Scripture: Infalliblity vs. Inerrancy

Jeremy stated:

I would be curious to hearing about your conclusion and finding on your scripture paper. I would love for you to illustrate the infallibility vs. inerrancy debate. Just a thought.......

Here Goes:

Lucky for me, the paper was about what I believe (it was a credo paper, not an academic process), so the scholarly language and background was assumed on many topics. In that specific paper, we were asked to pick any topic from the doctrine of scripture (examples: how the canon was formed, infallibility vs. innerancy, modes on inspiration) and write what we believed to be true about the subject.

I chose infallibility vs. innerancy. I was granted the luxury of being able to assume that the Bible was seen both as inspired and authoritative, so i'll speak little of either of those issues here. Instead, I'll briefly explain (as Jeremy asked) the infallibility vs. innerancy debate and give my brief opinion and conclusion.

Both "infalliblity" and "innerancy" are traditional theological terms to describe the level of "truth" that scripture contained. Both are terms I'll start by defining in the traditional sense.

"Innerancy" is the belief that the original autographs written by the writers of the Bible contained no errors. The premise is that God is perfect, cannot lie, and inspired the Bible, thus the Bible is perfect and cannot lie. It holds this view to the original autographs only as translating and updating and editing may have altered the validity of some claims the Bible makes.

The major critique of inerrancy comes with things that appear to be invalid or contradictory. Generally, issues of science and history that today are proven to have happened, or be different than the Bible says are hard for some to validate as true. It is because of this critique that the "infallibility" view has also become well known.

"Infallibility" is the belief that the original autographs written by the writers of the Bible contain no errors as it comes to faith, life and practice. It allows for the Bible to be wrong in areas of science and/or history because, generally, scientific and historical motivations were not on the mind of the authors. Instead, the author's intent was to communicate on issues of faith, life and practice. It defines lying differently that the "inerrantist" view would.

The "inerrantist" would say that God cannot lie, therefore, all he inspired must be true, while the "infallibist" would define truth as willful deceit and thus say that God did not try to willfuly deceive us in any matters of faith, life or practice and thus has not lied in the Bible, regardless of what the original authors thought to be true of science or not.

In my paper, and here both, I easily proclaim that based on the traditional definitions, I fall on the "infalliblity" side of the argument.

I however, would also claim that the "infalliblity" side of the argument believes that the Bible was "without error."

As all true "inerrantist" would say, genre and context matter. For example, "inerrantists" would not argue that all things said in poetry happened as stated. They give the liberty to the author to use a specific genre to accomplish a specific purpose. Thus, the imaginative language used to describe God, or us, does not have to accurately reflect (in a literal way) God or us.

Because "innerantist" themselves have decided to include this criteria for defining "errors of fact" I would argue that no scientific misconceptions be seen as errors in the Bible.

The Bible was not a science manual. The scientific knowledge available at the time the Bible was written is limited compared to today, which is limited compared to the future. Fortunately, the authors were not concerned with giving its listeners a correct scientific understanding of the world (or even the creation of it) but were concerned with teaching people what it looks like to be the people of God.

The Bible does this without error. It is INERRANT to that effect. That however is not the typical view of inerrancy.

I am unashamedly "infalliblitstic." I just wish the terms could be re-defined.

I believe the closing statement in my paper was something like:

I believe that someone can affirm that scripture is both inspired and authoritative without having to hold that it is inerrant.



I'm positive this might be clear as mud, so feel free to ask questions or state opinions.