What Inerrancy is Not

With all these posts on inerrancy, it may be helpful to explain what inerrancy is not. A friend of mine passed along J.I. Packer’s article from the New Dictionary of Theology (IVP 1988) where Packer gives a succinct one paragraph summary of all that inerrancy can mistakenly entail.

Some evangelicals who affirm that Scripture is infallible, never misinforming or misleading us, will not call it inerrant because they think that word tainted by association. They see it as committing its users to: 1. rationalistic apologetics that seek to base trust in the Bible on proof of its truth rather than on divine testimony to it; 2. a docetic view of Scripture that obscures its humanity; 3. unscholarly  exegesis that lacks semantic soundness and historical  precision; 4. unplausible harmonizing, and unscientific guesswork about textual corruption where inconsistencies seem to appear; 5. a theology preoccupied with peripheral details and thus distracted from Christ, who is the Bible’s focal centre. (338)

A few years later, Packer reaffirmed the importance of the word inerrancy, but he understood that in order to be heard correctly when we use the term and to be fair with the biblical text, inerrantists he need to “disclaim all these pitfalls.” The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is similarly nuanced.