Should Wesleyans Embrace a Doctrine of Inerrancy? [Firebrand Big Read]
With the Global Methodist Church planning for its founding conference in September in Costa Rica, many of its members are already thinking through the importance of Scripture for the wide-ranging life of the church. Four articles recently published in Firebrand have touched on this salient issue of the inspiration and authority of the Bible, and come to bear in important ways on the doctrine of inerrancy. Two were by David Watson, (“A Pain in the Brain: Is the Bible Divine Revelation,” and “Thoughts Upon Christian Orthodoxy, [Or, Epistemology Can’t Save You”]), and two by Thomas McCall, (“Biblical Revelation: Another View,” and “Biblical Authority Calmly Considered”). Both authors spent considerable time assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of a doctrine of inerrancy, with reasoned arguments abundantly evident over the inspiration of the Bible. This larger enterprise in recent decades has become something of a cottage industry, especially among Reformed Evangelicals. However, this will not be my approach in this present essay—at least not directly.
As an Evangelical, informed by the writings of one of our leading Wesleyan theologians, the late Billy Abraham, especially his carefully argued work, The Divine Inspiration of Holy Scripture, I have grown weary of the largely Reformed efforts (especially since the time of the conference on biblical inerrancy in Chicago in 1978) to uphold the inspiration and authority of Scripture exclusively through an appeal to a particular epistemology, that is, a well-touted doctrine of inerrancy. Indeed, I believe that the defects of this particular approach—as Abraham made clear over the course of his lengthy and productive career—are both considerable and compelling. Consequently, they inform and direct my own conscience, and that of other Wesleyan Evangelicals, in the broad recognition and affirmation of what we believe to be true.
Oddly enough, a doctrine of inerrancy does not focus on what Scripture is but on what Scripture is not. It’s in many respects a negative enterprise. However, when we think of the beauty, goodness, and awesome power of the Word of God to change lives, giving evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit within, a genuine God-in-breathedness, it hardly seems appropriate to build the entire house of the inspiration and authority of the Bible on a negation. This is an all-too-human doctrinal construction that in the end only declares what the Bible is not, or simply what it is without. Even the very word “inerrant” is both odd and awkward, and at first sight it is jarring. To be sure, when it comes to the Word of God, given its very nature, beauty, and life-giving power, a much more positive approach is always to be preferred. That which comes from a God of holy love, radiant in goodness, holiness, and beauty deserves nothing less.
The preceding observations are offered neither to persuade nor to convince but they are, after all, presented as a helpful context, a useful backdrop, in which readers will be able to appreciate the very different nature, the contrast, of my own current effort. Instead of focusing on first things I will focus on last things; instead of casting light on reasons for I will illuminate consequences of; instead of concentrating on rational arguments, I will focus on moral behaviors and judgments, in particular how Christians relate to one another who hold different views on just how the inspiration and authority of Scripture is best affirmed. This essay, then, will be a very practical exercise, and it will call for good judgment on the part of all readers. Accordingly, my fresh approach to this topic will be along the following lines: First of all, I will describe in detail the basic characteristics of several Christians that I currently know who have never embraced one of the most influential and widely held statements on inerrancy, the Chicago Statement. Second, I will consider the judgment of inerrantists made with respect to these very same Christians. Third, I will critically examine this judgment and indicate precisely how it reflects back on the nature of the claim of inerrancy itself, as well as on the consequences of this particular move. And finally, I will draw some helpful conclusions as to how the church can move forward in an irenic and broadly catholic way, one befitting the global church.
First of all, then, consider for a moment the reality of several Christians that I currently know, many of whom are Wesleyans, and who are clearly not inerrantists. Though they will remain anonymous, these men and women, young and old, rich and poor, white and black, do not hold and have never held the doctrine of inerrancy for conscience’s sake (because they simply don’t believe it to be true), and they are yet suitably described in terms of all of the following characteristics or traits—not one item is lacking:
They are doctrinally orthodox;
They affirm the creeds of the church: The Apostles Creed and The Nicene Creed;
They live a holy life: testifying to being justified and born of God;
They participate richly in the sacramental life of the church;
They are baptized and receive the Lord’s Supper regularly;
They serve the poor through works of mercy;
They defend the inspiration and authority of Scripture;
They celebrate Scripture with the language of Lausanne, not Chicago;
They acknowledge in their hermeneutic (see Augustine) that Scripture is preeminently about holy love and grace, and they live accordingly.
Some of these folk are obviously my seminary colleagues, others are members of our local church, and still others are believers that I have been blessed to know over the course of decades. These folk are a distinct population, to be sure, and my life has been richly blessed in knowing them.
