Truth worth dying for? Anyone? Bueller? Today, anyway?

by Dan Phillips

Privately and publicly, Phil Johnson and I have marveled at the spirit of some moderns regarding God's truth. We've wondered how Christianity could have survived, had it been animated by this spirit at its inception. We've wondered what the early martyrs would think of today's sofa-sitting latte-sippers.

One breed that apparently considers itself exempt from All That has long been the Academy, on which subject we've offered some thoughts previously. These are scholars; they're a breed apart from, well, from the folks who pay their salaries. That's because they've had the benefit of special training and special discipline, and thus are privy to special knowledge. They're specialists. They know facts and truths that mere garden-working pastors and ditch-digging churchgoers just can't understand.

It is important (to these folks) that we respect these folks, that we not malign or criticize them or make them feel or look bad. No matter what they say or write, we mustn't challenge their convictions or character. If they tell us that they fit in with a school's doctrinal position or confession, we must take their word for it. If they tell us that their books or lectures or articles are sound and orthodox, well then, they wouldn't lie or dissemble, would they? They're academics.

Their defenders and enablers surely communicate to all that not much is at stake, that it isn't anything to "get het up" about. They'll spill equal amounts of ink lauding the Christian characters of those who depart from anything the great unwashed would recognize as a commitment to inerrancy, and casting aspersions on less sanguine critics or opponents. Because it isn't as if we should expect someone to commit himself to a position as being binding on his conscience, as being something... oh, I don't know... worth dying for, or anything so drastic.

For instance, we recently read this:

Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible, then, like belief in the truthfulness of Christianity or materialism or anything else [!], is provisional—scholars hold to it (or not) on the basis of the evidence they've seen. Affirming the Bible is true, just like affirming the Christian creeds, is a statement of current conviction: “Based on what I know now, I believe that the Nicene Creed/the New Testament is correct, when properly understood.” It doesn't prevent individuals from researching carefully, nor from abandoning or adjusting their commitment if the evidence takes them that way; the changes of conviction, affiliation, and worship practices of many of the “aha” scholars, as well as those who have moved the other way, should be evidence enough. In some cases, no doubt, belief in inerrancy is associated with fearmongering, closed-mindedness, misrepresentation, and rudeness. But the same is true of evangelicalism, and Protestantism, and Christianity as a whole, let alone atheism, Islam, feminism, materialism, and virtually all beliefs held by human beings. I’ve seen a fair bit of it on Pete Enns’s own blog, and I imagine he’d say the same of mine.

Where did I see that? Patheos? BioLogos? Huffington Post? No; in the rarified air of TGC — which, I remind you, ostensibly stands not for The Great Clubhouse, but The Gospel Coalition; and which, I am sure, is funded and read and has its conferences swell with people who certainly are fiercely committed to the Gospel and the truths that underlie it.

This was a post at that site. And since one of the commenters dubbed this article "incredibly thoughtful and nuanced," well then, from one perspective, it must be considered a rousing success, a paradigm of carefulness and all that.

I made a comment in the meta; Phil shared this in Twitter:

“Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible…is provisional…” Wow. Quite a startling thing to read on the TGC website. http://t.co/jBUF0zEyoE
— Phil Johnson, ن (@Phil_Johnson_) August 27, 2014

Which provoked this wounded-sounding, bemused response from the author:

Woke up this morning to some pretty angry misrepresentations of my @TGC article. Why do Christians do this, I wonder? pic.twitter.com/wGwFhI7H6x
— Andrew Wilson (@AJWTheology) August 27, 2014

Now, ponder that, for a moment. Here's a scholar, who knows more than we all know. He professes Christian faith, at least "provisionally," according to what he knows right now. (Well, it's what he knew when he wrote the article; I suppose that may have changed since then.) Yet, speaking of his own fellow-believers ("Christians") in the third person, he professes bewilderment at Phil's eleven-word comment.

Remarkably enough, though, while unable to make sense of Phil's eleven words out there in print, he can read Phil's mood from the unknowable privacy of Phil's heart— and it's angry. Perhaps Phil is one of those scholarship-despising, progress-slowing fearmongerers lamented in the article? Phil certainly isn't being treated to the paeans of praise that the author heaped on those "thoughtful, insightful Christian brothers and sisters" and "good guys" in the Academy who find fault with the Bible.

So: It's all well and good to tell the unwashed that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:10). For them, maybe it is. For academics, however, it is at best a provisional conclusion tentatively reached, perhaps, at the end of investigation. It is held as today's conviction, which may be overridden tomorrow, depending on what our real starting-point dictates tomorrow.

Seriously: where would we be, had Doctor Martin Luther said "Here I stand —provisionally. At the moment. I think. Today. But tomorrow... who knows?"

Regardless, I wasn't going to say anything further about it — knowing the waves of anger and offense and indignation that it will provoke from folks who already haven't much use for me, if the usual "ignore it and it will go away" method employed for our posts doesn't serve as well as it usually does for them.

