Evangelical Answers : Inspiration and Inerrancy

We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. We also affirm the power of God’s word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. The message of the Bible is addressed to all men and women. For God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God.

(The Lausanne Covenant, The Authority and Power of the Bible; In: John Stott, The Lausanne Covenant: An Exposition and Commentary, [Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975], p. 10.) See also: lausanne.org.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer:

Truth presupposes meaning. To understand what truth a given discourse communicates, we must first understand the type of discourse with which we have to do. A poem harbors truth in a different way than does a physics manual, a narrative history, or a theology textbook. In William Alston’s words: “It is only after the proposition has been assigned that the question of truth value can be raised.” Truth is always about what is, but there are many kinds of reality and many ways of talking about it (for example, to what do metaphors refer?). We must first discern what a passage or a text is about, and then ask how it is about it. As Aristotle commented, “being may be said in many ways.” The same goes for history.

…Critics and commentators only confuse matters when they suggest that inerrantists believe in the literal truth of every word of the Bible. Individual words are neither true nor false, for they do not assert anything. To assert something—to say what is the case—is a thing people do by using words.

…Proponents of inerrancy must take great care to distinguish the notion of literal truth from a literalism that runs roughshod over the intent of the author and the literary form of the text. Was Jesus affirming botanic truth when he called the mustard seed “the smallest of all the seeds” (Mark 4:31 ESV), or was he drawing an analogy that his hearers would have understood, in order to communicate a nonbotanical truth?

…We must specify the author’s communicative intent in order rightly to say what he is doing with his words. Inerrantists read for the literal sense, that is, for the speech act content of an author’s discourse (in other words, the proposition pragmatically expressed by the sentence in its particular context). We need to know something about both the sentence (semantics) and the speaker’s intention (pragmatics) in order rightly to discern the literal sense (that is, what the author is saying in tending to his words in just this way). Only in the context of its particular use can we determine what is said.

…An illocution refers to what a speaker does in speaking (for example, promise, command, assert, and so on). The sentence provides the propositional content that the author then uses to mean something, that is, “to perform acts of a certain sort.” I propose that we identify the literal sense with the illocutionary act an author is performing. In sum: the literal sense of what we say is not the sentence content (the words considered apart from the context of their use) but the speech act content.

…we have first to discern the literal sense before saying “true or false.” And it helps to discern what is being affirmed (“what someone says about something”) when we attend to the form of the discourse and literary genre (“in some way”). Moisés Silva identifies a problem with unversed approaches to inerrancy when he notes that traditionally, “grammar books have stopped at the sentence level when describing syntax.” The best way to discover what sentences are being used for is to determine the literary form of which they are a part. Stated differently: the literary form is part of the context of use and thus stands at what we could view as the intersection of the semantics and pragmatics of meaning and truth. Interpreters need literary sensibility in order to determine which proposition(s) a discourse explicitly expresses or affirms.

(Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Augustinian Inerrancy: Literary Meaning, Literal Truth, and Literate Interpretation in the Economy of Biblical Discourse;” In: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, gen. eds. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013], pp. 218, 218, 219, 219-220, 220, 222.)

Cf. Robert Letham:

Speech-act theory distinguishes between a locution, something that is being said; an illocution, something that is being done through the words; and a perlocution, the effect that the words have on the hearers.

(Robert Letham, Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2019], 8.4.5, p. 264.) Preview.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer:

Like all other human acts, speech acts are fallible—liable to fail. God’s speech, however, is not so susceptible. In any divine communication, the four conditions necessary for felicitous or nondefective speech acts are always fulfilled. God’s locutions are always meaningful; the performance of the discourse act is always appropriate; the author is always sincere; the propositional content (predication and reference) is true (fitting) for its illocutionary mode. Isaiah said it better: “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa 55:11 RSV).

Scripture is, therefore, indefatigable in its illocutionary intent. It encourages, warns, asserts, reproves, instructs, commands—all infallibly. Note that this makes inerrancy a subset of infallibility. On those occasions when Scripture does affirm something, the affirmation is true. Thus, we may continue to hold to inerrancy while at the same time acknowledging that Scripture does many other things besides assert. Logically, however, infallibility is prior to inerrancy. God’s Word invariably accomplishes its purpose (infallibility); and when this purpose is assertion, the proposition of the speech act is true (inerrancy). Note too that inerrancy is subject to the intention and context of the assertive speech act. The parable of the prodigal son asserts that God forgives repentant sinners; it is not concerned to affirm that, in actual fact, a certain man had two sons who had a certain experience. However, the fact that Jesus uses the literary form of a parable results in the lesson being more memorable, vital, and powerful. When exegetes examine the total speech act situation, it will be seen that biblical texts are often more concerned with effective communication rather than scientific precision or exactness.

The Gospels, according to Ramm, “are witnessing or kerygmatic or preaching or teaching materials.” We might say that the illocutionary force of the Gospels is “proclaiming good news” (euangelizo). But, as Austin says, for any “performative utterance to be happy, certain statements have to be true.” Not only must it be true that I am proclaiming good news, but it must also be true that there is good news to proclaim. The Gospels are not intelligible apart from their presupposition that there is in fact good news to proclaim. The Gospels, however, are not works of modern historians who are concerned with accurate documentation and “objective” description. Rather, the main purpose of the Gospels is to proclaim the good news of what has been done in Jesus Christ. Moreover, their canonical home makes the Gospels “authorized” announcements. Their illocutionary authority not only commands assent but also calls for repentance.

Is every sentence of the Gospels “true”? This question errs in ignoring the total discourse act context and literary form. Is it “true” that “A certain man had two sons”? The point is that we must determine the particular illocutionary force of the biblical texts before we ask whether they are true or false. For this reason, the predominant category in considering biblical authority should be that of infallibility rather than inerrancy. Infallibility is broader in scope, logically prior, and covers all of Scripture’s authoritative functions.

(Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms;” In: Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, eds. D. A. Carson, John D. Woodbridge, [Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1995], pp. 94-96.)

Cf. Herman Bavinck:

Scripture is most certainly true but true in the sense in which Scripture itself intends to be and not in the sense we with our exact natural and historical science would impose on it. Hence before everything else, as we consider every narrative and report in Scripture, we are obligated to examine what the author, and what God through the author, intended to say by it.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 110, p. 412.)

I. Howard Marshall:

…‘infallible’ means that the Bible is entirely trustworthy for the purposes for which God inspired it.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 53.)

Full. I. Howard Marshall:

…the crucial point here is the concept of what God wished to be written. Our ideas of what we may have wished God to write may not be the same as what he may have wished to write. If we look once again at 2 Timothy 3:15 f. we find that the stated purpose of the Scriptures is to provide the instruction that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, and this is then detailed in terms of teaching, reproof, correction and training which enable the man of God to be fully equipped for every good work. The purpose of God in the composition of the Scriptures was to guide people to salvation and the associated way of life. From this statement we may surely conclude that God made the Bible all that it needs to be in order to achieve this purpose. It is in this sense that the word ‘infallible’ is properly applied to the Bible; it means that it is ‘in itself a true and sufficient guide, which may be trusted implicitly’ . . . We may therefore suggest that ‘infallible’ means that the Bible is entirely trustworthy for the purposes for which God inspired it. It will be noted that this description applies to ‘all Scriptures.’

The effect of drawing out the significance of inspiration in this way is to shift the focus of the discussion from the truth of the Bible to its adequacy for what God intends it to do.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 53.)

Cf. I. Howard Marshall:

…the Christian is faced by the authority of Scripture as the Word of God in its written form. He confesses its truth and its entire trustworthiness, even if he has to admit that there are uncertainties regarding its interpretation. In the Chicago Statement it is splendidly affirmed that Holy Scripture ‘is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises’. If the Bible is precious to the Christian believer, it is not because it is regarded as a paper pope or some kind of magical oracle but because here one hears and receives the message of a gracious God who, having revealed himself supremely in his Son Jesus Christ, continues to reveal himself in and through the pages of Scripture. It is through the Bible that I know of the God who has declared his salvation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and with deepest thankfulness I embrace that saving truth and stake my life on it.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 125.)

Cf. Steve Walton:

…the Bible is infallible for the purposes for which God inspired it . . . and thus the real issues become issues of interpretation, because that is how cash value is given to statements about authority. …I suspect that much modern debate about terminology misses the centrality of what Scripture means. Thus the view that Scripture is infallible ‘in all that it affirms’ leaves open the question of what Scripture does affirm, and allows tor charitable disagreement in this area.

(Steve Walton, “Book Reviews: I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration;” In: Themelios 10.1, September 1984, p. 34.)

Cf. John H. Gerstner:

…Bible writers themselves may have been laboring under erroneous impressions without this being normative instruction for us. Suppose they did think of a three-storied universe, which was the common opinion in their day, the Bible does not err unless it teaches such as a divine revelation of truth. In fact, by showing that the writers may have personally entertained ideas now antiquated it reveals its own historical authenticity without its normative authenticity suffering.

(John H. Gerstner, “A Primer on Bible Inerrancy;” In: Primitive Theology: The Collected Primers of John H. Gerstner, ed. Don Kistler, [Morgan: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1996], pp. 93-94.)

Cf. Paul D. Feinberg:

The point to be made here is that we cannot preclude in advance the possibility that some of the historically or descriptively authoritative material may contain errors. This does not, however, admit errors into what I have called the teaching of Scripture.

(Paul D. Feinberg, “The Meaning of Inerrancy;” In: Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1980], p. 298.)

Millard J. Erickson:

…inerrancy: the Bible, when correctly interpreted in light of the level to which culture and the means of communication had developed at the time it was written, and in view of the purposes for which it was given, is fully truthful in all that it affirms. …1. Inerrancy pertains to what is affirmed or asserted rather than what is merely reported. …2. We must judge the truthfulness of Scripture in terms of its meaning in the cultural setting in which its statements were expressed. We should not employ anachronistic standards in seeking to understand what was said. …When we speak of inerrancy, we mean that what the Bible affirms is fully true in terms of the culture of its time. …3. The Bible’s assertions are fully true when judged in accordance with the purpose for which they were written. …4. Reports of historical events and scientific matters are in phenomenal rather than technical language. That is, the writer reports how things appear to the eye. This is the ordinary practice in any kind of popular (as opposed to technical) writing. …5. Difficulties in explaining the biblical text should not be prejudged as indications of error, It is better to wait for the remainder of the data to come in, with the confidence that if we had all the data, the problems could be resolved. In some cases, the data may never come in. …Having defined inerrancy positively, we must note what it does not entail. The doctrine of inerrancy does not tell us a priori what type of material the Bible will contain. Nor does it tell us how we are to interpret individual passages. (That is the province of hermeneutics.) In particular, inerrancy should not be understood to mean that the maximum amount of specificity will always be present. Rather, our doctrine of inerrancy maintains merely that whatever statements the Bible affirms are fully truthful when they are correctly interpreted in terms of their meaning in their cultural setting and the purpose for which they were written.

(Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology: Third Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013], pp. 201-206.)

Cf. Millard J. Erickson:

We must judge the truthfulness of Scripture in terms of its meaning in the cultural setting in which its statements were expressed. We should not employ anachronistic standards in seeking to understand what was said. For example, we should not expect that the standards of exactness in quotation to which our age of the printing press and mass distribution is accustomed would have been present in the first century. We ought also to recognize that numbers were often used symbolically in ancient times, much more so than in our culture today. The names parents chose for their children also carried a special meaning; this is rarely true today. The word “son” has basically one meaning in our language and culture. In biblical times, however, it was broader in meaning, almost tantamount to “descendant.” There is a wide diversity, then, between our culture and that of biblical times. When we speak of inerrancy, we mean that what the Bible affirms is fully true in terms of the culture of its time.

(Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology: Third Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013], p. 203.)

Daniel J. Treier:

The inerrancy of Scripture means “that when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences.” Most would say that inerrancy does not require the Bible to speak with scientific precision and technical vocabulary; to have equal relevance for today in all portions; to contain verbatim quotation of the Old Testament in the New or literalist agreement between parallel accounts of events; or to lack unclear passages, the recording of sinful acts or errant claims, quotations from non-inspired authors, or historical investigation and perspective. The inerrancy of the Bible certainly does not extend to interpretations of Scripture, and therefore does not imply that evangelicals will presently know all the answers to challenging historical-critical questions. But biblical inerrancy does entail that there can finally be no outright internal contradictions in Scripture’s teaching (when rightly interpreted in canonical context), and no external contradictions between Scripture and genuine science or other forms of human knowledge (often associated with the concept of “general revelation,” as opposed to “special revelation” via Jesus Christ, the Bible, and so on). Thus, “context, context, context” becomes the hermeneutically paramount rule for implementing commitment to biblical inerrancy in interpretative practice; special attention must be paid to the diverse ways that literary genres relate to truth claims.

(Daniel J. Treier, “Scripture and Hermeneutics;” In: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, eds. Timothy Larsen, Daniel J. Treier, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], pp. 39-40.)

H. N. Ridderbos:

And it is not up to us; it is up to the free pleasure of God to decide what kind of effect divine inspiration should have in the mind, knowledge, memory, accuracy of those whom he has used in his service, in order that their word really can be accepted and trusted as the inspired word of God. If we deny or ignore this, we dispose of the very nature of the Scriptures as the word of God, and also of the nature of his authority and infallibility.

(H. N. Ridderbos, “The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture;” In: The Authoritative Word: Essays on the Nature of Scripture, ed. Donald K. McKim, [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983], pp. 187-188.)

Cf. H. N. Ridderbos:

The fact is that the infallibility of Scripture has in many respects a character other than that which a theoretical concept of inspiration or infallibility, detached from its purpose and empirical reality, would like to demand. One must be careful when reasoning about what is and what is not possible under inspiration by God. Here too the freedom of the Spirit must be honored; and we shall first have to trace the courses of the Spirit in reverence, rather than come at once to overconfident pronouncements, however proper our intentions.

Robert Letham:

Inerrancy can apply only to whatever the Bible itself intends to state. Scripture contains “the whole counsel of God . . . for God’s glory, man’s salvation, faith and life” (WCF, 1.6). It was not given to tell us where to drill for oil or as a manual for civil government. The Bible does not pronounce on everything. While it states that the whole world is God’s, it does not pretend to be an encyclopedia. Furthermore, the inerrancy of the Bible is not to be confused with particular interpretations of what this or that passage is saying. A passage may seem to a reader to have a clear and obvious meaning; that does not make that the correct interpretation, still less invest it with an unchallengeable authority.

Furthermore, not all literary forms in the Bible are ones in which precision is necessary or desired. Much is poetry, evocative in nature. Events are reported in ways that do not accord with twenty-first-century historiography, since they were not set down in the twenty-first century. Often round numbers are given; the Bible is not a statistical manual. In cricket, it is perfectly accurate to say that a batsman scored a hundred when he made 119, even though it would be an error if a statistician reported it in that form. The Bible refers to the world in the language of everyday observation rather than modern scientific precision. It is not pedantic.

In view of these caveats, one may well ask exactly how useful is the concept of inerrancy. After all, it is equally maintained by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Being incapable of error or of misleading us does not itself make something the Word of God. Books of statistics can be free from error; they are no more the Word of God than is an accurate railway timetable. Inerrancy is an entailment of the Bible being intrinsically the Word of God. Following that, inerrancy affirms positively that the Bible sits in judgment on all human opinions, in the church and outside it, and is the final arbiter of all claims to spiritual experience or constructive thought. It affirms that we can totally rely on it for our relationship to God and our life in the world. However, these things follow from its being inspired by God as canon for the church, not directly from the fact that it is free from error, understood in the way I have described. It is because God is its author and has given it as canon and authority for the church that these consequences follow. As Bavinck indicated, inspiration is more than the preservation of the writer from error; it is God speaking by the mouths of the apostles and prophets.

(Robert Letham, Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2019], 6.3.1, pp. 193-194.) Preview.

Cf. Herman Bavinck:

Inspiration alone would not yet make a writing into the word of God in a Scriptural sense. Even if a book on geography, say, was inspired from cover to cover and was literally dictated word-for-word, it would still not be “God-breathed” and “Godbreathing” in the sense of 2 Timothy 3:16. Scripture is the word of God because the Holy Spirit testifies in it concerning Christ, because it has the Word-made-flesh as its matter and content.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, p. 443.)

J. I. Packer:

Infallibility is the Latin infallibilitas, signifying the quality of neither deceiving nor being deceived. Inerrancy is the Latin inerrantia, meaning freedom from error of any kind, factual, moral or spiritual. Infallible as a description of the biblical Word of God goes back at least to the English Reformation. Inerrant is an adjective that gained currency in the second half of the last century, in debates that arose from the budding ‘higher criticism’. Both words take colour from the contexts in which they were mainly used; thus, though they are virtually synonyms, infallible suggests to most minds Scripture determining a faith-commitment, while inerrant evokes rather the thought of Scripture undergirding an orthodoxy. But for practical purposes the words are interchangeable. …Critics persistently suppose that both words, highlighting as they do the divinity and consequent truth of the Bible, express or entail a policy of minimizing the Bible’s humanity, either by denying its human literary sources or ignoring the marks of its human cultural milieu, or by treating it as if it were written in terms of the communicative techniques and conventions of the modern West rather than the ancient East, or by professing to find in it ‘technical-scientific’ as distinct from ‘naive-observational’ statements about the natural order, when the ‘technical-scientific’ study of nature is less than five centuries old. It is understandable that Christians who have not weighed the differences between our culture and that (or those!) of the biblical period should naively feel that the natural and straightforward way to express their certainty that the contents of Scripture, being divine, are of contemporary relevance (as they certainly are) is to treat Scripture as contemporary in its literary forms. No doubt many have done this, believing that thus they did God service. But our words have no link with this naivety; they express no advance commitment of any kind in the field of biblical interpretation, save that whatever Scripture, rightly interpreted (interpreted, that is, a posteriori, with linguistic correctness, in terms of the discernible literary character of each book, against its own historical and cultural background, and in the light of its topical relation to other books), proves to be saying should be reverently received, as from God.

(J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken, [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988], pp. 111, 113.)

David S. Dockery:

Inerrancy means that “when all the facts are known, the Bible (in its original writings) properly interpreted in light of which culture and communication means had developed by the time of its composition will be shown to be completely true (and therefore not false) in all that it affirms, to the degree of precision intended by the author, in all matters relating to God and his creation.”

