Comment by Brian

July 10, 2006 @ 11:16 pm

Hey man! I’m dying to comment on this but just can’t spend the time I need to on it at the moment. I’m gonna try my best to get to it tomorrow.

Just wanted to let you know that your work wasn’t going unnoticed!

Comment by Jenn

July 11, 2006 @ 2:32 pm

Me, too! Brian and I had a great conversation about this on Sunday but I haven’t had the uninterrupted time to comment in the manner this topic deserves. Maybe we need to do a joint comment later on tonight. Whaddya think, dear?

Comment by Jenn

July 11, 2006 @ 11:10 pm

Okay, just on a whim, I checked wikipedia for info on inerrancy and came up with a pretty interesting article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy

There are tons of extra links and related info at the bottom. I was particularly interested in the link to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. It is an ecumenical, Protestant statement done in 1978 by such prominent men as J.I. Packer and R.C. Sproul (to name only few). It’s a long read, but quite interesting. I’m ruminating…

Comment by Brian

July 12, 2006 @ 5:20 pm

I was also wondering, is it fair or accurate to say that the accepted definition of ’Infallible & Inerrant’ is ’being without error’?

Just talking off the top of my head here….. I don’t think anyone but the most rabid KJV-ONLYist would say that the scriptures we have today are without error. All you have to do is compare translations and see that differences do exist. And some of those differences are mutually exclusive, so that they cannot both be true.

So, for me, the question becomes were the scriptures without error as they were originally written. I don’t really have any problems with the transmission of the text - I think there are enough historical documents to verify that the scripture as we have it today is mighty close to it’s original form. My question rests more on what is the nature of inspiration. How do we understand the process by which Paul, Peter, David, etc captured the divine revelation which was given to them?

Enough rambling. I may have to turn this into a post since I’m kinda getting off-track of where you started from.

Comment by jenn

July 12, 2006 @ 6:04 pm

This is really hard to think about in parts, jlove! One question leads to another and another and another. I’m interested to see how you’re planning to split it.

In regard to what Brian wrote, I think that it’s hard to say that originally Scripture (as the Word of God) is not inerrant. If it is literally God’s Word, then it has to be inerrant, by definition. So that leads us to Brian’s question about the nature of inspiration for the writers. And I’m having an easier time thinking about NT writers than OT writers for some reason. I have to remind myself that the same God inspired both parts. But in the same way? I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but it’s something I’m pondering. Just my 2 cents worth at the moment…

Comment by Rey

July 14, 2006 @ 8:03 pm

We probably have to get into what we mean by infallible and inerrant, what the early church councils meant by it, what the psalmist might have thought about the purity of the Word and what was New Testament writers take on it. After all, they often quote the LXX which is sometimes differently worded than other translations. In some cases numbers are completely different.

And regarding literal interpretation: I think we can take Revelations literally which involves literarily. In so doing the literary use of an image then explained as being something else is literally telling you that the text has made use of a symbol to signify something else.

IE: “Like a dog in heat that guy is constantly following after the ladies.” I used an image and a hyperbole but that doesn’t cloak what I mean as indecipherable.

Comment by Lynn

July 17, 2006 @ 12:19 am

I, too, wish I could talk about this subject, but don’t know how to condense what I want to say. Seminary libraries contain volumes on this subject alone.

My one/couple ideas to offer briefly is that the Bible shows itself to be a miraculous book when you study the prophecies about the life of Christ alone.

Jesus Himself commented that the Scriptures *had* to be fulfilled, that the Scripture could not be broken, and that they testified of Him. This is where I get my understanding of infallible and inerrant. I don’t understand everything, but what I have seen is awe-inspiring — Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Micah 5:2, the 70 weeks of Daniel (all interpretations point to it either being completely fulfilled, or mostly fulfilled at the first coming of Christ).

Regarding what you are talking about — there are degrees of certainty we can get to with varying texts. It is easy for us to understand that we shouldn’t murder, either physically, or in our heart, as the Bible teaches.

It is another thing to understand what Paul meant when he said a woman would be saved in childbirth, or what headcoverings mean in that passage in Corinthians, or what the angel said to Daniel which made Daniel say, “I heard, but I did not understand.”

How we got the canon as it is today is a whole other interesting topic.

Good entries on this blog!

Comment by Brian

July 17, 2006 @ 3:35 pm

Rey’s and Lynn’s comments remind me just how BIG this topic is. Not only are there questions around inerrancy of the text as it was first recorded but also issues how certain we can be that we understand what we are reading.

Can we make a delineation between “error free” and “inerrant”? Guess that might take some research, like Rey suggests. All this stuff takes so much time.

Comment by jenn

July 17, 2006 @ 9:01 pm

In discussing this stuff with some friends the other night a great question came up - how can you continue to have faith and ask these type of potential faith-crushing questions? On what do you then base your faith? I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Like Brian says, BIG questions!

Comment by jlove

July 19, 2006 @ 8:04 pm

All good comments!

I would like to make 1 quick response to Jenn’s last comment…

In discussing this stuff with some friends the other night a great question came up - how can you continue to have faith and ask these type of potential faith-crushing questions? On what do you then base your faith?

First, great question! Second, the question of ‘On what do you then base your faith?’ is exactly part of the cause of ‘Why’ I have been thinking about this subject and started asking questions. I will probably start addressing this more in a future post, but my short response is…

Is our ‘Faith’ in God or the Bible? Do they have to be 1 and the same? If the Bible isn’t COMPLETELY without errors, then what is that saying about our ‘Faith’ if it would be crushed with such a finding. See, I think we have made faith in God the equivalant of faith in the Bible. I’m still not sure that the Bible isn’t without errors, but I find it interesting that we ‘hinge’ so much of our faith in God on our faith in the Bible.