Doctrine of Scripture

Of an erency has been a heated topic of debate within evangelical circles for many many years now, ever since the American Presbyterian tradition starting using it as a stronger term to refer to the truthfulness and reliability of Scripture. For many people, in erency is the evangelical doctrine par excellence. It's a watershed doctrine. It's the litmus test of orthodoxy. It's the password for admittance into fellowship. I belong to a theological society which for many years it's one plank was the Bible is the word of God written and inerrant. For other people, inerency is an irrelevant addendum to the doctrine of Scripture. It's the product of a misguided approach to the Bible, to truth and objectivity. When I interviewed here at Covenant, I got a chance to talk to a lot of students. One thing you do when that kind of thing comes up, not only are you being interviewed, but you're interviewing the other party as well. And one of the questions that I asked students was why they came here. It might help me in my decision whether I wanted to come here. Now there are many references, excuse me, responses to that, of course. But one that I heard over and over again, it was certainly the most popular one, is that students at Covenant appreciated the school's commitment to the inerency of Scripture. So obviously we're here talking about an issue that's an important concern for the community that our seminary serves. In a sense, inerency is simply another way of saying that the Bible is infallible. And there you see those two definitions that we are talking both is fallibility and inerency are talking about the truthfulness of Scripture. For some people, when we talk about anerency, it's simply another way of saying the Bible is inspired. However, I want to suggest that the focus of anerency is different than that of inspiration. It's not the authority of Scripture, which is in view here, so much as the dependability and truthfulness of Scripture. So when we talked about inspiration, we were talking about the Bible's authority. When we come to the issue of anerency, we are talking about the Bible's truthfulness and reliability. Can the truthfulness of Scripture be depended upon? Now certainly those two issues are related while it may appear that if the Bible is the inspired, authoritative word of God, then it has the inherent right to demand our allegiance, our agreement that it has the right to stand as the norm for faith and action. The reality is that the question of the Bible's truth, or its truthfulness, has been an issue of debate for some 200 years. And it has been in the context of the debate about the Bible's truthfulness that the issue of anerency has arisen. Well, a typical definition, one that you will come across over and over again in talking about anerency, is something like the Bible in its original writings, the autograph, or the autograph is without error. In its original writings, the Bible is without error. Yet many people have objected to this term, and we want to talk about some of those objections tonight. And the objections we are going to talk about are not those that come from flaming-haired liberals, but they come from flaming-haired conservatives. And that means that the objections that we want to look at here have not come from evidence that the Bible is not truthful, but there are objections that by and large come from philosophical or tactical problems with the term. It is really not the case that there is a whole load of evidence out there that the Bible is errant, is that people have problems philosophically or tactically with the term anerency. Now we are not here concerned to answer every possible objection to anerency, but I do want to make you aware of some of the issues of debate, and they will help us to understand what's at stake here. Now I should also be somewhat autobiographical here and tell you that these objections have been used by me on occasion two for many years. I was one of those who did not like the term anerency, so at some point that this is an insider's confession, by the way I'm now an anerotist, but I have used these arguments myself. First of all, on a list of objections, many people object that the term is overly scientific or scientific. It communicates an aura of precision, exactness, and specificity that's alien to ancient canons of science, history, and truth. The issue of anerency forces questions upon the biblical text that the authors were not in fact asking, it's a very popular objection to anerency. A second objection, a person might point out that the word anerency is a negation without error. You're not actually making an affirmative claim, a positive claim about the nature of scripture. And as such, it's suggested it's an ill-advised term. We might better speak of the infallibility or faithfulness of scripture. When we have thinking about this by illustration, let's say I'm going to fix you up with a blind date, and you ask me, well, what's he, she looked like in my response as well, he, she ain't ugly. You know, I haven't really told you anything positive about he, she, that he, she was for your benefit, not for he, she's, you get the idea. A third objection, we might object that the term applies it is to an autographer, the original writing, is in fact a hypothetical position. And therefore a phony position, since we don't possess the original writings, the autogress, the doctrine of anerency is about a ghost document, not the Bible we actually read. Fourth, it can also be objected that the term is a relatively recent vintage. It doesn't belong to the