Free Custom «The Biblical Inerrancy» Essay Paper

Introduction

Inerrancy in the Bible has three arguments that are primary to prove the truth of words in the scriptures. Biblical inerrancy is the testimony of the scriptures itself. Historical inerrancy views the history of the church. Lastly, epistemological inerrancy shows how claims must be justified.

Thesis

Biblical, historical and epistemological views on inerrancy of the Biblical scriptures will argue points to the understanding why the words of the Bible speak the truth. Arguments that go against Biblical inerrancy, such as falseness in the scriptures or errors in the words of the Bible, will be defended through three main roads, leading to inerrancy in the Biblical scriptures.

Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical scriptures are the breath and words of God, and they lead to Biblical Inspiration. Systematic theologians have tended to bypass the foundational question of why and how we call the scriptures the inspired word of God. Hence, naming the entity the inspired work of God is communicating with the spirits, and the Christian belief in inspirations rests on assentation of the spiritual record.

Biblical Testimony

An important aspect, along with inspiration in the Biblical scriptures, is the testimony itself. It is important to use inerrancy as a form of truth and falsity rather than only error in the Biblical scriptures. To use error is to define inerrancy as without error. Hence, the majority of books would be named inerrant. Error is named as willful deception. Since the Bible never willfully deceives its readers, the Bible is inerrant. In addition, the testimony of the Bible may be helpful with the subject of error.

In addition, in the testimony of the Biblical scriptures we read about miracles. The resurrection of the dead, transmutations of liquids (water, wine, and blood) into one another by the messenger of the divine and divine cure for sickness, especially leprosy and the overcoming of prolonged fertility problems. There are miracles repeated in the Bible to prove inerrancy in testimony. However, none of these “miracles” are a violation of the laws of nature and three scientific evidences and other models provide reliable predictions for inerrant scriptures.

Besides that, it is important to pay attention to a role of God in creating the Scripture. It is known to be the Word of God that contains a certain message. Provided that the Biblical text is the Word of God, it cannot be an error, as long as God is incapable of making any mistakes. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that errors are made by humans as they may interpret the Scripture’s message inappropriately. The Bible says the following: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” [Romans 11:33]. That implies a message that God cannot be comprehended by humans completely. In other words, the Bible admits that one should be aware of that fact in order to get God’s wisdom. Regarding that, it is possible to assume that any errors in the Scripture should be referred to a human error since God cannot make mistakes.

As a consequence, the language of the Scripture cannot deliver false messages. The Biblical text is a message of God, so that illocution is initiated by Him, while humans are the object of locution. In other words, God sends a message via the Holy Bible, while human-beings are expected to follow the message in a way desired by God. The Scripture writers might have understood the message wrongly, even though the message is valid itself. As long as God cannot make an error, there is no chance that the message is false. That is why the presentation (the Scripture writers’ perception of the message) was irrelevant to the real message of God. The Biblical text contains numerous messages that are illocutionary by their nature. God gives “instructions” to humans, so that the text of the Scripture cannot render a paradox message.

To return to the subject of human participation in creating the Scripture, it is worth mentioning that these people were inspired by God. Inspiration implies the fact that a certain individual is controlled by the Holy Spirit for delivering some message or completing some divine task. Therefore, the Scripture writer could not make a mistake at the moment of writing, as they were controlled by the divine power that is also incapable of error. That leads to a conclusion that average humans understand the Holy message in a wrong way, and some Biblical concepts have to be still comprehended. In order to do that, the other inspiration should be gained throughout a strong belief in God and study of the Scripture.

Eventually, it is necessary to place a certain degree of emphasis on a creative power of the Holy word. As the Scripture is a presentation of God’s will, the Biblical text should be regarded as an expression of His will. The will of God is creation, so that a word has to be understood as an equal term. The world was created by the word of God that is why word cannot be false or irrelevant. The entire reality is framed in God’s word, so that it is not able to frame the world around incorrectly. Hence, people understand the Will of God not to its full extent, as there are no disharmonies in God’s reality.

Epistemological Inerrancy

Epistemology, as a philosophic approach to comprehending the objective reality, makes a significant role to prove Biblical inerrancy. They are related to Hebrew language, which is believed to be the original language of the Scripture. Hebrew language was considered sacred, as all revelations were written in Hebrew. That is why a desire to acquire the Holy message caused a strong need for translating the Scripture. Hebrew language was commonly regarded as maternal language, while the other languages were just deriving from Hebrew as other civilizations were acquiring the Scripture as the word of God. That is why translations are commonly considered as partially misinterpreted message of God, since all languages, except Hebrew, are not divine. Namely, other languages can also serve the function of comprehending the Holy message, but speakers of these languages fail to acquire the message in a desired by God’s way.

