If It Isn’t Infallible and Inerrant … What Is It?
The difference between blind belief and tension between mysticism and rationalism is the difference between looking into a mirror and looking through glass. If Divine inspiration is true, then we are looking through a glass that is cloudy. We may not understand it all, but we can trust the teachings. If we are looking at a mirror, all we are left with is ourselves. We must make this world better; we must own our own problems of family and self. We must collaborate, participate and help our fellow man; God has so desired it. We must mourn the loss of easy belief if we are to help our fellow man. Regardless of where you and I may find ourselves on the teaching of Divine inspiration of Scripture, we both engage in probing and questions about which teachings in the Bible apply to us and how they are to be best applied. My question put most simply is how do we decide how far is far enough in this probative effort?
If It Isn’t Infallible and Inerrant … What Is It?
I am very thankful for the writing and teaching of people such as Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo and N.T. Wright. McLaren perhaps more than any other modern evangelical writer has developed the idea that we need to “reclaim the Bible as narrative”; an idea that allows McLaren to take liberties with how rationalism and science impact teachings once held as literal truth from within the Bible. Wright has developed the more scholarly version of this idea in his “critical-realist” principle, the foundation of which he develops in his The New Testament and the People of God (Volume 1). What both men are writing about is their belief that the Church over-reacted to the perceived threat modernity represented to the Bible itself. Some two hundred years ago men of faith saw that unless a tighter idea concerning the identity of the Bible could be created, the Bible would be subjected to increasingly voracious attacks that would ultimately undermine any claims they could make on the basis of Biblical authority. The need to have a final authority led to the postulate that the Bible be seen as infallible and inerrant. By drawing such strongly defined lines around what the Bible was and what its words contained, all future dialogue within the Church would have to have as a presupposition that the Bible was infallible and inerrant in all that it taught. This is in an of itself a tenuous projection for a number of reasons not least of which is that no simple reading of Scripture can take place without each of us bringing our cultural experiences and historical awareness to texts from antiquity. To say that we simply “read what is in there” is silly; in order to explain away the purity laws from the Old Testament one has to adopt traditionally either dispensational or covenant theology in an attempt to justify why these obtuse commandments once made sense. Neither dispensationalism nor covenant theologies exist on their own within Scripture; they are both attempts by men to wrestle with a systemized view of outdated purity laws and commands to commit heinous acts in the name of a chosen people.
Those very same people who claim to be literalists can not be literalists unless they first develop an external system of interpretation to explain Biblical difficulties away. If before taking a test for color-blindness I tell you that what you know is red is now blue, you may answer correctly within the confines of the test, but you will do poorly when forced to deal with reality. In a similar vein, I feel strongly that the Emergent Church movement needs to spend more time wrestling with the issue of Scriptural Authority. The teachings of McLaren represent an earth-shattering change for foundationalists; the majority of contemporary churches have drifted from doctrinal fundamentalism to political fundamentalism which has allowed them to appeal to a broader base of people who would never be drawn into religious fundamentalism. However, the changes McLaren advocates are still a movement that is inwardly-directed; it has marginal impact yet on those outside the church. I have a challenge to the Emergent movement: if you want to reach those outside the Church, not those on its fringes or those within it that are discontented, you need to be more aggressive in what it is you are wrestling with. Maybe it is time to set aside the desire to change the Church from within; maybe it is time to come after some sacred cows - specifically those within the Church have that you are most afraid of. If we are serious about impacting our culture, we are going to have to go farther in our view on Scripture than either McLaren or Wright’s teaching accommodates. It is progress, and I understand that it may be a necessary transition for those within the Church as they work their way out of fundamentalism and foundationalism, but we have got to get back to reaching those outside the Church and stop preaching to those who are perfectly comfortable where they are at. As I review these words I must apologize to those within the movement such as McLaren and Wright: I am deeply appreciative of your work and I would not be even slightly engaged with Christianity if it were not for you. I also realize that I do not make my living within the Church. It is remarkably easy for me to say challenge the system when I live outside the system! Forgive me if I seem brash; I care enough about my own spiritual renewal and maturity to deeply want an environment that can be honest and sincere in what it is teaching and wrestling with. I want a faith that matters, that feeds the hungry and clothes the homeless, and I want it without the outdated ideas that I can not accept and that do not make sense to most people anyway!
