Article XII

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, as we continue our look at biblical Inerrancy, we probably will get into some controversial stuff as we look at article XII which I do have some concerns with. Let’s take a look at what it says first.

We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

Now I will say that I do agree that Scripture is Inerrant in all that it teaches. However, I wonder about the last point. Could it be the case for instance that science could ever overturn a Scriptural teaching? If the historic belief is that God wrote two books, then we need not fear anything whatsoever in science. Hence, my opinion on scientific matters is simply that we should let the investigations go where they may. Of course, if we are scientists, we can participate in them, but if we believe the Bible is true, we need not fear any scientific conclusion. Naturally, I am aware that that does not mean conclusions by scientists necessarily. Science might show that macroevolution took place. It cannot show that there was no God driving macroevolution.

Would that mean that we’d have to rethink a lot of our interpretations? Yes it would, and we should be open to doing such. The whole Galileo issue might have turned out better had we taken a position like that. Today, I think the creation/evolution debate would turn out better if we did that. I have no problem with using extrabiblical evidence to help us in our understanding of the Bible. If we say “Well the Bible obviously isn’t teaching that because this evidence seems quite clear and is otherwise” then we can look more at what it is teaching. For instance, I’ve been impressed lately with the work of John Waldon on The Lost World of Genesis 1.

It could be I am misunderstanding the article, but I want us to be sure that if we do the science right and we do the biblical interpretation right, we will find truth in both cases. If macroevolution is not true, no need to fear science. True science working will eventually figure that out. If it is true, there’s no need to fear that for if we believe the Bible is true, then we will need to say “Maybe we were understanding this wrong” and start to seek a different interpretation. Does this violate Inerrancy? Not at all. We’re still saying that what the Bible says is absolutely true. We’re just saying that we were wrong on what it said.

So if the idea is that science cannot overturn the Bible, I agree. If it means however, that we ignore what is said in other fields outside of the Bible, I don’t agree. I say we should be fearless truth seekers wherever we go and we should rest assured that when we find something true in any field, it won’t disagree with Scripture.

We shall continue next time.

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