Part 9 - The Death of Inerrancy
Attentive readers will think it strange that this segment in my story is called “The Death of Inerrancy”. You may think, “you were never really a believer in the doctrine of inerrancy, were you?” and you would be correct. From my experiences early on at SPU and following, I knew that, whatever it was I believed about the Bible, I did not believe it was inerrant.
It would probably be good to introduce what is meant by “the doctrine of inerrancy”. There are many places online one can find various definitions, but a quick Google search led me to this definition given by Don Stewart on blueletterbible.com:
“Inerrancy,” or “infallibility,” means that when all the facts are known, the Bible, in the original autographs, when properly interpreted, will prove itself to be without error in all matters that it covers. These include areas of theology, history, science, and all other disciplines of knowledge—they will be in perfect accord with the truth. The Bible, therefore, is totally trustworthy in everything that it records or teaches. (https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/bible-difficulties/question1-what-is-the-doctrine-of-biblical-inerrancy.cfm)
If that is too much to digest, in the simplest terms, a belief in biblical “inerrancy” is the belief the Bible is true in everything it says. No errors. No contradictions that cannot be solved when enough knowledge is gained. And if any errors are found, they were changes from the original, perfect, manuscripts.
Somewhere around 2012 I did a series of messages from a 100-day Bible reading plan that was called the “100 Best Passages” or something like that. This took readers at our church through 100 daily readings of the best-loved and well-known passages of scripture, starting in Genesis and ending in Revelation. I remember leading our small group of friends as we discussed each weekly reading during this season. What stuck in my mind as I read through the stories in the book of Genesis were inner arguments and questions about these supposedly “historical” and “inerrant” texts. Did humans really live over 500 years at a time? Did a flood cover the whole earth including the mountains? Did a large boat enact God’s “Plan B” for humanity and animals? How come the creation stories did not line up with each other? Did a snake actually talk? Was a tower built to the heavens, bringing about the creation of different languages? All of these questions provoked more and more cognitive dissonance as I heard others in the group talking as if all these events were literal and historical events. To me they read like myths - stories with deep meanings that provided answers to big questions about life, God, humankind, the cosmos, but were obviously not true in the literal historical sense.
I sat in those studies and bit my lip. I knew that to share my opinion would cause a whirlwind of defensiveness and distrust of my leadership among those who were in the group. I knew I had to keep my opinions to myself. They simply did not match the doctrinal statement of that church about the scriptures being without error in the original manuscripts. My opinions and growing beliefs about the non-innerancy of scripture simply felt out of place and dangerous to my own position of leadership in that church.
Somewhere around this time, another good friend named Dave recommended a book to me called “The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It)” by Thom Stark. In this book, Stark shines a spotlight on the problems caused by trying to make the 66 books of the Bible fit under the doctrine of inerrancy. His central idea is that not only does the text of these books NOT actually live up to the reputation the doctrine of inerrancy promises, but this reading of scripture is actually a modern construct from the last century rather than an ancient way of interacting with the text.
Reading this book, I was for the first time shown how the authors of the Bible argue with each other and correct each other as they go from the earliest writings to later writings. With Stark’s help I began to see that these 66 books, created by authors over the course of hundreds of years in widely divergent socio-political-religious settings, offer divergent ideas about the God described in these books. I began to see that I was not crazy for having identified many places where the scriptures were not in agreement with each other. In fact, I was allowing the text to tell me it’s story in its own way.
Thom’s book, once and for all, freed me from the need to make the Bible fit the doctrine of inerrancy. I remember feeling, over and over again, the relief that comes from finding a like-minded person who not only has seen what you’ve seen, but has gone much further down the road that you are starting to travel. I was relieved, because for the first time someone was explaining a different way of understanding and interpreting the Bible than the ways I had been handed. I was introduced to a new framework for dealing with the shocking parts of the Old Testament where God is the author of genocide and violence. I was allowed to see a new way of reading texts that gave divergent answers to questions about God’s relationship to humans, and the problem of human suffering and evil. It was like opening a window in a stuffy room and letting in fresh air.
But it also initiated a process of fast-forward discovery that would lead me to the “fulcrum” scene detailed in the beginning of this story, where I would step down from my job as a pastor into an unknown future.
(For more thoughts about the doctrine of Inerrancy, see Is Biblical Inerrancy a House of Cards? in my Reflections.)
Coming Soon: Part 10 - The end, and a new beginning
