; God adopted him as his [God’s] only begotten son.
   
• And the orthodox teaching? Jesus is fully God and fully human. There is a “hypostatic union”—a joining together—of the divine and human natures, and Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, . . . incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and . . . made man.”

So what does this have to do with Scripture? Sparks makes two points.

1. We should probably recognize that Jesus himself lived and taught in some limited manner as a human being.

Sparks comments:

Jesus was a finite person who grew up in Palestine, learned Hebrew and Aramaic, and was not only born Jewish but, culturally speaking, became Jewish. . . . [B]eing a man, [Jesus] lived out his life within a finite human horizon. . . .

Okay. That seems unremarkable. What about this:

Though Jesus was undoubtedly sinless (see Heb 4:15), did he nonetheless embrace not only our finiteness but also our fallen condition? Did Jesus Christ have a fallen human nature? . . .

As a rule, the [church] fathers were not very comfortable with the idea that Jesus had a fallen nature, but I find it more reasonable—and more scriptural—to affirm that Jesus was both finite and fallen, in all respects like us, "sin excepted" (Heb 4:15). This is possible because the sinful nature and sinful deeds are two different things (infants may have a sinful nature, for instance, but they are not yet "sinners"). . . . In fact, many theologians would describe [the belief that Jesus had a fallen nature] as “good news.” After all, what victory did Christ win for us if fallen flesh itself were not redeemed and resurrected? [pp. 24-26]

In sum, then, Sparks says:

Jesus lived within the limits of his humanity and, it would seem, shared in our fallen nature. To what extent did this human horizon influence his teachings? . . . [I]t seems to me that [to borrow a phrase from Colin Gunton (Christ and Creation [Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1992]), p. 41] “no Christology is adequate which tries either to evade the material determinateness of Jesus or his Jewish particularity.” In principle, the theology of Jesus was largely the theology of a first-century Jew. And where that first-century theology was limited in its vision, so too was the theological vision of Jesus. Orthodoxy only demands that Jesus was sinless, not that his teachings were wholly insulated from the human condition.

Oh, boy!

If there are difficulties in [this] thesis, these involve the long-standing Christian debate about the communicatio idiomatum (“sharing of attributes”) between Jesus' divine and human natures. To what extent were divine qualities of Jesus Christ "communicated" to his humanity? Did the insights of divine omniscience in some way inform his human perspective? And if so, did this insight prevent Jesus from using theological images from his own day that are now, by our standards, problematic? . . . [I]f we attend to the general theological, biblical, and anthropological evidence available to us, my sense is that the evidence sides strongly with [the idea that] Jesus did not depend on unusual divine resources to live a holy life. Rather, he lived in holiness by the same resource that animates every Christian: by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. . . .

God did not redeem us in Christ by coming "alongside" the fallen cosmos as a human-looking phantom. His redemptive work came in and through that fallen order itself, by full human participation in a world that needed healing. Docetists judged that this gospel would be too "messy," entailing as it does God's close contact with a soiled world. But orthodoxy holds that, in God's wisdom, this is precisely the point: fallen creation is redeemed only when God participates in the fallen creation. So far as we know, there was no other way to save us or our world.

You just “know” where this is going, don't you? Sparks is angling to insert error into Jesus' teaching. “He was sinless, but he didn't teach without error.” –Or something like that.

But/and/so—assuming that this is where Sparks is going—why don't we think about that for a moment?

Is it a sin to teach something that “isn't true”? I mean, for example, should we charge Jesus with sin for claiming that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds? Just for example.

• Suppose, somehow, he had supernatural knowledge—beyond his historical and cultural context. And, therefore, suppose he knew there were smaller seeds than the mustard seed. Would it matter that he claimed it was the smallest seed? Supposing it did, then to whom would it matter? To his hearers—who, apparently, didn't know? . . .
   
• Suppose he didn't know there were (or are) smaller seeds? Would that matter? Why?

Back to Sparks. The second point Sparks makes with respect to Christology and the Bible is this:

2. While Christians understand Jesus is a hypostatic union,

whatever Scripture is, it is not a hypostatic union in which divinity and humanity are mysteriously joined in one person. . . . Neither Paul, nor Luke, nor any of the other biblical authors were both divine and human. They were human beings only—good men, perhaps, but also fallible sinners in need of redemption, who wrote texts that the church has nevertheless embraced as God's word.

A direct analogy that moves from Christology to bibliology does not work. Rather, if we wish to draw a theological analogy from the old Christological debates that explains Scripture's character, I would suggest that the adoptionist metaphor is closer to the mark. Understood in this way, Scripture is God's word because God providentially adopted ancient human beings, like Paul, as his spokespersons. In doing so God "set apart" or "sanctified" their words for use in his redemptive activity.

Hence, we can affirm with a straight face that Scripture, all written by sinful human beings, is rightly referred to as Sacred or Holy Scripture. . . .

