Vance said:
Yes, I agree. Every single truth contained in Scripture will remain true and inerrant forever. You are not saying that this refers to the actual, specific words themselves, which have changed, been translated, edited, etc, over thousands of years, are you? If so, then you are further down the "strict literalist" slide than I expected.
Perhaps another, more aptly stated position on the matter will clarify my similar views. Here are some exceprts and the link to the whole document:
The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian Church in
this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly
and faithfully obeying God's written Word. To stray from Scripture in
faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total
truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp
and adequate confession of its authority.
Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and
superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all
matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God's
instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God's command, in all
that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
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.
The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total
divine inerrancy is in any way limited of disregarded, or made relative
to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring
serious loss to both the individual and the Church.
We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church,
tradition, or any other human source.
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.
We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness 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.
We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation,
ever corrects of contradicts it. We further deny that any normative
revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament
writings.
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 inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to
heightened states of consciousness of any kind.
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 the finitude or falseness of these writers, by necessity
or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God's Word.
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the
autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be
ascertained from 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 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 assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may
be distinguished but not separated.
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.
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 metrical, variant selections of material in parallel
accounts, or the use of free citations.
We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by scholastic
Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to
negative higher criticism.
We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures,
assuring believers of the truthfulness of God's written Word.
We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by
grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and
devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We affirm that a confession of the full authority, infallibility and
inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound understanding of the whole of
the Christian faith. We further affirm that such confession should lead
to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.
We deny that such confession is necessary for salvation. However, we
further deny that inerrancy can be rejected without grave consequences,
both to the individual and to the Church.
'Infallible' signifies the quality of neither misleading nor being
misled and so safeguards in categorical terms the truth that Holy
Scripture is a sure, safe and reliable rule and guide in all matters.
Similarly, 'inerrant' signifies the quality of being free from all
falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is
entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.
We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on
the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining
what the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the
most careful attention to its claims and character as a human
production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture and conventions of
his penman's milieu, a milieu that God controls in His sovereign
providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.
So history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole
and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation
as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary conventions
in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: Since, for instance,
nonchronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and
acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not
regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When
total precision of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it
is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the
sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense
of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at
which its authors aimed.
The truthfulness of Scripture is not negated by the appearance in it
of irregularities of grammar or spelling, phenomenal descriptions of
nature, reports of false statements (for example, the lies of Satan), or
seeming discrepancies between one passage and another. It is not right
to set the so-called "phenomena" of Scripture against the teaching of
Scripture about itself. Apparent inconsistencies should not be ignored.
Solution of them, where this can be convincingly achieved, will
encourage our faith, and where for the present no convincing solution is
at hand we shall significantly honor God by trusting His assurance that
His Word is true, despite these appearances, and by maintaining our
confidence that one day they will be seen to have been illusions.
Since the Renaissance, and more particularly since the Enlightenment,
world views have been developed that involve skepticism about basic
Christian tenets. Such are the agnosticism that denies that God is
knowable, the rationalism that denies that He is incomprehensible, the
idealism that denies that He is transcendent, and the existentialism
that denies rationality in His relationships with us. When these un- and
anti-Biblical principles seep into men's theologies at presuppositional
level, as today they frequently do, faithful interpretation of Holy
Scripture becomes impossible.
Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture,
it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original
documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as
a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the
course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is
that the Hebrew and Greek text appears to be amazingly well preserved,
so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster
Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring
that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact
that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.
We affirm that what Scripture says, God says. May He be glorified.
Amen and Amen.
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/history/chicago.stm.txt
