What Does “Biblical” Mean?

What Does “Biblical” Mean? July 23, 2016

Chuck Queen Biblical Doesn't Mean a Darn Thing

Chuck Queen wrote a helpful post recently, sharing his own experience of interacting with someone who insisted the Bible was clear – but didn’t accept its “clear” teaching on certain matters. The quote above is from that post. Click through to read the rest.

I’ve said it often before, but it bears repeating. One should never say that fundamentalist Christians are “Biblical” or “inerrantists” or “literalists.” They are selectively Biblical, selectively literal, and the Bible’s inerrant meaning is always in fact what they are convinced it means, but other inerrantists often disagree, and so the claim to inerrancy is not about the Bible but themselves and their own interpretation of it.

Why is it important to emphasize this? Because otherwise it grants them a high ground in arguments that they don’t deserve. It puts one on the defensive, leaving them to ask why their opponent “doesn’t believe the Bible” or isn’t consistent, when their own stance is open to criticism in the exact same way for the exact same reasons.


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