What is it with Evangelicals and issuing bold proclamations every time they get dunked on by a black pastor on Twitter? First there was the Nashville Statement, then the Gospel and Social Justice. This is dumb. I was going to watch Futurama for the 49th time tonight and jerk off in peace but now I gotta get up and read this stupid document and translate the Christian-ese for both of my fans. Well here’s a hasty, non-edited summary of what’s in the latest dumb shit from dumb evangelicals. Bon appetit.
THE ENTIRE PREFACE FOR NERDS WHO LIKE READING
The Preface is mostly boilerplate stuff, introducing what we’re about to read. From this we gather that this statement is primarily concerned with one thing: the authority of scripture. We’re supposed to understand that (a) Scripture - the Bible (never mind it’s just assumed we’re talking the Protestant Christian Scripture) - is inerrant, (b) that Christian doctrine is perfectly given to us in Scripture, and therefore (c) Christianity can only be correctly followed by those who believe that and follow it.
These writers have done an excellent job trying to anicipate all sort of objections that, it turns out, are not the real objections we have to this document. But then they fail to aniticipate... literally anything else. Let’s take a look at a few sentences:
“To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master.”
Not to be too blasphemous here, but Jesus Fucking Christ. Okay, so I understand that the writers of the Bible used the word Master a lot more than we do now, but did anyone at the table writing this try to imagine what sort of connotation that sentence would bring up? Holy shit. There is no way to read “Master” here in a positive light. And... “disloyalty?” What? That’s a weird choice of words. God doesn’t demand our loyalty. There is not a single passage where God demands anyone using the word “loyalty.” Seriously. Find an online Bible Concordance, search “loyalty,” and see how many verses you get. Finally, what does it mean to “stray from Scripture in faith”? I get straying in conduct - you don’t do what it says. Do the writers of this document seriously intend for us to believe that we are disloyal to God if we don’t immediately believe everything in the Bible?
I started writing this thinking I was going to explain the words in this document in a way that non-Christians can understand what is being said... but I already have to tap out. This is so amazingly, utterly galling a sentence that I don’t think I could get through any more of this explanation without wanting to gouge my eyes out with a melon baller. Let’s move along.
Other than that, Ms. Lincoln, how was the play
The rest of the preface is mostly fine. We’re told the form the following statement will take, as well as the intention behind it. Frankly, I don’t care about the intention. “We offer this Statement in a spirit, not of contention, but of humility and love.” Buddy, you don’t decide whether your words are loving. If you say something hateful, it doesn’t matter if you wanted to be nice.
As for the final paragraph, this might need explaining for the non-evangelicals in the room. Basically, the writers are saying that if you disagree, then you need to provide - using Scripture (the Bible) - an argument for why they are wrong. This fails in two ways. First, from basic logic. If you make an argument, and someone says you didn’t actually provide any evidence, it’s on you - the maker of the argument - to do so. It is not for us to have to dig up evidence you’re wrong. Only once you’ve provided evidence can you then demand counterevidence. These idiots are demanding counterevidence up front, and there are no Biblical quotations in this document to back up their claims. Second, this sucks because it’s demanding us to use a source to prove itself. You can’t do that. If we want to show the Bible is true, or that it is false, we’re not going to use the Bible. We’re going to cross-reference the Bible against other sources. That’s just how adults do things.
Okay, I’ve gotta move on or I’ll be typing all night.
THE FIVE STATEMENTS
The Chicago Statement is preceded by five short explanatory statements to get us all on the same page. Of course, if you’re not Evangelical you might not even be able to get onto the same book here, so I will try to help.
TRANSLATION: God does not lie. God “inspired,” or created-with-extra-steps, Scripture to reveal Jesus Christ to us. Therefore, whatever is written in the Bible must be true, because God wrote it.
This one might sound illogical, but it’s not - at least it isn’t outright false or anything. It is based on a lot of assumptions. First, that God exists, and specifically the Christian God. If you don’t believe in that, then of course nothing else follows. But if you already believe in God and know that God is all-truthful, it should follow that whatever God says is correct.
