What Is the Definition of Inerrancy?

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What Is the Definition of Inerrancy?

February 17, 2025

Questions about the definition of inerrancy, whether or not Mark and Luke were associates of Jesus, and whether or not Mark and Luke wrote Mark and Luke.

* What is the definition of Bible inerrancy?

* Were Mark and Luke associates of Jesus, and did Mark and Luke write Mark and Luke?

Transcript

This is hashtag SDRask. You're listening to Amy Hall. I'm here with Greg Koukl.

And today, Greg, we have questions on the Bible. Okay. So we're gonna start with one from Jeremy Brown.

What is the definition of Bible inerrancy? A notable Bible scholar says the Bible isn't errant in what it teaches, but not in what it says. Trying to wrap my head around that, and you know you're listening to the Bible. need help.

Well, there's a couple of terms that in theological circles have our terms of art. They have a technical meaning. And when it comes to this discussion, those terms are inerrancy and infallibility.

Now, when you think of the words, it seems like infallibility would be a stronger word than inerrancy. Inerrancy says a thing isn't mistaken. Infallibility says it's not possible for it to be mistaken.

That's why it isn't mistaken. But actually in theological terms, that isn't the way it works out. What Jeremy just described is actually the weaker sense of biblical authority called infallibility.

And infallibility, this is the way it's used theologically with people who know how to use the terms. I qualify that because sometimes people use the terms interchangeably and they're not aware of the distinction and they just mean them as synonyms. But strictly speaking, infallibility is the fuller seminary standard which says that the Bible speaks accurately when it talks about theological issues of faith and morality.

And that's what matters. It doesn't necessarily speak accurately when it comes to historical matters or scientific matters. But you're asking it to be reliable in a way that it wasn't intended to be reliable.

Faith and practice are what matters. Now, the trouble with that view is the distinction there is not, that distinction is not made in the Scripture itself because there's so many theological factors that are tied to historical verities. Think, for example, of the resurrection.

The resurrection of Christ, if it didn't happen, then our faith is worthless. First Corinthians 15, Paul says that. And what about the Exodus? The Exodus is a massive historical intervention by God to rescue his people.

That's history. If that history didn't happen or the resurrection didn't happen or a whole bunch of other things in history, Jesus' crucifixion, then it eviscerates all of the theological and moral elements that are tied to those historical realities. Further, there's another problem and that is you can't test really very easily theology and morality.

You can test history. You can test science. So essentially, the person who holds to this weaker standard, the infallibility standard, is saying we believe all that the Bible says, it makes no mistake in all of these areas we can't test.

But in the areas we can test, oh, there's lots of errors, but that doesn't matter. So I think that not only is not a biblically sound way of approaching this issue, in other words, the Bible seems to make another case for itself regarding the nature of its authority. It also robs the Christian of an apologetic element to verify the legitimacy of the revelation.

The stronger word is actually inerrancy. And that means that the Bible is without error. And I'm going to put it in a general way here, but it's fairly specific in everything it affirms.

All right. There are lots of times where scripture describes something that took place. And if the narrative is intended to be taken as a straightforward historical narrative, then it's accurate in what it describes took place.

It isn't affirming what took place because it describes all kinds of sin that other people did. Well, look at this. Look at that.

Look at that. People say, David had many wives. So therefore, polygamy is okay.

Well, wait a minute. There's a difference between describing what took place and what ought to have taken place. So inerrancy means that it's the text's descriptions of events in so far as the author intends to communicate a specific detail about an event, those are reliable.

Now, sometimes they speak in general terms, sometimes in hyperbole, exaggeration for the sake of effect. We have to keep that all in mind because that's the way people who are in a certain sense speaking in a straightforward so-called literal way. This is the way we use language to make our point and we don't hold people to a literalistic thing until the standard reason party and everybody was there.

What? Eight and a half billion people? Oh, everybody on our team. Okay. So there's a frame of reference that the word everyone is applies to.

