Inerrancy

The word of a God who cannot lie

To call Scripture inerrant is to say that it does not err. The conviction rests first on the character of God. Paul speaks of "God, who cannot lie" (Titus 1:2), and Balaam was made to say, "God is not a man, that He should lie" (Numbers 23:19). If Scripture is breathed out by such a God (see inspiration), it shares his truthfulness.

The words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace, like gold purified sevenfold.

Psalm 12:6

John Wesley glosses the psalm's word ‘pure’ as "Without the least mixture of falsehood" Wesley. Jesus prayed, "Your word is truth" (John 17:17), and in the middle of an argument he said that "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

Inerrancy is not a demand to read everything with flat literalism. Those who hold it explain that it concerns what Scripture actually teaches and affirms. Poetry, parable and apocalyptic are read as what they are; round numbers and everyday speech (the sun "rises") are read as they were meant; the Gospels can report the same event in different order and words without error. Inerrancy is also claimed for the original text: copies and translations carry its authority to the extent that they reproduce it faithfully. On how well the text has been preserved, see Can the Bible be trusted?

How the church has spoken

For most of its history the church simply took the truthfulness of Scripture for granted. The Westminster Confession (1646), after listing reasons to esteem Scripture, says:

our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

Westminster Confession 1.5

The question was sharpened in the nineteenth century, as critical study of the Bible's history and text spread. In 1881 A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield of Princeton argued that Scripture, in its original writings, was inspired by the Spirit and is without error Hodge and Warfield, Inspiration. In 1978 the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, a gathering of evangelical scholars, issued the Chicago Statement: Scripture in its original manuscripts is without error in all it teaches, including what it says about history and the natural world, and each text must be read with attention to its literary form and the conventions of its time Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

Where Christians differ

Evangelicals themselves state the matter in different ways. Many, following the Chicago Statement, speak of inerrancy: whatever Scripture affirms is true. Others prefer infallibility: Scripture never misleads us in what it teaches for faith and life, and to test every incidental detail of history or nature by the same standard mistakes what it was given to do. Both confess that Scripture is wholly trustworthy in what God means to teach, and both read it with care for context and genre.

The Catholic Church teaches that Scripture teaches firmly, faithfully and without error the truth God wished to be recorded for the sake of our salvation Dei Verbum; Catholic theologians differ over how far that phrase reaches. The Orthodox churches confess the truth of Scripture but have not usually framed it in these terms, reading Scripture within Holy Tradition. For passages that seem to conflict, see Does the Bible contradict itself?, and on Scripture's authority, the lesson The inspiration and authority of Scripture.