Understanding Inerrancy

Our understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy must be resolved in the accompaniment of an extended analysis of the Scripture concerning itself. The following is an attempt to define that analysis through the articles of the ICBI. (The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy)
It has been said that the word inerrancy is a shibboleth for Christian orthodoxy and the evangelical community. It provides a certain clarity to ones belief system and allows evangelicals to quickly discern how others view Scripture, i.e. do we share the same foundation with regard to the inspiration and the authority of Scripture?
In October of 1978 the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy met in Chicago. At its conclusion it issued a statement that included a preamble, short statement, and nineteen articles of affirmation and denial. Materials prepared and submitted to the meeting for consideration came from Drs. Edmund P. Clowney (the former President of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, PA.), J. I. Packer (Professor of Systematic Theology at Regency College in Vancouver B.C.), and R.C. Sproul (chairman of Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, FL.). This information was discussed, reviewed, and edited by dozens of evangelical scholars in attendance from many evangelical denominations worldwide. A draft committee composed of Drs. Clowney, Geisler, Heohner, Hoke, Nicole, Packer, Radmacher, and Sproul labored to produce a document that would be acceptable to the vast majority of the participants. The document was left nearly as it was received with only minor editing and two hundred and forty of the two hundred and sixty-eight delegates became signatories to the nineteen articles. It is this document that will be the focus of this paper.
I will examine this document from the view of authority, revelation, and inspiration, all of which reflect on the doctrine of inerrancy. I will not examine all nineteen articles, only those pertinent to the discussion and purview of this paper. The articles are written both in affirmation and denial. The via negativa or the “way of negation” exhibited in the denial portion of the articles is crucial in understanding the exact intent and meaning of each.
In the past the church could get away with short concise definitions or statements to define its doctrine. It could talk about the infallibility of the Bible, the inerrancy of the Bible, the inspiration of the Bible, the verbal inspiration of the Bible, or the verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible. The church used these short hand phrases to capture a very complex doctrine, and in today’s theological milieu, these are found to be controversial and confusing to many scholars. In the last two hundred years so much criticism has surfaced in the Christian community by scholarship, that they have been found inadequate.
“The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are God’s words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God.”
The issue of authority is really what the Bible is all about. From where does the authority come for the Christian life? This authority is defined, at least in part, by what I “ought” to do or not do. However, when we use the word “ought” we are defining a moral imperative and the first question that is going to be asked is, who says? Who says I “ought” to tithe my money? Who says I “should” repent of my sins? Who says that Jesus was the Son of God? Who is it that is imposing obligations upon me? Who or what is it that has the ultimate authority to bind my conscience?
Historically the Christian Church has agreed that God has the right to bind the conscience, to issue commands such as “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not.” The question historically has been does any one else have the right to bind the conscience? Traditionally the Roman Catholic Church has maintained that it, as an institution, has the right as well. In fact this was, to a great degree, at the heart of the Reformation. In Aristotelian terms of form and matter, the matter, the stuff of the Reformation was Sola Fide, but the formal disputation was the authority of the Scripture, Sola Scriptura – by the Scriptures alone. Now the question is what by the Scriptures alone? At the Diet of Worms when Martin Luther was asked to recant of his teachings he answered, “Unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant, for my conscience is held captive by the Word of God and to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.” Luther was declaring Sola Scriptura, that the Scriptures alone had the right to bind the conscience. Martin Luther recognized even before the trial at Worms, in his disputations with Cajetan at Augsburg and Eck at Leipzig, that church councils made mistakes. Not only did the councils err, but the Pope did as well. Calvin said, “councils disagreed with councils…And there is no ground for anyone to murmur against me that of the two that disagree one is not legitimate.” Christians, in either case, at least believe that God, who is the supreme author of the universe, the Sovereign One, the Lord of the creation has the right to issue commands and to bind our conscience as the ultimate absolute authority.
Article I: Authority – “We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any other human source.”