classical heritage of the church. This position was popularized some years ago now by Rogers and McKim in their book The Authority and Interpretation of scripture. A fifth objection, anerency is impossible to verify, how would you prove the absolute or full truthfulness of scripture, think about that. Well, you'd have to define truth and error very precisely, then you'd have to inductively look at each and every statement and test it. Well, that's going to be tiring. But that can be done with a lot of the phenomena of scripture. It can be done. Did Jesus down across to historical statement? Was the tomb empty on Easter morning? It's a historical question. It's open to investigation. Did Israel actually lead the bondage of Egypt under Ramesses II? We actually have Ramesses' body. Was there a king in a Syria, named Saga in the Second? So looking at historical phenomena is possible. But what about claims like God's love? Or Jesus saying, I am the way of the truth and the life? How do you test those kinds of claims? Sixth, I was running the heels of five, but without testing. This term is really little more than a deductive, a priori dogmatic presumption. One that closes down, real investigation. One that closes down, discussion concerning the biblical phenomena. He mentions the singular Ferguson piece. He makes that point right at the very beginning of his piece that many evangelicals have hidden behind the doctrine of an erronecy. We want to talk about that. And we're to call D a taxonomy of positions, a taxonomy of positions. I think that the best chair in Millard Ericsson's systematic theology in Dr. Ericsson is a Baptist evangelical, theologian. I think the best chapter in his book is on an erronecy. By the way, the title of his book is called Christian Theology. I'm going to follow him a bit at this point. Noting some of the objections we've just talked about, Ericsson attempts to cast the doctrine of an erronecy in more helpful, more fulsome terms. And we want to look at how Dr. Ericsson does that. But before he does that, he also provides us with something of a taxonomy of positions. You see, the term an erronecy doesn't mean the same thing to all people. Many people have employed it to different degrees and meaning something different by it. So I just very quickly want to run through his taxonomy. The first category in his taxonomy is absolute in erronecy. Absolute in erronecy. The absolute in errantist says that the Bible is fully true, even exactly true. Not only in matters of our relationship to God, sin and redemption, those kinds of things, but also in our understanding or in its understanding of such things as science and history. In other words, the biblical writers give us a considerable amount of exact scientific and historical data. A book that now very few people have read, but was very popular 15, 20 years ago was Harold Lenzell's book, The Battle for the Bible, and Lenzell championed that position in that book. The second position is called full in errantcy. The full in errantist says that the Bible is not about science or history per se, and thus its treatment of such things is phenomenological. A word which simply means as seen from the point of view of the human author. Thus when the Bible talks about issues that could be scientifically reflected on, or historically reflected on, the Bible is not attempting to be objectively precise, but it is talking about those realities from again a point of view, a phenomenological point of view. Thus when speaking with such things as natural phenomena or historical events, the authors often gave approximations rather than specific scientifically exact or historically exact descriptions, and an example here would be Roger Nicole holding this position. A third position, limited in errantcy, and there is a continuum here and I'm starting from one end and moving to the other, limited in errantcy. This position takes the idea that the Bible is meant fundamentally as a revelation of God's person and will, a step further than the last position. And I'm going to quote, simply a paragraph here from errantcy helps make it, makes his point, quote, the scientific and historical references in the Bible reflect the understanding current at the time the Bible was written. The Bible authors were subject to the limitations of their time. Revelation and inspiration did not raise the writers above ordinary knowledge, God did not reveal science or history to them. Consequently, the Bible may well contain what we would term errors in these areas. This, however, is of no great consequence. The Bible does not purport to teach science and history. And if you're interested, that's page 2-2-2 of Ericsson's book. He cites Daniel Fuller as an example here. So this position deviates from the last in that not only is the Bible not, does not intend to teach us science or history, but what it says about those issues may in fact be fallible. A fourth position, in errantcy of purpose. Actually, when we talk about this position, we're talking about folks who don't like the term in errantcy at this point. The Bible faithfully accomplishes its purpose that is to bring people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ and an obedient life. Sounds good so far. However, the Bible is not about the communication of truths. It's about the communication of persons and relationships. It's therefore improper to equate in errantcy with factuality. After all, in the Bible, airing is a spiritual or moral affair rather than an intellectual affair. This position was simply, say, the use of the word in errantcy is