What is 'inerrancy'?

Dr. D.A. Carson - "What is 'inerrancy'?"
ehrmanproject.com

[@EternalDestiny48]

I have never heard it explained that way before. I think this is sound and convincing and I wish more people would think like that

[@iMentieth]

@Cousinsjay Yes, yes, he intimates that he accepts inerrancy - and he does. Here he's just explaining it. The thought provoked by your comment - which I thank you for - is if we say that "God wouldn't say that" (remember this is a issue for Christians), how do we know? What would He say? No matter what God says - if God speaks - would be subject to that.

[@johnschutt9187]

Beautiful!

[@johnpodgorney9535]

The Bible is like art by one of the great masters. We do not judge it; it judges us.

[@yankeejwb]

@LewisALawrence Notice the first words out of his mouth are, "It's worth pausing to..." The point of the clip is simple to avoid misconceptions over terms rather than trying to make an argument per se. This is one clip out of a whole slew that covers the topics you mention.

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

AegeanKing, I am fine with agreeing to disagree. This is how disagreements should go, before they get heated. You wrote, "Many Bible believing scholars reject it as literal history." What others believe or do not believe is not evidence of truth, or we would all be Muslims or Catholic. Many scholars want to call themselves conservative, when they are not, as they use forms of biblical criticism, thinking they will not damage the trustworthiness of Scripture, and yet they do just that.

[@warreer]

This is the definition of a moving target. Blatant sophistry.

[@armymobilityofficer9099]

You showed him to be problematic. Quid pro quo.

[@antonypearce5163]

If he defined inerrancy at any point then I must have missed it! What an exercise in obfuscation.

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

Part 1: There are several different levels of inerrancy. Absolute Inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is fully true and exact in every way; including not only relationships and doctrine, but also science, geography and history. In other words, all information is completely exact. Continued ...

[@baciliafernandez1776]

Amen to that

[@neophyteone712]

I agree with Garrigou Lagrange that Holy Writ is an inspired record of revelation. This would include what was commonly believed in the time, such as geocentricism

[@singwithpowerinfo5815]

The doctrine claiming that the Bible is the perfect, complete and inerrant word of God is extra-biblical. By what authority is the doctrine of the Bible’s inerrancy declared?

[@bungeebones]

Unfortunately, the "inerrancy" needs to also include the bishops selected by Constantine to decide which books were (or weren't) "inspired". Listen to this guy and apply everything he says to that council of bishops and his untruthfulness becomes apparent.

[@deltatheintp0263]

That's like saying science can't be true because a consensus is needed among human scientists to establish what is considered scientific or unscientific. The truth is already a reality... And God entrusted His words to the Jews, some points may be more obscurevthan others but in the end, among honest people, truth wins out.

[@paulallenscards]

@@deltatheintp0263that’s not a very good analogy, because the process of science always remains skeptical of previously accepted conclusions. Most of the conclusions we accept as true today were born out of a rejection of things considered true in their own time, and this process will continue as long as we maintain interest in refining our understanding of the natural world.

[@deltatheintp0263]

Yes, the analogy does fall apart when used in that way. I think we are actually agreeing on some points though. The truth does win out in the end, never perfectly, but more and more, the scientists need not be infallible to recognize truth when they see it. Yet still it remains the truth whether we recognize it or not.

[@LandscapeDallas]

Esther could be literal history or it could be a novella loosely based on the actual lives of its historical figures. There is no Dewey Decimal Code on the ancient scrolls to tell us which genre it is intended to be and we should not assume that God is limited to only one type of literary genre when communicating with us. In order to determine which genre the Bible's books and passages are the knowledge of scholarly experts in ancient literature and history is far more reliable than our personal feelings or expectations concerning how we think God ought to do so. It seems to me that both many fundamentalists and sensationalist skeptics like Ehrman fail to treat the Bible seriously according to ancient literary norms. They are both so wrapped up in their own ideas concerning what a God-inspired book SHOULD look like that they equally ignore the ramifications of genuine human input in the process. Fundamentalists are often willing to ignore any fact to preserve their view of inerrancy while skeptics are prone to stretch any fact to debunk the Bible. Looks like Confirmation Bias in both cases to me.

[@PjotrII]

+LandscapeDallas I´ve thought of a following picture to highlight the problem. 3000 years ago, around a campfire sat a group of tribesmen. they had a true message (or understanding) of God = God is with you in all problems in life, and he wants us to co-operate together. An elder in the tribe then start to tell a story about a man who built a boat when the storm came, and saved his family and all animals from a flood that covered the mountains. The whole tribe laughs as crazy to the highly exaggerated story, but they then understand the point in it, let´s work together and trust in God. 3000 years later, a fundamentalist pick up the bible reads that same story, and with a serious face tells that, yes water covered Mount Everest.

