Is This Really “Inerrancy?”

In 1984 I interviewed for a position teaching theology at Bethel College and Seminary (now Bethel University) in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was shown the denomination’s and institution’s statement of faith (doctrinal statement) and asked if I could sign it. It included belief that the Bible is without error in the original autographs. I balked a bit at that and asked what that means. I was shown an essay written by John Piper when he interviewed to teach at Bethel. (He was hired to teach New Testament.) The essay describes Piper’s own belief about the subject. Told that his view was compatible with that of the denomination (then called the Baptist General Conference), I was able to sign the statement of faith. The essay is still on John’s web site and is for public use when John’s authorship is acknowledged. I hereby acknowledge that. But what I want to know is whether John’s definition of “inerrancy” is what most conservative evangelicals mean when they talk about the accuracy of scripture as “without error in the original autographs” and insist on the agreement with “biblical inerrancy” for admission to their club. What do you think?

John Piper’s Essay about Biblical Inerrancy

1. The Word of God

“The Bible is…without error in the original manuscripts…”  Since there is a wide diversity of opinions on the meaning of “error” in such an affirmation, it is appropriate that I give my understanding of the word in this context so that you know what I am affirming.

I will suggest two definitions of “error”, the first of which I consider proper for judging the reliability of any literature including the Bible and the second of which I consider improper.  According to the first I believe the Bible is “without error”.

1) A writer is in error when the basic intention in his statements and admonitions, properly understood in their nearer and wider context, is not true.  (In reference to indicative statements, “true” means they correspond to reality; in reference to admonitions “true” means that obedience of these admonitions is in harmony with reality, i.e., it accords with the will of God.)

2) A writer is in error if any of his individual statements are not literally true.

The difference between these two definitions and my own understanding of the truth of the Bible may be clarified by three illustrations from Scripture. (To many of my fellow theologians the following would sound elementary to the point of being superfluous. But in my tradition it is a necessary starting point if we are to come to properly understand our affirmation on Scripture.)

1. A) God says against Jerusalem through Jeremiah (15:8), “I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the sea.” This statement is “literally” false. But according to definition 1 above, it is not false since the basic intention of Jeremiah is to press home (by an exaggeration which had become a commonplace analogy in the Old Testament) the tragically large number of widows as a sign of God’s judgment.
2. B) Jesus says in Mark 4:31 that the Kingdom of God “is like a grain of mustard seed which when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth…” According to definition 2 above, Jesus erred here because the mustard seed is not the smallest seed on the earth.  But according to the first definition he did not err because his basic intention was not in the least botanical.  The point is the great contrast between the smallness of the seed and the largeness of the full-grown shrub.  Jesus capitalized on the proverbial smallness of the mustard seed (TWNT, VII, p. 288) to make a perfect, inerrant point about the Kingdom of God.
3. C) If we used definition 2 above the Gospel writers would have to be accused of error in their chronology of events of Jesus’ life. Just one illustration: The story of the healing of the paralytic (Mt. 9:1-8 = Mk 2:1-12 = Lk 5:17-26), the call of Levi (Mt 9:9-13 = Mk 2:13-17 = Lk 5:27-32), and the question about fasting (Mt 9:14-47 = Mk 2:18-22 = Lk 5:33-39) follow back to back in all three Synoptics and so refer to the same events.  Again, the stilling of the storm (Mt 8:23-27 = Mk 4:35-41 = Lk 8:22-25) and the Gesarene demoniac (Mt 8:28 = Mk 5:1-20 = Lk 8:26-39) follow back to back in all three Synoptics so that with the verbal parallels one can see that the same sequence of events is being referred to in each Gospel.  But Matthew has these last two events before  the three cited above.  While Mark and Luke have them after these three events.  It cannot be both ways.

But the Synoptics are not in error here according to the first definition above because it was not their basic intention to give a rigid chronology of Jesus’ ministry (which Papias said already in the second century, cf. Eusebius, E. H. III, 39, 14ff).  Their intention was rather to give a faithful presentation of the essential features of Jesus’ teaching and deeds.  In this particular instance Matthew probably felt he could best do this by including the storm stilling and Gesarene demoniac scenes in his composition of chapters 8 and 9 where he has gathered ten miracle stories.  This presentation of Jesus’ miracle working is then bracketed together with the Sermon on the Mount with the identical summary statements in 4:23 and 9:35.  Thus we have a literary unit which beautifully and inerrantly sets forth the essential features of our Lord’s ministry.

These three illustrations should suffice to clarify my understanding of the affirmation: “The Bible is without error.”  I thus gladly align myself with the long-proved tradition: perfectio respect finis (perfect with respect to purpose).  I know no better statement of my own position on this matter than that of the Second Baptist Confession of 1677: “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience…”

But I think just as important as agreeing with Affirmation I in detail is my deep commitment to the spirit of it.  From history and from my own experience I can say that it is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the Bible.  We humans are incapable of finding out what we need so much to know: how to overcome sin, to escape the wrath of God, to become new creatures, to walk pleasing to the Lord.  God must reveal this to us or we perish.  This he has done and continues to do by means of the written Word, the Bible.  When a man has understood the Bible he has understood the revelation of God infallibly, inerrantly, and verbally.

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