The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism
Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority
Examines recent postmodern efforts to redefine the traditional evangelical view of scriptural authority and counters with sound logic that supports inerrancy. Due to recent popular challenges to evangelical doctrine, biblical inerrancy is a topic receiving an increasing amount of attention among theologians and other scholars. Here G. K. Beale attempts vigorously and even-handedly to examine the writings of one leading postmodernist, Peter Enns, whose writings challenge biblical authority. In support of inerrancy, Beale presents his own set of challenges to the postmodern suppositions of Enns and others. How can the Bible be historically inaccurate while still serving as the authoritative word on morality and salvation? Beale concludes that it cannot, and his work will aid all who support biblical inerrancy in defending their position against postmodern attacks. This is an issue that affects the entire body of Christ.
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Overall, this was a very weak response to Enns. Beale's use of prior journal articles, his summary of Enns responses instead of actually re-printing them and fairly random supplemental chapters make this book feel very thrown together and a very weak piece of scholarship. If Enns is important enough to write a full book about, he should be important enough to actually write a decent book about. Instead, this book seems to be exactly the type of book that Christian Smith wrote Bible Made Impossible to address. Beale's concern does not actually seem to be the authority of scripture, the value of the text or following the evidence of the text, but preserving his per-conscieved understanding of what the is necessary to maintain inerrancy. I also think much of the problems of the book are because this book is primarily outside Beale's traditional area of scholarship. It likely would have been much better with a co-author or if he had been an editor of a wider response.
My full review (about 1600 words) is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-erosion-of-inerrancy-in-evangelicalism-by-gk-beale/