But so understanding the conventions of language like that, when the text affirms something, it is not making a mistake about the thing it affirms and much of what it affirms has theological and moral significance. So that covers all the bases and we are also in a position to assess the reliability of the theological and moral claims of scripture because we can actually test the historical elements, the things that the text says happened that actually did happen. Any statements that says about the nature of the world properly understood, those statements that he is slightly misunderstood.

He didn't mention who the teacher was so I'm not sure it's hard to kind of evaluate what he's describing here. But it could be that he might be describing what you just said where he says the Bible's an errand and what it teaches but not and what it says. Maybe he's referring to the idea that if somebody in the Bible says a lie, it's recorded that doesn't mean that that's true.

It's just that if the reporting of it is true, so that's kind of what you were talking about. So it could be that that's what the scholar was talking about. I'm trying to think if there's any other reason.

Now Greg, one thing that we didn't really talk about yet is why would we think the Bible is an errand? And I think the simplest answer is just to pull it down right to the bottom line here. Jesus said the scripture cannot be broken. And the reason why is because it's the words of God.

It's inspired. All scripture is God breathed. It didn't come from the will of man.

According to what's that? Second Peter or first Peter. Now I can't remember. I think a second Peter.

Well, the one all scriptures inspired are God bread. That's first that second Timothy right chapter three. But then there are other passages that think the same claim or something similar.

So and Jesus talks about passages in the Bible that were said by David and he says, you know, the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David. I'm trying to remember. I think that was Jesus.

But you can find this all the way through. That was the understanding of Jesus. So if it's the word of God, then how can it error? That doesn't make any sense.

So that's kind of the idea we're talking about here now. And you also give reasons to think, you know, outside of its own description of itself. I'm right now I'm just talking about how Jesus.

Yeah, the internal evidence. But of course, you have a whole teaching on and I can't remember what you you did a solid ground on this last year. We put a solid ground up with reasons to think that the Bible is divine.

Has God spoken? Yeah. So that's a different question. And you can look that up on our website at str.org. But for now, it's just this is the understanding of the Bible itself of Jesus, of the people who were using the scriptures that they were they could not be broken, that they were the word of God, the Holy Spirit speaking through.

What is that? What is that verse in 2 Peter about no prophecy ever came from the will of man, but when men were moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, that's the second Peter chapter one, the last verse. Yeah. So that's the idea here of why why we would think a narancy is true.

And sometimes we can't necessarily figure out, maybe there's something we'd have questions about. But I heard T.P. Moreland say one time, he said, when when scientists have a theory and they find something that doesn't seem to fit, they don't just throw out the theory. They try and figure out how that fits into the theory.

It doesn't necessarily immediately disprove it because you don't necessarily have all the information you need to fit it in. So when you find something and you're and you think, oh, this is a mistake, do a little digging, find out maybe there's something you're missing, maybe there's something everyone's missing that we don't have just some piece of information. But because we have all of these other examples where it's proven itself to be true, we have these other reasons to believe it's the word of God, then we we don't have to throw it out just because we have something we can't explain.

Yeah, I need to underscore something else because outsiders will say, well, now you're arguing in a circle because you're seeing the Bibles the Word of God because it says it's the Word of God. That's not quite what we're doing. But I need to clarify the nature of this discussion.

We are having the nature of inerrancy or the issue of inerrancy is an in-house discussion. Right, right. It is it is a discussion by Christians about what Scripture teaches about itself and how they should do it.

Okay, we are not making the case to outsiders that the Bible is inerrant. It's the Word of God. That's a whole different enterprise.

What we're doing is saying we accept the Bible as authoritative, but how are we to understand that authority? And the way we understand that is by going to the text itself and seeing what the text says about its own authority. And this is why you're citing these passages and so many more could be cited about that. Now, we're this is actually an issue that we're going to have a sometime later this year, a SCRU class on.

I think John Noise is going to do it. So, but if there are some nuances here, we're going to have to work through this carefully because I think people do misunderstand this notion of inerrancy and it does seem like there are counter examples in the text. Well, this can't be right.

Well, how do you best explain that? Sometimes they're hyperbole. Sometimes in other words, people are exaggerating for the sake of effect and they're not. Sometimes they don't mean to what we used to call it, Memorex, which was a tape that got the sound perfectly, but nobody uses those tapes anymore.

