>Filoi,
>
>I get the impression, from a number of posts on this list (and other
>lists as well) that being an inerrantist is being unscholarly - it's as
>though the attitude is well, "you're an inerrantist - that speaks for
>itself - you can't be a thinking scholar and an inerrantist". In other
>words "only a complete moron would be an inerrantist."
>
>Is this what people think - That's the impression I get anyway.
>
>Of course, there have been and still are many brilliant inerrantist
>scholars...
Andrew, I think that is a very good (and scholarly) question, and I would
like to go on record myself as an inerrantist. I think the problem is the
unavoidable tension between faith and reason. Faith tends to lead us away
from science--though it need not do so--and vice versa. The golden mean
would be to understand as much as we really can within the sphere of faith.
Where scientists overstep their boundaries IMO is at the point of inquiry
where they accept unproven theories as facts that are contrary to a given
point of faith. If at that point they were instead willing to acknowledge
that faith's answer *could* be correct and the scientific theory was just
that, then perhaps we could avoid conflict. On the other side,
believer-scientists should compel themselves to find out as much about
nature as possible. E.g., I can accept the belief that God controls
everything, including the weather, but that should not preclude me from
studying and learning the physics of thunder and precipitation. If I ignore
the latter, then I might as well believe that precipitation is Zeus
urinating through a sieve. What I *should* do is declare that God sends the
rain, and thus-and-so is, to the best of my knowledge at this point, how He
does it.
Einstein, if I am not mistaken, once posed the hyposthesis that God is part
of the 90+ percent of the universe that we don't understand, and yet he
denied any possibility of a personal God. I suppose he also would have
rejected inerrancy. The proper *Greek* attitude would be to consider both
inerrancy and opposition thereto as part of the realm of DOXA, as opposed
to EPISTHMH.
Don Wilkins