If we truly believe the Bible to be authoritative, then we will seek to understand it as best we can, finding out what it says about itself and building a coherent understanding. But far too often, claims about inerrancy are a claim to personal inerrancy in interpretation. The inerrantist too often invests his own view with Biblical authority; the anti-inerrantist rarely questions his interpretation of a passage that generates an error.
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I discovered something one day that I almost certainly would not have if I hadn’t gotten tired of hearing preachers say, “The Greek says…” and then from a dozen preachers getting a dozen and one assertions… so I undertook to learn ancient Greek. The discovery was launched by an article that had quotations from early church writers purporting to show that the early church believed in inerrancy. Since I’d already read the entire New Testament in Greek, I figured “How much could it change in two and a half centuries?” and went in search of the originals.
The discovery was that those early church writers didn’t mean that every statement in the Bible was 100% scientifically and historically accurate; they weren’t even concerned about that question. What they meant was that God’s word is like an arrow shot by a perfect archer, that it always goes straight to its target and strikes dead center!
Along with that discovery was a lesson: they didn’t assume that they understood everything in scripture and everything about the world and were able to put the two together perfectly. Like Augustine somewhat later, they recognized that mankind’s knowledge of the world was imperfect, and that even the church’s understanding of scripture is imperfect, and so they didn’t worry about making the two mesh.Indeed they didn’t worry much about how mankind understood the world at all; their focus was on the scriptures and what God meant us to understand from them.
And that informs my view of the question here: what about trying to reconcile science and scripture is in any way edifying? how does it contribute to what God means us to understand from the scriptures? And I see the effort to demonstrate the modern meaning of “inerrant” as actually being detrimental, that it takes away time and effort from studying the scriptures, and it also leads to the arrogant assumption that we know just what the scriptures are saying – an assumption based on treating the early chapters of Genesis as though they were a friend’s grandfather’s diaries of events he lived through, and he never made a mistake in observing or recording. For Sunday school lessons with a flannel board that may be appropriate, but for adults it actually robs the scriptures of their meaning because it ignores the fact that they are first of all ancient literature written by ancient men for audiences made up of ancient people – and if we want to understand them we have to make the effort to crawl inside the skulls of those who wrote and of those who listened (don’t forget that the entire Old Testament was written during a period when narrative writing was intended to be read out loud [in fact reading it silently would have baffled them]). And when that effort is made, it’s striking that literary types where 100% scientific accuracy is intended do not exist in the scriptures, and ones where 100% historical accuracy is intended are not nearly as extensive as we would guess from reading in translation.
So “How do we reconcile science with Biblical trustworthiness?” We acknowledge that science is a very effective way for understanding the material Creation but since it is ever developing we don’t try to make the scriptures fit any particular scientific position. After all, the point of the scriptures is “not to tell us how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven”.
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The whole inerrancy thing bugged the heck out of me in my university days because I observe that the number one issue that drove fellow students to abandon Christianity was that they were brought up to consider it 100% scientifically and historically accurate as read in translation. So I tried to figure out where the idea came from.
Where I landed can be stated in two words: scientific materialism. Until that human philosophy infected the church the idea that it was totally inerrant in everything it stated was just one view among many! But the scientific materialistic view of things demanded that in order to be true something has to be absolutely scientifically and historically accurate – and that bled into the church.
So true irony: the modern idea of inerrancy rests on a human philosophy that is inherently atheistic.
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This reminds me of the day that our class in the Greek New Testament got introduced to the critical apparatus in our Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece: more than a few students freaked out at the idea that God’s written word could be less than perfect. I and other students along with the professor scrambled to try to assure them that this didn’t impair the message at all – yet I went further and said that there wouldn’t be any variant readings unless God allowed them, so the question we should be asking wasn’t “How can it be true with all these mistakes?” but “What is God saying to us by allowing all these mistakes?” That seemed obvious to me, but it caught most of the troubled students off guard, as a thought they never would have considered (even the professor hadn’t looked at it that way!).
The lesson seemed clear: we aren’t to put our faith in the words, but in the Word concerning Whom the words were written. So to me all the “errors” anyone points out (most of which aren’t errors, but that’s another discussion) are just God’s way of saying, “Keep your eyes on Me”.
