Inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility

As much as I hate to validate a tangent, the comment thread from yesterday touched on something important. Interestingly enough, Patrick Mead has been writing on the same subject: how should we understand inspiration?

Patrick explains in yesterday’s post:

When I was a boy and up until I was in my late 20s I only heard one version of how we got our Bibles. I was told that every single word came directly from the mouth of God (via the Holy Spirit). There was no input from the human writers. They were merely stenographers for the Spirit. As an illustration of this my father and other ministers would bring up the story of Balaam’s donkey. “God didn’t just give that donkey an idea and let him express it in his own words” they would say. And they said that the exact same mechanism was involved in writing the Bibles – Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, and Amos all wrote down what they were told to write, word for word.

I have talked with many people who think that the Bible was dictated, word for word, by the Holy Spirit. Any perceived humanness is the Spirit’s attempt to make the Bible more understandable, they say.

Patrick does a good job of reminding us that this view of the Bible arose with fundamentalism in the 19th century. It is a child of modernism, an attempt to make the Bible fit the scientific method.

So what do we expect of this holy book? If it is inspired, what does that mean? Terms get tossed around like inerrancy and literality. Patrick describes the Chicago Statement on inerrancy:

It says, in part, “Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individuals’ lives.” It goes on to state that the Bible’s words came directly from God and are, therefore, completely moral and without error in everything it affirms – historically, scientifically, and theologically.

Is that what inspired means? Does every detail in the Bible have to be correct for the Bible to be inspired? I have some thoughts on the subject, but I’d like to hear yours. How much room for “human error” is there in the text of the Bible?

20 thoughts on “Inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility

  1. Travis Flora

    My take on inspired/inerrant is, well, the Bible is inspired and inerrant. What that means, to me, is that everything in Scripture is accurately recorded. That is, the things that happened in Scripture happened the way it’s reported. The facts are true. The events are true. When we read the “words in red,” that’s accurately what Jesus said. It does not mean that every word spoken by every character in Scripture was correct, just that the reporting of it is accurate. Sometimes people made mistakes, but the record of that mistake is accurate. Pharoah was obviously on the wrong side of God’s will in the showdown with Moses, and that is accurately depicted. David’s triumphs AND sins are accurately reported. This also allows for the various writers to write in their own personal style, and also allows us to analyze what is written and examine the differences between Ezra, Jonah, and the others Patrick referenced. We know the accounts are true, but that does not inherently mean that the actions taken by those prophets and others were correct. That’s another issue completely. Anyway, that’s how I view the issue.

  2. laymond

    Patrick said, “When I was a boy and up until I was in my late 20s I only heard one version of how we got our Bibles. I was told that every single word came directly from the mouth of God (via the Holy Spirit). There was no input from the human writers.”

    I have been told this very same thing by Patrick, when we used to have conversations.
    I am glad to see that Patrick has come to the realization that God is not the author of the bible, God is the subject of the bible.

    Patrick quotes, John Collins as saying, “The Bible is an argument – with itself.” It is the searching of God for us and our searching for Him and some characters doing the searching get a bit lost from time to time.

    Human beings are still human, and we still get lost from time to time, but we keep searching.

    Patrick said “And I am not troubled to find morally and theologically disparate texts within our canon for I see disparate concepts of God and ethics in my own congregation and within the larger community of believers. I know we are still working out our salvation with fear and trembling, as we were told we should.”

    Seems to me anyway, Patrick may have changed his mind about “knowing without a doubt, you are saved”

  3. K. Rex Butts

    I don’t like the words “inerrant” and “infallible” since they are not even found in scripture at all (I don’t mind the later as much as I do the former). Why do we insist on projecting terms/ideas upon scripture that scripture never projects upon itself? Further more, while I certainly believe that scripture is a reliable and trustworthy witness of God’s creative and redemptive story, I’m not sure that inerrancy and infallibility can even stand up to scrutiny without the Bible being hi-jack by a bunch of theologians and preachers dissecting scripture (redirecting and redirecting even more) in order to prove something the Bible never claims in so many words. In the end that just becomes a spitting contests between two different modernist approaches to scripture.

    As far as inspiration… I don’t believe in verbal dictation but I do believe that God was providentially at work ensuring that what was told (and subsequently written down and then collected into a canon) was a true witness of what is. But that belief is something I accept by faith just like I accept by faith the conviction that God is providentially at work in this world throughout history. I can’t prove it in a scientific sense, but I do believe there is credible reasons for such faith.

