Irenaeus - second century Church leader - (fl. c.175-c.195):
“[We are] most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit … all Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent …” (Against Heresies, II, xxviii).
From when I was a child I can remember the preachers would often state that ”the word of God is inerrant”. As a child I would simply trust this… as a young teen finding what looked like small errors or apparent contradictions brought questions which were not easily answered! When I became an adult these questions were still unresolved and began to create doubt - and a substantial obstacle in my capacity to defend my faith. It was frowned upon to ask challenging questions like the ones I will list in my article here because the assumption was that as a Christian it was my duty to simply have blind faith!
Is the Bible truly “inerrant”?
Is Bible inerrancy important?
What is meant by inerrancy?
Does the Bible claim to be “inerrant” or is that something men have placed on it?
What is meant by Christian claims that the Bible is without error?
Why do some parts of the Bible appear to contradict each other?
If all men have sinned and men wrote the Bible can we not assume the Bible could have errors?
Lastly isn’t it true that the Books of the Bible we now have were put together well over 300 years after Christ by the Council of Nicaea?
I will not get to all of these questions today… that said they are not intimidating to me any longer. I believe its important to ask hard questions and dig for foundational truth! The Christian that has dug deep into the foundations of their faith will be able to defend their faith with deep conviction. My objective in writing about this topic is in the hopes it will help other believers who struggle with this to more fully grasp what is meant by our inerrancy statements regarding the Bible.
Webster defines the word “inerrant” as “free from error”. It further defines the word ”error” as:
An act,
an act or condition of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior
an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy
an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done
a mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact
the quality or state of erring
something produced by mistake
the difference between an observed or calculated value and a true value
a deficiency or imperfection in structure or function
In the aforementioned definition of error we can rule out any reference to “an act” and look at the other applications of the word. Listening to this definition I can think of several more questions:
Is the Bible wrong? That is, does it have a quality or a state of erring?
Was it produced by mistake?
Is it wrong in terms of observed or calculated value?
Is it deficient or imperfect in structure or function?
I hope by the end of this series you will find increased faith and trust in our Bible, its history, its absolute trustworthiness, and perhaps be freed from some beliefs that have created unneeded fear. In this first part we will look at how we should approach the scriptures in terms of reading and comprehension. As usual, this series may not be one after the other as this is a big topic so if you want to learn more… message me or follow our blog on Wix. I can also provide additional links or resources for study.
The way we teach on Bible inerrancy has driven a number of doubts and deconstruction journeys in recent years. The internet is full of “in your face” challenges to the statement “the Bible is without error”. Ardent atheists and Muslim teachers will gleefully show unsuspecting Christian’s all of these perceived but also very convincing “inconsistency’s” in the Bible. The Christian who believes in Bible inerrancy but has not learned how to defend his faith is often caught with no capacity to defend their position.
Now, up front and based on the definition of the word inerrancy quoted earlier I truly believe that the Bible is indeed “without error”, that said I want to ensure I cover all aspects of this subject so we can come to a place of confidence in the scriptures. When I say the Bible is inerrant, I am not saying it does not have human connection… which absolutely is prone to err. I am saying that it is absolutely true, reliable and trustworthy and without error in its message and foundational place in Christianity!
We can see that:
It does not have a quality or state of erring!
It was not produced by mistake!
It has been proven right historically, archaeologically, prophetically! This means it is a true value!
It is structurally perfect in form and function!
In terms of what the scriptures say of about inerrancy, the closest we cannot come to the Bible itself using the word “inerrant” is 2 Timothy 3:16.
The NRSV reads as follows:
“and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”
Notice that at no point here does the Apostle Paul allude to the word “inerrancy”. As a matter of fact, there is no place in the scriptures where the Bible claims itself to be inerrant. All this said, it DOES claim to be INSPIRED by God… and further to that, it says that scripture is USEFUL to train, inspire, discipline, rebuke, and correct. By inference we can quickly understand that the scriptures are completely reliable and trustworthy!
It is clear based on the definition of the word and what the Bible says about itself is that we can trust and rely on the teachings and message in the Bible as inerrant. This is consistent with how early Church leaders, the apostles and Jesus himself referred to the scriptures. None of these leaders diminished the value of the scriptures but elevated it.