(David S. Dockery, Christian Scripture: An Evangelical Perspective on Inspiration, Authority, and Interpretation, [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995], p. 64.)

2. An Incarnational Approach to Inerrancy. Return to Outline.

Charles Hodge:

It lies in the very nature of inspiration that God spake in the language of men…

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], p. 157.)

B. B. Warfield:

The Theory of Concursus.—According to this mode of conception the whole of Scripture is the product of divine activities, which enter it, however, not by superseding the activities of the human authors, but confluently with them: so that the Scriptures are the joint product of divine and human activities, both of which penetrate them at every point, working harmoniously together to the production of a writing which is not divine here and human there, but at once divine and human in every part, every word, and every particular. The philosophical basis of this theory is the Christian conception of God as immanent in his modes of working as well as transcendent. It is this theory, as has already been pointed out, that underlies the Church doctrine of inspiration and constitutes, indeed, the Church doctrine of the mode of inspiration. It was the conception of the greatest of the Fathers (e. g. Augustine) and of the Reformers, and it remains the conception of the great body of modern theologians. It is, for example, the theory of Gaussen, Lee, Bannerman, Manly, Dieckhoff, of A. C. Strong, A. Cave, C. Hodge, A. A. Hodge, H. B. Smith, and Shedd.

THE RELATION OF THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN IN INSPIRATION.—That the Scriptures are a human book, written by men and bearing the traces of their human origin on their very face, is obvious to every reader. That they are a divine book as well is the contention of every theory of inspiration. How are these two factors, the divine and the human, to be conceived as related to one another in the act of inspiration? And how are the two consequent elements in the product, the divine and human, to be conceived to be related to one another in the Scriptures? This is one of the fundamental problems in working out a conception of inspiration, and it has received very varied treatment.

1. Some writers have emphasized one factor or element in so exaggerated a way as to exclude the other altogether. At one time the divine element was commonly so emphasized. This produced the seventeenth century theory of dictation. This is not common to-day. The opposite fault of emphasizing the human factor or element so exaggeratingly as to exclude the divine, which is an inheritance from rationalism, is, however, very widespread. The effect remains the same, though the underlying philosophy be altered to one of a pantheizing type, which speaks, indeed, of the Scriptures as wholly divine, but adds that so also is all thought and all expression of thought. Nor is the effect altered when men allow a divine element of preparation for the book, but deny a divine factor in the immediate production of the book itself as such, and consequently deny any divine element in the book itself as such (e. g. Gladden, Who Wrote the Bible?, Horton, Inspiration and the Bible).

2. Others appear to conceive of the two factors in inspiration as striving against and seeking to exclude one another, and of the two elements in the product as lying over against one another, dividing the Bible between them. Crude and mechanical as it appears, such a conception seems extraordinarily common, and makes itself heard in the most unlikely places. It is this point of view which leads to the declaration concerning a given element in the Bible, that because it is human it is therefore not divine; and which underlies the quite common remark that in the prosecution of biblical science it is becoming ever more certain that the “human element” in the Bible is larger than we supposed—with the implication that the divine element is therefore smaller. (Sanday, The Oracles of God; Thayer, The Change of Attitude toward the Bible.) So Dr. Ladd speaks of the difficulty of determining “the exact place where the divine meets the human, and is limited by it.” (What is the Bible? 437.) This conception naturally is held with different degrees of crudity, and sometimes results even in an attempt to separate the inseparable, and to point out in detail what elements or parts of the Bible are divine and what human (Gess, Die Inspiration, etc.; Horton, Revelation and the Bible).

3. Justice is not done to the two factors in inspiration or to the two elements in the Scriptures by any other theory than that of concursus. On this theory the whole Bible is recognized as human, the free product of human effort, in every part and in every word—with the exception of the comparatively small portion which came by direct revelation. And at the same time the whole Bible is recognized as divine, to the smallest detail. The human and divine factors in inspiration are conceived of as flowing confluently and harmoniously to the production of a common product. And the two elements are conceived of in the Scriptures as inseparable constituents of one simple and uncompounded product. On this theory, of every word of the Bible in turn, it is to be affirmed that it is divine and that it is human; and all the qualities of divinity and of humanity are to be sought and may be found in every portion and element of the Scriptures. This is the Church doctrine on the subject, and it has underlain the thought of all the great Church teachers of all ages, and finds more or less full expression in their extant writings.

(B. B. Warfield, “Inspiration;” In: Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia: A New Edition: Complete in Eight Volumes: Vol. IV, [New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899], pp. 618-619.)

Cf. A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield:

The human agency, both in the histories out of which the Scriptures sprang, and in their immediate composition and inscription, is everywhere apparent, and gives substance and form to the entire collection of writings. It is not merely in the matter of verbal expression or literary composition that the personal idiosyncrasies of each author are freely manifested by the untrammeled play of all his faculties, but the very substance of what they write is evidently for the most part the product of their own mental and spiritual activities. This is true except in that comparatively small element of the whole body of sacred writing in which the human authors simply report the word of God objectively communicated, or, as in some of the prophecies, they wrote by divine dictation. As the general characteristic of all their work, each writer was put to that special part of the general work for which he alone was adapted by his original endowments, education, special information and providential position. Each drew from the stores of his own original information, from the contributions of other men and from all other natural authors, from the use of his own natural faculties of thought and feeling, of intuition and of logical inference, of memory and imagination, and of religious experience. Each gave evidence of his own special limitations of knowledge and mental power, and of his personal defects as well as of his powers. Each wrote upon a definite occasion, under special historically grouped circumstances, from his own standpoint in the progressively unfolded plan of redemption, and each made his own special contribution to the fabric of God’s word.

…It must be remembered that it is not claimed that the Scriptures, any more than their authors, are omniscient. The information they convey is in the forms of human thought, and limited on all sides. They were not designed to teach philosophy, science or human history as such. They were not designed to furnish an infallible system of speculative theology. They are written in human languages, whose words, inflections, constructions and idioms bear everywhere indelible traces of human error. The record itself furnishes evidence that the writers were in large measure dependent for their knowledge upon sources and methods in themselves fallible, and that their personal knowledge and judgments were in many matters hesitating and defective, or even wrong. Nevertheless, the historical faith of the Church has always been that all the affirmations of Scripture of all kinds, whether of spiritual doctrine or duty, or of physical or historical fact, or of psychological or philosophical principle, are without any error… There is a vast difference between exactness of statement, which includes an exhaustive rendering of details, an absolute literalness, which the Scriptures never profess, and accuracy, on the other hand, which secures a correct statement of facts or principles intended to be affirmed. It is this accuracy, and this alone, as distinct from exactness, which the Church doctrine maintains of every affirmation in the original text of Scripture without exception. Every statement accurately corresponds, to truth just as far forth as affirmed. …In all their real affirmations these books are without error.

(Archibald A. Hodge, Benjamin B. Warfield, “Inspiration;” In: The Presbyterian Review: Volume II: 1881, No. 6.—April, 1881, [New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company, 1881], pp. 229, 237-238, 238, 237.)

Cf. Charles Hodge:

The sacred writers impressed their peculiarities on their several productions as plainly as though they were the subjects of no extraordinary influence. This is one of the phenomena of the Bible patent to the most cursory reader. It lies in the very nature of inspiration that God spake in the language of men; that He uses men as his organs, each according to his peculiar gifts and endowments. When He ordains praise out of the mouth of babes, they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the tribute will be lost. There is no reason to believe that the operation of the Spirit in inspiration revealed itself any more in the consciousness of the sacred writers, than his operations in sanctification reveal themselves in the consciousness of the Christian. As the believer seems to himself to act, and in fact does act out of his own nature; so the inspired penmen wrote out of the fulness of their own thoughts and feelings, and employed the language and modes of expression which to them were the most natural and appropriate. Nevertheless, and none the less, they spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and their words were his words.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], p. 157.)

Cf. Charles Hodge:

It means, first, that all the books of Scripture are equally inspired. All alike are infallible in what they teach. And secondly, that inspiration extends to all the contents of these several books. It is not confined to moral and religious truths, but extends to the statements of facts, whether scientific, historical, or geographical. It is not confined to those facts the importance of which is obvious, or which are involved in matters of doctrine. It extends to everything which any sacred writer asserts to be true.

…plenary inspiration… denies that inspiration is confined to parts of the Bible; and affirms that it applies to all the books of the sacred canon. It denies that the sacred writers were merely partially inspired; it asserts that they were fully inspired as to all that they teach, whether of doctrine or fact. This of course does not imply that the sacred writers were infallible except for the special purpose for which they were employed. They were not imbued with plenary knowledge. As to all matters of science, philosophy, and history, they stood on the same level with their contemporaries. They were infallible only as teachers, and when acting as the spokesmen of God.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], pp. 163, 165.)

Cf. Charles Hodge:

…we must distinguish between what the sacred writers themselves thought or believed, and what they teach. They may have believed that the sun moves round the earth, but they do not so teach.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883], p. 170.)

Mark A. Noll:

…the reasoning was directly parallel to the classical view of Christ who as human could enjoy full identification with human beings and as divine could effect their redemption: “‘The Bible,’ says Dr. Westcott, ‘is authoritative, for it is the Word of God; it is intelligible, for it is the word of man.’ Because it is the word of man in every part and element, it comes home to our hearts. Because it is the word of God in every part and element, it is our constant law and guide.”

(Mark A. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011], p. 132.)

G. W. Bromiley:

It may be suggested in closing that a true doctrine of history and revelation in the Bible will be formulated only when the problem is studied in the light of the similar problem of the incarnation. In Christ, the Word revealed, there are the two: the divine and the human; the revelation and the history; and these two are distinct and yet one. So too it is in the Word written, which is the witness to Christ. It is not enough to deny the divine, to see only a man here, a book there. But it is also not enough to ignore the human, to see only a God here, an oracle there.

(G. W. Bromiley, “The Authority of Scripture;” In: The New Bible Commentary, ed. F. Davidson, [London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1954], p. 22.)

Herman Bavinck:

In view of all this, the theory of organic inspiration alone does justice to Scripture. In the doctrine of Scripture, it is the working out and application of the central fact of revelation: the incarnation of the Word. The Word (Λογος) has become flesh (σαρξ), and the word has become Scripture; these two facts do not only run parallel but are most intimately connected. Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he descended to the nethermost parts of the earth and became obedient even to the death of the cross. So also the word, the revelation of God, entered the world of creatureliness, the life and history of humanity, in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection, right down into that which is humanly weak and despised and ignoble. The word became Scripture and as Scripture subjected itself to the fate of all Scripture. All this took place in order that the excellency of the power, also of the power of Scripture, may be God’s and not ours. Just as every human thought and action is the fruit of the action of God in whom we live and have our being, and is at the same time the fruit of the activity of human beings, so also Scripture is totally the product of the Spirit of God, who speaks through the prophets and apostles, and at the same time totally the product of the activity of the authors. “Everything is divine and everything is human” (Θεια παντα και ἀνθρωπινα παντα).

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 114, pp. 434-435.)

Cf. Herman Bavinck:

Nonetheless, the organic view of inspiration does furnish us with many means to meet the objections advanced against it. It implies the idea that the Holy Spirit, in the inscripturation of the word of God, did not spurn anything human to serve as an organ of the divine. The revelation of God is not abstractly supernatural but has entered into the human fabric, into persons and states of beings, into forms and usages, into history and life. It does not fly high above us but descends into our situation; it has become flesh and blood, like us in all things except sin. Divine revelation is now an ineradicable constituent of this cosmos in which we live and, effecting renewal and restoration, continues its operation. The human has become an instrument of the divine; the natural has become a revelation of the supernatural; the visible has become a sign and seal of the invisible. In the process of inspiration, use has been made of all the gifts and forces resident in human nature.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, pp. 442-443.)

Herman Bavinck:

…just as Christ’s human nature, however weak and lowly, remained free from sin, so also Scripture is “conceived without defect or stain”; totally human in all its parts but also divine in all its parts.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 115, p. 435.)

Peter Enns:

This starting point can be traced back to the early centuries of the church and can be applied to modern issues with considerable profit. The starting point for our discussion is the following: as Christ is both God and human, so is the Bible. In other words, we are to think of the Bible in the same way that Christians think about Jesus. Christians confess that Jesus is both God and human at the same time. He is not half-God and half-human. He is not sometimes one and other times the other. He is not essentially one and only apparently the other. Rather, one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith, worked out as far back as the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, is that Jesus is 100 percent God and 100 percent human—at the same time.

This way of thinking of Christ is analogous to thinking about the Bible. In the same way that Jesus is—must be—both God and human, the Bible is also a divine and human book. Although Jesus was “God with us,” he still completely assumed the cultural trappings of the world in which he lived. In fact, this is what is implied in “God with us.” Perhaps this is part of what the author of Hebrews had in mind when he said that Christ was “made like his brothers in every way” (Heb. 2:17). Jesus was a first-century Jew. The languages of the time (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic) were his languages. Their customs were his customs. He fit, he belonged, he was one of them.

So, too, the Bible. It belonged in the ancient worlds that produced it. It was not an abstract, otherworldly book, dropped out of heaven. It was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures. The encultured qualities of the Bible, therefore, are not extra elements that we can discard to get to the real point, the timeless truths. Rather, precisely because Christianity is a historical religion, God’s word reflects the various historical moments in which Scripture was written. God acted and spoke in history. As we learn more and more about that history, we must gladly address the implications of that history for how we view the Bible, that is, what we should expect from it.

This way of thinking about the Bible is referred to differently by different theologians. The term I prefer is incarnational analogy: Christ’s incarnation is analogous to Scripture’s “incarnation.” As with any analogy, one could highlight places where the analogy does not quite fit. Moreover, we must reckon with the incarnation of Christ itself being mysterious; one could rightly question the merit of using an ultimately unexplainable entity to explain something else! That being said, my starting point is the orthodox Christian confession, however mysterious it is, that Jesus of Nazareth is the God-man. The long-standing identification between Christ the word and Scripture the word is central to how I think through the issues raised in this book: How does Scripture’s full humanity and full divinity affect what we should expect from Scripture?

The ancient heresy of Docetism stated that Christ was fully divine and only seemed to be human (the Greek verb dokein [“to seem”] is the root of the word Docetism). The Council of Chalcedon rightly concluded that if Christ only appeared to be human, then the death and resurrection are not real. And, if that is the case, then there is no forgiveness of sins. Although I am in no way implying that people who do not see things as I do are heretics, there is an analogy to be drawn here. What some ancient Christians were saying about Christ, the Docetic heresy, is similar to the mistake that other Christians have made (and continue to make) about Scripture: it comes from God, and the marks of its humanity are only apparent, to be explained away.

(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], pp. 17-18.)

Cf. Peter Enns:

…for God to reveal himself means that he accommodates himself. To be understood, he condescends to the conventions and conditions of those to whom he is revealing himself. The word of God cannot be kept safe from the rough-and-tumble drama of human history. For the Bible to be the word of God implies the exact opposite.

(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], p. 109.)

Cf. John Calvin:

For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.

(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.1; trans. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: Volume First, trans. Henry Beveridge, [Edinburgh: Printed for the Calvin Translation Society, 1845], p. 147.)

Cf. Peter Enns:

Christ is the ultimate example of how God enters the messiness of history to save his people. He did not keep his distance, but became one of us. This is true of Christ, the embodied word. It is also true of the Bible, the written word.

(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], p. 111.)

Michael J. Christensen:

Biblical inspiration is a mystery no less than the Incarnation. Any attempt to appreciate the method and extent of divine revelation and inspiration must first reverence the truth expressed in Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 92.)

Cf. Michael J. Christensen:

If God chose to express himself through the frailty of human words, just as he chose to reveal himself through the frailty of human form, are we to question his wisdom? The living God spoke our language and shared our flesh, and there are limitations to both.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 94.)

C. S. Lewis:

For we are taught that the Incarnation itself proceeded “not by the conversion of the godhead into flesh, but by taking of (the) manhood into God”; in it human life becomes the vehicle of Divine life. If the Scriptures proceed not by conversion of God’s word into a literature but by taking up of a literature to be the vehicle of God’s word, this is not anomalous.

(C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958], p. 116.)

Cf. C. S. Lewis:

The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.

(C. S. Lewis, “Modern Translations of the Bible;” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 230.)

A Tentative Objection.

I. Howard Marshall:

…our hypothesis does not explain how inspiration took place. Our human minds cannot bring together ‘theological’ explanations in terms of divine causation and the work of the Spirit and ‘natural’ explanations in terms of historical and literary processes. We cannot, to use another relevant example, understand the relationship between the sanctifying work of the Spirit in our own lives and the activity of our own wills. The doctrine of inspiration is a declaration that the Scriptures have their origin in God; it is not and cannot be an explanation of how God brought them into being.

One particular analogy which has sometimes been used to explain the character of inspiration is that of the person of Jesus Christ. The union of the divine and the human in Jesus so that he was both fully the Son of God and perfect man has been used to throw light on the nature of Scripture as being simultaneously God’s Word and man’s words. I have refrained from discussing this point in detail since I am not sure how helpful it is. The fact is that the problems of understanding the person of Christ are so great that it is far from obvious that a discussion of this point can help to clarify the doctrine of Scripture. Different conclusions have been drawn from the analogy by scholars of varying viewpoints. Again, it is not clear whether the analogy is properly applied to the human agents through whom God was active in the composition of Scripture or to the actual product of his inspiration. What the doctrine of the incarnation does do is to show that a real activity of God in the person of his Son is possible in the human dimension, and thus to make it all the more credible that God could work in other human beings to communicate his Word in human words. But the differences between the incarnation of the eternal Word in the person of Jesus and the divine composition of Scripture through human authors are so considerable that it is perhaps wiser not to hang a doctrine of Scripture on conclusions drawn from an analogy.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], pp. 44-45.)

A Tentative Reply.

John Stott:

It is essential to keep the two authorships together. Some theologians, ancient and modern. Catholic and Protestant, have appealed to the two natures of Christ as an analogy. Although the parallel is not exact, it is illuminating. Just as in the person of Christ (who is both God and human) we must neither affirm his deity in such a way as to deny his humanity, nor affirm his humanity in such a way as to deny his deity, but rather affirm both equally, refusing to allow either to contradict the other, so in our doctrine of Scripture we must neither affirm that it is the Word of God in such a way as to deny that it is the words of human beings (which is fundamentalism), nor affirm that it is the words of human beings in such a way as to deny that it is the Word of God (which is liberalism), but rather affirm both equally, refusing to allow either to contradict the other. Thus on the one hand God spoke, determining what he wanted to say, yet without smothering the personality of the human authors. On the other hand, human beings spoke, using their faculties freely, yet without distorting the truth which God was speaking through them.

