Is the Bible Inerrant? 

In 2021, the American Bible Society reported that more than half of Americans
believe the Bible is “without error. “

Is the Bible Inerrant? 

From its start in the 1730s, an underpinning of the evangelical movement has been the conviction that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant word of God. 

WHAT IS FUNDAMENTALISM? 

In 1910, fundamentalists declared five doctrines “necessary and essential” to the Christian faith:

• The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture. 
• The virgin birth of Christ.
• The belief that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin.
• The bodily resurrection of Christ.
• And the historical reality of Christ’s miracles.

THE FUNDAMENTALIST-MODERNIST CONTROVERSY

As scholarship increased at mainline Protestant divinity schools modernist and fundamentalist scholars diverged. Evangelical seminaries and societies sprang up in the 1930-1940s.

For instance, Westminster was founded by members of Princeton’s Theological Seminary after the school chose to take a liberal direction.

THE CHICAGO STATEMENT

Fast forward to October of 1978, 279 leading conservative Christians met at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel in Chicago.  The result was a statement of belief named “The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy”.  

It began… Article 1 : We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human service.

Evangelicals “doubled down” on the authority of scriptures.  At the time, a Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans believed that the bible was the actual word of God. 

JOHN F MACARTHUR 

John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. has been a conservative Protestant pastor of Grace Community Church in California since 1969. He was a signer of the Chicago Statement. To say that MacArthur is a proponent of biblical inerrancy would be an understatement. 

In a recent Masters University video he says” The authority of Scripture is absolutely everything….  The word does all spiritual work by the power of the Holy Spirit through Scripture so the foundation of all ministry is the word of God and having a firm grasp of the authority and inerrancy of Scripture is the foundation.” 

THE POWER OF GOD’S WORD

As a pastor, he understands that claiming the bible as the word of God gives it power. (It  gives him power too).

The Reverend Billy Graham once said,  “When I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power. When I stand on the platform and say, ‘God says,’ or ‘The Bible says,’ the Holy Spirit uses me. There are results”. 

Results are conversions to the faith and fill churches and auditoriums. 

WHY INERRANCY

So Why does MacArthur believe the bible to be  inerrant? … he tells us

“Because that’s what the Bible claims for itself.  Every word of God is pure like silver refined seven times in a furnace.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.  it’s all God breathed. The Bible claims that over and over and over again.  So if we’re gonna believe the Bible at all we have to believe it’s dominating claim to be the inspired inerrant Word of God.” 

In short,  MacArthur believes the bible is inerrant  because the bible says it is inerrant.

CIRCULAR REASONING

MacArthur’s reasoning is circular.  He uses the claim of “bible inerrancy”  as both a premise and a conclusion. This is a logical fallacy. It  appears to many to be a legitimate argument when in fact it’s just restating one’s assumptions.

In software, there is something called a do-loop. A Do-loop commands the computer program to go back to a prior decision point and do the same thing over and over again. An endless  do-loop will cripple the most powerful of machines.  

If software programmers put everything into a do-loop none of your favorite programs would work. 

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA

Many proponents of Biblical inerrancy often cite 2nd Timothy 3:16 as evidence that scripture is inerrant. 

“All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness.”  They interpret this to mean that the whole Bible must therefore be inerrant. 

Ironically, 2nd Timothy is considered by many modern Bible scholars as written by someone else proclaiming to be Paul…an imposter. 

FALSE ANALOGY 

https://biblia.com/bible/esv/psalm/12/6

MacArthur references  Psalm 12:6 as evidence of biblical inerrancy. But there is a difference between translations of the bible. In the NIV it states “And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times.” In the predecessor,  King James Version, the word “flawless is “pure” and the word refined is “tried”.  “The words of the LORD are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.”

While poetic, this metaphor is a false analogy. 

A false analogy is a type of informal fallacy. It states that since Item A and Item B both have Quality X in common, they must also have Quality Y in common. For example, say Joan and Mary both drive pickup trucks. Since Joan is a teacher, Mary must also be a teacher.

William Paley’s watchmaker analogy is another popular false analogy.  In simple terms, it states that If there is a creation…there must be a creator.  Another favorite used by pastors is comparing evolution to a windstorm in a junkyard randomly building  a 747 jet. 

MacArthur double downs on a literal Genesis… 

“I would say that even with regard to Genesis if you start tampering with Genesis and deny six-day creation you have literally become the judge of the Bible.” 

MacArthur has told us that the bible is true because it says it is true. Then he implies that questioning the bible is questioning God. 

In other words, we received the truth of the world 2000 years ago and need look no further. There is nothing left to learn. Curiosity is not a good thing. He tells us that we should believe in a young earth… despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.  

WILLFUL IGNORANCE 

The term uninformed is often used for someone who has little or no knowledge about something. It’s more polite than being called ignorant. The term willfully ignorant refers to those who lack the information or facts because they refuse to acknowledge them. Ignorance is a matter of choice.

Perhaps  MacArthur is a prisoner of his belief set. 

He may be fearful that questioning any part of his belief may have eternal consequences. 

BIBLIOLATRY 

Bibliolatry is a form of idolatry. It is the worship of a book.

The sacred texts of some religions disallow icon worship, but over time the texts themselves are treated as sacred and worshiped. 

Bishop John Shelby Spong pulled no punches –  

Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power.
Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long-term future of anyone.

Benjamin L Corey articulates it another way “ 

“When we place the Bible on equal footing with God, we become paralyzed by how to deal with it–because any criticism of the Bible becomes criticism of God himself.

CAN CURIOSITY AND FAITH COEXIST

There are people of faith that affirm evolution by natural selection. 

Dr. Kenneth Miller, is a professor at Brown University, and author of ‘Finding Darwin’s God”  He is an advocate of evolution by natural selection and still claims to have a deep faith. 

Dr. Francis Collins, is Director of National Institutes of Health and former director of Human Genome Project. He is the author of “The Language of God”.  Like many, he sees Genesis as “poetry and allegory”. 

Dr Collins has a masters and PhD from Yale and an MD from UNC Chapel Hill.  John MacArthur has a masters in Divinity from Talbot Theological Seminary. MacArthur is an expert in what the Bible says. Whereas Dr Collins is an expert in science and genetics.

But Dr. Collins is not claiming that if you don’t believe in DNA you are damned.