"Inerrancy" is a term I have been prone to throw around casually with regard to the Bible. Most people with a passing familiarity with Christian belief take it as standard doctrine that the Bible is inerrant, or at least infallible. Inerrant states that the Bible is free from all errors or contradictions and is true in every aspect, spiritual and historical, while infallible is a more limited understanding that the Bible is true in spiritual and practical matters with the possibility for minor contradictions as a historical account.
I'd always approached discussions with biblical inerrancy as one of those standard Christian assumptions. If you're a Christian, let's agree that we both assume the Bible is true and therefore use it as a benchmark for any other conclusions or inferences we reach. If you're not a believer, then for the sake of this conversation, we'll treat the Bible as a useful historical and cultural text and exclude biblical inerrancy from our list of givens.
The idea of biblical inerrancy has only recently come to the forefront of theological discussion. Before modernism and postmodernism pushed the reader to consider the source and author's perspective for a written text, most people wouldn't think to call the Bible inerrant because it was assumed to be so. But now we are trained to read between the lines, put things in context, research amplifying information, ask who the author is and what his motivation might have been.
So I was sitting in bible study one day and we were considering one of King David's psalms. And we were running into a wall with one of the psalm's phrases; I'm not sure which, but for "a man after God's own heart," King David says a lot of angsty, emo things. So I asked, do we have to take everything in the psalms to be true?
Some girl: What do you mean, Matt? Don't you believe the Bible is true?
Well, sure I do, I said. I take it as historically preserved and accurate, and I take it as moral and spiritual truth as well.
Then you have to take the psalms as truth too.
What I'm saying is, even if the Bible is historically accurate and spiritually true, there are things said in the Bible that we don't take as truth. "Am I my brother's keeper?" for example. So here, included in the Bible, is a collection of poetry and songs written by a King of Israel. Good stuff, to be sure, but infallible?
The girl didn't understand my question, which might be just as well for reasons I'll bring up in a few paragraphs.
I recounted this story with another friend, my friend who's studying to become a pastor, and he shared his perspective. He said he didn't like to say anything about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself. This practice seems wise, since Proverbs 30 (and Matthew 5) warns against adding to Scripture. And my friend said that the strongest statement the Bible makes about itself is that it is useful:
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- 2 Timothy 3:16
(On a related note, it's clear from 2 Peter 3:15-16 that Peter at least considered Paul's epistles to be in the category of Scripture.)
The perceived danger with disavowing biblical inerrancy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the Bible is possibly flawed, then everything we thought was true tumbles into a whirling chaotic mess of doubt, and what do we base our faith on? Jesus Himself says (Uh oh! Did He actually say it?) that we are to follow His words as if we were building a house on a solid foundation.
My friend and I agreed that we generally believe in Biblical infallibility and probably inerrancy. The logic "God is perfect, the Bible is God's book, therefore the Bible is perfect" is not a watertight syllogism, but it's certainly tenable. Maybe there is no statement in the Bible that claims its own inerrancy, but there are still very good arguments based on archeological consistency, textual preservation, and the personal and historical work of the Holy Spirit that would give excellent bases to take the Bible as a book of truth, and moreover, truth that transcends any other source of truth out there in the canon of things-written-down. If people want to go on believing and telling each other that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, I don't take it as a bad thing because in all honesty, I'm still part of that camp, even if I might start to avoid saying it explicitly. And sometimes if you don't throw that card down on the table right away, you'll interact better with the other players at the poker table, and who knows, even learn a thing or two yourself.
While the poker metaphor is still hot, there's a definite wild card here, and that's the omnipresent Biblical phrase "w(W)ord of God." It's a definite player because it shows up everywhere in the Bible and there are so many significant things said about the "w(W)ord of God." John 1 ascribes that title to Jesus and His incarnation, but is that a universal application of the term? Consider as an example Psalm 30:4-5:
"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him."
It would be speculative to delve into this discussion without more advanced etymological scholarship. I'm pretty sure I need to either find or become a Greek and Hebrew scholar before I can really say anything intelligent about the matter.
I've told you that my friend Peter thinks the first eleven chapters of Genesis are parabolic in nature. And my friend Orestes interprets the book of Job as fabular. Clearly, Scripture is not something to take with blanket literalism, not if we respect it, but a dynamic entity with which we as Christians will have to wrestle. You know the great thing about wrestling with something? You have to get up close and personal with it.
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3 comments:
(1) Yeah, I've had similar problems explaining this more nuanced view of Biblical inerrancy to others. When I attempted, we were in a discussion on Ecclesiastes, a book where Solomon, in his Godless depression, clearly says things that are not theologically true (e.g. Ecc 4:1-3), although the Bible is true in the sense that he truly said those things.
(2) I too can't quite make sense of the whole "Word" thing, although many Christians seem to conflate the term when it's clearly being used in different ways.
(3) Peter and Pat believe these things??!!
(4) We need to wrestle sometime. Have we before? I believe I'm seeing you next weekend for some reason, I think that'll be a good time.
The psalms strike me as different than Cain's line in a few respects. The narrator of Genesis isn't endorsing what Cain says - obviously you can have an infallible or inerrant account of someone being wrong. The account is inerrant if and only if everything that it claims is true is true - in Genesis, inerrancy enters into it only insofar as Cain may not have said that. If he did, then Genesis' account could not be more true.
By the same token, though, if the author is endorsing the truth of the psalms, and if the psalms are false, then you've lost inerrancy (and infallibility, if they're wrong about something spiritual). If the straightforward reading of the Bible is that the author endorses something false, then you've got trouble, even if some interpretive work can get you to the conclusion that the author wasn't really endorsing that.
Of course, authorial intent is difficult to discern, and certainly there are many modern authors who knowingly endorse false things in the book, while the reader is supposed to realize for himself that these things are false (unreliable narrators). However, in these cases it remains the case that the work isn't perfectly true, although it's possible to discern truth from it. If this is the case with the Bible, then it is the particular interpretations of God's message that can be inerrant or not, whereas the book itself is straightforwardly not inerrant (but, perhaps, quite useful for determining what the inerrant message actually is), though it could still be true in many senses. "True" is a much weaker property than either "inerrant" or "infallible".
When I first went to an Episcopalean church and found they didn't read the Bible infallibly, I was kind of surprised. But I liked the note you made: if we take the Bible's claims on itself to be true, then we have to remember that it claims to be useful. And at the very least, all Christians I know acknowledge the Bible as useful, even if in different ways.
While I'm not sure about how exactly to take the Bible, I think it is definitely a start to recognize that there is something to be learned from it, whether it be literal, figurative, or whatever.
(An interesting read - lewis' letters on inerrancy http://www.crivoice.org/lewisbib.html)
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