WESLEYANISM AND THE INERRANCY ISSUE

by J. Kenneth Grider

The long, Wesleyan tradition, in contrast to the rather recent and recent tradition in Calvinistic evangelicalism, has been one in which we have been hunters for the soteriological in the authoritative Scriptures, instead of for whether or not they contain errors on matters that do not matter—non—faith and non—practice matters.

A spill—over from the Calvinistic interest occurred during the first five formative years of the Wesleyan Theological Society, whereby all members were required to subscribe to the view that the autographs of Scripture were inerrant. Belief in the inerrancy of the autographs had been required for membership in the Evangelical Theological Society formed some twenty years earlier, and that requirement, no doubt, figured in a similar requirement for membership being established for members of the Wesleyan Theological Society.

I had been a member of and active in the Evangelical Theological Society, as had Stephen Paine and others, now forming the Wesleyan Theological Society. Scholars in that society were evangelicals, and we Wesleyans were also, of course, so we were at first uneasily content to make the same requirement for membership that was made by the Evangelical Theological Society.

As we of the Wesleyan Theological Society celebrate our twentieth year, I should like to present a number of supports for the change we barely voted through at the annual meeting of about our fifth year.

In that meeting, I made three brief speeches supportive of the change; and I feel that it is significant that the change was made.

I have never taught that there were errors in the autographs. I teach only that there might have been, and that it would not matter greatly to faith and practice if there had been certain inconsequential errors in such areas as mathematics or geography.

Harold Lindsell says that there are the inerrancy people, and those whom he calls the "believers in errancy."1 He does not recognize my agnostic—like kind of view, which I suspect is also the view of many other Wesleyan Theological Society members.

Since the early 1970's, much energy has been expended in Calvinistic evangelicalism to support the so—called total inerrancy view. The late Francis Schaeffer and Norman Geisler have figured significantly in this interest, but no one has figured as significantly as has Harold Lindsell.2

Besides treating the issue as editor of Christianity Today, Lindsell has published two books supporting it: The Battle for the Bible, 3 and The Bible in the Balance.4 In the earlier book, which occasioned perhaps more controversy within evangelicalism than has any other book within the past two or three decades, Lindsell teaches his view straightforwardly—as indeed he does in the sequel to it. He teaches that the Bible autographs were inerrant on all matters, scientific and historical, as well as doctrinal and ethical. He states that this kind of view has been normative throughout Christian history, and that "believers in errancy"5 have only appeared in any force during the past 150 years. He even prefers to define "evangelical" on a "total inerrancy" basis,6 although he is, of course, not willing to say that the so—called "errancy" people are not Christians.

After discussing the divided situation within what he hesitatingly calls Evangelicalism, he seeks to support his view from the Scriptures themselves; then treats the history of the church as though it is supportive; and follows this by a discussion of the "inerrancy" tensions among the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Southern Baptists, in Fuller Theological Seminary's history, and among certain other para—church groups.

A basic supposition of Lindsell's is that, while the early Christian creeds (Apostles', Nicene, Athanasian) do not have an article on Scripture, their writers assumed such a view to be commonly believed, so that no article on the matter was needed. Lindsell also assumes that the later creeds which do contain an article on Scripture mean that it is pervasively without error even though this is not made expressly clear in the later creeds—such as the Westminster Confession. Lindsell also tends to interpret numerous Fathers and medievals and Reformers, and even John Wesley, as teaching total inerrancy, when they do not do so expressly. Lindsell then calls the inerrant—on—doctrine—and—practice view as taught by many evangelicals a departure from the church's historical stance.

Fuller Theological Seminary's Jack Rogers, in his Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical,7 studied the writings of the seven Englishmen and the four Scotsmen who served on the committee that wrote the article of faith on Scripture in the Westminster Confession, and he found that not one of them taught that Scripture is necessarily inerrant on matters such as science and history. His work should be applauded as historical sleuthing which tends to undermine the view of Lindsell and others that the article of faith on Scripture in that Confession intends total inerrancy.

The total inerrancy view came to be taught by B. B. Warfield at Princeton at around the turn of the nineteenth century; and it is espoused by many evangelicals today, such as Dallas Theological Seminary's Norman Geisler.

I myself, not admitting that there were any errors of any kind in the autographs, am non—committal about any possible non—faith, non—practice errors in those non—extant manuscripts. I hold, as a faith confidence which I cannot altogether support, that the autographs would not have contained errors on doctrine and practice matters—if I am allowed to interpret with wide—brush strokes the manuscripts which we do possess.

I am actually a hunter after the Bible's soteriological message, and do not even like to engage myself with such matters as whether it errs on non-faith or non—practice matters.

