This article will reflect a personal narrative, because my story exemplifies the dangers that can be involved when one approaches the Bible, and critiques of the Bible, with a mistaken view of inerrancy.
Generally, when Christians speak of the Bible as being "inerrant", they mean utterly without flaw or contradiction. Whichever errors are undeniable are then labelled "copyist errors", and it is asserted that the Bible is absolutely perfect "in the original autographs".
Armed with this view, like many young Christians, I set out to answer Bible contradictions and criticisms, to defend the Bible, and my worldview. For a long time on this site, I had two sections dedicated to Bible contradictions and criticisms, and many notes for potential future articles on each topic as well.
However, what I found in researching and writing all of these articles is that while many (maybe even the vast majority) of the contradictions and historical criticisms had simple resolutions, sometimes, they did not. Sometimes, the texts did genuinely seem to contradict, or the historical critique did seem most likely to be the case, and the proposed "resolutions" offered by fundamentalist apologists seemed rather ad-hoc, and uncompelling. The more I learned, the less likely or compelling these answers seemed, especially when considered together. The more likely answer, in many instances, was simply that there was an error in the text.
When someone comes to this conclusion, and holds to a fundamentalist view of inerrancy, they are in a dangerous place. No one enjoys a feeling of cognitive dissonance. Eventually, something has to give, and in many cases, people become disbelievers, because they simply cannot bring themselves to ignore the fact that their conscience convicts them of errors or implausibilities in the text of Scripture.
In my own case, while I held onto inerrancy, the first domino to fall in my fundamentalist, hyper-literal understanding of the Bible was probably with respect to the age of the earth. The evidence that the earth and universe are very old is rather overwhelming. So, in spite of my young-earth creationism, I knew that it seemed far, far more likely that the earth was old, based on what I was able to see and understand, especially from the realm of astronomy. This led me to adopt a gap theory view of Genesis 1:1-3, wherein an unspecified period of time passed between God's initial creation, and the rest of the activity described in Genesis 1. Later, other factors led me to adopt a mytho-historical view of Genesis 1-11, wherein the earliest part of Genesis is understood as history told in the genre of myth, and not meant to be taken strictly literally.
These, however, were mostly shifts in understanding Biblical genre away from a hyper-literal fundamentalism, which is a different development than acknowledging that there may be errors in the Bible, but related in that if someone holds to a fundamentalist view of Genesis, they almost certainly hold to a traditional view of inerrancy as well, and see the two as very closely linked. Yet, if parts of the Bible, like the book of Job, or Genesis, are mytho-history, that does not mean that they are errant. It means that they are works of a different genre, and only "errant" when read in a way other than they were intended to be understood by God and their authors. However, adopting this view of Scripture already placed me outside the bounds of fundamentalism, and made me more open to acknowledging that the perception which I had held of the Biblical text to this point in my life may be mistaken in other ways as well.
My acknowledgement that there may be genuine errors in the Bible came gradually, mostly reflecting on the many critiques which I had attempted to answer in the past, and applying the same likelihood principal to them which I attempt to apply to other areas of my thinking. I understand that there are answers which have been proposed for whatever passage or set of passages which I could mention here as examples of potential errors. My point is not to debate those texts, but rather to communicate that I believe that a proper, reasonable understanding of inspiration allows a person to acknowledge that sure, those may be actual errors, and that is okay.
In the very helpful book Jesus, Contradicted, by Christian apologist Michael Licona, there are discussions of what "divinely inspired" means when applied to Scripture, the mechanism of inspiration, and also an expression of what I think is a compelling, sensible view of inerrancy, which avoids the mistakes of the common fundamentalist view:
Jesus, Contradicted, by Michael Licona - Chapter 11, pg. 192
A reasonable case can be made that Scripture is divinely inspired. But what does it mean to say Scripture is divinely inspired? Scripture does not provide specific details on this matter. However, by observing certain phenomena in Scripture, we can infer what inspiration was not. We are then left to speculate what it involved. A plausible model appeals to God's middle knowledge, which is that God, having foreknown all possible worlds, chose to actualize the one in which the biblical authors would freely write what they did. On some occasions, God may have planted ideas, concepts, and perhaps even the very words they would write. However, the human element also is present and includes imperfections.
