Fales’ reasoning here is not uncommon. He argues that what Genesis teaches is false because Genesis 1-11 is a myth. The latter claim he substantiates by comparing the early chapters of Genesis to various Ancient Near Eastern texts which we know to be myths. Fales contends that a comparison of the texts in question leads to the conclusion Genesis is a myth and hence what it teaches lacks authority.

In this post I want to address one aspect of this argument. The key premise I want to contest is that if Genesis is a myth and of the same genre as Ancient Near-Eastern myths then what it teaches lacks authority. Note this is a conditional claim: I am arguing that if Genesis 1-11 is mythic in genre then this would not necessarily entail that the text lacks authority. I am not, in this post, committing myself to any claim that Genesis is mythic; I am simply asking what follows if it is.

As a way of entering this question let me start by summarising a debate between two evangelical scholars, both of whom affirm biblical inerrancy. In Inspiration and Incarnation, Peter Enns compares the story of creation, fall, flood and Babel in Genesis 1-11 to various Ancient Near-Eastern texts such as Enuma Elish, The Gilgamesh Epic, Atrahasis Epic, the Sumerian Flood Story and the Sumerian King Lists. Enns argues that:

(a) these writings appear to be earlier than Genesis; and,
(b) the latter four in particular contain obvious parallels to Genesis that cannot be mere coincidence; and,
(c) these texts are myths.

In light of this, Enns argues that Genesis must be understood as a myth.

When Enns says Genesis is a myth it is important to not misunderstand his meaning here. In contemporary English the word myth is often a colloquial term for a falsehood, so that calling something a myth means it is false. In Enns’ use of the term the word ‘myth’ refers to a particular kind of genre, “myth is an ancient, pre-modern, pre-scientific way of addressing ultimate meaning and origins in the form of stories: Who are we ? Where do we come from ?”[2] Hence, by saying Genesis is a myth Enns is not committing himself to the claim that the text is false.

However, later in the same book Enns goes on to state that “the biblical account, along with its ancient Near Eastern counterparts assumes the factual nature of what it reports. They did not think, “We know this is all ‘myth’ but we will have to wait until science is invented to give us better answers.”[3] He suggests that while the text is myth, its original hearers would probably not have distinguished myth from what we would call an historical narrative.

It is worth noting that Enns is not alone in this kind of assessment. Drawing on the same literary parallels, Gordon Wenham has argued that the author of Genesis 1-11 was retelling stories that were well known in Babylonian culture. However, the author was transforming them to make a radically different theological point. These  points, in fact, repudiate and at times ridicule, the very teachings the Babylonian myths  were trying to teach.

Like Enns, Wenham notes several important parallels between Gen 1-11 and Ancient Near-Eastern myths and legends to substantiate this point. Wenham suggests that in retelling the Babylonian myths to make theological counter points the authors assumed or took for granted, the historicity of the folk stories in question. In The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism, Greg Beale responds to Enns’ suggestion, “But Enns is saying more than this: the biblical writers thought they were recording history but were really recording myth … Thus one ends up with a completely inspired bible  in which the narrators recorded what they thought was history, but we know they are wrong. This is tantamount to saying the biblical writers made mistakes.”[4]

Beale goes on to state that Enns sees Genesis as “a genre of divine accommodation,  whereby God knew better but the Israelite writers did not. They thought they were writing true history, but God knew they were not. In this respect has Enns formulated a new version of sensus plenor?”[5]

I think Beale is correct; Enns’ position does commit him to the claim that the biblical authors made mistakes. However, I think the conclusion he tries to draw, that this claim compromises the authority of scripture is too quick. It is worth noting that Enns claimed that the biblical writers assumed the factual nature of what they reported. He explicitly states also that the genre of myth uses stories to teach answers to certain theological and existential questions.  For example, questions regarding ultimate meaning and origins, such things as, who are we? where do we come from? and so on. Hence while Enns position accords errors to what biblical writers assumed, it does not necessarily entail that what the text teaches is erroneous. This may sound like a minor technical point but I am inclined to think it is important.

