Paper presented at the Ninth International Conference on Literature & Religion -
David Burke
Introduction
Epistemology is among the several factors influencing educational practice (Long, H.B., 1983, p.296). The purpose of this paper is to discuss epistemological considerations relevant to educational practice in conservative protestant churches.
For theologically conservative Protestants, the Christian Bible is the subject matter of religious education. Robert Long has recently argued for a close link between certain views of the Bible and certain educational attitudes and practices within new Australian Christian schools. Long calls these ‘themelic’ schools on account of the attention they give to the foundations under girding the school. (Long’s research is more conveniently available in three journal articles - Long, 1996a&b, Long 1997).
In summary, Long’s argument is as follows:
(a) Australian themelic schools have educational characteristics of rigidity and closure (Long, 1996, p.13,37,77,78,235,256, 277,322,328,335,341).
(b) These schools and their educational characteristic of rigidity are theologically shaped, in particular by an epistemology based on certitude in knowing the mind of God as revealed in an inerrant Bible (Long, 1996, p.76,77,107, 109,165-5,246,248-9,331,332).
(c) This epistemology is derived from nineteenth century north American Presbyterianism and is a theological echo of Enlightenment rationalism in the combination of Baconian inductionism and Scottish common sense realism (Long, 1996, p.59,163,245,247,249-253).
(d) Themelic schools, in fact, fall short of the breadth and openness of authentically Christian education due to their domination by an inerrancy based epistemology and the resulting rigidity (Long, 1996, p.77,81,87,99,340-341,396).
Long’s thesis raises questions regarding the nature of the epistemologies of conservative protestant churches, and whether those epistemologies warrant the educational certainties and rigidity identified by Long.
The following discussion is focussed on the first of this question and raises important questions as to how the Biblical canon is viewed and read.
Terminology
Three interconnected terms are in common use among conservative Protestants with regard to the Bible.
‘Inspiration’, while understood divergently and often undefined, refers to a belief that ultimately the Bible came to be by the action of God and is therefore, in some sense, his ‘word’.
‘Infallible’, in its historic usage refers to the inability of the Bible to err, on the logic that as the product of a God who cannot err, neither can his book err (Helm, 1982, p.56).
‘Inerrancy’ is the key term for the following discussion and refers to a belief that in fact the Bible does not err. Since the 1970s ‘inerrancy’ has taken on a particular meaning due to the activities of the mainly
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives. (ICBI, 1978 - quoted in Geisler, 1980, p.494.
This definition is wide ranging, with everything in the Bible subject to the claim of inerrancy. This view is known as total inerrancy and is defined in the context of an alternative view of partial inerrancy which came into common usage after 1969 (Lovelace, 1980, p.17). This view holds that the Bible is inerrant only on some matters, commonly on topics such as salvation and the nature of the spiritual life. The ICBI definition pointedly excludes this view. It should be noted that the term ‘infallibility’ is sometimes used not only in the above-mentioned totalising sense, but also as a synonym for partial inerrancy (Feinberg, 1980, p.288). In this paper ‘inerrancy’ will be used for the total view unless indicated otherwise.
Inerrancy - an issue of
Long follows a significant interpretative tradition in tracing the development of total inerrancy to nineteenth century theologians at Princeton Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary in the USA. Others see the concept, if not the term, as having an earlier presence, notably in the seventeenth century Westminster Confession of Faith. This Confession, held with varying forms of subscription, is the normative doctrinal standard for Presbyterian and allied churches worldwide.
Three main views exist with regard to inerrancy in the Westminster Confession. These are introduced in the following paragraphs.
(a)Inerrancy is in the Confession and was in preceding authorities. This view, common in ICBI circles, holds that the concept of inerrancy has a long lineage, certainly including the sixteenth century continental reformers and possibly including the early fathers (eg, Gerstner, 1980, p.385; Woodbridge & Balmer, 1988, p.254).
Given the persuasive influence of John Calvin in conservative protestant circles, and given the revisionist accounts of Calvin’s views offered by J.K.S. Reid, and Rogers & McKim (see (b) and (c) below), particular attention is given to his views. The view of Godfrey is typical: although not facing modern questions of inerrancy, Calvin did insist that all the words of Scripture are the words of God and therefore inerrant (Godfrey, 1983, p.230-33).
