Inerrancy: Limited or Unlimited?
The Evangelical View: Unlimited Inerrancy
The famous “Chicago Statement” on Biblical Inerrancy (1978), which was affirmed by some 300 evangelical scholars, was later accepted by the 3000 member Evangelical Theological Society as a guide for understanding inerrancy (2006). It is not, as some critics imply, the work of one individual or small group of individuals.
Unlimited inerrancy, as embraced by evangelical scholars down through the centuries and expressed by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), held the following: “We affirm that inspiration… guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write” (Article IX). They added (in Article XII), “We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit. We deny that biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science” It adds, “We affirm that since God is the author of all truth,…the Bible speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else” (Article XX). This has been the standard Evangelical view down through the centuries (see John Hannah, Inerrancy and the Church).
The Neoevangelical View: Limited Inerrancy
However, a group of evangelical scholars are now denying the historic evangelical statement of the ICBI in favor of a Neoevangelical view of Limited Inerrancy which limits inerrancy to redemptive matters and denies inerrancy of historical and scientific issues. This Limited Inerrancy view was presented by Jack Rogers of Fuller Seminary in The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible (1979) and was refuted by John Woodbridge in A Critique of Roger/McKim Proposal (1982). The new “Battle for the Bible” is all about this same issue. However, there are some serious problems with this view of Limited Inerrancy.
First, it is a denial that the whole Bible is the Word of God. For if (1) God cannot error (cf. Heb. 6:18; Titus 1:2; Jn. 17:17), and if (2) the Bible is the Word of God (cf. Mt. 5:17-18; Jn. 10:34-35), then it follows logically and necessarily that (3) the Bible cannot error—i.e., it cannot error in anything it affirms. Why? Because it is God’s Word, and God cannot err on anything He asserts. The God of the Bible is omniscient (all-knowing), and an all-knowing Being cannot err in anything He affirms—whether it is theology, history, or science.
Second, many theological doctrines cannot be separated from their historical and scientific affirmations and implications. For example, the biblical doctrine of creation cannot be separated from its scientific affirmations that the material world was created and that life has an intelligent Creator. Likewise, the doctrine of the virgin birth cannot be separated from the affirmations that a male sperm was not involved. Nor can one’s belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection be separated from the scientific assertions that He died physically or the historical affirmation He rose bodily from the grave.
Third, Jesus said, “If I have told you of earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (Jn. 3:12). Likewise, if we cannot trust the Bible when it speaks of earthly things, then how can it be trusted when it speaks of heavenly things? As it has been aptly put, “If we cannot trust the Bible when it speaks of how the heavens go, then how can we trust it when it tells us how to go to heaven?”
Fourth, just as Jesus, God’s living Word, is both God and man without sin (Heb. 4:15), even so the Bible is God’s written word without error (Psa. 19:7). Appealing, as critics do, to hypothetical errors Jesus assumed to have may have made as a child, misses the whole point, namely, only whatever Jesus (or the Bible) taught is without error, and no one has ever found anything Jesus (or the Bible) taught to have an error in it!
Finally, appealing to Jesus’ (and the Bible’s) limits as a finite medium does not invalidate the claim for complete inerrancy. For while Jesus in His human nature was limited (Mk. 13:32; Lk. 2:52), He necessarily adapted to human finitude, but there is absolutely no evidence that He ever accommodated to human error! The same is true of God’s inerrant written Word. In short, the error is not in the Bible; it is in the Neoevangelical view about the Bible.