But then I came on this from Spurgeon. As so often, once Spurgeon says a thing, it can't be much improved on. So I'll give him the closing word, and he speaks for me:

I have often wondered whether, according to the notions of some people, there is any truth for which it would be worth while for a man to go to the stake. I should say not; for we are not sure of anything, according to the modern notion. Would it be worth while dying for a doctrine which may not be true next week? Fresh discoveries may show that we have been the victims of an antiquated opinion: had we not better wait and see what will turn up? It will be a pity to be burned too soon, or to lie in prison for a dogma which will, in a few years, be superseded. Brethren, we cannot endure this shifty theology. May God send us a race of men who have backbones! Men who believe something, and would die for what they believe. This Book deserves the sacrifice of our all for the maintenance of every line of it.

[C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 35 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1889), 264.]

Aha, indeed.

And amen.

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Book review — The Doctrine of the Word of God, by John Frame

by Dan Phillips

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NOTE: in case you're interested, I reviewed the NICOT/NT in Olive Tree software at my site, yesterday.

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The Doctrine of the Word of God
by John Frame

(Presbyterian & Reformed, 2010)

Professor John Frame is a professor and a prodigious author of books on apologetics, theology, music in worship, ethical issues, and much else. Frame is, I know, a controversial figure in some circles. You'd think that a CalviDispieBaptoGelical such as I would be among his critics. Yet the truth is, I've profited from Frame's lectures and writings time and time again. My reading of The Doctrine of the Word of God was no exception.

An aside: seriously, pastordude, studentdude — you really ought to read out of your own little parochial circles. Sure, many writers (::cough::McLarenBellCampoloEtc::cough::) may be a pure and utter waste of time, but you really should let your thinking be stretched and challenged among Biblically faithful, godly, deeply thoughtful writers.

Such as John Frame.

The accolades from men such as Carson, Piper, Mayhue, Pratt, and Kelly are well-deserved. J. I. Packer calls the volume both "magisterial" (xxiii) and "pastoral" (xxiv) in the Foreword, and both are appropriate.

Let's take an overview. Imagine this — a book on Scripture that begins with two pages of Scripture lauding the excellencies of Scripture, which then is crowned by the simple profundity of the well-known song that begins, "Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so."

Then Frame provides a ten-page outline of the entire book, minus appendices (xiii-xxii). This is a helpful aid in keeping the shape of the forest in mind, whilst wandering amid the trees Prof. Frame points out for us. It is a singular feature; more authors should follow suit.

The next actually caught me by surprise. In the Table of Contents, one notices that Frame provides appendices. A lot of appendices. They run the alphabet from A to Q. How much of the book does that end up involving? This much:

That's right: on the left is the text, on the right, the rest. In a 684-page book, the text ends on p. 334. The rest is comprised of appendices, bibliography, and three indices. (No endnotes! Footnotes! Frame and P&R love and respect their readers!)

This is not a criticism, as the appendices provide worthwhile interaction with books, articles and movements, applying Frame's perspective to specifics such as issues of antithesis and rationality, charges of Biblicism, questions of the place of Christ and the Spirit, matters of worship and traditionalism, Dooyeweerdianism, and particular influential authors such as John Wenham, Peter Enns, and N. T. Wright.

As to the text itself, I was informed, challenged, and greatly helped. Several of Frame's insights had an impact on the way I presented the word of God in my first sermon series at CBC.

For readers new to Frame, here's what you can expect: he is (I'd say) a brilliant man who constantly interacts with Scripture in a very lively, thoughtful, probing manner. He is deep, yet readable, and he's greatly helped me think through some issues.

My favorite Frame anecdote was actually supplied by a friend, who shared about his father visiting him at seminary. One of my friend's roommates asked his father, “Were you in the same class as John Frame?”

My friend's dad paused a moment, then responded, “No one was in the same class as John Frame.”

Back to the book.

Frame treats of Scripture's self-testimony well and at length. He identifies the "main contention" of his book thus:

God's speech to man is real speech. It is very much like one person speaking to another. God speaks so that we can understand him and respond appropriately. Appropriate responses are of many kinds: belief, obedience, affection, repentance, laughter, pain, sadness and so on. God's speech is often propositional: God's conveying information to us. But it is far more than that. It includes all the features, functions, beauty, and richness of language that we see in human communication, and more. ...My thesis is that God's word, in all its qualities and aspects, is a personal communication from him to us. (3)

He develops Scripture as necessarily evocative of a wide variety of responses as befitting the individual texts, including belief, obedience, delight, repentance mourning (4). Scripture has inherent authority, which he defines as a "capacity to create an obligation in the hearer" (5)

So in Scripture God speaks, He speaks to us, and He speaks as Lord. His word is authoritative, and we are obliged by a wide variety of genera to respond in a wide variety of ways. God's whole word engages the whole man.

Frame then moves to identify the shocking defection of scholars and (then) pastors from that Biblical position. I've never seen a fresher, better analysis and representation of the Academy's betrayal. He says it began with the assertion of "intellectual autonomy" or "autonomous reasoning," with the corollary assumption that "anyone who disagreed was simply not a scholar, not qualified to do serious research" (19).

