I noted in an earlier post that debate about the inerrancy of Scripture has been sharper in North America than in Britain.  This is due to a considerable extent to the contrasting views taken by the Princeton theologians in America and their British counterparts.  Now, I love the Princeton theologians – B.B. Warfield is a special favourite of mine – but I continue to have a few problems with the concept of inerrancy.

One of the leading scholars on the British side was the Scot, James Orr (1844-1913).  It is a good indication of the cordial relationship between himself and his transatlantic contemporaries that when Orr came to edit the prestigious International Standard Bible Encyclopedia he invited Warfield to contribute the article in “Inspiration”.

But, for all that Orr had in common with the Princeton theology, he decisively rejected the doctrine of inerrancy (‘hard and fast literality in minute matters of historical, geographical, and scientific detail’).  Or, at least, he stedfastly rejected the idea that inerrancy was in any way essential to a Christian doctrine of inspiration.  Orr wrote:-

‘It is urged, e.g., that unless we can demonstrate what is called the “inerrancy” of the Biblical record, down even to its minutest details, the whole edifice of belief in revealed religion falls to the ground.  This, on the face of it, is a most suicidal position for any defender of revelation to take up.’

He adds that,

‘at best, such “inerrancy” can never be demonstrated with a cogency which entitles it to rank as the foundation of a belief in inspiration.  It must remain to those who hold it a doctrine of faith; a deduction from what they deem to be implied in an inspiration established independently of it; not a ground of belief in the inspiration.’

And then again, the theory of inerrancy may be stretched ‘by qualifications, admissions, and explanations, till there is practically little difference between the opposite views.  Orr quotes Hodge and Warfield:-

‘It is not claimed that the Scriptures any more than their authors are omniscient.  The information they convey is in the forms of human thought, and limited on all sides.  They were not designed to teach philosophy, science, or human history as such.  They were not designed to furnish an infallible system of speculative theology.  They are written in human languages, whose words, inflections, constructions, and idioms bear everywhere indelible traces of human error.  The record itself furnishes evidence that the writers were in large measure dependent for their knowledge upon sources and methods in themselves fallible, and that their personal knowledge and judgments were in many matters hesitating and defective, or even wrong.’

So much being admitted, says Orr,

‘it hardly seems worth while to deny the compatibility of inspiration with the possibility of minor errors also in the matter of the record.’

But then, those contemporaries of Orr who upheld inerrancy themselves agreed that the substantial truth of the biblical revelation is safeguarded even if belief in inerrancy is given up.  Again, Orr quotes Hodge and Warfield who, while defending an errorless Scripture, write,

‘Nor should we ever allow it to be believed that the truth of Christianity depends upon any doctrine of inspiration whatever.  Revelation came in large part before the record of it, and the Christian Church before the New Testament Scriptures.  Inspiration can have no meaning if Christianity is not true, but Christianity would be true and divine, and being so, would stand, even if God had not been pleased to give us, in addition to his revelation of saving truth, an infallible record of that revelation absolutely errorless by means of inspiration.’

And so Orr concludes,

‘The word of God is a “pure word” Psa 12:6; 19:8; 119:140 etc.  It is a true and “tried” word, Psa 12:6; 18:30; a word never found wanting by those who rest themselves upon it.  The Bible that embodies this word will retain its distinction as the Book of Inspiration till the end of time!’

In the light of all of this, I think it is a shame that inerrancy is sometimes made a boundary-marker for determining who is, and who is not, a bona fide evangelical.  Let us not place demands on one another that are not clearly warranted in God’s pure, true, and tried word.

See Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, 197-218; also: Rogers & McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, 385-388