bible

Yesterday, I ended Part I wondering what questions we ask of the Biblical narrative. And this leads me to the essence of why I no longer hold to inerrancy: the doctrine of inerrancy asks the wrong questions.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (vol. 2) says, "Those who speak of inerrancy usually mean freedom from any kind of error--scientific, historical, chronological, etc." (p. 821). But is this how the human writers of the Bible approached truth?

Let me make one side note here: those who believe in inerrancy and those who believe in infallibity both have an equal amount of respect and honor for God's word. Both camps believe God's word to be inspired (or God-breathed) and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). Both believe that Scripture reveals God's character (as, for example, omniscient, omnipotent, unfailing, etc.) and the creation, fall, and redemption of the world and humanity. Both take Scipture seriously.

With that in mind, I believe the argument for infallibility is stronger than the argument for inerrancy.

First, while God is all-knowing, sovereign, and full of truth, he works within limited humanity. Both camps believe this, but let me flesh it out. In working within humanity, he works within understanding and cultures in order to communicate. On the scientific level, the most obvious example is how the biblical authors reference the sun as rising and setting, which we today would acknowledge as a misunderstanding to the scientific workings of the cosmos. Even those in the camp of inerrancy acknowledge this.

But what about other aspects? For example, until Isaiah, the biblical authors wrote stories and poetry that affirms God as being more powerful than other gods. (Isaiah clarifies in tongue-and-cheek manner that these so-called gods are figments of our imaginations and craft.)

Or the Genesis account talks about God creating the sea creatures, a word used in other places to reference the mythological leviathan (Job 7:12; Isaiah 27:1; Psalm 74:13). In the culture of the biblical authors, the sea was a scary place filled with uncontrollable creatures called leviathan. In the creation account, God affirms his omnipotence over even these sea creatures. We see this theme carried through the Psalms and Isaiah and again in Revelation when John, picking up on passages such as Psalm 74 and Isaiah 27, notes especially that God destroyed the sea, which is the house of these sea creatures. In light of this, what do we do if these sea creatures (sometimes translated as dragon or sea monster) don't actually exist?

This brings me to the area of genres. As God communicates within cultures, he does so with the genres of these cultures. So back to our Genesis creation account. our evolution v. Intelligent Design wars ask the wrong questions of the passage. The writer of the account (I'm refusing to name any names or go into this because I don't want to get side-tracked with that discussion) framed the story with a common genre of Ugaritic creation accounts. Genesis 1 shares plot points with other Mesopotamian accounts. But it also has key differences (regarding the nature of God and the nature of humanity), and these differences would have stuck out to those familiar with the genre. (Augustine also speaks of the literary nature of the creation account.)

Does this mean that we can't believe in a six-day creation? No, but it means that's not the point. Perhaps that's how God created the world. But perhaps it's not. (For those of you interested in this issue, you can go here, here, and here.) The doctrine of inerrancy focuses on the wrong question.

Second, the Church creeds employ the term "infallibilty" but do not use the term "inerrancy." They use it to describe a sureness or certainty or faith in God's word in matters relating to salvation and life. Scriptures are reliable, trustworthy, and meaningful to contemporary life. But that doesn't mean they have to have the same types of standards (notice I said types, not levels) created in this scientific era. I take you again to Medieval days. Storytellers told and retold the account of King Arthur. With each telling, minute details changed over time. The tellers embellished or omitted certain things. They may have changed the order of events. But to the people at the time, this did not make the stories any less true or reliable. I don't say this to intimidate that we need to adopt the Medieval mindset. I say this as a reminder that the current mindset, preoccupied with scientific and chronological details, does not need to be imposed on the mindset of the biblical writers in order to prove the reliability of Scriptures. God does not lie, but he limits himself in order to communicate to us. And as any exegete knows, in order to understand what God is communicating, we must understand how and why he does so.

One final note before you have at me. I don't believe this means that we kowtow to science. (In fact, if you click on the last "here" link above, you'll see that while I don't think we have to necessarily hold to a six-day creation, I think there are theological and philosophical issues with evolution [on the macro level] to consider.) If inerrancy requires the Bible to be scientifically accurate, it opens the door for science to be the standard for truth, meaning things are only true if scientifically proven by humans. If science is the standard for truth, then a false dichotomy arises between science and the Bible. God uses science (as he does art and other facets) to continue to communicate to us (although in different ways than his biblical communication). We submit everything to God, knowing that our knowledge has always been and will always be limited but also knowing that these endeavors are part of fulfilling what it means to be human. And how fun is it that we have an eternity to learn, discover, and explore scientifically and artistically?

Recently, two friends and I decided to form a small group for spiritual formation. What we're using incorporates lectio divina with spiritual disciplines and accountability. But all of that is neither here nor there.

Caveat: I'm a nerd.

It all started tonight.

Yes, I recognize the incongruency in that statement, the past tense "started" with future reference "tonight." But that's what it means to enter into the story of the Bible. In some sense, as the writers of Battlestar Galactice said, "All this has happened before; all this will happen again."

I came across this article today in Publishers Weekly about a man who read the Bible cover-to-cover for the first time. The result: Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible.

I'm up today at the Tapestry blog: I Love a Good Myth about how we read our Bible.

An excerpt: "The Bible is a story, or a collection of stories, that define a people, that give the people identity."

The Church and Postmodern Culture blog has a post up about interpretation. I'd love to get some of your thoughts about it.