Belief in biblical inerrancy is at the root of many other unfortunate and hurtful beliefs such as angry God, legalism, condemnation of gays, and rejection of evolution. Inerrancy is the common misunderstanding that everything in the Bible is the same as God’s own word, as though he wrote it himself.
Books
- Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So (click to see the book on Amazon)
In The Bible Tells Me So, Peter addresses what I consider, perhaps, the most harmful belief among some believers today—a misguided and mistaken understanding of reading the Bible that assumes that the words of the Bible are straight from God and represent the very voice and intent of God. This has been a huge issue among evangelicals since the 1970s as some began to recognize the Bible as an ancient document written by ancient people from their own times and cultures, while others passionately defended the Bible as God’s own word for all time. (See my full review)
Articles
From Jesus without Baggage
- The #2 Most Harmful Religious Belief—the Inerrant Bible
- A More Realistic Alternative to Inerrancy of the Bible
- 4 Huge Ways Believing the Bible Inerrant is Tremendously Harmful
- Perspicuity: The Bible Clearly Says…
- Recognizing Literary Genres in the Bible (this post links to other posts on genre)
- Inerrantists Resolve Discrepancies with ‘It Could Happen!’
- How Atheists and Inerrantists Agree on the Bible
- Is the Bible Inerrant?
- The Old Testament Writers and God
- The Nature of the New Testament
- Paul and the New Testament
- What the Bible Is–And Is Not
- The Bible is not Magically Inerrant: Exposing Inerrancy Proof-Texts
- The Bible is not a Rule Book: Overcoming Legalism
- The Bible is not a Promise Book: Exploring a Misguided Approach to the Bible
- The Bible is not an Encyclopedia of Life: Demise of a Bible Answer Man
- The Bible is not a Magic Talisman: Biblical Power, Incantations, and Bibliomancy
- The Bible is not Open to Narcigesis: Thinking the Bible is Written to You
- Evolution and Inerrancy: Confusing Other Genres with History in Genesis (part 1)
- Why Progressive Believers and Fundamentalist Believers Disagree on So Many Important Beliefs
- For My Inerrantist Friends: Why Appeals to Inerrancy are Totally Ineffective in Discussion
- Jesus Without Baggage Welcomes Inerrantists!
- ‘The Bible Clearly Says’ is Always a Seriously Misguided Statement
- Bart Ehrman – Forged: A Book Review
- How Should We Regard New Testament Books of Uncertain Authorship?
- Blaming Paul for Things He Never Said
From Peter Enns
- What is the Bible? A good question that biblical inerrancy can’t answer
- 5 insights about the Old Testament
- The New Testament is not a “Continuation” of the Old Testament (plus a little quiz)
- Inerrancy Doesn’t Describe What the Bible Does
- Inerrancy: I think Someone Forgot to Tell the Bible
- Inerrancy and Younger Evangelicals
- What Biblicism is and Why it Makes Baby Jesus Cry
- Recovering from Inerrancy in the Second Half of Life
- When Inerrancy no longer Works: Carlos Bovell on Robert Yarbrough
- There are no Contradictions in the Bible–Yeah, You Heard Me
- Why I interpret the Bible the way I do
- What permanently screwed me up about the Bible
- The Bible: it’s sort of like a viral internet joke
- 3 things I would like to see Evangelical leaders stop saying about biblical scholarship
- 3 ways I would like to see Evangelical leaders stop defending the Bible
- 5 Modern Insights about the Old Testament
- Remember to Hold Your Beliefs Lightly: The Bible Says So
From Josh Way
- It’s (Never) Bible Clobberin’ Time
- Rescuing the Bible From Inerrancy
- Hearing Voices in Scripture
- Your Feelings and Experiences Matter, Young Christian
- Numbers 25 and the Zeal of Phinehas
- Three Ideas That Saved My Faith
- Misfiring the Biblical Canon
- The Self-Authorizing Book
- Jesus and Scripture
- Reading the Bible: A Helpful Guide to Picking and Choosing
- Unsystematic Theology
- The Tyranny of “The Bible Says”
From Evangelical Liberal
- The Bible – the Good Book, or a very bad book?
- The Bible – truly perfect and perfectly true?
- The Bible – a question of interpretation?
- What does the Bible really say about inerrancy?
From Rob Bell
- What is the Bible?
- Authority
- How We Got the Bible
- Inerrancy, Mozart, and String Theory
- Rob Bell once questioned hell: Here’s why he is now taking aim at the Bible (Jonathan Merritt)
From Other Writers
- The Broken Promise of Biblical ‘Inerrancy’ by Fred Clark on Slacktivist
- Don’t Bury Treasure by Derek Flood on The Rebel God
- Why I Reject Biblical Infallibility by Derek Flood on The Rebel God
- Literal Dictation of the Bible – Fiddlrts’ Reply by Timothy Swanson
- Christian Fundamentalism’s Grand Illusion by Chuck Queen
- What does it mean to be a Bible believer? by Chuck Queen
- Have We Made the Bible Into an Idol? by Rachel Held Evans
- Loving the Bible for what it is, not what I want it to be by Rachel Held Evans
- Fundamentalism and the ‘Clear Teaching of Scripture’ by Richard Beck
- Is The Bible Lying? by Dan Wilkinson
- How Jesus Cherry-Picks the Bible by Matthew Distefano
- Toward a Systematic Theology of Love by April Kelsey
- Proverbs: Principles, Not Promises by joantheexpatriatebaptist
- 5 Things You’re Reading, When You’re Reading The Bible by Benjamin Corey
- The Bible is Not for the Lazy by Jim Kelsey
- A Proverb is a Proverb… by Laura
Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
- Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy with Exposition explains what most prominent inerrantist theologians and Church leaders understand by the term ‘inerrancy’.