…The way we understand Scripture will affect the way we read it. In particular, its double authorship demands a double approach. Because Scripture is the Word of God, we should read it as we read no other book – on our knees, humbly, reverently, prayerfully, looking to the Holy Spirit for illumination. But because Scripture is also the words of human beings, we should read it as we read every other book, using our minds, thinking, pondering and reflecting, and paying close attention to its literary, historical, cultural and linguistic characteristics. This combination of humble reverence and critical reflection is not only not impossible; it is indispensable.

(John Stott, The Contemporary Christian: Applying God’s Word to Today’s World, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992], pp. 169, 170.)

Cf. John Stott:

To be sure, no analogy is perfect, and it is always perilous to argue from an analogy. In this case the imperfection is evident, for the Bible has no intrinsic deity as Christ has. Nevertheless, there is in both Christ and Scripture such a combination of the divine and the human that we must affirm each without denying the other. We must preserve each without sacrificing the other. Thus, Jesus is both God and man. We must neither affirm his deity in such a way as to deny the reality of his humanity, nor affirm his humanity in such a way as to deny his deity Somewhat similarly, the Bible is both divine and human in its authorship. Therefore we must neither affirm its divine origin in such a way as to deny the free activity of the human authors, nor affirm their cooperation in such a way as to deny that through them God spoke his word.

To say that “Jesus is the Son of God” is true, but a dangerous half-truth. It might even be the heresy of docetism (God pretending to be human) unless we add that Jesus is also the Son of Man. To say that “the Bible is the Word of God” is also true, but a dangerous half-truth. It might even be the heresy of fundamentalism (God dictating mechanically) unless we add that the Bible is the Word of God through words of men. The Bible is equally the Word of God and the word of men. This is the double authorship of the Bible. …Because of the kind of book the Bible is, we must approach it in two distinct yet complementary ways. Because it is the Word of God, we must read it as we would read no other book—on our knees, in a humble, reverent, prayerful and submissive frame of mind. But because the Bible is also the word of men, we must read it as we would read every other book…

(John Stott, Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity & Faithfulness: Revised Edition, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005], pp. 50-51, 51.)

Peter Enns:

To work within an incarnational paradigm means that our expectations of the Bible must be in conversation with the data, otherwise we run the very real risk of trying to understand the Bible in fundamental isolation from the cultures in which it was written—which is to say, we would be working with a very nonincarnate understanding of Scripture. Whatever words Christians employ to speak of the Bible (inerrant, infallible, authoritative, revelational, inspired), either today or in the past, must be seen as attempts to describe what can never be fully understood. I do not mean that the Bible is a complete mystery, that we have no meaningful way of speaking of it. I only mean that the incarnate written word (Scripture) is, like Christ, beyond our ability to grasp exhaustively: we can speak of the incarnate Christ meaningfully, but never fully. We should not think that the Bible, expressed as it is in the more tangible, controllable medium of human language, is any less mysterious. This is why the incarnational analogy is problematic on at least one level. The purpose of an analogy is to explain a lesser-known thing by using something better known. But the incarnation of Christ is itself precisely what needs explaining.

Perhaps, then, it makes more sense to speak of the incarnational parallel between Christ and the Bible. This should lead us to a more willing recognition that the expression of our confession of the Bible as God’s word has a provisional quality to it. By faith, the church confesses that the Bible is God’s word. It is up to Christians of each generation, however, to work out what that means and what words work best to describe it.

(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], p. 168.)

2.1. Concursus — Primary and Secondary Causation. Return to Outline.

J. I. Packer:

We are to think of the Spirit’s inspiring activity, and, for that matter, of all His regular operations in and upon human personality, as (to use an old but valuable technical term) concursive; that is, as exercised in, through and by means of the writers’ own activity, in such a way that their thinking and writing was both free and spontaneous on their part and divinely elicited and controlled, and what they wrote was not only their own work but also God’s work.

(J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1958], p. 80.) Preview.

J. I. Packer:

The twin suppositions which liberal critics make—that, on the one hand, divine control of the writers would exclude the free exercise of their natural powers, while, on the other hand, divine accommodation to the free exercise of their natural powers would exclude complete control of what they wrote—are really two forms of the same mistake. They are two ways of denying that the Bible can be both a fully human and fully divine composition. And this denial rests (as all errors in theology ultimately do) on a false doctrine of God; here particularly, of His providence. For it assumes that God and man stand in such a relation to each other that they cannot both be free agents in the same action. If man acts freely (i.e., voluntarily and spontaneously), God does not, and vice versa. The two freedoms are mutually exclusive. But the affinities of this idea are with Deism, not Christian Theism. It is Deism which depicts God as the passive onlooker rather than the active governor of His world, and which assures us that the guarantee of human freedom lies in the fact that men’s actions are not under God’s control. But the Bible teaches rather that the freedom of God, who works in and through His creatures, leading them to act according to their nature, is itself the foundation and guarantee of the freedom of their action. It is therefore a great mistake to think that the freedom of the biblical writers can be vindicated only by denying full divine control over them; and the prevalence of this mistake should be ascribed to the insidious substitution of deistic for theistic ideas about God’s relation to the world which has been, perhaps, the most damaging effect of modern science on theology. When the critics of Evangelicalism take it for granted that Evangelicals, since they believe in complete control, must hold the ‘dictation’ theory, while they themselves, since they recognize accommodation, are bound to hold that in Scripture false and misleading words of men are mixed up with the pure word of God, they merely show how unbiblical their idea of providence has become. The cure for such fallacious reasoning is to grasp the biblical idea of God’s concursive operation in, with and through the free working of man’s own mind.

(J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1958], pp. 81-82.) Preview.

Cf. Thomas Aquinas:

Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.

(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I. QQ. LXXV.—CII., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, LTD., 1922], Q. 83, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3, p. 149.)

Note: See further: “Concursus, Definition.”

I. Howard Marshall:

An analogy may help to clarify the idea. If we try to explain the idea of God’s creation and providence in the universe, we can describe what happens on two levels. On the one level, we can explain much, though not necessarily all, of what happens in terms of ordinary cause and effect. This is the method followed in scientific investigations of the origins and working of the universe, and it is a perfectly legitimate and fruitful method. On the other level, we can explain creation as the act of God and we can also postulate his continuing providential care of the world. For the most part these two explanations are complementary. We are looking at the same phenomena from two different points of view; it is not a case of explaining some things scientifically and other things (a diminishing number) by recourse to what has been called the theory of the ‘God of the gaps’. Scientist and theologian are asking two different, complementary questions. If the scientist is a Christian, he accepts the divine origin of the universe and also the legitimacy of understanding it on the level of natural cause and effect.

There will, of course, be supernatural events in the universe which cannot be accounted for in natural terms, such as the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God, and there will also be natural events which by reason of their timing or other characteristics can be understood by the believer as acts of God, such as the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon or the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. In some cases it may be difficult to draw a firm line between what is supernatural and what is natural. Nevertheless, for the most part one can say that there are two complementary levels of explanation of phenomena in the natural universe, and that care must be taken not to confuse the types of explanation or to assume that only one of them will be applicable in any given situation.

Against this background let us briefly look at the problems raised by the origin of the universe. On the one hand, scientific explanation can take us so far in understanding, but only so far. We cannot go back right up to the ‘moment’ of creation and look at what was happening ‘before’ it (if it is legitimate to talk in these terms at all). On the other hand, we cannot describe or explain creation from a theological point of view except by using the language of metaphor and symbol. We have to use two different sorts of language, religious language and scientific language, and we cannot bring these together in a single description of creation. For it is impossible to bring together divine causation and natural causation and show how they are related to each other. The reason for this is that as finite human beings we cannot in principle understand how the finite and the infinite are related to each other. All that we can do is, on the one hand, to let scientific explanation take us as far as it can and recognise that there are limits to its powers of explanation, and, on the other hand, to state our belief in the action of God in metaphorical and symbolical terms, recognising that we cannot describe God’s action in literal terms.

The point of this analogy, then, is that we can describe events from two angles in complementary ways, and that we have to recognise the dangers of confusing the two types of explanation.

We can now move on to suggest that the composition of the Bible can be understood in the same kind of way. On a human level we can describe its composition in terms of the various oral and literary processes that lay behind it – the collection of information from witnesses, the use of written sources, the writing up and editing of such information, the composition of spontaneous letters, the committing to writing of prophetic messages, the collecting of the various documents together, and so on. At the same time, however, on the divine level we can assert that the Spirit, who moved on the face of the waters at Creation (Gen. 1:2), was active in the whole process so that the Bible can be regarded as both the words of men and the Word of God. This activity of the Spirit can be described as ‘concursive’ with the human activities through which the Bible was written.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], pp. 40-42.)

Note: See further: Providence.

B. B. Warfield:

Representations are sometimes made as if, when God wished to produce sacred books which would incorporate His will—a series of letters like those of Paul, for example—He was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men He found there, seeking anxiously for the one who, on the whole, promised best for His purpose; and then violently forcing the material He wished expressed through him, against his natural bent, and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul’s, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters.

(Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, ed. Samuel G. Craig, [London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1951], p. 155.)

3. Issues With “Inerrancy.” Return to Outline.

Michael J. Christensen:

The nature of biblical inspiration has been understood in varying ways by Christians throughout history. Those who acknowledge special revelation—the grand presupposition that God has taken the initiative and revealed his truth to man—differ in their understanding of what this means. The issue is not whether the Bible is inspired or not, but rather, in what way? What do the terms inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, revelation, and authority mean?

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 19.)

Michael F. Bird:

In seeking to define how the Bible is true, or not untrue, there is the danger that one opts for a definition that is detailed and robust but thereby so specific that it fails to reflect the breadth of the Christian tradition, both historical and global. For that reason, I prefer stating the truthfulness of the Christian Bible in positive terms as veracity. In fact, this is the more “biblical” approach since the book of Revelation emphasizes God and God’s Word as “trustworthy” (Rev 3:14; 19:9; 21:5; 22:6).

(Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020], 6.3.5.2, p. 722.) Preview.

Cf. Donald G. Bloesch:

In my opinion it is wiser to speak of the truthfulness or veracity of Scripture rather than of its inerrancy. Infallibility and authority are also terms that can be legitimately applied to Scripture. Yet all these terms need to be qualified, for the truthfulness and infallibility that characterize Scripture are derivative from the One who alone is infallible and authoritative in the full sense of these words. …I affirm that the message of Scripture is infallible and that the Spirit infallibly interprets this message to people of faith. But the perfect accuracy of the letter or text of Scripture is not an integral part of Christian faith. Because the term inerrancy is so often associated with the latter position, I agree with Clark Pinnock that it is not the preferable word to use in theological discussion today, even though it should not be abandoned, for it preserves the nuance of truthfulness that is necessary for a high view of Holy Scripture.

(Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration & Interpretation, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994], p. 116.)

Tony Lane:

Does the Bible contain any mistakes? The answer to this question depends on what counts as a mistake. For instance, 2 Chronicles 4:2 implies that π, the relation of circumference to diameter, is 3, rather than 3.141. Is 2 Chronicles mistaken? If it had stated that π = 5, that would be a mistake; π = 3 is an approximation. The Synoptic Gospels locate the cleansing of the Temple at the end of Jesus’ ministry; John 2:13-22 locates it at the beginning. Is John mistaken? Only if he claims to be presenting the ministry of Jesus in chronological order. I would see it as wrong to describe either book as ‘mistaken’. What each teaches is true, given the limitations of what they set out to do, which was neither to give a precise definition of π nor to present a chronological account of Jesus’ ministry. I would not want to talk of ‘errors’ in the Bible but, like John Stott, I am not persuaded that ‘inerrant’ is a helpful term. Calling 2 Chronicles 4:2 inerrant creates the impression that one is claiming a greater degree of precision than is there found. One might say of a portrait, for example, that it was a true and faithful representation of the subject, but it would be inappropriate to call it inerrant. Parts of the Bible are like that.

(Tony Lane, Exploring Christian Doctrine: A Guide to What Christians Believe, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014], p. 27.) Preview.

John Stott:

Since the publication in 1976 of Harold Lindsell’s book Battle for the Bible, the battle among American evangelicals has really been over the word inerrancy, whose equivalent in British debate has been infallibility. There are at least five reasons why the word inerrancy makes me uncomfortable.

First, God’s self-revelation in Scripture is so rich—both in content and in form—that it cannot be reduced to a string of propositions which invites the label truth or error. “True or false?” would be an inappropriate question to address to a great deal of Scripture.

Second, the word inerrancy is a double negative, and I always prefer a single positive to a double negative. It is better to affirm that the Bible is true and therefore trustworthy. J. I. Packer clarifies in his lectures that what inerrantists are essentially concerned about is “total trustworthiness as a consequence of entire truthfulness.” And with that all evangelicals would (or should) agree.

Third, the word inerrancy sends out the wrong signals and develops the wrong attitudes. Instead of encouraging us to search the Scriptures so that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of God, it seems to turn us into detectives hunting for incriminating clues and to make us excessively defensive in relation to apparent discrepancies.

Fourth, it is unwise and unfair to use inerrancy as a shibboleth by which to identify who is evangelical and who is not. The hallmark of authentic evangelicalism is not subscription but submission. That is, it is not whether we subscribe to an impeccable formula about the Bible but whether we live in practical submission to what the Bible teaches, including an advance resolve to submit to whatever it may later be shown to teach.

Fifth, it is impossible to prove that the Bible contains no errors. When faced with an apparent discrepancy, the most Christian response is neither to make a premature negative judgment nor to resort to a contrived harmonization but rather to suspend judgment, waiting patiently for further illumination to be given us. Many former problems have been solved in this way.

(John Stott, Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea For Unity, Integrity & Faithfulness: Revised Edition, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003], pp. 61-62.)

Michael F. Bird:

While the contexts for the international evangelical church are varied, in no place has it been necessary to construct a doctrine of inerrancy as a kind of fence around evangelical orthodoxy. In what I have observed, such doctrinal fences, far from preserving orthodoxy, tend to divide believers, inhibit Christian witness by assuming a default defensive stance, and risk making the Bible rather than Christ the central tenet of Christian faith. What best represents the international view, in my opinion, is a commitment to the infallibility and authority of Scripture, but not necessarily a doctrine of Scripture conceived in the specific terms of the American inerrancy tradition as represented in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI).

(Michael F. Bird, “Inerrancy is Not Necessary for Evangelicalism Outside the USA;” In: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, gen. eds. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013], p. 146.)

Michael F. Bird:

The concept of inerrancy is a thoroughly ancient idea, though the actual word is relatively new. As J. I. Packer writes, “Evangelicals are accustomed to speak of the Word of God as infallible and inerrant. The former has a long pedigree; among the Reformers, Cranmer and Jewel spoke of God’s Word as infallible, and the Westminster Confession of the ‘infallible truth’ of Holy Scripture. The latter, however, seems not to have been regularly used in this connection before the nineteenth century.” The word infallible is the more prominent term in English-speaking global evangelicalism and for that reason is all the more preferable.

It is important to remember that many Christians around the world, though holding to an orthodox and high view of Scripture, did not experience the struggle with liberalism in the same way as North American evangelicals. The inerrancy debate that came to a head in the late twentieth century is very much an intra-American affair. As Daniel J. Treier comments, “Conflict over scriptural inerrancy has not defined evangelicalism elsewhere as it did in the United States.” So outside of America, inerrancy has never been a mandatory marker for orthodoxy. Instead, global churches have used the language of authority, infallibility, and sufficiency to underscore the claims of Scripture.

(Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020], 6.3.5.2, p. 722.) Preview.

Cf. Daniel J. Treier:

Conflict over scriptural inerrancy has not defined evangelicalism elsewhere as it did in the United States. British and other non-American evangelicals, for example, have held various other versions of a “high” view of Scripture. Even among Americans, some Reformed Christians have retained the classic Protestant language of biblical infallibility without taking a more specific position. Some non-Reformed Christians have rejected much of the controversy as a fixation on epistemology to the detriment of more holistic concerns in theological methodology and beyond. Many recent evangelicals have felt the need to distinguish carefully between a particular philosophical understanding of rationality or approach to apologetics using the Bible, and commitment to the trustworthiness of Scripture itself.

(Daniel J. Treier, “Scripture and Hermeneutics;” In: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, eds. Timothy Larsen, Daniel J. Treier, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p. 40.)

Tony Lane:

More recently there has been considerable dispute over this matter, especially since the 1970s in the USA. In the UK there is less polarization, with the acceptance of variety within limits. This is not unhealthy. The key to this doctrine is the tension between the divine and human aspects of Scripture and where there is a tension there will always be the scope for differences. The most important point is whether one maintains the tension between the two sides rather than the exact point on the spectrum that one holds. The problem with strong terms like ‘inerrancy’ is that they need to be qualified to allow for the hyperbole, approximation and imprecision that we see in Scripture. It may be simpler just to say that what the Bible teaches is true.

Also, statements about the truth/infallibility/ inerrancy of Scripture do not resolve the question of what it means. For example, the strongest affirmations of the reliability of Genesis 1 tell us nothing about whether or not the six ‘days’ are to be interpreted as 24-hour periods. Augustine believed in the total truthfulness of Scripture but regarded the six days as figurative.

(Tony Lane, Exploring Christian Doctrine: A Guide to What Christians Believe, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014], p. 27.) Preview.

Note: It would be more precise to say that Augustine believed that the days were analogical rather than figurative.

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

Thus, in all the days of creation there is one day, and it is not to be taken in the sense of our day, which we reckon by the course of the sun; but it must have another meaning, applicable to the three days mentioned before the creation of the heavenly bodies. This special meaning of “day” must not be maintained just for the first three days, with the understanding that after the third day we take the word “day” in its ordinary sense. But we must keep the same meaning even to the sixth and seventh days. Hence, “day” and “night,” which God divided [divisit Deus], must be interpreted quite differently from the familiar “day” and “night,” which God decreed the lights that He created in the firmament should divide [dividant luminaria quæ creavit] when He said, And let them divide day and night. For it was by this latter act that He created our day, creating the sun whose presence makes the day. But that other day which was originally made had already repeated itself three times when, at its fourth recurrence, these lights of the firmament were created.

(Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad Litteram), 4.26.43; PL, 34:314; trans. The Literal Meaning of Genesis: Volume 1, Ancient Christian Writers, No. 41, trans. J. H. Taylor, [Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1982], p. 134.) Preview.

I. Howard Marshall:

Perhaps one may say that the problem is one of definition and where to draw the line. It is worth asking whether ‘inerrant’ is really the most appropriate word to use to describe Scripture. It needs so much qualification, even by its defenders, that it is in danger of dying the death of a thousand qualifications. The term ‘infallible’ in the sense of ‘entirely trustworthy’ is undoubtedly preferable. Certainly, if I were to be put in a corner and had only the two options open to me of confessing the Bible to be inerrant or errant, then I have no doubt in which direction I would cast my vote as most nearly expressing my understanding of the nature of the Bible; I would prefer, however, to frame the options differently.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], pp. 72-73.)

Cf. R. C. Sproul:

With the combination of the affirmation and denial of article XIII regarding the term inerrancy, it may seem to some that, in view of all the qualifications that are listed in the denial, this word is no longer a useful or appropriate term to use with respect to the Bible. Some have said that it has “suffered the death of a thousand qualifications.” The same, of course, could be said about the word God. Because of the complexity of our concept of God, it has become necessary to qualify in great detail the differences in what is being affirmed and what is being denied when we use the term God. Such qualifications do not negate the value of the word but only serve to sharpen its precision and usefulness.

(R. C. Sproul, Scripture Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine, [Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2005], p. 156.)

Cf. I. Howard Marshall:

The question then becomes whether a specific understanding of the nature of the Bible in terms of inerrancy is essential if the doctrine of Scripture is to play its part in the whole web of Christian teaching. Obviously the doctrine of Scripture is more than a mere link in the system, but occupies a fundamental position as the basis of other teachings. Three things can be said. First, acceptance of biblical inerrancy is no guarantee of the doctrinal orthodoxy upheld by evangelical Christianity; there have been plenty of odd positions upheld by defenders of inerrancy. Second, the entire trustworthiness of Scripture for its divinely intended purposes is an adequate formula to cover the need for a secure basis for doctrine. Third, we have in the end to be content with what God has actually given us and not with what we may wish that he had given us. It may be objected that to put the matter this way is to make the teaching of Scripture a relative rather than an absolute standard. This is simply not so. The authority of Scripture remains absolute. Any element of relativism comes in at the stage of interpreting what Scripture says, since its meaning is not always crystal clear, and here the inerrantist is as much in difficulty as anybody else, since (as we have seen) he still has to interpret Scripture to find out what its inerrant message is.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 72.)

J. I. Packer:

When Thomas Hobbes declared that ‘words are the counters of wise men, they do reckon by them; but they are the coinage of fools’, he was warning us that words, being tools of thought and tokens of meaning, are neither magical nor impregnable, and we abuse our minds if we think otherwise. Anything you really understand you can express in more than one form of words, and no verbal formula is exempt from the possibility of reinterpretation, misinterpretation and debasement by those who come after its framers. It is well to remind ourselves of this as we weigh two words which twentieth-century Englis-hspeaking theologians have regularly applied to the view of Scripture as God-given verbal revelation which this book has been setting forth. The words are infallibility and inerrancy, both denoting qualities which adherents of this view ascribe to the Bible.

The first thing to say, in the light of the last paragraph, is that nobody should feel wedded to these words. We can get on without them. If we speak of Holy Scripture as altogether true and trustworthy, or as wholly reliable in its own terms, making no false assertions, claims or promises on its own account (however many lies told by good men, bad men and devils it records), we shall be expressing in formula terms exactly what these words mean. If we prefer these formulae to the words themselves (both of which, be it admitted, have turned into noses of wax, malleable and often misshapen in recent discussion), that is our privilege, and none should want to deprive us of it. Conversely, adherence to traditional terms does not necessarily argue the profoundest grasp of what they stand for; it may only be a sign of a traditional mind.

…the objections to these words. Some deprecate them because using them, they think, has a bad effect. Affirming inerrancy is thought to cause preoccupation with minutiae of Bible harmony and factual detail to the neglect of major matters, and to encourage the unhistorical kind of exegesis that we glanced at two paragraphs back, and thus to thwart good scholarship. Asserting infallibility is held to spawn a superstitious bibliolatry which reveres the Bible as a sort of everyman’s-enquire-within-about-everything, and also thwarts good scholarship. It may be replied that none of this is necessarily so, and that it is worth disinfecting both words from association with these failures in responsible biblical interpretation. But if it is still thought best to eschew the terms as tainted, the point is not worth pressing; as we said, we are not wedded to words.

(J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken, [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988], pp. 110-111, 114.)

Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen:

The Bible itself claims to be able to bring us to know and love God in Jesus Christ and to nurture us in that saving relationship. Nothing is said about vowel points in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Nothing is laid down about grammar or literary conventions or proper historiography. We hear nothing about original autographs and how perfect they were, as distinct from our present copies. The New Testament writers do not seem embarrassed to cite the Old Testament text freely or even creatively. The complexities we debate today simply are not discussed, and we do each other wrong when we make too much of them. Let us not try to be more evangelical than the New Testament by drawing up a rigidly orthodox belief at this point and using it to shut people out. We could not do this if 2 Timothy 3:15-17 were our guide rather than a scholastic conception awkwardly deduced from it.

(Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen, The Scripture Principle: Reclaiming the Full Authority of the Bible: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 154.)

3.1. Inerrancy is not the Gospel. Return to Outline.

B. B. Warfield:

Inspiration is not the most fundamental of Christian doctrines, nor even the first thing we prove about the Scriptures. It is the last and crowning fact as to the Scriptures. These we first prove authentic, historically credible, generally trustworthy, before we prove them inspired. And the proof of their authenticity, credibility, general trustworthiness would give us a firm basis for Christianity prior to any knowledge on our part of their inspiration, and apart indeed from the existence of inspiration. The present writer, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, desires to repeat here what he has said on every proper occasion—that he is far from contending that without inspiration there could be no Christianity. “Without any inspiration,” he added, when making this affirmation on his induction into the work of teaching the Bible[fn. *. Discourses Occasioned by the Inauguration of Benj. B. Warfield, D.D., to the Chair of New Testament Exegesis and Literature in the Western Theological Seminary, April 25, 1880. Pittsburgh, 1880. P. 46. Cf. Inspiration. By Prof. A. A. Hodge and Prof. B. B. Warfield. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1881. Pp. 7, 8 (also in The Presbyterian Review for April, 1891). Also, The Inspiration of the Scriptures. By Francis L. Patton, D.D. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869. Pp. 22, 23, 54.]—“without any inspiration we could have had Christianity; yea, and men could still have heard the truth and through it been awakened, and justified, and sanctified, and glorified. The verities of our faith would remain historically proven to us so bountiful has God been in His fostering care—even had we no Bible; and through those verities, salvation.”

(Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Real Problem of Inspiration;” In: The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Volume IV: 1893, [Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Review Association, 1893], p. 209.)

A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield:

In dealing with sceptics it is not proper to begin with the evidence which immediately establishes Inspiration, but we should first establish Theism, then the historical credibility of the Scriptures, and then the divine origin of Christianity. Nor should we ever allow it to be believed that the truth of Christianity depends upon any doctrine of Inspiration whatever. Revelation came in large part before the record of it, and the Christian Church before the New Testament Scriptures. Inspiration can have no meaning if Christianity is not true, but Christianity would be true and divine, and being so, would stand, even if God had not been pleased to give us, in addition to His revelation of saving truth, an infallible record of that revelation absolutely errorless, by means of Inspiration.

(Archibald A. Hodge, Benjamin B. Warfield, “Inspiration;” In: The Presbyterian Review: Volume II: 1881, No. 6.—April, 1881, [New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company, 1881], p. 227.)

James Orr:

It will have been seen that it is sought in the preceding pages to approach the subject of inspiration through that of revelation. This seems the right method to pursue. The doctrine of inspiration grows out of that of revelation, and can only be made intelligible through the latter. The older method was to prove first the inspiration (by historical evidence, miracles, claims of writers), then through that establish the revelation. This view still finds an echo in the note sometimes heard—‘If the inspiration of the Bible (commonly some theory of inspiration) be given up, what have we left to hold by?’It is urged, e.g., that unless we can demonstrate what is called the ‘inerrancy’ of the Biblical record, down even to its minutest details, the whole edifice of belief in revealed religion falls to the ground. This, on the face of it, is a most suicidal position for any defender of revelation to take up. It is certainly a much easier matter to prove the reality of a divine revelation in the history of Israel, or in Christ, than it is to prove the inerrant inspiration of every part of the record through which that revelation has come to us. Grant the Gospels to be only ordinary historical documents—trustworthy records of the life of Christ, apart from any special inspiration in their authors—we should still, one may contend, be shut up as much as ever to the belief that the Person whose words and works they narrate was One who made superhuman claims, and whose character, words, and deeds attested the truth of these claims. It is assuredly easier to believe that Jesus spoke and acted in the way the Gospels declare Him to have done, than to prove that Mark and Luke possessed an exceptional inspiration in the composition of their writings—though, as has been already stated, there is the best reason for believing that they did.

(James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910], pp. 197-198.)

Timothy Ward:

…inerrancy is a true statement to make about the Bible, but is not in the top rank of significant things to assert about the Bible.

…To say as one’s primary claim for a text that it contains no errors may well be a true thing to say about it, but in the end it does not in itself say anything especially significant about it. (Presumably a good dictionary is error-free, but that does not raise its status above that of just a dictionary.) What is much more significant to say about a text is who wrote it, and what purposes the author intended to perform by means of it. We can happily assert inerrancy with conviction, while putting it in its right place in relation to other aspects of the doctrine of Scripture, and without it coming to occupy centre stage in our thinking about Scripture.

(Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], pp. 130, 136.)

3.2. Infallibility vs. Inerrancy: A Matter of Degree? Return to Outline.

I. Howard Marshall:

Whether or not the Bible, as originally written, is free from error, the subsequent transmission and understanding of it is not free from error. No translation is absolutely accurate, and no commentary gets every detail of the meaning correct. Consequently the question arises: if God’s purpose in giving us a Bible which is entirely trustworthy for his purposes did not include the provision of a guaranteed text, a guaranteed interpretation and a guaranteed application for today, what right have we to assume that he gave an original text that was guaranteed to be utterly precise? The inerrantist will reply that, even if we may make errors in understanding, at least we can have an objective, reliable basis from which to start, and the fact of uncertainties in later transmission is not incompatible with this. This may be logically correct, but it can be argued that the fact that entire trustworthiness is compatible with textual uncertainties and problems in interpretation suggests that it is also compatible with a certain lack of precision in the original text. In short, with so much uncertainty at the level of interpretation, a further measure of uncertainty at the level of the original text does not greatly affect the situation, and is in line with the character of God’s providential care for the transmission of the Bible.

…we have asked whether the Bible contains errors and contradictions. It certainly does contain statements which can be regarded as erroneous by some standards but which are consistent with its intended purpose; one does not fault a carpenter for measuring a table leg accurately to only one decimal place when the standard of accuracy in a laboratory runs to several places of decimals. The problem, then, is what degree of imprecision is compatible with the intended purpose of the Bible.

Here we have encountered two points of view. One group of scholars defends inerrancy. They argue that inspiration implies inerrancy, and that the inerrancy of the Bible is a fact which can be defended. All cases of alleged error can be either accommodated within the definition of inerrancy or assumed to be merely apparent errors. The other group of scholars defends the entire trustworthiness of the Bible for the purpose for which God inspired it; inspiration means that God made the Bible what he wanted it to be for his purposes. This school of thought holds that a greater degree of imprecision may be compatible with God’s purposes. It will be apparent that the former group holds that the Bible was the result of a process giving the same results as divine dictation, while the latter group leaves the precise mode of inspiration somewhat uncertain.

…But at the end of the day the difference between the two points of view may well be nothing more than one of degree.

…It is clear that it is a matter of biblical interpretation to decide what is or is not compatible with biblical inerrancy. If we are to evaluate Scripture according to its own standards of truth and error, then it is arguable that the Bible does contain what may be regarded as errors and contradictions by modern standards but which are not in fact contrary to its own standards and purpose. If the inerrantists are standing for the truth of Scripture, understood in scriptural terms, then their position is no different in principle from that of the other school of evangelical Christians who also affirm the entire trustworthiness of Scripture. There may be differences between the two schools on matters of detail which are in danger of being elevated into matters of principle, but these are as nothing compared with that which they have in common, namely the belief in the entire trustworthiness of Scripture for its God-given purpose. And there is a world of difference between this position and that which would deny that the Scriptures are the inspired Word of God.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], pp. 68-69, 69-70, 70, 71.)

4. Literary Genre (Historiography and Cosmology) and Inerrancy. Return to Outline.

C. S. Lewis:

The very kind of truth we are often demanding was, in my opinion, not even envisaged by the ancients.

(C. S. Lewis, Letter, To Professor Clyde S. Kilby [7 May, 1959; Magdalen College, Oxford]; In: Letters of C. S. Lewis: Revised and Enlarged Edition, eds. W. H. Lewis, Walter Hooper, [London: Fount, 1991], p. 480.)

Michael J. Christensen:

The Bible as inspired literature requires good reading and intuitive perception. To appreciate Scripture, as with great literature, we must begin by receiving the text in the way it was intended.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 79.)

Charles Hodge:

The words of Scripture . . . must be taken in the sense attached to them in the age and by the people to whom they were addressed.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1874], p. 187.)

I. Howard Marshall:

The significance of the Bible for us flows out of what the original authors meant to say to their original readers, and does not pass by it.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 97.)

John H. Walton:

…we must be aware of the danger that lurks when we impose our own cultural ideas on the text without thinking. The Bible’s message must not be subjected to cultural imperialism. Its message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture. This was God’s design and we ignore it at our peril. Sound interpretation proceeds from the belief that the divine and human authors were competent communicators and that we can therefore comprehend their communication. But to do so, we must respect the integrity of the author by refraining from replacing his message with our own. Though we cannot expect to be able to think like they thought, or read their minds, or penetrate very deeply into so much that is opaque to us in their culture, we can begin to see that there are other ways of thinking besides our own and begin to identify some of the ways in which we have been presumptuously ethnocentric. Though our understanding of ancient culture will always be limited, ancient literature is the key to a proper interpretation of the text, and sufficient amounts of it are available to allow us to make progress in our understanding.

(John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], pp. 19-20.) Preview.

Note: See further: Sola Scriptura (Definition Of) — The Perspicuity of Scripture.

John Walton:

Those who take the Bible seriously believe that God has inspired the locutions (words, whether spoken or written) that the communicator has used to accomplish their joint (divine + human author) illocutions (which lead to an understanding of intentions, claims, affirmations and, ultimately, meaning) but that the foundational locutions are tied to the communicator’s world. That is, God has made accommodation to the high-context communication between the implied communicators and their implied audience so as to optimize and facilitate the transmission of meaning via an authoritative illocution. Inspiration is tied to locutions (they have their source in God); illocutions define the necessary path to meaning that can be defined as characterized by authority.

At times our distance from the ancient communicator might mean that we misunderstand the communication because of elements that are foreign to us, or because we do not share ways of thinking with the communicator. Comparative studies help us to understand more fully the form of the biblical authors’ employed genres and the nature of their rhetorical devices so that we do not mistake these elements for something that they never were. Such an exercise does not compromise the authority of Scripture but ascribes authority to that which the communicator was actually communicating. We also need comparative studies in order to recognize the aspects of the communicators’ cognitive environment that are foreign to us and to read the text in light of their world and worldview.

(John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015], p. 17.)

Daniel J. Treier:

Thus, “context, context, context” becomes the hermeneutically paramount rule for implementing commitment to biblical inerrancy in interpretative practice; special attention must be paid to the diverse ways that literary genres relate to truth claims.

(Daniel J. Treier, “Scripture and Hermeneutics;” In: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, eds. Timothy Larsen, Daniel J. Treier, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p. 40.)

Karl Rahner, S.J.:

The inerrant meaning of particular writings and sections must be determined essentially from the literary forms of the writings.

(Karl Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible, trans. Charles H. Henkey, S.J., Revised by Martin Palmer, S.J., [New York: Herder and Herder, 1966], p. 83.)

Peter Enns:

…inerrancy is not to be equated with literalistic readings of Scripture. Rather it must be sensitive to ancient genres and ancient conventions of speech. …I would stress that inerrancy is misconceived if it is used to delimit interpretive conclusions as a matter of a priori philosophical necessity, that is, coming to Scripture with thick interpretive boundaries already drawn. Instead, I would explain inerrancy as an expression of faith and trust in God, that whatever the Bible does, no matter how it might or might not fit into preconceived categories, reflects the “free pleasure of God.”

(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015], “Preface to the Second Edition,” pp. ix, ix-x.)

Denis O. Lamoureux:

Conservative Christian theology is distinguished by the belief in biblical inerrancy. Commonly understood, this notion asserts that God inspired Scripture, and as a result, it is completely free from any errors. Of course, a high view of biblical inspiration is foundational to the best theology. However, most Christians conflate the concept of biblical inerrancy with a strict literal interpretation of Scripture.

(Denis O. Lamoureux, I love Jesus & I Accept Evolution, [Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009], p. 64.)

Gerald Bray:

“Infallibility” emerged as a way of saying that the Scriptures do not teach error, and “inerrancy” makes it more precise by insisting that they do not contain it either. Both terms have suffered from the excessive zeal of some of their proponents, who have made extravagant claims that go beyond what can be proved from the texts themselves. For example, some have said that Job must have been a historical person, since he is described in that way in the book that bears his name, but it is just as likely that he is a fictional character whom the anonymous author created in order to make a series of important theological points. To use “inerrancy” as an excuse for insisting on the historicity of Job is going too far, and the term loses its credibility when such claims are made on the basis of it.

(Gerald Bray, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2012], p. 56.) Preview.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer:

The nature of a biblical text (the kind of discourse it is) should be determined only after a close reading and, if possible, a critical comparison with other ancient literary forms of the same type. Arguments from the supposed nature of truth to conclusions about what a genre “must” be are unsound. The purpose of exegesis is not to protect a correspondence theory of truth so much as to make clear what has been said in Scripture. Thus, the goal of exegesis will be a competent reading of the text, heeding both illocutionary intent (historical context) and literary convention (grammatical context).