The effects of this seismic shift came quickly and suddenly into the church:

It all happened very quickly. There was no academic debate on whether it is right for human beings to exercise reason without the authority of God's revelation. There was not much argument about whether the universities should change their time-honored commitments to divine revelation. Rather, major figures simply began teaching from the new point of view, and there was no significant resistance. They accepted the assumption of autonomy and saw to it that their successors accepted it, too. ...The conservatives did not know what hit them. (19)

Further:

This change was astonishing. The adoption of intellectual autonomy as a theological principle was certainly at least as important as the church's adoption of the doctrine of the Trinity in 381, or the doctrine of the two natures of Christ in 451. Yet without any council, without any significant debate, much of the church during the period 1650 to the present came to adopt the principle of intellectual autonomy in place of the authority of God's personal words. But this new doctrine changed everything. Given intellectual autonomy, there is no reason to accept supernatural biblical teachings such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. The virgin birth, miracles, atonement, resurrection, and glorious return of Jesus are on this basis no longer defensible. (20)

One more:

...if human reason is autonomous, the God of the Bible does not exist, for his very nature as the Creator excludes the autonomy of his creatures. And in fact nothing at all can be validated by autonomous reason, for...such reasoning leads to a rationalist-irrationalist dialectic, which destroys all knowledge. For that pottage, much of the church has forsaken its birthright, God's personal word. (20)

The rest of the book proves this from Scripture, develops it, and applies it.

In the course of this feast, Frame deals with propositional truth, authority, inerrancy, sufficiency, transmission, and translations. Let me just single out two more favorite points from the book, and finish by (surprise) recommending it heartily.

Frame faces head-on the charge that, since we don't have the autographa, inerrancy is irrelevant. He explains that inerrancy does not adhere to a particular sheet of papyrus, but to the text written on that sheet. From this, he argues that, while we do not possess the autographic manuscripts, we do indeed present the autographic (and therefore inerrant) text of Scripture.

Quoting Greg Bahnsen with approval, Frame notes that the autograph is "the first completed, personal, or approved transcription of a unique word-group composed by its author," certified by the author in some way, such as sending an epistle to a church  (241). Again, "The autographic text has been almost entirely preserved, accessible through manuscripts available to us and through the science of textual criticism" (252, emphasis original). What is more, "The distinctive teaching of the Scriptures has been entirely preserved, given the beneficial redundancy of doctrinal teaching in Scripture" (ibid, emphasis original).

That thought was immensely helpful to me. The other particular emphasis that stayed with me is found throughout the book, not easily reducible to one quotation. It is that God is present to me (and to His people) in His word. In His word He draws near, He speaks personally, and He exercises His Lordship. Tis affects me as a Christian, and as a preacher of God's Word.

The only disappointment I had was in his chapter on the Canon (133-139). It isn't that Frame's work is not helpful; it is. But my unreasonable expectation was that Frame would answer all my questions, but instead he understandably notes that "The present volume cannot enter into the details of this debate," and since this volume "is a systematic theological treatment, not a historical study" (135), he doesn't get fully into the issue. I would say that in this, Frame is a victim of my high estimation of him.

John Frame's The Doctrine of the Word of God is a challenging, informative, forceful and helpful book. I highly recommend it.

NOTE: this book was provided by P&R as a review copy.

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Are the commands to kill Canaanites and eschew shrimp binding on Christians? Yes — in a sense

by Dan Phillips

As I preach through a series titled Thinking Biblically, last Sunday brought us to consider What Is the Bible? It was the first of a projected pair of sermons treating the nature and use of Scripture. Last Sunday's installation was probably really about 1⅓ of a sermon, as I attempted to pack an awful lot into one message (epistemology, plenary verbal inspiration, inerrancy/infallibility, Canon, autographa, textual criticism... for starters). Praise God for those gracious folks, though; their response was very kind and encouraging.

In the course of our working through the issues we laid down the assertion that all of Scripture is morally binding. My text was James 4:17 — "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."

We all know that James speaks here of sins of omission. Sins of commission are when we do what God forbids (i.e. commit adultery, lie, steal). It is no less a sin to refuse to do what God commands. These are sins of omission. Once we know what God calls us to do, we are liable to respond in believing obedience.

In that category, it isn't difficult to think of examples. A Christian who refuses personally to commit himself to involvement in a local church is committing a sin of omission (Hebrews 10:25; 13:7, 17). A Christian who refuses to study the words of Christ regularly is committing a sin of omission (Jn. 8:31-32). A Christian who refuses to pray is committing a sin of omission (1 Thess. 5:17), and so on.

But we who know what Christ makes of apparently external OT laws (Matt. 5:21ff.) should know better than to confine such sins to activities alone.

For instance, Scripture tells us that Christ is God (Jn. 1:1, etc. ad inf.). Suppose we decline to affirm this teaching. Is it not a sin to refuse to embrace that truth in faith? Scripture tells us that there is one God (Deut. 6:4), and distinguishes the persons within that one God (e.g. Jn. 1:1, again). Is it not a sin to refuse to embrace either truth? Or the truths that Christ alone is the path to God (Jn. 14:6), or that His name alone brings salvation (Acts. 4:12)? Are these not morally binding on the conscience of the Christian?