Those holding to this reject the argument that the Westminster Confession represents a significant departure from Calvin. While granting that the Confession is more pedantic, academic and methodological (Gerstner, 1980, p.390) and has greater detail and prescription in its expression (Godfrey, p.225), proponents argue for a basic continuity, rather than contrast, between Calvin and the Confession (Davis, 1988, p.40).
(b) Inerrancy is a seventeenth century innovation, but is in the Confession. J.K.S. Reid disagrees with the above view of continuity from Calvin to the Confession. He identifies a living dynamic in Calvin’s approach to the Bible, which, while seeing the words of the Bible as God’s words, is open to the incarnational nature of Biblical language and the linguistic principle of accommodation. By contrast, he sees the Confession as legalistic, sterile, intellectualised and scholastic - in short, as quite empty of Calvin’s dynamic (Reid, 1957, p.77). For Reid, the Confession represents ‘rationalistic conceit’ and a loss of Calvin’s ambiguities (Reid, 1980, p.197).
Reid’s argument needs to be understood in the context of a general theory of English Puritanism as a theological arteriosclerosis, occasioned by the adoption of Ramist logic and expressed in the federal theology of English, but especially north American, writers. (See Burke, D.A., 1975, p.31-41 for a discussion of these themes with reference to the shift from Calvin to the Westminster Confession).
While disagreeing with the chronology proposed in (a) above, Reid agrees that the Confession teaches a form of total inerrancy. He laments its introduction as a step backwards from Calvin, but does not deny its presence.
(c) Inerrancy is not in the Confession, but was a nineteenth century
The main recent proponents of this view are Rogers and McKim whose study of the Confession is part of a survey of views about the Bible and its interpretation since the first century. Their general contention is that total inerrancy was not a prominent teaching in the church through the patristic, mediaeval and reformation periods, but that the church saw the Bible as self-authenticating by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, focussed on the message of salvation and practical in purpose (Rogers & McKim, 1979, p.xxii).
Rogers & McKim trace inerrancy to scholastic reformed theology that developed in
Significantly for the present discussion, Rogers & McKim argue that the 1640s Westminster Confession continued in the majority tradition embodied in Calvin rather than the newer scholastic path. Specifically, the Confession continued in a distinctly British Augustinian and Platonic view of faith leading to understanding, as opposed to the continental dominance of Aristotelian scholasticism (Rogers & McKim, 1979, p.202). Rogers and McKim cite writings of some authors of the Confession who emphasise Scripture as a source of saving knowledge and not, for example, ‘.. in things of Art and Science, such as to speak Latin, to demonstrate conclusions in astronomy’ (Rutherford, quoted in Rogers & McKim, 1979, p.206). The effect of this is a conclusion that the Confession teaches partial but not total inerrancy. A more detailed presentation of Roger’s view on the Confession’s doctrine of Scripture is found in the book arising from his Ph.D. thesis (Rogers, 1967, 264-436.)
Within the growing scholasticism of protestant theology, Rogers and McKim trace the full development of inerrancy to Alexander, Hodge and Warfield at Princeton Seminary in the nineteenth century (Rogers & McKim, 1982, p.242-246, 265-308). As mentioned earlier, this is seen as a particular application of Thomas Reid’s Scottish common sense realism which reacted against Hume’s scepticism by developing a notion of certain constructs in the human mind which gave a realist epistemology - things could be known as they actually were (Reid in Rendell, 1978, 113-114, Helm, 1993, 759, Audi, 1995, p.685, Vander Stelt, 1990, 9-10). See also Vander Stelt, (p.11-14) for the development of common sense realism into twentieth century American theology via
Coupled with a Baconian confidence in inductive reasoning and a treatment of the Bible as a source of quasi scientific data, the effect was to produce a Biblical epistemology such as that cited by Long and traced through to dramatic educational effects: ‘... naive realism or empiricist biblicism which stresses science and reason, the dominance of technical reasoning, the emphasis on certainty within faith and within its objectivist apologetic, the view of knowledge as an edifice and the absolute conception of reality that is believed possible.’ (Long, 1996, p.249) ’The dogma of inerrancy is a tool of indoctrination which rules out any idea of openness, diversity or dialogue in education. An epistemology which located truth in a naive understanding of an infallible Bible creates an environment which has serious educational consequences for many areas of school life.’ (Long, 1996, p.77)
The role of this paper is not to evaluate these historical arguments, two of which see inerrancy in the Confession and the third of which sees inerrancy as a comparatively recent aberration that is foreign to the Confession. However, one cannot help wondering about the extent to which past views on the Bible have been made the battleground for present theological discussions regarding the function and form of Scripture and the past debated through the lens of the present. See, for example,
Inerrancy - the shift from ontology to epistemology
During the 1970s and early 1980s a debate ranged in American protestant circles on the question of inerrancy. This debate was focussed on reactions to a combative 1976 book by H. Lindsell,
This debate had a largely ontological character, underneath the Biblical and historical framework in which it was conducted. That is, it was concerned with the nature of the Bible in itself.
