Biblical Inerrancy & Historic Christianity

The Place of Biblical Inerrancy in Historic Christianity

A consolidated look at biblical inerrancy — what it is, why sincere Christians disagree on it, and why it need not shake your faith

Should our faith weaken if the Bible is proven to contain errors? Isn't the Bible the very core of Christianity? If the core of Christianity were erroneous, shouldn't Christianity itself crumble?

If these questions trouble you, you are not alone, and you are not off the mark to ask them. To relentlessly assault the Bible's trustworthiness is the fervent passion of many. To rattle the faith of Christians is, for some, a vocation. The full-blown wrath of Christianity's detractors, including the New Atheists, is aimed squarely at unsettling the faith of ordinary believers — those of us who are not trained in seminaries or steeped in academic theology. At the first sound of their relentless tirades, our faith can shake.

This post brings together three pieces I've written over the years on biblical inerrancy into a single, consolidated treatment. My aim is to walk through what the doctrine of inerrancy actually claims, why faithful, sincere Christians land in different places on it, and why — whichever side of this you land on — your faith in Christ does not need to hang by that thread.

What Is Biblical Inerrancy, and Why Do Christians Disagree About It?

Broadly, there are two categories of Christians on this question, and both remain within the bounds of Historic Christianity.

Unlimited (or total) inerrancy holds that the Bible is without error in everything it affirms — not just matters of redemption, but also history, geography, and science. Defenders of this view state plainly that they deny biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual or redemptive themes, and that the authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if total divine inerrancy is in any way limited.

Limited inerrancy takes a more lenient position. It considers the Bible inerrant only in its redemptive teaching — matters pertaining to salvation — while allowing that the Bible may be susceptible to errors in non-salvific matters such as geography, history, or science. Proponents of this view hold that the central purpose of the Bible is spiritual transformation, to bring the lost into a saving relationship with God, and that if the Bible contains some errors or discrepancies that don't touch that transforming power, this is not a fatal problem. Interestingly, even bodies like the National Association of Evangelicals commit only to the Bible's infallibility — its inability to fail — in their statement of faith, without committing to unlimited inerrancy.

Christian evangelical scholars have studied, discussed, and debated this question at the highest academic levels for years, and they continue to hold contradictory positions on it. Yet they remain, on both sides, true and sincere Christians.

A Note on the Limits of Certainty

I should be upfront that this is a genuinely contested question even among careful, faithful evangelical scholars who love Scripture. I am not presenting one side as having won the argument. What follows is my own reasoning on why I don't believe this disagreement should be allowed to threaten anyone's faith — not an attempt to settle the debate itself.

The Case for Unlimited Inerrancy — and a Question Worth Asking

Those who hold to unlimited inerrancy argue from two strong premises:

A. God cannot lie, either intentionally or unintentionally. If the Bible is God's Word, and God cannot lie, then the Bible ought to be without error.

B. Christ Himself, God incarnate, proclaimed that God's Word cannot be broken (cf. John 10:35 & Matthew 5:18).

On the face of it, this reasoning looks airtight. But it is worth examining one premise more closely.

The argument typically runs:

Premise 1: God cannot err.
Premise 2: The Bible is God's Word.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Bible cannot err.

Premise 1 is correct. But Premise 2 deserves a second look. The term "God's Word" can carry two meanings — the spoken word of God, or the written word of God. If the Bible were simply a voice recording of God's spoken word, this conclusion would be very hard to resist. But that is not how the Bible came to us. Human agency and human authorship were involved in its writing. The Bible was not dictated word-for-word to its human authors; rather, those authors were inspired by God as they wrote, and the text was then transmitted across centuries by human scribes.

That presence of fallible human authors and copyists opens a window through which errors could, in principle, creep in — and textual criticism tells us that, at least at the level of manuscript transmission, they have. It is a well-documented finding that the New Testament text is about 99.5% accurate as preserved across the manuscript tradition, meaning roughly 0.5% of the text involves some kind of variation. Importantly, these variations do not affect any significant doctrine taught in the Bible. So at the very least, the Bible's transmission history contains some textual variants, which means the syllogism above — that the Bible cannot err simply because it is "God's Word" — is not as bulletproof as it first appears.

Why Biblical Inerrancy Is Not an Essential Doctrine of Historic Christianity

Historic Christianity rests on certain essential doctrines — doctrines that bear directly on one's salvation, such that unbelief in them jeopardizes salvation itself. Christ's bodily resurrection is one such doctrine. A person who denies it cannot rightly be called a Christian.

