Free From Error Since 1978

Have you ever been told that the Bible is perfect and free from all errors? In fact, maybe you were told that you had to believe in the Bible like that in order to be a Christian or to follow Jesus. This view of the Bible is called "inerrancy."

If you hold this view of Scripture, or were raised with it, then you likely think it's the view Christians have always had. After all, defenders of this view cite verses like 2 Timothy 3:16 for support.

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

Notice this verse says nothing about inerrancy. Inspired and useful are generic ways of saying something has value and merit. If it's inspired by God, then supernaturally so. Yet there is no mention of being free from error (which is a totally different point).

A related verse sometimes used to show that the Bible is complete and that nothing can be added to it is Revelation 22:18-19.

And I solemnly declare to everyone who hears the words of prophecy written in this book: If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book. And if anyone removes any of the words from this book of prophecy, God will remove that person's share in the tree of life and in the holy city that are described in this book.

Sounds pretty serious, huh?

And yet, the idea of inerrancy isn't as supported as its adherents would like you to think. Consider that when both of the passages above were written, there was no "the Bible." The earliest mention we have of the books of the New Testament, as we think of them today, comes from Athanasius in the year 367. That's long after they were written. Not to mention that, even then, Athanasius had a different Old Testament collection than you do.

This means those verses don't refer to the Bible as we know it today. They couldn't have, since it literally didn't exist. 

The idea of inerrancy doesn't go as far back as you might think. This doesn't make it any more true or false, but it does counter someone who says that Christians have always read the Bible like this. It was codified in 1978 as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Which means that many of you reading this were alive when this idea became a thing. If you think I'm offering a red herring, I once had a church member print out the entire Chicago Statement and ask me to endorse it to prove my understanding of the Bible was legitimate. Biblical inerrantists support this with a couple of significant events that happened prior to 1978. 

The early Church Father Augustine has a quote that often comes up here. Around the year 405, he wrote to Jerome that "I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error."

Then, two Princeton professors elaborated on inerrancy in 1881. While previous generations of Christians viewed the Scriptures as true and trustworthy, these two argued that the text was free from all error. That means popular adherence to this view of the Bible is younger than the telephone, the combustion engine, or even the light bulb.

Specifically, the view we think of today traces most easily to the thinking of 1978. But doctrines like these tend to gain traction when they are needed for something else. In the late seventies, inerrancy emerged alongside Christianity becoming a political force. 

Consider this timeline of events:

• 1976 - Harold Lindsell writes The Battle for the Bible, which turned inerrancy into a boundary marker
• 1977 - the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy is formed
• 1978 - the Chicago Statement is established
• 1979 - the Moral Majority is founded by Falwell and Weyrich

Inerrancy became one of the theological loyalty tests the religious right absorbed as it organized and was therefore one of the early precursors of the Christian Nationalism we're seeing running amok now.

Bible scholar Dan McClellan calls inerrancy one of three "presuppositions that modern readers of the Bible impose onto the text." I spent much of my early years defending this view of the Bible. I started having issues with it when I went to seminary and realized it took more and more work to explain away the text's complexities. I began to realize that even though I knew the arguments to defend it, I didn't find them all that compelling anymore.

For example, one way the inerrant view is defended is by saying the original manuscripts were without error, so any issues we find today come from translators. For fun, let's assume the claim is true. This claim becomes utterly irrelevant when we consider that we have exactly zero original manuscripts of the Bible today. It's a hypothetical argument with no connection to reality, yet it carries a gigantic assumption.

There's even an irony for those who love to tie inerrancy back to Augustine. He read Genesis allegorically and warned Christians against literal readings where it would contradict what we know of the natural world. His idea of "free from error" and the Chicago Statement are not the same thing.

All of this matters because many people don't particularly enjoy the Bible when they are forced to read it as inerrant. Jesus and Numbers 31 (a chapter of God-sanctioned genocide and rape) are not compatible. As I write in The Edge of the Inside:

Reading the Old Testament is like looking into a two-sided mirror. If the light is off on the other side of the mirror, you will only see your reflection. This is what a literal reading produces. We primarily see the views of the people from the Ancient Near East who wrote them down. But when you read it and begin with the fact that God looks like Jesus, it is as if you’ve turned on a light on the other side of the mirror. Now you can still see your reflection, but you can also see something beyond it that wasn’t obvious before. This allows us to see both Jesus and the people with whom God was in a relationship.

If you think that challenging inerrancy means you must think less of the Bible, then fear not. Our options aren't binary. N.T. Wright said, "It's possible that 'inerrancy' is, so to speak, the right answer to the wrong question."

Instead of viewing the Bible as inerrant, I invite you to view it as a running log of people trying to make sense of God and documenting their ongoing journey. Many times, it reveals far more about them than about God. In relationship, God meets them where they are and eventually leads them to the place where they discover that God looks like Jesus. God has always looked like Jesus. As the scholar Peter Enns writes, "Getting the Bible right and getting Jesus right are not the same thing."

Then, we are ready to read the Bible the way Jesus invited us to read it, with everything pointing us to Him. Jesus once chastised the religious leaders around him who were reading the Scriptures to find all they were looking for. Here was His correction to them:

You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life. (John 5:39-40)

Unfortunately, inerrancy tends to make the same mistake today.

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash