I’m currently featuring my favorite posts from 2011. In July I wrote a series of posts on the evangelical church’s claims about the Bible and the effect those claims can have on a person’s faith once they start examining closely. This issue is near and dear to me as it has been pivotal in my own faith journey and in the journey of many of my friends.
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Conservative evangelical Christians like to talk about “the infallible Word of God,” and how the Bible has authority over everyone and everything. If you ask an evangelical Protestant about the Bible, you’ll hear words like “inerrant” and “infallible” and “certainty” and “authority of Scripture” and “sufficient for everything.” They also tend to be all-or-nothing” about the Bible, teaching that if you aren’t certain that it is completely inerrant and infallible, you can’t believe any of it and may as well declare yourself an unbeliever.
These claims have always bothered me because they don’t reflect reality.
What many churches mean with the word infallible is perfect in every detail, and they mean error-free in every detail with the word inerrant. They teach that the Bible in its present form (or often in just one of today’s forms – a specific version, for example) is absolutely perfect and free of errors. They teach that you must hold these beliefs with a death-grip to maintain orthodox and saving faith. But I’ve learned from personal experience that clinging to infallible-means-perfection and inerrant-means-without-mistakes actually sets the Bible up to fail you. Certain definitions of inerrant and infallible will destroy faith.
Let me explain.
Like it or not, the Bibles we read today have two significant issues we must acknowledge and embrace in order to understand the Bible and place it properly into our faith: translation and copying issues and ancient language and culture issues.
Translation and Copying
Every English version of the Bible available to us is a translation, which means it is also, by necessity, an interpretation. If you’ve ever learned another language, you know that we don’t say things the same way, with the same number of words, in another language. A very simple example: in English, “Thank you very much” has four words. To say the same thing in Spanish or French only takes two words, and these two words do not each mean “thank” and “you” and “very” and “much.” In Spanish, we say “muchas gracias” which means “many thanks” in English. In French, we say “merci beaucoup” with means “thanks much.” Notice that the word order is different as well. It gets far more complicated than this, especially when you consider how languages change over time.
This is another reason why we have so many English versions of the Bible. The meanings, usage, and even spelling of words change in every language. We see it in English – here are two classic examples: the word “ass” which meant “donkey” 400 years ago but today is a derogatory term for a person’s back side, and the word “gay” which meant “happy” once upon a time but now describes a specific kind of sexuality. But English is a young language. The Bible contains words written over the course of 1000 – 1500 years.
We also find copying mistakes. The people responsible for copying and preserving the books of the Bible had to copy by hand until just a few hundred years ago. Sometimes they moved lines around, sometimes they misspelled, sometimes they even added their own notes or explanations to the text they were copying… and those notes were then copied into another copy.
Every Greek and Hebrew version available today has been copied countless times. There are copying mistakes, though everything I’ve read from people less polemic than Bart Ehrman assures me that the overall meaning of the Bible is intact because the multitude of copies allows scholars to compare and determine what the correct words, and word order, are. They also know from these comparisons that they still have preserved the general meaning or intention of each passage in question.
Ancient Languages and Cultures
In addition to translation issues, the Bible (and any ancient text, to be honest) has original-language issues.
We have many English-language versions of Bible in part because English lacks all the words to express what the Bible says in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. A classic example is “love” – we have one word, Greek has at least four with quite different meanings. Translators disagree on how to express those complex differences of meaning into English. Depending on their overall understanding of the Bible, different translators will go in different directions with these difficult passages, and even with ones that are less difficult but still could be translated more than one way.
Here’s another oddity about ancient languages. Did you know that Greek has no punctuation or spaces between words?
imagineifeverysentencewewrotelookedlikethisitwouldbeverydifficulttotellwh ereonewordstartsandendsnottomentionwheresentencesandtrainsofthoughtstartandend
Finally, stories and references to cultural mores get lost over thousands of years. For example, Paul quotes some of his contemporary secular writers and includes little sayings or –isms from his day that we are completely unfamiliar with. So the significance of these references gets lost in a casual reading the Bible, only drawn out with extensive background study.
So what now?
