8/11/2019 infalibility

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Another reason ultraconservatives use these arguments is that they wish to claim literal biblical support for the positions they espouse. They also wish to maintain that all other positions are unbiblical and undermine the authority of Scripture. This shows clearly in the reasons given for the publication of Affirm. In opposing the ordination of women, Affirm contends that if women are ordained, and the argument for doing so is based to some degree on cultural differences, the decision would also undermine the Adventist doctrines of "creation, Sabbathkeeping, clean and unclean meats, footwashing, tithing, etc. The authority of Scripture as a whole would thus be undermined and discredited."53 This indiscriminate attack on the higher critical method was an attempt to safeguard the reactionary conclusions espoused by this group of theologians.

James Smart argues that the inerrant view claims the "divine validation of a system of doctrine and practice."54 In this way, the infallibility they claim for Scripture becomes transferred directly to the doctrines and practices they espouse. Smart sets forth the ultimate case against inerrancy:

The theory of literal infallibility, far from being an expression of genuine respect for Scripture, is open to the accusation of being the means whereby, subtly, under a semblance of extreme respect, an established order of religion makes use of Scripture for its own purposes and subordinates it to itself, thereby removing from God's word in Scripture its power to revolutionize the existing order.55

This view of inspiration controls, subordinates, and imprisons God and Scripture to itself.

Another reason for the above strategy is that this argument is one that church administrators can readily agree to. Since the majority of laypersons have a strong conservative leaning, administrators can readily support the Adventist Theological Society since it claims to be strongly "supportive" of the Bible, the spirit of prophecy, and traditional Adventist beliefs, even though the society is exclusive and divisive and, in fact, is not truly traditional.

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In James Smart's, The Interpretation of Scripture, Philadelphia, Westminster Pre

ss, 1961, pp. 182-183, he argues that this is the "method of interpretation that robbed the revelation of Scripture of its freedom. God was no longer free to contradict the established religious order. The doctrine of the infallible inspiration of Scripture had the same effect later in Roman Catholicism, making the Scripture the bastion of an infallible church and denying any possibility that theword of Scripture might seriously sit in question on the order of the church. So also in scholastic Protestantism it was used to validate the established Protestant doctrine and order and claim for it an infallibility similar to that claimed by the Roman church. Doctrines and practices soundly based on an infallible Scripture could not be subject to any essential change. There could be no error in them. Thus has man in different ages used Scripture to establish his own or his own human church's authority over men.