Third Way Thursday: Inerrancy or Incarnation

There has been a debate stirring over how inerrancy is defined within evangelical circles.  For many onlookers this is a deal breaker, all the eggs are in one basket, and if they lose out they fear their whole system of theology will crack and spill its yokes out onto the floor.  Part of this has to do with changes in the way texts are approached and read, including the Bible. Part of this has to do with what we bring to the Bible: our beliefs about what is in it, what stuff it is made out of.  The most common presumption about the Bible is that it is a unified whole.  Most people treat the Bible as a database; still grasping at a meta-narrative that sees unity between all biblical texts regardless of tone, plot, characteristics, genre, etc. [1] We are told it all fits together in one big, epic, and sweeping story.

But after a while people notice differences, contradictions, weird stories, and impossible things happening.  They become perplexed.  Many people experience disequilibrium between the "world" we live in today and the "world" presented in the Bible.

There is diversity in Scripture.  Diversity of genre, style, tone, diction, and imagery. There are 66 books that provide many genres and narratives, all using different means and ways to convey the message of God, and they can appear confusing or even contradictory.  And yet they are supposed to be part of one big story, a meta-narrative?  If all these books put together form a meta-narrative what exactly is? [2]

The rub here has to be the center of the meta-narrative, that which holds up to the crux of faith: is it Christ or the Word?  In the inerrant view the Bible must be "perfect" in the same Platonic realm of ideals sense that Christ is "perfect."  Proponents of a more incarnational view of Scripture leads us down a better path concerning how we read the database as more of a in-fleshment of the Bible (prophecy, truth, etc.) but the fact that we still treat the Bible as data that can be dissected like a lab experiment in eighth grade is bewildering.  It is a travesty to treat a beautiful story like the Scriptures as a "document" like one treats the US Constitution or the Magna Carta.

However, when one sees the center of the meta-narrative as the incarnate Christ and not as the Biblical text the concern over data, both incarnational and inerrant, becomes secondary.  When telling a bedtime story to a child, and you say the Grand Canyon is "miles" wide are you a liar?  Should you only say, "it is 3,282.16 feet wide" (or whatever is the scientifically accurate number).  No one would accuse you of being a liar, yet when discussing biblical hermeneutics this is often the case as story is usurped of its edifying and pleasing role by a harsh Enlightenment infatuation with data.

I approach this dilemma in completely different ways than either advocates of inerrancy or advocates of an incarnational approach do, for I see this not as a problem of a low or high view of Scripture but a problem of how evident is your Christology.

In a postmodern world, when the power of the text is seriously questioned and we live in a world where there are, to quote Derrida, an "endless chain of signifiers" forming endless phrases and definitions a view of words as data only maintains the unending circular arguments about hermeneutics and trying to pin down the absolute, best interpretation.  Instead, we should look beyond the words of Scripture to the Word of God, Christ, for that is the intent and purpose of Scriptures: not to be an accurate database of Ancient Near Eastern history and an annotated bibliography of the prooftexts for Jesus’ Messianic dissertation on the Christ followed by an epilogue.  When story becomes fact, as the word becomes the Word, is when the inspiration of God meets the Incarnation of God.  Let that be my center.
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This Third Way Thursday was inspired by the back and forth between Waltke and Enns on Enns’ book Inspiration & Incarnation.  The introduction to Bruce Waltke and Peter Enns on Inspiration and Incarnation can be found on Enns’ blog along with accompanying scholarly articles "Revisiting Inspiration & Incarnation" by Bruce Waltke and "Response to Bruce Waltke" by Peter Enns.

[1] I approached the data a posteriori, not a priori. From that perspective I find none of Enns’s data supports his understanding of inspiration. And should I find that the a posteriori data supports his notion of inspiration, I would still not accept his theory as Enns represents himself, for I could not hold his theory with integrity.My heart has priority over reason. My
conscience, informed by holy Scripture, persuades me that our inerrant God represents truth in infallible Scripture. I know from personal contact that Enns also believes that God is the inerrant Source of Scripture, so I suppose that he too thinks it is infallible for faith and practice. Yet, for me to accept his understanding of inspiration as represented in Inspiration and Incarnation would entail confessing that it contains errors ("Revisiting Inspriation & Incarnation" by Bruce Waltke in Westminster Theological Journal).

[2] If I may put it this way, it ismy commitment to biblical authority that leads me to accept diversity and explore its significance. For Waltke, it is precisely his commitment to biblical authority that prevents him from doing so. The question to be addressed is whether diversity or non-diversity is more consistent with or required by Scripture. Again, in my view, we have little choice in the matter because of the diverse ‘‘behavior’’ we see in Scripture.("Response to Bruce Waltke" by Peter Enns in Westminster Theological Journal).