Not all that long ago I heard a priest declare in his sermon that the concept of inerrancy was relatively new, dating back to the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial. I approached him afterward and told him I thought that was a strange assertion because I had read the word used in theological writing from the 19th century (thinking of Warfield). The following quote comes from a great book by Kevin DeYoung. Apperantly some have actually argued that the concept of inerrancy comes from the 19th century theologians I had referred to.
The once (and briefly) credible idea that Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield invented inerrancy has been shown to be resoundingly false. Scholars like John Woodbridge and Richard Muller have demonstrated convincingly that the doctrine of complete biblical truthfulness is not a Princetonian invention. Clement of Rome (30-100) described “the Sacred Scriptures” as “the true utterance of the Holy Spirit.” Polycarp (65-155) called them “the oracles of the Lord.” Irenaeus (120-202) claimed that the biblical writers “were incapable of a false statement.” Origen (185-254) stated, “The sacred volumes are fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, and there is no passage either in the Law or the Gospel, or the writings of an Apostle, which does not proceed from the inspired source of Divine Truth.” Augustine (354-430) explained in a letter to Jerome, “I have learnt to ascribe to those Books which are of the Canonical rank, and only to them, such reverence and honour, that I firmly believe that no single error due to the author is found in any of them.” It was not modernism that invented inerrancy. It was modernism that undermined inerrancy.
(Why We’re Not Emergent, 76-77)
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