Theological Notebook: Why Not To Prepare For The Rapture Today

[novak]

In talking about strange specifics of American Christianity with my students, I have to say that few things boggle me as much as the sorts of predictions like today's confident end-of-the-world announcement by Harold Camping, a California preacher whose prediction has been taken up with great hilarity by media outlets and people around the world.

Comments

[sk8eeyore]

I'm glad you mention Marsden, because he's pretty good on these issues from what I know (my husband works on the fundamentalist-modernist stuff). And that you emphasize the complications of all this... I get very wary when "inerrancy" comes up because I don't trust most scholars not to lump inerrancy in with fundamentalism, fundamentalism with dispensationalism, etc., when it's all a great deal more complex than that. It's tricky enough being an evangelical in academia without frequently having to push back against people's assumptions about what inerrancy is, and of course figures like Camping (who as far as I know isn't any kind of mainstream dispensationalist...interestingly, his background isn't at all in dispensational evangelicalism but in the Christian Reformed Church) lead to irresponsible lumping-together and flippant dismissal of disparate branches of Protestantism.

[novak]

I know. I spent some years as an evangelical myself, before I realized that I had, in fact, accidentally catechized myself with all my patristic and medieval reading, and that I had moved myself back to the Catholic position, which was the tradition I was raised in, if not well educated in. But that's why I did try to qualify in this entry that I was playing fast and loose in giving a simple definition of what was involved in inerrancy, as well as giving a broad generalization about dispensationalism. (To be sure, I've not looked closely at Camping's teaching: I made the assumption, as I think is usually accurate in these kinds of theologies, that I would likely find all sorts of dispensational roots underneath it. Your comment that he had a Reformed background is interesting, although I certainly remember most people I knew who thought in dispensationalist ways were also steeped in Calvinist theologies as well.) Obivously, there's a sense of "inerrancy" in Catholic theologies of the inspiration of scripture, although those are

[sk8eeyore]

Yes, I'm right there with you in the frustration, and, just to be clear, I think your post is quite well put! Thanks for these additional thoughts.