Biblical Inerrancy vs. Biblical Infallibility

[Humble_Disciple]

While biblical infallibility claims that the Bible is without error in every matter required for salvation, Biblical inerrancy claims that the Bible is without error in every detail possible, including scientific and historical details.

The distinction between Biblical infallibility and Biblical inerrancy matters because many people, when first confronted with the apparent contradictions in the Gospels, stop believing in central doctrines like the virgin birth and physical resurrection of Jesus.

Another way of describing this distinction is that the Bible is inerrant in a limited sense, on matters of doctrine and practice, rather than in an unlimited sense, on every possible historical and scientific detail. The Bible, like Jesus, is fully divine and fully human.

To insist upon unlimited inerrancy seems like docetism, ignoring the element of human authorship. We have four Gospels specifically to give us four uniquely human, though divinely inspired, perspectives.

When assessing ancient documents by normal historical standards, their reliability isn't determined by exactness in every possible detail. For example, Jesus most likely cleansed the temple near the end of His ministry, like in the synoptic Gospels, rather than in the beginning, like in John.

This would explain why the Jewish authorities were provoked to execute Him. John, on the other hand, placed it in the beginning, in order to establish Jesus' authority over the temple as the Son of God, since the primary emphasis of John's Gospel is the deity of Christ.

This is only a problem if one insists that the Bible is inerrant word-for-word, rather than in doctrine and practice:

First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.

We can extend the point by considering the proposal that the Gospels should be understood as different performances, as it were, of orally transmitted tradition. The prominent New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn, prompted by the work of Ken Bailey on the transmission of oral tradition in Middle Eastern cultures, has sharply criticized what he calls the “stratigraphic model” of the Gospels, which views them as composed of different layers laid one upon another on top of a primitive tradition. (See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003].) On the stratigraphic model each tiny deviation from the previous layer occasions speculations about the reasons for the change, sometimes leading to quite fanciful hypotheses about the theology of some redactor. But Dunn insists that oral tradition works quite differently. What matters is that the central idea is conveyed, often in some key words and climaxing in some saying which is repeated verbatim; but the surrounding details are fluid and incidental to the story.

Probably the closest example to this in our non-oral, Western culture is the telling of a joke. It’s important that you get the structure and punch line right, but the rest is incidental. For example, many years ago I heard the following joke:

“What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the elevator shaft?”
“I don’t know.”
“He got up, dusted himself off, and said, ‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Now just recently someone else told me what was clearly the same joke. Only she told it as follows:

“Do you know what the Calvinist said when he fell down the stairs?”
“No.”
“‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Notice the differences in the telling of this joke; but observe how the central idea and especially the punch line are the same. Well, when you compare many of the stories told about Jesus in the Gospels and identify the words they have in common, you find a pattern like this. There is variation in the secondary details, but very often the central saying is almost verbatim the same. And remember, this is in a culture where they didn’t even have the device of quotation marks! (Those are added in translation to indicate direct speech; to get an idea of how difficult it can be to determine exactly where direct speech ends, just read Paul’s account of his argument with Peter in Galatians 2 or of Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus in John 3.) So the stories in the Gospels should not be understood as evolutions of some prior primitive tradition but as different performances of the same oral story.

Now if Dunn is right, this has enormous implications for one’s doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for it means that the Evangelists had no intention that their stories should be taken like police reports, accurate in every detail. What we in a non-oral culture might regard as an error would not be taken by them to be erroneous at all.
What Price Biblical Errancy? | Reasonable Faith

The limited inerrancy view offers room for the Bible to err in non-redemptive matters – matters that are not salvific by nature e.g. geographical, historical, scientific etc. The proponents of this view state that the main purpose of the Bible is “spiritual transformation” – to bring the lost man into a saving relationship with God. They then affirm that “If the Bible contains some errors, some discrepancies, that do not affect its power to transform lives through faith-filled communion with God, that is not important.” 3...Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lost his faith in Christ because he apparently discovered one minor error in the gospels. It seemed Professor Ehrman held the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as the core of Christianity. When a particular passage in the Gospel of Mark befuddled Bart Ehrman, his strong belief in inerrancy of the Bible was shaken. He became a liberal Christian and then ended up as an agnostic atheist after being unable to reconcile the philosophical problems of evil and suffering. http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/07/19/the-bible-has-errors-what-do-we-do/

Those who hold to unlimited inerrancy insist that the Bible is inerrant in every possible detail, while those who hold to limited inerrancy, also known as Biblical infallibility, regard the Bible as inerrant in matters of doctrine and practice.