An example might help to illustrate this point. Let’s take as an example the well known story of  the boy who cried wolf. This story, on the face of it, is simply a description of a shepherd boy who was killed after giving false alarms about wolves. Taken in a straight-forward, literal fashion it appears to relay an historical event. Now most people recognise that this story is not designed to teach us an historical event, those who retell this story do so to make a moral point about the dangers and pitfalls of repeatedly lying. The story is a powerful and graphic way of teaching this point and gives the point a vividness and power that the mere claim “don’t lie” does not have.  It is also clear, I think, that no one would consider what this story teaches to be false if it was discovered the events the story described never happened (which they probably did not). This is because once the genre of the text is realised, it is evident that the text does not teach that the events happened and if it does not teach that they happened then the fact that they did not cannot render what it teaches as false.

Now, let me provide a hypothetical situation. Suppose I was researching the origins of the story of the boy who cried wolf and I discovered that at some point in the past a person heard this story and believed it to be literally true, the person believed that the events actually happened. Suppose this person was also struck by the fact that these events provided a powerful illustration of the dangers of lying and issuing false reports so much so that this person began using this story to teach about the dangers of lying. Suppose that this person’s pedagogy caught on and the story entered into cultural consciousness and that those people who heard and retold the story also believed it actually happened. Would this discovery lead us to conclude that what the story teaches is false? Again it seems clear to me that it would not. This is because whatever the original teller believed about the story, what the story teaches remains true. The original teller may have all sorts of beliefs about what was authored but unless the story was actually used to teach each of these beliefs the story is not discredited by any finding to the effect that these beliefs are false. The story of the boy who cries wolf teaches us about lying it does not teach (nor does it purport to teach us) an historical event. As such, it is shown to be false only if someone can show us that what it says about lying is false.

It is important to see the limitations of this illustration. I am not arguing that Genesis 1-11 should be construed as a fable in the vein of the story of the boy who cried wolf - I think Genesis  is clearly not a fable - the point I am making is that there is a distinction between what a person assumes about a story when they tell it and what the story actually teaches. Even if a person falsely assumes the factual accuracy of the events in a story or narrative as true then that does not entail that what the text teaches is untrue. The example of the boy who cries wolf shows that with some genres the truth of what is taught stands whether or not the story used to teach this truth is historically accurate. Even if we grant that Genesis is myth or folklore, it does not follow that what it teaches is false.

[1] Evan Fales “Darwin’s Doubt, Calvin’s Calvary” in James Beilby Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000) 55.
[2] Peter Enns  Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids MI : Baker Books, 2005) 50.
[3] Ibid 55.
[4] Greg Beale The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority (Wheaton Ill: Crossway Books, 2008) 69.
[5] Ibid.

John’s first concern is that the two conceptions of inerrancy I set out, those of Verbal Plenary Inspiration (VPI) and Didactic Plenary Inspiration (DPI) constitute a false dichotomy. He notes that some people, such as himself, accept both VPI and DPI. This, of course, is correct. In fact I suggested as much in my follow-up post, Two Forms of Inerrancy, there I quoted Alan Rhoda,

A weaker, and I think more defensible view, may be called didactic plenary inspiration (DPI). This is the view that whatever the Biblical originals were intended to teach is inerrant. It is not necessary that the particular words of the Bible be chosen by God so long as the particular message that God wants to convey gets across. (VPI entails DPI, but not vice-versa.) [Emphasis added]

Rhoda explicitly suggested that VPI entails DPI; hence a person can accept both. What is interesting, however, is that one can also accept DPI and not accept VPI. One can accept that what scripture teaches is true and yet also hold that scriptures contain errors but that these errors are not part of what scripture teachers.

So John is correct that one can affirm both VPI and DPI; however, one can also affirm DPI and not affirm VPI and it was this possibility that was my major point. An implication of this point is that certain sceptical attacks on inerrancy fail because they attack VPI and leave DPI unaffected.

John’s second point is more interesting,

I also hold that God superintended the transmission (SPI) of the text such that it was, over time, faithfully edited and translated, and is, for all intensive purposes, just as inerrant in the Septuagint as it is in the MT; in the Textus Receptus as in Nestle-Aland; in the NIV as in the KJV.

He goes on to argue,

Since Matt likes to refer to the “originals” which we do not have, and applies the language of inerrancy to them alone, I am left to assume, which is absurd, that he considers the NIV or KJV Bible (or whatever) read and preached on in church on a given Sunday to be an errant text.