Is biblical inerrancy — specifically, the unlimited version of it — one of those essential doctrines? I don't believe it is.

The Nicene Creed lays out the essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith: belief in one God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth; in the one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten of the Father, who for our sake became incarnate, was crucified, died, was buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, from where He will come again to judge the living and the dead; belief in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who spoke through the prophets; and belief in one holy, universal, and apostolic church, one baptism for the remission of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. At a bare minimum, belief in what the Creed lays out is sufficient for salvation.

A Christian who believes wholeheartedly in the Triunity of God, the Lordship of Christ, His bodily resurrection, and the other essential doctrines of the faith — but who does not subscribe to unlimited inerrancy, holding instead that the Bible is fully trustworthy and authoritative without being inerrant in every non-redemptive detail — has not thereby forfeited salvation. This is an entirely different situation from someone who denies that the Bible is trustworthy in its entirety. Rejecting unlimited inerrancy does not require rejecting the essential doctrines of the faith; the two are logically separable. A Christian holding to limited inerrancy can affirm everything in the Creed while still maintaining that the Bible's inerrancy is confined to redemptive matters.

Christianity's truthfulness does not depend on the Bible being inerrant in this unlimited sense; it is anchored instead in events of history, which I get to below. For that reason, I don't think biblical inerrancy, in its unlimited form, can be elevated to the status of an essential doctrine of Historic Christianity.

So What If the Bible Were Proven to Contain Errors?

Here is the deeper and, I think, more important question: if the Bible were somehow proven to contain errors, would that bring Christianity crashing down?

Our response to that scenario depends heavily on whether we treat inerrancy as essential to the faith or not. If you treat unlimited inerrancy as essential, and the Bible were shown to err, your faith could be badly shaken. But if you regard the Bible as inerrant in its redemptive core while open to error elsewhere, an error of that kind would not touch your faith at all.

Easier said than done, of course. But consider the question from another angle entirely: would an erroneous Bible entail the non-existence of God? Not by any chance.

God exists necessarily. His existence is not predicated on, or intricately tied to, the veracity of the Bible. God would not cease to exist if the Bible were shown to be erroneous. In fact, God existed before the Bible was ever written. It was God who inspired human authors to write it; the Bible reveals God, but it is not the only means by which God reveals Himself (cf. Romans 1:19–20).

The Lord Jesus Christ, the means of mankind's salvation, existed independently of the Bible's veracity. History itself affirms Christ's existence and resurrection apart from any claim of biblical inerrancy. Dr. Gary Habermas has long argued that Jesus's death by crucifixion, His post-mortem appearances to His disciples, and Paul's encounter with the resurrected Christ are among the most widely affirmed historical facts, accepted by Christian and non-Christian scholars alike.

So even if the Bible were proven to contain errors, neither God nor Christ would cease to exist, and the historical case for Christ's resurrection would remain standing on its own footing. This is not an exercise in undermining the Bible's authority. It is simply an exercise in recognizing that God, Christ, and the salvation He offers exist independently of the question of biblical inerrancy.

God is at the core of Christianity. Christ, and the salvation He offers mankind, are at the core of Christianity. But inerrancy of the Bible need not be at that core. If inerrancy were placed at the center of the faith, it would imply that inerrancy is more valuable than God, Christ, and salvation themselves. But since God is the source of the Bible, it is God who belongs at the center — not the inerrancy of the text that reveals Him. Inerrancy, where it holds, is the corollary of God's nature, not a substitute for it.

A Cautionary Example

Bart Ehrman, the well-known New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lost his faith in Christ after he discovered what he regarded as a discrepancy in the Gospel of Mark. By his own account, his strong prior commitment to biblical inerrancy was the very thing that shattered when that discrepancy surfaced. He drifted first into a more liberal Christianity, and eventually into agnostic atheism, after he found himself unable to reconcile the philosophical problems of evil and suffering. Whatever one concludes about that particular passage, Ehrman's trajectory illustrates the real danger of placing inerrancy itself — rather than God, Christ, and the resurrection — at the very foundation of one's faith.

Faith Alone: How Billy Graham Weathered This Storm

This is not merely a hypothetical danger; it has played out in real lives. The renowned evangelist Billy Graham went through his own crisis of faith when his close friend and fellow evangelist Charles "Chuck" Templeton began questioning the Bible's veracity and ultimately abandoned the faith altogether.

