I was listening to a lecture on the psalms and the lecturer was getting around the "violent" psalms by saying that "after all, the psalms were written by humans, so they're not actually scripture".

My belief is that the Scriptures, including the Psalms, were written by people who were inspired by God to write them, and are therefore inerrant.

While God inspires many people, to the point that virtually nothing is written without some kind of inspiration from Him, the inspiration of the Scriptures is in a class by itself. The Scriptures are Divine Revelation, meaning that every word is directly from God.

The Scriptures are therefore God Himself speaking to the human race, despite the fact that they were written by people who used terms and concepts that made sense to them, and despite the fact that the literal accuracy of Scripture is not what we would consider to be literal accuracy.

I would not consider the Bible to be very factually accurate. Nor would I consider all of it to be literally true. For example, the first 11 chapters are, I think, ancient myths - which in no way detracts from them being the Word of God.

The inerrancy of the Bible resides in the spiritual truth that it contains, which it communicates to people who understand it. While many individual statements are literally untrue in theological terms, such as that God is jealous and angry, these statements nevertheless convey a part of an overall truth - which can be understood when the Bible is considered as a whole.

Even its most immoral aspects, such as God ordering the annihilation of whole cities, or the Psalmist praying for Babylonian children to be dashed on the rocks, essentially communicate fundamental truths.

For example, the annihilation of so-called "wicked" cities communicates the power of God and the danger of opposing Him. Dashing even small children on the rocks means that even the smallest and most apparently harmless of evils are to be removed from your life. Literally, however, these actions and desires on the part of the Israelites were wicked to the extreme.

The purpose of the Bible is to lift the human race out of evil and lead them towards heaven. It can do this very effectively if it is understood and loved. However, since the human race has been, and in many ways still is, in a quite primitive and uncomprehending spiritual level, the imagery and examples of the Bible are often drawn out of and speak to those states. The Israelites were not good people, at least as they are portrayed in Scripture, but they could be used by God to teach eternal truths and to represent the path that every imperfect ordinary person can follow to heaven.

Well, I could go on and on. But that is my basic view of biblical inerrancy.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
My belief is that the Scriptures, including the Psalms, were written by people who were inspired by God to write them, and are therefore inerrant.

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My belief is that the Scriptures, including the Psalms, were written by people who were inspired by God to write them, and are therefore capable of being errant. Mistakes have been made in transcriptions and mistakes in translations.

It seems that it is the nature of people to manage to stuff up anything that we get our hands upon.

The Bible is a continuing revelation of God to his people, God explaining himself and his nature to us. This being most fully explained in the person of Jesus.

Humans will often color things their own way, even if they don't mean to, even if it is simply subconscious. That's the same reason why, when conducting drug research using people, it is important that, not only should the test subjects not be told whether they were given a real drug or a placebo, but the researcher administering the tests should not be told either. Otherwise, they might subconsciously administer drug-effectiveness tests to the subjects in such a way as to alter the results toward his bias. (i.e.- If a doctor was doing tests for a muscle pain relieving drug that he wanted to work, he might subconsciously touch the drugged patients back more softly than the placeboed patient's back when he says "Does this hurt?")

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Originally posted by Steve G:
Inerrancy always strikes me as rather a defensive position. Surely there are more positive things we can say about the bible than that it has no errors.

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Good point. Maybe I am misunderstanding the thrust of the word, but I had connected it mainly with the absolute truth of the Bible's theological teachings, when these are properly understood.

I don't believe at all that the Bible is free of factual and redactive errors, or that it is always literally true. The simple fact that several different versions have come down to us, and that the various gospels disagree on minor points, should demonstrate that.

But the differences between the various versions are mostly trivial, as are the disagreements between books. And finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Bible has been remarkably accurately preserved over the years.

For a Christian book to be inspired by God does not mean that it's author got it 100% right.

What distinguishes the Bible is it's subject material. It contains the stories behind the evolution of the jewish faith, which set the scene. But most importantly it contains the stories which surround Jesus, written in some cases by eye witnesses. It is because Jesus was special that the Bible is special.

That's what makes the Bible important in my faith. I take what it has to say seriously, but I don't tell myself that I must believe every word. If it seems to my conscience that it is saying something wrong, I generally believe that what is said is meant, and that it is most probably wrong.

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Originally posted by Bonzo:
I see no reason to treat the Bible as any different from any other man made account, written by men of God.

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Is there any Christian denomination that makes this idea their official stance on the Bible? My impression is that most denominations officially consider the Bible to be the revealed Word of God.

My position is that the letters (romans on...) are not inspired. I also do not believe they claim to be inspired. There is one verse that claims that all scripture is inspired, but that is obviously referring to scripture, at the time ie: OT.

Whether or not Acts is inspired is irrelevant, because it is a historical account, not necessarily inerrant, but not theological in nature.

