Inerrancy leads to distorting God’s character November 1, 2009
Posted by Damian in Biblical Exegesis and Interpretation.Tags: Exodus, Leviticus, inerrancy, numbers, distortion, deuternomy, inerrant, inerrantist, dangerous
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Steve drew my attention to Cliff’s post on literal interpretation:
Inerrancy leads to distortions of the character of God. Sometimes, horrendous distortions. A few examples should suffice: In an inerrant Bible, God becomes one who endorses the practice of selling one’s daughters as sex-slaves (Exodus 21:7-11). The God of the Inerrantist commands that children who sass or stubbornly disobey their parents are to be killed for their transgressions (Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21). If God were speaking through Moses in the pages of Numbers 31:9-18, then God followed the pattern of many military conquerors, rewarding soldiers with virgins for their sexual indulgence (or please, Inerrantist, explain what else is going on in these verses!). The God of the Inerrantist was, on occasion, confused about biology, as when he identified rabbits as ruminants in Deuteronomy 14:7. Furthermore, an Inerrantist must view God as sometimes raging out-of-control, one who had to be talked out of venting his rage upon the Israelite nation by the cooler-headed Moses (Exodus 32:7-14). This list could be expanded. We haven’t even ventured beyond the first five books! But my point should be clear by now. Inerrancy is dangerous to a healthy view of God and his character. It leads to theological confusion and distortion.
There’s more good stuff, but I think this is the crux, and a well-said one at that. Thanks, Cliff.
So your rejection of inerrancy gives you the freedom to just ignore these verses rather than wrestle through them?
sounds a little cheap.
Mike,
Quite to the contrary, it is the inerrantist who ignores these verses by uniformly changing their meanings according to a ready made interpretive rubric. It is we, the post-inerrantists, who have wrestled with these Scriptures and allowed them to win out over our systems of interpretation rather than contorting them by the impositions of our “orthodoxy”. It would be all too convenient and “cheap” just to say, “Our doctrines are right, and so is Scripture, so we’ll just pretend that those verses don’t read that way or that they mean something entirely different from what they plainly meant in context so that we can keep both our inerrancy and our understanding of God reasonably intact.”
Mike,
I really don’t think you thought that response through. Rejecting inerrancy does not mean rejecting our regarding the text as inspired. But it does safeguard against inconsistent approaches to the text – which, to me, is an important aspect of regarding it as holy. There are many parts of the text – as Cliff points out – that nobody regards as binding. An inerrantist must either be inconsistent, or he is avoiding reading those passages. A non-inerrantist, however, can comfortably say that God does not condone giving your daughter up to be gang raped. Because God does not; the text does. However God is communicating something through the text – in that case, something about the importance of hospitality.
Oh, I definitely thought through it.
My point was that your post was somewhat frustratingly glib.
Mike, I did say that I posted the crux, and not the entire argument. I can understand how it might seem glib in the absence of the rest of the argument, but nevertheless, I think Cliff has a strong point: That by not having a way to interpret texts like the ones mentioned (and rather ignoring them), the doctrine of inerrancy can strongly distort our characterization of God.
Perhaps, but “can” is far, far different than “does.”
And it doesn’t help convince anyone to drop inerrancy when you choose to write in a fashion that at least appears to assume “does” rather than “can” — particularly when there are people in the blogosphere who have written quite thoughtfully about inerrancy such as Mike Heiser & John Hobbins.
Mike, simply because there is room for more complex comments on inerrancy, addressing things such as textual criticism, does not mean there is no room for opinion on the consequences of the doctrine.
And secondarily, I’m not sure that writing a post that expresses agreement on a reason why I choose not to believe in inerrancy, is me attempting to convince someone to ‘drop’ inerrancy. I’ve attempted to do that in the past; this was simply me recording and sharing something I thought was worth recording and sharing.
On #1: true, but providing a caveat can be done quickly – i.e. you just did it in a sentence right there. That would have been helpful. There are many of us who have thought through these sorts in a rather sophisticated manner and still hold the doctrine. Painting with such a broad brush without any acknowledgment of other possibilities even in passing can be kind of frustrating to some of your readers
On #2: that’s fair and I’ll definitely accept that. Sorry for going on berserk on you.
Perhaps you’re right – I should have mentioned that initially. My bad – I admit the time I’ve been devoting to this blog lately has meant that I’ve been a little briefer than usual.
I understand that there is certainly more sophisticated reasoning behind both the inerrant and non-inerrant positions; I’ve actually written on that in the past, but the truth is I do feel that the crux of the issue is the one of how it reflects God’s character. To me, my other – more sophisticated – opinions on the matter are simple extras.
But you didn’t go berserk.
So no need to apologize. I spoke insensitively.