It's simply an unprovable assumption that the Gospel authors intended for the events described to be placed in a strictly chronological, rather than thematic, order.

Sometimes you run into gospel events that aren’t the same chronologically. You can find this when Jesus is tempted in the desert. Matthew and Luke have the order of the last two temptations reversed (Matt. 4:1–11; Lk. 4:1–13). It makes perfect sense that Luke would make the climax of the temptations occur at the top of the temple since there’s a real focus throughout his gospel on Jerusalem and the temple. Matthew, on the other hand, ends with Jesus standing on a mountain looking at all the nations of the world. For a writer who sees mountains as places of revelation and epiphany, this is understandable, too.

What about Christ’s teachings? Was the Sermon on the Mount one long message or did Matthew—like many argue—pull Jesus’ various teachings together into one place? From reading Luke, it would be easy to make the argument that the Sermon on the Mount is a compilation of Christ’s teachings. But it’s just as likely that Jesus taught the same lessons multiple times throughout his ministry. Either way, rearranging Christ’s teaching doesn’t nullify the gospels...

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Jesus felt the need to clear the temple multiple times, but the credibility of the gospels doesn’t rest on having to believe that. There’s a possibility that Mark moved this event to the end of the gospel to emphasize its significance as an act of judgement against Israel, or that John moved it to the beginning as a historically symbolic inauguration to his ministry.
Bible Contradictions Explained: 4 Reasons the… | Zondervan Academic

While every historian agrees that Hannibal crossed the alps to Rome, the ancient accounts contradict each other on which road led him there:

Speculation on the crossing place stretches back more than two millennia to when Rome and Carthage, a North African city-state in what is now Tunisia, were superpowers vying for supremacy in the Mediterranean. No Carthaginian sources of any kind have survived, and the accounts by the Greek historian Polybius (written about 70 years after the march) and his Roman counterpart Livy (120 years after that) are maddeningly vague. There are no fewer than a dozen rival theories advanced by a rich confusion of academics, antiquarians and statesmen who contradict one another and sometimes themselves. Napoleon Bonaparte favored a northern route through the Col du Mont Cenis. Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was said to be a fan of the Col du Montgenèvre. Sir Gavin de Beer, a onetime director of what is now the Natural History Museum in London, championed the Traversette, the gnarliest and most southerly course. In 1959, Cambridge engineering student John Hoyte borrowed an elephant named Jumbo from the Turin zoo and set out to prove the Col du Clapier (sometimes called the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche) was the real trunk road—but ultimately took the Mont Cenis route into Italy. Others have charted itineraries over the Col du Petit St. Bernard, the Col du l’Argentière and combinations of the above that looped north to south to north again. To borrow a line attributed to Mark Twain, riffing on a different controversy: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”
How (and Where) Did Hannibal Cross the Alps? | History | Smithsonian Magazine

While every historian agrees that Hannibal crossed the alps to Rome, the ancient accounts contradict each other on which road led him there, just as the Gospels contradict each other on minor details like how many angels were at the tomb, while agreeing on Jesus' physical resurrection.

This same point is made in Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, one of the best-selling evangelical titles in the last twenty years. There is a historical difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and the scholars interviewed in Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, including William Lane Craig, would be considered evangelical, but not fundamentalist.

In traditional Jewish commentaries, the Book of Job might be entirely allegorical, rather than a historical account. This is only a problem if the Bible is seen as inerrant word-for-word, rather than in doctrine and practice:

There are, of course, times when we don’t know for sure whether something is history or allegory. One noteworthy example is the entire Book of Job. The Talmud (Baba Basra 15a-b) has a multi-pronged debate about when Iyov (Job) lived. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says that Iyov lived in Moshe’s day; Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Eleazar say that he was one of the Babylonian exiles; Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha says that Iyov lived in the time of Esther; others say he lived at the time of Yaakov. There are still other opinions.

