Reasonable people disagree as to whether the Convening Conference of the Global Methodist Church should commit to Scripture as infallible and/or inerrant. The arguments give me a headache. You better fasten your seatbelt if your mind is going to take some of those hairpin curves in the debates both pro and con. This is my short and simple appeal to a canonical approach to a Holy Bible.
Is the Bible inspired, inerrant, and infallible? That is an uninteresting question. It is all those things in every sense of those words. It is none of those things in any sense of the words. The words do not apply.
I appreciate the holy passion that drives us to find a word that that can communicate the unequivocal authoritative nature of Scripture, but all our words are flawed. The Bible is not authoritative because it is inspired, infallible, or inerrant. It is authoritative because it is Holy. It is the revelation of God. It is the ultimate authority through which any other claim of truth must be judged not because it is inspired, infallible, or inerrant; but because it is the only text which is Holy.
The Bible is Holy. It is the Holy Bible, the Holy Scripture, the Holy Writings. Because it is Holy Scripture, it is entirely separate from every other text. The Holy Bible is a wholly unique revelation. It is completely other. Its origin, its substance, its message does not originate in this world. The ordinary wisdom of this world is incapable of passing judgement on the Scriptures. The Scriptures pass judgement on the ordinary wisdom of this world.
It is the holiness of the Bible that authenticates its supreme authority. It is the wholly otherness of Scripture that validates its authority over all claims to truth that proceed from ordinary reason.
God has presented us with his self-revelation in exactly the form he intended. What we have in Holy Scripture is exactly what God intended to communicate to us and in the form that he intended to use. Does that mean it is inspired, infallible, and/or inerrant? I will not reject those terms because that would imply a rejection of the essence which they are trying to describe. I will not accept those terms because that would imply an acceptance of much of the baggage that accompanies them. As I said in the first paragraph: I find the question uninteresting. The answer does not change how I read that which is Holy and wholly other—God’s self-revelation.
I will demonstrate how I read Scripture. You can describe it with whatever terms best serve your purpose.
Do we forgive seventy-seven times or seven times seventy? It does not matter! It is an uninteresting question because it does not change God’s message. If at the end of the teaching in Matthew 18 you are still arguing about the number, then you have totally missed the point. Go back and start over.
When the woman caught in adultery is brought for judgement why is the male partner absent? It does not matter! It is an uninteresting question. If at the end of this lesson you are still looking for someone to throw stones at, then you have totally missed the point. Go back and start over.
If I finish reading Jonah and am concerned about whether he was an historical person and what kind of fish that could have been, then I ask uninteresting questions. We are not given the book to teach us to follow Jonah and fear fish. We are taught to follow God’s evangelical call upon our life and fear disobedience. I learn from Jonah exactly as it is written. I preach Jonah exactly as it is written without apology, because that is exactly how God chose to reveal himself. I am not concerned about being swallowed by a fish while on summer vacation.
I read Genesis 1 and 2 as a six-day creation followed by a sabbath. How long are these days? Are they really six epochs? In my best country preacher dialect:
We don’t know,
Cause the Bible don’t say,
Cause it don’t matter.
I keep evolutionary theories out of Genesis one not because I think most of them are garbage (which I do), but because that is not the story we are given. It is not our story. I am not allowed to rewrite the story.
That which God desires to reveal to us is discernable in the form it is presented. By receiving it in that form we are unlikely to fall into error. If we reshape or rewrite the text to suit extra-biblically sensibilities, then we are at great risk of falling into error. However, if I am ever called upon to write a manual for terraforming a planet, I hope you will understand if I use extrabiblical resources.
Should the Convening Conference of the Global Methodist Church commit to
Scripture as infallible or inerrant? I would rather that we could be satisfied with affirming Scripture as Holy. Not because I reject the essence of what those words try to communicate, but because years of epistemological debates have proven that our understanding of infallibility is not infallible, and our description of inerrancy is not inerrant.
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