Did Packer support Licona’s innovative defense of biblical inerrancy? Bill Roach and Mike Licona recently exchanged views on YouTube. We have updated the Defending Inerrancy playlist (<click there!) to include Bill’s responses.
J.I. Packer was one of the greatest defenders of biblical inerrancy in the 20th century. He helped shape and define the parameters of inerrancy for the evangelical movement from the 1950s to the 1980s. Many people wrote hearty tributes to him in 2020 after he completed his earthly race. (Our tribute is here.) As the intramural battles to refine and redefine the evangelical view of biblical inerrancy for the 21st century, it’s not surprising that some seek to establish continuity with a thinker and leader so respected as Packer. We who uphold without reservation the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics (CSBH), which Packer had an important hand in writing, naturally assume tremendous continuity with Packer on the nuances of inerrancy. But even the progressive evangelical scholars who interpret the Bible with a progressive form of inerrancy also seem keen on recruiting Packer and his endorsements.
Michael Licona’s book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP, 2010) reignited the genre criticism controversy that the majority in the Evangelical Theological Society had already ruled against in the early 1980s. The dehistorization of the raised saints of Matthew 27 was not consistent with the Chicago Statements, which the ETS had adopted as clarifying their own stance on inerrancy. Norman Geisler, who had opposed this kind of dehistorization (contra Robert Gundry) in the 1980s, reminded us in the 2010s that this should still be opposed. This was the same type of error Norm had dealt with in the ETS in the 1980s and Licona was at the time an adjunct professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary, a school which was co-founded by Geisler.
But the wind had shifted in the ETS. Most seemed strangely sympathetic to dehistorization through genre criticism–as if it were somehow just a matter of interpretation and not inerrancy. As ETS members give lip service to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and as there was some debate about what the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy might really mean, Bill Roach, the co-author with Norman Geisler of Defending Inerrancy: Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New Generation (Baker, 2012), asked the three last living framers of the Chicago Statements to weigh in on whether Licona’s type of dehistorization was consonant with the Chicago Statement. All three agreed unanimously and unambiguously that it was not. Some attempts to rally Packer to Licona’s side were made in 2011 and were corrected here, here, and here.
In 2016, however, Packer gave a surprisingly congenial commendation for Licona’s next book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn From Ancient Biography (Oxford, 2016). In his blurb, Packer seemed somewhat favorable towards the “compositional techniques which the synoptic evangelists appear to have used.” While this was in no way a retraction of his earlier judgment that genre criticism that leads to dehistorization was contrary to the letter and spirit of the CSBI, it suggests some openness in Packer to the genre criticism that might help explain away apparent contradictions in the gospels. There is also a few eloquent bits of exposition in the Chicago Statements which were probably penned by Packer himself (and accepted by the other framers and signers) that remind some of what Licona was trying to argue for in Why Are There Differences in the Gospels. Here are two examples:
Differences between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: since, for instance, non-chronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers.
Explaining Biblical Inerrancy (Bastion Books, 2013), p. 16
and. . .
Valuable as an aid in determining the literal meaning of biblical passages is the discipline of genre criticism, which seeks to identify in terms of style, form and content, the various literary categories to which the biblical books and particular passages within them belong. The literary genre in which each writer creates his text belongs in part at least to his own culture and will be clarified through knowledge of that culture. Since mistakes about genre lead to large-scale misunderstandings of biblical material, it is important that this particular discipline not be neglected.
Explaining Biblical Inerrancy (Bastion Books, 2013), p. 40-41
Packer well may have been intrigued by Licona’s compositional devices. Perhaps he was even optimistic about them. But since Packer lost his vision and his ability to read in 2015, there is room to question how many of Licona’s “compositional devices” he was able to hear about or read. Arguably what Licona was ultimately arguing for was not setting the bar for biblical inerrancy higher as it was setting the bar lower for what qualifies as an error or contradiction. Regardless of whether or not the four gospel accounts deserve the classification of Greco-Roman biography or not, concluding that the inspired gospels should only be held to the same low standards of truth-telling that uninspired, pagan biographies are held has its pitfalls. (F. David Farnell reviewed Licona’s book on differences here.) Check out our updated YouTube playlist to hear additional responses from Bill Roach.
Here are the links to the individual videos from oldest to newest:
Examining Michael Licona’s View of Inerrancy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRIGKluJJo
Mike Licona’s Misrepresentation of J. I. Packer and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR2P7ZbTBtY
Unpacking Mike Licona’s Views on The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (Jesus Contradicted)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjwo12AhVOE
Bill Roach’s Response to Michael Licona: Part 2: Claims of “Misquoting J. I. Packer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L14YyT9M-mc
Bill Roach’s Response to Michael Licona: Part 1: Claims of Slander and Misrepresentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ1DNeDmWr8
