Defending Inerrancy - Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New Generation

32 Pages·2016·1.1 MB·English

by  Norman L. Geisler

© 2011 by Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
[link:www.bakerbooks.com]
Ebook edition created 2011
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ISBN 978-1-4412-3591-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®),
copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights
reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963,
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Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973,
1978, 1984, by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson,
Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd
edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
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Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the authors’ emphasis.
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“Well, here we go again. In yet another generation, the inerrancy of the Bible is being
called into question. This time the issues are often more subtle, but they represent a
clear and present challenge for those who would defend and affirm the perfection of
the Holy Scriptures. Defending Inerrancy is a much-needed work and one that will
start an important and timely conversation. This is a book that cannot, must not, and
will not be ignored.”—R. Albert Mohler Jr., president, The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary “In the following pages Norman Geisler, who contributed as
much as anyone to International Council on Biblical Inerrancy’s [ICBI] original
legacy, and William Roach interact with evangelical hypotheses that have the effect of
confusing that legacy. They are masterly gatekeepers, and I count it an honor to
commend this work to the Christian world.”—J. I . Packer, from the foreword
“Even in the days of the ICBI, Norm Geisler knew that every generation would have
to address the question of the faithfulness of God’s Word. After all, the earliest attack
of Satan was on the question of whether or not God had really said what our first
parents understood him to say. In this superb volume, Geisler and Roach have
demonstrated once again that the attack, though an old one, must and can be
answered. Anyone engaging the culture needs to read this book.”—Paige Patterson,
president, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary “The biblical doctrine of
inerrancy is both true and of crucial importance for the life and health of the church.
Geisler and Roach provide an excellent, up-to-date treatment of the recent history of
the doctrine, an analysis of what it does and does not mean, and a response to recent
attacks against it. I am glad to see this book come out and happy to recommend
it.”—J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of
Theology; author, The God Question “Norm Geisler and I both served on the ICBI
for the ten years of its existence. What Dr. Geisler has now written in his new book is
certainly a masterpiece and worthy of careful attention by all who are interested in
dealing with the inerrancy of the Word of God.”—Earl D. Radmacher, president
emeritus, Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon
“This volume is a call to consider the trustworthiness of Scripture. It is written by one
of framers of the seminal Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, 1978. I maintain
that everyone interested in spreading the message of the Bible should read and
absorb Geisler’s treatment of this subject. It will strengthen your conviction that
God’s Word is truth and that it will stand forever.”—Phil Roberts, president,
Midwest Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri “This book begins
with a tremendously helpful history of the ‘battle for the Bible,’ the controversy that
dominated the evangelical landscape some thirty-five years ago. The authors recount
the powerful defense of biblical accuracy and authority that was led by the
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in the 1970s and 1980s. Then they give a
very informative but deeply disturbing digest of several recent attacks on Scripture
that have come from supposedly evangelical authors and institutions just in the past
decade.
The very same issues are under debate as before, and all the same tired, already-
answered arguments have been hauled out once more against Scripture. It is time for
genuine believers to awaken to this issue again and speak up with a clear, united voice
of confidence and conviction. We owe a debt to Norm Geisler and Bill Roach for
their willingness to stand at the front line in this renewed battle for the Bible.”—John
MacArthur, pastor, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA; president, The
Master’s College and Seminary “Church history records many a ‘battle for the Bible.’
So it is not surprising that in our day, the debate about inerrancy rages. Norman
Geisler and William Roach provide an excellent history of the debate and bring the
battle up to date with recent challenges to inerrancy. Their book is an essential
manual to understand the debate and to defend biblical inerrancy.”—Kerby
Anderson, national director, Probe Ministries; host, Point of View
“This is one of the most important books of the decade. Geisler and Roach not only
answer contemporary challenges to inerrancy but also provide a theological,
apologetical, and philosophical analysis and defense of inerrancy that is rather
stunning in its breadth and detail. Theology students both young and old will benefit
immensely from this well-researched, well-written volume.”—Ron Rhodes,
president, Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries
We wish to thank Joel Paulus for the many hours he spent improving the manuscript
of this book. For his diligent and scholarly efforts we are very grateful. He greatly
improved the final text.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Endosements
Dedication
Foreword by J. I. Packer
Prologue
Part One: History of the Inerrancy Controversy
1. Background of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
2. Formation of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
3. Influence of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
Part Two: Recent Challenges to Inerrancy
4. Clark Pinnock on Inerrancy
5. Bart Ehrman on Inerrancy
6. Peter Enns on Inerrancy
7. Kenton Sparks on Inerrancy
8. Kevin Vanhoozer on Inerrancy
9. Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy
10. Stanley Grenz and Brian McLaren on Inerrancy
11. Darrell Bock and Robert Webb on Inerrancy
Part Three: Reexamination of Inerrancy
12. The Nature of God and Inerrancy
13. The Nature of Truth and Inerrancy
14. The Nature of Language and Inerrancy
15. The Nature of Hermeneutics and Inerrancy
16. The Nature of the Incarnation and Inerrancy
17. Answering Objections to Inerrancy
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Signers of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Appendix 2: Inerrancy, Theistic Evolution, and BioLogos
Notes
Bibliography
About the Authors
Back Ads
Back Cover
Foreword
The two decades between the twentieth century’s world wars were years of eclipse
for English-speaking evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic. Liberalism was in the
saddle in the major Protestant churches, and liberalism remained as John Henry
Newman had defined it:
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good
as another. . . . It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be
tolerated, for all are matters of opinion.[1]
The virile Reformational orthodoxy of earlier days had been elbowed out to the
sidelines, and what we nowadays refer to as the guild—that is, the theological
teaching community in universities, colleges, and seminaries—seemed finally to have
closed its ranks against conservative scholarship and conservative scholars. Licking
its wounds, evangelicalism had withdrawn into modes of premillennialism, mainly
dispensational, on the one hand and pietism, mainly of the Keswick type, on the
other. In North America, the biggest of these recessive groupings took the name
fundamentalism, on the ground of its strict adherence to the fundamentals of biblical
faith.
During the Second World War, however, a strong sense of need for a renewing of
biblical and theological scholarship that would outthink, outflank, and outlast
liberalism established itself in evangelical circles in both Britain and North America.
The outcome was that Tyndale House, a biblical research center, was founded in
Cambridge, England, in 1943 as an extension of the ministry of the Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, and in 1947 Fuller Seminary, an academic spin-off from Charles Fuller’s
Old Fashioned Revival Hour broadcast, opened its doors. Both institutions aimed to
be change agents and committed themselves to essentially the same vision:
evangelical scholarship revivified, evangelical scholars finding a place for themselves
in the guild, and evangelical believers and congregations being resourced by biblical
truth and wisdom at every point of need.
Both Tyndale House and Fuller Seminary took their primary academic and
ecclesiological task to be the vindicating and reinstating of the canonical Scriptures as
the fully inspired and authoritative Word of God, the multiform utterance of God in
the words of some forty selected penmen, the church’s criterion of true faith and