The most surprising opinion, however, may be that Iyov never existed at all! According to this opinion, the entire story is a parable taught for the lesson it imparts. A similar (but slightly different) opinion appears in the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 57). There, the scholar Resh Lakish opines that Iyov was an actual person but that this story is a work of historical fiction, the same way that our legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood are works of fiction based on people who actually lived.

Is the Book of Job a work of literal history? Historical fiction? Pure allegory? There seems to be no consensus on this one – it’s completely user’s choice!...

However – and this is crucial – this does not give us carte blanche to disregard everything in the Torah that disturbs our 21st-century sensibilities by exiling it to the Land of Parables. Remember when Maimonides said that if the eternity of the universe were proven he would consider the creation account to be an allegory? That’s not the end of his thoughts on the matter.

He continues, “The eternity of the universe has not been proven and we do not abandon the literal understanding of Biblical verses in order to accommodate a theory” (Guide II, 25 again). You and I are not the Rambam. (At least I’m assuming you’re not!) We are not at the paygrade to decide that things are allegorical if doing so contradicts our mesorah.

Even the Rambam said he would not do so without a 100% ironclad compelling reason! (That’s a good thing: the scientific theories of his day were pretty compelling but they were eventually disproven.)
History or Allegory? It Really Doesn’t Matter | Everyday Jewish Living | OU Life

That the Book of Job might be an allegorical theodicy doesn't give us license to interpret Jesus' virgin birth and physical resurrection allegorically, because these truths are essential to historic Christian faith, just as the giving of the Commandments on Sinai is central to Judaism.

Those who believe in limited inerrancy have a higher view of scripture than Martin Luther did:

Luther considered Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Revelation to be "disputed books", which he included in his translation but placed separately at the end in his New Testament published in 1522.
Luther's canon - Wikipedia

Those who insist upon unlimited inerrancy miss the point as to why the scriptures were written in the first place, "to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus," to instruct in righteousness, to equip for every good work, and to correct false doctrine, none of which requires that the Bible be word-for-word inerrant on every possible historical and scientific detail.

2 Timothy 3:15-17
and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

If unlimited inerrancy were true, then the mustard seed would be the smallest of all seeds, which it obviously isn't. Jesus' point was to illustrate the power of faith, even if the size of a mustard seed, rather than teach botany. Matthew 13:31-32

 

[St_Worm2]

Here's another set of definitions (of the two terms) to consider from one of our denominations, the EFCA (Evangelical Free Church of America).

The Doctrine of the Scriptures (8): Inerrancy and Infallibility
Evangelicals affirm that the Scriptures are both inerrant and infallible. If there is misunderstanding of the term inerrancy, that misunderstanding and confusion multiples when you add the word infallible.

Many today conclude inerrancy is the stronger term, infallibility the weaker. Many believe that the term infallible is a way of avoiding inerrancy, of affirming the authority of the Scriptures though without needing to affirm they are inerrant, i.e. without error. This is related to and a carry-over of the inerrancy debates in the 1960s when the expression "limited inerrancy" was used in relation to the Scriptures.

Is this accurate?

It is actually a misunderstanding. Both terms affirm the authority of the Scriptures and that they are without error. Inerrant means there are no errors, they are without error; infallible means there can be no errors, it is impossible for them to have any errors. The Scriptures are both inerrant and infallible.

John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, helpfully defines the terms (169):

To say that a text is inerrant is to say that there are no errors in it. To say that a text is infallible is to say that there can be no errors in it, that it is impossible for that text to contain errors. . . . Inerrant means, simply, ‘without error.’ Infallible denies the possibility of error. . . . Scripture is both inerrant and infallible. It is inerrant because it is infallible. There are no errors because there can be no errors in the divine speech.

One of the criticisms of inerrancy is that the reality of what the term means dies a thousand deaths through caveats, concessions and qualifications. To claim a text is inerrant and then to follow that up with all the qualifications seems to undermine the very definition. But this is to misunderstand the nature of God’s revelation in written words, the Bible.

Once again Frame provides an important answer to this objection by distinguishing between qualifications and applications of inerrancy (174).

So I think it is helpful to define inerrancy more precisely [!] by saying that inerrant language makes good on its claims. When we say that the Bible is inerrant, we mean that the Bible makes good on its claims.

