01.08. Objections Arising from an Alleged “Docetism”
8º Objections Arising from an Alleged “Docetism” A very modern theological objection to Inerrancy is an implied “Docetism.” Docetism refers to an early heresy denying the genuineness of Christ’s humanity. It maintained that Christ merely appeared (dokein) to be human. Inerrancy does essentially the same thing to the Bible, it is said, that the docetists did to Christ; namely, deny its genuine humanness. “To err is human” and to be human is to err. If the Bible has no error it could not really have been written by men. Thus the human authors of the Bible, according to Inerrancy, it is charged, only appear to have written the Bible. In brief, the argument runs thus:
1. Inerrancy teaches that the Bible authors could not err.
2. But humans can err.
3. Therefore, Inerrancy implicitly teaches that the authors of the Bible were not human.
However, in this neat little syllogism they have neglected to observe a crucial part of the picture. Perhaps it will be clearest if we insert it where it belongs in the otherwise consistent syllogism:
1. Inerrancy teaches that the Bible authors could not err.
2. But humans can err (unless the omnipotent God preserves them from error without destroying their humanity).
3. Therefore Inerrancy implicitly teaches that the authors of the Bible were human (but we deny merely that their sinful erring tendencies were in operation during the writing of Holy Scripture).
Some may think that we here deny a principle we have defended above. There, we said that God could not force the will of man without destroying man as man. Here we say that God can suspend the operation of human sinfulness without destroying the humanity of the persons concerned. The difference is this: freedom is essential to the nature of man but sinfulness is not. Remove freedom and man ceases to be; remove sinfulness and he does not cease to be a man (in fact, he is only perfectly human without sin).
Furthermore, there is a rather interesting inconsistency among most of our critics. While they deny that the Bible writers can be truly human while writing without error they will not deny that Jesus could be truly human while living without error or even sin of any kind. This criticism has the value of calling even greater attention to Inerrancy’s insistence on the genuineness and indispensable importance of human participation in the writing of Scripture. While God’s part has been insisted on throughout this and most literature on the Inspiration of the Bible, this is because it is so often challenged and is of such infinite importance. Sometimes in this stress on the divine, the human is, we regret to say, overlooked. Finally, some critics appear who claim that we deny the human role altogether. This calls forth our reiteration that the Bible is no less the word of man than it is the Word of God. But it is the word of men inspired by God. The Bible, then, is the Word of God expressed in the inspired words of men.