I go to a church in which the Bible is referred to as “the Word of God” and it’s inerrancy is upheld as the basis (or foundation) of our belief. Here, Christians are basically people who decided to trust the Bible and arguments on Doctrine or Practice can be solved by consulting and quoting of Scripture.

Many of my brothers and sisters know the Bible very well and can quote chapter and verse (of which I am envious) but I have several issues with this “high” view of Scripture which have brought me into some conflict in the past with some of the pillars that be.

I have faced arguments of the following sorts:

  1. The Bible claims to be God Word – It says “Thus says the Lord” and it is “Spirit Breathed”
  2. Jesus took a high view of scripture - He was constantly quoting it and even said “scripture can not be broken”
  3. Our faith is useless if the Bible is in error
  4. God spoke through human authors without the message being corrupted in any way
  5. Scripture can be inductively proved – by reading it we come to see that it self-authenticates
  6. The Books we have are authoritative and inspired and others aren’t
  7. Scripture is clear and all readings lead to the Reformation (and NOT Rome)

To be honest, I never really “got into” this kind of world-view so I’m really a critical outsider. What I did try to do was to resolve some of the contradictions I saw as well as correspondence problems regarding creation and the age of the earth. This adventure taught me an important lesson which the secular world already learned: people can read almost any meaning into a text they desire. This is surely not legitimate but we Christians do it nevertheless and it permeates our whole theology and not just interesting side-issues like the age of the earth.

I also learned something important, that the Bible is a sign to Jesus and God’s Mission in the world. We should not mistake the sign for the destination, idolise the text (by attributing to it things which God alone fulfils), and that the Message is more than the words, sentences or even ideas.

Some things which stopped me worrying about the inerrancy question was the following list of realisations, in no particular order:

  1. We don’t we have the Bible
    By this I mean we don’t have the original text and if we have an incomplete copy of an inerrant text a) how do we know the original is inerrant and b) in what sense is our text inerrant? There are many words we don’t understand, variants we can’t conclusively resolve and ambiguous grammar. Qumran has taught us that the texts we have is in no way the Ultimate Canon and Church History shows Canon is a human invention.
  2. Doctrine is not so important
    We’ve been taught that what you believe saves you and it’s clear to me that this was not Jesus message. A religious war, such as we saw in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries is the greatest denial of Jesus I can imagine, a contradiction. Of course belief regulates practice but we must differentiate between stated belief (doctrine) and the unstated beliefs our behaviour belies.
  3. Inerrancy is a concealed power-play
    Even if we had the original text, we don’t have the commentary. Who tells us what the text means? Some say the Spirit, some say it’s self-interpreting. If we’re honest however, no matter how much we delve we end up with provisional interpretations - it’s Theology and that’s what we  often want to hold up as inerrant.
  4. Jesus authority was not text-based
    While Jesus mission and authority was rooted in Scripture, when he got respect and showed up his opponents and sceptics it wasn’t because he possessed a text, nor because he had a better theology. Jesus won affections and debates because he had real power to heal, raise the dead and real wisdom to silence the proud. The Church should be doing the same.
  5. Christianity is not about beliefs
    We call ourselves “believers” but Jesus was a “doer”. When he said “I am the way” he did not mean he was the sacrificial Lamb which, if believed in, became the solution to sin. He meant, the way all need to go is centred on me – follow me, live as I do, do what I say. His was a Way, a wise Way, but not a Wisdom (we’re not Gnostics but we flirt with it sometimes).
  6. Many books are inspired
    I’ve been changed more by books about God, Jesus and the meaning of the Bible than the actual Good Book itself. Although I’m fairly intelligent, I find much of the text unintelligible and I need someone to help me. C.S. Lewis, Keith Green, Nicky Gumbel, N.T. Wright, Brian McLaren and even Joyce Meyer have brought me leaps forward.

Having said all that I must counter-steer and proclaim my love for the Bible. I’ve discovered it’s a fascinating, mysterious and seemingly endless depth of wisdom and transformational power. I would use words like “reliable” and “unique” rather than “inerrant” and “holy”.

I think the greatest event of the past Millennium was Gutenberg and Luther putting a Bible in our hands. It’s a uniquely puzzling library of God’s work with Man. I don’t think God can be said to be the author, he’s more like a character in a story of Reality of which he is the author. God wrote reality, the Bible is Man retelling some of this reality.

The Bible is not my foundation, it’s my direction. When we consider the quadrilateral of Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience I place a premium on Reason and Experience of God and attempt to read Scripture and Tradition in this light. One may counter that these are fallible foundations but I would say the same of the other two. Scripture and Tradition come to us via History, one of the fuzziest sciences imaginable – a mere retelling of stories.

You search the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. Yet these are the Scriptures that testify about me.
John 5:39