Titus 1:2
…in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began…
In defending the faith and teaching God’s truth to others, Christian theologians have developed a specialized vocabulary. Terms such as Trinity, hypostatic union, eschatology, aseity, and many others are used to help people grow in their knowledge of God and His Word. With respect to the doctrine of Scripture, two words are used to make assertions about the truthfulness of the Bible: inerrancy and infallibility. Inerrancy means that the Scriptures do not affirm any errors. The Bible does not endorse anything untrue. When it tells history, it tells us what actually happened. It may report on what a person said when the person told a lie to someone else, but it does not endorse the lie. It is simply giving an accurate report of what the liar said. In the area of science, the Bible does not contradict God’s revelation in the natural world. So, the Bible is entirely truthful and has no errors at all in the original manuscripts that the prophets and Apostles actually wrote. We do not possess these manuscripts today, but through the process of textual criticism, we can recover the original wording of the manuscripts with a high degree of certainty. Now, inerrancy is not unique to the Holy Scriptures. Human beings regularly make error-free statements. Students score 100 percent on exams; people accurately state their names to others; and so forth. What sets Scripture apart from all else is its infallibility. Infallibility has to do with possibilities, and it means that the Word of God is incapable of error. Humans can produce inerrant documents and other things and, yet, still retain the possibility of error. Before a child scored 100 percent on a math test, it was possible that the child might miss one of the answers. But, when the Lord inspired the authors of Scripture, God worked so as to make it impossible for them to affirm error in the completed product. We can have inerrancy without infallibility, but we cannot have infallibility without inerrancy. Infallibility necessarily results in the text’s being free from error. However, without infallibility, the production of an inerrant text is accidental as it could have errors. Theologians and other biblical scholars affirm the inerrancy and the infallibility of Scripture because they know the character of God. Our verse today tells us that the Lord never lies. If God never lies, His Word never lies either. We can therefore trust it to be free from all error. Some have recently used the term infallibility even though they believe the Bible contains errors. We need to be on guard against the possible misuse of the word. Christians say Scripture is infallible because they believe that God’s Word is incapable of error. And the Bible gives us ample reason to believe this, so we can stake our very lives on the Word of God.
Source: S C Ball May 8, 2024
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