Graham later recalled that period:

"The exact wording of my prayer is beyond recall, but it must have echoed my thoughts: 'O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. … I can't answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck [Templeton] and others are raising.' I was trying to be on the level with God, but something remained unspoken. At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it: 'Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith!' … I sensed the presence and power of God as I had not sensed it in months."

Templeton's departure from the faith did not deter Graham. He survived that crisis and emerged a more deeply committed believer in Christ. How? Through simple faith. You and I will not be remiss if we, too, simply believe that the Bible is the Word of God, even while we hold open questions about the finer points of inerrancy.

Truth Alone: Christianity Doesn't Stand or Fall on Inerrancy

The deeper reason none of this needs to threaten anyone's faith is that the truthfulness of Christianity does not depend on the Bible being inerrant. As Christian apologist Frank Turek has put it, Christianity would still be true even if the Bible had never been written, because Christianity's truth rests on a historical event — the resurrection of Jesus — not on a perfectly transmitted text reporting that event.

It is a mistake to think that the Christian faith is a house of cards, ready to collapse if a single verse or reference in the New Testament turns out to be mistaken. Inerrancy, however well it may be defended, is an unnecessarily high bar to set for establishing the central event of the faith: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If Christ rose from the dead, Christianity is true; if He did not, then, as the first-century eyewitness Paul himself admitted, it is false. But establishing that the resurrection happened does not require inerrant sources, any more than establishing that a football game was played requires a perfectly accurate newspaper stat line.

In fact, the presence of minor discrepancies between eyewitness accounts is itself evidence that something real took place, not evidence against it. The very existence of a flawed stat line presupposes that a game was actually played; nobody bothers writing up, let alone disputing the details of, an event that never happened. The same logic holds for the New Testament's resurrection accounts. Even where the multiple narratives differ on minor details, such disagreement reflects independent eyewitnesses describing the same dramatic event from different vantage points, not collusion or fabrication, and certainly not evidence that the event didn't occur. Survivors of the Titanic disagreed about exactly how the ship went down, yet no one doubts that it sank. All the resurrection accounts agree that the resurrection happened; they differ only on incidental details, such as who arrived first at the tomb.

This matters all the more when we consider who wrote these accounts down. Nearly all the New Testament authors were observant Jews who had every reason to lose everything by proclaiming a resurrection. They were not protecting their reputations or their safety by writing what they wrote; they were risking both. There were, as the saying goes, thousands of Christians before a single line of the New Testament was written. Paul was already a Christian before he wrote a word of Scripture, and so were Matthew, John, James, and Peter. They did not invent the resurrection and then build a faith around it. They witnessed something, and the resurrection itself gave rise to the New Testament documents — not the other way around.

This is why the foundational beliefs of Christianity — what C. S. Lewis called Mere Christianity — remain true even if the reports contain some errors. Getting a detail wrong in reporting the resurrection does not undo the larger fact that the resurrection occurred. If every account agreed on every single detail, we would rightly suspect collusion rather than independent eyewitness testimony.

So whether or not one holds to an inerrant Bible in the unlimited sense, the resurrection we celebrate is a historical event that actually took place roughly two thousand years ago — and that means we can trust that those who put their faith in Christ will be raised as He was.

Where This Leaves Us

There is nothing wrong with simply believing, by faith, that the Bible is God's Word. Christianity is true whether or not the Bible turns out to contain errors in non-redemptive matters, because its truth rests on the historical reality of Christ's resurrection, not on a guarantee of total textual perfection. Without diluting the Bible's significance in the slightest, there is also nothing wrong with declining to treat unlimited biblical inerrancy as an essential doctrine of Historic Christianity.

God is at the core of Christianity. Christ, and the salvation He offers mankind, are at the core of Christianity. The Bible reveals our triune God, and Scripture cannot be broken. Let us continue to trust and study God and His Word with full confidence — not because every jot and tittle has been independently verified to our satisfaction, but because the God who inspired it, and the Christ to whom it points, stand firm regardless.

So, fear not.