But . . . To repeat the main and important point, the Christological analogy does not really apply directly to a doctrine of Scripture and, even if it did, it would not support but would more likely weaken arguments in support of [the inerrantists’] view of Scripture. . . . We may assume, for theological and practical reasons, that the human beings who wrote Scripture erred [even in their writing of Scripture—JAH] as all humans do. [pp. 28-29; bolding mine--JAH]

Now. Where Sparks goes with this, how he is going to handle the doctrine of inspiration (“all Scripture is inspired by God [‘God-breathed’]”—2 Timothy 3:16), and how he can possibly help anyone avoid falling over the precipice into complete skepticism that the Bible has any divine import at all: well . . . that will have to wait for another time. I'm sure this post has taxed your patience as it is. And I need to get on to other matters. But I wanted to at least "announce" what I have been thinking about and where I sense my mind and heart are at the moment . . . and where I am sensing I am heading.

Scary thoughts

We listened to a wonderful sermon yesterday morning. Our pastor--actually, our former senior pastor--preached on or from (perhaps more accurately, "inspired by"--but in the sense of "provided some excuses to touch on various themes by reference to") 2 Timothy 4:9-18.

Basic outline:

• v. 10--"Demas has deserted me"--The Danger of Defection: We need to be willing to come back to the Lord if we have deserted Him.
   
• v. 11--"Luke is with me"--The Value of Christian Friendship: We need to be willing to be friends and enter into fellowship--true, deep, searching fellowship--with brothers and sisters in Christ.
   
• v. 11--"Mark is helpful to me"--The Necessity of Forgiveness (based on reference to how upset Paul had been at John Mark in the past that Paul actually split with Barnabas, his long-time ministry partner, over the man [see Acts 15:36-41]): We need to forgive.
   
• v. 14--"Alexander did me a great deal of harm"--Beware of Bitterness: --Kind of a follow-on to the former point about forgiveness.
   
• v. 17--"the Lord stood at my side"--The Constancy of Christ: Jesus is always faithful.

Two particularly memorable quotes or stories within the sermon:

From the Fourth Point (about Bitterness):

• "The Devil has no happy old men or women. He keeps feeding them poison. [The poison of bitterness.]"

And, from the First Point (about Defection and the need for Repentance):

• The story of Robert Robinson, author of "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing":
  

  Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
  Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
  Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
  Call for songs of loudest praise. . . .
  
  O to grace how great a debtor
  Daily I’m constrained to be!
  Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
  Bind my wandering heart to Thee. . . .

  Our pastor told a story about Robinson--about how, long after he wrote this hymn, he himself wandered far from God. And then one day, while riding in a coach, a woman across from him, reading in a book, asked Robinson to read a passage.
  
  It turned out the words she asked him to read were his very own . . . from that very hymn!
  

  Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
  Prone to leave the God I love;
  Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
  Seal it for Thy courts above.

  Cut to the quick, Robinson repented of his wandering and turned back to the Lord.

I was inspired by this latter story. Yes, Lord! I want and need to repent. I want and need to "come back" to You. I don't want to wander. (But, O! Lord! How I feel it!)

I determined to find out more about Robinson.

The first biography I happened to read, written in rather stilted, old-fashioned English, mentioned nothing of the incident, nor even hinted that such an incident could have occurred. Absolutely nothing about Robinson wandering at any point in his life after he gave his life to Jesus.

The second one referenced the incident, but rather differently than did our pastor:

Prone to wander Robert was. He left the Methodists and became a Baptist. Later on, having become a close friend of Joseph Priestly, he was accused of becoming a Unitarian. Priestly and other Unitarians denied the full divinity of Christ. However, in a sermon he preached after he supposedly became a Unitarian, Robinson clearly declared that Jesus was God, and added, "Christ in Himself is a person infinitely lovely as both God and man."

Robert died on . . . June 9, 1790. Had he left the God he loved? A widely-told, but unverifiable, story says that one day as he was riding in a stagecoach a lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming. He responded, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."

Hmmmm.

So, nice story as it is, it may be nothing more than a Parson Weems'-style "George Washington cut down the cherry tree" kind of historically false, but morally encouraging tale.

Well, strange as all of that was, for some reason--I can't think why--yesterday afternoon, many hours before I got around to looking up Robinson's biography (this morning), I got thinking about stories in the Old Testament, and I began wondering: in essence, could many of the stories in the Old Testament be morally encouraging, but historically false tales?

I know, this isn't a new question. I've vaguely thought about it before. But it seems to be knocking with increasing insistence upon my brain.

What if? What are the ramifications? Can a morally encouraging story teach true Truth while itself not being, at root, a true story? Can stories of heroes--the legends of King Arthur, for example, or the stories of Sir Lancelot: Can they teach true Truth while themselves not being true--at least, not true beyond some very surface level?

Is it possible that our Jewish forebears in the faith, men (and, I expect, women) who interfaced with the real, true God: Is it possible that they conveyed true Truth about God and about how God operates in the world while telling morally compelling tales that aren't "really" true in detail?

There. I said it. I at least formulated the question and got it "out of my mouth" or "out of my fingertips."

I intend to return to this question--or the related group of questions, in subsequent posts.

"Failure to uphold any part of the Bible ultimately undermines trust in the whole."

