Thoughts on Inerrancy
Jan 15th, 2008 by Amanda
Kudos to Terri for her thoughts on inerrancy.
I have slowly moved away from a strict belief in the inerrancy of The Bible. It almost pains me to say that because it feels like betrayal to my faith of the not so distant past. It shouldn’t, but it does.
This statement speaks volumes. And it’s exactly how I’ve felt. It does feel like you’re betraying your faith to admit something like this.
Terri explains what she means:
To say that I don’t believe in inerrancy is not to say that I don’t believe the Bible. It doesn’t mean I think the biblical stories are legends. It doesn’t mean I think that everything in the Bible is figurative, outdated, or irrelevant.
It does mean that I won’t go to gymnastic lengths to justify every word I read against every other word I read in my Bible. It means that I recognize that God spoke to people then as He speaks to people now. He uses their personalities, their talents, and their situations to express His truth.
She hits the nail on the head when she explains why people rely on this idea of inerrancy:
Declaring inerrancy is not really proclaiming faith. Instead, the concept exists solely to create a safety net of false certainty in a believer. And..it works! Most of the time, that is. Minor problems can be swept away by a quick recitation of the mantra. However, it can actually keep people from deepening a true reliance and faith on Jesus. Instead of actively listening to Him, we can just open our handy-dandy “Instruction Book” or “Love Letter” or “Guide Book” and figure it all out for ourselves.
She questions, somewhat sarcastically, what would happen if people don’t believe in inerrancy:
One of the ideas that fuels a fundamentalist view of inerrancy is the fear of what will happen if people don’t believe in inerrancy. If people don’t believe the Bible is perfect in every way and circumstance, then what will hold the Christian faith together? How will we cling to Jesus if everything we know about Him comes from a tainted book? Won’t people begin to slowly peel away all the theology we have, all the while reminding us that the Bible is not inerrant?
You know what? I’m going to stop pasting Terri’s thoughts here. Go read them yourself! (Don’t forget this one too). She does an incredible job dissecting the fears behind inerrancy and brings it all together in an eloquent conclusion.
It becomes pointless when people start arguing about how literally the more minor statements should be taken rather than concentrating on the really big issues about which there can be no doubt. For example, there are whole debates about whether women should wear a head covering instead of how best we can love our neighbour.
I had never come across the doctrine of inerrancy until we lived in the USA for two years, back in the early 1990s. It seems bizarre to me, as it effectively makes the Bible into an idol. It’s not meant to be worshipped, or perfect, or flawless.
The Bible is the record of God’s dealings with the world, and contains the wonderful truth about the Messiah, and salvation, and a great deal of radical teaching. It should be read, and pondered upon, and taken seriously. But we should never forget that it was written by ordinary people.
Sometimes they are writing down the exact words of God (eg many of the prophets, and the book of Revelation) and I’m sure God inspired them all to include what was important for us to know. But it was still written by fallible humans, and there are bound to be a few typos or copying errors here and there. The miracle is that it has been so amazingly preserved.
I think it was probably Calvin or one of those guys who invented the doctrine of inerrancy, and for some reason it caught on in the USA in the past century.
As someone much wiser than me said, ‘Fundamentalists seem to worship Father, Son and Holy Scripture’.
[…] Amending the Bible … or (not) Inerrancy? […]
Thanks for the link!
I actually didn’t mean that part sarcastically. I know..it can be hard to tell with me sometimes!
I think those questions are valid questions for people to have, I just don’t agree with the answers that are usually given.
That’s exactly right. And that was my point with the whole living authentically thing. To do that, you have to be able to be okay with being uncertain. That is, you have to have faith and trust. Biblical inerrancy is one of those lies we tell ourselves in order to save us from the risk of pain that comes with being wrong. It’s a wall that keeps God and true spirituality from touching our hearts.
Sue - excellent point about making the Bible into an idol - I hadn’t thought of that!
Actually, this is the big problem with dropping inerrancy. Because, once people get it into their heads that the Bible is not directly from God, they start asking questions like “how do you know that Revelations is the word of God?”
To me, inerrancy is an attempt to make an entire book’s worth of assertions look like a single simple statement.
First, thanks everyone for the tone of all the comments - no-one is ‘attacking the person’, but there seems to be a genuine exchange (hearing) of others’ ideas. Inerrancy, as I understand it, does not necessarily require a spirit of ‘Bible-olatry”. If we take the words of the autographs (ORIGINAL) documents as inspired/God-breathed, then we see the esteem/authority of those words is inseparable to the authority of the Author. As I listen to my wife speak, it is not the words, per se, separated from the speaker that grab my attention: it’s the relationship I have with my wife that pours significance into those words. I don’t attribute inerrancy to my wife (and she doesn’t claim it)- but if she WAS without error - at any time or any situation - then I would treat those words with the authority they deserve. Pardon the weak analogy, but that’s how I see the Bible. God Himself has spoken - and if it take works to reconstruct the message as faithfully as possible through studying the Scriptures and taking advantage of (albeit limited)tools like textual criticism, that’s our job. God’s Words ooze relationship, even when warning us of the dangers of not listening (and responding to) His message.