Last week, I posted an article in which I explained that appeals to inerrancy in discussions were totally ineffective with those who do not embrace inerrancy. I had in mind those inerrantist believers who aggressively argue against progressive believers but who employ only appeals to inerrancy and accusations.
I stand by what I wrote, but there was a potential problem with that post that I did not foresee. Chas, a regular commenter on the blog, said:
Tim, the difficulty that you now have is that, with this post, you are closing the door on inerrantists, the very people who are weighed down by the fundamentalist baggage that you are hoping to take from their shoulders.
And he is absolutely right! This did not occur to me as I was writing the article; I did not think of the overflow impact it might have on those questioning their beliefs who would also need to use appeals to inerrancy in their interaction.
The Targeted Audiences of Jesus without Baggage
Jesus without Baggage has a somewhat focused target audience. While anyone is welcome to join in discussions, ask questions, or share their own perspectives, there is a target audience. It is specified in the introduction to the blog: About this Blog.
If you are concerned about unreasonable baggage (rules and beliefs) often associated with Jesus, then this blog is for you. It is a message of Jesus without baggage.
1. First and foremost, this blog is meant as a support for those questioning beliefs they have been taught as true or even essential. This is often an extremely frightening process, so this blog is a safe place for interaction, questions, and support.
Those escaping religious baggage sometimes abandon Jesus along with it and really feel the loss. We are here to say that baggage is not part of Jesus’ message to us; you can certainly follow Jesus without it.
I certainly don’t want to become an authority figure to replace authority figures people are escaping. I believe everyone should decide issues for themselves, but I am pleased if this blog provides information and help on your journey. The regular readers and commenters also provide a great deal of support.
2. The second intended audience are those already on a spiritual journey from religious baggage and would like confirmation or conversation from friendly co-travelers. Readers here interact freely with me and with other readers. It is nice to be part of a community of like-minded persons, especially when you might not have that in your local area.
3. Finally, this blog is for anyone interested in Jesus but not the traditional baggage often associated with him, whether or not they identify as followers of Jesus. It is also for those who simply enjoy discussion and interaction on these important topics.
Chas is referring to the first group, which is our primary focus: those who are questioning beliefs they have been taught as true or even essential.
Questioning Religious Beliefs We have been Taught
We find that many of those questioning their inherited beliefs are inerrantists. And, of course, inerrantist believers are often most comfortable posing their concerns in the familiar forms of inerrantist perspective, such as “What does it mean when the Bible says…?”, “How do you explain when the Bible says…?”, or “Do you believe the Bible when it says…”
This is understandable and appropriate. These are the mind-sets and expressions you are familiar with and we want to meet you with great respect and integrity where you are most comfortable. So the things I said about aggressive inerrantist opponents do not apply to you at all. We are here to help you who are questioning your beliefs when we can, and we are not picky about the way you express yourselves.
What about Inerrantists Who Just Want to Discuss Issues?
Sometimes we hear from inerrantist believers who do not question their beliefs but who simply wish to talk about issues with progressive believers. You are welcome here as well! As long as you realize that incessant appeals to inerrancy are unhelpful, we can talk! We can even talk about inerrancy itself if you wish. We love sharing ideas with others and hearing their ideas as well.
Then What was that Previous Article All About?
Over time we are approached by inerrantists who feel that they must prove their point. They are not all the same, but there are a number of very common approaches. The first is the appeal to inerrancy even though we do not accept the assumption of inerrancy. When that doesn’t have the desired effect, they often bombard us with even more appeals to inerrancy. Then there is their consternation and disbelief that ‘progressives really just don’t believe the Bible!’, which is not true. Often they redouble their efforts by applying even more appeals to inerrancy and begin to denigrate us personally and to increase their accusations against us.
We understand their frustration that their sure-fire arguments do not have the desired effect, but our frustration is that we have been through all this before—over and over and over. These are the only inerrantist believers I had in mind in the previous article. And I apologize to inerrantists who felt I was including them as well.
Jesus without Baggage Welcomes Inerrantists!
I love inerrantists; they are my fellow believers and followers of Jesus. All inerrantists are welcome to the discussion here—as long as they realize that authoritative appeals to inerrancy to prove their points will not be effective, especially if they keep pounding the same points over and over.
So I would like to hear from even more inerrantists believers—those who are questioning what they have been taught, those who just want to dialogue on issues, and even those who simply disagree—so long as they don’t become disrespectful and aggressive about it.
Let’s talk!
Articles in this series: Inerrantist Believers
Why Call Out Fundamentalist Views: Isn’t Everyone Entitled to Their Own Opinion?
Why Progressive Believers and Fundamentalist Believers Disagree on So Many Important Beliefs
For My Inerrantist Friends: Why Appeals to Inerrancy are Totally Ineffective in Discussion
Jesus Without Baggage Welcomes Inerrantists!
