2015 Shepherds' Conference: Inerrancy Panel Q&A

brother John the issue of inerrancy isn't a new issue evangelicals declared that it was settled in 1978 and you decided to go to all this trouble to hold a conference about it in the Year 2015 something happened and I would like to give you the opportunity to stay just as clearly is you will always speak as to why you did this thing you know this really started in your office when we had a meeting a year ago January and you're good man thank you this started in your office a year ago January we were all together you were on you were on the phone because you just had a new baby in your home but we were all together and you I was sitting next Iligan and you guys were talking about inerrancy as an issue and I think you were responding to this on urban book 5 views on inerrancy we all know there aren't five views it's either inerrant or not right and you guys were so exorcised by this that you were thinking about recapturing or adding to or developing this issue again and I mean it struck me as a reality not just because of that book but because the climate had allowed that book to exist and there didn't seem to be a whole lot of ruffling as a result of that book and I thought there is also a whole generation of young guys who have gone out and started churches many of whom don't have adequate theological training who wouldn't be able to fight this battle if it was if it was drawn up in their realm and that we needed to we need to reaffirm why we must have an inerrant text and I also remember coming back and thinking it isn't that people deny the inerrancy of Scripture just that it seems you're relevant it's it's like it doesn't have a place in the secret driven kind of pragmatic churches that seem to be flourishing today I mean who really cares you just flash a verse on a screen from whatever choice you have translation I just thought you know here's a whole generation who haven't fought this battle and this is the greatest battle of all battles and couldn't we bring together some of the finest minds in evangelicalism and wouldn't we all wouldn't we find the best of the best who would stand on this issue and we just began to say okay Lord how would we do this and this is the end of that planning praying well there will be other opportunities for this but on behalf of us all thank you for doing this no thank you Athanasius after the council of nicaea wrote a letter in which he said therefore the issue is settled it didn't stay settled so mark is that the way this works that in every generation a theological issue like this seems to be a recurring issue especially in the in the modern age with the the pressures upon the doctrine of Revelation or in Scripture it definitely is I think some issues are more particular so the idea of the openness of God was a raging debate this God into the future 10 years ago it's not a raging debate right now it's not there's no discussion on it this one is one of those perennial ones though because Satan says did God really say so I think we can expect that this is a battle that every generation faces in different ways at the Reformation you know the the material rather the formal principle of the sufficiency of Scripture is predicated upon is the Bible true is it completely true is it entirely trustworthy so yes this is something that I don't care how young you are here and if the Lord tarries a long time you will face this now and you will face this again what I've tried to think through in terms of this session or questions that I believe would be asked or ought to be asked especially by pastors would be here and I think a lot of younger guys don't know that there's a pedigree to this and of course we could go back to the Garden of Eden we could certainly go back to the 18th and 19th centuries in the in life I believe in the Garden of Eden now I do too okay so must we all just trying to be clear but we can't go back and trace it quite that far I do want to go back to 30 plus years ago when you and I we're looking at a manuscript from 1966 and one of Massachusetts a little-known event Nev angelical history when a group of evangelicals in 1966 tried to head off the inerrancy controversy they met at Gordon College kind of quietly you very quietly you weren't part of that is very young oh please you you were pastoring this church in Atlanta true alright oh no I had actually he wasn't yet he is three years away from being a peasant all right Oh close um yeah al so you're setting this up to you swimming no police brothers oh so yeah this is an important meeting yes and and what happened as Carl Henry said later is that no one affirmed the aaron c of scripture but the majority would not affirm the inerrancy of scripture then 10 years later held heroines l wrote a book or it was published in entitled the battle for the Bible in which he named names and went institution by institution and and figure by figure denomination by denomination showing the slippage on this issue and the reason I want to throw this back to you is because evangelicals did their best not to address this issue certainly the leaders until they simply had to and a group of very courageous men came together and John you were there then in Chicago in 1978 for the International Council on biblical inerrancy I don't think we should assume that the people in this room understand what happened there and why I agree the there was there was not an institution you could name almost that had in a previous generation been known as the evangelical school fuller seminary be the prime example where the authority of Scripture was defended which by the 1960s and certainly into 1978 by the time the International Council first meets had not seriously and sometimes publicly compromised on that issue and there forever Angelica 'ls were confused even in our lifetime because I'm just I'm in college then so I'm not really I read the ICB I when it was published in the family oz journal I read it loved it was thankful for it I was a