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This post draws on and consolidates three earlier articles of mine:

1. "The Bible Has Errors, What Do We Do?" (March 2016)

2. "Why Is Biblical Inerrancy Not An Essential Doctrine Of Historic Christianity?" (August 2019)

3. "Does The Bible Contain Errors Or Not? How Should A Simple Christian Think This Through?" (August 2019)

Sources referenced across these articles:

defendinginerrancy.com (on unlimited vs. limited inerrancy, and on why inerrancy matters)

National Association of Evangelicals, Statement of Faith — nae.net/statement-of-faith

Roger Olson, "Is the Bible Inerrant or Infallible?" — patheos.com

Dr. Gary Habermas, on the minimal facts of the resurrection — garyhabermas.com

Bart D. Ehrman — biographical note via Wikipedia

Billy Graham, on his crisis of faith with Chuck Templeton — billygraham.org and defendinginerrancy.com

Frank Turek, "Christianity Is True Even If Some Of The Bible Isn't" — crossexamined.org

Stand to Reason, "Is The New Testament Text Reliable?" — str.org

Why Did Paul Quote Pagan Philosophers?

            There is a common argument that the Old Testament is reliable because the New Testament affirms the Old Testament. If this is the case, would Paul’s quote of pagan (non-christian/unbelievers) philosophers affirm the reliability of the pagan works? Alternatively, would the inclusion of pagan work in the Bible undermine the reliability of the Bible?

            Did Paul quote pagan philosophers? Yes, here’s an excerpt from CARM:¹

Paul quoted Menander in the book of Acts and in 1 Corinthians.  He quoted Epimenides in the book of Titus.  Let's take a look.

·  Acts 17:28, "for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.'"

o "The first part of verse 28 comes from Cretica by Epimenides, and the second part of the verse from Hymn to Zeus, written by the Cilician poet Aratus. To be sure, both of these lines were directed at Zeus in Greek literature, but Paul applied them to the Creator of whom he spoke."1

o Paul quoted "the first half of the fifth line, word for word, of an astronomical poem of Aratus, a Greek countryman of the apostle, and his predecessor by about three centuries. But, as he hints, the same sentiment is to be found in other Greek poets. They meant it doubtless in a pantheistic sense; but the truth which it expresses the apostle turns to his own purpose—to teach a pure, personal, spiritual Theism."2

·  1 Cor. 15:33, "Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.'”

o"a current saying, forming a verse in MENANDER, the comic poet, who probably took it from Euripides [SOCRATES, Ecclesiastical History, 3.16]."3

o "The words “Bad company ruins good morals” are found in a play by Menander (4th-3rd century B. C.) but may well have become a common saying by Paul’s time."4

o "Evil communications corrupt good manners. An iambic line from the ‘Thais’ of Menander, and perhaps taken by Menander from a play of Euripides. More accurately it means “evil associations corrupt excellent morals."5

· Titus 1:12, "One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons."

o "Epimenides of Phaestus, or Gnossus, in Crete, about 600. He was sent for to purify Athens from its pollution occasioned by Cylon. He was regarded as a diviner and prophet. The words here are taken probably from his treatise “concerning oracles.” Paul also quotes from two other heathen writers, ARATUS (Ac 17:28) and MENANDER (1 Co 15:33), but he does not honor them so far as even to mention their names.6

o "A prophet of their own; viz. Epimenides, a native either of Phæstus or of Cnossus in Crete, the original author of this line, which is also quoted by Callimachus. Epimenides is here called a prophet, not simply as a poet, but from his peculiar character as priest, bard, and seer; called by Plato θεῖος ἀνήρ and coupled by Cicero with Bacis the Boeotian prophet, and the sibyl (Bishop Ellicott); described by other ancient writers as a prophet (Alford)."7

            Would these quotations affirm the reliability of the works of pagan philosophers?

            Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, in their work The Big Book of Bible Difficulties respond to this question (p.507-508):²

TITUS 1:12—DOESN’T PAUL PRONOUNCE THIS PAGAN POET INSPIRED BY MAKING HIM PART OF SCRIPTURE?

PROBLEM: Christians believe that only the Bible is the Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16). Yet the Apostle Paul quotes pagan poets on at least three occasions. But in so doing he seems to give assent to the sources he quotes as inspired, just as when he quotes OT Scripture as the Word of God (cf. Matt. 4:4, 7, 10).

SOLUTION: Paul is not quoting this non-Christian source as inspired, but simply as true. All truth is God’s truth, no matter who said it. Caiaphas the Jewish high priest uttered a truth about Christ (John 11:49). The Bible often uses non-inspired sources (cf. Num. 21:14; Josh. 10:13; 1 Kings 15:31). Three times Paul cites non-Christian thinkers (Acts 17:28; 1 Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12). Jude alludes to truths found in two non-canonical books (Jude 9, 14). But never does the Bible cite them as divinely authoritative, but simply as containing the truth quoted. The usual phrases, such as, “thus saith the Lord” (cf. Isa. 7:7; Jer. 2:5, kjv) or “it is written” (cf. Matt. 4:4, 7, 10) are never found when these non-inspired sources are cited. Nonetheless, truth is truth wherever it is found. And there is no reason, therefore, that a biblical author, by direction of the Holy Spirit, cannot utilize truth from whatever source he may find it.

