The Inerrancy of Scripture

Introduction

Why is this a fundamental? Earlier we spoke of the doctrines that a person must believe to be a Christian being the fundamentals and this is not one of those doctrines. A person could in theory deny the inerrancy of scripture and be a Christian. There are many Neo-Orthodox believers who believe the bible contains the word of God but is not the word of God; however, it is included in the fundamentals for a very important reason. Once we admit error into the bible, we do not know where it stops. If there are errors in the bible, how do we know the resurrection isn’t an error in the bible from some passionate but misguided disciples. How do we know that the gospel message of Paul was truly the gospel of Jesus Christ if he could have been merely adding to Christianity? Were does the authority for believing one over another come from? So it is included in the list of fundamentals because our confidence in any of the other fundamentals rests in a belief that the bible is God’s word.

The Inspiration of Scripture implies its Inerrancy

I cannot in the time we have do an in depth study of the doctrine of the bible; however, I taught on it last year on Wednesday nights if you would like a copy of the notes. But we must start with a proper understanding of the doctrine of inspiration because inspiration implies inerrancy. Consider the fact that 2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” declares that all scripture is given by inspiration. God is directly assumed to be responsible for every word of the scriptures. Secondly, the word scriptures speaks specifically of the words that were written down. The Greek word for scripture is graphe from which we get graphite, but it speaks of the writtings. So if every written word of the scriptures are inspired by God, then they are the communication from God. If error be admitted in the communication from God than error must arise in God Himself.

The Truthfulness of Scripture implies its Inerrancy

When we speak of the inerrancy of scripture, we are really speaking about its truthfulness. Errors creep into discussion from only one of two sources: deceit or mistake. The question one must ask is whether or not the bible is purposefully trying to deceive us or is it just mistaken if one believes there are errors in it? If it has errors there can be no other sources for that error. So its truthfulness now comes into question. And not only its truthfulness, but God’s Himself. So to support the doctrine of inerrancy let’s look at a handful of passages that support the truthfulness of scripture:

John 17:17- Jesus declares in vs 14 that he has given them God’s word. The message, teaching of God’s communication and in vs 17 that communication is declared to be truth.

John 10:35 “If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;” I will not get into the meaning of the first part of this verse or the context, but in this parenthetical aside Jesus declares the scriptures cannot be broken. The idea is that the cannot be nullified, set aside or disregarded because what they say is true and will happen.

Psalm 12:6- pure words- when we say pure, in this passage the word means clean or unalloyed. An alloy is a metal that is mixed with another metal in order to usually make it stronger or more tensile. The idea is that the words are not mixed truth with error. They are pure words.

Prov 30:5- the word pure here in this passage is a different Hebrew word meaning “to be worthy of trust or belief.” It comes from the idea of something that has been refined, but it carries with it the connotation of something that can stand up to the beating . You can press on it, try to straighten it, bend it; but it will still hold up. It is dependable. Now let me ask you this, “If I know that someone lies to me, can I depend on them.” Even if I know they are mistaken can I fully trust what they say? I might generally trust, but I will also always verify what they say because I can’t fully depend on them to guide me correctly. Verses like this speak of a related topic to inerrancy and that is the doctrine of infallibility. Scripture will not guide me wrong.

2 Sam 7:28- thy words be true- This is a statement made by David about the truthfulness of God’s words. Notice the s on the end of the word there. It isn’t just God’s message to man that is true but the words used to communicate that message.

The Character of God implies the Inerrancy of Scripture

If Scripture is literally the words of God, inspired, breathed out by God; then those words reflect His character. If someone is telling me lies, those lies tell me something about the person. Maybe they don’t think truth is important. Maybe they are trying to hide something from me. Maybe they are trying to trick me, deceive me. But lies tell me they are dishonest.

Let’s say its not a lie, its just a mistake. Well that also tells me something about the character of the person involved. At the very least, it tells me they are ignorant of some things. They just don’t know. But we know and believe God is omniscient; He knows everything. It could also tell me that they are just to lazy to look up or find the answers. There are those who do not want to find the truth. In fact, many who deny the inerrancy of scripture have never done the work to look for the answers to their objections. Again it all comes down to the character of God.

Num 23:19- God cannot lie- if every word of scripture comes from God, then the words of God cannot be lies. Heb 6:18

Heb 4:13- God cannot be mistaken

Romans 3:4 “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.”

The logic of inerrancy is this:

Premise One: God only tells the truth and cannot be mistaken

Premise Two: All scripture is inspired by God

Conclusion: Therefore all scripture must be true and without mistakes

Clarifications

The bible is intended to be a history book, though when it speaks of history it is truth. Rather, scripture is intended to communicate God’s message to mankind in such a way that God condescends to communicate on our level. Often the scriptures communicate in ordinary, common ways of talking. So when it comes to errors in the bible we must ask ourselves What is an error? To answer that you must know some details about the culture of the one speaking and how the language is used. The authors of the bible generally used non-technical language so that the bible is without error even though it may not be maximally precise.

Not scientific precision

It must be remembered that the bible was not written to be a history book or science textbook. It was written to be a revelation of God to the common man and thus it speaks in ordinary language. This often means that it may not be scientifically precise. As we will see with many of the following clarifications to what we mean by inerrancy, imprecision does not always mean error. Take for example the question, “How old are you?” A normal ordinary answer to that question from a child might be 5 years old, but a precise answer to that question would be 5 years, 2 months and 12 days. We could continue to hours and minutes and seconds to be more precise. Has the child lied or made an error in merely stating that he is 5 years old? We would all agree he has not. He is using ordinary understandings of truth to communicate how old he is. In fact, if someone were to give more precise information they would merely complicate communication and frustrate the other person.

