Skip to main content

The Big Problem with Stanley's Position

As David Prince recently tweeted, “Affirming inerrancy in principle, while rejecting its sufficiency in practice, is like saying your wife’s perfect while having an affair.” This is exactly right. To put it in parlance Stanley’s tribe may be more inclined to consider: as the apostle James says, “Faith without works is dead.” If you say you have faith, but your deeds do not show faithfulness, your faith is under question. Further, affirmation of inerrancy without the practical application of sufficiency is dead. If you believe the Scriptures are totally reliable, why would you obscure them?
Further—and this is by far the biggest error of the entire attractional church enterprise—this approach to teaching/preaching presumes that the Bible is not living and active, that the gospel is not power, that the book is in fact kind of an old, crusty thing that really should be saved for after people have been softened up by our logic and understanding. In other words, Stanley believes the Bible needs our help, that his words are more effective than the Bible’s at reaching lost people. Which is just a way of saying that God’s Word isn’t good enough. A formal affirmation of inerrancy with a practical denial of sufficiency is actually an informal denial of inerrancy.
In this article, Jared Wilson nails the real problem with Andy Stanley's view of Scripture.  Stanley may believe it is the inerrant Word of God, but he doesn't believe that by itself it is sufficient to do the work God wants to do.

Read the whole article:

3 NAGGING PROBLEMS WITH ANDY STANLEY’S APPROACH TO THE BIBLE

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oops!

I can be a real klutz.  I have very few manual skills and I never grew out of the "tripping over my own feet" stage of life.  I have fumbled and dropped more than my fair share of balls. In other words, "oops" has been a regular part of my vocabulary. It is not only in the physical world that I have fumbled things.  I have messed up relationships.  I have prejudged people before ever getting to know them.  I have used and abused those who love me most in this world.  I have failed and sinned my way into more than one tight corner and created untold disasters.  Oops is not even sufficient for the ways that I have blown it. Perhaps that is why something Paul, our worship leader last Sunday, said resonated so deeply with me this week.  He said "Oops is never said in heaven."  Our God never is clumsy.  He never makes mistakes. His plans never go belly-up.  He never fails.  He never ever has to say oops - and that comforts me.

The walking, talking providence of God

Today I met a man in Israel I will never forget.  Fifteen years ago he was voting in a primary for candidates of the Likud party.  At the polling station, two Palestinian terrorists burst in upon the crowd who were choosing their candidate for the next election.  They sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire.  Seven people fell to the floor, wounded by the barrage.  The terrorists moved among the fallen, stopping to shoot each one between the eyes to make sure that they were dead.  Six people died that day.  Today I met the seventh. He was wounded four times in the initial burst of gunfire - once in each leg, once in the arm and once in the side.  The terrorists then put a gun two feet from his face and put a bullet between his eyebrows.  I saw the deep scar with my own eyes.  The next year he spent in a coma. Today I met him at the little restaurant he owns outside the gates of the ancient ruins of Beth She'an.  He stood in f...

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...