THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF
CONFESSING THE INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE TODAY
Samuel Ling There are no errors in the Bible.
If there were errors, they are not errors of the Bible itself, but errors made by men.
Either they are errors in translation, or errors in interpretation.
Wang Mingdao.
AuChong sheng zhen yiAy (The true meaning of regeneratio.
Our attitude concerning our faith is: we receive and hold to all truths taught in Scripture.
we totally reject anything which is not in Scripture.
Wang Mingdao.
AuWomen shi wei liao xinyangAy .
e do this for the sake of the fait.
The Works of Wang Mingdao, vol.
7, 320.
A Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof .
, of the Scripture.
, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:5.
The Importance of the Doctrine of the Inerrancy of Scripture:
A Word to Opponents Is it anachronistic to bring up the subject of Authe inerrancy of ScriptureAy in the 21st century? Are we turning back the clock? The Jurnal Amanat Agung term AuinerrancyAy seems to give an impression of being a Audouble Ay Is there theological warrant for this belief? Do people who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible blindly do so? Do they force a literal meaning on the text, regardless of the genre? Furthermore, is the concept of Authe inerrancy of ScriptureAy a product of western culture, loaded with Graeco-Roman baggage? Is it a product of Protestant scholasticism, an obstacle to the healthy development of an indigenous theology in China and Asia? These are serious questions which we must not ignore.
Why, indeed, do we bring up the subject of inerrancy again, the 21st century? There are several important considerations.
First.
The church must articulate a Bible-based view of God and the universe in every generation.
as she does so, she will inevitably stand apart from secular views of God and the universe.
Throughout history all Bible-believing churches believe that God is God is an eternal, infinite, unchangeable God.
thus GodAos revelation must be without defect, fault, error, or confusion.
todayAos world, we detect a tendency to relativize God in both Asian and western thought.
At least, there is a tendency to regard GodAos revelation as limited and errant.
Therefore, a belief in the BibleAos absolute truthfulness, dependability, infallibility and inerrancy, is a part of, or a natural conclusion of, the belief that God is truth.
God, who is absolutely truthful, inerrant, holy and faithful, has concretely revealed himself in the history of the universe.
Because of this, men can understand, know about, and come to know This is the orthodox Christian view of revelation.
it is an integral part of the Christian faith.
Modern philosophy and theology have attempted to deny this.
these attempts have been built on various secular views of history, truth and knowledge .
, episte-molog.
denial of the inerrancy of Scripture may be related to the relativization of God.
Second.
GodAos revelation is an act which he planned in his absolutely free and sovereign eternal decree.
God has freely, auto- Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture nomously .
chosen to use language .
s well as other media, such as dreams, visions, angels and miracle.
as the medium of his revelation.
The church today must confess that: the language and the words which God used in the process of inspiration, inasmuch as they were selected by God, result in an absolutely trustworthy, true, infallible and inerrant Scripture .
ruthfulness and inerrancy refer to the original manuscripts, not copies, of Scriptur.
Contemporary theologians want to tell us that language is not it is slippery.
Therefore we have lost a firm foundation for thought and communication.
This is a serious trend which is detrimental to the building of global culture.
To reaffirm and defend the adequacy of human language in divine revelation is an urgent task for evangelicals today.
Third.
Some people think that, since God has planned to reveal himself to mankind, and to give truth and life to men and women, he must be able to use finite AuvesselsAy to reveal to men.
Whether these be prophets, apostles, the Bible .
specially copies which contain error.
, and even pastors and individual Christians, they are all finite, or even by nature sinful.
God can use them all.
do not have to worry about the Auvessel,Ay or to emphasize its The vessel must be errant.
the importance is the essence, the content, the power to change lives.
There are several considerations in regard to this view.
Yes.
God can indeed, and God did indeed use finite, created, and even sinful AuvesselsAy to be instruments of his revelation.
However, whether the Bible is inspired, or whether it is inerrant, depends on the selfattestation by and in Scripture.
Furthermore, the Bible is the AuvesselAy which God has specially chosen to use.
The Bible was written through the supernatural inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore the original manuscripts of the Bible are infallible and inerrant.
God can use Ae and God did use Ae languages in the finite .
nd fallen worl.
as the vehicle for his supernatural, inerrant communication.
The prophets and apostles who were inspired by God were not sinless.
they were not Jurnal Amanat Agung However God can inspire them in such a way so that the Scriptures which were put into writing are inerrant.
God can do this.
God actually did this.
On what basis do we separate AuvesselAy and Aumeaning,Ay the AumessageAy and the AumediumAy .
, languag.
? We cannot ignore the BibleAos self-attestation, the BibleAos own testimony to both its content and to its medium of revelation.
Another point to be made is: We cannot argue back from the impact which the Bible makes on peopleAos lives, to prove whether the Bible is inerrant or inspired by God.
Fourth.
Chinese theology and Chinese theological education faces a tremendous crisis today.
If we do not build a firm, strong theological foundation on the Bible, in 10-20 years the evangelical Chinese church today .
ith her seminarie.
will become the liberal church .
nd seminarie.
of tomorrow.
Let us learn from history! He who has ears, let him hear.
Therefore, confessing our faith in the inerrancy of Scripture is not some outdated doctrine.
Rather it is the very truth which the church needs to hear, as she faces a crisis of confidence today.
The inspiration and the inerrancy of the Bible are truths to which the Bible itself testifies.
These are unchanging truths which the church has confessed throughout history, and a message which the 21st century desperately needs to hear.
Perhaps the term AuinerrancyAy sounds like a Audouble negative.
Ay however throughout history the church has expounded on the attributes of God by using the negative way .
ia negativ.
For example.
God is un-limited, un-changing, his Cf.
articles on AuLiberal EvangelicalismAy and AuLiberalism and Conservatism in theologyAy in The New Dictionary of Theology.
Sinclair B.
Ferguson.
David F.
Wright and J.
Packer, eds.
, (Downers Grove.
Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1.
(Chinese translation availabl.
Also cf.
Francis A.
Schaeffer.
The Church before a Watching World (Downers Grove.
IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1.
(Chinese translation availabl.
, which narrates the crisis in the theology of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the 20 century.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture wisdom is infinite, his glory is unlike that of any other.
GodAos love is un-changing.
nothing can separate us from his love! If we open the Book of Job, the Psalms, or Isaiah 40-66, we will find that in numerous places, the via negativa Ae what God is not Ae is the very way in which the Bible depicts and proclaims the living true God.
Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture does not imply an insistence on literal interpretation of every text in Scripture, regardless of its genre.
