(Because everything comes in threes...)

How strongly do/should evangelicals hold to biblical inerrancy, or it’s weaker (?) form of infallibility?

To me I wonder if the often implicit idea of inerrancy/infallibility has caused a generation to not be able to actually read their bibles properly.

I’ve always considered strange the disdain some people seemed to have for outside sources in helping them understand the text (eg study notes), instead preferring to ‘do the hard work’ and work it out for themselves, as though the bible is a puzzle with all elements for unlocking it’s mysteries contained within itself.

It’s a very odd, selective mix of both the acceptance of some things on authority (how you should read the bible), and the rejection of other authority.

It also leads, in my view, to a general poverty of thinking about the texts themselves - when they are divorced from time and place, and read as though the writer was sitting next to you 2000+ years later writing directly to you, you’re deprived of a great deal of context and are left the poorer for it, imo.

I would go further to suggest it leads to a strange kind of anti-intellectualism in the pews, which is very odd for a diocese that prides itself on its intellectual rigor at Moore etc.

Given your average pewsitter don’t seem to know how to read the text for what it is, and has no regard for time, place, context etc, they’re left to come to the ‘right’ answers any way necessary, sometimes with absolutely no help from the text at all!

We’ve been able to get away with this to a point while our ‘right’ answers that Joe pewsitter accepts on authority & regurgitates correctly are for the most point the right answers, but it’s a dangerous place to be in.

Regurgitating ‘right’ answers often looks kind of similar to reading the text correctly if the outcome is the same - but if the text isn’t being read properly, then we’ve got problems.

I wonder about a generation that grows up with this - in 30 years time, will they be able to make the arguments for themselves from a thorough reading of the text, or will they just be regurgitating ‘right’ ideas and picking from the text when it suits them?

I don’t think any strategy that (selectively) disqualifies outside information and discourages people to think properly about how they read the bible is a recipe for long term success, in fact it’s probably more likely to breed fundamentalism long term. It also deprives people from a far richer reading and experience of the bible.

So is it fair to pin all this on inerrancy?

These issues have bothered me for quite a while, and it’s only recently that it dawned on my slow old brain that they could largely be traced back to ideas of inerrancy/infallibility.

Does inerrancy cause more problems than it solves?

Hey Luke,

From my observations I agree with the issues/symptoms you describe - I think pewsitters are often left to fend for themselves in figuring out how to read their bibles, with predictably variable results.

Can you pin this on a view of inerrancy/infallibility?

Honestly I don’t think so. I reckon if you ask the average punter they wouldn’t know what these mean.

No doubt we have drummed into them that the bible is God’s word, but to the point where they eschew other materials...I haven’t seen it.

Dear Luke;
I’m afraid I would have to disagree with your suggestion that the doctrine of inerrancy of the Bible causes the problems you are referring to.
My position first of all: I think that the Bible is inerrant. That means that no proposition that is asserted by the Bible is in error. I also believe that the Bible is infallible (if you want to draw a distinction between the two words), in that the other “speech acts” contained within the Bible never fail to fulfill their purpose. God’s promises are effective to bind God to carry them out, etc etc. I seem to recall finding Vanhoozer (or a name like that) very helpful on this topic when I was studying the issue some years ago.
Of course my position that none of the Bible’s assertions are false or in error means that I need to know what is being asserted before I know what to believe as true. So I need to pay even more careful attention to the genre of the various pieces of literature in the Bible, any help I can get from those who have studied the literature etc etc. I have never found the fact that I anticipate what the Bible tells me will be true, to interfere with a careful analysis of what it says! (Of course I suppose I will be predisposed to believe that it is ultimately consistent with itself, but that is a presumption that analysts of any text make.)
Your suggestion, as I read it, is that people who believe in inerrancy have a disdain for other sources. If this were true (and I can’t honestly say it fits my experience) I don’t see the two as connected.

