When reading Five Views on Inerrancy, author John R. Franke piqued my interest with these statements regarding John D. Woodbridge’s Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal:
[John D. Woodbridge] demonstrated that inerrancy was not merely implied but required when the historical record of the church is thoroughly explored.
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First, Christian believers over the course of history have repeatedly affirmed that the Holy Scriptures come from God, they are to be read and studied in the churches, they are the inscripturated form of the rule of faith, they emit divine authority, they are without falsehood, and they are true and trustworthy.
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A full-orbed demonstration of inerrancy’s historical pedigree is beyond the scope of the present essay. Others have been there, done that.
— John R. Franke
I’ve written an amateur article about whether the early church fathers held a modern view of inerrancy (I say “no”), so these claims were interesting to me. Though I admit, I’d never heard of the “Rogers/McKim Proposal” (shortened thereafter as RMP):
Rogers and McKim… argue that the biblical authors wrote infallibly on matters of faith and practice, but that they could and did err on occasion in statements that touched upon scientific, geographical, and historical matters, as judged by modern standards of measurement. [They] propose that is is their own analysis that reflects the authentic, “historic” position of the church.
— John D. Woodbridge
I find myself on the “flexible” side of inerrancy— I don’t read the Bible as a history or science textbook, I tend to interpret Genesis and much of Bible history as metaphor, and I am okay with (and recognize) contradictions within the Gospels without stumbling my faith. Dr. Roger’s suggestion that total inerrancy is a modern idea appeals to me because it assists my views. In the book’s foreword, Kenneth S. Kantzer writes about the attractiveness of this opinion:
Inerrancy, Dr. Rogers feels, is a stumbling block to faith— a stumbling block with which we would do well to dispense— all the more so because from its earliest period to modern times it has never been the doctrine of the church.
Some stumbling blocks, of course, are necessary: there is a legitimate offense of the Cross. We cannot and ought not to avoid that stumbling block. If inerrancy were truly an aspect of the offense of the Cross, we could only say: “So be it. Such is the tragedy of human sin and pride.”
But other offenses are of our own creation and are unnecessary. We must eliminate such false stumbling blocks so that the true offense alone can stand forth unencumbered.
— Kenneth S. Kantzer
Unfortunately for Rogers/McKim (and perhaps myself), this book is a total debunk of the Rogers/McKim Proposal. Woodbridges approaches the proposal with good intentions and states his arguments softly, without making too many fiery accusations. Still, he tears their argument apart by showing clear examples of the disjunctive fallacy, a lack of academic rigor, and a biased account of history, among other things.
The largest problem with RMP is its obsession with divine accommodation being mutually exclusive with total biblical infallibility. They claim that to admit divine accommodation is to admit a view of inerrancy limited to salvation truths; as Woodbridge helpfully points out, this is simply not true, but RMP uses it across history to support their revisionist history that many important historical Christians weren’t total inerrantists. RMP often cites a source when it’s beneficial for them, but ignore context and that same author’s other works when it stands in opposition with their thesis. When we look at the greater context of many of RMP’s quotes, we see that it doesn’t always support their thesis, and often contradicts it.
True as Woodbridge’s criticism may be, I nonetheless found Biblical Authority a rather boring read, especially as someone not very familiar with the Rogers/McKim Proposal (I fully accept that I would enjoy this book had I been more familiar with the matter). Rather than writing a book specifically to critique the RMP, I would have instead appreciated a more straightforward book promoting a position opposite to RMP, with some rebuttals mixed in. Regardless, it was an informative read, and I found Woodbridge’s words to be quite convincing over the whole matter.
[Jack Rogers and Donald McKim’s study] is not an adequate survey of the history of biblical authority. Rather, it constitutes a revisionist piece of literature that apparently attempts to interpret the history of biblical authority with the categories of the later Berkouwer.
— John D. Woodbridge
After reading this book, there is no doubt in my mind that the modern idea of inerrancy is not really modern at all. It’s rooted in a deep Church history of believers who affirm the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible as a whole. Of course, that doesn’t make it true by default, but it’s something worth noting, and gives the pro-inerrancy argument a good deal of merit. As even Woodbridge shows, there have been plenty of attempts among church minority figures to push back against this perspective, but they are always met with disdain (or jail time).
Unfortunately, this conclusion is less helpful than I’d hoped. Declaring the Bible free from “error” doesn’t assist in interpreting difficult passages, or delineating historical facts from allegory. It simply gives the modern Christian the confidence to trust their Bible is true— in some sense of the word.
