A. K. Chidgzey

This week’s topic is on biblical infallibilism, which is closely relate to the idea of inerrancy. They are virtually synonymous, but have slightly different meanings. Infallibilism means that the Bible cannot contain errors, whereas inerrancy does not contain errors. Inerrancy claims that every little detail in the Bible is exactly correct, on all matters and topics, whereas infallibilism asserts that the Bible is correct on matters pertaining to faith, spirituality, and theology. So there’s a subtle difference, but nevertheless, I don’t really like either, so for the purposes of this episode I’ll be treating them as identical.

But we should also make the distinction between the doctrine of biblical infallibilism and the Catholic notion of papal infallibility. Within Catholic doctrine, the Pope, when speaking ex cathedra, that is, from the Seat of Peter, is entirely infallible. So what the Pope says is absolute. Historically, the doctrine of papal infallibility is actually pretty interesting, though is another doctrine I don’t agree with, but is not what we are looking at in this episode. In this episode, we are focusing on the question of whether not the Bible is entirely infallible, without error, or not.

And to again clarify, I reject biblical infallibilism and inerrancy. And in this episode I’ll give you my reasons why. But I’ll also give you my reasons for why I nevertheless hold scripture with high regard and authority. It is a thoroughly and inescapably human book – or rather, collection of books – and being human, it cannot be infallible or inerrant, but precisely in it being human that it is special.

The doctrine of the infallibility of scripture is an absolutely central doctrine to many branches of Christianity. For many, I would probably be considered a heretic or a false teacher, or something along those lines, by rejecting this doctrine. Many Christians treat this doctrine as an absolutely necessary belief to be considered Christian.

But basically, infallibility is the belief that the Bible is free from error, contradiction, and is the quintessential sourcebook for all matters pertaining to Christian life and theology. The argument essentially goes like this: we know from passages like Numbers 23.19 and Hebrews 6.18 and from general common sense that God cannot lie or deceive. According to 2 Timothy 3.16, Scripture is God-breathed. God cannot lie. The Bible comes from God. Therefore, there cannot be any errors in the Bible.  

Now this was generally the assumed position for most of Christian history. The 4^th century theologian Augustine argued that the Bible is free of error. However, within a pre-modern world, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural didn’t really exist; basically everything was determined in some sense, either intentionally or accidentally, by the activity of the gods. That was generally the worldview right up to modern times. So the belief in the infallibility of scripture was generally assumed in a bit more of a mystical sense, but not as a codified doctrine per se.

With the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century, people turned their attention to the Bible, with Luther arguing that Scripture was the prime and ultimate authority, over and above tradition. Scripture was elevated to a position it had never occupied before. Which meant that it had to be entirely beyond reproach. It had to be perfect. And so the idea that it was infallible began to develop in earnest.

But it was really in the 20^th century that the doctrine became much more codified and systematised, particularly with the rise of fundamentalism. One of the five core fundamentals of this conservative movement was – and is – the inerrancy of Scripture, largely as a response to developing scientific discoveries and biblical criticism. And so was birthed the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible has no errors, no contradictions, and is entirely truthful. And it has remained a key doctrine of many Christian traditions, particularly within conservative Protestantism and evangelicalism.

What I find quite interesting is that within Judaism, the religion from which the Bible emerged, though the Hebrew Bible is generally considered to have a divine origin, there is no such doctrine as the infallibility of Scripture. At least not in the same sense as conservative Christian infallibility. Within Judaism, additional accompanying texts are also considered authoritative; one cannot just read the Torah, but also consult what is called the Oral Torah. It is quite common in Jewish tradition to retell stories in a new way to get a point across, which is partly why we have multiple creation accounts, multiple histories of the kingdom of Israel, and multiple gospels – and the Jewish editors didn’t see any problem with having multiple different stories all side by side. So the concept of a literal inerrancy is foreign to Jewish tradition.

But let’s have a closer look at 2 Timothy 3.16-17: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

That word inspired is, in Greek, theopneustos, which is a word that is not really found anywhere else and it’s made up of the two words meaning God and breathe. So it’s often translated as God breathed. The Latin word from where we get the word inspiration is inspirare, which means to breathe or to breathe into.

It’s like God giving life to Adam, breathing life into Adam. The idea of God-breathed, theopneustos, is that God gives life. But here, in 2 Timothy, it’s not God giving life to scripture, it’s God giving life through scripture. That is, all scripture is life-giving.

