In particular, Shawn Nelson cites Clement of Rome, Papias, Ignatius of Antioch, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Epistle to Diognetus as examples of those whom held to inerrancy.
Aquinas wrote: It is heretical to say that any falsehood whatever is contained either in the Gospels or in any canonical Scripture.Another theologian, Hugh of St. Victor, is known for stressing the importance of the historical and literal senses of the Bible in the face of the strong allegorizing tendency of the age.
Subtract the letter and what is left?Philosopher John Wycliff proposed an extreme version of inerrancy, that meant that even parables must have been factually true, in the book Latin: De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae (On the Truthfulness of Holy Scripture, c.1378).
Scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, who published the first Latin-Greek New Testament in print, believed not only that translation between languages was always imperfect, that transmission errors had occurred by scribes, and that Scripture was sometimes deliberately obscure, but also that "the sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) were slightly different in each.
[38] The Christian humanist and one of the leading scholars of the northern Renaissance, Erasmus (1466–1536), was also unconcerned with minor errors not impacting theology, and at one point, thought that Matthew mistook one word for another.
In a letter to Johannes Eck, Erasmus wrote that "Nor, in my view, would the authority of the whole of Scripture be instantly imperiled, as you suggest, if an evangelist by a slip of memory did put one name for another, Isaiah for instance instead of Jeremiah, for this is not a point on which anything turns.
Whereas the Council of Trent only held that the Bible's authority was "in matters of faith and morals", Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) argued in his 1586 De verbo Dei, the first volume of his multi-volume Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei adversus hujus temporis haereticos that "There can be no error in Scripture, whether it deals with faith or whether it deals with morals/mores, or whether it states something general and common to the whole Church, or something particular and pertaining to only one person."
Where the focus switches to an undue emphasis on matters like chronological details, precise sequence of events, and numerical allusions, we would consider the term misleading and inappropriate.
This creed has been normative for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and all mainline Protestant denominations except for those descended from the non-credal Stone-Campbell movement.
[64] Because of this, Lutherans confess in the Formula of Concord, "we receive and embrace with our whole heart the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel".
[65] Lutherans (and other Protestants) believe apocryphal books are neither inspired nor written by prophets, and that they contain errors and were never included in the "Palestinian Canon" that Jesus and the Apostles are said to have used,[66] and therefore are not a part of Holy Scripture.
[75] Harold Lindsell points out that it is a "gross distortion" to state that people who believe in inerrancy suppose every statement made in the Bible is true (as opposed to accurate).
Some denominations that teach infallibility hold that the historical or scientific details, which may be irrelevant to matters of faith and Christian practice, may contain errors.
[77]Figures such as Scot McKnight have also argued that the Bible clearly transcends multiple genres and Hebrew prose poems cannot be evaluated by a reader the same as a science textbook.
[80] In addition, Michael T. Griffith, the Mormon apologist, writes: Nowhere within its pages does the Bible teach or logically imply the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy.
[82] Furthermore, the Catholic Veritas Bible website says that "Rather than characterizing the Old Testament scriptures as required reading, Paul is simply promoting them as something useful or advantageous to learn. [...]
[86] In the introduction to his book Credible Christianity, Anglican Bishop Hugh Montefiore, comments: The doctrine of biblical inerrancy seems inherently improbable, for two reasons.
[89] John Shelby Spong, author and former bishop of the Episcopal Church who was well-known for his post-theistic theology, declared that the literal interpretation of the Bible is heresy.
[111] KJV-only inerrantist Jack Moorman says that at least 356 doctrinal passages are affected by the differences between the Textus Receptus and the Nestle-Aland Greek Text.
[119] As a result, Licona resigned from his position as research professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary and apologetics coordinator for the North American Mission Board.
St. John Henry Newman, writing in 1884, acknowledged the "human side" of biblical inspiration which "manifests itself in language, style, tone of thought, character, intellectual peculiarities, and such infirmities, not sinful, as belong to our nature, and which in unimportant matters may issue in what in doctrinal definitions is called an obiter dictum (said in passing).” In this view, the Bible contains many statements of a historical nature that have no salvific content in themselves and so need not be inerrant.
[124] After several years discussion and numerous drafts, on 18 November 1965 the Vatican II Council adopted the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, known as Dei verbum from its first Latin words.
In this long journey of thought the concept of inerrancy was not rejected but was seriously modified to fit the evidence of biblical criticism which showed that the Bible was not inerrant in questions of science, of history, and even of time-conditioned religious beliefs.Similarly, Scripture scholar R. A. F. MacKenzie,[134] in his commentary on Dei verbum, said:[135] The Bible was not written in order to teach the natural sciences, nor to give information on merely political history.
It is only in this respect that the veracity of God and the inerrancy of the inspired writers are engaged.In a speech to German bishops during the Second Vatican Council, the future Pope Benedict XVI described inerrancy as referring to everything which scripture intended to affirm, but not necessarily in how it is expressed, saying:[136] "It is not surprising that according to a practically irrefutable consensus of historians there definitely are mistakes and errors in the Bible in profane matters of no relevance for what Scripture properly intends to affirm.
Vatican II says that "the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" (Dei verbum 11).
of total biblical inerrancy sometimes focus on its incompatibility with the idealized scientific method, which relies on empirical evidence, testable hypotheses, and the falsifiability of claims.
Total biblical inerrancy, the belief that the Bible is free from error in all its teachings, including historical and scientific assertions, is seen as incompatible with these principles due to its reliance on faith and dogmatic authority.
For instance, the story of Noah's Ark (Genesis 6:9–9:17) describes a global flood, which lacks geological evidence and contradicts known principles of hydrology and biology.
While science progresses through the refinement of theories based on new evidence, total biblical inerrancy maintains that the (original) text is immutable, preventing reinterpretation in light of new discoveries.
by framing the Bible as infallible, proponents of inerrancy place religious doctrine in direct opposition to scientific methods, leading to ongoing debates about the role of faith in understanding the natural world.