John here raises several questions regarding the reference to “the originals” in my initial post. In response let me say two things. First, I made reference to the “originals” because that is the position defenders of inerrancy typically take. Consider the statement of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which I cited in my post, Two Forms of Inerrancy, “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the originals.” The distinction between VPI and DPI made by Alan Rhoda, which I cited in my post, was an attempt to show two different ways this particular statement could be understood. Now given that this statement clearly applies inerrancy to the originals, whatever understanding one adopts of it, one must also apply inerrancy to the originals. The EPS are not being unusual here; defenders of inerrancy normally limit inerrancy to the originals. For example, Article VII of the Chicago statement on inerrancy states, “We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.” Similarly Article X states,

We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

Second, it seems that the issue John raises actually illustrates another difference between VPI and DPI in that VPI has to limit inerrancy to the original documents whereas DPI does not have to. John attributes inerrancy to not just the originals but to contemporary English translations such as the NIV and KJV. He also suggests that ancient manuscripts such as the Septuagint, Masoretic Text, the Textus Receptus and the Nestle-Aland are all inerrant. The obvious problem here is that these texts do not agree on the precise words used to convey the message of scripture. A couple of examples will suffice. Take the following passage in the NIV version of 1 Corinthians 13:5, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing,” a footnote states, “some ancient manuscripts have body that I may boast.” Here we see that differing manuscripts disagree over the exact wording used in this text. They both cannot be correct, word for word, translations of this verse as they differ. Similarly, the Masoretic Text (MT) translates Exodus 21:22 as follows,

When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.

The Septuagint (LXX) renders the passage as follows,

If two men fight and strike a pregnant woman, and her unformed embryo departs, he shall be fined; according as the woman’s husband lays upon (him) he shall give according to what is thought fit. But if it be formed, he shall give a life for a life.

When it comes to the exact wording of this law the MT and LXX clearly use different words, as such both texts cannot both be verbally inerrant. Similar differences in wording can be found amongst the English translations.

Defenders of VPI acknowledge these facts. Norman Geisler’s response is fairly typical, “Actually, the variant readings which significantly reflect the sense of a passage are less than ten percent of the New Testament, and none of them affect any basic doctrine of the Christian faith.”[1] Similarly the Chicago statement in Article X states,

We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

The argument here is two-fold; first, both Geisler and the Chicago Statement affirm that textual criticism shows various manuscripts and English translations are reliable and reflect the original wording to a high degree of accuracy. Second, both go on to note where there is dispute over the exact wording of the text, this does not affect any doctrine or teaching of the Christian faith.

I am not going to contest the accuracy of either of these points. I am inclined to agree that many of the variant readings in different manuscripts do not really affect much of substance. Take the Corinthians passage mentioned above, whether Paul stated “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing,” or whether he stated, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body so I may boast, but have not love, I gain nothing,” his point is surely the same – that a person who engages in massive sacrifices but does not actually love other people really misses the boat. Similarly, as I have argued in my Alexandrian Argument series, while the LXX and MT disagree on the exact wording in Ex 21:22-25 what they teach is essentially the same and the LXX appears to be an accurate interpretation and application of the law even if it is not an accurate word for word translation.

What I will say however is that the response of Geisler and the Chicago Statement shows that when it comes to any existent manuscripts, inerrancy can only be applied to them if one adopts a DPI view. This is evident from their responses; take the claim that various manuscripts and translations reflect the original to a high degree of accuracy. To say something is highly accurate is not the same as saying it is completely accurate or inerrant. Both Geisler and the Chicago Statement admit that when it comes to actually existing manuscripts, we do not have a verbally inerrant text. The second claim, essentially affirms that this verbal errancy does not really matter or carry much significance because what the originals taught is not affected by this difference in wording.  In other words, while we do not have VPI we do have DPI and apparently when we are talking about anything but the originals this is sufficient.

Geisler’s comments illustrate the point that DPI enables one to avoid the very criticism John raised whereas VPI does not. The fact that we do not have the exact wording of the originals and the fact that different English translations such as the NIV, KJV, RSV, etc differ in the precise English words they use to translate variant manuscripts threatens the inerrancy of these particular manuscripts and translations only if inerrancy requires VPI. If inerrancy is predicated of the teaching of the texts and not the exact words then the problem does not arise.

[1] Normal Geisler and William Nix The Bible an Introduction (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986) 489.

RELATED POSTS:
Sunday Study: Inerrancy and Biblical Authority
Sunday Study: Two Forms of Inerrancy

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the originals. God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

In a discussion with Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher on the meaning, Alan Rhoda distinguishes two accounts of inerrancy,

It seems to me that the EPS statement is sufficiently vague to permit a few different readings.

