Over the years I have absorbed a lot of teaching about the “inerrancy” of the Bible. I have served as the principal of several Christian day schools and as an administrator and faculty member at two Christian colleges. These positions have provided many opportunities to read, listen to and talk about biblical inerrancy locations from lecture halls to coffee shops. Inerrancy of scripture is one of those topics that you know is going to be hard to deal with because almost everyone (in my circles, anyway) agrees with the concept but almost everyone has a different idea about what it means. Nevertheless If I am going to use the Bible as evidence for Christian hope, I owe it to you to explain how and why I trust it as an authoritative source.
I will start with a widely-accepted definition of Biblical inerrancy:
The inerrancy of the Bible means simply that the Bible tells the truth. (Charles C. Ryrie, What You Should Know About Inerrancy, Moody Press:Chicago, 1981, p. 16).
There are many other definitions, most of them significantly more thorough and complicated than this one. However, I believe that the short definition above is adequate for my purposes.
Even so, I need to explain what I mean when I say that “the Bible tells the truth.” I believe that the Bible tells the truth because I believe that God informed and motivated human individuals to write it so that humankind could be aware of and understand certain things. I believe that God is incapable of making mistakes or lying. Since God informed and motivated the authorship of the Bible, it must be true.
There are many ways to communicate truth through writing. For example, we can speak scientifically, metaphorically, allegorically, and poetically. Western thinkers tend to believe that scientific communication is the best way to tell the truth. However, many literary traditions throughout history would disagree. It may be accurate to say that scientific communication is the best way to communicate truth about science, but the world is made up of many dimensions other than science. Some of them are subjective, emotional and perhaps even transcendent. If it is true to say that scientific language is the best way to communicate scientific principles then certainly it may be true that nonscientific languages are the best way to communicate nonscientific principles.
The Bible was written over a significant period of time. The book of Job was probably started around 1657 BC and John’s letters were completed in about 98 AD, a period of 1755 years. When God began to communicate with humankind about the origins of His creation, they were living in a largely pre-scientific age. Even if God had chosen to dictate the creation narrative to the author of Genesis in modern scientific terms, the people of 1657 BC would not have understood it. It is only in relatively recent time that some humans started to use scientific language to describe the universe. The Genesis story of creation has served humanity well and continues to convey the same truths it always did. God understands perfectly the language that will convey the exact and complete ideas that He wants us to understand.
Charles Ryrie continues the quote above by observing:
Truth can and does include approximations, free quotations, language of appearances, and different accounts of the same event as long as those do not contradict. (Ryrie, ibid)
A communication can be true even if it is not understood. It takes a large human ego to believe that a statement is not true simply because the owner of that ego does not understand what the statement means or how it can be true. During the period of my life when I conversed frequently with theology professors and students, I heard lots of arguments about the contents of the Bible. I rarely heard anyone conclude, “Well, I don’t understand what that means and I doubt that I ever will.” Nevertheless, sometimes an honest person simply must conclude that there are concepts and ideas that he or she cannot figure it out.
Finally, listening is an important part of understanding. Jesus often taught by using “parables.” According to one popular definition, a parable is “a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.” On at least one occasion, He followed a parable with these words: “He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:9). His close followers responded by asking him why he used stories to teach people such significant truths. He responded by saying (my paraphrase), “Those who want to understand what they hear will understand what my stories mean. Those who do not want to understand the truth will not understand.” In the same way, those who refuse to understand the Bible because linguistic style is more important than truth will simply fail to understand.
I believe it is important to try to understand the Bible. However, my ability to interpret it is limited by the constraints of my personal experiences and style. I happen to be one of those people who prefers scientific language. For this reason, it is important for me to seek different perspectives in order to expand my own view. It also means that I sometimes have to say, “I’m not sure what the Bible means on this particular point, but whatever it means, I believe that it is true.”
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