Timothy Ward:

Belief in biblical inerrancy naturally takes account of a number of features of Scripture that flow from the fact that it is written in ordinary human language, using the everyday features of ordinary language. These include the use of round numbers and colloquial approximations; loose and free quotations (especially of the Old Testament in the New); some unusual (and, strictly speaking, wrong) grammatical forms; and figures of speech such as metaphor, parable, hyperbole and so on. None of these features counts against the claim that Scripture does not err in everything it affirms. Rather it is by taking full account of these features that we shall be able to discern what in fact God is and is not asserting in Scripture.

One straightforward example is the early chapters of Genesis. The question of how much of the content of these chapters is intended by God to give historical description and how much is intended to be metaphorical is of course widely debated among evangelicals. However, subscribing to inerrancy does not require us to adopt one particular interpretation of these chapters – for example, believing that the universe was created in six twenty-four hour periods. Many inerrantists believe that Genesis does intend to teach this, while many other inerrantists believe that it does not. Inerrancy does not set down any principle that requires certain sections of Scripture to be treated as intended to be either largely historical or largely metaphorical. That question must be addressed through appropriate biblical interpretation, and the answer is not determined in advance by a doctrine of Scripture. All inerrantists, however, do agree that whatever one decides that Scripture intends to assert, that content must be regarded as free from error.

(Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], pp. 133-134.)

Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen:

…we have to put aside modern inhibitions and alien expectations and permit Scripture to employ whatever forms of literary composition it chooses. It is a simple question of the sovereignty of God and the freedom of the text to determine its own thrust and form. Although it is natural for readers to expect those forms familiar to them, we must be open to surprises when the text employs literary forms no longer in use. To some extent, the problem is eased by the great influence the Bible has exercised in Western culture, so that forms such as proverb, parable, and lament are familiar to us already. Nevertheless, we must remain open to fresh examples that may come out of the ongoing scholarly study of the text. It is not our right to sit in judgment on the text and measure it by our standards of appropriateness.

Divine inspiration can make use of all forms of literature employed by humans and make them into media of the Word of God. Note this: “We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.”[fn. 8: Typical of the Chicago Statement, the next sentence reads: “We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship” (article 18). One feels a certain reluctance to accept certain literary forms even if the text suggests them.] The reason exegesis is important is to enable us to understand the text better. Unless we grasp the language scheme that is being played out in the text, we may not be able to comprehend what is being communicated in it. Valid interpretation requires that we pay attention to such factors as literary form.

(Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen, The Scripture Principle: Reclaiming the Full Authority of the Bible: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 142.)

Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen:

…the Scriptures have the right to choose what literary forms they will use, and we must be open to what they decide. This is not to say that we have to accept whatever speculation biblical critics advance or that we have to deny a traditional interpretation just because it is traditional. It is simply a question of our willingness to respect the liberty of the biblical writers to choose their forms of literary composition, even if it shocks us and contravenes our standards of writing. Once we grant Jesus the right to use fictional stories called parables to make a point, we are on the right track. He did not use parables to deceive people about historical facts. He simply decided that this was a good way to teach the people at that time. Therefore, we must not be suspicious of the biblical scholars who try to inform us about these matters, but give them a fair hearing because their expertise is precisely to determine unfamiliar literary practices and to help us understand the Word of God better. We have our literary ideals in the Western world and must take care not to impose them on the Bible, which has its own.

Many of our difficulties with the Bible arise from its way of writing history and from its manner of using details. We in the West are schooled to look for exact information and factual accuracy, so when we read the Bible, we expect the same thing. We automatically suppose that a detail is recorded because it corresponds to factual reality and is not fictional. If it is not true in this scientific sense, we do not look kindly on it. When we read the creation story, we think immediately about evolutionary biology, not about those issues that concerned the ancient writer. We simply tend to assume that apparently descriptive narrative is necessarily what it appears. Because we impose such expectations on the text, we create for ourselves a large number of difficult problems.

We must not yield on the principle that the Bible has a right to report history the way it chooses; it does not have to answer to us. Despite history being crucial to the biblical message, we have to grant the Bible its freedom to employ the styles of historical writing it wants to. The Chicago Statement was correct in making this generous concession: “We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selection of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.”

(Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen, The Scripture Principle: Reclaiming the Full Authority of the Bible: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], pp. 144-145.)

Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen:

First, it must be stressed that the literary vehicle, Scripture itself, has the right to determine its own forms, not the reader. The Bible does not attempt to hide the marks of its humanity. In inspiring the Scriptures, God made full use of human intermediaries operating out of specific cultural contexts. His Word comes to us through a variety of literary forms, and all of them deserve our close attention. It is inevitable that a modern reader will have difficulties with the text at numerous points, and assistance should be offered. But seeking to skirt issues or engaging in ingenious attempts at harmonization are not wise because they dishonor the Bible and discredit its supposed defenders.

Simple honesty is essential. It is not edifying to see liberals or conservatives tampering with the text to avoid something in tension with their own presuppositions. The distance of the text, its integrity apart from us, must be maintained if it is to be our norm. We must be willing to face the facts, whatever they are. Because religion touches the deepest emotions, believers easily become inconsistent when their whole worldview seems to be threatened. We can be tempted by clever epistemological tricks that offer to ease the pain of religious doubt. But our love for the God of all truth must be great enough for us to refuse such seduction. What lies in mystery should be allowed to so lie.

Second, the kind and number of difficulties in the Bible definitely vary with the expectations brought to the text by the reader. The Calvinist will want the Bible to be Reformed, the Wesleyan will want it to be Wesleyan. A scientific person may want it to be technically accurate, whereas a literary person may glory in the symbols and the imagery. The difficulties arise when the Bible does not meet these expectations. In a sense, we create the difficulties for ourselves. None of them are “in” the Bible per se. They are self-imposed burdens that we bring as modern readers.

(Clark H. Pinnock, Barry L. Callen, The Scripture Principle: Reclaiming the Full Authority of the Bible: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], pp. 152-153.)

David S. Dockery:

…it is necessary to know if a text has been interpreted properly. The author’s intention must be recognized, and matters of precision and accuracy must be judged in light of the culture and means of communication that had developed by the time of the text’s composition. The text, as a guideline, should be interpreted normally, grammatically, historically, contextually, and theologically. The context, background, genre, and purpose of the writing must be considered in interpretational matters.

(David S. Dockery, Christian Scripture: An Evangelical Perspective on Inspiration, Authority, and Interpretation, [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995], p. 65.)

Paul D. Feinberg:

The literary style or form has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the content conveyed in that style.

(Paul D. Feinberg, “The Meaning of Inerrancy;” In: Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1980], p. 299.)

René Pache:

Although everything in the Bible is inspired, it does not follow that all of it must be taken literally. …This repeated accusation of an obligatory literalness looms up partly from the false idea which critics hold about our position. They think that the concept of verbal inspiration forces us to consider every word by itself, irrespective of the context, as being the object of an independent inspiration. Nothing could be further from the truth. No language, no literature, could be subjected to such treatment. Words, vehicles of thought, are arranged and bound together to express one unified whole.

(René Pache, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, trans. Helen I. Needham, [Chicago: Moody Press, 1976], p. 124.)

Robert H. Gundry:

…if we do not enlarge the room given to differences of literary genre and, consequently, of intended meaning, scriptural inspiration, authority, infallibility, or inerrancy—call it what we will—cannot survive the “close reading” of the biblical text now going on.

(Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1982], “A Theological Postscript,” p. 639.)

Michael F. Bird:

The language of revelation is accommodated to the worldview and expectations of its audience in matters of cosmology and historiography, but the accommodation is never a capitulation to error. God does not speak erroneously nor does he feed us nuts of truth lodged inside shells of falsehood.

(Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020], 6.3.5.2, pp. 720-721. Cf. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, gen. eds. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013], p. 159.)

Cf. G. W. Bromiley:

…for while it is no doubt a paradox that eternal truth is revealed in temporal events and witnessed through a human book, it is sheer unreason to say that that truth is revealed in and through that which is erroneous.

(G. W. Bromiley, “The Authority of Scripture;” In: The New Bible Commentary, ed. F. Davidson, [London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1954], p. 22.)

Note: See further: Historiography (As a Literary Genre).

William Henry Green:

No objection can be made to the demand that the sacred writings should be subjected to the same critical tests as other literary productions of antiquity. When were they written, and by whom? For whom were they intended, and with what end in view? These are questions that may fairly be asked respecting the several books of the Bible, as respecting other books, and the same criteria that are applicable in the one case are applicable likewise in the other. Every production of any age bears the stamp of that age. It takes its shape from influences then at work. It is part of the life of the period, and can only be properly estimated and understood from being viewed in its original connections. Its language will be the language of the time when it was produced. The subject, the style of thought, the local and personal allusions, will have relation to the circumstances of the period, to which in fact the whole and every part of it must have its adaptation, and which must have their rightful place in determining its true explanation.

Inspiration has no tendency to obliterate those distinctive qualities and characteristics which link men to their own age.

(William Henry Green, “Preliminary Remarks;” In: Moses and the Prophets, ed. William Henry Green, [New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1882], pp. 17-18.)

Note: See further: Cosmology (As a Literary Genre—Myths/History).

N. T. Wright:

There is nothing to be gained from an attempt to make the truth of Christianity depend on the literal truth of every word of the Bible. Such a view shifts the balance in Christianity decisively in the wrong direction. For Christians, Jesus, not the New Testament, is the central truth. But one should not, for that reason, imagine that historical issues can simply go by the board.

(N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1993], p. 88.)

Note: See further: “The Relation Between Christ and the Scriptures.”

5. Inerrancy vs. Interpretation. Return to Outline.

Rex A. Koivisto:

And there is the ever-present danger . . . to confuse the authority of Scripture with a given line of interpretation . . . and imbue that interpretation with divine authority.

(Rex A. Koivisto, One Lord, One Faith: A Theology for Cross-Denominational Renewal, [Wheaton: A BridgePoint Book, 1993], p. 201.)

I. Howard Marshall:

Whether or not the original text is free from error, we are not free from error and uncertainty in understanding it.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 68.)

Moisés Silva:

To interpret the biblical text (or any other text, for that matter) involves a contextual shift. Even when I seek merely to express what Paul meant, for example, I am constrained to do so in my situation: with English rather than Greek, with modern rather than ancient idioms, with Western nuances rather than Middle Eastern thought forms. In other words, all forms of interpretation necessarily include a measure of contextualization. This point is a little frightening because it appears to relativize Scripture. On the contrary, it should remind us of the relativity of our interpretation, because we are weak, limited, ignorant, and sinful. God’s truth remains sure, while our perception of that truth may need to change.

(Moisés Silva, Has the Church Misread the Bible? The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987], p. 23.)

Michael F. Bird:

…Mohler says that “I do not allow any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify to the slightest degree the truthfulness of any text in all that the text asserts and claims” (p. 51). There are three problems here. First, Mohler does not distinguish between the text and his interpretation of it; he conflates them. The result is that he preaches the inerrancy of the text but practices the inerrancy of his interpretation. Second, Mohler’s unyielding commitment to the Bible turns out to be a type of extreme fideism, and in practice it means a closed-mindedness to examining all the evidence, pro and con, concerning the Bible and his interpretation of it. Third, Mohler has a faulty view of revelation. He forgets that God’s Word comes to us in God’s world so that God’s revelation of himself in Scripture (i.e., special revelation) is taken in tandem with God’s revelation of himself in nature and history (i.e., general revelation). The problem is that Mohler wants to interpret nature and history in light of Scripture, but not Scripture in light of history or nature. That means that whenever there is a dissonance between the claims of special revelation and those of general revelation, Mohler will always find the error to be in secular interpretation of general revelation, whereas the error might just as well reside in his interpretation of special revelation!

(Michael F. Bird, “Response to R. Albert Mohler Jr.;” In: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, gen. eds. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013], pp. 69-70.)

Note: If there is such a thing as “general revelation” (and I firmly believe that there is, cf. Rom. 1:18-32; 2:14-15; Psa. 19:1-7; Act. 14:15-18; 17:23-29; etc.) then “general revelation” has the exact same ontological status and validity as “special revelation.” Both are equally veracious because both are God speaking (“general revelation” is revelation). God is truth (Jhn. 14:6 cf. Heb. 6:18), He does not speak some things that are more true and other things that are less true. This is not to say that the content of “special” and “general revelation” is identical, “general revelation” does not tell us of Christ or Salvation, but this does not make the content of “general revelation” any less true or authoritative. The difference between the two is a matter of content (and, to a degree, perspicuity) not veracity.

Note: See further: General Revelation (The “Book” of Nature—Science and Scripture).

Kevin J. Vanhoozer:

Mohler seems oblivious to the varied meanings of inerrancy currently in circulation. He quotes the ICBI definition (“without error or fault in all its teaching”), but he does not say what counts as an error or whether Scripture intends to teach (modern) science. In his case study on Joshua 6, however, he does say this: “I do not allow any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify in the slightest degree the truthfulness of any text in all that the text asserts and claims” (p. 51). Neither do I. The relevant question, however, is whether he allows any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify, or rather modify, in the slightest degree the truthfulness of any interpretation of the biblical text. I’m willing to be radical about the truthfulness of Scripture too, but this radicalism or boldness must be tempered with humility as concerns my interpretations. Humility does not mean that I give up without a fight for traditional interpretations; it, only means that I do not summarily rule out readings that challenge traditional interpretations, especially if they claim to make better sense of the text as it stands. After all, what is inerrant is the text, not our interpretation.

(Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Response to R. Albert Mohler Jr.;” In: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, gen. eds. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013], p. 74.)

Matthew Barrett:

…inerrancy means that Scripture is true in everything it affirms. Scripture does not address everything, but in everything it does address, it speaks the truth. So whether it is doctrine, morality, history, or even life sciences, its assertions are truthful and trustworthy. As Vanhoozer puts it, “To say that Scripture is inerrant is to confess faith that the authors speak the truth in all things they affirm (when they make affirmations).” Of course, it takes a keen eye to discern what exactly Scripture is affirming and asserting and what it is not (hence the importance of hermeneutics). We must work hard to consider the various biblical genres to ensure that we do not make Scripture say something it is not saying, and we must also distinguish between the inerrant text and our fallible interpretations of the text.

(Matthew Barrett, God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016], p. 266.) Preview.

I. Howard Marshall:

…a proper understanding of the Bible as the written Word of God does not tie revelation down in an unacceptable way. It is the Bible which is the Word of God and not our understanding of it. Granted that the Bible needs to be interpreted, it is still the Bible which remains authoritative and not our interpretation of it.

(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 124.)

Excursus: Some Hermeneutical Principles.

Anthony Thiselton:

1. The urgency and relevance of the questions before us can be seen clearly from contemporary theology, from current debates in the Church and from practical questions about Christian spirituality, including those of preaching and Bible study.

2. The task of understanding the biblical text must include a careful investigation of its linguistic, historical, literary and theological context, and its setting in the ancient world.

3. Often this may call for the use of resources provided by biblical scholarship. But this is not to deny that the untrained reader may draw from the Bible ‘all things necessary for salvation’.

4. Not only the ancient text but also the modern reader is conditioned by his place in history. This gives rise to specific types of problem, which vary according to each particular passage (cf. the different parables discussed).

5. Historical distancing has a vital part to play in preventing premature ‘applications’. It ensures that I do not merely read my own ideas into the text.

6. Understanding and appropriation depend, however, on a fusion between two sets of horizons, namely those of the text and those of the modern reader. Both distancing and fusion are equally necessary.

7. The reader’s own prior frame of reference both helps and hinders a right understanding of the text. He can begin only with his own questions; but these questions, in turn, must be called into question by the text. Questioning one’s own questions is a necessary part of biblical interpretation.

8. Understanding the biblical text is a process rather than an act. It involves both studying and listening, both careful reflection and response.

9. The Bible not only conveys information to be learned, but also communicates God’s word of address to be obeyed. Language about biblical authority, in spite of its controversial nature, calls attention to this dimension of obedient response to God.

10. The Holy Spirit works through the kinds of means which have been set out above, and not usually in independence of them, even though this may sometimes occur. An appeal to the doctrine of the Spirit does not relieve Christians of the responsibility to take these hermeneutical issues seriously.

(Tony Thiselton, “Understanding God’s Word Today;” In: Obeying Christ in a Changing World: Volume I: The Lord Christ, ed. John Stott, [Glasgow: Collins, 1977], pp. 120-121.)

5.1. “Interpretation” is Unavoidable. Return to Outline.

Christian Smith:

…beliefs are always set in historical, sociological, and psychological contexts…

(Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, [Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2011], p. 64.)

C. S. Lewis:

What are facts without interpretation?

(C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, [New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1955], p. 116.)

Rex A. Koivisto:

None of us interprets the Bible in a vacuum. We interpret out of a cultural, historical context, through an ecclesiastical context, looking for the Bible’s relevance to cultural problems. Since the cultural context and problems change, what we look for in the Bible changes, even though the text remains the same. Brown is right when he says that the “leapfrog” model of interpretation which asserts we can go directly, uninfluenced by tradition to the Bible is wrong, for two reasons:

(a) it ignores the fact that people inevitably read the Bible in the light of a denominational or theological heritage, and (b) it ignores the fact that they read it in the light of their contemporary situation.

Thus, interpretive traditions are unavoidable even for the most ardent evangelical student of the Bible. And beyond that, we really stand on the shoulders of interpretive work done by Christians centuries before our time—not to mention the work of the originators of our own denominational subgroup. This is not to say that reading Scripture from the standpoint of an inherited tradition is wrong (it definitely can be if it is unrecognized and therefore confused with biblical authority), but it is only to say that doing so is inevitable. In fact, sometimes a given tradition can draw out some nuances from the text that is lost to other traditions.

(Rex A. Koivisto, One Lord, One Faith: A Theology for Cross-Denominational Renewal, [Wheaton: A BridgePoint Book, 1993], pp. 136-137.)

Richard Lints:

I write this not to offer an outright condemnation of the movement but merely to establish the point that evangelicalism has been deeply influenced by the culture in which it has thrived. Ours is not a simple distillation of the pure gospel. Nor can we lay claim to a Christian America as much as we can to a Americanized Christianity. As evangelical theology approaches the twenty-first century, it must take these trends seriously. It is not feasible any longer to argue that only our opponents are biased in their theologizing. Evangelical theology must not only engage a culture that is largely resistant to its claims of absolute truth but must also recognize the influence which that culture has exercised upon it. Evangelicals must acknowledge the reality of cultural influence and cultural bias even in their own community.