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Just for the record, this atheist doesn’t think something has to be scientific in order to be true, but I would agree that there are many atheists who do adhere to that philosophy.
An interesting aspect of scientific materialism leaking into the church is often seen in creationist arguments. One that I often see is creationists trying to argue that the theory of evolution is a religion as a way of discrediting evolution. I think this says a lot. It demonstrates that even creationists think science is superior to religious belief. Very rarely do I see a creationist who states that the theory of evolution is entirely scientific, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true. Even rarer still do I see people trying to discredit creationism by calling it scientific.
As a result, I would estimate that the majority of people who claim that evolution, if true, would disprove the Bible are theists, not atheists.
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That’s what used to be called “infallibility”, that the Bible unfailingly communicates as God intended it to.
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I would never use the word “inerrant” and prefer “sufficient”
We must give allowance for the Spirit speaking into particular situations in the which the various parts bible was composed with the known cosmology and environment of the times in which the texts were composed. The Spirt inspired the writers mainly to instruct in relationships and God’s intentions, not all the details of history. It’s sufficient to lead us into the right relations with God, our families, neighbours and rest of creation.
- I, for one, would be interested in a complete set of commentaries on the OT and NT canon, written by one or more scientists who affirm the crucifixion, death, entombment, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.
While I generally enjoyed the article. it doesn’t get at the heart of the issue or take any real stance. I don’t think most modern Christians are predisposed to getting behind the text to “what the author intended to teach.” To many people, Matthew intends to teach a bunch of dead people came out of the tomb, waited there for a day and half then came out after Jesus rose from the dead because that is what Matthew plainly narrates. Its clearly fiction so we have to try to figure out some clever reason why its there.
The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[e]went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
The NT and Jesus make no distinction between historical and non-historical characters in the OT. Luke traces Jesus’s Genealogy to Adam. You can argue “Luke is just trying to teach Jesus is God’s son through genealogy” or something much more witty and scholarly sounding than I can come up with, but that is not what Luke actually says and that is where many modern Christians have a problem. This is why Calvin had a problem with a moving earth. Not only was it common sense to him but scripture clearly taught the earth was immutable. In most cases,Christians simply look at the plain sense of the Bible, which was not written for modern, literary critics with 50 versions, concordances, search engines and so on. Every Christian generation seems to think the Bible is not only fully compatible with their beliefs but their beliefs are what the Bible teaches. Think of the solid exegesis those in favor of slavery put out in the 1800s, or all the ammunition those engaged in misogynistic ideology had. Thinking that modern science and inerrancy are reconcilable is not valid for many because we are fact-literal westerners and Christians want to know if the plain sense of so many plainly narrated details is not “what the Bible intends to teach” then what happens to many of the miracles and stories about Jesus?
Sadly, a tour of history doesn’t show us how flimsy and vacuous our mental gymnastics actually are. We just repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, conforming the Bible to what we believe under the pretense we are following IT and letting IT serve as conscience and corrector. In the end all of us are in a symbiotic relationship with the Bible. It influences us as we influence what we allow it to teach and say.
AMEN
Our faith is in the Word, Who is God, not the Book which is not.
I have felt some rather strong agreement with many of the comments in this discussion, especially the one emphasized in the March 9 comment that we are to worship the Word, not the book about this true Word. As I have evolved my beliefs over the last 50 years, I have felt that I had been taught some things that were misinterpretations of what was written in the Bible, either distorted by human perspective, or incomplete, due to the interpreter not applying a consistent understanding of who God is, and what that means. I would say, explicitly relevant to BioLogos and this thread, there are two key characteristics of God, important in helping us to interpret what God meant when He asked His Prophets and Apostles to write something, which are better understood in the context of modern mathematical and cosmological knowledge. These two characteristics are the belief that God is Creator of the entire physical universe, and the belief that God is infinite.
What does it really mean when I say that God created the universe? Yes, that is the 300 trillion stars, and all the other matter and energy in the space between. However, I believe that creation of the universe also includes all the laws of physics by which the universe functions, and even the space and time dimensions of the universe as we experience those dimensions. God as Creator certainly means that God exists outside of the created universe – the Creator exists outside of the full extent in space and time of the creation. I note that this fact does help explain something that Jesus said: “Before Abraham was, I am.” His existence outside of the created universe places Him “simultaneously” before Abraham, and yet right there talking to the Jews. That is, God is there (present tense) before, during, and after the created universe is proceeding down its path through time.