Now, many writers have enumerated what are sometimes called qualifications to inerrancy: inerrancy is compatible with unrefined grammar, non-chronological narrative, round numbers, imprecise quotations, prescientific phenomenalistic description (e.g., “the sun rose”), use of figures and symbols, and imprecise descriptions (as Mark 1:5, which says that everyone from Judea and Jerusalem went to hear John the Baptist). I agree with these points, but I do not describe them as “qualifications” of inerrancy. These are merely applications of the basic meaning of inerrancy: that it asserts truth, not precision. Inerrant language is language that makes good on its own claims, not on claims that are made for it by thoughtless readers.

The Scriptures are both inerrant and infallible. Because the Scriptures are infallible, they are inerrant. In the EFCA we affirm both truths as they relate to the Scriptures.

Greg Strand
EFCA
Greg Strand is EFCA executive director of theology and credentialing, and he serves on the Board of Ministerial Standing as well as the Spiritual Heritage Committee.
​

--David

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Jesus most likely cleansed the temple near the end of His ministry, like in the synoptic Gospels, rather than in the beginning, like in John. This would explain why the Jewish authorities were provoked to execute Him.

John, on the other hand, placed it in the beginning, in order to establish Jesus' authority over the temple as the Son of God, since the primary emphasis of John's Gospel is the deity of Christ.

This is only a problem if one insists that the Bible is inerrant word-for-word, rather than in doctrine and practice.

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

My predication and personal advice: clinging to absolute inerrancy for all of the Bible is a recipe for faith collapse when one is confronted by Biblical criticism from experts who really know their stuff. So please don't do that - and learn to value and use the Biblical texts in that they're reliable enough to get the main picture and the message for salvation.

Texts have a history; reading about textual criticism will reveal the extent to which we sometimes do not know exactly what an author originally wrote; or even who that author was.

Personally speaking: I can believe God worked through the Gospel writers, worked through and revealed himself to Paul, but I can also acknowledge there may be inconsistencies, copying errors, or even plain errors in the Biblical text - my faith and salvation does not depend on that.

Faith that depends on the assumption (as the Bible itself does not even claim that) of absolute inerrancy will make you extremely vulnerable for any attacks from Atheists or Muslims.

Rhetorical question: when Paul writes ' ... please take my coat with you ....' (2 Timothy 4:13), do you think of that as the literal word of God (and thus inerrant)? I don't; and I don't have to, because even Paul does not claim that. And despite that - we can still read reliable enough about God's truth, his revelations to Paul, and his instructions to the church in his letters.

The 'word of God' is that what is uttered or brought forth by God himself - it is contained IN the scriptures, but there is not necessity to view ALL individual books/chapters/sentences of the Bible as literal the word of God.

And of course, the ultimate 'word of God' is Jesus himself !! The literally living word !

 

[St_Worm2]

Jesus most likely cleansed the temple near the end of His ministry, like in the synoptic Gospels, rather than in the beginning, like in John. This is only a problem if one insists that the Bible is inerrant word-for-word, rather than in doctrine and practice.

The Bible tells that the Lord Jesus cleansed the Temple ~twice~, once at the beginning of His public ministry, and then a second time, three years later, after His triumphal entry into the City of Jerusalem. Is there a reason(s) that we should believe otherwise, IOW, that there was only a single Temple cleansing instead of the two that are recorded for us in the Gospels

Thanks!

--David

 

[Humble_Disciple]

The Bible tells that the Lord Jesus cleansed the Temple ~twice~, once at the beginning of His public ministry, and then a second time, three years later, after His triumphal entry into the City of Jerusalem. Is there a reason(s) that we should believe otherwise, IOW, that there was only a single Temple cleansing instead of the two that are recorded for us in the Gospels

Thanks!

--David

That's already been answered. Please read before commenting:

First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.

