Understanding Biblical Inerrancy
Note: The emphasis in quoted texts is always mine.
In order to understand biblical inerrancy, it is useful to define a few other terms:
Inspiration: The property of having been written under the positive guidance of the Holy Spirit as part of public revelation.
Canonicity: The property of being declared to be part of the canon of Scripture, i.e., the official list of inspired texts by the Church.
Authenticity: The property of having, in fact, actually been written by the person by whom authorship is claimed or to whom authorship is traditionally ascribed.
Integrity: The property of having as the writer of all the parts of one’s text the same person.
It is important to define these terms so that we do not confuse them with inerrancy or confuse them with one another.
Where do we start?
All the texts of the Bible are inspired.
From the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Session IV:
If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books in their entirety and with all their parts … let him be anathema.
From Vatican I, Session III, Chapter II:
6. The complete books of the old and the new Testament with all their parts, as they are listed in the decree of the said Council and as they are found in the old Latin Vulgate edition, are to be received as sacred and canonical.
7. These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.
Since the definition of canonicity includes the texts’ inspiration, the councils are declaring that all the books in the Catholic Bible “with all their parts” are inspired.
Inspired writings contain what the Holy Spirit intended them to contain.
From Dei verbum, Section 11:
In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him (2) they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, (3) they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.
The sacred writers did not add to the texts things which the Holy Spirit did not intend, and they did not omit things which the Holy Spirit had intended to be retained.
What are the consequences of inspiration?
Inspired writings are inerrant.
From Providentissimus Deus, Section 20:
But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred.
What is inerrancy?
Inerrancy: The property of making no other assertions than those which are accurate.
From Dei verbum, Section 11:
Therefore … everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit …
This idea of assertion is very important since it indicates that the definition of inerrancy takes into account the original intention of the author.
Is the Bible only inerrant in matters of faith and morals?
From Dei verbum, Section 11:
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation.
Is the clause “for the sake of salvation” limiting the scope of inerrancy or expressing the purpose for which God revealed himself in writing?
From the Latin text of Dei verbum, Section 11:
Cum ergo omne id, quod auctores inspirati seu hagiographi asserunt, retineri debeat assertum a Spiritu Sancto, inde Scripturae libri veritatem, quam Deus nostrae salutis causa, Litteris Sacris consignari voluit, firmiter, fideliter et sine errore docere profitendi sunt.
The Latin makes it seem that this is expressing purpose rather than limiting scope. This seems like a non-defining relative clause.
A better translation would be:
Since therefore each thing, which the inspired writers or hagiographers assert, ought to be regarded as having been asserted by the Holy Spirit, the books of Scripture must be professed to teach firmly, faithfully, and without error the truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, willed to be entrusted to Sacred Writing.
Besides looking at the grammar, we should take into account previous documents on the topic to see what they say about the scope of inerrancy.
From Vatican I, Session III, Chapter II:
7. These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.
8. Now since the decree on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, profitably made by the Council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.
9. In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.
The first emphasized section indicates that inspired writings contain “revelation without error.” It does not tell us anything new about what it means for them to be “without error.”
The second emphasized section may seem at first to be limiting inerrancy to faith and morals, but this is not the case. Rather, it is speaking of the Church’s competence in interpreting the inspired texts. It does give us important information, namely, that the Church’s understanding of the assertions of an inspired text regarding faith and morals is guaranteed to be the correct understanding.
From Providentissimus Deus, Section 20:
For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated.
From Divino afflante Spiritu, Section 1:
When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the “entire books with all their parts” as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as “obiter dicta” and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules.
From Providentissimus Deus, Section 23:
In order that all these endeavours and exertions may really prove advantageous to the cause of the Bible, let scholars keep steadfastly to the principles which We have in this Letter laid down. Let them loyally hold that God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures - and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures.
From the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Section F:
Fundamentalism also places undue stress upon the inerrancy of certain details in the biblical texts, especially in what concerns historical events or supposedly scientific truth. It often historicizes material which from the start never claimed to be historical. It considers historical everything that is reported or recounted with verbs in the past tense, failing to take the necessary account of the possibility of symbolic or figurative meaning.
Fundamentalism often shows a tendency to ignore or to deny the problems presented by the biblical text in its original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek form.
The emphasized section does not indicate that historical or scientific events presented in the Bible are not inerrant. Rather, it simply states that it is not good to place undue stress on these claims. It also indicates that the original author’s intention must be taken into account in order to understand whether what appears to be an assertion is really an assertion or merely a way of expressing something.
What about apparent contradictions or falsities in what the text asserts?
From Divino afflante Spiritu, Section 37:
Nevertheless no one, who has a correct idea of biblical inspiration, will be surprised to find, even in the Sacred Writers, as in other ancient authors, certain fixed ways of expounding and narrating, certain definite idioms, especially of a kind peculiar to the Semitic tongues, so-called approximations, and certain hyperbolical modes of expression, nay, at times, even paradoxical, which even help to impress the ideas more deeply on the mind. For of the modes of expression which, among ancient peoples, and especially those of the East, human language used to express its thought, none is excluded from the Sacred Books, provided the way of speaking adopted in no wise contradicts the holiness and truth of God, as, with his customary wisdom, the Angelic Doctor already observed in these words: “In Scripture divine things are presented to us in the manner which is in common use amongst men.”[30] For as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things, “except sin,”[31] so the words of God, expressed in human language, are made like to human speech in every respect, except error.
From Divino afflante Spiritu, Section 38:
Not infrequently - to mention only one instance - when some persons reproachfully charge the Sacred Writers with some historical error or inaccuracy in the recording of facts, on closer examination it turns out to be nothing else than those customary modes of expression and narration peculiar to the ancients, which used to be employed in the mutual dealings of social life and which in fact were sanctioned by common usage.
This is important because, keeping in mind Dei verbum 11, only the assertions of the sacred writers are inerrant. If the sacred writers are not asserting something but only using a mode of expression in order to assert something else, then the apparent assertion–in reality a mode of expression–is not to be understood as if it were itself a purely empirical assertion of fact.
For example, if I tell you that “I’ll be back in five minutes,” I would probably not intend–and you would probably not expect–that I would be back in exactly 300 seconds. What I’m really asserting is that I will leave and come back in a relatively brief amount of time. Thus, even if it takes me four minutes or six minutes to return, it was not an error for me to say “five minutes” because this is only a common mode of speaking. What I had intended to assert–my return after a brief absence–came to pass.
From the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Section F:
At the same time fundamentalism neglects an important fact: The way in which the first Christian communities themselves understood the impact produced by Jesus of Nazareth and his message. But it is precisely there that we find a witness to the apostolic origin of the Christian faith and its direct expression. Fundamentalism thus misrepresents the call voiced by the Gospel itself.
We must take into account the culture within which the sacred writer was writing since only then will we be able to figure out what the text was intended to mean and, therefore, what its assertions are.
In Brief
- All the books of the Bible with all their parts are inspired.
- Whatever is inspired is free from error.
- Being free from error means not asserting something false.
- Whatever the sacred writer of a text asserted is asserted by the Holy Spirit.
- Thus, nothing the sacred writers asserted in the inspired text is capable of error.
- Thus, it is always possible to resolve apparent contradictions between archaeology or science with the text of the Bible.
- In order to do this, we must figure out what a sacred writer was actually asserting–not merely what modes of expression he used.
- In order to do this, we must understand the modes of expression that were in use at the time the sacred writers were writing.