1. Inerrancy ? Because people of faith were convinced that God was intimately involved in the formation of scripture, from early on they have often concluded, or simply assumed, that such God-filled writings must be infallible (not misleading) and inerrant (without error). Infallibility and inerrancy are closely related and often used interchangeably, and both concepts are defended with the same reasoning.

2. This conclusion began to be increasingly questioned, by people of faith as well as by skeptics, with the development of historical criticism. Present-day defenders of inerrancy insist, however, that any doubts about the Bible’s inerrancy are doubts about God’s very character. Thus Josh McDowell: “If every utterance in the Bible is from God and God is a God of truth, … then the Bible must be wholly truthful, or inerrant … An attack on the inerrancy of the Bible is an attack on the character of God.” [The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), p. 338]. But does this conclusion follow?

3. Whatever one thinks of the doctrine itself, this argument, though popular, is gravely flawed. If God cannot err, it does not follow that what comes from God cannot err (though that is what McDowell assumes). In fact, the whole Biblical story begins with telling how what came directly from God most definitely did err, big time. Genesis says that the world itself is a direct utterance from God, spoken into existence, with humans created in God’s very image. And yet those same humans went on to make what, in this story, could easily be called the biggest error of all history. So ironically, McDowell’s argument starts to look like an anti-Biblical argument: in order for it to work, McDowell would have to reject the Genesis story, and he would never dream of doing that.

4. The conservative evangelical insistence on biblical inerrancy (and infallibility) is all that survives, among Protestants, from an older outlook. In that older outlook, not only scripture, but God’s people, were believed to be exempt from error. This is still the official teaching of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Roman Catholicism: "The whole body of the faithful... cannot err in matters of belief … The People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium),... receives... the faith, once for all delivered to the saints... The People unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life." http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/profess3.html#INTERPRETATION http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/profess3.html#INTERPRETATION

5. Eastern Orthodoxy: “The Church, as a whole, is infallible … The synods of the Fathers, as a whole and as individuals, believe that their decisions are infallible.” www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7063.asp www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7063.asp www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7063.asp The argument for the inerrancy of God’s people followed the same logic as the argument for scriptural inerrancy: Since the church is the very Body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, to question the church’s official teaching is to question Christ’s (and thus God’s) teaching. Protestants rejected this line of reasoning about the church in the 16 th century, often relying on Renaissance humanist scholarship. But they did not reject the same line of reasoning when dealing with the Bible. Why? And the majority of Christians (Roman Catholics + Eastern Orthodox) accept this line of reasoning for both scripture and the church. But it is a line of reasoning that the Bible does not always appear to support.