It's In the Code Ep. 83: "The Very Words of Scripture"
When inerrantists say that the Bible is “without error,” one of the things they mean is that the very words of the Bible itself were chosen by God. When they say that the Bible is “God-breathed” or “inspired,” this inspiration goes all the down to the biblical authors’ very choice of words. Why is this important to them? What does this claim mean? Does it remove the human element of the Bible’s production? Can we make this understanding of the Bible make sense? Take a listen to this week’s episode to find out!
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Hey everyone.
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Now we go to It's in the Code.
Welcome as always to everybody.
This is It's in the Code, as we say, a series that is part of the podcast, Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I am your host.
As always, thank you for joining us.
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We're going to dive right in here, right?
We have been, in a series of episodes, more or less taking a deep dive into what it means when a certain kind of Christian or Christian congregation or Christian tradition claims to be quote-unquote biblical.
Again, a long time ago in this series, we talked about the notion of a Bible church, or when churches say that they're biblical or just being biblical, what that means, and have been taking a deeper dive into this.
And that has led us into the claim that the Bible is inerrant, that it is literally without error.
And we've highlighted how central this is to the understanding of the Bible within contemporary white evangelical Christianity, what we could call a sort of biblicist form of Christianity.
And last episode, I offered sort of my big picture perspective on why the doctrine of inerrancy just doesn't work.
Before you even get into the specifics of it, before you even get into specific examples and questions about errors in the text or things that need to be harmonized or what have you, I think the doctrine doesn't even get off the ground.
And I suggested that it's irrelevant at best, meaning that it's Something, you know, you can only hold by faith, and so if you're not part of the faith community, sort of by definition, it can't be proven to you, or it becomes incoherent, right?
If you do try to prove it in some way that's not circular, you undermine the doctrine itself.
So the fact of the matter is that the doctrine of inerrancy, it isn't really intended for non-believers, right?
And again, this is one of those reasons why if you get in a conversation with Cousin Lenny, who's been to seminary and knows the language of inerrancy, or whatever it is, and you feel like you're just going around in circles, that's why.
They are making some fundamental assumptions about the Bible that if you're not part of that group, you are just unlikely to share, right?
It is an apologetic doctrine that is aimed at reassuring those who already believe in and accept the authority of the Bible.
And that's evident by now.
We're going to have more to say about that as we move along, but that's just, it's right there on the surface.
And if those of us on the outside of that tradition don't find it compelling, that shouldn't surprise us.
But I've also been inside the inerrantist world, right?
That's the world that I grew up in.
It's the world that I was a part of when I was an undergraduate studying the Bible.
It's a world that I was part of when I was ordained as an evangelical pastor.
It's a world that I was part of When I attended a Southern Baptist seminary to get my Master of Divinity.
It's the world that I was part of when I was pastoring in that world.
And the ironic thing—or I don't know what the right word for this is—maybe the telling point is that I don't think that inerrancy fares any better from that perspective.
It's the reason I became, as an evangelical true believer, a non-inerrantist.
And I want to be clear about this.
I didn't stop becoming an evangelical.
I didn't start identifying as an evangelical because I was not an inerrantist.
In other words, at that time in my life, I thought it was completely possible to be an evangelical and believe the things that evangelicals believe and so forth without being a biblical inerrantist.
So that's not the idea that threw me out of the tradition or other things at work there.
So as an evangelical, as an insider, I came to believe that the doctrine just didn't fare any better.
And what I want to start doing today is sort of digging into that, right, as we continue this deep dive.
And what I want to dig into specifically a little bit today is the inerrantists' claim that when they say the Bible is without error, this extends to the level of the very words used in the biblical text.
This is typically a part of the claim of inerrancy.
I said in an earlier episode that inerrancy is a part of the doctrine what we call inspiration, the notion that the Bible is inspired by God.
There's a passage where it says that all scripture is God-breed, that's that notion.
This is what is known, if people want to get technical, as verbal or plenary-verbal inspiration, meaning that the view that God inspires the Bible all the way down to the exact words of the biblical text.
The words themselves And why does this matter to an errantist?
