Inerrancy and Infallibility

In a somewhat tangentially-related post on science and faith, I thought I'd link an excellent read by Justin Taylor at the Gospel Coalition on the subject of Inerrancy and Infallibility.

Quoting John Frame, he writes:

So, I think it is helpful to define inerrancy more precisely (!) by saying that inerrant language makes good on its claims. When we say that the Bible is inerrant, we mean that the Bible makes good on its claims.

Now many writers have enumerated what are sometimes called qualifications to inerrancy: inerrancy is compatible with unrefined grammar, non-chronological narrative, round numbers, imprecise quotations, pre-scientific phenomenalistic description (e.g., “the sun rose”), use of figures and symbols, imprecise descriptions (as Mark 1:5, which says that everyone from Judea and Jerusalem went to hear John the Baptist). I agree with these points, but I do not describe them as “qualifications” of inerrancy. These are merely applications of the basic meaning of inerrancy: that it asserts truth, not precision. Inerrant language is language that makes good on its own claims, not on claims that are made for it by thoughtless readers.

It's fairly lengthy, and I've only quoted the conclusion. You should read the whole of it.

The Ungospel in Exodus 33

We're in Exodus 33 in church—one of the most anticipated passages in awhile for me.  It's a great gospel passage, at least in the sense that it sets us up for the gospel so nicely.

I will send an angel, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people (Ex. 33:2,3).

God safeguards the people of Israel by refusing to go among them:  his presence would consume them.  There is an echo of the role of Jesus here in the person of the angel (the LXX is more personal here, saying, "I will send at the same time My angel"), who serves as God's representative and in a way shields them from his devastating presence.

The people mourn, and for two reasons, I think:  the first is the fear of God's presence, and the second is their desire for his presence.  In verse four, the NKJV puts it nicely:

When the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.

It is this bad news that is the "ungospel," and the same news that sets the stage for  the cataclysm of 33.18–20:

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And [God] said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

The glory of God is terrifying, and this is a terrible truth.  God has just told Moses that no one is permitted to enjoy the most intimate access to himself.

This is controverted in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate in human flesh.  God must no longer refrain from walking among his people:  he walks freely among them.  He no longer hides his face because his glory would consume:  now we see the image of the invisible God (Co 1.15).  Indeed, in Jesus we behold the glory of God (Jn 1.14, He 1.3).

It is this glory that makes us live:  "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (Jn 17.3; it's no accident this verse is sandwiched by verses about the glory of God). It is in God's presence that we are truly alive.

On Science: Let God be True (Part Six)

We now (re-)confront an issue alluded to in previous posts: the Omphalos hypothesis. I'm not sure its in vogue in most young-earth creation apologetics, but it seems to have taken root in the apologetic against YEC.

The hypothesis is that God created a functional and mature world to start, including an Adam and Eve with requisite signs of age (and for completeness' sake, belly buttons:  omphalos is Greek for navel).  As we have learned more about the universe, this hypothesis has been extended to other signs of age, especially the distance in time and space that light must travel to reach the Earth.  The YEC posits that either God created the universe with an appearance of age or that some natural constant(s) changed to speed things up a bit.

The response to this is pretty predictable:  this seems pretty deceptive.  Isn't an appearance of age deceiving?  I think this argument is successful if you're agnostic or atheist, but I'm not sure we can say the some of an old-earth creationist.  Indeed, as the Scriptures say, "Let God be true and every man a liar."

Why is it difficult to make this case as an OEC?  Because science is always evolving.  Our understanding of the cosmos is changing and, we think, basically improving.  Be that as it may, the dominant theories for how the universe works have persisted even though they are inaccurate to some degree.  Newtonian mechanics is one of my favorite examples because it illustrates how our changing observational power conclusively demonstrated that Newtonian inaccuracies were not a result of experimental error but experimenter inability.

As a Christian, then, I can ask basically the same question of the OEC as the OEC can ask of the YEC:  why didn't God give us the answer ahead of time?  Why did we have to wait some 200 years between Newton and Einstein to figure this out?  Why didn't God just make it obvious that this is how things were supposed to be?  Why didn't he stop us from drinking thoriated water or make penicillin obvious?  Why did he allow us to persist in the mistaken thinking that the earth was at the center of the universe (and then the sun) or that flies would spontaneously arise from meat?


This isn't terribly different than asking why God would create a universe that appears inconceivably ancient but is really only 6000 years old.  The OEC can only really say that the universe is complicated, and it's taken science some time to catch up to that fact.  We know better now than we did then.  But there's literally no reason why the YEC cannot counter, "What makes you think the 'We know better now' of the future won't accord with a literal reading of Genesis?"

People who protest against YEC because God is deceptive if it's true miss the plain facts that we can say God is deceptive or downright cruel for not revealing more in the first place about anything else.  Landmark scientific achievements greatly improved our health:  pasteurization, vaccinations, penicillin, to name a few.  At the very least, you'd think Jesus could have shown us that screen doors would help fix pest-borne diseases.  Why didn't God make the universe easier to understand?

For my part, I have no real dog in the fight about the age of the universe.  I do think, though, that the arguments employed on both sides do some violence to the authority of Scripture and often lead to illogical conclusions.  But I think we can put this particular argument to rest for anyone who believes in God.