The strongest is what’s known, I think, as verbal plenary inspiration (VPI). This is the view that each and every word used in the Biblical originals is exactly the word that God wanted used. Hence, since God is infallible, the Bible is inerrant. (VPI is the position of the Chicago Statement.)

A weaker, and I think more defensible view, may be called didactic plenary inspiration (DPI). This is the view that whatever the Biblical originals were intended to teach is inerrant. It is not necessary that the particular words of the Bible be chosen by God so long as the particular message that God wants to convey gets across. (VPI entails DPI, but not vice-versa.) If one accepts this view, then the question to be asked with respect to a Biblical text is “what was it intended to teach?” Is Genesis 1, for example, intended to teach that the world was created in six 24-hour days? Or is it, perhaps, a kind of literary framework intended to teach the absolute superiority of Yahweh over all other gods? Or perhaps its purpose isn’t primarily didactic at all, but something primarily evocative like poetry?

My point is that since the EPS inerrancy statement does not specify the primary locus of inerrancy (whether the words, the teachings, or something else) it permits a flexible range of approaches to Biblical interpretation.

Rhoda suggests two different ways of understanding the doctrine of biblical inerrancy; one that follows from affirming verbal inspiration and another that follows from didactic inspiration.

To see how DPI works consider a legal analogy, suppose that I want to write up a last will and testament. I approach a lawyer and tell set out precisely what I want put in my will. The lawyer then drafts a document that contains the provisions I stipulated but expresses them in standard legal terms and in accord with standard legal conventions and phrases e.g. “I, Matthew Flannagan, being of sound mind, hereby decree that…”

The document expresses, in first person, my will regarding my assets and property so I can be said to be its author, a court will call it my will as will my surviving family. However, I did not write it. The form, exact wording, turns of phrase, sequencing, choice of font and paper, etc are the lawyers’. Given that the will was drafted in New Zealand, in 2010 it will be in New Zealand English and drafted in accord with the styles and conventions of the statutes and precedents applicable to New Zealand wills and testaments. Nevertheless, as the content of the document express my wishes, despite my lack of authorship, it is a faithful expression of my will. Something like this picture of inspiration is suggested in Exodus 4:10-16.

Now it is important to note that a DPI model of inerrancy does not mean that people reject the entire biblical text as mythical and figurative stories, which illustrate theological and moral truths and assert nothing about space-time history. If the message is articulated through the literary and rhetorical conventions of human beings then a plausible interpretation, as opposed to a strained one, will take these conventions into account. When this is done, it is implausible to conclude everything in scripture is myth.

Take, for example, the genre of ancient biography, as mentioned in my previous post. This genre does not intend to affirm as true every detail it records but rather seeks to give an accurate picture of the person the biography is about. This still requires that much of what it records is true; no one would interpret biographies about Alexander the Great to read that they did not teach that he was king of Macedon, son of Philip, who conquered Persia, fought in the battle of Gaugamela, etc. Similarly, if Jesus did none of the things recorded in the gospels and said nothing at all remotely resembling what they attribute to him then these accounts do not give an accurate picture of him.  However, the genre of ancient biography does not require that Jesus’ teaching on divorce be presented verbatim, in precisely the same order or using exactly the same words in the various synoptic gospels. Neither does it require that every temporal or geographical detail mentioned within them is taught as correct.

Many historical books intend to teach historical claims. The Old Testament teaches, among other things, that Israel went into exile as a result of disobedience; it also teaches God lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. These texts are, as far as I can tell, historiographies. Admittedly they are ancient near eastern “ANE” historiographies and the fact that the genre of ANE historiography uses hyperbole, lack of precision, a degree of historical reconstruction, etc needs to be taken into account. Nevertheless, as are historiographies they intend to teach us the significance of events that occurred in the past.

Now a person would not take an Egyptian history as entirely figurative. One should take it to teach that a particular event happened. It is true that one should recognise the hyperbole present, the theological/political message the text affirms but this would not be taken to be all that the author teaches. Ramses’ campaigns into Syria are intended to tell us that the campaigns actually happened, that the battles actually occurred even if they use hyperbole, rhetoric and historical reconstruction to articulate a political/theological message over and above the mere reporting of history. Hence, DPI does not necessitate a licence to de-historicise the text or embrace biblical minimalism.

