Biblical Inerrancy: Pt 5. Inerrancy

Part 5 on Inerrancy, and the subtitle is also Inerrancy, we're going right to the heart of it here. Remember, just going to review this, 19 Articles of Affirmation and Denial, 1 and 2, The Bible and Authority, 3 through 5, The Bible and Revelation, 6 through 8, Address of the Bible and Inspiration, and this is what we're looking at tonight, and 9 through 12, actually we're probably only going to get to 11, as I was going through this I'm cutting it off at 11, Bible and Inerrancy, and then it's going to be the Bible and Truth, and then the Bible and You.

Article 9: Inspiration and True, Trustworthy Utterance

Alright, so let's go right to the Affirmations and Denial of Inerrancy, Article 9 of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, keep that in mind, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

Now I'm going to get into this a little bit more in the exposition, but just notice some things. One, we're not saying that inerrancy on the part or inspiration on the part of the biblical writers conferred omniscience to them, alright, and I'll get into that a little bit more, but what it does do is guarantees true and trustworthy utterance on all matters which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

Again, you'll see later on that some people say that, well, the Bible, sure, it's inerrant when it comes to religious or spiritual matters, but not on everything else it touches, and obviously we know some of the big reasons why they say that.

The denial, we deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers by necessity or otherwise introduced distortion or falsehood into God's Word, and you can see what the charges are there, why they would have that denial.

So let's look at the exposition of these affirmations and denial. First, the affirmation of Article 9 indicates that inspiration guarantees that the writings of Scripture are true and trustworthy, that is, they are not false, deceptive, fraudulent in what they communicate, alright?

Notice not only are they totally true and trustworthy, but we get the negative side of it, they are not false, not deceptive, and not fraudulent in any way in which they're communicating, okay? Now notice the words in the affirmation, not conferring omniscience.

That's an important phrase because our view of inerrancy and inspiration is not saying that the Holy Spirit granted to the biblical writers full knowledge of everything in which they wrote. That's not one of the affirmations, alright?

Not conferring omniscience. Now there's quite a difference in guaranteeing inerrancy and conferring omniscience, okay? The writers were able to write without error as far as they went, but that doesn't mean well, let me give you an example.

The Genesis account of creation, Moses wrote what God told him. Did Moses know exactly how God did everything? Did Moses know what ex nihilo meant? We know what the phrase means, but we don't really understand what that really means.

How did God create something out of nothing? The biblical writers probably didn't understand that either, okay? So you see the difference between guaranteeing inerrancy and conferring omniscience. It's not the same thing.

That doesn't mean that they knew everything about which they wrote. We already talked about that. The denial of Article 10 has to do with man's propensity as a finite and fallen creature to introduce distortion and falsehood into God's Word, okay?

So that's what the denial is talking about. It's talking about this propensity that we as fallen creatures have. But what is in view here is the recurring charge that verbal inspiration or confession of the inerrancy of Scripture carries with it a docetic view of Scripture, okay?

Verbal inspiration of confession of inerrancy of Scripture carries with it a docetic view of Scripture. All right, enough said about that, let's move on. The obvious next question is, what is docetism?

Docetism and the Charge of Biblical Docetism

Okay, all right. So what I'm going to do just for a slide or two is talk about what docetism is and then how they apply that to biblical inerrancy, all right? Docetism is a particular distortion of the biblical view of Jesus, all right?

Has to do with Christology, all right? In the earliest days of the Christian church, there were those usually associated with the school of Gnosticism, all right? I hope everybody understands Gnosticism.

The word comes from gnosis, meaning they claimed to have a higher knowledge. What they did was they denied that Jesus came in the flesh. They denied that he had a human nature or a human body, okay? And in fact, they said that the flesh is evil in and of itself, all right?

So the docetists were associated with the school of Gnosticism who believed that Jesus did not really have a human nature or a human body. Now, they argued that he only seemed or appeared to have a human body, all right?

This heresy was called docetism from the Greek word dokio, which means to seem, to think, or to appear. Those who denied the reality of the incarnation and maintained that Jesus had but a phantom body were accused of this heresy.

Notice this was, in fact, from the earliest days of the church, considered to be a heresy,.

All right?

Okay, so now what does this have to do with inerrancy? The charge of biblical docetism has been leveled against advocates of inerrancy, most notably by Karl Barth, all right? Karl Barth was a 20th century neo-orthodox theologian.

And most notably for his aberrant view of scripture. And this is now what he's doing. He's claiming that those of us who are whole to a standard orthodox view of inerrancy and inspiration, he called us biblical docetists, all right?

