Inerrancy of Scripture
I have uploaded a document from Phil called "The Inerrancy of Scripture." The article is by Kevin Vanhoozer, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at New College, University of Edinburgh. You may access it by browsing to it on the Group iDisk of Duke Socratic Club web site
I posted this in response to a series of discussions I have heard or participated in on the topic of sola scriptura, sola fidei, etc. Phil sent this article, and, I learned once again that my understanding of a key concept was partial and imperfect. Perhaps your understanding of "inerrancy" is similarly off the mark. So check it out and let's discuss!
How should we go about making doctrinal decisions? On what authority(ies) should we rely?
I posted this in response to a series of discussions I have heard or participated in on the topic of sola scriptura, sola fidei, etc. Phil sent this article, and, I learned once again that my understanding of a key concept was partial and imperfect. Perhaps your understanding of "inerrancy" is similarly off the mark. So check it out and let's discuss!
How should we go about making doctrinal decisions? On what authority(ies) should we rely?
posted by Unknown at 8:17 PM
4 Comments:
I just read this article and have some serious problems with this guy's argument. Though I will for the time being stick with correcting his view of Augustine's view of scripture with a quote from Augustine found in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture - Volume I - Genesis, pg. xliii:
"For the same Spirit that was in the prophets when they delivered those messages was present in person in the seventy men also; and he surely had it in his power to say something else, just as if the prophet had said both, because it was the same Spirit that said both…so as to show that the work was not accomplished by a man enslaved to a literal rule of thumb but by the power of God flooding and guiding the intelligence of the translator…If, then, we see, as it behooves us to see, in these Scriptures no words that the Spirit of God did not speak through men, it follows that whatever is in the Hebrew text but not in that of the seventy translators is something that the Spirit of God did not choose to say through the latter, but only through the prophets. On the other hand, where anything that is in the Septuagint is not in the Hebrew text, the same Spirit must have preferred to say it through the former rather than through the prophets, thus showing that these as well as those were prophets. Likewise he spoke, as he please, some things through Isaiah, others through Jeremiah, still others through one or another prophet, or the same things but in different form through the latter prophet as well as the former. Moreover, anything that is found in both places is something that one and the same Spirit chose to say through both kind of instruments, but in such wise that the one kind led the way in prophesying and the other came after with a prophetic translation of their words. For just as a single Spirit of peace inspired the former when they spoke true and concordant words, so the same Spirit manifested himself in the latter when without mutual consultation they nevertheless translated the whole as if with one mouth. (City of God 18.43).”
In other words, the translation is just as inspired as the "original manuscripts." The acorn isn't necessarily better than the tree for Augustine. And this is not to mention his buying into the idea that 70 translators perfectely translated the Hebrew into LXX in exactly the same way! Augustine's view of scripture was anything but what we would recognize as "inerrant" by today's standards.
I wonder how old Steinfeld would think of Vanhoozer's interpretation of Calvin and Luther's views of scripture.
And by evoking the language of 'original manuscripts' in his definition of inerrancy, isn't he and others just building an unreachable ideal, a far-off telos for biblical scholars? It creates an unfalsifiable standard that we can assume but never reach.
The other part of his definition I also have trouble with: "when interpreted according to the intended sense." Singular. I know I am nitpicky about grammar but this is important. Definitions and diction are important. First off, intended sense is in the same category of ideals as 'original manuscripts'. Second, it limits the intention of the text and the Spirit moving through the text.
Phil,
Does KV address the ambiguity of "original manuscripts”, your point by point skipped that. I haven't finished the book (and probably won't for a while, I bought 23 books today)
Over all, I feel like his quest to rescue terms from fundis is ultimately futile because those terms are not the ancient terms of the church. They are not the biblical terms of canon. (e.g., Inerrancy, Sola Scriptura, original manuscripts, &c.) Instead of jumping back on the time line two thousand years, he jumps back 400 into the language of the princtonites who schismed Presbyterians early in the last century and articulated the fundamentals.
Socratic King,
You're right to note that the original isn't necessarily better than the translation for Augustine, but that's because he buys into the legend about the LXX's origins--which turns the translation, for Augustine, into another original. It is a second "original autograph," if you will. I think he does think that both the Hebrew version and the LXX are superior to any Latin translations, though.
The argument you quoted is just another volley in his argument with Jerome about the Vulgate. Augustine didn't approve of Jerome translating from the Hebrew instead of the LXX, because he believed that Jerome would thereby fail to include pieces of revelation that God's Spirit had really given to the church.
A deep suspicion about rejecting the LXX in favor of the Hebrew version had a long history among Christians by this point. There are a couple reasons: (1) Very few Christians knew Hebrew, so relying on that would require going to Jews with interpretive questions--something few wanted to do. (2) There were suspicions that the Jewish leaders had excised embarrassing material from the Hebrew text. (See Origen's correspondence with Julius Africanus over the canonicity of Susanna.)
To complicate things just a little more, here's what Augustine had to say when he encountered Jerome's suggestion that Peter and Paul in Gal. 2 weren't really in disagreement, but were instead basically putting on a theatrical show to teach the Antiochenes (which Augustine thinks amounts to saying they were lying):
In reading your exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, that passage came to my hand in which the Apostle Peter is called back from a course of dangerous dissimulation. To find there the defence of falsehood undertaken, whether by you, a man of such weight, or by any author (if it is the writing of another), causes me, I must confess, great sorrow, until at least those things which decide my opinion in the matter are refuted, if indeed they admit of refutation. For it seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say, that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to writing, did put down in these books anything false. It is one question whether it may be at any time the duty of a good man to deceive; but it is another question whether it can have been the duty of a writer of Holy Scripture to deceive: nay, it is not another question—it is no question at all. For if you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement as made in the way of duty, there will not be left a single sentence of those books which, if appearing to any one difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away, as a
statement in which, intentionally, and under a sense of duty, the author declared what was not true. (Ep. 28.3)
This is a very fundie-sounding slippery-slope argument for the absence of any falsehoods from Scripture. Nevertheless, it's not the fundie argument--and I'll leave it to you to figure out why.
Tom
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