The Preservation of Scripture

posted by: chet

*EDIT* In his comment, Loren brought my attention to an online article by Daniel Wallace addressing the question of how evangelicals can claim inerrancy when they do not even have the original Biblical manuscripts.  I have that article now linked at the end of this post.

 

This weekend here on campus we had our annual Point-Counterpoint Forum.  This year the two sides, Bart Ehrman from UNC and Dan Wallace from DTS, debated the textual reliability of the New Testament.  Both sides, as well as the other speakers from all over the place, gave me a lot to think about regarding our scriptures and ideas of inerrancy.  Dan Wallace, who was taking the "conservative" position, made an interesting point that I've been thinking about today, using a quote from C.S. Lewis' book Miracles.  Here's the quote:

"The moment (a miracle) enters (Nature's) realm it obeys all her laws.  Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested.  The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern."

Wallace used this idea as a reason why he does not hold to a preservation theory for scripture.  And I'll say that this viewpoint seems to have way less fiery hoops to jump through than maybe some other views of inerrancy. 

So what do you think?  Are we ok with this idea or do we need to hold on to another model of biblical inerrancy?  And what's at stake here?

Daniel Wallace - Inerrancy and the Text of the New Testament

Comments

[Loren Eaton]

Wallace wrote a good article related to this called "Inerrancy and the Text of the New Testament." You can find it with a quick Google.

[chet]

Thanks Loren! And if you ever get some time, I would love to read your thoughts on The Shack as a work of fiction.