The Bible According to Ray

The most popular position on the authority of Scripture is that Scripture has no authority at all. It is a human document like other human documents, and like other human documents it is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

The second-most popular position on the authority of Scripture is that Scripture is one-hundred-percent authoritative. Everything that Scripture says must be believed: it is a matter of faith.

Both of these positions are self-consistent, rational positions that a thoughtful person can hold. They can’t both be true, but they are both logical.

However, the third-most popular position about the authority of Scripture emerges from the offices of Ray Moose and is disseminated through his accomplices, both the knowing ones and the unknowing. This third position enjoys neither the proud rationality of the first nor the thoroughgoing consistency of the second, but muddles along in typical Moose fashion. Here it is:

Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith and moral, but not in science or history.

Now that doesn’t sound so unreasonable, you say—it actually has a rather moderate ring to it.

That, my friend, is the hallmark of Ray’s work. He always manages to sound moderate so that his opponents will always sound extreme. Only when you unpack the meaning of his words do you realize that he has sacrificed real intelligibility for apparent moderation.

So let’s look at this Moosian theory piece by piece, starting with the phrase, “Scripture is inerrant.” When we say that Scripture is “inerrant”, we do not mean that we have checked all through it and found no mistakes; in that sense, lots of people write “inerrant” texts, and lots of school-children turn back “inerrant” quizzes. No, what we mean is that Scripture has authority so that we have to believe what it says. The second-most popular position mentioned above is that Scripture is entirely inerrant, meaning that it is all authoritative: we have to believe by faith everything that Scripture says.

The Moosian theory tries to limit Scripture’s clout by saying that it has authority when it speaks about some things but not when it speaks about others. This is all very well: my geography teacher has a kind of authority when he speaks about geography but not when he speaks about mathematics. Perhaps Scripture has authority when it speaks about politics but not when it speaks about astronomy.

But let’s look closely at the first phrase Ray uses to limit Scripture’s authority: “Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith....” In this context, “matter” means the subject matter, i.e., what the text is about. So “matters of faith” means subjects that have to do with what we believe by faith.

Now we can put together the meaning of “Scripture is inerrant” with the meaning of “in matters of faith.” Here it goes:

What Scripture says must be believed by faith when it talks about subjects that have to do with what we believe by faith.

WARNING: DO NOT READ THE PRECEDING SENTENCE TOO MANY TIMES, OR YOU WILL GET DIZZY AND FALL DOWN. IT IS A CIRCLE—A VICIOUS ONE.

To find out whether a biblical statement is one of the things we must believe you have to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe; to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe you have to know all the things we must believe and check to see if this biblical statement is talking about those things; to know all the things we must believe you have to know whether this biblical statement is one of the things we must believe!

The Moosian theory on Scripture is like the man who says, “You can always know whether I am telling the truth, and here’s how: I always tell the truth when I’m talking about one of the subjects about which I tell the truth.” How helpful is that?

Confused? Let’s look at it from another angle. Suppose there is a statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith. The very fact that we have to believe this statement by faith tells you that it’s talking about a subject that has to do with what we believe by faith. So any statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith is a statement relating to matters of faith. If Ray tells us that Scripture has authority in matters of faith, he hasn’t told us a darn thing.

Coming up next: Ray Moose makes a VALID distinction!