The Bible, Jesus and Inerrancy
I recently did two separate but related Twitter polls that provided some interesting results. They were designed to test a hypothesis I had about inerrancy.
My interest was in a comparison between Jesus and the Bible. Most evangelicals see both as being both human and divine. The incarnation of Jesus can inform our doctrine of inspiration. The Bible can be both the Word of God and written by human beings and shaped by who they were.
My first poll was about Jesus. Acknowledging that Jesus was always accurate in preaching the Kingdom of God and explaining the nature of the Father, could he have made mistakes in other areas of his life? You will see that the overwhelming majority (81%) believed that Jesus probably made some kind of mistakes in non-theological areas.
The second poll was about the Bible. It was a similar question. Did people believe that the Bible could have some mistakes apart from its theological teachings? The results were interesting. Again, a majority (65%) believed such was possible, but the number was significantly lower than for Jesus.
What we see here from this admittedly unscientific poll is that Christians are more comfortable with Jesus making a mistake than the Bible making a mistake. This supports my impression from previous conversations. How do we explain these results?
In the poll about Jesus, people were careful to clarify that making a mistake was not the same as sin, which I agree with. But this may point to how Jesus is understood. Jesus’ primary role was to die on the cross for our sins. To accomplish this, he had to be without sin but not necessarily without error.
When it comes to the Bible, there is a concern that reliability may not be enough. In order for us to be confident that Jesus died and rose again, we need to be sure that every other detail is just as accurate. Inaccuracy in any detail casts a shadow on every other claim in the Bible.
In this post I am not trying argue for or against inerrancy. But I find it interesting, and somewhat disturbing, that people seem to have a higher view of the Bible than Jesus. A Jesus with error is acceptable not a Bible.
Does this lead to the Bible becoming an idol? What do you think?
