To me, one cannot separate the question of whether or not “the Bible” is inerrant from the question of how and why the books in “the Bible” are in “the Bible” and other books are not or are no longer in “the Bible” – at least the Protestant Bible.

Maybe he discusses in his book how only inerrant books ended up in the canon, and how that process worked itself out and was ensured.

True. But what about human authors? And what is a mistake? This again hits the question of authorial intent. Did God intend for the Bible to be true in the modern and scientific sense? Did he intend for it to be chronological? Did he intend for the NT to make use of the OT according to the historical-critical method of exegesis?

o The Bible is God’s revelation of himself.

Does the Bible need to be true in this (modern and scientific) sense to reveal God? I would argue no. As a corollary, take the fact that most evangelicals already admit that the Bible is not a complete revelation of God (but is accurate in what it reveals). Therefore we must also admit that He does not rebut every false concept regarding his attributes in that revelation. Thus, He leaves us in error on certain, evidently less important, points about his own nature. God remains inerrant, while we are limited by our humanity. So, to what extent or in what way does the Bible need to be “inerrant” in order to reveal accurate truth about God, sufficient unto salvation?

o Therefore the Bible never lies, deceives, or makes mistakes.

(Of course one could just tack on to the end of this last statement . . . . “in what it reveals about the person of God.”

This statement hinges on the first two. But if God’s inerrant will brought us the Bible through human hands, then the Bible’s existence is not a mistake and the execution of its writing is inerrant as it relates to fulfilling God’s intended purpose for it. And this can be the case even if it does contain what humans judge to be “mistakes”.

Here’s another issue in all of this: God is omniscient and all-powerful. He inspired the scriptures. He was able to foresee man’s development (even in the open theist picture, his wisdom would have allowed a clear picture of where science would take mankind). He knew what things someone would someday see as an apparent contradiction. Why did he allow those things to be stated as they are in the scripture? It seems the answer can only be speculative, but the fact that he did allow apparent or even real contradictions seems to me to indicate that He left more to human creativity than definitions of inerrancy usually allow.

How do Beale’s points from Revelation compare?

o Jesus is the faithful and true witness, revealing what God has given him to show his servants.

He doesn’t reveal everything, only what God intends. Are “faithful [or trustworthy, NIV] and true” (πιστοσ και αληθινοσ) = “inerrant”? That question probably needs some research, but I’ll say this: Trustworthy and True is just the kind of language prefered by scholars who find infallibility more tenable than inerrancy.

o John is commanded to write the faithful and true words of God.

John is the one who writes God’s revelation of himself. What are the “words” mentioned in Rev 19:9? Reading the verse in context it sure looks like the angel is only referring to the statement of blessing he just uttered. If that’s correct, then I’d have to say this is a prooftext that has been co-opted by systematic theology (hopefully causing a slight feeling of discomfort for good biblical exegetes everywhere). Can Beale really use this verse in this way?

o Therefore the words that John has written are also faithful and true.

As before this hinges on the first two points. I agree they’re faithful and true, but precisely which words are referred to in (Rev19:9)? And does this really mean they are inerrant?

***Please remember,*** The book is new. I have not read it. But it will be interesting to see if it addresses the questions I raise above.

Lastly, it is interesting to note that the title of Beale’s book casts the recent debates about inerrancy as an assault on the authority of the Bible. This is a fundamentalist, rather than evangelical stance in my view. The full title is: The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority.

Of course, if he accepts his own argument that the Bible asserts its own inerrancy, then he is logical in seeing disagreements with inerrancy as rejecting the authority of the Bible. So we’re back where ETS started: Do those who reject the trinity reject the authority of the Bible? Apparently they embraced its inerrancy.

Thanks for your meaningful contribution to the discussion. I look forward to reading Beale’s book.

I’ve ordered the MP3 CDs of all the 2008 ETS talks. They said they’d ship them 4-6 weeks after the Conference.

I heard Beale give the address at ETS a couple/few years ago (Valley Forge, PA? or was it San Antonio, TX?) when he was made President, I think. Very powerful and worshipful, in fact, and I later realized that I had his book, The Temple and the Church’s Mission – which is why what he said had sounded a bit familiar, even though I didn’t put 2 and 2 together until after he had finished.

