The Word of God--explanations (PK Confessions, part 3)

You know, I started this mini-series about The Faith I Grew Up With thinking I was just doing some necessary exposition--who is this guy writing?--before getting to nitty gritty details about conservative evangelicalism.

In relating some of the key components of my childhood faith culture, though, I realize I'm actually running through some of the commonly mentioned distinctives of present-day evangelicalism. There's the emphasis on personal conversion (with heavy stress on a literal heaven/hell afterlife), the emphasis on personal evangelism, and--today's topic--the status of the Bible as inerrant, infallible Word of God.

Actually, a full discussion of inerrancy would take much longer than a single blog posting to deal with. I'd go so far as to say that few other issues can compete with Biblical Inerrancy for the title of Most Perennially Divisive Issue in Evangelicalism. To keep things sanely short, then, I'll restrict myself to some basic definitions and clarifications in this post.


In general, biblical inerrancy refers to the belief that the Christian Bible (as Protestants affirm the canon--sixty-six books) is accurate, consistent, and factual in all aspects--not just authoritative in matters of faith or doctrine but reliable on any subject (science, psychology, history, geography) that it cares to mention.

Scholars and theologians (evangelical and otherwise) often distinguish between inerrancy and infallibility, the latter referring to a belief that affirms the Bible's reliability in matters of Christian faith but declines to endorse the "every detail" case of inerrancy.

More general still is the doctrine that the Bible is inspired, "God-breathed," full of divine truths about life and faith if not necessarily a set of cohesive, comprehensive propositions about faith. Most Christians of any stripe (evangelicals, non-evangelicals/mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and many groups that evangelicals would consider pseudo-Christian sects, like the Mormans or Jehovah's Witnesses) would affirm the inspiration of the Bible.

Most conservative evangelicals, however, stress a particular brand of inspiration, commonly referred to as "verbal, plenary" inspiration. Plenary means "complete"--as in everything in the Bible, every book, every sentence, every story, every bit of doctrine. By verbal, evangelicals mean an understanding that God inspired every single word in the scriptures. Thus, by "verbal, plenary inspiration," evangelicals (those that affirm verbal-plenary inspiration, that is) propose that the scriptures contain no human-authorial excrescences or textual surpluses.

Now, for a variety of reasons I'll detail later, I do not subscribe to plenary-verbal-inerrant-infallible inspiration (indeed, I find the doctrine pernicious). Be that as it may, I need to make some quick clarifications about what a doctrine of inerrancy does not entail, lest I erect a straw-man of a belief central to many evangelicals. Most of these qualifications (and more) are included/explained in a much-cited document, the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, found here.

1. Inerrancy does not mean literalism. Like other writings, ancient and otherwise, the Bible occasionally uses literary devices like metaphor, simile, symbolism, allegory, or poetic imagery. It would be rare for an inerrantist to insist that a phrase like "built like a lion" means the person being described resembles some nightmare patchwork of lion-parts and human-parts. Inerrancy as most commonly conceived and practice recognizes and works with literary forms as they are found int the Bible. If there is some ambiguity as to whether a passage could be taken literally or allegorically (e.g., the Genesis creation account), however, inerrantists will typically affirm a literal reading. "Literal where possible" is the rule of thumb.

2. Most inerrantists tend to affirm that plenary/verbal inspiration applies to the original texts in the original languages--what are called the autographs. This qualification grants a few advantages. First, it lets evangelicals off the hook of having to affirm the authority of Bible copies that are clearly corrupted or misprinted (see this Wikipedia article for an idea of what I'm talking about). Second, the autograph concession gives evangelicals an "easy out"--or at least an Ultimate out--if they are confronted with what seems like a clear contradiction in scripture (a difference in numbers or names in parallel accounts of the same event, for instance). Since the autographs are lost, an irresolvable contradiction could be blamed on a copyist's error. I should mention, though, that in practice most scholars who subscribe to inerrancy will do their utmost to explain or reconcile seeming contradictions without recourse to the "easy out."

Finally, the autographs qualification defuses (or attempts to defuse) much of the debate about versions of the Bible--i.e., which English translation of the Bible is authoritative? Those inerrantists who affirm the 1978 Statement or something like it can endorse a range of translations (King James, New King James, New International Version, etc.). Crucially, though, there's a considerable number of conservative evangelicals who will insist not only on verbal/plenary inspiration but also on a corollary doctrine of preservation--namely that the only version of the Bible that preserves the autographs' (and therefore God's) exact words is the 1611 King James Bible, based on the Greek Textus Receptus. Such "King James Only" believers can be quite adamant in insisting in the inadequacy, even heresy of other versions.

Most evangelicals, however, are not KJV-only.

Why is all this important? What does this have to do with my Southern Baptist childhood?

To answer that, we'll have to get into what's known as the Battle for the Bible.

Peace,

JF