One of the great accomplishments of my friend Dr. Mike Heiser (Dr. Michael Heiser – Biblical Scholar | Author | Semitic Languages Expert (drmsh.com)) before his death was helping some percentage of conservative and fundamentalist American Christians loosen their death-grip on their logical definition of inerrancy–a definition that has produced more atheists in the past century than probably existed in total in all of prior history.

In recent years a new and virulent strain of inerrantists has popped up–flat earthers. They are garnering followers by appealing to fears that if scriptural descriptions of a flat earth under a hard dome held up by pillars are not factually scientifically accurate, then the whole edifice of Scripture and Christianity falls. In reaction, modern society laughs and continues further into atheism.

In a 2008 comment section of a blog post Mike wrote about the stinkin’ thinkin’ of fundamentalists addicted to inerrancy:

“People want some mystical or supernatural feel to the Bible and they don’t think providence cuts that (i.e., they have a low view of providence – God must be a ‘performer’ or do something startling rather than use normal people in normal life settings). I think that’s a low view of God, frankly.”

Yes indeed, while believing it to be a high view.

Mike concluded:

“Inerrancy is, more or less, a philosophical construct that seeks to address (or ought to seek to address) how we understand the phenomena of Scripture against the character of God — and God’s willingness to use imperfect means (people) to give us information. Personally, for me the issue is becoming how to answer the question, ‘what information did God want us to have – what was the point of the exercise?’ That is, I think we need to focus on the inerrancy of the ENDS to which God did what he did in dispensing revelation, recognizing the imperfection of the MEANS. It’s not easy to know how to spell that out.”

Arguments for inerrancy and errancy are based on modern presuppositions of the value of precision. These presuppositions need to be tested in light of the worldviews of the Ancient Near East. My guess is, despite the scriptural quest for righteous weights, the evidence of the pyramids’ accurate alignment with astronomical measurements, and the eureka over measuring the weight of gold, generally precision of measurement and language was not valued as highly as by modern society. 

Inerrancy is a logical deduction from the Pauline doctrine of inspiration, but might be incorrect, and is not necessary to a high view of the authority of Scripture. A useful analogy might be, “Inerrancy is the crown on King Scripture.” A crown is a beautiful symbol of the king’s authority, but not essential to it. The king still stands in his authority whether he wears a crown or not.

I believe I first read an analogy like this in the works of systematic theology written by Charles Hodge, his brother Alexander A. Hodge, or A. A.’s co-author Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield.

Whoever created this analogy likely meant inerrancy in all details of numbers and science, non-essential to the messages the scriptures’ authors intended to affirm.

HELPFUL ARTICLE RE: CHARLES HODGE

The quotations below came from a post at http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/perry-inerrancy.shtml. Unfortunately this link is no longer active as of 9/26/2024, but an academic paper by the same author is available for free at https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/jctr/vol6/iss2001/1/

“A much-disputed question in the evangelical debate is how Charles Hodge dealt with apparent biblical errors. Because he wrote long before the height of the debate, Hodge’s testimony tends to carry weight as an example of how conservative Christians should approach the Bible. The debate generally centers on the following passage from Hodge’s Systematic Theology:

“‘The errors in matters of fact which skeptics search out bear no proportion to the whole. No sane man would deny that the Parthenon was built of marble, even if here and there a speck of sandstone should be detected in its structure. Not less unreasonable is it to deny the inspiration of such a book as the Bible, because one sacred writer says that on a given occasion twenty-four thousand, and another says that twenty-three thousand, men were slain. Surely a Christian may be allowed to tread such objections under his feet.

“‘Admitting that the Scriptures do contain, in a few instances, discrepancies which with our present means of knowledge, we are unable satisfactorily to explain, they furnish no rational ground for denying their infallibility.’

“According to opponents of detailed inerrancy such as Ernest Sandeen, Jack Rogers, and Donald McKim, this demonstrates that Charles Hodge did not have as strong a view of inerrancy as did his followers, A. A. Hodge and Warfield. On the other hand, in Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal, John D. Woodbridge argues that ‘Hodge did not accept the possibility that the “errors” were genuine ones.’ In support of this, Woodbridge cites, remarkably, the very same passage as Rogers and McKim. Woodbridge additionally quotes Hodge’s statement that ‘the whole Bible was written under such an influence as preserved its human authors from all error, and makes it for the Church the infallible rule of faith and practice.’

“What exactly Hodge meant by his Parthenon illustration seems to be the source of these varying interpretations of his work. According to Rogers and McKim, the Parthenon illustration shows Hodge ‘was able to dismiss such problems as minor.’ However, they also feel Hodge somewhat contradicts himself by elsewhere insisting on the Bible’s inerrancy in all matters. Woodbridge counters, ‘Hodge was apparently arguing that even if one should suppose that there were minor errors (which Hodge himself did not allow), that should not keep an inquirer from contemplating “the sacred Scriptures filled with the highest truth.” In fact, both positions seem to miss the heart of the illustration. According to Hodge, it is still true to say the Parthenon is built on marble ‘even if here and there a speck of sandstone’ is found. In other words, it is still true to say the Bible is inerrant even if ‘one sacred writer says … twenty-four thousand, and another says that twenty-three thousand, men were slain.’ Such an error is so minor that it does not even ‘count’ as violating the Bible’s inerrancy. This interpretation of the illustration is further confirmed by Hodge’s next sentence in the passage, in which he states that even if there are no satisfactory explanations for these discrepancies, the Bible still meets his definition of inerrancy. What is more, it should be clear that Hodge was certainly not troubled by these errors-no more than would the builder of the Parthenon have feared that structure’s collapse due to specks of sandstone in its foundation. The difficulty Woodbridge and Rogers have in understanding Hodge seems due to the fact that in the time since Hodge wrote, inerrancy has come to mean only ‘detailed inerrancy.’ If, when Hodge described the Bible as ‘free from all error’ he had in mind, not detailed inerrancy, but some other form of inerrancy, his position becomes clear. However, contemporary writers, such as Woodbridge, insist that Hodge was a detailed inerrantist. This once again reveals the push that took place away from other views of inerrancy toward detailed inerrancy.”

“At least on this very specific point, Hodge appears to be closer to the views of those who went before him than those who have followed him. For example, Martin Luther writes, ‘The Scriptures … do not lie or deceive’ and ‘The Scriptures have never erred.’ Yet Luther also expresses doubt that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that the apostle Jude wrote the book bearing his name, and that Old Testament battle accounts were not exaggerations. For example: ‘When one often reads that great numbers of people were slain-for example, eighty thousand-I believe that hardly one thousand were actually killed.’ For Luther, this exaggeration in no way contradicts his belief that ‘the Scriptures have never erred.’ Similarly, Calvin has no problem suggesting in his Commentaries that Matthew ‘incorrectly,’ but with ‘no impropriety,’ calls a comet a star. These apparent difficulties simply did not matter to these writers, nor did they violate their very high views of biblical authority. As discussed above, this is possible only because, as pre-moderns, the reformers found the Bible’s authority in its author, not in its inerrancy.”

In reading Charles Hodge’s systematic theology, I found the following assertion that God does not correct the mistaken scientific theories of Scripture’s authors: “We must distinguish between what the sacred writers themselves thought or believed, and what they teach. They may have believed that the sun moves round earth, but they do not so teach…. There is a great distinction between theories and facts. Theories are of men. Facts are of God. The Bible often contradicts the former, never the latter.”

Marvelous. It’s 9/15/2024 and flat earthers still want to argue about this from a conspiracy theory platform that leaves them floating alone in the ocean of modernity, beached high and dry on a rising, boiling volcano of bitterness and fear. From this lost Island, not on any map of the human psyche I know of, we may never be able to save them.