Inerrancy Is Nonsense
Evangelical inerrantists are in the apostle Paul’s camp. They’re sinners (I Timothy 1:15). But contra Giberson, pointing out the mote in the inerrantist’s eye hardly constitutes a refutation of inerrancy. (A college student’s failure to find the derivative of a function doesn’t entail that calculus is a “gigantic anchor holding mathematicians back.”) So, what’s the real concern here?
Inerrancy is all about epistemology. Giberson knows this. He rejects “the ‘hypothesis’ of inerrancy [because it] has proven to be ‘degenerate’ because it is too difficult to apply, leads nowhere helpful, has to be propped up with all sorts of ad hoc additional assumptions . . . [and] turns out to lead to error.” It prevents Christians from holding “sensible positions” [emphasis mine] on many matters.
Giberson is probably right in thinking that his epistemology of sensibleness is incompatible with his understanding of inerrancy. Many inerrantists believe that Scripture teaches all sorts of nonsense, often on the basis of their commitment to the Bible’s being without error. It’s better to believe “sensible” things than nonsense. Therefore, inerrancy must go.
Whether evangelicals should pull up the anchor of inerrancy and set sail with Giberson turns on whether the epistemology of sensibleness should govern one’s approach to Scripture. Here’s why it shouldn’t.
Christianity is fundamentally a religion of nonsense. Does it make any sense to believe that the death of a first-century rabbi has any bearing on the resurrection of my body to eternal life? (Does it make any sense to believe in the resurrection of the body to eternal life, period!?) It is precisely the utterly fantastic nature of the “word of the cross” that led the apostle Paul to call it “foolishness” to the Greeks (I Corinthians 1:18-25). And as heirs of the disenchanted world of the Enlightenment, we are all, denizens of 21st century West, thoroughly Greek.
Giberson may be right in claiming that a commitment to inerrancy “requires the rejection and distortion of so much generally accepted knowledge that embracing it forces one onto an ideological Fantasy Island.” But aside from taking the epistemology of sensibleness as axiomatic, it does not follow from this observation that “Fantasy Island” is uninhabitable.
C.S. Lewis illustrates the logic of this point delightfully in a marvelous scene in The Silver Chair. Having been captured by the Lady of the Green Kirtle, the nefarious enchantchress of Underworld, Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, and Puddleglum the marsh-wiggle find themselves on the brink of falling under her epistemological spell. She tries to persuade them that Narnia, Aslan, and life above the surface in “Overland” is all illusory – not real, merely a fantasy. In a moment of fragile clarity, Puddleglum responds:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”
Of course, Giberson is undoubtedly right in pointing out that far too many self-professed inerrantists lack the humility of Puddleglum in their quests to set out in the darkness of inerrancy looking for a young earth, or the anti-Christ, or a biblical worldview. Far too many are just downright arrogant and mean-spirited.
But vice is no respecter of epistemological frameworks. Thus, the epistemology of sensibleness lends itself to being defended with as much “obnoxious vigor” as inerrancy. So, why favor inerrancy?
Besides the fact that Christianity is built on the rock of folly, inerrancy matters because at its best, it is designed to posture the reader in precisely the stance that Brown and Roberts so eloquently describe – standing “under” the text. At its core, inerrancy is a commitment to the idea that the Bible is truthful in all that it says. It is the spirit of the Psalmist who rejoices, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalm 19:7). One could almost think of inerrancy as an epistemological prayer: “Lord, help me to be faithful to understand all and only those truths expressed herein.”
In practice, this means that perceived errors (or conflicts between revealed and natural knowledge) should be treated neither as occasions for rejecting Scripture or nature nor as mere puzzles to be solved through interpretation and systematicity. Rather, perceived errors in the Bible should, first and foremost, drive readers to root out error in themselves (Psalm 139:23-24). In other words, the perception of error in Scripture (or of conflicts between revealed and natural knowledge) primarily signals that something is wrong with me.
Sadly, too many inerrantists lack the piety that is built into their epistemological stance – a piety that Augustine himself expressed in a letter to Jerome:
“For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the MS. is faulty or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it . . .”
To the extent that such piety has been lost among evangelicals in their clamor to defend the veracity of the Bible, rejection is not the remedy. Remedy rests in remembrance and recovery.
Perhaps it’s still premature to weigh anchor and “learn to sail” from the Fantasy Isle of Inerrancy. After all, there’s no assurance of better lands across the Ocean of Disenchantment.
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