Of course, there are other books and literary forms in scripture, such as the parables or the apocalyptic, which are not intended to be read as history. Then there are the early chapters of Genesis or the books of Job and Jonah, where it is not clear that the text intends to teach that the events actually occurred in history and where it seems more likely that these were stories were meant to convey theological and ethical truths. What is needed when reading these texts is attention to the genre. Conclusions about what a text teaches must be based on defensible claims about the literary style and the context of the text in question.

DPI, therefore, is not the same as the view that scripture is infallible in faith and morals but not in history. It may simply be that at certain junctures scripture intends to teach us something about the past. On the other hand, DPI does allow for certain types of errors that a more verbal account may not allow for. Here are two examples. The first is one I alluded to in my previous post, cases where the form or way the message is articulated presupposes error. Consider Jesus’ comments in Matt 15:18-19, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things make a man unclean. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Some scholars take, as metaphoric, references to the heart as the seat of the will, emotions, intellect. However, others suggest that ancient cultures literally believed the heart was the seat of psychological states like this and conclude that these texts reflect and presuppose a false and erroneous view of anatomy. I am inclined to think that even if these scholars are correct, little of interest follows.

An analogue here would be a person who reads a 12th century account of a battle that is recorded to have occurred at “sun rise”. We know that 12th century people literally believed that the sun rose, in accord with the accepted pre-Copernican cosmology of the day. Hence, it is plausible to think that the human authors of these texts took the phrase “sun rise” to literally mean that the sun rose. Despite this, I think it would be a mistake to suggest that the phrase “the battle took place at sunrise” is false because of Copernicus’ discoveries. While the text presupposes an erroneous view of cosmology, it clearly does not intend to teach us pre-Copernican cosmology; all it teaches is that a battle occurred at dawn and it uses pre-Copernican cosmology to express this point. What the text teaches is true if the battle occurred and it occurred at dawn. It would be false if the battle occurred at another time of the day or never occurred at all.

I am inclined think that the references to heart, kidneys, etc in the scriptures function in an analogous way to the word “sunrise” in medieval texts. I would say the same thing about references to the “four corners of the earth” or “the waters above and below” even if the original human writers understood these to be literally true. The cosmology in question is presupposed by the text abut is not what the text is trying to teach us. The author uses these phrases them to teach something else and it is what the author taught not the author’s mode of presentation that matters.

A second example of an error that would be allowed under DPI would be where scripture affirms or states something which is unrelated to what is being taught. An example would be Paul’s instruction to Timothy in 2 Tim 4:15, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.” Suppose, for the sake of argument, Paul did not leave his cloak at Troas, perhaps he thought he had but in reality he had left it somewhere else. I am inclined to think this kind of error would make absolutely no difference to whether what Paul teaches in 2 Timothy is true or not. As the point of this letter is not to give an apostolic teaching on whether there is a cloak in Troas.

Paul’s teaching is authoritative because he is an apostle, what he teaches as an apostle is true. It does not follow from this, that every personal conversation, remark, Paul ever made in his life or every memory he had was without error. It’s rather that what he taught in the function of an apostle has divine authority. It seems to me that while the letter to Timothy expounds apostolic teaching and instruction and the whole book letter is therefore authoritative, the specific passage in v 4:13 records a personal aside Paul gives to Timothy regarding some property he left at Troas. To interpret Tim 4:13 as a divine command to collect Paul’s cloak, or a prophetic or apostolic utterance that a cloak existed in Troas seems to me to be excessively pedantic and implausible, hence I myself see nothing about the divine authority of scripture threatened by a discovery that there was no cloak in Troas. All it would show us was that Paul’s memory was not perfect, which we already knew.

So DPI is compatible with certain sorts of errors in the text provided they are not what the text teaches. Of course none of this means that scripture contains these errors. There may well have been a cloak at Troas. References to “the waters above,” “heart,” etc may be phenomenological language, the point is that even if these references do presuppose or  contain errors of a certain sort this does not really make any difference to the claim that whatever scripture intends to teach is true. Other examples could be given but I think you get the point.

I suspect something like what Alan Rhoda calls didactic plenary inspiration is the view I was elaborating in my previous post. It also appears to be the view defended (at least in some places) by William Lane Craig and something like it is the view expounded by Alvin Plantinga. I also suspect that Glenn Peoples holds this view; although Glenn considers himself to not be an inerrantist he would probably, on Rhoda’s classification, be a particular kind of inerrantist, one that rejected VPI and instead asserted DPI.