For those who were raised within the Church, or for those who have predominantly taken part in the conventional American evangelical experience, McLaren’s teaching represents earth-shaking change over conventional teachings on Scripture. These changes rightfully soothe those raised within the Church, but do little to broaden the appeal of the Church to those who have no such history. I do not desire to change the message of the Church simply to increase its appeal; I believe its lack of appeal is in part due to its unwillingness to be honest about its own teachings. If we can be honest about what our belief that Scripture is not infallible and inerrant means to Divine inspiration, we will make it easier for people to embrace Christ’s essential teachings. Believing the Bible is divinely inspired, that it is somehow supernatural in the truths it teaches, are wholly against not only rationalism, but the ambiguity and solitary nature of our individual spiritual experiences. If we can not be trusted to allow for how our own spiritual journey should impact our theology, then we do not deserve the trust of those we want to shepherd. It is here that I find myself in a unique position: I care little for the Church even though I was raised within it.
I spent 18 years having a really bad experience in a fundamentalist Christian church and school; I do not recall those memories with fondness and I do not bring a quaint view of the Church to my current struggles. I view the Church with deep suspicion and more than a little bit of cynicism. A part of my cynicism is my own belief that what motivates the Church is less a search for truth, less a desire to make a difference in a hurting world, and more the adoption of a comforting worldview: I know who is OK, who is not, who is going to heaven, who is not, how you make that decision, and which beliefs you have to have right to be in communion with God. What makes me somewhat unique is that through this, I have managed to wrestle with my beliefs, ending up in a position where I can appreciate the thoughts and concerns of the evangelical Church without any real desire to be a part of said Church. On the flip side, I am closer to wholly un-churched and largely self-educated non-believers in terms of beliefs, questions and doubts about the Church. I do not believe the Emergent movement, as progressive as it is, fully grasps how severely modern man views Scripture or how significant of an obstacle this represents to his living a spiritual life.
In other essays I have struggled with my own beliefs about whether or not Scripture is infallible and inerrant. I do not believe Scripture is either of these things. But the belief that I still struggle with is whether or not it is inspired. This is an idea that is held in common between the Emergent Church and the Evangelical Church. But if we are to believe that Scripture is not infallible and inerrant, what do we mean when we say that it is inspired? Inspiration is critical because folded within our view of Divine inspiration is a more complex issue: do we believe God reaches down to man, or does man reach up to God? The Emergent Church has not as of yet been prepared to wrestle with this issue, and has left this question largely untouched. Nature abhors a vacuum, including a vacuum of ideas. As long as this vacuum is allowed to exist, people will assume that it exists for a reason, namely that the underlying question of the truth held within Scripture is right to be questioned.
Frankly, the founders of dispensationalism and covenant theologies were right in this matter: if you take away infallibility and inerrancy you are left with modern scientific man stripping away that which within the Bible is outmoded and irrelevant. They rightly feared such rationalism and built walls around that which they held as most precious: not the Bible as Divine, but the most important thing that these two ideas would protect - that God reached down and interacted with man, that we are not alone, that we are the spawn of a loving Creator, and that we can rest easily in His arms. The thinking of dispensationalism and covenant theologies do not protect the Bible, they protect the increasing sense of nothingness that science, biology and cosmology have created within our species. By realizing that our fear of nothingness may be coloring our search for truth I believe we stumble across an even deeper truth that holds the promise to create even more profound self-awareness: just because absent a particular idea I may have a profound sense of nothingness does not mean that particular idea is correct. For too long Christianity has hidden behind dogma that can not be explained rationally, and is held up best by mysticism. Mysticism has its place, but to simply throw up certain ideas as being outside rational thinking and thus unquestionable (i.e. part of the mystery) is a serious mistake that will ultimately lead to the destruction of faith in general. Mysticism must be employed carefully: this realization in and of itself begs the question of which issues we elect to be mystical about! Unfortunately, mysticism can exist on its own no more easily than can rationalism - they both require each other. If rationalism can propose a theory that can be tested and verified against that which was previously held as mystical, the mysticism should be set aside and rationalism allowed to advance. Mysticism is never an answer on its own - it must be challenged if our understanding of the world around us is to go forward. Mysticism was bad for science; theologians must be careful in how they employ it within spiritual matters for it is not a trusted tool.
