Why I am a fundamentalist - according to Jim West’s definition

According to Jim West, “A fundamentalist is a person who believes that the Bible is inerrant or infallible.” He also contends that none of the Reformers were fundamentalists according to his definition, because “NONE of the Reformers would attribute to a book what can only be attributed to God.”

There is only one problem with Jim’s assertion. It’s not true.

Here’s Luther:

I have learned to ascribe the honor of infallibility only to those books that are accepted as canonical. I am profoundly convinced that none of these writers has erred. All other writers, however they may have distinguished themselves in holiness or in doctrine, I read in this way: I evaluate what they say, not on the basis that they themselves believe that a thing is true, but only insofar as they are able to convince me by the authority of the canonical books or by clear reason. (WA, 2. 618. Contra malignum Iohannis Eccii iudicium ... Martini Lutheri defensio 1519).

I thought that was a pretty famous passage. I don’t have the Latin handy, so I’m breaking my rule no #1: never, among people who care to know the truth, quote someone in translation only. But, as it happens, Luther is channeling Augustine almost word-for-word, and I can provide the relevant quote from Augustine in Latin and in translation:

Ego solis eis scriptorum, qui iam canonici appellantur, didici hunc timorem honoremque referre ut eorum nullum scribendo errasse audeam credere ac si aliquid in eis offendero, quod videatur contrarium veritati, nihil aliud quam vel mendosum esse codicem esse vel non esse assecutum interpretem quod dictum est vel minime me intellexisse non ambigam. Alios autem ita lego ut quantalibet sanctitate quantave doctrina polleant non ideo verum putem quia ita ipsi senserunt sed quia mihi per alios auctores vel canonicas vel probabiles rationes quod a vero non abhorreat persuadere potuerunt.

I have learnt to offer this fear and honor only to those works of writers who are now called canonical, so that I dare to believe that none of them has erred in writing; and I do not doubt that if I come upon anything in them which seems contrary to the truth it is nothing but either a faulty codex or that the expounder has not comprehended what has been said or that I have not understood it. I read other [writers], however, in such a way that however greatly enriched they are in sanctity or learning I do not as a result think something true because they have believed it to be so but because they have been able to persuade me by other authors or by canonical or probable arguments that it is not inconsistent with the truth.

Text and translation reproduced from John Scott’s edition of William of Ockham’s Dialogus (here). For the Augustine quote in context, see Augustine, Epistolae, 82. 1.3. William of Ockham cites this Augustinian statement as a “Catholic Truth.” It is indeed. Jim West, by driving a wedge between God and God’s Word found in scripture, sets himself against the clear teaching of classical Christianity before and after the Reformation.

Calvin and Zwingli do not differ from Augustine and Luther on this issue. Current Catholic teaching is also identical. John Paul II also spoke of “sacred scripture as the highest authority in matters of faith” in his ecumenical encyclical Ut unum sint (1995). For Catholic teaching also, Scripture is norma normans, that is, the norm which norms all other norms, whereas Tradition is norma normata, that is, a norm normed by a higher norm, which is Scripture.

Yes, Catholics then like to turn around and emphasize that Scripture and Tradition are in fundamental or even complete agreement. They refuse to drive a wedge between Tradition as found in Scripture and Tradition sanctioned by the Church outside of Scripture. Indeed, creedal Christians in general take this tack. Norms beyond the norm of Scripture, normed by Scripture, are important. It would be fun to talk this through, but I will resist the temptation here.

Now, if Jim wants to pick a fight with those Christians and Jews who don’t seem to believe that Scripture is given to us pro nobis in the sense of our salvation, but rather, in order to have live ammunition available to shoot up theistic evolutionists or those who have a nuanced position on the historical Moses and/or historical Jesus (Michael Bird is getting clobbered by the more-conservative-than-thou crowd on the last point; see Doug Chaplin's discussion to which I link below), I’ll stand right beside him.