Because this matters a lot, folks.
You get in a conversation with somebody, this is a big deal.
There are other ways to imagine inspiration.
There are other Christians who would say, yes, I believe that the Bible is inspired.
I believe it's a message given to humans from God and so forth.
But they might say, this doesn't mean that every single word in the Bible is determined by God.
They might argue that the message of the Bible is inspired, for example, but that God moved different individuals or different communities to express or articulate that message in their own ways, right?
When I was an evangelical, this was the kind of closeted position that I held.
This is what I thought.
I thought that the Bible was inspired, but not verbally, not down to the language of the specific words and all of that sort of stuff.
For inerrantists, And we've been looking at a couple of theologians.
I've been looking at a couple of theologians.
I've been bringing them into here because I want people to know that I'm taking this this seriously.
So we've been looking at Wayne Grudem and Millard Erickson.
For those inerrantists, that's just too risky.
The notion that it's the message that is inspired, but not the words, not the form.
We might say it's the content, not the form or something like that.
That's too risky.
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Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
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Why?
Because it opens the possibility that while God's message might be without error, the Bible, as a human record of that message, the Bible might not be.
The Bible itself might not be without error.
For them, it makes the Bible all too human of a book.
To say that the Bible is without error for them, inspiration has to get down to the choice of exact words.
Because if there's the possibility that the words of the Bible are not inspired, the notion that the Bible is without error is put at risk.
And if you were to get in a discussion with Cousin Lenny, or Uncle Ron, if he's kind of up on his inerrantist stuff, they will say something like that.
They will say, we can't trust The Bible fully, if there's doubt about the words of the Bible, right?
Remember that the Doctrine and Covenants, it's all about biblical authority and the assurance that what the Bible says is true and so forth, and then we'll say, this has to go down to the words.
So they argue that God's inspiration extends all the way down.
But here's where it gets complicated.
And again, this is stuff that I used to wrestle with as an insider in this tradition, because they also argue That God didn't dictate the words of the Bible to the authors, right?
And if you want a model of this, it's more akin to traditional Islamic conceptions of the Quran and how the prophet Muhammad was inspired or received revelations from Allah.
It's more of a dictation model.
And they have resisted this.
They've said, no, no, but that doesn't mean God dictated it.
They also insist that there is a substantive human dimension to the Bible, that the Bible is a divine and human text.
So they will say that God expressed his message using the language and the culture and the personality of the biblical authors.
They insist that God didn't sort of take over or override the biblical authors.
They'll say that, you know, they were not entranced.
God didn't possess them.
They were not like spirit writing or something like that.
And it's not always clear to me, to be honest, why they argue this.
Some say that it's like another form of incarnation, that's the Christian doctrine that this person, Jesus of Nazareth, was fully human and fully divine, and so we have this text that is human and divine, a kind of human-divine melding.
I think the other thing is that you'd have to be ignorant, blind, I don't know, to not recognize that the Bible doesn't read like it has a single author.
Anybody can read it and see that there are different authors with different interests and a different focus, and they use the language differently, and obviously it's written by people from different cultural backgrounds and all of that sort of stuff.
So it's not compelling to think that it was dictated.
So this is the trick.
This is the inerrantist.
They want to affirm two things.
They want to say every word of the Bible is what God intended it to be, But that doesn't mean that God dictated what was written.
The Bible nevertheless reflects the cultures and backgrounds and personalities and individual characteristics of its authors, right?
And that's a tall order, okay, to hold those two things together.
And if it's not clear how those two claims can be true, how you can say, on the one hand, the Bible fully reflects the personality and interests and so forth of its human authors, and we can be assured that every single word is literally what God wanted it to be, I'm with you.
It's a tall order.
And I came to the conclusion a long time ago that you can't reconcile those two things.
Okay?
That you can't fix it.
But I don't want anybody to say, well, okay, Dan, that's fine, but you're opposed to white evangelicalism.
You say evangelicalism has bad theology.
You're a jaded critic who's not giving a full hearing to this doctrine and so forth.
I don't want anybody to come at me with that.
