Notes on the Christian Delusion: The Bible-bashing chapters

Having read through The Christian Delusion, I have some comments. I have given some a few posts back, and I have some now.

I must admit that the target of the book is somewhat confusing. It seems to target "evangelicalism" primarily, though its claim is that all Christianity is bunk. A number of the chapters are what I would call Bible-bashing chapters. The trouble here is that these chapters seem to me to have paid no attention to attempts on the part of Christian theology to read Scripture in a nuanced way. It is hardly the case that atheists are the ones who have discovered difficulties with the Old Testament, or the New Testament for that matter. Even if we restrict ourselves to those who hold to "inerrancy" or "plenary inspiration" there were no references, so far as I could see, to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which is where that doctrine was clarified and developed in a sophisticated manner. And then there are other attempts to come to terms with the Bible as in some sense God's word while distancing oneself from inerrancy. C. S. Lewis is a certainly a highly respected figure amongst evangelicals, but he didn't accept inerrancy, and he also raised questions about the moral character of the Old Testament in Reflections on the Psalms. Lewis is a profoundly orthodox Trinitarian Christian, but certainly not a hard-line inerrantist.

In Tobin's essay, you get a brief treatment of "liberal" theology, as if the only deviations from the evangelical hard-line is going to a full-blown liberalism. Stephen Davis's book on inerrancy and infallibility represents a moderately conservative view, as would Pinnock's The Scripture Principle. There's no attempt, in the Christian delusion, to grapple with people like this.