John Frame's Selected Shorter Writings, Volume 2

John M. Frame

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781629950792
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Frame's pointed essays challenge fashionable arguments in theology and encourage us to abhor easy answers. Includes some of Frame's main ideas on Scripture, theological education, apologetics, ethics, and the church.

Part 1

Theological Topics

1

Inerrancy: A Place to Live

This chapter was delivered as a plenary address to the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, November 19, 2013, published in JETS 57, 1 (2014): 29–39. (For stylistic purposes, this chapter has been copyedited for inclusion in this volume.)

For purposes of this paper, I define inerrancy simply as “propositional truth.” To say that a sentence is inerrant is simply to say that it is true, as opposed to false. To say that the Bible is inerrant is simply to say that it contains no false assertions.

Forty or fifty years ago, it was common for theologians to speak of biblical inerrancy as a “new” or “recent” doctrine. Their thesis was that although the church had always held to the authority of Scripture in a broad and general way, inerrancy was, as we like to say today, a product of modernity. Enlightenment rationalists had challenged the historicity and reliability of Scripture, and in reaction, according to this theory, orthodox Christians of the past two centuries or so insisted that Scripture was completely historical and reliable on all subjects it treats. That more pedantic and precise doctrine of biblical authority they called inerrancy. In this lecture I will not be discussing this issue, however, because I believe that the thesis that inerrancy is recent was thoroughly demolished by John D. Woodbridge in his book Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal.9

Now, members of ETS have subscribed to inerrancy in this form: “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written, and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.” So I assume that most of you here today believe the doctrine of inerrancy. You do not believe it to be a recent theory, a speculation, or overreaction to criticism, but to constitute one of the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. Further, since you believe that the doctrines of our faith are based on Scripture, you believe that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is itself a biblical doctrine.

But of course, God’s Word is our life. Biblical doctrines are not just propositions that we occasionally sign our names to, or that we recite on demand. Rather, they constitute the environment in which we live. The doctrine of the deity of Christ, for example, is not just a test of orthodoxy, but a place to stand against temptation. When Satan tells us that he intends to rule our lives, we reply: No, you may not. For we do not trust in ourselves to stand against you in our own strength. We trust only in Christ, and Christ is God.

So similarly, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy provides us a place to stand, a way to live. The doctrine of inerrancy is often used among us as a reply to scientific, historical, or philosophical claims that seem to oppose the Bible, but that’s not its most important use, for mature Christians. When we read the first chapter of Genesis, our deepest impulse (not necessarily the first, but the deepest) is not to wonder how its descriptions can be reconciled with scientific ideas, but, like the deepest impulses of the psalmists, to praise God for doing something incredibly greater than we can comprehend, bringing all the universe into being, from nothing. When we read of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea, or Sea of Reeds, we have a slight interest in how the wind blew the water away. But our larger and more consuming interest is that we have a God so great that he can time the movements of the wind and water to deliver his people and judge his enemies.

This is to say that for us the accounts in Scripture of the mighty acts of God are not primarily problems to be solved, or stories that might have to be retold to make sense to some group of modern people. They are news, true accounts of what God has done, testifying also to what a great God he is. Of course, the stories do now need to be retold to modern people, but what modern people most need to hear is what a great God our Lord is.

Some have complained that the doctrine of inerrancy is a distraction, taking us away from the great themes of creation and redemption, getting us tied up in minor details, such as how God could have made light before making the heavenly bodies that bear light, or where Cain got his wife, or the botanical properties of the mustard seed. It is true that inerrancy pertains to the details of Scripture. As we’ve always said, you can’t draw a principled distinction between what is small in the Bible and what is large. And if God doesn’t speak truly in earthly matters, how can we trust him in heavenly things?

But those within the community who confess inerrancy know that this doctrine encourages us most in the big themes. The inerrancy of the Word of God enables us to state with confidence the most extraordinary fact—that the whole world is God’s, and displays his glory. It enables us to say that Jesus is really Lord, that he really saved us from sin and its consequences, and that he is coming again to restore the whole universe to something pure and even more beautiful. And inerrancy assures us that we have a God who speaks to us in our own experience—the Lord of language who knows how to use symbols to talk to human beings.

Modern secularism, for its part, is not primarily interested in niggling over details, however much it annoys Christians with these controversies. Unbelief is as skeptical of blood atonement as it is of whether water can become wine. The attack on inerrancy does not limit itself to details. It will not be satisfied until it has set to rest the idea that a man can be God, that he can die for the sins of others, that he can rise from the dead, that he can communicate clearly with us. But if we have settled the question of inerrancy, we can dispatch such questions in short order. Yes, a man is God, he died for our sins, he rose again, and he is coming again—because God told us that this story is true.

There is a place for detailed apologetics, but that is not where we live. Inerrancy is not primarily a doctrine about the little details, even though it embraces those. It is a place for us to live. It enables us to look at everything, in the Bible and outside, with a supernaturalistic worldview. So when we are alone together, without skeptics looking over our shoulders, the inerrant Bible is, ironically, the most natural thing in the world. We argue about why in his miraculous healings Jesus used spittle in some cases, but not in others. But we don’t argue about whether Jesus healed miraculously. We exchange perplexity about the line between temptation and sin, but we don’t debate that Jesus was tempted as we are but did not sin. What the Bible clearly teaches must be true. God said it, we believe it, and that settles it.

If a skeptic questions whether five thousand people can be fed with five loaves and two fish, the answer is simple, however unpersuasive it might be to the inquirer: Of course this is possible, because God exists. This is God’s world. So the highest laws of physics are his intentions. He therefore establishes the laws of nutrition as well, and if he wants to feed five thousand people miraculously for his own purposes, he is perfectly able to do that. And for that matter, if someone asks how a book written by human beings can be inerrant, the answer is the same: If God wants such a book, he can arrange to provide one. We live in a supernaturalistic world—God’s world.

This kind of thinking enters into our more technical conversations as well. Say that a liberal scholar looks at the Mosaic law and asks, isn’t it peculiar that this law, supposedly revealed by God, looks a lot like the law of Hammurabi? We reply, yes, that’s interesting. He says, no, you miss the point. If the Mosaic law was revealed by God, then it should be unique, very different. It shouldn’t look like the laws of the nations around Israel. So the similarity between Moses and Hammurabi indicates that the Mosaic law was not divinely inspired after all. If the law of Hammurabi can be explained without resorting to inspiration, the same can be done with the law of Moses.

Now, we should take this argument respectfully, because we should treat all human beings with respect and honor. Perhaps we may even take the argument with some level of academic seriousness. But in our heart of hearts, we cannot take it seriously. The fact is that this is God’s world. If God wants to give his people laws that are in some way...