Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. Similar to probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast, I grew up in a pretty conservative environment, like a standard evangelical Christian family. And I wouldn't have considered it at the time because I always looked at people, you know, you compare yourself to other people and, you know, you're perfect. You're you're like Goldilocks, so you're just right. Whereas, when you look at other people, they're either crazy one way or the other.

Derek: 00:57

So when I was growing up, I would not have considered myself a fundamentalist Christian. But I guess from a from a, like, technical standpoint, when you think about the fundamentals that came out in what, like the the early nineteen hundreds, I guess technically, I was a fundamentalist. You know, so that's probably like five five key ideas. I think that was what the fundamentals centered around, right? These these five key ideas.

Derek: 01:25

You've got inerrancy, which in a lot of lists that you look at comes first, right? And and it also like some of these terms, it depends on how you define it because some lists will say, like, the elevated scriptures, right, like, considering that scripture is really high in importance and other groups will use inerrancy. But I think technically, like, inerrancy is the the idea that most fundamentalists go with here. Right? So inerrancy, the virgin birth of Jesus, atonement, and I see some lists, they they say substitutionary atonement.

Derek: 02:01

So your view of the atonement is is a part of fundamentalism. The bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the fact that miracles and the supernatural exist. So that would exclude, like, you know, deists like Thomas Jefferson who cut out a bunch of miraculous portions of scripture, and probably they put that in there, which seems kind of redundant because inerrancy, the virgin birth, bodily resurrection, those all three of those are like miraculous supernatural things. Right? But anyway, that's kind of your your general list of what constituted at least the backbone of fundamentalism.

Derek: 02:42

If you look at a lot of various Christians, a lot of them would believe in most of those things, except for inerrancy and substitutionary atonements. They they would still believe in atonement, but, you know, different forms than maybe standard fundamentalists would believe in. In this episode, what I want to do is I want to just take one of these aspects of fundamentalism. I wanna take the idea of inerrancy, is the backbone to the backbone or the heart of kind of the fundamentalist list. Because like Calvin's tea in in the Tulip, like his total depravity, which if you take that for what Calvin said it was, then all of the rest of the things seem to fall into place.

Derek: 03:31

They they seem unavoidable. Then the same thing is sort of true with the fundamentalist list list. They would say, if you don't take inerrancy, you can't really stand on any of the other things because you don't believe what God said. Right? You can never know.

Derek: 03:48

Right? You can never have certainty or knowledge because you don't believe that that the words you get from the scripture are the very words of God. And so, inerrancy is is extremely important to to fundamentalist Christianity and many versions of evangelical Christianity today. So I've I've studied apologetics. I've, you know, I grew up in a Christian school, went to a Christian college, have a Bible minor, went through apologetics courses with my wife, didn't get a degree for it, but, you know, I was I I'm extremely self studied in this regard, and I have a ton of experience in the Christian community.

Derek: 04:26

And I've done a whole lot of thinking about this, which doesn't make me right on this stuff. But as as I'm going through this season, as I'm thinking through a lot of developments in the last couple years in my life, as I'm thinking about people deconstructing and I'm thinking about the apologetic sphere and just all of these things, I'm coming to realize that inerrancy is really a a very big example of what I would consider complexification that we're studying in this in this season. Right? Inerrancy is complexification. It is it is taking the simple way of God, it's taking the simple, and it's complexifying it, which comes with a whole host of issues as we've discussed.

Derek: 05:13

Namely, wherever you find complexification, it's generally because people are seeking power or the avoidance of the loss of control. And really, that's why I put this episode, this section of the season where I did. We are following a section of the season where we talked a lot about mammon, and in particular, we led that section of the season off with discussing the slave trade and mercantilism and all that stuff in the, you know, the fifteen hundreds and things, and how Christians were at the forefront of that. And we didn't dig too deeply into enslavement and all of the justifications for it, but at the backbone of the system of shadow slavery, you had Christians arguing from the Bible and it was actually it was the inerrantists who, you know, could say to the the progressives, hey, you're taking the Bible out of context. Hey, look at this.

Derek: 06:16

You know, the Bible says this, they had slaves back in Israel, so we can do it. Or whatever else, the curse of Ham, right? You don't take the Bible at face value. However they they termed that, inerrancy was used to prop up a system that was atrocious, horrendous, unjust, antithetical to the the way of God, unchristian. So don't think here that I'm just making some, you know, progressive liberal leap.

