The Necessity of Inerrancy

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.

1. Scripture is the witness to the works and words of God.
2. Scripture is the means by which the desires, promises, and commands of God have been revealed to and transmitted by men superintended by the Holy Spirit and bears his full authority.
3. The Spirit is the means by which one understands Scripture.
4. The very words of Scripture convey God’s truth, free from error and deceit.
5. A denial of the total truthfulness of Scripture is an impairment both to the believer and the church as a whole.

As noted, this is but my summary of what is found there and one should read the full text to understand and appreciate it. However, what one must recognize is that it’s not just enough to assume or assert the inerrancy of Scripture with regard to its authority, with regard to its function, which is “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”(2 Timothy 3:16, ESV).

The issue is one that divides the church and pits believers against believers rather than uniting them. And it breaks along what are two ways of reading the Bible.

Two Ways of Reading the Bible 

There are, at best, two ways of reading Scripture in a manner that takes inerrancy seriously.

The first is the most simple, the second is more complicated. Both have benefits, both have deficiencies. It is not fair to say that both are necessarily correct but both are necessary for the church to survive. The problem is that there are those who will insist on one over the other as being the only way to interpret (understand) Scripture , however will sometimes defer to the other of necessity when encountering difficulty.

The first way of reading Scripture is often referred to as the “plain meaning” reading of Scripture. The second is often referred to as a “socio-historical” reading of the text.

Most people, when reading any text, engage with what their reading in what could be considered “plain meaning”. We read the words, assuming that the words mean what we understand them to mean in a normative sense. However, we also engage in what is known as “contextualization”. We realize that there’s flexibility in language and we don’t necessarily make unjustified assumptions, unless we choose to ignore various contextual markers.

For example, at one time I worked in retail automotive part and the company sent out a flyer advertising alternators with a starting price of $19.95. Indeed, we had alternators that were priced at $19.95, however the vast majority of alternators that we sold were priced significantly higher. There are no telling how many times over the course of the years that I worked that I had to defend the company that I worked for against charges of false advertising because people would ignore the contextualizing phrase “starting at” in favor of the $19.95 price. 

Both myself and the customer approached the text from the “plain meaning” perspective, however one of us had not limited the reading to just what we want to see in the text. Just as someone might selectively focus on one particular element in a text there might also be a tendency in engaging in a plain reading of a passage to ignore context and make assumptions about what a particular text means or makes application to.

Historically, at least in the American context, we can see this in regard to the issue of slavery as many otherwise well-intentioned Christians would argue, based on a plain reading of the text that slavery was not only morally permissible but that there was also a moral obligation to do so. They would base such conclusions on their reading of the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament, as well as an apparent absence of any condemnation of the practice in the New Testament documents.

This argument appears to have been adopted by a number of non-believers as well who argue that the Bible condones slavery as an institution.

A socio-historical reading of the text, which takes into account the broader cultural milieus into which Scripture arose from, will dismiss such claims out of hand as a fallacious conclusion. Such a reading recognizes that “slavery” was not one thing throughout history and to fail to see not only the categorical distinctions that existed across a broader historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts is to misunderstand the text.

A socio-historical reading is necessarily cognizant of the fact that slavery, as an institutional feature, has existed across all human cultures at all times, in various manifestations, for various purposes. To attempt to treat all instances as identical is a logical error, and moreover to assume that a writer, writing at a place in time, dealing with a specific situation in their time, expects no one to be considerate of their circumstances is to mistreat the author.

The simplest way to state this is that a socio-historical reading, recognizes that the text is originating at a point, under specific circumstances, and while the author may have had certain beliefs or expectations or understandings, they didn’t expect those circumstances to remain in place, which brings us to the downside of such an approach.

A pitfall that the socio-historical reading of the text can bring one to the edge of is that in recognizing that a text has a particular context that it must be understood in, is that it can lead to a dismissive attitude with regard to the text: because it was written at a certain place and time, and because it has certain expectations or assumptions built into it, while it may be interesting to study, it has no authority or applicability to our experience or place in time.

The tendency is towards relativizing categories, assuming that they are somehow equal to biblical categories, and asking the wrong questions.

Inerrancy as Praxis

As has been noted there are two distinct ways that one can read the text, and yet both have their disadvantages. The issue is how one should consider inerrancy as a practice. 

To shun one way of reading the text (plain reading) in favor of the other (socio-historical) or vice versa will certain cause problems both in interpretation as well as application.

The plain reading model of the text can respond to those who use or appeal to a socio-historical model in order to dismiss the text as applicable, while the socio-historical model is a wonderful tool for dealing with those who would read the text with a wooden literalism.

Inerrancy neither stands nor falls on the method of interpretation used. Rather, it rests on the application of the text in the life of the believer, as it says in the Epistle of James,

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

(James 1:22, ESV)

A Word on Division

As far as I can tell, the one place where this division finds its most clear expression is in the debate between what are called “young earth creationists” and “old earth creationists”. And this debate even seems to fall more along the lines of the debate between “concordist” and “accommodationist” readings of scripture, as there are, even between the two of “young” and “old” two ways of approach.

To state things simply, a concordist view states that scientific conclusions, in order to be true, must not contradict scripture. This view necessarily assumes a direct correspondence between the truth of Scripture and any scientific conclusions. From my point of view, such a position inherently makes the truth of Scripture dependent upon the creation and not the Creator.

An accommodationist view recognizes that the biblical texts arose in a point in time, and that point in time had a specific view of reality that God was fully comfortable with and would fully articulate the message that he desired to give. This view sees that theology as the greater concern. An accommodationist view sees that there are two streams of knowledge: of God and of the creation. And that the greater understanding of one can drive a greater understanding of the other. In interacting with special revelation we might find correspondence to general revelation by the fact that both have the same author, but both are subject to the same God and Creator.

For more on the discussion between these two views, see here.

That Being Said…

Inerrancy is, fundamentally, a assertion that Scripture is the only sure means that finite creatures can gain any understanding of the God who made everything and what he desires of his creatures. It is by Scripture alone that men come to the sure knowledge of the reality of the world that they inhabit.

Those who deny the inerrancy of Scripture undermine any grounds from which they could hope to make any sure or certain proclamation about the true nature of man or his purpose as the image bearer of God. They deny themselves any grounds to address evil or assume any kind of moral authority.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est