I don’t think any strategy that (selectively) disqualifies outside information and discourages people to think properly about how they read the bible is a recipe for long term success, in fact it’s probably more likely to breed fundamentalism long term. It also deprives people from a far richer reading and experience of the bible.

I would have to disagree with this as an analysis of good evangelical Biblical analysis (of course there are always bad examples, but I mean as taught in Moore College in my experience.) In fact I found in my time in Sydney and at Moore that most preachers were in danger of the opposite error, of spending too much time explaining to people how they had analysed the text and not enough applying it. But at any rate I found mostly that far from simply “handing down answers from on hight” most preachers were keen to instruct people in helpful ways to read the text.
And again, I certainly don’t think a commitment to inerrancy leads to the problems you mention in any particular way.
Regards
Neil F

Yes, I would have thought that a belief in Scriptural inerrancy would make you more interested in the way words were used in the original cultural context. It wouldn’t tell you what interpretation to favour, and couldn’t ever be determinative of meaning of the text in its context. But it might suggest certain interpretive options; then highlight some of those interpretive options as being more potentially fruitful and others as being less likely.

BTW, my spellchecker highlights ‘inerrancy’ as a mis-spelling, which is funny in an annoying kind of way.

I haven’t encountered the problem that Luke mentions, but, like many things, it could be a case of taking a good thing too far. We believe that the word of God is living and active - God can, and does, speak directly to us, despite the problems caused by things like changing cultures. That’s why we’re so enthusiastic about getting people to read their Bibles.

Commentators and scholarship are helpful in giving us a deeper understanding of the background behind the words in the Bible, but there’s always the risk that people can make the commentator the mediator between themselves and the Bible. It’s not - “this is what the Bible says”, but “this is what John Spong/Phillip Aspinall/John Stott/Peter Jensen/Paul Barnett says that the Bible says”. But all commentators are sinful creatures, and we can all twist the message of scripture (whether deliberately or inadvertantly) and end up preaching a distorted gospel.

That’s why I tell the kids in my youth group to always check what I say against the Bible directly.

Only 5 or 6 posts & this topic feels a bit too theologically deep for General Discussions!

Looks like it might fit better under Understanding the Bible…

TZ.

Hi Luke,
I note the problem you have pointed at. I can’t see how it can be directly attributed to innerancy/ infallibility.
As I wondered about this, I first toyed with the idea that it may come more with the fascination that we have with the GREAT ONES. We love quoting them & saying how we came to our conclusions (which usually match our hero’s conclusions).
If preachers keep repeating how Joe Bloggs came to a conclusion that it was right, then we strip away the Holy Spirit’s role in convincing us of the truth, & we make the scriptures less perspicuous, as it tends to reinforce that only Joe Bloggs can know the truth. (I apologise to JB & all his family, if I have cast any dispersion upon the man & his great love for JC)

But the more I pondered, I found myself wondering why a Diocese that not only loves intellectual rigour, but also prides itself on teaching people how to read the Bible in the way we preach (thus justifying a more point by point, methodical and lecture style of exegetical sermoning) should end up with people not knowing how to read the Bible, but only have “right answers” (if your perceptions are reflected across the diocese).

Obviously (well to me anyway) part of the answer also lies in the way that ministers state that we can know that this is what the text is saying, & therefore this is what God intended. Because of the intellectual rigour, we have learnt to read the text to evaluate what it is saying, & we are taught to see flaws in some ways that the text is understood, which do not clearly reflect what is written. This knowledge can (as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:1) puff us up, & puff up our congregations. We need to carefully speak in love, so we build up with the truth (which comes from a loving application of the knowledge God has revealed in his word, enlivened by His Spirit).

Oh what a can of worms is waiting now for my dinner.

1. When is love “love”?
2. In what ways is speaking the truth not “speaking the truth in love”?
3. Could our problem be we love the word more than we love people?
4. Or is it more we understand the word more than we understand people?
5. Or is it simply knowledge puffs up...?
6. Or am I barking up the wrong tree, & the fox has sneakily left a track for me to sniff, while it is really somewhere totally different?

