“Inerrancy: in every passage of Scripture, all the information God intended to convey is as accurate and precise as its scribe intended it to be, given the conventions of his genre and the expectations of his audience.”

1. As accurate as the scribe intended to convey? So does that mean if the bible teaches a false cosmology, then that is okay as long as it was a part of the genre considerations and expectations of the audience? How is this different from Bultmann? I am sure a follower of the German giant could easily accept this definition. I am thinking along the lines of this response: “A stupid goat-herder, writing for stupid goat-herders will have ideas of a stupid goat-herder.” Now we could try an derive some existential meaning that all religious people have or something, but I don’t think that is what you are saying. I don’t see how your definition helps anything.

I’m on your side, I’m just trying to get at what you are trying to clarify. I don’t see much difference between what you are saying and what Peter Enns is doing.

2. I could construe what you are saying along these lines (and I would find this acceptable): Some critical scholars think that the book of Joshua is something of a cultic text that would mark out pilgrimages for the faithful in ancient Israel. Both the author, and the audience knew that this wasn’t strict history, and both the author and the audience understood the purpose behind this text. I think John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry holds something like this view. Now that would be hard to have a problem with, but I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. Anyway, God bless.

Hey Blake,

So does that mean if the bible teaches a false cosmology, then that is okay as long as it was a part of the genre considerations and expectations of the audience?

No, because you’re leaving out the crucial antecedent in my formulation; namely, the truth God intended to convey. A false cosmology, by definition, would not be a truth God intended to convey.

The point of the formulation I’m proposing is to emphasize the ultimate authorship of God, while simultaneously working within the constraints that he chose in terms of author and audience worldview. So, the truth God intended to convey is not conveyed in a different format than the instrumental means (author & audience) allowed. So for instance, if the cosmological depictions of Scripture are not in a scientific format, but perhaps a mytho-poetic one, then the truth God intended to convey should not be construed as scientific.

Moreover, there may be many false ideas God did not intend to convey (like that pubes are actually semen tubules), but which were instrumental in conveying the true ideas he did intend (like how we should worship).

Does this clarify?

Yes. It did clarify a lot. So, for you would Adam and Eve be simply a mytho-poetic construct or do you think that because of Paul’s argument in Romans that they must be historical persons? Are there any hermeneutical breaks we can apply to stop from saying that everything is historically conditioned? What would those principles be?

Better put: How do we know what propositions God intended to convey as truth? Do those need to be found out by other disciplines than theology? So, the issue of origins would need to be determined by Science?

How do we know what propositions God intended to convey as truth?

Well as I say, this is the million-dollar question :) But it’s an interpretive question, rather than a specifically doctrinal one like inerrancy.

I’m just trying to formulate a definition for inerrancy that exposes this question clearly, rather than obscuring it as I think most definitions do.

That said, Genesis is clearly historical narrative, so it would be mistaken to interpret it as mytho-poetic. There are no doubt genre conventions and motifs and authorial polemical intentions that make interpreting it less straightforward than we might like, but I think even on its own terms it can’t be interpreted as anything other than actually historical. Of course, Paul’s argument cinches it anyway. Without a first Adam, the gospel falls apart.

I would be interested in your opinion on Troy Martin’s paper. That was fascinating to me, and resolves a few things about the text… but I admit that my up-to-this-moment definition of inerrancy was giving me a bit of trouble with regard to this.

Hey Charles, yeah, it’s a really interesting piece right?

I can’t see any reason that Troy would be wrong about this. That isn’t to say there isn’t one—I’m not an expert on this topic. So maybe I’m missing something. But his case is certainly prima facie the most plausible I’ve seen (by far).

I think most people’s up-to-this-moment definitions of inerrancy would cause them some trouble if Troy is right. That was one of the things that prompted me to write this post (the other being Hebrew cosmology). It struck me that all the views of inerrancy I’ve seen articulated suffer from a common defect—namely, taking far too much for granted about the nature of the “instruments” God used to write Scripture. Ie, if God is going to use someone with plenty of false beliefs to nonetheless convey true propositions about himself and us, then how likely is it that those false beliefs aren’t going to appear at times in the text itself? Is that something God would consider a problem? Would he comprehensively re-educate his instruments prior to using them to author Scripture, or would he simply work with what he had, and expect us to rightly divide what he intended to convey, and what was just the accidental means to that message?

Btw, I think it might be easy to misconstrue me as attenuating inerrancy to the point of liberalism. That’s not what I’m doing. I am actually trying to articulate the classic view of inerrancy in a more helpful way, so that when we encounter difficult passages, we can correctly identify that the problem is hermeneutical rather than doctrinal. What God intends to convey is always true, but it seems to me that in certain situations, what God intends to convey is not as obvious as most definitions of inerrancy make out with their vague term, “affirm”.

Do you think Vanhoozer’s definition has “weasels”?

“The authors speak the truth in all things they affirm (when they make affirmations), and will eventually be seen to have spoken truly (when right readers read rightly).”

I think it is very difficult to build inerrancy around the word “affirm” because it is so ambiguous. I also think there are times we need to distinguish between what an author takes for granted, and might have affirmed if asked, and what God intends to convey.

Tbh, Vanhoozer’s definition seems worse than most to me since it not only uses the weaselly word “affirm”, but it also doesn’t give any hint that truth is a very flexible term given various genres and worldviews, and it further fails to note the important fact that inerrancy is the product of two authors with vastly different epistemic and teleological perspectives.

Is “affirm” more weaselly than “intended”?

Well, I’ve argued that it is because it conceals an important issue :) You’re welcome to counter-argue of course.