‘The Bible Clearly Says’ is Always a Seriously Misguided Statement
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Jesus Without Baggage 
Tim, I like your thoughts here, I really do like the regulars here who I have bantered with occasionally. And if I am totally honest, I would have to say that I find that many of us inerrinest’s really only believe certain parts of the Bible, and seem to explain away other parts. They are most often smorgasbord believers. In fact Peter said of Paul’s writings that they are often difficult to understand and that they get twisted often to ones own destruction. I find that no one really wants to believe that particular statement from Peter. Especially the once saved always saved inerrancy folks. I of course accept it because I’m not in that camp, but I also then have scriptures that I must struggle with, because one thing about us inerrancy folks is that we do want to be right, but I think that that is right about even you guys. Because Jesus did say “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”. But there is another part to that quote from Jesus. It says: “if you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples and you shall…”. But then that is the rub isn’t it? Just what did Jesus mean by “my word”? To the true inerrancy folks like me— it is all of scripture. Thanks for hearing me out again.
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Hi Jerry, it is good to hear from you again. I really enjoyed your comment; I think it had some really good insight. I especially liked your statement, “one thing about us inerrancy folks is that we do want to be right, but I think that that is right about even you guys. Because Jesus did say “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”.”
I know that those of us who are sincere want to understand the right things, believe the right things, and do and teach the right things. And I also recognize that none of us can claim to know for certain that we know the ‘truth’ on everything. We are all in this together, as brothers and sisters, trying to work it out.
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Tim, I do appreciate your attitude and approach. Although some would call me a hermitic for even listening to you. But that’s been done before. Thanks for your comment.
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And I thank you, Jerry.
I have been reflecting on your earlier comment and there was something I wanted to ask about. You said, “And if I am totally honest, I would have to say that I find that many of us inerrinest’s really only believe certain parts of the Bible, and seem to explain away other parts.”
What did you have in mind? Examples?
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Ok, I’ll try but it’s involved. I was raised Baptist, in dispensational theology. Big on endtime Second Coming, Rapture, and eternal security as well as literal interpretation. At Liberty U. I was somewhat anal and wanted to know why we believed as we did in light of certain scriptures that would contradict. No good answers. Long story short after much independent study I changed my theology years ago. My reason Dispensationalists and Reformed theologians alike refuse to deal with anything that opposes their thinking — literal or otherwise. Gifts of the Holy Spirit was an issue; apostasy was an issue; millennial beliefs; Tribulation beliefs. Free will Vs predestination issues. Inerrancy seems to be the only non issue with most fundamentalists or evangelicals.
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Jerry, I think I know what you mean. I was raised Baptist, too–fully dispensational. But we were Free Will Baptists and at odds with Southern Baptists and Independent Baptists over ‘once saved always saved’. We were also at odds with Pentecostals over ‘three works of grace’. And these were the groups that were closest to us in belief in inerrancy.
You said, “Inerrancy seems to be the only non issue with most fundamentalists or evangelicals.” I have noticed that same thing. One would think that a ‘plain’ reading of the Bible would lead to similar conclusions, but this is not the case. As it happens, I have already written an article that will appear soon that mentions these types of disagreements among inerrantist believers, including some of the very issues you mention.
You said that at University you asked questions about why you believed certain things. I had a similar experience in doctrine class and was told I was not there to ask questions but to learn the church’s doctrine.
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Great piece; thanks for clarifying that point. Good catch by Chas, too 🙂
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“Great piece; thanks for clarifying that point. Good catch by Chas, too :)”
tonycutty, I agree.
A great article welcoming all and a great start to the discussion! 🙂
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Tim, I enjoyed reading your latest article as much for its sensitivity to the beliefs of others as for its reasoned and very practical approach in the discussion of this difficult and often emotional issue of inerrancy. I think that what really has me hooked about this blog is the idea that although you and many others on this forum put a good deal of stuff out there for all of us to think about, it is never done in a dogmatic fashion which, I would think, would always be a very big turn off for anyone who feels the need to “think things through” on his own in the first place. After all… isn’t that why most of us are here… so that we can perhaps think about some of our most valued spiritual concepts from a different perspective within a community of believers who are traveling the same spiritual path?
In addition to all this, something you’ve said many times in the past that applies to many of us here and that bears repeating is this idea that we have all heard what inerrantism has had to say and we have found much of it unconvincing. This is not meant to be a judgement upon the beliefs of others… it is simply a statement of fact.
Thanks for another great article!
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Anthony: “Dogmatic”; Dogma; Dogmatism. I think this is baggage to any person who tries to think for themselves. I think holding or sharing a body of belief is good and important, but when it becomes dogmatic–it is time to be alert. It might be time to run. Thanks for introducing the term today.
I do try to be sensitive to the beliefs of others; thanks for recognizing that. Though sometimes I do grow tired of being badgered. I like what you said, “We have all heard what inerrantism has had to say and we have found much of it unconvincing. This is not meant to be a judgement upon the beliefs of others… it is simply a statement of fact.”