We can extend the point by considering the proposal that the Gospels should be understood as different performances, as it were, of orally transmitted tradition. The prominent New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn, prompted by the work of Ken Bailey on the transmission of oral tradition in Middle Eastern cultures, has sharply criticized what he calls the “stratigraphic model” of the Gospels, which views them as composed of different layers laid one upon another on top of a primitive tradition. (See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003].) On the stratigraphic model each tiny deviation from the previous layer occasions speculations about the reasons for the change, sometimes leading to quite fanciful hypotheses about the theology of some redactor. But Dunn insists that oral tradition works quite differently. What matters is that the central idea is conveyed, often in some key words and climaxing in some saying which is repeated verbatim; but the surrounding details are fluid and incidental to the story.

Probably the closest example to this in our non-oral, Western culture is the telling of a joke. It’s important that you get the structure and punch line right, but the rest is incidental. For example, many years ago I heard the following joke:

“What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the elevator shaft?”
“I don’t know.”
“He got up, dusted himself off, and said, ‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Now just recently someone else told me what was clearly the same joke. Only she told it as follows:

“Do you know what the Calvinist said when he fell down the stairs?”
“No.”
“‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Notice the differences in the telling of this joke; but observe how the central idea and especially the punch line are the same. Well, when you compare many of the stories told about Jesus in the Gospels and identify the words they have in common, you find a pattern like this. There is variation in the secondary details, but very often the central saying is almost verbatim the same. And remember, this is in a culture where they didn’t even have the device of quotation marks! (Those are added in translation to indicate direct speech; to get an idea of how difficult it can be to determine exactly where direct speech ends, just read Paul’s account of his argument with Peter in Galatians 2 or of Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus in John 3.) So the stories in the Gospels should not be understood as evolutions of some prior primitive tradition but as different performances of the same oral story.

Now if Dunn is right, this has enormous implications for one’s doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for it means that the Evangelists had no intention that their stories should be taken like police reports, accurate in every detail. What we in a non-oral culture might regard as an error would not be taken by them to be erroneous at all.
What Price Biblical Errancy? | Reasonable Faith

If you insist that Jesus cleansed the temple twice in order for the Gospels to be historically reliable, then you don't understand the genre of ancient biographies, in which they were written, "But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way."

 

[St_Worm2]

That's already been answered. Please read before commenting:

Whoops, I must have missed it. Sorry about that. I'll take a look and get back to you.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Whoops, I must have missed it. Sorry about that. I'll take a look and get back to you.

What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.
What Price Biblical Errancy? | Reasonable Faith

 

[St_Worm2]

Hello again @Humble_Disciple, thanks for pointing out the pertinent comments from your post to me again

Looking back, I realize that my last question to you should have been, "Is there a reason(s) that we MUST believe otherwise, IOW, that there was only a single Temple cleansing instead of the two that are recorded for us in the Gospels?"

I believe that there were two different Temple cleansings, so that means that I disagree with Craig's assessment (as do many/most of my commentaries .. then again, there are commentators who agree with him as well ).

The other thing is, even if Craig's view is correct, how does that disprove the inerrancy of the Scriptures, especially when you consider the explanation that he gave us for believing that there was only one? Perhaps we are on a very different page concerning the meaning of Biblical inerrancy!

I haven't looked into this topic for years (of the two accounts of Jesus and the money changers, that is), so I think it best that I do so again before continuing. I'll (hopefully) be able to get back to you about it tonight (Dv).

God bless you!

--David

 

[Humble_Disciple]

The other thing is, even if Craig's view is correct, how does that disprove the inerrancy of the Scriptures, especially when you consider the explanation that he gave us for believing that there was only one? Perhaps we are on a very different page concerning the meaning of Biblical inerrancy!

It's simply an unprovable assumption that the Gospel authors intended for the events described to be placed in a strictly chronological, rather than thematic, order.

Sometimes you run into gospel events that aren’t the same chronologically. You can find this when Jesus is tempted in the desert. Matthew and Luke have the order of the last two temptations reversed (Matt. 4:1–11; Lk. 4:1–13). It makes perfect sense that Luke would make the climax of the temptations occur at the top of the temple since there’s a real focus throughout his gospel on Jerusalem and the temple. Matthew, on the other hand, ends with Jesus standing on a mountain looking at all the nations of the world. For a writer who sees mountains as places of revelation and epiphany, this is understandable, too.

