Thinking to Believe

Those who deny inerrancy end up replacing the authority of the Bible with their own authority because they get to determine which parts of the Bible are divinely inspired and which are not. The process is almost entirely subjective.

The tendency is to deny the inspiration of any part of Scripture that does not line up with what they think is true. When the Bible’s sexual ethics conflict with their sexual ethic, it is because those texts reflect man’s opinion rather than God’s. When the Bible’s teaching seems to conflict with the current scientific consensus, it is because those teachings are not inspired. When the Bible portrays God doing something that conflicts with their understanding of God, those passages must reflect man’s ideas rather than God’s. In the end, the Bible (and Christianity) is remade into their own image. When God just so happens to endorse everything you already believe, you’ve probably got the wrong God.

Here’s a dilemma for those who support abortion.

Imagine that an IVF embryo was inserted into the wrong womb. The clinic notifies both parties. The biological mother wants the baby, but the gestational mother wants to abort the baby because it is not hers. What do you do?

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While cessationists offer Biblical arguments for their position, truth be told, Scripture plays a secondary role in most cessationists’ epistemology/theology. What’s really driving their position is their experience – or more properly, their lack of experience of the supernatural.

They seem to reason as follows: “I have never witnessed a miracle or the operation of any spiritual gifts. None of the people in my church or broader religious organization have experienced such either. I know I am a Christian and the people in my fellowship are Christians, so if God were still doing supernatural he miraculous today, surely we would witness such events in our midst. Since we have not witnessed such events, God must not be doing supernatural things in our day.” From there, one simply needs to determine when and why God stopped doing miracles and giving spiritual gifts.

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