Evangelicalism in the 1970s and 80s—Scripture’s Inerrancy and Errant Evangelicals (Part 2)
The thesis that God accommodates erroneous and false beliefs of the Bible’s human authors is attractive to academics…It is most visible among many academics who dispute the accuracy of the Bible’s creation narrative and especially its account concerning the formation of Adam. They regularly contend that Genesis 1-11 has more in common with the creation-flood myths of the Ancient Near East than with Genesis 12–50. Though they retain the designation, evangelical, their belief concerning Scripture is not the ancient Christian belief in the infallible witness of the Scriptures.
Before Harold Lindsell published The Battle for the Bible in 1976, the second major world conference on evangelism was held, the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization. Out of this conference that same year the influential Lausanne Covenant was produced, a document that is both statement of faith and ministry philosophy. This Covenant affirmed the “Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms,” but this sentence left loopholes. Some prominent evangelicals claimed that scripture was without error in faith and practice, but not necessarily in history and science—a position coined as “limited inerrancy.” This and other currents led to the International Conference on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI, 1978) and the drafting of the seminal Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Following the publication of the Chicago Statement, a flurry of books challenged the traditional evangelical position on the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. A year following the ICBI, Jack Rogers of Fuller Seminary and his former student, Donald McKim, launched a major retaliatory assault upon belief in the inerrant Scriptures with The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach. Written for academics, it was a book few lay people would read. They drafted Ford Lewis Battles of Calvin Seminary, an evangelical institution, to write the foreword where he effectively exhibits the book’s arsenal:
How did the defensive, intransigent position of inerrancy that marks the handling of Scripture among certain twentieth-century children of the Protestant Reformation come into existence? Our authors have read the early church fathers, the medieval exegetes, and especially the magistral [sic] Reformers, and have found no such teaching about Scripture and its inspiration in those authors.[1]
Accordingly, Rogers and McKim claim that Calvin’s sixteenth-century successors launched a scholastic, philosophizing endeavor that found a haven at Princeton Seminary where Francis Turretin’s theology thrived with new life invigorated by infusions of Thomas Reid’s Scottish common-sense realism. According to Rogers and McKim, full inerrancy was a relatively recent invention, and church history was on the side of “limited inerrancy.”
The Rogers/McKim proposal quickly gained adherents despite initial piecemeal rebuttals published by the ICBI. Then, John D. Woodbridge, a church historian, reviewed The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible for the Trinity Journal (1 NS, 2 [1980]). His review swelled to 70 pages. Then it expanded into a book, Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal (Zondervan, 1982). Woodbridge exposes numerous methodological problems manifest in Rogers and McKim’s presentation, documentation, and historiography. He rightly features their pivotal error, one that evangelicals who affirm an errant Bible regularly commit to this day. They unwittingly adopted Faustus Socinus’s teaching on divine accommodation.[2] Rogers and McKim erroneously attribute this errant notion concerning God’s revelation to Christians ranging from Augustine to Calvin in their effort to find reputable historical support for their belief that Scripture includes unintentional errors, otherwise known as “limited inerrancy.”
D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge jointly edited two additional volumes that provided decisive responses to the Rogers/McKim thesis, with contributions from about twenty brilliant scholars, most of whom had no direct affiliation with the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The first book, in 1983, was Scripture and Truth, a collection of twelve penetrating and evergreen essays. Woodbridge and Randall Balmer dismantle Ernest Sandeen’s proposal on which Rogers and McKim so heavily depended. Carson and Woodbridge followed this with Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon in 1986, a collection of nine essays that effectively demonstrate that belief in Scripture’s infallibility has always been central to the church’s affirmations. Carson’s, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture,” and Woodbridge’s, “Some Misconceptions of the Impact of the ‘Enlightenment’ on the Doctrine of Scripture” administer devastating blows to the Rogers/McKim thesis. These knockout punches destroyed the thesis that ‘prior to the nineteenth century Christians never affirmed Holy Scripture’s inerrant authority in all matters the Bible affirms and on which it touches.’ Nevertheless, as will be shown, this discredited belief stubbornly persists contrary to the evidence.