Yet what is the judgment of inerrantists in terms of these Christian believers? For his part, the late Francis Schaeffer made the bold and sweeping claim that such believers cannot be Evangelicals because they do not affirm a doctrine of inerrancy. In other words, for Schaeffer, inerrancy is a criterion of Evangelical identity. He is not alone in this assessment. However, Wesleyans have been practicing Evangelicals of good standing for centuries without this particular doctrine. The early Methodists were part of the Evangelical Revival that launched evangelicalism to begin with. As such, they have never needed someone from outside their own tradition stripping them of their evangelical status! That’s hardly an ecumenical move or one that is marked by the sweet graces of Christian fellowship. Moreover, all of this disruptive behavior takes place simply because such a population of Evangelicals, genuine Christian believers, don’t happen to share Schaeffer’s epistemological commitment to inerrancy. Imagine that! Since when have philosophical views become so important?
The Evangelical Theological Society likewise divides the evangelical community, largely between Reformed and Wesleyan Christians, by insisting that the clear affirmation of a doctrine of inerrancy is an absolute requirement for membership. As a consequence, the ETS is dominated by Reformed Evangelicals, though there are some Wesleyans and those from other theological traditions in its membership who no doubt reason in a similar way. Recently, I gave a paper on the theology of John Wesley at the ETS meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Wesley’s writings are a genuine portal to theological clarity, freedom, and grace. This is a society, however, from which I am excluded from membership as a matter of course. The society does make provision for those like me, who do not share its celebrated claim, and we are, after all, allowed to speak—but only under certain conditions. All of this can happen, in other words, the doors can suddenly break open, under the special status of being deemed a “guest.” This designation, on one level, is actually an oxymoron because in reality it’s just a more polite way of saying that you are not one of us; you are and remain the “other.” Does the ETS share the same judgment as Schaeffer? If so, it should state this clearly and thereby own, in an honest and forthright way, all of the consequences of such a view.
Beyond this, the Fundamentalists of the early twentieth century, taking their cues from nineteenth-century Princeton theologians such as B.B. Warfield, embraced a doctrine of inerrancy. And though the Neo-evangelicals later during this same century claimed to have thrown off the fundamentalist yoke with its aggressiveness and separatist tendencies, the question remains whether or not they were ever successful. Embracing the doctrine of inerrancy, just as the early Fundamentalists had done, the Neo-evangelicals continued the separatist, divisive ways of the Fundamentalists (again, focus on what they do, not on what they say) by excluding whole populations of Evangelicals and Pentecostals from a place at the evangelical table. What’s more, they actually congratulated themselves in doing so. Those so labeled were certainly not welcomed in several venues, and of course in scholarly societies among them.
In light of these judgments, along with their consequences, upholding orthodox beliefs is clearly not enough; affirming the creeds is not enough; living a holy life is not enough; participating richly in the sacramental life of the church is not enough; being baptized and receiving the Lord’s supper regularly is not enough; serving the poor sacrificially is not enough; upholding the inspiration and authority of Scripture as the Word of God is not enough if it doesn’t embrace the epistemological position embedded in the doctrine of inerrancy; interpreting the Bible (its major hermeneutic) in terms of holy love and grace, and living accordingly, is not enough. All of this, as important as it is, simply doesn’t matter. In the end, it counts for nothing, absolutely nothing. No membership in the ETS for you. In fact, all of it is powerless to prevent the negative, separatist, and divisive judgment that is surely coming: “You are not one of us.” “You have never been one of us.” What’s more, “You are not an evangelical; you have never been an evangelical. We therefore must separate from you and divide, divide, divide.”
Readers by now are likely to come to the conclusion that something is terribly wrong here, and they would be correct in that judgment. Indeed, once you bring these elements together, holding a particular belief, on the one hand, and examining the consequences of holding such a belief on the other hand, it’s almost like receiving a splash of cold water in the face. While some have been lost in the details of their own arguments, along with their odd epistemological moves, they failed to reckon in concrete ways with other matters of great and pressing concern. In other words, what are the effects of holding such views for the Body of Christ? Put another way, what would be some of the specific problems entailed in all of this for ongoing Christian fellowship?
On one level, it’s the nature of the claim itself and the way in which it is held which has caused so many problems. Indeed, when the doctrine of inerrancy is seriously considered, it becomes immediately evident that this is an exclusive claim. According to inerrantists there is only one way, and one way alone, to view the inspiration and authority of Scripture. All other views are simply deemed wrong at the outset—even before they are seriously considered. If inerrantists already know what the results of any examination will be, then why even bother? It’s our way or the highway. Get on board or get out. Welcome to a new form of cancel culture.
