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The Necessity of Inerrancy

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In the pursuit of the Reformed tradition, while a correct understanding of inspiration as a phenomena is important with regard to Scripture, central to the belief in the authority of Scripture is the belief that Scripture is true. That being said, when one says that they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture there is a certain caricature that is often conceived and perpetrated in the public sphere. That is not to say that there are not certain ones who perpetuate this caricature, persisting in a particularly stubborn interpretive methodology that is, thankfully, often inconsistent in its application. Here though, is not the place to complain, but rather to seek for that which is consistent. To that end, it seems as though it would be best to summarize what is known as the “short statement” from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and offer some commentary from there. Scripture is the witness to the works and words of God. Scripture is the means by which the desires, prom

Inconsistency In Belief in Biblical Inspiration

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  Inspiration is defined as, “ That which moves humans to receive divine or supernatural truths, associated particularly with biblical authors in the writing of Scripture .” 1  This is often (mis)understood by way of (often) assuming a type of  dictation theory  of  inspiration  when referring to biblical inspiration. However, a more reasonable way to understand inspiration is via superintendence 2 , that is to say that there’s a recognition of what writers of the biblical text wrote that necessarily recognizes that our current situation wasn’t in the mind of the author.   Some might argue that somehow undermines the authority of Scripture but I don’t necessarily think so, but that isn’t what this post is about. Rather it’s about really bad arguments for inspiration, arguments such as those offered by Roman Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong over at his blog  Biblical Evidence for Catholicism . In a  post  titled, “Why Do Christians Believe in Biblical Inspiration?”, Dave offers some ar