I will repeat something I have said in an earlier piece: if the Emergent Church really wants to avoid the dead spiritual climate currently seen in Europe, it will make haste to throw away outmoded ideas that are important to reaching those within the Church, but matter little to those outside of it. Ultimately, the Church will lose the battle against advancing modernity as it has lost every single other battle with technology, science and medicine. As long as the Church loses these battles in pitched combat that holds out a particular idea wedded to a divinely inspired truth, both the idea and our conception of the divinely inspired source will lose out.
Questioning what we mean by divinely inspired is critical to issues such as homosexuality and the ambiguity of our individual spiritual experience. Within these two issues, the question about what the Church means concerning Divine inspiration can perhaps be seen most clearly by those who care about the Emergent Church movement and by those who are seeking authentic spirituality but are outside the Church entirely. In both of these situations a couple of questions are being asked that I do not believe are being dealt with by the Emergent Church movement:
• Scripture and theology have been used in the past by the Church to abuse mankind. To claim a particular teaching is of Divine origins is easy. How do we test that which is claimed to be Divine if not against what is known within modernity? This is a challenge on the Church’s handling of homosexuality: the teaching has been held up in the past for heinous reasons that are now known to be prejudicial and incorrect. Now the reason is theological - homosexuals are the result of the Fall. Translated to modern man, that means “it is wrong because the Bible says it is wrong.” But if the Bible is not infallible or inspired, why is this teaching not subject to revision? What is so special about this doctrine?
• To believe that Holy Scripture is divinely inspired requires that we talk about the means of transmission. Honesty in the matter of personal spiritual experience yields the realization that we all share an ambiguous spiritual journey, except for those who wrote Scripture. They are somehow different. Their experience is somehow unique. They had something that must have been more specific. If, however, we can be honest about the act of transmission involving humans stretching towards the Divine, we can productively discuss how to test for what within is truth and what is man speaking for God.
I have dear friends within the Emergent Church movement who hold to a belief that homosexuality is wrong. They base this on Scripture; typically a specific passage in Romans. Rarely will they rely on the Old Testament passages as even they are unwilling to base their own beliefs on passages they do not believe in any more than I do. Homosexuality is such a divisive issue in America for two reasons. I believe the first is simple homophobia: most men are turned on thinking about two women having sex with each other, but the idea of having sex with another man horrifies most men. It is good old fashioned fear, nothing more. The second reason is that homosexuality is a representative issue. For those on the left it represents another area where individual freedom is being suppressed. For those on the right it represents something that is wrong because God said so in the Bible. Underlying this belief is the greater belief this issue touches on: that the Bible is the inspired word of God. If it is, then its teachings can not be questioned. Never mind the implications on our idea of God to people who appear to be born favoring this particular type of lifestyle, only to be told that what we need most as humans - the love of another - is not to be found for them in this world. Homosexuality is a politically and religiously charged issue because of what it represents to the idea of Divine inspiration. If a scientific, moral and ethical apologetic can be developed for homosexuality, it means nothing because the divinely inspired Bible teaches that this is wrong. All the evidence and arguments on the other side of the issue are immediately marginalized by this belief. The same issue underlies the teaching of the Church whether it is on the Canaanite genocide or homosexuality: if it is in the Bible, no matter how egregious the teachings may be when transferred into the contemporary world, it is appropriate because it was divinely commanded. As much as some may want to deny this, rationalism has as little a place to play in a narrative view of Scripture as it did in a literalist perspective. McLaren is willing to adapt evolution to fit into the Genesis account but is unwilling to make similar advances in our knowledge about the causes of homosexuality and how it should impact the teachings of the Church. What especially aggravates me is that evolution versus creationism really does not impact anyone’s life versus the Church’s stance on homosexuality which robs good people of an ability to be true to themselves, to know love, and to be well-adjusted. We can afford to be big when dealing with dry ideas that do not really impact anyone, but when people’s lives are at stake, we will not budge.
