The Bible is like no other book on the planet. Men have been killed because they have translated it, printed it, read it, and preached it. Why have so many been convicted enough to die for this Book? In short, because it is inspired by God. When God moves men to write, He does not error. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Pet. 1:20:21). What logically follows from a the inspiration of Scripture is the fact that the Bible is without error in its original form. This doctrine of inerrancy is attacked from skeptics, scholars, and sometimes even within the Church.
The doctrine of inerrancy is the belief that the Bible does not error in any matters of history, science, theology, or any other discipline.The Bible describes things as they are. Inerrancy does not demand to be scientifically precise but it does require it to be accurate in what it describes in the time period it was written. For instance, it was common in ancient times to round the measures of lengths. For instance in 1 Kings 7:23 the the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. Circumference of a circle is calculated by taking the diameter times . Critics claim that 1 Kings 7:23 errors because the distance around the sea would be 10 X which would equal approximately 31.4 cubits not 30 cubits. This kind of criticism however does not effectively attack inerrancy. A response to this criticism is simply this, the writer of 1 Kings was not making a technical and scientific proclamation about the sea. Rather, he was describing it in everyday approximations, and that is the sense it should be taken. It is like the weather man who notes the rising of the sun at 6:01am and the setting at 7:22pm. Does he error because he is describing the sun as rising and setting when science has clearly shown us that the earth revolves around the sun. Nonsense, the weather man is simply using everyday language to describe the world we perceive. The critics should give the same consideration of context they give their weatherman.
The attacks on inerrancy come from various perspectives. One such example is that of textual criticism. Textual criticism is the art and science of attempting to reconstruct the original text of Scripture by comparing the various manuscripts we have available. This can be a very helpful discipline. Because of good textual criticisms it can be argued that our modern translations are closer to the original than ever before. However, there is also a more dubious side to textual criticism. In our day, Bart Ehrman has made a career by using the facts of textual criticism for his own purpose. Ehrman likes to disclose the fact that there are some 400,000 discrepancies between the manuscripts of the New Testament alone. What Ehrman fails to reveal is that many of these error are simple misspellings. For instance, if one word is spelled incorrectly in the same passage in 500 manuscripts, Ehrman sees this as 500 errors when in reality there is only 1 difference between the manuscripts. Most objective scholars estimate the New Testament manuscripts agree on 95-99% in substance. For books of antiquity, this is not good, nor great, but fantastic.
A second form of attack comes from what is called in academia higher criticism. This attempted blow at inerrancy rests not on the manuscripts themselves, but rather on a interpretation of how the Bible was compiled. This higher criticism came at inerrancy at full blast through the writings of Julius Wellhausen. The results of his Documentary Hypothesis theory was to render the first five books of the Old Testament as little more than fairy tail. Those who hold to this and similar theories have a common belief. Namely, that miracles are not possible. This belief lead them to conclude that the Bible must error because many miracles are recorded. Therefore, they reject the accounts of Creation, the Exodus, and Jonah and the whale to name but a few.
A third method of attack on the inerrancy of the Bible comes from the likes of archaeology. Often the skeptical archaeologist makes their claim against the accuracy of Scripture from silence. For instance, the supposed lack of archaeological evidence from major events in the Bible such as the Exodus, the Conquest, and the United Kingdom under David and Solomon. Where is the original writings of Moses, Joshua, and David? Where is Solomon’s temple? Where is the Ark of the Covenant?
Many of the other articles in this notebook address these attacks head on. Evidence from archaeology in the Near East continues to affirm the words of Scripture. For an exhaustive scholarly study of how the archaeological evidence verifies the Old Testament narrative read On the Reliability of the Old Testament by K. A. Kitchen.
The issue of inerrancy has been under heavy attack since the Enlightenment’s attack in the 17th century on the idea of miracles. The liberal theology of the 20th century moved attacks on inerrancy into the Church. As an attempt to stave off the attacks on Holy Scripture xxx men came to gather in Chicago the fall of 1978. Men such as R. C. Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, J. I. Packer, Norman Geisler, and Carl Henry. Out of this conference came the definitive document on what Biblical inerrancy is. The document is called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and a copy is included in this notebook.
To this day the Chicago Statement remains the definitive work that defines the doctrine of inerrancy. Its stated purpose is, “The following Statement affirms this inerrancy of Scripture afresh, making clear our understanding of it and warning against its denial. We are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside the witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit and to refuse that submission to the claims of God's own Word which marks true Christian faith. We see it as our timely duty to make this affirmation in the face of current lapses from the truth of inerrancy among our fellow Christians and misunderstandings of this doctrine in the world at large.”
How important is this idea of biblical inerrancy? What if the Bible makes a few mistakes about the events of the Exodus or the conquests found in the book of Joshua, or the narrative of Jesus? Is it really that big of deal? What is at stake is our very faith. If the Bible is not completely accurate in all it reports, then the Bible errors. If the Bible errors, it was not inspired of God. If the Bible is not inspired by God it is not Holy. Yes, the Book we trust for our revelation to all that we believe and practice must be without error if we are to be justified in following the Christian faith.
