> FARRELL TILL AND THE INCONSISTENCY OF INERRANCY (part II)
> =========================================================
>
>
>II. THE CASE FOR CONSISTENCY
> ------------------------
>
>Till's claim, you will recall, is that the propositions
>
> (A1) God is omnipotent
> (A2) God is omniscient
>and
> (A3) There is more than one inerrant gospel record
>
>comprise a logically inconsistent set; it is impossible that the conjunction
>of these propositions be true. In particular, Till assumes that
>
> (A4) Necessarily, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then there will
> be exactly one inerrant gospel record (if any).
>
>Accordingly, he feels that anyone who believes set A is irrational. Now, in
>part I, I argued that Till fails entirely in his attempt to prove (A4). At
>this point, the inerrantist might well be inclined to simply put up her feet
>and wait for Till to get his arguments together. But it seems to me that she
>can press the matter, showing not only that Till has failed to carry his case,
>but that what he has said is in fact _false_. In other words, I think it can
>be shown that
>
> (A5) Possibly, God is omnipotent and omniscient and there is more than
> one inerrant gospel record (if any).
>
>To this end, consider the following two propositions:
>
> (A5a) Libertarianism is true.
>
> (A5b) The libertarian version of the inerrancy doctrine entails (i) that
> the gospel writers were free in a libertarian sense with respect
> to the composition of their records, and (ii) that (taken
> together) the four gospels provide a complete and inerrant account
> of what God wants us to know w.r.t. a certain set of events.
Davis proceeds to offer an admirable defense of a libertarian version of inerrancy. Unfortunately, such a defense is unnecessary in view of the fact that Till's argument is not directed at a libertarian interpretation of inerrancy. Till's argument is, and has always been (so far as I can tell within the context of the ERRANCY list), directed against a particular brand of inerrancy held by members of various fundamentalist sects. According to these fundamentalists, the Bible is the inerrant word of an omniscient, omnipotent God, and as such is *completely and utterly* free of error or contradiction. This absolute accuracy is held to apply to *all* matters - scientific, historical, geographic, and textual as well as spiritual. This view is more widely held than Davis might think. In fact, many churchgoers in the U.S. would consider his libertarian view to be heretical. Moreover, these fundamentalist inerrantists hold that God's inspiration of the Bible was a matter of direct word for word influence on the human authors, something like giving dictation to a secretary. Actually, it is even more constrained than that, since God exerted his unlimited power to ensure that no errors were made in the actual writing of the scripture. In addition, since the Bible is held to have issued directly from this perfect being, it is held to be perfect itself.
It is this extreme version of inerrancy that Till's arguments are directed against, and they are successful in demonstrating the flaws in that position. Davis' libertarian view is decidedly not the view of the inerrantists that Till wishes to address. Davis has taken the term 'inerrancy' out of the context in which it was raised and broadened its definition to include a more libertarian interpretation. In doing so, Davis is flailing away (albeit with some success) at a straw figure that he himself has erected. His defense of libertarian inerrancy fails to address the point of Till's argument against the fundamentalists.
> My two posts are not intended to show that Till isn't persuasive on the
>popular, lay level. For all I know, he is. Rather, they are meant to show that
>Till's case for the irrationality of inerrancy is _philosophically_ bankrupt.
>No serious student of logic or philosophy should be impressed by it. Hence, no
>thoughtful person should claim (or be taken in by the claim) that Till has
>offerred us a knock-down argument for the conclusion that belief in inerrancy
>is irrational. This is hardly the case.
On the contrary, given the definition of inerrancy Till has consistently been addressing, his case for that position's irrationality is _not_ philosophically bankrupt. Now, it is entirely possible that the post that originally led to Davis' response did not contain an explicit definition of the version of inerrancy in question, and if such is the case it is understandable that a misunderstanding has arisen. If Till were writing a piece intended for publication in a scholarly journal of philosophy, he would be remiss in leaving out such an explicit definition. Given the somewhat less strict standards of lay discussion on e-mail lists, however, and given the established context of the ERRANCY list, Till's failure to explicitely define inerrancy is quite acceptable.
>************************************************************************
>| Richard Davis, PhD (Cand), Dept of Philosophy, U Toronto, 215 Huron |
>| St, M5S 1A1, Ph: (905) 727-0361, Email: davis@epas.utoronto.ca |
>************************************************************************
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