When speaking about inerrancy/infallibility, it's important to clearly define terms. For example, does inerrancy mean that the sun revolves around the earth, as some verses in the Psalms, when interpreted with a rigid literalism, seem to say?
A few weeks ago, Michael Patton wrote an
insightful blog post about this question. Here's a portion:
Quote:
I remember when I was young and I first began to read the Gospels. I was rather confused about the repetition of the story of Christ. I was further confused that there seemed to be many places where the same event was told in different ways, using different words, and sometimes with different people involved. Whether it was Christ’s encounter with the demoniacs (Luke 18:27ff; Matthew 8:28ff) or the words written above the cross (Mark 15:26; John 19:19), there were differences. I noticed that differences of this type were a primary criticism to which skeptics would refer when attacking the reliability of Scripture and the truth of Christianity. This disturbed me. If the Bible was inspired, these differences should not be there. Isn’t the Bible inerrant? If it is, it cannot have discrepancies. How could God have gotten it wrong? As I sought answers, I found initial comfort in those who would explain these “discrepancies” in some very creative ways. Most would say that the parallel accounts that I was having problems with were not really parallel at all. They were different encounters altogether!
These explanations satisfied me at the time. I thus unknowingly adopted a strict view that I call “technically precise inerrancy.” This means that all the writers of Scripture, by virtue of their ultimate source of information (God), recorded everything precisely as it occurred. It also means that we attempt to take the Bible with an absolute literalism until forced to opt for another approach.
I later came to realize that this methodology was not only unnecessary but was actually birthed, I believe, out of a very gnostic view of Scripture. I was so emphasizing God’s role in the writing of Scripture that the role of man could not be found. Yet if God used man in writing Scripture, and Scripture was intended for man, then would God not have used a common means of communication that did not require technical precision in describing events?
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Read the whole post.
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