But don't stop there. When pagans unreflectingly throw Yahweh's command to kill the Canaanites or the dietary laws of the Jews at us, don't some Christians cringe? Don't we sometimes beat a hasty retreat into the claim that we are not under the law of Moses, so that we can be done with the subject?

("Where are you going with this, Phillips? I thought you were a dispensationalist, not a reconstructionist.")

While it is fair enough, and true enough, to point out the progressive nature of Scriptural revelation (Heb. 1:1-2) and the unfolding nature of God's requirements of His children, the Christian is no less morally obliged to acknowledge that those commands/prohibitions are part of God's Word and that they are wise, true, and right commandments in their context. That is, we may not "write off" such commands as an embarrassing backwards part of Israel's religious evolution, since Scripture presents them no less emphatically as God's Word than it does John 3:16. In fact if anything, the claims that these OT injunctions are direct words from God is more emphatic and transparent than NT claims.

If that isn't plain enough, let me rephrase: whether or not I am commanded and thus morally obliged to do something commanded in the Bible (i.e. Exod. 29:10; Mt. 21:2) is a matter of sane interpretation (That is to be part of the topic of the next sermon. Pray for me!) But each affirmation of Scripture also places an obligation on me — an obligation to believe, to be molded in my thinking by it. I am morally obliged to believe what Scripture affirms, whether it is the facts of creation (Gen. 1) or the foundation of knowledge (Prov. 1:7) or the dietary value of hoopoes for Israelites (Lev. 11:19) or subordination within marriage (Eph. 5:22ff.).

All Scripture is God-breathed, profitable... and (on one level or another) morally binding.


(BTW, this is a corollary of this post, and this post.)

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Warfield on textual evidence for inspiration as an avalanche

by Dan Phillips

I'm reading through John Frame's Doctrine of the Word of God, and his Appendix F pointed me to a useful (and uncharacteristically humorous) illustration given by the great B. B. Warfield in his own great work, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, from which I'll break up a portion of a massive paragraph.

After examining a number of passages that attest to Scripture's inspiration and authority, Warfield says:

But no grosser misconception could be conceived than that the Scriptures bear witness to their own plenary inspiration in these outstanding texts alone. These are but the culminating passages of a pervasive testimony to the divine character of Scripture, which fills the whole New Testament; and which includes not only such direct assertions of divinity and infallibility for Scripture as these, but, along with them, an endless variety of expressions of confidence in, and phenomena of use of, Scripture which are irresistible in their teaching when it is once fairly apprehended.

The induction must be broad enough to embrace, and give their full weight to, a great variety of such facts as these: the lofty titles which are given to Scripture, and by which it is cited, such as “Scripture,” “the Scriptures,” even that almost awful title, “the Oracles of God”; the significant formulæ by which it is quoted, “It is written,” “It is spoken,” “It says,” “God says”; such modes of adducing it as betray that to the writer “Scripture says” is equivalent to “God says,” and even its narrative parts are conceived as direct utterances of God; the attribution to Scripture, as such, of divine qualities and acts, as in such phrases as “the Scriptures foresaw”; the ascription of the Scriptures, in whole or in their several parts as occasionally adduced, to the Holy Spirit as their author, while the human writers are treated as merely his media of expression; the reverence and trust shown, and the significance and authority ascribed, to the very words of Scripture; and the general attitude of entire subjection to every declaration of Scripture of whatever kind, which characterizes every line of the New Testament.

The effort to explain away the Bible’s witness to its plenary inspiration reminds one of a man standing safely in his laboratory and elaborately expounding—possibly by the aid of diagrams and mathematical formulæ—how every stone in an avalanche has a defined pathway and may easily be dodged by one of some presence of mind. We may fancy such an elaborate trifler’s triumph as he would analyze the avalanche into its constituent stones, and demonstrate of stone after stone that its pathway is definite, limited, and may easily be avoided. But avalanches, unfortunately, do not come upon us, stone by stone, one at a time, courteously leaving us opportunity to withdraw from the pathway of each in turn: but all at once, in a roaring mass of destruction. Just so we may explain away a text or two which teach plenary inspiration, to our own closet satisfaction, dealing with them each without reference to its relation to the others: but these texts of ours, again, unfortunately do not come upon us in this artificial isolation; neither are they few in number. There are scores, hundreds, of them: and they come bursting upon us in one solid mass. Explain them away? We should have to explain away the whole New Testament. What a pity it is that we cannot see and feel the avalanche of texts beneath which we may lie hopelessly buried, as clearly as we may see and feel an avalanche of stones!

Warfield, B. B. (2008). The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Volume 1: Revelation and Inspiration (65–66). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

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The "to err is human" dodge (NEXT! #29)

by Dan Phillips

Challenge: The Bible can't be inerrant because it is human speech, and all human speech is errant.

Response: Including that assertion? (Oopsie.)

NEXT!