On the other hand, the sceptics I referred to in my previous post (people like Tooley, Fales, Brink, Loftus, etc) in their critiques, work with a fairly strong VPI view of inerrancy. John Loftus’ speaks of Jesus’ reference to “the heart” and how this reflects a primitive view of anatomy, Fales states that certain books may contain the genre of myth and Tooley suggests that Genesis contains a story in which God wipes out the human race. This suggests that they think that every word, illustration or literary convention used to teach us about God must itself be without error. If I am correct, then what sceptics attack is one particular version of inerrancy. They may or may not be successful in this attack but attacking one version of a doctrine does not show that all versions are false, and in this case many leading defenders of Christianity do not hold the version under attack any way.

RELATED POSTS:
Sunday Study: Inerrancy and Biblical Authority

RELEVANT CONVERSATIONS:
Basic Inerrancy @ First Things (also at Parableman)
Inerrancy again – a blog about a blog about a blog about a blog @ Beretta
The Pitfalls of Literalism & Plantinga on Inerrancy @ The Church of Jesus Christ

While there has always been a clear expression of the view that what Scripture teaches is correct, this has certainly not always been seen in terms of the notion of “inerrancy.” After all, the very disagreement that exists between evangelicals who affirm inerrancy and those who do not is whether or not the idea that the Bible is authoritative and truthful in what it teaches us should (or need not) give rise to the further claim that the Bible is also inerrant.

Peoples here distinguishes between two theses; the first is that bible contains no errors, the second is that whatever the bible teaches is true. In his article Peoples argues that the first of these theses is false, he argues that there are numerous factual errors in scripture. On the other hand Peoples maintains that the second thesis is true, none of the errors he mentions call into question the authority of scripture because they do not affect the truth or falsity of what scripture teaches. Hence, one can affirm the authority of the bible, even the claim that it is infallible in what it teaches, without affirming that it is inerrant, in the sense of containing no errors.

In A response to Glenn Peoples’s ‘No, I am not an inerrantist’ Bnonn argues that Peoples is attacking a straw-man. The doctrine that the bible is inerrant does not mean to deny that the kind of discrepancies Peoples points to do not exist; rather, supporters of the position Peoples attacked have in mind a different account of what constitutes an error to what Peoples’ critique suggests. Here, I do not want to discuss whether Bnonn is correct or incorrect here because whether he is or not, I think Peoples is onto an important distinction here and he offers an important critique of one way of understanding biblical authority which is often assumed by sceptics.

A couple of examples may illustrate this point. In Does God Exist Michael Tooley, for example, suggests that those who hold that Genesis is the revealed word of God run into trouble because in Genesis God decided to “drown all men, women, and children in a great flood” and suggests that this means they must believe that God has engaged in genocide of the human race.[1] David Brink similarly argues that the Genesis story of Adam and Eve is contradicted by contemporary geological evidence and evolutionary biology so, hence, is unreliable.[2] Fales notes “then, there is the generally mythical character of Genesis, and the fact that many of the themes in the first eleven chapters are borrowed from, or influenced by, the myths of other ancient Near Eastern cultures”[3] and considers this to undercut the authority and reliability of the book of Genesis. Some sceptics contend that primitive scientific understandings of the world are presupposed in various biblical passages. In Matt 15:18-19 Jesus states “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things make a man unclean. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” Some sceptics argue that this passage reflects a primitive ancient understanding of human anatomy that held that the heart was literally the seat of the emotions, will and intellect.

Now some evangelical scholars would contest each of these claims by questioning the existence of such underlying cultural beliefs, the geological evidence and so on, however, here, for the sake of argument, I will assume these basic contentions are correct. I think an important question to ask is, so what? Because even if the sceptic’s claims are true it is far from clear that this actually calls into question biblical authority, the distinction Peoples raised gives us some insight into why. The examples might show that the text contains errors in some sense of that term but it is not clear that they actually show that what the bible teaches is false.