Unfortunately, we’re going to get hung up on “inspiration” for a while. Strap in, folks.
TRANSLATION: Because God’s words are true, they cannot be denied. If God says x happened, you must believe x happened. If God says to do y, you must do y.
This follows necessarily from the first statement.
TRANSLATION: The way you know that Scripture is true is that God personally tells you.
I’m serious, that’s what this means. Trust me, I grew up in this fucking cult. Their defense against any sort of argument from outsiders such as “wait a second, how can you say the Bible is true when it says [insert crazy thing]” is: God told me in my heart.
I would like to say here that I have no problem with God speaking through the Holy Spirit to a person who reads the Bible. But the idea that God can only do that, and that outside sources are not to be trusted, is at best stupid and at worst demonic. As the Bible itself says, “test the spirits.”
TRANSLATION: Every single word of the Bible is true in a literal sense.
There’s a lot here that is either outright wrong or just worded in such a way that someday someone could come along with evidence to prove it is wrong easily. Claiming the Bible is verbally God-given is a mistake. We don’t know that God’s way of inspiring the writers was to use words. All we know is that the writers eventually used words. It’s also a huge mistake to specifically add the creation story to this. If God indeed inspired the specific words of Genesis 1-3, we do not know to what extent God intended for those words to be a literal recounting and what extent they were metaphorical. Basically, if I were advising these people I would suggest they make the argument as broad and light as possible so that it could not be easily countered by... you know, measuring the age of the earth.
TRANSLATION: If even a single word of the Bible is wrong, it throws the veracity of Christianity into question.
This is just bad logic. It’s possible for Christianity to be true even if every word of the Bible is wrong. It would be less likely, but it’s possible. The idea that we need to believe every word of the Bible in order to have Christian doctrine is just silly. I seem to recall Evangelicals telling us all we need to do is believe in Jesus, but here we are having to uphold the entirety of Scripture, too. Seems like we’re adding a bunch of rules in. Also, how weak is your Christianity that it would crumble if someone found out that Leviticus has a few dumb rules in it? It’s ok. Jesus isn’t going away. We all know he came, bled, and died for us. The blue haired SJWs can’t hurt you, Owen Strachan. Hush. No one is making Christianity false by disbelieving the Bible.
Overall, these statements aren’t too bad and tend to follow from one another. But there are too many unstated assumptions, and they place way too much burden on the Bible itself and not what it contains. By making their claims strong, they make their arguments weak. Because their Christianity is so dependent on every single word of the Bible being inerrant, their beliefs end up much, much easier to shatter than those of a liberal Christian.
ARTICLE I: CIRCULAR REASONING PART ONE
TRANSLATION: Scriptures/the Bible come from God and that’s why they are true. They are not true because people say they are true.
On the surface that sounds reasonable, but unfortunately we have no way of verifying any of this without the Church, tradition, or human sources. That’s not the fault of Evangelicals, though, so I won’t take points away from them here. It’s just that God is not specifically speaking to anyone to tell them the Bible is true, except through the Church, tradition, and human sources. That’s kind of how God works. Very few, if any, of us will ever have a spiritual experience where God speaks directly to us. The vast majority will have to trust another source to believe in the Bible.
ARTICLE II: AN ACUTALLY SENSIBLE ONE
TRANSLATION: No matter how you set up your church, if you aren’t following scripture, you’re doing it wrong.
I tend to agree with this, but unfortunately this is worded too vaguely to really be helpful. Yes, if the Bible is our source of the truth of Jesus Christ, you would be an idiot to think your personal opinions or church hierarchies are going to trump that. But unless we all know with absolutely certainty every single correct interpretation of every single verse, then it’s hard to tell whether we’re following scriptural authority or man-made authority. I have a feeling the authors of this statement think their churches are doing it right, while other churches are doing it wrong. I humbly submit to all Christians to look inward. Stop thinking that the other churches aren’t properly biblical and start worrying about whether you yourself are.