Karen Armstrong has been asked by many interviewers and critics to better explain her idea of God. I will allow her own words to speak for her on that matter; however, what I find in Karen is best put as honesty about her spiritual walk. Karen has described herself as an “ardent monotheist.” When asked about her own spiritual experience she seems to gravitate most easily to the Christian and Muslim mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Ibn Sina. In her talk The Future of God she shares with the listener that some of her most profound spiritual experiences are when she is in a library studying and feels that she has uncovered some hidden truth, some insight and she is that much closer to truth and thereby to God. As a child almost nothing tormented me as much as did the ambiguity of my own spiritual experience. I grew up with people who employed metaphors like “walking with Jesus” and “talking to God”; I heard people talk about conversion experiences that sounded like they came out of a bad extraterrestrial abduction movie. I knew people who prayed for hours at a time and one who read Proverbs every night until he fell asleep so that the last thing on his mind would be Scripture. I have little question that these people had the most sincere of motives; but they let their emotional need to rest in the arms of a loving God get in the way of honesty about their spiritual experience. As I have grown older, bolder and hopefully a bit wiser, I have asked almost everyone I know about their own spiritual experience.
Even the most dedicated Christians have admitted to me that they never hear God, they never see visions, they may at best have impressions that they need to do something somewhat specific. But taken together, no one has yet shared with me anything but the most ambiguous and lonely of experiences. It is not that I doubt the authenticity of these ambiguous experiences; I simply question why we can not be honest about that being all there is. Would we not be in a better place as a Church if we were to admit that we have an ambiguous God? But this idea, this reality - a reality that colors almost everything those outside the Church believe about Christianity - stands in stark contrast what the Church says about the Bible. The Bible is held out as a set of experiences over four thousand years where God directly involved Himself through miracles and testimonials; these came together into what we now have recorded as Holy Scripture. By believing in Divine Inspiration we are telling modern man that certain people throughout time had spiritual experiences you will never have; we thereby have to take their spiritual experiences as being wholly unique. They can not be proven and they can not be tested, they just have to be believed. Yes, you will never experience anything similar to this; yes, I can be honest enough to admit that I have had no such experience; yes, the most spiritually mature person I know has not had these experiences … but they had to be real because if they are not, I have to set aside my own view of Divine inspiration. Once again we can see that because we need something to be true, we choose to believe it.
The difference between blind belief and tension between mysticism and rationalism is the difference between looking into a mirror and looking through glass. If Divine inspiration is true, then we are looking through a glass that is cloudy. We may not understand it all, but we can trust the teachings. If we are looking at a mirror, all we are left with is ourselves. We must make this world better; we must own our own problems of family and self. We must collaborate, participate and help our fellow man; God has so desired it. We must mourn the loss of easy belief if we are to help our fellow man. Regardless of where you and I may find ourselves on the teaching of Divine inspiration of Scripture, we both engage in probing and questions about which teachings in the Bible apply to us and how they are to be best applied. My question put most simply is how do we decide how far is far enough in this probative effort? Only honesty about our own spiritual experiences and our own collective knowledge as humanity will afford for belief to be productively fostered in the future.