Given the current climate of “post-everything” theological criticism, it would seem that “intention” is a tendentious term, at least. However, I suspect we would both come down on the same side of the fence regarding that issue, though, so I won’t waste either of our time shadowboxing about it.

I do think your definition collapses divine intentionality into human author/audience intent/reception, though – meaning that your definition does not seem to take the canonical “horizon” of Scripture into consideration. This is one of the more controversial issues between Biblical Theology and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture in biblical studies right now: the relationship between divine and human authorial intent. Your definition fits well within the BT position, but I think it’s problematic – it denies a sensus plenior which I think is clearly present from a canonical perspective. I apologize for not having the time to argue that point out, but I would agree largely with Moo: http://www.djmoo.com/articles/sensusplenior.pdf

Cheers!

I’ll check Moo out, but at first blush I find your comment surprising. I would have thought the natural objection to my definition would run in the opposite direction—along the lines of that it emphasizes the sensus plenior at the expense of the human author’s intended meaning.

That may be what you intended, but at least this member of your audience is reading it otherwise.

If “all the information God intended to convey is as accurate and precise as its scribe intended it to be” then God’s intention is limited to the accuracy and precision of that scribe’s intents.

If your intent is to incorporate divine super-intention upon human authorial intention then you might need to amend your definition. Maybe: “in every passage of Scripture, all the information God intended to convey is accurately and precisely conveyed by supervening upon all which the scribe intended it to convey, given the conventions of his genre and the expectations of his audience.”(?) It could bolster inerrancy by reference to inspiration. Or it could cloud the definition of inerrancy by incorporating the controversial issue of sensus plenior…

I see your point. I was hoping to keep the definition at a relatively lay level. Introducing words like “supervening” would defeat that purpose, but I’ll have a think about how I could better solve this problem.

Hey Bnonn,

Your post has given me much to think about recently. Have you read Mark Goodacre’s critique of Troy Martin’s work?

I also do not find the ancient cosmology arguments to be convincing. Calvin showed handily that the “windows” of the heavens and other metaphorical language in the creation account, when interpreted against the context of the Canon, can not be given the story book understanding that moderns give it. Added to that I think Noel Weeks makes some pretty damaging criticisms of the idea that the ancients had one overarching understanding of the cosmos. Why not elevate the idea of Mount Zion being the center of the world over a triple decker universe? Anyway…

I still cannot shake the feeling that if you are correct we should dispose of the word inerrancy as used for Scripture. Maybe the suggestion of Kenton Sparks would be more appropriate where he argues that it is God who is inerrant and not the Bible. The reason I say this is simple if you are right I see no reason why we should think that Peter wrote 2 Peter. As many have argued Pseudonymous writings were common in the ancient world and no one thought anything of it. Another example would be the book of Daniel. As long as God gets his intention across it doesn’t matter about authorship. After all if the Genre considerations of Pseudonymous literature applies, then scripture doesn’t “affirm” that Peter wrote 2 Peter or some 6th century prophet wrote the book of Daniel. This all seems to undercut the narrative unity of scripture by essentially arguing that, “well, Scripture does have a narrative, but by using the critical tools we have developed we have found the “real narrative”.”

In essence you are collapsing the Divine Author into the human authors.

I don’t think that is what you believe, but I don’t see what use inerrancy has under your theory. Why not just dispose of the whole thing?

One other question: Would it be safe to call your proposed solution as the “Inerrancy of Intent”?

In Christ,
Blake

Maybe something like: “In every passage of Scripture, all the information intended to be conveyed from the divine perspective is accurately and precisely conveyed through the human scribes’ perspectives, given their limitations, genre conventions, and the expectations of their respective audience(s).”(?)

“In every passage of Scripture, all the information intended to be conveyed from the divine perspective is accurately and precisely conveyed through the human scribes’ perspectives, given their limitations, genre conventions, and the expectations of their respective audience(s).”(?)

So should we only trust passages from the prophets in which “thus saith the Lord”? How do we know that a certain narrative is divine discourse? I don’t see how this helps anything. We are stuck with a bible that has both divine and non-divine messages. How do we know what is divine and what is human? I know that is the question, but how does that help the Christian community? Do we need a new papacy to tell us what is of God and what is not?

Ben, I think your proposed wording certainly removes some of the issues we’ve talked about.

Blake,

How do we know that a certain narrative is divine discourse?

Well, the point of inerrancy is that all Scripture is divine discourse. But I think Ben is onto something when he suggests that God’s discourse supervenes on the discourse of the human authors.

Remember, I am not trying to subvert the traditional view of inerrancy. I’m just trying to clarify it, so that the difficulty in figuring out what the Bible “affirms” is put on the surface, rather than hidden underneath.

We are stuck with a bible that has both divine and non-divine messages. How do we know what is divine and what is human?

I’m not sure I’d go that far. I’d say that the “messages” of the human authors are truthful, and are often conterminous with the “message” of God. But these messages are sometimes delivered in “packaging” that to us seems odd. For instance, Jude refers to Michael disputing with Satan over the body of Moses. Are we to think that Jude’s message to us includes the “affirmation” that this happened; or is this “packaging” which he is using to deliver the actual message?

Asking how we know what is divine and what is human actually strikes me as a very naive question (no offense). It is the question we have to ask every time we interpret the Bible, or assess the arguments of exegetes who interpret the Bible. What is actually the divine message, and what is a mistaken human understanding? Being able to tackle that question is a fundamental part of the Christian’s job description. Usually it isn’t too difficult. Sometimes it is.