Derek: 06:47

Right? And I'm unchristian because I'm questioning inerrancy. This is something that we really need to deal with because inerrancy is wielded as a power play so so often whether people realize that's what they're doing or not. And if by being a progressive that means I am seeking justice, loving mercy, trying to walk humbly with God, then I'll take the label. So first of all, inerrancy.

Derek: 07:16

There are a lot of different iterations of inerrancy. If you look at technically what inerrancy means, like what people should mean by it, the vast majority of people should mean that there are no errors in the Bible in the original autographs. Okay? That would mean when Isaiah wrote on his scroll, there were no errors on there. But, obviously, that scroll has disappeared.

Derek: 07:45

There are scribes who have copied that since then, and then that has been translated into a lot of different languages. And even the English language has changed over time, over the last few hundred years. So that is what people should mean by inerrancy. But even a lot of pastors and certainly most lay people, when they hear the idea of inerrancy, what I I think most of them think is that there are no errors in the Bible whatsoever. Right?

Derek: 08:18

No historical or scientific errors and no grammatical errors, no, like, nothing. No errors whatsoever. And the problem with that, of course, is that this is just absolutely demonstrably false. Right? And it's not in in my scope here in this episode to show you, to demonstrate for you how this is false.

Derek: 08:44

Like, you can find that easily online. Now, granted, most of the errors that you will find really don't make any meaningful difference. And a lot of the a lot of the stuff, because we have so many variants, like, we know what the author was saying. So there is a felt need by the evangelical, by the fundamentalist community to preserve our faith, our ability to trust in God with this doctrine of inerrancy. They think it's it's really necessary to believe about God.

Derek: 09:24

And I wanna take a look at that today because I I've been thinking a lot about it over the last year or two especially, and I wanna explain to you why I think this is illegitimate and why I think it's it's comes from a harmful place. So let's go ahead and jump into my thoughts on this here. So as I was thinking about doctrine in general, like, what are the doctrines that we think you should have to hold to? I thought, of course, first to the the Nicene Creed, like one of our earliest, like, ecumenical sorts of creeds. So I want you to think about what the Nicene Creed says.

Derek: 10:03

You should you should go look it up and read it, but, essentially, I'm gonna distill this for you. I'm gonna break it down. At the Nicene Creed, here's here's essentially what it says. God is a creator. There's an uncreated son.

Derek: 10:19

This son, Jesus, He became incarnate. He did this. He he was born of a virgin. He was crucified and rose again. He ascended into heaven.

Derek: 10:31

He reigns at the right hand of God. He's going to judge. He sent the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit was sent. The church exists and is important. Baptism is something we should do, and the dead will one day be resurrected.

Derek: 10:48

Right? So if you think about these, all of these, most of these are essentially events or they are descriptions of who God is. God is a creator or right? That's who God is. Or God created.

Derek: 11:09

That's what God did. Right? The Son is uncreated, that's who He is. He was born of a virgin, that's what He did. He was crucified and rose again, that's what He did, like that's what happened.

Derek: 11:25

So essentially, the doctrines that are creedal, the doctrines that are very important for us to believe in, are doctrines of who and what. And if you look at how God describes himself in in the Old Testament, a lot of times when he comes to people, like when he comes to Israel, he says, I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Right? He uses what's all the time. I am the God of your father Jacob.

Derek: 11:55

I am who I am. Those are who's. Who am I? I am the God who is the savior, the, you know, the the overseer of your great great great great grandfather. Like, that's who I am.

Derek: 12:09

So who's and what's? That is is largely what our most important creeds are about. If you take a look at at some of these things and you break them apart, right, in the Nicene Creed, Jesus became incarnate. Okay? We have theology about how that happened, we call it the hypostatic union.

Derek: 12:32

I don't know if that's right, like, how that happened. I I don't I don't know how that worked. I just know that that Jesus did it. It's fun to talk about how he might have done it. Like how does God fuse divinity with humanity?

Derek: 12:44

I don't know. Right? Fun to talk about different theories. Great. But that doesn't matter.

Derek: 12:50

Like, God

Derek: 12:50

did it. That's what matters. That's what you need to believe. Jesus was born sinless. K?

Derek: 12:56

Maybe that was because he was born of a virgin, like that maybe that's why God had to have him born of a virgin. I don't know. We've got traducianism which says, yes, it was because he was born of a virgin because the male sperm actually carries the sin nature and so therefore, God had to cut the male out in order to to make Jesus sinless. I don't know. That seems kinda weird.

Derek: 13:18

Like, the sin nature is carried physically on like, is it in your DNA or something?

Derek: 13:23

Like, it's and it's only in male DNA? So then I don't know. That's just weird.