ARTICLE III: WE SAID NORMAL THINGS IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY
TRANSLATION: All of the Bible is true regardless of the situation one reads it in.
Honestly, this is boring. Everything is evaluated this way. Every single book does not depend on responses of men for its validity. You’re not saying anything special, Christians.
ARTICLE IV: THIS IS AS WOKE AS IT GETS, MY DUDES
TRANSLATION: God is perfect but we are not. God used us imperfect being to write the Bible. But just because we are imperfect does not mean God’s message became wrong. In other words, we didn’t screw up the Bible.
Man, they are so close. It’s aggravating. If only they would apply this logic to literally any other speech.
Basically they’re trying to counter the edgy-fourteen-year-old-atheist argument of “humans are imperfect so even if God told us what to write we would have added our biases/prejudices/typos in.” It’s not a great counterargument, but the general message is on point. Imperfect means of delivery do not necessarily dilute a perfect message. We’ll just leave this one here and move on.
ARTICLE V: ALL POSITIONS HAVE BEEN FILLED, TRY AGAIN LATER
TRANSLATION: The Bible was written in a serial fashion. However, upon the completion of the final book in our Protestant Bibles, God added no new revelation.
I really, really, really need a source for this if I’m going to believe it. Nowhere in the Bible is this claim made.
Also, the writers probably intended this article specifically about the Bible and arguments for or against its inerrancy, but their statement that God is never revealing himself anymore is... kinda sad, actually. Yeah, they say “normative revelation,” but that’s a meaningless phrase. I deny the idea that God won’t reveal more of himself anymore. That goes against his character as he revealed in the Bible.
But we all know why this is here. If you claim God is speaking to you now, these white evangelicals will smugly tell you that unless God spoke to you a rehash of what’s in the Bible, it doesn’t count. That’s why. They intend to deny God’s revelation to you.
ARTICLE VI: EXCEPT FOR THE TYPOS, IT’S PERFECT
TRANSLATION: Every single word of the Bible is written by God and therefore true. You can’t believe only some of the Bible. You have to believe all of it.
This one sound like standard Christian stuff. After all, it would be hard to have a religion centered around a text if you didn’t believe the text. But it breaks down in specifics. What does it mean to believe in the Bible? For instance, I believe in the creation while also believing that none of the specific words of Genesis 1-3 are correct in a scientifc, historic sense. I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord while thinking Paul’s letters are not good advice to most Christians. Do I believe? Or does that not count?
We also don’t have the original manuscripts. This isn’t really a problem as the number of copies made close to original creation are so numerous as to make the whole issue trivial. However, if we are to say that all the words are inspired in the original form, we have to ask if the words of the translations are also inspired. Because if they are, well that contradicts Article V unless you claim that every single translation is 100% accurate. If that were the case, each language would have one translation. If these translations aren’t inspired by God, then are they true? Honestly, this is a huge can of worms to open up and I can see why the authors of this statement are going to handwave it away when it comes up again.
ARTICLE VII: GOD WROTE IT, SOMEHOW, DON’T ASK US
TRANSLATION: The writing of the Bible was done by God somehow, using human writers, but the mode of authorship is beyond human comprehension.
Seems like a convenient way of getting out of explaining things, but this is probably one of the whole paper’s best arguments. It’s a better argument precisely because it is honest about its shortcomings and doesn’t overpromise. How is all this possible? Dunno. All we know is that (a) God was the initial author, (b) it wasn’t simply humans making stuff up, and (c) it definitely wasn’t humans on a drug trip.
If Christians were to maintain this level of honesty towards all of Christian doctrine, perhaps we could all get along and live Christianity better. But no, these are evangelicals we’re talking about. While they may say here that they don’t know for sure and can only speculate, they ultimately behave as if they do know. They may say that the divine inspiration is a mystery, but when it comes time to interpret the Bible, then buckaroo the exact words in English are the exact correct interpretation as if God wrote with a human hand in goddamn American! That just makes this article seem like a deflection. If you try to chase down an Evangelical’s narrow interpration of a passage, and you have the patience to go through hundreds of deflections, you’ll finally end up here, asking how they know God wrote the Bible. At this point the Evangelical will shrug their shoulders and say “it’s a mystery,” all while never realizing that this mystery would therefore apply to the whole document. If its origins are mysterious, all of it is.