…Evangelicals have not been as critically self-conscious as they should have been. They have not understood themselves as well as they have understood their opponents. Part of the task of theology is to reflect on the one who reads the biblical text. Theology is about God, but it is also about those who have been created in God’s image and have become distorted images. A genuine biblical theology will strongly affirm that humans (Christian and non-Christian) are inevitably influenced by their own culture, tradition, and experience. Until and unless the evangelical community wrestles more seriously with this fact, they will not overcome the unreflective biases that characterize the evangelical appropriation of the Bible. To that end it is imperative that they understand the peculiar cultural shape of evangelicalism and its impact on the theological framework and vision of the evangelical community.

(Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1993], pp. 25-26, 27.) Preview.

N. T. Wright:

…all humans inevitably and naturally interpret the information received from their senses through a grid of expectations, memories, stories, psychological states, and so on. The point of view is not merely peculiar in terms of location (I am standing on this side of the room, not that side, so my viewpoint is different from yours); it is also peculiar in terms of the lenses of my worldview (as various writers have shown, a tacit and pre-theoretical point of view is itself a necessary condition for any perception and knowledge to occur at all). Thirdly, and most importantly, where I stand and the (metaphorical) lenses through which I look have a great deal to do with the communities to which I belong. Some things which I see in a particular way I see thus because I belong to a particular human community, a network of family and friends, some, because I belong to a profession, some, because I am an amateur musician, and so on. Every human community shares and cherishes certain assumptions, traditions, expectations, anxieties, and so forth, which encourage its members to construe reality in particular ways, and which create contexts within which certain kinds of statements are perceived as making sense. There is no such thing as the ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ observer, equally, there is no such thing as the detached observer.

(N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 1, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992], p. 36.) Preview.

James K. A. Smith:

…we never have simply “the Scriptures” pure and uninterpreted; every appeal to “what the Bible says” is an appeal to an interpretation of the Bible. Whenever someone promises to deliver “the Scriptures alone,” he or she has always already delivered an interpretation that is carried out within an interpretive tradition. Fidelity to the Scriptures is always fidelity to an interpretation of the Scriptures and thus operates only within an interpretive tradition, a way of reading one cannot step outside of (though one may participate in a different interpretive tradition).

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 53.)

Cf. James K. A. Smith:

…everything is a matter of interpretation… We never have the “crisp, unadorned voice of God” because it is always heard and read through the lens of our finitude and situationality. Even when someone purports to deliver to us the unadorned voice of God, or “what God meant” (OLOF 162), we always receive only someone’s interpretation, which is wearing the badge of divinity.

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 44.)

Note: See further: “The Necessity of Private Interpretation.”

5.1.1. “Overcoming” Interpretation? Return to Outline.

Moisés Silva:

We should keep in mind that the church has made great advances in scriptural knowledge, and it would be tragic if we were to ignore all of that understanding in our own study. It is actually an illusion to think that we can somehow skip over those centuries and face the teaching of Scripture directly, with a blank mind and without the counsel of those who have gone before us.

(Moisés Silva, Has the Church Misread the Bible? The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987], p. 21.)

Cf. Moisés Silva:

…we can hardly claim to have developed a satisfactory approach if our exegesis is in essence incompatible with the way God’s people have read the Scriptures throughout the centuries.

(Moisés Silva, Has the Church Misread the Bible? The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987], p. 35.)

Possible Solution: One.

Richard Lints:

Sola Scriptura was a rallying cry for our Protestant forebears. As we have already seen, neither Luther nor Calvin ever intended that this principle serve as the means by which individual interpreters might bypass the contributions of the larger interpretive community, either past or present. The Reformers maintained that interpretation of the biblical text is a responsibility not of the individual but of the community of believers gathered. It must be a corporate enterprise.

There are manifold indications that individualism, so characteristic of the modern West, wreaked havoc on biblical interpretation in the generations after the Reformers. Even so, Protestantism has managed to preserve a sense that Scripture is the final authority for the life of the believer, it has simply failed to affirm the hermeneutical parameters that are properly implicit in the principle of sola Scriptura. If Scripture is the final authority, then in some important sense Scripture must be allowed to interpret Scripture—which entails another fundamental principle of the Reformers, the analogia fidei (the analogy of faith). The faith defined in any given scriptural passage is to be interpreted by the faith defined in the whole of the Scriptures. The authority of the Scriptures is integrally connected with a proper understanding of those Scriptures, and the final court of appeals in interpretive matters must be the Scriptures themselves.

(Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1993], p. 291.) Preview.

Note: See further: Biblicism.

Possible Objection.

James K. A. Smith:

First, we must affirm the canonical horizon of interpretation and in this sense affirm the principle of sola Scriptura in terms of the analogia fidei. It seems that recently canonical criticism and the work of figures such as Hans Frei (and even Walter Brueggemann), have sought to retrieve this principle such that Scripture is taken “on its own terms.” As suggested above, this highlights the intertextuality of Scripture and works as a counterweight to the neoscholasticism of Protestant fundamentalism as well as to the imposition of modern criteria of interpretation as practiced in Enlightenment historical-critical approaches. Further, it properly situates the site of interpretation within the believing community, the church. Again, here must be noted the contributions of postliberal discussions that have renewed our appreciation for biblical interpretation as an ecclesial task.

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 55.)

Cf. James K. A. Smith:

…is it not simply begging the question to assert that the criterion for interpreting the Bible is the Bible itself? How can we bring our preunderstandings under the judgment of “scriptural teaching” if we never have “scriptural teaching” apart from those preunderstandings? Is there not lodged in Lints’s appeal to “the Scriptures themselves” an implicit notion of pure reading, of simply reading the Bible apart from interpretation? As soon as we appeal to sola Scriptura in this (second) sense, se, do we not only and always have interpretations and readings—what my Bible clearly says? The problem with this understanding of “Scripture interprets Scripture” is that the interpreting Scripture must be interpreted; there is no “pure” (i.e., noninterpreted) Scripture.

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 56.)

Cf. James K. A. Smith:

…the principle “scripture interprets scripture” does not allow us to appeal to uninterpreted Scriptures to clarify matters of interpretation elsewhere. It will always be interpretations of interpretations.

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 53.)

Note: See further: Sola Scriptura (Definition Of).

Some Thoughts.

Note: Here I must agree with Smith. While the principle that Scripture is to interpret Scripture is ancient (virtually ubiquitous among the Patristic writers) and is certainly a vital hermeneutical principle to be employed, it does not ultimately ameliorate our difficulty, namely that in the realm of hermeneutics “everything is a matter of interpretation”. (Idem, p. 44.)

Note: See further: “Pluralism, A Problem for the Reformation and Rome.”

Possible Solution: Two.

Richard Lints:

So the Christian theological framework must take into account the God who is known and who has made himself known. Secondarily, it must take into account the one to whom this knowledge comes. God speaks not in a vacuum but to and through people and in and through history. The speech of God has entered into time and space. It comes clothed in a cultural history and addresses itself to people across different cultural histories. The language is often eloquent, sometimes earthy, always appropriate.

It is a speech often misunderstood and misinterpreted, because those who listen to the speech come with expectations about it. Hoping it will say one thing, they are often disillusioned that it says another. In quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) acts of desperation, they interpret the speech as meaning something that was never intended. They turn the conversation strangely upside down. Many listen but mold the message in order to avoid the force of the rebuke it is meant to deliver. They substitute an all-too-human message for the divine message.

Do we all do this to some degree? Yes. Must it happen all the time? No. We all participate in the fallenness of creation. By nature, we do not desire the things of God. Even in redemption, we continue to resist the “good news” at the fierce urging of the sin that remains within us. It is not merely “someone else” who distorts the truths of God; we have to acknowledge that we do so ourselves. If we want to be able to listen to the conversation with God, we have to be able to see how our own expectations color our understanding of the conversation. The impulses that drive us are not always holy and pure.

…we hear the divine conversation only after it has passed through several filters—our culture, our religious tradition, our personal history, and so on. If we take these filters seriously, we may be able to decrease the distortion with which we hear the conversation.

(Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1993], pp. 59-60, 61.) Preview.

Note: See further: “The Perspicuity of Scripture.”

Possible Objection.

James K. A. Smith:

My difficulty is not with Lints’s discussion of fallenness but rather with what he links to fallenness: namely, presuppositions and horizons of expectation. That my hearing the voice of God and reading the word of God are conditioned by historical horizons of expectation, Lints takes to be indicative of the fallenness of creation. As he later notes, “we hear the divine conversation only after it has passed through several filters—our culture, our religious tradition, our personal history, and so on. If we take these filters seriously, we may be able to decrease the distortion with which we hear the conversation” (FT 61).

But are not culture, traditionality and personal history constitutive aspects of simply being human, of being a creature? Is not the finitude of creaturehood inextricably linked to conditionality and situationality? Am I not, as a human being, limited to this space where I stand, with these horizons, which move with me but nevertheless remain my horizons? Are not the “filters” or “presuppositions” that I inherit from a multitude of traditions (religious, sociolinguistic, familial) an inescapable aspect of human experience as created by God? And if so, is not Lints in fact devaluing creation by linking such conditions of finitude to the Fall and sin? If being human necessarily entails our having expectations and presuppositions and if being human means being God’s creatures, then why should such expectations and filters be described as “distortions” that “color” our understanding? Is that not to make being human a sin?

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 51.)

Some Thoughts.

Note: While I am sympathetic to the point Smith is attempting to make, I am uncertain how much force his objection actually carries. I agree with Smith that our “culture, traditionality and personal history” and our “presuppositions and horizons of expectation” may very well be constituent aspects of our humanity. Similarly, I agree that these things may very well exist in the world to come (the new Heavens and Earth). That being said, however, at present our “culture, traditionality and personal history” and our “presuppositions and horizons of expectation” are the products of finite, fallen, sinful individuals. Whereas in the world to come (assuming such things continue) our “culture, traditionality and personal history” and our “presuppositions and horizons of expectation” will be the products of finite, redeemed, righteous individuals. The fall has not left mankind destitute of their constitutional faculties, nor did it introduce interpretation into a world where previously there was none. The fall has, however, resulted in changing the human heart such that it now “is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick”. (Jeremiah 17:9, NASB) This is to say that our “understanding apprehends the truth to be believed, and decides upon the validity of the evidence, but the disposition to believe testimony, or moral evidence, has its foundation in the will.” (Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology: Rewritten and Enlarged, [New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1878], p. 466.) In the world to come our hearts will no longer be “desperately sick” but in this vale of tears it is not yet so. This sickness has had a profoundly devastating impact on all human “culture, traditionality and personal history” as well as upon our “presuppositions and horizons of expectation”.

C. S. Lewis:

We must not let loose our own subjectivity upon the pictures and make them its vehicles. We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations. …We must use our eyes. We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there. We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

(C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, [Cambridge: At the University Press, 1961], pp. 18, 19.)

Cf. Michael J. Christensen:

We respond not to the Bible per se but to the realities conveyed through the Bible by the power of the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 80.)

Cf. George Herbert:

…look here; this is the thankfull glasse, That mends the looker’s eyes; this is the well, That washes what it shows.

(George Herbert, “The Holy Scriptures;” In: The Poetical Works of George Herbert, ed. Charles Cowden Clarke, [London, Charles Griffin and Company, 1865], p. 53.)

Note: See further: “The Christocentric Hermeneutic: A Tentative Solution?”

Possible Solution: Three.

Robert McAfee Brown:

…our present concern is not the “Roman Catholic—Protestant” tension except as it throws light on Protestantism’s inner tension over the relationship of Scripture and tradition. A study of the evolution of Roman Catholic dogma makes the Protestant understandably wary about what tradition may do to the Biblical faith, but reaction from this has led much of Protestantism to an unrealistic disavowal of tradition. Emphasis on sola Scriptura has been the distinctive grandeur of Protestantism, but it has been the source of distinct misery as well. For it has often been based on the faulty assumption that it is possible to “leapfrog,” as it were, over 1900 years of Christian history, and read the Bible as though nothing had happened since the documents themselves were composed.

Even if this were desirable (which is debatable), it is impossible. The “leapfrog” is doomed to failure on at least two counts: (a) it ignores the fact that people inevitably read the Bible in the light of a denominational or theological heritage, and (b) it ignores the fact that they read it in the light of their contemporary situation.

a. No one approaches the Bible free of denominational or theological presuppositions. Lutherans tend to read the Bible in the light of the interpretive principle of justification by faith, Presbyterians in terms of the sovereignty of God. The sect groups read it from the perspective of their own practices, which may range from snake handling to speaking in tongues. Liberal Protestants find the Bible a handbook for social justice, while conservatives find it depicting an everlasting hell fire designed for liberals.

b. But our contemporary situation also conditions the way we read the Bible. Americans in East Lansing hear Romans 13 in a different way from Germans in East Berlin. When Mississippi Senators and Afrikaner Nationalists read Paul’s speech on Mars Hill, they draw different conclusions about racial discrimination than do natives of Indonesia or Ghana who read the same passage.

No one is trying to be dishonest. Everyone claims to be hearing the Word of God. But the indisputable fact of the matter is that Lutherans, Presbyterians, sectarians, liberals, conservatives, East Lansingites, East Berliners, southern Americans, southern Afrikaners, Indonesians, and Ghanians, all read the same Scriptures and all hear different things.

Much of this may be due to faulty reading and faulty listening. But it cannot all be explained so simply. It can be explained only by recognizing honestly that Protestants do not rely on sola Scriptura in quite the pure way that Reformation Sunday sermons would suggest.

Recognition of this fact will be the beginning of its cure. For once it is acknowledged that our approach to Scripture is conditioned by the tradition and situation in which we stand, then we can listen with new attentiveness to Scripture to see in what ways it may challenge that tradition and situation. In the very risky process of being exposed to Scripture, our own tradition can be made more conformable to it. The mark of Protestant courage is precisely this willingness to subject not simply tradition, but our own tradition, to the destructive and healing power of Scripture.

There is another thing we can do, and it too takes courage. We can listen to the interpretations of Scripture that come from traditions other than our own. There is something salutary about the fact that in the ecumenical movement Baptists must now be exposed to Anglican treatments of the New Testament doctrine of the ministry, and that Lutherans must listen while Methodists explain how their social activism is rooted in the Bible. There is no longer any excuse for pockets of Christendom to remain uninformed about the way other Christians interpret Holy Scripture. Denominational exegesis exists to be challenged.

The wider the scope of the church’s listening, the better the chances for the corrective power of the Holy Spirit, speaking through Scripture, to break down the barriers men constantly erect so that they will not have to heed his disturbing voice.

(Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1961], pp. 215-216.)

Note: See further: “Dialogue and the Necessity of Humility.”

Some Thoughts.

Moisés Silva:

While the history of the Christian church contains many instances of discord, we cannot allow that fact to obscure the remarkable unity of understanding that has characterized God’s people throughout the centuries. Precisely when one considers the numerous difficulties involved in reading an ancient document such as the Bible, touching as it does on many highly controversial issues, the great wonder is that the church has survived at all.

The history of biblical interpretation may be discouraging at times, but it also ought to reassure us that God has not left us alone. The evidence is plentiful that his Spirit has slowly guided believers to a fuller and increasingly clearer understanding of the divine revelation. And is not this progress sufficient grounds for assurance that he will continue to work in our hearts and minds as we devote ourselves to the study of his Word? The day will surely come when we will know fully, even as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12).

(Moisés Silva, Has the Church Misread the Bible? The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987], pp. 119-120.)

Note: See further: Gospel (Historical) and Rule of Faith (Tradition).

5.1.2. Critical Realism. Return to Outline.

James K. Dew, Jr., Mark W. Foreman:

Given the strengths and weaknesses of each theory of perception, we may never be able to say which theory is absolutely correct. We may, however, be able to adopt a methodology that allows us to take the strengths of each theory into account. In a wide variety of intellectual disciplines—such as philosophy, theology, sociology and science—much attention has been given to developing a methodology that will allow for genuine knowledge of the external world while also noting the potential for perceptual and cognitive error. This approach is described in various ways, but it most often is referred to as critical realism. When applied to the issue of perception, this approach holds that we can apprehend the external world itself (following the intuitions of direct realism) but can also be misled by both external and internal factors (heeding the warnings of indirect realism). Though it is a genuine form of realism, it emphasizes a need for critical assessment of our perceptions, beliefs and truth claims. It holds that we see the real world, but we might not see it exactly the way it is and should thus shun the naïveté of direct realism.

(James K. Dew, Jr., Mark W. Foreman, How Do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], p. 92.)

N. T. Wright:

If knowing something is like looking through a telescope, a simplistic positivist might imagine that he is simply looking at the object, forgetting for the moment the fact that he is looking through lenses, while a phenomenalist might suspect that she is looking at a mirror, in which she is seeing the reflection of her own eye. One logical result of the latter position is of course solipsism, the belief that I and only I exist. What else do I have evidence for?

Over against both of these positions, I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into ‘reality’, so that our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning realities independent of the knower, is never itself independent of the knower.

(N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 1, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992], p. 35.) Preview.

Ronald E. Osborn:

Critical realism seeks to chart a third way between the epistemologies of both modernism and postmodernism. It is critical because it accepts the postmodern emphasis on the provisional and always contingent or mediated aspect of knowledge, yet realist because it insists upon the objectivity of the world we encounter and so the possibility of more or less truthful ways of talking about the properties of this world. Whether in matters of science or biblical interpretation we must resist the temptation of modernist positivism, “commonsense empiricism,” or naive realism (the dubious claim that we have direct, unmediated or unproblematic access to truth). At the same time, we must resist the temptation of sheer postmodern relativism (the claim that truth or even reality as such does not exist or cannot be known at all apart from purely subjective language games about it). …We never possess a “god’s-eye view” of the world—a view without lenses, so to speak—but neither are we simply trapped in a hall of mirrors.

(Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], p. 118.)

