Garlic, Onions, & Inerrancy

The challenge of eating at an Italian restaurant when your body does not like garlic and onions is no laughing matter. Neither is the significance of ones view of scripture. So my friend asks the waitress “what dishes do not have onion or garlic?”  She thought he merely did not like those ingredients. I tried to explain that he was not expressing a taste preference and was not trying to be funny. So she recommended a dish, which he had and later realized that there was garlic in his marinara sauce.  Meanwhile we somehow got into a conversation about infallibility and inerrancy. Once of the guys said he did not believe in inerrancy, so I asked him to define it. The definition was one I had not heard before. It included the idea that everything in the Bible was without error in regards to every matter. His definition went so far as to say that one could use the bible as a science text book! I shared a different definition of inerrancy and my friend with the garlic and onion issue tried also to shed light on a different definition. My understanding has always been that the Bible does not set out to explain all things in science and nature but rather all that pertains to God and his redemptive plan for the world. The Bible actually describes some scientific realities that were not defined until later in history, but that’s not the point of the Bible.

The trouble with rejecting inerrancy is that we throw away a starting point. I’ve no qualms with the possibility that textual changes were made in copies and translations. If some scribe along the way updated the name of a place for clarity in a next generation, it’s no surprise to me. But we have to start with an error free bible in order to believe that all of God’s word is true. Anything less than that means we have to first figure out which bits are God’s word and which are not. The conservative who opposes a radical understanding of inerrancy usually clings to the concept of infallibility.  That is typically defined as “God’s word (the Bible) is true in all that it teaches in regards to spiritual matters”.  So then it’s easy for someone to agree to the idea that scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.  Sure, but is it more than all things necessary for salvation? Do we have a Bible that we can trust in regards to the history of God’s people? Does his word accurately portray the human condition? Is God capable of preserving truth throughout history? We know that scribes worked hard to eliminate any errors but we also know that early manuscripts were damaged by time. It’s relatively easy to buy into inerrancy, to think that all that God intended to communicate about redemption was preserved in the Bible. Yet, must we reject the idea that the original writing, the first time things were penned on a parchment, they were completely accurate?  They were the words of God as written down by man thru the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?

My friend discovered in the middle of the night that the marina sauce had a decent amount of garlic within it.  He disposed of much of his dinner by morning. Who knows how much nutrients were lost in the process. What do we lose by believing a radical and perhaps wrong view of inerrancy? Might we miss that God’s word teaches more than the way of salvation?