At the core of the Rogers/McKim thesis is their grave misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of God’s condescension or accommodation to reveal himself and his purposes to us his creatures. In their version of “limited inerrancy,” they contend that the Bible contains no intentional errors, that is, no biblical authors intended to deceive. However, Rogers/McKim claim that there are errors arising from human misunderstandings and false beliefs that have no bearing on Scripture’s saving function. For example, they would relegate much of Genesis 1–11 to mistaken understandings of human origins. Thus, they affirm Scripture’s “functional inerrancy.” They unwittingly and mistakenly attribute to ancient Christians (e.g., Chrysostom and Augustine) and medieval Reformers (e.g., Calvin and Luther) the doctrine of God’s accommodation that properly belongs to Faustus Socinus of the sixteenth century. Like Socinus, Rogers and McKim contend that the Holy Spirit accommodated the Scriptures to the mistaken viewpoints and beliefs of the biblical writers which included unintentional, erroneous, and false beliefs concerning the world, geography, history, mathematics, science, etc.
-
Anything you can do….
Let us never forget key lessons we should have already learnt: to vacate solid granite of Scripture for shifting sands of feelings, impressions, hunches, emotions, sense, reason, circumstances, providences and signs, always results in a knot that is only untangled by grace.
We are called to walk by faith, through which we are also justified. Far too often, believers including mature saints, even in top ecclesiastical posts, seek to further God’s work by resorting to the flesh.
DIY salvation (adversely reviewed) is one of the main points of Genesis 16 – here the holy family, with Abram included and implicated, without jeopardizing his saved status, faithlessly and pragmatically, tosses a carnal spanner in God’s Work.
A catastrophic lapse led to a failed attempt to give the LORD a helping hand in hurrying His world-blessing plan along: with no heir in sight, and beyond all human hope, Sarai’s servant-surrogate Hagar, whom providence put within reach, offered an open door to sire, and adopt, an illicit to-be-son.
Certainly, we can sense the frustration of his wife whose womb Yahweh had shut, with perhaps a hint of blame? It was 10 years down the line from the night God launched His plan in Ur – impatience, sense, reason and sight gave the patriarch a nudge &, with echoes of Eden, Abram listened to his wife.
But, it really does matter how the plan of God moves forward – the Angel of the LORD, with his first appearance on-stage, indicates clearly that the One who sees all & knows the fact-file of our lives, is as interested both in the way of what we do as the what of Jehovah’s work.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Maximizing Our Influence as Family Leaders
The call to biblical leadership is the call to serve our families. Accepting our positional authority and using it to firmly discipline our children is crucial for effective influence upon our children. Parenthetically, we don’t need to fear that wielding such authority will harm our relationship with our kids. Scripture assures us, We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us AND WE RESPECTED THEM. Firm discipline, in the long, run wins our kids’ respect. They will not respect a dad who just wants to be their play buddy. On the other hand, to maximize our influence there is no substitute for winning their hearts by caring for them well.
Some years ago, I found myself praying about whether I should pursue a DMin degree and write my dissertation on men’s ministry. But a rather sobering thought struck me. If my kids are in my home roughly twenty years and I live to be seventy, they are only going to be with me 2/7ths of my life. The price of pursuing the degree now will be paid by my 5 kids, who will get less time with me. I decided to put it off until 4 of my 5 kids were in college.
The years of greatest influence in our kid’s lives go by in a flash; so, dads whose kids are still at home, need to know how to maximize their influence, before their kids are launched into a world full of destructive worldviews. But it is not only Dad’s with kids at home who care about their influence. Even if our kids are already launched or have gifted us with grandkids, we also want to know how to maximize whatever influence we can have with both our adult kids and grandchildren. This episode examines God’s two-part design of the influence we wield as spiritual leaders of our home, positional influence and relational influence. In both cases, we must overcome false worldviews that undermine the way God wants us to lead our homes.