It doesn’t mean that God wrote or dictated the Bible, produced it exactly as is. If we were to take the near equivalent of inspiration, the idea of inspiration is never used elsewhere to mean that something is reproduced exactly or without error. Vincent van Gogh was inspired by nature, but nature did not produce van Gogh’s paintings, and his style was an impression of nature not an exact replica – though technically he was more post-impressionistic. He was also inspired by Monet, but Monet didn’t produce Starry Night.

We might also say that the American version of the movie Death at a Funeral was inspired by the British version by the same name, the plot is virtually identical, but the American version is absolutely horrible compared to the brilliantly dry original.

Or the true stories or documentaries that begin with “Inspired by true events” – ostensible replicas of exactly what happened but everyone who has ever watched those movies knows full well just how much creative license the directors take.

To say that God inspired the text is not to say that God spoke the text exactly as is and therefore cannot include errors. It means that God acted or spoke and someone, a human, interpreted and reproduced.

Another problem with using 2 Timothy 3.16 as a proof text for infallibilism is that God breathed human life into existence and one of the basic premises of the whole biblical narrative is that humans are not infallible. They are very, very fallible. So just because God breathes something, does not make it infallible.

But also, this isn’t a reference to the New Testament. Scripture, at the time this text was written, was the Hebrew Bible, but even at the time there was a lot of debate around which books should be included in the Hebrew Bible. There were several different religious ‘parties’ at the time and they disagreed on what constituted scripture. The Sadducees only viewed the Torah – the first five books of the Bible – as authoritative, whereas the Pharisees included the prophets and the writings. But many Jews considered a wider variety of texts to be scripture that is not part of the Bible today – books like Tobit and Enoch. So if we’re using 2 Timothy 3.16 as a proof text for divine inspiration or for infallibility, it gets a little bit tricky to actually work out what constitutes scripture.

But does the Bible itself teach infallibilism anywhere?

No.

The Bible itself does not claim to be without error. You’ll find lots of apologists produce various passages and come up with all sorts of arguments, but the Bible just simply does not claim inerrancy. So imposing infallibilism upon the Bible is treating the Bible in a way that is foreign to the Bible.

But even if the Bible did teach infallibility, that does not prove infallibility. In fact, that would be circular reasoning. Why is the Bible infallible? Because the Bible says so. And because the Bible says that it is infallible, therefore it is infallible. It’s like me saying, “Everything I say is absolutely true. Why? Because I said so.”

One thing that the Bible does say about itself is that it was written by humans. A lot of the texts are anonymous or the authorship is unknown or likely an edited conglomeration of several authors, but some texts are attributed to specific people. Like Galatians and Romans, written by the apostle Paul, James was written by James. The Gospel of Luke begins with a bit of a preamble, probably a dedication to the person who funded the Gospel, and the author says that they went off and did all this research, collated it, and put it into a neat narrative. That’d be a weird thing to do if God was dictating exactly what to say.

Here’s the thing: humans are fallible. If we take Scripture seriously, the notion that humans are fallible is a pretty central topic. And Scripture tells us that humans wrote Scripture. You do the math.

And it’s precisely because fallible human beings wrote Scripture that, actually, errors and contradictions do exist in the written text. You’ll see all sorts of apologetic attempts to explain away or hide these contradictions, but there’s actually no getting around it. There are some mistakes.

There are at least two creation accounts in Genesis and they do contradict one another. There are four Gospels and each one is different. There are two accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts, and they differ. Biblical cosmology is entirely different to what modern science tells us about the world and the universe. The Gospel of Luke places a census within the lifetime of Herod the Great, but Quirinius’ census took place after Herod’s death, and that census was only in Judea, not all across the Roman Empire, and such a census would not require Joseph having to travel to the town of his birth.

I’m not wanting to list the inaccuracies and, to be honest, given that the Bible was written by many different authors across many different centuries, in different languages, different locations, and to different audiences, the fact that there is any sense of consistency within the text is actually quite remarkable.

But are these errors or contradictions necessarily wrong?

No. They are different perspectives, different interpretations, different contexts. Let’s take those creation accounts in Genesis. They are different, but not only are they not to be taken literally and that they are poetically expressing a theological meaning beyond simply how the world came into being, the editor of Genesis knew full well that the two creation accounts contradicted one another and nevertheless was comfortable placing them right next to each other! The editor wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t a mistake.

Same with the Gospels – they are different and they do contradict one another on occasion. Did Jesus say this or did actually say that? Did Jesus do that at the start of his ministry, or toward the end? Did Jesus spend the first few years outside of Jerusalem and then only enter the city later on, or did he visit the city regularly? Was it a sermon on a mountain, or on a plain?