As it has been mentioned in the preceding section, the Holy message can be understood in terms of divine inspiration. Little is known about the divine inspirations of Greek translators, but their understanding of the Scripture demonstrates a deeper acquisition of the divine wisdom. It can be explained by the fact that the translated Scripture is written in a more complicated language. Certain concepts, actions, and messages are reflected with specific grammatical forms. On the one hand, it is a natural acquisition of God’s word. On the other hand, it is a distinct sign of misunderstanding, as long as similar grammatical categorizations cannot be noticed in Hebrew version of the Holy Bible. It is worth saying that language does not change the message itself, while wrong conceptualization of the divine message is quite possible. Therefore, any evidence of invalid messages of the Bible should be referred to human errors in translation as the word of God is similarly relevant in any language.

Epistemological approach also proves inerrancy of the Bible from the perspective of God’s conceptualization. It is known that Hebrew version of The Scripture used mainly the word ‘Lord’ instead of ‘God’. Needless to say, ‘Lord’ is not semantically unique, as it contains multiple meanings and definitions. Hence, Greek interpretations started using God as a definition of creation, life, kindness, world, and eternity. Epistemological doctrine assumes that knowledge can be gained throughout personal feelings, so that understanding of God means understanding of life, creation, world, and etc., which are distinct objects of the reality. Taking all these points into consideration, it should be noted that comprehension of the Holy wisdom enhances with the development of civilization. That means that Greek civilization failed to interpret messages written in Hebrew but managed to collect the knowledge about the concept of God. This idea can be connected to the statement that God cannot be fully understood, at least in a single flow of inspiration. Thus, all irrelevancies of the Scripture, especially the Greek one, have to be referred to a lack of divine wisdom to decipher all the messages of the Bible.

However, major debates keep revolving around the translation and interpretation of Hebrew language. Genesis 49, verse 5 of the Old Testament says the following: “Simeon and Levi are brothers; Weapons of violence are their swords” [Genesis. 49:5] In fact, there has been a little agreement on the true meaning of combination “their swords”. That fact implies a high probability of the message’s interpretation, even though the verse is not isolated from the context. To get back to philosophical perspective of epistemological approach, it is worth saying that argument about a certain concept’s relevance usually means that the concept is initially valid. Again, arguments about appropriate translation do not play any role regarding truthfulness of the message, as humans can make an error while God cannot.

Overall, it should be admitted that epistemological approach proves that the Holy Bible is inerrant. First of all, a need for more knowledge about God caused translation of the Scripture from Hebrew that was initially believed to be a sacred language. As it is becoming increasingly apparent, the divine message is valid on any language, while none of languages guarantee the understanding of a particular message by individual, since some concepts may remain beyond human capabilities. At the same time, different parts of the Bible become explicit throughout time so that it is possible to admit that the divine knowledge can be obtained throughout the inspiration by the Holy Spirit. Thus, the text of the Scripture is universal, as long as its messages are understandable at different times in various places on Earth. That is why any misunderstanding of the Bible is a result of human error, rather than malicious will of God. It is necessary to pay attention to a high possibility of incorrect translation of the holy texts. Moreover, epistemological approach suggests that arguments about a certain divine concept are usually a distinct evidence of the concept’s validity, as it is created by God while average people are not able to understand purposes and essence of a certain concept to its widest extent as long as “mysterious are the paths of God”. There is a wide range of other facts regarding validity of the Scripture from the perspective of epistemology, but the arguments described above comply with theological doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. Hence, it is necessary to proceed to the next section.

Historic Inerrancy

The most obvious fact of historic inerrancy is based on the evidence that none of existing Christian churches denied that the Holy Bible is the word of God. To the greatest extent, none of Christian churches expressed any doubts regarding the relevance of the Scripture. Needless to say, opinions about translation and interpretation of certain messages differed considerably, but their validity was never an object for doubts. The Holy Bible has been an ultimate authority of the divine wisdom since the beginning of the Christian church’s history. That can be proved by the fact that various churches managed to acquire particular messages, which occurred to be truthful and applicable to the real world. Therefore, the Scripture does not address issues and concepts, which do not exist in the real life, as God has framed the world by His will.