            Here’s another response from Phillip J. Long, the Chair / Professor of Biblical Studies at the Grace Christian University:³

Paul quotes two Greek writers as support for his case that the creator God does not need temples or temple services from humans. The use of this material has always prompted discussion among readers of Acts, especially with respect to application. Is Paul modelling how Christians ought to present the gospel in a non-Christian, non-Jewish environment?

The first allusion is to Epimenides the Cretan, the poet Paul cited in Titus 1:12. The original poem no longer exists, but fragments appear in other ancient writers. The second citation is from Aratus, a Cilcian poet (Phaenomena 5).  The original line, “in him we move and live and have our being,” was pantheistic, but Paul spins this line into a statement about God as the source of our life.

In other words, he ignores the writer’s original intention so that he can effective make his point. If Aratus had been in the audience in Acts 17, what would he have said in response to Paul? In modern scholarly writing, misrepresenting another scholar’s ideas is not just a mistake, but intellectual dishonesty. Someone who does this sort of thing today would be dismissed as a poor scholar or a crank (or possibly just a biblio-blogger). In some areas of scholarship, authorial intent is not important, so perhaps Paul is not out of line here. Can Paul legitimately pull this line out of context and reapply it to prove the God of the Bible is superior to the other gods?

A second problem is how Paul came to know these lines of poetry. There are not many modern readers who can quote freely from current poets or philosophers. One possibility is Paul had some secular education which could be applied to the preaching of the gospel. We might imagine Paul thinking through his task of being a light to the Gentiles and researching possible points of contact in order to preach to pagan audiences. This is in fact a typical way of doing apologetics today. Christians will study philosophy for the purpose of interacting with the philosophical world in their own terms.

While I do not think this kind of cultural education is a bad idea at all, that may not be Paul’s point in using these sources (or, Luke’s point in presenting Paul as using these sources). These lines may have been well known proverbial wisdom, common knowledge. If so, then the allusion to Greek poets is more like the preacher who uses a common phrase in order to make his point.

Or better, this is an example of a modern pastor quoting lyrics of popular songs to make a point. I occasionally use a line from a popular movie or song in order to make a point (although with my taste in music, it usually does not work very well).  This comes down to knowing your audience.  I have found that I can get a lot further with college age group with a Simpsons reference, while the same line is lost on an adult group.  Perhaps that is what Paul is doing here in Acts 17 – he is riffing on the culture.

In both of the allusions Paul simply intends to demonstrate his thinking is not too far from the culture the audience understood and appreciated.  To cite the Hebrew Bible would have been fruitless since the audience did not know it, nor were they inclined to listen to philosophy drawn Jewish texts.

Does this mean Acts 17 gives permission for Pastors to quote Bob Dylan lyrics or use Simpsons clips in their sermons and Bible studies? Perhaps, but we need to couple cultural reference with a serious point from the text of the Bible.  It is one thing to mimic culture to attract attention to you point, but it is a fairly worthless strategy is if there is no point behind the reference. I think that you can (and should) illustrate serious theological points via cultural artifacts (like poets, books, movies, etc.), but this can be very dangerous if it overwhelms the Scripture.

If the message of the Gospel is obscured by the using Fifty Shades of Grey as a sermon title, or by playing U2 songs during your worship, or hosting a Dancing with the Stars night at church, then you have missed Paul’s point in Acts 17.

            These responses are terse as well as comprehensive. Therefore, quoting unbelievers would neither affirm their reliability as divinely inspired nor undermine the reliability of the Bible. 

         

Endnotes:

¹https://carm.org/did-paul-quote-pagan-philosophers

²The same material is also found here: https://defendinginerrancy.com/bible-solutions/Titus_1.12_(2).php

³https://readingacts.com/2015/03/25/acts-1722-28-quoting-the-philosophers/

Websites last accessed on 29^th October 2019.

Does The Bible Contain Errors Or Not? How Should A Simple Christian Think This Through?

            The question “Does the Bible contain errors or not?” will evoke contradictory responses even from the most eminent Christian evangelical scholars. The two major contradicting groups are unlimited inerrantists and limited inerrantists.