I see no reason to believe in a literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. I am willing to concede that the rest of the events in the OT might very well have happened. There is certainly credible evidence pointing towards the fact that the stories were NOT in fact made up at a late date to give the Israelites a "history" as a nation.
Shakespearean ASIDE:(this evidence would be that prices, ie the price of Joseph, when sold into slavery, is accurate for the culture of his time, but not for the time when critics would have us believe it is written, hence making it improbable that they knew the going rate of slaves hundreds of years after the event. Also Abraham's grim split-goat covenant with God was a common way of sealing a pact in his time, but would have been strange and remotely barbaric to the later jews.)

Your other thoughts almost precisely echo my own.

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Originally posted by Ham 'n' Eggs:
"Inerrancy", when used in this context, never has a single specific meaning.

It always means what the person using it requires it to mean, no more, no less.

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This thread has got me thinking about "Biblical Inerrancy" -- which is, I confess -- not something I normally think much about. In particular it's got me thinking about the notion of what it would me to say the Bible contains "errors."

To take an example: While I think the first two chapter of Genesis do not give an accurate scientific account of the world's formation, I also do not think this is a matter of "error." It is not like God wanted to give us a scientific account but muffed it. It's bad science, but then it is not intended to be science. So no "error" is involved.

Similar examples could be taken from the New Testament: e.g. the two genealogies of Jesus. Maybe the point of the genealogies is something other than giving us an accurate account of Jesus' bloodline (which they obviously can't be trying to do, since they trace the genealogies through Joseph, whom Matthew and Luke both deny is the biological father of Jesus). So it isn't as if one or the other of them has made some mistake.

I guess my general approach to the Bible is that of Origen: it is all inspired (even the Epistles and (gasp) the Apocalypse). But the difficult passages (in this case, those that cannot be literally true) are there in order to push us to read beyond the literal, to grasp the "spiritual" or "mystical" meaning of the text. Perhaps Origen learned this from the rabbi that taught him Hebrew, since it is very close to rabbinic midrash.

My point here is that "error" may not be a very helpful category when approaching the Bible.

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Originally posted by IconiumBound:
Well then, what do we mean when we say, at the end of each reading, "the word of the Lord."? Is it really that or might is be not quite that?

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I never say that. The Word of God is most definitely Jesus. "The Word was made flesh and live with us for a while."

To argue that anything that is not literally true is either a mistake or a lie simply doesn't make sense and rather falls into the literalist trap.

No matter what the purpose of the statement is, if it is false, then it is false. Poetry is accepted because we know that the author is not actually saying that the bird is literally not a bird. We know he is trying to explain how he sees it as something more than it is. But anyone would have a difficult time of explaining how giving the created order of things in the incorrect order could ever be considered a poetic or metaphorical statement of any similar measure.

To me, it is evidence that when a story gets passed by mouth over time, it gets altered a little bit here and there, even by accident in very small amounts. And no one can deny that if one part of a wholly true story has been altered, then we can call that part a "falsehood" as it relates to what was originally told.

What it all comes down to is that this "falsehood" was either placed in the Bible on purpose or by accident. If someone knew that it was an "elaboration" when they said/wrote it, then it was done on purpose. If someone thought they were doing it the right way, but messed it up, then it was done by accident. There is no escaping that fact.

To me, the only logical and resonable options are that either Moses goofed up God's original story, or it was slowly altered over time, while being passed by word of mouth, or someone responsible for passing it along changed it on purpose.

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But anyone would have a difficult time of explaining how giving the created order of things in the incorrect order could ever be considered a poetic or metaphorical statement of any similar measure.

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I think you're right to point out the crucial factor of people recognising the literary genre they are reading. The original readers would have found this easier than us (Hebrew readers would have looked for parallelisms in poems, whereas our forms of poetry are somewhat different).

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Originally posted by nemo:
No matter what the purpose of the statement is, if it is false, then it is false.

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How about allegory, parable, metaphor, or the way that you explain to a child that the reason that the sky is blue is to match her eyes?

The early Genesis stories relate the early spiritual history of the human race. There was a Golden Age. People fell away from those idyllic times - so drastically that it was predicted that God would need to come to earth. There weren't really any magic trees or talking snakes!

This doesn't make the story untrue. It is simply not a book about natural factual knowledge, as Astro points out:

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Astro writes:
The Bible is not a book of facts, nor is it as Babybear has pointed out the word of God

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A journalist who has a law degree made it his task to proove that the claims about Christ were false but after his research became a Christian.

Now he has written a book about the toughest issues that face Christians.

He interviewed a number of top scientists etc and theologists concerning issues like evolution and "apparent" contradictions in the Bible.

