Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible by Vern Poythress
Copyright © 2012 by Vern Sheridan Poythress Published by Crossway
This is my new “handout book” to people who have difficulties with the Bible. It is very well rounded, tackling challenges from major disciplines that are under the influence of modern assumptions. Just look at the table of contents: challenges from science and materialism, from history, about language, from sociology and anthropology, and from psychology. Critics of the Bible come from these various angles, and reading this book will certainly help you in being prepared “to answer anyone.”
In my frequent apologetic conversations about the Bible with unbelievers, I have realized more and more that nearly all the difficulties with the Bible arise from the worldview that the individual brings to Scripture. The Bible is not dealt with according to it’s own claims. Rather, it is measured by another criteria, an autonomous criteria. This is rarely recognized on the part of the critic, who either alleges his neutrality explicitly or simply argues like he’s neutral (having never examined his own bias). I find myself, over and over again, having to point out the underlying commitments (about reality, or knowledge, or ethics) being brought to the Bible and questioning their validity. This book does just that, and is therefore an indispensable aid to day-to-day apologetics.
Taking seriously the Bible’s own worldview, and not imposing ideas from modern worldviews, helps to dissolve many of the alleged difficulties. (pg. 209)
This book defends inerrancy, Scripture’s complete truthfulness in what it says, from the angle of worldview. Vern Poythress shows that many of the challenges to Scripture, resulting in moves to throw out or redefine inerrancy, are the result of worldviews in conflict with the worldview of the Bible itself.
We can begin to answer many of our difficulties in a number of areas if we make ourselves aware of the assumptions that we tend to bring along when we study the Bible. (pg. 16)
Poythress also makes the necessary connection between false worldviews and the reality of sin. He addresses the noetic effects of sin, sin’s corruption of the mind, “so that we may appreciate the need for Christ to rescue us from sin, not only in its gross forms, but in the subtle forms that it can take within the mind. By so doing, we can also grow in appreciating the role that the Bible has to play in renewing our minds.” (pg. 187)
. . . mainstream modern thinking collides with the Bible. The collision arises largely from differences in worldview. The differences are all the more important because worldviews have entanglements with our hearts. People with corrupt hearts, in rebellion against God, corrupt their view of the world. They pass corrupt worldviews to their children, who absorb them because they too have corrupt hearts to which corrupt worldviews appeal. It is the ultimate vicious cycle. (pg. 237)
Further, Poythress emphasizes that only by God’s gracious work (regeneration) will we trust Jesus Christ, see Scripture’s claims and believe them. Worldview and ultimate trust are connected, and every human being is blinded by sin, and cannot escape that on their own. Thus, they need the Gospel and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit:
God has made provision for sins, not only through what Christ accomplished on earth, but also through Christ’s life now. He reigns as King in the presence of God the Father (Heb. 6:20; 7:24–25). And he sends the Holy Spirit, who empowers people to understand and receive what he is saying in the Bible. Robust reading of the Bible means reading that is filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit in your heart and mind and life while you are reading. If you do not have the Holy Spirit in your life right now, you can ask Jesus Christ, who is alive in heaven, to send his Spirit to you to enable you to hear and understand the Bible. But, as usual, there is a difficulty: to do that, you have to admit failure—you need supernatural help. You have to admit that you cannot receive adequately what God says unless God enables you. (pg. 186)
I highly recommend this book. It’s a quick read. The chapters are short and the whole book progresses quickly. This work is untechnical and very easy to understand. I think every Christian is able to (and should!) read this book, even if English is a second language. Read this book especially if you are frequently talking with people (even professing believers) who have difficulties with believing the Bible. I suggest even giving this book to them (after you have read it), so they can see how the prevalent modern worldview is probably the reason for the alleged difficulties.
The best option is, of course, to read this book with them.
College students (and future college students) would especially benefit from this book. I heartily agree with Wayne Grudem’s praise: “it is a wide-ranging analysis that exposes the faulty intellectual assumptions that underlie challenges to the Bible from every major academic discipline in the modern university world. I think every Christian student at every secular university should read and absorb the arguments in this book.”
Again, I highly recommend this. It is now my handout book for anyone who has difficulties with the complete truthfulness of the Bible, and for any believer frequently confronted with modern challenges to the Bible.
From the preface:
I agree that our modern world confronts us with some distinctive challenges. But I do not agree with the modern attempts to abandon or redefine inerrancy. To respond to all the modern voices one by one would be tedious, because the voices are diverse and new voices continue to appear. Rather, I want to develop an alternative response in a positive way. . . .
The Bible has much to say about God and about how we can come to know him. What it says is deeply at odds with much of the thinking in the modern world. And this fundamental difference generates differences in many other areas—differences in people’s whole view of the world. Modern worldviews are at odds with the worldview put forward in the Bible. This difference in worldviews creates obstacles when modern people read and study the Bible. People come to the Bible with expectations that do not fit the Bible, and this clash becomes one main reason, though not the only one, why people do not find the Bible’s claims acceptable.
Within the scope of a single book we cannot hope to deal with all the difficulties that people encounter. We will concentrate here on difficulties that have ties with the differences in worldview. (pg. 14)
And yes, Inerrancy and Worldview is in the Apologetics Track.