The teachings of Christ have the potential to impact the world as much today as they did when he walked this earth; the question is whether or not we will continue to harness to his teachings ideas he never claimed as his own, and teachings that those who never met him have propagated. Down one path lie truth, self-awareness and the betterment of society; down the other lies ignorance, destruction and further dark ages. Yes, our hope is in a loving God, but our world is best served by an ethic of responsibility to ourselves, our families and the global village we all inhabit.
previous post: Does God Love How We Love?
next post: December 2004 Bookshelf
3 Responses to “If It Isn’t Infallible and Inerrant … What Is It?”
Leave a Reply
About MysteriousFaith
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
Themes
Now Reading
Search
Favorites
Personal Writing
Theology
Categories
Meta Data
February 1st, 2005 at 4:43 pm
Interesting piece. I need some definitions though: what is the emergent movement & foundationalism? Also, can you, in layman’s terms, make the distinction between inerrant, infallible & inspired? I am apparently too simple to understand what you are trying to say in this piece -if you believe there is a God & whether or not the Bible is His Word- can you help me out?
February 3rd, 2005 at 8:07 am
I believe your question has two dimensions to it: the first is simple definition of terms and the second is related to questions that seek to clarify a particular position I am advocating.
To your first question, see some very, very basic introductory definitions as follows:
* Emergent Movement - a movement within the evangelical church (probably 8-10 years old now) that advocates viewing the Bible (although firmly authoritative and inspired) through the lens of the history of the day. It is also a church that tends to be left-of-center politically, focusing more on issues like poverty and social justice. You will find some (but not all or even a majority) of people within this movement as being accepting of homosexuality; most within the movement hold to it being wrong but actually are more gracious in how they live out this teaching.
* Foundationalism - I will copy a definition from this web site for an explanation: “Traditional ‘foundationalism’ was the view that knowledge could be started, or started again, from nothing by finding pieces of certain and infallible knowledge, the ‘foundation,’ upon which all other knowledge could be constructed.”
* Innerrant & Infallible - To answer your question in layman’s terms, any difference in the meaning between these words is not significant enough to worry about; essentially both mean something is without error. It means that whatever object we refer to with these words can never be wrong, and is the final, unquestioned authority on those matters with which it speaks.
* Inspired - Again, a simple definition that fits within conventional orthodoxy is that this word means God breathed. It brings with it the idea that God quite literally spoke to man, man recorded His words, then passed these words down to modern day. This is not a concept unique to Christianity as the Islamic faith teaches the same concept about the Koran (a dictation of the Koran by God to Mohammed).
Transitioning to the second part of your response is slightly more complex. It has been my own experience that I ask questions for one of two reasons. I may ask someone a question knowing that their answer will tell me where I can place them on a theological radar screen (the blip in the middle is me with God, the farther from the blip the farther from God). A second type of question is very different, it is a question that comes from a seeking heart. I’m not sure which of these type of questions your last two are?
Do I believe in God? Certainly. The personal God of contemporary Christianity? Probably not. Depending on which type of the two previous questions you are asking (”where are you in relation to me” versus “help me understand something I don’t”), you may find that answer unhelpful. More than likely, if my answer is unhelpful it is probably because your question is rooted in a desire to put me somewhere on the theological radar screen versus trusting that the questions I ask are sincere and the “doubt” (although that word is misused too often to mean that I have absolute truth and those who disagree are searching for what I already know) is part of authentic spiritual teaching.
Do I believe the Bible is the Word of God? My response after thinking about this - that is man’s phrase, developed for the same reasons that infallibility and inerrancy were developed. It becomes quite difficult to respond to someone when they claim absolutely that something came straight from God. I will leave it to you to wrestle with my writing and see for yourself (I don’t hide my opinion on this matter - I am just hiding it in my response here).
February 4th, 2005 at 7:13 pm
I still think I could use some Cliff notes - now for your answer, not just your essay!