The Word of God

[Anonymous]

This was an inspiring conversation that I recently had with a pastor who I have had some good conversations with. One of the biggest struggles I have had after spending time researching the origins of Christianity was accepting the Bible as the LITERAL and INERRANT Word of God. I know that this is a tennant espoused even more within mainline Christianity than in Mormonism (we have our “so far as it is translated correctly” clause), so I asked my pastor friend what his thoughts were on the matter, knowing that he has spent an exhaustive amount of time studying the origins of Christianity.

Below is a paraphrase of our email communication. I really liked his approach and found it very affirming, and I think it can also be applied to much of our Standard Works. 🙂

Q: I struggle with taking the Bible literally and accepting it as the inerrant Word. Does someone who seeks after Christ also have to accept the Bible as literal and inerrant?

A: We believe the Bible to be INFALLIBLE absolutely. Inerrant, however, is a word often used to describe the Bible which I would not use myself. The Bible has several errors here and there that were most likely lost or mixed up through the translations. But we do believe that the Bible is INFALLIBLE, in the sense that the general messages and teachings within it never fail.

‘Heaven and earth may pass away, but My words will not pass away,’ (Matthew 24:35)

I would argue the same with the term ‘literal’ as I do with ‘inerrant.’ One man may read a passage and get something quite different from the next guy. Kind of the beauty of the Word, actually. God will lead you. He will show you the truth.

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[Anonymous]

Sounds like he’s kind of a buffet Christian.

I like his response, even if we disagree somewhat on the point in question.

[Anonymous]

epiginosko wrote:

But we do believe that the Bible is INFALLIBLE, in the sense that the general messages and teachings within it never fail.

I think a better term for the word INFALLABLE, would be INFAILABLE, as in “Charity never faileth”.

[Anonymous]

epiginosko wrote:

This was an inspiring conversation that I recently had with a pastor who I have had some good conversations with. One of the biggest struggles I have had after spending time researching the origins of Christianity was accepting the Bible as the LITERAL and INERRANT Word of God. I know that this is a tennant espoused even more within mainline Christianity than in Mormonism (we have our “so far as it is translated correctly” clause), so I asked my pastor friend what his thoughts were on the matter, knowing that he has spent an exhaustive amount of time studying the origins of Christianity.

Personally, I don’t believe the Bible is literally the word of God in many cases and it looks like it almost certainly contains many myths, legends, and purely human ideas and opinions regardless of any real history, inspiration, or “revelation.” Finally reading most of the Old Testament and how many Church leaders have tried to interpret it mostly literally in so many cases was one of the main factors that led to my faith crisis. Of course, we have a lot of extra theology tied to Old Testament figures like Adam, Abraham, Moses, etc. plus the emphasis on prophets in general as if that’s the way it has always been and always needs to be in the ideal situation.

As far as the idea of most Christian sects requiring and expecting this kind of nearly literal belief in the Bible I’m not so sure about that. My understanding is that this “inerrancy” idea was actually a fairly recent and mostly American invention popularized by some Baptists, evangelicals, and other “fundamentalist” Protestants but there are supposedly many other “mainline” churches like the Episcopalians that don’t put quite as much emphasis on this notion.

In my opinion, the question of how much of the story of Jesus is for real or not is completely independent of Paul and other early Christians’ human limitations or opinions, the accuracy of the Old Testament, etc. because from the beginning all of this was in fact written, copied, and transmitted by men and the level of influence God had on this process is just an extra assumption people make about it. So if the Bible is not really the literal “word of God” from beginning to end maybe it’s just because God didn’t want to control all these men that wrote it like a puppet every step of the way for whatever reason and it wouldn’t necessarily prove that none of it ever happened approximately the way we are told with some embellishments or changes to be expected.

[Anonymous]

I have no faith that the bible is literal or infallable.

I can accept that it’s core message “is the word of God, “in the sense that the general messages and teachings within it never fail”, but that is as far as I can go today.

[Anonymous]

Those are two very specific words with meanings in a bible context.

Biblical Innerancy means the Bible contains no factual or conceptual errors. It is literal and has no internal inconsistency. Innerancy = without any error, in this context.

Biblical Infallibility is a looser standard. There can be errors, both factual and even theological. But people who believe in infallibility are speaking of salvation. They believe the Bible contains enough of God’s literal truth that it makes clear how to be saved. It does not fail in transmitting the minimum information needed for salvation of the soul. That is the specific and narrow area it is “infallible.”

I suppose I would call myself someone in the Infallibility camp, in a loose sense. I think the Bible is a great work, and it contains information that could help lead someone to enlightenment, or call it salvation. I am not sure it is quite as clear as others might propose though. But I also think a lot of “holy books” are infallible in that sense too.

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