Luke Stevens - 21 April 2008 04:46 PM

Does inerrancy cause more problems than it solves?

Hi Luke. I’ve also scratched my head over inerrancy and have come pretty much to the conclusion that it doesn’t hold water.

Anyhow, here are a few online articles/blogs that I found particularly helpful ...

http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=413
http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=414

http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=4200

http://michaelpahl.blogspot.com/2006/04/thoughts-on-inerrancy.html

I don’t know what to make of it, but there have been some interesting posts recently on inerrancy at the Better Bibles Blog:
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2008/04/800-pound-gorilla.html
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2008/04/itch-that-inerrancy-scratches.html
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-felicity-isnt-just-truth-in.html

A couple of thoughts.

I have always wanted to believe the bible to be inerrant. But on my reading over the years, I found stuff that was just plain loopy. Good teaching by various ministers over the years has provided the sustaining framework. What has also helped in the last few years is that I started to look into some Messianic teaching - and found some (among lots of stuff) that was good quality, because the theology about Yeshua was sound. With that as an anchor point, the purpose of my quest was to regain a sense of the original text - the original Jewish text.

This has opened up the bible to me; what was sometimes gibberish has become entirely sensible once I understand the context that Jesus was talking in. The messianic “Torah Teaching” and the “Complete Jewish Bible”, translation by Dr David Stern, has been a great help, but there are sometimes passages that I become bogged down in because of the transliterated Hebrew scattered therein. Although it is no more disjointed than reading the ESV can be :)

I still like my NIV. And I do believe the bible to be inerrant. I think we just need to ask, seek, and do some sleeves-up work on the meanings and nuances in the text.

Hope this adds light and not heat.

Isn’t the question about inerrancy a question about the nature of God?

Inerrancy means that there are no errors in the Bible.

So the question becomes, when God spoke the Bible, was it possible for him to make an error?

My answer to that question is no.

However Gordo, since we don’t have the autographs from God, there is still a place for humility in acknowledging that what we have is pretty darn close to what they had about 2000 yrs ago.
So our particular translation of choice is not necessarily totally inerrant.

Still wrestling with that question Robertus. I think God could probably cause even a childrens’ Bible to be inerrant if he so chose. That may end up looking a lot like prayerfully thinking about the text we have before us, learning original languages and asking friends to help us, but even so.

So I quote, for example, from the ‘Big Picture Story Bible’ story that I read to my girls tonight:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

I think that is probably an inerrant statement, don’t you? That is to say, with my feeble analytical powers I don’t think I can spot any error there. Others may succeed where I failed.

Somehow God has to get what he thinks from his mind into ours. At least, if he wants to. And my view is that he wants to, and when he wants to, he succeeds perfectly. Eventually.

Gordon Cheng - 21 April 2008 10:55 PM

So the question becomes, when God spoke the Bible, was it possible for him to make an error?

Gordon, if you believe that ‘God spoke the Bible’, how do you exegete 1Cor 7:12? Do you think that Paul was confused when he claimed that the instruction given was his and not the Lord’s?

No, I believe God told him to say that, and that it was an inerrant statement on Paul’s part.

Interestingly, the 39 Articles do not require inerrancy as a requirement of belief for Anglicans. Articles vi & vii (with help from xx, xx1, xxii & xxxiv) lay down the foundation of their canonicity, authority & respect we are to have for them.

& Gordo, no I am not wrestling with that one. I am just a bit uncomfortable when people make claims on inerrancy as the litmus test for faithfulness, which happens in some parts of Christianity, and usually with a certain type of translation or version.

Gordo, instead of inerrancy as the absolute way that God gets his messge across to us, He has given us His Spirit who convinces of the truth. He is probably why we don’t need the originals, for He accomplishes all He desires through His word, actively in us, not just by the printed page (if it was only the written page, then we absolutely need the originals).