Although there are Christians within the inerrantist community who hold this view, this does not represent an essential part of the doctrine of inerrancy.
We would also like to point out that, those who criticize the doctrine of inerrancy as Protestant scholastic baggage, also need to realize that there are different genres in Scripture.
There are didactic portions of Scripture which directly teach doctrines .
they are not to be ignored.
To be sure, much of Chinese and Asian literature is sensitive to the mystical and aesthetic dimensions of the universe, e.
poetry, proverbs.
However the Chinese tradition is not devoid of systematic, cognitive analysis (Zhu Xi is a good We must face the fact that, within the soul of man, there is a cognitive-intellectual dimension, and also an aesthetic-emotive God gave man his inspired Scripture.
Scripture contains didactic portions, e.
Romans.
Ephesians.
and also more aesthetic portions, e.
the Psalms.
JesusAo parables.
We must not pitch one against the other.
The maturing of Chinese theology requires careful study of both kinds of texts.
Let us forge a new path in theology by first learning from Scripture and history, rather than hastily and impulsively critique portions of what God has revealed to us.
mature Chinese theology must be an all-comprehensive theology, speaking all of Scripture to all of man.
Contemporary Views of the Bible: A Mini Tour Let us briefly survey what various schools of theology think of the Bible.
Jurnal Amanat Agung AuLiteral Interpretation OnlyAy Fundamentalists They believe that the Bible is inerrant, and that the Bible is verbally inspired.
They have done a lot of work to expound and to promote the doctrine of Scripture.
We identify with them, and appreciate them for all these.
However, some individuals in this group hold views which are rejected by other evangelicals, e.
: only the King James Version .
is the true Bible.
and every word in the Bible should be interpreted using the rules of literal interpretation, regardless of the genre .
orm of literatur.
These views do not represent the entire inerrantist Christian community.
The Traditional Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church The Roman Catholic Church also teaches the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible.
However, at the same time they declare that the church .
he ecumenical council.
and the official declarations by the Pope are inerrant and authoritative as well.
Packer rightly reminds us that: AuProtestants see Catholics and Orthodox as imposing misinterpretations on the text at key points.
Ay2 This is a much needed reminder, because this misunderstanding is built on an erroneous view of authority, i.
: the Bible and the church has the same measure of Aupower to bind the conscience.
Ay In recent years some evangelical leaders have begun to openly cooperative with Roman Catholics.
However the basic teachings of the Bible .
s understood by evangelical.
and those of the Catholic Church are very different.
Cooperation with the Roman Catholics must be limited to areas of social ethics and a prophetic confrontation with evil .
to abortio.
We must not engage in commun-ion .
in preaching, doctrine and the sacraments.
On at least one occasion.
Promise Keepers invited a Catholic cardinal to speak from the podium Packer.
AuInfallibility and Inerrancy of the BibleAy in New Dictionary of Theology, eds.
Sinclair B.
Ferguson.
David F.
Wright and J.
Packer (Downers Grove.
IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1.
, 337.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture in one of their stadium events.
This represents a type of alarming compromise which evangelicals can no longer ignore.
Liberal Theology and Neo-orthodox Theology Once Immanuel Kant divided the universe into the phenomenal realm and the noumenal realm, the knowledge of absolute truth is no longer possible, according to western philosophy.
Friedrich Schleiermacher thus began the 19th century liberal theological tradition.
for him, the essence of the Christian religion is not objective revelation from God, but the subjective religious experience of man.
The essence of religion is manAos feeling of his absolute dependence on Authe infiniteAy in the universe.
Many theologians after Schleiermacher doubted the truthfulness of the Bible, including accounts of supernatural events .
, such as the Virgin Birth and the physical resurrection of Christ.
Many doubted that a historic Adam existed.
Very unfortunately, a number of Chinese theologians today are highly appreciative of Schleiermacher, and directly or indirectly promote his approach to culture.
SchleiermacherAos intent was to speak to the Aucultured despisersAy of religion of his day.
the same is true of some Chinese theologians today.
However SchleiermacherAos understanding of Christianity is based on his pantheistic view of the universe Ae God is the same as nature.
Authe infiniteAy can be either God or nature.
What will Chinese Schleiermachians do to the church of tomorrow? Neo-orthodox theology, represented by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, was deeply influenced by Soren Kierkegaard .
espite denials by some followers of Barth, both British and Chines.
Truth and religion are subjective.
Barth makes a distinction between the Bible and the Word of God.
the Word of God is an existential encounter between God and man.
This encounter cannot be reduced to words or doctrines.
The Bible is a mere witness to, or record of, this AuWord of God,Ay but not the Word of God itself.
The Bible is written by men, and contains errors.
Barth accepts the critical approach to the Bible.
However, when a person reads the Bible, he may experience a new Jurnal Amanat Agung encounter with God.
at that moment, and only at that moment, the Bible becomes the Word of God for him.
It sounds very pious to separate the Bible as different from the transcendent AuWord of GodAy .
he latter transcends human reason and experienc.
In fact, however, this method deals a great blow to the traditional doctrine of Scripture.
The Barthian approach to Scripture has been incorporated into the creed of one major denomination in the United States.
I hereby translate one portion of their Confession of 1967 as follows:
The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written.
The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel.
The church has received the books of the Old and New Testaments as prophetic and apostolic testimony in which it hears the word of God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated.
This paragraph states certain historic facts: that Jesus Christ became incarnate.
the Holy Spirit witnessed to Christ.
Scripture was put into writing.
and the church submits to Scripture.
The church hears GodAos Word in Scripture.
But the careful reader will notice that while the paragraph is entitled AuThe BibleAy, it never states that the Bible is the Word of God.
Of course, the idea of the inerrancy of Scripture is absent! This paragraph is a rehearsing of facts, not a statement of faith! It has not declared anything to be the truth.
This Cornelius Van TilaThe New Modernism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1.
, collected in The Works of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1997 (Labels Army Co.
) CD Rom.
Also cf.
Packer.
Truth and Power: The Place of Scripture in the Christian Life (Wheaton.
IL: Harold Shawa1.
, 115-118.
AuConfession of 1967Ay I.
Book of Confessions (Presbyterian Church.
, 1.
, 257.
Section 9.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture kind of statement of faith can be endorsed by liberals, neo-orthodox and radical Christians and others who do not believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, as well as by well-meaning, optimistic, unthinking evangelicals.
The words sound orthodox enough.
they are acceptable to people who are far from the orthodox position, both within and outside the church.