    Grace and Peace,

    Rex

  4. Jr

    Paul’s use of the word θεόπνευστος (“inspired/breathed out by God”) in 2 Tim 3:16 is interesting. It is a hapax legomenon; and it comes from joining the two words θεός (“God”) and πνέω (“blow” or “breath out”). This definitely has the connotation of the Spirit of God working in providing the Scriptures. Therefore, I believe that this teaches that the Scriptures are our authority, because it came from the very breath of God. I do not think it means divine-dictation; but what it does mean is that the Spirit was working throughout it all, to formulate it through divine and human agency and to provide it through divine and human agency for God’s people in all places at all times. Thus it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man (or messenger) of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

    All that said, I still maintain infallibility and inerrancy. The God-breathed process, writing, production, supplying, and purpose of the Scriptures is infallible and inerrant. This makes the Scriptures infallible, inerrant, and ultimately authoritative. Jesus links His Word with Truth; and there is no error in His Truth.

    Grace be with you –
    Jr

  5. Paul Smith

    My problem with the whole discussion is in the definition of terms. What does one mean by “inerrant”? What does one mean by “infallible”? If by inerrant you mean without error is science, philosophy, theology and every other kind of rational discourse, then you have some serious problems. Gen. 15:13 says that the time of captivity was 400 years. Gal. 3:17 lists it as 430 – and that from the time of Abraham! Gen. 46 says 70 persons went into Egypt, Acts 7:14 lists the number as 75. In 1 Tim. 5:14 Paul tells young widows to remarry, in 1 Cor. 7:8-9, 39 Paul encourages the widows to remain celibate. Even a cursory examination of the many genealogies in the Bible reveals some striking dissimilarities, not the least of which is found in Matt. 1 and Luke 3. So, then the inerrantists start to redefine the word inerrant to mean something like, “fundamentally true, although with some room for scientific understanding of the day and age in which it was written” and that destroys the whole idea of inerrancy. Either “inerrant” means “without error” or it does not. Something cannot be “inerrant” and contain errors, be they scientific, theological, philosophical, historical, mathmatical, or even spelling (which opens up another entire can of worms – what do we do with the thousands of variants within the texts of the original languages? Which translation of those texts is inerrant and infallible, as some translations have significant variances). The whole discussion becomes oppressive unless clear definitions and boundaries are given – and I have yet to find any clear and universally agreed upon boundaries.

    Please excuse my effuvium of negativity. Maybe I should just crawl back into my hole today.

  6. Wendy

    JR, using what Paul says in 2 Tim about the Scriptures being God-breathed and therefore inerrant, is a circular argument as 2 Tim is IN the Scriptures. There is no outside validation for the claim.

    If you have Scriptures which are infallible and inerrant, where is the book of Enoch? Why are there contradictions in factual accounts (Chronicles/Samuel etc) Which Scriptures are inspired and inerrant? Only “our” protestant Bible? Were the Scriptures NOT infallible and inerrant for much of their history when they included the apocryphal books? Did inerrancy exist before the canon was “closed”?

  7. Paul Smith

    Another problem I have with “inerrancy” is pastoral. When someone is led to believe there are no discrepancies or differences within the text, or if they have no concept of the variants in the manuscripts they tend to have a black/white understanding of the transmission of the text. As they learn that, yes, there are some unique characteristics within the text their mind either cannot handle the discrepancies and they resort to human philosophies to try to bridge the gap or they give up on faith in God altogether. Neither choice is healthy.

    We need to leave the “fundamentalist” line of argumentation and go back to what the text says about the text itself and quit importing human philosophical constructs about the text as if they were part of the text itself. This is difficult, because we have made believe in “inerrancy” an issue of faith itself.

    Hope this was a little more constructive than my earlier rant.

  8. Wendy

    Paul, that’s my issue with inerrancy as well, and with holding a concrete interpretation of Genesis 1-11. When our kids find out that science doesn’t agree with a 6 day creation and a young earth, then their faith is needlessly put on shaky ground. We need to have faith in Jesus, NOT in an inerrant Bible interpreted concretely…

  9. laymond

    “We need to have faith in Jesus, NOT in an inerrant Bible interpreted concretely…”
    Dang ! Wendy, I think I felt the earth trimble just a bit.

  10. Travis Flora

    Sorry, guys, but a God who endorses a book that is filled with factual errors, doctrinal discrepancies, and outright lies (like a 6 day creation) isn’t much of a God. I’ll keep on believing it’s God-breathed and use it like Jesus, the prophets and Apostles did, for teaching, instructing, correcting, etc. (as Jr. pointed out from 2 Tim. 3:16). We don’t have every Jewish or Christian religious document ever written (Enoch, letter to Laodiceans, letters TO Paul FROM various congregations), but we do have what God deemed important enough to preserve so that we could have faith (which comes from hearing the Word of God, and per John 1:1, Jesus IS the Word). In other words, we cannot have faith in Christ or God without having a faith in the Word of God, which is Jesus and, by extension the Holy Scriptures. A rejection of either one is a rejection of both.