ARTICLE VIII: THIS WAS INCLUDED BECAUSE YOU NERDS WATCH TOO MUCH ANIME
TRANSLATION: God may be the origin of Scripture, but he used people as they were to create it. He did not physically possess them to get the Bible written.
Um, who is this article responding to? I don’t know of any serious person who would argue against this. Yes, it’s weird to say both that God directed every word exactly while also not forcing anyone to write those words... but this is God we’re dealing with and we already know that it’s beyond human understanding. Was there one really annoying guy at the convention and they added this article to shut him up?
ARTICLE IX: THE STOPPED CLOCK COROLLARY
TRANSLATION: The authors of the Bible were not perfect, but in this one instance, they were.
This would be a massive contrivance if God were not behind the authorship of the Bible. Huh, seems like the writers of this whole paper are putting a lot of stock in God being the author and this Bible being word-for-word inerrant! This would surely compel them to vociferously defend even the dumbest and most outdated passages as if their lives depended on it. After all, if the human writers could not err in writing the Bible, then any errors found would directly fall on God! I don’t know about you, but I would like my theology to not be dependent on my human writers not writing any mistakes. Seems like this is a shaky foundation to build your house on.
ARTICLE X: WE USE THE “GOD IN THE GAPS” FALLACY ON OURSELVES BECAUE WE ARE MASSIVE IDIOTS
TRANSLATION: Okay, so any translations are not the Word of God if they deviate from the originals, which we don’t have and cannot verify, but trust us guys, the translations are correct! If we ever have a gap in our knowledge, we’ll just assume the thing we don’t know says the thing we want because God would say that! Hooray, we’re smart!
I mean, I personally believe that the oldest copies we have of the Bible are accurate, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re inerrant because that’s unprovable. You do you, I guess. The problem (well, one of many) here is that by making this claim, the writers are implying that the Bible can only be diluted, and that it’s possible that every copy we have is in some small part diluted. It’s another weird result of trying too hard in the initial setup. The claim is too strong, and in order to bolster it against the obvious counterarguments, the writers have to make further and further bold claims, all without evidence. I was led to Christianity because I only needed to do one thing - believe in Jesus. Now I gotta believe 18 whole flipping articles about Scripture, all without a shred of corroborating evidence?
ARTICLE XI: I CAN’T BELIEVE IN JESUS IF DEUTERONOMY 47:12 HAS A TYPO, I’M AN INFANT
TRANSLATION: It’s impossible to believe the Bible is true if there is even a single error in it.
Honestly, this is just stupid. There are plenty of things that have errors which are still true. For instance, if I wrote “teh sky is bleu,” that would be true even though I put two typos in there. Can Evangelicals relax for a second here? If you make the argument that the whole Bible falls apart if even one error is in it, you are inviting a ton of smart people to immediately demolish your faith with ease. Your Bible is brittle and fragile. There are different degrees of errors. If I told someone they could find the bathroom down the hall to the left on the second door, but it was actually the third door, I would still have gotten them to their destination, moreso than if I had told them to go down the hall to the right. It is possible for a minor error to be in the Bible, or even something outright fictional, while the work as a whole tells us the truth about Jesus. Please, Evangelicals, I’m begging you to have complex beliefs and opinions. Your arguments will be stronger.
ARTICLE XII: BIBLICAL AUTHORITY MEANS THAT MATH DOESN’T WORK UNLESS IT’S IN THE BIBLE
TRANSLATION: The Bible is true about everything it says and if you run a scientific experiment which proves something in the Bible is wrong, no you didn’t.