In other words, the problem with neo-orthodox theologians .
s well as neo-evangelicals who admire neo-orthodox.
consists not only of what they do say, but what they do not say Ae what they are no longer willing to affirm, what they have no courage to, or have no resolve to, reaffirm.
And what they fail to affirm, are often the basic doctrines of the historic, orthodox, biblical faith.
In the past 25 years, a number of Chinese theologians .
itherto regarded as evangelical.
have been promoting Karl BarthAos theology .
ncluding his view of Scripture and the AuWord of GodA.
, and integrating it into their own thinking.
The following is a final paragraph in an article encouraging Christians to read books, in this age of the visual image.
It posits a subtle.
AudialecticAy relationship between the AuWordAy and words:
The Word was made incarnate.
God left his imprint on earth, in human history.
Witnesses saw it, heard it, touched it, argued about it, denied it.
All these became past.
With the flesh, it returned to dust and disappeared.
All the contacts of sense have passed.
What is left? Traces are left, and remain in human history in the form of Words carry the Word .
en yi zai da.
The Word appears between the lines of language.
it remains to be searched out, made out, imagined, constructed.
It is a process, definitely not a matter of a moment.
Until that day, until that hour.
For now, it is still words! As BarthAos neo-orthodox theology become more accepted and popular among Chinese theologians, the faith of the church will Deng Shao-guang.
AuHai shi wen zi?Ay (Still words?).
Logos In Text (Ji dao yue d.
, trial issue, (June 1.
, 3.
(Translated by the present write.
Jurnal Amanat Agung become more and more subjective.
Objective truth, prepositional revelation, verbal inspiration, systematic doctrine, will all be critiqued and rejected.
The future is bleak indeed.
The So-called Neo-AuEvangelicalismAy The AuNeo-evangelicalAy movement emerged in the 1970s.
Fuller Theological Seminary was established in the late 1940s.
doctrinal stance was quite solid in the beginning.
However, by the 1970s, under the leadership of the new president, some of the professors began to reject the concept of Auinerrancy.
Ay They wanted to stress the importance of understanding the historical and cultural background of Scripture.
they also affirmed that the Bible is the highest authority in matters of faith .
and life .
However in the realms of history .
and science, portions in Scripture are not accurate or truthfulness according to modern academic standards.
How do they understand the truthfulness of Scripture? Some say that the entire Bible is inspired and inerrant, with the exception of certain portions.
Others say that certain portions of Scripture are inspired and inerrant, but not the whole of it.
There is, in other words.
Aua canon within the canon.
Ay6 In the 1970s.
Jack Rogers and other Fuller professors faced the criticism of other evangelicals.
The two sides met at Wenham.
Massachusetts in 1975, but could not reach an accord.
Soon thereafter, the orthodox believers in the inerrancy of Scripture organized the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
In ten years they held several conferences, and published the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Application.
Then, according to plan, they closed down the organiza6.
Cf.
the views of Clifton J.
Allen, in Richard P.
Belcher.
Sheng jing wuwu bian.
Argument for Inerrancy (Hong Kong: China Alliance Pressw, 1.
, 38-45.
Bernard RammAos views were summarized in pp.
Ramm does not believe in inerrancy.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture tion after ten years.
7 The issue of the inerrancy of Scripture also deeply affected developments in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination in the United States.
After years of struggle, some conservatives managed to hold on to the presidencies of certain seminaries.
These Auneo-evangelicalsAy have sought to usurp the term Auevangelical,Ay and expel believers who believe in inerrancy from the ranks of evangelicalism.
For example.
Dr.
Roberta Hestenes, renowned pastor, seminary professor and college president, made this assertion in Christianity Today: Au I want to belabor the language a bit.
Evangelical is a label that applies to millions of Presbyterians.
Methodists.
Episcopalians.
Lutherans.
I donAot want to use the word for those outside of mainline churches.
Ay8 This is a new definition indeed! How should we understand it? According to HestenesAo definition, thousands of conservative believers in churches such as the Evangelical Free Church.
Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Conservative Baptist Association.
Reformed and Presbyterian denominations.
Lutherans.
Free Methodists and Holiness Churches .
o name a fe.
, plus independent churches .
ncluding Gospel Halls and Brethren assemblie.
would not be evangelicals! Who are they, then? If we Aubelabor the pointAy made by Dr.
Hestenes, those who still believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, who are outside the Aumainline Protestant denominations,Ay should be regarded as AufundamentalistsAy .
o use a term which has been used in our not-so-distant pas.
Well, that is not the worst thing which can happen.
As early as the 1950s.
Packer wrote a book.
AuFundamentalismAy and the Packer summarizes this history in his Truth and Power, 104-105.
Roberta Hestenes.
AuThe Spirit HasnAot Left the MainlineAy moderated by Tony Campolo.
Christianity Today.
August 11, 1997, 19.
Packer.
AuFundamentalismAy and the Word of God: Some Evangelical Principles (Grand Rapids.
MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1.
Jurnal Amanat Agung Word of God, in response to liberal attacks on the historic orthodox Packer made some important clarifications.
If AufundamentalismAy refers to the belief in the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture, then we should stand and own up to the term: Yes, we are fundamentalists indeed! However, we do not identify with other connotations associated with the term Aufundamentalism,Ay such as:
low level of education, a narrow vision, bias and prejudice toward those who hold different views, apathy toward global and cultural affairs, and ignorance! Forty-some years after its initial publication.
AuFundamentalismAy and the Word of God is such a fresh and refreshing read! Postmodern Hermeneutics The most influential philosophy in the 21st century is the postmodern theory of Audeconstructionism.
Ay Postmodern philosophy seeks to complete divorce itself from the traditional belief in and quest for absolute truth in western thought.
postmoderns critique the latter as Aulogocentrism.
Ay Following Nietzsche and others, postmoderns believe that there is no meaning in the universe, and words .
have no meaning either.
Words are tools of political power and oppression.
Language is merely ideology.
Words are only signs.
What are words signs of? They are signs of the acoustic image which emerges in the mind, when one thinks of an object.
These signs .
are arbitrarily assigned to these acoustic images.
Words have no intrinsic meaning.
meaning lies in the conventional languagestructure in a given society at a given moment in time.
Postmodern hermeneutic .
denies that the interpreter can or should seek to grasp the originally intended meaning of the author.
Once a text is finished, the author is absent from the text.
he is Audead.
Ay Does the text itself have a stable, unchanging meaning? No, because there is a mutual relationship between the text and the reader.
the reader or interpreter gives Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture meaning to the text.
