Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals. Carlos R. Bovell
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id="ulink_87f174d8-dded-51f2-ae11-75baedc43cb8">7 “Modernity” in this instance refers to the intellectual and industrial effects of the Enlightenment. For example, how is an African woman who believed that a witchdoctor’s curse had been cast on her that prevented her from becoming pregnant to respond when it dawns on her that a relatively routine technological procedure allowed her to conceive soon after it was performed? Or how is a Christian parent to respond when she realizes that pills and not prayer are what is keeping her child from extreme emotional episodes?
8 John Caputo explains that “[p]ostmodernity is a continuation of modernity by another means, a kind of hyperbolic modernity or hypermodernity, a way of being ungrateful, a way of moving on with modernity.” See John Caputo, “Metanoetics: Elements of a Postmodern Christian Philosophy” in The Question of Christian Philosophy Today. (ed. F. J. Ambrosio; New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), 189–223. See also Lee Hardy, “Postmodernism as a Kind of Modernism” in Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought. (ed. M. Westphal; Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 28–43.
9 Aristotle, The Metaphysics, Book I, 981a. (trans. J. H. McMahon; Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1991). Might one simplistically describe the problem as preferring Plato over Aristotle?
10 Compare John J. Brogan’s objection in “Can I Have Your Autographs? Uses and Abuses of Textual Criticism in Formulating an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture” in Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics. (ed. V. Bacote, L. C. Miguelez, and D. L. Okholm; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 93–111, 108.
11 Whereas Kevin Vanhoozer attributes a “hermeneutics of procrastination” to untoward spiritual conditions in one’s heart, I decry the contributions of the stultifying burdens placed upon the heart by inerrancy in the first place. See Kevin Vanhoozer, “Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics” in Whatever Happened to Truth? (ed. A. Köstenberger; Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 93–129.
12 Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America. 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 170.
13 Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, 170.
14 Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, 170.
15 Compare John Webster’s suggested pattern of a simultaneous unworkability and necessity in Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 11.
16 I was appalled to learn that some evangelical apologists of a previous generation publicly argued that the only sensible alternative to Christian belief is suicide. (See Nelson, The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind, 211–214.) Inerrantists should take more seriously the analogous psychological effects of all-or-nothing rhetoric on younger evangelicals. If they deliberately contrive inerrancy apologetic so that its disbelief is equated or directly associated with outright apostasy, perhaps the present work can help redirect attention to more pastoral considerations.
17 Or modernism for that matter. Carl Raschke’s juxtaposition of inerrancy and postmodernism, for example, misses the mark as far as I can see. His alternate construal of scriptural truth as a progressive, sacred “troth” that begins with Abraham can be rejected as sheer fantasy once one becomes convinced that Abraham never existed, that the exodus never took place, that Moses had very little to do with composing the Pentateuch, etc. More importantly, no inerrantist worth his salt will agree to framing discussions about biblical authority in terms of either inerrancy or authenticity for the two are seen as concomitants. See Carl Raschke, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).
18 Compare Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
19 I am grateful to the editor for permission to incorporate the article into the present work.
20 “Your Word Is Truth: A Statement by Evangelicals and Catholics Together” in Your Word is Truth: A Project of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. (ed. C. Colson and R. J. Neuhaus; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 1–8, 5.
21 Francis S. Collins, “Faith and the Human Genome” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55 (2003): 142–153, 151–152.
Recognition One
Evangelical Worldview Philosophy Is “Corrupting” Our Youths
A high view of Scripture is what has traditionally identified evangelicals.1 It is often asserted that non-evangelical doctrines of Scripture are to be attributed to non-Christian worldviews. Evangelical teachers are, therefore, instructing younger evangelicals to “do battle” at the worldview level since non-evangelical estimations of Scripture are invariably linked to non-Christian suppositions.
Of interest to us is how trend-prone evangelical Christian youth teachers and leaders can be. From WWJD to the Prayer of Jabez, evangelicalism-at-large seems to be especially susceptible to vogues. Since evangelicalism is at heart a grassroots movement, it, perhaps, should not surprise that when a particular idea gains in its ascendancy, it is very difficult to keep it in check. Perhaps for this reason, even evangelical academics have set their (and God’s) stamps of approval on the current pedagogical trend involving worldview philosophy.2 For example, Chuck Colson has so strongly affirmed the new vogue that he professes, “I am convinced that meshing prison ministry with worldview teaching is God’s providential plan for Prison Fellowship.”3
Worldviews are presented to young believers as coherent paradigms founded upon Christian beliefs and traditions that ready one for confrontation with alternate and competing paradigms. The philosophy seems to have the advantage of unifying life’s manifold experience into an integrated whole. Even so, evangelical teachers may find themselves guilty of “corrupting” their youths4 and setting them up for a spiritual fall.
Salient features of worldview philosophy (at least as employed by its most influential proponents) typically include: an insistence upon coherence, strategic approaches to effect the nullification of the plurality of “non-Christian” worldviews, and a concomitant validation of the elusive and much coveted “Christian” worldview. In this chapter, I suggest that evangelicals have set their youth up for a serious fall by over-welcoming worldview philosophy into their circles. Though worldview philosophy may prove serviceable to younger evangelicals in eliciting a much needed, critical self-awareness, the worldview mentality should be disseminated more discriminately—making clear to youth groups and college fellowships, for example, that worldview philosophy is a historically and culturally convenient tool that may prove helpful in developing, with varying success, a greater sense of critical