Jesus, Contradicted, by Michael Licona - Chapter 12, pg. 198
We have noted in the previous chapter that Scripture is confluent, having dual authorship: God and human. So Scripture should be thought of as the precise words God chose only insofar as he actualized the world in which the biblical writers would freely write what they did. God approved of the Scriptures we have. However, it is not necessarily the case that he regards every word, every analogy, and every illustration, as being ideal. Most often, the Word of God should be thought of in the broader sense of being God's message or God's teachings. In fact, it is used in this sense with great frequency in the New Testament where both Jesus's teachings and the message preached in oral form by his apostles and others is called the Word of God (Luke 5:1; 8:4-15; Acts 4:31; 6:2, 7; 11:1; 12:24; 13:7, 46: 2 Cor. 2:17; Col. 1:25: 1 Thess. 2:13; Rev. 1:9; 6:9). Surprisingly, while many of us modern Christians use the term Word of God exclusively to refer to Scripture, it is rarely ever used in that sense in the Bible.
Jesus, Contradicted, by Michael Licona - Chapter 12, pg. 206-207
Traditional inerrantists believe every detail was correct in the originals. Given what we have discussed above, traditional inerrancy might be correct. However, we cannot know that it is since we do not have the original manuscripts and the standard argument for traditional inerrancy has serious challenges that prevent a justified confidence in its conclusion. Others, like myself, hold what I will refer to as flexible inerrancy, which is less extensive than traditional inerrancy. Here is a definition of flexible inerrancy to which I can subscribe: the Bible is true, trustworthy, authoritative, and without error in all that it teaches. Flexible inerrancy does not concern itself over whether there were errors in details in the original manuscripts. To fret over such is not a profitable exercise, since we do not have any of the originals and have not had them for a very long time, not to mention the other challenges articulated previously. Still, traditional and flexible inerrantists have what is most important in common - that is, both have faith that since God loved us enough to bring about the incarnation, he would ensure that the Scriptures that have come down to us in their present form are sufficiently accurate in all that they teach and that God intends for us to know.
Flexible inerrancy fits hand-in-glove with a model of inspiration that includes the confluence of Scripture, that is, its dual authorship. This model of inspiration can be open to the possibility of the presence of some errors in the autographs. How? Humans were involved in both the composition and preservation of the biblical texts. God allowed the human element to introduce errors in the text during the transmission process while ensuring that the integrity of Scripture's message was preserved. Similarly, God could have allowed the human element to introduce errors during the composition process while ensuring that the integrity of Scripture's message was preserved.
The above view accommodates the difficulties that are encountered in an honest examination of Scripture, but preserves the fact that the Bible is God's inspired message to mankind. That message is preserved, and reliable, and from God, even though He utilized flawed human beings to deliver it. And of course, Licona develops what is presented above in much more detail throughout the entire work, which gives much more context to his conclusions, and why he arrived at them. The book is worth a read, even if one holds to a traditional view of inerrancy, if for no other reason than expanding one's own perspective and awareness of the options available to them as a follower of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the Old Testament prophecies of Christ, are the objective foundations for the truthfulness of Christianity. An utterly inerrant Bible, perfect in every detail, is not required for Christianity to be true, and should not be thought of as a make or break issue when considering the truthfulness of Christianity.
At the same time, as I present this view, I do not condemn others who hold to a traditional view of inerrancy. I simply present this out of a concern for those who, like me, have examined dozens of critiques of the Bible, and find themselves unconvinced of the traditional understanding of inspiration and inerrancy. There are ways of understanding the Bible that God gave us in a way that absolutely does not require one to deny reality, or common sense, but rather, allows a person to embrace all truth, and still hold to the truthfulness of Christianity, because all truth is God's truth, and does not fear inspection or examination.
Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew About the Bible, by Michael Bird - Chapter 2
Thus, while you can find fulsome statements of faith that regard Scripture as "infallible" (cannot err) or "inerrant" (does not err), and this is all well and good, nonetheless, these statements and their claims about Scripture can be problematic if they do not sufficiently help you convincingly address questions raised by reading Scripture.
These questions can include things like "Why is the Pentateuch attributed to Moses when it shows signs of being compiled long after Moses?" Or "How do we match modern understandings of the universe's origins with Genesis 1?" Or "Is the book of Jonah actual history or a type of extended parable?" My point is that if your doctrine of inerrancy means you cannot explain why the evangelists do not agree on the details of Jesus's entrance into Jericho, then your inerrancy model will not last the winter of its own peculiarities or survive the summer of simple queries. Did Jesus heal one blind man on the way out of Jericho (Mark 10:46) or on the way into Jericho (Luke 18:35), or was it two blind men (Matthew 20:29-30)? Can you address these issues without fanciful suggestions like Jesus healed one blind man on the way into Jericho and two blind men on the way out of Jericho? Or can we accept that the evangelists felt free to amend the details in the storytelling? By seeking to define the precise way in which Scripture is true, or not untrue, you risk defining it so narrowly that the first time you find something in Scripture that does not seem to fit, you end up having to choose between a true Bible and a falsified Bible. Inerrancy should not be posed as an alternative to unbelief. As if one is asked: Do you believe in either (a) biblical inerrancy with Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, six literal twenty-four-hour days of creation, the historical existence of Jonah and Job, that all the psalms were written by David, the four Gospels were written independently, Paul wrote Hebrews, and the book of Revelation should be interpreted in a strictly literal fashion; or (b) a bunch of atheist, Marxist, liberal, secularized, Christ-hating, sacrilegious blasphemy of God's holy word? Trust me, there is an option (c), which I'm trying to lay out for you. Be that as it may, well intentioned as some are in trying to fortify their own doctrine of Scripture with naked assertions of its truthfulness and how it is true, they can inadvertently shatter other people's confidence in the Bible and even shipwreck their faith.
A healthy doctrine of Scripture, with a cogent and careful definition of inerrancy, should not deny apparent ambiguities nor mute anyone's gnawing questions. There are even types of errors that one can accept if you understand divine accommodation to ancient worldviews and how ancient literary genres work (such as the evangelists tinkering with the story about Jesus healing a blind man in Jericho). Admitting such a fact in no way undermines the truthfulness and authority of Scripture. Inerrancy can be retained as long as it has certain qualifications, nuances, and thick explanations. In those explanations we affirm the phenomenon of Scripture, the divine and human elements of Scripture, the progressive nature of revelation where the new supersedes the old, and God's accommodation to the ancient worldviews in Scripture. In other words, you can't explain inerrancy or infallibility using terse descriptions, like answers to a multiple-choice test. Instead, you need an essay on God as a revealing God, the meaning of inspiration, and more in order to properly explain what is and is not being claimed. Some might complain that this means that inerrancy or infallibility dies the death of a thousand qualifications. Well, perhaps, but trust me, any complex term, whether it is "democracy" or "incarnation," is going to need layers of explanation if the concept is to be properly understood and not knocked down as a flimsy straw-man argument. Some ideas in theology and religion are irreducibly complex. Anything related to truth claims and the Bible is bound to be so. So, when it comes to describing infallibility and inerrancy, if you ask me, bigger books are actually better.
Reasonable Faith Podcast - What is Inerrancy? (December 15, 2008 AD)
Kevin Harris: Let me give you an example, Bill. A young man preparing to enter college. As he is going into his freshman year, he holds strongly to inerrancy, and his certain brand of inerrancy holds that every single thing that his NIV Bible that he has right there is totally dead on center accurate, even down to the numbers that it reports in categorizing things and in counting things in the ancient world. He gets to college and he finds out that some of those numbers were rounded off and were not intended to be exact but were, according to ancient standards, a basic kind of a round off or estimation. And that topples his faith. In a sense because suddenly that view that he held gets kicked out from under him and he can't tolerate that maybe the numbers were rounded off a little.
Dr. Craig: What that would be, I think, would be an example of someone who misunderstands the doctrine of inerrancy. To think that, for example, rounding off is an error. What one needs to tell that person is that is not an error. We use rounding off all the time. Similarly, paraphrase is not an error. If I paraphrase what we talked about today on the air I would not give a verbatim transcript but nevertheless my paraphrase would be accurate. So those are not examples of errors. That would be a misunderstanding of inerrancy.
