Reply to N. L. Giesler

Abstract

"My paper on "Ordinary Language Analysis and Theological Method" published in the last issue of this Bulletin was not about the doctrine of Scripture but part of a symposium on theological method. Had it been about Scripture I would have given the subject more than one paragraph! But it was about methodology: I suggested that the logic of models and constructs is neither strictly inductive nor strictly deductive, and that inrductio nand deduction are not the only logics available to theologians. How we formulate our theological concepts is a complex question: we do not derive all of them by direct exegesis. I used the concept of inerrancy (not inspiration nor revelation nor authority) as an example. I could as well have used the Chalcedonian formula or the congregational concept of church government: both of which I accept but neither of which in its technical detail is, I think, derived either by inductive generalization or by strict deduction from Biblical statements alone. In the Chalcedonian formula the language of Greek metaphysics provides a model, but the resultant formula is still "true to" Scripture. In the congregational concept of the church, I suspect 17th century political concepts suggested how the church might be regarded. The problem in each case is to distinguish the resultant construct from what Scripture plainly teaches. The construct is a second-order doctrine; what Scripture itself says is first-order. The same distinction must be made with regards to inerrancy, for we affirm an inerrant Scripture, not an inerrant logic nor an inerrant theological method nor inerrant theological constructs"