I’ll end with a fascinating quote I found in the book. Galileo helped push forward the “heliocentrism” model of the solar system in the 1500s, but was famously met with pushback from the Catholic church, who claimed the earth was the unmoving center of the universe. In a letter, Galileo stresses the inerrancy of Scripture, and the simultaneous errant nature of interpretation. I found his words reminiscent of one of my favorite quotes from Deborah H. Haarsma, president of BioLogos: “When good hermeneutics allow for multiple interpretations, science can inform our choice.”
[it was properly propounded to you by Madam Christina] and conceded and established by you, that Holy Scripture could never lie or err, but that its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth. I should only have added that although Scripture can indeed not err, nevertheless some of its interpreters and expositors may sometimes err in various ways, one of which may be very serious and quite frequent [that is] when they would base themselves always on the literal meanings of the words.
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…[it is] moreover manifest that two truths can never contradict each other, [thus] it is the office of wise expositors to work to find the true senses of passages in the Bible that accord with those physical conclusions of which we have first become sure and certain by manifest sense or necessary demonstrations.
— Galileo, Letter to Castelli
In a similar way to Galileo, I read many quotes from Christians ages past that echo sentiments I still read today about the Bible and how to best interpret it. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
Notes
Patristic Period and Middle Ages
The first 400 years of Christianity were diverse in orthodoxy and beliefs. It’s clear they believed God was somehow involved in the creation of scripture, but they debated how.
- Clement of Rome: “You have studied Scripture [O.T.] which contains the truth and is inspired by the Holy Spirit. You realize that there is nothing wrong or misleading in it.”
- Justin Martyr: “I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another”.
- Irenaeus: “For no person of common sense can permit them to receive some thing recounted by Luke as being true, and to set others aside, as if he had not known the truth.”
- Theophilus of Antioch says about prophets: “those things are really true which they declared…”
- Origen: Woodbridge argues, using scholar Vawter, that Origen “could therefore entertain a notion of verbal inspiration” (Vawter) and that Origen’s belief in divine accommodation does not mean he wasn’t an inerrantist. Rather, he simply appealed to metaphor when exegesis became difficult.
- Chrysostom: Woodbridge argues that while RMP says Chrysostom believed in divine accommodation and therefore would have accepted technical errors, there is good evidence (including within RMP’s own sources) that Chrysostom believed in total inerrancy. Chrysostom also supported a harmonization view of the gospels.
- Augustine: Augustine clearly believed in total inerrancy, and wrote about the slippery slope of allowing minor errors in scripture: “I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.” Woodbridge pulls an interesting quote from Augustine I hadn’t seen, wherein he suggests that the Holy Spirit did not intend to teach science to the biblical authors, but their words can reveal truth about science when properly interpreted.
Whatever they [the men of physical science] can readily demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with out Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises to be contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is, to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events, we must without the smallest hesitation believe it to be so.
— Augustine
Reformation (Luther/Calvin)
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Martin Luther: “It is impossible that Scripture should contradict itself; it only appears so to senseless and obstinate hypocrites… Scripture… has never erred.”
- Woodbridge uses scholar M. Reu to argue that Luther never admitted discrepancies in scripture, but did “acknowledge his only inability to resolve some apparent problem passages” (Woodbridge).
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John Calvin: a believer in divine dictation: “[God’s] witnesses… wrote freely and honestly what the Holy Spirit dictated.”
- Because Calvin suggested that the NT writers “allow themselves some indulgence” when quoting the OT, RMP suggests that he was not a total inerrantist. Woodbridge counters by showing quotes from Calvin that the NT authors still kept true to the meaning of the OT passages they used so liberally, and in this way, they did not “distort the words” (Calvin).
- Interestingly, in at least two instances, Calvin believed that there was a genuine mistake in scripture, but was too ambiguous about whose fault it was. Woodbridge, of course, asserts, that Calvin would have blamed a copyist. In both instances (Matthew 27:9’s misquote of “Jeremiah”, and Acts 7:16’s misquote of “Abraham”), our current best translations still include these “mistake”(s) as Calvin put it. I wonder, what would Calvin say if the autographs were found to include these so-called mistakes?
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Martin Luther and John Calvin often had difficulties resolving problematic passages of scripture, but both clearly believed in divine dictation and did not acknowledge a single real contradiction in scripture.
Catholic/Protestant Split (16th-17th centuries)
- Woodbridge holds that even after the Council of Trent and the Protestant/Catholic split, both sides held firmly to biblical infallibility.
- Catholics criticized early Protestants for claiming that the Holy Spirit alone can be enough to distinguish the canonical books (the Catholics leaned on church tradition).