This is the third episode in our January series, Leading Our Homes Well in a Culture That Doesn’t Want Us to Lead. Last week we answered the first leadership question, “Where am I taking my family?” noting the biblical answer, to spiritual maturity as Christ’s disciples. Like Paul, home leaders say, One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus… Brothers, join in imitating me. (Phil 3:13ff). Today’s episode examines the second leadership question, which has to do with my relationship with my followers. “How do I use my leadership influence to motivate them to come with me?” The biblical answer to this question, once again, requires us to overcome strong cultural headwinds, i.e. worldviews promoted in the culture, which undermine a man’s leadership calling. We identify four.
A. False Worldview #1: Men Are Unnecessary
This view is rooted in feminism, egalitarianism, and the LGBTQ+ movement. A lesbian couple can parent as well as a heterosexual married couple. Men bring nothing unique to the process of raising children. Egalitarian-leaning, church-going men know their wives have more intuitive insight about kids than they do. When the kids ask permission to do something, their response is, “Go ask your mom.” Such men don’t wear the pants in their family.
Biblical View #1: Fatherhood Is IrreplaceableCreation, itself, tells us that the nuclear family is not just a social construct. The biological fact that conception takes place in the context of husband and wife making love speaks volumes about the best environment for nurturing that child to healthy adulthood. In God’s obvious creation design, for a child to thrive, he needs a family built on mom and dad’s love for each other.
The family code sections of Ephesians and Colossians are significant. They address wives, then husbands, then children—commanding them to obey their parents. So, we might expect the next group Paul addresses to be parents; but it is not. How about mothers? No. It is striking that when Paul addresses the training of the children, he doesn’t mention mothers but gives commands to fathers. This pattern of responsibility began with Abraham, the Father of the Christian Faith. God said of Abraham, I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him (Gen 18:19). Perhaps fathers are specifically addressed because we inherited Adam’s passivity. He should have protected Eve from Satan and reinforced the truth of what God said.
Substantial research confirms that fathers and mothers discipline their children differently. Focus on the Family writes, “Dad takes an objective approach and provides his children with much needed instruction in the area of moral absolutes and the consequences of right and wrong actions. Mom, on the other hand, emphasizes compassion, empathy, relationship, and the importance of appreciating the uniqueness of each individual” (Online article, Mom and Dad Approach Discipline Differently). Both Mom and Dad are needed.B. False Worldview #2 Teaches a Parent-Centered Approach to Children’s Discipline
In our narcissistic culture, it should not surprise us that some approaches to discipline are more about the parent’s feelings than the child’s behavior. It is reactive discipline. Here is an example. A dad on the playground says to his son, “Stop playing on the monkey bars.” But his son knows that this command means nothing. His father will not act until he has told the boy four or five times to stay off the monkey bars. So, the son continues to ignore his father’s command. The father, who is busy talking, yells at him again, but the son knows that his dad is not steamed up enough to act. Finally, the father reaches his limit and explodes,“You’ve got me really angry with you now. Get into that car.”
Instead of clarifying his instruction once, and then giving painful consequences for disobedience, this parenting approach is based upon the exasperation of the parent. Kids live up to whatever is demanded of them. The dad didn’t want to be bothered with the responsibility of being a good parent, but instead to continue his conversation. Furthermore, when my parenting is based upon how patient I feel, or how irritated or angry I am, punishment becomes random, and inconsistent, which provoke hot anger in a child. One moment, he gets away with murder, the next moment he barely steps across the line and is slammed with punishment. The dad trained his son not to obey until he started to get angry. He also made the issue HIS anger instead of the son’s disobedience. Good parenting isn’t rooted in how a parent FEELS but how a child BEHAVES. In fact, good parenting makes sure that the child understands that painful consequences for his misbehavior are NOT personal and do not interfere with the parent’s love for him.
