The purpose of this article is neither to debate, nor to refute the arguments that the Bible was compiled by a group of men, attempting to advance their supposed agenda, but rather providing evidence that the original writings have been preserved throughout the copying and translation of the Scriptures, as we know it today.

“Why do you (still) believe the Bible?
It is an ancient book full of errors and contradictions and incorrect translations.”
We have all heard this many times over. The question now arises. Why would most conservative evangelical Christians disagree with this claim and continue to hold to a doctrine called the inerrancy of Scripture?

A good place to start is to define both inerrancy and error.
By inerrancy, we mean the following. When all the facts are known, i.e. the Bible – in its original manuscripts, properly interpreted – will be proven truthful and never false in all that it claims and affirms, whether related to doctrine, ethics, or the social, physical, or even life sciences.

Please note that some Bible scholars will rather refer to “infallible” instead of inerrant, of which the meanings differ as follow:
infallible: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong; never failing; always effective.
Infallibility therefore means incapable of making a mistake, while inerrancy means the absence of any error.

The following matters in this definition of inerrancy are noteworthy;

1) First, we recognize that we do not possess, neither claim to possess all the information to demonstrate the Biblical truth we hold to, although we strongly feel that the authenticity of the Bible can be confirmed based on an evidentiary approach and not through a scientific approach as many would like to do in order to discredit the Bible.

2) Second, inerrancy is defined in terms of truth that most philosophers today take to be a property of sentences, not merely words. This would then mean that all the indicative sentences, or statements, of the Bible are true, e.g. In John 10 v 30, Jesus claimed that He and the Father were One and for this reason they wanted to stone Him. Therefore, based on this definition, an error in the Bible would require that it made a false statement and therefore all subsequent statements would then be regarded as false.

3) Finally, all information in the Bible, regardless of the subject, is true. That is, it accurately records events, time lines and conversations, which include the lies of men and Satan. It teaches truly about God’s nature, the human condition, even heaven and hell and as a result does not obscure anything. If the lies of men and Satan can be believed, the many “apparent” truths should also be scrutinized and at least given half a chance as you will see that both truths and lies are portrayed in the Bible in equal fashion.

There are basically four (4) pillars that the belief in inerrancy rest on, in order to substantiate the claim that the Bible (as we know it today) remains accurate and faithful to the original manuscripts:
the a) biblical, the b) historical, the c) epistemological (theory of knowledge; the distinction between justified belief and opinion), and the d) slippery slope argument.

a) The biblical argument is drawn from what the Bible has to say about itself and is ultimately the most important. This argument may be formulated in a circular and a non-circular way. It is circular when one claims that the Bible says it is inspired and inerrant and that this is true because it is found in an inspired and inerrant Scripture. It is not circular when claims are made that are verifiable outside the document by secular sources. This is possible because the Bible makes historical and geographical statements and claims that are verifiable independently. Inerrancy follows from what the Bible has to say about its inspiration. It is the exhaled breath of God (2 Tm 3:16) and is the result of human authors guided by the Holy Spirit (2 Pt 1:21). It is a divinely inspired – humanly penned book, so if someone argues that it was written by men, the answer is YES! Sure it was… Moreover, the accreditation of a prophet in the OT requires nothing less than complete truthfulness (Dt 13:1-5; 18:20-22).

A critical question, you should have asked yourself by now, is this.
Can God’s written communication or word(s) meet any less a standard? It should be noted that both these oral and written forms of communication involve the human element and show that human agency or involvement does not necessarily imply the presence of error. The Bible, being able to defend itself, teaches its own authority as well. Matthew 5:17-20 teaches that both heaven and earth will pass away before any minor detail of the law fails to be fulfilled. Furthermore, the way Scripture uses Scripture to explain itself, supports its inerrancy. This is exactly how Jesus interpreted the scriptures. At times arguments in Scripture may rest on a single word (Ps 82:6; Jn 10:34-35), the tense of a verb (Mt 22:32), or the number of a noun (Gl 3:16). Ultimately, the character of God stands behind His written word, and therefore He cannot lie (Nm 23:19; 1 Sm 15:29; Ti 1:2; Heb 6:18).

b) A second argument is historical of nature. While there have been some who disagree, inerrancy (or infallibility), has been the normative Christian view throughout church history. Augustine writes, “I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.” Luther says the following, “Everyone, indeed, knows that at times they [the fathers] have erred as men will; therefore I am ready to trust them only when they prove their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred.” John Wesley gave a similar opinion: “Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.”

c) A third argument is epistemological (based on what and how we know something). A helpful way to formulate this notion is to recognize that if the Bible is not entirely true, then any of it may be false. Why then trust anything the Bible has to say about anything, right? This is particularly problematic (to some folks), when some of the most important information communicated is not verifiable through independent facts, seeing that It teaches about an invisible God, angels, and heaven. Inerrancy requires that those claims of the Bible that are testable will be shown to be true once all relevant information is available.

Critics of the Bible’s full truthfulness (or lack thereof), point out numerous alleged errors. But in these cases, the passage in question may have been misinterpreted or taken out of context by the critic or not all relevant facts have been brought to light, i.e. no archives or archeological site(s) have yet been found. During the twentieth century, numerous claims of the Bible, thought to be in error, were shown to be true in the light of newly found information. So… why should anyone believe what is unverifiable? Surely, only an inerrant Bible can assure us that what we read is true? If you believe this, you are not alone and many sceptics will stand with you.

d) The fourth argument is the slippery slope (not a fallacy in this case), which states that inerrancy is so fundamental that those admitting errors into the Bible will soon surrender other central doctrines like the deity of Christ and/or the substitutionary atonement, which has been the foundation of our faith from the beginning. The denial of inerrancy leads to greater doctrinal error. This does not happen in every case, but it is demonstrable as a trend. Why would majority religions (if not all of them), remain steadfast in their belief, even though certain events or doctrines cannot be verified either, while Biblical events, places and timelines are verifiable and supported by history.

Every single one of these arguments have been criticized.
However, a common and fundamental objection to them contends this doctrine is meaningless since it is true only of nonexistent autographs (the original manuscripts). But is it meaningless? Not if two conditions are met: (1) we possess a sufficient number of high-quality copies of the autographs (over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts catalogued, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic, Nubian, etc), and (2) there is a sophisticated discipline of textual criticism to use these copies in determining what the original must have said.

The major types of biblical criticism are: (a) textual criticism, which is concerned with establishing the original or most authoritative text, (b) philological criticism, which is the study of the biblical languages for an accurate knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and style of the period, (c) literary criticism, which focuses on the various literary genres embedded in the text in order to uncover evidence concerning date of composition, authorship, and original function of the various types of writing that constitute the Bible, (d) tradition criticism, which attempts to trace the development of the oral traditions that preceded written texts, and (e) form criticism, which classifies the written material according to the preliterary forms, such as parable or hymn.

Taken from Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-criticism

Both of these conditions are met in the case of the Bible. The fundamental issue is the Bible’s teaching of its own inerrancy. And for those who are skeptical, evidence from science, archaeology, and history has supported this claim over and over again.

Inspired by Paul D. Feinberg