Let’s Talk About Biblical Inerrancy (Part 1)
Which brings me to my question: Must one uphold the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy in order to be saved? What do you think? This may surprise you but in my humble opinion, the answer is No. The Bible clearly says that salvation is through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior from our sin (Romans 4). Therefore, it is not necessary for one to uphold the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy for salvation. You will not find it anywhere in the Bible that says one must agree the Bible is without error in order to be saved. If this is true, then it must be the case that there are two groups of Christians on this planet. There are those who uphold the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, and there are those who don’t.
However, even though both the Christian who upholds the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, and the one who doesn’t, experience the same conversion and salvation, there are some real differences between them. Because the Christian who upholds the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy believes the Bible is without error, he is likely to read the Bible extremely carefully. The Bible contains the words of the living God, after all. He is more likely to expend hours and hours of personal study, consider what other Bible commentators have to say, purchase expensive Bible software, enroll in Biblical Hebrew and Greek courses, and research into historical contexts, to try and grasp what the Bible says. For the Christian who rejects the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, on the other hand, he is less likely to do any of those things. To him, the Bible is not accurate in the first place, so why should it deserve all the weight and attention? It shouldn’t.
But although it is not required for one to uphold the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy in order to be saved, if I am being honest, I have grave concern for the Christian who believes the Bible contains errors. If one doubts the integrity of the Bible, the Bible must not be reliable to him. And if the Bible is not reliable to him, then the question becomes on what does he base his beliefs? If he says to me he personally received a message from God, I will have no choice but to take his word for it. Who am I to say to him God had not done so? To make a complex scenario even more complex, if multiple people claim to have personally received a message from God, and the content in those messages varied from one to another, even conflicting, what do we do? Where do we go from here? When I announced my decision to go to seminary many years ago, one person asked me why I felt the need to study the Bible. He explained to me that what Christians need today is not more Bible study, but paying more attention to God’s voice. I do not doubt that God can communicate to his creatures extrabiblically, but it is not always easy for us to discern if indeed God had spoken to so-and-so. We need to be very careful when that happens.
In conclusion, I uphold the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, and I believe it is critical for understanding matters related to our Christian faith. In my opinion, it is the only way for anyone of us to really know God. Our understanding of who is our God must come from what God says about himself in the Bible. No one ought to come up with his or her own explanation. When we hear something, we must, in the same way as what the Bereans did in Acts 17, put the things we heard side by side next to the Bible, and see how they match up against each other. The Bible is the ultimate authority. It is easy for me to see why the Apostle Paul exhorted Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 to handle the word of truth with great care.