This is how the text is born.
Therefore the text Ae a text with one, stable meaning Ae does not exist.
Not only is the author dead, and the text is dead.
postmodern interpretation tells us that even the reader Ae I myself Ae does not exist.
I am dead! This is because when a reader reads the text, it is not the reader himself who is doing the reading, but his contemporary hermeneutic community.
The reader merely represents his contemporary language-structure.
As a result, postmodern hermeneutic gives us these conclusions: the author .
ntended meanin.
is the text .
table meanin.
is dead.
the reader is dead.
The only thing which exists is the conventions of the language structure of a And of course, language-structures changes with time.
This kind of nihilistic thinking is presently influencing and controlling the hermeneutics and theology of many Chinese church Most of the articles which have appeared in Hong KongAos seminary journals, which deal with postmodernism, have been affirmative and appreciative,11 thus encouraging Chinese Christians to For an introduction to, and an evangelical response to postmodern hermeneutic, cf.
Kevin Vanhoozer.
Is There A Meaning in This Text? The Bible.
The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
More obvious examples include the following: CAU <OyNN AuA AoUaInAy sAneioEs>U AOAeOOAUU sAu O1998 7uOOU23-42 uyeAEUAOyAoENUAUOoUAeuoU1997Ou uIUAOaONU aUOoEuasAyAOUAOAeAU.
AuO1994 aOu yeAEUAOnNuU u uNUONNUeOacAOU AOAeAUU3u .
Uiu AOyAoENUAUUA2351AC Few are articles which take a critical stance toward postmodern One such is Dr.
Wai-Yee NgAos work.
AuAoText and InterpretationAo under the Influence of Postmodernism,Ay CGST Journal.
Issue 22 (January 1.
, 97-119.
In it she introduced the view of E.
Hirsch.
The English abstract states: AuAs postmodern hermeneutics swamps biblical scholarship with various reader-response and text-centred theories, many Jurnal Amanat Agung follow this global trend.
This is a serious development.
May the Chinese church wake up.
It is reasonable to critique the modernist exaltation of reason .
s postmodernists have don.
However, in the past 300 years, a good number of evangelical Protestant theologians have offered thoroughgoing critique of the EnlightenmentAos blind confidence in Not all Protestants have blindly believed in the human mind! Critics of the autonomous human mind include Abraham Kuyper, theologian, founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands at the turn of the 20th century.
Cornelius Van Til, 12 the late professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary.
Carl Henry has also critiqued modern theology in his God.
Revelation and Authority.
13 It is unfortunate that contemporary evangelicals are following the lead of postmodern thinkers to critique the so-called AulogocentrismAy .
uilding theological systems on blind faith in the existence of absolute.
in Christian In fact, evangelical theologians can learn a lot by emulating Kuyper.
Van Til and Carl Henry, because years ago, they have warned that building oneAos philosophy or theology on the foundation of the autonomous reason .
e, the way of modernit.
is a dead-end street.
What is so difficult to understand is, when the nihilist deconstructionists have critiqued modernity, evangelicals then follow the post- evangelicals embrace the view of E.
Hirsch on Authe validity of Ay Hirsch argues that meaning does not exist outside human consciousness, and so a text cannot have meaning unless it is used or interpreted by men, and validity resides in the authorAos use, not the readerAos Much of HirschAos theory has to do with the delimitation of this valid meaning, which he claims to be determinable and reproducibleAy .
Such bold critiques of postmodern hermeneutics, as Dr.
Ng has done, are rare in the Chinese church.
Van TilAos writings have been collected in The Works of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1997 (CD Ro.
Eric Sigward, editor.
Labels Army Co.
Visit:
6 vols.
(Wheaton.
Il.
: Crossway Books, 1.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture modernists! (I would like to bring up a different, but related point here: There are theologians who call themselves AuevangelicalAy but have been immersed in existentialist philosophy and BarthAos neoorthodox theology.
they are having a very difficult time critiquing postmodern hermeneutics, even though they know that there is something evil in postmodern deconstructionism.
This is because one kind of humanism cannot critique another effectively! When one has succumbed to the autonomy of man, one cannot accuse someone else of doing the same thing.
(See various Chinese theological It is an urgent task for the evangelical church to declare and defend the adequacy of language in GodAos revelation.
There are some theologians who are working in this direction.
The 500-year AumodernAy period has ended.
We are in the postmodern period in history.
There was one the AuDark AgesAy in Europe.
during that time, monks in IrelandAos monasteries copied, preserved, and transmitted the Bible, so that Europe could learn how to read, how to farm, and how to read the Bible.
Today in the new Dark Ages, we need the monks and nuns of the 21st century, who would defend the adequacy of language in revelation.
the clarity of GodAos revelation.
biblical use of the .
the biblical idea of truth.
and a Bible-based epistemology.
It is high time that the church return to the orthodox, historic biblical faith! The Meaning of the Inerrancy of Scripture The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy published the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1978.
Rev.
and Mrs.
Ting Wu Lee and Dr.
Luke Lu retranslated this document into Chinese.
merits our careful study.
For some Christians who are not used to reading creedal statements, it would take 3-4 readings before we can grasp the meaning of this document.
We will briefly outline the orthodox doctrine of Scripture, and then point out some implica-tions of confessing inerrancy today.
Jurnal Amanat Agung General Revelation Scripture declares that all men know God, because God has revealed through the things that are made, and in the human heart.
However man, in his ungodliness and unrighteousness has suppressed the truth, and turned to worship the creature rather than the Creator.
Thus, manAos hearts have been blinded.
Concrete (Specia.
Revelation in History God has decreed in eternity, that he would reveal himself and his way to eternal life to mankind.
God concretely, objectively, directly entered into time and space .
, and revealed himself through dreams, visions, miracles, angels, etc.
, and through his spokesmen, prophets and apostles.
Thus God revealed himself through events and through words.
Some non-evangelical scholars believe that God revealed himself only through events, not through words.
However, we clearly see in the Bible, that GodAos AuactsAy and GodAos AuwordsAy work together, and interpret each other.
Inscripturation (Inspiratio.
God decreed that he would put his revelation .
ncluding both events and word.
into writing, through inspiration.
The result of this act of inscripturation is the Bible, which is GodAos Word itself.
All Scripture is inspired (God-breathe.
every word, every part is inspired by God.
This does not mean that every time when God inspires Scripture, he uses the human authors like secretaries, in something like giving dictation.
