On the Bible being inerrant.

[nobspeople]

I came across a post the other day as follows:
"My argument doesn’t rely on the Bible being inerrant."
It has meaning in the context of that discussion, of which I wasn't privy. But it got me thinking:

Does (or should, if you wish) a christian believe the bible is inerrant?

There seems to be a couple camps on the subject:
1) A christian should believe the bible is 100% true and accurate in every way
1a) This seems to indicate the bible was 'god written' (by whatever means you think necessary)
2) A christian should believe the bible is capable of being wrong or inaccurate
2a) This seems to indicate the bible may or may not have been 'god inspired'
2a1) To what extent is it god inspired and when do you know it is and when it isn't?
2b) To what percentage is the bible capable of being wrong or inaccurate?
3) A christian should be able to pick-n-choose their beliefs when they fit their chosen lifestyle agenda (this seems to be a popular choice for obvious reasons)

For discussion:
Do you believe the bible is infallible or not?
Why or why not?
How did you come to this belief?

NOTE: This should be about one's belief and why, not taken as a challenge to 'prove' the bible is or isn't correct and or devoid of errors, contradictions, lies or ½ truths.

[We_Are_VENOM]

1) A christian should believe the bible is 100% true and accurate in every way

This^.

If the Bible is the inspired word of the Living God (as believers believe it to be), then it has to be 100% true and accurate in every way, as I believe an inaccurate word of God cannot be inspired by God (and vice versa).

That being said; there may be some small translation errors as it relates to the translation (rendering) of the scriptures from one language to the next, but that is an error in the translation, not in the message of the original author and his intentions.

Skeptics of the Bible need to understand the difference.

But yeah.

[benchwarmer]

#1 The genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-17 vs Luke 3:23-38).
#2 God needs to rest or not? (Isaiah 40:28 vs Exodus 31:17)

Next up:

#3 Man can see God or not? (Genesis 32:30 vs John 1:18)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[a] saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,[a] who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

[otseng]

1) A christian should believe the bible is 100% true and accurate in every way

This^.

If the Bible is the inspired word of the Living God (as believers believe it to be), then it has to be 100% true and accurate in every way, as I believe an inaccurate word of God cannot be inspired by God (and vice versa).

I would challenge this. I know it's a bit controversial, esp among evangelicals, but I believe it's not necessary to believe the Bible is "100% true and accurate in every way". What is more important is to consider the Bible to be the authoritative source for instruction and life for believers.

Implicit in the claim that the Bible is "100% true and accurate in every way" is one person knows with 100% certainty what the Bible is saying. How do you know if one person's view of the Bible is accurate and another's is not? How do you know if a passage is meant to be taken literally or symbolically? An example of this is a controversy between Mike Licona and Norman Geisler over Matt 27.

Mat 27:52-53
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Geisler wrote:

Our original focus was on his denial of the historicity and inerrancy of the resurrection account of the saints in Matthew 27. He called this “poetical,” a “legend,” an “embellishment,” and literary “special effects” (see 306, 548, 552, 553). Against Licona’s view, we set forth “Ten Reasons” for the historicity of this text. And, as evidence that it was a denial of the historic ICBI (International Council on Biblical Inerrancy) view on inerrancy, we provided “Six Reasons” (www.normangeisler.com). Thus, both the historicity and inerrancy of the text which are firmly established are tragically denied by Licona.

https://normangeisler.com/mike-licona-o ... y-thought/

However, Mike Licona is no liberal scholar. He is one of the foremost Christian apologists and is firmly rooted in the truthfulness in all of scripture.

Debating over inerrancy gives rise to unfruitful debates between believers and also between believers and non-believers.

Another example is:

In the spirit of that, I'm planning to highlight one contradiction per day until I grow weary of it. Hopefully that's ok in this thread since that is the topic and these contractions are my support for my position. I don't think any single one of these is the 'nail in the coffin', but the accumulation of issues should make my point. I fully expect all of them to be apologized for and look forward to the word games and contortions likely required to do so.

It's not like presenting any contradiction is new to anyone. Billions of people have been reading and studying the Bible for thousands of years. Yet, not one single person can state they know exactly what the Bible means or says. That's not to say it's incomprehensible. But it is a complex book. It's like saying you've watched a YouTube video on quantum mechanics and then you know everything about it. And then arguing quantum mechanics is wrong because there's a contradiction that light can't be both a wave and a particle.

[benchwarmer]

It's not like presenting any contradiction is new to anyone. Billions of people have been reading and studying the Bible for thousands of years. Yet, not one single person can state they know exactly what the Bible means or says.

I fully get your point and appreciate your view. My presentation of contradictions is aimed squarely at the "there are 100% no errors in the Bible" crowd.