Derek: 13:31

And then there's creationism which says that no, God creates life anew, which a lot of fundamentalists don't like that either because, you know, there are implications for things like abortion and when does human life begin and all that kind of stuff.

Derek: 13:44

So there are all kinds of I don't know. I don't

Derek: 13:47

know if either of those are right or if one of those is right. But yeah, believe that Jesus was without sin. Okay? Right? The the what or the the who He is, not how did it happen.

Derek: 13:59

I believe that God is a creator. He created what He did and who He is, a creator. Did He create a young earth or an old earth? I don't know. Did He literally speak it into existence or is that story a arc, like a some narrative element used to just kind of describe how God created, but it wasn't He didn't really just like speak it into existence over six actual twenty four hour days.

Derek: 14:27

I don't know. It doesn't matter. God's the creator. He is a creator and He created all things. Okay.

Derek: 14:36

How God is the savior of people. How does He

Derek: 14:40

do that? Monergism, synergism? I don't know. But I know that God regenerates people. He's the God of He's the God who saves.

Derek: 14:48

I don't know how he does it, but he

Derek: 14:49

does it. Atonement, penal substitution, I don't know.

Derek: 14:54

Could be lots of other 10 different things that 10 different ideas about atonement that exist. I have no idea. And then the Holy Spirit was sent. That's what God did. He sent the Holy Spirit.

Derek: 15:08

The Holy Spirit has come. How did he do that? Did he come through God the Father or did he come through the Father and the Son, the Filioque? I don't know. But the whole church basically split and, you know, that was one of the main reasons the church split because they argued over how the holy holy spirit proceeds from God or from God and Jesus.

Derek: 15:30

How? I don't know, but

Derek: 15:32

the holy spirit proceeds. And see, that's

Derek: 15:34

the thing. We get into a whole lot of problems when we make the what's or the how's dogmatic. When dogma and creedal formulations and what is

Derek: 15:47

vital is has always been the what's and the who's. It's never or it's rarely been in the how's. And that's what I'm gonna argue here. I'm gonna

Derek: 16:01

argue that inerrancy does just this. Inerrancy doesn't ask a who or a what so much

Derek: 16:09

as it asks a how. And we can

Derek: 16:12

take a, you know, a more zoomed in look to how this functions in in church history. I

Derek: 16:19

take Marcion, who was deemed a heretic. And he was deemed a heretic, I would argue, because he changed a who, not a how. There's a

Derek: 16:32

lot of these types of examples like docetism, right? It talks about how the incarnation was illusory or Sabellianism, Monarchianism, or Unitarian ideology which says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit aren't really distinct. They're like modes, modalism. Or Gnosticism, which, you know, creation and material are are bad and that it's really knowledge that saves. So we are saved not so much by God but through knowledge.

Derek: 17:03

Right? And so there there's a lot of these types of things which Marcion was one of those things. He he did not change how God did things, he changed who God was. He says, oh, we must have one not so good God, a mean God in the Old Testament. We've got a nice God in the new New Testament.

Derek: 17:21

So now all of a sudden, God is not one and He has turned God into two separate beings. He changed who God is. So what's interesting about that is when you look at a lot of modern iterations, you know, different theologies that exist out there. So take Calvinism for example. Right?

Derek: 17:42

One of the things that they are very careful to do is that they will say that humanity is free and that God is love. Right? So they don't change who God is. God is love. But they significantly redefine those sorts of things based on how most people would understand those to be.

Derek: 18:04

You know, God choosing people to go to hell when he could do

Derek: 18:07

otherwise, or I let me rephrase that. God choosing to not save some who He could choose to save if He wanted to is deemed as, you know, that fits with love. Right?

Derek: 18:26

It has to because that's what the Calvinist believes that that God does. And so love must include allowing people to be damned to hell without saving them when you could. But they would still say that God is love. Like they do not change who God is or even what God does because God saves. That's true, when God's the only one who can save.

Derek: 18:46

But they change how He does it, right? He does it for some and not others and He does it, you know, in how whatever way you wanna get into Calvinism. And so you you could look at a lot of different theories about that. You could look at Arminianism and there are some things that they say about God that deal with how's and not who's, but

Derek: 19:09

the Calvinist and the Arminian would both agree on who God is and what He does. God is love and God saves.

Derek: 19:19

Now when we think about the who and the what, they tend to go together and it it just kinda makes sense that they do if you think about it. So who God is is usually based on what He does. And if we think of

Derek: 19:34

this with like a husband and a wife, right, a husband is loving, and because he's loving, what does he do? He buys his wife flowers. But if he hits his wife, then he is not loving. Right? I think we'd all agree on that.