It is not necessary for us to believe The Holy Spirit sovereignly guides not only the very words which were put into writing.
under his rule and guidance, he also superintended the birth, upbringing, background, education, experiences, temper-ament, writing style and even the mood and immediate context of every author.
It is not just the words which were the work of the Holy Spirit! We believe that the process of inspiration itself is mostly a mystery .
hat is, exactly how did the Holy Spirit caused the Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture words to be written down by the human autho.
However we believe that, the process of writing, and every factor surrounding the writing of Scripture, is under the sovereign rule of the Holy Spirit.
Nothing happened by chance! Infallibility and Inerrancy Scripture, thus inspired .
reathed ou.
by the Holy Spirit, is infallible .
t cannot contain mistake.
and inerrant .
t does not contain The Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms, not only in matters of doctrine .
and life .
ethics or sanctificatio.
, but also in matters of history and science.
The inerrancy of Scripture refers to the original copies .
however, to the extent that translations and versions of the Bible faithfully renders the meaning of the original, they should be regarded as the Word of God.
The Witness of the Spirit The Holy Spirit does not stop working with inspiration.
witnesses with and by the Bible.
this is the inward testimony of the Spirit of which the Westminster Confession speaks.
God is Canon The Holy Spirit kept the church, so that each New Testament book was, upon completion, read and recognized as Scripture (God is canon: the basis of canon is in the work of the Spiri.
Preservation by the Spirit The Holy Spirit is sovereign over history.
under his supervision.
Scripture has been preserved, and translated into many languages of the world.
Illumination by the Spirit According to GodAos pleasure, the Holy Spirit enlightens a sinnerAos mind, and opens his heart, so that he understands the truths Jurnal Amanat Agung in Scripture, and surrenders himself under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
On the basis of this Audoctrine of Scripture,Ay we can see that the inerrancy of Scripture is based on the fact that the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Thus, inerrancy is an integral, indispensable part of an orthodox doctrine of Scripture.
(See The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
The Implications of the Inerrancy of Scripture Now let us see what are the implications for believing in the inerrancy of Scripture.
A Responsibility for Confessing Our Faith Confessing in the inspiration, inerrancy, clarity and authority of Scripture is the responsibility of every pastor, teacher and Christian (I Timothy 6:.
All theological research should begin with faith in the content of faith (Scriptur.
Evangelical scholarship is not for scholarshipAos sake.
we must not follow secular trends, adoring and importing the latest fads in western scholarship .
ncluding both western and anti-western trends from the wes.
Theologians and theological educators must be highly conscious that they are churchmen first, academics second.
they are responsible to, and accountable before God and before the church.
Cf.
Norman Shepherd.
AuScripture and Confession,Ay Scripture and Confession: A Book About Confessions Old And New, ed.
John H.
Skilton.
Nutley, (NJ: P & R Publishing Co.
, 1.
, 1-30.
In his book Truth and Power J.
Packer reminds us.
AuAthe critical approach is nowadays an accepted convention of professional biblical scholarshipAWhereas biblical infallibility was once a paradigm for Christian scholars in all fields, biblical fallibility is the accepted paradigm today.
(Truth and Power, original edition, 47.
[Downers Grove.
IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1.
, .
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture A Renewed Emphasis on Propositional Revelation Today the Chinese theological world has been deeply impacted by the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard .
and Karl Barth .
eo-orthodox.
Over against this secularizing and humanizing trend, the Chinese church must re-assert her belief in Auprepositional Ay Some Chinese authors and thinkers today, who became Christians in mid-life after a career immersed in Confucianist and Taoist philosophy .
ome grew up in Hong Kong, others in mainland Chin.
are arguing, in agreement with the liberals of an earlier generation .
Zia.
Cha.
, that the Bible should not be systematized into doctrines.
They say that the Christian faith is not a matter of propositions, but rather relationships in life, or a matter of mysteries which can only be grasped through faith and intuition, not through reason.
Even Professor Kevin Vanhoozer, who has done a through study of postmodernism and provided a gracious, positive evangelical response, does not believe that the word AuinerrancyAy is In an interview with Christianity Today magazine, he said that the word AuinerrancyAy is not big enough:
In many ways, he says, evangelical theology with its emphasis on prepositional truth and law is a step-child of the Enlightenment.
AuIAom not denying inerrancy, but itAos not big enough.
Ay It offers only a partial rendering of the whole picture of biblical truth, compared to the wideness of ScriptureAos narrative, song, poetry, and aphorism.
AoWe are trying to get away from an idea of language simply picturing the world.
A promise, for example, has a much more complicated relationship to the self and others.
You can become a positivist, but why? Vanhoozer uses music as an analogy to suggest that we need a larger concept of Autruth.
Ay His interviewer quotes him:
Tim StaffordAos interview.
AuKevin Vanhoozer: Creating a Theological Symphony,Ay Christianity Today.
February 8, 1999, 38-40.
Jurnal Amanat Agung AoBrahms says a lot, but if you try to sum it up in a proposition, the way we often try to sum up the Bible in a proposition, you lose so much.
My early work with music and mission has helped me to see the same problem in other areas of theology.
Ao VanhoozerAos hope: to capture the fullness of truth, not losing something in the translation.
In an academic world skeptical of any truth, he wants to show that the true, the good, and the beautiful still have meaning in Christ.
do that means expanding beyond the categories recognized by Enlightenment rationalism.
Vanhoozer thinks, in musical terms, of AupolyphonyAy Ae many voices creating one music.
He hopes for something Aoakin to the Reformation, in which the church recovers the literature of the Bible, and has what Lewis calls a baptism of our VanhoozerAos agenda is to respond to postmodernism .
specially to Jacques Derrid.
He gave up his teaching position to return to teach and do research at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
this is indeed good news for evangelicalism.
However, his antagonism toward inerrancy, and toward prepositional revelation, is a great loss to evangelical theology.
As we said above, the Bible itself contains propositions as well as non-propositional .
oetic, etc.
) revelation.
need not, we should not choose between the two.
To be sure, there are portions of poetry, proverbs, parables and prayers in Scripture.
However Scripture also contains historical accounts, epistles, sermons and doctrinal .
Some leaders in the Chinese church who are engaged in cultural dialogue want to appear less offensive to non-Christian (Confucianis.
they attempt to dialogue with Chinese people who think in the AuChinese wayAy .
Aucircular way to think,Ay according to one Christian This AuChinese way to thinkAy means that the search for truth is part of the knowledge of truth.
According to such thinkers, the entire Bible is made to be non-propositional.
This amounts to a great disrespect or irreverence toward the Bible.