As to why Scripture might possibly contain errors on unimportant matters, but not on important ones, I hold this because I believe that a special help on the consequential matters was a significant aspect of the Holy Spirit's inspiration of the writers. One of the important effects of inspiration, I feel, is that the writers were guided in such a way that they did not teach errors on doctrine and practice. I believe, however, that a careful student of the Scriptures can only say this if he is allowed to interpret Scripture with Scripture, often explaining the difficult and seemingly inconsistent passages with passages that are more clear in their meaning.

It is on a considerable number of bases that as a Wesleyan evangelical, I hold the confidence that Scripture is inerrant on doctrine and practice, but that it just might contain error on matters relating to mathematics or science or geography or such like.

One basis for this view is that, if God had been interested in some sort of wooden accuracy even on non—doctrinal and non—ethical matters, it is strange that he would have chosen such languages as Hebrew and Greek for the writing of the Bible. This is especially because Hebrew had no written vowels. Since it had only consonants, we have been required to supply vowels; and this necessity of supplying vowels makes for an inexactness not in keeping with total inerrancy interests. It is admitted that the context helps us to be usually confident about what vowels to add. And most would agree that the Massoretes did very well in adding vowels to the Hebrew consonants. Yet inexactness is introduced. With regard to Greek: the fact that the earliest manuscripts were uncials, thereby containing only capital letters, leaves it open to question in some contexts as to whether (for example) SPIRIT refers to the Holy Spirit or the human spirit. The total absence of punctuation gives rise to further uncertainties.

God could have gotten inspired thoughts conveyed in the Hebrew and in the Greek, it would seem to me. And He could have used those languages if He was interested that the writings contain no errors in doctrine and practice matters. But especially the Hebrew, and the Greek to some extent, would have been inadequate languages, if God was anxious about some sort of total accuracy.

Further, if God was interested in total inerrancy, why are the approximate 300 quotations in the New Testament not the writers' own translations of the inspired writings of the Hebrew Old Testament, but instead always from a Greek translation of the Hebrew: the Septuagint? Something of total accuracy is always lost, in a translation. And, while the Holy Spirit would have been helping the seventy pre—Christian Septuagint translators, the church has not understood that they enjoyed what we technically call inspiration.

Moreover, what great advantage would there have been, in total inerrancy in the Hebrew and Greek autographs, when the writings were soon to need to be translated into other languages, and the wooden accuracy would have been lost anyway? In the thousands of extant New Testament manuscripts, we find tens of thousands of minor variations. We find numerous such variations if we collate only our few oldest New Testament manuscripts and if we compare the Dead Sea Hebrew—language Scrolls with the Massoretic Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts. Why should the Holy Spirit guard just those original autographs that came from the Bible writers themselves on all minute non—faith matters, when the equivalent meaning of what is said had to be translated into all sorts of languages, and fine, precise accuracy was going to be lost anyway? Evidently, what is important is that the meaning be guarded sufficiently so that matters of doctrine and practice are protected. That, as I see it, is one of the continuing works of the Holy Spirit of truth.

Of bearing also on the inerrancy issue is the fact that even the four Gospels, which give details of Christ's life, tend to give only such life details as relate in some way to the redemption He provided for us. These strange looking books which we calls Gospels, which do not seem to conform to any previous literary form, seem to be biographies that were not simply biographies. They do not give biographical details one by one, but details that relate to redemption. They give accounts of His teachings, His mighty works, and His death and resurrection. Two of them, Matthew and Luke, start with His birth, no doubt because they understand that its supernaturalness and its naturalness relate to the redemption He provided; then they skip over to matter related to His ministry. John gives us a different order of events because he feels that that order will facilitate his purpose of giving us an account of the redeeming Christ in whom he wants the reader to believe savingly.

Moreover, Scripture itself is not interested in inerrancy. It makes a claim for inspiration, but not for inerrancy—at least, not for total inerrancy. And what the New Testament says the Old Testament's inspiration results in is not inerrancy, but correct teaching on doctrine and practice. The most express passage of all, on inspiration, states clearly what the inspiration insures; and all the things that it insures, or results in, are doctrine and practice matters. This passage reads, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16).

A final matter I would mention on this: to express a total inerrancy view of Scripture might mean that we would be expressing a "higher" view of Scripture than the church usually expresses on Christ our God—Man Savior. We express the confidence that Christ was sinless. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf . . ." The writer of Hebrews says it in 4:15: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin."