However, alongside and since this ontological focus, the debate took an epistemological ad specifically epistemologically turn as attention shifted from the nature of the Bible in itself to the nature of the knowledge available from the Bible to the knower.
Beneath continued use of the label of ‘total inerrancy’ there has been a flurry of activity responding to issues in modern hermeneutics (Larkin, 1988, p.23) and recognising the difficulty of transcending the three horizons of the Biblical world, the interpreter and teacher’s world and the hearer’s world (Conn, 1988, p.193).
Conservative theological literature reveals a wide range of people committed to total inerrancy, including many who agree with the ICBI identification of inerrancy as a Confessional teaching, but who have an epistemological stumble when it comes to a confident assertion that they always know exactly what the Biblical text means and hence share the epistemology discussed by Long.
Hence a range of voices urging recognition that the cultural tradition, and personal limitations, of the interpreter may give a blinkering perspective in interpretation (Conn, 1988, p.190, 196; Carson & Woodbridge, 1983, p.11; Fee, 1980, p.161); and Feinberg who utters the memorable ’... no interpretation of Scripture is inerrant’ (Feinberg, 1980, p.297). Packer makes a similar point (Packer, 1958. p.96).
Among supporters of inerrancy a range of other concerns have added to the epistemological humility arising from hermeneutical questions. These include doubt as to whether discovery of the writer’s intent exhausts the meaning of a given text (Conn, 1988, p.30); restriction of inerrancy only to the now lost autographs of the Bible, discrimination between the intentional teaching of Scripture and its background context, recognition of diverse literary forms and the citation of non-inspired sources within the Bible (Feinberg, 1980, p.296-300); and problems of translation, the language of approximation in the Bible, and fragmentary information only being available to Biblical writers (Nicole, 1980, p.77-85).
It is instructive to compare a definition of inerrancy that was written in the light of these concerns, with the earlier cited ICBI definition. ‘Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm whether that has to do with doctrine, or morality, or with the social, physical or life sciences.’ (Feinberg, 1980, p.294 - my italics)
This definition is still committed to a ‘total’ notion but heavily qualifies inerrancy in practical terms, as indicated in the italicised phrases. Feinberg accepts that this is a qualification, but holds that the term is still useful (Feinberg, 1980, p.302). Others are not so sure. Nicole concedes that it may be wrong to make inerrancy the test of orthodoxy (Nicole, 1980, p.93) and Lovelace opines that it may be humility and not unbelief to disown the doctrine of total inerrancy (Lovelace, 1980, p.35).
The effect of this is to create an impression of a tension within supporters of inerrancy as an espoused theory (Michaels, 1980, p.51). At an ontological level, total inerrancy is characterised by certitude. At an epistemological level it is accompanied by sufficient qualifications as to introduce a measure of uncertainty when the focus shifts from the nature of the Bible to questions of receiving and interpreting the text.
A sample of conservative theological writing from 1992 to 1997 reinforces this impression.
The importance of hermeneutical issues was noted by Kaiser and Silva in 1994: ‘The results of this debate will so shape the next generation of believers that it may easily qualify as the top mega trend in evangelical theology’ (Kaiser & Silva, 1994, p.10).
