Inerrancy and Inspiration

If we consider ourselves Christian, the Bible probably plays an important role in our lives.  We’re undoubtedly familiar with the key names and the major stories.  We’ve undoubtedly got multiple copies of the Bible in our home and the app on our phone.  If we’re a part of a small group or Sunday School class, it plays a central role in what we do when we come together.  It’s the source book for preaching and teaching.  It’s something we look to for answers to life’s questions and read regularly as a part of our devotional life.  It’s hard to imagine that anything connected to the Bible would have any measure of controversy associated with it.

But when we talk about the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible—when we talk about what it means for the Bible to be authoritative … and inspired … and the source of ultimate truth—we get into a realm with quite a bit of debate and misunderstanding.  For when many of us use those terms, we don’t really know what we’re saying … or we attach an expectation or understanding to the Bible that doesn’t gel with what it is or the role it’s meant to assume in our lives.

Here's what Church of the Nazarene—my tribe—has to say regarding the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture: 

“We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith.”

There’s an important phrase in that statement … the notion of the Bible “inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation.”

When we say the Bible is authoritative and inspired, what exactly are we saying?  When we say it’s inerrant, where do we see its inerrancy?  Do we see it in the actual words of the text?  Or is it in the message, meaning, and truth those words sought to convey?  Where do we see the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?  Is it in the specific details of the writing—the vocabulary, idioms, and metaphors the biblical writers used?  Or is it in the hearts of the writers and the story they related through their words—the faithful narrative of God’s trustworthiness and unrelenting love through the course of history?

Our answer to that question depends largely on the theory of inspiration we hold.  Some hold what’s called the dictation theory.  They believe the various writers of the Bible were like court transcriptionists—passive vessels—who captured and recorded everything God told them to say exactly as He told them to say it.  Others hold what’s known as the dynamic theory which says the Holy Spirit motivated and compelled the various writers to write, but the choice of words was theirs and their style of writing was shaped by the norms and customs of their culture, reflective of their personality, and stamped by their understanding of the world.  But because they were guided and carried along by the Spirit of God, what they communicated has enduring value.

The result of this difference in belief about inspiration influences how we approach the Bible.  Those who hold to the dictation theory tend to focus more on the letter of the text, and those who hold to the dynamic theory tend to focus on the spirit or meaning of the text.  When we become preoccupied with the former, we can run into problems because we view the Bible through a different lens than the original audience.  We approach it asking it to address issues and answer questions the biblical writers never intended—indeed, those things weren’t remotely on their radar screen.  When that is the case, we run the risk of twisting it and interpreting it in ways to where we claim it says things it never intended to say. 

One of the challenges of the dictation theory is … How do we account for the difference in technique between certain authors?  For instance, scholars who understand the original languages can pick up on the stylistic differences between, say, the writings of Paul and Luke.  They’ve noted the penchant for certain words and themes to appear in John’s writings that are unique to him.  Matthew appeared to be writing for a Jewish audience while others were more dialed in to the issues and concerns of Gentiles.  If the various writers of the Bible were nothing more than passive instruments, how do you explain this?  It’s hard to account for.  Just as we believe Jesus was fully God and fully man, so the Bible is fully divine and fully human.  But the dictation theory seems to largely minimize, if not altogether remove, the human element from the equation.

Another downfall of the dictation theory is that when we believe inspiration is lodged in the text and every word of the Bible is inerrant and perfect and true, it’s very easy for the biblical text to become an idol.  In other words, if the Bible is commensurate with God—if it’s interchangeable with God—it’s easy for us to conclude that it’s the equivalent of God.  And it’s not!  To say something is divinely inspired is not to say it’s synonymous to God.  It’s a faithful witness to God.  But it is not God.  The Trinity didn’t just expand and welcome a fourth member—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Written Word.

Given these issues, many of us shy away from the dictation theory.  But in terms of how we relate to the Bible, we still act like we hold it.  What do I mean by that?  Let me ask you some questions:  How many of you were taught the Bible should be treated with reverence because it’s the Word of God, even though it was printed and produced just like any other book (except that the paper was incredibly thin to keep it from being too bulky)?  It’s as if the ink, paper, and binding was sacred.  How many of you were taught not to place other books on top of your Bible?  You could toss the Time magazine, your school textbook, or your paperback novel into the empty chair a few feet away, but to do that with your Bible is disrespectful and sacrilegious.  When I got my first Bible at about age twelve—one with a leather cover with my name stamped in gold on the lower right hand corner—I struggled to underline and highlight verses because I felt like I’d be doodling on God’s face.  But when I got to my teenage years and realized people I deemed to be better Christians than me made notes in their Bibles and marked them up, I started doing it.  In fact, I sometimes felt as if, when I read my Bible, if I didn’t come away with a verse to highlight or something to mark that something was wrong with me—that I wasn’t reading it right, or I was too shallow or dense to where I wasn’t allowing it to speak to me the way it should.  So I’d desperately search to find something to mark.  Even today, I have Bibles I know I’ll never use again—the translation is outdated to where I’ll never read it, or the binding is cracked, or the print is too small for my eyes that aren’t as sharp as they used to be—but I just can’t bring myself to throw them away.  I feel like if I do I’m going to be struck down by a bolt of lightning because God who doesn’t appreciate being treated in such a callous and insensitive manner.