[@DavidParker-cf2km]

There are fossils of sea creatures on Mr. Everest.

[@majorharris8194]

3:16-26

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

Part 3: Limited Inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is meant only as a reflection of God’s purposes and will, so the science and history is the understanding of the author’s day, and is limited. Thus, the Bible is susceptible to errors in these areas. Inerrancy of Purpose is the belief that it is only inerrant in the purpose of bringing its readers to a saving faith. The Bible is not about facts, but about persons and relationships, thus, it is subject to error. Make sure they qualify.

[@narcanparamagician]

Rejoicing in the Lord always, does not preclude mourning. See John 11

[@TheGizmoskate]

all he's doing is changing the definition of inerrancy from "100% error free", to just "reliable". The New Testament cannot be inerrant if it is anything less than 100%, which it is. It's like peeing a little in someone's drink and saying, "well it's mostly still your drink"

[@antonypearce5163]

100%

[@reneejones6330]

If I define "inerrancy" as permitting errors, then I win.

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

Part 2: Full Inerrancy is the belief that the Bible was not written as a science or historical textbook, but is phenomenological, in that it is written from the human perspective. In other words, speaking of such things as the sun rising, the four corners of the earth, or the rounding off of number approximations are all from a human perspective. Continued ....

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

PART 2: Should we expect, then, that Biblical and secular records would agree in every detail? No, as Pearlman notes: “This kind of identical ‘war reporting’ from both sides was unusual in the Middle East of ancient times (and on occasion in modern times too). It occurred only when the countries in conflict were Israel and one of its neighbours, and only when Israel was defeated. When Israel won, no record of failure appeared in the chronicles of the enemy.” Moshe Pearlman - 1980

[@rev.stephena.cakouros948]

Inerrancy has to mean that that scripture is utterly reliable when it speaks about God the origin of the cosmos the creation of man his fall and salvation. And that it does this in a historical context that covers times places persons and events accurately. If a blind mans receives his sight it happened. If Christ hushed the raging sea it happened. Inerrancy means accuracy.

[@UpdatedAmericanStandardVersion]

Well, then you are leaning the wrong way. Esther is literal history. The book's primary intention is to record history. It seems to be a tendency with Bible critics (rationalist critics), to see some things not within secular history, so they cast doubt on the books a be historically true or reliable, or not literal history. For example Belshazzar, which they made a big argument about, until archaeology evidence came in. The same with Sargon, the successor of Shalmaneser V as king of Assyria.

[@TheVirgotube1974]

5 dislikes, those must christians, your kind will never know the truth until you open your mind.

[@mikebaker2436]

He insists on defining what inerrancy is.... but doesn't define what constitutes a "truth claim".

[@JACKRICK117]

you just double-negatived your point. Don is the foremost Christian scholar in the world today, and I can assure you he believes in inerrancy in every page of scripture. As do I.

[@bingo1232]

The Word of God speaks about Donald Trump -- Ezekiel chapter 23, verse 20

[@paultaylor6712]

What about the many contradictions found in the Bible? First and Second Genesis grossly disagree regarding the creation of humanity. One has it that we are like unto them, spiritual beings. (Elohim is plural, which raises other questions.) The dust of the earth and Adam's rib don't mesh well with eternal spiritual beings. The days of creation are different, there are four sets of ten commandments and so on. Inerrancy/literally true amount to cherry picking. Some love to bash gays but conveniently ignore that the penalty for adultery was death. Plus Jesus equated divorce with adultery. Do you hear them bellowing about the death penalty for divorce? I haven't.

[@faith-n-understanding]

When you discuss the issue of inerrancy, you must first define it as understood by the literalistic, Calvinistic, fundamentalists as Harold Lindsell and others who joined the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. These people proclaimed that the Bible contains no disrepancy whatsoever from the spiritual truth to even areas of science, numbers, description of events, geography and so on. Jesus cleansed the temple in the early period of his ministry in John but he does it in the last week of his life in synoptic gospels. The inerrancy fundamentalists say that the cleansing happened two times, and they argue like this only because both should be right in term of the time of the event. Without dealing with this central issue, Carson is talking about other more general things that any Bible believer can agree on. He is not clear and not helpful at all here. I wanna ask Carson: Do you believe that John and synoptic gospel writers are in discrepancy in the matter of the time of cleansing event? If so, how are you different from those inerrancy people? If you don't believer so, how will you acccount for the difference between the two writers?