(Proverbs 21:22)

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About any claim of a word from God: application

by Dan Phillips

Let's make a step forward from the basic considerations we laid down about any word from God, a couple of posts ago. I'll take this as established:

• There is no such thing as a word from God that is erroneous. If a word affirms error, it is not God who is speaking (Num. 23:19; Jn. 17:17; Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6: 18).
• There is no such thing as a word from God that is not absolutely morally-binding (Deut. 18:19; Jn. 15:22). This absolute obligation is all-encompassing: if God tells us to act or refrain from acting, we must comply; if God tells us to think or believe, we must agree. I sin equally if I fail to love my wife (Eph. 5:25), and if I fail to refrain from committing adultery (Rom. 13:9) — but I also sin if I do not believe that Christ is God (Jn. 1:1) and that He became flesh (v. 14).

Sad but true, I wish I could say that all professed Christians (myself included) "get that" in terms of accepting and embracing and practicing it with complete consistency regarding the Bible. Sanctification is a process.

But I'd like to stir your pure minds to thought in another direction. Take a hypothetical — oh boy, I wish it were hypothetical. But let's put it as one.

HYPOTHETICAL: Brother X says that God "told" or "has called" him to do Y, which is not in any way directly stated or contained in Scripture.

Now here are my questions, and I really would urge you to think hard about this. Picture me looking you straight in the eye, requiring that you lock gazes with me as I say very intently: it is failure to think through the implications of such claims that accounts for a great deal of sloppiness and error in the professing church today.

My questions, then:

1. What absolute and immediate obligation does that put on every person who hears that assertion?
2. What must the consequences be for church discipline?

Have at it.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... how to understand the OT

by Dan Phillips

"You know where you really go wrong? You just read the Torah 'way too literally."

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My last post on BioLogos

by Frank Turk

I was going to go on this back-half of the year taking a look at the BioLogos positions on the Bible and especially origins, but they're going to take all the fun out of it.



On 2 Sept 2010, they tipped their hand the rest of the way -- and let me say it plainly: we told you so. Phil and I told you that they could not start down the path they were on hermeneutically and not end up here:

In the final chapter of Evolution Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (2008), Denis O. Lamoureux opens, “My central conclusion in this book is clear: Adam never existed, and this fact has no impact whatsoever on the foundational beliefs of Christianity.” This is the first entry in a three-part series, in which Lamoureux answers the question: Was Adam a Real Person?

So all the folks defending BioLogos have to face up to it: it was never about whether or not there were days or ages in Genesis 1; it was never about reconciling Gen 1 and Gen 2 to "science". It was always explicitly about what it means to say, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth," and then "the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature" without it meaning that God actually, really, historically did something.

Instead, Biologos says explicitly, "Genesis 1 does not reveal how God actually created life." and then again it says explicitly, "And just like His use of ancient astronomy, when He separates the waters above from the waters below with the firmament in Genesis 1, His forming of Adam from the dust of ground never happened either."

That's really all that needs to be said: they reject the historical Adam. After that, it's only a matter of a few faculty meetings before they have called Jesus a manifestation of first century Jewish imagination and a deconstructing of Greek ethos to suit the likes of Philo and Paul.

Don't think so? You didn't think they'd reject Adam as a historical person, either. There's no sense fighting about it when any milestone that can be set up and then passed by these guys is not seen by their advocates as the bridge too far.

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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.

The Great Blue Ox of History, um, I mean Mythology

by Frank Turk

Let me say that this subject is completely astonishing for three reasons:

1. It is stunning in its plain-spoken objectives.
2. It is stunning in its unqualified rejection of historical categories.
3. It is baffling in its appeal that it is “compatible” with faith in Jesus Christ.

On 14 Aug 2010, BioLogos posted a video from Tremper Longman, and a brief essay from him regarding the historicity of Adam and Eve. Before we get into this, let’s make sure that the allegedly-meek supporters of the BioLogos site and agenda as they have manifested here have said plainly that BioLogos is not trying to re-write Christian orthodoxy – that their concern is about the stumbling block of 6-day creation and not about how we understand man anthropologically or spiritually.
But here’s what Longman says:

The description of how Adam was created is certainly figurative. The question is open as to whether there was an actual person named Adam who was the first human being or not. Perhaps there was a first man, Adam, and a first woman, Eve, designated as such by God at the right time in his development of human beings. Or perhaps Adam, whose name after all means “Human,” is himself figurative of humanity in general. I have not resolved this issue in my own mind except to say that there is nothing that insists on a literal understanding of Adam in a passage so filled with obvious figurative description. The New Testament’s use of Adam (Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) does not resolve the issue as some suggest because it is possible, even natural, to make an analogy between a literary figure and a historical one.

This issue is an important one. It is wrong to challenge people to choose between the Bible and the science of evolution as if you can only believe that one or the other is true. They are not in conflict. It is particularly damaging to insist that our young people make this kind of false choice as they are studying biology in secondary school or college. If we do so, we will force some to choose against the Bible and others to check their intelligence at the classroom door. This is a false dilemma created by a misuse of the biblical text.

Aha. The Biblical text is misused when Adam is referred to as a historical person. So to say this:

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. [Luke 3:23-38, ESV]

is a misuse of the text, dear reader.