Cf. Ronald E. Osborn:

Another implication of critical realism is that we must always see our knowledge about particular realities as fitting within narrative frameworks that are nested within larger stories and ultimately within worldviews that involve complex interplays of reason, observation, culture, history and experience that cannot be understood in any kind of neatly stacked way. We must chart a course between the Scylla of modernist-style foundationalism and the Charybdis of postmodern antifoundationalism. The word for this post-postmodern position is postfoundationalism (as if the prefix “post” were not overused by academics already!). Postfoundationalists agree with foundationalists that our worldviews can have greater or lesser correspondence with reality, including both scientific and theological truth. They agree with antifoundationalists (and nonfoundationalists), though, that the attempt to build a system of knowledge from a base of indubitable, infallible certitude that somehow stands on its own (whether this base is said to be else) is an utterly failed epistemological project well past its sell-by date.

(Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], pp. 119-120.)

5.1.2.1. Epistemic Certainty. Return to Outline.

James K. Dew Jr., Mark W. Foreman:

There are a few things that we can have certainty about, but for most things, certainty eludes us. This suggests that there are various degrees or levels of assurance that we can have. At the highest level, one might have what we call logical or absolute certainty. This is the kind of certainty that makes a belief impossible to doubt. These include, as McGrath notes, logical statements, self-evident truths or many mathematical propositions. For example, 2 + 2 = 4 or “All triangles have three sides” fall into this category. These are statements that could not possibly be untrue. After this, there is a level of assurance that we might call probabilistic certainty. These include statements like “The sun will rise tomorrow” or “The pen will fall if I drop it.” These statements are considered to be true by everyone. But it is always possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow or that the pen could float on this one occasion. One cannot claim to know with certainty that these things will happen. Nevertheless, it is foolish to think that these things might not happen given the universal track record of the sun coming up and of gravity pulling pens to the floor. There is also what we might call sufficient certainty. In this case, we have very good evidence in favor of a particular belief and know of no significant defeaters for this belief.

But if there are varying degrees of certainty, what causes this variation? Again, McGrath is helpful here. He notes that the degrees of certainty arise from the nature of the objects, entities or issues that we inquire about. In other words, the nature of the thing in question largely determines how it can be known. So, for example, when we are asking about apples, we use our senses to investigate them and see what they are like. By contrast, when we are asking questions about God, who cannot be seen with our eyes or touched with our hands, we must rely on something different. In this, we see how the nature of the object determines how we know it. But, as McGrath notes, the nature of the object also determines how well it can be known. He says, “The degree of theoretical [certainty] that may be secured for any aspect of reality is determined by its intrinsic nature. We are thus obliged to think in terms of a range of possibilities of closure, depending on which stratum of reality is being encountered and represented in this manner.”[fn. 16: Alister E. McGrath, The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 187. McGrath uses the word closure, and we have substituted the word certainty here, as this is what McGrath has in view.] In other words, we may know some things more directly and as they appear more obvious to us. This does not suggest any kind of superiority or deficiency in the objects themselves. It simply recognizes certain epistemological facts about the way our minds apprehend reality and the limitations of our cognitive processes.

(James K. Dew Jr., Mark W. Foreman, How Do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], pp. 161-162.)

J. P. Moreland:

Here’s a simple definition of knowledge: To represent reality in thought or experience the way it really is on the basis of adequate grounds. To know something (the nature of God, forgiveness, cancer) is to think of or experience it as it really is on a solid basis of evidence, experience, intuition, and so forth. Little can be said in general about what counts as “adequate grounds.” The best one can do is to start with specific cases of knowledge and its absence in art, chemistry, memory, Scripture, logic, introspection, etc., and formulate helpful descriptions of “adequate grounds” accordingly.

Please note that knowledge has nothing to do with certainty or an anxious quest for it. One can know something without being certain about it, and in the presence of doubt or with the admission that one might be wrong. …When Christians claim to have knowledge of this or that—for example, that God is real, that Jesus rose from the dead, that the Bible is the Word of God—they are not saying that there is no possibility that they could be wrong, that they have no doubts, or that they have answers to every question raised against them. They are simply saying that these and other claims satisfy the definition given above (that is, to represent reality in thought or experience the way it really is on the basis of adequate grounds).

(J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters, [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014], pp. 13-14.)

Garrett J. DeWeese:

…the stock of propositions about which I can have certainty is not all that large; most of the really interesting things that I believe in life are such that I recognize that I could possibly be wrong about them.

(Garrett J. DeWeese, Doing Philosophy as a Christian, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011], p. 158.)

Alistair McGrath:

The beliefs that are really important in life concern such things as whether there is a God and what he is like, or the mystery of human nature and destiny. These—and a whole host of other important beliefs—have two basic features. In the first place, they are relevant to life. They matter, in that they affect the way we think, live, hope and act. In the second place, by their very nature they make claims that cannot be proved (or disproved) with total certainty. At best we may hope to know them as probably true. There will always be an element of doubt in any statement that goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions. Christianity is not unique in this respect: an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma.

(Alister McGrath, Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith, [Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006], pp. 24-25.)

Alistair McGrath:

Yet a scientific theology takes a markedly different approach, , insisting, as we have seen, that ontology determines epistemology — in other words, that the degree of theoretical closure that may be secured for any aspect of reality is determined by its intrinsic nature. We are thus obliged to think in terms of a range of possibilities of closure, depending on which stratum of reality is being encountered and represented in this manner. The category of ‘mystery’ plays a particularly important role in any discussion about theological closure. The key point here is that the category of ‘mystery’ affirms both the coherence of a multi-levelled reality, and its complexity, which is such that its meaning cannot be totally determined by any one writer or era. As a result, what one generation inherits from another is not so much definitive answers as a shared commitment to the process of wrestling.

(Alister E. McGrath, The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004], p. 187.)

John Piper:

Fourth, we might remind the sufferer that his demand for a kind of absolute, mathematical certainty about his right standing with God is asking for too much. None of us lives with that kind of certainty about any relationships in life, and this need not destroy our comfort. As Baxter says, “No wife or child is certain that the husband or father will not murder them; and yet they may live comfortably, and not fear it.” In other words, there is a kind of certainty that we live by, and it is enough. It is, in the end, a gift of God.

One can imagine a wife obsessed with fear that her husband will kill her, or that during the night one of her children will kill another one. No amount of arguing may bring her away from the fear of this possibility. Rationally and mathematically it is possible. But millions of people live in complete peace about these things, even though there is no absolute 2 + 2 = 4 kind of certainty. The certainty is rooted in good experience and the God-given stability of nature. It is a sweet assurance—and a gift of God. So we say to our suffering friend, “Don’t demand the kind of certainty about your own relationship to God that you don’t require about the other relationships in your life.”

(John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift, [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006], pp. 41-42.)

Note: See further: Assurance of Salvation.

5.1.3. Critical Realism in Practice. Return to Outline.

1 Corinthians 13:12a:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.

(New International Version.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself [Nichts ist so schwer, als sich nicht betrügen].

(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, eds. G. H. von Wright, Heikki Nyman, trans. Peter Winch, [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980], p. 34c.)

N. T. Wright:

The flying sparks of prayerful interpretation can still, alas, lead us astray. Self-deceit remains a powerful and dangerous possibility…

(N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, [New York: HarperOne, 2011], p. 33.)

John H. Walton:

“FAITHFUL” RATHER THAN “RIGHT”

Note that I frame this quest by the word faithful—not by the word right. People who take the Bible seriously have perhaps spent too much time and energy trying to insist that their interpretation is right and the interpretations of others are wrong. This is not to say that interpretations cannot be right or wrong. Nevertheless, in the cases of the most controversial issues, “right” is precisely what is under discussion. Everyone cannot be right, but we should recognize what commends one interpretation over another. That is why I have framed this as “faithful” interpretation. Our methodology should be faithful even though sometimes we might arrive at different answers.

Simply put, an interpretation is the result of identifying evidence (for example, linguistic, literary, historical, theological, cultural) and assessing that evidence, then applying it to a base of presuppositions one holds. Such presuppositions may pertain to what readers believe about the Bible or to the theology they deduce from the Bible. They may be presuppositions held consciously, by choice, or subconsciously, adopted through long years of passive reception and tradition. In the process, interpreters prioritize and shape the various pieces of evidence to accord with their presuppositions and cultural locations to arrive at an interpretation. That interpretation, then, reflects what the interpreters consider having the strongest evidence in light of their governing presuppositions.

Unfortunately, it is common for all of us to consider the interpretation that we prefer, given our perspectives and presuppositions, as simply “right.” It is logical to conclude that the interpretation with the strongest evidence carries the highest probability. But for another reader who has different presuppositions, or who prioritizes the evidence differently, or who is not persuaded that one piece of evidence is legitimate, a different interpretation will take pride of place and be considered as having the strongest evidence.

Using the adjective “faithful” instead of “right” humbly recognizes that we all fall into the pitfalls of blind presuppositions and overlooked evidence. We can only seek to be as faithful as possible. No interpreter is infallible. Maybe sometimes we will even be right, but that is not our claim to make. Certain interpretations may be disproved by evidence, but interpretations cannot be proved true. Evidence supports an interpretation and therefore lends it a higher degree of probability. The greater the evidence that supports a particular interpretation, the higher the probability we are understanding God’s message, and the higher our confidence in our conclusions can be.

(John H. Walton, Wisdom for Faithful Reading: Principles and Practices for Old Testament Interpretation, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023], pp. 4-5.) Preview.

Gordon D. Fee:

…the intersection of the eternal word with historical particularity leaves us with far more ambiguities than some feel comfortable with. What do we do with the holy war and the slaughter of nations? How do we reconcile the lament to have Babylonian children’s heads bashed against rocks with God’s abundant mercy? What do we do with the holy kiss, charismatic gifts, head coverings, the mode of baptism, the sovereignty of God and human freedom, to name but a few items where evangelicals, who all hold the same view of Scripture, are deeply divided as to how it impacts our lives at specific points?

The longing for absoluteness on all matters, which compels the fundamentalist mindset, is ever with the evangelical as well—precisely because of the conviction that Scripture is God’s word above all. Since God himself is unseen and known only by revelation and faith, and must finally be trusted, the need for certainty is often vested in the penultimate that leads us to God. Such a need drove the Pharisee to put a hedge around the law and the legalist to put a hedge around certain behavior. It is too much to trust in God without absolute certainty, which of course, as Bultmann rightly criticized us, is its own form of idolatry.

Hence there is always pressure from this side of our fallenness to eliminate ambiguity. If God himself is infallible, then the text of his word must be infallible. If the text is infallible, then there must be an infallible understanding of it. But that is not an evangelical syllogism. The text itself in its intent is infallible, we would argue, because of its character as God’s word. And we insist on this, because even if we disagree on the meaning of the text, our hope lies in the text itself to have its inherent power as God’s word to correct us.

But the buck stops there, at the text and its intent, as to what is infallible. God did not choose to give us a series of timeless, non-culture-bound theological propositions to be believed and imperatives to be obeyed. Rather he chose to speak his eternal word this way, in historically particular circumstances, and in every kind of literary genre. God himself, by the very way he gave us this word, locked in the ambiguity. So let us not fight God and insist that he give us his word another way, Or as we are more apt to do, rework his word along theological or cultural prejudgments that turn it into a minefield of principles, propositions, or imperatives, but denude it of its ad hoc character as truly human. The ambiguity is a part of what God did in giving us his word this way. Our task is to recognize and capitalize on what God has done.

(Gordon D. Fee, Gospel and Spirit: Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics, [Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2000], pp. 32-33.)

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

But those who read them in a light-minded spirit are liable to be misled by innumerable obscurities and ambiguities, and to mistake the meaning entirely, while in some places they cannot even guess at a wrong meaning, so dense and dark is the fog that some passages are wrapped in. This is all due, I have no doubt at all, to divine providence, in order to break in pride with hard labor, and to save the intelligence from boredom, since it readily forms a low opinion of things that are too easy to work out.

(Augustine of Hippo, Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), 2.6.7; trans. WSA, I/11:131.)

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

Where, however, an ambiguity can be resolved neither by the standard of faith nor by the actual context of the passage, there is no objection to your phrasing it in any of the ways that are open to you.

(Augustine of Hippo, Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), 3.2.5; trans. WSA, I/11:170.)

Ronald E. Osborn:

What all this means is that we must abandon any pretensions to absolute certainty about our interpretations and confess that we always see “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12).

(Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], p. 119.)

Note: See further: “Dialogue and the Necessity of Humility.”

5.1.4. “God’s Word” Bible Translation: A Case Study. Return to Outline.

God’s Word: Today’s Bible Translation That Says What It Means, [Grand Rapids: Word Publishing, 1995]. See also: biblegateway.com.

James K. A. Smith:

While a myriad of groups such as this meet every night across the country—and while just as many “readings” or “interpretations” are offered—in the end all of these Bible students tend to think that interpretation is an inconvenience, that interpretation is somehow “our fault” and that God helps us to overcome it. When, for instance, I offer an interpretation that might suggest something contrary to a traditional reading, I am often met with the response, “Well, that might be your interpretation, but my Bible clearly says women are to be silent in church!” I am complicating matters by interpretation, my interlocutor suggests (another product of my academic corruption, I’m usually told); he, on the other hand, is simply reading what God’s Word clearly says in black and white.

This general “interpretation of interpretation” was captured very well by a recent advertisement in a leading evangelical periodical: “God’s Word. Today’s Bible translation that says what it means,” the dust cover boldly proclaimed. Underneath the photograph, in large bold letters the publishers heralded “NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.”

(James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 39.)

Merold Westphal:

It may seem obvious that Christians interpret the Bible. Is not every devotional reading (silent), every sermon (spoken), and every commentary (written) an interpretation or a series of interpretations of a biblical text? Does not the history of Christian thought show that Christians in different times and places have interpreted and thus understood the Bible differently? Even at any given time and place, such as our own, is there not always a “conflict of interpretations” between, among, and within various denominational and nondenominational traditions? So it seems obvious that Christians would be interested in hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation that is sometimes normative (how we ought to go about interpreting) and sometimes descriptive (what actually happens whenever we interpret).

But often enough the hermeneutical theory, if we may call it that, of lay believers, pastors, and academic theologians consists simply in denying that interpretation is necessary and unavoidable. We encounter this general attitude when we offer a viewpoint about, say, some controversial moral or political question to someone who (1) doesn’t like it and (2) doesn’t know how to refute it (perhaps deep down knowing that it is all too much on target) and so replies, “That’s just your opinion.” Similarly, an unwelcome interpretation of some biblical text may be greeted by the response, “Well, that might be your interpretation, but my Bible clearly says . . .” In other words, “You interpret; I just see what is plainly there.” I am reminded of an ad for a new translation of the Bible billed as so accurate and so clear that the publishers could announce “NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.” The ad promotes “the revolutionary translation that allows you to immediately understand exactly what the original writers meant.” But, of course, this “immediacy” is mediated by this particular translation, one among many, each of which interprets the original text a bit differently from the others.

This “no interpretation needed” doctrine says that interpretation is accidental and unfortunate, that it can and should be avoided whenever possible. Often unnoticed is that this theory is itself an interpretation of interpretation and that it belongs to a long-standing philosophical tradition that stretches from certain strands in Plato’s thought well into the twentieth century. This tradition is called “naive realism” in one of its forms. It is called naive both descriptively, because it is easily taken by a commonsense perspective without philosophical reflection, and normatively, because it is taken to be indefensible on careful philosophical reflection.

(Merold Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009], pp. 17-18.) Preview.

Ronald E. Osborn:

Many Christians strenuously resist the idea that their readings of the Bible are driven as much by philosophical as by theological commitments. Merold Westphal describes an advertisement he once saw for a new translation of the Bible being billed by its publishers under the banner, “NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.” Yet the notion that the Bible ever speaks so unequivocally or with such immediacy that no interpretation is needed, Westphal points out, is itself an interpretation of an interpretation with a highly problematic pedigree. This philosophical school of thought—the school of “naive” or “commonsense” realism—is itself in need of interpreting since what is “plain” or “commonsense” to one person might not be obvious or uncontroversial at all to another (whether because they possess more or less information, or because they simply see the same facts in a different light). We all bring important background experiences and beliefs about the structure of reality with us to our readings of the text, and this means there are no “plain” or purely “religious” readings of Scripture untainted by philosophical perspectives or by our culturally embedded worldviews. The most urgent questions facing creationists in this light are not textual but rather epistemological. They are, we might say, prehermeneutical.

(Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], p. 41.)

Jeannine K. Brown:

…Why is interpretation needed, let alone the analysis of interpretation? (To get down to it, why this book?) This is an honest and common enough question, especially in light of reflexive assumptions that would say reading rather than interpreting is what ought to happen when we come to the Bible. I am reminded of an advertisement I came across in a Christian magazine a while ago for a new English Bible version. The slogan read, “Now No Interpretation Needed.” The advertisers were implying that this particular Bible was so accurate and clear that simple reading of the text would suffice.

The matter is not so simple, however, given that all reading is interpretation. When I pick up the newspaper in the morning to read, I am, to be more accurate, an interpreter of it. I make a large number of reflexive determinations in order to read that newspaper rightly. For example, I know that I am to read the editorials differently from the front page headlines, and also from the funnies. I adjust my expectations accordingly. I also draw upon a large pool of shared assumptions with the writers of my local newspaper, such as the identities of local sports teams (Go, Vikings!) and the general political and social situation of my city, state, nation, and world. But I do so without much conscious effort, given my familiarity with my own culture’s social context and literary conventions (e.g., funnies are not advertisements).

When living in England for a month, I had the experience of reading a newspaper in my own language but without fully sharing the cultural backdrop of its writers. There were many times when they referred to a name, place, or situation that would have been clearly understood by a local British resident but was obscure to me. Additionally, a turn of phrase that was commonplace for a local reader would puzzle me. I felt the culture gap, even though I share the same language and live at the same time in history.

Imagine how the task of understanding grows more complex when reading ancient texts, including the Bible. This complexity is the reason why what is usually reflexive when reading documents in our native language and from the same cultural context necessarily needs to be more consciously addressed when reading ancient texts. There are significant gaps in our knowledge of the literary conventions, language, and social settings that surround and inhabit biblical texts. We live in a different time and place than the times and places in which and to which the text originally spoke. Deliberate attention to these issues and painstaking work at many junctures are required. That is the reason why interpretation is not only necessary; it is also unavoidable. And that is why biblical interpretation needs second-order reflection; it needs hermeneutics.

(Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007], pp. 21-22.)

Gilbert Lozano:

Christians claim that the Bible is the Word of God. Many think therefore that there is an immediate communication between God and the reader. Sometimes this is taken to extremes. A few years ago, some organization produced a new edition of the Bible that presumably was so easy to understand that the publishers felt confident to advertise it with the slogan “No interpretation needed.” This claim sounds almost comical were it not for the fact that it does not do justice to the very nature of the Bible.