            Unlimited Inerrancy teaches that the Bible is without error in all that it affirms.¹

            Limited Inerrancy considers the Bible as inerrant (without error) in only what it teaches. In other words, the Bible’s inerrancy is limited to only redemptive matters.

            Christian evangelical scholars have studied, discussed and debated this subject at the highest academic forums for years and yet hold contradictory positions. But they remain as true and sincere Christians.

            Given this situation, how should a simple Christian – who is not trained in a Bible college or seminary – contemplate the complex theme of biblical inerrancy?

Faith Alone

                          Famed Christian evangelist Billy Graham went through a crisis of faith when his evangelist friend Charles “Chuck” Templeton questioned the veracity (truthfulness or accuracy) of the Bible and abandoned his faith in Christ. Billy Graham, however, overcame his crisis situation.

            Billy Graham reminisced those moments, “The exact wording of my prayer is beyond recall, but it must have echoed my thoughts: “O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. … I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck [Templeton] and others are raising.” I was trying to be on the level with God, but something remained unspoken. At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it: “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith!” … I sensed the presence and power of God as I had not sensed it in months.”²

            Templeton’s departure from Christianity did not deter Billy Graham. He survived the crisis and became a more committed believer in Christ.  

            How?

            Through faith. Simple faith!

            You and I will not be remiss if we simply believe that the Bible is the word of God.

Truth Alone

            The truthfulness of Christianity is independent of the Bible. Christian apologist Frank Turek explains this position:³

Is Christianity true just because the inerrant Bible says it is?  No.  Christianity would still be true even if the Bible was never written.

… some of us erroneously think that Christian beliefs cannot be sustained unless the Bible is without error.  That would mean that the Christian faith is a house of cards ready to collapse if one verse or reference in the New Testament is discovered to be false.

Although I think are good reasons to believe in an inerrant Bible, inerrancy is an unnecessarily high standard by which to establish the central event in Christianity—the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (which we celebrate this Sunday).  Christianity hinges on that historical event.  If Christ rose from the dead, then, game over, Christianity is true.  On the other hand, if he didn’t rise from the dead, then, as a first-century eyewitness by the name of Paul admitted, Christianity is false.

But you don’t need inerrant sources to establish that the Resurrection actually happened, or any other historical event for that matter.  For example, if you found an error in the stat line of a football game, should you assume that every game, story and stat line in the newspaper was a complete fabrication?  Then why do some people do that with the New Testament?   Why do they assume that unless every word of it is true, then most of it is false?

They assume that because they are confusing the fact of the Resurrection with the reports of the Resurrection. Conflicting reports of a historical event are evidence that the event actually occurred, not the reverse.  In other words, to return to our sports analogy, the only reason there is an error in the stat line, to begin with, is because the game was actually played and someone tried to report on that game.  Neither the stat line nor the error would exist unless the game had actually been played.  After all, who reports on a game that didn’t actually take place?

The same is true with the documents comprising the New Testament and the Resurrection.  Even if one were to find an error or disagreement between the multiple accounts of the Resurrection story, the very fact that there are several eyewitness accounts shows that something dramatic actually happened in history—especially since the folks who wrote it down had everything to lose by proclaiming Jesus rose from the dead.

That is, all of the New Testament reporters (except Luke) were observant Jews who would pay dearly for proclaiming the Resurrection.  Why would Jewish believers in Yahweh—people who thought they were God’s “chosen people” for two thousand years—invent a Resurrection story that would get them excommunicated from the “chosen people” club, and then beaten, tortured and murdered?

Answer:  they wouldn’t. They saw something dramatic that they weren’t expecting.  Then they proclaimed it, altered their lives because of it, and later wrote about it, despite the fact that doing any of that would get them killed.

So Christianity isn’t true just because the Bible says it’s true. Christianity is true because an event occurred.  True, we wouldn’t know much about Christianity if the reports of the Resurrection had never been written, but the Resurrection preceded the reports of it.

As my friend Andy Stanley asks, “Do you realize that there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was ever written?”  Paul was a Christian before he wrote a word of the New Testament.  So was Matthew, John, James, Peter, etc.  Why?  Because they had witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

Contrary to what some skeptics may think, the New Testament writers didn’t create the Resurrection—the Resurrection created the New Testament writers.   In other words, the New Testament documents didn’t give us the Resurrection.  The Resurrection gave us the New Testament documents!  There would be no New Testament unless the Resurrection had occurred.  Observant Jews would never have invented that.

