Ask Steve:
Is the Bible infallible?
What does it mean when we say that
the Bible is inspired by God? Is every
word of it infallible? Is the whole Bible
universally applicable? And if not, in what sense is
scripture authoritative?
The writers of the New Testament are clear. Through Jesus, for the first time in history, we get to see God exactly as he is. Or, to put the other way round, if it doesn’t look like Jesus, it’s not God. Ironically, that’s the beginning of your dilemma. Jesus, even as he claimed to be committed to bringing the full meaning of the Old Testament to the surface (Matthew 5:17), is famous for his challenges to parts of its actual text.
For instance, ‘You have heard it said that...But I tell you that...’ Jesus used this well-known formula first to quote from the Old Testament and then to radically re-write it. Indeed, it was his deliberately renegade attitude to these and many other Old Testament laws and teachings which increasingly got under the skin of Israel’s teachers.
I guess another part of the question you are grappling with surrounds all the discrepancies and conflicting statements contained in the Bible. Take an example from the Old Testament.
Was it Satan or God who inspired King David to carry out the census of the people of Israel which the Old Testament writers record? According to 1 Chronicles 21:1, ‘Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census’, whereas 2 Samuel 24:1 is adamant that ‘the LORD...incited David...saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”’ Which is right? Not both!
This is no small point because both versions of the story go on to explain that ‘the LORD sent a plague on Israel’ and 70,000 people died in three days. This reported action of God – especially in the 2 Samuel version – raises huge theological issues about his nature.
So what do we do with texts like these? There’s a passage in the New Testament which, in my opinion, is very revealing. In 1 Corinthians 7 the Apostle Paul has a whole section of instructions about marriage and divorce. However, he is at pains to make clear a fundamental distinction between two parts of this teaching. The first section he says is not from him ‘but the Lord’ (v10) whereas, by contrast, the second is his opinion but ‘not the Lord’. The question is this: Was he right, or was he wrong? Is this second segment of teaching inspired by God, even though Paul claims it isn’t, or not? Either way we have a problem. If Paul is right, then not all scripture is directly inspired by God in the simple way we have sometimes assumed it to be. If Paul is wrong, and all his teaching was actually from God – then, by definition, because his erroneous statement is part of the New Testament, not all scripture is directly inspired by God in the simple way we have sometimes assumed it to be.
One way or the other, this passage challenges an over simplistic understanding of what we are talking about when we refer to the infallibility of the Bible. It forces us to think more deeply. So in what sense is the Bible authoritative?
Many would ask why I don’t just quote Paul’s letter to his apprentice Timothy (2 Timothy 3:16): ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...’and leave it at that. The reason is because it’s vital that we are honest enough to take the setting, culture, context and even complexity of all scripture seriously. Though we now use Paul’s words to apply to the whole of the Christian Bible, in context he is actually referring only to the Old Testament. It’s clear that his original intention was not to regard his own letters to churches or individuals as scripture, and that he was also commenting before the Gospels, or the majority of the rest of what now comprises the New Testament, had been written.
Over the years I’ve had countless conversations with people – including church leaders – who are secretly struggling with these big issues, but feel there is a conspiracy of silence around them. Our love for God, for people and for the Bible should compel us to wrestle with this challenge rather than trying to push it away through the use of, what must sound to others like, shallow statements about the authority of God’s word. As we celebrate 400 years of the King James Bible, perhaps one of the best things we can do is to promote honest discussion in others – both inside and beyond the church.
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