inappropriate. It's a category error. It's mixing apples and oranges. The Bible is not about facts in any scientific sense. It is about persons and relationships. A fifth position, someone might say the Bible is inspired but not in errant. This position emphasizes the idea that the Bible came through normal human channels and thus it participates in all the shortcomings of human nature. Now, that position can be taken to say that this participation in human limitations also pertains to the confessional matters as well. In short, there may even be doctrinal errors in the text. Not only are there scientific and historical failings, there are also doctrinal failings. W.D. Davies is an example here. Paul does not agree with John at every point. James and Paul disagree regarding works. The Bible is authoritative for us. The Bible is inspired but it is not in errant and there are disagreements across the spectrum. A final position is that the Bible is, I don't think the best way to put it. I can't put it in a sense which starts with the Bible is. A sixth position here might best be said this way. Revelation is non-propositional.

So a non-propositional approach to Revelation. So you see a real spectrum from a very high view of inerrancy to a non-view. Revelation is about acts, not words. Deeds, not proposition. Thus the Bible is not itself revelation. It is merely a human and fallible record of God's revelatory acts. Now if you think about that, that's still a position about Scripture which sees it as authoritative. It's a long way from the evangelical or reformed tradition but it is still a Christian position and that of course was the position of Emil Baruner. Well now we come to e. Responses to these objections. Now I should say something more about this list. One thing you will see is I hate lists, I don't like to give them. If I do give you a list, it's probably for some purpose other than fodder for a test. I'm going to suggest that theology is not a descriptive but it's also prescriptive. I'm going to suggest that our options from an evangelical or reformed perspective are going to be from the top of the pecking order here. Ericsson is a full inerrantist, not an absolute inerrantist and I have to admit I also am a full inerrantist and not an absolute inerrantist. The reason for this I simply wanted you to see that there's an entire spectrum out there according to how you define such terms as inspiration, authority, installability, and on and on and on where people will use language in slightly different ways than you might. It will not mean exactly the same thing that your church might mean or that I might mean and you need to be aware of that. Well, response to the objections now. First of all, Ericsson's definition of an errantist. This is page 233 in his book, The Bible, when correctly interpreted in light of the level to which culture and the means of communication had developed at the time it was written. And in view of the purposes for which it was written is fully truthful in all it affirms. Now we're going to have to unpack that a little bit and in fact most of Ericsson's counters to the objections are included in the definition if you look at it closely. But even before we get there we should know a couple of things about the definition. First of all, he does not cite an autographer if you notice that he doesn't say the Bible in its original autographs in its original documents. A years ago now, CH Dodd in his book, The Authority of the Bible, claimed that the autographer or the autographer idea is the fatal flaw, the fatal qualification of the doctrine of an errantist. He says, when you cite an autographer, you're making an assertion about a document which is quote forever inaccessible to us end quote. Hans Kuhn himself, no friend of biblical inerrancy, represented a slightly different picture or painted a different picture and he said this, despite the lack of original manuscripts and the fact that in many cases authentic readings were not fixed until a late date, textual criticism has succeeded in establishing with the greatest possible certitude the original wording of the biblical writings in the earliest form available to us. So Kuhn is actually saying something very different from Dodd, Dodd is saying the autographer you can't get to it. Kuhn is suggesting that through the science of textual criticism we've actually come quite close to the autographer. FF Bruce, if you're familiar with his name, argued in much the same way in his book The New Testament documents are they reliable. As a matter of fact, Bruce went so far as to say that we have 99.9% of the original text and the point 1% we have don't matter. Well, I want to appreciate that. However, it should be realized that sometimes inerrancists have hidden behind an autography idea. That's simple to do here. The autography is back here, right? It's in the past and sometimes it's not only stated as the Bible in its original autographs is inerrant but also it will be added to that. Now, all the facts are known, it will be shown that the Bible is inerrant. Now, that statement isn't a statement about the past and the statement about what? The future? Well, where do we live? We're kind of stuck right here in the middle. Sometimes we conservatives, we do hide behind our statements either about the past or the future. The Bible before it got corrupted and the Bible in the eschaton when it's perfectly put together will be shown to be inerrant. And what we do sometimes is we use then the doctrine of inerrancy as an out. It's a way of not having to deal with the problems. I want to suggest