I’ll split the 2.5 cents with you.

“This year’s Crossway Lecture at ETS was presented by G. K. Beale. Beale argued that Inerrancy is not a scholastic theological deduction made by interpreters of the Bible, but rather that it is an exegetical observation of a theological deduction that at least one biblical author has already made within the text of the Bible itself. Citing the logic of innerancy:

o God is true and trustworthy, and he never lies, deceives, or makes mistakes.

o The Bible is God’s revelation of himself.

o Therefore the Bible never lies, deceives, or makes mistakes.

Beale argued that John has already made this argument and drawn this conclusion for us in the book of Revelation. The gist of Beale’s argument went like this:

Revelation 3:14 presents Jesus identifying himself as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness.”

Later in Revelation an angel commands John to “Write,” and then the angel declares to John, “These are the true words of God” (Rev 19:9).

Later still in Revelation the one “who was seated on the throne” commands John, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true” (Rev 21:5).

And again we read in Revelation 22:6 that an angel says to John, “These words are faithful and true.”

From this string of verses, Beale argued that John has presented to his audience the very logic of inerrancy:

o Jesus is the faithful and true witness, revealing what God has given him to show his servants.

o John is commanded to write the faithful and true words of God.

o Therefore the words that John has written are also faithful and true.

Beale then argued that based on the inter-textual connections between Revelation 3:14 and Isaiah 65:16, and based on the claims made in other texts in the Bible (such as Ps 119:137-42, and cf. Ps 119:103 with Rev 10:9-10) this logic is not limited to the book of Revelation.

I thought the presentation was compelling, and in my view it adds to the evidence supporting the position that the inerrancy of the Bible is not some foreign theological abstraction imposed on the Bible from the outside. Rather, Beale has demonstrated that the inerrancy of the Bible is an inductive, exegetical conclusion that arises from the claims the Bible makes about itself.”

Read it all here.

inerrant Definition
in·er·rant
adjective
not erring; making no mistakes; infallible
Etymology: L inerrans, not wandering, fixed: see in- & errant

It seems to me that if you have to prevaricate and equivocate, and qualify and caveat the meaning of “inerrant,” you need to use another word. I.e., Christians/Evangelicals can’t and shouldn’t use the word “inerrant” if it means something other than what it means in English usage and per dictionary definitions.

Is doing so not unlike being “a little bit pregnant”?

My 2.5 cents.

I, too, feel uncomfortable with us or anyone saying that the Gospels tell us “what Jesus said and did” while at the same time saying or defining that to mean that (within the limits of a language’s ability to make accurate vs. inaccurate statements) the Gospels don’t always tell us correctly or exactly what Jesus said or exactly what He did or when He said or did them or to whom He said or did them, but that the authors at times took liberty with the facts (as they understood them to be) to make a point, or possibly didn’t get the facts or all the facts right in the first place (hence the disagreements between/among Gospels) and hence what they wrote was not exactly accurate – and still calling that “inerrancy” or claiming that the Gospels are “inerrant.”

Fair enough. I realized as I was writing some of my responses that I was sounding inconsistent with my original question. Internally I was digesting your comments but not convinced by them so I continued to probe.

Your second last comment is one that I largely agree with and found helpful to the discussion. So Mark mentions the rich man leaves so as to end the rich man component and start on the next issue which is about followers of Jesus giving up all. Mark structures his gospel here topically, not chronologically.

What you have infact said is that Mark has no interest in being chronologically correct. He is more interested in being topically correct. I don’t have a problem with that. But what it sounds you have just said is that while you believe in inerrancy you believe that Mark is not interested in being chronologically inerrant.

So that takes us back to my original question. “I can believe inerrancy with the understanding that the Gospel writers were not concerned with a particular order of events. As such I qualify and redefine inerrancy. But then, am I defining inerrancy in such a way that it changes the meaning of the word to such an extent that it no longer means inerrancy. If so, why use the word in the first place.”

If Mark is not interested in being chronogically inerrant, then I get uncomfortable using the word inerrant.