Infallibility and Inspiration
If we think the Bible is inspired, must we also think it inerrant? Inerrantists certainly have reason to believe we must; the implication affords them a simple modus tollens argument against their detractors:
1a. If the Bible is inspired, then the Bible is inerrant.
2a. The Bible is not inerrant.
3a. Therefore, the Bible is not inspired.
Anyone who believes 2a, then, becomes (to the inerrantist) a reprehensible disbeliever in the inspiration of Scripture.
But why should we believe 1a? Here is one argument:
“If infallibility can attach to the ‘spiritual truth’ enunciated by the Biblical writers, then it is obvious that some extraordinary divine influence must have intervened and become so operative so as to prevent human fallibility from leaving its mark upon the truth expressed. If divine influence could thus intrude itself at certain points, why should not the same preserving power exercise itself at every point in the writing of Scripture?”[1]
"Inspiration" by Lars Justinen
Two claims are being made: first, if God could have made any part of Scripture inerrant, He could have made every part of Scripture inerrant; second, that if God could have made every part of Scripture inerrant, he would have. The first claim seems to be a relatively straightforward claim about divine omnipotence. But why ought we believe the second claim?
I admit that no particularly appealing arguments present themselves even when I deliberately adopt a charitable state of mind. The best candidate I can imagine is something like:
1b. God always does whatever will most effectively accomplish His purposes.
2b. Providing us with correct information is one of God’s purposes.
3b. Therefore, God always does whatever will most effectively provide us with correct information.
4b. God had the ability to make Scripture inerrant.
5b. Inerrant Scripture provides us with correct information.
6b. Therefore, God made Scripture inerrant.
3b above is manifestly false – it is not the case that God goes out of his way to provide us with every sort of correct information. We do not learn by special revelation facts about the structure of benzene, the digestive tract of the hippopotamus, or the finer points of category theory. Surely, though, God could have arranged things such that we obtained that information by special revelation. So it looks like we were wrong about 2b – God only really cares about providing us with certain kinds of information. (I am content here not to specify which kinds of information; it won’t matter for the below.) So the supporter of our argument for inerrancy will need to show that all of the information in the Bible happens to be in the set of information God wants to reveal to us.[2] And that is a theological project with little hope of success.
In general, I think it appropriate to wonder why we were attracted to 2b in the first place. Is our possession of information an end in itself, or is it instrumental for some more important purpose? It seems to me that God reveals certain information (usually information about Himself) to us in order to accomplish his redemptive plan. This opinion, I think, is widely shared. And we can easily imagine how excessive informational content could have impaired the efficacy of the scriptures as instruments of God’s self-revelation. The thought is familiar: if, for example, the Genesis creation account had been concerned with dispelling the ancient Near Eastern belief that the ‘firmament’ was a solid metallic barrier several miles above the surface of the earth, it would have been almost totally incomprehensible to contemporaries, and the emphasis of the text would have been distorted. So in some cases we have reason to expect that God would not have provided correct information. Moreover, we can imagine that certain information contained in the Scriptures is irrelevant to God’s self-revelation; for example, the finer historical details of the Gospels (the order of the calling of the disciples, the slight differences between accounts of the empty tomb). So in some cases we have no reason to expect that God would have provided correct information.
Whether my arguments here are sound or not, I hope I’ve at least shown that 1a is by no means a self-evident or even easily defensible proposition. There is room in Christian discourse for discussion about where we might expect to find errancy in an inspired text.
[1] John Murray, “The Attestation of Scripture” in The Infallible Word, N. B. Stonehouse and P. Woolley, eds. (Nutley: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1946), pp. 5.
[2] And his answer must not presume that the presence of some information in the Bible is sufficient evidence that it has been revealed to us by God; to do so is to assume that God made every part of Scripture inerrant, which is the point to be proved.
Interesting thoughts, though I do think the best “inerrantists” would provide other, different and better reasons for their beliefs than just this. Regardless, I do think your distinction between what Scripture is “aiming” at and what it says “incidentally” (to use my own terms here) is crucial, and that inspiration has to do with the former, not the latter.
Assuming you agree, my question would be: would you see the “inspiredness” of what God reveals “in order to accomplish his redemptive plan” as inerrant, perfect, infallible? I think that would be the historically mainstream and orthodox view of most of the church; where modern day conservative inerrantists often go wrong is in trying to expand this to scientific and philosophical areas the biblical writers were completely uninterested in and had no intention of speaking to.
BTW,along these lines, I’ve been very helped by this essay by the Dutch theologian Herman Ridderbos on the nature of Scripture’s authority & inspiration:
http://www.the-highway.com/scripture_Ridderbos.html
Hi Nick,
I don’t know. The argument I presented is reproduced exactly from Harold Lindsell’s widely circulated and revered evangelical book The Battle for the Bible, and he understands it (as far as I can tell) as THE main argument for his position. I’m sure there are many arguments for the infallibility of /at least some/ of Scripture, but I can’t think of any other arguments for the infallibility of /all/ of Scripture except for the dubious “slippery slope” argument.
And yes, whatever in Scripture is revealed by God in order to accomplish His redemptive plan (that it, whatever can be seen to be the heart of the message of the scriptures) is going to be inerrant.
Harold Lindsell! I can’t stand that book of his…I suppose it is revered in certain circles, but I would turn to B.B. Warfield or J. I. Packer for more classic expositions of the evangelical view of Scripture than him. Vanhoozer is one of the more helpful proponents today of a coherent inerrancy position:
http://uga.ruf.org/site_content/attachments/0000/0640/Inerrancy_of_Scripture_Vanhoozer.pdf
But back to Lindsell…he argues in that book (given his unbelievably specific and narrow view of inerrancy) that Peter denied Jesus either 6 or 9 times on the final night, since the details of the parallel passages differ a bit in the various gospels (and thus must be referring to different events, given his strict view of inerrancy). This is certainly not how the best evangelicals have understood the inspiration of Scripture!
BTW, I think the more standard argument for inerrancy within these camps runs more like this:
1.) God cannot lie/always speaks truth in His words or communication
2.) The Bible is God’s Word/communication
3.) Therefore, the Bible cannot lie and must always speak the truth (i.e. be inerrant)
I think there are holes even in this (for instance, “inerrancy” still needs to be defined, and it completely leaves out the human element of Scripture), but it does get a little closer to the truth, I think, and actually reflects how the biblical writers themselves think about the matter (i.e. the nature of God’s written word is consistently attached to the nature of His character in many passages).