Inerrancy and Textual Variatians in the Scriptures

One aspect of the argument made against the Christian position of the Scriptural errancy is that is the Biblical Scriptures are found to be wrong on smaller details (such as dates, numbers, historical or scientific facts), then such a finding casts doubt upon the legitimacy of the longer details of the Scriptures as a whole. However, such an argument could be similarly applied to the known and universally agreed upon existence of textual variances in ALL the known Scriptural documents. Yet, the existence of these textual variances does not cast any such serious about the reliability of the Scriptural message (in either parts or whole) for evangelical, inerrantist scholars.

I bring this analogy up not because I desire to convince anyone that the Scripture are errant. I myself do not hold to that position; rather, I believe that the original documents of the Scriptures are inerrant. Of course, my own interpretation of the doctrine of inerrancy can be somewhat at variance with most of the conservatives with whom I associate and fellowship. Furthermore, because I believe I have a fairly accurate understanding of what many Christian believers mean when they refer to themselves as “errantists” or even understand the reasons why many Christian believers refuse to adopt the designation of “inerrancy”, I often defend various “errantists” for various and always particular reasons. Such a defense would thus categorize me as a “moderate” in the label-making department Paul Pressler (see A Hill on Which to Die, x.). However, since I neither care what Judge Pressler thinks about this matter nor even believe him to be any sort of learned authority about subject of “Scriptural inerrancy”, I am most dutifully self-described as a conservative, evangelical Christian who holds to the label of “inerrantist”.

Therefore, I bring up this analogy in order to spread ecumenical tolerance among the various Christian factions. I bring up this analogy in order to soften the minds and hearts of my fellow conservative, evangelical Christians by introducing to them a palatable reason why some Christians can honestly and faithfully hold to the position of “Scriptural errancy”.

Allow me to paraphrase Emil Brunner's illustration about the errancy of Scripture. It's like hearing Carouso singing on a phonograph. We hear a scratch here or there, a little white noise as they say today, but through it all is the unmistakable voice of the Master (see The Christian Doctrine of God, vol. 1: 107-113.)

I have often heard this illustration denounced and mocked by evangelical pastors and professors (mainly the latter). But could not such illustration also be made to bolster the existence of the textual variances in the Scriptural documents?

Allow me to make such thoughts more personal:

Recall the “King James Only” Christians and other Fundamentalists whose blind and unthinking approaches to their Faith practice excludes any hint that there could ever be any textual variances in the Scriptures: “GOD WOULD NOT ALLOW IT!”

Recall your own first belief about the nature of the Bible. Recall your first reaction when told by someone that the various documents of the Bible do not agree with each other 100% of the time. Did you believe it? Did you think that the people who believe this are liberals? Did you think that they could not possibly be Christians? How did you finally come to accept this view as true, if you have in fact done so?

Thus I think that we need to be quite tolerant of those who hold to “Scriptural errancy”. We need to give grace to those who have incorrect theology because 1) we all once had a theological viewpoint that was proven to be wrong and 2) we all currently have a theological viewpoint that will be proven to be wrong.

More importantly, we need to give grace to those who have incorrect theology because God gave US grace when we had and have incorrect theology.

See also:

Inerrancy and the Historical Veracity of Literary Scripture

Inerrant Art

Inerrancy and the SBC

The Heighth of Goliath