And here's why. He accuses us of holding a view of inspiration in which the true humanity of the biblical writers is cancelled out by the intrusion of the divine characteristics of infallibility. See, remember way back at the beginning of this series that we started, we talked about the fact that the Bible is fully human, fully divine.

It was written by men, all right? But it was superintended by the Holy Spirit. So the root of it is both. Just as Jesus is fully God and fully man. So that's why Karl Barth accused us of being biblical docetists, because we negate the human factor of scripture by emphasizing the divine infallibility.

Does that make sense? So he's not claiming that we're docetists, but biblical docetists.

OK.

Barth held that it is fundamental. Now, this is important. Barth held that it is fundamental to our humanity that we are liable to error. Now, I want you to read. I phrased this very carefully, that it's fundamental to our humanity.

Notice I didn't put fallen humanity.

All right.

But it's fundamental. This is Barth's view, that it is fundamental to humanity in general to be prone to error. The Council, the Chicago Council, disagreed with that assertion, and they said basically just because humans are prone to error, firstly, it does not follow that they must err.

And that's talking about even fallen human beings. Just because we are prone doesn't mean that we must.

All right.

Just because I'm not infallible doesn't mean that I can't say some things up here that are absolutely true and right on. You'll hear them periodically throughout my teaching, that I say something that's really important.

That was a joke, albeit a bad one. See, prone to error.

All right.

Just because humans are prone to error does not follow that they must err.

All right.

Especially with divine superintendents. So even fallen man with divine superintendents can do something without error.

Okay.

If, as Barth claims, error is intrinsic and fundamental to humanity, it raises many different problems. Firstly, it means that Adam was prone to error before the fall. And that, do you see how you can say, if he's saying that it's intrinsic, that's why I made a point of showing you, he's not saying that it's fallen humanity that's prone to error, but humanity itself.

All right.

Now, he's getting antsy.

All right.

Glorified Christians would still be prone to error in the eternal state, if that's true, because we will still be fully human in the glorified state. And yet we know that flies in the face of what Scripture teaches.

It's worse. And Christ would be prone to error in his human nature. Why would we say that? Because Christ was fully human. And if prone to error is intrinsic and fundamental to human nature, not even not fallen human nature, but to human nature, then that would mean that Christ was united with prone to error.

You see, thoughts have consequences.

Okay.

So that would mean that Christ would be prone to error in his human nature, which obviously is blasphemy. So if it's possible for an uninspired person to speak the truth without error, how much more will it be the case for those who are under the influence of inspiration?

That's the whole point.

Okay.

Somebody's going to come up with that later, I know it. Let's move to Article 10, the autographs.

All right.

By autographs, we mean the original manuscripts that John and Matthew, Mark and Luke, the original manuscripts that they wrote. That's what we mean by autographs. We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.

We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. Now notice there's something that's inherent in what that's saying.

We're not saying that copies and translations are in and of themselves inerrant. Even the authorized version.

Yeah.

We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

Now you can tell by these affirmations and denial that the council members had certain charges that have been laid against those of us who believe in inerrancy. They had those in mind, and we'll pick them up a little bit more in the exposition.

Okay.

Now this is, again, this is the exposition. Article 10 deals with the perennial issue of the relationship of the text of Scripture that we presently have to the original documents, which have not been preserved except through means of copies.

Okay? You follow what it's saying? In other words, he says it's a perennial issue. In other words, this is something that comes up periodically. Almost every year somebody else is coming up with the same charges.

So that's what it deals with.

All right.

In the first instance, inspiration applies strictly to the original autographs. You need to understand that. When you hold that Bible in your hand, whether it's an NASB, the ESV, or King James, New King James, or even the nearly inspired version, the NIV. We're not saying that any of those versions are in and of themselves inspired.

Okay? You follow that? That's not what we're saying. We'll explain a little bit more. In the first instance, inspiration is strictly to the original autographs of Scripture, to the original works of the inspired authors.

What this does indicate is that the infallible control of God in the production of the original Scripture has not been miraculously perpetuated through the ages in the copying and translating process.

You follow? So we're not saying that even the scribes of old, as they would sit and copy, we're not saying that they were inspired too, where they could not make any mistakes. You know how we know that for sure?

Huh?

Because, yes, because we find differences in some of the ancient manuscripts.

All right.

This is plainly evident since we see minute variations even in some of the ancient manuscripts. Notice the phrasing that they use, minute variations.

All right?