that we do not have to argue about a hypothetical document. I think we need to speak constantly about the Bible we have in front of us. And I think we have to, for the doctrine of inerrancy to mean anything, if we're simply talking about the original autographs or the Bible in the eschaton, we're not really talking about the Bible we have before us. We should also note about Ericsson's definition that he defines inerrancy not as being without error but rather being fully truthful in all it affirms. So he's gone from she's not ugly to she's beautiful. We've moved from an negation to an affirmation. That's a welcome definition, I think. For it gets precisely at what B.B. Warfield and A.A. Hodge were after when they coined the term inerrancy in the first place. So already in his definition Ericsson addresses two of the popular objections, number two and number three from our list. Well now let's look at these other objections under point three here. Ericsson suggests I think rightly that anerrancy pertains only to what is affirmed or asserted in the biblical text rather than what is merely reported. There are falsehoods in the Bible. There are matters of opinion in the biblical text. Not as affirmations of truth but as a report of what historical actors believe to be the case. Job's three friends, are they speaking the word of God? No. They are speaking their opinions. Often those opinions are wrong. Now what we have is a faithful record of their stated opinion but the opinion itself is false. Second response to the objections or second qualification of definition. We must judge scriptural truthfulness in terms of ancient rather than modern canons of historiography, historical reportage, history writing. You see ancient canons of historiography and even sighting of quotation are different than ours. If I want to quote you, if you've written a piece and I want to include your statement, we have a device for that. We have a convention for that. I put quotation marks around what you've said. One of those quotation marks indicate that I am getting you verbatim. Now perhaps you spoke German. Well I'm translating it as closely as I can into the English language. There were no such conventions in the ancient world. What did Jesus say verbatim to Nicodemus? Can you reproduce the sounds for me? To the woman at the well? In fact as we can't. Because one thing we're almost absolutely certain of, Jesus did not speak Greek to the woman at the well, or in Nicodemus, or to John, or to Peter. He more than likely would have spoke what language? Aramaic, what we already have in our Greek New Testament is a translation. However faithful, believe it is faithful, but it is not a writing down of the exact words. One thing that's great about the synoptic tradition, the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you can put events side by side where it's very clear that you're talking about the same event. And the quotations will not be precise. They'll not be exact. They'll be close. Often that's very close, but oftentimes there'll be slight variations. Now what this hints at is that ancient canons of historical reportage were not as caught up as we are with the idea of being objective. However, that does not mean they were deficient in any way. I would actually suggest that the ancient canons of historiography are superior to ours. Not inferior, they're superior to ours. You see the ancients knew something about history writing that we seem to have forgotten. It's never objective. The myth of objectivity is part of the mythology of our modern scientific world view. All history writing is perspectival. All history writing is a form of advocacy. As perspectival is written from a point of view, it's written from a point of departure. It's written from some point on the globe. As a form of advocacy, all history writing is written for a purpose to move people to belief, to action, agreement, what have you. While the biblical authors were committed to the truthfulness of the events, they sought to close events into a usable history, a history which had pedagogical and redemptive force. They felt free to select, arrange material, emphasize material, and interpret material. Once you put the gospel side by side, one to the other, you'll notice, well, we're not four versions of the same thing. They're not, you know, it's not Matthew, then Matthew come out of a copier, then Matthew come out of a copier, then Matthew come out of a copier. Events like the cleansing of the temple appears in Luke, so chapter 11, 12, 13, somewhere in there, right about the center of Jesus public ministry, but in John, it's chapter two right at the beginning of his public ministry. Now, that should not cause a problem for us. We ourselves often engage in topical statements of the truth. If I were, you know, to ask Jerry and I were talking about the fact that we hadn't seen each other in class for a couple of years, but ask Jerry, what have you been doing for the last two years? He wouldn't say, well, let me see. Last time I saw you was, July 17 of 1996, I went home that night and put on my jammies. No, he wouldn't do that. He would choose out. He would select out two, three, four, whatever events in his life that he thought were significant and say, you know, my oldest daughter got married. We bought a new house, those sorts of things, and he would arrange them according to whatever arrangement he would like. You know, maybe he wants to tell me about his new car first because he's a car nut. None of that would in any way subtract from the truthless, the facticity of what he's saying. Sid