And if Jim wants to point out that for Luther and all the Reformers, the authority of the word of God derives from God and has no foundation outside of God, well, duh, even Jim’s more-conservative-than-thou Southern Baptist friends know that. But they don’t misuse that truth to drive a wedge between God and the word of God, and we shouldn’t either.

I’ve stated before what I take to be an adequate doctrine of Scripture for a Christian who wishes to stand in the catholic (note small “c”) tradition:

Scripture for evangelicals is about “hearing the word of God with reverence and proclaiming it with faith.” “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will, such that through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father.” “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” “In composing the sacred books, God chose men, and while employed by Him, they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.” “[T]he books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

The quoted statements are lifted from the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, a Catholic (as in “Roman Catholic”) document known in Latin as Dei verbum. Apart from the gendered language even Wayne Grudem and company would probably not want to imitate, the statements, I contend, do a better job of articulating a full-throated, unabashed, and intellectually honest devotion to Scripture than does the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy.

I now note that Doug Chaplin has already taken Jim West to task for his definition of fundamentalism here. Doug wants to kiss the language of inerrancy goodbye, though he seems more comfortable with the language of infallibility.

But the language of inerrancy can be used in an evangelical way – evangelical in the sense of “true to the Gospel.” Here’s Zwingli, for God’s sake:

Endlich, damit wir aufhören, einem jeden auf alle Einwürfe wieder eine Antwort geben zu wollen, so ist das unsere Meinung: Daß das Wort Gottes von uns in höchsten Ehren gehalten werden soll - unter Gottes Wort ist allein das zu verstehen, was vom Geiste Gottes kommt -, und keinem Wort soll solcher Glaube geschenkt werden wie diesem. Denn das ist gewiß, es kann nicht fehlen; es ist klar, läßt uns nicht in der Finsternis irre gehen; es lehrt sich selber, erklärt sich selber und erleuchtet die menschliche Seele mit allem Heil und aller Gnade, macht sie getrost in Gott, demütigt sie, daß sie sich selber verliert, ja wegwirft und dafür Gott in sich faßt; in ihm lebt sie, zu ihm strebt sie, verzweifelt an allen Kreaturen, und Gott allein ist ihr Trost und ihre Zuversicht; ohne ihn hat sie keine Ruhe, in ihm ruht sie allein.

As the context makes clear, Zwingli is talking precisely about Scripture when he uses the term “word of God.” 

Here’s a rough-and-ready translation:

Finally, we conclude in the hopes of giving an answer to one and all objections – this is our opinion: that the word of God is to be held by us in the highest honor – by word of God is alone meant, what comes from God’s Spirit – and no word should be accorded the same faith as this one. For it is certain, it cannot err, it is clear, it does not let us go errant in the darkness, it is its own interpreter and enlightens the human soul with all salvation and all grace, makes it [the soul] confident in God, humbles it, so that it abandons and throws away its pretensions, and places itself in God's hands; in it, it lives, toward it, it turns; it doubts all creatures, and God alone is its trust and security; without it, it has no rest, and in it alone, it rests. 

Zwingli uses both the language of infallibility and the language of inerrancy – the latter in two different senses! – but he does so in a pneumatocentric fashion.

So long as the language of inerrancy and infallibility is referred to Scripture in theocentric, christocentric, and pneumatocentric fashion, it is not only possible to use it. It is right and good to use it.

Comments

[Sam Norton]

Hmm. I note that Augustine allows for the possibility of incomprehension on the part of the interpreter. What that means is that the doctrine of infallibility can float apart from any concrete or specific application. Whenever something comes up which casts doubt upon infallibility or inerrancy, there can be resort to "I do not understand how this is true, but I declare that it is true." That's the sort of thing which I might be happy to accept under obedience, but it's not something that makes a difference to the digestion of the text (as opposed to some doctrine of authority or inspiration, ie God speaking through the text to me).

