"Biblical inerrancy vs. infallibility"

The terms "inerrancy" and "infallibility" are frequently used interchangeably in popular religious discourse, but they represent significantly different theological positions on the nature of biblical authority. Understanding this distinction is essential for grasping the range of views Christians hold about Scripture and for recognizing that the strict inerrancy position, far from being the historic consensus of the church, is a relatively modern doctrinal formulation that crystallized in response to Enlightenment challenges to traditional faith.^{1, 2}

Defining the terms

The philosopher and theologian Stephen T. Davis provided what has become a standard formulation of the distinction. Inerrancy, in his definition, means that "the Bible makes no false or misleading statements on any topic whatsoever," including matters of history, geography, and science. Infallibility, by contrast, means that "the Bible makes no false or misleading statements on any matter of faith and practice."³ The difference is not merely semantic; it reflects genuinely different understandings of how Scripture relates to truth and what kinds of claims the biblical authors intended to make.

Under the inerrancy view, if the Bible states that a particular battle involved 800,000 soldiers, that figure must be historically accurate. If it describes the sun standing still, the cosmology implied must be true in some literal or phenomenological sense. Any apparent error in any domain, no matter how incidental to the text's theological message, constitutes a challenge to the Bible's truthfulness and ultimately to its divine origin.⁴ The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, which drafted the 1978 Chicago Statement, defined inerrancy as the quality of "being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit."⁵

The infallibility position takes a different approach. Advocates of this view argue that the Bible's authority and reliability pertain to its purpose: communicating God's will for salvation and guiding the life of faith. On these matters, Scripture does not fail and cannot lead believers astray. However, the biblical authors were not attempting to write scientific textbooks or provide journalistic accounts meeting modern standards of historical precision. When ancient writers used round numbers, adapted earlier sources, or employed the cosmological assumptions of their time, they were not making erroneous claims because they were not making claims in those domains at all.^{6, 7}

The Catholic theologian Raymond Brown, widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important New Testament scholars, exemplified the infallibility approach. Brown accepted that the Gospels contain historical and chronological discrepancies, that the Pentateuch was composed from multiple sources, and that some biblical books were written pseudonymously. Yet he maintained that Scripture remained authoritative for faith and morals, arguing that divine inspiration worked through human authors with all their limitations and literary conventions.⁸

The spectrum of views

Between strict inerrancy and liberal critical views lies a broad spectrum of positions held by Christians of various traditions. Understanding this spectrum helps clarify that the inerrancy-infallibility distinction is not a simple binary but rather a range of approaches to Scripture's authority and truthfulness.^{1, 9}

Strict or absolute inerrancy holds that the Bible, in its original autographs, is completely without error in all that it affirms, including statements about history, science, geography, and any other topic. This position is associated with fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism, and it is the view defended by the Chicago Statement.⁵ Proponents acknowledge that the original manuscripts no longer exist and that copying errors have entered the textual tradition, but they maintain that the original documents were perfect.⁴

Limited inerrancy, sometimes called qualified inerrancy, accepts that the Bible is inerrant in matters of faith, doctrine, and salvation, but allows that it may contain incidental errors in areas such as science, history, or geography that are not central to its theological message. This position is held by some evangelicals and many mainline Protestants.⁹ Proponents argue that God's purpose in inspiring Scripture was not to provide a science textbook but to reveal truths necessary for salvation, and that inerrancy should be understood in terms of that purpose.⁶

Infallibility without inerrancy maintains that Scripture is completely reliable and trustworthy in accomplishing its purpose of communicating God's message for salvation and guiding the life of faith, but does not claim that every statement in the Bible is factually accurate. This position is common in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and many mainline Protestant denominations.^{7, 10} The Second Vatican Council's document Dei Verbum (1965) articulated this view, stating that Scripture teaches "solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."¹¹

Critical approaches, associated with liberal Protestantism and academic biblical scholarship, view the Bible as a human document that, while religiously and historically significant, is subject to the same kinds of errors, biases, and limitations as any ancient text. This position does not typically use the language of inerrancy or infallibility, viewing these categories as unhelpful for understanding the Bible's nature and value.¹²