This affirmation, at its roots, goes back to the Thesis that Martin Luther nailed to the bulletin board door at the Church of Wittenburg in October of 1517 and the events following. The Scripture and the Scripture alone has the authority to bind the conscience and impose obligations, ultimately. Why did Luther make the declaration at Worms? It wasn’t because he thought that the prophets, teachers, and apostles of the Bible, in and of themselves, had the authority to bind the conscience. It was because in the Bible he knew he was dealing with more than just the opinions and insights of Daniel or Peter or Paul, he was dealing with the Word of God. How else can God bind the conscience except by commands and how can He give commands except by verbal communication? The Protestant Church tacitly assumed in the sixteenth century that the Bible was the Word of God. The Bible cannot be proved to be God’s Word by appeal to a higher authority. The Bible is self-attesting. For if an appeal is to be made to some other authority, or to a higher authority, it relinquishes God’s Word as the highest authority to those things to which the appeal has been made. It must then be assumed that the thing to which the appeal was made is of higher authority than the Word of God.
Today however, this is very much in debate, i.e. whether the Scriptures are just from primitive men or whether they are, in fact, the Word of God.
In the days of the Reformation the Church of Rome and the churches that parted from it, ascribed Divine authority to Scripture. In spite of the fact that Roman Catholics and Protestants agreed on the principle of authority, they were not altogether agreed as to the nature of that authority.
The Roman Catholic Church has maintained that the Bible is the Word of God and thereby has the authority to bind the conscience, but according to them it isn’t the only authority. The church through its councils and traditions has the right to do the same. It claims after all that if it weren’t for the church we wouldn’t have the Bible. The liberal argument says that the church’s authority establishes the Bible’s authority. “It has been a continuous assertion of the Roman Catholic Church that since the church established the extent and scope of the New Testament and Old Testament canon, there is a certain sense in which the authority of the Bible is subordinate to and dependent upon the church’s approval.” It is principally these issues of the relationship of church and canon and multiple sources of special revelation that are considered in the first two articles of the convention. The church does have authority, but it does not have ultimate authority. Such was the fundamental contention of Martin Luther. These issues have an important effect on the doctrine of inerrancy because all men err.
The key word in the affirmation section of Article I is the word “received.” This word is of historical significance because in the church councils that considered the canon’s adoption, the Latin word recipimus was used. This word means, “we receive.” The councils received the books to be included in the canon and consequently did not create or establish them. “It is clear that the church was not declaring certain books to be authoritative by virtue of the church’s prior authority, but that the church was simply acknowledging the Word of God to be the Word of God.” By using this word recipimus, they were merely acknowledging and submitting to what they already regarded to be the Word of God. If there is any double meaning in the affirmation of Article I, it is removed and made clear in the denial.
The article does more than just answer the question of the authority of the Bible, it is also answers the question of where the authority originates. If the Scripture comes to me and I recognize it as the Word of God, does my recognition of it in any way add to the authority of it? No, I am merely submitting to the authority already vested in it. It is abundantly clear that the New Testament documents from the first century functioned as canonical literature. The internal evidences given in 1 Timothy 5:18 and 2 Peter 3:16 and the fact that the early church fathers and bishops were quoting from the Scriptures and from the apostles all demands we recognize that from the earliest days the church had a functioning, working, operating Bible.
Article II: Scripture and Tradition – “We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.”

Article II reaffirms Article I and reinforces Martin Luther’s declaration that began the Reformation. From the church councils and from the Council of Trent, it is clear that the Roman Catholic Church has two sources of revelation. The Bible is one source and the Pope and church councils are another. A question that had to be dealt with by the ICBI is that there are other important written documents in the life of the church. For example creeds and confessions play an important role within certain denominational communities and they do have a normative authority within a particular Christian body of believers. However, it is and has been the position of the evangelical community that creeds and confessions are fallible. Therefore, even as Article II does recognize other written norms it boldly declares them to be subordinate and dependent upon the supreme written norm, which is the Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture has been called the “norm of norms, yet without norm.” This is not to say that as Christians we are not to submit ourselves to our own church confessions and other ecclesiastical bodies, but whatever the authorities are, they never carry with them the weight and authority of God Himself. All authority under heaven comes from and is dependent upon God Almighty. It is He alone who has the intrinsic authority or right to bind our consciences. It is that authority that we find in the pages of Scripture. This issue of authority is at the heart of any serious study of the Bible and inerrancy, but not for doctrine’s sake alone or because the church is interested in having a “paper Pope.”
The next three articles deal with the relationship of Scripture to revelation. They guard against a view that would decrease, lessen or change the nature of the Bible as God’s written revelation.
Article III defines the Scripture as written revelation and not merely a record of revelation or a witness to revelation, but revelation itself down to the very words and propositions.
Article III: Revelation – “We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God. We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.”

It seems this article was written to condemn “neo-orthodox” theology and to confirm that the Bible is objective written revelation. Revelation is defined as that which is revealed or communicated to us by an unveiling. It is that which would be hidden or obscured from us through the normal means of knowledge. Christianity is at its core a revealed religion. God must, in some sense, open His mouth and reveal to us through special revelation the information that He wants to make known to us and which would otherwise be hidden. “The revelation of the word of God to man is absolutely and simply necessary for Salvation.”
There has been considerable debate in the twentieth century regarding a dynamic view (as opposed to a static view) of Scripture led by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. This view entertains the idea that “authority of Scripture is functioning in a dynamic relationship of Word and hearing of the Word,” i.e. in an event. They maintain that revelation only occurs when an inward, subjective existential event takes place in response to the reading of the Bible. It (Scripture) then literally becomes the Word of God in the event but is not in and of itself revelation. It is only a witness to revelation. They consider Christ to be the only true revelation and by reading the Scripture we encounter Him through the working of the Holy Spirit and thereby receive revelation through the event. Brunner called it “truth as encounter.” At the moment of the event, the Word becomes revelation. The question I want to ask is what is it when it’s not becoming? Is it true or not true? As a result of this thought, it has been called, in theological language, “event revelation” as opposed to “propositional revelation.” In this “event revelation” we, the readers, are left to interpret the meaning, significance, and the content of the event. The critic of inerrancy then argues that, yes, God did act in history. The Bible is indeed a record of the activity, but the interpretation of that activity is left to human fallible agents and they record their own experience, interpretation, and meaning of the event. This view opens up all doctrinal issues to subjectivity, revision, and reinterpretation. It throws the church into the middle of a theological crisis, which is exactly where we find ourselves today.
Christianity has historically believed in propositional revelation. It is propositional because it communicates a content, i.e. God’s Word, which may be understood by propositions. This is precisely what Article III is describing in its affirmation, i.e. it is revelation! The Bible itself is objectively verbal propositional revelation from God. The Bible is a witness to revelation, but it is not merely a witness. It interprets God’s activity in history through words.
The words “in its entirety” are important because they transmit the idea that the whole of Scripture is revelation, from cover to cover. This article rejects “degree inspiration or “partial inspiration” leaving only a plenary view intact.
The denial portion is self-explanatory and discounts human response as necessary for Scripture to be revelation. Whether or not I respond doesn’t alter the fact that it is revelation. “The Bible, then embodies truth that comes to us from beyond the scope of our own abilities. It comes from God Himself.”
Article IV: Human Language – “We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation. We deny that human language is so limited by our creaturliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration. “

