According to Article IX of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, the human authors of Scripture were fully trustworthy in all that they “were moved to speak and write” and were wholly without “distortion or falsehood.” But is that true? ?
inerrancy
You Can’t Save Biblical Inerrancy By Limiting it to Faith and Morals
Many biblical inerrantists limit the term to “faith and morals”: that is, the biblical authors made no errors in terms of their communication on theological and ethical topics. But that more modest inerrancy still fails. For example, multiple biblical authors endorse severe corporal punishment of children, actions we would consider abusive and immoral today. They […]
How an Inerrant Bible Can Have Errors
In this video, I explain how God can inerrantly include human theological errors within a plenarily inspired biblical text. For further discussion see my book Jesus Loves Canaanites: ?
A Logically Valid But Unsound Argument for Biblical Inerrancy
Here is my attempt to articulate a logical argument in support of inerrancy. By “inerrancy”, I refer here to the view that the affirmations of all human authors are true. I should stress that this is not a view I hold and I have little sympathy with this argument. But be that as it may, […]
When conservative Christians confuse their interpretation of the Bible with the Bible
Yesterday, I tweeted the following observation: Many Christian conservatives profess to defend the inerrancy of Scripture when, in fact, they are defending the inerrancy of their interpretation of Scripture. In order to appreciate the reasoning of the conservative Christian, we should begin by unpacking the assumption that there is a commonsense way to interpret a […]
Why belief in divine inspiration commits the reader to wrestling with Scripture
We begin with a tweet from Brian Zahnd: “Biblical inerrancy” is an empty signifier. Why? Because an inerrant text still has to be interpreted. Then you run into the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism (to borrow a phrase from Christian Smith). Plenty of people agree on inerrancy and disagree on everything else!” Next, we have a […]
Does inerrancy apply to the human authors of the Bible?
This morning I posted a tweet on inerrancy which prompted a reply from the philosopher Paul Franks. I thought it was an interesting Twitter exchange and worth repeating here. After compiling our tweets, I’m a bit surprised at how long it is too. I have not bothered to flag or correct the typos that appear in […]
Is the Exodus as important to Christian belief as Jesus’ resurrection?
When I was growing up, I learned to read biblical narratives as historically reliable accounts of past events. Whether the issue was the death and resurrection of Jesus, the curious maritime journey of Jonah, the Exodus from Egypt, Samson’s killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, or Adam and Eve talking to […]
Are Angels and Demons Part of an Obsolete Biblical Worldview?
In his book The Biblical Cosmos (which I just reviewed here), Robin Parry points out that the Bible is written against the backdrop of an ancient cosmology which we no longer accept in the modern world. For example, biblical writers assume a flat earth and a three-storied universe with heaven located physically above the earth. They assume […]
Inerrancy: Still Hazy After All These Years
I grew up in a Pentecostal fundagelical church where we prided ourselves on taking Scripture seriously. That meant, among other things, a commitment to literal interpretation. From a literal six days of creation to a literal thousand year millennium, we took Scripture in what we believed to be the natural sense. And that meant reading […]
Does Wintery Knight believe the sun orbits the earth?
Yesterday I challenged an anonymous blogger who calls him/herself “Wintery Knight” (henceforth “WK”) on his/her anonymous defense of the Rebellion Thesis (the claim that all atheists are actively and sinfully suppressing their natural knowledge of God). Wintery Knight’s Ad hominem Rebuttal Sadly, WK responded less like a bold knight fighting for truth than an insecure lord defending his […]
42. Peter Enns on Inerrancy and the Bible
At the beginning of his book Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman tells the story of his conversion to conservative Christianity as a young man. And then he relays how, over the next several years, his faith in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible was gradually taken apart as he confronted the full range of human […]
The Bible and the Moral Artist Principle: A response to Jason Thibodeau
In “God and Gus Van Sant: Two morally irresponsible artists?” I provided a rebuttal to Jason Thibodeau. Jason had made the following claim in response to my Americana Omnibus illustration: “If I was an editor of the American Omnibus and I came across passages in which I (and/or other editors) were depicted as commanding/approving of/bringing […]
Reading the Bible informed by conscience
In “A review of “God or Godless”, inerrancy, and begging the question” I defended myself against a reviewer of God or Godless who opined that I had made a “major mistake” in my theology by rejecting the doctrine of inerrancy. I pointed out that I don’t reject inerrancy, though I do reject indefensible articulations of […]