recent convert from agnosticism to Christianity I was a religion major Duke University and what the ICB I said was not what I was being taught at Duke but it was very much what I thought was true and I was glad that they were a bunch of you know gray beards and brilliant guys around who said yes this is the truth about the Bible and it functioned as a rallying cry but I think as I got a little more mature looking back on it through the 80s I went to gordon-conwell and then on it was probably more shocking to me all those who wouldn't affirm it even people who we would think are in some ways our Evangelic old brothers and sisters but they would not want to affirm inerrancy and it was even more that way in the UK it kind of gets back to what John said they didn't exactly at that time at least most of them want to affirm its opposite they just were not willing to affirm inerrancy or they said it's it's not where the lines need to be drawn well and you have some time where you were trying to sort out is that the right word to use about scripture well in the midst of a denomination that was fighting a civil war over the question and thankfully settled the issue for inerrancy but yeah III think there were there were millions of evangelicals and certainly Southern Baptist trying to find out is that what we have to say about the Bible Winston Churchill once said that Americans can be counted on doing the right thing after everything else has been tried and that that's kind of what happened to the SBC in the 1980s but we'll get to that yeah just a footnote to that it's in the 70s I'm here fuller seminaries in Pasadena Jack Rogers comes out with a book he's a faculty member at fuller that just assaults the doctrine of inerrancy but but doesn't admit to that it try it it falsifies a doctrine of inerrancy just just a footnote this is called the Rogers McKenna thesis and it's the idea that it was created at Princeton in the 19th century through rationals that inerrancy is not an old doctrine of the church so that sort of sweeps the day at fuller seminary the board is confused there are some significant people on the board money people people like the Weyerhaeuser family and people like that they're putting pressure on the school because they said we come here and you tell us how evangelical you are and how faithful you are we go back to our churches in Arkansas to Encino all we hear is that Fuller's compromising we're trying to figure out what's the real story David Hubbard was the president at the time and his stated vision was to convert liberalism back to evangelicalism to try to do that with a weak view of inerrancy would be an impossible task so they invited Ian hey do you remember that from the Africa England mission myself and Ken concert I don't know why I got in the triumvirate to speak to the faculty and the board on our view of fuller seminary in Pasadena at the school I want to stay there for just a moment John will turn to two Ligon as a seminary president seminary president here up until 1972 the confession of faith in the Fuller Theological Seminary read on Scripture quote the books which formed the Canon of the Old and New Testaments as originally given are planarity inspired and free from all error in the whole and in the part these books constitute the written word of God the only infallible rule of faith and practice 1972 at the instigation of the faculty the board changed that confession to read quote scripture is an essential part and trustworthy record of this divine self disclosure all the books the old New Testaments given by divine inspiration are the written word of God the only infallible rule of faith and practice they are to be interpreted according to their context and purpose in reverent obedience to the Lord who speaks through them in living power end quote what's the difference between those two statements notice the shift to try and use infallible as making a claim that is less than inerrant the first statement affirms plenary verbal inspiration inerrancy infallibility Authority the second one dials that back down suddenly it's a record of the revelation and it's infallible now that's an illegitimate use of infallible in the first place if you pick up your oxford english dictionary you'll find out that infallible is a synonym for inerrancy when it came into the language it means exactly what we mean by inerrancy so when you say infallible you're not making a lesser claim for the Bible than in Aaron fact John frame argues you're actually claiming more when you use infallible and somewhat persuasive when he says that so but you will hear people use infallible as a substitute for inerrancy as if it is not as comprehensive a claim for the total truthfulness of Scripture that's inaccurate but what clearly was being done here was a step back away from an affirmation of biblical inerrancy the reason I want to bring it up that way is because when John talks about Jack Rogers a decade later had the confession not been changed so explicitly which at least they were honest to do and I want to give them credit for the honesty in changing the confession rather than just blinking at those who who didn't mean and signed it that issue would have been closed long before that book could have been written right but it it wasn't in that book is the authority and interpretation of Scripture and as Mark said it's generally identified as the Rogers and McKim proposal and you received as a part of your giveaway a book that was written by John Woodbridge at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School that devastates that particular thesis you need to read that volume it's still worthwhile reading to this day I'm very glad that it was given out you know the irony of it all is that fuller lost the battle for the Bible and they were the source of the book in linz ELLs day it's a an issue not here of just trying to point to an institution but to point to the principles of of what have has led to the and the historical events that led to the