Biblical Inerrancy and the New Testament

What is biblical inerrancy?

Biblical inerrancy is the Christian doctrine that the Bible is “without error or fault in all its teaching.”  This idea flows from biblical inspiration; God inspired the authors of the Bible because it is God’s Word, or revelation, to humanity.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a little while now.  My friend attends Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where most of the professors don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy.  For me (and many others), this has always been a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.  This is the book we teach from, preach from, and use as a basis for morality and essentially everything the Christian lives by.

However I think my hiccup has been with differentiating between inerrancy with infallibility; from doing some further research and thinking on the subject, I think that these should be defined in the same way.  Instead of taking inerrancy to mean that scripture is free from all factual errors, we simply maintain that scripture is true in all it teaches.

Why believe in biblical inerrancy?
I’ve previously blogged on this topic here, where I made a case for the importance of believing this doctrine.  I also blogged here about how inspiration and infallibility was Jesus’ view of scripture.  If this is Jesus’ view of scripture, then it follows that as His disciples, we adopt the same view.

The question I haven’t been able to answer:

"Why should we believe in the inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of the New Testament?"  

Sure this was Jesus’ view of scripture, but the New Testament wasn’t around during Jesus’ day.

Until now, I haven’t had much of an answer to my question.  Although now I think I understand a more appropriate way to view this.

The Question of the Canon

This question now becomes an issue of the canon of scripture.  “Canon” means “ruler” or “standard”.  The canon of scripture refers to which documents are recognized as inspired by God, and therefore infallible and inerrant.  Aka, how do we know the books that we have in the Bible are inspired and inerrant?

We know that all the books in what we regard as the Old Testament was viewed as completely inspired and inerrant by Jesus, who is God (for more on this view my previous blog post here).  This makes it kind of easy for us to lean on.

For the New Testament, a different case has to be made.  For this we cannot rely on Jesus’ view, because technically couldn’t have any views on the New Testament when he was around.  But we can ask this question: “Does Jesus’ view of scripture allow for the New Testament to also be considered inspired by God and therefore infallible and inerrant?”

Establishing the Canon of the New Testament:

The entirety of Christianity would say: Yes.  There are four main tests used to establish the books of the New Testament as canon.  To be recognized as inspired, the document:

1. Internally claimed to be inspired.

2. Written by an apostle or an associate of one.

3. Universally accepted by the Early Church.

4. In harmony with the rest of scripture.

If these documents passed these four tests, claiming to be the Word of God, then they were compiled into the New Testament.  These tests help to ensure against false documents claiming to be about Jesus’ life, which really had ulterior motives to teach doctrines contrary to Christianity (The Gospel of Thomas or Gospel of Judas are examples).  More could be said on this subject, but that would have to be in a different blog post.  For more check out this link: https://bible.org/seriespage/7-bible-holy-canon-scripture

CONCLUSION

My question: “Why should we believe in the inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of the New Testament?”

Answer: Jesus’ inerrant view of scripture allows for the New Testament documents to be considered inspired and inerrant, as long as they internally claimed to be inspired, were written by an apostle or associate of one, recognized and circulated by the Early Church, and in harmony with the scripture Jesus personally affirmed.