Part of the difficulty inerrantists have in terms of serious reflection, as well as sound critical thinking, in this particular area is that they simply cannot fathom that others in the church actually think differently than they do about such matters and with a seriousness and integrity that helps to form their own consciences. Faced with sincere, godly Christian believers who for conscience's sake cannot with integrity affirm a doctrine of inerrancy, the inerrantists, given their exclusive claims, can only respond with the very negative and sweeping judgment that such consciences are in the end malformed. Here reading an additional book or two on the wonders of the doctrine of inerrancy will not solve this problem. Going to another lecture will not do. Thinking well of the nineteenth-century Princeton theologians will not cut it. With malformed consciences in place, something much more is needed. The confessional is now required.
That the doctrine of inerrancy is held as an exclusive claim is also evident in the annoying habit of inerrantists of reading their own views into everything, even where they don’t belong. They’re like epistemological wedding crashers. To illustrate, a colleague of mine at Asbury Seminary recently looked over our Statement of Faith in terms of its specific teaching on Scripture and immediately concluded “inerrancy.” I had now become “the other” in one swift and audacious move. Knowing the history of the seminary as I do, I had to correct this presumptive judgment. Oddly enough, given how the doctrine is held by its adherents, it only takes a few key words or their cognates to trigger a full-blown judgment of inerrancy. That’s all that’s needed for a document to be ripped away from its owners and drafters.
In the face of these deeply mistaken judgments, I had to carefully acquaint this person with the specific context in which this segment on Scripture was actually written. Indeed, Dr. Frank Bateman Stanger, who was president at the time, specifically wanted to avoid the full-blown language of inerrancy because he not only recognized its exclusive, shutting-down-the-conversation claims, but he also recognized that many Wesleyan Evangelicals, with so many holiness folk among them, did not and have never viewed the inspiration and authority of Scripture in this way. Stanger was not about to make a good portion of the seminary population “the other.” Accordingly, he wisely and confidently made sure that the language of Lausanne, in a far more gracious, irenic and ecumenical way, would be employed in the seminary’s documents. This is a fact that is well documented; it can be richly corroborated.
In light of all of this, what then is the way forward for Evangelicals of whatever stripe? For one thing, it may be helpful as a corrective to these disturbing trends to consider, by way of contrast, the Wesleyan Theological Society. In its early years, key scholarly leaders recognized the theological, ethical, and ecumenical problems of narrowing down an understanding of the inspiration and authority of Scripture simply to one exclusive view. To illustrate, Dr. George Turner, Professor of Biblical Literature at Asbury Theological Seminary, led the movement to drop the language of “inerrancy” from the society and to replace it with the language of “infallibility.” However, once it was realized that such a move left far too many problems yet in place, Dr. Melvin Dieter, professor of Church History at the seminary, led the way to remove the language of “infallibility” from the documents of this Wesleyan society. What emerged from these careful labors, marked by generous ecumenical concern and grace, was a society that was doctrinally sound and ecumenically robust. Indeed, the Wesleyan Theological Society today remains a place in which both inerrantists and those who express the inspiration and authority of Scripture differently (by a well-developed understanding of the testimonium internum spiritus sancti, for example) are both welcomed in the society for genuine Christian fellowship and for scholarly pursuits. In such a setting, there is no need to make a division or to exclude. There is no requirement to plop down on a particular epistemology and to demand that all others do the same. Genuine Christian believers are never deemed “the other.” Instead, they are generously welcomed. And the Wesleyan Theological Society today is far stronger and far better for all of this.
And finally it must be borne in mind, for the sake of both clarity and peace, that those who understand the inspiration and authority of Scripture in different ways, and in different frameworks, do indeed recognize that inerrantists as well must follow their own consciences. There is no desire to lord it over others or to start making newfangled exclusive claims from the other side of the argument. Here once again there must be freedom, the liberty to follow one’s own conscience. Indeed, there is a spirit of generosity among those who hold other views, and it is very precious. Therefore, and in a similar way, inerrantists must finally come to recognize that the grace extended to them, in the Wesleyan Theological Society for example, must likewise be extended to others. “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12b NIV). It’s that basic; it’s that simple. In other words, they are free, of course, to hold the doctrine of inerrancy, if conscience so requires, but not in an exclusive and disruptive way, certainly not in way that breaks fellowship and fails to respect the serious reflections and the consciences of others, those who are nothing less than real, true, proper, scriptural Christians. However, if they forsake such wise, helpful and irenic counsel, if they insist that their view is the only view, and in a very self-referential, even myopic way, then here are not the markings of the universal church, rich in its catholicity and grace. Here instead is the emergence of the tribe called inerrant. Can schism be far behind?
Kenneth J. Collins is Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, and a member of Firebrand’s editorial board.