Christ was without original sin because he was a new Adam, a new representative of the race, and did not get represented by the first Adam. And Scripture declares in effect that he did not ever disobey the Father who had sent Him. Yet Scripture does not declare outright that Christ never did err in any way whatever. I myself would not state that He erred in any way. Yet, even as I allow that Scripture might err in some unimportant way, I would also allow that Jesus might have erred in such a way. He might have as He grew up. Are we to believe that He never once looked for Joseph in the carpenter shop only to learn that "father" was somewhere else? Some evangelicals, such as Olin Alfred Curtis, understand that there was a gradual dawning in Jesus' consciousness of just who He was. If He had never made any mistake of the type I have mentioned, it would be somewhat open to question whether He really was fully human, as well as fully divine.

Luke's statement that "Jesus kept increasing in wisdom" (Luke 2:52) as well as in "stature" might imply that in His humanity as a lad, He gradually corrected earlier faulty understandings.

What I am saying is that Scripture and the church have taught unequivocally that Christ was sinless, not that He was totally errorless on unimportant matters. And I am saying that if one were to say that the Scriptures were totally without errors, even on inconsequential matters where doctrine and practice are not involved, we would be saying something more select about them than the Scriptures and the church have usually expressed about our God—Man Savior Himself.

The Wesleyan tradition, I feel, is similar to the view I have here taken on the inerrancy issue.

Although John Wesley can be and is quoted as supporting a total inerrancy view, I interpret him as teaching a view similar to my own, on this matter. It is so that Wesley made at least one statement, in his journal, which might imply total inerrancy. He said, "Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth."8 This statement, which is quoted by Harold Lindsell in The Battle for the Bible, is different from much that is contrary to it in Wesley; and indeed, even this statement is not a clear teaching of total inerrancy. On this latter matter, he has not clearly stated that he is including unimportant matters as he says there are no mistakes in the Bible. Indeed, as he says that if there is one "falsehood," he implies that the "mistakes" he has just spoken of would be on consequential matters. Since "falsehood" is his synonym for "mistake," then "mistake" must have to do with a consequential matter. Besides, since he uses the word "truth" here, implying that the Bible, without any falsehoods in it, comes from "the God of truth," he seems to be talking about its consequential matters, instead of its mathematics, or geography, or genealogical tables, or something of that sort.

Besides, many things that Wesley says about Scripture show clearly that he views it in much the same way as I have here said I myself do. For one thing, he allows that there might have been incorrectness in the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. In his comment on Matthew 1:1 in the Notes, he says:

This passage shows two special things about Wesley's view on inerrancy. It shows that there might have been unimportant errors. It shows also that, if there were any, it does not matter, if the "grand point," the important point, is still made, in the passage.

Wesley's use of "true," in "infallibly true," I feel, also suggests that he understood the Scriptures to be infallible on the important matters instead of always correct on such matters as mathematics. In this connection, he says, " 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,' consequently all scripture is infallibly true."9

In a letter, he said, "The Scriptures are a complete rule of faith and practice; and they are clear in all necessary points."10 This shows that "faith and practice" are the "necessary points," and that those are the points in Scripture he is interested in.

It is correct that Wesley's instruction was to "enjoin nothing that the Bible does not clearly enjoin," and to "forbid nothing that it does not clearly forbid."11 But this is simply an announcing of his sola scriptura view, not of anything like an inclusive inerrancy.

It is also correct that he and other Holy Club members were called "Bible moths,"12 who fed on the Bible as moths do on cloth. Again, this is only a high view of Scripture as a means of grace, as he understood it to be; not that it is totally inerrant.

Even Wesley's well—known statement about Scripture helping us to "know one thing—the way to heaven," where he also says, "O give me that book!" and where he says he is "homo unius libri,"13 only supports what I am saying—not a total inerrancy view.

I should also suggest that the loose, inexact way in which Wesley uses Scripture, referring to its thrust, often without quoting it precisely, implies that he did not think of it as somehow correct in areas of detail on matters that do not matter.

Early Methodist Adam Clarke, Biblical scholar extraordinary, also held this kind of view on inerrancy. He said, "I only contend for such an inspiration, or Divine assistance of the sacred writers of the New Testament, as will assure us of the truth of what they wrote, . . . but not for such an inspiration as implies that even their words were dictated, or their phrases suggested to them by the Holy Ghost."14

That Clarke was interested in faith and practice matters, instead of anything like a total inerrancy, is shown when he says, "The Sacred Scriptures . . . are alone sufficient for every thing relative to faith and practice of a Christian, and were given by inspiration of God."15 Along with this, it should be mentioned that for Clarke at times "the Holy Ghost . . . dictated to them . . . what to write . . ."16 This heightened degree of the Spirit's help, in certain parts of Scripture, has been properly taught also by many others inside of and outside the Wesleyan tradition.