Gradanas, who teaches homolytic Calvin Seminary, adds this here. He says, the one goes to the gospels in order to discover the exact sequence of events in the discovery of the empty tomb on Easter morning. They will come away frustrated for no to accounts agree on the particulars outside of the fact that Jesus has risen from the grave. He says, we ought not to approach the text as precise objective accounts and already you can see we're moving away from the absoluteest position here. We should not approach the text as conforming to modern notions of historiography. You'll be frustrated if your operative question is what precisely happened rather if you undo justice to the text, the interpreter's primary question will have to be what message is being communicated. What response is he seeking to elicit from his hearers? Now part of the reading of the text according to the standards of ancient history writing is judging the truthless of scripture in terms of what the words and statements meant in the cultural setting in which they were expressed. We have talked long and hard about this very issue and when we talk about interpretation the issue of authorial intents of reproducing the historical horizon of the author. Just one real quick example here, for us the word sun means a first generation descendant, not so within the biblical world. The word sun could mean a great grandson, a great great great great great great grandson gets simply meant in the line. Third, the Bible's assertions are fully true when judged in accordance with the purpose for which they were written. So we think of truthless and rather static terms, whether it's true or it's not. I don't mean to make this sound too slippery, but there are degrees of exactness, there are degrees of precision. Sometimes the biblical writers insist that X happened, X is the point. In the resurrection narratives for example the writers are unrelenting in their claim that the tomb is empty. The sense I get when I put all those narratives together is, don't ask me about the details, Jesus is not here. He's gone, he's resurrected. That's the one thing is clear throughout all of them. You see the truth of the matter is that scripture can sit quite loose in relationship to some aspects of events. A good example here is the rounding off of numbers. Are we to believe that exactly 5,000 people, not 5,000 in one, not 4,999 were fed loads and fishes? What if the actual number was 4,999? Would the number 5,000 then be false? No, not at all. We round numbers off like that all the time. You see it's a matter of purpose. If I'm filling out my return, the IRS will not look kindly at me if I round off my gross income to the next lowest $1,000. If the fact is that I'm paid $25,100, but I report 25,000, they would say I told the falsehood. But as Paul speaking of falsehood in 1 Corinthians 10, when he reports an Old Testament event as 23,000 people dying of the plague, when we know from chronicles, excuse me, numbers 25,9, that the reportage there is 24,000 people dying of plague and the same events. It seems to me that both numbers are approximations and both are adequate for their purpose. D, in your outline, reports of historical events and natural phenomena are given in philosophical rather than technical language. They say philosophical, phenomenological, excuse me. Now, a common example of this is we talk about the Sun rising. However, the Sun does not rise. The Earth rises relative to the Sun. But let me use an example that's not so obvious, I guess. In 2 Chronicles chapter 4, we're told about the molten sea. The molten sea, the text tells us that the sea has a diameter of 10 cubits. Its circumference is 30 cubits, and it's circular in shape. However, we know that the circumference of a circle is pi, which is not 3.0. And 0, as this text would claim, if it's red in a kind of absolute sense, but 3.14159, what you can probably take it further. John Murray said this point. Everyone should recognize that in accordance with accepted forms of speech and custom, a statement can be perfectly authentic and not yet pedantically precise. Is that quotation in your outline? Murray belongs to what you know, our taxonomy here would be called the full rather than the absolutist tradition. And also a BB Warfield. If anyone's responsible for corning the term in herancy, it's BB Warfield. He says this, there's a vast difference between exactness of statement, which includes an exhaustive rendering of details on absolute literalness, which the scriptures never profess, and accuracy, on the other hand, which secures a correct statement of facts or principle intended to be affirmed. What all to suggest is that an airancy should not be thought of as scientific or historical precision. And the reformed tradition has more often than not, could be categorized as full an airancy rather than absolute an airancy. The fact that we have difficulties in explaining the text should not be taken as a pre-judgment to air. And let me say that more positively, an airancy suggests a positive attitude towards a text. The doctor of an airancy suggests that we should have a positive attitude rather than negative attitude. I think this is important. It says a lot about, right here, we're going to say something about the context in which the doctor of an airancy arose. You see, an airancy is a reactionary doctrine. It arose in response to the development of the higher critical method. The higher critical method presupposes Renee Descartes' principle of critical doubts. The principle of critical doubts says that all assertions must be doubted. That