Proposition this!

Gladly, my paper at the Tübingen colloquium went well, and it gave me a good deal of pleasure that all agreed with the thrust of my thesis in affirming a Pauline divine-Christology.

I was also glad to be informed by Prof. Lichtenberger (a delightful man, by the way) that the brilliant NT scholar, William Horbury, will be heading Tübingen-way next month to present a paper in honour of Martin Hengel’s 80th birthday. Oddly enough, I mentioned Horbury in my paper Monday evening, and though he is really not the sort of exegetical opponent one would want to have, I’m nonetheless convinced his take on early Christology is faulty. Thus I take issue with him at numerous points in my work. I’m sure looking forward to his lecture!

I was also pleased to see how much dialogue has been generated below in the comments concerning the ETS adoption of the Chicago statement on inerrancy (and on blogs all over the place). David Wilkerson (from whom I learn a lot) wrote something in the comments that has stuck with me and I have taken the following from it: I would now speak about affirming the Scriptures as ‘true’ (not CS inerrant) without always having to feel that I need to be sure what I mean by such an affirmation. I suppose I wouldn’t feel comfortable anymore with any ‘statement’ qualifying inerrancy through a thousand deaths. Why the need? Can we define the concept of ‘childhood’ in propositions? Can we exhaust or capture the meaning of ‘sin’ or ‘love’ in propositions? Why should we feel able to express the truth of Scripture in just such a way without either missing the point or even getting it ‘one size fits all’ wrong, as arguably the Chicago statement does?

The ETS can of course make all the doctrinal definitions they want - that is up to them. They are defining the limits of what counts as evangelical within their own society, not worldwide (did someone say ‘thank God!’?). But their actions still send out a message to all evangelicals, so perhaps others need to be reminded – and I’m pretty sure many members of the ETS will agree with this – that while numerous things, not least believing the evangel of Jesus Christ, make an evangelical, one is not qualified or disqualified as an evangelical because, to put it bluntly, one does or does not happen to believe that the bunnies literally hopped up into the Ark two-by-two (cf. Article XII).