Review of Scholar’s Library (Logos Bible Software)

Installing a new software package on your computer is rarely an interesting or pleasurable experience. The longer it takes, the more irritating it becomes. Strangely, however, I found that installing the Scholar’s Library from Logos Bible Software flouted this principle. Even though it takes a good while to install, I didn’t resent the wait, because the installation process itself makes clear just why it takes the time it does. As all of the electronic books in the library are copied from the DVD to your hard drive, thumbnail images of their covers are displayed on the screen like playing cards dealt face-up on a table. And believe me, there are a lot of cards to be dealt!

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Documentary Proof of the Divine Authorship of the Bible

Uncovered today in a dusty packing box, an archaeological find that must surely rival the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in its implications for biblical scholarship:

A Reader's Hebrew Bible (front)

Reader's Hebrew Bible (back)

Note the authentic surname-comma-first-name format used to indicate the author of the text (a standard convention during the period documents such as these were produced).

Apologetic arguments for the divine inspiration of Scripture will never be the same again.

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How to Write a Theological Paper

John Frame and P&R Publishing have kindly granted me permission to post Professor Frame’s ‘How to Write a Theological Paper’ on my website. This short article appears as Appendix F in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (P&R, 1987). It should be required reading for every seminary student!

The article makes a few references to other sections of DKG, and is best read in the context of the whole book, but it can still be read as a standalone article to great profit.

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Wesleyan Trinitarianism

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the incarnate Deity!

‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ is one of my favourite Christmas carols, and I’m not alone. It’s one of the few carols that manage to combine a rousing tune with grown-up theology, all the while avoiding historical and meteorological blunders. (See amid the winter’s snow?) It’s nice to be able to sing carols that don’t require me to cross my fingers at certain points. But as I sang the lines quoted above at our Christmas Day service, I wondered whether a Social Trinitarian ought to do precisely that.

Among those who actually think about such matters, the two most popular understandings of the doctrine of the Trinity are Latin Trinitarianism (LT) and Social Trinitarianism (ST). According to LT, God is essentially one being who subsists in three distinct persons. Each person of the Trinity is numerically identical to God, but numerically distinct from the other two persons. As I’ve argued elsewhere (and so have others) this conception of the Trinity is mysterious to the point of paradox, but arguably it enjoys the best support from the biblical data and the strict monotheism of the early trinitarian creeds.

According to ST, on the other hand, God is three distinct personal beings who share precisely the same divine attributes and who are necessarily united in mutual love and benevolent purpose. On this conception, God is essentially a society of divine persons. God is, in effect, a group. The main objection to ST is that it’s closer to tritheism than monotheism. (Some theologians, most notably Jürgen Moltmann, have courageously tried to spin this apparent vice as a virtue.)

Both LT and ST reject the heretical position of modalism, according to which the persons of the Trinity are not ultimately distinct. (The modalist’s God is more like one divine person who plays three different roles.) But the two views differ on whether God is ultimately Three rather than One, ontologically speaking. LT insists that God is neither ultimately One nor ultimately Three; rather, God is ultimately Three-in-One and One-in-Three. In contrast, ST comes down squarely on the side of plurality: God is ultimately Three.

So what does any of this have to do with ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’? Consider the first of the two quoted lines. According to standard dictionary definitions, the word ‘Godhead’ refers here either to God qua God (i.e., the Deity, the Creator, the one God of monotheism) or to the divine nature (i.e., the essence of deity which is possessed fully by each of the three persons, according to trinitarian theology).

Take the first interpretation, where ‘Godhead’ refers simply to God, the Deity. I suggest that this is the most natural reading, since the first definition of ‘Godhead’ is usually in view when used with the definite article. (We would say “Jesus is the second person of the Godhead” rather than “Jesus is the second person of Godhead”,  but we would say “Jesus fully possessed Godhead” rather than “Jesus fully possessed the Godhead”.) The echo in the line that follows (“Hail the Incarnate Deity”) tends to confirm that this reading is the correct one.

Now, this first interpretation causes no problem for LT, which holds that the Son of God is one and the same being as God (the Godhead). Jesus is God Incarnate, not merely one-part-of-God Incarnate or one-member-of-God Incarnate. However, the same reading couldn’t be endorsed by an advocate of ST, since ST denies that the Son of God is one and the same being as God. Rather, the Son is only one third of God (the Godhead). Jesus Christ is not the Godhead “veiled in flesh” on this view.