[@derjogderjog8031]

god knows all these languages...wow..tower of babel he confused them...right...when did god talk to u last...or me or you or me...come on....can u imagine how many translations human hands on this thing..where is jesus--40 years and back said paul too...

[@swandike]

@JoeBible because atheists find it hard to understand simple statements. e.g God exist

[@CanadianOrth]

Note well, no scriptural examples are presented but rather a philosophy of protecting God. Inerrancy simply doesn't cash out. We have no Originals and we have no inerrant copies.

[@theguyver4934]

I am a muslim and i disagree

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

This is not what inerrancy usually means. The "without error" part is missing here.

[@alw1403]

Definition of inerrancy : Merriam-Webster : exemption from error: Infallibility. Inerrancy would include, mistakes, errors, contradictions and lies. The bible is full of them - You have to at least hear the inerrancy they are talking about, look up youtube: C. Dennis Mckinsey, Fallacies of the Bible

[@GSOlsen123]

Sorry, but I have to believe that parts of the Old Testament are in error or manmade or I have to believe that the God of the Old Testament is very nasty person and not worthy to be worshiped. You can not have it both ways.

[@amoxtlacatl]

Dictation that sounds stylistically different from author to author, huh? Hmm... Sounds indistinguishable from human writers writing at will. Not very helpful to determine divine authorship, is it? I guess you will see divine authorship if you first believe in it. Believing is seeing. Cart before horse.

[@PjotrII]

Stop talking and twist the word inerrancy when the bible is not that. The reason it is used is because it is a tradition to use it, and a wish of the fundamentalists. But we are interested in factual representation of the word. Would you call a book written by Peter von Millerheim who has 360 spellings wrong, 13 facts wrong, 5 quotes wrong etc to be an inerrant book? I hope not! The bible is written by many writers over a long period. It contains errors of many kinds. If there is a message from God in some text is then a totally different theological matter. But don´t lie to people and say it´s inerrant (or as here to try to twist the meaning of inerrant to suite the fact that it is not).

[@ricklannoye4374]

THE BIBLE IS BEST DESCRIBED AS A 10,000 PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE...THAT IS MISSING ABOUT HALF THE PIECES! If only we had one book that had descended to earth, directly from God, in words we all understood, and it contained only what God wanted for all of us, at all times and in every circumstance! There are more than a few religious leaders, preachers and teachers who try to make it seem like there is such a singular book they call THE BIBLE. Trouble is--no such book exists! What is so often called "THE Bible," is actually a very broad array of many different collections of books, in many different languages, not always containing the same books, which are not translated from the original copies of any of them, because every single one of the original "autographs" have been lost, and all we have are copies...of copies of copies of copies...and even those differ one from the other! OK, so let's say we can at least agree that the original writings were, every one "inerrant." Apparently not! At the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, that was held in Chicago in October 1978, a very conservative group, came out with a statement declaring what "inerrancy" of the bible meant, and all they did was re-define the meaning of the word "inerrancy" to exclude the 1000s of discrepancies between all the copies of copies of copies of texts that had been discovered up to that time, and they refused to recognize the results of the discipline of Contextual Criticism, the way all legit scholars of antiquity determine what parts of any copy of ancient documents is most likely in accord with the originals and which are not! OK, so let's just say we could agree on what scholars tell us which texts most likely represent the original writings of the bible books...then you have to ask, "Which books?" Today's Protestant Bible, for example, has 27 New Testament books, but before 1807, it had only 26, before the American Bible Society surreptitiously removed the Introduction page to the apocryphal books, like Revelation, which was often added to their printed editions! OK, so let's say we agree on what Protestants thought of as "The" Bible books before the 19th Century. Then how to know which parts of the that Bible represent God speaking to us today, and which parts not? Jesus, himself, said the Law of Moses was given for the hardness of men's hearts, a stop gap measure, not the full and final version of what God really wanted to tell us! OK, so let's say, for Christians, what really matters is what Jesus said, and everything else, such as the Old Testament and the later Epistles, must be interpreted through the prism of what Jesus taught and not the other way around. Well, maybe we're now getting to the heart of the matter...as long as we understand Jesus often spoke in parables, and more than a few times, employed the use of hyperbole, and probably because his real views, had he expressed them openly and unreservedly from the get go of his public ministry, he would have been killed right away, and we would never have even heard of him...so he also spoke as if he agreed with what the Pharisees taught, only to put a little twist on them, as his way of conveying his real positions but only to those "who had ears to hear." Is, then, "inerrancy" the word to describe the process of peeling back all the many layers of trying to get at what Jesus of Nazareth was really driving at and what was, centuries after their deaths, attributed to Moses, the Jewish prophets and writers of the New Testament? Well, how about another term that much better fits what we have to work with--a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle! Depending on what's included (just the Greek and Hebrew or the Latin and other language versions), there are somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 texts of the Bible, none of them the originals, but copies of copies of copies. So, more than a few people are content to claim one version of this puzzle, pieced together by representatives of one particular religious sect that began when a murderous king wanted to get rid of his Catholic wife that could not bear him a male heir, the King James Bible, is somehow miraculously equal to the original autographs, and every part of it (well, as cherry picked and then proclaimed from pulpits) represents what God says to everyone today. However, if we apply honest scholarship to weed out all the fake pieces someone cut out and added to the box (using Textual Criticism), and do our best not to cram pieces together with others where they, in context, do not really fit (using Contextual Criticism), even though what remains represents only about half of what was in the original box, a pretty good picture emerges...that is, if one is willing to accept that picture for what it is, regardless of how well it compares to or contrasts with the image created by Churchianity! Rick Lannoye, author of www.amazon.com/Real-Life-Jesus-Nazareth-Really-Stood-ebook/dp/B09V4BJ62D