Biblical View #2: Disciplining Children Is Part of a Training Plan for the Child. Paul Writes, Fathers, Do Not Provoke Your Children to Anger, but Bring Them Up in the Discipline and Instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4)Here are four wrong approaches to discipline that provoke anger: 1) Inconsistent discipline, as we’ve seen. Consistent discipline trains a child to know what the boundaries are because the parents have thought them through ahead of time. It is not a seat-of-the-pants, reactive discipline. 2) Discipline that attacks a child’s character using the words, you always or you never instead of correcting behavior provokes anger. 3) Disciplining a child in public will wound his spirit. 4) Discipline that is more frequent than praise wounds our child, also provoking anger. Studies show that parents use critical words ten times more than they use words to praise their children. Mostly correction with little or no affirmation CRUSHES kids’ spirits and can lead to a rebellion.
In context, as Ephesians 6:4 continues, Paul implies that the alternative to provoking anger in our children is to exercise discipline in connection with the rest of the training plan for the child. Paul describes the plan: 1) bring them up: Dads are NOT to watch their children grow up but to actively raise them with intentionality 2) in the discipline: This Greek word is PAIDEA, from which we get pediatric. It means using consequences to train children. A father’s punishing authority is never to be used selfishly, or reflexively, but as part of a TRAINING plan. Paul continues, 3) and instruction (of the Lord): Instruction, means literally “to put into the mind.” This requires a plan for what biblical truths, godly qualities, and characteristics of Jesus we plan to impart to our kids.Read More
Related Posts: -
Unpacking “No Creed but the Bible”
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
The best scenario for Christians, therefore, is to acknowledge that all of us have creeds and confessions—all of us think the Bible means something and that its teaching can be formulated in a manner that is concise and summarizes the Bible’s position on a whole variety if important. But we should not stop there. We move from such an acknowledgment to look to the great creeds and confessions of the church to see what “forms of sound words” have been useful throughout history to keep the church faithful to the gospel message. Time is no guarantee of truth, but if a creed—say, the Apostles’ or the Nicene—has served the church for over 1,500 years, that says something about the consistency of its content with what the Bible says. Of course, a church today can produce its own statement of faith. But why reinvent the wheel when tried and tested creeds and confessions already exist?This article is part of the Unpacking Culture series in which we examine a well-known axiom and weigh any true or positive aspects of it against any negative or misleading connotations of the phrase.
An Important Truth
Many Christians from non-denominational evangelical backgrounds may well have heard the phrase “no creed but the Bible” at some point. Perhaps a pastor has used it while preaching or somebody has used it at a Bible study or in conversation about what Christians are supposed to believe. As a statement it is concise and clear. But the key question is, Is it a faithful and useful principle for guiding how we as Christians think about Christian truth and authority?
Before offering some criticism of how the principle of “no creed but the Bible” is sometimes used, it is first useful to understand what important truth those who use it are rightly trying to protect. That truth is the unique authority and sufficiency of the Bible as the source and criterion for Christian doctrine. This scriptural principle is something that is rooted in the Reformation when the Protestant Reformers asserted that many of the claims of the medieval church—for example, purgatory, indulgences, and the elaborate theory of transubstantiation—not only lacked warrant in Scripture but were arguably inconsistent with scriptural teaching. They were inventions or speculations of a church that claimed access to a tradition of Christian truth that was independent of the biblical revelation.
Against this background, “no creed but the Bible” highlights an important truth: the Bible provides the content of Christian doctrine and the principles for judging whether a doctrinal claim is true or not. Is justification by faith? Yes, for Paul teaches that in Romans. Can someone buy God’s favor through the purchase of an indulgence? No. Not only does the Bible never teach that, it teaches against it, as in the case of Simon the Magician in Acts 8. The desire to protect scriptural sufficiency is therefore something to be commended.
But does this mean that creeds and confessions—statements of faith that summarize biblical teaching—are problematic and should have no place in the church? Does the use of a creed or confession necessarily mean that the unique authority of Scripture has been compromised? Not at all. And it is important to understand why.
First, we all need to acknowledge that no Christian has no creed but the Bible in a comprehensive and exhaustive sense. To understand why, one need only reflect on the fact that nobody simply believes the Bible.
Read More
Related Posts:
