Highlights from Last Week's Newsletters

We had a great week on Tov Unleashed this past week.

We began by poking at the misunderstandings, impositions, and misuses of inerrancy — so that the term, so we think, has become nearly unhelpful.

More now on this sense of authority. In the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible there is no entry on “inerrancy.” What is there is found under “Scripture, Authority of.” That is telling in itself. The essay is by John Webster who speaks too of divine authority mediated through scripture. “The authority of Scripture lies in its reference to the church’s God and his gospel” (Webster, 725). He anchors Scripture, as does Bird, in the doctrine of God, not in epistemology. It is a “function of the triune God’s self-manifestation” (725). It is a “commissioned witness or herald” (726).

So, to the words for the meaning of inerrancy we must also add God’s witness.

Over the years when people use the term “inerrancy” I have a habit of listening to see what they mean by its use rather than assume I know. Yes, it can mean without error or true but more often than not they are affirming some authority for a specific interpretation that is part of their tribe.

For this reason the term is not that helpful. Like the word “evangelical,” it has had its day in the sun.

And we had a good time with some ideas about reading the Book of Revelation, which is the first in a series we will be doing on the Book of Revelation.

First, chuck what you learned in the Left Behind series and open your mind to imagination. This Book of Revelation is more like Where the Wild Things Are and Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia than like the dispensational readings so popular on YouTube and the internet.

Second, the predictive prophecy approach has been wrong every time. The driving passion of this approach to Revelation is Who does What at What Time? Who is the Beast from the Sea, What do the seven seals predict, and what time is it now? Is it rapture time? Tribulation time? Millennium time? Every identification of Who, What, and What Time has so far been wrong. We’d be better off not reading Revelation as predictive prophecy.