Even in ancient manuscripts. The translation process for those who do not read the original languages adds more variants. How many people here speak more than one language? Okay. Those of you who speak more than one language.

You then know how you can read something in English and then you try to translate it into your other language. It's never perfect, is it? You're always struggling to get the exact meaning, but it doesn't always come across.

There are certain words that are just inherent to Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic that no matter what language you're trying to translate in, it just doesn't translate fully. That's why pastors and theologians study the original languages, because there's just not perfect translations.

And that's what the point we're making here is this translation process adds more variants to it. So the framers of the document are not arguing for a perpetually inspired transmission of the text. Since we do not have the original manuscripts, some have urged that an appeal to the lost originals renders the whole case for inspiration of the scripture irrelevant.

This is what some of the critics would say. They say, well, you don't have the original manuscripts. So therefore, how can you say that they were inspired? And they say, you don't know if your copy is inspired or not.

Do you see the argument? How would you answer that? We'll get there. To reason in this manner is to denigrate the very serious work that has been done in the field of textual criticism. Textual criticism is the science which seeks to reconstruct an original text by a careful analysis and evaluation of the manuscripts we possess presently.

This task has to be accomplished with respect to all documents from antiquity that have reached us through manuscript copies. So, in fact, I don't know the exact percentage, but the original writings of Plato, which scholars quote authoritatively all the time.

There's something like 80 fragments. And they don't think, the textual critics don't think that we have more than maybe 60 of his actual writings. And yet nobody has any problem quoting him. You'll see probably next week that we have like thousands, 5 ,000 text fragments of the ancient scriptures.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Old and New Testament scriptures are probably the texts which have reached us with the most extensive and reliable attestation. For more than 99 of the cases, the original text can be reconstructed to a practical certainty.

In other words, while we're not saying that God has miraculously preserved inspiration to the copies and translations, it is almost miraculous because of the scholarship that went into it with the amount of texts that we have and with textual criticism piecing these things together and then comparing them.

That's what textual criticism does. I'm getting ahead of myself. There's families of documents. And they compare those families of documents which come from different parts of the world and then they compare them together and then find out that the differences are like minute.

So it's not like there's one document here, one document there. And I believe I'm going to get into that a little bit more, maybe even give you some of the numbers and maybe even show you some of the family trees of some of the documents next week.

Because this section here, I knew that I would not get through all the articles in time and still be able to do that. If you notice, I haven't even given you any scripture references yet. I'm going to save that all until next week.

But anyway, the council said that can be reconstructed to a practical certainty. Not an absolute certainty, but to a practical certainty. Even in the few cases where some perplexity remains, this does not impinge on the meaning of scripture to the point of clouding a tenant of the faith or a mandate of life.

What they're saying is even where you come with certain of these documents from different families or different areas of the world, none of them have contradicted any of the major tenants of scripture.

In other words, the variants are of no import as far as doctrine is concerned. Thus in the Bible, as we have it, and as it is conveyed to us through faithful translations, we do have for practical purposes the very Word of God.

So when you pick up your translation, you can use that as though it was the very inspired Word of God. The further affirmation of Article 10 is an important point, though it's somewhat of a concession.

Copies and translations of scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. So if you're reading a translation and it varies from the original, obviously you can't consider that to be inspired.

But those variations have been reduced as we find more and more manuscripts, so that the certainty that we have the exact Word of God is increasing almost by decades.

Even the larger variants that you have, they're marked in your Bible, so that you know the long ending of Mark may not have been there, and the woman at the well, that story between chapter 7 and 8 may not be in the earliest manuscript.

So you know they're not hiding it, they're actually highlighting it so that you can see it.

Yeah, and certain things we know are left out, like the chosen people being the Norwegians, that's not there. And yet we know that that's true. So I mean we know there's certain things that have been left out, we know that was probably done intentionally by the Swedish translators.

So copies and translations of scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. Though we do not actually possess the originals, we have such well-reconstructed translations.

And copies, to the extent to which they do correspond to the original documents, they may be said to be the Word of God. The denial of Article 10 has in view the important point that in those minuscule segments of existing manuscripts, where textual criticism has not been able to ascertain with an absolute certainty what the original reading was, no essential article of the Christian faith is affected.

Okay, that's just kind of repeating what I said earlier. So in other words, you don't have to worry about the doctrine of the resurrection, there's no variations. You know, the doctrine of soteriology, all of the major doctrines that are contained in scripture, we are absolutely certain that we have the Word of God.

Now, to limit inerrancy or inspiration to the original manuscripts does not make the whole contention irrelevant. It does make a difference. If the original texts were errant, then the church would have the option of rejecting the teachings of the errant texts.

