A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 2

August 17, 2007 Posted by Roger OvertoncloseAuthor: Roger Overton Name: Roger Overton
Email: rogeroverton@hotmail.com
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About: Roger Overton is currently pursuing a Masters degree at Talbot School of Theology. He has addressed various churches, schools and youth camps throughout the United States. Roger was co-editor of The New Media Frontier (Crossway, 2008) and God and Governing (Wipf & Stock, 2009). Roger can be emailed at rogeroverton@hotmail.com.See Authors Posts (569)

My paper on inerrancy continued…

Part 1

          Precisely what details are affirmed by scripture is a hermeneutical question; therefore, people can agree about inerrancy but differ on theological details such as the age of the earth. Pertinent to the definition of inerrancy is the question of whether every category of affirmations is included, or whether only some categories are included. Even the Fuller statement above implies that the Bible does make historical assertions. They simply deny that such assertions must categorically be true. According to them, only the primary or ultimate purpose of the Bible must be true. “The purpose of the Bible is not substitute for human science. The purpose of the Bible is to warn against human sin and offer us God’s salvation in Christ. Scripture infallibly achieves that purpose.”[1] In contrast, the traditional view of inerrancy does not draw such a severe distinction between the Bible’s primary purpose and any other purpose God may have had for it. Full inerrancy entails that every affirmation of the Bible is true regardless of the affirmation’s category or immediate purpose.

            An important qualifier is inherent in the definition of inerrancy. When asserting that the Bible is true in all that it affirms, inerrantists are speaking of the original manuscripts. Full inerrantists do not claim inerrancy for the manuscripts currently in possession. That would entail some sort of inerrant transmission that is neither claimed by the Bible nor reasonably possible considering the many discrepancies between manuscripts. However, the admission of modern discrepancies does not make the doctrine of inerrancy irrelevant. If the text had errors to begin with, then accumulated more errors through centuries of transmission, confidence in the reliability and subsequent authority of the text could not be strong. However, if the text was originally without error, and it can be shown that few or no substantial changes have been made through transmission, then confidence in the integrity and authority of the text ought to be strong. Greg Bahnsen concluded his outstanding chapter on this subject noting “the results of textual criticism confirm that we possess a biblical text that is substantially identical with the autographa… Accordingly the doctrine of original inerrancy can be commended to all believers who are sensitive to the authority of the Bible as the very Word of God and who wish to propagate it as such today.”[2]

Related posts:

1. A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 6
2. A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 1
3. A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 3
4. A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 5
5. A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy, Part 4
6. Why Not Inerrancy?

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