How does this relate to interpreting the Bible? One key comment that has occurred to me is the question of how to interpret God’s statement in Genesis, as He observed His creation, that “it is very good”. I believe that God is commenting from God’s perspective, not from the perspective of a created human. What I mean by this is that I am sure that God is saying that the entire universe, through all space and time, had functioned exactly as She wanted it to function, that the universe had fulfilled the purposes for which He had created it. I do believe it is an anthropomorphic misinterpretation of what God said to claim that the earth was created as a perfect thing by God, at the time of its creation, but the perfect world that God wanted was ruined by Adam’s sin (with a little help from Satan and Eve).
I definitely accept that my interpretation requires a reconsideration of what God’s purposes are for creating us in this universe rather than just creating us in Heaven. In my current understanding, it is not God’s intent to have us live here in a perfect Garden of Eden, with no troubles or evil things happening. And, based on several biblical passages, and on my belief that Jesus’ death shows how much God loves each of us, I do not believe that God put us here to give us a “pass/fail” test to determine who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell.
What might be God’s purposes? Perhaps to experience things here that we cannot experience in Heaven. I believe that this suggestion is consistent with what Jesus said to the Jews who asked Him about the man blind from birth whether the man’s blindness was caused by the man’s sins, or his parents’ sins. Jesus said that the man was blind so that the glory of God could be shown through him. That leads me to realize that we could not help anyone, we could not offer comfort to anyone, and we could not be helped or comforted if there were no problems, no disabilities, and no illness or injury. I believe that one of God’s purposes for placing people in this world is so that we can experience the good of helping others, and either by our own actions or observation of the actions of others, we can experience the bad impact on relationships when someone chooses not to help a person in need.
The other characteristic I wish to discuss addresses directly the issue of how incomplete our knowledge of God is: What does it mean that God is infinite? Suppose every (finite) human brain that ever existed were filled completely with knowledge about our infinite God, with not a single bit of information in any brain a duplicate of information in any other brain. What percentage of the total infinite God would be described by all that knowledge? The mathematical truth is this: The sum total of all that knowledge is mathematically indistinguishable from 0% of the total infinite knowledge (no matter how small a finite number I state, all of our extremely large finite number is a smaller fraction of the infinite total than that number).
What does this mean? It is absolutely true that no one human, nor any group of humans, or even all humans together, have the whole truth about God, or the only truth about God. There is so much real truth that God can very well reveal one part of Herself to one group of humans, and a different (perhaps partially overlapping, perhaps with no overlap) part of Himself to a different group. I do firmly believe that what God has revealed to me as a Christian, both through the Bible and through other means, is not the whole story about God. I also strongly believe that my Christian beliefs and knowledge are sufficient knowledge for God’s purposes for me.
To summarize this rather lengthy discussion: Yes, I believe the Bible is an accurate partial description of God. However, this description, while being extremely important as a sufficient knowledge base on which we can build a proper relationship with God, is subject to misinterpretation due to our limited human understanding, and is absolutely a partial description of God, mathematically indistinguishable from 0%
Oh, very well said! I’ve tried to get that across to people before but I think I’m going to borrow your wording for next time.
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Yes, our understanding is limited and this leads to partial misinterpretations when reading the biblical scriptures. I do not know how large part of Christians really understand this. I have discussed with believers who attack against interpretations and doctrines on the basis that they do not depend on theological interpretations or doctrines because they just read the Bible and believe it as it is. O sancta simplicitas!
I would say that the biblical scriptures include (not is) an accurate partial description of God. The message was told to people living in another kind of culture, with the language they could understand. Therefore, it partly answers to questions that are not very relevant to us and do not answer to many questions that we feel are relevant. It is like gems wrapped in an ancient cloth. We see the cloth but looking deeper into what is inside, we find the gems.
Philosophically or mathematically, our understanding about God may be very close to 0% but is not 0%. If it was 0%, we would not be discussing here. We do not need to know everything, what is needed is very elementary information about God and what He wants to tell to us.
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Jerry, thank you for your positive response to my short message and sharing your experience. I hope to continue this discussion on a positive note. None of my comments is meant to be a negative criticism of anyone.