You follow? Without this doctrine of inerrancy, the church could say, we reject that. That's not the Bible. Or it may contain error. So that's why this doctrine of inerrancy is important. Because of this doctrine, the church does not have the authority to say, this is scripture and this is not scripture.

All right, that goes back to remember when we talked about revelation. And remember the Roman Catholic Church today says that they say what scripture is and what it isn't. All right, which is a new thing over the last several hundred years.

Article 11: Infallibility and Inerrancy

Then we come to Article 11, which is infallibility. We affirm that scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all matters it addresses.

Now I'm going to get into a little bit of the difference between infallibility and inerrancy, and you're not going to believe what some people say. Oh, notice it's true and reliable in all matters that it address.

All right, keep that phrase in mind as well. We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant. So what do you think somebody's saying for them to write that in there?

Oh yeah, it's infallible, but it does contain error. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, oops, sorry, may be distinguished, but not separated. And we'll talk a little bit more about that.

The central affirmation of Article 11 is the infallibility of scripture. All right, infallibility is defined in this context in positive terms as implying truthfulness and reliability on all matters that scripture addresses.

Now notice, on all matters, not simply spiritual or religious matters, but whatever the Bible addresses, it is doing so infallibly and inerrantly. Negatively, infallibility is defined as the quality of that which does not mislead.

Now the denial of Article 11 touches on the important point of controversy, particularly in the modern era. There are those who maintain that the Bible is infallible, but not inerrant. Thus, infallibility is separated from inerrancy.

Now I'll pick up a little bit more on this here as well. Though the words infallible and inerrant have often been used interchangeably and virtually as synonyms in our language, nevertheless, there remains a historic technical distinction between the two words.

And here's the distinction. Infallibility speaks to ability or the potential. Inerrancy deals with actuality. So if I want to speak about the Bible, I can say this book is inerrant. That means it does not actually contain any error.

If I say the Bible is infallible, what I'm saying is it is impossible for this book to contain errors. You see the difference? I made an analogy using a speaker such as myself. It is possible for me to give a lecture without error.

I don't think I've ever done it yet, but it's within the potential and the possibility of doing that. So I can say I can do this inerrant. I can do this without error. What I can't say is I can infallibly do this because there is always the possibility of error on the part of anybody human.

So theoretically, something may be fallible and yet be inerrant, such as a speaker. But something cannot be infallible and errant. So it's ludicrous for somebody to say, yeah, the Bible is infallible, but it contains error.

Just by definition of the terms, it can't be that. The only way they can do that is to redefine the terms. And what do we say in apologetics? At the very beginning of a debate, you have to define your terms.

Otherwise, people are going to run amok with it. So that's not a possibility. In the modern debate, infallibility has often been substituted for inerrancy with the intent of giving a lower view to Scripture.

Again, this is crazy. They're probably redefining what infallibility means and think that it's somewhat lower than inerrancy. But in essence, what they're doing is they say, well, it's not inerrant, but it's infallible.

They're actually giving it a higher view. That's what they said there. In our apologetics, the two principles must never be separated, but they must be distinguished from each other. We must always, when we're talking about the Scriptures, we should be using both terms, infallible and inerrant, because both are important.

And you can distinguish between them, like I said, but when it comes to our apologetics, you cannot separate them. You try to separate them, and you're really going off in a direction that you don't want to be.

So to repeat, theoretically, something may be infallible and yet be inerrant, but something cannot be infallible and errant at the same time. And that's where I decide. We have one more article on inerrancy, and I'm going to do that next week, plus with all the Scripture references.

And if I have time, if the time constraints are right, I will put a little bit in there about textual criticism and the number of manuscripts and maybe even some of the family trees. Any questions? Yes, Joe.

How does the Apocrypha fit in all of this? Is it infallible and errant?

No, it's neither. It's neither. The Apocrypha are human writings, and it has never been considered part of Scripture until the Roman Catholic Church tried to declare it as part of Scripture. But it was never, in the first century, the Hebrew Christians didn't consider it to be Holy Scripture.

And certainly, the Church, post-AD, never considered it to be Scripture. That's not to say that it's useless or irrelevant. I have a copy of the Apocrypha. I've read it. I've actually used some of the information given in it for historical purposes.

And I've actually, I quoted it in a sermon. With trepidation, because I don't want to give anybody the impression that it's on a par with Scripture. But just like I would quote a history book, I would quote the Apocrypha.

But it's not Scripture. Any other questions?