These thinkersAo intention is to lessen the resistance of traditional Chinese to the Gospel.
we can Tim Stafford.
AuKevin Vanhoozer,Ay 40.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture understand this intention.
However, the strategy adopted may be futile from the start.
God has revealed himself in propositions in Scripture, using spiritual words .
ords inspired by the Holy Spiri.
to convey spiritual truths (I Corinthians 2:.
! The Basis for Confessing the Inerrancy of Scripture We believe that Scripture is inerrant, because the Lord Jesus Christ confessed his full confidence in the Old Testament Scriptures.
This is certainly true.
John Stott and J.
Packer .
s well as many other British Inter-Varsity author.
have appealed to the authority of Christ himself, to establish the authority of Scripture.
We certainly would not discount the significance .
r centrality!) of ChristAos testimony and obedience to the Old Testament.
However.
ChristAos witness to Scripture is not the entire foundation for the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy.
The Westminster Assembly declares in the Westminster Confession of Faith .
: AuAour full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof .
, the Scripture.
, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
Ay18 The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible.
he inspired its He continues to witness in, with and through the Bible (Isaiah 55:8-.
Therefore our belief in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture is built on the prior assurance given by the Holy Spirit.
Concerning the rejection of AuprepositionalAy way of thinking on the part of contemporary Chinese Christian thinkers with a ConfucianistTaoist background, cf.
Thomas In-seng Leung.
AuTheological Reflection on the Chinese ContextAy .
hong guo chu jing di shenxue fanxin.
, in Ji du jiao yu zhong guo wen hua geng xin yan tao hui hui bao (A Compendium of the Conference on Christianity and the Renewal of Chinese Cultur.
Sharon Wai-man Chan, ed.
, (Argyle.
TX: Great Commission Center, 2.
, 151-158.
Also see the response by Ka-lun Leung.
AuA Response to the Theological Reflection on the Chinese Context,Ay 159-162.
Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:5.
Jurnal Amanat Agung The witness of the Holy Spirit is both invisible and visible .
The latter dimension includes the following:
The Old TestamentAos witness to the Old Testament The Old TestamentAos witness to the New Testament ChristAos witness to the Old Testament Christ commissions the witnesses for the New Testament .
he apostle.
The New TestamentAos witness to the Old Testament The New TestamentAos witness to the New Testament .
he apostles to each othe.
In light of this, the testimony and obedience of Christ to Scripture is a most important and central part of the Holy SpiritAos witness to Scripture, but it is not its entirety.
As we seek to build our doctrine of Scripture on Scripture, let us not fall into a kind of Christomonism.
Receiving All Forms of Scriptural Language The types of language used by the Holy Spirit in Scripture, being tools in the hands of the Spirit of God, are not options for human choice.
If we pick and choose which forms of language to prefer, we rob Scripture of GodAos own authority.
Some Chinese theologians .
n Hong Kong as well as oversea.
, having received advanced training in Britain or Europe, are highly resistant of what we have traditionally called the Auforensic languageAy and Aucommer-cial languageAy used in Scripture.
they regard these .
ransom, satisfaction, etc.
) as western cultural baggage.
They feel that these are impediments toward the development of an authentic Chinese theology.
They are leading the Chinese church to alter the For the self-witness of Scripture, see John Murray.
AuThe Attestation of Scripture,Ay in The Infallible Word: A Symposium by Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.
, 1.
, 1-54.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture content of the gospel message, emphasizing themes such as reconciliation relationship .
between heaven and mankind, a sense of being accepted, and inner healing.
I am not opposed to emphasizing such themes as found in the Bible.
Whatever the Bible emphasizes, we should emphasize.
However, themes such as justification, substitutionary atonement, propitiation .
ppeasing the FatherAos wrat.
, ransom.
GodAos wrath and judgment are not western cultural baggage! These are part of GodAos revelation in Scripture! What right do we have to arbitrarily discard them?21 If we say that, in the past the church did not emphasize grace and AuqingAy .
, the resurrection, and Auhealing,Ay and that contemporary men and women are in great need of grace, this is quite However, it is unconscion-able to take what is clearly taught in Scripture, and call it western cultural baggage! Thus, to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture involves accepting all the forms of language used, and all concepts taught in Scripture.
The Unity of Progressive Revelation Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture must involve a firm belief in both progressive revelation and the unity of revelation.
Biblical scholars and theologians who compromise the inerrancy of Scripture, very often divide Scripture into mutually contradictory parts.
We give some examples:
Enoch Wan provides a summary view from this standpoint: cf.
AuPractical Contextualization: A Case study of Evangelizing Contemporary Chinese,Ay Chinese Around the World (March 2.
, 18-24.
Cf.
John Murray.
Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Chinese translation: Hong Kong.
Tien Dao, 1.
Murray offers succinct definitions of some of the great terms used in Scripture to describe GodAos work of salvation.
The Chinese edition of the New Bible Dictionary was based on the 2nd edition of the English.
in both the 1 edition .
2, preferred by the present write.
and the 2 , there are many solid articles on God, his revelation and his work of Jurnal Amanat Agung One evangelical feminist theologian, in her defense of womenAos ordination, pitched the teaching of Jesus against the teaching of Paul.
22 This is in fact quite common among biblical scholars today.
Other scholars pitch the four gospels against each other.
In a very appreciative tone.
Christianity Today magazine interviewed several Aunew theologiansAy in 1999.
In addition to Kevin Vanhoozer .
hom we discussed abov.
, also featured was Dr.
Richard Hays (Professor of New Testament.
The Divinity School.
Duke Universit.
Hays was very brave to critique Yale professor.
John Boswell.
he said that the latterAos interpretation of Romans is a Autextbook example of bad exegesis.
Ay While still young and relatively unknown.
Hays took on Yale UniversityAos John Boswell, famous for his scholarly vindication of homosexuality in Scripture.
Hays politely demolished BoswellAos progay interpretation of Romans 1 as a textbook example of bad Cf.
Alvira MickelsonAos chapter in Women in Ministry: Four Views, eds.
Bonnidell Clouse and Robert G.
Clouse (Downers Grove.
IL: IVP.
She articulates the following heremeneutic principle:
Aidentify the highest norms or standards taught in the Bible.
AOld and New Testament commands that, if applied today, would be contrary to these basic Auhighest standardsAy so clearly taught by Jesus and Paul, must be carefully examined to see whether they are Auregulations for people where they wereAy because of some local or temporary situationAy .
