The Inerrant Bible that Wasn't
This is a long post about the Bible. I wrote it more for myself than anyone else. I was raised with a strong version of Biblical inerrancy, but I gradually came to find it untenable, and this made me a much less conservative Christian. For better or worse, I felt the need to sort it out in writing.
I was raised in conservative Protestantism,1 and a belief in Biblical inerrancy was extremely important for us. When the Bible spoke, God spoke, and God was always right, as much about history as about faith and morals. For awhile, I was happy to believe this. But, as I read the Bible and learned more about its history, I found that it simply contained errors. At first, I noticed the bits of the Old Testament that were morally abhorrent.2 This bent my faith in inerrancy. But, for whatever reason, it did not break it. I mostly tried not to think about it. At times, I half - heartedly believed a few apologetic responses. But, the more I studied the New Testament, the more errors I found.
At first, I was troubled by small discrepancies. Matthew and Luke attributed two incompatible genealogies to Christ, and I found the attempts to reconcile them very unpersuasive. Similarly, Acts and Matthew say Judas died in different ways. In Matthew, he "[goes] away and [hangs] himself," (Matthew 27: 5) but Acts tells a more grisly story, where he falls to his death and his intestines spill out. (see Acts 1: 18 - 20). The New Testament authors also disagreed about to what extent Christians should follow the Mosaic law. Acts 15 states that Christians do not have to follow the whole Torah, but must only "...abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from sexual immorality." (Acts 15: 29) In contrast, Romans 14 famously presents a more liberal stance, and Matthew's Jesus presents a much stricter one:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven...
- Matthew 5: 17 - 19, emphasis mine
I recognized that these were contradictions. But, somehow, they did not really trouble me. They were so remote from my own religious concerns that I could pretend they weren't there. However, I soon discovered errors which did. For instance, Paul claimed that all people knew with certainty that God exists: if they claimed otherwise, it was because they were sinfully suppressing the truth.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. So they are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
But this directly contradicted my experience. If I had a sensus divinitatis, its light was dim and fleeting. I occasionally found myself moved by philosophical arguments for theism, but just as often I did not. I knew plenty of irreligious people, and few resembled Paul's rhetorical foes.
Just as alarmingly, some of the authors of the New Testament expected Christ to return in their lifetimes. When writing about the Parousia, Paul writes:
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
- 1 Thessalonians 4: 15 - 18, emphasis mine.
He reaffirms this in in 1 Corinthians 7, taking it as reason not to change one's worldly circumstances.
I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is good for you to remain as you are. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in the flesh, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
- 1 Corinthians 7: 26 - 31, emphasis mine.
Nor is this problem confined to Paul. The Book of Revelation famously opens:
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
And yet, they were all wrong. For twenty centuries, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.
This broke inerrancy for me. It sort of started of avalanche; now that I knew the Bible contained some errors, what if it contained more? The Bible seemed ever less divine and unified, ever more human and polyphonic. Where before I had seen difference in wording or emphasis, I now saw differing perspectives. For instance, take the three things the synoptic gospels record Christ saying about divorce.
Mark has Christ forbidding divorce and remarriage, with no exceptions.
Some, testing him, asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
In Matthew, by contrast, there is an exception for porneia, and it is immediately followed by a cryptic saying, apparently about the superiority of celibacy to married life.
They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
- Matthew 19: 7 - 12, emphasis mine
In seeming contrast to both, Luke does not condemn divorce, but only remarriage after it.
“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."
Likewise, the Biblical authors disagree about corporate guilt. Understandably, the prophet Ezekiel is not a big fan:
Yet you say, “Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?” When the son has done what is lawful and right and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be their own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be their own.
But, this is flatly contradicted by the author of Deuteronomy, who says: "You shall not bow down to [idols] or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me." (Deuteronomy 5: 9) The author of 1 Samuel goes further, he depicts God ordering the slaughter of a people group for the sins of their ancestors. "Thus says the Lord of hosts: I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Samuel 15: 1 -2)
These perspectives are irreconcilable, and one is obviously superior to the others.