I agree. And resistance to it is also not a judgment on beliefs but on method. But, even so, this does not make even the most persistent inerrantist believer our enemy–just our opponent in the field of ideas.
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Those three ‘D’s, dogma, doctrine and denomination! Ugh!
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As our Christian brothers and sisters, who subscribe to inerrancy, are invited to dialogue further with us, let me throw out a couple of ideas as a possible framework for discussion. These ideas come from the famous American philosopher, William James, and are found in his well-known essay, “The Will to Believe.”
“Are our moral preferences true or false, or are they only odd biological phenomena, making things good or bad for us, but in themselves indifferent? How can your pure intellect decide? If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one. Mephistophelian scepticism, indeed, will satisfy the head’s play-instincts much better than any rigorous idealism can.”
“Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. …This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker.”
I suggest that these observations shed light on both liberal and literalist beliefs in the Bible. Both kinds of Christians choose to believe in a world made by God and in a book that conveys certain truths about Him. In making this choice, they stand together. They part company, however, when it comes to hypotheses about that book. Inerrancy is simply not a live option for liberal Christians, because they perceive it as impossible ON THE BASIS OF THE BOOK ITSELF.
Liberal Christians would LOVE to have an inerrant Bible hot off the presses from the hand of God. But the book just doesn’t read that way to them, no matter how long and hard they try. Accordingly, they cannot, will not, sacrifice the truth, as they see it, to what would be, FOR THEM, blind faith. For liberal Christians, such a sacrifice would be a sin in their relation to God, Who blessed them with reason. Now, let’s hear from our brothers and sisters for whom inerrancy remains a live option.
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Newton, you present some very good suggestions. And I think your observation is right on target that, “Liberal Christians would LOVE to have an inerrant Bible hot off the presses from the hand of God. But the book just doesn’t read that way to them, no matter how long and hard they try.”
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Newton… I believe your comments to be quite valid and sensitive… but here’s the problem as I see it, told to you from a real live, face-to-face discussion I recently had with someone who bluntly says that she is a Bible-believer (translated: the Bible is the verbal: every word; and the plenary: all parts equally authoritative… inspired word of God)…
We were having a discussion on the Bible when I happened to mention some secular views — William James, perhaps; I can’t recall — and I was immediately shut down when the lady said something very similar to, “Well!…. I believe in the Bible and I don’t look to anything else in order to know the truth about my Lord.” That pretty much put an end to that discussion. Additionally, I would proffer the thought at this time that a great many people of this mind set would not include any of us as “christian brothers and sisters”. I have found, generally speaking, that any dialogue they do choose to entertain with someone who opposes their views is done strictly with an agenda of trying to prosletyze someone they see as being on the other side — a non-believer. Open and free discussion and dialogue are seldom possible in such cases.
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A.P, the situation you describe reminds me of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door. Even if I take a little time to talk with them, I never sense that a genuine exchange of views occurs. Rather, I find myself speaking only to blank faces who apparently presume that I know nothing of interest to them, but who, to the contrary, know everything that should be of interest to me. My hope is that at least some inerrantists who choose to engage with us will be less locked into such presumptions and thus more open to meaningful dialogue. Certainly there must be some Biblical literalists who refuse to believe that God gave humanity the gift of reason only as a trap or foil to be overcome, as He planted fossils in the ground only to test our faith. I guess we’ll find out whether my hope is well-founded or forlorn.
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Newton, You are right about the need for hypotheses. Once one has been framed to meet all of the criteria that seem to be relevant, it then becomes possible to test it against other criteria that might arise. If we assume inerrancy, based on its being the Word of God, as a first hypothesis, it falls at once, because it would require a flawed God, since it contradicts itself in numerous places.
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Ahh…I’m starting to understand now. I wasn’t raised Baptist, like the rest of you’uns (we don’t say ya’ll where I’m from) so I didn’t have as far to go in my rebelling. I just dropped the dress code and the notion that you could lose your salvation for one bad thought.
“Now, let’s hear from our brothers and sisters for whom inerrancy remains a live option.”
What do you want to know?
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Wild, I would like to ask why inerrancy is so important and non-negotiable to those who embrace it. I think I know some of the reasons:
The need for a sense of certainty
The thought that God MUST have given us a totally true and authoritative record
The hesitation (or fear) of rejecting God’s possible ‘truth’
The comfort that one does not have to personally work through religious issues
The loyalty to the particular strand of inerrancy tradition received from past generations
So, I would ask why inerrancy is so important and non-negotiable to those who embrace it.
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“The comfort that one does not have to personally work through religious issues”
What does that mean? Believing scripture is inerrant does not some how cancel out every relationship struggle with God. There seems to be a supposition in these comments that if you believe in inerrancy, you are some how sure that you are right in everything. Scripture is with out errors in it’s original form. We are not without errors. It’s important because it is God’s main way of relaying truth. With out it, we are prone to wander even more than we do. We are more likely to be taken in by obviously false teachers. In the “progressive” mindset, as far as I have been able to determine, all supposed paths to God are equally valid. Jesus stated he was the way, but if scripture is unreliable, I have no particular reason to see him as the truth. He just becomes one possible truth among many.
