Inerrancy is to Evangelicalism as Inspiration is to Christianity (or Not)

Michael Patton has written a post arguing that inerrancy is not the linchpin of evangelicalism. This post should make me happy, and indeed I am glad that someone is making this claim. Further, Patton makes some very interesting points, including noting that we don’t throw anything else out completely just because of some error in detail, particularly if we’re dealing with eyewitness testimony.

There is a certain conflict when we argue for both any form of verbal dictation, or even verbal plenary inspiration, and at the same time try to support the historicity of events in the gospel by claiming they contain eyewitness testimony. If the Holy Spirit is dictating the words of the gospels, or even protecting them so they are not merely the Word of God, but are words of God, then the truth of those words would not be dependent on eyewitnesses. We’d have precisely one witness in the gospels, and that would be the Divine witness.

But that isn’t either the most common claim in favor of the historicity of the gospels, nor, indeed, is it the claim of the New Testament documents or of the early church regarding Jesus. The claim is not that the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are correct because they were revealed (or dictated) by the Holy Spirit, but rather they are the words of people who saw what happened and reported what they saw.

Thus minor differences in the accounts are to be expected if the claim is true, since eyewitnesses don’t generally agree absolutely in all details. Whether we admit just differences in perspective or accept outright errors of fact may well depend on what we expect. Patton says that finding such an error would not impact his faith in Christ. He says: “However, if I were to find something that I believed was a legitimate error in the Scripture, I don’t think my faith would be affected too much. Why? Because the central truths of the Christian faith are not affected by inerrancy.”

Patton believes in inerrancy, and I do not, but I would say much the same thing. I have no great desire to locate errors in scripture. In fact, I’d say that while I don’t accept the doctrine of inerrancy as stated in the Chicago Statement, for example, I don’t believe there is anything in Scripture that is there by error. Scripture is precisely what God wanted it to be. Finding errors of fact or contradictions doesn’t impact my faith because my faith didn’t come into existence based on the number of errors present or not present in the Bible.

I must note here that I sometimes frustrate opponents of inerrancy as well, because I don’t really want to make lists of errors in scripture. I think that’s entirely the wrong way to go about it. It’s much more a process of interpretation. The question is always this: What (and where) is the message God is presenting through this passage? So I don’t compare Genesis 1-2 with science as we know it today to find what is correct and what is in error. If Genesis is written with a different cosmology than we have today, I would both admit it is not scientifically accurate and also claim it is not in error. Rather, we have God’s message set in the cosmological knowledge of the time. As we continue to live in God’s world, we can reset that message in the context of the cosmological knowledge we have today. If the world is still here in 200, 2000, or a few million years, I expect our understanding of cosmology will have changed, and we’ll have to see God’s message in another set of ideas about cosmology. Why would we assume that the early 21st century has the final answer on this?

But let me return from that rabbit trail. (I’m just as bad at staying on topic when I’m speaking!) Patton continues by claiming that inspiration isn’t actually necessary for Christianity.

But I would also say Christianity is not dependent on the inspiration of the Bible either. In other words, the Bible does not even have to be inspired for Christianity to be true. We could just think of the eyewitness accounts in what we call the New Testament as twenty-seven ancient historical documents. . . .

Here is where I disagree. Fundamental to the idea of Christianity is this: God acts in history. We may disagree radically on just how subtly or openly God acts. We may disagree about how he communicates and how much he protects that communication. But without God’s acting in history and someone recognizing God’s action, there would be no Christianity. So once these historical acts or events to which Patton refers have happened, there is inspiration. The only real question is how it is going to be handled. If God sends a message, that’s inspiration.

Now it’s true that, in theory, the Bible need not have the kind of authority it has in the church. Inspiration and authority are not equal (Vick, From Inspiration to Understanding, pp. 156-163). We could give authority to the historical events rather than to the reports of them, but if God is communicating through them, they would be inspired in some sense. We can disagree about how that works, but without agreeing that it works in some way, I can’t see how Christianity could exist.

Thus while I’m not certain if a particular description of inspiration (inerrancy) is essential to evangelicalism, I’m quite certain that some form of inspiration is necessary to Christianity.