Uses improper grammar

Eph 3:1 begins in Greek with a sentence that does not contain a verb. This is improper grammar in most languages. The verb is the one necessary element in a Greek sentence. The bible actually contains areas where the grammar is not exactly standard acceptable Greek or Hebrew grammar. We call these solecisms. A common example of this is when a singular noun is used with a plural verb. Sometimes there is a theological reason for this while at others it does not seem to have a reason. Does this mean the bible contains errors? We must remember that truth can be expressed in any dialect. Consider this example: it is proper to say, “I am not going to the store,” and yet someone may say, “I ain’t going to the store” which is grammatically incorrect. Has the person made a factually incorrect statement? The truth that he isn’t going to the store is expressed in both statements though one of them is grammatically correct. God’s desire is to speak to ordinary people. Calvin describes this tendency in scripture when he says that God “lisps” to us. He condescends to our level to communicate with us on a level we can understand.

Uses non chronological narrative

When we write a book report or a history book, modern authors are pretty consistent to tell things in chronological order. But this is not how ancient historians often wrote their histories. Histories were written around a theme or a purpose and so events would be organized around the lesson that was being conveyed. While on average the events of the bible are chronologically arranged, sometimes they are thematically arranged. Often when the events are intended to be chronological there will be chronological words used like when and immediately. However, words like and, and then, next, after that are not inherently chronological in the NT. Some of these words focus on logical development or the result of something. One example of non chronological arrangement can be found in the account of the arrest of John the Baptist. Luke in Luke 3:20 includes this event towards the beginning because he is wanting to lump the story of John the Baptist together at the beginning of his gospel while Mark 6:17 places the arrest later on.

Uses round numbers

The use of round numbers often occurs because a precise census was not being taken. Consider Num 1:21-23. Reuben is said to have 46,500 men able to fight and Simeon has 59,300 men of war. Why are these numbers perfectly even? Wouldn’t it make sense that they should end in a random number? In estimating this census, they counted their armies by bands of men or groups of soldiers. This was not a precise head count. This accounts for some of the number differences between Kings and Chronicles.

Uses imprecise quotations

If John were to come and say that he had just had a fight with his sister and was going to take the bus to the park for awhile, and I come and ask you what did John say, would it be an error to say that John is going to the park because he had a fight with his sister? You did not quote John exactly and yet you still told the truth. Your statement is consistent with what John said. Such quotations are often found in the NT. Matt 2:6/ Micah 5:2

Describes things using  phenomenalistic language

Psalm 113:3 Sometimes the bible describes things using common ordinary language for how people perceive things. One common example is the rising of the sun. Scientifically, we know that the sun does not rise; rather the earth rotates around the sun, but from the perspective of a man standing on the surface of the earth it looks like the sun is rising. We cannot judge prescientific descriptions too harshly considering even our weathermen still speak of sunrise and sunset.

Use figures of speech and symbols

Rev 1:12-15 There are many uses of poetic speech, allegory and symbolism in scripture and we must pay attention to them. Poetic speech allows the author to draw a picture for us that descriptive words alone could not do. Using these forms of speech in normal ordinary writing today does not make it in error; so why should it do so in the bible?

Use imprecise descriptions

Mark 1:5- the use of “all” technically could fall under “figures of speech” though we will include it here. “All” falls under the use of hyperbole in language. Children use this all the time (did you catch the hyperbole there) when they say, “you never let me go with my friends.” Hyperbole is used to emphasize something and in this case it emphasizes how large the group actually is.

Textual Variation

There are over 5,800 copies of the portions of the Greek NT spanning the history of the church still in existence and no two of them agree 100%. Because of errors in copying, variation has crept into the manuscripts; so we must also not assume that an error was actually the intended word. The bible teaches its own preservation so we have all the words God gave, but inerrancy on applies to the word’s God gave by inspiration.

Conclusion

Mankind has a problem with scripture usually because of two reasons: human weakness and/or sin. Because of our finite minds, we cannot comprehend everything in scripture. Included under this category is just plain ignorance. We don’t know what we don’t know. Often people will hear someone arguing against the bible and they have never heard that before so they start making the same arguments. The Church has known about the supposed errors in the bible for thousands of years and answers have been given to explain. Most do not bother to look at the answers that have already been given.

When something comes up that you do not understand, what is your response? Do we respond in faith and acknowledge that I may not have the answer, but God does? Scientists do this all the time. When a phenomenon arises that seems to contradict their held theory, they still hold to the theory believing there must be a way to reconcile the two. They don’t stop looking, but they also don’t allow one difficulty to throw out the whole system.

The other reason that people have problems with scripture is sin. Romans 1:18 speaks of man's act of holding the truth in unrighteousness. The word hold literally means to suppress the truth or hold it down. The reason they do this is revealed in vs 19-23. They glorify not God; they are not thankful; their imaginations are vain and their heart is dark; they are proud; and they replace God with false gods. A summary word for all of this is sin.

Christians can fall into thinking like unbelievers. In rejecting the virgin birth of Christ, the deity of Christ and the bodily resurrection, the liberal reveals that he is not a christian and yet Christians are swayed by their academics. The Christian has fallen into sin in rejecting the authority of God in His word and replacing it with the wisdom of the world. The main difference according to John Frame between a liberal and a believing Christian is a moral difference. “The liberal reads the text with an incredibly exalted view of his own competence to understand ancient cultures and writers in finest detail.”