Augustine said "I most firmly believe that the authors [of scripture] were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the [manuscript] is faulty or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.”
The definitive statement on inerrancy was drafted in 1978, when three hundred conservative evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, and laity met in Chicago and produced the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” This statement has been adopted by the Evangelical Theological Society as defining the doctrine of inerrancy. In the document’s “short statement,” it makes this claim regarding the meaning of biblical inerrancy:
"Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives."
Article 13 of the Chicago Statement offers this denial:
"We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or 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."
That's a pretty big loophole.
Let's be grateful for Article 19: “We deny that such confession [of inerrancy] is necessary for salvation.”
John Wesley, during the eighteenth-century evangelical revival he led, adopted as the official doctrinal statement of Methodists related to scripture the following:
"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."