This why the foundational beliefs of Christianity—what C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity—are true even if the reports have some errors.  Getting details wrong in reporting the Resurrection doesn’t change the larger point that the Resurrection actually happened.  In fact, if all of the accounts agreed on every detail, we’d rightly assume they colluded.  Actual eyewitnesses never describe the same historical event in the same way.

For example, survivors of the Titanic disagreed how the ship sank.  Some say it broke in two and then sank.  Others say the thought it went down whole.  Does that disagreement mean that we shouldn’t believe the Titanic sank?  Of course not.  They all agree on that!   They were just viewing the same historical event from different vantage points.

Likewise, all the writers agree that the Resurrection occurred, but they differ on the minor details (Who got to the tomb first?  Did you see one angel or two? etc.).  And these differences aren’t necessarily contradictions, but the natural result of viewing the same historical event from different vantage points.

The historical documents we’ve collected and put into one binding we call the New Testament are just what the name implies— they are testaments or reports of what honorable people witnessed and had no motive to invent.  In fact, given who they were and how they suffered, they had every motive to say it wasn’t true.  And there are several other excellent reasons that show it takes more faith to be an atheist than a Christian.

So inerrant Bible or not, the Resurrection we celebrate on Sunday actually occurred about 1,985 years ago. That means you can trust that one day you’ll be resurrected like Jesus if you put your trust in him.

Conclusion

            There is nothing wrong if we, by mere faith, believe that the Bible is God’s Word.

            Christianity is true whether or not the Bible has errors. Without diluting the significance of the Bible to any extent, there is also nothing wrong if we do not consider biblical inerrancy as an essential doctrine of Historic Christianity.

Endnotes:

¹https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/may-2014/take-a-stand-on-biblical-inerrancy/

²https://defendinginerrancy.com/billy-graham-and-biblical-inerrancy/

³https://crossexamined.org/christianity-is-true-even-if-some-of-the-bible-isnt/

Websites last accessed on 21st August 2019.

The Bible Has Errors, What Do We Do?

            Should our faith weaken if the Bible is proven to be with errors? Isn’t the Bible the core of Christianity? If the core of Christianity is erroneous, shouldn’t Christianity crumble?

            If these thoughts resonate in you, you are not totally off the mark.   

            To relentlessly assault the Bible is the fervent passion of many. To rattle the faith of the Christians is their vocation.    

            As if to add to this predicament, quite a few evangelical Christian scholars and institutions are migrating away from committing to inerrancy i.e. the Bible is without errors. But interestingly, they commit to Bible’s infallibility i.e. the Bible is incapable of failing.

            Broadly there are two categories of Christians in the context of Historic Christianity and biblical inerrancy. The biblical inerrantists defend the view that the Bible is without errors with all their intellect and might.¹ The other group, the non-inerrantists, is rather lenient in this position. They consider the Bible as a document that is susceptible to errors, but not in the matters pertaining to the redemptive (salvation).

            For instance, the National Association of Evangelicals, in their statement of faith, do not commit to inerrancy of the Bible, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” ² In this view, biblical inerrancy is limited to matters pertaining to salvation and not the entire content of the Bible.

            The limited inerrancy view offers room for the Bible to err in non-redemptive matters – matters that are not salvific by nature e.g. geographical, historical, scientific etc. The proponents of this view state that the main purpose of the Bible is “spiritual transformation” – to bring the lost man into a saving relationship with God. They then affirm that “If the Bible contains some errors, some discrepancies, that do not affect its power to transform lives through faith-filled communion with God, that is not important.” ³

            But the unlimited or total inerrancy view does not offer any room for the Bible to err. The unlimited inerrancy view affirms that the Bible is true in all its content, be it redemption, history or science.

            Those who defend total inerrancy state, We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science” (Art. 12). It further declares that: “The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own (A Short Statement, 5, emphasis added).”⁴

            The picture becomes rather clear now.

            Those who believe that the Bible contains no errors or the biblical inerrantists or those subscribing to the unlimited inerrancy view hold the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as an essential doctrine of Historic Christianity.⁵  The non-inerrantists or those who hold to the limited inerrancy view do not consider the doctrine of inerrancy as a core tenet of Historic Christianity.

            If the Bible is proven to be with errors, you and I could respond in two broad ways. These options are predicated on whether we hold the doctrine of inerrancy as an essential doctrine to Christian faith or not.

            If you consider inerrancy as an essential doctrine, and, if the Bible is proven to be with errors, then your faith could weaken. But if you consider inerrancy as a non-essential doctrine, and, you consider the Bible as a document that is not erroneous in the redemptive but otherwise susceptible to errors, then your faith would not weaken.

