ver.: 08 March 2008
Your selection isn't infallible or inerrant, but it is yours to make. When speaking about the Bible, what's the meaning of:
Infallible : In its best sense, 'infallible' means that when the Bible is speaking the Good News of Christ and describing the character, vision and purpose of God, through the Holy Spirit's work it transcends the sin and spiritual flaws of its writers, of the media of communication (such as print or preaching), and of the readers/hearers.
According to the idea of infallibility, the Bible's Gospel message of God's love and forgiveness is not 'fallen' or corrupted by sin. The Bible becomes the way we find out that the 'fallen' human race is being restored and made worthwhile again through Christ. Fundamentalists overplay the term, saying that the Bible is infallible on every matter it covers, in just about all its uses. They usually use 'infallible' and 'inerrant' in tandem. Mainline Protestants choose not to use the term 'infallible'. Some of them (especially among US Presbyterians and the United Church of Christ, and most of those in the Westar bible-critical project) believe there is nothing in the Bible which escapes earthly corruption, so even each aspect of its Gospel message (such as the New Testament's answer on the cosmic role of Jesus of Nazareth) must pass the bar of human reason. This sounds fine to those who think open-mindedness and reasoning are all that matter, but the Scriptural message rather clearly says that some matters are simply too important and too true to waffle about. The Spirit inspired the writers so they would get these matters right no matter what other ideas or motives were floating through their minds. We are no more (and no less) infallible than they were. But why bother with the Bible if you'll disregard what it says, thinking you know best? And when you feel that it's right to discount or devalue Scripture's core themes and the narrative which carries them, are you really listening to it at all?
Evangelicals, Pentecostalists, and
many Lutherans and Anglicans are not willing to call
the Good News 'fallen', and hold to some limited form
of infallibility. Roman Catholics can speak of the
'infallibility' of the Bible, but only within the framework of
the historic Roman Church tradition and the God-guarded
teaching role of the Roman Church leadership ('magisterium').
The Eastern Orthodox don't think in any of these terms,
seeing the Bible and churchly tradition as one flowing stream
in which the Gospel message remains truthfully conveyed through
the work of the Spirit (a sort of limited 'infallibility', but
without a fallen 'magisterium' as its master). Postmodernist
Christians see 'infallibility' the same way they do
'inerrancy', as a relic of modernist/Enlightenment
thinking.
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You can also find a definition for 'infallible' in the dictionary.
Inerrant : In its best sense that's most in line with Christian tradition, it means that the Scriptures are always right (do not err) in fulfilling their purpose : revealing God, God's vision, God's purposes, and God's good news to us. The teachings of Scripture are not to be disregarded or tossed away as if they were a mistake. They must be dealt with straightforwardly, in a way which affects what we say and do as persons and as a body of believers.
Some Christians ('fundamentalists' or 'literalists') teach that the the Bible is without error in every way on all sorts of matters : chronology, history, biology, sociology, psychology, politics, physics, math, art, and so on. There can't be any mistakes in a divine work, fundamentalists say, for God is perfect and cannot lie. The idea of inerrancy is very ancient, even if the word 'inerrant' wasn't how they described it until the past two centuries. Though the literally-taken Bible is often more right than most scientists think it is, it is quite far from being an inerrant authority on such matters. It wasn't written to be that kind of an authority; that's not why it's there. It's a divine work, true, but it does not claim to be inerrantly dictated from on high, as is said to have happened with the Qur'an. The books of the Bible were written by divinely-inspired human beings for the good of other human beings. The Bible itself shows how the inerrant Spirit works through errant people, for that's the only kind of people there are. In a way, it is God's communication incarnated into the stuff of material earth -- pages and ink, literary forms, languages, and spoken words. This combination gives us a Bible that can be mistaken on matters which are not directly tied into what the Bible exists for. Because of the literalist misunderstanding of the Bible, 'mainline Protestants' (such as the Methodists, American Baptists, United Church, Anglicans, most Presbyterians, and most Lutherans) choose to reject the term. Perhaps they've overreacted, but it helps to set the record straight.
