In that I mean, many (probably most) Bible scholars outside of the evangelical realm would say the Bible is not inerrant, not infallible, written by non-eyewitnesses decades later, at best (or whatever your favorite example would be) They would argue apologetic Christians are the ones taking liberties on the evidence, etc.
I suppose the answer is largely a spiritual one, that those do not have faith, but I am both science-minded, logical, academic and hold that the Bible is true.
This is a good question in my opinion, and it parallels many of the science-faith tensions we discuss here.
A few thoughts:
“The Bible is true” can mean different things. I hold that the Bible is true in what it intends to teach—that it reliably reveals God’s character, humanity’s condition, and God’s redemptive work. But “true” doesn’t require me to defend that Job was written by an eyewitness, or that the author of Matthew was literally the disciple Matthew, or that every historical detail in Chronicles is precise. Those are questions about how the Bible communicates truth, not whether it does.
Many faithful, orthodox Christians engage seriously with mainstream biblical scholarship and don’t see it as threatening faith. They’d say conservative evangelical positions sometimes do (or often) take liberties with the evidence by forcing ancient texts into modern categories like “inerrant historical reporting.” The genre of Genesis 1-11, for instance, matters for how we read it—and I’ve personally come to love Scripture more than I did when I read it as “inerrant historical reporting.”
Recognizing human authorship, ancient literary conventions, and the theological (not always chronological) purposes of biblical texts doesn’t make the Bible less divinely inspired—it helps us read it more faithfully.
The spiritual dimension matters, but not as an escape hatch from evidence. Faith trusts that these texts—written by real people in real historical contexts—still reliably point us to God. That’s different from saying “faith overrides what scholarship shows.”
I would argue that I’ve found a more genuine faith in leaving behind the “apologetic Christians” approach, and despite the fact that I am less “certain” about some topics, I gained something much greater.
I would say one thing that I’ve experienced in my faith-journey is that I once viewed Genesis as literal history, but as a person of science, led by faith and led by evidence, I have come to accept the mainstream views on age of the universe, earth, etc. I still believe that Jesus is Lord (we confess such as church every week) and agree what you’re saying about the Bible being true can have many profound depths to it.
I don’t think most of those really apply to orthodoxy. I mean, if God inspired scripture, does it really matter if Mark written in 40CE by a companion of Peter or by an unknown Christian in 75CE after the Roman-Jewish war? If God inspired it does it matter if Matthew was written by an eyewitness or not? God playing a role in the composition of scripture should be more than enough for any Christian to trust it. Its date and authorship is just an open question and we are free to go wherever the evidence takes us. The gospel of Luke itself says it was not written by an eyewitness! And Church tradition ascribed Mark to a non-eyewitness, which if we are weighing arguments, is certainly going to to support that since we could ask why Mark was not attributed directly to an apostle if the attribution was made up from whole cloth.
I think a lot of Christians put a little too much stock in historical apologetics and don’t realize the latitude ancient bios allowed an author in telling a story.
I also don’t find the Bible infallible or inerrant in the normal sense. I think the Bible is inerrant and infallible insofar as it serve the purposes for which God intends it. Nothing about the Bible tells me God cares about inerrancy. From textual criticism, to canonization and translation, the how the NT uses the OT, to its internal contents and doublets. It’s messy all around. The Bible is good enough to serve God’s purposes. The same is true of all the people God chooses throughout scripture. They are imperfect and screw up but God’s will ends up being done either way. I understand that we can’t attribute errors to God so we may have to review our understanding of inspiration if my view is correct, but I know that God can absolutely use an imperfect text to teach and teach people. It would be terrible theology to suggest otherwise as if our omnipotent and omnipresent God was incapable of doing such.
The difference would be the lens through which Scripture is viewed.. A cold, impartial and academic view will differ wildly from a spiritual, faithful view.
Of course there is also the definition of Orthodoxy that will also vary.
The nature and understanding of Scripture can be a lifelong odyssey. I, personally, think that you can study too hard, and dissect it to oblivion, but..
That’s a big aspect of the biblical worldview that atheists and YECists get wrong – they impose their worldview’s definition of “true” without asking if the Bible holds that same definition.
It could be argued that we should expect what are errors from the MSWV perspective; they function to remind us that the whole thing isn’t about knowledge, it’s about a Person.
Sort of related:
My wife leads a Bible study and they are studying Isaiah. She was asked by one of the lecture leaders if it OK to bring up the Isaiah was not all written by Isaiah, and some scholars divide it into 3 books. she was genuinely surprised to hear that despite leading Bible studies for many years, but has been in a conservative evangelical bubble in all that time, along with most of the participants of the study.
Academics have held that in one form or another since 1775 at least, but you never hear it from conservative evangelical circles. So, in actually , it is the conservative evangelicals that actually hold unorthodox views unknowingly oftentimes.
I loved Michael Heiser’s response to that on one occasion, when someone said it wasn’t all written by Isaiah: he shrugged and said, “So? It’s still inspired”.
We get all worked up over authorship, but God plainly doesn’t since most of the books of the Bible have no given author.