Moreover, that Luke thought this way doesn’t speak to us at all (see above from Longman) about how Paul thought about this – because Paul’s use of the fall as evidence of all our sin is somehow the right way to see what Jesus did. Without getting overwrought here, that’s like saying, “Since in Paul Bunyan we all have a great blue Ox, so in Obama we all have the hope for the future.” It’s childish at best, and an insult to the kind of work Paul is saying Jesus -- who is God -- has done for us really and not merely mythically or somehow supernaturally.

The longer this goes on, the more ridiculous it looks to say that BioLogos is somehow preserving orthodoxy and making science’s peace with faith in Christ.

And that said, the Keller paper at BioLogos is on my agenda for next Wednesday. For those of you who haven't read that paper, find it here, and then pack a lunch.

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Small Handles for the Kids

by Frank Turk

Here's a little passage from Mark 4 (ESV), with the verse numbers left in to keep us all on the same sheet of music:

30 And he said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

And any person you meet except the really militantly self-absorbed would agree with the following statement:

The Gospel of Mark is a historical account of Jesus' life, and as such, this passage of Mark reports historical events in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Now, here's where many people will bail out of the discussion: How much time elapses between v. 32 and v. 35 in Mark 4?

I mean, this is a historical account, right? So it doesn’t seem very problematic to say, without being very cheeky, "The rest of the day, cent. Pay attention."

That's fine, I guess – no reason to argue about that. But what did Jesus say during the rest of the day? We know in general what Jesus said – Mark says, "With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything" – but we don't have any kind of a record of what Jesus said in the rest of the day.

Now, that's pretty much undeniable – we don't have any way to tell what Jesus said specifically the rest of that day. And worse still, when v. 35 begins, "on that day, when evening had come," Mark may also be saying "on that day when this next stuff happened", so it's another day entirely.

And I bring this up not to impugn the clarity of Scripture, but to instead ask what it means to have a class of literature which conveys historical facts. In the first place, we can see that not every minute detail has been included in Scripture – how often Jesus drank water, for example, is not included in the holy writ. In the second place, there are massive omissions of dates and time – so much so that there's no way to say that the "synoptic" Gospels actually list the events of Christ's life as if they were a travelogue.

But if this is so, how does the good Christian say that the Bible says things which are true, let alone that the Bible is truth? How do we trust them, for example, as history when these texts are practically date-free?

Well: we have to be better readers than my first-grader. We have to be somewhat literate readers who understand things like genre and type and authorial intent. Because it turns out that Scripture is clear, and is truth, but not in some wooden sense where words don’t do what they do in every other place we use them.

So on the one hand, to stick with my example of Mark, we can say that Mark wrote a historical account of the life of Christ. But on the other hand, he wasn't transcribing Jesus' diary of his 3-year ministry: Mark was ordering the events, or grouping them, or relating them, to underscore specific truths about the life of Christ – building contrasts and comparisons in the events in order to make what we can call expositional points.

That's going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but who asked them? Here's what you can't do with the Bible: you can't demand that it be "narrative" and not define what kind of "narrative" it is, especially in its diversity of text types. But once you define its genre – its type by book and author – you then have the broad opportunity to read and receive what's written as it was intended to be received.

And I say all that to say this: we can't get all broken up when somebody comes to us and wants to tell us that the Bible is a shaky foundation for faith. For centuries – millennia almost – the Bible has been recognized as one of the great sets of literature man has available to read. And in that, we can’t read it like it's simple hack writing; we can't receive it as great literature but expect it to be easier to read than Milton or Shakespeare or Spencer. The Bible is a beautiful thing, and in that it has all the attributes of beauty: simplicity and complexity, accessibility and incomprehensibility, small handles that even a kid can grasp but massive weight that grown men will strain at to carry.

We have a beautiful thing in the Bible and we can't let someone scare us off that just because they don’t really understand how beauty works. There's more to be said about this, but I have run out of daylight today, so think about that and we'll come back to it eventually.

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Everyone is an inerrantist

by Dan Phillips

Phil's recent (terrific) posts on BioLogos tangentially raise the issue of inerrancy once again. Many lodge the charge that some or all of the contributors at BioLogos either weaken or deny inerrancy, either openly or tacitly.

My contention is that they affirm inerrancy, every one of them. As surely as Phil does, as surely as I do, as surely as you do.

As surely as Christopher Hitchens does, as surely as Richard Dawkins does, as surely as Paris Hilton (or Perez Hilton, for that matter) does, as surely as the Pope does, as surely as Lindsey Lohan does.

Everyone is an inerrantist.

The only question is where we locate inerrancy.


The glandolatrous hedonist locates inerrancy in his senses; the Papist (and the, er, Pape-er himself) locates it in the teaching office of The Church™.

What of the BioLogos types? One might argue that they locate inerrancy in the scientistic fad du jour, the fad of uniformitarian macroevolutionism with a light dusting of God-talk on the top.

At this juncture, the retort might come "Oh no! All we care about is Science™ and The Evidence. If the Facts led elsewhere, we'd change in a heartbeat."

