Debates on inerrancy tend to rest on two opposing principles. Inerrantists proclaim a ‘high view of Scriptures’ to accent Scriptures’ truthful nature. Scholars denying inerrancy, especially those of a historical-critical persuasion, emphasize having a view of Scriptures rooted in how the text behaves. Such debates often end in a quagmire: the two principles are incommensurable since they rest on different systems of value-judgment.
I’d like to approach this issue differently. These two perspectives, despite their superficial disparity, make a foundational assumption about truth, namely, they both assume that truth is correspondence to an external reality.
For inerrantists, the Bible speaks truth because it corresponds to the world as it presents itself. If the book of Joshua speaks of conquest across Canaan, it must have happened as a fact of history. Of course, the inerrantist follows this statement with his all-time favourite clarification: that facts will be taken as history if the textual genre is history, and taken as poetry if the genre is poetry. This clarification, however, does not distract from the fact of truth being taken as correspondence. The inerrantist does not see poetry’s literary beauty as a truth in-itself, but attempts to ‘exposit’ a truthful principle from the poetry that is consistent with the rest of Scriptures (or at least the inerrantist’s theological worldview). This is another assumption behind inerrancy, that truth is necessarily propositional. It consists of statements of facts that correspond to reality. That is why statements on inerrancy tend towards a format of ‘we affirm; we deny’ propositions.
For historical-critical scholars, the Bible must correspond to how Scriptures behaves as a text. For instance, if one finds etiological markers in Joshua 9, these literary features signal to readers that the text is not straightforward history, but an attempt to – for social, religious or political reasons – explain why a certain people, such as the Gideonites, are menial labourers for the Israelites (I’ve written more about this here). Such origin narratives are thus not necessarily intended to be factual. Critical scholars also engage in comparative studies between archaeology and Scriptural narratives. If the latter does not correspond to the former, then Scripture’s historicity is disputed.
Both inerrantist and critical approaches thus embed truth in the text itself. Consequently, Scriptures can speak no more truth than what is present in its contents. The inerrantist’s well-intended fervour to justify Scriptures ends up becoming apologetics detached from the march of knowledge. The critical scholar’s clinical dissection of Scriptures results in irrelevance to most lay Christians. Both approaches therefore resign Scriptures to silence in all time periods save the ancient context in which it was written.
Experiential Truths in Scriptures
A friend recommended an amusing yet insightful article from Christianity Today on the hermeneutical flip-flops of ChatGPT when AI interprets Scriptures. The article concludes:
In a word, will we outsource our understanding of the Scriptures? Or will we choose to live together, seeking the meaning of these texts through our history and our common commitment to God and thus teaching them to those who come after us (Matt. 28:20)?
Note the emphasis here. A Christian community does not seek the meaning of Scriptures through ‘right interpretation’ as inerrantists assert, or through ‘right context’ as critical scholars demand. Rather it seeks meaning through “our history and our common commitment to God”. Knowledge derived from Scriptures is experiential in nature. It is what the people of God had struggled through, and hence passages of Scriptures resonates its truths in fresh ways across time. An inerrantist or critical scholar could read the Genesis narratives on Hagar’s flight from domestic abuse in all the right historical and cultural contexts. But how much richer and meaningful, would it be for someone who left an abusive spouse, to read the text and see Hagar calling God ‘El Roi‘, which means ‘the God who sees’?
Aesthetic Truths in Scriptures
The second kind of truth that inerrantists and their scholar critics often miss is the aesthetic dimension of Scriptural truth. Admittedly, there are scholars such as Robert Alter, who brought this out beautifully in this literary masterpiece of a translation. They are, however, in the minority, and their views rarely inflect the debates on inerrancy. Consider this risque excerpt from verse 6 of the Song of Songs:
Do not look on me for being dark,
for the sun has glared on me.
My mother’s sons were incensed with me,
they made me a keeper of the vineyards.
Mt own vineyard I have not kept.
(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Song of Songs translation and commentary)
Instead of an expository or critical approach, Alter parses the literary nuances of the Hebrew text. The text is extremely subtle. She calls her brothers ‘my mother’s sons’, suggesting a strained relationship. The vineyard, being a euphemism for her virginity, explains why the brothers were angry; she had not kept her virgnity and hence her brothers punished her with a peasant’s task.
Immediately, such a reading poses a problem for the inerrantist. The prose is defiant and unrepentant of her sexual promiscuity. How is the inerrantist able to derive godly principles consistent with traditional Christian ethics? One approach is to treat it as allegory of Christ’s relationship with the Church. By doing so, erotic love is replaced by reverential love, ignoring the text’s literary features. An Evangelical friend once even suggested that the entire Song of Songs is a lesson: since the lovers never seem to commit to marriage at the end of the poem, the Bible is ‘warning’ of the meaninglessness of frivolous love! If so, then why the subtle eroticism of the poetry, with no sign of condemnation in the text at all?
Perhaps the Song of Songs is not teaching propositional truths at all. Its truthful qualities rests in its literary qualities, in the same way a painting by Van Gogh or a symphony by Mahler speaks to us. Its eroticism evokes the human experience, but yet is so much more vivid when presented as art.
Generating Truths from Scriptures
Lastly, Scriptural truth is generative. By this I mean that the Bible’s truths are not merely located by the author’s intent, but by the reception of Scriptures by the Christian communities across the ages. I anticipate an objection from both inerrantists and critical scholars here. Inerrantists, especially of the Evangelical-expository variety, would call audience reception of Scriptures as ‘application’ rather than truth. Critical scholarship’s earlier methods also assume that the meaning of a text is located in the author’s intent or at least the cultural world it inhabits.
The problem with both approaches is that this is not how Scriptures interprets itself. Biblical intertextuality as exercised by biblical writers often creates new meanings when quoting and alluding to older texts (I’ve written more about this here). A brief example would be Matthew 2 when quoting Hosea 11. In Hosea, the ‘son’ refers to Israel, and its context is about God’s historical grace towards Israel as He led them out of Egypt. Most strikingly, Hosea’s literary features show no predictive elements, contrary to popular belief that the Old Testament quotations referenced in the New are ‘predictive prophecies’. When Matthew quotes Hosea, layers of meaning are added. The Son now refers to Jesus. Instead of God’s historical grace for Israel, it is now a foreshadowing of future grace for all humanity. Hosea’s text thus gains a meaning beyond its original author’s intent. Scriptural truth, through the intertextuality deployed by later authors, gains a generative quality.
Generative truth-making did not end with the authors of the New Testament. When we read about the liberation theology of the 1960s, the ecotheology of the 21st century, or even the contemporary progressive Christian movement, we are encountering a Christian community that revisits and refreshes Scriptures in the light of changing societal, cultural, and political landscapes. Truth in Scriptures is therefore not a treasure trove contained within the text, to be dug out through the ‘right’ interpretative key. Rather, truth is like a coruscant gem, constantly refracting light differently depending on your cultural angle relative to Scriptures.
The inerrantist cannot make an accusation of revisionism. If the inerrantist reads church history, one can find numerous tradition-minded movements who engage in the same act of reading Scriptures through the lens of their own context, including the very theologians who penned the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, since they were opposed to the dominance of 19th-century liberalism. Consider Article XII:
We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or
redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further
deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the
teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.
The statement here already betrays a modernist assumption about Scriptures that is not found in Scriptures: that the conducting of history is about factual recounting, when ancient historiography may not have such an over-riding intent. It is also anachronistic: science as a modern discourse did not exist in biblical times, nor did Scriptures proclaim its truthfulness in such a format. Lastly, nowhere did Scriptures proclaim its own inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement.
This is not to critique the Chicago Statement, or any other form of inerrancy. But even inerrantists themselves must acknowledge that their beliefs rest upon layering new truths upon the text that is not inherent to the text. The modernism of liberal theology so critiqued by inerrantists, is an unconscious assumption inerrantists themselves hold.
Conclusions: Let Scriptures Speak
The problem with inerrancy is not that it is too conservative. Rather, it is not conservative enough. It fails to conserve enough of Scriptures to let the holy text’s words speak its truths. I’ve attended many churches which limit Scriptural exegesis to expository preaching. The text says only what it says through the historical-grammatical method. The truths derived are often plain, mechanical, and lack resonance with lived experience. We do not sit in meditation, marvelling at the poetic masterpieces of Job, Psalms and Ecclesiastes. We reduce our Christian sentiments on climate change, social activism, cosmopolitan loneliness and the Russo-Ukraine war to merely ‘application’ of Scriptures.
Critical scholarship fares little better. It basks in arrogance at its more historically-informed approach to the Bible, but resigns it to irrelevance in the modern world. Since Scriptural truths are imprisoned by the cultural world it birthed from, it is only a curiosity for ancient historians, linguists and archaeologists. Inerrantists are not wrong to critique this ‘low view’ of Scriptures.
Perhaps the problem is neither inerrancy nor its discontents, but the nature of this debate itself.
The Stranger Beyond the Gate 