Inerrancy and Church History: The Post-Reformation and Modern Period

As I noted briefly in the last two articles, the church has always, generally speaking, held to the idea of an error-free Bible. This was true during the early church, the middle ages, and the Reformation. In the early 1600s, however, significant changes began to take shape in Western intellectual culture. Developments in philosophy would dislodge Christian presuppositions from their preeminent epistemological status, and reason would increasingly stand in judgment over Scripture rather than Scripture serving as an authority over reason. With these significant changes would come an approach to biblical studies that undermined the historical and scientific reliability of the Bible while introducing hermeneutical theories that challenged long-held beliefs about God’s supernatural action in the world.

Despite these challenges, Christian theologians located in the Protestant tradition would continue to uphold the Bible against explicit attacks and implicit anti-supernatural theories of interpretation, and they would do so by arguing that the Bible, as a result of its divine inspiration, was wholly without error. Read more