One of the most notable attacks in the twentieth century on Biblical inerrancy is based on the limitations of human language.
Going back to the Reformation we find the doctrine of the “incomprehensibility of God” which means that none of us has the ability to have a total and exhaustive knowledge of God. The church recognized historically that there is an element about God that is different from us. He is higher than we are. He is transcendent. He is not to be identified with a human being. However, although God is different from man, he is not utterly different, and as Karl Barth said, “wholly other.” If God were really totally and utterly dissimilar, there would be no point of commonality or reference point for communication. From this theory of Barth’s came the “God talk” crises that said that all of our language about God is meaningless. Only languages that can be verified through our senses are meaningful. This is what Article IV is refuting. Though our language about God is never fully comprehensive and exhaustive in its ability to harness eternal truths, nevertheless, it is adequate to give us truth without falsehood. Although human language is limited it doesn’t necessarily follow that it must necessarily distort truth. Because of Divine Inspiration and superintendence of the Bible by the Holy Spirit, the writings of the Bible are free from the normal tendencies of fallen men to distort truth. We must remember that we were created in God’s image, the Imago Dei. There is, in fact, a point of contact between man and God. Therefore, communication is possible as it was built into creation. All language about God is anthropomorphic because we can not escape the boundaries of human language. We can’t escape its boundaries because we’re human. Humans speak anthropomorphically. Romans 3:4 says God is true though all men are liars, but though all men are liars it doesn’t necessarily follow that all men lie all the time or that all men always error. That would be an error of logical inference. We can conclude then, that human language is adequate as a vehicle for Divine revelation. The reason the church believes in the inerrancy of Scripture is not because they are betting on the odds of the brilliance and genius of the human authors, but because of inspiration. The Bible claims to be more than simple human opinion or activity, it claims Divine origin through human agency as seen in 1 Peter 1:21. It is because of the authors’ superintendence by the Holy Spirit that makes possible the church’s claim of inerrancy.
Article V: Progressive Revelation – “We affirm that God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive. We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.”

This simply states that New Testament revelation is more full and complete than that of the Old Testament. New Testament revelation is complimentary to Old Testament revelation and never contradicts it. The affirmation simply says that all that has been revealed about God in the totality of the Bible is not found, for instance, in the book of Genesis.
The denial portion maintains the Scripture is without contradiction. The Bible is to be understood as the Old Testament giving light to the New Testament and visa versa. The two Testaments are complimentary. The New Testament builds upon the Old Testament.
With regard to new revelation, it doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit is no longer at work or that He has stopped leading His people today. It does mean that since the close of the canon no new normative revelation has been given. What this means is that no revelation has been given that justifies inclusion in the canon of Holy Scripture since the first century and the death of the last apostle.
The following three articles need to be taken together from the ICBI document.
Article VI: Verbal Plenary Inspiration – “We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration. We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed by the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.”
Article VII: Inspiration – “We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of Divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us. We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.”
Article VIII: Human Authors – “We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.”

Charles Hodge said, “the infallibility and Divine authority of the Scriptures are due to the fact that they are the word of God; and they are the word of God because they were given by inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”
Sometimes there is confusion about the word inspiration. We tend to think of inspired poetry or inspired artwork where the author or artist receives a flash of insight or creativity that makes the end result exceptional. When we talk Biblically about inspiration we are not referring to exalted states of human insight or consciousness. We are talking about a Divine operation. 2 Timothy 3:16 is a vital passage of Scripture that affirms the inspiration of the Bible. This passage affirms the Bible is the product of Divine inspiration and that the Holy Spirit’s work extends through the human writers to each section and word in the autographs. Although it is inspired down to the very words, as it says in Article VI, it denies the dictation theory of inspiration in Article VIII.
The issue of dictation has been a problem historically in the church. “In the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church did use the word dictante, meaning ‘dictating,’ with respect to the Spirit’s work in the giving of the ancient texts.” John Calvin also spoke of the authors of Scriptures as amanuenses or secretaries. Also there appear to be in Scripture some places where some form of dictation was evident such as the revelations given by God to the prophets, e.g. “Thus sayeth the Lord.” This theory is not borne out in Scripture because the authors literary styles, vocabulary choices, and personalities are evident. Historically the word “dictation” references the fact that inspiration shows some analogy to a man issuing a message that is put together by a secretary. The analogy points to the question of origin. The source of the Scriptural message is from God rather than from a human beginning. The source of Scripture is the mind of God.
The mode or method of inspiration is a mystery and is left that way in the Article VII. The classical definition is that inspiration is the superintendence of the Holy Spirit upon the individual authors so that they wrote and recorded without error the revelation of God to human kind in the words of the autographs.
Article VII amplifies Article VI. The human authors are referenced here as human instruments by which God’s Word comes to us. The Holy Scriptures have been called the Verbum Dei, the Word of God or even the Vox Dei, the voice of God. There is a human agency through which the Divine Word is communicated so that the end product is God’s.
The word theopneustos in 2 Timothy 3:16 means literally “God breathed” out. It is a reference to God’s breathing out His word rather than breathing in some kind of effect upon human writers. Therefore, the term expiration is more accurate than the term inspiration with respect to the origin of Scripture. The ICBI document makes no pretense to define the “how” of Divine inspiration.
Article VIII refers to the human authors and their humanity. It clearly holds a denial that the authors were mechanistic or robot-like machines, mere automatons. Analysis of Scripture declares their different personalities and writing styles. What is overcome by superintendence is not their individuality, but rather their propensity to distort and record falsehood or error.
Articles IX through XII deal with the matter of greatest importance in the paper, inerrancy. Dr.Wayne Grudem of Trinity defines it by stating that “inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.”
Article IX: Inerrancy – “We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write. We deny that the finitude or falleness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.”