The Bible consists of a collection of ancient documents written in three languages over a period of a thousand years or more. No one today would claim that the English language has not changed in a thousand years or that The Canterbury Tales written by Chaucer in the 14th century require no interpretation. Something quite similar could be said of any of Shakespeare’s works written in the early 1600s. If this is true of works written fairly recently in the English language, how could anyone claim that the language of the Bible transparently conveys a meaning that can be easily grasped by anyone regardless of background or the intellectual framework to deal with that ancient literature?

The books contained in the Bible were written over a very long period of time in different places (Palestine, Babylonia, Persia, ancient Asia [now Turkey], Greece and probably even Rome). Moreover, the books were written by people from different cultural backgrounds — some were priests, others were court officials, others were simple individuals moved to write by religious convictions. To be sure, the Bible is united by a central unifying theme and thrust. It tells the story of God’s dealing with a people and the effort to make that people live up to the divine promises — this is largely what scholars call the history of salvation. And yet, since antiquity, readers of the Bible have seen the enormous diversity of ideas found within its pages.

In sum, the Bible consists of dozens of books or documents written by many hands, over a very long period of time, and in different languages. Those facts alone should lead one to the conclusion that, in fact, interpretation is of the greatest importance.

(Gilbert Lozano, “Textual and Contextual Hermeneutics;” In: A Faithful Witness: Essays Honoring David Sebastian’s Heart and Mind for the Church, [Anderson: Anderson University School of Theology, 2014], pp. 37-38.)

Note: See further: “The Perspicuity of Scripture.”

6. Appendix: Herman Bavinck, Inspiration and Inerrancy. Return to Outline.

Herman Bavinck:

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 110, p. 412.)

General.

Herman Bavinck:

When some theologians deduce from this dogma that Scripture is absolutely infallible in all the matters it contains, this is just as one-sided as the position of others who assume the presence of errors and mistakes in Scripture. Scripture is most certainly true but true in the sense in which Scripture itself intends to be and not in the sense we with our exact natural and historical science would impose on it. Hence before everything else, as we consider every narrative and report in Scripture, we are obligated to examine what the author, and what God through the author, intended to say by it. In general we can already say at this point—and in the abstract this is conceded by everyone—that the Bible is not a handbook for geology, physics, astronomy, geography, or history. That does not mean that Scripture does not contain various statements about them, but in each case we have to examine what the author intended to say by it, whether he really wanted to give us information pertaining to those sciences or whether he included and recorded these statements for another purpose. If in a handbook on logic a sentence is quoted (say: “Gaius is a criminal”), it is not the purpose of the author to communicate a historical fact but only to make known the logical content of that sentence. This is frequently the case in Scripture also. Psalm 14 contains the words “there is no God”; this is not the opinion of the author, however, but a pronouncement cited by him to convey to us the sentiments of a godless person. Paul often uses ad hominem arguments, but this is not to give us a lesson in logic, nor to bind us to his argumentation but only to the matter he wants to prove.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 110, p. 412.)

Inspiration.

Herman Bavinck:

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, p. 443.)

Revelation vs. Inspiration.

Herman Bavinck:

Revelation and inspiration are distinct; the former is rather a work of the Son, the Logos, the latter a work of the Holy Spirit. There is therefore truth in Schleiermacher’s idea that the holy authors were subject to the influence of the holy circle in which they lived. Revelation and inspiration have to be distinguished.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 112, p. 426.)

Historical Criticism.

Herman Bavinck:

Holy Scripture has a purpose that is religious-ethical through and through. It is not designed to be a manual for the various sciences. It is the first foundation (principium) only of theology and desires that we will read and study it theologically. In all the disciplines that are grouped around Scripture, our aim must be the saving knowledge of God. For that purpose Scripture offers us all the data needed. In that sense it is completely adequate and complete. But those who would infer from Scripture a history of Israel, a biography of Jesus, a history of Israel’s or early-Christian literature, etc. will in each case end up disappointed. They will encounter lacunae that can be filled only with conjectures.

Historical criticism has utterly forgotten this purpose of Scripture. It tries to produce a history of the people, religion, and literature of Israel and a priori confronts Scripture with demands it cannot fulfill. It runs into contradictions that cannot be resolved, endlessly sorts out sources and books, rearranges and reorders them, with only hopeless confusion as the end result. No life of Jesus can be written from the four Gospels, nor can a history of Israel be construed from the OT. That was not what the Holy Spirit had in mind. Inspiration was evidently not a matter of drawing up material with notarial precision. “If indeed in the four gospels words are put in Jesus’ mouth with reference to the same occasion but dissimilar in the form of their expression, Jesus naturally could not have used four different forms; but the Holy Spirit only aimed to bring about for the church an impression which completely corresponds to what came forth from Jesus.”

Scripture does not satisfy the demand for exact knowledge in the way we demand it in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, etc. This is a standard that may not be applied to it. For that reason, moreover, the autographa were lost; for that reason the text—to whatever small degree this is the case—is corrupt; for that reason the church, and truly not just the layman, has the Bible only in defective and fallible translations. These are undeniable facts. And these facts teach us that Scripture has a criterion of its own, requires an interpretation of its own, and has a purpose and intention of its own. That intention is no other than that it should make us “wise unto salvation.” The Old Testament, while not a source for the history of Israel’s people and religion, is such a source for the history of revelation. The Gospels, while not a source for a life of Jesus, are such a source for a theological (dogmatic) knowledge of his person and work. The Bible is the book for Christian religion and Christian theology. To that end it has been given, and for that pose it is appropriate. And for that reason it is the word of God given us by the Holy Spirit.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, pp. 444-445.)

The Scriptures are not a Scientific Textbook.

Herman Bavinck:

…there is also a large truth in the saying of Cardinal Baronius. All those facts in Scripture are not communicated in isolation and for their own sake but with a theological aim, namely, that we should know God unto salvation. Scripture never intentionally concerns itself with science as such. Christ himself, though free from all error and sin, was never, strictly speaking, active in the field of science and art, commerce and industry, law and politics. His was another kind of greatness: the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. But precisely for that reason he was a source of blessing for science and art, society and state. Jesus is Savior, only that but that totally. He came not only to restore the religious-ethical life of human beings and to leave all other things untouched as if they were not corrupted by sin and did not need to be restored. Indeed not, for as far as sin extends, so far also the grace of Christ extends.

The same is true for Scripture. It too is religious through and through, the word of God unto salvation, but for that very reason a word for family and society, for science and art. Scripture is a book for the whole of humankind in all its ranks and classes, in all its generations and peoples. But for that very reason too it is not a scientific book in the strict sense. Wisdom, not learning, speaks in it. It does not speak the exact language of science and the academy but the language of observation and daily life. It judges and describes things, not in terms of the results of scientific investigation, but in terms of intuition, the initial lively impression that the phenomena make on people. For that reason it speaks of “land approaching,” of the sun “rising” and “standing still,” of blood as the “soul” of an animal, of the kidneys as the seat of sensations, of the heart as the source of thoughts, etc. and is not the least bit worried about the scientifically exact language of astronomy, physiology, psychology, etc. It speaks of the earth as the center of God’s creation and does not take sides between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican worldview. It does not take a position on Neptunism versus Plutonism, on allopathy versus homeopathy. It is probable that the authors of Scripture knew no more than all their contemporaries about all these sciences, geology, zoology, physiology, medicine, etc. Nor was it necessary. For Holy Scripture uses the language of everyday experience, which is and remains always true. If, instead of this, Scripture had used the language of the academy and spoken with scientific precision, it would have stood in the way of its own authority. If it had decided in favor of the Ptolemaic worldview, it would not have been credible in an age that supported the Copernican system. Nor could it have been a book for life, for humanity. But now it speaks in ordinary human language, language that is intelligible to the most simple person, clear to the learned and unlearned alike. It employs the language of observation, which will always continue to exist alongside that of science and the academy.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, pp. 445-446.)

Historiography.

Herman Bavinck:

…the historiography of Holy Scripture has a character of its own. Its purpose is not to tell us precisely all that has happened in times past with the human race and with Israel but to relate to us the history of God’s revelation. Scripture only tells us what is associated with that history and aims by it to reveal God to us in his search for and coming to humanity. Sacred history is religious history.

Considered from the viewpoint and by the standards of secular history, Scripture is often incomplete, full of gaps and certainly not written by the rules of contemporary historical criticism. From this it surely does not follow that the historiography of Scripture is untrue and unreliable. Just as a person with common sense can put up a good logical argument without ever having studied logic, so a reporter can very well offer a true account of what has happened without having first studied the rules of historical criticism. If historical criticism should deny this aspect of real life, it degenerates into hypercriticism and destroys the object it is designed to address. But all the historiography in Holy Scripture bears witness to the fact that it follows a direction of its own and aims at a goal of its own. In its determination of time and place, in the order of events, in the grouping of circumstances, it certainly does not give us the degree of exactness we might frequently wish for. The reports about the main events, say, the time of Jesus’ birth, the duration of his public activity, the words he spoke at the institution of the Lord’s Supper, his resurrection, etc., are far from homogeneous and leave room for a variety of views.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, p. 447.)

Against Literal Theories of Inspiration.

Herman Bavinck:

Whether the rich man and the poor Lazarus are fictitious characters or historical persons is an open question. Similarly, we can differ about whether and in how far we must regard the book of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon as history or as historical fiction. This is especially clear in the case of prophecy. The Old Testament prophets picture the future in colors derived from their own environment and thereby in each case confront us with the question of whether what they write is intended realistically or symbolically. Even in the case of historical reports, there is sometimes a distinction between the fact that has occurred and the form in which it is presented. In connection with Genesis 1:3 the Authorized Version [Dutch] comments in the margin that God’s speech is his will, his command, his act, and in connection with Genesis 11:5 that this is said of the infinite and all-knowing God in a human way. This last comment, however, really applies to the whole Bible. It always speaks of the highest and holiest things, of eternal and invisible matters, in a human way. Like Christ, it does not consider anything human alien to itself. But for that reason it is a book for humanity and lasts till the end of time. It is old without ever becoming obsolete. It always remains young and fresh; it is the word of life. The word of God endures forever.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, p. 448.)

Against Mechanical Inspiration.

Herman Bavinck:

A mechanical notion of revelation one-sidedly emphasizes the new, the supernatural element that is present in inspiration, and disregards its connection with the old, the natural. This detaches the Bible writers from their personality, as it were, and lifts them out of the history of their time. In the end it allows them to function only as mindless, inanimate instruments in the hand of the Holy Spirit. To what extent theologians in the past held to such a mechanical view cannot be said in a single sweeping statement and would have to be explored separately in each individual case. It is true that the church fathers already started comparing the prophets and apostles, in the process of writing, with a cither, a lyre, a flute, or a pen in the hand of the Holy Spirit. But we dare not draw too many conclusions from these comparisons. In using these similes they only wanted to indicate that the Bible writers were the secondary authors and that God was the primary author. This is evident from the fact that, on the other hand, they firmly and unanimously rejected the error of the Montanists, who claimed that prophecy and inspiration rendered their mouthpieces unconscious, and often clearly recognized the self-activity of the biblical authors as well. Still, from time to time, one encounters expressions and ideas that betray a mechanical view. In general, it can be said without fear of contradiction that insight into the historical and psychological mediation of revelation—now taken in a favorable sense—only came to full clarity in modern times and that the mechanical view of inspiration, to the extent that it existed in the past, has increasingly made way for the organic.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 113, p. 431.)

In Favor of Organic Inspiration (An Incarnational Approach to Scripture).

Herman Bavinck:

The Reformed confessions almost all have an article on Scripture and clearly express its divine authority; and all the Reformed theologians without exception take the same position. Occasionally one can discern a feeble attempt at developing a more organic view of Scripture. Inspiration did not always consist in [new] revelation but, when it concerned familiar matters, it consisted in assistance and direction. The authors were not always passive but also at times active. They used their own intellect, memory, judgment, and style but always in such a way that they were guided and kept from error by the Holy Spirit.

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 111, p. 415.)

Herman Bavinck:

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 114, pp. 434-435.)

Cf. Herman Bavinck:

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 117, pp. 442-443.)

Herman Bavinck:

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], §. 115, p. 435.)

7. Appendix: C. S. Lewis, Inspiration and Inerrancy. Return to Outline.

C. S. Lewis:

I have no claim to speak as an expert in any of the studies involved, and merely put forward the reflections which have arisen in my own mind and have seemed to me (perhaps wrongly) to be helpful. They are all submitted to the correction of wiser heads.

(C. S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night;” In: C. S. Lewis: Fern-Seed and Elephants: And Other Essays on Christianity, ed. Walter Hooper, [Glasgow: Collins, 1977], p. 65.)

Note: For an in depth treatment see: Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979].

C. S. Lewis:

Dear Mr. Carnell

I am myself a little uneasy about the question you raise:[fn. 114: Carnell said of this letter: ‘I inquired about the lengthy footnote in Miracles which asserts that some Biblical miracles are to be understood rather literally, others not.’ The footnote he was inquiring about is a reference to the book of Jonah in Miracles, ch. 15, note 1: ‘A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this book and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view . . . would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History . . . The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology – the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical . . . I take it that the Memoirs of David’s court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.’] there seems to be almost equal objection to the position taken up in my footnote and to the alternative of attributing the same kind and degree of historicity to all the books of the Bible. You see, the question about Jonah and the great fish does not turn simply on intrinsic probability. The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the account of K. David or the N.T. narratives, not pegged, like them, into any historical situation.

In what sense does the Bible ‘present’ this story ‘as historical’? Of course it doesn’t say ‘This is fiction’: but then neither does Our Lord say that His Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal Son are fiction. (I wd. put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same reason). How does a denial, or doubt, of their historicity lead logically to a similar denial of N.T. miracles?

Supposing (as I think is the case) that sound critical reading reveals different kinds of narrative in the Bible, surely it wd. be illogical to conclude that these different kinds shd. all be read in the same way? This is not a ‘rationalistic approach’ to miracles. Where I doubt the historicity of an O.T. narrative I never do so on the ground that the miraculous as such is incredible. Nor does it deny ‘a unique sort of inspiration’: allegory, parable, romance, and lyric might be inspired as well as chronicle. I wish I could direct you to a good book on the subject, but I don’t know one. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

(C. S. Lewis, Letter, To Corbin Scott Carnell (W) [5/4/53, Magdalen College, Oxford]; In: The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963, ed. Walter Hooper, [New York: HarperCollins, 2007], pp. 318-319.) Preview.

C. S. Lewis:

Dear Mr. Kilby

Thank you for your kind letter. I enclose what, at such short notice, I feel able to say on this question. If it is at all likely to upset anyone, throw it in the waste paper basket. Remember too that it is pretty tentative, much less an attempt to establish a view than a statement of the issue on which, whether rightly or wrongly, I have come to work. To me the curious thing is that neither in my own Bible-reading nor in my religious life as a whole does the question in fact ever assume that importance which it always gets in theological controversy. The difference between reading the story of Ruth and that of Antigone – both first class as literature – is to me unmistakable and even overwhelming. But the question ‘Is Ruth historical?’ (I’ve no reason to suppose it is not) doesn’t really seem to arise till afterwards. It can still act on me as the Word of God if it weren’t, so far as I can see. All Holy Scripture is written for our learning. But learning of what? I should have thought the value of some things (e.g. The Resurrection) depended on whether they really happened, but the value of others (e.g. the fate of Lot’s wife) hardly at all. And the ones whose historicity matters are, as God’s will, those where it is plain.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Whatever view we hold on the divine authority of Scripture must make room for the following facts.

1. The distinction which St Paul makes in I Cor vii between οὐκ ἐγὼ ἀλλὰ ὁ Κύριος (v. 10) and ἐγὼ λέγω, οὐχ ὁ Κύριος (ν. 12).[fn. 82: 1 Corinthians 7:10: ‘yet not 1, but the Lord’; ibid., v. 12: ‘I say, not the Lord’.]

2. The apparent inconsistencies between the genealogies in Matt i and Luke iii: with the accounts of the death of Judas in Matt xxvii 5 and Acts i 18-19.

3. St Luke’s own account of how he obtained his matter (i 1-4)

4. The universally admitted unhistoricity (I do not say, of course, falsity) of at least some narratives in Scripture (the parables), which may well extend also to Jonah and Job.

5. If every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights then all true and edifying writings, whether in Scripture or not, must be in some sense inspired.

6. John xi 49-52. Inspiration may operate in a wicked man without his knowing it, and he can then utter the untruth he intends (propriety of making an innocent man a political scapegoat) as well as the truth he does not intend (the divine sacrifice).

It seems to me that 2 and 4 rule out the view that every statement in Scripture must be historical truth. And 1, 3, 5, and 6 rule out the view that inspiration is a single thing in the sense that, if present at all, it is always present in the same mode and the same degree. Therefore, I think, rules out the view that any one passage taken in isolation can be assumed to be inerrant in exactly the same sense as any other: e.g. that the numbers of O.Τ. Armies (which in view of the size of the country, if true, involve continuous miracle) are statistically correct because the story of the Resurrection is historically correct. That the over-all operation of Scripture is to convey God’s Word to the reader (he also needs his inspiration) who reads it in the right spirit, I fully believe. That it also gives true answers to all the questions (often religiously irrelevant) which he might ask, I don’t. The very kind of truth we are often demanding was, in my opinion, not even envisaged by the ancients.

(C. S. Lewis, Letter, To Clyde S. Kilby (W) [7/5/59, Magdalen College, Cambridge]; In: The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963, ed. Walter Hooper, [New York: HarperCollins, 2007], pp. 1044-1046.) Preview.

C. S. Lewis:

Thus something originally merely natural—the kind of myth that is found among most nations—will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself it would not have served. Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature—chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of God’s word. Not all, I suppose, in the same way. There are prophets who write with the clearest awareness that Divine compulsion is upon them. There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record. There are poets like those in the Song of Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed. There is (and it is no less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonising just these books. There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them. On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious.

(C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958], p. 111.)

C. S. Lewis:

(C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958], p. 116.)

Cf. C. S. Lewis:

(C. S. Lewis, “Modern Translations of the Bible;” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 230.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

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Monday, March 8, 2021

Inspiration and Inerrancy

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