The Divine Authenticity of Scripture: Critical Review 1

Introduction

As I planned in the intro to this series, it’s time to engage in some serious apologetic issues regarding the doctrine of inerrancy by examining a handful of blunders made by A.T.B. McGowan’s The Divine Authenticity of Scripture: Retrieving an Evangelical Heritage (2007).

The ultimate purpose of this review series is to uphold the truth of God’s unfailing Word and represent the historical position of the church as it really existed. The more “hands-on” purpose of it is to correct McGowan’s misunderstanding of Bavinck and contemporary inerrantists (i.e. Chicago Statement of Inerrancy), which will hopefully de-alienate Christians who hold to inerrancy. More thorough and scholarly refutations can be found elsewhere (for example, James Scott’s “Reconsidering Inerrancy: A Response to ATB McGowan’s The Divine Authenticity of Scripture, WTJ 71: (2009): 185-209). But I do hope this work will be fair, accurate, and God-honoring.

In short, McGowan misrepresents both Bavinck and those who (like RealApologetics.org) hold to inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement (1978). Correction is essential because of the huge mass of misinformation and confusion regarding the nature, purpose, and substance of the “doctrine of inerrancy.” For those who have not read previous articles on this blog, for the sake of clarity, I will repost a few quotes that state what I believe are the best (concise, accurate) definitions of inerrancy:

“Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.” – RC Sproul, President of Ligonier Ministries and author of over 100 books

“The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture, in the original manuscripts and when interpreted according to the intended sense, speaks truly in all that it affirms.” – Kevin Vanhoozer, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, author of Drama of Doctrine, Ph.D Cambridge

“The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.” – Wayne Grudem, author of Systematic Theology, Ph.D Cambridge

“All [inerrancy] means is that we hold that the Bible is true – that is, as God gave it. It is without error. That’s not referring to whether or not that somebody wrote down the words there might not be a spelling mistake or something like that. That’s not the issue, but whether or not what God said as originally given was true. And accounts for different literary genres for example. The Bible is not a systematic theology textbook. Although, it does give a whole lot of systematic truth. But it includes lament, and narrative, and letter, and adoration, and apocalyptic symbolism, and so on. So the way truth is conveyed varies enormously from literary form to literary form. All that is accounted for in any sophisticated treatment of the doctrine of Scripture. But the “flag” inerrancy is meant to describe is the reliability of Scripture.” – DA Carson, Ph.D Cambridge

“My own conclusion is that ‘the Scripture cannot be broken’ (John 10:35). The point of this verse in John is that whatever Scripture addresses has a truthful force that cannot be blunted. I understand this in terms of the inerrancy of Scripture, especially as that is formulated in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” – GK Beale, Ph.D Cambridge