CJ’s session with Matt Chandler at T4G, in my opinion, this was the best session…
T4G 2010 — Special Session — Matt Chandler from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.
As I have said before, I am currently taking a couple classes at Liberty University. One of my classes is basically an introduction to theology. In this class and really in any theology class, the format will consist of approaching big theological topics and tackling them in about a week’s time-span before moving onto the next topic. This leaves little time to drink deeply of a topic, rather it feels like you are drinking from a fire hose and then being asked to write a paper on how it tastes. In my class this last week we were dealing with “Bibliology”-which is basically the study of the Bible, as in how we got the Bible that we have today. The topic was really boiled down to the inerrancy debate though the manuscripts and other sub-topics were dealt with as appropriately as time would permit.
I approached this topic as I approach most topics in these types of classes; I approached it with my mind basically made up. If someone would have asked me even before I started attending Liberty I would have said that the Bible is inerrant and verbally inspired by God, fair enough, case closed, mind made up, and now let’s move on. I am not recanting my belief in inerrancy by any means that is a huge-mountain (not hill) that I am willing to die on. But guess what, all the other students in the class did not agree with me, surprise, surprise. As I read the papers from the other students in the class I would constantly be criticizing (in my mind of course) their logic because they did not arrive at my conclusion. But I held this conclusion before I even came to this class to learn and didn’t they come to learn also? Now I am beginning to realize that though our presuppositions are all different, they are clearly evident in our conclusions.
I am glad that I started class coming from a reformed-conservative perspective; I do believe it is the most faithful to the biblical-evidence. I am beginning to feel sorry for those who are coming from a more liberal-arminian perspective; it seems they constantly have to diminish the power of God in the formulation of the scriptures. But I wonder how tightly my classmates are going to hold onto their presuppositions? I know coming from my perspective that I will not easily change my views and I don’t believe others will either. Why? One reason is we might just want to vindicate our particular ecclesiology. Or more likely, we are so addicted to never being wrong about our presuppositions that we would rather hold our breath until our faced turned green and then right before we passed out, our heads would begin to spin (of course) and finally once our “never-being-wrong” withdrawals passed, we would finally blurt out the phrase….”yyyour RIGHT…and I’m wrong.”
We really hold to our presuppositions very tightly, even if we have not studied the topic adequately. I know I have not studied the topic of inerrancy adequately and yet I approach the topic with an extremely biased presupposition. But then, I get irritated when others hold to presuppositions that differ from mine! I presuppose that their presuppositions must conform to my conclusions or else their holding onto presuppositions and I am not. I believe there does come an eventual point when, once we have studied the topic adequately we move pass just merely holding presuppositions because we now understand what opposing sides teach. If not, then whenever one arrived at an opposing conclusion one could just say that you got there by a faulty presupposition.
But my purpose here is to address those who tightly hold presuppositions in areas where they may have not adequately studied. Now your conclusions may be right, but without adequate knowledge of what you are talking about you are tightly gripping the thin air of ignorance. We all grip tightly our presuppositions and then we put our hands in our pockets, so as to pretend that what we are gripping doesn’t exist. And until we can pull our hands out of our pockets and peer into them we will never be doing anything other than vindicating ourselves and feeding our pride.
The following is a short conclusion on a paper that I wrote for a Liberty University class. In this class we will write critiques of theological-journal articles followed by personal conclusions. The following is my conclusion on an article dealing with the “inerrancy debate”. When all is said and done, it seems, the debate is really a question of whether God could have erred or not…
Personal Conclusion
This writer believes that of necessity Christians are forced to some level of inerrancy. The issue is just a matter of how far one will take inerrancy. That is where the rub is. Do the scriptures err on the gospel? Even though the scriptures speak of salvation by grace through faith alone, could that have been a mistake? Could adding some meritorious works to our salvation really be a part of the equation and our misunderstanding is only due to the fact that the scriptures erred? No, of course not, how could any Christian be confident in their forgiveness of sins apart from the scriptures inerrancy on the gospel? Once inerrancy is dispensed all scripture becomes suspect and its truth is then at the mercy of the subjective experience of the reader. This is really the “epistemological argument” promoted.
The scripture has its origination with God (2 Tim. 3:16). It is a divine product. Men that were moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Pet. 1:21). God is the one who is speaking, not men. The men speaking for God did not even understand what they were saying (1 Pet. 1:10-11). To conclude that men made errors is to deny the power of the Holy Spirit and to elevate the human power over God. If men were moved by the Holy Spirit and spoke from God but erred, who made the error men or God? If we deny inerrancy we would of necessity have to say that God erred to some extent. The scripture says in Jeremiah 23:29 “Is not My word like Fire…and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” Could the words of God be like fire or a hammer if they erred? That would seemingly blow the fire out and break the hammer. If the scripture claims that the words of God are clear and powerful then we must conclude that God inspired the scriptures and they are inerrant-verbal inspiration. If it errs it is not the word of God, or to say it another way, if it is the word of God is doesn’t err.
You may think I have exposed myself terribly. Instead of talking about God as something vague and indefinite, after the fashion of the modernist, the Barthians, and the mystic, a god so empty of content and remote from experience as to make no demands upon men, I have loaded down the idea of God with “antiquated” science and “contradictory” logic. It seems as though I have heaped insult upon injury by presenting the most objectionable sort of God I could find. It ought to be very easy for you to prick my bubble. I see you are ready to read over my head bushels of facts taken from the standard college texts on physics, biology, anthropology, and psychology, or to crush me with your sixty-ton tanks taken from Kant’s famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason . But I have been under these hot showers now a good many times. Before you take the trouble to open the faucet again there is a preliminary point I want to bring up. I have already referred to it when we were discussing the matter of test or standard.
The point is this. Not believing in God, we have seen , you do not think yourself to be God’s creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God’s creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And having insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on “speaking terms.” And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God’s vineyard without paying Him any rent and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.
I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand…
…We seem now to have come to a pretty pass. We agreed at the outset to tell each other the whole truth. If I have offended you it has been because I dare not, even in the interest of winning you, offend my God. And if I have not offended you I have not spoken of my God. For what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God, is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect, the standard of what is possible or not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God…
…I shall not convert you at the end of my argument. I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.
(Read the entire article here)
Van Til, Cornelius. Why I Believe in God. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, 1996, Barlow, Jonathan ed.
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