I've been sorting through old papers and came across a special insert in one of the Answers in Genesis Answers magazines from last year. (Can't recall which issue. I removed the insert for future reference.)

The insert is titled "The Descent of Man" and suggests that Martin Luther held a pure view of Scripture: we are to "accept all of God's Word." Since Luther, however, men like Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Thomas Chalmers (1760-1847), and Hugh Miller (1802-1856) compromised their interpretations of various parts of the Bible so that, today, many "deny all of God's Word."

And the alleged steps in this descent of man?

• Francis Bacon . . . "argued that the Bible is not needed to understand the world."
   
• Galileo Galilei . . . "argued that one can interpret the Bible based on science."
   
• Thomas Chalmers . . . "popularized the gap theory (millions of years passed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2)."
   
• Hugh Miller . . . "popularized the day-age view of 'days' in Genesis 1.

As a result of these men's "compromise," the document urges,

Charles Templeton (1915-2001), once an evangelist alongside Billy Graham, later embraced evolutionary history over millions of years while attending Princeton Seminary; he died in unbelief.

And so, as the subtitle of the document declares, "Failure to uphold any part of the Bible ultimately undermines trust in the whole."

"Who are we to question God's account of creation?" asks the front cover of the document. "'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding,' God says in Job 38:4."

And then, on the back cover: "Does God's Word trump man's ideas? -or- Do man's ideas trump God's Word? When faced with questions about current science models, many Christians place their faith in man's ideas above God's Word. Yet the search for understanding must always begin with God's Word. 'The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge' (Proverbs 1:7)."

Question: Do attempts to align what we might call "secular knowledge" with what we might call "spiritual" (or Scriptural) knowledge necessarily and unavoidably imply compromise?

Question: Suppose we "understand something wrong." Does that unavoidably imply that we are headed down the slope to unbelief?

Question (as asked before): Is Answers in Genesis itself compromised with unbelief, having permitted modern science to shape its understanding of what, prior to Galileo, was the incontrovertibly clear statement of Joshua 10? On what ground can they pretend they are not on the "slippery slope" to unbelief as Gerardus Bouw urges?

Question: The back cover says the search for understanding must always begin with God's Word. Must it end there as well? (Based on what else is said on the back cover, it sounds as if Answers in Genesis wants us to believe--and act on the belief--that the search for understanding must, indeed, end with God's Word as well. There is no room for scientific input into our understanding of Scripture. Indeed, from the AiG website itself: "Scripture interprets Scripture. . . . Scripture itself is our best theology professor in helping us understand and apply Scripture. . . . What to pray: seek repentance in your life for times when the words of men--even good men--have become more important to you than the Word of God."

Things I've known . . .

I've been at least vaguely aware of the things that Jonathan Dudley states in a recent Huffington Post article. But he provides some details and background of which I was wholly unaware.

Probably worth keeping in mind . . . and, from a young-earth creationist perspective, figuring out how to respond to what he says:

In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner's view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.

These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary's Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: "Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science."

In this analysis, Christians must accept sound science, not because they don't believe God created the world, but precisely because they do.

The question is: Is macro-evolution good science?

Dudley says it is.

Why? On what grounds?

Because no amount of talk about "worldviews" and "presuppositions" can change a simple fact: [young-earth] creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.

It has failed to explain why birds still carry genes to make teeth, whales to make legs, and humans to make tails.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record proposed by modern scientists can be used to make precise and accurate predictions about the location of transition fossils.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record demonstrates a precise order, with simple organisms in the deepest rocks and more complex ones toward the surface.

It has failed to explain why today's animals live in the same geographical area as fossils of similar species.

It has failed to explain why, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived at the same time as modern animals, we don't find the fossils of modern animals in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs.

It has failed to explain the broken genes that litter the DNA of humans and apes but are functional in lower vertebrates.

It has failed to explain how the genetic diversity we observe among humans could have arisen in a few thousand years from two biological ancestors.

Who should you trust? Who CAN you trust? Separatism and degrees of separation. Reforming Fundamentalism--Part III

I ran across an article two weeks ago on a fundamentalist website as I was looking for information about some of the people I count as spiritual ancestors. I have run across these kinds of articles in the past. I figure it is time I at least acknowledge their existence and say something about them.

As so many other such articles, The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree attempts to paint all efforts at Christian unity--working together for the advance of the Kingdom of God worldwide--as virtual blasphemy. No one who refuses to be quite as "holy" ("separate") as those who write these articles escapes the brush. Thus, as I have discovered,

Karl Barth more satisfying than the evangelical theology in which I was raised?

I referred last Monday to a comment by Kim in MT. "My world and my God are much larger now that I'm not trying to do the mental gymnastics to make them fit in the young earth, evangelical box," she had written.

Though it dismayed me, her comment did not come as too much of a surprise.

But I was blown away a few hours after my post when I received a note from Perry Marshall, a friend of mine, a guy I recognize as an outspoken and zealous advocate for Christian faith both publicly and privately.

I think you may be outgrowing both evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Congratulations.

???!!!!???