To deny these realities about the nature of the Bible is to demonstrate yourself afraid of the truth and destroy your credibility. Our God is a great and mysterious God, whose ways are not ours and who we dare not put into a box. God values the truth, and we do Him and the Bible great injustice when we deny the truth.
Once you acknowledge these realities about the nature of the Bible, you recognize that you must develop a more nuanced understanding of what makes the Bible a holy and authoritative book. Like most things in life, trying to simplify this topic and making dogmatic authoritative statements does plenty of harm and no good. Understanding the Bible is neither a simple nor clean endeavor. A very basic reading of the Bible and survey of history reveals that God likes a messy process. He does not wrap things up in a perfectly cubic box and put a perfect bow on top. To insist otherwise is deceitful and destructive.
I’m going to spend several posts over the next few weeks diving into this topic. Tomorrow I’ll dive into the definitions of inerrancy and infallibility. It has been crucial to the survival of my own faith, as I know it is for many others.
What questions about the Bible have you wrestled with? Where have you landed?
The rest of the posts in this series: The Bible and Perfection: When Modern and Ancient Collide, When the Bible Becomes Your Idol, and God Never Said the Bible Is Inerrant.
P.S. My post originally titled “Why You Should Date Your Church” has been picked up by ChurchLeaders.com. It’s running today with a few tweaks and the new title, “Can Your Church Divorce You?” Come by and join the discussion!
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I no longer believe in “inerrancy.” If the Bible truly is inerrant, where are the details about the first Easter different in each gospel? I do, however, believe that the Bible is trustworthy when it comes to pointing us towards the true inerrant Word of God, which is the person of Jesus Christ.
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I like your differentiation between “inerrant” and “trustworthy.” As I wrote in the second post in this series (here: http://joyinthisjourney.com/2011/07/the-bible-and-perfection-when-modern-and-ancient-collide/), evangelicals mean “without error” when they use the word inerrant, but I think a better meaning is “true.” Although I have to defer to Rich and his excellent comments on the history of terms and arguments. I’m not sure what to make of what he wrote, but I know that definitions and history is important.
I think I mentioned in your original post, that inerrancy as it is used today by evangelicals is not the same as the historic church use nor the Reformers. The term was “without error,” meaning the text of Scripture is true in everything it says (without error). However, with B. B. Warfield in 1880, he changed the referent from the existing original language text to the manuscript evidence. By doing so, he ceded to liberals a very important concept, and unfortunately the wrong battle has been fought on the wrong field.
As a conservative Lutheran I am delighted to continue in the tradition that focuses on the historic referents and terms: apostolic (most important), inspired, and without error (not referring to manuscript differences).
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I do remember your comment, Rich. This is an area in which I need to do more reading. I’m curious what you mean by “without error.” What I’ve read is that we need to be careful not to hold the Scriptures to a standard they cannot meet. They were written thousands of years ago in their own context, before many of the discoveries we know today. It isn’t fair to expect them to read like a textbook does today. If you have any recommendations for further reading, I’d love to hear them.
That is why the phrase throughout church history was “without error” — what it reported was in fact true and without error. It was in reference to the original language text that was available. The term inerrancy refers to “the original manuscripts.” (those written by the authors like Matthew, Luke, Paul, etc.). The problem is that we do not have any “original manuscripts.” Also, “inerrancy” has established an late 19th century understanding on 1st century writings, which is not helpful. The advantage of “without error” is that it reflects the attitude of those early in church history (same approach as Biblical writers), who wrote from the same perspective, not from the perspective of 21st century historians, etc.
The essential terms for Scripture were: apostolic (came from apostle or a companion of apostle), catholic (not Roman Catholic) (everywhere accepted), orthodox (correct doctrine), without error, and infallibility (it accomplishes what is proclaims, i.e. Isaiah 55). I will look for a good reference. BTW, in the Book of Concord (Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1580), the reference is often made to the Scriptures “without error” and it does not impose the standards of the day on that phrase or its understanding.
http://www.bookofconcord.org/
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I haven’t heard any version of inerrancy or infallibility refer to the current English translations, but always to the original text.