On inerrancy specifically, Clarke implies that this has to do with matters of salvation when he writes, "The Bible . . . declares his [God's] will relative to the salvation of men . . . Men may err, but the scriptures cannot . . ."17 He also says, "The apostles were assisted and preserved from error by the Spirit of God; and therefore, were enabled to deliver to us an unerring rule of faith."18 Again, this is inerrancy on the "rule of faith," not on inconsequential matters.

H. Orton Wiley (1877—1961) viewed inerrancy similarly. He seems to have written Article Four of the Nazarene Articles of Faith, as he served on a commission which re—wrote the article on Scripture—which re—writing was made official at the 1928 General Assembly and at the subsequent district assemblies.19 I studied under him and taught a course jointly with him at Pasadena College during the 1952—53 school year, and also visited with him on theological matters almost daily. I also visited with him and corresponded with him occasionally until near the time of his passing in 1961. We discussed specifically the matter of the Bible's total inerrancy, and he told me clearly that he did not hold to that position. One reason I remember this so clearly is because, at that time, I myself tended toward the total inerrancy view. I have since searched Wiley's Christian Theology to see if, in it, he anywhere indicated a total inerrancy view. This is because I was corresponding at the time with my friend from Drew University student days, William Arnett, long—time systematic theologian of Asbury Theological Seminary, who told me he was reading Wiley as teaching total inerrancy. Yet from my visits with Wiley, from checking his writings, and from checking the passages which Professor Arnett asked me to check, I am confident that Wiley nowhere taught total inerrancy. He probably wrote about, and he did teach, the kind of inerrancy which is indicated in Article Four of the Nazarene Articles of Faith, which speaks of the "Holy Scriptures," written by the help of "inspiration," as "inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation."20 The word "inerrantly," here, first appeared in the Scripture article in 1928. In 1907, this part of the article had read, "revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation." No change was made in the article in the Manuals of 1908 and 1919; and the changes in the 1911 and 1916 Manuals were not of consequence. The twenties had been a time when fundamentalist ideas on scripture had been debated, and when some Nazarenes had tried to nudge the denomination toward fundamentalism as such. This might have figured in the introduction of the word "inerrantly" in the 1928 article on scripture. Yet it is to be noted that Scripture is only said to be inerrant on matters "necessary to our salvation"; not on all matters.

Wiley's delineated view on scripture is found in his Christian Theology. In it, he says that the Spirit's "inspiration" means that "the Bible becomes the infallible Word of God, the authoritative Rule of Faith and Practice in the Church."21 This is not a total inerrancy statement; instead, it reveals that his interest is in the Bible's being "infallible" and "authoritative" on the matters that matter: doctrine and practice. At one place, he gives seven bases for believing that the Scriptures "have been kept intact and free from essential error, so that we may be assured of the truth originally given by the inspired authors."22

A. M. Hills, perhaps second only to H. Orton Wiley in significance as a theologian of America's Holiness Movement during this century, author of 35 books and over 2000 articles, taught that Scripture contains errors on unimportant matters.

Sometimes, it seems that Hills means only that the copies of the autographs introduced errors—which we are all compelled to understand. He writes, "Thus by the negligence or inaccuracy of the copyist, through the many centuries, in hundreds of manuscripts, there came to be ten thousand various readings in the Old Testament, and one hundred and fifty thousand in the New Testament, as the eminent scholars tell us, . . ."23

At other times, though, he simply admits that there are inconsequential errors and discrepancies in our Bible, and he does not seem to be speaking of copying variations. In this connection, he says, "But to say that all of Scripture was so inspired verbally, is to put too great a tax upon faith. In view of the discrepancies, and the disagreements and misquotations, or inaccurate quotations, and the manifestly lower moral and spiritual tone in some passages than in others, these strong theories [of "universal" plenary and "common" verbal inspiration], if applied to the whole Bible cannot be successfully defended."24 He goes on to say, "But if the inspiration of the original text [the autographs] were absolute and complete [he implies that it was not], and were absolutely proved, no one can maintain that we have that original text in every minute particular."25 Later, he says, "But, in spite of all discrepancies, and disagreements, and errors, and minor inaccuracies, the Bible still remains God's inspired and infallible book."26 And he soon adds, "The marvel and the miracle is that there are so few discrepancies of any real importance."27

So, while he states, early in his treatment of Scripture, that it is the copyists of the autographs, the "original texts, " who made errors, he later seems clearly to be saying that there were inconsequential errors and discrepancies in the autographs. This is in part because he later speaks simply of Scripture as having the errors in it. It is in part because the nature of the errors is not such that they would come from merely the copyists. When he speaks of copyist errors, he refers to letters within words that are missing or out of order, or incorrect—clearly copyist errors. Yet, he later speaks of, as quoted above, "the discrepancies and the disagreements and misquotations, or inaccurate quotations," and of the "errors," all due to a lower than verbal form of inspiration obtaining in the Scripture writers.