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Sorry, Wild. I didn’t mean to insult you; I was speaking from my interactions over the years with MANY inerrantist believers and, as I have said before, some of them are not very sophisticated about it.
You said, “In the “progressive” mindset, as far as I have been able to determine, all supposed paths to God are equally valid. Jesus stated he was the way, but if scripture is unreliable, I have no particular reason to see him as the truth. He just becomes one possible truth among many.”
It is true that some progressives see Jesus as only one way among many and that all paths to God are equally valid, but this is not true of me or many other progressive believers. I believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life after death but that in his inclusiveness eternal life will be offered to everyone–even those who have never heard of him.
Also, I believe the truth of Jesus comes through in the gospels even if all the words of the gospels are not what we understand today as ‘true’.
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I believe eternal life is offered to all, but of course, I would have to quote scripture to tell you how I arrive at that, and that would be proof texting….I have no idea why I should trust a gospel that is not true?
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Wild, I don’t think discussing biblical passages is proof-texting. Throwing out biblical passages or references without comment or discussion is proof-texting. Personally, I would like to hear your basis for eternal life being offered to all.
Secondly, you ask why one should trust a gospel that is not true. I do not think the gospels are ‘true’ in every detail, but they are reports of Jesus’ teaching and example from the memories of his earliest followers. I think the overall portrait of Jesus from the four gospels is remarkably consistent and compelling.
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I think I have about 5 minutes here… Of course there are a multitude of verses that claim salvation is for all. “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men”
And there are also many verses that indicate many will not receive him.
“Whoever does not believe is already condemned”
Which is why I believe in a Universal offer of salvation but not in Universal salvation. Universalists and Calvinists are alike in that thier theology logically excludes free will. I’m not sure if that makes me arminian or traditional.
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Wild, I also believe in a universal offer of eternal life but not necessarily a universal acceptance for that offer. And it is for the reason you state–freedom of the will. I don’t think God will force people into eternal life in his presence if they don’t want it, but I don’t think they will be punished in hell for it.
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For starters, I’d like to know whether your belief in the Bible’s inerrancy originates in the fact that certain parts of the Bible tell you this, or results from your actual reading and study of the book, or results from your personal religious experience, or comes from some other primal source. What exactly is it that makes Biblical inerrancy a live option for you?
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The first three. I’m not sure how you separate reading and studying from personal religious experience, as they are completely intertwined. Believing it is true helps you experience it as true, which leads to deeper relationship. ( I don’t really care for the word religious) and I think the opposite is also true. Doubting the truth of scripture leads to doubting your experience with God, which can then lead to doubting his existence. I know we live in days where doubt has become some sort of virtue, but you’ll see Jesus praising people for their faith, not for their doubt. Of course it takes faith to believe in the accuracy of scripture… but only mustard seed Faith to start on that journey.
Incidentally I just put up a post that tells a bit about my faith Journey, starting as a child. One thing I do not do is to Simply assume that because a pastor says it it is truth. Without a fight firm belief in Scripture, I’m not sure how a person discerns who is being biblical, or why it would even matter.
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Wilds, I too received revelation from reading and studying the bible, but that is attributable to direct influence coming from God. Without this latter, whatever might be gained is more random. I still receive revelation from the bible, when God wishes me to have it, despite it being clear that it is not His Word. Now it tends to give me greater understanding.
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How is it clear that it is not his word? As far as I’m concerned, the Holy Spirit occupies His Word, so any revelation I receive from scripture is from God.
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Any revelation that I receive from the bible comes from God, but the revelation is not in the words themselves, but in the hearer.
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Wild, “Doubting the truth of scripture leads to doubting your experience with God, which can then lead to doubting his existence.” This sounds like a slippery slope argument, though I don’t know if you are using it that way here.
I wonder though, if doubt is bad does that mean questioning is bad? Is there a difference between the two.
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Prayer, to cite just one form of personal religious experience, is not reading and studying. Your point that belief facilitates experience is certainly true, but it would apply to the adherent of any religion, or to the atheist who would, for example, tend to experience nothing while attempting to pray. So I’m not sure that this point gets us very far. Where, out of curiosity, do you believe that Jesus praises people for faith in scripture, instead of faith in him? Doesn’t Jesus alter and correct scripture, saying you have heard it said, but I say to you? Lastly, there are many examples of Christians, fully conversant with the Bible, who moved from inerrancy to a more liberal interpretation (like Tim himself). Could you point me toward a previously Biblically literate believer who moved from a more liberal interpretation to inerrancy? That would be helpful, and thanks for engaging with me.
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Good point, Newton.
