It occurs to me that a random visitor to this blog (okay, I’m assuming a lot here!) who read the last couple of posts might be thinking, ‘If you’re so keen to challenge biblical inerrancy, why not simply find some alleged errors and point to these instead of this rather indirect critique’.
This would be a highly useful question to raise. One might expect that a doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration would be fairly brittle. Since it rests on the assertion that there are exactly zero errors in the text, conclusive evidence of even one such error shatters the theory.
I know of two common sources of ‘errors’ levelled at evangelicals: internal and external. Internal errors are inconsistencies within the text. For instance, a quick read of the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke present apparently contradictory accounts of Jesus’ parents’ home town. Matthew appears to locate Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem, and only after a return from Egypt did they decide to relocate to Nazareth. In Luke, they journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem where Jesus is born. External errors are inconsistencies between the text and other sources – such as scientific or archaeological evidence that contradicts the Bible.
Of course, if it were that easy to destroy inerrancy with such ‘errors’, it would have happened many years ago and inerrancy would be but a memory. In fact, evangelicals have proved very capable of accommodating such charges, in one of three ways:
1. By denying the error. For instance, inerrantists often attempt a somewhat clumsy reconciliation of the two hometown accounts above, rather than conclude that at least one of the Gospel authors had got things muddled.
2. By accommodating the error. For instance, many inerrantists believe that the six days of creation may represent six longer eras, to better accommodate an ‘older Earth’ supported by geology and cosmology.
3. By leaving the error unresolved as a ‘mystery’ of faith. “The Bible is full of contradictions,” a preacher once declared, “and I believe them all”.
Options 1 and 2 take a fair bit of work, reinterpreting or reconstructing events to ensure the Bible remains error-free. Option 3 is perhaps easier. I have used all three freely in the past. But I began to wonder just what was so important about an error-free Bible that we’d go to great lengths to avoid Option 4: accepting the fallibility of Scripture. What about this option seemed so terrifying, so fatal to a vibrant faith? I needed to understand the roots of inerrancy and its role in my own theological framework. In the next post, I’ll share some of my discoveries.
Eventful Journey 
This is so helpful to have the progression of thought followed through in this way. I’m very much enjoying the read. Thanks! I feel an e-book coming together!??
Dear Jeremy,
I am thrilled your blogging again as well! I’m not sure, however, if you are recounting a journey already taken or reporting in real-time a journey in progress or catching us up with the first phase of a journey of which the destination or future stops are still undecided or unknown. Is this blog more a middle journey consultation with others on the route or a guide to others who might want to follow the route you have taken? The problem with inerrancy is that it was encoded in a modernist moment that tempted some of its adherents into being diverted from the message of scripture into false expectations for a certain kind of scientific, historical, and linguistic precision. The problem with attacking inerrancy however is the mirror image of this – that critics likewise are diverted from the message of scripture into attending to pedantic or extraneous issues. If you have any interest in the possiblity of retaining inerrancy than perhaps you should think of it as a heuristic devise which privileges wrestling w\
ith scripture as significant as opposed merely to ignoring it or setting it aside. By far the most interesting textual question you have raised so for to me is the one about the youths and the bears. It seems to me that finding a text offensive but not simply ignoring it or setting it aside is the kind of engagement to which this heuristic devise invites us. In other words, it is about continuing a conversation that runs through Paul, Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Luther, Bonhoeffer and so on and expecting that conversation to be bequeathed to future generations – should the world endure.
Hey Tim – good to hear from you and thanks for this post. I am trying to do the third thing (recounting the first steps of my recent journey away from the more traditional evangelical theology I inherited). I’m really doing this for myself, as a way of expressing a conversation that has frequently been internal, and not explicitly for others; but we’ll see. For that reason, I’m trying to spell things out bit by bit. And (for now) it’s a personal narrative from within my biblical reading rather than attempting to reflect the wider context (e.g. Enlightenment, Modernism and Postmodernism).
I’ll see how this approach works out. It may turn out to be unbearably tedious for anyone but me to read, hence I’m not rushing to promote the blog to anyone other than close friends and the odd random visitor. If even I begin to find it tedious, I will stop or change tack!
The thing about the youths and bears (as set out in this post) is that the inerrancy or otherwise of the text does indeed overtake the benefits of wrestling with the verse. I have talked to a couple of friends about this passage who each said, in effect, ‘yes it’s odd, but there you are, it’s the Bible and it’s God’s Word and I believe it anyway’. This is to my mind as unprofitable as excising it from acceptable text and never considering it again. I will come round to this eventually, but am deliberately going slowly! You’re a very welcome visitor, Tim.