October 9, 2024

Flexible Biblical Inerrancy

To write a good book review, you need a certain baseline of knowledge about the topics and themes covered in the book. That doesn’t always mean, however, that you need to be a professionally trained expert who can match the author credential for credential, advanced degree for advanced degree.

There are instances, of course, when I want a book making scholarly claims reviewed by a fellow scholar, who can rigorously assess those claims and judge whether they measure up. There are other cases, though, when I think readers benefit from hearing the perspective of a thoughtful, broadly educated reviewer coming from a different line of work or walk of life.

Noah Peterson is a DC-area think tank editor by trade, not an apologist or biblical scholar. But I liked the angle he suggested for reviewing a new book by Michael Licona, who is distinguished in both fields. Peterson had based his Christian faith on confidence in biblical authority. But he found that confidence wavering when he encountered skeptical scholars arguing that discrepancies in Scripture (like differing genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke) rendered it untrustworthy.

Then he read Licona’s book, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently, and it renewed his assurance that Scripture, ultimately, speaks with one voice. His review for CT explains why.

“The most skeptical position on inerrancy, as advanced by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, treats contradictions between Gospel accounts as a reason for doubting their accuracy altogether,” writes Peterson. “If the authors can’t get the minor details right, why trust them at all?

“On the flip side, attempts at harmonizing the Gospels have been a popular (though not unanimous) Christian response. While some harmonizations may be legitimate, others seem far-fetched (like Peter denying Jesus six times, not three) and risk ‘subjecting the Gospel texts to a sort of hermeneutical waterboarding until they tell the exegete what he or she wants to hear,’ as Licona put it in his 2016 book. Harmonization in the wrong place may very well lead us astray—and damage our credibility.

“A third camp sees Gospel differences as grounds for rejecting the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. This was my initial reaction as I wrestled with the biblical scholarship. The Bible, I believed, was the very Word of God, his speech in written form. But if God cannot err and the Bible has errors, then how could the Bible be divinely inspired at all? I began to think this collection of books by human authors might be just that: human.

“Worse, the doubts spread. If what I had been told about the Bible was untrue, what else about Christianity was untrue? My conception of inerrancy and inspiration put my faith on shaky ground. But Licona lays out an alternative to this inflexible view of the Bible, hopefully preventing a good many Christians from falling away when they encounter contradictions too.”

The Meanings of Divine Absence

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” to quote the opening line of a well-known poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. But the modern world, with its technological marvels, has a way of diverting our attention from this grandeur. Perhaps more insidiously, it can tempt us to see more grandeur in ourselves and our (admittedly impressive) tools than we see in our Creator.

In his book Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age, Davenant Institute teaching fellow Joseph Minich cites contemporary “technoculture” as an underappreciated driver of doubt about God’s existence. This technoculture, as Minich argues, clouds or blocks out our immediate perception of God. And modern people, lacking a framework for understanding why God might sometimes seem distant or remote, mistakenly conclude that he isn’t there after all.

Writer and editor Blake Adams reviewed the book for CT.

“In recent years,” he writes, “there has been a steady stream of books on secularism, modernity, and disenchantment, but the bulk of these adopt a ‘history of ideas’ approach, attributing these developments to Marxism or feminism or Hegelianism or Puritanism or late-stage capitalism, to name a few. Minich counters that these accounts, while relatively valuable, don’t tell the whole story. Ideas are not the only driving force of history.

“As Minich argues, the root cause of our divine-absence discourse is phenomenological rather than ideological. In other words, it derives more from how we perceive the world than our theories about it. Supplementing the work of Charles Taylor, author of the oft-cited study A Secular Age, Minich agrees that our tacit experience of modern life has altered our view of reality.

“The triumph of the Industrial Revolution played a pivotal role in this shift, ensuring that machines and modern technology would fundamentally shape our perception of reality. Over time, the Industrial Revolution gave rise to what Minich calls the ‘bulwarks of unbelief’: the background features of modern ‘technoculture’ that (both consciously and subconsciously) render belief in God implausible (though not impossible) and atheism plausible (though not inevitable).

“Minich’s entry point into this problem is how modern people interpret divine absence. As a phenomenon, this is nothing new. Ancient and medieval peoples experienced it (just read the Psalms, particularly Psalm 88), but they interpreted it differently. God’s perceived absence could mean, perhaps, that he stood in judgment over a person or people for their sin. Or it could mean that, like a trainer, he was leaving us to be tested. At any rate, God’s absence called for interpretation.

“Something happened in the hundred years spanning 1860 and 1960, Minich argues. In that period, the possible meanings of God’s absence shrunk down to one: God’s nonexistence.”

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

Seek the Kingdom

Let’s seek the kingdom together through CT’s annual Week of Giving. By partnering with CT, you will help others see his kingdom come and his will be done. You will bring the hope of the gospel to a world that is groaning for the kingdom.

Give Now

don’t miss

The Bible Contains Discrepancies. That Doesn’t Make It Untrustworthy.

In 1983, biblical scholar Robert Gundry was ousted from the Evangelical Theological Society. Gundry, in his lengthy commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, had suggested that Matthew tailored stories about…

Modern ‘Technoculture’ Makes the World Feel Unnaturally Godless

In his 1996 novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, John Updike has a fictional Reformed Presbyterian minister feel his faith abandon him like an exhale, leaving his “habitual mental…

Limited Time: Get 60 Days Free

Thoughtful journalism for complex times.

in the magazine

Our September/October issue explores themes in spiritual formation and uncovers what’s really discipling us. Bonnie Kristian argues that the biblical vision for the institutions that form us is renewal, not replacement—even when they fail us. Mike Cosper examines what fuels political fervor around Donald Trump and assesses the ways people have understood and misunderstood the movement. Harvest Prude reports on how partisan distrust has turned the electoral process into a minefield and how those on the frontlines—election officials and volunteers—are motivated by their faith as they work. Read about Christian renewal in intellectual spaces and the “yearners”—those who find themselves in the borderlands between faith and disbelief. And find out how God is moving among his kingdom in Europe, as well as what our advice columnists say about budget-conscious fellowship meals, a kid in Sunday school who hits, and a dating app dilemma.

VIEW FULL ISSUE

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Share