By the same token, it is pivotal to pay attention to the fact that concepts of sin and good remained the same throughout the entire history of Christianity. Churches changed the extents of sins and related divine punishments, but none of the churches ever denied the fact of a certain sin. As a consequence, sins can be regarded as universal concepts, as long as their meaning is unchangeable. Message of sins’ concept is delivered in the Holy Bible so that it is possible to admit that the Scripture is universal divine text because it can be applied to any period in history and any nation. Historically universal applicability of the Holy Bible should be considered as a distinct sign of its inerrancy. That is why the Scripture does not contain any errors as its concepts and ideas occurred to work throughout the entire history of the mankind so that different people confirmed the Scripture’s validity at different historic periods.

To be more exact, historic persons inspired by the Scripture confirmed that it is completely inerrant. Such statements can be traced throughout ages of history: Calvin, Martin Luther, Saint Augustin, etc. All of them confirmed that they did not have any doubts about the relevance of the Holy Bible as long as they were inspired by its holy texts. At this point, it is appropriate to make a reference to epistemological perspective of the Scripture’s inerrancy. The divine wisdom can be gain throughout personal feelings and inspiration so that different people experienced the same Holy inspiration by the Scripture. Hence, the true content of the Scripture is impossible to change as mistakes are made by humans while the true language of the Bible is the word of God. Additionally, this point proves the eternal value of the Bible that is why it has to be related directly to God.

Besides that, the texts of the Scripture are commonly recognized as historic. The majority of New Testament and entire Old Testament are believed to reflect the events, which really took place and coincide with certain historically-known events of the world’s civilization. Thus, the Holy Bible is inerrant because it depicts recorded events that are believed to be true. Otherwise, they would not have been recorded in the Scripture. Any doubts expressed about this point are usually explained by the fact that humans are sinful so that they are tending to make prejudices while the word of God is always true at any event. That is why the events and issues described in the Scripture are described in a form of a story, which has already happened, but is likely to continue as the return of Jesus Christ is referred to the future of the world.

All in all, historic inerrancy of the Holy Bible is based on the following arguments. The first one is related to the history of the Christian church that did not ever denied the fact that the Scripture is inerrant. In the same way, the history of Christianity does not presuppose any events, owing to which the concept of sin and good changed. In other words, these concepts were existing always as they are universal. Therefore, the Holy Bible cannot contain any errors as it describes the issues that are universally applied without any respect to historic period or nation. The same idea was confirmed numerous times by persons who experienced the divine inspiration throughout the Scripture. That is why the Bible is inerrant as various people at different time periods experienced the same feeling of inspiration that can be referred to epistemological perspective of inerrancy. What is more, the majority of the Biblical texts are commonly considered as historic as they are believed to depict real events that occurred along with the rest events of the history of mankind. The content of the Scripture is mainly written with reference to the past events so that actions and thoughts of saints is a shared wisdom of God that cannot make a mistake. In addition, the Scripture refers to the second coming of Jesus Christ as an event, which should happen in the future so that it is possible to argue that a full inerrancy of the divine wisdom will become explicit for human in the future. Thus, all these facts lead to a conclusion that the Bible refers to certain events that happened in the past so that they cannot be invalid otherwise the Bible would not have described them. It is worth mentioning that historic perspective of the Biblical inerrancy corresponds to the rest of the arguments so that the entire complex of facts creates a distinct doctrine.

Conclusion

Eventually, it should be admitted that the paper has discussed and described the Biblical inerrancy from the perspective of the Biblical study, epistemology, and history of the Christian church. As a consequence, the study has given an account on the Holy Bible in terms of theological study, linguistics, and hermeneutics. Then, the paper has introduced the Biblical inerrancy at the angle of philosophic approach for knowledge gain. This perspective occurred to be related to Hebrew and Greek versions of the Holy text. Historic aspect of the Biblical inerrancy has been demonstrated using the Christian church’s history, related historic persons, and the history of the Scripture’s study itself. The findings have revealed the fact that is not usually spotted in terms of an average hermeneutic research as it is particularly focused on the interpretation of the Scripture while this study has demonstrated the pragmatic aspect of the divine texts.

In conclusion, it is appropriate to make a general comment on the fact of the Biblical inerrancy being proved by the study. The paper has managed to provide the most convincing facts as there are a wide range of arguments about this doctrine. Still, it should be admitted that epistemological perspective as well as the Biblical verse point at one fact that the most controversial phenomena occur to be true. The arguments discussed in this paper are still debatable, but their existence is sufficient for considering them as a distinct evidence of the Biblical inerrancy. Scholars seem to discuss this issue as much as more findings are available. That is why the main question of religion remains to be optional for every single individual. Everyone is free to choose what should be regarded as divine and reliable without any respect to academic debates concerning the issue.