Rehabilitating Inerrancy In A Culture Of Fear [Hardcover]

Description: The notion that the Bible is inerrant in everything it teaches is something those with conservative upbringings are conditioned to take for granted. However, after being exposed to scholarship in biblical studies and other disciplines, some draw the unexpected conclusion that inerrancy as a doctrine is in dire need of serious revamping. Unfortunately, inerrantist politics and culture are making the constructive, restorative process impossible to intitiate. In Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear, Carlos Bovell offers a synoptic overview of the issues to be addressed if inerrancy is to survive as a viable bibliological option. Endorsements: Bovell unveils his positive agenda: rehabilitating a robust doctrine of Scripture in a context marked by suspicion and fear. By exposing hidden assumptions, unclear concepts, and sloppy reasoning, Bovell sketches out some of the necessary conditions for this rebuilding task. You need not agree with all of his prescriptions to benefit immensely from his perceptive diagnoses. The last chapter on Old Princeton alone is worth the price of the book! --Stephen Taylor Associate Professor of New Testament Biblical Seminary (Pennsylvania) Bovell argues compellingly that commitment to the authority of Scripture does not require that one affirm the doctrine of biblical inerrancy . . . I was particularly impressed with his argument that the employment of speech act theory, to understand the relation between what the human writers of Scripture say and what God says by way of those writers, undermines rather than supports inerrancy as a way of understanding the Bible as God's word. --Nicholas Wolterstorff Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia In order to rehabilitate inerrancy, Bovell makes a bold and thoughtful plea for evangelicals to realize the important hermeneutical issues of culture, historylÓ&