Mickelson is also opposed to what she calls Aupropositional exegesis:Ay Propositional exegesis .
sserting a proposition and then searching for support by selective literalism and Aureading into the textA.
has used the Bible to prove almost anything the interpret has chosenAy .
With such principles of interpretation.
Mickelson can choose her Aubasic principlesAy according to her own preference.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture The late Doctor Boswell huffily refused to respond, refused even to speak to Hays.
Hays may be considered conservative as he critiqued the Auhermeneutics of suspicion.
Ay Hays was perhaps even more audacious in a paper he presented at the 1996 conference of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in New Orleans, for it took on one of the darlings of modern academia, the Auhermeneutic of suspicion.
Ay The hermeneutic of suspicion is the cornerstone of much modern scholarship in that it suggests that nothing can be taken at face value.
It follows the Aumasters of suspicionAy Ae Marx.
Nietzsche.
Freud, and more recent French postmodernists like Foucault Ae in seeking to unmask the strategy of power that allegedly lies behind every text.
The Bible, for example, offers itself as a divine message of liberating love, but a suspicious reading might discover that the BibleAos talk of a supernatural realm actually masks a desire to pacify or distract people so that they can be more easily oppressed.
In his paper, later published in the Christian Century.
Hays admitted that suspicion is a useful tool.
He wondered, however, why scholars had come to be endlessly suspicious of the text and not at all suspicious of themselves.
Why were they so Auremarkably credo-lous about the claims of .
heir ow.
experienceAy? He cited feminist critic Elisabeth Schyssler Fiorenza, who seeks to use AuwomenAos own experience and vision of liberationAy as a norm for assessing the Bible.
What use.
Hays asked, was a critique that never seemed to actually listen to the Bible and allow it to critique us? His paper called for a Auhermeneutic of trustAy like that which Paul sued as he read the Old Testament Scriptures.
Taking his argument to its ultimate, provoca- Tim Stafford.
AuThe New Theologians: These Top Scholars Are Believers Who Want to Speak To the Church,Ay Christianity Today.
February 8, 1999, 30-31.
Jurnal Amanat Agung tive extreme.
Hays asked scholars to approach Scripture as sinners Ae as those who Auhave filth in their souls.
Ay Hays received a standing ovation from over two hundred scholars at the Society for Biblical Literature.
AuThe response was stunning to me,Ay Hays remembers.
Aua standing ovation from a crowd of two or three hundred people.
I donAot think it was because it was such a brilliant paper.
I think it was that I had articulated a deep longing of a lot of people in the guild to recover the capacity to hear the word of God in the text.
Ay25 However.
Christianity Today tells us that Hays believes that there are conflicts between the gospels: He resists, however, any attempt to harmonize the divergent views of New Testament That sometimes means he sets one Gospel at odds with another, even concluding that one is historically inaccurate when it seems to run contrary to another.
The interviewer also tells us that Hays does not like to use the term Auinerrancy:Ay He is not in tune with an understanding of Scripture as inerrant, not because he has trouble believing in miracles or obeying scriptural commands, but because he thinks inerrancy as a theory tends to blind one to the realities of the texts themselves.
Failure to believe in the unity of revelation in Scripture is a tremensdous deviance in the evangelical faith! Recent books on how to study the Bible often only contains chapters which deal with the various genres of Scripture.
Gradually, general principles of interpretation .
uch as the inspiration of Tim Stafford.
AuRichard Hays: Recovering the Bible for the Church,Ay Christianity Today.
February 8, 1999, 33.
Tim Stafford.
AuThe New Theologians,Ay 30.
Tim Stafford.
AuRichard Hays.
Ay Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture Scripture and the necessary guidance by the Holy Spiri.
are disappearing .
ections such as in Norton Sterrett.
How to Understand Your Bible, or A.
Stibbs.
Understanding the Word of Go.
This contemporary phenomenon gives the possible impression that there is great divergence .
nd possibly contradictio.
between the various genres of Scripture.
Where are the 21st century authors who would proclaim and teach the unity of revelation? A Warning against Exaggerating the Text-Context Relationship We must resist an excessive and erroneous overemphasis on the dialectical relationship between text and context.
To be sure, an adequate understanding of a portion of Scripture must involve knowledge of the historical and cultural background of the text.
However we must not follow the lead of church leaders such as Shoki Coe, of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches, who taught as early as 1972, that the context is the social reality of the Auoppression of the poor.
Ay Coe, who virtually coined the term Aucontextualization,Ay used a Marxian epistemology to build his interpretation of Scripture.
if we do not understand that the poor are oppressed, we cannot truly understand the Bible.
Is the hermeneutic of the Chinese evangelical church today guilty of Marxian epistemology also? An overemphasis on the AucontextAy can also be seen in the paperback.
Leading Bible Discussions by J.
Nyquist (Chinese translation: ni ye neng dai ling cha jin.
This was Aurequired readingAy for all who would learn how to lead small group Bible study in the 1960s and 1970s.
All who have gone through this kind of training knows that there are three steps to inductive study: observe, interpret, and In the early 1990s.
I bought copies of the book for a training class, and was shocked to discover that the AuInterpretAy section had been totally rewritten! The older version leads the reader to identify the key words in the passage.
are there any words which are repeated? These words Jurnal Amanat Agung are to be written out, and any order or sequence in the authorAos argument should be detected.
Is there a progression of thought? Are there any contrasts or comparisons in the passage? However, the newer version leaders the reader to study the historical and cultural context of the passage, and to read the entire book .
pistle, gospel, ) as a whole! Detailed analysis of the words and arguments of a passage is no longer emphasized.
This book is published by the major Anglo-American publisher.
Inter Varsity Press.
What happened? Could it be that Inter Varsity no longer believes that a detailed study of the words of each passage is necessary in Bible study? Or could it be, that IVP no longer believes that college students today have this ability to read, analyze and synthesize? Or could it be, that IVP editors have accepted contemporary theories of interpretation, and adopted the view that the meaning of Scripture can only be ascertained by the larger historical, cultural and textual context, but not from the individual words of the text themselves? Leading New Testament scholar Gordon Fee is a co-author of the popular book.
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.
He believes that the meaning of the text is the meaning which it had for the original hearers and readers of Scripture, in the generation when Scripture was written.
If we push such concepts to their logical conclusion, would the church, in the not so distant future, reject the belief that every passage of Scripture contains timeless, eternal teaching? Context must not usurp the authority of Scripture itself! A Reaffirmation of the Propriety of AuTruthAy We have mentioned how Kevin Vanhoozer opposes the term AuinerrancyAy because it does not give a large enough picture of truth .
ee IV2,) In a desire to dialogue with contemporary post-moderns, he expands the concept of truth to include the complex relationship of language with the self and with others.