debate as as we know it now I want to turn to Kevin and just ask you explicitly is the doctrine of inerrancy directly dependent upon the verbal plenary understanding of inspiration and before you answer it let me turn it around if you do affirm the verbal plenary understanding even from a of inspiration as this confession once did would you not logically also affirm the inerrancy of scripture I like he gives me the questions that already have the answer stuff study sure and just for the record I wasn't alive for any of these things that they were talking about so it wasn't my fault so man what were you guys doing thank you for all that waiting for you well of course that you shouldn't be able to have one consistently without the other if you have verbal God speaking plenary all of it revelation then what we have in this book is God speaking to us and as as all these guys know even better than I do and most of you would have heard about probably in your seminary education we want to be wary of any kind of bard Ian neo Orthodox understanding of inspiration which at first can sound very spiritual look this contains the Word of God or this becomes to you God's Word when you preach it oh wow that's so but you see all of that kind of neo Orthodox language puts this one step removed from the Word of God which is what Ligon was so astutely pointing to in that language it's now become a record of God's revelation so it contains what God has revealed to man rather than this is God's revelation so if this is verbal plenary inspiration God's speaking to us than it must have the same truthfulness and trustworthiness that God Himself has let God be true and every man a liar so we cannot budge on the doctrine of inerrancy or on our doctrine of Scripture without impugning the very character of God that's why the stakes are so high John when you were the new pastor at Grace Community Church 1969 when you surveyed the evangelical landscape when you were ministering here in Southern California did you expect this to be one of the defining battles of your generation outside the church outside the true church I did I think I was exposed in seminary to BB Warfield treatment of the inspiration authority of Scripture so I knew that liberalism was out there making an assault on it it was like a lot of things I knew they were out there outside the true church but I think the shock for me was when they all of a sudden showed up inside the confessing evangelical world the confessing people who believe the gospel the confessing people who believe the Bible but were equivocating and equivocating on all kinds of issues I just that's been the biggest shock of my whole life is fighting all these wars inside the professing church I think seminary expected taught me to expect I mean we all read higher critical theory we all had to be able to answer that we were we were interacting with the dead Germans that nobody would know ever lived if we didn't raise him from the dead all the time and so we so we knew we had to argue and I just keep a straight face yeah some people actually get a PhD for resurrecting dead Germans and he's got us not mine but anyway so I think I think the shock for me was to see that going on and the nearest expression of that was fuller seminary because they're right on our doorstep and very early in the ministry Grace Community Church and fuller seminary became like light and darkness there was a period of time this would probably surprise you when peter Wagner used to bring all the students in this school of church growth from Fuller to Grace Community Church to experience a growing church and this was when Peter hadn't you know jumped off the cliff and he was still in the church growth aspect of his journey and then I got a call from him one day and said we're not bringing them anymore and the curtain went down and I remember that conversation very very well he said it confuses our students your church experience conversations with you are very confusing to the students he was he was tampering with Biblical Authority in another level not not on a liberal level but on a and the Bible was was coming to mean less and less to him at all not because of some intellectual theory or some rational argument but it just didn't fit that the mystical model that was developing the pragmatic model so we've watched that alienation continue and continue and continue so here we are ostensibly an evangelical church with virtually through the years since the very earliest years absolutely no relationship to that institution mark you went as an undergraduate to Duke University you had recently been an agnostic you were then a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ seeking to be a faithful believer when did you become an inerrant in other words when did the inerrancy of scripture become pressed upon you as as what will be very necessary to your theological self understanding I think probably that first year at Duke I think I assumed it I think when you come to Christ you assume the Bible's true so I think you just walk in with that assumption and I remember my first weekend at Duke I shared with my religion department advisor all the things the Lord had been doing in my life that summer I didn't really have a category of liberals I knew there were unbelievers and believers you know that's all there was and so I'm I later when I told a friend that a Christian undergrad friend that I just had this great time sharing is my religion department advisor all the things the Lord of the do my life that summer they said you know she's a Jewish atheist I didn't know I mean she was just very you know nice to me and you know who knows what I must have sounded like to her some nutcase from Kentucky you know but because of the things that I was assigned to read I immediately had to think okay on all of the historical constructions lately the Old Testament alone even in the New Testament all the historical constructions I see just aren't true and they immediately drove me to read Donald Guthrie's interruption of the New Testament RK Harrison's interaction the Old Testament you know all these things that were not assigned but I think I think Paul Pressler had a similar experience at Princeton you know it's when you put in an experience early on in a school that doesn't believe you had this at Furman you this is southern I had this you have it in your denomination you know I think we we're pressed to have to define these things but one thing I want to pick up on on that comment that John was making about peter Wagner not being an intellectual opponent necessarily I think for most of the men sitting in this room but the danger will come as much from language about evangelism and mission that's where liberalism comes from and please don't misunderstand all these brothers here share the faith we we humble even evangelism admissions but it again and again Edinburgh 1910 the world missionary movement it's it's it's if we can get us to agree on our common mission we don't have to worry about the doctrine that divides and that's how you often shift over into an unbelief that dog ECT like ECT would be a more recent example of ligand you grew up in a Presbyterian home and you are now Chancellor of a reformed seminary you were the moderator the Presbyterian Church in America that denomination wouldn't exist but for the question of inerrancy and I think it's important that people know the story when they a lot of folks in to hear the word Presbyterian they think of one denomination but that's anything but and that's a story that needs to be told I grew up in Greenville County South Carolina not but a few blocks from where Southern Baptist Theological Seminary once was amen so close and yet so far southern Presbyterianism was going through a theological decline neo-orthodoxy had influenced the agencies and the leading pastors of that denomination the seminaries of the denomination were not sound you wouldn't have found professors except for one in any of the southern Presbyterian seminaries in those days that believed in biblical inerrancy which is why so many Presbyterian ministers of those times went to dispensational institutions like Dallas for their education because they wanted to go someplace that believed in inerrancy and I so I'm being reared in this context in the 1960s and 70s because my mother is a graduate of the church music school at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has been on the music faculty at Furman I'm watching what's happening in the Southern Baptist Convention I see the beginnings of the conservative resurgence I'm profoundly thankful that there are people that are standing up for the authority of Scripture I recognize the same thing going on in the southern Presbyterian world my father is an elder is working to try and bring the southern Presbyterian Church back to a high view of God and a high view of Scripture eventually it's apparent that that is not going to work and the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973 comes out of the Presbyterian Church us the what used to be called the old Southern Presbyterian Church on the issue of inerrancy the Westminster Confession of faith obedience to the Great Commission the same kinds of things that we're going on in Southern Baptist life you won you won your seminaries back we lost our denomination and our seminaries but we were prepared to stand with a Word of God even if meant even if it meant walking away and we did and I think the issue is we want everyone to know that thus you defined inerrancy within the confession of faith of the pca and within your requirement of those who have you ordained within your that's exactly right and every minister of the Presbyterian Church in America must vow to believe biblical inerrancy it's in our ministerial ordination vows now Kevin you're in a very different reformed denomination and there's a very important story to be told there as well and it may be one that's even less known among the pastors who are here so it'd be helpful if you told that story so I was born and raised in the Reformed Church in America who for many years our most famous church was just a little Cathedral the Crystal Cathedral a cautionary tale and you know wonderful history now the the oldest Protestant denomination in the country with a continuous ministry back to the 1620s in New Amsterdam and again it happened in the 60s that there was a formal switch in the language to move away from it I don't know if the word inerrancy was in it but it was that idea that then switched to the Bible is truthful in all that it intends to teach for faith and practice so it's the sort of thing that goes by and you want to say well I do agree that the Bible is true and all that in intensities for faith and practice but it's what it was not saying by making a decision to now say that instead of what it used to say a softer form of subscription and then this much watered-down version so that now I don't think in any of we have two seminaries I don't think there would be anyone in any of those seminaries that would affirm inerrancy and at times people who have gone through ordination through other means have been suspect for being a part of those who in fact there was one prominent person who was looking at Skansen people who are too influenced by John MacArthur or John Piper or these these Neal reformed folks and held to complementarianism and inerrancy and so though I went to one of our denominational colleges and was thankful for many things about it I too had to cut my teeth on remember we had to learn read books about the Jesus Seminar and we had to learn all of the the liberal theologians and neo Orthodox theologians when it came to Scripture and in it caused something of a crisis of faith how do i how do I know that the Bible is true and that's what similar to you guys I I found BB Warfield inspiration authority searcher wasn't being assigned to me I said I need to read this I've found books about the Canon of Scripture to try to answer some of these questions and determine what exactly is true about the Bible because I knew that if if this gets wobbly everything else is a house of cards Kevin tell him tell him who anchored you in in the Word of God my parents yeah yeah so I when I went to when I went to college and started hearing things from people who are smarter than me and this is the danger of going to a Christian school because you got the professors they go to church they're really nice they they tell you about their church experience and they're telling you something different from what you grew up with better to go to a university you know our students who go to Michigan State they don't expect anything that they tell them about the Bible is going to be true it is just clearer that way so when I was hearing these things I really had to wrestle with why is this different from what I heard growing up in church and what anchored me was this thought like this isn't what my parents would believe and it just gave me pause and and though parents out there just you you don't know your teenage kids are not going to come and tell you I'm heading off to college I just want you to know how much you've anchored me on the truth they're not going to say that they're going to be on their phone when you're crying and they go off to school what you crying mom but things stick with you and things that you just saw habits in your and your parents and in your church are hard to shake off and I by God's grace just knew I should not shake that off and so I ran to figure out a better way to try to understand these questions really help John when the battle for the Bible kind of exploded in the evangelical world in 1976 what did you think where did you think that the discussion would go was the ICB eyes of the Chicago statement was was that at all on the horizon when you were thinking about this oh when I first saw the book of course I devoured it and I I honestly thinking back if I remember correctly again saw it in it is an answer to people outside the church outside the true church it didn't take long to become evident to me though that this had infiltrated the church and I think Harold and Zell must have known that that was a very unique book al you you you may remember some of the history of that book it hit the top of the bestseller list and it was a theological book and that just didn't happen I don't know that any theological book has done that since so it it came at a critical critical time and already I think those those realities had moved into the church and it was a little alien to me because it wasn't in here wasn't a Grace Community Church but I had I had already begun to feel that coming from fuller seminary that we can view Scripture and I knew it was was around and it didn't take long before we were all very much aware that this book was speaking volumes and people were reacting and it was in the thrust of that kind of thing a few years later that the meeting over there was held because by then fuller had called all kinds of things into question mark oh you were growing up you grew up in kind of a stereotypical Southern Baptist First Baptist Church Seville Kentucky did you ever hear the inerrancy of scripture explicitly taught and did you ever hear the suggestion that scripture had any error whatsoever I think no to both those questions uh this the Scriptures were taught I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't a Christian I was just coming along with my family when I was a you know single digit child and then I was gone and then I came back as a teenager came to Christ was well taught there but I was taught in the middle of a believing community with the Bible always being treated as true but that's why I think I went to Duke kind of unarmed I was armed in the most important way with the truth of Scripture but I found Harrell denzel's book a few years later after his published when I'm an undergrad the thing that first really woke me up to the problem not just in the Duke religion department with you know theological liberals but inside concern I was going to an old PCUs church at the time that was evangelical and Aaron 'test but I knew that there was a professor at Southern Seminary who was coming out with a new systematic theology and I was getting excited like this is going to be helped because I've read RK Harrison you know he's in Anglican in Canada and I've read Donald Guthrie you know a Brett and now the Southern Baptists are going to come to help and it was Dale Moody's the word of truth and I just had no idea what I was in for so I excitedly bought a copy as soon as it came came out I was driving home from dukedom back to tell you drove right through Nashville with the main bookstore there of the Sunday school board bought the book devoured it and was shocked I mean the the fundamentalist who were objecting to what was going on the seminaries didn't know that half of it if this thing was true I mean he was mocking the idea of a bodily resurrection or of substitutionary telling and I'm looking on the back of thing and this guy teaches at Southern Seminary so I'm thinking of all the old people at my church who've been given money to pay this salary you know since Moses was a kid and and I'm thinking and this is what Moses was a Southern Baptist no I do think he was more of the older covenant but anyway I think that there was a sense of betrayal you know that I just couldn't believe that this was that they could in good conscience take this money and teach this stuff well imagine what it was like for Dale moody to be your theology professor as he was mine and to speak of Dale moody as I must as someone who was so gracious to me and so engaging in the classroom I came to an errand see because basically I was taught it as a child and because without it explicitly yes yes but that was a different context in in Fort Lauderdale yes not in my single digits as you put it but in the double digits yes because the issue had exploded D James Kennedy Jim Kennedy was so