In addition, is this not a radically different notion to the post-19th Century understanding of inerrancy, so conditioned by Scottish Common Sense philosophy and scientific epistemology (see Marsden for one)? And surely it is this latter sense which is both an innovation compared to Augustine and Luther, and the target of the criticism?

[JohnFH]

I agree with your points, Sam.

I stand with Augustine and Luther, not the rationalistic interpreters you refer to, which people like Bernard Ramm and George Marsden rightfully hammered as innovators.

But I don't believe it is wise to give up the language of inerrancy and infallibility. It makes more sense to use it in a truly evangelical fashion.

The same applies to terms like "born-again" from John 3, or atonement, or the concept of an angry God.

It is also true that Augustine's qualifications open up the possibility of abuse by a willful or "strong" reader (not to put too fine a point on it, someone like you or me). The same comment applies to Zwingli's qualification.

But I see no way around that. They are risks that must be run.

[Doug Chaplin]

Doug wants to kiss the language of inerrancy goodbye, though he seems more comfortable with the language of infallibility.

You have misread me: I don't like either term, and believe that the misuse of "infallibility" in its modern constructions has now rendered it completely useless as well.

[JohnFH]

Fair enough, Doug. But your choices put you in a corner by yourself.

You deprive yourself of core common vocabulary you might have shared with, for example, contemporary Catholic Christians, as in Roman Catholic, and evangelical Christians of many varieties. You might have argued about how best to use that vocabulary, how best to contextualize it.

You are left instead with the unenviable task of trying to say the same things as Augustine, Luther, and Zwingli did by means of some sort of DE translation of their infallibility and inerrancy vocabulary. If you succeed in attaining "Ouch!" level referential accuracy, I will be happy to pick up on the language you develop.

[Bob MacDonald]

quod videatur contrarium veritati seems to me to be an escape clause. I have heard it used by Imams (not to mention Christians and Jews) to prevent the discussion of the truth of homosexuality or any form of acceptance of non-violent forms of the same.

While I don't want to get on to this topic here, it illustrates how 'truth' as prejudged can become the place of the lie. When we are grasped by the truth, our prejudgments are changed. I don't know what name to call myself but fundamental is good if indeed I have found myself on the foundation. I have to be willing to crucify even my desire to be right let alone all those good prejudgments that I think define 'truth' for me. Often I have found that my so-called truth has been a mask for fear and a reflection of social fear. The tipoff is usually that I am exercising self-defence or putting myself in the position of being the judge - it's really hard to avoid!

As regards 'the canon', I don't treat any other set of books the same way. Not because I think my reading (or traditional reading) of them or my explanation is infallible, perhaps because I count them infallible as somehow independent of my judgment - but the infallibility is limited. What attribute can I assign to God's word or to God that defines either accurately? I find such in God is light, and God is love - both are positive and unlimited. I find such in the non-use of a negative sense of NXM with respect to the new covenant. God has no need to repent of the acts portrayed in Jesus and testified to by the Spirit. This is a true consolation without legal conditions.

Here I think I come to your conclusion that only the Spirit can give us the inerrant evolution of interpretation - and the wind blows where it chooses... It is in this wind that I find myself truly grasped, a grasp that transcends my psychological states and turns me to the only source of life. In this turning, I join all in all traditions who learn the reality of sin and its utter dissolution. When he says God will destroy the wicked of the earth, it is because that destruction is found in the death of Christ - and all turnings in all time partake of the washing of the feet of the righteous in the blood of the enemy (Psalm 58) - only then can the righteous be righteous for the righteous one of God became their enemy for this reason. The canon certainly tells me about this participational atonement. And here it transcends all science, gathering together in the cross all time and space. But this event does not establish my literal and infallible reading of Torah. If any person says he has entered this Holy place, who am I to say - no you haven't. If we make ourselves holy by such an entering, we will find that what we and others considered unholy is unaccountably washed and changed but not into what it was not. It is changed into what the Spirit truly intended for it.

