Book Plunge: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

What do I think of this book edited by J. Merrick, Stephen Garrett, Stanley Gundry, and published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been no stranger to the Inerrancy debates and when this book went on sale I decided to get a copy. I like that the book features so much on ICBI (International Council on Biblical Inerrancy) and the CSBI (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy) that came from it. The authors are all Christians and have different viewpoints.

All are also supposed to write on three problems for Inerrancy. The first is the conquest of Jericho. The second is the different accounts of the conversion of Paul. The third is the God of peace in the NT versus the God of the conquest in the OT.

Albert Mohler has the first essay. I am convinced that easily this was the worst of the lot. Mohler treats the CSBI as if it was sent down from heaven above. His argument style is highly fundamentalist. One key example of this is at location 772 in the Kindle version where he says the following:

Archaeologists will disagree among themselves. I am not an archaeologist, and I am not qualified to render any adequate archaeological argument. The point is that I do not allow any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify to the slightest degree the truthfulness of any text in all that the text asserts and claims. That statement may appear radical to some readers, but it is the only position that is fully true and trustworthy. Any theological or hermeneutical method that allows extrabiblical sources of knowledge to nullify the truthfulness of any biblical text assumes, a priori, that the Bible is something less than the oracular Word of God.

This shouldn’t surprise us. In going after Mike Licona for what he said about the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27, Al Mohler said the following:

What could one possibly find in the Greco-Roman literature that would either validate or invalidate the status of this report as historical fact?

This is one of the things that’s quite wrong with much of our Christian mindset today. We have isolated ourselves off from the outside world and we have read our culture into the text. Mohler is one who has used Inerrancy as a weapon, something Michael Bird has something to say about in his chapter. I agree with Mohler’s conclusion on the truth of Inerrancy, though I do so with the full openness that I could be wrong, but I see no real argument for it.

Next is Peter Enns where I see the exact opposite. Peter Enns has abandoned Inerrancy and sees it as a problem. There is much that he says that is important for us to consider. The difference with Enns is that I like that he actually argued his case. I just don’t agree with his case and thus I reject the conclusion, but I can at least say he put forward an argument.

Michael Bird comes next. Bird writes with a more international perspective where he critiques what he calls the American Inerrancy Tradition. (AIT) Bird reminds us that there are plenty of Christians all over the world who uphold Inerrancy and have never heard of ICBI or CSBI. He also says that it’s amusing that America seeks to tell evangelicals all over the world how to handle the text right while we also produce people like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and the Left Behind novels.

Bird’s essay I found to be one of the best. Bird wants Americans to realize that there is a world outside of the U.S. and we can learn from them. We need to stop reading American thinking into the text. ICBI was hardly an international conference since few if any representatives were there from even certain continents to give their perspective.

Kevin Vanhoozer came next with another great essay. Vanhoozer writes about how to try to get the meaning from the text and recommends we take off our cultural blinders. I really didn’t notice too much of a distinction between Vanhoozer and Bird.

Finally, there’s John Franke. I still don’t know what to think of his essay because it’s really hard to tell what he’s arguing for. He seems to hold to a more coherence view of truth and thus it’s hard to tell what Inerrancy is for him.

The back and forth as always is quite helpful in this. Those who like Bird’s writing style will also be pleased to see he has brought his razor-sharp wit to this one as well. It is my hope that more will follow his and Vanhoozer’s route and get away from AIT. It would be good to see also a new ICBI and have this one be truly international and have certified scholars make up the board entirely. Time will tell if this will happen.

For those interested in the Inerrancy debates, get a copy of this one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters