Is the Bible inerrant? If not, then what?

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When I was a  Christian, there were two popular interpretations of the Bible- Biblical Inerrancy, and Biblical Liberalism. In the former, the Bible is taken at face value- the words it says are considered to be a true and accurate depiction of the past with the only exceptions being passages of poetry or those that employ other literary devices (like Psalms or Song of Solomon). The belief is typically that though the Bible was written by fallible men, it was divinely inspired by God so that nothing that made it into the book was inaccurate historically or theologically. This interpretation is very common in evangelical circles, like the one I grew up in, and in said circles is often considered to be the one "true" interpretation even if they don't all agree with exactly what the Bible means (with conversations around Calvinist vs Armenian theology for instance.) In this blog, I'm intentionally lumping together Biblical Inerrancy and Biblical Infallibility because I believe that my criticism of one is applicable to the other. With Biblical Liberalism we have a more loose interpretation of scripture- allowing for the possibility of errors and mistakes to be corrected by modern culture or science. This belief is usually associated with things like a God directed evolution. Many people who believe this way see the Bible as being written by men with divine aid- but not so much aid as to correct human error.

I'm aware that there are other biblical interpretations- and sub-interpretations that one could discuss at length- but I'll leave that for the believers to hash out. For this, I want to discuss specifically these two diametrically opposed philosophies of how the Bible came to be; the belief that the Bible was divinely inspired vs the belief that it was written down by fallible men with only limited aid of the divine.

First- to look at the Inerrantist approach. Growing up I was taught that this was the only right way to read the Bible as a Christian. If inerrancy is true then readers are required to reconcile any apparent contradictions. I'm not going to create an exhaustive list here but I'll use a common one that is cited by Biblical scholars like Bart Ehrman on many occasions. When discussing the birth of Jesus- Mathew (2:1-21) claims that Herod had all babies under 2 years old killed in Judea. Mary and Joseph were warned of this in a dream so they fled to Egypt shortly after the wise-men/magi came to visit. Upon Herod's death the messiah and his parents returned to Judea. However in the account according to Luke (2:21-40), on the eighth day they had their child circumcised as is required by the mosaic law and then left immediately for Galilee. These two examples are directly contradictory.

A subscriber of the inerrancy interpretation of the Bible, has to find a way to reconcile these two accounts. I imagine that many of them would (as I did once) say that both happened, but that Luke just left out the trip to Egypt. So when he said, "When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth." He meant, "When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they went to Egypt for a bit and then returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth." Or when he said, "Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover." He meant, "Every year (except the first two) Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover." These are the types of reconciliation tactics that have to be deployed to ensure there are no contradictions in the Bible. All of which are going to require that you believe that these were written to fit together perfectly and that any apparent contradiction is actually a misunderstanding of what the scripture says.

This reconciliation that is required is also a determent to the inerrancy or infallibility doctrine. In order to say that these stories are reconcilable- you have to admit that one of them is wrong in the way they are presented or wrong in the way it is translated. If it isn't a mis-translation (because the error occurs in our most base documents, as is this case) then we have to admit that one of these writers incorrectly described the events- in such a way that implies contradiction. This flies in the face of inerrancy because such an error wouldn't exist if the text was inerrant. I recognize that some may see this as a stretch in terms of the inerrancy or infallibility of the scripture- but I believe that regardless you contradict your belief in inerrancy or infallibility.

Additionally, it seems to me that the justification for the Inerrantist's view is lacking. The only justification for inerrancy that I have been able to find from those who subscribe to it is based on scripture- many of which citing 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (though there are other scriptures as well- but all with the same flaws as 2 Timothy so I'll only reference this one). In fact this is the very scripture used by several popular denominations in their statements of faith. This defense of the Bible's inerrancy is inadequate for at least two major reasons. 

The first is of course because when 2 Timothy was written (by the apostle Paul), it was not written about the Bible because at the time the Bible did not exist. Paul could not have meant the whole Bible as we know it because at the time the only scripture the Jewish people had was the Old Testament- some scholars may say they only had the Torah, some say they had the books on the prophets as well, but needless to say in this way- at least at the time it was written, it wasn't mean to apply to itself as scripture nor did it intend to appeal to the Gospels which- if they had been written, hadn't been widely circulated yet. To sum up this first point- Paul did not intend to refer to the New Testament as scripture.

However, just in case you disagree- maybe God came to him and told him it would be- and we can just ignore that he never refers to his own texts as scripture- I still contest the assertion that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is a valid defense of the inerrancy of the Bible. The most important reason is because it creates a circular argument. In the view of those who believe in Biblical inerrancy, the Bible is viewed as a single work, essentially, commissioned by God to a variety of authors. So when the Bible declares itself divine, it is using circular reasoning. This type of reasoning, appealing to the truth of a thing because the thing itself says it is true, is never valid justification for a belief that this thing is true.

I'm going to take just a moment to explain why this is the case. In this situation the proposition that "The Bible is divinely inspired" is evidenced by 2 Timothy 3:16-17. So the question becomes, why do we trust that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is telling us the truth about the divine inspiration of the Bible? It isn't because of it's own historic context, because there was no Bible when it was written- so context would tell us that it isn't talking about the Bible. Instead we have to presuppose it is true- likely because the Bible is divinely inspired- which makes our justification only justified by our first proposition. This is inadequate justification when in search of truth because this can be used to justify the truth of many false things- but I digress.

This isn't to say that a Christian shouldn't believe the Bible is inerrant, just to point out that they lack a valid justification for doing so- when I say this I mean justification in the epistemic sense. So I suppose I should move onto the issues I have with viewing the Bible in a more liberal sense, as I've described above-

If you believe the Bible is not inerrant, and that it is man's attempt to write down the acts of God as it was seen/understood at the time- then we need to view each book independently. This view requires that we take each book as it's own account and use literary and historical methods to decipher the truth or falsity of the stories as they were written. We should look at the discrepancies (one of which I described above) in the New Testament as an actual discrepancy and not as a mere misunderstanding unless we have good reason from a literary or historical perspective to assume we are misunderstanding the text.

This interpretation requires a much deeper understanding of the methodology of historians and philologists. This makes understanding and accepting the Bible for the lay-person very difficult as they are required to rely on experts and expert consensus and cannot believe the truth of the Bible on presupposition alone. There are many different scholarly views on the topic of the Bible. Consensus is hard, if not impossible to find, because there are two diametrically opposed philosophies in the realm of Biblical scholarship- there are the believers (like Mike Licona) and unbelievers (like Bart Ehrman) who approach the text in two distinctly different ways. As I am not a Bible scholar, I will not try to influence anyone one way or the other on this topic.

A common example used to attack the Liberalist view of the Bible is by comparing it to a fictional, but grounded story like Spider-Man. Nearly everything we know to be true about the Bible (the names of places, famous people, jobs and culture, etc) are all also evident and true in Spider-Man comics. Spider-Man takes place in NYC, a real city, where, alter-ego, Peter Parker works as a news paper photographer (a real job), the culture mimics our own and many actual places in the city are represented. However, the paper he works for is fiction, his existence is fiction, and so is the existence of most other characters. The point is that the truth of some minimal amount of facts does not corroborate the whole story being told. In this way- future generations can't find old Spider-Man comics or movies and believe them to be telling stories of true events just because the world it takes place in resembles the world as it once was. In the same way- the mention of Jerusalem, Nazareth, Quirinius, Caesar Augustus, etc. is not evidence that the story being told actually happened. The point being, simply, that it requires significantly more work to justify the position that any part of the Bible is true than appealing to a few seemingly accurate references.

That said- I want to get to what makes this interpretation of the Bible so unconvincing to me. Unsurprisingly- on the topic of Biblical contradiction and historical accuracy- I agree heavily with Bart Ehrman as his standards for justification are more inline with mine than someone like Mike Licona. That said, what I find to be more compelling a reason to ignore the god of the Biblical Liberalist is that such a god is unqualified for praise/worship by his creation. My typical objections to the Christian god apply here, namely his immoral nature. If a Biblical Liberalist were to tell me that those parts of the Bible that I object to most, namely the mosaic covenant, were inaccurately recorded or in some other way flawed- I would take a different approach in my criticism.

My response would be something along the lines of- any god who allowed for his message to his creation to be so distorted is a god not worthy of my time. I would like to take a minute to elaborate. If the mosaic covenant is flawed- then by what have we judged it to be flawed? I think the claim that it is incorrectly recorded requires some justification. If any were to exist, I would apply it to the New Testament books and see if it was equally relevant. Further I would point out the discrepancies in the messianic story- notably the one I mentioned at the start, but also those around his death and resurrection. I would ask that any believer who interpreted the Bible as being potentially flawed to either accept that the most important story God had to tell was one he wasn't bothered to protect from flaws, or that the apparent flaws are all somehow justified in being reconciled in someway.

If the believer did reconcile these- and did believe that the Gospels themselves were accurate, I'd criticize their choice to ignore my objections to the mosaic law, as Jesus, in the Gospels repeatedly affirmed that it was indeed the law given by God to Moses- As a Jewish man who grew up in the synagogue- and reportedly did some teaching there- you would expect he was well versed in the Torah (which includes the laws God gave to Moses). If he affirmed them, then my objections to them and to the god that gave them, still stand. 

If one doesn't choose to reconcile these issues, and instead chooses to accept that there are flaws in the most important stories in the Bible, then I wonder why anyone would be interested in an all powerful god who doesn't care enough about his creation to ensure he is clearly understood for generations to come. I personally can't conceive of a being who shows his love to his creation by allowing them to distort and pervert his message to them- especially if the consequences of not loving and obeying him is either death (in the Old Testament) or eternal damnation (in the New Testament). It seems that if there is any truth to John 3:16, we would expect this god to be abundantly clear in the story of salvation. However, that certainly isn't the case if we accept a Biblical Liberalist interpretation of the Bible.

In summary- my primary objection to the Biblical Liberalist is that the god they believe in is as objectionable as the Biblical Inerrantist or is not worthy of our attention or our love in lieu of the reckless way in which he as allowed humans to distort his story to us- one that condemns us to death or eternal torture for not understanding and obeying.

On the other hand I think the Biblical Inerrantist is in a different and more peculiar position- one where the god described in the Old Testament has to be reconciled with the one in the New Testament. Their god, then, would be subject to my criticism of the immorality described in the Old Testament (a subject I am eager to write a dedicated blog on) which I have touched on in other blogs- though deserves more of my attention. This god- is in my opinion- an immoral and sadistic figure and therefore not worthy of my attention or the attention of any moral person. To defend such actions and commands is to defend evil.

With that- I will leave you- my criticism of two diametrically opposed Biblical interpretations. I know there are more interpretations- I know there are many more subtle differences when one does a deep dive on them- but I believe my criticisms here apply to all of the interpretations of the Bible I'm familiar with.