About that. Is Science a person, a monolith, a thing that speaks or writes? Or is it (as the word is popularly used) actually a particular philosophy? Are there other competing philosophies? Is there only one school of thought?

Are facts self-interpreting? How long has the current fad held the day? How long did previous fads dominate? Did previous generations say they were probably wrong and would likely be undone by the next generation — or did they all lay out their positions in just as absolute and self-assured terms as the current lot is doing?

Yet with all that, let us grant for the sake of argument that the BioLogos types really are sincere in their insistence that they'll go wherever the evidence drives them.  Then we must make three observations:

1. Given their eagerness to throw out the plain reading of Scripture in Genesis 1-3, they obviously do not locate inerrancy in the text of Scripture.
2. Given their eagerness to throw out the plain reading of Scripture in Genesis 1-3, they obviously are in fact provisionally locating inerrancy in today's scientistic consensus, over against Scripture. (That is to say: given that there is a push and shove between the majority view created on the assumption that Scripture is untrue on the one hand, and Scripture itself on the other, they are siding with the former against the latter. It is Scripture that must yield, to them.)
3. Given their eagerness to throw out the plain reading of Scripture in Genesis 1-3, they obviously locate inerrancy in their own personal reason, their own ability to sort things out, their own (if you will) autonomous knowledge of good and evil.

The Christian position is radically different, by definition. It is a chastened epistemology specifically in that it is the way a man will think when God has broken his pride through conviction of sin, through a vision of the massive holiness and rightness and wisdom of God, over against the pervasive moral, spiritual, and noetic effects of human sin. It is the thinking of a man who has come to see that Jesus is Lord, and he isn't; who has come to the cross for life and light and wisdom; who has yoked himself to Jesus and confessed, "I can't see anything rightly unless I see it as You see it, which I learn from Your Word alone."

Creation is a classic He-said/they-said. Listen:

• We begin our thinking with the premise that God the eyewitness cannot err in His revelation of what happened, or ...
• We begin our thinking with the premise that man the non-eyewitness cannot err in his reconstruction of what happened.

Because everyone believes in inerrancy.

It's just a matter of where he locates the final authority.

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Doing something to the text

by Frank Turk

Dan is off today, and I'm loaded for broke at work, but I had an old post from my blog worth sharing today; I hope you find it useful as you were hoping for the poly-glotinal brilliance of DJP but youinstead have to settle for my poor sister of a post.

Here's what I'm thinking about: the degree most reputable universities and colleges give out to English majors is "B.A. (or M.A.) for Literature in English" – because one doesn’t really study grammar or the alphabet for 4 or 6 years in college: one reads way too many books. One reads poems until one either "gets" it or throws up. One reads plays, which is its own special punishment for majoring in literature.

And there's something interesting that happens there which is applicable to the art of preaching: not once in 6 years of studying literature did we do a "word study" for an hour to plunge the depths of meaning in one word over the larger portrait of meaning the author was communicating in his book or play or poem or whatever.

Now, the disjunction between what one does in reading Literature in English and what one does when reading literature in translation (cf. the Bible) is that in the latter case, the reader has to grasp what the translator was doing while at the same time to seek out what the original author was doing when the text in question was written. That is: was the translator seeking to be as transparent as possible, or was the translator seeking to do something independent of the original work as well as remain faithful to the work?

For those of you who are really into this geekish analysis, think about Samuel Butler's translation of Homer's Odyssey, which is a prose translation of a poem. Butler's intent was to translate the words as best he could, but in doing that he sacrificed the matters of diction, form, and genre – so we get the story from classical literature well enough, but it's not hardly poetry: it's prose; it lacks the magic of poetic form even if all the words of the original are in tact. On the other hand, about 50 years earlier, Chapman translated Homer as a poem, and as such he took liberty with the words of the original poem in order to convey, in one poetic form/style in order to convey the art and power of the original in a second language. No real story changes were made by Chapman, but you can't line up his poem to Homer's and go line by line and learn the Greek – it would be impossible.

The translator does something to the text when he brings it from the source language to the receiving language, and understanding what he did is important for those who are only reading the receiving language. In that, word studies have a place in preaching. But my contention is that it is a subordinate place to preaching, as they say, "the whole counsel of God".

John MacArthur's excellent book on Bible study, Unleashing God's Word in you Life, makes this point clearly, as does any really good book on Bible study: you have to get the big picture before you try to sort out the details. For example, the book of Jonah is not about a big fish. There is a big fish in Jonah (or, well, Jonah does wind up in a big fish, right?), but this book is about the hardness of Jonah vs. the love of God toward the unrighteous. And if we read Jonah to try to justify the presence of the big fish, or to make the big fish into an allegory of this or that, we miss the actual point that God is willing and able to do things even for the enemies of Israel which we, as men, are not.

You have to read Jonah the first time to see how it comes together; then, you have to read Jonah to see what the parts are in order to better understand how they come together. And it's the same for any book of the Bible.