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Bob, for some very sweet reflections. I might not agree with you in all details about "the truth of homosexuality," or some other matter, but I want to avoid the mistake of conflating my interpretation of scripture with what scripture actually teaches.

The goal is, at some level, for the two to coincide, but it's no more true in fact than is the statement that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are among the inalienable rights of humankind.

It's important not to prejudge, as you say, and to remain in a listening mode, until the day that we die.

[Sam Norton]

John - have you expanded anywhere on what it might mean to take "the language of inerrancy and infallibility [and] use it in a truly evangelical fashion"? I'd be really interested to explore that further. My problem is that I'm just not sure it makes any sense any more; that is, to say the same thing (the claim of infallibility) in a (radically) different context is not to say the same thing.

Also - genuine question - would it be fair to say that we know more about Scripture than Augustine did?

I just feel that to start using this language in our present context is instantly to be sucked into intellectual quicksand. What I want to hold on to is some way in which the text is over and above me, which language of authority and inspiration can achieve. Whenever that language is rendered more specific by talking about infallibility or inerrancy then I find that the spirit flees. It's a bit like listening to a sublime piece of music, being transported into a different place, and then finding that the CD has started to repeat a section. You come crashing back into the mundane and your entire attitude and approach changes. Maybe it's just me, tho' I think that's what Jim West was getting at, and, to that extent, I agree with him.

(I agree with you about the strong reader point, btw, and that it is a necessary risk. Though I also think that we are still suffering from the impact of Calvin's strong reading. But that's a whole other story.)

[JohnFH]

Sam, I agree with Jim West to the extent you indicate.

But I also think that words serve as - sorry for being a bit vulgar, but I think it makes the point - piss points like those a dog makes to mark territory.

This applies to all words, not just "fundamentalist," "liberal" (I claim both!).

Since I want to roam a wide territory which includes Orthodox, Catholic, metacatholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and evangelical friends, I will attempt to express myself in language they can all sniff at, recognize, and .... well, you get the point.

So I take a word like 'infallible" and refer it back to its scriptural sense in Isa 55, and re-depart from there.

I take a statement like "God does not lead into err" and "God does not lie" and show how God does both, according to Scripture, and how God "does not err" in so doing.

Key references: 1 Kings 22 (Micaiah ben-Imlah), Isa 6 (and NT actualizations); 63:17.

Yes, we know more about Scripture than Augustine did. We must also, with fear and trembling, accept the principle of his hermeneutic of love without necessarily subscribing to his concrete application of it in all instances.

But I don't see the need for a radical departure from the approach to Scripture found in Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, or, at another level, from that found in the Talmud. Rather, I see the need for a co-penetration of traditional and modern approaches/readings of Scripture.

I want to be a believer, practice the historical-critical method, and be able to savor and learn from more traditional methods of reading scripture. As Adrian Warnock said in another context - with Adrian I have a number of disagreements, but that's beside the point - I don't want balance. I want it all.

I hope that helps. But keep at me if you're looking for more.

[Jim]

John bless your heart you don't know Jack about Zwingli or Calvin- or Luther for that matter- because you twist their words, in their historical context, to fit your meaning of your word. I reassert that what you mean by inerrant in connection with scripture, along with all the other fundamentalists who use the word, is nothing close to the Reformers views and a thorough misrepresentation of them.

Further, you completely and conveniently ignore the simple fact that 'inerrancy' is a Tridentine development foreign both to the biblical texts themselves and Reformation theology.

And finally, yes, I require you to show me a single text of Scripture sans your twisting of them to fit your preconceptions which say quite directly what you claim they say vis a vis infallibility.

[JohnFH]

Assert all you want, Jim. At least you admit now that the Reformers used infallibility and inerrancy language to describe Scripture.

The burden of proof is on you who stays away from said language, to prove that Augustine and the Reformers meant something radically different by it than do post-Tridentine Catholics and reasonable evangelicals who practice a hermeneutic of love and are conscious of genre distinctions as they apply to Holy Writ.

