Scripture: Inerrancy

As I am trying to think about what I want to say about scripture, I am realizing this may have to be a three or four post process. There is little in the Christian bubble of our world that causes more strife and contention than the nature of scripture, and I guess I understand, it is a pretty important topic.

I guess the place I have to start is by saying what I think scripture is not. There is a word that gets thrown around a lot today that is no where in scripture and in my opinion is supported no where in scripture and that word is "inerrant." People divide over this word and some are labeled as "heretics" because they reject this word. Well I guess I should be labeled the same.

There are several different reasons that I don't buy inerrancy, but I think its important to first discuss what people mean when they claim the bible is inerrant. The opinions on inerrancy are anything but unanimous. Some would say the bible is inerrant because the original manuscripts (the first handwritten texts by the authors) were inerrant, every word, jot and scribble was exactly as God intended and perfect in fact and message. However, over time there were copying errors and pieces lost and added etc, and so since we no longer have any of the original manuscripts, we no longer have it exactly as it was. However, the message is still innerant according to most of those.

Then there are some, albeit probably many fewer and less well-read, that would say that every word and punctuation of today's bibles are exactly as God intended. Some would even go so far as to say that the King James Bible is the only Bible, but I guess no one could read the real Bible before the 1600s...

All that to say, there is some disagreement as to what exactly "innerant" means. However, I would say the majority of Christians in the United States cling tightly to that word. I have some ideas why, but I think that is a discussion for another post. I should probably just say what I think about it and why as quickly as possible and expand on that some later.

Probably my biggest issue with inerrancy is this: God has shown a pattern of working through and with weak people. God has shown a propensity to entrust his treasure to jars of clay. The only place I see God using a perfect agent to get his message to the world, was in the person of Jesus Christ (who is called the word in John 1, and I think he should be understood primarily as "the word" rather than scripture). God shows his greatness by having relationship with flawed people in a flawed world with flawed ideas.

Do I think God could have written a perfect book filled with stories about his relationships with people? Yes. He could have. But do I think he did? Not at all. If it was important to God that scripture be inerrant, if it was so important that his words to people contained no error so much so that he verbally dictated to humans what he wanted written, where he wanted punctuation etc, that he wrote an "inerrant" scripture to begin with, then he would clearly be capable of preserving it in its inerrant state. But the scripture we have in Greek and Hebrew is full of typos and discrepancies, we have a multitude of texts, some very different. I think God is more than capable of preserving a perfect, inerrant text if he wanted to, but since he obviously didn't, then I have to conclude that God thinks people can be saved without an inerrant scripture. Am I missing something?!

Further, the other mistake I believe people make is thinking that the bible is just one big book. It is anything but. There are 66 books in our bible, but those books could have been written at countless times (and I mean countless when you think that Isaiah was probably written in three parts, the Chronicles and Kings were probably compiled over generations, Genesis has four major sources, not to mention the Psalms have 150 chapters, and Psalm 119 could have several authors on its own...) so to think that these books are all homogenous in some way is pretty shortsighted to me. That doesn't even mention all the books that were left out of the canon, but were fairly close to making it in... which I guess I should write about canon at some point...

So, sure there are places in the bible that say things like "all scripture is God breathed" but to pretend that that pertains to all of our bible is borderline dishonest. One of the most basic rules of hermenuetics (bible study) is that a verse means first and foremost what it meant to its original hearers. The early Christians would not have considered Paul's epistles, the gospels and Revelation to be "scripture" yet. They would have considered "scripture" to be the Old Testament. So while we can affirm today that the New Testament is "God breathed" that wouldn't likely have been the original intent. And even then, does that mean that scripture is inerrant? I think not. Not because of any error by God, but because God chose to use fallible humans to be his medium. God worked through people and those people make errors.

Let me say it like this. Say my boss at work says to me, "Chris, we need you to run downtown and get the skid of bananas and take it to the Crossing," and then I turn around and say "Craig, we need to go to DRML and get the bananas and take it to Holly street." I got the same message across, but didn't repeat it exactly as my boss said. That doesn't mean the message is wrong, but it does mean that I didn't convey my boss said without error. He used different words. I think the bible we have today contains God's message for humans. I think it is full of mistakes and errors and some of the historical facts may not be accurate. But I don't think God is all that worried about all that (again, if he was, he would have seen to it that it was preservered without error). I think God is concerned that his basic message gets across. Go pick up the bananas and take them somewhere else. We can get that message even if Noah was only in a boat for 39 days or something like that.

I realize this is woefully incomplete, but I am going to add on to these thoughts and keep this general topic going for awhile. I may have said something in a way I didn't intend, forgive me, correct me, whatever, but I think this is an extremely important topic to consider and mull over. Again, I am probably wrong about a lot of things I think, I just don't know which I'm wrong about and which I'm not. What do you think about inerrancy?