We posit:
Scripture is infallible (but not inerrant) in that it is able to accomplish the thing for which it is intended (Isaiah55:11).
Inerrancy says, “No error in scripture.” Infallibility says, “God’s errors are more potent than man’s best strength.” Therefore it is written:
“For what seems to be God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and what seems to be God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1Cor1:25).
Bible is a picture of the dealings of a perfect God with imperfect men. To say it is “inerrant” is like saying, man is perfect. Suffice to say a portion is greater light. But not inerrant.
By ‘Scripture’ we mean the meaning of the inspired Word and not the translated word, containing translation errors. By this we are NOT denying whatever the scripture affirms is true.
If those who claim inerrancy in the original, why aren’t they also furnishing an inerrant translation of the same? Because it is another one of those cop-outs!
There is no scriptural basis for inerrancy. But there is for infallibility–Isa55:11. Scripture supposedly for inerrancy is John 17:17 (Your Word is truth). But Jesus says: “Earth and sky will pass away, but it is certain that My words (not the entire Bible) will not pass away” (Mt24:35 Weymouth New Testament).
You might question: How can something infallible have the potential for error?
The Law is perfect but weak as it were through the flesh (Rom8:1-3). If God is Almighty (omnipotent/infallible), he can fix things caused due to any errors that have crept in due to flesh. But Gen6 is another matter where God is said to have “goofed”? It is not that God is prone to error! It was man, who was given the freewill that goofed and got what he deserved.
Why did God have to “regret” (Gen6) if He is inerrant, in His supposed hypostatic union with man, who is under His sovereignty and control? Answer: There isn’t any hypostatic union, which precludes better management by local lords/gods. God has granted some degree of laissez faire within some set boundaries to show that He trusts man. For the sake of His love He gives us freewill to some degree.
A small digression to God’s supposed omniscience is essential here. It is said of Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:5). But that’s not the case for all because he has to be just to all even as He gives freewill to all, which means He does not know all except those who rent their hearts like David of old, to His searching eyes, which explains Rom8:29 as God being one, who foreknows only those who rent their hearts whom He later predestines. God can be omniscient if He so chooses, but since He is omnipotent, He chooses not to know your heart unless you rent your heart. Sodom & Gomorrah too is about God’s omnipotence (sovereignty) and our freewill in display together. Luke 12:2-3 says, “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops.” This tells you that His knowledge is effectively complete–no circumstance can be hidden from Him; there is no motive or thought process that He CANNOT discern. But that does not mean He will encroach into your privacy. He has placed boundaries for man. Only when we cross those boundaries, He exercises His omnipotence and corrects anything when strayed. Because He is omnipotent, He has no need to be omniscient, let alone be inerrant. This means that indeed we have freewill. We are not puppets or automatons. What that means to His Word is stated at the beginning: God’s errors are more potent than man’s best strength.
We may have been in the image of our federal head, the fallen Adam at one time. But we now wear, as it were, Christ in our new-creation. So it is not idolatry to envision the image of God, which is Love (1Jn4:8) and then derive from that, what His thoughts and plans may be and manage accordingly as local lords and gods with some degree of laissez faire policy by the Father. Therefore He says: “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to HIM.” And moreover, He entrusts all judgment to Him (Jn5:27) just as the Son entrusts some to us as He lets us be seated on His own throne (Rev).
You may ask: Isn’t Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever as per Hebrews13:8 (immutable)? That isn’t true because the disciples saw him as a fully human but fully possessing the Holy Spirit when he walked the earth. A better understanding of Heb13:8 would be: He remains as LOVE.
Adam is also son of God (Luke). So there is a difference between Son-of-God and God-the-Son, as the Jehovah Witnesses–of whom i am not ashamed–teach us. He is the legitimate begotten TRUE Son of God–the Logos without any corruption and becoming flesh.
Now, 1Jn4:1-6 is about what it takes to be an anti-Christ, namely to deny that “Christ came in the flesh”, which means to deny that He is man only. To prop Him up by saying equal-to-God or God-the-Son, is effectively following the sin of Uzzah or Lucifer himself.
The Lord Jesus Christ has the possession of 100% God in Himself (Colossians 2:9) and He Himself, the Arm (Isa53:1), has become 100% man ONLY. This is the correct hypostasis. Check out my other blog post on The Mystery of Christ: Revealed!
Jason Massey poses an important question: how much of the black and white text do we honour over Truth (Logos having become flesh)?
But greatly, Bro. Bakht Singh has said: “Even if it is written in the Bible that a whale lived in the stomach of Jonah, i will believe it.”
“I think we are forgetting that as the second Adam, he was a son of God as the first was. And through Him, man is restored back to their relationship with the Father.” (Jason Massey)
Tradition has indeed outweighed the Word of God over Truth itself. But we must never forget that the best canon we have is the Bible, which is sufficient for salvation. Let’s not place another yoke on people that we ourselves have not been able to bear. Confer with the Judgements of the First Christian Council at Jerusalem (Acts).
A useful verse to know if some forth-telling by someone is of the Lord is to see if it aligns with “the Testimony and the Law” (Isaiah8:20). And test his spirit (1Jn4:1-6) whether it is of the Lord.
But let’s not discount the fact that the tradition of “Jesus being God Himself” was useful insofar as to enable the breakdown of all of idols as per 1Cor15:24.
As for Isaiah 9:6, it was fulfilled during the time of the first Church itself when Thomas called (Heb: וַיִּקְרָ֨א) Him, “My Lord, My God” (John).