As I’ve dug into the topic of inspiration and inerrancy, I’ve discovered the understanding I’ve held for much of my life is flawed.  What I want to do in this post is lay out the beginning of an understanding of what these terms mean in hopes it will rekindle and ignite in us a passion for this collection of ancient writings that is both historically faithful and intellectually honest, but also be life-giving and liberating to those of us who take it seriously but often find ourselves bewildered and confused by some of the confounding things we find inside its pages.

To understand how we got into this situation, we need to go back to the 1830s and the work of Charles Darwin.  When he published his book Origin of Species and claimed that natural selection and evolution was responsible for our existence, many people perceived his challenge of the doctrine of creation as a full-on assault on the Bible.  During roughly this same time period, the discipline of higher criticism emerged which asked questions of the Bible and challenged a number of long-held assumptions.  These two things were perceived by many as indicative of the Bible being under attack.  If Scripture was going to stand up to these threats, it had to answer these charges.

Theologians rushed in and try and defend the Bible.  And one of the verses they latched on to was 2 Timothy 3:16 which says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness …”.  Largely on the basis of that verse, they developed a theory regarding the inspiration of the Bible called inerrancy which said the Bible was utterly perfect and true and any notion that challenged its conclusions needed to be put down.  When those on the other side came back and pointed out some of the perceived inconsistencies in the Bible, or some of the problematic passages, they responded by saying those deficiencies and imperfections were the result of errors in transmission.  But the original autographs—the initial manuscripts which, of course, were lost to antiquity and couldn’t be found—were unblemished and unerring.  A perfect God, who had inspired these writings, couldn’t produce something any less perfect and flawless than He was.

A couple of things to bear in mind: (1) the word in the original language translated “God-breathed” in 2 Timothy 3:16 is used nowhere else in the New Testament.  As a result, there aren’t other occasions where it’s utilized you can refer to in order to get a read on what exactly it means.  There is, however, one place it is used in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament.  It is used in the creation account—Genesis 2—when the writer talks about how God scooped up the dust of the earth and breathed into it the breath of life which resulted in the formation of the human race.  According to the apostle Paul, what God did to fashion us as humans is the same thing He did behind the scenes in relation to this collection of manuscripts we hold as authoritative.

This raises an interesting follow-up question:  If God is perfect and can’t produce anything any less perfect than He is—if He’s flawless in every way and whatever He crafts can be no less unblemished than He is—how do you explain our shortcomings and imperfections?  Yes—we are made in the image of God.  But we’re certainly far from perfect.  If whatever God breathes into is by definition without fault and free of defect, then how do you explain our many deficiencies?  This is where this the concept of inerrancy runs into trouble.

And it’s a problem that largely surrounds a misunderstanding of what it means for something to be inspired.  For something to be inspired, or “God-breathed”, doesn’t mean it’s without defect or blemish free.  When the Bible talks about something being inspired, it’s not so much talking about what God did in the process of bringing that thing into being. It’s talking about what He can do though that thing.  Inspiration doesn’t so much refer to the process of how something came to be as it does how the Holy Spirit can utilize thru that something.  Something that’s inspired is something God uses powerfully and profoundly for His ends … something that furthers His work in the lives of people … something that enables them to live out the life He wants them to live.

And the fact of the matter is, God doesn’t need something to be flawless and perfect to facilitate His work in our lives.  In fact, God uses flawed, imperfect vessels all the time—just read the Old Testament!  God has an incredible habit of using flawed, imperfect vessels.  The truth God communicates is not dependent upon the flawlessness of the text—scientifically accurate, word-perfect, contradiction-free accounts of ancient manuscripts.  The truth God communicates is something that comes through faithful, God-breathed people who responded to His nudge to detail part of this grand and glorious story we’re invited to participate in—the story of a God who is relentless in His pursuit of us … a God who loves us more fiercely than we can imagine … a God who longs to enjoy a rich connection with each of us and will stop at nothing to do what needs to be done to enable it … a God who is still fashioning that story in our day and invites us to be meaningful part of it.  This is what it means for the Word of God to be inspired.  It’s something that—when we will open ourselves up to it and allow it to influence and impact our life—will lead us to an invigorating and soul-stirring connection with God.  It will pull us in and allow us to assume a role in this ongoing story of resurrection life piercing and transforming a world of pain, brokenness, and death.

So, when we talk about the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible, we’re not saying the Bible is contradiction-free or perfect.  For the writers of the Bible weren’t trying to give us something that could stand up to the opinions and observations of Charles Darwin. They weren’t trying to supply us with a collection of writings that could refute the conclusions of scientists and philosophers who try to explain away God’s existence.  Their intent was to supply us with something that could open us up to, and invite us into, the story of God … that could help us discover His purposes … that could be the occasion to experience for ourselves His personal work in our lives … and could help to forge in us His character and heart.  And when it comes to creating something that is able to do that—something that inerrantly reveals the will of God in all things necessary to our salvation—the Bible is absolutely up to the task.  It is reliable!  It is authoritative!  It is true!  We don’t need to appeal to some additional document or some supplemental resource. 

That’s what it means for the Bible to be inerrant and inspired.

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