We can understand his However, an alteration of the traditional concept of truth.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture just to please contemporary people, may be too high a price to pay.
To be sure, the Bible does not only speak to the human mind.
are narratives, parables, poetry and lyrics in the Bible, which have divine power to speak to the human heart.
We can say that: the Bible, the Word of God is God himself speaking.
As far as cognitive truth is concerned, the Bible is absolutely infallible and inerrant.
far as moral righteousness is concerned.
GodAos revelation in the Bible is absolutely lofty, holy and upright.
As far as the beauty and glory are concerned, the sublime perfection of the Bible comes from GodAos own character.
AuTruthAy and AuinerrancyAy are attributes of God, thus attributes of his Word.
The Bible is absolutely holy, righteous and glory.
We need to uphold the Bible, and give a renewed emphasis on all its perfections.
The Westminster Confession describes the perfections of the Bible this way:
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend esteem of the Holy Scripture.
And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole .
hich is, to give all glory to Go.
, the full discovery it makes of the only way of manAos salvation, the many other incomparable excellen27 cies, and the entire perfection thereofA Therefore we do not need to alter or AuexpandAy the concept of AutruthAy as historically used.
this would lead to confused thinking.
It is a hindrance to a proper understanding of the very words used in Scripture.
Vanhoozer is representative of many philosophers and theologians today who wish to dialogue with postmoderns and In so doing, they have adopted postmodern I would like to seriously question this strategy: can we Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:5.
Jurnal Amanat Agung adopt all vocabulary from contemporary thought uncritically? Can we ignore the special meanings of words which the Holy Spirit used in the Bible, which he inspired? As we converse with contemporary thinkers, is it not our duty and privilege to show them the BibleAos concepts of truth, language, and text? There are many dimensions to the attributes of God.
glory of Scripture, likewise, is a many-splendored thing.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches:
Who is God? God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and Scripture is inerrant, because it is unchanging truth.
orthodox doctrine of Scripture is not only concerned about its inerrancy.
There are several other important declarations, such as:
The necessity for Scripture The apostolicity of Scripture (New Testamen.
The infallibility of Scripture The perspicuity .
of Scripture The sufficiency of Scripture The authority of Scripture Each of these truths need to be highlighted anew today, so that Christians may truly understand, love, revere, obey, and proclaim the Word of God! These seven considerations point out the implications of the doctrine of inerrancy of scripture.
Today we face a global crisis in the ideas of proposition, truth, didactic language in Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Question 4.
Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture Scripture, and the unity of Scripture are not something which the church can ignore any more.
Theological educators must give renewed emphasis to these, so that pastors and teachers are trained who have convictions Ae biblical convictions about the Bible! Applications of the Doctrine of The Inerrancy of Scripture We face a massive confusion in thinking today.
The church must return to a high esteem and consistent use of GodAos Word.
This article deals with contemporary views of the Bible, and reaffirms the doctrine of inerrancy.
it is not within the scope of this article to discuss how to build healthy churches.
However we offer a few suggestions for church leaders who are serious about the Bible:
Systematic Expository Preaching The Lord Jesus Christ established preaching as an ordinance to proclaim the whole counsel of God.
Pastors must not abandon systematic, expository preaching of the Bible, in order to adapt to secular trends, or to hope for faster church growth or Authe healing of Ay Often, stories and topical speaking have taken the place of careful exposition.
As we look across the Chinese church, we find many hungry and thirsty souls, eager to be fed with solid food.
Where are the shepherds equal to the task? Systematic Teaching.
Sunday School classes.
Bible study groups, cell groups and fellowships should not neglect the book-by-book, as well as topical study of the Bible.
I personally recommend that over 50% of programs should be focused on the serious, prayerful study of Scripture.
Theological Education and Theological Reeducation Pastors, evangelists and seminary professors have issued the call at conferences and conventions, and Christians have responded by dedicating their lives to full time ministry.
Three and four years in Jurnal Amanat Agung seminary are a very precious investment of time.
they pass quickly.
When Chinese seminary students graduate, have they increased in their confidence in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible? Or rather has their faith in the Bible decreased? Some seminary graduates have begun to doubt the Bible! Seminary administrators and professors need to re-think how to deepen studentsAo convictions concerning Scripture.
It is true that convictions arenAot everything.
seminary education should build up a studentAos spiritual disciplines, church experience, and exposition of Scripture .
sing original language tool.
However, a dynamic faith and full confidence in the Bible are also virtues which must be part of the character of a minister of the Word! What is the seminary doing to nurture and develop this? Do seminary professors today have a full confidence in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible? How is this confidence expressed in the instruction? How can we deepen the professorsAo convictions concerning the Bible? It is high time to re-think and reform Chinese theological education.
A Renewed Understanding of AuSpiritualityAy Since the Bible is verbally inspired and inerrant, it should rightfully exercise its authority on the believerAos heart and lifestyle.
Christians today are exposed to various AubrandsAy of spirituality, such as: Auopening our heartsAy .
hang kai xin lin.
, contemplation .
e gua.
, or the more traditional Auhigher lifeAy .
ei ling, ling min.
Some of the basic concepts in the Bible merits vigorous study and practice by the church today:
The fear of God Worshipping God Thankfulness to God Identifying with GodAos holiness and holy jealousy toward sin Contentment in GodAos abundant fullness Trust in God Confessing the Innerancy of Scripture Pursuing God Submission under God Words are important.
names are not meaningless.
We should seek the true meaning of Auour relationship with the Lord Jesus ChristAy from the Bible, not just from the experts.
Let us measure our experience by the Bible.
Our experience is not the standard for measuring the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
only the Bible is.
The Pursuit of Reading.
Analysis and Meditation We live in a time of civilization decline.
As the church seeks to teach and proclaim the Bible, she must at the same time teach her members how to read and study GodAos Word.
She must provide instruction in meditating and memorizing Scripture.
This is a matter of disciplining the heart, and a discipline in using the mind which is being sanctified by the Holy Spirit! Since the early 1980s, the ability of young people to read, analysis and synthesize texts has been in steady decline.
The responsibility of Christian education .
hether in Christian schools or in the churc.
is tremendous.
My plea is: AuThe goal and task of Christian education is education itself! May GodAos Word increase, like it did in the 16th century.
may GodAos children truly understand GodAos Word.
may true, biblical education spread, and may societyAos morals and manners improve, to the glory of God.