is assumed false until they are proven true by the light of human race. Now that principle meant that the reader must come to the Bible in an adversarial posture. I must come to the Word of God, assuming it false until I can prove it in some way. Contrary to that presumption of falsehood, the doctrine of an airancy is a pre-commitment not too false today, but to truthfulness. It's a pre-commitment to biblical truthfulness as the proper complement to the Bible's own affirmation of its divine authority and its divine source. You see, the principle of critical doubts suggested by the higher critical method adopts a hostile attitude towards a text. Yes, it parades as a concern for scientific integrity, but it's not to be believed as that. It is in actuality a confessional prejudice against the Bible. That's fairly easy to prove. How so? Because it's only in the book talking about the Bible that this principle is enforced. I don't know. Well, I guess I can make a generalize because I don't know. I don't know any modern philosopher who denies the historical existence of Socrates. What is the foundation for the belief in Socrates? What is the evidence for Socrates? Anyone know? Plato. Is it possible? Plato made up Socrates? I think yes. If I was going to follow this principle of critical doubt, I would have to say Socrates is pure to the creation of Plato's mind. You see, we do not approach other ancient documents this way. We have a tendency to give them the benefit of the doubt. We do not come to the Bible that way. Thus, Warfield and Hodge sought to counter that very prejudice. With this little piece of rationale, since the Bible is the inspired, authoritative word of God, an appropriate stance toward it is one which respects its divine authorship. It's one which assumes not falsity, but truth. A third little item here in our subpoint, let me get in the right page with you, is that an answer cannot become a license for obscurentism. It cannot become a refusal to investigate the phenomena of the text on dogmatic grounds. Sometimes, we evangelicals have kind of done this. We say the Bible is an errant because the inspired word of God and God cannot lie. Period. And we're done. We think that's it. That's end, that ends the arguments. And we thus refuse to take problems seriously. I want to suggest to you, as Ferguson does in that piece, that this is an intellectually illegitimate position. Such a move demonstrates a, it's true no matter what the evidence says, additive. In answering tells us that we must be sensitive to the reality of the text. We need to run toward the text rather than away from it. We don't have to protect it, but we start from position of faith. We start from position of being accepting toward it. I think we need to be honest with this here. There are some difficulties in looking at the biblical text. There are some difficulties with the resurrection narratives. Now, there are ways of addressing this. When we put the resurrection narratives next to each other, and there's enough of them, it's an interesting event to do. You find out, gee, who got there first? Was there angel there or not? Was there one angel or two? Was the rock covering the tomb or had been rolled away? Were the angels inside or outside sitting or standing in on and on? Now, much of that can be solved through, it's true, understanding a perspective, a perspective is impossible, or a time frame. Maybe when John talks about the first visitors to the tomb as Peter and the beloved disciple, he's not aware of others. Those are possibilities. We're not going to resolve these issues by running away from phenomena. The only way we'll resolve them is by investigating. Let me give you one example here. Acts chapter 1, verse 8, we have, excuse me, 18, we have the account of Judas's death. Both the King James Version and the NIV says that he fell headlong, his body bursting open. Yet, if you compare the synoptic tradition, we are told that he died by hanging, he committed suicide, right? Well, which is it? The fall on the stairs and splat, or did he hang himself? Well, at one time, it was common to say we can resolve these problems by simply adding the text together, we can flate them. So he hung himself, the rope broke, he fell, and he burst open. Well, that's in fact what some people argued. I see Goulson's book on a crucifixion, I'll get exactly that way. However, during this century, in the last 25, 30 years, evidence from 1st Century Papairai has helped us here. There's one little word in the Greek text called Pranase, and that word is just glossed over by both the King James and the NIV. I didn't know what to do with it, it's what's called a hapax legaminon. It's a word that only appears one time in the New Testament, so I didn't know how to translate it. When we came back and looked at extra biblical sources, we find out that it's a book that, excuse me, a word that can be translated as swell up. What seems to have happened, I'm going to get gross here for a second, is that Judas hung himself and a body left out in the sun with levity and all the rest, the gases in the stomach expand, the stomach explodes. And we have a description of both texts put together and perfectly fits the phenomenological reality of what happens to corpses. But again, this is a resolution that comes only because we've investigated the text, only because we've run toward the text rather than from it. I'm not ready for that overhead. Well, can we add anything to the list? Ericsson does hint at one more qualification here, and then it's this. It's this. It's only when the Bible is correctly