Definging Inerrancy

To put it another way, a belief in Scripture as God’s word is an article of faith, a gift of the Spirit, and is confirmed by faithful study and following Jesus within a community of believers. It is not where we end up after some rational proofs. It is where we begin so that we can end there.

That line I like. I have not finished it yet, but I completely agree there. You can’t (well you can try, but you’ll a. Fail or b. Use bad logic) get there using reasoning. But if you bite the bullet then a world of golden opportunities open up.

I totally agree with his wording and assessment.

Through God we can be sure that what we have is inerrant.

There are two things lingering around for me in the Christian inerrancy debate.

The first is genre. We need to look at how texts of a similar genre acted and claimed for themselves apart from the one we find in the Bible. Then, if we take that text and consider it inspired, then we can only claim for the text what texts in that genre claim, not what we claim through the writings of our time.

Secondly, I think we forget one of the most important issues here - the view and teaching of the laity on the subject. It is all well and good if the cultural elites of Christianity have a workable and nuanced view of the inerrancy and historicity of scripture, but what about the common wo/man? What do they think on the subject and have they been educated as to what the elites or specialists think on this issue? If the specialists in a religious group have this nice and well thought out conception of inerrancy and the laity hold to a “bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” mentality, then the specialists have failed. This is where I run into problems. I often speak about the common view and I am rebuffed by the specialists view. I care more about the laity having a better view.