Consider these quotes from early Church Leaders:
Clement of Rome (fl. c.90-100): "Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them" (I Clement, xlv).
Clement of Alexandria (c.155-c.220): "... truly holy are those letters that sanctify and deify; and the writings or volumes that consist of these holy letters or syllables, the same apostle consequently calls ‘inspired by God ...’"
Irenaeus (fl. c.175-c.195): "[We are] most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit ... all Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent ..." (Against Heresies, II, xxviii).
Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329-388): "We trace the accuracy of the Spirit in detail to each separate stroke and letter; for it is blasphemous to suppose that exact pains were bestowed by the compilers of the Books, or even the smallest letters, without design."
Basil the Great (330-379): "No single syllable of the sacred writings is to be neglected." "Every word or action must be accepted on the testimony of inspired Scripture."
Chrysostom (c.344/354-407): "There is divergence in the historical narratives of the Gospels ... but there is no contradiction."
Augustine (354-430): "Lord, surely your scripture is true, for you, being truthful and Truth itself, have produced it ... ‘O man, what my scripture says, I say’" (Confessions, XIII, xxix). "I believe most firmly that no one of those authors has erred in any respect in writing"
For myself, as I have grown in my faith I’ve moved from a place of pulling obscure verses to justify my faith to reading overarching truths out of groups of verses or entire books. What I want to know is - without chapter headings (which did not exist when the Bible was written)… what is the message here and to whom was it written? I want to know why God inspired it so I can learn from it.
Did you know the Bible is an likely the most hyperlinked book in history? It is actually stunning. So stunning that Jordan Peterson and other secular scholars have taken note in recent years!
In 2007, Pastor Christoph Römhild and Chris Harrison assembled a digital dataset of all of the cross references in the Old and New Testaments of the King James Bible. On their blog (linked here) they explain that the “Cross-references are conceptual links between verses, connecting locations, people, phrases, etc. found in different parts of the Bible.”
They discovered that the Bible is completely cross-linked with itself. A book written over a period of 1500 years by over 40 authors and split into 66 books and written 1950 plus years before the modern computer was invented has over 63, 779 linked cross references!
The biggest struggle the men had was how to portray the dataset that showed these cross-references. They decided to show it in a picture graph which is shown below.
This stunning image shows every one of these hyper links. It is a stunning image and difficult to comprehend how difficult this would have been to make happen even with AI capacity in todays modern computers.
Chris says: “The bar chart that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible, starting with Genesis 1 on the left. Books alternate in color between light and dark gray, with the first book of the Old and New Testaments in white. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in that chapter (for instance, the longest bar is the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119). Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible are depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect”
Why is this important? Let’s go back to that passage in Timothy. What does the Bible say about itself?
“All scripture is inspired by God”.
It would make sense therefore that scripture would be hyperlinked and connected to itself if it is inspired by a single all powerful being! This is what I’ve found, in it’s overarching message is threaded throughout the text from Genesis to Revelation. A contextual understanding of scripture has helped me greatly in resolving any difficult passages I find.
The ardent skeptic would point out various grammatical errors of the earliest copies or some apparent inconsistency. For the Christian who has never considered this possibility, there is a fear that admitting these types of real or perceived errors exist will mean they have to rework their belief in inerrancy… for indeed, there are small translational and copy “errors” in early copies and further to that, are some passages that “appear” to contradict each other at first read. The fear is that if we admit this we will lose the entire books value and begin to rubber stamp life choices and make the whole book largely irrelevant like many progressive leaders have done.
I would suggest that there is a way to approach the Bible that maintains its God inspired value, it’s authority and it’s teaching value. If we approach scripture with a correct understanding we will be able to stand strong against even the most aggressive attack on its authority or its teachings. We will find out that there are some grammatical or translation challenges and that none of these change the gospel or the message of salvation. As a matter of fact, between the thousands of ancient texts we have there are over 300,000 differences between those copies… and yet none of them affect instructions for life in context with the gospel’s or the overarching message. Most are minor grammatical “errors”.
So… is the Bible inerrant? We owe it to ourselves to find out!
