Well, no. It's not the one that most people on this forum are thinking of. And it was one that I had never heard of before now. But it gave me pause to think.
Maybe it was the result of
subscribing to the Biblical Archeological Review, or
or posting on this site ( I have noticed some targeted adds here based on hotel reservation information searches)
or doing directed searches on related topics
or placing a contribution in an offering basket as a visitor in a church where such beliefs are shared...
But anyway, someone somewhere got the impression that I wanted to subscribe to
"The International Prophetic Voice for the Endtimes - Midnight Call" Citing a host of recent news items pertaining to upheavals and reversals, the circular enclosed in my mail states,
"The Real Answer - the only book ever written giving precise details about the past, the present and the future is the Bible. And that's what Midnight Call is all about. Our research reveals the hidden items and events overlooked by the news media."
We will just pause for a moment to note that since they already said that the ONLY book ever written giving PRECISE details, etc., ... Then why in the world do we need a commentary on that?.... Now, does that seem like a pertinent matter for this forum?
But no risk, no hidden charges, no obligation....for faster service dial with your credit card ready. The publishers appear to be confident of two conflicting ideas: that the end is imminent and that the association with the subscriber will be long enough to sustain the investment in a subsidized introductory offer. What am I supposed to make of that?
At the bottom of the page below the offer for a complimentary subscription and additional book offers and the executive editor's signature is a "Statement of Faith" which is very much akin to the Nicene Creed, but with one remarkable addition.
We believe:
"In the divine inspiration of the whole Bible, and therewith, the infallibility of the Holy Scripture, which is God's Word,..."
Other Nicene like "we believes" follow, though strangely enough to me as well, an insertion "that Israel is God's chosen people, and that the restoration of the Jews in their own land is the fulfillment of the Word of God. Tribulational beliefs are further departures from the earlier creed as well.
The masthead of this letter featured a number of figures in the movement who had contributed to the publication, many of whom appear regularly on televangelical network stations: John Ankerberg, Zola Levitt, Peter Lalonde, Hal Lindsey,.... I suppose the Harold of 18 May 2012 fame would have been on there earlier, but perhaps his absence is better explained by Hal Lindsey's continued presence. Anyone with a Theological Studies doctorate can still be allowed to roll the dice. Not because he ( or she?) correctly interpreted inerrant scriptures, but because he was still alive.
Should we say doctors of theological studies or theological sciences since there is a picture of the Earth on one issue cover titled The New Universe. Because many of the conclusions about what instruments detect or experiments suggest is that we are misled if there is an appropriate Biblical verse that would counter. Galileo would be an illustrative case, running afoul of Chronicles, Joshua and Psalms.
Now let's go back to the publisher's version of the creed. First something about the content of the Bible and Athanasius of Alexandria from the Wikipedia:
St Athanasius is also the first person to identify the same 27 books of the New Testament that are in use today. Up until then, various similar lists of works to be read in churches were in use. A milestone in the evolution of the canon of New Testament books is his Easter letter from Alexandria, written in 367, usually referred to as his 39th Festal Letter. Pope Damasus I, the Bishop of Rome in 382, promulgated a list of books which contained a New Testament canon identical to that of Athanasius.[30] A synod in Hippo in 393 repeated Athanasius' and Damasus' New Testament list (without the Epistle to the Hebrews), and a synod in Carthage in 397 repeated Athanasius' and Damasus' complete New Testament list.
Scholars debate whether Athanasius' list in 367 was the basis for the later lists. Because Athanasius' canon is the closest canon of any of the Church Fathers to the canon used by Protestant churches today, many Protestants point to Athanasius as the father of the canon. They are identical except that Athanasius includes the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah and places the Book of Esther among the "7 books not in the canon but to be read" along with the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Judith, Tobit, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas...
Considering the primacy of place that the Bible has in the Midnight Call's creed, it is a wonder that Athanasius is not treated with reverence as well.
I saw something like the Midnight Call's creed in the non-denominational church that I mentioned. The main difference though was that the inerrancy belief was inserted in the midst of the creed rather than the first element. But it illustrates the difference between the notion of a Testament ( New or Old) and Scriptures ( Hebrew and Greek). Testaments have a different context in language. Someone writes their views, even swears by them - and you take them in the context of what they are talking about. When they speak of God, commandments, the sacred, the lives of those we view as exemplary, sacred or even divine, they count for a great deal. And it is hard to overstate.
But study shows that they are not inerrant. They wouldn't contradict each other from chapter to chapter, book to book or absently drop important matters or revise them in latter or separate accounts. There wouldn't be disputes about which ones should be included or dangling threads of missing chapters and cross references that did not make the cut ( e.g., Enoch). To my mind, those are features of testaments and it would appear that from the beginning of their compilation accounts ( e.g., Eusebius, Luther, councils) there were those that recognized as much. It can only be considered scandalous what the originator of Sola Scripta had to say about Revelation, much the same as many early church fathers did as well.
An inerrant Bible fixes a number of things, but not in the sense of repairing them. If experts in Biblical studies can fix the age of the Earth to 6000 years, then most of what we know about God's creation from our perceptions must be a diabolical deceit. And if what we know of evil is a leap from Genesis chapter 3 to Job, to interpretation of various passages in Ezekiel or Isaiah to the Gospels and Paul, well, I guess we really need those doctors of theology to explain it all to us repeatedly century after century, lest we actually try to benefit on our own from the fruit of Gutenberg's work.
And this is the foundation of my Protestant critique, the Pandora's box it has opened.