![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/26\/2012\/06\/Bible-Made-Impossible.jpeg\" "\\"Bible")
<\/a>Carlos Bovell is our guest blogger today, and has written numerous posts for us over the past few months on the topic of evangelicals and the Bible. His most recent book is Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\nHere he interacts with Craig Blomberg\u2019s recent review of Christian Smith\u2019s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture<\/a> Craig Blomberg recently reviewed<\/a> The Bible Made Impossible<\/em> by Christian Smith.\u00a0To summarize, Smith argues that evangelical \u201cbiblicism\u201d crumbles under its own weight<\/strong>, but continues to survive\u00a0because\u00a0of its historical role in establishing evangelicalism\u2019s sociological\u00a0boundary\u00a0markers, which explains evangelicalism\u2019s well-documented history of protecting their doctrine of Scripture against perceived attacks.<\/p>\n Smith defines Biblicism as \u201ca particular theory about and style of using the Bible that<\/p>\n is defined by a constellation of related assumptions and beliefs about the Bible\u2019s nature, purpose, and function\u201d (p. 4). Smith lists ten assumptions or beliefs about the Bible that will be familiar to evangelicals, and include: inerrancy, clarity (perspicuity), \u201ccommonsense\u201d hermeneutics, internal harmony, and treating the Bible as a sort of handbook for Christian living.<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s central contention is that \u201cpervasive interpretive pluralism\u201d renders moot evangelical presumptions\u00a0of the nature and\u00a0authority\u00a0of Scripture. Smith means that since the Bible clearly \u201cteaches very\u00a0different\u00a0things about the most significant subjects,\u201d and since highly competent biblical interpreters come to very different conclusions about the same texts, evangelical assertions about the Bible\u2019s inerrant authority ring hollow (pp. x-xi).<\/p>\n One of Smith\u2019s most important claims, as I read it, is that in much the same way that biblicism was at the heart of the fundamentalist approach to faith, it has also come to define contemporary evangelicalism<\/strong>. If fundamentalism failed in large measure because biblicism became the main theme of their obscurantist, fundamentalist self-understanding of Christianity, evangelicalism has also condemned itself to failure because it too constructs its<\/em> identity around more or less the same forms of biblicism, which, in Smith\u2019s analysis, makes the Bible \u201cimpossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Blomberg is among a number of evangelical scholars who have recently taken up the cause of giving a fresh defense of the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy (see Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?: A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture<\/a> Blomberg contends that Smith has created a straw man.<\/strong> Biblicism only describes the approach of \u201cgrass-roots pure fundamentalists.\u201d It does not describe the fully up-to-date hermeneutical teachings of the best evangelical colleges and seminaries (the appearance of doctrinal commitments to an inerrant Bible in the majority of colleges\u2019 and seminaries\u2019 statements of faith, notwithstanding).<\/p>\n Blomberg\u2019s response to Smith echoes his recent review<\/a> of my latest book, Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear<\/a><\/em>. Blomberg addresses my concerns regarding the damage inerrancy has done to evangelical culture by observing that \u201ca disproportionate amount of the witch-hunting that [Bovell] and I alike rue has come either in truly fundamentalist circles, especially in the South, or in thoroughly Reformed circles.\u201d<\/strong> He goes on to carve out a geographical niche where his vision of a healthy, sophisticated evangelicalism is flourishing, a niche that is \u201cNorth or West of the Mason-Dixon line or in less reformed circles.\u201d<\/p>\n Blomberg approvingly mentions schools such as Gordon-Conwell, Dallas, Bethel, Talbot\/Biola, Wheaton and his own Denver Seminary, while chiding Westminster Seminary and Southern Baptist schools for being too rigid in their thinking. Related to this is an observation Blomberg makes\u00a0in his review of my first book<\/a>,\u00a0Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals<\/a><\/em>: \u201cFor a variety of reasons, systematic theologians and philosophers tend to get more \u2018bent out of shape\u2019 on such issues than scholars who specialize in the original historical contexts of the different books of Scripture.\u201d\u00a0He also points to the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society as prime examples of non-biblicism in the evangelical mainstream.<\/p>\n I appreciate some of Blomberg\u2019s points, such as the existence of some latitude in some evangelical institutions. I also agree that the theological agendas of certain Reformed and Southern Baptists elements are a problem. Nevertheless, Blomberg\u2019s assessment of true evangelicalism being more sophisticated is more damage control than a fair assessment\u00a0of the evangelical landscape<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For one thing, one wonders who is left once these less-than-true-evangelical systematic theologians and philosophers are taken out of the picture and biblical scholars south of the Mason-Dixon Line or Reformed are also removed. Blomberg\u2019s answer seems to be that there is a remnant of biblical scholars out there who have not been unduly influenced by systematic theology or philosophy and who happen to teach in the Northeast or out West.<\/p>\n But does not Blomberg\u2019s rejoinder rest on as selective a population as he accuses Smith of doing? Is this not a straw man of another sort?<\/p>\n Is Smith\u2019s attempt to provide empirical evidence for his claim that evangelicals on the whole are good, old-fashioned biblicists a straw man as Blomberg claims, or is the straw man rather in Blomberg\u2019s appeal to a diaspora of biblical scholars scattered throughout the northeastern and western United States who truly get it? Who really<\/em> represents a minority view? Smith\u2019s biblicists or Blomberg\u2019s biblical scholars? Readers will have to decide for themselves, but as for me, Smith\u2019s analysis is far more sober than Blomberg\u2019s.<\/p>\n Readers might also take note of one element of Blomberg\u2019s argument that I found to be quite curious and somewhat self-defeating. He lists a number of evangelical scholars who are doing non-biblicist work (\u201cP. Enns, K. Sparks, C. Bovell, C. Allert, and N. T. Wright, to name just the most prominent.\u201d). His point is that, if Smith were more familiar with the evangelical landscape, he would not give such a reductionistic analysis. Blomberg is forgetting, however, that Smith, although now Roman Catholic, is hardly an outsider to evangelicalism, having spent most of his life in such an environment. And the scholars Blomberg lists Smith not only cites but actively incorporates into his book. This indeed indicates that one side is not seeing what the other side claims to see.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1587433036\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/26\/2012\/06\/CSmith.jpeg\" "\\"CSmith\\"")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/26\/2012\/08\/Blomberg.jpeg\" "\\"Blomberg\\"")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1433525712\")