Friday, March 30, 2012

No Proofreader Necessary

One thing Baptists, and for that matter, all evangelicals, should agree on is the inerrancy of Scripture. To that end, The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was produced in 1978 by hundreds of evangelical scholars and leaders of various denominations. It affirms that the Bible is God's revelation and is infallible, without error or fault, and authoritative.

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 also states that the Bible is "without any mixture of error...totally true and trustworthy." The words of Scripture reveal God's communication to us with such reliable veracity that the apostle Peter referred to the Word as superior even to first-hand experience for teaching truth (2 Peter 1: 19).

The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is a vital presupposition for supporting spiritual and doctrinal truths. Those who attempt to defend a position which imagines an imperfect Scriptural thread containing both truth and error set up for themselves a process for being lured from the path of truth.  They deem themselves magnanimous in acknowledging the Bible contains God's word, while maintaining a facsimile of presumed enlightenment which insists that they can't expect it all to be inspired. And in the arbitrary process of deciding what is inspired truth and what is called into question, it seems those politically incorrect or culturally anachronistic verses always seem to be found unsupportable by the postmodern editor's adjudication.

But Scripture is not for us to judge; rather, it judges us. If someone decides they will merely exclude those sections of the Bible they find unpalatable, then they lose any foundational support for objective spiritual truth.

And that is a sure way to begin to sink.

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