Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
link to full text of statement
Overall, it was stronger than I expected it to be. By pointing to Jesus' doctrine of Scripture and affirming that hermeneutics should be centred on Christ, they effectively secured an evangelical approach to the Old Testament.
On the other hand, it still seems to have weaknesses, particularly in the question of genre. I don't remember anything guaranteeing a belief in the essential historicity of the gospel accounts, for example, rather than the view which sees them as intentionally written to be legendary accounts pointing to a spiritual truth. There are also a few areas where the wording seems to be less than ideal. It seems to me curious but true that it puts more effort into safeguarding and emphasising the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Bible than his historical death and resurrection, which is where the emphasis of the Bible itself seems to be more focused. Possibly that is because while the underlying doctrine has been held by the Church since the beginning, this expression of it is reacting against certain false teachers, and so faces the danger of over-reacting.
Some of my initial thoughts were wrong, because I had not realised that "inerrancy" is often used as jargon to carry a lot more meaning than the word "inerrant" on its own does. But it still does not carry quite enough weight, and the use of one word to carry meanings not entirely stemming from that word is potentially confusing.
5 comments:
'I don't remember anything guaranteeing a belief in the essential historicity of the gospel accounts, for example, rather than the view which sees them as intentionally written to be legendary accounts pointing to a spiritual truth.'
I think ruling this out is rightly delegated to the statement on hermeneutics. Someone could still be an inerrantist and hold that the gospel writers intended to assert only spiritual truths.
'It seems to me curious but true that it puts more effort into safeguarding and emphasising the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Bible than his historical death and resurrection, which is where the emphasis of the Bible itself seems to be more focused.'
This is surely just because it is a statement on inerrancy, not on the teaching of the Bible as a whole.
Why would a statement on inerrancy pay more attention to Jesus' words than to his resurrection?
The Statement makes plenty of hermeneutical points that affect other areas of the Bible.
'Why would a statement on inerrancy pay more attention to Jesus' words than to his resurrection?'
Inerrancy is a property of words (strictly, assertions), rather than of events, such as the resurrection. That's not to say that Jesus's words were more important than his death or resurrection, just to clarify the focus of the Statement.
Or the words of the gospel writers describing the Resurrection.
Yes, the framers of the Statement obviously thought that the words of the gospel writers describing the Resurrection were inerrant. The point is that the Statement is about words (e.g. the teaching of Jesus, including his teaching about his death and resurrection) rather than about events (such as his death and resurrection themselves).
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