central in in in pressing f4 and Francis Schaeffer who who had such a massive influence on me when I had an apologetic crisis as a teenager so then I arrived at Southern Seminary and Dale moody was on my teachers and I did my very best to find a way to make peace with what he was saying and the scripture by it you know these pupils cared for me greatly Dale moody is not DL mu yes think if we're confusing anybody DL Moody was a god-fearing evangelist in the late 19th century Dale Moody was a leave to him his fear of God but I mean he was a professor at Southern Seminary in the 20th century no relation whatsoever I'm so sure I just realized probably a lot of people were confused there yeah I never confuse the two I can tell you that but that that wasn't even what was mostly being taught when I was a student because Dale moody was already a very old man and by the time I got there there was a professor who was actually at one point on the Jesus Seminar and and and so it moved light-years beyond where it was and folks here need to know that the inerrancy battle in the Southern Baptist Convention and the the battle that was one for inerrancy that made the opportunity for the recovery of Southern Seminary and the institutions of the SPC was driven by people who were willing to put their lives on the line to define the issue but it was made possible by God's grace by laymen and laywomen who sacrificially gave up their time and slept in their cars because they couldn't afford hotel rooms to go into a convention hall and vote for the inerrancy of scripture because the far as they were concerned that was the most important issue for the entire future of the denomination and as one of them said if my grandchildren are going to get taught the Bible I'm going to have to do whatever it takes to make certain it starts right here and so it's just with great humility I just want to I want folks to know that this was something that when Harold Linds L wrote the book he did not expect Southern Baptist to recover the authority and trustworthiness of the scripture much less than in the year 2000 the Southern Baptist Convention would write inerrancy into its confession of faith a more conservative confession to faith where it where else is there a denomination that's revised it's denominates confession of faith in a more conservative direction but that's not an arrogant statement of pride it's a humbling statement of necessity but you know we are arriving at a conversation and so I became president of Southern Seminary I was 33 I'm now 55 you can do the math the issues are back ligand now they're not back on my campus I'm so thankful for that it's nailed down tight and that's one of the great things that does come as one of the effects of this kind of civil war in a denomination the people who are left know what was bought it's so high a price when I look at it have angelical ISM and I see all the old issues coming right back very much so and I and by the way I had the same feeling you described John feeling these things nailed down I can remember as a seminary student in the middle of the 1980s having read the products of ICD I and I thought to myself I think this is handled for another 50 years and I and it's come back quicker than I thought I didn't expect it to stay settled for the very reasons that you and Mark talked about at the beginning of our conversation and even when you look at the Athanasius and arias engagement that you reference in the Council of Nicaea that that was really the beginning of the second stage of the Arian country it when a controversy it went on for another 50 years after the Council of Nicaea say lives on today does and I so I expected there to be those issues but not as quickly and and not as pervasively and I think a lot of that is the cultural shift that we've gone through all in your work on this and and you've written about this a little bit in the volume that you did on those on those five years you've pointed out that the kinds of arguments against the Bible that we're facing today are a little bit different than we were hearing in 1970 so that people are now making moral judgments about the ethics of the Bible being below their standards which the Liberals of the 19th century would never have that they wanted to get rid of the supernaturalism and hold on to the ethics but now we've got a culture around us that's looking down on the ethics of the Bible and they're calling the Bible into question on a moral basis and then on a theological basis as well and I think that's impacting evangelicalism we know in that project where I was asked to defend the classical view of an arrant see the three test cases included a case where it was historicity a case where there was supposedly an internal conflict in a case in which there was a moral judgment made on Scripture and you're right that third one would not have appeared even I think in the 1970s in the same way I want to turn to Kevin Kevin and I'm going to turn to everyone else on the on the panel and ask the same question so you get kind of heads-up here where are the hot spots right now me for a pastor for a preacher where are the hot spots where are the land mines that we just need to name where inerrancy is is the definitional issue whether it's acknowledged or not I think of three three things one the sufficiency of Scripture so if you think sufficiency clarity Authority necessity that acronym scan is sort of the four attributes of Scripture and Aaron C has to do a lot with the authority okay we have the authority of Scripture but sufficiency and clarity would be two other pressure points and it gets to what John was saying about pragmatism that's really an assault on the sufficiency of Scripture does the Bible tell you what you need to know to run your church doesn't tell you everything you need to know about everything you might want to know about how to change the oil in your car I don't know how to do that at all but it tells you what you need to know for ministry is the word of