Fewer Broken Pieces

Here continues my commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, starting with the seventh article:

We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.

We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

I can give a resounding “Amen!” to thy mysterious nature of inspiration.  The eighth article:

We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.

We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.

This article clearly answers the charge “if God wrote the Bible, why isn’t it homogeneous?”  The idea that the authors of scripture were mere scribes for the Holy Spirit has never been popular.  However, verbal plenary inspiration comes close to this position, where each and every word was chosen by God, but in conformity with the author’s style.  In effect, it comes quite close to removing all agency from the human authors in their writing of scripture.  This is hard to harmonize with the fact that some books (especially the epistles) indeed have a rather personal agenda for the author.  So when Paul sends greetings, or when he gives advice (but not divine command), how is inspiration working there?  It is a complex issue. The ninth:

We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

This does not make the resulting documents “perfect,” however, as can be seen by various errors of spelling and grammar which may be found in the scriptures.  So what sort of error, and how severe, is a true threat to inerrancy?

It has been a while since I posted any new commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  Here is the fourth article:

We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.

We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

I believe that this is only addressing the source languages of the Bible and does not concern translation.  Still, I think no statement of bibliology is of much use today without some clarification on translation, since so few read Hebrew and Greek.  The problem is that there is no such thing as a “perfect” translation, strictly speaking.  So how does the curse of Babel weigh on our understanding of written revelation?  I will watch for clarifications on the translation issue in the rest of the Statement. Article five:

We affirm that God’s revelation within the Holy Scriptures was progressive.

We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.

The obvious question here: “how do you know that there has been no normative revelation since the completion of the New Testament writings?”  I suppose that will be addressed in later portions of the statement as well. The sixth article:

We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.

We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

This is, to say the least, very interesting.  There were no verses, chapters, spaces, or punctuation (including explicit quotation marks) in the original texts.  So yes, the very words is an apt way of talking about the issue.

Hebrew, however, poses a challenge.  The original text of the Old Testament contained consonants only.  The writing and pronunciation system we use today was codified from the oral traditions by the Masoretes long after the consonants were penned.  So this leaves us with a dilemma.  There are many cases where the Hebrew consonants are ambiguous, and some where that difference can affect a significant shift in meaning.  However, the means to tell multiple options apart, and therefore the key to ascertaining the meaning of the text, was not part of written revelation.  It was oral tradition which was preserved in parallel with the text.  This bends our understanding of “written revelation” severely.  Affirming the whole whole and the parts of written revelation becomes problematic when one of the parts is not actually recorded in the text.

Not only does this make it difficult to speak of written revelation, it makes all the more important the need for some theology of preservation (in this case of the oral tradition of the Hebrew scriptures) if we are going to be able to rightly understand today’s bible as inerrant.

After the five point summary, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy moves on to nineteen articles of affirmation and denial (one statement of each per article).  I will comment on the first three here.

(I should note here that my treatment of the Chicago Statement follows the order of that document. The “exposition” section comes last, yet the summary and articles are based on that exposition.  Therefore I will compile a list of questions which are hopefully addressed in the exposition, and my comments may have to revised in light of that final section when I reach it.)

The first article:

We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God.

We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.

It seems that this article requires a corollary concerning the doctrine of the canon.  That is, if our canon does not come from any human source, how do we receive it from God?  And if the canon is indeed from God, how do we decide which attested canon is that which God has provided?  So while we agree that scriptures derive their authority from God, it is more difficult to delineate just what those scriptures are without human tradition.  This article may very well be true, but it requires some additional explanation as to how we know what the scriptures are which we are to receive as divinely authoritative.

We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.

We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

Similar to above, this point requires some corollary explanation.  Our ability to apply the scriptures as the supreme norm is dependent on our ability to properly understand those scriptures.  If scripture is going to be the divine arbiter, practically speaking, we need to know just what it is saying.  So we need an authoritative hermeneutic.  What is that, and how do we get to it?  True Christians have had radically different hermeneutical systems.  And even when a given hermeneutic is consistently applied, we cannot always reach a definitive answer as to the meaning of the text for various reasons.

I suppose in the later sections of the Chicago Statement it will be explained why the scriptures are qualitatively different with regard to their authority.  Personally I am inclined to think that “scripture v. tradition” is a false dichotomy.  So the second article needs some consideration of hermeneutics and the nature of the scriptures.

We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God.

We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.

I believe this question is addressed later in the process, but if the text itself is revelation, how does it work in translation?  Linguistically speaking, an exact translation is impossible.  Therefore it seems that revelation cannot be preserved across languages without somehow altering the revelation.  If it is altered, what use is it to say it is inerrant?  This is obviously a scandal for most everyone in the world.  Once again, this should be addressed in the final portion of the Statement.

More later.

The doctrine of inerrancy seems to be falling out of favor.  As I noted before, I am going to be interacting with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  First, I will look at the five points of the summary, which should help frame the inquiry:

God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

The phrasing here is somewhat odd.  Through what has God revealed himself, Jesus or scriptures?  Well, both, it seems.  It seems to me that the last sentence should be rephrased as “Holy Scripture is one of God’s witnesses to Himself.”  I am not sure if this statement really intends to say that the Bible is the only witness or not, but I think it should be cleared up.  Obviously, based purely on chronology, we can see that the Bible is not a necessary condition for understanding God.

Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

This is perhaps the most troubling for me.  Scripture does not promise anything - it contains records of God’s promises.  Why the equivocation?

The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

While I certainly affirm this, it can be a thorny issue.  Why is it that true believers can understand the scriptures in such radically different ways?  I will address the issue more carefully later.

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

The main problem I see with this point is that it views the Bible as a generic historical narrative and does not take other genres into account.  What does it mean that the Psalms are inerrant?  The proverbs?  Parables?  Of course we can see from this statement that the drafters of this document viewed the Creation story as a historical narrative.

The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

The statement of consequences is interesting.  Rhetorically it places dissenters in a difficult position, since they are said to have suffered some sort of loss.  Personally I do not appreciate this point.  I understand that the drafters likely truly believed this, but I will reserve judgement on this point.  As for the point itself, I am not sure I see how the lack of inerrancy as stated here leads to a degradation of scriptural authority.  It seems to me that the scriptures have authority because God gave them, not because they are inerrant.

I suppose I have been quite negative and deconstructive so far, and there is probably more of the same coming.  I do not mean any personal affront to the authors.  I am just interested in interacting with the ideas.