Given M. Silva’s close association with the heirs of ‘old
While speaking of the important difference that the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit makes in interpretation and while noting the constructivist extremes of some hermeneutical positions (Kaiser & Silva, 1994, p.23, 243& 267), Silva is frank in noting the difficulties of the interpretive process. These include the (in part) human nature of the Scriptures, equivocal language; the gap between the world of the text and that of the interpreter, the history of interpretation, and the difference between author’s intended meaning and the text’s present significance (Kaiser & Silva, 1994, p.16,18, 20-22, 245-6). Consistent with contemporary discussion on hermeneutics and epistemology, Silva recognises that, post Kant: ‘One might as well admit that the world as we know it is a world created by our own ordering of sensations’ (Kaiser & Silva, 1994, p.241), and that accordingly, ‘... isn’t it true then, that interpreters in some sense contribute to the meaning of the Bible out of their own context?’ (Kaiser & Silva, 1994, p.267).
J. Packer has been a prominent conservative defender of infallibility and inerrancy since his 1958 publication, ‘Fundamentalism and the Word of God’ and remains so today. He discussed hermeneutical issues in 1958 and continues to do so. Packer draws a clear distinction between the text of Scripture, which is inerrant and infallible, and interpretations of the text (Nicole, 1996, p.178). In a 1996 work he refers to the several blinkers which act barriers to good interpretation and comments: ‘We cannot hope in this world to lose our blinkers entirely; we shall always be men and women of our time, nurtured by our cultural milieu an also narrowed by it. That is the inescapable human condition.’ (Packer, 1996, p.146).
The Westminster Theological Journal has given regular attention to issues associated with the nature and authority of the Bible in recent years. At one level, there are regular articles and reviews upholding inerrancy and infallibility as the Biblical position and also, in a continuing response to Rogers and McKim, as a view held long before nineteenth century Princeton (eg, Delivuk, 1992; Klauber, 1993; Hart, 1993; Trueman, 1997). At another level, further articles and reviews engage with modern hermeneutics. Their tone is guarded. Hence Poythress who welcomes a book under review for the encouragement it gives to Christians to learn about hermeneutics, but warns against blurring the antithesis between belief and unbelief and undermining the historic faith (Poythress, 1993, p. 346). In a 1996 review Poythress again welcomes engagement with hermeneutical issues, warns against extremes and proposes that hermeneutics is no remedy for the fundamental problem of sin as a barrier to good interpretation (Poythress, 1996, 317&319). A more positive appreciation of hermeneutical issues is represented by P. Enns who calls for: ‘... more epistemological self-consciousness by evangelicals living in a postmodern world’ (Enns, 1995, 253).
The present state of play among conservatives is summarised by Noll as:
’... the awareness that even those who claim the most for the unvarying truth of the Bible constantly treat the Bible as a malleable book by projecting varying local norms, standards or cultural conventions onto its pages’ (Noll, 1997, p.22)
Conclusions
The theologically conservative Christian community, like others, is sufficiently diverse as to caution against simplistic analysis. There is a real danger of outsiders constructing and demolishing a caricature of conservative views of the Bible as naive, simplistic and as failing to grapple with the challenge of contemporary hermeneutical concerns. As illustrated above, at least some elements of the conservative community are making a serious response to this challenge.
However, and again as illustrated above, the conservative community faces a continuing and significant gap between an ontology that classifies the Bible as infallible and inerrant and an epistemology characterised by less certitude on hermeneutical grounds. Attention is needed to the implications of this hermeneutic for the articulation of Biblical authority. In doing so, a desire for certitude should not simply promote restatement of the ontology of Biblical infallibility and inerrancy. Rather, hermeneutical considerations need to be given due weight, for ontological certitude may be misleading if it masks the epistemological qualifications noted above. Hick sums up the implications of this in his thoughtful observations that: ‘Inevitably this has had repercussions on their understanding of the nature of truth’, and ‘Evangelicals are sounding a muted note on certainty ... less dogmatism in their claims, whether in the area of hermeneutics or in the admission that their propositions cannot be finally established’ (Hick, 1998, p. 112 & 130).
These hermeneutical and other qualifications to inerrancy have significant educational implications. Even with the hermeneutical qualifications noted above, evangelical Christian education still proceeds on a confident knowledge base (especially in comparison with contemporary epistemologies). However, as a functioning epistemology it does not warrant the certitude identified by Long in themelic schools. This is an area needing further attention in Christian communities that maintain a theological commitment to inerrancy. What kind of pedagogies is appropriate, given these hermeneutical considerations?
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