What about Christ’s teachings? Was the Sermon on the Mount one long message or did Matthew—like many argue—pull Jesus’ various teachings together into one place? From reading Luke, it would be easy to make the argument that the Sermon on the Mount is a compilation of Christ’s teachings. But it’s just as likely that Jesus taught the same lessons multiple times throughout his ministry. Either way, rearranging Christ’s teaching doesn’t nullify the gospels...

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Jesus felt the need to clear the temple multiple times, but the credibility of the gospels doesn’t rest on having to believe that. There’s a possibility that Mark moved this event to the end of the gospel to emphasize its significance as an act of judgement against Israel, or that John moved it to the beginning as a historically symbolic inauguration to his ministry.
Bible Contradictions Explained: 4 Reasons the… | Zondervan Academic

I agree with William Lane Craig that the Bible is limitedly inerrant, inerrant in matters of doctrine and practice, as opposed to unlimitedly inerrant, inerrant in every possible historical and scientific detail.

 

[Hmm]

The distinction between Biblical infallibility and Biblical inerrancy matters because many people, when first confronted with the apparent contradictions in the Gospels, stop believing in central doctrines like the virgin birth and physical resurrection of Jesus.

Good explanation - I never understood the difference between infallibility and inerrancy before. Re. the above, I'm not sure that people turn away because of contradictions in the Bible on minor issues, I think most people would expect that. I think it's because if the only Christians they meet insist that there are no contradictions and that 2 + 2 ≠ 4 they will quite naturally feel that that isn't something they can stomach.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Good explanation - I never understood the difference between infallibility and inerrancy before. Re. the above, I'm not sure that people turn away because of contradictions in the Bible on minor issues, I think most people would expect that. I think it's because if the only Christians they meet insist that there are no contradictions and that 2 + 2 ≠ 4 they will quite naturally feel that that isn't something they can stomach.

Those who stress Biblical infallibility still believe in its inerrancy, but only on matters of doctrine and practice. It's an understanding of the scriptures as, like Jesus, both divine and human.

 

[Hmm]

Those who stress Biblical infallibility still believe in its inerrancy, but only on matters of doctrine and practice. It's an understanding of the scriptures as, like Jesus, both divine and human.

I agree with you. I was meaning minor and natural discrepancies such as in the varying eye witness accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb. - if they tied up word for word it would be extremely suspicious and that's what I meant by saying most people would expect a level of contradiction in things like that. If the Christians they know won't allow them to be rational about this then this will usually be a deal breaker, and I wouldn't blame them if it was.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

I agree with you. I was meaning minor and natural discrepancies such as in the varying eye witness accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb. - if they tied up word for word it would be extremely suspicious and that's what I meant by saying most people would expect a level of contradiction in things like that. If the Christians they know won't allow them to be rational about this then this will usually be a deal breaker, and I wouldn't blame them if it was.

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine sets out to disprove the Gospels simply by pointing out discrepancies between the virgin birth and resurrection accounts. It's a complete joke compared to what they know today about how ancient history was actually written, but liberal theologians like John Shelby Spong still use the same arguments.

 

[Hmm]

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine sets out to disprove the Gospels simply by pointing out discrepancies between the virgin birth and resurrection accounts. It's a complete joke compared to what they know today about how ancient history was actually written, but liberal theologians like John Shelby Spong still use the same arguments.

Interesting. I remember going to a talk once given by a literalistic Christian given to uni students on this theme. He had lots of pictures of rocks, bones and the galaxy and during his talk he proved using the Bible that all these rocks and bones were less than 6,000 years old or whatever it was and disproved the constancy of the speed of light to prove that the universe was too. I noticed a group of students ahead of me who weren't Christians and had come along hoping to learn something looking at each other and shaking their heads in disbelief. I remember feeling angry about this guy who was so arrogant in his ignorance of his ignorance that he may well have put this group of people off Christianity for life. I'm glad the Bible says that that false teachers will be held to account.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Interesting. I remember going to a talk once given by a literalistic Christian given to uni students on this theme. He had lots of pictures of rocks, bones and the galaxy and during his talk he proved using the Bible that all these rocks and bones were less than 6,000 years old or whatever it was and disproved the constancy of the speed of light to prove that the universe was too. I noticed a group of students ahead of me who weren't Christians and had come along hoping to learn something looking at each other and shaking their heads in disbelief. I remember feeling angry about this guy who was so arrogant in his ignorance of his ignorance that he may well have put this group of people off Christianity for life. I'm glad the Bible says that that false teachers will be held to account.

