Second, many of your insights are excellent, and your wit and writing skill are top notch. I am still chuckling over liking the SBC evangelism methods to a vacuum cleaner salesman’s pitch. All too familiar. Your insight and writings regarding Rick Warren’s methods are unexcelled in many respects.

You write:

“Inerrancy is almost always tied up with things that really bother me: Young earth creationism … Spiritual warfarism, where people with problem kids and screwed up marriages think that Satan is in the house and/or in their head. Secret knowledge schemes, like What did Jesus eat? Diets. Conspiracy theories. Bible only Christian education. Lunacy like the Bible Codes. It goes on and on. Magic Bookies run amuck.”

It is hard to argue with almost every item on your list (except young earth creationism – I am a young earth creationist). Yes, they are ridiculous. Yes, they make a mockery of biblical Christianity. But this alone would not justify chucking inerrancy any more than the inability of the authors of the Chicago statement to write clear, concise English.

The abuse of scriptures by current popular teachers like an Ed Young or a Bill Gothard who come up with Seven Steps to This or Eight Steps to That also does not justify abandoning inerrancy.

Let me suggest an interesting study, made easier by computer bible software, but a highlighter will do – go through the gospels and underline every use by Jesus Christ of the phrases “It is written” or “Have you not read”. A good place to start is the temptation of Christ in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.

My appeal is that you not abandon inerrancy just because there are wacko inerrantists. Jesus Christ seems to have been an inerrantist. That would make no more sense than me ceasing to read marvelous Puritan or Reform writings just because I have met a few Calvinists who are elitist snobs.

Do, please, keep writing. Please reexamine your position on inerrancy. And please do not grade my english – I am already on a discussion group where I get that regularly.

Jim Gieseke

I can sense some of your frustrations here and I am certain that people may have misinterpreted what you are saying. Let me see if I can make things clearer (hah!!)

I think what you are trying to point out is that many people who hold to inerrancy also hold to a belief in a literalistic reading of scripture – ie the “magic book” you were talking about earlier.

I am one who will argue that the Bible contains everything that the Christian needs for living a Godly life. In the Bible they find out about who God is and what he has done; about sin and punishment; about repentance and forgiveness; and ultimately about how all that is focused on Christ.

But I am also one who will argue vehemently that any usage or understanding of the Bible OUTSIDE of this is heresy. Thus I am with you regarding issues like the young earth and the scientific understanding of the creation of the universe.

However… I am also one who believes that the historical record provided for us in Scripture is 100% accurate – and I would certainly hold to paragraph 13 of the Chicago Statement in this light.

I think it is possible to hold a historically perfect “Chicago statement no. 13″ position and still hold to the literary character of scripture. I believe that the books of the Bible should be read and understood in their particular literary genre, and that reading them outside of this is actually unspiritual.

If this is what you’re saying, and if you agree with me, then I see no problem.

If not, then perhaps God is cursing you for attacking his anointed servant Joel Osteen, and that you should go back to Vermont with all your other homosexual, Democrat, Michael Moore loving, Hillary-canoodling, abortion doctor friends, where you can continue your satanic plot to take away all our high powered assault weapons so that the United Nations can take over America and impose a one world government.

Okay so it was a bit extreme, but it did leave me thinking ‘why couldn’t they just have estimated the measurments? why does it have to be so accurate?’

I will not try not to repeat (yeah right) any of the comments that it seems you have been getting lately:

1) Being in the inerrancy camp doesn’t mean you have to throw out reading and interperting Scripture in the manner in which it was intended. It should be obvious that you must pay attention to the type of literature when extracting the meaning. As an example poetry is different than narrative, poetry is likely to rely heavily on metaphor and similie and we must recognize that. Okay, okay, you’re the english teacher, give me a “Duh.” You may enjoy, RC Sproul’s short book “Knowing Scripture” on interpretation.

I have never read anything that you have written that twists Scripture so my intent is not to correct but, to give you balanced view from someone else.

2) It seems that most of the issues you have with the inerrancy camp have more to do with bad interpretation and not with inerrancy in itself. I like Jim’s challenge about checking all the places the phrase “it is written..” occur. Another example to consider in evaluating how we think about Scripture is to consider how the apostle Paul starts making arguments in Gal. 3:16 based on a noun being singular or plural. Jesus does similar things at times. Granted this may talk more about the actual words but, if we are to accept that there are no errors in the words, why would we accept errors in the ideas.

3) Finally, as far as the young earth creationist thing goes, here are just 2 things that put me in that camp. a) the proof (maybe a bad word, I mean we weren’t there right), lets try the evidence, in science is far more on the side of young earth creationists than any other position. I know we don’t want to start a post on young vs. old creatist positions, so to get back to the point.

If Genesis is a historical narrative (I guesss we could argue that it is not) then the natural way to interpret the creation account is in a literal straight forward way, giving us a 6 day creation. You can try and turn this into something else but, then how do you stop from turning the creation and fall of Man into something else? Jesus treated Adam as a real historical person, if you do not take Genesis primarily as history you chop the legs out from under Christianity. There is more there than just creation “really” happened. I just think that a literal 6 day interpretation is a better one.

I guess I would love to hear your slant on the first 3 chapters of Genesis and how you avoid making Adam and Eve into myth.

Keep up the good work, making the body of Christ think is always a good thing! As encouragement, I totally agree that we over focus on the verses and miss the main point of many books of the Bible. We need to be called back to putting verses in context, then putting chapters in context.

Hey, 3 points…it’s a sermon.

“Why will I take heat? I’m not confessionally required by anyone anywhere to believe in an form of the word inerrancy”?

==

You will take heat only in the sense that many of your writings appeal to people like me who do believe in inerrancy and because there is a marked tendency for many who profess to know Him to be mean-spirited. I myself can be quite “mean-spirited” when I get in the flesh and lose sight of the biblical example Jesus so often gave and when I lose sight of the warnings in the epistles to speak the truth in love.

So, you will get some nastygrams, and that is never pleasant. But once again, never let the nastiness of those holding a given position dissuade (spelling?) you from that position.

Jim Gieseke
Houston, Texas

Jim Gieseke
Houston, Texas

It just seems so very easy to hold to a literal type inerrancy and slip into eisogesis, which we believers have so unfortunately done over the years to defend our prejudice, or our small imperfect view of God and His works.

Once I started to read scripture without my own preconceived notions, the foreshadowing of Christ, God’s love and compassion took my breath away and convicted me anew of my unrighteousness. I guess if we did have actual autographs of each text, we would worship those books and letters rather than God.

Thanks for putting your thoughts out there so eloquently