Jesus without Baggage exists to assist and support those questioning beliefs they have been taught in fundamentalist, traditional evangelical, and other groups. If you know someone who might find Jesus without Baggage helpful, feel free to send them the introductory page: About Jesus without Baggage.
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Pages in this series:
Resources on Angry, Violent, Vindictive God
Resources on Inerrancy and Reading the Bible
Resources on Hell and Conditional Immortality
Resources on Legalism, Sin, and Salvation
Resources on Gays and the Church
Resources on Christian Patriarchy, Abuse, and Extreme Fundamentalism
Resources on Young Earth Creationism and Evolution
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Jesus Without Baggage 
The bible contains contradictions, so to believe that it is inerrant is to believe that God contradicts Himself. Why would He do such a thing? The contradictions might be the origin of almost all of the divisions and schisms that have occurred in the ‘church’. However, that is probably because those who have caused the divisions have not been listening to the Holy Spirit, and so have not had the authority that they have claimed to have.
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Here’s a link that shares how some people approach the Bible. “Atheists and fundamentalists each tend to read the Bible in the same wooden, overly literalistic manner. The difference is that atheists reject what they read in that manner, while fundamentalists believe it.”
“All Christians pick and choose which portions of the they interpret Bible literally, progressive Christians simply admit this and share how we discern.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogerwolsey/2014/01/16-ways-progressive-christians-interpret-the-bible/
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Thanks for sharing, Roger.
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Christ Himself never denied being Jewish (and in fact at one point implied that He came for the Jews alone, though this was changed/abrogated at least at the Pentecost and possibly earlier, with the weeping woman).
Point is, modern scholarship has shown that most of the Old Testament probably never happened. Not just the seven-day Creation, but things like the Exodus, the conquering of Canaan by the Israelites, etc. Even God the Father has been shown to have evolved, as it were, from the proto-Semititc deity El.
I guess my point is, Christianity seems like something I would like, but since Jesus was God and would therefore presumably know the truth of things, the fact that He accepted Jewish religion and history as basically true makes it difficult for me to accept His divinity.
I’m not trying to be argumentative; please forgive me if I sound that way. Christianity as a religion and system of ethics is very appealing to me, but I can’t get past this one point: that Christ accepted as true things that we know were not, and framed his ministry against a God that we know now was simply one specific incarnation of the father god from the Semitic pantheon.
I would like, truly, to be able to see a way around this.
PS> I appreciate your blog. It’s very interesting. Thank you.
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Hello Somebody! I like your name; it seems mysterious and intriguing. I certainly understand your issue (unless I have misunderstood it):
If Jesus was God and knew everything, and yet he accepted things from the Old Testament that we have good reason to dismiss, then how can we have confidence in such a person no matter how appealing he might be?
I think this is a very valid and critical question. And the premise the question is based upon (that Jesus was God and knew the truth of everything) is, indeed, one that many believers assume; I used to understand it that way myself many years ago. However, I think there are major flaws in the premise.
The first flaw is that Jesus was ‘God’. Jesus certainly was not the Father and, to whatever extent he had a God nature, he did not play the role of ‘God’ in any way during his human life. Instead, his role was as the son of God; while he was led by the Father and given the authority to represent him, he was at the same time human and in many ways a person of his own human time and culture. He was, as you say, very Jewish because he was a Jew born into Jewish culture.
This leads to the second flaw in the premise–that Jesus knew the truth of everything. We should not imagine that baby Jesus woke up in the manger, looked around, and said. “Well here I am; the plan can now get underway!” He was a baby. He had to develop and mature, and along the way the realization developed that he was the son of God with a mission to bring the good news of God to the people of Earth. He did not know everything, but he knew about the Father and what he wanted him to reveal to the people about the Father’s nature and the inauguration of the kingdom of God.
Does this help at all? Let me know, and also share any other aspects of this issue that concerns you. And I am glad you think the blog is interesting–thank you.
Have a great day, Somebody Else! I look forward to hearing from you. ~Tim
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I believe that the original writings were inerrant. It is the majority of the translations that have the errors. Even the Passion (TPT) Translators who considered the fact that those in NT biblical times spoke Koine Greek (not modern) have errors in their version.
TPT still uses the word hell (a place where sinners burn eternally)… even tho, as you reiterate, there will be no eternal suffering. However, Youngs Literal Translation does not use the word.
In Romans 1, Paul was NOT talking about homosexuality. He was talking about what the Roman higher-ups were doing to children and women. In those days women and children… especially little boys… were used by officials for their own lusts. What is described in this chapter is how these people (slave women and children) were forced and used by governing officials. Where it speaks about sexual conduct the original wording refers to intercourse… and since women cannot have intercourse with one another… IMHO it was not referring to homosexuals, but those who forced and used women and boys for their own gratification.
Paul was talking about Roman society and how decadent it had become. Then in Romans 2 it immediately says “Therefore”… which means the 1st chapter was ‘there for’ the following reason that is stated in chap 2, which he loudly exclaims is that those who point at others must be careful… as what they are judging others for they are doing themselves or doing something worse!!
SO the whole REAL reason for Romans 1 & 2 is to deal with the hearts of people who are pointing at others.
I also do not believe the (original) scriptures had contradictions. Just because it appears to does not mean it does. But I guess this is for another time :)….
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