03 Some Excuses

Some Excuses

Some say the inerrancy is either unimportant, irrelevant, or unnecessary to the faith. Therefore, all the furor being stirred up over it is merely a tempest in a teapot, and those who insist on it are disturbing the peace of the church. But that simply is not so. Inerrancy is a crucial issue, for if the Bible is not completely without error, then it must have at least one error in it. Now if we could all agree on where that one error is, the problem might conceivably be tolerated. But, if current literature is any guideline, there would be about twenty candidates for that “error,” and that means there might be as many as twenty errors. And if there could be as many as twenty errors, then the question becomes: How can I trust the Bible at all? Inerrancy is not a tempest in a teapot.

Several reasons are commonly offered for concluding that inerrancy is a nonessential doctrine.

Those who oppose or who want to diminish the importance of inerrancy often make the statement: “Inasmuch as the Bible does not clearly teach inerrancy, neither can we.” At the very least that places those who insist on the importance of inerrancy in the position of insisting on more than the Bible does. At the most, it implies or asserts that inerrancy is not a biblical doctrine. But for the statement to be true requires (a) that we can show that the Bible does not clearly teach inerrancy, and

(b) that if it does not, in the sense of providing proof texts, we cannot assert inerrancy on the basis of an inductive study of the evidence. Let us examine those requirements. Does the Bible clearly teach inerrancy? The answer will depend on what is meant by “clearly.” If by “clearly” one means proof texts such as those present in the Bible for substitutionary atonement, for example (Matthew 20:28), then admittedly there is not that type of “clear” evidence for inerrancy. But many doctrines for which there are no proof texts are accepted by evangelicals as being clearly taught in the Scriptures. The doctrine of the Trinity furnishes the best example of that. It is fair to say that the Bible does not clearly teach the doctrine of the Trinity, if by clearly one means there are proof texts for the doctrine. In fact, there is not even one proof text, if by proof text we mean a verse or passage that “clearly” states that there is one God who exists in three persons.

How then do we arrive at a doctrine of the Trinity? Simply by accepting two lines of evidence in the Bible: (1) clear statements that teach there is only one God: and (2) equally clear statements that there was someone called Jesus and someone designated the Holy Spirit who in addition to God the Father claimed to be God. Such evidence permits only one of two conclusions: either Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not divine, or God exists as a triunity. Orthodox Christians have never shied away from the second conclusion even though evidence for it is of a different kind of clarity than that which proof texts provide.

Or, to take another example, many deny that Jesus is God because, they say, there is no “clear” evidence that He ever claimed to be divine. Robert Alley, then of the University of Richmond, stirred up a furor among Southern Baptists when he asserted that Jesus “never really claimed to be God or to be related to him” (“Some Theologians Question Factual Truth of Gospels,” Richmond News Leader, 17 July 1978, p. 1). Even though he possessed the same evidence from the Bible as those who conclude that Jesus did claim to be God, he arrived at a completely different conclusion. The “proof texts” commonly used by evangelicals did not for him clearly teach the deity of Christ. Such heresy outrages orthodox believers, and rightly so.

Though I have not yet discussed the evidence for the clear teaching of the Bible as to its own inerrancy, let us assume for the moment that it does teach it clearly, though not necessarily by proof texts. If so, are errantists demanding of the Bible a higher standard of clarity to prove inerrancy than they require to prove the deity of Christ or the Trinity? In other words, do they not have one set of criteria for clearly proving the doctrine of the Trinity and another for inerrancy? The above illustrations prove the fallacy of concluding that if something is not “proof texted” in the Bible, we cannot teach the results of an inductive study or reach logical conclusions drawn from the evidence that is there. If that were so, I could never teach the doctrines of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the deity of the Holy Spirit, or even forms of church government.

Often I hear people say, “I will go only as far as the Bible does.” That can be a good standard, because we do not ever want to add to what the Bible teaches. But neither do we want to omit anything it teaches whether by clear proof texts, clear deduction, clear induction, clear implication, clear logic, or clear principles. The claim for not wanting to go beyond what the Bible teaches can be merely an excuse for not wanting to face the implications of what it does teach. And I fear that for some that has been their excuse for not wanting to face what the Bible does say about its own inerrancy. A second excuse for diluting the importance of inerrancy is that since we do not possess any original manuscripts of the Bible and since inerrancy is related to those originals only, the doctrine of inerrancy is only a theoretical one and therefore nonessential. It is true that we do not possess any of the original manuscripts of the Bible, and the doctrine on inerrancy, like inspiration, is predicated only of the original manuscripts, not on any of the copies. The two premises in the statement above are correct, but those particular premises do not prove at all that inerrancy is a nonessential doctrine.

Obviously, inerrancy can be asserted only in relation to the original manuscripts because only they are the original record of what came directly from God under inspiration. The very first copy of a letter of Paul, for instance, was in reality only a copy and not the original that Paul himself wrote or dictated. Both inspiration and inerrancy are predicated only on the originals. But would an errantist claim that inspiration is a nonessential doctrine, on the basis of not having the originals, and not attributing inspiration to the copies? I think not. Then why does he say that about inerrancy?

Another argument is that inerrancy is a recent teaching about which the church formerly was not concerned; therefore, we need not be so concerned today. The argument from church history seems to rear its head almost every time any doctrine is discussed. If the doctrine was taught in ancient times, it is supposedly more reliable. If, on the other hand, it has not been taught until more recent years, then it is suspect. Of course, the argument itself is invalid. The truth or untruth of any doctrine does not depend on whether or not it was ever taught in church history. Its truthfulness depends solely on whether or not it is taught in the Bible. Now, admittedly, a teaching that no one has ever before heard about might be suspect, but the Bible, not church history, is the standard against which all teachings must be measured. Nevertheless, the history excuse persists with the doctrine of inerrancy. It is recent, they say, therefore the debate should cease.

Some say inerrancy originated with B. B. Warfield at Princeton in the late 1800s. Others claim that Frances Turretin, a Lutheran theologian, started it all just after the Reformation.

Actually neither man did. We believe that Christ taught inerrancy as well as did the apostle Paul. Furthermore, Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers, and other great men held to it throughout church history. Granted, such evidence from history does not validate the doctrine (Christ’s and Paul’s teaching do, and we shall examine that later), but it invalidates the claim that says inerrancy is a recent invention. For example, Augustine ( A.D. 354-430) clearly stated: “Most disastrous consequences must follow our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us and committed to writing, did put down in these books anything false. If you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of those books, which, if appearing to anyone difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away as a statement, in which intentionally, the author declared what was not true.” [Epistula, p. 281] Here in ancient terms is the same domino theory mentioned earlier.

Again, Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) plainly said, “Nothing false can underlie the literal sense of Scripture” (Summa Theologica 1. 1, 10, ad. 3). Also, Luther declared, “I have learned to ascribe this honor, i.e., infallibility, only to books which are termed canonical, so that I confidently believe that not one of their authors erred” (M. Reu, Luther and the Scriptures, p. 24). Again, “The Scriptures have never erred” (Works of Luther, XV: 1481). John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote, “Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible there may well be a thousand. If there is one falsehood in that book it did not come from the God of truth” (Journal VI: 117).

How can anyone say, then, that inerrancy is a recent invention? But even if it were, it could still be a true doctrine.

Only the Bible, not history, can tell us.