The other key issue we have to take into account is that all Scripture is God breathed (2 Tim. 3:16). This is why Evangelicals (and Christians prior to Evangelicalism) vehemently claim that Scripture is authoritative, and that any teaching outside of Scripture (such as prophecy) must not contradict what is revealed in Scripture. This is also why it’s an “all or nothing” deal. If we can question the validity of one text, we can question the validity of the very text that gives Scripture its authority. If we do that, we may as well chuck the whole thing because we then can’t believe any of it. The same Scripture that tells us about Jesus being born of a virgin tells us of what authority in the home looks like, what our response to the unchristian government should be, and that we actually have hope in this fallen, broken world.
Finally, God is great and mysterious. He is also sovereign over all things, and nothing happens without His permission. The 66 books of the Protestant canon were not forged as the Bible in defiance to His will, but in submission to it. The laborious work of copying and translating the early texts wasn’t done outside of His purview. Each translation says exactly what it’s supposed to say. Now, this poses problems when we expect “thought for thought” translations to communicate the literal meanings we come to expect from “word for word” translations.
John Piper handles addresses many concerns with textual criticism (if I remember right) in his message on John 7:53–8:11: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/neither-do-i-condemn-you–3
That said, I’m all for invoking a practice of Christians learning Hebrew and Greek so we can read the original text
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Don, from where does the Scripture get its authority? I mean, how specifically do we know the specific 66 books are Scripture and other writings, even by the apostles themselves, are not? This is difficult for me.
I reject the idea that inerrancy is an all-or-nothing deal. That is a false dichotomy. We do not chuck the whole thing because one part is questionable any more than we chuck everything a person says because they make a mistake on one thing.
Joy, I too think that it is not a case of inerrancy or nothing. But (see my post above), I think inerrancy gets into trouble with that.
Interestingly, Lutherans are ones who have never defined the absolute limits of which books are canonical, reflecting the reality of the early church struggles with exactly your questions, Joy. The inclusion of books in the New Testament in particular is not determined by church councils. Rather church councils recognized what the church catholic (local congregations everywhere) was already using as Scripture.
BTW, I think 2 Peter 3:14-18 offers a direct statement about Paul’s letters being Scripture, when Peter puts them on the same level as “Scripture” (meaning the Old Testament).
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Joy, your question seems to be less “is Scripture inerrant” but rather “is this text Scripture?”
Here’s what we know for certain: 1) All Scripture is God-breathed (which is where it gets its authority), 2) Rich is correct in that Peter referred to Paul’s writings as on par with the Old Testament as Scripture, 3) God is sovereign over the original writing of and the current translation of Scripture.
Now, there is an argument against what I just said, namely that I pull all of those points from Scripture. If we’re going to question what is and isn’t Scripture, and whether Scripture is inerrant, than the very texts that tell us these points are called into question. So, at that point it becomes a circular argument filled with and driven by doubt.
Some doubt is a good thing. I don’t know all the answers to why Scripture is inerrant, but I have faith that God has placed in me to believe in Him and trust that He’s got things handled even when I don’t understand it. I once knew more than I do now about how the canonization process happened, but the details are too fuzzy for me to relay accurately.
And, here’s how outside my ability to comprehend this goes: how does the same sovereign God allow the Protestant church to use 66 books and the Catholic church to include others? I don’t know. I don’t know what weight the Catholic church gives the Apocrypha. I don’t know whether it’s considered on par and as authoritative as the Old and New Testaments, or whether they see it as we do, some useful historical information but not authoritative.
Ultimately, my question in response to anyone asking this type of question (and, no, this isn’t a personal thing targeted toward Joy)is this: Why are you asking? Are you asking because you believe the Scripture is authoritative and are curious as to how it took its current form? Or are you asking because there’s part of Scripture you disagree with, and are looking for a way to circumvent its authority? There may be other possible scenarios, but those are the two that seem to trend.
I’m grateful for you, and for this post, Joy. Asking hard questions is a good thing.
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Don, even further, the RCC determined that the Vulgate (by Jerome) is the final Scripture, not the Hebrew or Greek texts.
Ultimately, we have to ask the two most critical questions: 1) What is most important? 2) What is the source for determining #1?