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I’m not sure what adherents to other religions really have to do with it? I’m not saying that it’s true because I believe it to be true, which seems to be a common thought in our culture.Prayer is not always separate from reading, and certainly bringing scriptures to memory is a form of prayer. Jesus considered scripture authoritative and quoted it often to prove various points. So much for the idea that he didn’t hold scripture as reliable. He also speaks of it as real history. He corrected wrong interpretations of it, but he didn’t correct scripture. He used it against satan…I’m not sure what more proof we need that scripture is reliable. I don’t have an example offhand of someone moving from a liberal interpretation to inerrancy. As a rule, that is what most non believers do when they become believers. They go from thinking it’s just another book to seeing it as God’s Word.
Incidentally, what I said was the Jesus praises people for their faith, not their doubt, I didn’t say their faith in scripture per say.
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Wild, I really appreciate your willingness to talk with us. Let me assure you that I respect your views even if I cannot agree with them; I hope you do not feel that you are being attacked.
I guess my main question is: What causes you to believe the Bible is inerrant? What is the reason or reasons?
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Just going back to Universal Salvation excluding Free Will, there are Christians who believe in Universal Salvation AND Free Will. In other words, Universal Salvation does not exclude one’s responsibility to think, speak or act towards others in a way that continues to demonstrate one’s commitment to learn from Jesus teachings and how he was able to fully accomplish God’s Will, eventually overcoming death itself (resurrection).
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Wilds, I wasn’t raised a Baptist either. In fact, the Church of England doesn’t seem to have any strong views on anything. Maybe that is why it has survived for so long; it causes little offence to anyone, but it also has little to offer anyone. Lukewarmness itself.
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I appreciate the role you have played in my own journey away from a more fundamentalist mindset. I think you are correct that those of us in that category had already “lost” something, and were looking for confirmation that it was possible to retain faith while “losing” the baggage.
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I think often people connect with what they read in the Bible through their own lives, their environment/culture and circumstances. Therefore I don’t think God expects us to have (complete) knowledge but perhaps He is more interested instead in how we apply that knowledge (Jesus principles, through healthy and constructive ways) according to our own faith and our own (limited) understanding.
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Very well said, Paz!
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Let me return for a moment to a question I asked ww and ask it of all JWB readers. That question is whether one can point to a previously Biblically-literate believer, someone who really knew his or her Bible, who changed from having a more liberal understanding of the Bible to embracing an inerrantist view. What I’m looking for, to be more precise, is someone who is or was a thinker of some stature, a person who has written or spoken publicly, in a serious way, about the Christian faith. There are numerous examples of Biblically-literate Christians who have moved from inerrancy to a more liberal viewpoint about scripture–a journey many of us have made, each in our own way. But I would be interested in reading the work of a Christian scholar or serious thinker who went in the other direction ALL THE WAY TO INERRANCY. Can anyone out there help me with this? And let me just add that if in-depth knowledge and study of the Bible have a tendency to move believers (if it moves them at all) in only the more liberal direction of scriptural interpretation, that fact alone (if it exists) would seem to speak volumes.
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Dont know if this is what you are looking for or not: https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Great-minds-who-went-from-skeptics-to-Believers-20130227
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Thank you for this, ww. I will need to spend some time reading through it and following up with additional research. On first blush, your link seems to be a list of nonbelievers or sceptics, with only passing understanding of the Bible, who then dove into it and came to believe in its overall reliability, although not necessarily as the inerrant word of God. Reliability as a spiritual guide or resource is a common belief about the Bible among Christians of all stripes, including many of us of the more liberal persuasion. Inerrancy, however, is quite a different animal. But again, I appreciate the list you provided and will check out whether any of the people mentioned in it fit the bill of what I’m looking for.
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jesuswithoutbaggage says:
“Wild, I really appreciate your willingness to talk with us. Let me assure you that I respect your views even if I cannot agree with them; I hope you do not feel that you are being attacked.
I guess my main question is: What causes you to believe the Bible is inerrant? What is the reason or reasons?”
I think I already covered most of them: The Bible’s own claims:
2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21, 1 Corinthians 2:13
And my own reading and study of the Bible, plus seeing how it changes people, and Jesus’ own appeals to the authority of scripture.
Of course, one can always conclude that most of the evidence for the inerrancy of the scripture is found in scripture, and thus a circular argument. I’m ok with that. I don’t need irrefutable proof, that’s where faith comes in.
A better question might be how one builds their faith on something they claim may or not contain the truth.
I have heard the saying that you don’t believe in a book, but Jesus, which is fine, of course we don’t worship a book. But without a reliable record of who Jesus was, we are left with making God into whatever image we desire.
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Thank you, Wild.
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Should the faith be in the words, or in God?
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What God? If the words aren’t reliable, he could be Zeus or Odin or Allah for all we know.
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Jesus tells us about God, and I think Jesus is reliable. But he doesn’t give us a whole lot of detail.
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So only the words of Jesus tell us about God? Jesus said the whole Torah tells about him, so I’ll take him at his word.
