Carlos R. Miller
Turabian
THEO 201-D09
Short Essay on Inerrancy and Inspiration
Inerrancy and Inspiration
Today was a picture perfect day. The weather was great, the sky was blue, the birds
singing blissfully and I had a bench all to myself in the park. Conditions were perfect for me to
pull out my bible and began reading. At least so I thought! No sooner than reading one verse of
scripture, I was interrupted by this guy jogging in the park. I should have known that my perfect
day wouldn’t last. This jogger started in on me by asking “Why in the world would I study the
Bible and how can you possibly consider it to be authoritative?” After getting past my initial
displeasure, I took the question in stride and began to answer his question. After all I consider
inerrancy and inspiration to be essential in my estimation of the bible.
I consider the bible to be authoritative and this is why I choose to study it. I have always
been taught from a young child to follow what the bible says. Whenever I would ask why, I was
told “because it’s God’s word.” Now I didn’t know all of the implications of that statement, but I
do now understand why I was told that and this is why I tell my children the same thing. Biblical
authority means that the bible has “the right and power to command, enforce laws, exact
obedience, determine or judge.”1 This also includes “words spoken or written whose accuracy
has been established and whose information can consequently be trusted”2 In other words it boils
down to it being, a divinely authoritative standard for every age and life... it has the right to tell
you how to live your life.
It seems to me that it should go without saying that the bible’s authority comes from none
other than God Himself. The bible has what is called “conferred authority, because the bible
1Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker,1984), 153
2Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 153
points beyond itself to God.”3 The pages of the bible are filled with what God said, and what God
it. But that alone is not all, because the Bible has authority in itself, due to the self disclosure of
the revelation of God. God is revealed to all humanity by in large through the Bible. As God is
His own authority, and there is no authority higher than God (Heb. 6:13), when God reveals
Himself, He declares His authority. It is through this means that solidifies the Bible’s authority.
When thinking about the authority that the Bible has in itself, leads directly to biblical
inspiration. Inspiration is “a supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit upon divinely chosen
agents in consequence of which their writings become trustworthy and authoritative.”4 The Holy
Spirit aided the writers of the Bible. They were not left to themselves to come up with what
needed to be said, but the Holy Spirit helped them in the sense of God breathing. That would be,
that the breath of God, conveyed to the writers what needed to be said, but through their own
personalities. This is based on what the bible says in (2 Tim. 3:16). The word for inspiration in
the Greek that the Bible uses is “theopneustos”, which literally means God breathed out. This
definition helps me to embrace, biblical inspiration since it relates to the very way humans
speak, in that we breathe out. Beyond this definition is the numerous times that the Bible states it
is the word of God, such as (Rom. 3:2).
Upon reflecting on my understanding of inspiration, I began to wonder, can I trust it? In
other words, how do I know if what the scriptures say is not wrong? Because if I am to live my
life by the scriptures, I need to know that they are right. In biblical terms, this would deal with
Inerrancy. Inerrancy is the view that “when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate
that the Bible is in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never
false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life
sciences.”5 Although the meaning is wordy, it boils down to the fact that the documents that the
authors of the books of the bible originally wrote were free from errors. Obviously according to
the definition, it is not possible now to prove this, because of several reasons. Of which the
objector of inerrancy would point out. Some of the arguments against inerrancy would be (1)
Human knowledge is limited (misinterpretations, wrong conclusions, lost or undiscovered
material) and (2). We are without the originals. But in defense of inerrancy I would cite the
arguments for inerrancy, being the Biblical, Historical, Epistemological and the Slippery Slope. I
personally think that the Biblical argument is the strongest and the one that I would use to
defend inerrancy. The Biblical argument deals with the testimony of scripture itself as being
inerrant. As alluded to earlier although it is looked at as being implicit, the Bible is its own
witness to inerrancy, as stated in (2 Tim. 3:16). This gives no wiggle room; it means what it
says… no error. This view also has “truthfulness in view as it relates to the Old Testament
criteria for distinguishing God’s message and messenger from false prophets who gave false
messages.”6 Supporting scriptures are (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and 18:20-22). There was a human
element involved in communicating the message in both the prophets case and the writers and in
both cases the Bible demanded truthfulness. The second strongest argument for me would be the
Epistemological one. This one I think the objectors would find to be formidable. This one states
that one error in the Bible would not necessarily mean that there are others. But likewise it does
mean that you couldn’t be sure about any passage to it being true or not. So unless the objector
5Ibid, 157
6 Ibid, 157
just doesn’t believe in the Bible at all, I would think this to be a good argument. It has to be
inerrant for any of it to be right and trust worthy. The last two I think are the weakest of the
inerrancy argument, which are the Historical and Slippery Slope. The Historical supports
inerrancy by the Church throughout the ages believing in the inerrancy of the scriptures, but it
alone I don’t think carries much weight with someone who is not a believer. Lastly the Slippery
Slope although I believe to have validity at least in my thinking doesn’t have conclusive
empirical data from which to support it.
As I look at the views that I have discussed, there is evidence of a natural relationship
between inspiration and inerrancy. Due to the nature of both springs forth this relationship. The
relationship is formed on the basis, that because the Bible is inspired, it ultimately has to be
inerrant. God is His own authority and there is no authority higher than God, so He is always
right. So since He breathes out His message to the writers and they wrote His message, then the
Bible is without errors.
These views are critical in their implication to my life, in that I need to look to the Bible
to tell me how to live my life. Since the Bible is authoritative, inspired and inerrant there is no
other source that I feel that I should look to for guidance of my life.
Word Count: 1268
Bibliography
Elwell, Walter. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984. 1312.