When David tried to build a temple, God said, “heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool, are you going to contain me in a man-made temple?” but He approved of David anyway. God was only testing to see the heart of David. For, God is not limited by space and time. “All things are possible with God” (Mt19). Today we know from Moore’s law that an increasing amount of information can be contained in a chip.
That we who are recipients of the sap/Word/Spirit directly from God is proof that we too are gods (Jn10:35). But according to 1Cor11:3 and 1Cor12:28 there is an orderly relationship among the gods. This also speaks of the epitome of the revelation that came through Jesus Christ.
Jason Massey says: “The fact that this brother was called into question showed a spirit of error. Why was he not received? Could we not see the Spirit of the Truth. Yes, Christ said to the Pharisees, Scribes and lawyers that the scripture cannot be broken, true (infallible) but you do err not knowing the scriptures therefore it is not ‘inerrant’. The scriptures are not without error. The truth: even the law is spiritual. The text itself may have flaws, especially when compared to it’s original language”!
Like Uzzah, let’s not try to prop up the Truth, saying it is without error, when in fact we do see that there are errors. Let’s speak the Truth like it is. If there is error let us not shy away from acknowledging it. You don’t need to protect scripture or prop it as if it is going to lose its balance and fall to the ground. As i said it earlier: Infallibility is more potent than Inerrancy, which is a newly invented theory. “Will the Lord find faith when He returns” is a refrain we must contemplate.
Theologians who propose the theory of Inerrancy use the word Scriptures to refer to the very original script; in the original languages. It’s the meaning, they say, of the Scripture that is inspired and not the print, for, it’s impossible to translate void of error. They assert that inspired scriptures were given by divine authority and quote 2 Timothy 3:16, and say that God does not make mistakes.
But the truth is that the one who says there is no error in scripture even in its meaning, has not read the scripture.
Of course, when Jesus said, “Blessed is the one who does not stumble/take offense on account of Me (Truth)”, it is not because He makes mistakes, but because we make mistakes in understanding, scribing and hearing. But the fact that it is written in Romans9:33 saying:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”
goes to prove that there are stumbling blocks (errors) right in scripture that throw a person off if he is the nitpicking self-righteous type. So effectively, Jesus’ statement in Matthew5:18 is true, and scripture is infact inerrant, if you look at it that way (Edited by Caleb on March 14, 2014).
There are four versions of the Gospel, not one version, for a good reason. This alone strikes down the argument for inerrancy even in the original language. It is these later so-called “learned people/theologians” who know little but want to be seen as ones exalting the Word who make the blunder of propping it up. What happened to Uzzah is something for us today to reckon with. When a person of faith is in search of truth we should not put a stumbling block before him, such as one like Inerrancy, which will make him dismiss all scripture outright when he does find some errors.
The problem with the doctrine of the Inerrancy of Scripture is that it pits every writer of scripture with the Son of God Himself, who is the epitome of Truth. Therefore, it is not coincidental that some good bibles intone the truth and have Jesus’ Words in red.
The Glorified Lord has retained His Limbs with the nail prints. God Eternal is in a fleshly body. That is not a paradox. Jesus is currently Man-Almighty seated at the right hand of God. God is spirit (Jn4:24). So we cannot say something which is not spirit is God. The resurrected Jesus Himself said: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).
What’s to be understood is that God need not “change Himself even after taking the Human (Finite) form because Man was already made in the image of God and human nature (originally given) is compatible with God’s nature” as Prakash Gantela, rightly observed.
That is why i said: Jesus is currently Man-Almighty seated at the right hand side of God.
Scripture is infallible as a whole because the revelation is dynamic. “Due to post-Babel corruption of the flesh” (as Bro. Jawahar Peter put it), it is overcome with later revelations, where the epitome of that revelation is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Words are therefore in Red, not without reason. So if you take some verses by some authors, they do have error but only an error that does not render the ark fallible or out of balance that supposedly needs to be propped up.
Bitter Pill: “Opinions are like arseholes – everyone has one and everyone else’s stinks” ~ Clint Eastwood.
Past, present and future versions of truth, except that of the Lord Jesus Christ’s own Words, may have some minor errors. But for anything to be considered part of the canon it must align with the scripture that Jesus kept, that enabled Him to stay holy and rise from the dead. A dead man comes back to life to show that a man need not die if he is clean (Rom1:3-4; cf. Rom6:23; Gen2:17). That a totally innocent man needs to be put to death so that “his blood would be upon us and our children” and then for him to rise again from the dead to show that our sins have indeed been forgiven IN him, is self-evident, requiring no evidence to defend it. Therefore, for something or someone to be part of scripture, they must be aligned “to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Isa8:20).
Therefore, since we are discussing inerrancy/infallibility of scripture, the “YouVersion” of the Bible is condemned outright.
BTW, i don’t claim this particular post is inerrant.
Conclusion
Saying, “Scripture is Inerrant” is offering, strange fire! We have made an attempt at the Word & of the Word becoming flesh in one post. We assert that the meaning of text itself in isolation from the epitome can be in error. A good version of Truth shows intonation, giving due respect to whom due. Therefore, a targum of the whole, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Jn14:6), is the tree of life.
Excellent Related articles: ‘Inerrancy’ is not a victimless crime
The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Yuj’, which means: the act of being yoked, harnessed, joined, attached to God and come under His rule.