Each of the Gospels were written to different audiences in different contexts and there slight differences because each Gospel emphasizes a different theme or message. And then they’re all kept right next to one another for all the world to see those differences!

To call these contradictions is not quite right. They’re just different interpretations, different emphases, different contexts. But they are all of these because of the fact that the Bible is a thoroughly and inescapably human book, and that’s precisely what makes it special.

You see, all through Scripture we see God working through humans, fallible humans, who keep messing up. Like all the time. The very first human beings messed up and then pretty much immediately after being kicked out of Eden, there’s murder. Noah is a bit of an alcoholic. Abraham gave his wife to Pharoah. God gave Moses the 10 commandments, and Moses broke those stone tablets. David was a murderous adulterer. Solomon possibly engaged in child sacrifice. Jesus’ disciples were pretty whingy and self-absorbed, and Peter denied ever knowing Jesus. And remember: Jesus chose Judas.

In Deuteronomy 7, we read that God deliberately chose Israel, the least of all the nations. If God was about using perfect things to accomplish perfect goals perfectly, he wouldn’t have chosen the people whom he chose. He wouldn’t have chosen the weak; he would have chosen the strong, the powerful. In fact, he’d probably just circumvent humans all together and step down and do the job himself. But that’s not how he works. He uses and works through fallible human beings.

God’s modus operandi is using fallible humans, human beings who continually make mistake – that’s the story of the Bible, so why would it change when it comes to the writing of the Bible itself?

If that is how God has always worked, to use fallible people and fallible means, why would he suddenly change how he does things? I can understand why people would want a perfect, inerrant text that can provide neat answers to all the big questions in life. But unfortunately that’s now what we have and that’s not how God works.

I think there are some dangers in the doctrine of biblical infallibility.

The first is to place the bible on the same level as God. We call the Bible God’s word and revelation, and the text gets elevated to a point where the Bible is worshipped more than the God that the Bible points to.

The second is to mistake the teaching of the Bible with one’s own interpretation of the Bible. I seen it countless times when people assume that their own interpretation is accurate and infallible, when it is, in fact, just an interpretation. They claim that they cannot be incorrect because the Bible cannot be incorrect.

So how then should we treat Scripture?

Well, first, let’s clarify that it is not the Word of God. The Bible never calls itself the Word of God. In fact the Bible says that something else is the Word of God: Jesus. Jesus is that which comes from God, is God’s voice, God’s image and representation, that which enacts God’s will in the world. That is the Word of God, as we read in John 1. The bible is not Jesus.

When scripture mentions ‘the word of God’, such as Hebrews 4 (The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword), it is decidedly not talking about the written words of Scripture. It is talking about the will and activity of God or even about Jesus.

When I think about the nature of Scripture, I’ve been influenced by the work of Karl Barth, N.T. Wright, and Peter Enns. For Barth, Scripture is only indirectly the Word of God in that it is a record of revelation. Jesus is the ultimate act of divine self-revelation, and Scripture attests to that. It is not the revelation itself, but a record of that revelation.

N.T. Wright speaks of terms of the acts of a play. Let’s say we discover a play written by Shakespeare, but we only have the first four acts of that play; the fifth is lost. But we want to perform the play and we want to finish that play as authentically to Shakespeare as possible. So experts would examine the first four parts, would analyse Shakespeare’s broader portfolio of work, try to understand the context as much as possible, the allusions made within those four parts and so on, and based on all of that research complete the play. Those first four parts become authoritative for how the fifth should be acted, but the fifth is not identical to those initial four.

In the same way, Christians are living in the fifth part, and Scripture comprises the first four. We analyse those four parts and do our best to determine how God would want us to act out the fifth. It won’t be identical to what is written in Scripture, but Scripture nonetheless becomes authoritative to how we now live and what we now believe.

Finally, Peter Enns talks about Scripture in terms of a guide that leads us toward wisdom. We grapple with Scripture, we wrestle with it, we interpret it, it raises questions of us as much as we raise questions of it. It doesn’t lay out a simple path to correct and absolute knowledge, it doesn’t give us all the answers in neatly wrapped little bundles. But it invites us into a journey of growth, and that journey leads us to wisdom.

While I don’t believe that Scripture is infallible or inerrant – I believe that it is an inescapably human book, written by human beings within and shaped by particular political, intellectual, religious, economic contexts – I nevertheless think that it is normative for Christian theology. To be a Christian is to be like Christ, and the only way we know what Christ was like, is to read Scripture. For a full theology, we do have to incorporate a broader range of sources, including science and philosophy and experience and tradition and so on, but Scripture absolutely is a central part of that process.