You would think that someone with an appreciation for Bultmann would be capable of dialectical thinking on the issue at hand, but then again, maybe not. Bultmann's demythologization program is testimony to his inability to hold opposites in tension. Barth was right to say take Bultmann to task for this.

Scripture often quotes scripture, and even when it does so to offer a corrective ("but I say to you"), the authority of uncorrected scriptural precedent remains uncontested. That's the truth of the matter, but takes a dialectical thinker to grasp it.

The infallibility of scripture is clearly taught in Isa 55. It is clear from dozen of passages that God does not lie, that leads into truth, not error. It's impossible to affirm these things about God without also affirming them about his word.

And yet God does lie or lead into error, yet he does not do either even as he does so. See the passages referred to higher up in the comment thread. Leave the Bible out of it if you wish. Just do plain theology. You can't avoid the necessity of thinking dialectically about these matters.

You are applying a double standard. You accept all manner of complications in speaking about God, but not about his word. Well, it doesn't work that way.

[Doug Chaplin]

John, I have replied on my blog with some stuff too long for a comment.

[JohnFH]

Thanks for your reply, Doug.

I don't think I reach your levels of Humpty-Dumpty-like creative and critical adherence to your, the Anglican tradition, in the approach I take to my Reformed tradition, the Waldensian tradition. But I aspire to!

Your series on the 39 articles makes for a gripping read.

For reasons that escape me, you don't seem to notice that your own metacatholic endeavors at speaking about Scripture "in a post-thingy world" are in continuity and discontinuity with the past no less, and perhaps more, than mine.

Is there really something wrong with that in principle?

[Doug Chaplin]

I don't think I redefine words in the same way you do, John, although I certainly recast and reframe doctrinal ideas and that involves exploring what language from the past is helpful in what ways today. My concern is that using the same language to mean something quite different will not only confuse people, but worse, will give the appearance of support and encouragement to those who have, (in my view, irreparably) misappropriated it, and with whom we both disagree.

[JohnFH]

If I start getting fan mail from YECs (young earth creationists), complementarians, and Daniel-was-written-in-the-Persian-period people, I'll let you know.

Somehow, I don't see that happening. But I will be honest: I try to respect those who hold such positions, not to pillory them, even if I do not agree with them.

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

I see what's going on here: it's post-Enlightenment weasling, in short. Notice those provisos in Dei Verbum above, that the infallibility applies (implicitly only) to the moral and spiritual, just as much a weasle-way as the "infallible in their original manuscripts" is. This was because in 1965 they'd realized there was some stuff in the Bible that just couldn't be true in a literal sense historically, so the focus was altered. In 1500 this would've been sacrilege to everyone. World histories were written both before and after that time (in both Christendom and the Islamic world) taking the genealogies of Genesis (all descended from Noah's three sons) entirely historically, factually, and without qualms. Likewise the 6-day creation in Genesis was the only one understood until even much later, and simply wasn't be questioned. Nowadays, the effort is underway to rebaptize past theologians and writers (ignoring obvious evidence to the contrary) as modern folk, that didn't lock text to reality and vice versa, like those dirty fundamentalists. We're led to believe (though this horse won't drink THAT water) that their inerrancy isn't what inerrancy was for everyone else back then, but what it is to the more enlightened now. In fact, all those people believed in a very recent creation, in the Great Flood, and Noah's sons and descendants populating the world as told in Genesis, and it didn't stop them evangelizing the globe or creating the steam engine or any other number of wonderful things. The Bible was considered inerrant and infallible, not just in morals and spirituality, but in EVERYTHING, every single word. Look how Jerome put it: "Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor, me in interpretatione Graecorum, absque Scripturis sanctis, ubi et verborum ordo mysterium est, non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu." NPNF renders this: "For I myself not only admit but freely proclaim that in translating from the Greek (except in the case of the holy scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery) I render sense for sense and not word for word." Being the second most influential Doctor of the Church (after Augustine) throughout Western European history, these words had an impact. Not just the words themselves, but even their very order, were mysteries, i.e., sacraments, i.e. Divine Revelation. Jerome was familiar with varieties of texts, and didn't shrink at announcing in the above (as though he would shrink from anything!) that there is a there there, discernible through the detritus of human laziness, sloppiness, and fallibility. Of course, that particular letter of Jerome's (number 57, to Pammachus) and the above sentence are usually excerpted and paraphrased in order to support dynamic equivalence translation theory of the Bible, another, particularly egregious, rebaptizing of a writer's words in flagrant contradiction of his own obvious meaning.

