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Biblical inerrancy is the doctrinal position that in its original form, the Bible is without error; "referring to the complete accuracy of Scripture, including the historical and scientific parts."
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Inerrancy in context
Many denominations believe that the Bible is inspired by God. (See biblical inspiration) Among those are the beliefs that errors in the scripture and other ways to God may also exist. Some who believe in the Inspiration of scripture also teach that it is infallible. (See biblical infallibility) Among those who subscribe to infallibility is the belief that though the minute details may contain errors, but maintain what the scriptures say regarding spiritual issues is ultimately useful and true. Inerrancy goes one step further and includes that the scientific, geographic, and historic details and of the original text is ultimately true and real.
Many religions include texts other than the Bible under various categorizations of inspiration. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) consider the teachings of Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon along with the bible as being the "word of God", but recognize translation issues.[See the Eighth and Ninth Article of Faith]. Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church considers some teachings of the Church, such as those of ecumenical councils and the Pope, to be infallible in the sense that their solemn definitions are preserved from error. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility].
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Basis of belief
The theological basis of the belief, in its simplest form, is that as God is perfect, the Bible, as the word of God, must also be perfect, thus, free from error.
Proponents of biblical inerrancy also teach that God used the "distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers" of scripture but that God's inspiration guided them to flawlessly project his message through their own language and personality. (See biblical inspiration).
Infallibility and inerrancy refer to the original texts of the Bible. And while conservative scholars acknowledge the potential for human error in transmission and translation, modern translations are considered to "faithfully represent the originals" .
In their text on the subject, Geisler & Nix (1986) claim that scriptural inerrancy is established by a number of observations and processes, which include:
the historical accuracy of the Bible,
the Bible's claims of its own inerrancy,
church history and tradition, and
one's individual experience with God, etc.
"Prima Facie" refers to evidence and claims from the Bible itself. "The Witness of the Spirit" is cited as proof to the person to whom God speaks. The "Transforming Ability" of scripture is cited as yet another supernatural proof to an individual. The "Unity of the Scripture" despite its myriad of authors, cultures, and topics, the "Historicity of the Bible" and how the archaeological record is interpreted to confirm the Bible, the "Testimony of Christ," "fulfilled prophecies," "apparent indestructibility" of the scriptures, and the "integrity of its authors" are all commonly taught as ways reliability is established.
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Establishing the autograph
There are over 5,600 Greek manuscripts containing all or part of the New Testament. Most of these manuscripts date to the Middle Ages. The first complete copy of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, dates to the 4th century. The earliest fragment of a New Testament book is the Rylands Library Papyrus P52 which dates to the mid 2nd century and is the size of a business card. Very early manuscripts are rare. However, because the church fathers cited the New Testament abundantly, it is possible to reconstruct most of the New Testament without even referencing the manuscripts. Including these quotations there are over 20,000 sources for the New Testament. Inerrantists believe that once all the manuscript evidence is compiled and compared, the errors in transmission become apparent and are easily eliminated. While this may be true for minor errors, such as misspellings, deletions, and word order errors; other differences are more difficult to account for or notice. Three common examples of text being inserted, which are commonly footnoted in bibles, are the Pericope Adulteræ (John 7:53 - 8:11), the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8), and the longer ending in Mark 16 (Mark 16:9-20). For hundreds of years, biblical scholars have examined the manuscripts extensively, yet there is no consensus on what the original version may have looked like. On the other hand, inerrantists believe that the autograph is not only accessible, but existent in modern translations, although different inerrantists disagree on which version is the best. Inerrantists from non-Protestant churches often prefer the traditional texts used in their churches to modern attempts of reconstruction, arguing that the Holy Spirit is just as active in the preservation of the scriptures as he was in their creation.
Another technique some historians employ to help evaluate ancient texts such as the books of the Bible is the historical method. The branch of history that examines the extant copies of a written text to produce a version of the text that is as close as possible to the original is called textual criticism.
Some inerrantists claim that critics have no problem with accepting accuracy of transmission for the works of Homer (600 copies exist, the earliest over 500 years after the autograph) or Plato (only 7 manuscripts exist, 1,200 years after the autograph). This position ignores the fact that scholars and other critics know of many historical inaccuracies and many variants in both sets of texts.
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Roman Catholics
Roman Catholic Church teaching holds that the resurrection of Jesus affirms his divinity, and Jesus in turn appointed the Pope, and the body of Bishops led by the Pope, guided by the Holy Spirit, to offer infallible guidance on questions of faith and morals. Catholics believe this guidance has allowed the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture (the Bible), to be preserved and passed down to the present day. Speaking from the claimed authority granted to him by Christ, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu•, denounced those who held that the inerrancy was restricted to matters of faith and morals:
The sacred Council of Trent ordained by solemn decree that "the entire books with all their parts, as they have been wont to be read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the old vulgate Latin edition, are to be held sacred and canonical." ... When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the "entire books with all their parts" as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as "obiter dicta" and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus•, ... justly and rightly condemned these errors. *•
The Roman Catholic position on the Bible is further clarified in Dei Verbum, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, n. 11 & 12) This document states the Catholic belief that all scripture is sacred and reliable because the biblical authors were inspired by God. However, the human dimension of the Bible is also acknowledged as well as the importance of proper interpretation. Careful attention must be paid to the actual meaning intended by the authors, in order to render a correct interpretation. Genre, modes of expression, historical circumstances, poetic liberty, and church tradition are all factors that must be considered by Catholics when examining scripture. The Roman Catholic Church holds that the authority to decide correct interpretation rests ultimately with the church through its magisterium.