But it wasn't meant to be a recording. The servant of the mount wasn't recorded and we have everything. We have a summary of these statements and some are so crystal clear and memorable that they come down the same for everybody.

But sometimes we have summaries and so all that has to be taken into consideration when we think about the issue of inerrancy. So, for the question of, like you said, Greg, there are two questions here. How should Christians view this Bible they consider authoritative versus how do we show someone else who's not a Christian? How do we give evidence for its divine authorship? So, that would be where they would go look at maybe your article called the Bible has God spoken.

I think that was the title. And then you can see some reasons to believe there. All right, let's go to a question from Paula.

This may not be true, but I was confronted with this and it scares me. I was told first Mark and Luke were not associates of Jesus. And second, Mark and Luke did not write Mark and Luke.

Is any of that true? Well, the first thing is true. Properly qualified, Luke was a Greek companion of Paul. And he actually made the largest contribution to the New Testament, if you count the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts together.

And he's the author of both of them and you can see the internal evidence makes that rather clear. So, but that I'm not sure why that matters in the case of Luke. What Luke is doing is he's researching in a way that's contemporaneous to the events, the events as they took place.

This is what he says in the opening words of his gospel. Yeah, let me read that right here. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.

It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. Right. Yeah, that's an ASB.

Yeah. Yeah. The consecutive is some, it really is an orderly, orderly way, not precisely consecutive because that isn't the case there.

The word means orderly as opposed to Mark who came earlier and it's a kind of a account by some assessment in any event. So there, I think the next, I'm curious about what follows right after that opening. Let me look in line because your type is too small for me to read.

Chapter one, I think that what you have next, it's very interesting, the very next, you read the verse three verses, okay, or first four, verse five says this, in the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias of the division Abhisheh, he had a wife from the daughters. So he goes right into very precise historical material and he, he positions it in time. Okay, there's another account too that goes into a lot more detail.

It was like, oh man, it's so tedious because it's talking about all the rulers and everything. And so, in the case of Luke though, he's just, he's claiming that he's writing an accurate record having done the research himself. There is no need for him to have then a companion of Jesus in order for him to get the accounts of the life of Christ correct or the life of the early church as he does in the book of Acts.

And we know that he was a companion of Paul because sometimes he's writing in the third person and other times in the book of Acts, all of a sudden, he's in the first person plural, then we did this and we did that. So he joined Paul and his writing gains authority because of the Apostolic Association with Paul in the book of Acts and the Apostolic Association with the research that he did early on. And in fact, there is, there is a reference that I think Paul makes to the book of Luke.

And he calls, he quotes it. So the book of Luke is in circulation when he quotes it. And he says, and he identifies it as scripture.

And he puts it on par with another Old Testament passage. You don't muzzle the ox while he's stretching you, the worker's worthy of his wages. Paul says these two things, as the scripture says, well, one from the Old Testament, one from the gospel of Luke.

So you have this strong sense of authority early on from Luke, even though he wasn't a companion of Jesus. Now, Mark is a gospel that was written by the companion of Peter and his name was John Mark. Now, I just finished reading the gospel of Mark a couple of days ago.

And it's a very quick, very basic text. And what the early church fathers record, I don't like saying tradition has it, because that sounds like, well, this is what we've always said. When they say according to tradition, they mean according to the writers of the early church fathers who were proximal to the event, they said that Mark recorded Peter's information.

So Mark was like the the ammanuensis or the secretary recording the events that as Peter experienced them. So that's the classical understanding of the text. And there are always going to be somebody who takes exception with the authorship of some New Testament text.

But the early church fathers testimony to the authorship here is, as I think is a reliable source. And Mark was a young man, John Mark. And he actually was a companion of Paul and Silas early on with their missionary journey, first missionary journey, I think, but he ended up turning back and he left the ministry.

And this created a falling out next time around between Paul and Silas, whether they take Mark again. Barnabas. Barnabas.

