A school’s real creed is what is taught in the classroom. If a creed sits in a drawer, it does not matter much what is said. A school’s practical creed is the beliefs and teaching of its faculty. Erskine cannot at the same time uphold inerrancy and employ those who oppose inerrancy any more than the United States of 1850 could have been described as a free society.

Last year, the Reformed world watched as the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) plunged itself into a debate about how to address longstanding tensions and issues surrounding its Erskine College and Theological Seminary. Those issues are far too complex to sort out here, other than to say that one result of the battle was the appointment of a new president for those conjoined institutions, Dr. David Norman. Dr. Norman has an unenviable task, for the issues are many and complex. Since his appointment, he has been attempting to navigate the murky waters of Erskine’s deep and longstanding difficulties.

One of those difficulties surrounds the requirement that all faculty affirm the doctrine of inerrancy. What is this doctrine and why is it so vital? The ARP expressed its understanding of inerrancy in 2008, stating “the position of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church on Scripture is that the Bible alone, being God-breathed, is the Word of God written, infallible in all that it teaches, and inerrant in the original manuscripts.”

Inerrancy is something the Bible claims for itself. Paul tells us that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of Godmay be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Likewise, the Apostle Peter wrote, “[k]nowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Inerrancy simply means the Bible is God’s word and thus without error. While it is true that we don’t possess the original manuscripts, archaelogical discovery and Biblical scholarship has given us a very trustworthy and accurate manuscript.

For a long time, scholars in the PC(USA) who consider themselves to be relatively conservative have tried to stake out a mediating ground between inerrancy, which they perceive to be a militant and anti-scholarly fundamentalist position, and the outright denial of Biblical authority by higher critical scholars. Thus, they attempt to affirm the Bible’s authority without affirming its inerrancy. This presents a problem, and this is where Erskine and her president come in.

Erskine’s requirement, the ARP’s statement, and the Scriptures appear clear enough. There are only two options: either one sits under the authority of the Word of God or he places himself in judgment over the Word of God. Either God’s Word is what it claims to be or human scholarship and authority supersedes the Bible’s own claims, and man must sort out for himself which parts of Scripture are accurate and authoritative, and which are not.

If the Bible contains error it cannot be authoritative. Man must then judge which parts of Scripture are true and which are false; Scripture no longer sits in judgment over man.

The problem at Erskine centers around two faculty members, themselves members of the PC(USA), not the ARP, named Michael Bush and Richard Burnett. Dr. Burnett does not like the ARP’s statement on inerrancy, or Erskine’s requirement that faculty submit to it. Indeed, he has written a fifty-six point rebuttal of such a doctrine, with high dudgeon, here [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

This presents Dr. Norman and the whole Erskine governing structure with a tremendous problem. How can Erskine stand before the watching world, proclaiming herself to be evangelical in doctrine, and yet harbor those who publicly and vociferously denounce and ridicule the doctrine of inerrancy?

Like institutions are wont do to, Erskine is resting her hopes in a technicality. First, Erskine reports “In 2008, the Seminary Committee of the Board of Trustees investigated issues related to Dr. Burnett’s teaching on Scriptural authority…The committee agreed that Dr. Burnett affirmed the inspiration of Scripture and its infallible authority in keeping with the Westminster Standards.” There is no subsequent explanation of how it found this to be true, given what Dr. Burnett himself has written. It is simply declared to be true, in defiance of the public evidence.

For instance, Dr. Burnett, in the aforementioned fifty-six points, states that inerrancy is of recent vintage, asking

“If affirming that the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts is so essential, why did it take so long for the church to do so officially?”

This is misleading. The truth is that belief in Biblical inerrancy was always subsumed under the doctrine of inspiration. It is not until Protestant liberals began to widen the definition of inspiration to make room for themselves that orthodox Christians were pressed to define the doctrine further. Doctrines always become more precise as error asserts itself –witness the Nicene Creed and its precise Christology.

The church always affirmed the full divinity and humanity of Christ but, when faced with a challenge, fleshed the doctrine out in response to error: so, too, with Biblical inerrancy. No-one could seriously assert that the Westminster Divines meant anything other than inerrancy when they penned the first chapter of the Confession of Faith.

Yet, it is precisely here that Dr. Burnett seeks to make room for himself. We cannot reasonably expect the Divines to have countered challenges to inerrancy they had not experienced any more than we could expect Sun Tzu to have written rules for nuclear war. You cannot oppose or define what does not yet exist.