interpreted that it's inherent. I'm going to let that sink in for a second. That's a shocker. It's only when the Bible is correctly interpreted that it's inherent. Well, either not. What Ericsson is doing here is he's simply taking a page from the history of the reform tradition and talking about an erancy. You see, an erancy does not allow one to subtract the Holy Spirit from the equation. What have we been doing throughout the last couple of weeks? Point to the fact that the Holy Spirit is there involved at every point, not only from the generation of Scripture, but to illumination and every other event. Inspiration is part of the entire organism of the Word of God under the sovereignty of the Spirit. In other words, an erancy is never some over there objective static reality. Just like Ferguson said, this Scripture erroneously interpret it is no longer God's Word. Now, before you want to jump on him, listen to a few other reforms theologians on the subject. Note, David Jones comment here. Dr. Jones talked this course in years past. It is the God-intended meaning of Scripture as expressed in the Spirit-inspired words that is an errance. And not some other meaning that anybody thinks the words convey. J. Oliver Buzwell, past president of the institution, you'll find his likeness on the wall in the library, go in and turn the heart left and you're looking at Dr. Buzwell. He said this. Inerancy means that what the Bible says when correctly understood dramatically and in its historical setting is absolutely true. We contend for the inerancy of the meaning which the inspired writers intended to convey in their original manuscripts. And John Murray, you don't get better credentials as an American Presbyterian than John Murray as a reformed thinker than John Murray. In all questions pertinent to the doctrine of Scripture, we must remember that the intent of Scripture is Scripture. It is what Scripture means to say that is Scripture. We cannot deal therefore with the inerancy of Scripture apart from hermeneutics. And this is from the tradition from which the term inerancy comes. John, thank you. A couple last comments here for we open this up to questions. What about the recent or excuse me, what about the allegation that inerancy is a recent addition that it doesn't belong to the history of the church? Well, that's true. The term inerancy does not belong to the grand history of the church. It arose around the turn of the century with an American Presbyterian circles. But so what? That's an argument. You see, even though the term inerancy is relatively young, the idea behind it is very old. We can find statements in Augustine, in Calvin, and even Luther, which come amazingly close to Warfield's term. Let me just give you one example. This is in Augustine's letter to Jerome. He said this quote. I admit to your charity that it's from those books alone of the Scriptures, which we now call canonical, that I have learned to pay them such honor and respect as to believe most firmly that not one of their authors has aired in writing anything at all. He goes on to say that he finds nothing in the canonical Scriptures, which is contrary to truth. Now, he did not use the word inerancy, but he has certainly fleshed out or affirmed the exact same notion in Augustine's early fifth century. One last issue here, and that's the question who cares, and I don't mean this flippantly at all. The authority, the reliability, the truth and the subscription is inevitably bound up with the question of truth. Was the Bible, was the Bible, was the right, was the Bible until it's late in the day, was it capable of error? It would then be subject to correction by some other means, some higher source of truth, and Scripture's competence as that supreme and final authority was seriously be jeopardized. The traditional exegetical task has always been comprised of three actions. First of all, determine the text, it's called textual criticism. Second, exegete the text, what's the text mean? And then apply or interpret the text for contemporary needs. A critical attitude would have us insert a fourth crucial step, one between exegesis and contemporary interpretation. Somewhere in this process, we would have to adjudicate the truthfulness of the text. We would have to decide the truth status of the text. And it's there that authorities which are extraneous to Scripture appear and become dangerous. Yes, the doctrine of inerrancy has often been dismissed as a kind of fundamentalism. Yet the confessional affirmation of the truthfulness of Scripture has a long and distinguished historical pedigree. I'm not going to read the statement there from the French confession of faith, but you can read it for yourself. Let me just make this one last comment and we'll open it up to questions this evening. Today, when we talk about the classical commitment to the truthfulness of Scripture, we use the term inerrancy. There are some ways in which that term could be thought of as unfortunate. It cannot be pushed too far. It's going to have to be qualified by everyone in one way or another. It may even be an unfortunate term in some ways. But it's the term that our heritage has handed us, and I think we need to affirm. It may be a clumsy way of saying the Bible is true, but at the end of the day I'd rather live with it than without it. Because if I am to live through the biblical story, if I'm to see the world through its eyes, I need that obedient, believing predisposition to Scripture, that the term inerrancy was coined to protect and has protected for some three generations of American evangelicals.