## patg’s post at 43 corrects that:
Is the problem:
- Father Brown as a person
- His conclusions
- His methods
or what ? If people want others - non-Catholics, say - to believe the Bible is inerrant, the believers in inerrancy need to ask:
- why it is so important that it should be inerrant
- how it can make sense to say that texts never seen by anyone are inerrant
- how texts in Hebrew of which the vocalisation was added in the Christian era are inerrant - was the unvocalised text inerrant ?
- If a text is consonantal, the markings which are the letters of the words will be more liable to being read so as to provide different meanings - how is a text of which the meaning is not fixed by the way it is written, inerrant ?
- how texts which are corrected by other texts within the canon are inerrant
- How blasphemies and recorded in the texts can be called inerrant
- how the inerrancy of (say)
- how a corrupted text is inerrant
- how a text which could be translated equally well to mean wholly different things is inerrant
and, indeed, what inerrancy as a concept denotes - what does it mean to say, “This passage is inerrant” ?
What, for that matter, is the Bible ? Is its truth that of propositions and no more than that - or is its truth more akin to that of a person ?
ISTM that the Bible is true according as it mediates Christ - that it is very like the Church, in fact. Both are quasi-personal, both are flawed in a thousand ways - but both are enveloped and bathed in the ocean of God’s grace, so that the flaws are no obstacle to the making known of Christ who speaks in through both.
IOW, defenders of inerrancy need to be able to account for much much more than the letter of the teaching of the Church. Insisting a thing is true, is anything but convincing if the insisters upon it can do no more than insist - they need to be able to answer questions about what the thing they insist on implies both for other doctrines and for other things important to Catholic Christianity.
And, what is the function of inerrancy
- and, of the insistence on it ?
Is it meant to function, say, as a barrier to “liberal” questionings ? If so, it is very poor barrier against such things.
It’s very difficult to have any kind of useful discussion, helpful to all involved, with people whose thinking about a doctrine begins and ends with purely dogmatic reasoning, the reasoning which boils down to “It’s true because I say it is”.
The trouble with dogmatic reasoning, is that that sort of reasoning is not distinctively Christian - any dictatorship with a doctrine to preserve can say “It’s true because I say so”. The Church (like the Bible) is credible because of Christ - not because of those elements in it which resemble things which are not Christlike. Authority is not enough - or rather, the communion Christ gives through the Bible has its own authority.
What idea do people have of the authority of the Bible ? We need to think about this too - like so much else; inspiration, for instance. Doctrines imply things - and that is as true of doctrines of inerrancy, as of any others. Doctrines, and what they are taken to mean and imply, affect each other, just as the parts in our bodies do. Which is why a doctrine whether of inerrancy or of anything else that makes no sense is bad for all the rest of the Faith.
We cannot hand on to others as true what has not already entered into each of us as true - the Church must give away what she has received; but she cannot give, unless she has received first. And that means work on our part - not mere passive reception of statements expressing doctrines; for that is only a beginning at understanding them.
IOW - we have to think about things theologically. ##
? Thanks