I don't want anybody to say that I'm not being fair.
So let's look at the evangelical theologians.
This is why I'm reading Wayne Grudem.
This is why I'm reading Millard Erickson.
Maybe they can fix this.
I say it's a tall order, maybe they can explain it to me, but it turns out the evangelical theologians don't have a great answer for this.
So Wayne Grudem, evangelical extraordinaire, how do we square this circle?
How do we ensure that the Bible is absolutely authoritative down to the words?
While maintaining its human personality, so to speak.
Here's his response, and I'm sorry it's long, right?
I'm quoting from his book.
This is one of the longest sentences ever.
It's only one sentence, but it's really long.
This is what he says, okay?
He says, all that we are able to say is that God's providential oversight and direction of the life of each author
was such that their personalities, their background and training, their abilities to evaluate events in the world around them, their access to historical data, their judgment with regard to the accuracy of information, and their individual circumstances when they wrote, were all exactly what God wanted them to be, so that when they actually came to the point of putting pen to paper, the words were fully their own words, But also fully the words that God wanted them to write.
Words that God would also claim as his own.
It's a long sentence.
Basically, what Wayne Grudem says is, God just makes sure that that's how it works.
If you're like, man, that's a really bold claim.
We're going to have to do some real work to show that you can bring those things together.
One of the biggest names in evangelical theology.
All he can say is, yeah, it's God, so he's able to do it.
He can make sure the words are fully human and fully divine.
It's just another theological mystery we can't unravel.
And that's what he says.
That's what he says.
All we are able to say is that the words are fully their own words, but also fully the words that God wanted them to write.
If you take out all the stuff in the middle, that's literally what he says.
How about Millard Erickson, our other theologian?
He argues that the inspiration goes all the way down to the words used in Scripture, and his response isn't that much better, though I think he tries.
He says, quote, he says, we are suggesting that what the Spirit may do is direct the thoughts of the Scripture writer.
That direction, however, is quite precise.
Being omniscient by creating the thought and stimulating the understanding of the Scripture, the Spirit will lead him, in effect, to use one particular word rather than any other.
It starts sounding pretty close to dictation, right?
The direction is really precise.
God stimulates the understanding and leads them to choose one word and so forth.
All the inerrantist can do is say that God's able to preserve the fully human character of the Bible and ensure that all and only the words that God wants in the Bible are in there.
That's their answer.
And folks, I call bullshit.
I call bullshit.
Why?
Lots of reasons.
But here's one.
It simply isn't how language works.
Right?
Both of the theologians we're looking at defend these views on the grounds of the clarity and precision of Scripture.
They both argue that because the Bible is so clear, its meaning is so precise and so clear, God had to determine the language used right down to the very words.
That's their claim.
But here's the issue.
The Bible isn't clear.
It's just not.
If you're somebody who, like, you didn't grow up in one of these traditions or something like that, or you haven't been to seminary, like, you just pick up the Bible and start reading it, it's not clear.
It's not clear at all.
But even evangelicals know this, right?
Erickson, one of these theologians, he starts his own discussion on the inspiration of the Bible by highlighting a lack of clarity in the grammar and syntax of the Greek passages about Scripture being God-breathed.
He starts with a textual difficulty and a lack of clarity, something in the Greek original that's really hard to understand.
The field of biblical studies, including evangelical biblical studies, it illustrates that the Bible isn't clear or precise.
People have been trying to interpret this text for 2,000 years, parts of it for much longer.
Evangelicals themselves, they insist—this is even part of their doctrine—they will say that no matter how much we study the Bible, we will never be able to fully comprehend it.
We will never exhaust its meaning, right?
Folks, I'm going to say you can't do both.
You can't say it's crystal clear and it's precise and it's evident to anybody who reads it reasonably to the plain meaning of Scripture, etc., tells us how to live our lives, and also say you could devote your entire life to this and never plumb the depths of this text.
It's not clear or precise.
Hell, Wayne Grudem, who calls his systematic theology an introduction to biblical doctrine—that is what he is claiming to distill the Bible into this—his text is over 1,200 pages long!