However, the sheer number of contradictions and issues I've found also put to question the idea that the Bible is 'trustworthy' and make it hard to consider 'authoritative'. When I was a Christian, I just assumed the Bible was 'mostly' correct except for the odd translation wobble. Once I started actually digging, that idea fell apart pretty quickly. Trying to understand what was in the Bible more fully is one of the key ingredients to my deconversion.

To be clear, I don't claim to understand everything about the Bible. It's just the more I dig and learn, the more it falls apart as error free, trustworthy, or authoritative. In fact, the more I learn, the more I see the hand of man massaging previous texts and trying to steer the 'living' theology that we even see even today with all the denominations.

[1213]

...What do you propose to do about the 15 missing people in a list that is supposed to be 'inerrant'? The best you can argue now is that one list is missing people. If the list is missing people it is in error. Plain and simple. It is also useless since an incomplete genealogical list does not actually show what it is trying to show. i.e. a direct line from Abraham to Jesus.
....

I think incomplete is not same as erroneous.

[1213]

If the bible is a 'guide' to understand god, there's every reason to assume so. Even if they're witness testimonies, if god wanted them to tell its story correctly, one would think there would be no contradictions, errors, omissions, confusion caused by wordings or bias or individual agendas.
But that's not what we see...

I think the story is told correctly. All the confusion seems to come only when person doesn't want to believe, or likes more of his own ideas than what the Bible tells.

[nobspeople]

If the bible is a 'guide' to understand god, there's every reason to assume so. Even if they're witness testimonies, if god wanted them to tell its story correctly, one would think there would be no contradictions, errors, omissions, confusion caused by wordings or bias or individual agendas.
But that's not what we see...

I think the story is told correctly. All the confusion seems to come only when person doesn't want to believe, or likes more of his own ideas than what the Bible tells.

Thinking the story is told correctly seems to come only when a person wants to believe, ignoring all the issues (issues they may very well have with other stories).
Odd how that works when there's nothing tactile and provable, isn't it?

[benchwarmer]

...What do you propose to do about the 15 missing people in a list that is supposed to be 'inerrant'? The best you can argue now is that one list is missing people. If the list is missing people it is in error. Plain and simple. It is also useless since an incomplete genealogical list does not actually show what it is trying to show. i.e. a direct line from Abraham to Jesus.
....

I think incomplete is not same as erroneous.

You are of course welcome to that opinion, but it makes no sense. Why would an author give an incomplete list when trying to make the point that Jesus is connected to someone?

The way I see it, there are actually 3 major problems here:

1) Giving the list in the first place is useless because Jesus is supposedly the son of God, not Joseph! BOTH genealogies should in fact be for Mary because Jesus only has a blood relation to her, not Joseph. However, showing maternal lineage does not 'count' apparently, so the authors went with a paternal lineage to try and make their point. In other words, BOTH genealogies are in fact yet another contradiction. i.e. the father of Jesus is supposed to be God, not Joseph.

2) The lists themselves do not line up in number of generations between common ancestors. Missing people breaks the provenance. If one author says X is the son of Y, but another says X is the son of Z, that's a major issue.

3) The lists have different names for multiple people in them. Trying to pretend that name X is really name Y - with 0 evidence this is the case - makes every other name given in the document useless.

Apologizing away these issues just creates even more problems. It also puts the cart before the horse. Assuming the information is correct and THEN coming up with any possible method to make some sense of it all is backwards. What we should be doing is looking at what we have and determining what it means. To me, it means later authors decided, for whatever reason, to 'fix' the previous accounts. At the time I doubt they realized that their creative editing and 'truth telling' would get bundled together with the very thing they were trying to update.

[otseng]

It's just the more I dig and learn, the more it falls apart as error free, trustworthy, or authoritative. In fact, the more I learn, the more I see the hand of man massaging previous texts and trying to steer the 'living' theology that we even see even today with all the denominations.

I understand and also realize many people are in this camp. To me, this is another pitfall of the inerrancy doctrine. If people are taught growing up to blindly accept the doctrine of inerrancy, then when they start to think for themselves, things start to fall apart. As a matter of fact, I was also one that just blindly accepted the doctrine of inerrancy until relatively recently. As I thought about it more, the doctrine made no sense to me. But, in my case, my faith grew stronger as I left the inerrancy camp and studied the Bible more. As a matter of fact, I now study the Bible more than ever before and have a greater appreciation for it.

[benchwarmer]

#1 The genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-17 vs Luke 3:23-38).
#2 God needs to rest or not? (Isaiah 40:28 vs Exodus 31:17)
#3 Man can see God or not? (Genesis 32:30 vs John 1:18)

Next up:

What were Jesus's last words?

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

34 At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” 36 And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

28 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

* The obvious editing by the author of John to make His second to last words 'fulfill scripture' is telling.