This article dictates that Scripture is true and trustworthy without being false, deceptive, or fraudulent in what it communicates. The Biblical authors were not omniscient. Though the writings were inspired, this doesn’t impart omniscience on the authors or discount that they themselves were fallible. The information they communicate is not totally comprehensive, but it is true and without error in what has been penned. John Calvin stated that the apostles “were sure and genuine scribes of the Holy Spirit, and their writings are therefore to be considered oracles of God.”
The denial has to do with man’s finite and fallen nature. The phrase “to err is human” is technically a false statement. One doesn’t have to error to be human. Karl Barth leveled the charge of Biblical docetism against the advocates of inerrancy claiming the authors would have lost their humanity in order to gain the characteristic of infallibility. This statement is patently false or we would have difficulty explaining Adam’s humanity before the fall and Christ’s humanity in the incarnation.
Article X: The Autographs – “We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained form available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. We deny any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.”

This article is self-explanatory. We know through the science of textual criticism that we have available to us in our translations ninety-nine percent of the text and one hundred percent of the doctrine. Though we do not possess the originals, we have such well-reconstructed translations and copies, and such great numbers of them, that we can say with certainty that our Bible faithfully represents the originals. It is well to note that no essential doctrine is in question or has been in doubt. If the original text is inerrant then we are under divine obligation to obey the text. On the contrary, if the original text were found to be errant then we would be under no moral obligation to submit to its teaching.
Article XI: Infallibility –“We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses. We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertion. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.”

The definition for infallibility in this paper is the inability to err. It has to do with ability or the potential for error. It is essentially a stronger word than inerrancy. While inerrancy means without error (in actuality), infallibility means unable or incapable of error. It implies truthfulness and reliability of all matters that Scripture addresses.
Some theologians today maintain that the Bible is infallible but not inerrant. The denial argues against this as impossible. Using the above definitions it is impossible for something to be infallible and at the same time errant. To hold to this disjunction is an obvious contradiction. These two words are often used interchangeably but technically their meanings are different. Something that is fallible could theoretically be inerrant, but that which is infallible could not at the same time, or in any way, be errant.
Article XII: Inerrancy of the Whole – “We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit. 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 hypothesis about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.”

This article would be a good definition for the theological description of “full inerrancy” found in Erickson’s book Christian Theology. He states:
“that the Bible is completely true. While the Bible does not primarily aim to give scientific and historical data, such scientific and historical assertions as it does make are fully true. There is no essential difference between this position and absolute inerrancy in terms of their view of the religious/theological/spiritual message…Full inerrancy regards these references as phenomenal; that is, they are reported the way they appear to the human eye. They are not necessarily exact; rather, they are popular descriptions, often involving general references or approximations.”

