JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

77
". . . most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything
false is found in the sacred books. That is to say that the men by whom the
Scripture has been given to us and committed to writing put down in these
books anything false. If you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority
one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of those books,
which, if appearing to anyone difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not
by the same fatal rule be explained away as a statement, in which intentionally,
the author declared what was not true."7
This is what led to the so-called "all or nothing" or "domino theory of inspiration."
Verbal inspiration is the first domino. The logic is that if you question that in any way the other
tenets of Christian theology inexorably fall. If there is one error or fault then there is no way to
know whether there may be others as well. For the most part history proves this to be true. Yet
occasionally the chain reaction stops, for reasons conservatives cannot explain.
Conservatives have often been unfair to those who disagree on theological issues such as
verbal inspiration by their inclination to take a person's present position then logically extend it,
and finally judge him for where his logic makes him end up. But he may never go beyond this
present point in his thinking he may never end up anywhere near where "logic" puts him.
Conservatives need to be cautioned that each person stands or falls to his own Master. That
Master does not see dominos; He sees our hearts as clearly as He knows our hearts. He wants to
help us stand, not prove by logic that we'll topple.
Conservatives have also tended strongly toward fundamentalistic or evangelical
rationalism in which they have tried too hard to rid the Bible of any semblance of uncertainty.
Many believe they have handily "proven" beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Bible is the
Word of God. In their relentless pursuit for proof they have invented desperate answers based
upon questionable logic and unwarranted reasoning. Such a fervor is more a testimony to their
own doubts than to their sturdy faith.
Other giants in the field of theology who held to verbal inspiration were such men as
Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1224-1274) who said "nothing false can underlie the literal sense of
Scripture."8 Martin Luther declared, "The Scriptures have never erred."9 John Wesley wrote,
"Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible there may well be a thousand. If
there is one falsehood in that Book it did not come from the God of truth."10
The problem with nonbiblical terms such as "inerrancy" is that they present problems that
seem rather alien to Scripture itself. There is the danger to overstating a doctrine because of what
is implied by these terms. We must be careful not to impose a Western standard of scientific
accuracy on an Eastern manuscript. Many Westerners force alien "accuracy" to a document that
simply was never intended to be scrutinized and analyzed by such a scientific approach. Thus
problems are created by a wrong methodology.