Building a House on Sand

Abstract

Rezetko identifies the Westminster Confession of Faith and “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” as foundational documents to contemporary American evangelicalism. Prominent in both is their declaration of the divine revelation, inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the original Old Testament and New Testament texts. Rezetko explores the views of evangelical scholars on the Old Testament text. He evaluates major evangelical publications on the topic, paying close attention to what they say about the original text and what they aim to accomplish with their text-critical principles and practices. He argues evangelical scholars find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, informed evangelical Old Testament textual critics have rightfully accepted the scholarly consensus view and abandoned the search for the original text. On the other hand, their presuppositions and beliefs compel them to still try to defend the text’s accuracy and reliability, and indirectly its originality and inerrancy. Consequently, evangelical scholarship on the Old Testament text is marked by conflict of interests, mutually inconsistent beliefs, problematic tactics, and ultimately uncritical and marginal views.