Those Tricksy Biblicists

Several weeks ago I posted a critical review of Christian Smith’s new book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Since then, Peter Leithart also posted a largely negative review. Joining the fray with a devastating rebuttal of Smith’s book is Robert Gundry’s excellent article in Books and Culture.

Not surprisingly, Christian Smith does not agree with these criticisms. His main rejoinder is that Gundry, Leithart, DeYoung have failed to deal with the main point of his book, namely, that pervasive interpretive pluralism (PIP) undermines biblicism. Responding to Leithart’s review, Smith contends that “his response essentially dodges rather than engages my book’s central argument.” Similarly, commenting on my blog, Smith argues, “Most problematically, DeYoung’s review in the end simply EVADES rather than resolves the central problem of PIP. He does not squarely address and answer the key challenge of my book, namely, that PIP shows biblicism, as a theory about scripture, to be impossible.” In the same vein he concludes: “So, what on first read appears to be a careful book review actually turns out to be scatter-shot and evasive. DeYoung is clearly quite caught up in trying to catch me in (alleged) inconsistencies, meanwhile he never actually responds to the central question of the book. Does that tell us anything?”   Keep Reading...