It's not clear or precise.
So they will say that the Bible is so clear that we can be sure that every word is what God wanted, and it's so complex, deep, and beyond our moral capacities that we'll never fully understand it again.
Folks, I just call BS on this.
I don't think it can be both.
And it's not how language works.
And the reason why it's not clear is it's not how language works.
The idea that you can have an idea that can be so specific that it can only be expressed In one way, using one string of words, with one particular grammar, etc., that's just naive and nonsensical.
No contemporary philosopher or linguist would advance an argument like that.
And folks, I could go in, I could dive into these texts and the arguments they make and how they don't work.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Okay?
So, inerrantists want to have it both ways.
They want to acknowledge the very obvious human elements of the biblical text, Personal style, the fact that there is different grammar and syntax, that authors' different interests and concerns are present, and so forth, right?
And they want to insist that none of these obvious human characteristics really define the Bible.
Ultimately what they want to do is say that those are kind of a surface issue, they're not really the Bible, it's just a kind of appearance.
But here's where I think all of that really comes out.
And I've gotten lots of emails about this.
We're getting to some of this stuff.
Here's the biggest issue.
You can claim all you want about how the specific words are what God wanted.
You can claim all you want and try to hold together and say that it preserves all this human element, but we can still be assured that it's exactly what God wanted it to be and so forth.
Here's the problem.
There are hundreds of issues in the Bible that we would conventionally call errors.
These range from really little things.
There are lots of grammar and syntax errors, especially from authors who clearly didn't write well in the biblical languages.
There are historical and chronological contradictions and errors.
There are errors of descriptions of physical and historical events.
There are misquoted passages from other scriptures and related texts, places where a biblical author will quote something, but they don't quite get it right.
And if you're not an inerrantist and somebody says, wow, how do you explain all that?
The explanation is simple.
You've got human authors and it's got the flaws of human authorship.
But if you are an inerrantist, it means now that, okay, so we've got all these things.
Again, I say we conventionally call them errors because inerrantists go to great lengths to try to show that these things are not actually errors at all.
Okay.
We're going to talk about that a little bit.
I'm not going to get into a laundry list of all of those, but we'll revisit that.
But if you are an errantist, part of what you're stuck doing is you have to say that God chose or determined that these errors would be in the Bible in the first place.
So now we've got a contradiction in the description of a historical event, but now you've got to say, well, God intended for competing descriptions of this historical event.
You've got grammar and syntax errors, and now you've got to say, well, God wanted there to be grammar and syntax errors.
You've got misquotations of scriptures and other texts.
Well, God wanted them to misquote other scriptures and other texts.
And again, you're just like, does that make sense?
We've got a Bible without error.
The lack of error goes all the way down to the very words, which means that God chose to put things in there that sure look like errors.
Again, I call bullshit.
Evangelical theologians and apologists, they're not stupid.
They know that those issues are there, and they try to respond to them.
And are they able to do so?
Can they shore up their doctrine of inerrancy?
Nope, not in my view.
That's a bold claim.
It deserves more.
We'll pick this back up in the next episode.
We'll start looking at those errors or mistakes.
Right now, again, just hold this idea.
That all those things in the Bible that look to any of us, to anybody who's not a committed believer, they sure look like errors or mistakes.
To a lot of committed believers, they look like errors or mistakes.
There are a lot of inerrantists out there who literally lose sleep at night worrying about the fact that there are these clear issues in the biblical text.
But God willed them to be there.
God wanted those complexities and those competing things, and God apparently could tell authors or lead authors to choose exactly the words that he wanted, but he couldn't get them to do it without grammar mistakes or syntax mistakes or whatever.
I find it not compelling.
We'll pick this back up next episode.
As always, would love to hear from you.
Would love to hear more from this.
I've had a couple email exchanges with folks who've talked about their own Uncle Ron or their cousin Lenny and how this is useful.
I hope so.
Keep the ideas, questions, comments coming.
Value those as always.
Daniel Miller Swag.
DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Best way to reach me.
As always, please be well until we have a chance to talk again.
