The doctrine of Inerrancy simply states that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact: all of the Bible is true, from book to book, chapter to chapter, verse to verse, in every way, concerning everything that it talks about. This does not mean that the Bible contains all there is to know concerning a given subject but, with regard to what it does mention about that subject, it is absolutely factual.
Sometimes claims are made against the factuality of the Bible based upon what appears to be scientific errors, such as statements of the Sun moving around the Earth but these statements are describing an event through the eyes of an observer using everyday speech. For someone standing on the surface of the Earth describing a sunset, it is quite common for them, even today, to describe the “Sun moving.”
Sometimes the Bible gives different quotations for the same speaker for the same phrase but we must remember that all cultures do not follow the exact quotation rules we follow in both American and British cultures. Other cultures regard loose rephrasing as acceptable. In these cultures, it is perfectly fine to quote a general meaning rather than exact words. This does nothing to the phrase’s truthfulness. If Bob told me he’d “be back in thirty minutes”, it would be completely truthful for me to say that Bob said he’d “be back later.”
Critics also point to the use of rough grammer to attempt to point out mistakes. How can an all-powerful God make grammatical mistakes? We must remember that the Bible was written by God through specific men in their own language and grammer using their personalities and literary styles. We must not question why God chose to do it this way, but accept that He did so. This also has not bearing on the statement’s truth or falsity. If I wrote “Bob’ll be back more sooner,” this also would do notthing to the factuality of the statement, regardless of poor grammer.
Others state that the Bible is only truthful in what it says about faith and religious practice. I’d like to ask them how much faith we can place in a document that makes other claims about reality that are untrue by this definition? Why would we belive the “religious things” of the Bible when we think that the “historical or scientific” details are falshoods? One can not hold one belief without the other.
The doctrine of Inerrancy can be summarized as follows: God, who is truth, inspired the Bible, which is therefore truth. The Bible was written by men with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who then authenticates this written word to the reader. Since the Bible comes from God, it is without error or fault in all of its teaching; it has divine inerrancy. The Scriptures get their authority from God, not the church and Scripture surpasses all church creeds or statements. God’s Word was progressively revealed over time through the writers of the Bible. God never changed His mind, He only revealed more and more as time passed. Anything in the Bible that appears to be contrary to scientific or historical “facts” is still correct: we just havn’t learned how to correctly interpret the “facts” yet to fully understand them. When we do, they will fall completely in line with the revelation of the Bible. Since God created both the Earth and the Bible, is is impossible for them to contradict each other. Human beings, however, can misinterpret either. Remember when science thought the Earth was flat?
My name is Richard Smolenski and I am a theologian in training. I have an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from