That's right. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Barnabas. Thank you. And in any event, he is active involved, actively involved in the apostolic band and attaches to Peter and then records Peter's testimony of Jesus.

And there's an interesting passage in there that do you wonder what's this all about when Jesus is betrayed in the garden to get semany? There's a boy there who's kind of watching from the edges and he's just wearing a sheet over his body and somebody grabs him and they grab the sheet and he wrestles and he gets away, but he leaves the sheet behind and he well, most people think that that's Mark who is watching these events happening as an eyewitness, but he's just a kid. The Last Supper apparently was in his mother's house, the upper room at his house. Which was mean he was around Jesus.

He was. Yeah. But and he was there as a witness, if that's the best way to understand that first, but it seems to be the best way to understand it.

These things all fit together in a nice, neat way that companion Peter writes this thing and then you see these little pieces that suggest internal evidence that John Mark the boy who runs away naked is the one who is the scribe for this piece. And I will say for the question about whether or not Mark and Luke actually wrote Mark and Luke, there's never been any other name associated with these gospels. There's never been any question about that and no one's ever said no was someone else who wrote it or that's never happened.

And the internal evidence for Luke, I think I don't know. I would have any reason to think it wasn't him. Mark never says his name.

I don't think Luke says his name either, but we know from the maybe you know more about this Greg, but what's so ironic to me is that you have these ancient gospels, these are the most ancient texts and there are plenty of reasons to think their first century, all of them, good reasons. Okay, we'll get into all of that right now. But people who are naysayers of the canonical gospels have some other their own ideas about what are appropriate expressions of what really happened to Jesus.

And they've got all these other texts and the most well known is the gospel of Thomas. Well, everybody knows the gospel of Thomas was written the second century. It's undisputed as a second century document.

That means it could not have been written by Thomas. So it just it's so funny that people are going after the canonical gospel so aggressively without I think good reason, picking, picking, picking at all these little things that they think indicate they're not for century or they're not written by the authors that are classically attributed to them. But at the same time, then they latch on to other things that are completely spurious.

And in many cases, the church fathers knew they were spurious and wrote about these things in the second and third century. Yeah, I again, the gospels were circulating very early and together even as for gospels. It just seems to me that if there was any question about the authorship, it wouldn't they wouldn't have been accepted so easily and so quickly.

That's right. Yeah. And there were people when a position to know it wasn't like they just found these gospel sitting somewhere.

These were they were part of communities. They knew they all knew each other. It wasn't they didn't just come out of the sky.

They knew who had written them. You know, I I in reading Mark, I'm just going to go to this quickly. I know we're almost out of time, but it's just a little thing that that shows up in Mark that you see this kind of thing, these these little tidbits that many people overlook.

All right. And this shows up in Mark at the crucifixion of Jesus. Okay.

And here's what the text says. Jesus is tried and he is he's going to be crucified. And at the crucifixion, it says they mocked him, gave him the cross, let him out to be crucified.

Verse 21 of Mark 15, they pressed into service a passerby coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus to bear his cross. Now why is that significant? If you just write the story, you're going to say they pressed into service a passerby, but they named him and they named where he was from. And they also named relatives, his children.

Why would they do that? It's because the readers will probably recognize these names as members of the Christian community. Oh, you know, that's Simon. Yeah, he's the dad of these two guys.

Oh, yeah. Okay. That's the guy.

It makes no sense if this is just a fabricated thing. This is a very small detail, but it it it blends. It gives a an error of of truth to it.

Now, somebody could always say, oh, they just wrote that in there to make it sound like, no, come on, really? That's not how they wrote back. They were trying to create realistic historical fiction. Yes, that's right.

Historical fiction didn't come to much, you know, centuries, centuries, thousand years, thousands of years later. But here they were just giving the details and happened to do this toss away. And I wrote in the margin, these must now, at the time of the writing, be known to many or else he wouldn't have mentioned these boys.

Remember these guys? Yeah, Jeremy and Paula for your questions. We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question.

We want to hear from you. Send it on x with the hashtag SDR. Ask or go to our website at str.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Cocle for Stand to Reason.