It's better to honestly recognize that the people in the past were more like those fundamentalists that so many despise, even your heroes were, whoever they may be, in believing the Bible described infallibly, accurately, inerrantly, and perfectly, therefore authoritatively, the creation of the world and the history of Israel and the Church and everything else that it touched on.

Someone brought up allegorizing. This also is, believe it or not, related directly to the understanding of the Bible as infallible. The text was seen as perfect, but it was incomprehensible or the superficial meaning was distasteful (sound familiar?) to modern sensibilities. So, methods of interpretation based in a moral, intellectual, or theological viewpoint were initiated in order to extract value from a piece of text that was considered perfect. This method, of course, began in Alexandria at the Mousaion with work on the Homeric texts, with those scholars inventing the method of allegorical interpretation to enable a retention of the various characters' (most notably the gods') noble reputations intact. If the text were not considered inspired and infallible and inerrant, it would've been jettisoned for something more suitable to contemporary mores. The same was seent to apply to the Bible: it's the infallible text that requires allegory as the solution.

[JohnFH]

I don't understand the Enlightenment to be pure evil, but curse and blessing at the same time. On the other hand, I'm not sure we have seen in our age the kind of synthesis between a strong reigning philosophy and precedent tradition as occurred among the Fathers and later, with Thomas. The amount of cacophony in our age is enormous.

Each age does its share of accommodation to one or more reigning philosophies. Allegory, a hermeneutic of love, sensus plenior, the historical critical method, all may even coexist in the interpretive method of a single person.

Even when the results are ephemeral, they are not necessarily destructive, so long as the perfections of the text of reference are affirmed even before it is known in what they might consist. It seems to me that this kind of openness to the text's ability to enlighten is an essential component to a healthy reading of it. Otherwise, we simply fall prey to our own suspicions and paranoia. Even if said suspicions and paranoia are those of someone as brilliant as Nietzsche, a steady diet of it is, perhaps literally, suicidal.

As far as I can see, touting the human errors in scripture except as one more way of emphasizing scripture's perfection is tantamount to pushing the self-destruct button. Full allowance for the human dimension of scripture is necessary, I believe, in our post-Enlightened age (word play intended), but it must be done very carefully, with constant allowance for divine transcendence.

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

Yes, exactly. One old metaphor (from one of the Gregories, I think) was that there was the Harpist and the Harp, God and man, with the music being the Bible, which required both. In the imprefections of materials, the spaces between them, the differences in the gut strings, the work of the Harpist becomes music. That should never be forgotten.

Else, one complains of a scratched peg of the third violin after a magnificent symphony. It's petty and irrelevant.

[Marc]

Mybe it's a character flaw but I just can't bring myself to say "The Bible is the Word of God". I think Jesus is the Word of God and that the Bible points to Him. To say the Bible IS the word of God is like saying the sign IS the destination.

Can anyone enlighten me: when did people start calling Scripture God's word?

I find the Bible itself does not do this; at least, I cannot find a single passage which unambiguously does this. Most passages used to base the argument that the Bible IS God's word are referring either to Jesus, prophecy, actual words from God or other specific instances of God sending a message.

[JohnFH]

Marc,

You have a fine blog I see. I like your willingness to re-examine questions most people are afraid to touch.