Consider now the second interpretation, where ‘Godhead’ refers to the divine nature. Would this reading be more acceptable to the advocate of ST? According to both LT and ST, the divine nature is possessed fully by all three persons of the Trinity. So both agree that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, fully possessed ‘Godhead’ in this second sense. Nevertheless, this second (and less common) meaning of ‘Godhead’ leads to a theologically awkward reading of Wesley’s lyric. On a ST view, the divine nature is an abstract set of divine attributes shared by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It’s hard to see how the divine nature in that sense could be “veiled in flesh”. Indeed, to be theologically precise, we ought to say that the Incarnation involved a divine person taking on a human nature, not a divine nature taking on a human nature. So it seems we have both grammatical and theological reasons to prefer the first reading of Wesley’s verse over the second. But if this is correct, a Social Trinitarian ought to take issue with the idea that in Christ we see the Godhead “veiled in flesh”.

So what’s the lesson here? Some will conclude that Christians should give more thought to the theology of Christmas carols. Others, no doubt, will conclude the very opposite! Either way, sustained reflection on the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation can only increase our awe at the God who created us and then condescended not only to live among us but also to suffer and die that we might have eternal life.

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

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Fallacy Files #3: Confused Conditionals

One common logical fallacy is known as ‘affirming the consequent’. Arguments that commit this fallacy have this general form:

If P then Q.

Q.

Therefore P.

(In technical terminology, P is the antecedent of the first, conditional premise and Q is the consequent of that premise. The second premise of the argument affirms the consequent of the first premise rather than its antecedent; hence the fallacy of ‘affirming the consequent’.)

It isn’t difficult to see that such arguments are fallacious, as this example makes plain:

If Bob lives in Chicago then Bob lives in America.

Bob lives in America.

Therefore Bob lives in Chicago.

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Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy (Part 4)

[Continued from Part 3]

Inerrancy: Rationalistic or Just Plain Rational?

McGowan’s final salvo against the doctrine of the inerrancy is his charge that it is a “rationalist implication”. This is a rather surprising accusation, since inerrantists are more commonly accused of irrationalism than rationalism! At the heart of McGowan’s charge, however, is the idea that inerrantists have based their doctrine on an “unwarranted assumption about God”:

The basic error of the inerrantists is to insist that the inerrancy of the autographa is a direct implication of the biblical doctrine of inspiration (or divine spiration). In order to defend this implication, the inerrantists make an unwarranted assumption about God. The assumption is that, given the nature and character of God, the only kind of Scripture he could ‘breathe out’ was Scripture that is textually inerrant. If there was even one mistaken in the autographa, then God cannot have been the author, because he is incapable of error. (p. 113)

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Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy (Part 2)

[Continued from Part 1]

The Case of the Missing Argument

Two things surprised me about McGowan’s case against inerrancy. The first is that (unless I’ve missed it) he nowhere provides a definition of the doctrine of inerrancy. It seems to me that anyone who wants to argue against a doctrine ought first to specify clearly what he understands that doctrine to claim. Still, since McGowan expresses his view that the “most significant argument for inerrancy … comes from the Chicago inerrantists” (p. 104), it’s reasonable to assume that his working definition aligns with the one provided by the Chicago Statement.

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Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy (Part 1)

Challenges to the doctrine of inerrancy from within the evangelical tradition are nothing new. In that respect, Andrew McGowan’s recent book The Divine Spiration of Scripture is not especially noteworthy.[1] It has, however, caused quite a stir in Reformed evangelical circles, mainly because confessional Reformed theologians (such as McGowan) are generally thought to be more firmly committed to inerrancy than other evangelicals precisely in virtue of their confessional commitments (e.g., to the Westminster Standards). The burden of McGowan’s book is to argue that the doctrine of inerrancy is actually a recent development within the Reformed tradition, forged by Old Princeton in response to the challenge of the Enlightenment, and, moreover, that its advocacy was — to be blunt — a big mistake.

In this series of posts, I want to examine McGowan’s main arguments against the doctrine of inerrancy, as that doctrine is articulated in the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.[2] I believe his arguments are weak and evidence a misunderstanding of both the core claim of inerrantists and the core argument for that claim. What follows is not intended to be a full book review of Divine Spiration. I happen to agree with much of what McGowan says in the book, but here I want to focus solely on his case against inerrancy.[3]

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Delivered From and Unto Death

Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death. (Psalms 68:20, ESV)

For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:10, KJV)

The Christian life is a series of deliverances: a succession of temporary, partial deliverances preparing us for a permanent, decisive deliverance.

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