Derek: 19:55

So what is important is the what and the who, and the what kind of shows you what the who is a lot of times.

Derek: 20:06

The how is largely, I won't say unimportant, but it it is secondary. So for example,

Derek: 20:13

a husband hits his wife.

Derek: 20:15

That's not good. Like, that is bad no matter what way you look at it. Now if we ask the how, how did he hit his wife? Was it a punch or a slap? Was it hard or, you know, medium or soft?

Derek: 20:31

Right? Did it how did he do it? Did he do it hard enough to leave a bruise? Did he how did he do it? Did he do it with a weapon?

Derek: 20:40

Like, sure. One of them might involve, like, jail time and the other one might involve maybe parole or something or maybe not even jail time but his wife leaving him. So the but but the what, like the what is bad and how just kind of exacerbates how bad that something is or how good that something is. So for example, the the gift of the Magi. If you know that story, right, there are these two people and they they love each other so much, and the guy for Christmas wants to get his wife this one thing that she really really wants, and so he sacrifices his most most cherished thing to get his wife something.

Derek: 21:21

And the wife does the same thing, but they end up both sacrificing their most cherished item which is the, you know, what the other one was gonna buy them. I think the wife, like, cuts off her hair to sell, and the husband, like, got her something for her hair and now she has, no hair. Something something like that. But it's like, oh, man, the how, how they obtained that gift for the other, like, yes, that is very important. That illuminates things.

Derek: 21:49

That makes things so much more valuable and beautiful, but it accentuates the action. It doesn't make or break the action. Like the action of getting something for somebody you love was was already there. It just it just accentuates the love when you see how they came to obtain that. So inerrancy then, I would argue, is a lot more like a how than a who or a what.

Derek: 22:15

The idea behind inerrancy is that God is perfect, and so therefore, He must have ensured giving us a perfect text. Now, are a lot of huge assumptions based on what we think a perfect God should do, like how He should do that thing. So if God is perfect, can't lie, He must produce a perfect text for us to have.

Derek: 22:39

Thus, we get inerrancy, right? The problem well, one

Derek: 22:43

of the problems with that, besides having no evidence for it, is that we know God doesn't work this way in a very similar realm. Like we know clearly clearly this is not how God works. Take a look at

Derek: 22:59

the problem of evil. We know that God created a good world, and in that good world, He has allowed evil, corruption, right, untruth to take hold.

Derek: 23:16

Well, in Genesis 50, we see that that Joseph tells his brothers this this evil thing that they did, throwing him into into a pit and selling him into slavery. Joseph says, you, my brothers, did this for evil, God did this for

Derek: 23:35

good. So God, a perfect God, is taking this first of

Derek: 23:44

all, He allows just evil and corruption and untruth and

Derek: 23:47

all that stuff. He allows that stuff to exist in His perfect creation, and then He even uses that for good. Like, He

Derek: 23:57

doesn't do it, but He uses it for good. He allows humans to do to corrupt things, and then He turns that corruption around and uses it for good things. So if you're an inerrantist and and you believe that evil exists and that God is good, yet God wields that, right, Romans eight twenty eight and following. Right? You believe that God turns all things together for good.

Derek: 24:21

It's like, why how do you deduce inerrancy out of that? Like, don't get inerrancy from the scripture. Like, the Bible doesn't tell you that the Bible's inerrant, and that would be circular even if it did. But you you surmise this how based on what you think how you think God should act based on who God is. So if a perfect God has created a world that now contains horrendous imperfection, and He created this world on His own without human partnership, ex nihilo, now

Derek: 24:57

we think about the scripture, which is a creation that He created with fallen humanity, then what in the world makes you think that God had to transmit the scripture perfectly? Right? Maybe he did. Right? Maybe the autographs truly are

Derek: 25:17

perfect. But, like, why do you think that God would have had to do it that way when partnering with fallen humanity knowing that he is perfectly capable of and willing to and actually does take corruption and turn that around. So to me, it just seems ludicrous that I would die on that hill of inerrancy, that I would push others away from the faith because of this seemingly I mean, it is easily refutable doctrine the way that most people understand it. Of course, if you believe that the autographs are inerrant, we don't have access to those, nobody can disprove it, But it doesn't it it's largely irrelevant to, you know, to today because we don't have those autographs. So if you believe in the lay understanding of inerrancy that the Bible has no errors, then that just seems to me, why would you push people away from the faith for something that is so easily refutable and makes you look just ridiculous when you try to explain away every single thing in the Bible that, you know, you refuse to take as metaphor, you refuse to take in cultural context, and all that kind of stuff.

Derek: 26:26

It just seems it seems yeah, just just so wrong to me. And then on top of that, to not only distance yourself, to to push non Christians away through that that millstone, you also are using this as a gatekeeping doctrine which prevents legitimate theological discussion and fellowship and and working together with other Christians. Now, understand the aversion to throwing off inerrancy because we associate its dismissal with extreme liberal Christianity, and sure, that type of thing does tend to go hand in hand. If you have a liberal Christian who, you know, deviates morally and in other ways, then yeah, they probably aren't going to believe in inerrancy. But to believe that one is causative, I think is disingenuous and incorrect.

Derek: 27:21

Because I can point you to a lot of people who would hold the scripture in high esteem and would be very conservative in a lot of ways, but do not adhere to inerrancy. One of those examples is somebody like Greg Boyd who holds the Bible in high esteem but doesn't adhere to inerrancy as lay people would determine it. And so it's he adheres more to what I would consider, I would call the term infallibility. And so the way that I I would the way that I would describe infallibility is not a how, right, how God does things. He does thing He makes sure that He creates Scripture perfectly, but it's more of a what.

Derek: 28:07

What does God do? He ensures that His word doesn't return void. He brings good out of human error and evil. He speaks through His words and His people. How?

Derek: 28:20

I mean, through his spirit. That's kind of the closest I can give you to a how, but I really don't I don't know how God works works that. Just like I couldn't have told you how God was gonna work Joseph's slavery out for good. When his brother sold him the day that his brother sold him, had I been there, I have no clue how God's gonna work that out from for good. That seems terrible.

Derek: 28:43

It's not only divisive amongst the family, but like that can't end up good for Joseph. And if it ends up good for Joseph, it's not gonna like, how is he ever gonna reunite with his family? How is God going to, accomplish good through that? I don't know. But God did.

Derek: 29:00

Right? We can see those things in retrospect, but we can't see them in the moment. That's sort of the same thing here. I believe that God can take the human corruption, the human lack of moral clarity, right, the the moral problems wanting to dash infants heads against the rocks, you know, from David or the psalmist, all those kinds of things. I I don't know why that's in scripture.

Derek: 29:27

I don't know how that's, how how that's good, but God can turn that into something that's true when we when we compare that to the the ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ. And I think Randall Balmer does talk about that a little bit in our discussion where he he he uses an example of a woman whose family was killed in a car crash and then going into this psalm and saying, and David covers that that range of emotions and shows the humanity, and then we can compare that to to Jesus and, you know, recognizing that, yes, we are humans, but through Jesus, we can, we can deal with those things in an appropriate way. So, yeah, there are ways that you can look at it, but to just simply take it as, something is inerrant and without human moral flaws or scientific misunderstandings or anything like that, just doesn't seem to be the way that God works. Now maybe it is, because I'm not here to tell you how God does something, but, it's not the the how that should be a gatekeeping device and something that keeps people away from the faith. Now I love discussing how questions as much probably more than most other people.

Derek: 30:45

I'm not at all saying that hows aren't unimportant, right, that they aren't important. They're they're a lot of fun and they can they can really illuminate the the characteristics of God, of who He is. It it adds more flavor, and complexity can add flavor. It can be awesome to explore the intricacies of God, and it can produce wonder in us. But a lot of times, as we've talked about complexity throughout this season, complexity can oftentimes bring danger.

Derek: 31:19

Hows can become power plays when we we seek tight fisted control rather than open handed understanding and humility. You think about the types of things that you seek to know how. Kids, my kids like to watch like magic tricks, like, Oh, how do I do this card trick? Right? So they can trick their friends and like seem cool and stuff.

Derek: 31:40

That's not a bad thing. I watch YouTube videos, how to fix a car. Well, that's great because then I don't have to go and spend a bunch of money that I don't have to fix my car. That's awesome. Can bake.

Derek: 31:54

Can bake homemade food, which is gonna end up probably being healthier and cheaper, and it's fun. You can do it as a family. How do you speak better in public? Or how do you persuade people? So all of those things can be perfectly good, appropriate things when we seek to learn how to do things.

Derek: 32:16

But at the same time, you can also see how most of those things can become problems because it can teach you how to manipulate and how to implement to your advantage at the disadvantage of others a lot of times. So with magic tricks, obviously, right, learning how to manipulate perception, public speaking and persuasion, how do you manipulate perception? Or if once I learn how to fix a car and I learn how to bake, feel pretty good about myself, about this how that I can now do, and now I judge other people. Oh, those people eat unhealthy because they don't bake their own stuff. They're just lazy.

