My review of the Warfield book continues with Moisés Silva’s article. This is a previously published article (WTJ 50 (1988): 65-80), though with minor revisions to the argument. The article is entitled “Old Princeton, Westminster, and Inerrancy.” The importance of the topic can hardly be overestimated. In many ways, the article is as timely today as it was in 1988. Silva starts out with this sweeping claim:
It may be an exaggeration, but only a mild one, to say that the infallibility of Scripture, with its implications, has provided Westminster’s raison d’être (p. 77).
Silva’s program here must be carefully spelled out. He is not positing this doctrine in the way that it has become stated in fundamentalist circles, despite the fact that Warfield contributed to The Fundamentals. Rather, Silva desires to lay out for us the definition of inerrancy as it has been understood by its best exponents (p. 77). Silva notes that many discussions about inerrancy (including discussions of Warfield’s position) have been characterized by a lack of appreciation for the nuances in Warfield’s position. Expressions of the lack of error in the Scriptural record must be nuanced with exegesis in order to determine what the Scripture intends to convey. A great example of this is the statement, “There is no God” (p. 80). This is from the Bible. The statement, if yanked out of its context, is the fundamental error of atheists. The Bible records this error. But the Bible ascribes it to the mouth of the fool. In other words, “not everything found in the Scriptures is actually affirmed or taught by the biblical authors” (p. 80). What is the authorial purpose or intent of the biblical writers? In today’s ethos, such a question is not necessarily perceived as a valid one. Post-modernism, in its extreme forms, would have us believe that the text of the Bible (though not the text of its own assertions!) can mean anything that the reader wants it to mean. Silva plainly rejects such an idea. We can do exegesis (it is Silva’s job description, after all! He is an exegete by trade). This dictum is well worth remembering: “one can hardly speak of inerrancy without getting involved in hermeneutics” (p. 84).
There is really only one small quibble I would have with the article. Even though Silva balances this statement one way, it still needs a tad more qualification. He does qualify it. but one has to read the statement ever so carefully to avoid a misimpression. Here is the statement:
to acknowledge a measure of interpretive ambiguity, rattling though that may be, indicates our conviction that the Bible, and the Bible alone, is inerrant (p. 90).
Now, it is vital to note the word “interpretive” here. Silva is not saying that the Bible itself, or any one text of the Bible, has more than one meaning. All would agree that the meaning of a text could be multifold. But the entirety of the meaning is one. I think Silva might have done well to make this point a bit more explicit. In today’s post-modern age, it would be quite easy to miss the word “interpretive,” and get a wrong understanding of the point. This is a very important article, especially for fundamentalists to read. Fundamentalists tend to separate inerrancy from hermeneutics, which is perhaps the main mistake that Silva wants to guard against (aside from the obvious denial of inerrancy itself).
Green Baggins 