I just couldn’t pass up posting this video that James McGrath shared on his blog the other day. It’s a short, sometimes humorous video that explains in a very insightful way how the idea of inerrancy can sometimes be a pitfall.

In the last few weeks there have been a number of posts on blogs that I read where the authors have been dealing to one degree or another with the subject of Biblical inerrancy. James Mcgrath had a very interesting post on his blog about the troubles that many have with the statement that Jesus made in Mark 9:1 where Jesus predicted that there where some standing there that would not taste death before they saw the Kingdom come with power. Victor Reppart questioned different theories concerning the resurrection of Jesus and had a flurry of very interesting comments, many by atheists questioning the inerrancy of the Bible. I also brushed across the subject of inerrancy a couple of weeks ago in my Waters of the Bible post.

But perhaps some of the most interesting reading has come from Terri over at Wheat Among Tares. She wrote two well thought out posts about inerrancy that gave me additional pause to think. In her first post, she explores the idea of inerrancy from a somewhat Calvinist viewpoint suggesting that God had sovereignly assembled the Bible Himself according to His Divine Will. As do I, she appears to have serious reservations about the whole Protestant Sola Scriptura standpoint that she sees as coming from out of Calvinism. Although one of my best friends is a staunch five-point Calvinist and he and I have had some lengthy conversations on the subject, I simply cannot reconcile my concept of a loving God with the tenants of Calvinism. I agree with some of the Calvinist sovereignty argument, but much of it troubles me deeply. I suppose that the King James Onleyism form of inerrancy came from this sovereignty idea, and I don’t buy it.

Terri’s second post was even more thought provoking than the first. In this post she explores the concept of the infallibility of the Biblical authors. In this post she addresses the problem of how difficult it is to trust anyone from Luther all the way to Polycarp when there is so much disagreement among theologians on even simple things such as transubstantiation. Who can you believe? Terri writes;

“In order for Christianity to sustain itself, there must be a quantifiable level of trust in its beginnings and in its early teachers.
A confidence in inerrancy undermines trust in the church fathers insomuch as simply taking their word about things. Protestants tend to be willing to revise any and all held beliefs until we get to the original apostles, the gospel writers and Paul; we place them and their writings in a special case, declaring them to be inspired and holy.
This creates a dilemma…. If we are willing to discard doctrines developed by the early church fathers, going all the way back until we reach the apostles, what’s to keep us from going that last step and questioning the doctrines and writings developed by them?”

Interesting dilemma, and one that I have oft wrestled with myself. As Terri put it, “Really, all it boils down to is trust no one.”

Having grown up in Armstrongism, spent some time in the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, moved on to the Baptist church, and then settled into Methodism/Wesleyanism a few years ago, I have had exposure to more theological interpretations of the Bible than I care to admit to. Although I consider myself to be a Wesleyan, I don’t necessarily agree with all of the doctrine and Biblical interpretation that I find in the Methodist Church. I simply admire John Wesley’s life and teachings and find the Methodist Church to be a comfortable place to hang my hat at the present time.

I would have to say that I am in Terri’s same predicament about trusting no one. I personally believe that neither one denomination nor Bible commentator from Irenaeus all the way to Billy Graham has all of the Truth. I do believe that all do have varying degrees of Biblical Truth, some having more and some having less. And I’m quite sure that I will never gain a full degree of the Truth myself in this lifetime.

As Terri addresses the quandary that she is in, she closes with this statement;

“I have chopped down the tree I scaled so eagerly in my life. I have watched it tumble to the ground.
Will I be able to make something useful of the lumber?”

Well, Terri, I have cleared entire forests of trees. I got pushed up the tree of Armstrongism and discovered at a young age that it was infested with termites. I made it up to the first few branches of the Pentecostal/Charismatic tree and then beat a hasty retreat. Many of the theological trees that I have encountered I felled without much more than a passing glance. I’ve made a home in the lower branches of the Wesleyan tree, but I am somewhat suspicious of a few branches that I see a little higher up…from where I’m currently sitting they appear a little weak.

