The Online Inerrancy Debate Continued

Father Matthew’s take: the Bible is great, but the Episcopal Church is even better. Go here. Not so sure about that. “Give it up for me, please. Put your hands in the air": that's how the suggestion to prefer the wisdom of this or that church to that of the Bible sounds to me - a request to give up sound reasoning.

  Jim West: take it from Zwingli: inerrancy, rightly understood, is a right and good and joyful thing. Go here.

Joseph Kelly and Art Boulet: the Bible is perfect, but not inerrant. Go here and here. One might also say: the Bible is inerrant in the senses of which they speak. 

It seems to me that this is the Roman Catholic position as well. Brant Pitre, on a recent thread over at Nick Norelli’s place (go here), points us to the doctrine of inerrancy as formulated by Benedict XV. Go here. I’m trying to find an area of serious disagreement with Messieurs West, Kelly, Boulet, and Ratzinger Benedict XV, but I haven’t succeeded.  (Okay, B XV sounds a bit off key in today's context, but maybe we can learn from that.)

Comments

[Jeremy]

John,

I think you might be one Benedict off on this one. Ratzinger is Benedict XVI. Benedict XV wrote the document linked to in 1920.

Other than that, thanks for the links.

[JohnFH]

Hi Jeremy,

Yes, you're right. Good eye. The magisterium of course continues to reassert the authority of Scripture with inerrancy language, but with a little more wiggle room, I think, in comparison to what Benedict XV had in mind.

On the other hand, the continuities far outweigh the discontinuities.

[Jeremy]

The amount of wiggle room is debatable when you consider the make up of the Pontifical Biblical Commission under John Paul II. Many Catholic Biblical scholars have taken the proverbial inch and gone a mile. But, you're right the official language sounds like inerrancy language.

As a Catholic working in parish ministry, however, I can say that at the ground level a considerable number of Catholics, at least in America, probably do not even know what the word magisterium means much less follow it.

[JohnFH]

Jeremy,

I would love to see you and Brant Pitre talk these things through a bit online. I think evangelicals for example might learn a lot from overhearing Catholics go back and forth on such matters.

[Jeremy]

Perhaps I will try to write something substantive on the issue. I think probably according to some people's definitions I am an inerrantist, but according to others not. I would probably articulate something like a privileging the metanarrative approach (I think I heard that terminology on one of Tim Bulkeley's podcasts on his 5 minute Bible site, but I think others may refer to it differently). In the end though, my view is that most definitions of inerrancy become so technical as to be almost unrecognizable to even a fairly well informed lay person and so nuanced as to bear very little, if any, meaning at all. In light of that, it makes very little difference to me whether someone considers me an inerrantist or not.

[JohnFH]

It is true that any language we use to describe our approach to scripture is liable to die the death of a thousand qualifications.

[Jeremy]

John,

I finally got around to writing something a little bit more here - http://www.freeoldtestamentaudio.com/Blog/New.php/?p=1333

[Johnfh]

Thanks, Jeremy. I find some time to comment later.