            Easier said than done!

            Those who consider the Bible to be without any errors (biblical inerrantists) argue against the argument that the Bible has errors but is infallible (biblical non-inerrantists).⁶ Their argument is predicated on two very strong facts:

            A. God cannot lie either intentionally or unintentionally. If the Bible is God’s Word, and if God cannot lie, then the Bible ought to be without error.

            B. Christ (God-incarnate) proclaimed that God’s Word is without any errors (cf. John 10:35 & Matthew 5: 18).

            So it is quite plausible that the Bible cannot or should not err.

            But think from another vantage point.

            Would an erroneous Bible entail the non-existence of God? No, not by any chance!

            God exists necessarily. God’s existence is not predicated or intricately linked to the veracity of the Bible. In other words, God will not cease to exist if the Bible is erroneous.

            In fact, God existed even before the Bible was written. It was God who inspired the human authors to write the Bible. Bible reveals God. However, the Bible is not the only source that reveals God (cf. Romans 1: 19-20).

            The Lord Jesus Christ, the means to salvation of mankind, existed independent of the Bible’s veracity. For instance, history affirms Christ’s existence and resurrection.

            Dr. Gary Habermas asserts that Jesus death by crucifixion, HIS postmortem appearances to HIS disciples, and Paul’s vision of the resurrected Christ, are the most affirmed historical facts by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. ⁷

            Therefore, if the Bible is proven to be with errors, neither would God cease to exist nor would Christ. If history affirms Christ’s resurrection, then salvation through Christ is also a fact that remains independent of the Bible.

            This is not an exercise to undermine Bible’s authority. This is a mere exercise to affirm the independent existence (apart from the Bible) of God, the Lord Jesus Christ and salvation of mankind through Christ.⁸

            Therefore, even if the Bible is proven to contain errors, it would not and cannot undermine God, Christ and salvation of mankind. In other words, Christianity would not crumble if the Bible is proven to be with errors.

            God is at the core of Christianity. Christ and the salvation that HE offered to mankind are at the core of Christianity.

            But inerrancy of the Bible need not be at the core of Christianity. If inerrancy of the Bible is to remain at the core of Christianity, then it would presuppose that inerrancy of the Bible is far superior in value to God, Christ and salvation. However, since God is the source of the Bible, God ought to be at the core of Christianity and not the inerrancy of the Bible. Inerrancy is the corollary of God’s nature.

            Unfortunately, this is not what Bart Ehrman thought. Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lost his faith in Christ because he apparently discovered one minor error in the gospels. It seemed Professor Ehrman held the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as the core of Christianity. 

            When a particular passage in the Gospel of Mark befuddled Bart Ehrman, his strong belief in inerrancy of the Bible was shaken. He became a liberal Christian and then ended up as an agnostic atheist after being unable to reconcile the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.⁹

            So should inerrancy be an essential doctrine of Christianity? Maybe so. However, God who is the source of the Bible ought to be at the core of Christianity and not the inerrancy of the Bible. Disputing inerrancy would not and cannot damage God or Christ or salvation of mankind.

            The theme of this article is intended to touch the scores of ordinary Christians. By ordinary Christians, I refer to Christians who are not into serious Christian pedagogy or academics.

            The full blown wrath of Christianity’s detractors, such as the New Atheists, is aimed to rattle the faith of these ordinary Christians. At the first instance, when you hear the relentless tirades of these detractors, your faith in Christ may shake.

            The scope of this article is only to emphasize that the inerrancy of the Bible is not the beginning and the end of Christianity. The scope of this article excludes a defense of inerrancy.

            So, fear not!

            God is at the core of Christianity. Christ and the salvation offered to mankind are at the core of Christianity. The Bible reveals our triune God. The Scripture cannot be broken. Let us continue to totally trust and study God and HIS Word. Amen.   

Endnotes:

¹ http://defendinginerrancy.com/

² http://nae.net/statement-of-faith/

³ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/11/is-the-bible-inerrant-or-infallible/

⁴ http://defendinginerrancy.com/unlimited-vs-limited-inerrancy/

⁵ http://defendinginerrancy.com/why-is-inerrancy-important/

⁶ http://defendinginerrancy.com/roger-e-olsen-is-the-bible-inerrant-or-infallible/

⁷ http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/southeastern_theological_review/minimal-facts-

methodology_08-02-2012.htm

&

http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005.htm#ch5

⁸ I personally subscribe to the 3-ins – inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.

⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman