This is the eighth and final post in a series on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics.
Part 1: “All or “every” Scripture?
Part 3: The nature of inspiration and the purpose of Scripture
Part 4: Inerrancy vs. infallibility
Part 5: The literary-generic principle
Part 6: The authority of Scripture
So anyway what about the Fall? If no one human is the cause for our sinful natures, what is?
Depravity for me is summed up by self-centered living, which is inexcusable for a species that has achieved consciousness of the divine. We are all sinners because we all start off life living for ourselves, which, after early childhood and the awareness of Otherness sets in, becomes sin. Sin is a state of estrangement from God. Over long eons, God brought His children up biologically so that mankind became sentient and came to know that it had a Maker. At that point, God chose a different means to mature our species. We still struggle to subdue and tame our own biological impulses that lead to our detriment and God’s displeasure, but we master them not through natural selection, but by the overcoming power of the Spirit of God. Christianity is the next (and final?) phase in the evolution of God’s creation.
Filed under: Hermeneutics, Scripture, Theology | Tagged: Hermeneutics, Scripture, Theology
Hi Steve,
A very interesting post. I think you have articulated a path that impressively navigates through issues of science, history, and how we should interpret the Bible. I am sure that some people will be uncomfortable with it because it argues against many of the absolutes that evangelicals have clung to, but it rings true to me.
I appreciate you weighing in, Vance. There’s a seat-of-the-pants quality about it that makes everyone, me included, feel like someone took the training wheels off the bike. Here the process of undeception is much more uncomfortable than believing this way in the first place: if we Christians didn’t always talk about the Bible as though it were an inerrant epistle written directly by God and delivered on the wings of a dove, seeing it the way I’ve argued would seem perfectly natural.
Oh, man. I never thought I’d get to this point, but I think I have. I’m in complete and total agreement with you on your view of the Bible’s nature and purpose. I’ve just never been able to articulate what I’ve been musing over for a long time now.
The training wheels are, indeed, off the bike. And I’ve never had a freer ride …
I wrote the last few of this series (“The authority of Scripture” through to this one) all as one essay that I was planning on presenting at TruthVoice 2007. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me to go (my son ended up in the emergency room for a false alarm).
The process of writing this last year about this time and editing it for this blog helped serve as a chance for me to remove the training wheels for myself, and when I didn’t fall down on my face, I figured it was worth presenting to others. Now I’m glad to see some others responding to it positively — the originally intended audience at TV wouldn’t have liked it so much
Steve,
Mike Beidler told me to read your series and I’m glad he did. You’ve put into brilliant prose what I’ve believed for a while now, plus added a few flourishes I had not thought of before, such as the effect of Greek thought on the historicity of the gospels.
One additional thought that I learned from N.T. Wright: the bible itself isn’t authoritative. It’s the Spirit speaking through the scriptures which is authoritative. And God chooses to speak through the holy scriptures in an authoritative manner to all generations of Christians. All authority ultimately rests in Him, and inerrancy comes close to stripping the Spirit of His place in speaking to the church dynamically and incarnationally. The truth of scripture has been frozen into scientific, modernistic categories of thought. How then can the church fulfill its prophetic task when it already has it all figured out? Or to put the question another way how can God speak to us today through His Word?
God bless,
Dan
I’m glad you came by: I’ve appreciated your input on Mike’s blog and would like to have it here as well.
Wright’s point is well-taken. It sounds like the neo-orthodox expression, “The Bible isn’t the Word of God; it becomes [sometimes contains] the Word of God”. That seemed so scandalous when I first heard it.
And this reminds me of yet another neo-orthodox critique of the evangelical movement at large: Barth said that Protestants had, in effect, traded a pope in Rome for a “paper pope.” Cogent statement of the problem, eh?