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Wild: “Jesus said the whole Torah tells about him.” What does that mean specifically?
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I would have to write a book to cover all the ways the Torah points to Christ. Of course, Paul covers a lot of the how in Romans, but there is another whole aspect when you get into all the types of Christ found there. And another layer with all the symbolism in the Jewish law that points to Christ.
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Okay, thanks Wild.
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“But without a reliable record of who Jesus was, we are left with making God into whatever image we desire.” On that point, we are in full agreement, assuming one is (as I am) desirous of believing in the Abba of Jesus. I, like other liberal Christians, don’t need inerrancy in the gospels to find in them, taken as a whole, a reliable record of Jesus, as Tim has already pointed out. But, apparently, you do need inerrant gospels. So let’s talk more about that difference here on JWB, as all of us continue our discussion and exploration with mutual respect.
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I would never say I “need” inerrant gospels. That smells like relavitism to me, as in, I want something to be true, so it is. I would say that it must logically be true, if God is who he is portrayed to be in those gospels.
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How can it logically be true, when it contradicts itself? It would require God to be illogical, or be in some other way imperfect.
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Did you ever think that perhaps it doesn’t contradict itself, but it’s only your interpretation of it that seems contradictory?
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While I, for some reason, have never been a huge fan of C.S. Lewis (unlike Tim and many, many other Christians), I did run across these comments of his with which I find myself in perfect agreement. Credit goes to ww for prompting me to do this bit of research. I’m providing the Lewis quote as additional material for discussion on this thread, and I would appreciate the take of other JWB readers on the significant issue Lewis raises.
“I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous. Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. But this I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation ‘after the manner of a popular poet’ (as we should say, mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction. The real reason why I can accept as historical a story in which a miracle occurs is that I have never found any philosophical grounds for the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen.”
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Newton, my thought on miracles is that I don’t see God (or Jesus) manipulating the physics of the Universe. Now, I very much agree that Jesus was a healer; and for me this includes his casting out of demons which I understand to be healings of mental illness. But are these healings really miracles, or did Jesus have access to properties that already exists?
The nature miracles give me pause, such as turning water into wine or walking on water. Why would Jesus even do such things? They seem trivial to me.
One nature miracle is of a different order, however–the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Though I have no idea how this occurred, it is attested in both John and the synoptics which are separate witnesses, and the context in John makes the event more significant beyond the feeding of 5000. So it seems historical, but I have no idea how it was done.
Remember though that any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic to a less developed civilization. My point is that I am not sure God actually interferes with or suspends physical laws.
Now the biggest and MOST significant ‘miracle’ of all is, of course, the resurrection of Jesus from death. That is a game changer and I am convinced that it did happen.
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Tim, why do you regard the synoptic gospels as being independent? Also it can easily be shown that John had access to all three synoptic gospels when he wrote his gospel, since it contains things that are specific to each of the three synoptics.
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Chas, I think one of the positive results of the Jesus Seminar (I am not favorable to much of what they say) regards independent witnesses. I am not convinced that those who wrote the book of John used earlier gospels as sources. If the synoptics and John report a similar incident (like the feeding of the 5000 or the cleansing of the temple) I think it very likely that their reports go back to the original event itself–independent witnesses.
Unlike Luke and Matthew, John does not seem to be dependent on Mark or on Q.
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Tim,
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What?
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Let me see if I understand this right. You have no idea how the Creator of the entire universe (from nothing) could multiply the properties of some food?
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Wild, I wouldn’t say that God COULD not, but I question why God would establish laws of physics and then manipulate them. How does one take a physical fish and multiply it? What method is used? Now, if you recall, I did say that I believe this event really happened.
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Well I would say walking on water takes some manipulation of physics. The one who created the laws can do whatever he pleases with them. Even calming a storm, although you could suppose wasn’t so much changing laws as directing them, is still a miracle. Why on Earth would some one accept one miracle and deny others?
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Wild, you ask, “Why on Earth would some one accept one miracle and deny others?”
Some ‘miracles’ are not necessarily what they seem to be–like healings; I don’t think the ability to heal people is a miracle–rather, it is a natural process which we do not yet understand, and perhaps never will.
The resurrection of Jesus was a singular, one-time event that provides ultimately for our own individual resurrections.
I believe the multiplication of the fish and bread because of the multiple attestations and the significance of the context in John’s report.
I am unsure of the water-to-wine and walking on water episodes because they were private ‘miracles’ of questionable value. They could be embellishments. I think each ‘miracle’ should be evaluated individually rather than on an assumption of inerrancy.
Pulling from the OT, do you think God really made the sun stand still for a day during the battle with the Amorites in Joshua 10? “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!”
Did the Earth stop rotating? If so, why did the wind not rip apart everything over the entire planet?
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The Earth would not have needed to come to a stop in order to prolong the day, the earths rotation could have slowed . Either way, why would it be impossible for an omnipotent God to change the laws of nature temporarily? Of course we don’t know how it happened, but there are many, many things we don’t know about how God operates.