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Eastern Orthodox Christians
The Eastern Orthodox Church also believes in unwritten tradition and the written scriptures, but it has rarely sought to clarify the relationship between them. Contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians debate whether these are separate deposits of knowledge, or different ways of understanding a single dogmatic reality. Father George Florovsky, for example, asserted that tradition is no more than "Scripture rightly understood." Others tend to place a body of beliefs beside scripture, although even then these theologians would argue that tradition is consonant with scripture, and does not add any new dogmatic understanding of who God is in Trinity or the work of Jesus Christ. Because the Eastern Orthodox Church emphasizes the authority of councils, which belong to all the bishops, it stresses the canonical uses more than inspiration of scripture. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, most Eastern Orthodox theologians also recognize that a final seal of authenticity or ecumenicity is that the body of the church receives the councils. Since the acceptance of the Septuagint and New Testament by leading regional bishops of the second century was based on those texts' faithfulness to the same apostolic teaching to which the church traditions are also faithful. The Eastern Orthodox Church emphasizes that the scriptures can only be understood according to a normative rule of faith (the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in short) and way of life that has continued from Christ and the Apostles to this day, and beyond.
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The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
In 1978 a large gathering of American Protestant churches, including representatives of the Conservative, Reformed and Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Baptist denominations, adopted the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement does not necessarily imply that any particular traditional interpretation of the Bible is without error. Instead, it gives primacy to seeking the intention of the author of each text, and commits itself to receiving the statement as fact depending on whether it can be determined or assumed that the author meant to communicate a statement of fact. Of course, knowing the intent of the original authors is impossible. Acknowledging that there are many kinds of literature in the Bible besides statements of fact, the Statement nevertheless reasserts the authenticity of the Bible in toto as the word of God. Advocates of the Chicago Statement are worried that accepting one error in the Bible leads one down a slippery slope that ends in rejecting that the Bible has any value greater than some other book. "The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the church."
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Evangelicals
Evangelical churches, unlike Eastern and Roman churches, reject that there is an infallible authoritative tradition that is held over, or on a par with, scripture. Some Evangelicals hold that the Bible confirms its own authority, pointing out that Jesus frequently quotes scripture as his final "court of appeal". (See for example Matthew 4:4,6 & 10; 21:13; Mark 9:12) Protestants do not reject tradition, but as Lorraine Boettner comments, they "make judicious use of it in so far as it accords with scripture and is founded on truth. We should for instance treat with respect and study the confessions and council pronouncements of the various churches, particularly those of the ancient church, and of Reformation days... The history of the church at large shows all too clearly that church leaders and councils can and do make mistakes. Some of them serious... Protestants use their traditions with one controlling caution: they continually ask if this or that aspect of belief and practice is true to the Bible." The reasoning is that if the Bible is assumed to be inerrant and the only form of God's word, then that implies that the Bible is fully reliable. Tradition on the other hand is seen to be subject to human memory, and may have many versions of the same events/truths, some of which may be contradictory.
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King James Only
Another belief (King James Only) holds that the translators of the King James Version were guided by God, and that the KJV thus is to be taken as authoritative. However, those who hold this opinion do not extend it to the KJV translations of the Apocryphal books, which were produced along with the rest of the Authorized Version. Modern translations differ from the KJV on numerous points, sometimes resulting from access to different early texts. Upholders of the KJV would nevertheless hold that the Protestant canon of KJV is itself an inspired text and therefore remains authoritative. The King James Only movement asserts that the KJV is the sole English translation free from error.
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Wesleyan and Methodist view of scripture
The Wesleyan and Methodist Christian tradition accepts that the Bible is authoritative on matters concerning salvation. But it does not advocate that the Bible is inerrant, nor does it contend that the Bible is authoritative on all matters.
What is of central importance for the Wesleyan Christian tradition is the Bible as a tool which God uses to promote salvation. The Bible does not itself effect salvation; God initiates salvation and proper creaturely responses consummate salvation. One may be in danger of bibliolatry if one claims that the Bible secures salvation.
With this focus on salvation, Wesleyans need not make claims about inerrancy in the original autographs, subsequent translations, or particular interpretations. And yet Wesleyans affirm the Bible to be principally authoritative for faith and practice, and the Bible is often a principle means for God to promote salvation in the world.
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See also
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Notes
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Supportive links
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Critical links
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