While this quotation might seem to do with time, it really does not. It refers to Exodus 3:13-15 where YHWH reveals God’s own Name, which translated is I AM, to Moses and us. Thus, what Jesus is saying that He is superior to Abraham, because He is YHWH. From this and other passages we get the Christian understanding of God as Trinity, Father, Son. and Holy Spirit, Three in One, One in Three.
I want to bring this out because. when we study the Book as the Word, we logically think of all parts of it as equal, which they are not. The New Covenant is superior to the Old.
Look at the Rich Young Ruler. He believed that Jesus was sent from YHWH, he obeyed the moral commandments, and yet he was not ready for the Kingdom of God because he did not Follow Jesus.
Christianity is not an extension of Judaism. It is based on a different Covenant. It appears to me however, that too much of evangelicalism is a legalistic extension of Judaism with a new Torah,
Where does that leave the Jews? I cannot really say how God will judge therm. Only how God reveals what YHWH expects of us Gentiles. Also, I think that Judaism has changed since the time of Jesus.
The Trinity is very important because God is too great and too complex to be known as just One. God is the Creator and Father/Abba of us all. This means that God is the Author of all valid scientific laws, but YHWH is more than that.
God is also and equally the Logos, Truth, whereby we can understand our world and the Father/Abba. Jesus is the true Good News Who demonstrated by His life that God is the God Who Relates and Abba is Love. Humans find fulfillment and salvation when they trust in Him.
God is also and equally Love/Agape, whereby humans can receive and return YHWH’s Love and share it with others and nature. The Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit of Love that holds things together even when we are trying to tear them apart.
Humans are created in the Image of YHWH, so we can share in God’s power, God’s Wisdom, and Gods Love.
He tells us way more than 0% about some of his most important attributes, not that we can comprehend (as in surround) them in our understanding, but we can certainly apprehend (as in grasp) them weakly and imperfectly. He tells us way more than 0% about his sacrificial love and his triune personhood, not to mention his sovereignty and omnipotence, omniscience (of which wisdom is a large subset), omnipresence, his timelessness (or timefulness) and more. Those are certainly not nothing.
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I’m sorry if I was unclear; I definitely believe that our knowledge of God is VERY important, and is the essential base on which any of us are able to form a relationship with Him. My point is only that I need to understand that I do not have full knowledge of God, and that my knowledge is so small a fraction of the totality of the God that I love that I dare not suggest that my God, whom I believe is infinite, can only relate to other humans in the same manner, with exactly the same knowledge base, as She relates to me.
The mathematical point still stands. Any finite number is mathematically indistinguishable from 0% of infinity. If you don’t believe me, look it up. And most religious wars have a significant component of the lack of understanding of how big infinity really is, with us finite humans claiming that anything that is different from what we know must be wrong. I fully accept that you know enough abut God so that you can build a proper relationship, and yes, that knowledge is important. But for any human to claim that his or her finite knowledge about God is measurable fraction of the totality that is our infinite God is inaccurate, and potentially misleading.
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I have a degree in math. 
(Just a baccalaureate and a year of grad school – I don’t consider myself a mathematician. ; - )
God is omnipotent. That is a 100% true statement about one of his attributes that we can know.
So this quote directly refers to Exodus 3: 13 - 15, where the God calls Himself the same thing. What I believe this means, in both cases, is that the Creator has to logically exist outside of the created universe which we now understand better than the ancient Jews could have understood. The universe is not just the “stuff” (matter and energy) in space, moving along in a uni-directional flow through time. The universe is all that “stuff”, plus the laws of physics by which that stuff moves around, and even the dimensions of space and time in which the stuff exists. God the Creator exists outside of the creation, which is why He calls Himself, “I AM.” God exists before, during, and after the entire created universe exists.
Please note that the percentage of the total being such a small number that it cannot be explicitly calculated as a finite number does not say anything about the truth of any of the statements. And I do believe that my (admittedly infinitesimal part of the total infinity of God) is true, or I wouldn’t believe it! What I do not claim is that I know how God relates to any other human, or other denizen of His universe in some far away environment, if such creatures exist. That is, God is so big that She can relate to others in a different way from how He relates to me.
I also do appreciate your belief in an omnipotent God; I do believe that God gets to do whatever God wants to do.