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Inerrancy?
by Steve Bussey
This is a fascinating discussion
emerging in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. Dr. Ken Collins,
whom I deeply respect, has challenged some of the discussions
advocating for a stricter view on inerrancy.
His arguments go back to those being
proposed in the 1980s and 1990s, which I grew up with - where
"infallibility" was proposed as an alternative amongst some
evangelicals to "inerrancy" as the latter was perceived to be
so closely associated with extreme forms of fundamentalism.
Little did I know where this would lead. Here is some of the
history as I have pieced it together:
If you look at the 1977 book by Stephen
T. Davis called "The Debate About the Bible" you will see how
this emerged as an alternate for neo-evangelicals during this
era. I will note that Clark Pinnock wrote the foreword to this
book. At the time, Pinnock was considered hyper-conservative
having defended inerrancy in the 1971 Moody Press-published,
"Biblical Revelation - The Foundation of Christian Theology."
Pinnock expressed discomfort with the
term six years later and began to shift towards the
infallibility camp. By the 1980s, Pinnock moved even further
into process theology and open theism.
Collins speaks to how there has been a
range of views amongst Wesleyans on the topic. This largely
goes back to Princeton Theological Seminary and the attack
Charles Hodge made on Charles Finney and several Methodists
for their use of "new measures revivalism." Some of this
thinking was fused into the practices of the holiness movement
- and these debates continued throughout the 19th century.
By the turn of the 20th, as the German
"higher criticism" creeped into the American church, and some
of the "modernist" notions challenged the "fundamentals" of
the faith - there were several Methodist and some holiness
leaders who began to adopt these ideas. In Boston, a movement
now known as "Boston Personalism" led to another wave of
controversy, when Cornelius Van Til and others began to write
off those embracing Wesleyan theology as abandoning orthodoxy
and embracing modernist theology.
However, when "The Fundamentals" (which
is different to the fundamentalist movement that emerges
later) were published, there were some Methodist writers who
were included in these publications.
During this time, defending the Bible
against Modernism was giving rise to presuppositional
apologetics and the need to defend the integrity and validity
of Scripture. This defense was embraced by many who were
witnessing the accelerated drift in Wesleyan circles - and
hence their shared conviction and defense that Scripture was
"without error."
By the 1950s, the rise of
"neo-evangelicalism" was developed as an alternative to
classical evangelicalism (which was deeply rooted in Wesley
and Wesleyans of the 18th and 19th centuries). Those
championing this movement (as a counterpoint to the European
neo-orthodoxy movement championed by Karl Barth and others),
were deeply embedded in Princetonian and Dutch Reformed
thinkers. Folks like Carl Henry and others looked to B.B.
Warfield, Abraham Kuyper, Cornelius Van Til, etc. - and this
became a major factor in evangelical groups like the
Evangelical Theological Society. The birth of the "Wesleyan
Theological Society" was established because Wesleyans had
been sidelined and "put at the kids' table" at the ETS. The
WTS had Colonel Milton Agnew as a founding member - and the
group aimed to be fiercely orthodox in their Wesleyan values,
although within ten years that fragmented into a broad range
of theological perspectives, many of which were less than
orthodox!
So by the late 1970s, some of these
neo-evangelical seminaries, like Fuller were "outed" by Harold
Lindsell who published "The Battle for the Bible" - suggesting
that Fuller had been diminishing the authority of Scripture
and embracing liberal tendencies. This led to the formation of
a broad cross-section of evangelicals (including some
Wesleyans) that released the "Chicago Declaration on Biblical
Inerrancy." This declaration was embraced by some but - as I
shared earlier, led some to choose a softer approach utilizing
the term "infallibility." Those at the forefront of the
Chicago Declaration were mainly reformed in perspective -
which many in the Wesleyan community weren't crazy about...
The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of
process theology and increased tensions with the "Jesus
Seminar" which seriously questioned the validity of Scripture.
Further defense ensued - largely driven by folks like R.C.
Sproul, Norman Geisler, and J.I. Packer. By the mid 1990s, the
concept of "postmodernity" emerged and captured the attention
of evangelicals - and a young Gen-X community began to
question methodologies like Church growth and mega church
concepts... but in the process began to question the message.
It wasn't long before process theology
morphed into progressive Christianity in the 2000s. The
resurfacing of Jesus Seminar advocates, the popularization of
the 1930s writings of Walter Bauer through folks like Bart
Ehrman and others fueled a whole new wave of discussion around
inerrancy.
During this time, several classic
"evangelicals" began to shift on issues of theology and
ethics. Fusing personalism, process, postmodern, and
progressive theologies - an "intersectional" alliance of
'eXvangelicals' emerged who embraced constructivist
philosophy, politicized critical theory, and a relativist
ethics that sought to "deconstruct" doctrine and oppressive
readings of Scripture.
It is in this context that Wesleyans
have begun to reclaim and promote the concept of inerrancy.
There is still much to debate on this issue - but it is one
that is worth thinking deeply about and probing the history to
understand. I will be interested to follow the ongoing
discussion amongst Wesleyans whom I greatly admire! I hope you
will join the discussion!
Should Wesleyans Embrace a Doctrine of Inerrancy?
(Firebrand Big
Read)
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