Dr. Burnett wants to take refuge in the word “evangelical.” Erskine has long been known as an evangelical institution, and Burnett argues that an affirmation of inerrancy is not essential to what it means to be evangelical. In his first point, he states, that the inerrantist believes that a failure to affirm that the Bible is inerrant “is not to be an evangelical Christian.” He states that the vast majority of evangelical Christians around the world and the overwhelming majority of evanglical colleges in the United States do not make this affirmation nor do they require it of faculty members.”

Yet, this is a tautological argument. Dr. Burnett assumes what he seeks to assert, namely that self-described evangelical institutions do not see inerrancy as part and parcel of evangelicalism. We might counter that an institution, its protestations to the contrary not withstanding, that does not affirm the full inerrancy of the Scriptures is not evangelical in the historic sense of that term.

The term evangelical has an interesting history –it was the self-designation of Lutherans in Germany, and became associated with the revivalist movement of the eighteenth century, associated with men like Whitefield, the Wesleys and Edwards. In the nineteenth century, it was affiliated both with the work of Charles Spurgeon and the modern missions movement.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the term “evangelical” would be further defined by men like Carl F. H. Henry and Harold John Ockenga as a conservative, scholarly movement that focused on the centrality of the gospel, the necessity of Christ’s atoning work and the reality of the conversion experience, while advancing a conservative stance on Scripture and doctrine.

One wonders where, among this long pedigree, Dr. Burnett might find a single man who ever asserted a single error in the Biblical text. Indeed, the honest student of history will find just the opposite to be true. J. I. Packer, one of the intellectual leaders of twentieth century evangelicalism shows this to be the case in his fine little volume, ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God.

The Erskine authorities take refuge in the rules of tenure. No doubt these rules put them in a difficult spot –the precise reason that other Reformed seminaries eschew tenure altogether. They state that since “Dr. Burnett was hired and granted tenure before the adoption of this wording, he is under no obligation to concur with that wording as a condition of his continued employment at Erskine.”

In the ARP magazine, President Norman, no doubt eager to promote his schools as defenders of inerrancy, has published the first two articles of a three-part series on the doctrine of inerrancy and its place in academia. He tries to stake out careful ground between academic freedom and doctrinal moorings. In this attempt he is unsuccessful.
In part two, Norman writes,

“This discussion naturally raises questions like, “Can one believe in inerrancy and still believe in _____?” (Fill in the controversial idea of your choice: female elders, abortion, homosexual marriage, or football at Erskine). My answer would be “yes.” How? Because a commitment to inerrancy defines our premise, not our conclusions.”

Yet, surely this cannot be right –how can we define the Scripture to be inerrant, and yet take exception to what it says?

By Norman’s definition, one could affirm inerrancy, yet deny that the Scriptures are authoritative in all areas of faith and life. In Dr. Norman’s estimation, inerrancy is an empty doctrine. It affirms the whole of Scripture, while denying that it is the sum of its parts. It denies that Scripture is given for reproof, instruction, correction and training in righteousness. This is a most disappointing line of argument from a man pledged to lead an institution that is both ecclesiastical and academic.

Abraham Lincoln is famous for having said that the American government could not long endure half slave and half free. Two groups of people with such opposite commitments in such a fundamental area could not long exist together. It created problems in administration and policy to be sure –three-fifths compromises, territorial self-determination and so on. Yet, at a deeper level, ideologies were in conflict. Was the black man a man, or was he not? Were his person and his labor his own? What happened if a slave escaped to a free state? We know what the result was. Lincoln was right.

Erskine faces a similar situation. It cannot continue in its current position. It cannot advertise itself as a school that adheres to inerrancy while it and employs vocal opponents of the doctrine. It matters little that the school’s statement of faith affirms inerrancy if what is taught in the classes that inerrancy is anti-scholarly, untenable and untrue. Dr. Burnett would be forced into an untenable situation were he to hold that inerrancy was false and foolhardy, but be forced to teach a doctrine he does not believe.

A school’s real creed is what is taught in the classroom. If a creed sits in a drawer, it does not matter much what is said. A school’s practical creed is the beliefs and teaching of its faculty. Erskine cannot at the same time uphold inerrancy and employ those who oppose inerrancy any more than the United States of 1850 could have been described as a free society. Dr. Norman’s statements simply do not wash.

Ken Pierce is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS. This article was written for The Aquila Report.