Inerrancy and Church History: The Early Fathers

Since 1978 and the release of Rogers and McKim’s massive The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, it has been a strategy among evangelicals who dislike the doctrine of inerrancy to suggest that the doctrine itself has a recent origin. Why some evangelical non-inerrantists continue to hold this line is baffling, however, for it is widely acknowledged that Rogers and McKim’s thesis–that conservative efforts to uphold the doctrine of inerrancy are grounded in theological innovation rather than historical precedent–was soundly and definitively refuted by John Woodbridge’s Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal. The church has always believed in an error-free Bible.

Nevertheless, in light of recent challenges to inerrancy by those who self-consciously place themselves within the evangelical tradition, it becomes necessary to revisit old paths for the sake of clarity and certainty.

Over the next few weeks I want to look at the doctrine of inerrancy in the history of the church. My goal here, however, is not to provide a full history of the doctrine as it has been articulated by Christians throughout the centuries. Such a task, as John Woodbridge noted in his own volume on the subject, would be “herculean” and would require an entire book! Rather, my aim in these few articles is to sketch a general picture of the church’s belief in an error-free Bible in order to establish that the doctrine of inerrancy as defined, for example, in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, has strong historical precedent. I begin with the early church fathers. Read more