Interestingly something like this distinction occurs in the characterisation of inerrancy offered by two leading, contemporary, Christian philosophers. Alvin Plantinga states, “Scripture is inerrant: the Lord makes no mistakes; what he proposes for our belief is what we ought to believe”. Here Plantinga defines inerrancy not in terms of the bible containing no errors at all, but rather that what God proposes to teach with scripture is not mistaken. William Lane Craig articulates a similar account:

Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds.  Why?  Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm.  This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach.[4]

Craig’s point here is that Jesus’s comment taken literally contains a falsehood, that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds. I myself am inclined to see hyperbole here and so do not think that Jesus did literally say the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, suppose however he did, then his statement would be false. Nether the less Craig notes, and I think correctly, that this is irrelevant because even if Christ said this about mustard seeds, this passage is not supposed to teach us about Botany. It’s a teaching about the growth of the kingdom of God. The saying about the mustard seed is simply a way of illustrating the point Jesus is trying to teach. And it’s the truth or falsity of this teaching, not the details of the illustration that is what is at stake in the question of biblical authority.  I think Craig is correct here, God uses texts written by human beings to teach people certain truths about himself and the world. What is authoritative is what is taught not the details of how it is expressed. This distinction between what the text teaches and what it contains then is I think illuminating, it also I think casts some light on cases of error that Peoples refers to the difference between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels in terms of the cleansing of the temple:

Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography.  This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave.  Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities.  What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography.  To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels.  But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way.

Craig’s point can be seen this way. John records the cleansing of the temple near the beginning of his ministry, whereas the synoptic gospels record it occurring near the end of his ministry. Hence, these accounts contain contradictory records of the same event. This, however, does not call into question the accuracy of what is being taught because once one understands the genre being employed, the genre of ancient biography, it is evident the authors did not intend to teach that every event they recorded actually happened in the precise way they narrate. The authors are not teaching that Christ actually cleansed the temple at a particular time and place in history, they are trying, rather, to provide a faithful account of who Christ was, what he was like, what he taught, the major things he did and said. These records are accurate if they faithfully reflect a correct answer to these questions. They, like other biographers of the time, drew on accounts or traditions that highlighted the point they were trying to make without necessarily accepting that every account they refer to actually happened precisely how it is stated. The authors, in relaying the story of the cleansing of the temple, are teaching not that the event actually happened as they narrated it but that Christ was opposed to the kind of actions that were taking place in the temple; he was so opposed to it that given the opportunity, whether late in his ministry or early, he would respond in the way the Gospels portray and take the kind of stance he is portrayed as taking. The text teaches truth if it is true that Christ was like this and false if he was not. If Christ had no problem with money changers in the temple, and considered this activity to be a perfectly appropriate way to make money, then what this text asserts would be false.

I think many of the cases cited by sceptics of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures are unpersuasive because they fail to distinguish between what is contained in the text and what the text teaches. Given this they fail to really challenge biblical authority as this has, according to Peoples, been traditionally understood.

Suppose, as Fales suggests, the evidence supports the contention that Genesis is not an historical account of origins but a rewritten legend or myth, it does not follow that what this myth teaches is false. Myths are used to teach theological and ethical points and the question of whether these points are true or false or not is whether the genre that expresses them is mythic.

Similar points can be made about the other examples. The fact that Genesis contains a story about God drowning the human race in a flood does not entail that the text teaches that God committed genocide. For this latter conclusion to follow one would need to establish that the genre of Genesis is on par with the genre of modern histography and hence intends to teach the events recorded actually happened. This may or may not be the case but it requires argument. Merely citing a passage does not do this.

Similarly, Brinks’ argument assumes that the text not only contains stories about Adam and Eve but also teaches the story occurred as historical fact. This involves important questions of genre that Brink ignores. It is possible that these stories are included by the author to teach certain theological and moral truths about human beings, sin and God; of course they might not be either, but merely pointing out that a story contains error if taken as literal historical fact does not substantiate this.

Finally, even if Christ’s statement presupposes or reflects a mistaken ancient view of human anatomy it is clear that in the passage in question he is not teaching that this anatomy is true. He is teaching about human sin and its relationship to the Torah. He might use a primitive understanding of anatomy to illustrate or make the point but that is not the point he is imparting.

Here, as elsewhere, sceptics show themselves up as fundamentalists working with an excessively pedantic understanding of inerrancy; a conception that Peoples correctly rejects and also argues, again correctly, is largely irrelevant to the question of biblical authority. Moreover, if Bnonn is correct, most inerrantists do not assume this understanding of biblical authority either, which means that such arguments are simply attacks on straw men, often by people who should know better.

[1] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 75.
[2] David O Brink “The Autonomy of Ethics” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism ed Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 159.
[3] Evan Fales “Plantinga’s Case against Naturalistic Epistemology” 63 Philosophy of Science 1996, 447-448.
[4] William Lane Craig “What Price Biblical Errancy?” Reasonable Faith Q&A.

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