I had an
earlier post on James Orr’s Revelation
and Inspiration (Scribner’s, 1910), reflecting on seeming inconsistencies in
his views (e. g., rejecting higher criticism but embracing evolution). At the
close of the same book the Scottish theologian who contributed to The Fundamentals offers a surprising
critique of the Hodges/Warfield construal of inerrancy. He writes:
It is urged, e.g., that unless we can
demonstrate what is called ‘inerrancy’ of the Biblical record, down even to the
minutest details, the whole edifice of belief in revealed religion falls to the
ground. This, on the face of it, is a most suicidal position for any defender
of revelation to take up (p. 198).
So, Orr does not think it necessary to affirm inerrancy in
order to uphold the authority of the Bible. Though this sounds like the same
view disastrously adopted in liberal Protestantism, perhaps Orr was intuiting
some of the flaws in the defense of the Bible based in the hypothetical
reconstruction of inerrant, non-extant autographs.
Along these lines, he has some interesting points to make
with regard to the doctrine of preservation, noting, “it is reasonable to
expect that provision will be made for the
preservation of the knowledge of revelation in some permanent and authoritative form. Otherwise, the object in giving revelation would
be frustrated” (p. 155).
Though Orr’s unwillingness to defend the uniform truthfulness
of Biblical content is distressing, could he have been on target in other ways?
Is it that Orr saw a fundamental disconnect between the Westminster construal
of the infallibility of Scripture stressing immediate inspiration and divine
preservation and the new construal of inerrancy by Hodges/Warfield?
JTR
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