Here's how fundamentalists live up to the OP's thought that many Christians are deceived and are on their way to destruction (not sure if he means in this world or the next--but certainly in this one).
Dr. Dennis Bratcher is a retired Professor of Old Testament. The following are excerpts from his long essay on "The Modern Inerrancy Debate." (CRI/Voice, Institute 2013)
There are a variety of theories of inspiration (of Scripture), and I won’t take the time to deal with them all. The basic issue in talking about inspiration is the balance between the dual nature of Scripture, the balance between God’s role and humans’ role. Usually
inspiration has to do with the work of God in the process. In Christian tradition, this is usually connected with the work of the Holy Spirit as the agent of truth in the world. Thus, inspiration can be conceived, in some way, as "in-Spirited" (cf 2 Tim 3:16-17, 2 Pet 1:20-21). But this does not in itself resolve the question of balance.
On the one pole are
dictation and
verbal theories that affirm nearly 100% God. Usually, these are heavily influenced both by an absolute sovereignty of God model that allows little human input into anything since humans are totally contaminated by sin and cannot be trusted (with roots in Augustinian influenced Calvinism), as well as by the philosophical model mentioned earlier that equates revelation with all truth. In these views, Scripture is equated with the mind of God, and He is seen as the primary author of Scripture. Here, the physical text itself is seen as the locus of inspiration and, indeed, revelation of absolute truth.
On the other pole are
elevation theories that affirm nearly 100% human. Usually, these are heavily influenced either by rationalistic, naturalistic, or deistic models that do not see God active in the world, or by atheistic or agnostic thinking that will not acknowledge anything other than humanity. In this view, Scripture is just a good book reflecting the same kind of elevated human insight that, for example, might be found in Shakespeare, J. R. Tolkien, or
Star Wars. Here, the writers are the source, and most often the only source, of the writing.
Between these poles are various blends of the two. Interestingly enough, theories toward either pole claim plenary ("full") inspiration depending on whether
the physical text itself is seen as fully inspired or only
the writers are inspired. In any case, the mediating position is usually termed
dynamic inspiration, which tries to balance the role of God and humans. In many of these perspectives (with various nuances) it is not the text that is inspired but the writers themselves, or the message. However, what the writers understand is not solely a product of their own thinking but is enabled by the activity of God, which distances this from the elevation pole.
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I see the locus of inspiration neither in the physical text itself nor in single writers, but in the
message of Scripture, what it tells us about God, about ourselves, and about how we relate to God. These three factors lie at the heart of the nature of Scripture, its purpose, and its overarching content. It is not just inspiration of God in the message as a collection of facts, but inspiration operative in the message as a witness to the transforming and enabling power of God’s grace in the lives of people!
The people do not pass on eternal, absolute truths devoid of any context. They tell the story of God, which God has revealed to them and helped them understand, but they tell it in their own way. They translate God’s revelation into the language, metaphors, symbols, liturgy, and literature through which they can bear witness to God’s truth, and in which other people can hear and understand the testimony.
However, Scripture does not yet arise at this point. Inspiration is not the one time action of God that is only related to the original revelatory event, or to a posited "original" author. Inspiration is the ongoing work of God (Christians would say the Holy Spirit) whereby He continues to help people understand the message, the testimony. So inspiration is not static to be located at a specific point in time any more than God is static.
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But
we affirm that God has so enabled the process that even with all the vagaries of history through which the communities of Faith have passed, with all the difficulties of transmission of the story, even with all the inaccuracies and discrepancies in Scripture that we now have, we still have a reliable and trustworthy witness to the truth of God. It is not because of an inerrant text that this is so. it is because of God and his continued presence with the community and its testimony!
That is why I think that any reading or study of Scripture should begin with the prayer, "Lord, help me understand." It is an acknowledgment of that dynamic quality of inspiration, and a confession that finally, after we have done all we can do to understand the human dimension of Scripture, it is God who brings the testimony alive, and makes it a living and active word!
And yet, the form, the vehicle of that message is dependent upon the people themselves. So, there are cultural oddities. There are personal idiosyncrasies.
There are discrepancies of fact, of science, of grammar, of spelling, of data. There are different perspectives from different people from different cultures on different continents over a span of 1,800 years.
There are inconsistencies in historical data, in the use of symbols, in views about future events. Sometimes prophets were wrong in how they translated their understanding about God into their interpretation of historical events. Sometimes they even had to change their prophecies (See
Ezekiel and the Oracles Against Tyre).
Sometimes leaders had to go far beyond the old law codes, and sometimes had to invent new responses to ethical challenges (Nehemiah; "
Applied Torah" in
Torah as Holiness).
Sometimes new understandings challenged old orthodoxies (Job, Jonah). Sometimes in one historical situation one view was valid, and in another historical situation the opposite perspective was valid (Deuteronomy, Jeremiah). Sometimes they emphasized one aspect and sometimes another, and sometimes those are not directly reconcilable (Proverbs, Leviticus). As Walter Brueggemann put it, there are voices and counter voices, as very human people living in a very real world try to live and apply what they have come to understand about God in radically different and constantly changing contexts. After all, the story is in human words.
But it is God’s story! Or perhaps better, it is a story of God!
For me, affirming a dynamic view of inspiration allows the truth about Himself that God has revealed to us to be faithfully and accurately preserved by the community of Faith. This takes seriously the faith confession that God is active in the world, that He reveals Himself to humanity, and that there is a dimension to God that cannot be accessed by human reason or experience. In this sense, the Bible
is God’s word.
However, a dynamic model that sees inspiration of Scripture as a process operating within the community of faith rather than a one time revelation of absolute truth also allows us to examine all the evidence within Scripture honestly without need for apology or rationalization. So, I can conclude that Moses did not write the Pentateuch as we now have it (
JEDP: Sources in the Pentateuch), or that Ezekiel was dead wrong in his prediction about the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (
Ezekiel and the Oracles against Tyre), or that Isaiah did not have Jesus in mind in Isaiah 7 or 9 (
Immanuel in Isaiah and Matthew), without in any way whatsoever taking anything away from the message of Scripture, from its witness to God’s revelation of Himself, and the resulting call for us to respond to that revelation.
This demonstrates that the "Battle for the Bible" and the almost obsessive preoccupation with the inerrancy of Scripture among some strands of American Protestantism is not nor has been an important concern to churches in the Wesleyan tradition. As heirs of the Reformation, Scripture played a central role in those traditions. But
the affirmations were content to focus on the message of Scripture that bears witness to the saving and transforming work of God in the world. That remains today in those traditions the primary emphasis in relation to the authority and reliability of Scripture.
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http://www.crivoice.org/inerrant.html
john223, read and learn. This man, Dennis Bratcher, has studied Hebrew and spent his life immersed in both teaching and inspiring others in the Wesleyan tradition--MY tradition.
Don't worry about me plagiarizing, I've exchanged several e-mails with Dr. Bratcher last year. He is a wonderful, intellectual Christian and protects the Bible in the way it should be protected--and not as an idol.
You might try reading another of his essays co-written with Dean Nelson, "How to Use and Not Abuse, the Bible," in
I Believe: Now Tell Me Why, Beacon Hill, 1994, 30-41.
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