But I am talking about something more radical, Kevin. I'm saying suppose somebody actually did demonstrate an error in Scripture that really is wrong - it is a mistake. Does that invalidate the Christian faith? And I am saying no. It would mean you would have to adjust your doctrine of inspiration; you would have to give up inerrancy of the Scripture. But it wouldn't mean, as I say, that Christ didn't rise from the dead. It wouldn't even mean that you don't have good grounds for believing that Christ rose from the dead.
So often Christian apologists give lip service to this idea that if you approach the New Testament documents as you would any ordinary historical document, that they are reliable enough to show, for example, that Jesus thought that he was the Son of God, that he did miracles and exorcisms, that he rose from the dead. But they don't really believe that. Because the minute somebody points out an error, they go up in arms as though to admit this one error would completely undermine the historicity of the records of Christ. And that is just false. No historian approaches his documents like that. Indeed, the very task of the historian is to sift through the chaff and to find the historical nuggets of truth amidst the errors and mistakes that are typically found in historical writing.
So what I am suggesting is that if you approach the Scriptures as you would ordinary historical documents and you find in them mistakes, contradictions, and errors, that still wouldn't undermine the general historical credibility of the Gospels, for example, including things like the miracles and exorcisms of Jesus, his radical self-understanding, his resurrection from the dead. Those things don't hang on the affirmation of biblical inerrancy.
William Lane Craig - Responding to the Difficulties of Biblical Inerrancy
Suppose at the end of the day, however, in dealing with these biblical difficulties, we are convinced that the Bible does have an error in what it teaches. We just can't somehow make sense of it. We are convinced, in fact, that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is false. What would we have to give up in what we've said so far? Well, it seems to me that what we would give up would be premise (2) of part (B) of our defense of biblical inerrancy. That was the premise that said, “Jesus taught that the Scriptures are the inerrant Word of God.” Therefore the conclusion was that they are therefore that. The evidence for this premise is not overwhelming or undeniable. Jesus says the Scripture cannot be broken. Perhaps he means there that the central spiritual truths of Scripture are infallible or must be preserved or something of that sort. But I think this is what we would reject. We would say we have not properly interpreted Jesus' attitude toward the Old Testament. We've taken it too strongly to say that there cannot be errors. But I would not give up the other premises. I would first sacrifice this premise.
That would enable you still to hold to the doctrine of inspiration (that the Bible is God's Word and inspired by God) as well as all the rest of Christian teaching that would be in place. What you would sacrifice would be the view that inspiration entails inerrancy. You would give up this premise of the argument for inerrancy. Obviously, I don't think we are at that point at all. I don't think we are pushed to that point. But I do want to say that clearly because some people, as we described the other day, convinced that there is a single error in the Bible, walk away from Christ and apostatize and go to these incredible extremes. Michael Licona was just telling me of a Facebook posting that he recently saw where a kid had become convinced on the basis of the writings of certain New Testament critics that the Bible or the Gospels do contain errors and therefore he had decided to cease to be a Christian and become a deist. This is just so heartbreaking: that a person would walk away from Christ because of something like this when it is so unnecessary. This is not a good argument for denying the deity of Christ or the resurrection of Jesus or his sacrificial atoning death for our sins. What this would mean is you would give up the doctrine of inerrancy. But you don't have to give up anything more than that.
Note that in both of Craig's citations, he is using "inerrancy" in the strict sense, meaning "without error of any kind". Licona, as seen above in the citations from Jesus, Contradicted, argues for a different use of the term "inerrancy", in which one can affirm that the Bible is "inerrant", and yet, this is to be understood in a more flexible way, which technically allows for potential mistakes or errors in the text. The term "inerrancy" can be unhelpful because of what it has come to mean, and it could be that "inspired" is generally a more useful term for those who wish to express that they believe the Bible is God's accurate, divine, reliable message to humanity, while not binding themselves to a strictly "inerrant" view as it is more popularly understood. However, one who took Licona's view of the term would not have to abandon affirming inerrancy, even if they acknowledged errors in the text.