Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy represents a timely contribution by showcasing the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy, facilitating understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge. There is little doubt that the inerrancy of the Bible is a current and often contentious topic among evangelicals. The thesis will then be concluded by a brief summary, some methodological reflections, and some suggestions for further research (Chapter five). In sum, Grenz’s decision to insert “culture” as one of theology’s sources fails both on theological and methodological grounds. Moreover, the unity of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and Scripture as the pattern of divine authority is compromised and the integrity of Scripture as the norma normans of teology is in jeopardy. In the end, we are left with no stable criteria to discern the voice of the Spirit in the midst of other voices in culture. With Grenz’s instrumental and minimalist view on the nature and the function of Scripture’s authority – informed and shaped by his postmodern commitments – these problems are exacerbated rather than eliminated. In the end, these problems boil down to the important issues of criteria and authority. These problems are compounded by Grenz’s uncritical appropriation of socio-anthropological view on culture, resulting in his “interactional approach” to Gospel-culture relation, where culture eventually assumes more than a ministerial authority to shape theology. In Chapter four, we look at two major problems with this understanding: the problem with the concept of revelation and grace and the problem with the Spirit-Christ relation. Instead, it is in his inclusivistic understanding of revelation and grace that we find the strongest indication of Grenz connecting culture with the work of the Holy Spirit. Strangely, it is not this systematic pneumatology that gives theological justification for Grenz’s pneumatological understanding of culture. With his methodological commitments, this thesis argues that Grenz eventually have to make both community and the Holy Spirit his “first theology.” Chapter three expounds Grenz’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. However, it is the latter that has heavily informed and shaped his methodological choices (e.g. In Chapter two we trace Grenz’s understanding of his contexts and discover two determinants that influence his methodological commitments: his pietistic root and his engagement with postmodernism. To answer the thesis questions, we begin by placing Grenz’s theological agenda within the broader picture of recent growing interest in the study of the Holy Spirit in the world with its multidimensional concerns and motives (Chapter one). Culture must be engaged with and listened to because, along with Scripture and tradition, it is the media in which the Holy Spirit is present and speaks. At the outset, Grenz justifies this decision by making a connection between culture and the Holy Spirit. One expression of this commitment is his decision to insert “culture” as one of the sources of theology in his theological method, along with “Scripture” and “tradition.” The aim of this thesis is to trace, both theologically and methodologically, how Grenz comes to this methodological decision and to assess whether this decision is justified and hence commendable. Grenz (1950-2005) has been widely known both within his own context of North American evangelicalism and beyond as a theologian who is committed to contextual and culturally-sensitive theological method and construction.
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