Inerrancy Is Not Enough: A Lesson in Epistemology from Clark Pinnock on Scripture R. CARLTON WYNNE Abstract In the 1960s, Canadian theologian Clark H. Pinnock declared that saving human knowledge of God could only be built upon the plain sense of the infallible and inerrant text of Holy Scripture. In the ensuing decades, however, Pinnock’s confidence in an inerrant Bible severely waned. A close examination of Pinnock’s early epistemological outlook reveals critical defects that sowed seeds of his later departure from a traditional confession of Scripture’s total trustworthiness. Pinnock’s theological migration reminds scholars and church leaders that only an epistemolo- gy that is rooted in the being, knowledge, and revelation of God in Scripture supplies the necessary context for a robust confession of Scripture’s inerrancy and its relationship with the observable world. 67 68 UNIO CUM CHRISTO ›› UNIOCC.COM Introduction anadian theologian Clark H. Pinnock opened his 1967 book, A Defense of Biblical Infallibility, by claiming, “The central problem for twentieth century theology is its own epistemo- logical basis.”1 Pinnock went on to insist that a sure and saving knowledge of God can be derived only from the plain sense of Cthe infallible and inerrant text of Holy Scripture. For him, any Christian endeavor—to the extent that it is truly Christian—must remain unswervingly faithful to Scripture as theology’s principium cognoscendi and “the necessary link epistemologically between sinful man and the inscrutable God.”2 In the decades following A Defense, however, Pinnock’s confidence in an inerrant Bible as the Christian’s ultimate epistemological norm severely waned. By at least 1977, he was convinced that evangelical defenders of an errorless Bible were evidencing a “fortress mentality” and had begun to “play on the fears of Bible readers” by telling them that the Bible was no longer trustworthy if it was mistaken on a single point.3 For the “later” Pinnock, Scripture’s dependability must also be qualified by, and adjusted to, the limitations imposed upon the text by its human authorship and historical milieu.4 Conflicts in ancient biblical manuscripts, the seemingly insuperable challenge of harmonizing purportedly disparate accounts, and the supposed illogical inference from inspiration to strict textual inerrancy, he believed, made “the argument [for an errorless Bible] based on episte- mology … very doubtful.”5 Even so, Pinnock remained confident that the 1 Clark H. Pinnock, A Defense of Biblical Infallibility (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967), 1. 2 Ibid., 18. See also Clark H. Pinnock, Set Forth Your Case: Studies in Christian Apologetics (Nutley, NJ: Craig, 1968), 69. 3 Clark H. Pinnock, “Three Views of the Bible in Contemporary Theology,” in Biblical Authority, ed. Jack Rogers (Waco, TX: Word, 1977), 65. 4 Pinnock cites G. C. Berkouwer’s Holy Scripture, trans. and ed. Jack B. Rogers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), as a work that does justice to “the actual nature of the Bible … taking into account the cultural context, and the human qualities,” which for Pinnock account for Scripture’s “inconsistencies, duplicate passages, [and] seemingly pointless details.” Pinnock, “Three Views,” 62. For a romp through various models for understanding the humanity of Scripture, including Pinnock’s, and a conclusion with a constructive alternative, see Paul Wells, “The Doctrine of Scripture: Only a Human Problem,” in Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church, ed. Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald N. Gleason (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 27–61. 5 Pinnock, “Three Views,” 66. Pinnock has in mind here what Stephen Davis calls “the epistemological argument” for inerrancy, which Davis summarizes as follows: “Unless the Bible is inerrant, Christians have no sound epistemological foundation on which to base their beliefs. Thus, inerrancy is crucial for Christians.” Stephen Davis, The Debate About the Bible: Inerrancy Versus Infallibility (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 66. According to Barry Callen (Clark H. OCTOBER 2016 ›› A LESSON IN EPISTEMOLOGY FROM CLARK PINNOCK 69 edifice of theological knowledge could remain standing without a founda- tion in an inerrant Scripture and that Christian practice could even flourish in its absence.6 In the ensuing years, however, the edifice Pinnock perceived began to crumble as he followed his changed position on Scripture with additional radical theological views. He came, for example, to embrace a “wider-hope” theology in which redemption may extend to unevangelized people groups and the unconverted dead.7 He grew sympathetic with a number of motifs in process theism, rejected substitutionary atonement, and applauded elements of charismatic Pentecostalism.8 Today, Pinnock is perhaps best known as a prominent former