Derek: 32:56

They don't fix their car. Right? They're ignorant. Like, I'm better than them. So these these hows can really influence your attitudes, your perceptions, your understanding, and the way that you treat or view other people.

Derek: 33:10

Now the Christian life is not so much about the how, but it's about the what in a process that we call discipleship. And it's discipleship through lots of what's, through ritual, which we talked about with doctor Jude Johnson in our season on propaganda. What do we do? We break bread together. What do we do?

Derek: 33:35

We worship together. What do we do? We mourn together. We are formed together through our actions, through actions that stem from beliefs, beliefs in who God is, beliefs in what God has done for us. It's these beliefs in the who's and the what's, less so the how's.

Derek: 33:53

So in this episode, I have made the case for why inherency, I think, is problematic, at least when you use it as a dogmatic ultimate gate keeping device. How does that tie into complexity and simplicity? You know, I mentioned the importance of control when we talked about, like, examples like the kids learning magic tricks or YouTube, how to fix a car, that kind of stuff. A lot of times, we want to impress others, we want to manipulate others, we want to avoid dependence on a mechanic or the the cost to obtain a car, we want to feel safe. Like, whatever your how is that you learn to do, you have reasons for doing that.

Derek: 34:35

Not all of which are bad, but things which can become problematic. If you take a look at inerrancy, you get this dictation view of scripture, generally, get a face value, whatever you want to call that. You get a prescriptive as is reading that's really easy for hearers, which means it's really easy for you without a whole lot of legwork to understand. And that also means it's easy to manipulate, and you don't really need a whole lot of humility. There's there's actually a doctrine called the doctrine of perspicuity, which means that the scripture is easy to understand.

Derek: 35:17

It doesn't mean easy like it takes no work, but it's saying it's it's understandable for anybody who really wants to understand it essentially. Right? It's not super overly complicated type of thing. And that right there, I think, is is maybe one of the funniest doctrines that exists because you could look at all the different denominations that exist in the world. And I'll I'll put a video in the show notes of this this great this great example just from first Timothy, this guy who's talking about egalitarianism and showing you just from, like, these these few verses all of the different theological mainstream evangelical theological standpoints there are just on this idea of complementarianism from just these like three verses or whatever, like all these different interpretations.

Derek: 36:07

And you're like, oh, nope, there's not a whole lot of perspicuity here. There isn't a whole lot of clarity, but there is a whole lot of dogmatism. There's extreme dogmatism and extreme division over many of the same clear passages from God. You know, I just had an example last year. There is somebody, a pastor in our denomination, who refused to guest preach at our church.

Derek: 36:42

Because in our church, we allow women to read Scripture from the front. This pastor was like, no, I I can't it it goes against my conscience that that I would read upfront. And so our pastor was like, well, you know, I okay. That's fine. Like, we can work with that.

Derek: 37:02

What if, like, the week that you would be here, we just wouldn't have any women speaking from the the front, from the platform that week? And this this other pastor said, no. The fact that you do it at all, like, essentially, he believes that our church is corrupted because the fact that we do it at all would go against his conscience to speak at our church. And we're in the same denomination. We're reading the same Bible.

Derek: 37:32

Think about all the different denominations that exist, all the different issues. Like, this is just one minor issue, like the issue of complementarianism, egalitarianism type of thing. And it's divisive. It just is when you make these hows gatekeeping devices. And I mean, these examples just make it clear that if inerrancy is correct, then clearly, the mere transmission of perfect word selection and order are a tiny tiny fraction of what constitutes perfect communication.

Derek: 38:05

And God clearly didn't communicate perfectly because there are so many divisions today from people that most of us would consider those genuinely trying to seek God with their hearts. As my Pennsylvania grandparents would say, and I can't think of a better word to describe it, it's all for hoodled. You know, for individuals who adhere to inerrancy, you know, it's easy because I can trust my spiritual adequacy. And it's easy for me to be dogmatic and to say that since the words are transmitted perfect, and since I know my heart, and I know that my thoughts, and I think clearly, therefore, I know God's meaning. And since God spoke perfectly and I know His meaning, that means my my understanding, my prescription, my my how is perfect.

Derek: 39:01

Right? That inerrancy carries carries through if I'm following the Bible for what it says. And now because of that, I have control because what God said is clear at face value, so how I see it and perceive it is inerrant too. And if you deviate, it's not because God's words are living, but because you are defying Him. And I've referenced Beth Allison Barr in this discussion on egalitarianism so many times, but, you know, she has bemoaned a number of times how because of inerrancy as a gatekeeping device, there is a very significant lack of theological rigor because you just can't have certain conversations with fundamentalists, a lot of evangelicals because of this inerrancy gatekeeping device.