Basically I think that we make judgements on things we don't have the full facts. More & more scientist actually believe God created the world. If you read the bible properly and apply set rules that are applied to all historical accounts then you won't find contradictions in scripure.

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Originally posted by gkbarnes:
pick up deadly snales

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I would argue that Gen 1 is intended to help us see the pre-fall creation as ordered according to God's sovereignty, with humans as part of creation, but ruling it as God's vice-regents. The fall then substantially messed this up, with the relationships between humans and creation, other humans, and God all marred.

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Originally posted by nemo:
To me, it is evidence that when a story gets passed by mouth over time, it gets altered a little bit here and there, even by accident in very small amounts. And no one can deny that if one part of a wholly true story has been altered, then we can call that part a "falsehood" as it relates to what was originally told.

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However there are at least two ways of reading author intent. They answer the questions

What does the human author intend to communicate?

What might God see as important in this passage?

There are equally two reader intents:

What would the originally intended (by the human author) readers have heard from this passage?

What do we in the light of the full Bible and our understanding of modern society hear from this passage?

When all four agree I am suspicious that we are deluding ourselves.

I wouldn't want to drive a wedge between your first 2 questions. What God intends in a passage may be more than what the human author intended (eg Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53), but the divine intent doesn't contradict the human, rather it supplements or fulfills it. Naturally, it is in the light of Christ that all scriptures take on their fullest meaning.

None of these questions are necessarily easy to separate from each other

and just to make matters worse I think the last one is covering two different reader interpretations

1) What has this passage been understood to mean historically by the Church?

2) What do I as a twentieth century christian understand by it?

If you want passages where these meanings Kaleidoscope into a complex pattern then look at the suffering servant passages in Isaiah.

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Originally posted by Gauk:

One might also note that Jesus stated quite clearly that the Second Coming would be in the lifetime of the Disciples. So even Jesus was capable of error.

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originally posted by gkbarnes:

The Bible is the word of God, and is therefore His word's to us. While I belive that there aresome errors, there is NO THEOLOGICAL error.

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appreciate the replys guys.
Hmmmmmm....looks like I gotta try to defend my way out of this eh?

Firstly, on a very personal note, I want to say that doctrines/beliefs don't just stay in the realm of the cerebral, but they have to be lived out. And I'll admit that my belief in the inherrancy and infallibility of scripture is tough. Questions like, 'what about the apocrypha?' or 'what about genesis 1 in light of evolutionary theory?' are very challenging questions.

But I will say that there are 3 main reasons for not abandoning the belief that the Bible is a whole, perfect, and trustworthy source of God's truth:

1) First, the Bible says that it is the perfect, whole, and trustworthy word of God. While this may sound like circular reasoning, the fact is that if we believe in any part of scripture, then we by very defenition MUST believe in ALL the scripture. (I can hear the objections already ) If Isaiah says that the word of Yhwh will never pass away and we reject that idea, then what gives us the right to accept any part of Isaiah's message??? If Jesus claimed that heaven/earth would pass away before His words would, and we say 'well, some of it is here and maybe some of it is covered over there,' then why can we trust anything that he has to say???

2)Secondly, Jesus' views of the OT scriptures were that of a very 'literalist' and very authoritative interpretation.
Jesus claimed that He was the fullfilment of OT prophecy regarding the messiah (I don't deny that most of the prophecies were somewhat metaphorical). Next, Jesus used the scriptures to 'fight' the temptations of Satan. Jesus defended the doctrine of a 'literal' resurrection of the dead before the 'liberal' saducees from the OT. Jesus often said, "So that all that has been written in the scriptures may be fulfilled......" Again, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus ends the story by saying that the truth of the OT scriptures 'should' be more convincing proof of God then even a resurrection from the dead. Need I go on?
As a Christian, I cannot deny what my master has believed about the nature of revelation/scripture. To Jesus, the OT was the exclusive truth of God on earth. (apart from His incarnation and general revelation, of course.)

3) Now I feel that I have barely scratched the surface as far as a defense goes (there are much more qualified CHristians who could do a much better job). But I want to end by saying that God can, if He wanted to, protect His scriptures through many centuries. I mean, He is God, right? Also I want to say that I would not even want to be a Christian if the Bible is not the perfect and inspired and kept word of God. Why? Because how would we ever know what parts were what? How can I trust my salvation to a book that might be wrong?
It can seem very "intellectual" and "mature" of us to say that we have to 'wade' through and critically find out what parts are true ot not, but its foolishness. Either God can and has kept HIs promise to maintian His word, or we are playing a guessing game with our souls at stake.
You can do whatever you want, but I can't have peace without first affirming (by faith, as is everything when it comes down to it) that the Bible is God's message that He has kept for us to give us light and a path to follow.
"Let God be True, and every man a liar."
Romans 3:4
thanx for be patient.

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"'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."
- C.S. Lewis

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