At long last, I’ve begun reading Heidegger. I think I am understanding it so far, despite its reputation for being so difficult. Metaphysics is always difficult, because it addresses the deepest and most important questions. With Heidegger there is also the problem of his flexible and sometimes deliberately ambiguous use of German and the scholarly questions of how best to translate this into English. As an English speaker who has only barely started learning German, I can only take note of what the translators say about this, but it seems to me, just from the side of my understanding of English, that they do a good job of explaining the terms that he coins.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is not to make any comments about Heidegger’s thinking, but as a way to try to clarify my understanding of what it means to claim that the Bible is “the inerrant Word of God.” Let us suppose that we had been taught by our elders, and, in general, by everyone whose opinion we respect, that Heidegger is unquestionably the ultimate authority on the most important questions of metaphysics, and that Being and Time is the inerrant word of Heidegger. This would not automatically solve everything for us. We would still have to come to an understanding of what Heidegger means, and, in particular, of what his writings mean for oneself in one’s own particular situation. And we would see that, until we could succeed in that, our agreeing that Heidegger is the ultimate authority on matters metaphysical would be mostly empty and merely verbal. The favorable opinions of Heidegger on the part of those whose opinions we respect would motivate us to read and try to understand what he wrote, but until we succeeded in understanding, our agreement with their judgment would have only this value as a motive for trying to understand, and our own recommendation of Heidegger to our children and friends could be only half sincere.
I hope the implication is clear: believing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God might be a necessary first step towards understanding the Scriptures, but it wouldn’t get you very far by itself. If you are to really believe it, you need to understand what a particular part of the Scriptures, or the whole of the Scriptures in general, are telling you right now under your present circumstances. At that point, whether you really and truly and deeply believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God will be proven by the effectiveness or not of your understanding.
But is believing in the inerrancy of the scriptures a necessary first step to understanding them? And is the effectiveness in your life of your understanding of the Scriptures the proof that you believe in their inerrancy? I suggested that we suppose that we had been taught as a doctrine that Being and Time is the inerrant word of Heidegger and that he is the ultimate authority on the most important questions of metaphysics. And that was to make the point that unless you understand what Heidegger meant, belief in this doctrine would be rather worthless, except to motivate you to take the trouble to try to read and understand what he wrote. In fact, I don’t know if anyone professes or confesses the inerrancy of Heidegger, and yet there are people who take the trouble of reading and trying to understand his writings and to explain them to others, and it may be that this has done them good. May it not be likewise with the Scriptures?
Someone might object that it is wrong to compare a human philosophy with the Gospel, except to show the shortcomings of the former. But I am not comparing the merits of Heidegger’s philosophy with those of the Gospel. As yet, I don’t even have a well-informed opinion about Heidegger. As I said, I’ve only begun reading him. And the Gospel is more than a discourse on the nature of ultimate reality. But the comparison is apt, I think, in bringing out what makes the Gospel interesting intellectually, apart from all its other appeal, in a way that might fill out the feeling that it is the inerrant Word of God.
So, my answer to the first question I posed above, “Is believing in the inerrancy of the Scriptures a necessary first step to understanding them?” is No. And my answer to the second question, “Is the effectiveness in your life of your understanding of the Scriptures the proof that you believe in their inerrancy?” is Yes.