Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy 27

What do Christians mean when they say the Bible is inerrant? The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy tells us what leading inerrantist mean by inerrancy. I’ll be posting a section of this statement each week until I’ve posted the whole thing.

After a preface and a short statement, the Chicago Statement contains the Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (You can read previously posted sections of this statement in by clicking here.) The last section is the Exposition, which “gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.” This is the very last section of this historic church document.

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Inerrancy and Authority

In our affirmation of the authority of Scripture as involving its total truth, we are consciously standing with Christ and His apostles, indeed with the whole Bible and with the main stream of Church history from the first days until very recently. We are concerned at the casual, inadvertent, and seemingly thoughtless way in which a belief of such far-reaching importance has been given up by so many in our day.

We are conscious too that great and grave confusion results from ceasing to maintain the total truth of the Bible whose authority one professes to acknowledge. The result of taking this step is that the Bible which God gave loses its authority, and what has authority instead is a Bible reduced in content according to the demands of one’s critical reasonings and in principle reducible still further once one has started. This means that at bottom independent reason now has authority, as opposed to Scriptural teaching. If this is not seen and if for the time being basic evangelical doctrines are still held, persons denying the full truth of Scripture may claim an evangelical identity while methodologically they have moved away from the evangelical principle of knowledge to an unstable subjectivism, and will find it hard not to move further.

We affirm that what Scripture says, God says. May He be glorified. Amen and Amen.

Round the Sphere Again: For Fall

Light in the Darkness
The fall equinox is officially at 8:09pm, my time. From then until the spring equinox, those in the northern hemisphere will have more darkness than light, although the change will be more dramatic the farther north you go.

All that darkness makes for good northern lights viewing, and there’s a new place to view them: The Canadian Space Agency’s new aurora webcam. Scroll over the upper right corner and click Connect and if it’s after dusk Yellowknife time, you can watch for the northern lights. Or you could just watch one of the featured videos of past northern lights.

Comfort Food in the Pot
I have harvested everything from the garden except for a little lettuce. I decided it was time to dig the rest of the potatoes and carrots and pick the last three heads of cabbage when I woke a few mornings ago to a thermometer that said -6.7C.

• I’m going to use some of those cabbage leaves in this recipe: Crock Pot Cabbage Rolls (Mennonite Girls Can Cook). Cabbage rolls are a favorite in this house and I can’t wait to try making them in my favorite fall kitchen appliance—the crock pot.
• After that, I’m trying Kim’s lentil soup (The Upward Call). I’m thinking I could make that in the crock pot, too. That it’d use up a little more of the three heads of cabbage crowding the vegie drawers in my fridge is a big bonus.
• I’ve mentioned last week that I’ve been making and canning applesauce. The orchard run MacIntosh were in the supermarket this week, so I’ve made more sauce from the Macs. Don’t know how to make applesauce? I do it like this, except that I usually don’t use cinnamon.

Poem for the Season
I suppose it’s really more about spring, but this seems appropriate for fall, too, don’t you think? (While We Sojourn)

Theological Term of the Week

supralapsarianism
The view that in the plan made by God in eternity, his decree of election logically preceded his decree to permit the fall, so that when God chose “some to receive eternal life and rejected all others,” he was contemplating them as unfallen.1

• Scripture used to support supralapsarianism:

  For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

  19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (Romans 9:17, 19-21 ESV)

• From The Plan of Salvation by B. B. Warfield:

  Some are so zealous for particularism that they place discrimination at the root of all God’s dealings with his creatures. That he has any creatures at all they suppose to be in the interest of discrimination, and all that he decrees concerning his creatures they suppose he decrees only that he may discriminate between them. They therefore place the decree of “election” by which men are made to differ, in the order of decrees, logically prior to the decree of creation itself, or at any rate prior to all that is decreed concerning man as man; that is to say, since man’s history begins with the fall, prior to the decree of the fall itself. They are therefore called Supralapsarians, that is, those who place the decree of election in the order of thought prior to the decree of the fall.

Learn more:

1. Monergism.com: What do the terms “supralapsarianism,” and “infralapsarianism” mean…?
2. Phil Johnson: Notes on Supralapsarianism & Infralapsarianism
3. Kevin DeYoung: Theological Primer: Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism
4. Loraine Boettner: Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism
5. Herman Bavinck: Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism
6. Curt Daniel: The Order of the Decrees (mp3) from The History and Theology of Calvinism
7. Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas: Differing Views on Election 01 and 02 (RTS on iTunes U)

Related terms:

• order of the decrees
• infralapsarianism

1This definition is taken mainly from Notes on Supralapsarianism & Infralapsarianism by Phil Johnson.

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

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Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.