The Inerrancy of Scripture

This is one of the best essays I’ve read – ever. Prepare yourself though, it’s not light reading.

Is the Bible Inerrant, and if so, How?

Inerrant : In its best sense that's most in line with Christian tradition, it means that the Scriptures are always right (do not err) in fulfilling their purpose : revealing God, God's vision, God's purposes, and God's good news to us. The teachings of Scripture are not to be disregarded or tossed away as if they were a mistake. They must be dealt with straightforwardly, in a way which affects what we say and do as persons and as a body of believers.

Some Christians ('fundamentalists' or 'literalists') teach that the Bible is without error in every way on all sorts of matters : chronology, history, biology, sociology, psychology, politics, physics, math, art, and so on. There can't be any mistakes in a divine work, fundamentalists say, for God is perfect and cannot lie. The idea of inerrancy is very ancient, even if the word 'inerrant' wasn't how they described it until the past two centuries. Though the literally-taken Bible is often more right than most scientists think it is, it is quite far from being an inerrant authority on such matters. It wasn't written to be that kind of an authority; that's not why it's there. It's a divine work, true, but it does not claim to be inerrantly dictated from on high, as is said to have happened with the Qur'an. The books of the Bible were written by divinely-inspired human beings for the good of other human beings. The Bible itself shows how the inerrant Spirit works through errant people, for that's the only kind of people there are. In a way, it is God's communication incarnated into the stuff of material earth -- pages and ink, literary forms, languages, and spoken words. This combination gives us a Bible that can be mistaken on matters which are not directly tied into what the Bible exists for. Because of the literalist misunderstanding of the Bible, 'mainline Protestants' (such as the Methodists, American Baptists, United Church, Anglicans, most Presbyterians, and most Lutherans) choose to reject the term. Perhaps they've overreacted, but it helps to set the record straight.

Many Evangelicals show a better understanding of the term in the Lausanne Covenant, which holds the Bible to be "without error in all that it affirms" (Sect. 2, The Authority And Power Of the Bible). This is the approach of the 'new breed' Pentecostalist churches and those in Africa; it's much like the view of the Lutherans in the Missouri Synod, the European Inner Missions, and (in practice) most of the 'church growth'-oriented community churches. However, these churches feel fundamentalism pulling them toward a larger realm for inerrancy. The term 'inerrant' is foreign to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, even though the idea behind it can be found in some parts of their traditions.

For postmodernist Christians, the whole concept of inerrancy is 'foundationalist' (that is, that the framework of the Bible stands on something rational or demonstrable). Postmodernists reject foundationalism, holding that any philosophy, set of ideas, the Bible, or even life itself, can only have meaning as a part of the web or relational network of all life, truths, and facts. And their 'web of truth' is different than the rigid "modernist" form of truth which inerrantists speak of. That's somewhat helpful in arguments about inerrancy that generate much more heat than light.

Yet, is it accurate to hold (as some do) that philosophical differences, truth claims, or even factual conflicts simply 'dissolve away', so that they don't really matter or mean anything? At what point does the claim to a 'different kind of truth' become a mask to hide behind? And if it doesn't matter if there's anything factual behind the Bible, why would a non-believer bother with even its good news? Why would they bother taking up with the poor deluded people who actually believe that a real God really is forgiving us and is giving us life beyond death, in God's new world? The postmodern non-believer would create their own matrixed philosophy of love instead, which would be way shallower than the meaty, bloody, tough stuff of the Bible. Or, they would treat the Bible much as they would Lord of the Rings or Dianetics or Celestine Prophecy or even Green Eggs and Ham.

While it's impossible to draw a clear line as to when 'interpretation' becomes dishonest with its source, at some point it does. We interpret away the Bible at our own risk. Truth matters, and in a different way so does fact, and yes, in another different way, so do logic and rational processes. Words like 'inerrancy' are no help, but neither is it helpful to say that the Bible should be followed because the church traditionally has said so, or because 'I feel it in my heart'. Ultimately, the Bible's authority comes from the Spirit of the God that continues to choose to operate through it in a unique way. All our words about the Bible, including 'inerrancy', do little more than try to describe some small part of how that can be.
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You'll also find a definition for 'inerrant' in the dictionary. But the dictionary itself is not inerrant.

From the website: http://www.spirithome.com/index.htm