A big challenge that is often brought is the slight differences between the gospels, which can be explained fairly quickly IF you understand that the gospels and all portraying historical events as first hand accounts. This goes for some other historical parts of the Bible… as first hand accounts the order of the story, the things that stood out for each writer, the details of each story will all stand out differently for each writer. If you have 4 witnesses describing the same accident from different perspectives their stories may appear to be different as they remember different aspects of the same series of events. Some will fill in more detail than others… and we need to understand is that the historical portions of the Bible are written as first hand accounts or a retelling of first hand accounts from a witness or previous written history. Each account will have different details that stood out for the writer.
My wife and I used to play a game when we went out for supper. She is highly tuned in to details… I myself am much more into generalities - Cole’s notes if you will. We would sit there and someone would walk by, then I would ask her “what were they wearing and what did they look like?”. She would then proceed to describe in incredible detail what they were wearing, if they had glasses, hair color and gender. She would then ask me to do the same and I would say “I think it was a guy and he had black hair”.
Each of us watched the same event but we had different details. Let’s be honest, she had all the details lol. Anyway, if we were asked to describe that event our accounts would have looked very different. My account would have resembled Marks account, factual and to the point… my wife’s would have been more like Matthew’s account… super detailed.
Wisdom would look at the differences and say “I believe that someone did walk by Gord and Mary at the restaurant!”. Why, because our stories were describing the same event but were not so close that it looked contrived. The slight differences lend credibility because our humanness is taken into account. If our account was verbatim identical it would indicate collusion or lying on our parts.
The gospels are a first hand account of real events. When we put all four together we can see a fantastic and beautiful story unfold with incredible detail. When we use logic and reasoning we can understand that differences in the story are filling in missing details from other eye witness testimony. As an example Matthew 28:8 documents that the women reported the resurrection to the disciples whereas in Mark 16:8 they do not. In this example and aligning with how Mark shares an abbreviated account of the gospel we can state that Marks story is unresolved or incomplete. The passages in Matthew and Mark can both be true. J Warner Wallace does an excellent job of explaining this in his book “Cold Case Christianity”. See the link for his presentation on this at the bottom of this page.
Going back to this beautiful cross-sectionalitey we saw earlier… remember the amazing rainbow of cross connection? This connection exists in ALL true Bible translations (not as much in recent paraphrased versions like the Message or Passion translations). This hyper-connectivity is obviously designed and intentional by God as it affirms: Reliability, Integrity, Consistency, and Accuracy
The Bible was written by over 40 authors into 66 books that were written over a period of 1500 years… if it is God inspired the message should be intertwined and focused on what matters most to Him.
As such, when we find a single scripture that doesn’t line up with the gospels or appears contradictory getting thrown at us… we need use our critical thinking skills and search for contextual truth.
Who is the writer talking to at the time of writing?
What is the context in the writing… leading up several “chapters” before and several after?
What cultural or political issues was the intended audience dealing with in the context of the letter?
I’ll use this verse as an example:
1 Timothy 2:15 NRSV says this:
“Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”
Is this an instructional verse for us today?
Is it an error?
Is Paul saying that women need to have children to be saved?
Is this consistent with the local Timothy context or the larger Bible message?
Does it contradict other Pauline letters or scripture overall?
Does it contradict other Bible passages?
These are all important questions to ask! Remember that cross connectivity? The scripture will confirm itself - often through repetition.
The only other passage that might remotely bring up child bearing in regards to salvation is Genesis 2 where God tells Satan (the serpent) that the woman’s offspring would strike his head. This passage is clearly referring to Christ… so this means that the Timothy passage is not teaching a new concept for salvation and as such there must be an explanation for this that does not change or add to the gospel message!
Sometimes in this effort to understand a verses context we need to study a bit of history, read other portions of the Bible and study the whole “letter” or book of the passage we are trying to understand.
In the case of this particular passage Paul is speaking to Bishop Timothy… who oversaw the Church at Ephesus - Acts 18 has an account of Paul’s first encounter with the city.
With Acts 18 as a foundational understanding we could read about Ephesus in other parts of the Bible and in history. Here is what we would discover:
Ephesus was the location of the Greek temple of Artemis.