Derek: 39:52

So I wrote something a while back about, you know, the two types of people who are pursuing God, and how I myself am each of these types of people at different times in my life based on different issues. And this article is called Stalkers and Mistresses. And essentially just saying that, look, a stalker is somebody who knows a lot about God, and they know a lot about about celebrities, their favorite color, their birthday, all that kind of stuff. They don't really have a they don't have a relationship with them because they they stalk them at a distance. And mistresses, they have flings and things with their lovers, but they don't live day to day life with them for the most part.

Derek: 40:38

It's flings. And so they know, experientially know, their lover in a very intimate way, but they don't really really know their lovers. And so, you know, this would be stereotypically more of the like charismatic y churches where the ones where they focus on experience and like you have to speak in tongues and you have to do this apart from theology. So, inerrantists, I would say, in general, tend to be very ideologically focused. They'd be more of the the stalkers.

Derek: 41:17

They know a lot about God or they they claim to, and they have this apparent simplicity. Look, all you gotta do is go to the text, right? Keep it simple. That's not complex. But relying on the how of transmission rather than the who of the transmitter, rather than relate to the known source, they manipulate the unknown uncertain process.

Derek: 41:41

There's apparent simplicity in there, but really it's it's complexity because the system has to be devised and complex. You you think about reading The Lord of the Rings, and to understand to truly understand with more depth The Lord of the Rings, you'd want to read The Silmarillion as well. Or if Tolkien was alive, you just ask him, hey, what do you mean by this? Now, that would require a connection with Tolkien. It's easier for me to just go get a copy of The Silmarillion, but if someone told you, like if you knew that they were friends with Tolkien, and Tolkien told them X, Now, that would require that you trust them to convey that information correctly and that they actually did talk to him.

Derek: 42:31

But if you read something in The Silmarillion and tried to interpret it one way, and you had a friend who you knew was close friends with Tolkien and asked him directly, and Tolkien said something different than you got out of The Silmarillion, who do you believe? Right? Oh, of course, you'd want to you'd want to believe the person who talked with Tolkien. Now, you'd still check it with the text, you'd be like, does that fit with what was said in the text? Like, I don't know.

Derek: 42:58

And you went back there and you looked and you said, oh, okay. It doesn't it doesn't contradict it. I can see how it would say that. I just I never thought of it that way. Right?

Derek: 43:07

So you'd still want to check your friend on the text to make sure they weren't, like, tricking you or something or that they misheard Tolkien, which is a possibility, but you'd trust the one with a direct connection to Tolkien. I think that analogy holds here. God's word is infallible. I can go to the Bible and it is a great overall guide. And if somebody says something that is in direct contradiction to the Bible, then I'm not gonna believe that.

Derek: 43:36

But if I look through the lens of Jesus, and Jesus is the pure revelation of God, and that's who God is, that's who God told me He is, and I compare that with something like dashing babies' heads against the rocks, I'm gonna be like, hey, you know what? I believe Tolkien. Right? I don't I don't I believe less what Moses wrote than what Tolkien says. And God, through Jesus, directly told us who Tolkien is.

Derek: 44:03

And I can talk to God, and through His Holy Spirit who lives in me, God can tell me things. Now that that might make you very uncomfortable. Right? That might make you be like, well, isn't that really subjective? Well, obviously, and again, if you go watch that video on the complementarian thing, I think you can see the idea of inerrancy, the the idea that your interpretation of a text is not subjective is just I mean, that's laughable.

Derek: 44:33

Like, that that's just that you have to it is completely disingenuous to say that your interpretation of the text is not subjective because it is. There are hundreds and hundreds of interpretations for a lot of mainstream theological concepts because there are lots of different ways to take things. And so the connection to Tolkien through Jesus and his revelation, as well as through our connection to the Holy Spirit is very important for us to understand God's word, a living word, which is just as living for us today as it was in the past. But it's living because it's not dead in, you know, in this this ancient text that was written to only for a certain people thousands of years ago. It's living because of the living God and because His spirit is living within us.

Derek: 45:27

Now on the other hand, inerrantists, a lot of times, they're gonna view texts as standalone in practice with no real need of the Holy Spirit or no real need of God. Sure. Okay. They give them lip service. They're not gonna deny the Holy Spirit, but they don't need them.