To put it mildly, the Evangelicals have shot themselves in the foot on this one. I mean, their audience won’t think so because they pander to people even dumber than them, but for sure everyone else is rolling their eyes. Once again I implore Evangelicals to learn basic rhetoric and logic and how to structure your arguments to be as strong as possible. If you claim, for instance, that most squirrels are white instead of black, well, the existence of a black squirrel does nothing to damage your claim. But if you claim that all squirrels are white instead of black, a single black squirrel proves you are wrong.
If you say the Bible is 100% true in matters of faith and on Jesus Christ, fine. Pretty hard to disprove. If you say, though, the Bible is 100% true on all matters it speaks about, then someday someone very learned in a non-religious subject will provide evidence against a Biblical statement. At that point you are forced to choose to believe the thing on paper with no evidence, or to believe the thing you are looking at with the eyes in your face. I’ll give you a hint: you have to believe what you are witnessing. It’s irrational not to. Before you talk to me about faith, remember that we believe in Jesus because his death and resurrection were witnessed. With eyes.
It is an unforced error to make your faith contingent on the Bible speaking of scientifc and historical things in addition to spiritual ones. Even if you could show that all science currently supports the Bible (it does not), science is ever progressing while Biblical revelation is - by your own admission - stagnant. You will eventually be proven wrong. You idiots. You dumb, stupid, fucking inbred idiots.
ARTICLE XIII: YOU CAN’T USE MODERN STANDARDS TO DETERMINE THE BIBLE HAS ERRORS BUT WHEN WE SAY IT’S INERRANT WE MEAN IT IN THE MODERN SENSE, WE’RE JUST HOPING YOU DON’T NOTICE
TRANSLATION: Come on guys, the Bible’s really old and had different journalistic standards, it’s not fair to judge it by modern, precise ones.
I do have some sympathy to that, but only some. It’s not fair to judge the writings of someone 2000 years ago on matters they couldn’t possibly know. But if we cannot judge it false by modern standards, we also cannot judge it true by those standards. So... what standards are we using? It seems Evangelicals are perfectly fine with us interpreting their claims of “inerrancy” through a modern lens, but only complain as soon as we use that same modern lens to find inconsistencies.
Yes, a grammatical error negates the Bible’s inerrancy. It does not negate its truth or infallibility. Please, I thought we were all adults who could understand this. Inerrancy means there are no errors, typos are errors, therefore etc. etc.
ARTICLE XIV: WE KEEP MAKING BOLD CLAIMS ABOVE AND BEYOND WHAT IS NECESSARY TO BELIEVE IN JESUS AND ALSO TO THE POINT THAT THEY ARE MORE EASILY DEFEATED IN ARGUMENTS, SOMEONE STOP US WE’VE HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE AND DAVE IS PHOTOCOPYING HIS BUTT AND SHOWING EVERYONE IN THE OFFICE
TRANSLATION: The Bible is a unified document and also anything that appears to not be unified is simply a discrepancy to be resolved at a later date and we’re sure that discrepancy doesn’t invalidate any other verse.
My snarky title for this should explain it. There is no reason to make this claim. It adds nothing to Christianity and introduces too many opportunities for atheists to score home runs on you. Scripture is not internally consistent - maybe it’s more consistent that many other ancient documents but it is nowhere near perfect, and pretending otherwise severely damages the reputation of Christianity among societies with thinking people.
ARTICLE XV: THE BOOK TOLD US THE BOOK NEVER LIES
TRANSLATION: Our doctrine which says Scripture is inerrant comes from Scripture. No we won’t show you which passage. Also we will not explain why this is logical.
Okay, I know that, if you dig far enough into your belief systems, you are going to come up to a point where there is no more evidence. You just believe x because you do. That’s fine. But can Evangelicals be honest that the inerrancy of Scripture is one of those points? If Scripture says Scripture is perfect, that’s not evidence. You need outside sources. I personally believe there are enough outside sources to verify the overall message of the Bible, even if we have proof today that some of it is wrong or even if there are some passages which can be potentially disproven later. That’s okay. I’m not too broken up about it because I worship Jesus, not the Bible.
