I’m sorry that Michael Pahl is taking a rest from blogging at the moment. But his blog is still worth visiting.
Particularly interesting are some of Michael’s thoughts on inerrancy. I must emphasise that he affirms inerrancy. As a kind of self-criticism, however, he notes the following:-
[Index to this series of posts]
Chapter 8 of the The Post-Evangelical, by Dave Tomlinson, asks a ’straightforward’ question: what is a post-evangelical view of the Bible?
First, Tomlinson feels that there is a need to ‘exorcise’ the ghost of inerrancy. He finds it incredible that anyone thinks it even plausible to believe in such a thing.
I was interested to learn of the fairly recent publication of:-
The Divine Spiration of Scripture: Challenging Evangelical Perspectives
A.T.B. McGowan
Apollos (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press), 2007, 229pp.
£14.99, ISBN: 978-1-84474-220-2
Apparently, in addition to advocating the notion of ’spiration’ instead of ‘inspiration’, the author challenges the concept of biblical ‘inerrancy’, arguing instead for ‘infallibility’. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, it has attracted rather hefty criticism from those whose position it questions.
Some reviews (mainly critical of the author’s proposals) can be found here, here, here, here and here.
I imagine I would take a somewhat more appreciative view. I’d better get hold of it and see for myself.
Craig Blomberg is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. He’s the author of a number of fine books, including one on the Historical Reliability of the Gospels and another on the The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel.
I was interested to read this recent interview with Blomberg over at Justin Taylor’s blog, Between Two Worlds.
I noted in an earlier post that debate about the inerrancy of Scripture has been sharper in North America than in Britain. This is due to a considerable extent to the contrasting views taken by the Princeton theologians in America and their British counterparts. Now, I love the Princeton theologians – B.B. Warfield is a special favourite of mine – but I continue to have a few problems with the concept of inerrancy.
Ever since I came to a living faith in Christ at the age of 19, I have been persuaded of the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible.
I also acquired at that time a real desire to study the Christian faith in general, and the Bible in particular. This led me to my local library where a book that caught my eye was the Bible Handbook by G.W. Foote and W.P. Ball (don’t you just love that pair of names?). On looking at the book more carefully when I reached home, I realised that it was not at all the kind of thing I was expecting. Far from being an informative guide to the Bible it turned out to be a compilation of supposed errors and contradictions as uncovered by two ‘freethinkers’. Well, I thought I would have a good look at these alleged problems and inaccuracies. I examined carefully any number of Bible passages that were supposed to be problemmatic but came to the settled conclusion that the difficulties were apparent, rather than real. That doesn’t mean, of course, that I found answers to all the questions or solutions to all the problems. But I did find that the whole exercise confirmed my belief in the inspiration and authority of the Bible.
