Is The Bible Inerrant?

This question has been asked and answered countless times over the years and, quite frankly, it is only an issue in certain evangelical circles. I don't have anything to add to the formal discussion here but, since I consider myself evangelical and liberal and, since this was once  a big issue for me (and I believe still is for some others) I want to addess it now.

The word inerrancy, in regards to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, has at least two meanings. The first is what I was taught from my church and from my Bible College days. Essentially, it means that every word, in fact every jot and tittle in the Bible, is exactly what God wanted said while working through the individual personalities of each author. God did not dictate the words, although the end result is the same.

Every word of Scripture is literal unless expressly stated otherwise (as when Paul says in Galatians 4 that he is speaking allegorically) or unless the context or part of speech clearly demonstrates that the words are not literal (as when Jesus says hyperbolically in Mark 19:47, if your eye causes you to stumble it is better to gouge it out). Therefore, when the Bible touches up on any subject it is always factual and without error historically, scientifically, philosophically, etc.

Closely associated with this view of inerrancy is the belief in the "domino effect" of a single mistake. If the Bible is wrong in one place, in one verse or in one word, then the whole of Scripture must be discarded because it can no longer be trusted. Adherents to this view believe with deep conviction that any apparent errors can be satisfactorily reconciled.

Over the years I began to find this theory of the scriptures less and less plausible because I continued to find many mistakes, discrepancies and errors. I will use one brief example to illustrate the point.

Peter's denial of Jesus is mentioned in all four of the Gospels and they all agree that Peter denied Jesus three times, but they don't all agree on when this happened. Matthew, Luke and John say that Peter denied Jesus three times BEFORE the rooster crowed ONCE. While Mark says it happened BEFORE the rooster crowed TWO TIMES. Each prediction has a correspondingly appropriate fulfillment in each gospel.

One evangelical scholar, Harold Lindsell, admitted that in order to reconcile the accounts one must believe that Peter actually denied Jesus six times. Three times before the rooster crowed once, and then three more times before the rooster crowed a second time. If you accept that then, in a way, all the Gospels got it wrong since each one says that there were only three denials.

Examples like this can be multiplied over and over again but it is not in the scope of this article to try and prove or disprove any one theory of how to view the Bible. The above is simply one of the many problems I faced concerning the plausibility of the view of inerrancy that I had been taught. Further study in seminary only confirmed my fears and eventually I discarded the entire Bible and with it my understanding of the Christian faith. After all, I had been taught the domino effect of Scripture, which was an all or nothing approach. And even though I knew that a handful of other evengelical leaders had a different interpretation of inerrancy, the die had been cast, and I, in great despair, walked away.

This brings me to the other view of inerrancy I mentioned previously and this one allows for a more common sense approach. In essence, it says that the Bible is inerrant, not in all ways, but only when it regards faith and practice. In other words the Bible is sufficient for all that Christians need concerning those two areas but there is plenty of room for human error historically, scientifically, anthropologically, and so on. Since this view was not an option for me given my Bible College education and my overall black and white temperament and since I don't know many Christians personally who struggle with this view, I will not discuss it in detail for now.

So is the Bible inerrant or not? After many years of doubt, thought and study I no longer think that is a relevant question. First if all it presupposes that the Bible was written by individual authors whom God inspired to write God's exact words, instead of being compiled, edited and re-edited by many people from many known and unknown sources. It also presupposes that the Bible has authority only if it records the exact words of God and correspondingly, also presuposses that absolute truth can be completely captured in propositional statements. It seems to ignore the reality that these so called perfect words have countless interpretations.

In other words, if God spoke perfect, literal words then God would also have to guarantee a perfect,  literal understanding of the text. Furthermore, it would also be necessary to have not only the inerrant scriptures and from there an inerrant understanding of those scriptures but, consequently, an inerrant method of communicating those scriptures to others or it is pointless. Finally, it is this understanding of inerrancy that actually states that these perfect scriptures were limited only to the original documents which everyone agrees no longer exist.

Needless to say there are many other ways of looking at the Bible and of accepting its authority other than believing that the majority of it is primarily literal and factual. More on that later.

Larry