Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Inerrancy (again)

One area that I keep revisiting in my thinking is the question of Biblical Inerrancy. To that end, I am re-reading the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and will post some of my thoughts on it here in due course. I probably ought to say, by way of introduction, that I think I agree with what the people who wrote the Chicago Statement meant by it, and with the words they used, but I rather suspect that the words they used do not do enough work to cover what they meant by it.

Furthermore, I strongly suspect that inerrancy is a fundamentally Christian modernist point of view, and that it doesn't stand up too well to postmodern challenges. I'll also be trying to think about that, and referencing the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics as well.

I do, however, think it is a thoroughly good thing that so many evangelicals from different backgrounds got together to agree on one of the key doctrines in evangelicalism.

Interestingly, I know quite a few Christian postmodern evangelicals who don't bother much about the whole inerrancy thing. They see, for example, the gospels as consisting of true stories, even if the details in those stories aren't necessarily factually accurate. Whether or not Mark was correct in saying that David took the bread at the time of Abiathar the high priest is pretty much irrelevant to their understanding of Scripture. I disagree (but then I would).

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