Can a church really just be two guys talking about God over a beer? How about 4 people in a house (without beer)? There is a lot of talk these day about completely redefining what church is and is not. This is both good and bad, but can leave ambiguity. I would encourage you to check out this great post from James White called "When is something the church."
I had the privilege of hearing Dr. James White give an excellent lab presentation at the Catalyst conference this year. In case you don't know who he is, Dr. White is the new President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (by the way, what a great choice!). He clearly understands the current state of the church, the post-modern culture we are surrounded by and the struggle for the former to make an impact upon the latter. Anyway, he writes a bi-weekly update called Serious Times that is always thought-provoking. The one I received yesterday was no exception! Dr. White writes about the inerrancy of scripture and defends it...against Christians! I believe it's such a great piece that I have decided to reproduce it here (WITHOUT permission). It's a little lengthy, but well worth the read:
The
Stupidity of Inerrancy and a Long Winter
The words jumped off the
test page. In answering a question related to the inerrancy of Scripture, one
of my students wrote, “it’s a stupid word, and a stupid
idea.”
Stupid? What makes it seem
so stupid? And why is this student not alone? If you haven’t noticed,
increasing numbers of young evangelicals are distancing themselves from one of
evangelicalism’s bedrock ideas.
As my friend David Dockery
has written, inerrancy is "the idea that when all the facts are known, the Bible
(in its autographs, that is, the original documents), properly interpreted in
light of the culture and the means of communication that had developed by the
time of its composition, is completely true in all that it affirms, to the
degree of precision intended by the author's purpose, in all matters relating to
God and His creation." Something
along these lines needs to flow from the idea of “inspiration.”
So what’s not to
like?
Some don’t like the
qualifications definitions like this contain, and would prefer simply saying
it’s inspired. But today’s pluralistic milieu demands a carefully nuanced and
explained presentation of what we mean by inspiration, and if true, what we mean
by the Bible being true. Else we fall into the hands of those who continue to
caricature Bible believers as those who “take it literally” and then caricature
“taking it literally” as reading the game of tennis into the sentence, “Joseph
served in Pharaoh’s court.”
Others dismiss inerrancy on
the grounds of the postmodern dismissal of all things Enlightenment, suggesting
that the question of the nature of truth is no longer relevant. Mistaken as I
think this dismissal would be, I think we’re getting warmer - but I don’t think
that’s the heart of the matter.
My own sense is that young
evangelicals have breathed in deeply the air of our culture, and specifically
caught a cold from the sneezes of the media, which has long equated
fundamentalism with intolerance, evangelicals with fundamentalism, and inerrancy
with evangelicals. In a day when young Christians seem desperate to have their
faith find a foothold in cultural acceptance, finding more security and
self-esteem aligning with Bono over Bonhoeffer, there is a conscious distancing
from anything – including key doctrinal ideas - that culture may have
successfully caricatured.
If this thesis is true, it
is a profound dynamic to consider, and inerrancy will not be the last doctrine
to fall. Indeed, in light of the National Study of Youth and Religion,
conducted from 2001 to 2005 and perhaps the largest research project on the
religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents, it will only be the
beginning. While the vast majority of U.S. teenagers identified themselves as
Christian, the “language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin,
grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell
appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States..., to be supplanted
by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward.”
Principal investigator Christian Smith writes, “It is not so much that U.S.
Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either
degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly,
Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different
religious faith.”
And what is lost?
Orthodoxy, many of us would argue. Not to mention impact. As Carl F.H. Henry
once wrote, no “movement can dramatically affect the course of the world while
its own leaders undermine the integrity of its charter documents." But I also
sense another loss, one that many of these young men and women may not sense.
To borrow from C.S. Lewis, people are left with a faith where it is always
winter, but never Christmas. While it may seem helpful to speak of such
epistemologically anchorless exercises as “journey” and “dialogue,” we must
never fall prey to having such endeavors be an end to themselves. As G.K.
Chesterton once famously reminded H.G. Wells, “the object of opening the mind,
as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something
solid.”
As I interact with men and
women in their teens and twenties, I sense this void more than ever. They sense
it, too, but aren’t aware of its source. There is an ironic longing for
absolutes in a day of relativism; a desire for certainty – for true truth, to
use Francis Schaeffer’s terms – in an atmosphere of skepticism and doubt.
So is inerrancy a “stupid
word, and a stupid idea”?
It depends on how long you
like your winters.
James Emery
White
If you'd like to subscribe to the Serious Times updates click here.
OK, I am not endorsing or supporting any PHYSICAL violence...after all both of these men have challenged and encouraged me in different areas of thinking through their books and teachings. However Rob Bell of Mars Hill in Grandville, MI and Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill in Seattle, WA (while having the same name for their churches) approach the emergent/emerging "conversation" in some very different ways. Wouldn't it be amazing to hear these 2 very influential church leaders debate some key issues of theology and missiology that we hear them individually address? Here is what I am thinking: Rob is touring the US on his "Everything Is Spiritual" tour. Maybe Mark could join forces and co-headline the tour (tentatively entitled "No It's Not!"). Each could have their individual prepared presentations and the final event could be a free-for-all VERBAL CAGE MATCH where they both jump in the ring and have a theological spar. I would shell out MAD CASH to witness this as I think it would help bring further clarity to the issues in my own mind. I'm aware of 1 Tim 1:4 so we'd have to put a time limit on it so it technically wouldn't be "endless." Who do you think would win?!?
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