J.P. Moreland: Evangelicals are "over-committed" to the Bible

From Christianity Today, this fascinating bit of news:

While the ballroom sessions of the first day of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting had more attendees, no session was as packed as J.P. Moreland’s “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.” While the average breakout session seems to be attended by fewer than 50 people, easily more than 200 packed the room to hear Moreland’s talk, with dozens standing and more listening outside the door. ...

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.” ...

“The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement,” he said. “We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends.”

That wasn’t as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those “Catholic friends.” Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting’s many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the “new open theism” at ETS.

No, more provocative was Moreland’s argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren’t allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they’re not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they’re engaged in “private language games and increasingly detailed minutia” and “we’re not seeing work on broad cultural themes.”

Blogger Barry Carey of WithAllYourMind.net is at the conference and writes this:

First, J. P. Moreland delivered a paper entitled, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What can be Done about It.” One might misunderstand Moreland’s topic without having attended the session. In one sense, Evangelicals are under-committed to the Bible, yet, Moreland argues, they have over-committed to the Bible in making it the sole authority, or source of knowledge. This stands in contrast to the historical view which holds that the Bible is the ultimate authority or source of knowledge. This over-committment stems from a withdrawal from the broader world of ideas, surrendering the source of “real knowledge” to the hard sciences. Moreland’s call was for evangelicals to recover the use of right reason, natural law, experience, Creeds , and tradition as subordinate sources of knowledge.

The reaction to Moreland's talk should be interesting to follow. The former ETS president who became Catholic is, of course, Dr. Francis Beckwith, professor at Baylor University (read my June 2007 interview with him here). More to come, I'm sure.

Comments

[LJ]

Could the Evangelicals ever loosen their grip on Sola Scriptura? The consequences are monumental for anyone in that camp that has looked at the issue of authority in more than a cursory way.

"Moreland’s call was for evangelicals to recover the use of right reason, natural law, experience, Creeds , and tradition as subordinate sources of knowledge."

Barry Carey's qualifier is significant and the key word is "subordinate". However, if Moreland can move them to look at the Early Fathers, for example, without any guilt feelings, that would be a great step forward. We, as Catholics, would be more than happy to provide a reading list and then pray the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

[ASimpleSinner]

The Coming Home Network has assisted or been in contact with over 1000+ pastor converts to the Catholic Church.

I have every reason to believe this trend will continue.

Offer prayers.

[Eric Postma]

"Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren’t allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they’re not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they’re engaged in “private language games and increasingly detailed minutia” and “we’re not seeing work on broad cultural themes.”"

Alasdair MacIntyre makes precisely this observation in The Religious Significance of Atheism" (way back in 1968 when he was still an atheist) when he is discussing how Christians reacted to the growth of science. They tended to become deists or fundamentalists, virtually throwing in the towel or declaring victory while the opponent was punching them in the face. Such is the picture most people still have of Christians in general. Sadly, few people (including MacIntyre at the time, he's Catholic these days) adequately condsider the far more robust, if slower repsonse of the Church which, understanding that truth cannot contradict truth sought ways to understand Scripture in the light of science and vice versa, a process which could be seen to have been going on long before the 16th and 17th centuries.

[xavier]

Carl:
Doesn't the Protestant overreliance of the Bible smack of Islam' similar obession with the Koran? I've always been struck at how the 2 have a strong similarities about their obsession towards the holy books. The advantage is that Christanity doesn't stand or fall solely on the Bible whereas Islam will utterly fall apart if the Koran is refuted.

xavier

[Joe]

"Islam will utterly fall apart if the Koran is refuted."

As would the Church if were the Bible. See Vatican II.

[joanne]

Considering the content of some Catholic Bible study sessions and the published guides they follow, I hope that the advice given to Evangelicals is not to follow our recent trend. Ironically, I've attended a Baptist Bible Study recently just because it is wonderful to hear people who love God's Word and whose goal is not to deny Christ's miracles.
If I hear that business about the "real" miracle of the loaves and the fishes being one of people actually sharing their food with each other one more time, I'm going to be sick. The "isn't it obvious that this isn't literal?" and the "everyone knows that..." trend is both sad and viral. I hope the evangelicals don't catch it.

[Amera Joseff]

All may be interested to know that JP has posted his response to the CT blog on the Kingdom Triangle blog: http://kingdomtriangle.blogspot.com/2007/11/morelands-response-to-ct-blog.html
Moreover, the link also provides access to the full-text of Moreland's ETS paper. Moreland's www.kingdomtriangle.com also provides opportunity to sample his book Kingdom Triangle, along with audio of him speaking and being interviewed about the book.