In order to treat the Bible as \u2018inerrant\u2019 one has to attribute inerrancy to not only those who made these judgments, but also to the authors (at least while they were writing). But of course, Protestants have a certain aversion to the idea of church leaders who can make infallible pronouncements but the rest of the time are fallible human beings, so this view shouldn\u2019t appeal to as many Protestants as it apparently does.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, one has to attribute inerrancy to someone or something other than God in order to take this sort of view of Scripture. But the real aim is not to connect ourselves with the inerrancy of God, but to be able to claim the inerrancy of our own views about God, claiming that they are just the teachings of the inerrant Scriptures. Any doctrine that ultimately serves the interests of individuals claiming their own certainty must be criticially evaluated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSola Scriptura\u201d still has a certain potentially valid meaning \u2013 one can still value these writings as our earliest Christian sources. But not studying them critically, or pretending they dropped down from heaven in a single package, is not an option. The time has come for us to stop speaking nonsense in the name of God, and to stop quietly tolerating others who do the same. Those whose views are expressed in the public sphere are open to rational discussion and evaluation \u2013 whether they are about science, the environment, the Bible, religion or anything else.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although I am a Protestant, I must confess that the idea of \u2018sola Scriptura\u2019, of \u2018Scripture alone\u2019, doesn\u2019t work. It could perhaps theoretically work in Islam, where one can (assuming one doesn\u2019t take a critical approach to the text) assume the unity of the book as a given. In the case of the Bible, such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n