Where I have to stop at is the Bible itself. Although there are definitely what would appear to be flaws and errors in the Bible, I wont take a saw to the trunk of the Bible itself. The reason for me is quite simple:

I was a very lost person before I encountered Jesus Christ. I didn’t encounter Him in any church or denomination, but instead through prayer and earnest searching for Him in the scriptures. I simply realized one day that He had found me and brought me home. The fundamental change that occurred within me after accepting Jesus Christ into my heart is as much of a miracle to me as the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. After years of searching for Jesus in various churches, I found Him in the Bible. He spoke His love for me through the words written in that book, and He speaks to me still.

I have read countless tomes about all of the questionability of the various books that we call our canon. I sometimes wonder why the Protestants leave out books such as 1st and 2nd Maccabees. And why didn’t Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians make the cut with anyone? Nobody knows for certain who the heck wrote Hebrews, but it is considered canonical to virtually everybody. Theologians go back and forth about 2nd Peter, some say that there is absolutely no way that Peter wrote it, and others will back Petrine authorship with their life. And we can go on and on ad infinitum.

I tend to think that God did divinely inspire the writers of the Bible, all the way from Moses through John. I tend to think that there are probably a few other God-breathed writings out there as well. It is obvious to me that through centuries of translations and even obvious additions such as the Johannine Comma, that we most certainly haven’t retained these writings as perfectly as they were originally written. And there are definitely some portions of scripture that we have a difficult time in understanding. If we were able to ask Paul exactly what was going through his mind when he wrote that women were to keep silent in Church, I’m sure that he could clear it up for us. He might even say, “Hey, I never wrote that part! Someone else must have added that part after the fact!”

The writers of the Bible weren’t infallible; they were human beings just like all of us. However, I do believe that God through the Holy Spirit inspired the original words that they penned. It’s not a question of the original writings themselves being infallible, but rather our interpretation and understanding of them. And over two millennia of theologians picking apart their words hasn’t helped a lot either. There is much to try and sift through to get to the real message at times.

I study the Bible to see what God has to say to me personally. I also respect what other people say that God is saying to them through the Bible, and realize that might be what God is saying to them, but it may not really apply to me at the time. I read Augustine and I read Philip Yancey. I read Luther and I read C.S. Lewis. I read various apocrypha with a large grain of salt in hand. I gain many things from all of them, but if what they are saying doesn’t line up with the way that I read my Bible, I pretty much will chunk it. Not the whole book, but just the portion that I don’t agree with. And I also give myself permission to be wrong. For example, while I don’t agree with the doctrine of “Perseverance of The Saints” (also known as “Once Saved, Always Saved), I realize that I may be wrong in my interpretation of scripture on the subject and that God may speak to me more on the subject later on in my life.

I don’t necessarily believe that the Bible is inerrant, but I do believe that it is inspired. And I do believe that it is about 97% inerrant, give or take a percentage point or two. Although it is not perfect in any translation or form, it is the closest thing that I have found to be able to hear God speak directly to me. It would be nice if we could get Paul or John or the writer of 2 Samuel on the phone and ask them some questions (in English!) about exactly what they meant by such-and-such scripture, but that apparently isn’t going to happen. So we simply have to go it on faith and believe that God will bring us the understanding that each of us need one person at a time.

Faith.

That’s where it all ends up. I have faith in God, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ came and died on the cross for me two thousand years ago and rose on the third day. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recorded His words in the Gospels and Paul, among others, received further revelation for His Church. I believe that God speaks through His Word, and that Word is the Bible. I may not always understand everything that I read in the Bible, but I understand enough to know that Jesus loves me and “is with me always, even to the end of the age.”

As for the trees of theology, if you don’t like them, cut ‘em down. There are plenty of them out there.

Just please leave the tree that is the Bible alone. It may have what seems to be a few dead limbs on it and may appear to need a little pruning, but it’s kind of like the title of Terri’s blog, Wheat among Tares. Only God knows for sure what is wheat and what is a tare and likewise what is a dead limb and one that just looks dead.

I’m going to leave the tree that is the Bible alone, but just venture out onto the limbs that I feel are stable and secure. Perhaps God will reveal to me other safe limbs as I continue my walk in faith, and I’ll let Him take care of whatever may be dead branches.