inerrancy

At every point in the story of the transmission of biblical material from the original text to today we are dealing with the interaction of men and women with God. At every point, human judgment and human fallibility are involved, as they are in every attempt we make today to act faithfully in new situations. The idea that at a certain point in this long story a line was drawn before which everything is divine word and after which everything is human judgment is absurd.

My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am, and that's good to keep in mind.

Even though the Bible is an ancient document, every person in every situation in every society that__ ever existed can find in this book things that endure forever. Here__ a book that never needs another edition. It never needs to be edited, never has to be updated, is never out of date or obsolete. It speaks to us as pointedly and directly as it ever has to anyone in any century since it was written. It__ so pure that it lasts forever.

My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression.

It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.

If God did not reveal himself with word-by-wordprecision, then He has placed the revelation oftruth into the incompetent hands of fallen man.That would prove hopelessly imbecilic. He whorevealed Himself with exactness in __atural_ creationchose the precise words, sentences and paragraphs to compile one Book in which we have His perfect Word.