We have a tendency to look back and make everything an object lesson. Or to find some great meaning from it. Perhaps Jesus did walk on water to give an object lesson. Or perhaps he was just tired and didn’t feel like going around, and took the shortest distance between two points. And perhaps he turned water into wine just to make Momma happy.
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God’s omnipotent power is recognized by Jesus when he noted that “with God, all things are possible.” The existence of miracles–which can be confirmed by anyone who takes a serious, sustained, and open-minded look at so-called paranormal phenomena–also indicates that the straight jacket of scientific materialism is as ill-fitting of reality as the outmoded Newtonian physics upon which it is based. Since many (though not all) liberal Christians acknowledge the existence of occasional miracles that defy the known “laws” of science, let’s be careful not to mislead ww, and others of like mind, into thinking that rejection of the miraculous is the principal reason that liberal Christians reject the inerrant view of scripture.
What made it crystal clear to me that both the OT and NT are replete with nonhistorical material was the intense, objective study of scripture I was privileged to undertake in college and seminary. With the aid of a resource called “Gospel Parallels,” for example, which sets side-by-side each gospel’s version of a specific saying or action of Jesus, or event in his life, it became obvious that these gospel accounts vary, often in substantial and irreconcilable ways. To cite just a trivial example, did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on one donkey to two? The same is true of the OT, which even at the outset contains two very different and conflicting creation stories. These glaring contradictions, revealed by exacting scholarship in the very texts themselves, are what render inerrancy a dead option for the faith of a liberal Christian.
All of which is far from saying that the Bible, as a book written over many centuries by many imperfect men about the one perfect God, does not remain–and will always remain–the foundational historical resource that binds together, educates, and inspires Christian believers. For the inerrantist, the letter suffices. For the liberal Christain, the letter must be searched and sifted for the hidden truth and Holy Spirit as Jesus urges us to do: “Seek and ye shall find.” I keep saying it on JWB, and I’ll say it again–by far the best book out there IMHO to help with this searching and sifting process is “The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus” by Dale Allison, a top-tier NT scholar and committed traditional Christian. The last chapter is so profound that I read it devotionally.
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Newton: “The existence of miracles–which can be confirmed by anyone who takes a serious, sustained, and open-minded look at so-called paranormal phenomena–also indicates that the straight jacket of scientific materialism is as ill-fitting of reality as the outmoded Newtonian physics upon which it is based. Since many (though not all) liberal Christians acknowledge the existence of occasional miracles that defy the known “laws” of science, let’s be careful not to mislead ww, and others of like mind, into thinking that rejection of the miraculous is the principal reason that liberal Christians reject the inerrant view of scripture.”
I think we are operating with different definitions of what a miracle is. I think many believers understand a miracle to be God’s intervention into the world to suspend, or override, physical laws of the Universe. I doubt that God does that.
However, you mention paranormal phenomena. Whatever genuine paranormal phenomenon we might witness would not be a miracle by my definition but an event we do not (yet) understand. You mention ‘occasional miracles that defy the known “laws” of science’. If an apparent miracle is only something that defies the KNOWN laws of science, then it need not be a ‘miracle’ at all. Perhaps it is part of a yet unknown law of science.
My point is that I don’t think God just violates the laws of science willy-nilly. I think the laws of science have more integrity than that. In addition, there are so called miracles, especially in the OT, that I doubt happened at all such as a talking donkey, the sun standing still for a day, the parting of the sea, and so forth. These are more likely stories or exaggerations written about themselves by the Jewish people.
But to you point, I agree with you that rejection of some reports of the miraculous is certainly not a principal reason that I reject the inerrant view of scripture.
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Tim, we have a difference here, but one which obviously does not affect the strong commonalities of our Christian faith. I have moved away from adherence to unalterable laws of nature and toward a universe that is not necessarily of one unified piece, with certain regularities always in place that yield predictable outcomes, assuming we acquire enough information about the natural processes involved. You know C.S. Lewis a lot better than I do, but that quote I introduced earlier caused me to believe that he also saw the universe in much the same way I do, as open to rare and inexplicable mysteries that do not and will never yield themselves to complete scientific explanation. But perhaps I read Lewis erroneously on the basis of a single quote. It might be fun sometime to revisit, in its own thread, this whole subject of the miraculous. I fear that the categorical rejection of miracles, based upon Newtonian laws of nature, still leads many potential Christians (unfamiliar with the kind of information provided on JWB) to forego the faith altogether in favor of secular humanism.
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Newton, I don’t think you misread Lewis–he wrote an entire book on miracles. While Lewis is among my very favorite writers, and has provided me with tremendously helpful insights, I do not agree with everything he wrote.
