A Word of Warning

Even 99-44/100% is not enough

Jonathan Noyes and Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason got together recently to produce an excellent post on the subject of the inerrancy of scripture. It’s lengthy, but well worth the time it takes to work through. Full credit to the apologists for doing their job. It’s severely needed these days, especially among the younger generation in our churches.

But in setting out why inerrancy matters and what the scripture claims about itself, Noyes and Koukl include a word of warning about the inerrancy argument that I think is worth taking to heart: they believe the Lord never intended us to debate inerrancy with the skeptics of our generation.

An In-House Discussion for the Convinced

I’ll include the entire text of that section for clarity:

“The question of biblical inerrancy is an in-house discussion among Christians who are already convinced the Bible is God’s Word in some sense. It’s not a good idea to grapple with skeptics on this issue. Here’s why.

Trying to persuade outsiders that the Bible makes no mistakes in anything it asserts often triggers from the skeptic an avalanche of alleged contradictions. If the believer cannot convincingly meet that challenge — and few can — he’ll be stonewalled, unable to move forward with a more vital concern: a clear, persuasive proclamation of the gospel. Even a single apparent discrepancy raised by a naysayer can be enough to short-circuit that process, potentially undermining any further attempt to reason with him from Scripture.

The early Christians did not engage this way. Before the New Testament was even assembled, Peter, Paul, and the others made no claims of authority for either their speaking or their writing when doing evangelism. They made no appeals to inerrant texts in order to entice listeners to take their words seriously. (The Jews, of course, were an exception. Paul cited the Hebrew prophets frequently with his Jewish audiences since they were already convinced that God had spoken in their ancient texts.)

The disciples’ message was simple. Jesus the Messiah was crucified and raised from the dead as a fact of history — ‘to which we are all witnesses’ (Acts 2:32). He died and rose again for a reason: rescue. Trust in him, and be saved from damnation. Ignore him, and face the wrath of God (John 3:36; Acts 2:22-24, 36-38; Acts 17:30-31; Acts 24:24-25). That was it.

In the same way, when we are pressed about the text, our response with outsiders should focus on its historical reliability, not its divine inspiration.”

This is an important point. It’s the same reason I don’t raise Noah’s Ark, the historicity of Adam and Eve or the age of the earth with skeptics: it invariably takes a herald of the gospel off-message into territory from which it’s difficult to get back to his mission. For the unbeliever, inerrancy is very much a side issue to explore once he has first come to trust the word of Christ, not least because the Lord’s own claims about the Old Testament are the rock on which the doctrine of inerrancy is built.

The Example of the Early Christians

But I love the way Noyes and Koukl make their argument: by pointing to the example of the early Christians.

The apostles and other first century witnesses to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus invariably started their gospel presentations to Gentiles in territory where they and their audience already agreed, not by trying to persuade them of complex background details about the Bible they had never considered and about which they were not inquiring. That’s a useful example to follow. Consider:

• To the men of Athens, Paul preached the identity of the “unknown God” they already worshiped. Where the Greek poets and philosophers his audience read and quoted (probably Epimenides and Aratus) aligned with the truth of scripture, Paul cited these as his witnesses rather than the Old Testament prophets.
• To Cornelius and his household, Peter simply interpreted and explained facts with which his audience was familiar. “You yourselves know what happened,” he began. When he came to the resurrection, he did not appeal initially to the Old Testament prophecies about the Christ, but to the witnesses still alive who could confirm they ate and drank with the risen Jesus. He appealed to history first.
• Before Agrippa, Paul witnessed first to his personal experience of the risen Christ, then to the testimony of others about the resurrection that was still circulating, and with which Agrippa was familiar. Only after this does he mention the Hebrew prophets, and only because he knew Agrippa already believed in them.

Would-Be-Apologists, Take Note

In short, the New Testament scriptures give us no instruction, no example and no pressing incentive to engage with unbelievers about inerrancy. It’s simply not a question they ever chose to open up with skeptics. To reach the skeptic, we need to begin with issues about which we already agree, and move on from there.

All the famous passages concerning the reliability of scripture address people who already believed in the scriptures, many or most of whom already confessed faith in Christ. The confirmation of biblical inerrancy was given to support existing faith, not to kindle faith into life in those who are spiritually dead.