[@dauharryrahman3398]

A very pleasant way to address the issue of errancy which after all can be accepted as long as we consider the whole Bible as a way to express God's messages to mankind. But if we want to maintain that it is God's words or even God's inspired words then we're in serious trouble. The discrepancies, contradictions, inaccuracies, errors and flaws would simply depict a God who does not master his mathematics and his logic , very inconsistent in his decisions, unfair sexist, cruel if not sadistic ... Would he create days and nights on earth and on the 4th day create the sun (Gen. 1)? Compare Samuel 24:1 and Chronicles 21:1. Won't he know he is not Satan? These two self-contradictory verses would imply a very gullible deity. Errancy there indisputably is! I believe the Bible is God's message but written with men's words and pens. I've read a book says God's signs instead of words. I tend to agree with it

[@russedav5]

Such bigoted nonsense only impresses the ignorant and gullible, having been ably reconciled and refuted for centuries, but of course impervious to imperious (and likely pretended) ignorance. No doubt far more erroneous pagan documents would be accepted without question, showing it merely a matter not of truth or reality but devout unbelief trying to excuse itself, like deceitful Bart Ehrman likes to do. As to the silly day and night "argument," one only needs a light source (e.g. God is light) to differentiate them, not the sun, as centuries of able expositors unread by ignorant hypocrites have shown.

[@Gitfidlpickr]

They will not fess up and admit that inerrancy was invented in 1878 at Niagra by American churcmen and adopted by Princeton U in 1920 until 1880NOBODY claimed the Bibel was inerrant. THEY invented it out of thin air and they did a good sales job. AND they will ousta naypne who says it isn't .. the Bible is thus their god (their idol)

[@Gitfidlpickr]

@@elvisisacs3955 The word "inerrant" means the speaker above (Dr. Watson) dismisses Ehrman (copies-copie-copies) and translation error..and then says the Bible is "reliable" . Inerrant does not mean "reliable;" it means without error. It an indefensible word (it cannot proved because it is not so). It is false to predicate "inerrant" of Bible. There was NO Bible (and no canon) when Jesus ascended (33 AD) ending his mission in the world. Jesus did not ever say "read" because there was nothing to read. He said "preach," There is not need for "inerrant" to meet the criteria for "reliable." So "inerrant" is a falsehood that is foolishly sought (by fools)(Doctor notwithstanding) It is a false premise (a logical fallacy)

[@CMoesta]

No one has ever claimed that anything other than the autographs are inerrant.

[@BikiniDeathSquad]

The biggest problem the bible has is saying, through various writers, that it was inerrant in the first place. It's claim of inerrancy sets it up for failure.

[@victorvalenzuela7626]

clearly you never read the bible. the bible starts with creation and then how Israel was being formed then the bible talks about the upcoming Messiah and then 400 years later He comes and saved us all. God's plan was clear

[@anothercath]

So lemme get this clear the bible is inerrant because we who are foolish sinful mortals think that those ancient text of similar context is true. And we think that we mortals are able to decide that by God's providence. While we also decide that God is real and always speaks the truth because the bible says so? What the hell is that kind of thinking? I think harry potter is real because I believe harry speaks to my heart, and I believe that harry always speaks the truth because the book says so. The real foundation of Christianity is the people. We invented Christianity ourselves and place it above ourselves never to question it.