While every historian agrees that Hannibal crossed the alps to Rome, the ancient accounts contradict each other on which road led him there:

Speculation on the crossing place stretches back more than two millennia to when Rome and Carthage, a North African city-state in what is now Tunisia, were superpowers vying for supremacy in the Mediterranean. No Carthaginian sources of any kind have survived, and the accounts by the Greek historian Polybius (written about 70 years after the march) and his Roman counterpart Livy (120 years after that) are maddeningly vague. There are no fewer than a dozen rival theories advanced by a rich confusion of academics, antiquarians and statesmen who contradict one another and sometimes themselves. Napoleon Bonaparte favored a northern route through the Col du Mont Cenis. Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was said to be a fan of the Col du Montgenèvre. Sir Gavin de Beer, a onetime director of what is now the Natural History Museum in London, championed the Traversette, the gnarliest and most southerly course. In 1959, Cambridge engineering student John Hoyte borrowed an elephant named Jumbo from the Turin zoo and set out to prove the Col du Clapier (sometimes called the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche) was the real trunk road—but ultimately took the Mont Cenis route into Italy. Others have charted itineraries over the Col du Petit St. Bernard, the Col du l’Argentière and combinations of the above that looped north to south to north again. To borrow a line attributed to Mark Twain, riffing on a different controversy: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”
How (and Where) Did Hannibal Cross the Alps? | History | Smithsonian Magazine

This same point is made in Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, one of the best-selling evangelical titles in the last twenty years.

 

[com7fy8]

My short answer > it is possible that each Gospel writer knew what he witnessed. And Jesus went to the temple more than once. And there were things Christ did more than once.

Now, in case anyone wishes to get into a lot of detail about Biblical accuracy >

As we can see, anyone can argue what they decide to promote.

And God knows the real reason why we say what we do.

So, if someone tells me something, I might keep listening to see what is the "therefore" of what someone says.

How therefore are you becoming as a person? Are you sharing with God who has you becoming more and more maturely like Jesus? This is the accuracy we need . . . how God alone can know how Jesus really is, and change us to be like this, so we love the way God knows He means by His word.

What therefore do you claim about right from wrong? There are people who make their claims about God's word, and then they discriminate, by saying certain wrong people are ok and therefore do not need to be forgiven; but Jesus died for all sinners, so any wrong person can be changed to be and to love like Jesus and obey how our Father rules us in His own peace (Colossians 3:15).

If our understanding of God's word is accurate, we are discovering how God in us does what He knows His word means to Him > this includes >

"we who first trusted in Christ" > in Ephesians 2:2.

"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful." (Colossians 3:15)

"'Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'" (Matthew 11:29)

"Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:31-32)

"even as God" we forgive, if we are living in God's love. This is very good accuracy of knowing God's word

And God is able to use any scripture to help us to find out how to love.

So, is this where our attention is, first of all??? It is wise to have our attention accurate.

Plus, do we have accurate examples, who are like Jesus and who love like Jesus and His word say to love any and all people; do our examples help us with this? People on the Net can say anything and argue it, but we don't maybe get to see how they really are and live as their result. We are now reaping according to what God knows we really have been sowing, including now in our emotions.

So, you can make sure with God. People you don't even know can make their claims about what is logical and scholarly, but our character has a lot to do with what we are ready to trust and claim.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

My short answer > it is possible that each Gospel writer knew what he witnessed. And Jesus went to the temple more than once. And there were things Christ did more than once.

While every historian agrees that Hannibal crossed the alps to Rome, the ancient accounts contradict each other on which road led him there, just as the Gospels contradict each other on minor details like how many angels were at the tomb, while agreeing on Jesus' physical resurrection.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Those who believe in limited inerrancy have a higher view of scripture than Martin Luther did:

Luther considered Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Revelation to be "disputed books", which he included in his translation but placed separately at the end in his New Testament published in 1522.
Luther's canon - Wikipedia

 

[com7fy8]

how many angels were at the tomb,

But the one angel is outside. The two were inside. The Gospels do not contradict how many were out and how many were in. Also, how many angels were unseen?