The temple Artemis taught that women should not get married or have children. It was largely run by women. Men who were involved with worship there would have likely been eunuchs.
The temple of Artemis was massive… and as such people in Ephesus, much like Corinth both had very strong ties with pagan temple worship practices. This temple absolutely saturated the city as evidenced by Paul’s interaction in Acts 18.
Artemis of Ephesus was the goddess of hunting, fishing, childbirth and chastity. That said, temple worship was said to be very sensual with erotic ritualistic dance, women were discouraged from having families or getting married.
Both Ephesus and Corinth had many converts from these pagan temples. This means that they brought those cultural influences into the Church. In the Ephesus Church Timothy was dealing with women who would act out in Church in an un-orderly fashion that was learned by influence of Artemis worship.
Understanding all this… and please note for time sake I can’t write all that I have researched here on this, we can begin to understand Paul is not attempting to lay forward a new teaching here! Rather, Paul is saying to Timothy is that contrary to the Artemis teaching that was making its way into the local Church, women would find a sense of satisfaction and preservation through childbirth. This becomes clear through reading other scriptures but even clearer understanding the cultural group he was speaking to. We can see in other scriptures that clearly Paul also valued singleness (read 1 Corinthians letter) so obviously this passage is not meant as a piece of theology for all churches and all women. He is addressing a specific issue in a specific Church community.
Now… before I sign off on this one…
What about purity?
Is there any part of the Bible that endorses sexual promiscuity?
No… the Bible is very consistent on this message throughout. There are indeed stories of despicable things that men did but there is no endorsement of those sins. Even more so we read of significant consequences of such acts. Thus we know that God is a holy God who does ask us to submit our sexual desires to Him. As a matter of fact the word “porneia” which is referring to ”sexual immorality” is mentioned at least 25 times in the New Testament. That is a lot of repetition! If we include the root word “pórnos” and we now have 35 references to the topic of sexual purity.
From Strongs Dictionary we find this definition of the word:
“porneía (the root of the English terms "pornography, pornographic"; cf. /pórnos) which is derived from pernaō, "to sell off") – properly, a selling off(surrendering) of sexual purity; promiscuity of any (every) type.”
Again we see this consistent message encouraging us to repent of sins and live in a way that reflects Gods character in the area of sexual purity.
When we find a verse that appears to differ from the rest of what we are reading it is our signal to dig deeper… to search for context (reading several chapters before and after the verse).
I’ve been learning most of all to trust God. The questions that bothered me 20 years ago have long since been answered. Sometimes it’s helpful to just shelve a question and trust God to reveal it at a later date.
I need to close this up…
If we come to a correct understanding of scripture, of how we got our Bible, of how reliable it is and of the value of the scriptures in guiding our lives - we can be confident and able to defend our beliefs. When we trust the Scriptures and learn to read them as they are meant to be read we can avoid progressive and culturally deceptive ideologies that promote acceptance of our own desires as godly.
Paul testifies:
”All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,”
There of course some progressives who claim that Pauline letters were added later and not meant to be part of the scriptures…
Historically - following the chain of custody of the books of the Bible as quoted by early church fathers - we find that is not true.
As a matter of fact, Peter testified that Paul’s letters were considered scripture - in his letter! We read in 2 Peter 3:16:
“So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures”
Once again the word confirms itself. This same Greek word for scripture is used more than 50 times in the New Testament to describe the old and new testament’s.
Todays post is about foundations, as this topic can raise MANY fears! I want to help establish trust in the Bible for someone who like I did has questions that are not getting answered in their Church.
I am working on several posts that have been used to promote a false view of women in ministry, of hell and other relevant topics. These could take awhile to release - until then if you want some links to do your own research message me and I’ll gladly send you some study links.
I hope as you have read or listened to this today you have found that wrestling and studying the hard questions can increase our trust and our faith in the written inspired word of Creator God. Even though humans have played a part in its creation and we can clearly see its human influence… we can also see its perfection and incredible accuracy, its depth of knowledge and its utter trustworthiness!
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I highly recommend watching the two videos below for more in depth analysis:
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