Ignorance, or Unbelief?

by Phil Johnson

From time to time we pull classic comments up out of an old thread's combox. This is one of those:

    few years ago we had one of those long comment-threads driven mainly by the skepticism of a single persistent commenter. This guy was a character who posted under the pseudonym "Touchstone," and he continually questioned the authority and accuracy of Scripture—while insisting that he was a believer.

His assaults on Scripture were relentless. Answer one objection and he would immediately come back with two new ones. No matter how directly or thoroughly his arguments were defeated, he never even paused to acknowledge that an answer had been given. He just kept proposing new reasons to distrust what the Bible says.

When his pattern became clear, I suggested that he was either lying or self-deceived, but he was certainly no believer. I wrote, "someone who thinks the Bible is a human work, full of errors, and subject to an infinite number of possible interpretations, doesn't really believe in the truthfulness, authority, and perspicuity of Scripture in any meaningful sense."

It came to light several months later that I was exactly right: Touchstone was an atheist in the process of "coming out."

When I initially questioned his faith because of his incessant attacks on the truthfulness and authority of Scripture, several other commenters objected, suggesting I was trying to set the bar for saving faith too high. One wrote: Are you saying that a person can't be a believer in Christ if they don't believe in the innerrancy of Scripture?

My reply:

Ignorance is one thing; unbelief is another. I'm sure people become Christians without understanding the nuances of the hypostatic union. I don't question whether they are truly saved. But when someone comes along who actually does understand the basic idea and yet rejects the full deity or humanity of Christ, I would not regard that person as an authentic Christian. That said, I don't think I would necessarily take the view that a strict inerrantist position is an essential aspect of Christian faith in the same sense that the apostle John suggests a sound doctrine of the incarnation is (1 John 2:22-23); or in the same sense Paul suggests both the lordship of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:3) and the doctrine of justification by faith are (Galatians 1:8-9). By that, I mean I wouldn't necessarily question the salvation of everyone whose notion of biblical infallibility doesn't quite measure up to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. But clearly, there comes a point somewhere when a person's questioning the plain truth of Scripture ceases to reflect the weakness of an immature faith and instead becomes an expression of rank unbelief. I think that point is reached sooner rather than later. The more someone questions Scripture, the more I question that person's profession of faith. I deplore the tendency that has existed in every generation of church history to subject Scripture to the shifting trends of rationalistic hypotheses, behavioral theories, moral fads, academic novelties, and whatnot. That represents the worst kind of human arrogance—subjecting the eternal Word of God to the ever-changing measuring rod of human wisdom. It is the fruit of unbelief, and the history of the church reveals how deadly it is—even though it invariably infects the church through seemingly-benign people who profess to love Christ while subtly disagreeing with what He taught. So when someone comes along whose main contribution to virtually every conversation tends to be an expression of distrust or disbelief regarding the historic Christian understanding of something Scripture seems to state plainly enough; and when that kind of skepticism becomes a hobby horse that they blog about constantly—I wouldn't take that person's profession of faith at face value. In fact, I think it's wrong to do so. That's not to say such a person "can't be a believer in Christ." It's merely to say that it's folly to embrace such a person as a spiritual brother automatically just because he claims to be a Christian.