  11. K. Rex Butts

    Travis,

    Though I eschew and disagree with the use of philosophical terminology like “inerrancy” and “infallibility”, I still believe I hold a high regard for scripture as it is the narrative I seek to live my life by and measure my knowledge and practice of my faith against. That is so because I still believe scripture is inspired of God and therefore I too will still continue to use scripture “like Jesus, the prophets and Apostles did, for teaching, instructing, correcting, etc.”

    Because we may disagree on some philosophical terminology does not mean that we both do not have a high view of scripture.

    Grace and Peace,

    Rex

  12. Paul Smith

    Travis, I think you have equated a faith in inerrancy with a faith in the truth of the word of God. I have an extremely high view of Scripture. Higher, in my estimation, that someone who holds to a literal view of inerrancy. The Bible contains many references to the movement of the sun. A fundamentalist, literal inerrantist interpretation of those passages would demand that the earth is motionless and that the sun revolves around the earth. You either have to modify the word “inerrant” until it is basically meaningless, or you have to hold a view of the Bible that is philosophically and scientifically ridiculous. And, as I point out earlier, exactly which Bible are you referring to when you say the text is inerrant? Which Hebrew text? Which Greek text? Which variant of the thousands of variants is inerrant and which are errors?

    The word of God is inspired – I confess and teach that. It is profitable for teaching, rebuke and correction. As I said, I have a very high view of the Bible. I have a very low view of inerrancy. Inerrancy is a human construct that is flawed and cannot be defended without constructing further human concepts around the Bible. Inerrancy is, quite ironically, one of the most liberal ideas concerning the Bible to arise in the past 100 years.

  13. Darin

    Paul, good thoughts. I would quibble with your example a bit in that no one believes cultural idioms are to be taken sceintifically or literally. The fact that someone did in the past in inconsequential.

  14. Jr

    Wendy: Put your sword away. Your fighting a battle with me that I’m not engaged in.

    I made an attempt at redefining the terms by attempting to explain what I think the Scriptures show regarding what its purpose is and what Jesus said about them. I think this is what has been advocated above (allowing the Scriptures to define what it is). With that, this is not a faith issue for me; meaning, my faith doesn’t rely on inconsequential differences in Chronicles and Samuel being remedied (though they can be); nor do those things even have weight against the idea of infallibility for me. I would say that those who base their faith on such a claim is just as dangerous as those who base their faith on how others treat them. Losing one’s faith over either one is showing that their faith was never in the God of the Scriptures to begin with. However, I do want to say that it seems to me that the militant wing of the anti-infallibility crowd usually have an alternative motive behind their arguments (like not wanting to believe something particular that is written, or wanting the liberty to disregard something else because it doesn’t suit their particular agenda – whatever it may be).

    Again, what it means to me is that the Spirit of God was working throughout it all, to formulate it through divine and human agency and to provide it through divine and human agency for God’s people and for His purposes in all places at all times. In this way it operates infallibly – that is, exactly the way God has intended it – and it should be believed, honored, and obeyed as the breath of God that it is. It is also essential to reflect on Jesus’ and the Apostles’ view of the Scriptures, for they used and promoted them as such.

    Grace be with you –
    Jr

  15. Paul Smith

    Darin, you raise an interesting point. I would agree with your comment about cultural idioms. The issue then becomes what is a cultural idiom. Classic liberal theology would say that virtually all of the Bible is couched in cultural idioms, and therefore very little of it would be literally true. On the far right “fundamentalist” end would be those who would say there are no, or virtually no, cultural idioms. So, are Jesus miracles to be read literally or as cultural idioms? Is the virgin birth a true and literal event, or a cultural idiom? Are the “six days” of creation literal or a cultural idiom? Are the various genealogical lists to be taken literally (and sequentially accurate) or as a manifestation of a cultural idiom? So, while I would agree with you about the movement of the sun v. the rotation of the earth, I’m sure I would disagree with some of my brethren about what else should be considered “cultural idiom” and what should be considered literal and inerrant.

    When everything is considered, this is a very important issue to work through, and those who do generally have a much greater appreciation for the text than those who just accept a teaching on face value because their favorite preacher once taught a lesson on the subject. As Paul told Timothy, “Study” – not “jump to conclusions.”

  16. Keith Brenton

    Of late, my view of scripture has been (and continues to be) that it is the way God wanted His story told.

    And that’s enough for me.

    It probably doesn’t help to superimpose theories of inspiration or perceived contradictions on it when, in the main, it tells us who God is and whom we ought to be like.

    “I don’t know” is a legitimate answer to questions about/problems with scripture. They may have been embedded in it by God to stimulate our individual and communal meditation and discussion. They may be intended to prod us to pray for His Spirit and His discernment. They may even be reminders that we ain’t as bright as we’d like to think we are.

    And that’s enough for me, too.

  17. laymond

    Lot of maybes there Keith, I don’t think God would fib to just to get us confused, I believe we do that very well on our own.

    1Cr 14:33 For God is not [the author] of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

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