God sufficient to do the work of God that's the question and that's what pastors have to deal with as it prayer and the word the word in prayer if you can grow a church if you can do a church apart from those two things and you can but you're not you're not doing Christ's Church so the sufficiency and then the clarity what Christian Smith wrote about unhelpfully but he does have a way of turning a phrase he called a pervasive interpretive pluralism this is what you find as pastors people come up to mark talked about all the translations people say well look there's all these five views of this and four views of that and four you know Christians can't agree on anything so how am I related to no and there's a lot of smart people out there and there's PhDs who can't agree on this look if we're going to hold up you know throw up our hands because PhDs can't agree on something you won't know anything about anything and all the corpus of human knowledge because that's that's a human salability problem not a war word of god infallibility problem and then the issue that I'm sure we're all aware of is the issue of human sexuality because people who in our churches who will affirm all of the Principia things that we're saying here will come to this issue and want to find a way to get around what the Bible says it isn't that the other side and this argument really has powerful arguments the only arguments they can they really can marshal arguments to try to say well the Bible doesn't really say what it actually seems to be saying and so when you find a way to do that you set aside the locus of authority from scripture as I heard Carl Truman say one time it's not that we're losing the argument it's that no arguments are being made and therefore we're losing alright so like I'm going to wrap myself for just a minute and ask you a very blunt question does the Roman Catholic Church teach the inerrancy of Scripture Roman Catholics at the time of the Reformation certainly would have accepted the inerrancy of Scripture but they would had a different view of a biblical of religious authority they would have wanted to add alongside of an inerrant Bible an authoritative Magisterium and tradition and so the protestant engagement with Roman Catholicism in the 16th century especially issue deals with the issue of authority not so much having to refute bad views of the Bible that were being purported the reason I ask is because in a real sense means OVAs witnesses affirm the inerrancy of Scripture and the Roman Catholic Church still according to its official statements affirms the inerrancy of Scripture but then it goes on to say as rightly interpreted by the Magisterial authority of the church so in one sense inerrancy is necessary but it's not sufficient true and Carl Truman brilliantly made that point in his lecture on inerrancy and the Reformers and I think if I were going to add I'd agree with everything that Kevin just said and by the way his book taking God at His Word Wright will outline I require my seminary students in the doctrine of Scripture course to read that book and they love that scan out because they know they're going to hear it from me in the oral examination and I so everything he said yes I would add to two more things to that one would be and it's already been echoed here pragmatism is our big problem on this there there will be a small small wedge of left-leaning evangelical academics that will be able to make hay undermining scriptural authority because they're speaking into a largely pragmatic evangelical audience that's our problem secondly what Carl said what Ian Hamilton said remember every time you meet a doctrine of Scripture you are meeting a doctrine of God underneath every doctrine of Scripture is a doctrine of God and you show me a low view of Scripture I'll show you a low view of God behind it so theology matters and so the pragmatism of Evan Jellicle ISM leaves it vulnerable to bad theological arguments because it doesn't think that theology matters so part of this is having a robust historic biblical faithful theology and doctrine of God mark what do you see is the the crucial areas of urgent debate and defence M B P this is two pastors membership books and preaching membership whoever has the authority to take members into your church or see members out those people need to understand that they need to believe the inerrancy of the Bible so if you're in a Baptist Church like we are that means all of the members need to affirm inerrancy because they are the ones who vote on people coming into membership and putting them out of membership if you're in an elder rule Church like John kind of is and like lid kind of is and like Kevin really is I think though those brothers better make sure all your elders believe in an Aaron C because that's that that's the camels nose if you let people in who have a vote on who can comprise the members of your church who do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible or don't think you - then you just might as well give the keys to the build a building way right then I mean that's just that's it so membership matters on this point second thing books watch what books you're selling at your church watch what books you recommend make sure you have good defensive of an errand see like what Kevin's book on your church books all or in your church book store or that you're recommending them or giving them away that's books do not lightly give away books that have authors that will confuse them on this topic I don't care how good they are on other things you can privately suggest those to people who you think are mature enough to to pick them out but do not broadly suggest Christian books by people who do not believe the Bible's and Eric will confuse too many sheep and number three in terms of preaching in your own preaching take take time to defend the authority of the Bible as you're walking through think through think how a non-christian or an antagonist here's what you would say uh I think in all