There are four other contributors: John Franke, Kevin Vanhoozer, Michael Bird, and Al Mohler.

As many of you know, the Counterpoints series invites authors of different, even diametrically opposing, views to write essays on why the entire world should rightly revolve around their view and why everyone else’s should be dismissed as hopelessly muddled. I signed on right away.

This particular volume should be interesting in that the participants do not represent five distinct positions but three general ones. At this point I will leave it to you to figure out what those positions are and who holds which.

In the meantime I will say that we are going to be discussing inerrancy not in the abstract, but focusing on the same three passage, which have yet to be determined. That will be a strength of this volume, even a breath of fresh air: “How does inerrancy work here in this passage?” (No easy retreat to doctrinal statements to stall debate.)

This won’t see the light of day until 2013, so don’t hold your breath (unless your view differs from mine).

The idea for the book came out of a symposium I participated in at the University of Pennsylvania last October. I gave a Protestant perspective. A Jewish perspective was given my Marc Brettler (Brandeis) and a Catholic perspective by Dan Harrington (Boston College). We will also have a chance to engage each other briefly in the volume

Here is the outline of my chapter (about 15000 words)

1. What is a Protestant, anyway [I define what I mean by Protestant]

2. The Bible and Biblical Criticism: Three Obstacles for Protestantism [sola Scriptura, the unity of the Christian Bible, the defensive legacy of the nineteenth century]

3. Biblical Criticism and Protestant Faith in Conversation [focus on two issues:  NT use of OT and the problem of history in the OT]

4. One Protestant’s Perspective [a little of my own journey and some observations I have made along the way]

I will post more about this as we get closer to the publication date.

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/isc.upenn.edu.5147494416 (Audio is in iTunes University. Link will open iTunes. You must have iTunes installed on your computer for this to work.)

OR

MP3 download version – Part 1 (right click and save to download)

MP3 download version – Part 2 (right click and save to download)

Marc Brettler of Brandies University gave a Jewish perspective, Dan Harrington of Boston College gave the Roman Catholic perspective, and I was given the impossible task of giving the Protestant perspective.

The 3 papers (each 20 minutes long) were very well received and generated a lot of discussion afterwards. It is my understanding that the entire evening was recorded and will be (is?) available as a podcast.  A text of my own comments can be downloaded here. (Forgive the oral feel of the paper, incomplete sentences, etc.)

My comments were aimed at diagnosing why some Protestants have such an easy relationship with modern biblical scholarship, and I suggested three reasons: the Protestant notion of sola Scriptura, the Protestant identity forged in the 19th century, and the very nature of the Christian Bible. I concluded with some very brief thoughts about moving forward.

I would like to thank Beth Wenger, Director the Jewish Studies Program at Penn, for arranging the evening and doing such a great job, Jeff Tigay, Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, for extending the invitation, and Marc Brettler and Dan Harrington, for their deep thoughts on these matters and great dinner conversation afterwards.

For details, click the flyer image below, or download the full-size PDF using the link below the image.

Click image for full size

PDF version of flyer: Bible_Panel_flyer

Rachel Evans thinks doubt is a part of faith. In fact she thinks doubt can save your faith–provided you have the faith to doubt and the courage to learn from it what God may be showing you.

I agree with Rachel, and I wish I could say it as well as she does in her just-published memoir Evolving in Monkey Town.

Like a lot of people out there, I picked up the book (actually, Rachel gave me a copy at a conference –yeah me), and I couldn’t put it down. It struck a cord with me (here and here), but more importantly, it became quickly clear to me that there are a LOT of people who will benefit from Rachel’s honesty and insights.

Rachel connects with Christians who believe the Gospel, or think they do, or want to, but whose inner-theological gatekeeper collides with their life experience. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are losing steam for many young people–not because they are rebellious or naive or unlearned–but because the ecclesiastical and theological paradigms with which they are familiar have lost their explanatory power.

Critics will say that subjective experience does not determine theological truth. This is false, since any articulation of theological truth involves an inescapable subjective dimension. My proof for this is the theological diversity that has existed throughout the history of the church and continues today throughout the world.

Subjective experience, such as Rachel’s, actually exposes the inadequacies of any theological tradition when it holds itself in too high regard. It reminds us, sometimes painfully, that these traditions are not the Gospel itself but impermanent ways of understanding it. They are provisional, always in need of refinement, adjustment, augmentation, deletion–and when and where need be, abandonment.

Rachel’s critics will likely mistake her criticism of the paradigms with criticism of the Gospel itself–which precisely misses the point of the book.  Rachel’s crisis of faith was fueled by her religious education, which failed to distinguish between the two--to question one is to question the other.

In a word, this book is about how Rachel learned to stop doing that. Such a journey is risky, because it involves moving away from all that is familiar and comforting. But for Rachel and many like her, staying put is not an option.

He mentioned in his presentation the BioLogos Foundation as a being on the wrong side of this culture war, a since we are not biblical literalists and we feel science affects how we read the biblical account of creation. Along the way, Mohler made numerous statments about Darwin, science, and biblical interpretation that are simply wrong, ungenerous, and potentially misleading to his listeners, so we thought we would respond.

My response follows that of Darrel Falk’s and Karl Giberson’s (here and here). A transcript of Mohler’s presentation can be found here and the video here.