There’s a response to my critique of Beale’s book on inerrancy over at Triablogue. Rather than repost both that post and my comment, I’ll reproduce my comment and invite those interested to pay a visit to Triablogue to see the wider context of him quoting me quoting… Here’s what I commented there:
Thanks for taking the time to interact with my post on Beale’s book. I will let you read about my own conversion experience on my blog if you are interested; the authors that have come to be among my favorites did not achieve that status without a fight against them on my part. And I think this too tells against the “conspiracy theory” and “peer pressure” hypotheses. I attended Evangelical Bible colleges, and it was already in those contexts that I found the Bible itself raising the questions, and at times leading to the answers, that I resisted from “liberals”. And you are surely aware that both Robinson and Bultmann can only be generalized as “liberal” if one defines that term to mean “anyone who doesn’t adhere consistently to conservative Evangelical conclusions”. Bultmann challenged classic Liberalism’s assumption that one can merely remove the cultural shell of the first century and take a timeless core of Christianity out from within it, and his existentialist emphasis on personal decision became a key element of modern Evangelicalism. Robinson’s conclusions on the date of New Testament writings are more conservative than those of many conservatives. This is one reason why terms like “liberal” and “conservative” are unhelpful: they suggest that there are two opposing views rather than a wide range of partially-overlapping possible positions, as well as the possibility of being more or less conservative on some issues and different on others.
On methodological naturalism, I don’t see how historical study can adopt any other approach, any more than criminology can. It will always be theoretically possible that a crime victim died simply because God wanted him dead, but the appropriate response of detectives is to leave the case open. In the same way, it will always be possible that a virgin conceived, but it will never be more likely than that the stories claiming this developed, like comparable stories about other ancient figures, as a way of highlighting the individual’s significance. And since historical study deals with probabilities and evidence, to claim that a miracle is “historically likely” misunderstands the method in question.
I do not claim any sort of intellectual superiority. I do claim to have spent many years wrestling with the Bible and to have given these matters a great deal of thought – that’s all.
Let me not make this comment any longer, but I will say that when inerrancy is nuanced and qualified as in the Chicago Statement, it is not clear what is in fact being affirmed. The Bible can be approximate and imprecise, and contains different genres – that is certainly true. But why then prejudge which texts represent which genres, and why continue to use “inerrancy” when that gives an impression to laypeople that is different from what adherents to the Chicago Statement mean by it? I think it is to create a sibboleth (sorry, I have trouble pronouncing that word) that will allow seminaries and theological schools to continue to be funded by conservative congregations and individuals, rather than educating them, since education inevitably involves having our assumptions challenged.
Elsewhere around the blogosphere and web: Adam Kotsko points to a piece on peer review. Read the Spirit has a conversation with Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan about First Paul. Mark Goodacre shares a podcast on the Gospel of Mark. April DeConick will be appearing in IMAX – sort of. Ken Schenck is working on a Generous Ecclesiology. Ben Witherington discovered that Satan is on Facebook (as are the passion and Passover).
Also, if you can teach science using stick figures, there’s a contest you may be interested in.
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