spokesman for the movement within evangel- icalism known as “open theism” (also “neoclassical theism” or “free-will theism”), in which a future that is unknown to God unfolds as he responds to man’s unconstrained and unanticipated decisions.9 What accounts for Pinnock’s dramatic change regarding the character and content of Scripture? Did he self-consciously uproot his epistemology from its biblical moorings and replace it with an entirely diferent system? Or was there something defective in his epistemology from the beginning that (a) can help to explain Pinnock’s departure from an evangelical, even apparently Reformed, confession of Scripture’s inerrancy, and (b) contribut- ed to his later theological evolution? This article argues that the culprit was a defective early epistemology. An examination of the broader framework Pinnock: Journey Toward Renewal [Nappanee, IN: Evangel, 2000], 56–57), the release of Davis’s book, which includes a chapter criticizing this argument, contributed to Pinnock’s re-evaluating and revising his traditional position on Scripture. If this is the case, it is noteworthy that Davis’s summary fails to address, at least in any pointed way, the Christian’s proper epistemological warrant for the belief itself that Scripture is inerrant. This article is intended to show how this lacuna played an important role in Pinnock’s departure from inerrancy. 6 See Callen, Clark H. Pinnock, 57. 7 Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 153–72. 8 Clark H. Pinnock, “God Limits His Knowledge,” in Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 147; Clark H. Pinnock, “From Augustine to Arminius,” in The Grace of God, the Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 22–23; Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 129–39. 9 Pinnock defined open theism as “a relational and trinitarian doctrine with an emphasis on God as personal and interactive, both in his own immanent triune nature and in the economic relationships in which he engages and enjoys with creatures. It holds that God could control the world if he wished to but that he has chosen not to do so for the sake of loving relationships. Open theism does not believe that God is ontologically limited but that God voluntarily self-limits so that freely chosen loving relations might be possible.” Clark H. Pinnock, “Open Theism: An Answer to My Critics,” Dialog 44.3 (Fall 2005): 237. 70 UNIO CUM CHRISTO ›› UNIOCC.COM behind Pinnock’s initial trust in Scripture’s total truthfulness reveals that his belief in inerrancy operated, at least in part, independently of Scripture’s self-witness and authority. That is, Pinnock maintained defective epistemo- logical assumptions—specifically including relying on an inductive-empirical form of reasoning that was insufciently qualified by “the norming norm (norma normans)” of Scripture—that gradually exposed the instability of his early position on inerrancy and eventually infected much of the rest of his theology.10 The ensuing analysis does not presume to ofer a comprehensive account of how Pinnock’s faulty epistemology afected his entire theology. Nor does it deny that additional influences contributed to his theological evolution.11 It simply aims to examine how Pinnock broke from an inerrancy position (a) by tracing that break back to a more basic epistemological commitment to would-be autonomous inductive and empirical reasoning and (b) by of- fering a critique of such reasoning from a Reformed theological perspec- tive. This exercise will press home what the title of this article intends to convey, namely, that a bare confession of inerrancy, or one that surrepti- tiously depends upon some extrabiblical authority, is not enough to sustain a lasting Reformed Christian witness to the total truthfulness of Scripture. Instead, what is needed is a confession of biblical inerrancy and the Bible’s relation to the observable world that is self-consciously rooted in an episte- mological framework that is thoroughly shaped by the being and knowledge of the God revealed in his inerrant Word. I. Pinnock’s Epistemology at a Glance Pinnock never presented a sustained exposition of his epistemology, or theory of knowledge. His concerns throughout his career were more overtly theological.12 When he did attempt to explain his epistemology, he often 10 In contrast to valid deductive arguments, in which premises logically entail a conclusion, in inductive reasoning premises provide only a degree of support for the conclusion. See James Hawthorne, “Inductive Logic,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/logic-inductive/. The descriptor “inductive- empirical” attempts to capture how Pinnock viewed sense experience as supplying the premises that allegedly validate Scripture’s claims by way of inductive probability. 11 For a fuller account of Pinnock’s theological shift on the doctrine of Scripture, see Ray C. W. R o e n n f e l d t , Clark H.