Inspiration and Criticism: The Nineteenth-Century Crisis: Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 129-159
Inspiration and Criticism: The Nineteenth-Century Crisis: Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 129-159
Inspiration and Criticism: The Nineteenth-Century Crisis: Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 129-159
130
131
4.
5.
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136
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138
139
140
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142
Historian 49ff.
143
D_______________________So, Q, C
|
|
|
Unless R
Since W
|
On account of B
144
2.
D
Q
C
Harry was born __________So, presumably,
Harry is a
in Bermuda
|
|
British subject
Since W
Unless R
A man born in Bermuda Both his parents
will generally be
were aliens/he has
a British subject
become a naturalised
|
American,. . .
On account of B
The following statutes
and other legal
provisions:
D____________________________Q,
C
x
|
Presumably,
y
Since W
|
The historical method
Unless R
applies thus
Counter-vailing
|
historical arguments
|
can be brought; i.e.,
On account of B
the Conservative
1. Historical criticism
interpretation of the
is generally valid;
passage is inherently
2. Historical criticism
more likely
applies to Scripture,
as to any other book
145
D _____________________________Q,
C
x
|
Presumably
y
Since W
|
What the Bible
|
says is true
Unless R
|
Compelling historical
|
arguments can be
On account of B
shown to the contrary
1. It is the canon of
the Church;
2. It is inspired, the
Word of God, etc.;
3. Jesus held this view
of the Old Testament
Here x represents the Biblical narrative, and y the
inference that - notwithstanding what may be
considered apparent discrepancies - this account
gives a unified and accurate report of something
which took place as described.
146
147
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149
42.
150
Cont.
or "God does not really love us then"' (New Essays
98). Flew's intention is to argue that since
religious assertions are unfalsifiable in any
conceivable set of circumstances, they are not really
'assertions' at all.
It is neither appropriate nor necessary for us to
discuss this fundamental question at any length,
since we are not trying to justify religious belief
in general, but rather to show the place of the
Conservative view of Scripture in Conservative
religion, and the way in which Conservatives saw
defence of infallibilism as analogous with defence of
other elements of the Faith. But it is illuminating
to refer to Basil Mitchell's answer to Flew, since it
sheds its own light on the dynamic of Christian
apologetic in the face of difficult evidence.
Mitchell writes: 'The theologian surely would not
deny that the fact of pain counts against the
assertion that God loves men. This very
incompatibility generates the most intractable of
theological problems - the problem of evil. So the
theologian does recognize the fact of pain as
counting against the Christian doctrine, but it is
true that he will not allow it - or anything - to
count decisively against it; for he is committed by
his faith to trust in God. His attitude is not that
of the detached observer, but of the believer' (New
Essays 103). Mitchell then sets up an analogy which,
interestingly, has much in common with Burgon's
analogy of the Bible and his friend. In an occupied
country a member of the resistance meets a stranger
who tells him and convinces him that he is actually
in command of the resistance forces. 'The partisan
is utterly convinced at that meeting of the
Stranger's sincerity and constancy and undertakes to
trust him.' After that there is never again a
private meeting, and the stranger is seen sometimes
helping the partisans and sometimes helping the
occupying power. 'Sometimes his friends, in
exasperation, say "Well, what would he have to do for
you to admit that you were wrong and that he is not
on our side?"' Mitchell continues: 'The partisan
of the parable does not allow anything to count
decisively against the proposition, "The Stranger is
on our side". This is because he has committed
himself to trust the Stranger. But he of course
151
Cont.
recognizes that the Stranger's ambiguous behaviour
does count against what he believes about him. It is
precisely this situation which constitutes the trial
of his faith.' The question is how long, and in the
face of what evidence, he can uphold this position,
'without its becoming just silly' (104). It is of
the nature of faith that it cannot be merely
provisional, while, on the other hand, it cannot be
merely a 'vacuous formula . . . to which experience
makes no difference'. 'Do I want to say that the
partisan's belief about the Stranger is, in any
sense, an explanation? I think I do. It explains
and makes sense of the Stranger's behaviour: it helps
to explain also the resistance movement in the
context of which he appears. In each case it differs
from the interpretation which the others put upon the
same facts ' (105). There is an irreducible
circularity in the position of the religious man, and
whatever may be the conditions of falsification of
his beliefs (and in practical terms they must exist,
since people do change and abandon religious beliefs),
Mitchell comments that one cannot say 'in advance'
what they will be. In terms of his parable, 'it will
depend on the nature of the impression created by the
Stranger in the first place. It will depend, too, on
the manner in which he takes the Stranger's
behaviour. If he blandly dismisses it as of no
consequence, as having no bearing upon his belief, it
will be assumed that he is thoughtless or insane ...
In that case he would be like the religious man who
says blandly of a terrible disaster "It is God's
will". No, he will only be regarded as sane and
reasonable in his belief, if he experiences in
himself the full force of the conflict' (104, 105,
emphasis ours.)
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153
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155
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157
IV
We have ranged wide over the field of nineteenthcentury debate. It remains to attempt a perspective on
these momentous developments. One of the difficulties
of any such assessment is that this story is, of course,
a chapter in our own autobiography as scholarly
defenders of what we take as our own tradition. Another
is that, plainly, evangelicals today have not resolved
those questions which lie beneath the surface of the
Criticism debate, about the relations of dogmatic and
historical warrants and the role of the critical reason
in interpreting the Scripture. One must therefore
proceed with some care.
The nineteenth-century crisis broke upon a consensus
doctrine which evangelicals shared with all mainstream
'Christians': that Holy Scripture was, ex hypothesi,
infallible. As this ex hypothesi infallibilism came
under pressure during the first part of the century,
there was loosed on its opponents a mounting torrent of
apologetic. With the broader dissemination of
Continental Critical ideas in the middle of the century
it was felt to be increasingly necessary to respond ad
hominem, on the merits of the Critical case, and to this
end, for example, the T. and T. Clark Foreign
Theological Library was started in 1846, making
available German Conservative works to the British
public.
Imperceptibly, as the debate progressed, the ground
occupied by the Conservatives shifted. While, generally,
they continued to believe the Bible to be infallible,
they began to acknowledge the validity in themselves of
the historical criteria which the Critics took to be
absolute. The middle position to which this took the
Conservatives was still infallibilism (in that they
still believed the Bible to be infallible), but it was
infallibilism-on-the-merits, de facto. This was
substantially the position early taken up by Westcott
and his colleagues in the field of the New Testament,
and had the effect of largely removing the New Testament
from the debate about Criticism and Scripture until that
debate had been largely resolved. Dogmatic warrants
had been laid aside, and, de facto, its infallibility
apparently preserved.
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