Nearly every major Protestant denomination has, in the last couple hundred years, had to wrestle with the question of whether or not the Bible should be read as an inerrant word from God, or as a perfectly useful work heavily influenced by the limited knowledge of its human authors. And I phrase it that way on purpose; too often those who hold to inerrancy characterize those who don't as not having any trust in the Bible, which isn't entirely true. The fact is, we must all hold some degree of tension between the claim that God wrote the Bible with His perfect knowledge and the claim that human authors wrote the Bible with their full personality and understanding of the world intact, and the debate has been marked by people emphasizing one side of that tension over the other. In my previous post in this series, I addressed the nature of Christ as the living Word of God. While I will be relating this post to that statement, I will not spend time revisiting the idea in detail; rather, this post will deal with the twin questions of the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture.
In the interest of fairly presenting the complexity of the issue, and ensuring we have a shared understanding of terms, allow me to explain the general issue before taking a stance. Inerrancy is conceptualized as a question of the degree to which we can trust scripture on matters that are not directly relevant to the matter of salvation. There is always nuance, but there are essentially two sides to this matter within Christianity, and they define the two major movements at battle whenever a denomination finds itself fighting over this issue. One side, who is said to hold to inerrancy, maintains that all scripture must be true in its presentation of all matters it addresses. That is, the Bible is only trustworthy to get us into proper relationship with God if it is wholly trustworthy in all matters. The other side, which will sometimes claim it views the Bible as inerrant in all essential doctrines (and thereby also occasionally claim to hold to inerrancy, but by a different definition), holds that the Bible is accurate in all matters directly relating to salvation, but that the accuracy of other matters is not a hard requirement to trust the Bible's essential message. That is, the Bible is trustworthy to get us into proper relationship with God, regardless of how accurately it portrays secondary issues. The logic for the former is fairly straightforward. It relies on two essential claims; that God is the source of scripture and cannot be wrong about anything, and that the accuracy of that which can be seen is the evidence that the claims about that which cannot be seen are accurate. As stated previously, all revelation about God comes through the Son, who by His very nature is Truth and therefore cannot have falsehood within Himself. If the Bible is to be understood as the word of God, then it must be given to us by the Word of God, and as such must have His essential nature as truth without any mixture of falsehood. And, as Christ submitted Himself to a state which allowed His claims of divinity to be tested (ultimately by His resurrection, but also by His works in the flesh), so He has built into scripture the ability to be tested. This ability is carried in the details of things which happened in full view of human witnesses, including minutiae such as genealogies, miracles, and conversations between man and God. The accounts of these events are generally included by people in a position to know they are true, to indicate that the ultimate Teller of the story is faithful in the telling, and therefore can be trusted to tell of things which human eyes cannot witness on this side of eternity. The logic for the latter is not really much more complex. It, too, relies on two essential claims; that God used human authors to pen scripture and therefore allowed their understanding to shape the way the scripture was recorded, even when that understanding was incorrect, and that the stories contained in scripture serve to illustrate essential truths rather than to prove them. The Bible, therefore, is a document in which God reveals truth to mankind through avenues accessible to mankind, with is focused primarily on allowing mankind to connect with that truth. As Christ used parables which were not true but were able to enlighten ears ready to hear, so He as the Word uses fables and ideas which are not true but are able to enlighten ears ready to hear. The accounts of these events are often written by people who were not eyewitnesses but had reason to believe the events at least so far as they illustrate truth, to indicate the lesson God wanted man to learn. Both sides will affirm 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which in the NASB states that "all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." In the case of the former camp, this passage is evidence that all scripture is true and accurate; in the latter, it is evidence that the result of applying the scripture is the primary concern, rather than the actual content of that scripture. Both sides attempt to take scripture seriously, but have a different focus on how to do that. I do not find the argument of the latter group convincing. The essential problem with the view that scripture can be truthful without being accurate is that the Bible itself doesn't really present itself this way. The parables of Christ, for instance, are presented in a manner in which their nature as educational stories is evident; He speaks in vague terms about archetypal characters rather than specifics, He makes interpretive statements like "such is the Kingdom of God," and he often uses them directly to illustrate the answer to a question or challenge. But this isn't the case of stories like Noah's flood or Jonah's whale, both stories that are widely considered folklore by those who hold the truthful-but-inaccurate stance. These events are described in detail, generally placed in a specific period or point in time, with specific named characters in specific named locations, as part of a narrative that has not been prompted and is not paired with interpretive statements. That is, if the Word of God is telling parables in the construction of scripture, then He is a significantly different kind of storyteller in the flesh than He was outside the flesh, the very way His mind seems to process stories is different, and this calls into question how much the two storytellers can really be the same Person. It also places mankind in a position to judge what of scripture is to be taken accurately and what is not. In the inerrancy view, scripture itself tells us; that which is written in a manner that indicates it is history will be read as history, that which is written in a manner that indicates hyperbole will be read as hyperbole, and so on. It is not true that inerrancy demands that every passage of scripture be read as literal, but that it be literally read as the genre which it presents. By placing the authority on us as interpreters to determine what of scripture we will treat as what, we become arbiters of truth. But this is not a position we are ever granted. God is truth, and the arbiter of truth; we are recipients of and responders to truth. To hold that some elements of scripture which claim to be true can be false requires that we place something else, inevitably something of our own, as a higher authority on the nature of the text than the Author of scripture Himself. But for the Christian, there can be no higher authority than God, and there can therefore be no higher authority on how to read His words than He Himself. I therefore stand on inerrancy, and posts from this blog will be written from the understanding that the Bible is true in the manner to which it presents itself as true on all matters.
I have addressed this to some degree already, so this will not be as long, but it warrants mention as it is presented as the fight currently happening in Evangelical circles concerning matters like Critical Race Theory. The essential claim is that those willing to use external ideas, like CRT and Intersectionality, are holding the gospel as insufficient to address the true needs of mankind that must be supplemented by man-made ideas. As such, groups like the Conservative Baptist Network position themselves as standing on the sufficiency of scripture in opposition to this perceived erosion of faith in the gospel as all we need for salvation.
I do, of course, agree with the CBN and their ilk in the claim that the gospel is sufficient for the salvation of mankind, but then, so would the majority of the people the CBN and their ilk are condemning. The fact is, the argument for using man-made discussion points and theories is not designed to replace or supplement the gospel, but to apply it. The aim is to help people who are not Christians see how the gospel informs the problems they see in the world, and to help Christians see how the brokenness of the world is affecting real people so we can accurately and helpfully bring the gospel to those people. And for this purpose, the Bible itself not only isn't fully sufficient, but never claims to be. We have historically understood that application of the gospel in different contexts requires us to explain how the gospel plays out in the lives of real people in that context, and we see the Bible itself practice this. Paul, in Titus, uses ideas as presented by a pagan poet to explain how the gospel needs to be applied in Crete. Jude uses Jewish folklore that we don't hold as authoritative to illustrate his point. If we can understand that human authors of scripture can use man-made ideas to help them apply the gospel without watering the gospel down, why can we not understand modern Christians as capable of doing the same? As such, I maintain that the sufficiency of the gospel for the salvation of human souls is a true stance that should be defended whenever it comes under attack, but that it is not under attack in this particular context.
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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