Hills might be the only major Holiness Movement theologian to teach that there were unimportant errors in the autographs. I myself understand that there might have been inconsequential errors, not that there were. It would seem to me that even such an error as that of quoting one Old Testament prophet, and saying that the quote is from a different prophet, might have been an error that got introduced into the text at a later time. A copyist could have mistakenly thought that the wrong prophet was named, and changed it to another name. I also feel that it would be of no special consequence if the autographs did contain occasional errors of that sort. It is interesting, though, that Hills took this kind of view in a 1931 publication, just after evangelicalism generally in America, the Church of the Nazarene included, had been pushed in the middle and late 1920's toward fundamentalist directions. It is a fact, too, that from 1932 until the appearance of the first volume of Wiley's Christian Theology in 1940, Fundamental Christian Theology was the required theology text for Nazarene home—study—course ministers.

One more Holiness theologian's views should be mentioned, I feel, on this inerrancy issue: those of Richard S. Taylor, my colleague for sixteen years at Nazarene Theological Seminary.

Taylor's views are remarkably similar to my own. On the worth of literary criticism, he is more disparaging than I am; and he has even discouraged ministers from studies that include such pursuits, whereas I would not. Yet in the same book, on the inerrancy issue, he takes a view which seems to be identical to my own, on possible inconsequential errors in the original writings of Scripture. He says, "Of course the whole question of 'inconsequential error' remains debatable; this book is not assuming that such error existed in the autographs."28

As we in the Wesleyan Theological Society begin our next twenty years of contribution to the theological understanding of people in our tradition, let it be hoped that we will do our theological work with care, not accepting readily spillovers from the right wing of the larger segment of the evangelical camp: Calvinistic evangelicalism.

Notes

1See Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), p. 141.

2Such Calvinistic evangelicals as Jack Rogers and Fuller Theological Seminary president David Allen Hubbard have at the same time opposed the total inerrancy view.

3Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976).

4Harold Lindsell, The Bible in the Balance (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979).

5Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, p. 141.

6Ibid, p. 139.

7Jack Rogers, Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974).

8John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 8 vols., ed. Nehemiah Curnock (London: Epworth, 1909; reprint ed., 1938), 6:117.

9Wes1ey's Works, 6:193.

10Ibid, 2:325.

11Ibid, 8:192.

12See Richard Green, John Wesley Evangelist (London: The Religious Tract Soc., 1906), pp. 76—77.

13John Wesley, The Sermons of John Wesley, annotated by E. H. Sugden (London: Epworth, 1936), 1:31.

14Adam Clarke, The New Testament . . . with Commentary and Critical Notes (New York: Abingdon—Cokesbury Press, n.d.), 1.

15See J. B. B. Clarke, ed., An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke, 3 vols. (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833), 1:172.

16Clarke, Commentary, comments on 2 Peter 1:20, 21.

17Adam Clarke, Miscellaneous Works, 13 vols. (London: T. Tegg, 1839—1846), 12:132.

18Clarke, Commentary, 6:9.

19A. Elwood Sanner stated in the Wiley Lectures at Pasadena College that Wiley had told him that he, Wiley, had written Article Four, and that Wiley had added, "I wanted to state it so that there would be a little bit of elbow room in there." Stephen S. White stated in the Herald of Holiness in 1966: "I had nothing to do with writing this statement (Article Four), but I am quite sure Dr. Wiley did have" (Nov.9, 1966, 14). White did not serve on the Manual Revision Commission. His college theology teacher, E. P. Ellyson, was its chairman; General Church Secretary E. J. Flemming, its secretary; and the other members were J. B. Chapman (not elected general superintendent until 1928), H. Orton Wiley, A. E. Girvin, John Gould, and P. L. Pierce (see Manual, Church of the Nazarene, 1923, 186—186; Journal Sixth General Assembly, 7).

20See Nazarene Manual, 1928, p. 22.

21Christian Theology, 1:170.

22Ibid., 213—214.

23A. M. Hills, Fundamental Christian Theology, title page missing, p. 64.

24Ibid, p. 78—79.

25Ibid., p. 79.

26Ibid.,p. 87.

27Ibid.

28Richard S. Taylor, Biblical Authority and Christian Faith (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1980), p. 80.