ARTICLE XVI: HERE IS ANOTHER THING WE BELIEVE WITHOUT EVIDENCE
TRANSLATION: Everything we’ve said in this document is exactly what Christianity has been saying since its inception.
Unfortunately... that’s not true. The existence of some church fathers who believed in inerrancy is not enough - we need to see it as an integral doctrine since day one or this article is false. If the Church had always believed in inerrancy, then we should expect the Church at all times to teach the exact same things. The fact they didn’t (I mean, why do we have Catholics vs. Protestants?) means one of two things: (1) the Church mostly doesn’t believe in inerrancy, or (2) almost all of them thought the Bible was inerrant and just misinterpreted it. If (2) is true, then it follows there is a chance modern Evangelicals are also wrong in their interpretation. Given that there is no evidence Evangelical beliefs are the norm in Christian history, it is highly unlikely that everyone has been wrong up until now.
ARTICLE XVII: THAT’S JUST, LIKE, YOUR OPINION, MAN
TRANSLATION: Believers can correctly interpret scripture because the Holy Spirit tells them what it means. Except, of course, if the believer interprets it in a way that’s against the Scripture, in which case it’s not the Holy Spirit.
Seems tautological, but ok. If you read a passage and think the correct thing, that’s the Holy Spirit, but if you think the incorrect thing, it’s not. There is no way to verify whether you are hearing from the Holy Spirit except, apparently, your feelings? What exactly is the assurance here?
ARTICLE XVIII: THE SCRIPTURES ARE TOO COMPLEX FOR YOUR STUPID LITTLE MIND AND YOU NEED TRAINED SEMINARY STUDENTS TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU EVERY SUNDAY
TRANSLATION: There is only one correct way to interpret Scripture and no outside sources are allowed.
Wait, I thought the Holy Spirit affirmed Scripture. Now I need grammatico-historical exegesis? Who has that kind of time? It’s also hilarious to say that the literary forms and devices should be considered while pretending those forms and devices didn’t come from “sources lying behind it.” As if the Bible sprung out of nowhere and from nothing while coincidentally looking like every other religious text. This is pseudo-intelligencia nonsense. Psychobabble. It means nothing and it’s not supposed to mean anything.
ARTICLE XIX: FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO TEN PEOPLE OR YOU WILL BE RUN OVER BY A ZAMBONI
TRANSLATION: Okay, we’re going to say you don’t have to believe what we believe exactly in order to be a Christian, but you kinda do.
Grave consequences? Like what? What bad thing happens if people deny Biblical inerrancy? These guys are trying to have their cake and eat it. They’re trying to claim that they aren’t saying anything about the salvation of those who disagree with them, but also strongly, strongly hinting that those other people are doomed in some mysterious, unnamed way. As if God is telling his Holy Spirit “give him an offer he can’t refuse.”
SO WHAT’S THE POINT OF THIS NONSENSE
Mostly to make white men feel better.
Honestly, this one isn’t nearly as bad as the Nashville Statement or the Statement on the Gospel and Social Justice. It’s still bad and wrong, but rather than being openly bigoted, it’s closeted. Nowhere in this statement is mentioned any specific grievance. But if you look at the discourse that sprung up right before this statement was made, and signed by the people involved in that discourse, you can see what they’re talking about.
Women pastors.
That’s it. That’s the whole reason. There are some verses in the New Testament from a letter Paul wrote which can be (but doesn’t necessarily have to be) interpreted as saying “only men can be pastors.” So some men started arguing with women pastors, and the women naturally ate them up because the men were fragile and the women had dealt with far worse from far stronger men. Those men proceeded to retreat to Chicago to draft this document saying “No Girls Allowed” and high five each other as if they finally solved the problem of women learning to read.
That’s the whole thing. Aren’t you glad you read all that?
Now I’m going to bed. I might even still have time to watch one episode and jerk off. Please don’t contact me for the next half hour.