Many Evangelicals show a better understanding of the term in the Lausanne Covenant, which holds the Bible to be "without error in all that it affirms" (Sect. 2, The Authority And Power Of the Bible). This is the approach of the 'new breed' Pentecostalist churches and those in Africa; it's much like the view of the Lutherans in Australia and the Missouri Synod, the European Inner Missions, and (in practice) most of the 'church growth'-oriented community churches. However, these churches feel fundamentalism pulling them toward a larger realm for inerrancy. The term 'inerrant' is foreign to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, even though the idea behind it can be found in some parts of their traditions.
For postmodern Christians, the whole concept of inerrancy is 'foundationalist' (that is, that the framework of the Bible stands on something rational or demonstrable). Postmodernists reject foundationalism, holding that any philosophy, set of ideas, the Bible, or even life itself, can only have meaning as a part of the web or relational network of all life, truths, and facts. And their 'web of truth' is different than the rigid "modernist" form of truth which inerrantists speak of. That's all quite helpful in arguments about inerrancy that generate much more heat than light.
Yet, is it accurate to hold that philosophical differences, truth claims, or even factual conflicts simply 'dissolve away', so that they don't really matter or mean anything? At what point does the claim to a 'different kind of truth' become a mask to hide behind? And if it doesn't matter if there's anything factual behind the Bible, why would a non-believer bother with even its good news? Why would they bother taking up with the poor deluded people who actually believe that a real God really is forgiving us and is giving us life beyond death, in God's new world? The postmodern non-believer would create their own matrixed philosophy of love instead, which would be way shallower than the meaty, bloody, tough stuff of the Bible. Or, they would treat the Bible much as they would Lord of the Rings or Dianetics or Celestine Prophecy or even Green Eggs and Ham.
While it's impossible to draw a clear line as to when
'interpretation' becomes dishonest with its source, at some
point it does. We interpret away the Bible at our own
risk. Truth matters, and in a different way so does fact, and
yes, in another different way, so do logic and rational
processes. Words like 'inerrancy' are no help, but neither is
it helpful to say that the Bible should be followed because the
church traditionally has said so, or because 'I feel it in my
heart'. Ultimately, the Bible's authority comes from the Spirit
of the God that continues to choose to operate through it in a unique way. All our words about the Bible, including 'inerrancy', do little more than try to describe some small part of how that can be.
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Indelible : The Bible seeps through
despite our attempts to white it out or paint it over. It leaves its mark on us, somehow, in some way. The
Spirit keeps calling to us through the Bible, telling us of
God's love and grace. God's word will be heard, and it
will have an impact.
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You can also check out 'indelible' the dictionary.
literal : One of the most misused words about the Bible. The word 'literal' means 'what the words say', or 'letter by letter'. Yet the same exact word with the same exact spelling says different things in different settings around different other words, using different literary forms. (For instance, 'love' means one thing in Jesus' command to love, and a very different thing in a steamy sex poem, and still another when a child talks about a pet puppy.) A literalist believes that every word of the Bible is not just a part of the divine creative Message (Greek logos), but is also a specific word from God. Yet the human writers of the Bible were inspired by the Spirit to tell stories and histories, write poems and songs, and share visions with their readers. It is literature. And this is the context in which you find out each word's true 'literal' meaning.
What many people mean when they say 'literal' is
'face-value' or 'in the strictest / narrowest
sense'. But the Bible's writers, like most writers everywhere,
don't just operate at face value. How can anyone who believes
in the unseen spiritual realm be satisfied with just face
value or the narrowest sense? Spirituality is about what lies beneath the face, a wide
realm of complex simplicity and the deepest of meaning. There is another side to it,
though : it isn't wise to simply disregard the literal face value
meaning, for it's what the fuller meaning of the word grew from. A word starts from its face value, but rarely
stays there.
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You can also find a definition for 'literal' in the dictionary.
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