We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Idolatrous Devotion to Inerrancy
Ed Cyzewski posted some thoughts on his blog on why he hates the word “inerrancy”. He agrees with something Greg has been saying for a while now that seems shocking to many: fighting for the idea of inerrancy can devolve into a kind of idolatry. This is well worth the read if you’re struggling with how to read the Bible and appreciate its truth.
From Ed’s post:
I do not affirm the word inerrancy because it compromises the Christian faith to the standards of secular scientific thinking. It takes our devotion and worship away from Christ and substitutes a second-rate god that breeds fear and paranoia, threatening to crumble our faith in God with every scientific report, literary device, or historical discrepancy.
This second-rate god demands that we spend our lives worrying about the chronology of the Hebrew kings, the findings of archeology, the age of the earth, and the chronology of the gospels.
This second-rate god drives wedges between the people of God as we fight each other in the name of protecting this false “foundation” of our faith.
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Ed Cyzewski, Inerrancy, Religious Idolatry, Truth
Related Reading
Lies, Truth, and the Holy Spirit
The root of the flesh is a lie about who God is and who we are. Satan brings us into bondage of the flesh by convincing us that God is not the loving God he says that he is. In doing this, Satan convinces us that we cannot find fullness of life by being wholly…
False Gods in the Church
We often think of an idol as a statue, but an idol can be anything we use to meet the needs that only God can meet. In other words, a false god. There is no end to the false gods we create. In Western cultures we often strive to feel worth and significance by acquiring…
Quotes to Chew On: Religious Violence
“The myth of religious violence promotes a dichotomy between us in the secular West who are rational and peacemaking, and them, the hordes of violent religious fanatics in the Muslim world. Their violence is religious, and therefore irrational and divisive. Our violence, on the other hand, is rational, peacemaking, and necessary. Regrettably, we find ourselves forced to bomb them into the higher rationality.” ~William Cavanaugh,…
The Image of God
Distorted from digma.com Is the image of God you hold in your heart one that attracts or repels you?
Reading the Bible “by Faith”
The cruciform approach to reading the Bible—and specifically the culturally-conditioned and sin-stained portraits of God—requires faith on the part of the reader, which I argue in Crucifixion of the Warrior God. On one level we can discern by faith that often times God broke through the limitations and sin of the ancient authors, for we…
Imaging God Wrongly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 2
Our relationship with God depends on the way we imagine God. When we get the image of God right, the doors open for us to trust and relate to God in the ways we were created to do. But there are so many images of God that are entirely messed up. Just think about the…