Spectrum of views on biblical authority^{1, 9}

Historical development of inerrancy

Although defenders of inerrancy often claim that their view represents the historic position of the Christian church, historians of doctrine have demonstrated that the modern formulation of strict inerrancy is a relatively recent development, crystallizing primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in response to specific intellectual challenges.^{1, 2}

The historian Richard Coleman observed that "there have been long periods in the history of the church when biblical inerrancy has not been a critical question. It has in fact been noted that only in the last two centuries can we legitimately speak of a formal doctrine of inerrancy."¹³ The church fathers, medieval theologians, and Reformers all held high views of Scripture's authority and trustworthiness, but they did not articulate the precise doctrine of inerrancy as it is formulated today, nor did they treat apparent discrepancies in the text with the same anxiety that characterizes modern inerrantist apologetics.^{1, 2}

The rise of modern biblical criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly the application of historical and literary methods to Scripture, created new challenges for traditional understandings of biblical authority. German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Wilhelm de Wette, and Julius Wellhausen developed theories of composite authorship for the Pentateuch that contradicted traditional Mosaic authorship. Historical criticism raised questions about the accuracy of biblical narratives. Scientific discoveries, particularly in geology and biology, challenged literal readings of Genesis.¹⁴

In response to these challenges, theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary, particularly Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, developed a systematic defense of biblical authority that emphasized the inerrancy of the original autographs. Hodge, in his influential Systematic Theology (1871-1873), argued that the Bible "is free from all error whether of doctrine, fact, or precept."¹⁵ Warfield, who taught at Princeton from 1887 to 1921, became the most influential articulator of the inerrancy doctrine. In his essay "The Inerrancy of the Original Autographs" and other writings, Warfield developed the position that the original manuscripts, though no longer extant, were completely without error, and that this inerrancy was essential to the Bible's authority as the Word of God.¹⁶

The Princeton theology became foundational for the fundamentalist movement that emerged in the early twentieth century. The publication of The Fundamentals (1910-1915), a series of essays defending traditional Protestant doctrines, included multiple contributions on biblical inerrancy and the dangers of higher criticism.¹⁷ The Scopes Trial of 1925 and subsequent fundamentalist-modernist controversies solidified inerrancy as a defining boundary marker between conservative and liberal Protestantism in America.¹⁴

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

The most significant modern articulation of the inerrancy doctrine came in 1978 when the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy convened a summit conference in Chicago. Nearly 300 evangelical scholars and church leaders signed the resulting Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which has since become the definitive statement of the strict inerrancy position for conservative evangelicals.⁵

The Chicago Statement consists of a preface, five summary statements, nineteen articles of affirmation and denial, and an exposition. Article X provides the core definition: "We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original."⁵

Article XII addresses the scope of inerrancy: "We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit. We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science."⁵ This article explicitly rejects the limited inerrancy and infallibility positions, insisting that Scripture's truthfulness extends to all its affirmations.

However, the Chicago Statement also includes significant qualifications that critics have argued substantially weaken the inerrancy claim. Article XIII states: "We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations."⁵

This list of exceptions is extensive. It acknowledges that the Bible lacks "modern technical precision," uses "round numbers," arranges material "topically" rather than chronologically, reports events with "variant selections of material in parallel accounts," and employs "free citations" rather than exact quotations. Critics have noted that these qualifications concede virtually everything that biblical criticism has documented about the text, while retaining the label "inerrancy" more as a theological commitment than a descriptive claim about the text's factual accuracy.¹⁸

Did the church fathers hold to inerrancy?

Defenders of inerrancy frequently cite the church fathers as evidence that their position represents the historic teaching of Christianity. Augustine, in particular, is often quoted as having said in a letter to Jerome: "I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error."¹⁹ This statement appears to support the inerrancy position directly.

However, historians have cautioned against reading modern categories back into ancient texts. The church fathers operated with different assumptions about truth, history, and textual interpretation than modern inerrantists. Augustine, for example, freely employed allegorical interpretation to resolve apparent contradictions in Scripture, a method that modern inerrantists typically reject in favor of harmonization at the historical level.^{1, 20}

Origen of Alexandria, one of the most influential early Christian interpreters, openly acknowledged apparent contradictions in the literal sense of Scripture and used these as evidence that the text should be read allegorically. In his De Principiis, Origen wrote that "the Word of God has arranged for certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences and impossibilities to be inserted in the midst of the law and the history" in order to lead the reader beyond the literal sense to deeper spiritual meanings.²¹ This approach treats apparent errors not as problems requiring harmonization but as intentional features of the inspired text.

The Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin held high views of biblical authority but also made statements that would be difficult to reconcile with strict inerrancy. Luther famously questioned the canonical status of the Epistle of James, calling it "an epistle of straw" because he believed it contradicted Paul's teaching on justification by faith.²² Calvin acknowledged apparent discrepancies in parallel biblical accounts and sometimes attributed them to minor errors by the human authors, as when he wrote concerning the citation of Jeremiah in Matthew 27:9 (where the quotation is actually from Zechariah): "How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess that I do not know, nor do I give myself much trouble to inquire."²³

The historian Jack Rogers and theologian Donald McKim, in their influential study The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach, argued that the Princeton doctrine of inerrancy represented a departure from the Reformation heritage, which emphasized the Bible's authority in matters of salvation rather than its technical accuracy in all details. This thesis has been contested by inerrantist scholars, and the historical debate remains active, but the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that the modern inerrancy position cannot simply be read back into the entire Christian tradition without significant qualification.²⁴

Internal evidence challenging strict inerrancy

The Bible contains numerous internal discrepancies that have been documented extensively by mainstream biblical scholarship. While some of these can be harmonized through interpretive strategies, others present genuine conflicts that resist easy resolution. The existence of these discrepancies does not necessarily undermine the infallibility position, which holds that Scripture is reliable in matters of faith and practice, but it does challenge the strict inerrancy claim that the Bible contains no errors whatsoever.^{12, 18}

Numerical discrepancies between parallel accounts are among the clearest examples. When 2 Samuel 24:9 reports that David's census found 800,000 fighting men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah, while 1 Chronicles 21:5 reports 1,100,000 in Israel and 470,000 in Judah, both figures cannot be historically accurate. When 2 Kings 8:26 states that Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, but 2 Chronicles 22:2 gives his age as forty-two, one of these numbers is incorrect.¹⁸

The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 present another well-documented discrepancy. Both trace Jesus's lineage through Joseph, but they diverge dramatically after King David. Matthew traces the line through Solomon, while Luke traces it through Nathan, a different son of David. Between David and Jesus, the two genealogies share only two names in common: Shealtiel and Zerubbabel. Even Joseph's father is identified differently: Jacob in Matthew 1:16 and Heli in Luke 3:23.^{8, 12}

The accounts of Judas's death in Matthew 27:3-10 and Acts 1:18-19 present conflicting information about how he died, who purchased the field, and why it received its name. In Matthew, Judas hangs himself after returning the silver to the chief priests, who use it to buy the potter's field. In Acts, Judas himself buys the field with his ill-gotten money, and he dies by falling headlong and bursting open.¹² Harmonization attempts typically propose that Judas hanged himself and then the rope broke, causing his body to fall and burst, but this explanation requires adding details found in neither text.

The resurrection narratives across the four Gospels contain numerous discrepancies regarding who went to the tomb, what they found, whom they encountered, and what happened afterward. The Gospel of Mark, in its original ending at 16:8, states that the women "said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid," directly contradicting Matthew's account that they ran to tell the disciples "with great joy."⁸ The longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) is absent from the earliest and best Greek manuscripts and is widely recognized by textual scholars as a later addition.²⁵

American views on biblical literalism, 1976-2022²⁶

Denominational positions

Christian denominations and traditions vary significantly in their official positions on biblical inerrancy and infallibility. This diversity itself demonstrates that strict inerrancy is not a universal Christian position but one particular theological stance among others.⁹

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, affirmed inerrancy in its 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, stating that the Bible "has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter."²⁷ This position was adopted after decades of controversy within the denomination, culminating in the "conservative resurgence" of the 1980s and 1990s that saw inerrantist leadership take control of SBC institutions.²⁸

The Roman Catholic Church does not use the language of inerrancy in the strict evangelical sense. The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (1965) teaches that Scripture is inspired and teaches "firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation."¹¹ The phrase "for the sake of our salvation" has been interpreted by many Catholic scholars as limiting inerrancy to matters pertaining to salvation, effectively adopting an infallibility rather than strict inerrancy position.⁷

Eastern Orthodox Christianity emphasizes Scripture as part of the living tradition of the Church, interpreted within the context of liturgy, patristic teaching, and church councils. While Orthodoxy holds Scripture in highest esteem, it does not typically employ the inerrancy/infallibility categories that developed in Western Christianity, viewing them as artificial impositions on the text.²⁹

Mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church generally do not require belief in inerrancy. These denominations tend to emphasize Scripture's authority in matters of faith while accepting the findings of modern biblical scholarship regarding authorship, historical context, and textual development.⁹

Within evangelicalism itself, significant diversity exists. Organizations such as the Evangelical Theological Society require members to affirm inerrancy, while others, such as the National Association of Evangelicals, use more general language about biblical authority. Fuller Theological Seminary, one of the largest evangelical seminaries in North America, modified its statement of faith in 1972 to remove inerrancy language, leading to prolonged controversy within the evangelical movement.³⁰

Contemporary debates

The inerrancy debate continues to generate significant discussion within Christianity, particularly in evangelical circles. Several developments in recent decades have shaped these ongoing conversations.^{9, 31}

The publication of Kenton Sparks's God's Word in Human Words (2008) represented a significant challenge from within evangelicalism. Sparks, a professor at Eastern University, argued that evangelicals should accept the findings of critical biblical scholarship, including the recognition of genuine errors and discrepancies in Scripture, while maintaining a high view of the Bible's theological authority. He contended that the inerrancy doctrine actually undermines faith by setting up expectations the biblical text cannot meet.³¹

Peter Enns, a former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, generated controversy with his book Inspiration and Incarnation (2005), which argued that the human dimension of Scripture, including its ancient Near Eastern context and its internal diversity, should be embraced rather than explained away. Enns proposed an "incarnational" model of Scripture analogous to the incarnation of Christ: just as Christ was fully human while remaining divine, so Scripture is fully human while remaining God's Word.³² Enns's departure from Westminster in 2008 illustrated the continuing institutional tensions over these issues.

The Chicago Statement itself has been subject to renewed scrutiny. Some scholars have argued that its extensive list of qualifications and exceptions effectively evacuates the inerrancy claim of content. If the Bible can use round numbers, topical arrangement, free citations, and variant selections of material without these constituting errors, what would an error actually look like? Critics suggest that inerrancy has become an unfalsifiable claim, protected from counterevidence by an ever-expanding set of qualifications.¹⁸

Defenders of inerrancy respond that the Chicago Statement's qualifications are not ad hoc protections but legitimate recognitions of how ancient texts function. The issue, they argue, is not whether the Bible meets modern journalistic standards but whether it accurately communicates what its authors intended to communicate within their ancient literary conventions.⁴

Theological significance of the debate

The inerrancy-infallibility debate matters because it shapes how Christians read, interpret, and apply the Bible. Different positions on this question lead to different approaches to difficult texts, different methods of resolving apparent contradictions, and different understandings of what kind of authority Scripture possesses.⁹

For strict inerrantists, the presence of any genuine error in Scripture would undermine its divine authorship and authority. If God inspired the biblical authors, the argument goes, he would not have permitted them to make mistakes, even in incidental matters. This view creates strong pressure to harmonize all apparent discrepancies and to reject any scholarly conclusions that identify errors in the text.⁴

For those who hold to infallibility without strict inerrancy, the focus shifts from defending every detail of the text to understanding its central message. Apparent discrepancies in historical details do not threaten the Bible's authority because that authority pertains to matters of faith and salvation, not to providing a scientifically and historically accurate account of every event it describes. This view allows for greater engagement with critical scholarship while maintaining a high view of Scripture's theological significance.^{6, 7}

The debate also has pastoral implications. Some believers have experienced significant spiritual crises upon discovering that the Bible contains apparent contradictions or historical inaccuracies, having been taught that any error would invalidate the entire text. The infallibility position offers a framework for acknowledging these difficulties while preserving Scripture's authority in the areas that matter most for Christian faith and life.³¹

Perhaps most significantly, the historical evidence demonstrates that strict inerrancy is one position among several that Christians have held throughout history. The church has never required uniformity on this question, and Christians of deep faith and serious scholarship have held a range of views. Recognizing this diversity can reduce the anxiety surrounding the inerrancy debate and allow for more constructive conversations about the nature and authority of Scripture.^{1, 2}