- RMP attempts to claim that early Protestants only claimed the Bible’s infallibility in regards to salvation. Woodbridge points out that these statements weren’t an attempt to limit infallibility, but rather a response to the Catholic perspective which held that the Bible is insufficient to teach fully about salvation.
- Early protestants made the claim that only the original autographs were the “authentic” version of the Bible, whereas the Catholics held that the Vulgate was the most “authentic” version, and the autographs couldn’t be that important if they were forever lost.
Challenges to Biblical Infallibility in 16th/17th centuries
- Interestingly, a group of prominent Protestants argued in the 1600s that the Massoretic pointing of the Old Testament was divinely inspired, despite being a much newer work. Both Woodbridge and RMP agree that this “stepped beyond the teachings of the Reformers.”
- As early as the 1600s, there were serious critiques of the Bible’s history with new evidence that humans have existed for much longer than ~4000 years prior. One such proponent, La Peyrere, argued for a local flood amongst other things, and was jailed and forced to recant his positions.
- The historical negative orthodox responses to anti-Noah-historicity arguments is evidence that inerrancy extending to biblical science is a historical church position.
In this quote, Galileo is seen advancing two common arguments:
- Scripture is inerrant, but interpretations can err, and commonly do when they insist on reading the Bible “literally”.
- “If good hermeneutics allows multiple possible interpretations, science can inform our choice.” (Deborah H. Haarsma)
[it was properly propounded to you by Madam Christina] and conceded and established by you, that Holy Scripture could never lie or err, but that its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth. I should only have added that although Scripture can indeed not err, nevertheless some of its interpreters and expositors may sometimes err in various ways, one of which may be very serious and quite frequent [that is] when they would base themselves always on the literal meanings of the words.
…
…[it is] moreover manifest that two truths can never contradict each other, [thus] i is the office of wise expositors to work to find the true senses of passages in the Bible that accord with those physical conclusions of which we have first become sure and certain by manifest sense or necessary demonstrations.
— Galileo, Letter to Castelli
But, in a later Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo seems to somewhat recant these beliefs and hold to a more traditional view that the Bible is the first source of truth beyond human reason; this has sparked debates about what he really thought, but at least some scholars believe he essentially surrendered to save himself.
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In the 1600s, Christians like Le Clerc and Spinoza were positing that Moses didn’t write the entire Pentateuch. They were ousted from orthodoxy for these views.
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Rogers did an independent study of biblical infallibility in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the English Puritans. He concluded that they limited infallibility to matters of salvation, but Woodbridge argues that he presents no direct evidence of this, just some theories (“it was a pre-scientific era!”).
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Woodbridge points out two prominent pre-Westminster Reformers, William Perkins and William Ames, whose writings can be easily shown to affirm total inerrancy.
The Scripture tells us in plaine termes, the Earth is immovable… and yet you spurning at Scripture, sense, and reason as if your phansie were instar omnium, would have our judgments, senses, Scripture, Church, and all regulated by your absurd dictates; therefore it is an unreasonable thing in you to desire that the Holy Ghost should not be Judge of his owne assertions in naturall truths; and that there should be more credit given to your conceits, (which you call industry and experience) than to God’s own words.
— Alexander Ross, The New Planet no Planet (a response to Wilkins)
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Before the Westminster Assembly, there were already Christians like Wilkins/Ross that debated whether the science in the Bible is true (e.g. heliocentrism). This flies in the face of RMP’s suggestion that inerrancy was not in the minds of the “pre-scientific” Christians.
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It’s somewhat unclear what the divines of the Westminster Assembly thought about the specifics of biblical infallibility, but it’s clear they believed in biblical authority and likely a divine dictation view of inspiration.
19th century
- RMP hold that the founding of Princeton Seminary (1812) is the beginning of the “scientific era” and modern inerrancy, but Woodbridge holds that Americans were fighting over inerrancy long before that.
The ground taken by the writer is that the historical parts, especially, of the New Testament are not inspired, nor even with the inspiration of such a degree of divine superintendence as to exclude error and contradiction from them. He takes the ground that there are palpable inconsistencies and flat contradictions between the writers of the Gospels, and points out several instances, it appears to me, very much with the art and spirit of infidelity, which he affirms to be irreconcilable contradictions. The ground taken by him is that the doctrinal parts of the New Testament are inspired, but that the historical parts, or the mere narrative, are uninspired.
Who will not see at first blush, that, if the writers were mistaken in recording the acts of Christ, there is equal reason to believe they are mistaken in recording the doctrines of Christ?
— Charles Finney (1792 - 1875)
- RMP hold that the doctrine of “inerrancy of the original autographs” began in 1879, but Woodbridge gives several examples of this doctrine beforehand.