When most Christians speak of Biblical “inerrancy” they have in mind what could more accurately be called “strong” or “dogmatic” inerrancy. It is a kind of methodological stance, amounting to something like this:<\/p>\n
strong inerrancy (SI) = If something in the Bible looks implausible or mistaken, then either you haven’t understood it properly, you have a defective copy\/translation, you’re laboring under erroneous extra-Biblical assumptions, or etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
SI is “strong” because it makes inerrancy non-negotiable<\/em>, a doctrine to be protected come what may in the way of evidence. In short, error is always to be located in us, somehow, not in the Bible.<\/p>\n
But why believe SI? One cannot establish it by quoting the Bible because that would be viciously circular. One can offer empirical support for the general reliability of many Biblical claims (e.g., the Resurrection), but empirical arguments fall short of proof and are limited in scope to claims that are empirically verifiable. Given the absolute nature of SI, it seems that such a methodological stance could only be justified by a deductive argument from clearly true premises. Here’s a sketch of one version of what such an argument might look like:<\/p>\n
\n
- Necessarily, God would ensure that any special revelation He gives us in inerrant if He can do so.<\/li>\n
- He can do so.<\/li>\n
- The Bible is special revelation from God.<\/li>\n
- Therefore, the Bible is inerrant.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
This is a valid argument and all of the premises are arguably at least prima facie<\/em> plausible. I’ll grant that the argument may<\/em> be sound. Still, none of the premises is obviously<\/em> true. And even if there’s a better argument out there, I suspect that the same could be said for the premises of that<\/em> argument. Hence, there doesn’t seem to be adequate warrant for affirming inerrancy in a strong or dogmatic way.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, there are good reasons for wanting to affirm, if not SI, then something in the broad neighborhood. The basic reason is that if something is to be a serious source of normative authority<\/em> for us\u2014and presumably the Bible is that, if it is anything\u2014then it needs to be given the benefit of the doubt. It needs to be “innocent until proven guilty” beyond, say, a reasonable doubt. So I propose, as a defensible methodological stance, what I call “weak” or “modest” inerrancy (WI):<\/p>\n
weak inerrancy (WI) = If the Bible seems to teach something that looks implausible or mistaken, then *before* you conclude that it is in fact mistaken, you should first establish beyond a reasonable doubt that you have understood it properly, am not depending on a defective copy\/translation, or laboring under erroneous extra-Biblical assumptions or etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All WI says is that, with respect to any given Biblical passage, our initial or default<\/em> position should be that the passage is truthful and accurate. Unlike SI, WI says this default position is defeasible<\/em>.<\/p>\n
The methodological stance reflected in WI is the same type of stance that the Principle of Charity encourages us to take when in communication with other people. Thus, if you say something to me (in a serious context) and I have no antecedent reason to distrust you, then I should give you the benefit of the doubt. If what I think<\/em> you’re saying to me seems false<\/em>, then before I conclude that it is<\/em> false (and thus that you are errant) I should first consider and rule out as highly unlikely the possibility that I have simply misunderstood you (because I didn’t parse the text or speech properly, because I didn’t understand the context from which you were speaking or writing, because I’m laboring under false assumptions about your intentions, etc.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When most Christians speak of Biblical “inerrancy” they have in mind what could more accurately be called “strong” or “dogmatic” inerrancy. It is a kind of methodological stance, amounting to something like this: strong inerrancy (SI) = If something in the Bible looks implausible or mistaken, then either you haven’t understood it properly, you have\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[7,17,8,9],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-interpretation","tag-bible","tag-innerancy","tag-interpretation","tag-methodology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}