The Bible itself speaks of some of its contents as God's word. It is typical of prophets to speak in God's name and they often present a message as the "word" or "instruction" of the Lord (cf. Isa 1:10). The words of Jesus, who came to be understood as the Word of God, were taken to be God's word in only a slightly less direct sense right from the start.

Scripture-based religion is very old, and in that context, it quickly became a matter of course to speak of scripture, in particular the Torah and the Prophets, as God's word. The practice of reading portions of the Torah and the Prophets is attested in the New Testament. By that time, Judaism had become a scripture-based religion. Within the Bible, the word received from God in scripture is praised in Psalms 19 and 119. It might be argued that those psalms do not have the Torah (narrative + precepts) as we know it in mind. That is probably true. But it is likely something analogous to it was in their minds.

Traditionally, both Judaism and Christianity have spoken in the highest imaginable terms of scripture. Jews and Christians have often refused to consider the possibility that it contains errors of even the banal kind, or that it is time-conditioned in any way. The question of genre identification has been and still is a taboo subject in some circles. But it is possible to hold a high view of scripture and believe, at the same time, that the Bible is both fully human and fully divine. I so believe. To put it in another way: God's word often comes to us in scripture precisely because it is wrapped in such a human envelope. This is my experience with a text like Psalm 137, for example.

Historically, movements that have affirmed Jesus as the Word of God have also held that the Scriptures which speak of him are the Word of God. Conversely, movements that see Jesus as a super great guy but not as someone who died for the sins of the world don't take the Christian Bible as the Word of God either.

Is there a third way? Not that I know of.

[Marc]

When I can't say "The Bible is God's Word" it's not because I think the Bible is unreliable. It's because the Bible itself does not make this claim directly or indirectly and it must have been invented at some stage. Sure the Bible refers back to passages and says "_that_ is God's Word" but not how we do it today where "Bible" is synonymous with "God's Word".

Let's look at the question Biblically: I looked at every instance of Pauls use of the phrases "Word of God" or "God's Word" and found the following. In all cases but one the phrase means Jesus or the Gospel. In one case (Ephesians 6:17) I am not clear what Paul means when he says "and the sword of the Spirit, which is the spoken word of God;". To me this constitutes good evidence that the early church meant "Jesus" when they said "God's Word" especially as John 1 is so clear on this. What turn of history did I miss?

PS: Could you pop me an email?

[JohnFH]

Marc, you are welcome to email me at your leisure. You will find my address under "about."

You are right that referring to the Bible as a whole as "God's Word" is not attested in the Bible. It is indeed a later formulation which, however, is meant to be consistent with earlier formulations. Like the doctrine of the Trinity in reference to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the latter case, too, there have been those who have said that the later doctrine of the Trinity is out of step with earlier doctrine. But saner heads emphasize the continuity, not the discontinuities.

That is how things stand with descriptive language about scripture over the course of time in Jewish and Christian traditions as well. Later language and tradition develops earlier language and tradition in fairly consistent ways.

[Marc]

This is indeed what I am beginning to see - we have a doctrine called "The Bible as a whole is God's Word" which does not and cannot come directly _from_ the Bible itself because the Bible was not a complete work at the time of it's writing.

Now, I understand how doctrines come about but I am of the opinion that they bring more harm than good. If I experience God in a profound way and write a letter to a church about it which really communicates the nature of God, namely 3 persons, why not just let the letter stand - why try to nail God down with a doctrine, fail, and end up with the obscure nonsense we call the Doctrine of the Trinity which chases people away before they've even encountered God?

RE: The Word of God is the Bible. It seems not to be an official doctrine, more of a jargon. Who started it? It seems to confuse more than illuminate and has possibly passed it's sell by date! Things like the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy are based on this uncritical assumption that the Bible is exactly what God wanted to say and that's a long leap from people, inspired (or moved) by God, wrote in the Holy Spirit.

See My Q&C on Chicago Biblical Inerrancy.