Article XII declares clearly and plainly the inerrancy of sacred Scripture. In the affirmation, inerrancy is defined by the way of negation. It defines limitations or parameters that we cannot violate, i.e. inerrant Scripture must be free of “falsehood, fraud, and deceit.” The denial rejects those who would limit inerrancy or infallibility to a particular message, area, or part of the Bible. The limited inerrantists have tried diligently to separate doctrinal and theological issues from history but the effort is futile. For instance, how does one separate the historical event of the cross from the cosmic act of redemption? To do this would be a totally subjective endeavor with monumental theological consequences.
With regard to science, the second denial rejects science as having authority over Scripture. That is not to deny the importance of science or to say that science can not aid the church in understanding Scripture, but rather that it has a secondary position with regard to Holy Scripture. An example of how science did help the church interpret Scripture correctly is found in the dispute between geocentricity and heliocentricity during the Middle Ages. Galileo was condemned as a heretic for supporting heliocentricity. Upon later examination of overwhelming scientific evidence the church had to reexamine what Scripture really taught since there was no explicit teaching in Scripture of geocentricity. The entire belief by the church was based on Ecclesiastes 1:5, but it was discovered that Scripture was speaking in phenomenological language. The church corrected its earlier misinterpretation of God’s Word.
“It is simply a question of our using the increasing knowledge of physics or astronomy or biology or geology – whatever the science may be – to understand more perfectly what the Divine Author meant by the terms He caused the human authors to use when matters of this sort were being discussed.”

Therefore science can be helpful, but this does not give it the license to reinterpret Scripture capriciously or arbitrarily.
The last article to be included in this paper deals with truth, i.e. the real state of affairs.
Article XIII: Truth – “We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture. We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage and purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.”

All of the affirmations and denials of Article XIII correspond to and are in harmony with reality. Because the word inerrancy must be qualified, some critical scholars have moved to exclude it from our theological vocabulary, claiming it has “died the death of a thousand qualifications.” For those that see Scripture as God’s verbal plenary revelation, this word is a safeguard, a shibboleth against those who would attack the truthfulness of Scripture. Inerrancy speaks to the fact that the Bible does not violate its own principles and definition of truth.
“When we say that the truthfulness of Scripture ought to be evaluated according to its own standards that means that for Scripture to be true to its claim it must have an internal consistency compatible with the biblical concept of truth and that all the claims of the Bible must correspond with reality.”

The Scripture and inerrancy are not impaired by the occasional use of round numbers, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the accurate reporting of falsehoods, or the use of hyperbole. All of these literary devices are perfectly legitimate ways of honest communication and perfectly consistent with the Bible’s own view of truth. Different parallel accounts are not contradictory but rather complimentary. God, who speaks only truth, has inspired Holy Scripture in order to reveal Himself to the lost through His Son Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer, and Judge. The Bible is God’s witness to Himself.
All of Holy Scripture is God breathed and consequently without error in the autographa. Since it is all God breathed it is infallible and inerrant. Infallibility signifies that Scripture is unable to err and is neither misleading nor capable of being misled, thereby safeguarding that the Scripture is sure, safe, and reliable in all matters. Inerrancy signifies that the Scripture is free from all falsehood or mistakes, thereby safeguarding the truth of Scripture to be entirely accurate and trustworthy in all propositions down to the very words. In as much as Scripture is the product of a single Divine mind, interpretation must stay within the bounds of the analogy of Scripture, i.e. Scripture must interpret Scripture. We must consult all relevant passages on any given issue or doctrine to get the full council of God. The best theology is that which is in greatest harmony with all of Scripture.
2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correction, and training in righteousness.” (NIV) 1 John 2:20 says, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” (NIV) As Christians we know the truth, i.e. all of Scripture is inerrant just as the internal evidence implies. It’s not a human product with God’s assistance, but rather God’s product through the writers as instruments. Martin Luther said simply this, “you are so to deal with the Scriptures that you bear in mind that God Himself is saying this.” Plainly stated, what the Bible says, God says to His everlasting Glory! Can God make a mistake? Can He err? Luther acknowledged the Scripture to be the Word of God and infallibly true when he said, “as the Word says, so it must come to pass, although all the world, mind and understanding, and all things are against it.”