four of these men's preaching I regularly hear that note be be mindful of the historical claims but the ethical claims if you're preaching through Joshua and I let me encourage you go preach through Joshua and take head-on the idea that there is a genocide 'el atrocity suggested there you know because because we need to understand that morally and ethically and we need to be clear in defending that the Bible records a good God and his actions are good and right and we have nothing to be ashamed of it anyway pairs the thought in Scripture and preachers are the front line of the Sheep understanding that hmm John you know they're certainly not much to add to that I would this might be expected but I would say this the scripture itself is its own best defense nothing validates the inerrancy of Scripture like the scripture carefully taught I look at Bible exposition every sermon I preached is an argument for what is revealed in the text it is coherent it is reason it is uniform it is consistent and a loggia scriptura you can trace it everywhere because of the sole authorship I my fear is that an inerrant Bible doesn't matter that much if you're not an expository Rand scut skim lightly across the top of the surface of the Bible and suck up whatever attaches to your outline but every really really faithful handling of the Word of God is an argument out of a text it is it is a divine argument and the button you know when you do this for nearly 50 years nobody around here is questioning the veracity of Scripture nobody is questioning the integrity of the text or its inerrancy because you you just continually you just continually build this massive exposure to this divine coherency in this divine reason and these powerful arguments that are made through the text of scripture from the very mind of God and it carries such force in and of itself so that I'm not the convincers is the convinced err and I that that's at the heart of everything why I advocate expository preaching not because people need to need to kind of know their Bible but because you can't see the real revelation of God in any other way I want to come back to what Ligon mentioned because it was so central in in in the challenge I face that Zondervan project I think one of the things I don't share with is this we got to decide what we're willing to be called and at Forbes magazine about a week ago I was specifically singled out because of my beliefs on creation and Genesis 1 and 2 is being quote mired in anti intellectualism in quote did the author know you he knew what I believed about Genesis 1 and 2 and that was quite sufficient and so I actually have told many people that that doesn't worry me someone coming from that worldview saying I'm mired in anti-intellectualism I'll admit there's a part of me that wants to call him up but the other part of me says he's mired in anti-intellectualism but we have to decide what we're willing to be called and and for the better part of the last 250 years if you affirm propositional revelation you a verb you affirm verbal plenary inspiration you affirm the inerrancy of Scripture you you've had to be prepared to be called anti-intellectual or intellectually deficient in some way but now there's more you also now have to be willing to be called immoral because the arguments against us now is that the the clear teachings of Scripture and Kevin cut to this that the other side is giving up trying to argue the Bible doesn't say what it says because that is just such a prima facie just losing strategy it just loses on its face that anyone can read the text and tell what it says elizabeth octa meyer late presbyterian professor at a liberal institution pc USA she said if the Bible is clear about anything it's clear about God's pattern of sexuality it's not it's not clear it's abundantly clear but we're now accused not only of being anti intellectual and being intellectually deficient we're now being charged of being morally deficient and I just want to warn you if you are afraid to be called that by the secular world then you'll abandon not only the inerrancy of Scripture but the gospel of Jesus Christ because the gospel itself in naming sin as sin makes very clear that by the modern standards of the of the political and sexual revolutionaries the gospel itself is immoral in their eyes so together every once in a while we need to gather and look each other in the eye and say we're willing to bear this scandal because it's necessary for the sake of the church I need to ask an embarrassing question what time is this session end that's what I thought that means the session now ends and I want to turn to our host and ask dr. John MacArthur to lead us in a closing word of Prayer thank you Lord we thank you for the clarity of this conversation expression of biblical convictions so unwavering so passionate thank you for the leadership of these men thank you that they are magnets to attract other faithful men that they have blazed a trail of leadership in your church influence and impact bless them encourage their hearts fill their ministries with fruitfulness and joy bless their families children and Lord I pray that you'll take all of the men who are here and listening to this as well and and continue to build into them the same convictions that mark these men and raise up an entire generation of those committed to your word so that it can be passed on to the generation that is in our hands to care for and Shepherd bless the rest of our conference together we give you praise for such a privilege in the Savior's name Amen

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 113,334

Rating: 4.8136644 out of 5

Keywords: Exposition, Evangelicalism, Inerrancy, Inerrant, Sufficient, Sufficiency, Infallible, Infallibility, Accuracy, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, Scriptures, Bible, Christianity, Gospel, Expository Preaching, Grace to You, Grace Community Church, John MacArthur

Id: cyD-dzqygEg

Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2015