Theological Term of the Week

inerrancy of scripture
The principle that the Bible as it was originally written is completely true and without error.

• From scripture: 
  

  God is not man, that he should lie,
  or a son of man, that he should change his mind. (Numbers 23:19 ESV)

  The words of the Lord are pure words,
  like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
  purified seven times. (Psalm 12:6 ESV)

• From The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy:

  1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

  2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

  3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

  4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

  5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

• From John Frame in Is the Bible Inerrant? :

  Other things being equal, I would prefer to drop all extra-scriptural terms including “infallible” and “inerrant” and simply speak, as Scripture does, of God’s Word being true. That’s all we mean, after all, when we say Scripture is inerrant. But modern theologians won’t let me do that. They redefine “truth” so that it refers to some big theological notion, and they will not permit me to use it as meaning “correctness” or “accuracy” or “reliability.”

  …Now what is our alternative? Even “accuracy” and “reliability” have been distorted by theological pre-emption. “Correctness” seems too trivial to express what we want to say. So, although the term is overly technical and subject to some misunderstanding, I intend to keep the word “inerrant” as a description of God’s Word, and I hope that my readers will do the same. The idea, of course, is more important than the word. If I can find better language that expresses the biblical doctrine to modern hearers, I will be happy to use that and drop “inerrancy.” But at this moment, “inerrancy” has no adequate replacement. To drop the term in the present situation, then, can involve compromising the doctrine, and that we dare not do. God will not accept or tolerate negative human judgments concerning his holy Word. So I conclude: yes, the Bible is inerrant.

Learn more:

1. Blue Letter Bible: What is the Doctrine of Inerrancy?
2. Roger Nicole: Questions and Answer on Biblical Inerrancy
3. Kevin DeYoung: What Inerrancy Is Not
4. Greg Bahnsen: The Inerrancy of the Autographa
5. John Piper: Is the Bible Without Error? (mp3) 
6. D. A. Carson: What does inerrancy mean? Is it essential to Christian belief? (video)
   

Related terms:

• authority of scripture
• autographa
• infallibility of scripture
• inspiration of scripture

Filed under Scripture.

Have you come across a theological term that you don’t understand and you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

A Thankful November: Dog Walks

Copyright © 2006-2007, Andrew Stark.

All rights reserved.

(Click for larger view.) 

 
I’m thankful for a dog that needs to be walked. Things are always better after a good walk in the outdoors, so I’m thankful for a dog who forces me to get some regular outdoor exercise and then adores me for the rest of the day because she had so much fun with me. (This is an old photo. We have snow now.)

Other thankful folk 

• Ann B is thankful for freedom.
  
• William Meisheid is thankful for being off dead center on his writing again.
• Kim is thankful for new brakes and the old gas grill.
  
• Connie is thankful for a spark from a reluctant writer.
• Kim is thankful that the orthodontist hasn’t charged….yet.
  
• Carla is thankful for giggling.

Doesn’t that list make you thankful, too? Why don’t you participate in being thankful with us? Here’s how:

• Mention something you’re thankful for in the comments here, and I’ll include it in one of my thanksgiving posts, or
  
• Email me to tell me what you’re thankful for and I’ll include it in one of the thankful posts, or
• You may post your thankful thought(s) on your own blog and send me the link(s), and I’ll link to your post.
• If you’ve posted something thankful and I missed it, please remind me.

Do Not Dance With Them!

North America  has it’s first documented case of  a healthy wolf killing a human in the wild.

A coroner’s jury in Saskatchewan has determined that Ontario university student Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack.

Carnegie was 22 when he died in November 2005 near Points North Landing, Sask. On a work term for a company at the mining exploration camp, located about 750 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, Carnegie went for a walk and didn’t come back.

Searchers later found his body surrounded by wolves.

Not that the findings are undisputed. One expert witness, Paul Paquet, testified that it is more likely that it was a black bear that killed Carnegie. However, he did not rule out the possiblity that it was a wolf attack.

Mark McNay, recently retired as head of the research department at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (who happens to be my cousin, and with whom I visited in September when he flew through Whitehorse on his way south), testified that he was convinced that it was indeed a wolf attack. He argued that bears would have been in hibernation at the time Carnegie was killed, and that no bears had been seen in the area for several weeks before the attack, nor were any seen for months after.

In photographs of the site, what Paquet identified as bear tracks were actually wolf tracks, said McNay. The tracks were on the lake’s surface, which had not completely frozen over. When the wolf stepped into the ground and broke through to water, the water came up and made the track larger, leading people to believe it was bear tracks.

McNay said it was also unlikely that two wolves would have eaten the same hair from the dump on the same day Carnegie was killed.

As for the argument that wolves don’t attack humans, McNay said that is not the case anymore because wolves are becoming habitualized and losing their fear of people.

These incidents of wolves and people, predictably, are going to increase,” he said. 

So if you’ve been been told that wolves in the wild in the wild never behave aggressively toward human beings, you might want to file that thought under urban myths, and I use the word urban deliberately.

 
Sources: OHS Canada, CBC News

You’ll find more info on agressive and nonagressive wolf-human encounters in this case history (pdf) done for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by Mark McNay.