Listen: preach the word, in season and out of season – but don’t just preach on one word from the word. Preach the Word: preach Christ. Get the whole thing out there. Don't get so engrossed in one word that you miss all the others: that's called missing the forest for the trees.

Now back to your day.

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Word Up

by Frank Turk


Before I give you my review of this next book, let me be up-front about something: I'm a formal translation guy and I like to use a formal translation when I'm reading the Bible because, well, I do.

I don't want to be too glib about that choice on my part because I am pretty sure it's a reasoned choice -- and I could line out for you the reasons in about 5000 words if we had that kind of time today, but we don't.

At the root of it, I like a formal translation of the Bible because when I am studying seriously (for example, when I am teaching at church) and I open up the reference material to see what's going on behind the text in the original languages (not because I can read Greek or Hebrew, mind you, but I took Methods and Research in Grad School and I can use reference books), it's always reassuring that what I see in the English is somehow representative of what the Greek or Hebrew expresses according to the lexical experts.

I mean: it always bothers me when we have a translation that we have to debunk for the reader so that as a teacher (or as a preacher) we have to say, "but what the Greek really says is ..." Translation is an art, to be sure, but it's not a baffling mystery which leaves the reader at the mercy of the translator to the place where the translator has interjected himself as the author's editor.

But in that, I have a respect for "functional" or "dynamic" translation as a methodology for some purposes. For example, I think there is a good use for the NLT as a first-pass read through the whole Bible -- because it seeks to deliver the message of the text without using a collegiate-level vocabulary. That is valuable in evangelism and in other kinds of ministry to those who are not pre-grad or post-grad egg-heads.

That said, there is a larger debate going on in the realm of Bible translation regarding the methodology which is best for the church and for Christians in general. For me, the most forceful spokesman for the "essentially literal" approach is Leland Ryken. He's an English professor, and if you ask me we need more men like him teaching English at the college level so that there are more, better readers of our language. He also wrote my favorite all-time book on the philosophy and theology of Bible translation: The Word of God in English. The egg-heads among you readers should read that book and forget about the rest of this review/recommendation.

But Dr. Ryken has just written a new book for Crossway called Understanding English Bible Translation, and it will be reviled by anyone who has any affection for dynamic equivalence. Coming in at 194 pages before the brief appendices and index, it's a brutal assessment of the flaws of dynamic equivalence and a brief and popularized argument for the use of what Dr. Ryken calls "essentially literal" translation. It's red meat for the common inerrantist, and frankly it's a pretty gripping read for the kind of book that it is because Ryken argues with passion and keen intellect. He doesn't let much get by on the other side, and while he gives gracious credit for some things (for example, he's gracious about the really good motives for some dynamic equivalent practitioners [e.g. - evangelism]), he doesn't let that get in the way of making his case at every point. By the end of the read, if you're not a convicted "essential literalist", I'll need to see your baptismal certificate and have a talk with the elders at your church.

Now, having said that, and now saying explicitly, "buy this book, read it, and get other people to read it," let me offer some criticisms of the book which I think are important to consider.

First, I think Dr. Ryken's approach to translation philosophy veers dangerously close to a correspondence theory of translation which, let's face it, would be a little simplistic. There is no way to say that every word in (for example) Greek has a categorically-equal corresponding word in English both lexically and practically. And because this is true -- that in some cases we would need an uncommon word in English to translate a relatively common word in Greek -- we have to admit that often translators ought to make a judgment call about how to present some text as the author intended, thereby having occasions in which giving us just one word for another is an inadequate approach.

And this happens in all translations of the Bible, including the KJV, the NASB and especially in the ESV. However, Dr. Ryken seems to make the case that the practice of doing this across the board in order to improve the reader's basic comprehension of the ideas of the text is inherently disreputable and undesirable for philosophical reasons. The irony here is that I agree with his objection but I disagree with the force with which he makes it. By a long shot, this is best exemplified by his lumping together of the NIV and the Message as two types of the same kind of Bible translation -- and this is simply a category error. Everyone by now knows that the Message is a paraphrase and not intended to do anything but, well, paraphrase the original text rather than translate it. And while his system of explaining this issue may simply call all translations to the "right" of the NKJV "dynamic translations", it seems to me to be a difficult pill to swallow to make the NIV or the HCSB texts which destabilize the common understanding of the Bible.

And that, I understand, is a pretty stiff criticism of a book which one is actually recommending and endorsing. However, in spite of this concern I have for this book, Dr. Ryken's book is a stiff tonic in an age where all manner of issues relating to the author's original intent in the text is being subverted for the sake of appealing to contemporary, metropolitan sensibilities. If you want to clear your head about this subject, get this book and read it. In the end, you may not agree with this argument or the substantive reasons for it, but you'll be better made over having had to grapple with the scope and direction of this book.

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Charismatic low-octane "prophecy" dodge (NEXT! #10)

by Dan Phillips

Challenge: Prophecy is no more infallible than preaching.

Response: Okay, now replace "prophecy" with the pan-Biblical definition of (1) "inerrant, (2) morally-binding (3) direct revelation from God," and try that again.

NEXT!

(Proverbs 21:22)

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