Derek: 45:41

Not really. They just need a really good commentary, and they need to go sit down and think really hard about something. And if they know more Bible verses that they can connect it to, that's great. Right? I mean, that's really, that's more like a a dead word.

Derek: 45:53

Right? That's inapplicable today because now all of a sudden, I'm trusting your knowledge and your study as opposed to the Holy Spirit. You know, that runs into the very problem that inerrantists say the the non inerrantists have in their subjectivity. Right? They experience the exact same problems.

Derek: 46:13

Now, the inerrantists have good intentions like most people do, right? And we're all paving the road to hell with those good intentions. And it's seemingly simple. Inerrancy seems to make things very simple. Just believe the text.

Derek: 46:29

But the perceived need of the system is just so that we could have confidence is just misguided, and that's what makes it really complex and really controlling, right? All you just have to look up apologetics defending inerrancy, and the complexity will slap you in the face. Like, all the different hoops they have to jump through to try to show that there are no errors at all. It's just it's mind boggling some of the the ways they try to avoid some of the texts that that have errors. And that's not even getting into the Septuagint and, you know, the the deviation there with, like David and Goliath is is the best example if you look that up.

Derek: 47:13

There's a there's a good book I will link in the show notes on the Septuagint where you can kinda get some of that stuff too. What they end up creating though is really a house of cards, and that goes back to one of our first episodes where I talked about how washing machine seems very simple, simpler than, going down to the river and washing your clothes and saves you time and everything. But there's one piece that doesn't work there. Right? If your pipe busts, if the electricity doesn't work, if a fuse is out, it like anything, any number of things, there are so many things that can go wrong and your washing machine doesn't work.

Derek: 47:51

It's a it's a house of cards. Now from the infallible position, right, God spoke in relation with others, and those others were humans. They recorded that interaction for us. Right? Their thoughts about God and their interaction with God and the things that God said.

Derek: 48:12

They recorded that to others, a specific group of people in their time, and that was recorded for me. Like, God preserved that for me. I have to read those words in relation with God and in understanding of the original audience to ensure that I'm understanding meaning rather than importing my perception. That's really uncomfortable for me, for a lot of people, for for anybody who's clung to inerrancy at some point because it does feel more subjective even though really it's not, but it makes us dependent. Right?

Derek: 48:52

If I go right now and try to just understand on my on my own merit, on my own knowledge and everything, if if inerrancy isn't correct, then I have no assurance that my perception of the text isn't clouded by a lot of different things. I require a relationship with the living God to come to a text and have hope that He will illuminate that text for me to to be a living text. So I'm dependent for my understanding of the Scripture, and that means I'm responsible for the relationship that I have with God. In a lot of modern evangelical Christianity, you don't really have to have a relationship. You you made the transaction to get saved when you prayed your prayer to God, and now you just have to be really smart, memorize enough Bible verses, be able to prove text, and as long as you can defend your perception, your perceived interpretation of a text, then that must be what God inherently said, and you can find a denomination to plug into that will affirm that for you.

Derek: 50:05

Because we've got so many to choose from, you're bound to find one who thinks just like you do. And if not, you can always start your own. Now I'd argue that this infallibility requires a very high view of the text. Right? It's a flexible text that can work from generation to generation, but it also requires a high view of God, not some God who's just kinda sitting in the background and just happens to be perfect and exude perfection whenever He interacts with humanity, but a God who works with humans where they are, who works with me where I am, and leads me and guides me and is in relationship with me.

Derek: 50:45

But it doesn't require a whole apologetics movement to spend so much breath on explaining away why there are so many textual variants, why there are so many errors, why, you know, we switch back and forth between the Masoretic when it's convenient, all all kinds of things. And probably most of all, we don't have to explain why God thought it was so important to communicate perfectly, but not preserve that perfect communication. There's so much jumping through hoops when you cling to inerrancy, and it is just something that keeps people away from the faith and something that kills rigorous theological discussion between groups. And as you'll see with my discussion with Randall Rauser, it also leads to some pretty horrible things where you have people defending genocides today because of this inerrant reading of the Bible. The Silmarillion is great, and it's even authoritative.

Derek: 51:48

But your interpretation of it is not authoritative. You need to talk to Tolkien and know what he thinks. And while you can't actually talk to Tolkien today, so there's always gonna be questions as to what is ultimately true in the Lord of the Rings realm, you can talk to and relate to God. And really, that's as simple as you can get, relationship. You can do it at any time from anywhere, but you're also in need of a community that's gonna hold you in check.

Derek: 52:20

Like Vernard Ehlers says, it's simple, but simple isn't easy. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.