Around this time, I listened to Christians discuss the nature, duration, and purpose of Hell. Most, of course, thought that Hell was a place of eternal torment. But there were small and growing minority reports. Some Christians, annihilationists, said that the damned would be totally destroyed. Others, like Robin Parry and David Bentley Hart, saw Hell as a kind of purgatory that eventually led to redemption.
And, for good or ill, the Bible supported all of them.
The eternal torment view is less represented in the Bible than most people think. But we still have just a little eternal torment, as a treat. The Book of Revelation seems fairly clear about the matter.3
Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, “Those who worship the beast and its image and receive the brand on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the brand of its name.”
But, other parts of the Bible endorse annihilationism. Luke 20, for instance, implies that not all people will be resurrected. Only a subset of us are "considered worthy of a place in [the world to come]." 4
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
Indeed, a lot of Jesus's judgement language sounds like annihilation, at least at first glance. Weeds are burned up, corpses are devoured by worms and fire, body and soul are destroyed in Gehenna.
Other passages — especially in Paul's letters — seem to state that all creation will be reconciled to God. The book of Colossians, for instance, states that "all things" are created and upheld by Christ, and that it is these very same things which he has redeemed.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers — all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And, while I don't think any of the Biblical authors directly endorse a purgatorial Hell, there are places where God's judgement is described as being remedial or temporary — 1 Corinthians 3: 5 - 15 and 5:5, perhaps Matthew 5: 21 - 26.. A universalist can reasonably look to these for support, though I suppose a believer in Catholic purgatory could also.
The Bible also seems to disagree with itself about women's ordination. The author of 1 Timothy does not think women should be bishops, nor hold any authority over men at all.5
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
Yet, in other places, women are clearly described as occupying positions of authority. In Romans 16, Paul famously mentions a female apostle named Junia, and the letter was apparently delivered by a deaconess named Phoebe. There are some Christians who allow women to be deacons but not ministers, so I suppose they might not be troubled by Phoebe. But, being an Apostle is certainly a position of authority — in many Christian traditions, clergy are understood to have authority because they inherit it from the Apostles.
Each of these issues was a theological or ethical point which I cared about. And, with respect to each of them, the Biblical authors held differing views. Perhaps some of the texts have a deeper meaning which accords with what the others say. But, their human authors simply disagree.
I did not want to come to this conclusion, but I have. It did not break my Christianity, but it did break my conservative Protestantism. I still see the Biblical texts as holy and important — they were written by God's people as they struggled with God. I believe God wants us to read them and struggle with them, and — in an imperfect and human way — they point us towards God's self - revelation in Christ. But I cannot call them inerrant or infallible, for that is simply not true.
Some people would describe my family as "Evangelical." I do not think that this term is helpful or meaningful. When I was a child, our church was part of the PCUSA (a "mainline" denomination), but it later joined ECO because it opposed gay marriage. Throughout this process, nothing drastic changed about how the church's practice or teaching.↩
Sometimes, people speak as though Old Testament is just a catalogue of horrors and barbarities, and I disagree with this. Much of the Hebrew Bible is lovely and profound, parts of it are even comical. But, other parts of it more than deserve their reputation. I think that 1 Samuel 15 and Numbers 31 were the passages that most bothered me. They both present mass murder as just and divinely ordained, and the later seems to do the same with sexual slavery.↩
As this is a piece of apocalyptic imagery, there is a bit of wiggle room here. But, personally, I tend to think the author of Revelation was an infernalist.↩
It is not clear to me whether this passage makes celibacy a requirement for salvation. Some Bible scholars apparently argue it does, though that would be very inconsistent with many other parts of the Bible (along with the beliefs of all Christian communities that perpetuate themselves).↩
With this passage, a lot of modern conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to use it to bar women from being priests, pastors, or bishops, but they don't take it to mean women can't be politicians, bosses, or department heads. This does not make sense to me. The author's logic (which, to be clear, I do not accept) is that women shouldn't lead because they are more gullible than men. This applies just as much to the president as to the parish priest. If he means to say something else, Eve's being deceived is irrelevant.↩