As you say, it might be fun to discuss the miraculous as its own topic. Indeed, it might be fun but I don’t think I would want to pursue something like that. I think it would be more cerebral than practical. As you know, my focus is on harmful beliefs and I don’t think this qualifies; it doesn’t matter to me whether a person believes in miracles or not. Of course it came up here in the context of inerrancy.
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If Jesus rode two donkeys at once, that would have been quite an entry. Kind of like the trick riding at the beginning of some rodeos. But, seriously, there is no contradiction. One writer mentions one donkey, the other mentions both. It’s just a matter of what details one wants to point out, and that true for many so called contradictions. If you and I both watched a parade and wrote about what we saw, we would surely emphasize different details. It’s hard to take people seriously when they nit pick at those kind of details, and call them contradictions. The only way one even notices that stuff is if they are trying to find faults, not inspiration.
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This following looks like a rather comprehensive site, which works through the apparent inconsistencies in the Bible (OT and NT) ALONG WITH the attempted inerrantist explanations. Reading and arguing about this stuff no longer interests me, but for those who remain interested:
http://www.errancy.com/on-how-many-donkeys-did-jesus-ride-into-jerusalem/
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Did you ever watch the movie “Vantage point?”
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No, ww, but I checked out a description of the movie and it looks interesting. I’ll give it a go, and thanks for drawing my attention to it. Just by way of background, I went to law school after seminary and practiced law, in the civil litigation area, for some 36 years. Trust me when I tell you that I’m well aware of how witnesses, in good faith and trying to be as accuate as possible, can give varying accounts of the same event.
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Newton, thanks for the link. It looks interesting.
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A while back, I said that I would try to point out how liberal Christians and inerrantists are similar in certain ways. One of those ways has to do with what William James calls “overbeliefs.” Once one answers in the affirmative the essential religious question, whether everything in the universe is ultimately OK because there is some sort of positive transcendent culmination to it all, James submits that our more specific beliefs about ultimate things boil down to matters of subjective experience, conjecture, and personal preference. But James is also adamant that our overbeliefs–and every religious believer has them–are the most interesting, important, and revealing things about us. Indeed, they become incorporated into our very identities.
Speaking more personally, there was a period of time in my spiritual journey when I was reading some very compelling studies of reincarnation. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I desire is to return to this dog-eat-dog world, perhaps over and over again, and have to re-experience all of its inevitable frustration and excruciating heartbreak. Though I have been richly blessed in innumerable ways throughout my life, I have also, like most of you, had a substantial dose of suffering, and at this point (perhaps unlike many of you) I would prefer oblivion to an endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth in this vale of tears.
So what was my reaction to this strong evidence of reincarnation? It was to search in every corner I could find for counter-evidence, for facts and arguments against this worldview of many Eastern religions. And I must admit that I was overjoyed to discover that the goal of many of these religions was to ESCAPE the cycle of reincarnation, and for the same reasons that I dreaded the idea. As an aside here, it’s bewildering to me that so much of New Age religion eagerly embraces reincarnation, notwithstanding the fact that the concept originated among those who were desperately seeking to avoid its clutches.
But to return to my central point, the overbelief of reincarnation THREATENED me, UNSETTLED me, made me feel that my religious ground of safety and security was shifting dangerously beneath my feet. Eventually, I made my peace with reincarnation, coming to believe that if it’s part of God’s plan, then it’s for our ultimate good, and that it may well apply only to certain human lives for certain special reasons. Might not a loving God give second chances to people whose lives were cut short or who were unable to evolve spiritually for reasons beyond their control? I didn’t necessarily buy into belief in reincarnation, but I was finally able to look at it in a particular way that fit into the framework of my other overbeliefs.
It seems clear that our inerrantist Christian brothers and sisters see a less-than-perfect Bible as threatening and unsettling to their belief in a perfect God, similar to the way I saw reincarnation as threatening and unsettling to my beliefs in a final reckoning of good and evil as the doorway to an eternal destiny in heaven. No evidence or argument could have convinced me to abandon these core overbeliefs, which had become infused into my identity. Had I not worked my way through the reincarnation concept and come to my own personal reconcilation with it, I would no doubt have continued to fight against the idea at every opportunity, summoning every fact or interpretation of fact I could come up with to ward off what I perceived as a serious, pernicious challenge to my religious faith and security.
So……am I, are all of us liberal Christians, REALLY THAT DIFFERENT from inerrantists when it comes to the deepest aspects of our human nature? And if we are not all that different, at this fundamental level, then while we might desire to continue to debate the merits and consequences of the overbelief in an inerrant Bible, our predominant feeling toward inerrantists should always be one of love, understanding, and brotherhood/sisterhood, whether or not that feeling is returned. And I know that in saying this on JWB, I”m preaching to the choir.
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Newton, this is very interesting. And I really like your concluding statement, “while we might desire to continue to debate the merits and consequences of the overbelief in an inerrant Bible, our predominant feeling toward inerrantists should always be one of love, understanding, and brotherhood/sisterhood, whether or not that feeling is returned.”
Agreed!
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