We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

The Idolatrous Devotion to Inerrancy

Ezechiele 21:20

Luca Rossato via Compfight

Ed Cyzewski posted some thoughts on his blog on why he hates the word “inerrancy”. He agrees with something Greg has been saying for a while now that seems shocking to many: fighting for the idea of inerrancy can devolve into a kind of idolatry. This is well worth the read if you’re struggling with how to read the Bible and appreciate its truth.

From Ed’s post:

I do not affirm the word inerrancy because it compromises the Christian faith to the standards of secular scientific thinking. It takes our devotion and worship away from Christ and substitutes a second-rate god that breeds fear and paranoia, threatening to crumble our faith in God with every scientific report, literary device, or historical discrepancy.

This second-rate god demands that we spend our lives worrying about the chronology of the Hebrew kings, the findings of archeology, the age of the earth, and the chronology of the gospels.

This second-rate god drives wedges between the people of God as we fight each other in the name of protecting this false “foundation” of our faith.

Related Reading

Possibility of Love

In this video, Greg explores the core sin that stands in the way of love. You might be surprised by what it is. Video by The Work of the People

When the Bible has Errors

In the previous post, we dealt with the question of why we are able to trust Scripture. But we need to explore this further because if you read the Bible carefully, you will find parts that look erroneous. Some aspects of the Bible don’t line up with what we know from history and science. Let’s…

Imaging God Wrongly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 2

Our relationship with God depends on the way we imagine God. When we get the image of God right, the doors open for us to trust and relate to God in the ways we were created to do. But there are so many images of God that are entirely messed up. Just think about the…

Topics:

On Biblical Interpretation

chad via Compfight Today we’re linking to a blog post from Rachel Held Evans about Biblical interpretation. In her post, Rachel writes about the complexities Christians encounter when our scriptural interpretations differ (emphasis is Rachel’s): What is perhaps most frustrating about engaging in such conversations within the evangelical community in particular, however, is that differences…

Christ the Center

The center of the Christian faith is not anything we believe; it’s the person of Jesus Christ. The foundation of my faith is a person, not a book and a set of beliefs about that book. Rather than believing in Jesus because I believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, I came…

The Most Subtle of Idolatries

In our fallen state, separated from our true source center, we live from the knowledge of good and evil regardless of the particular idols from which we try to get life. [see yesterday’s post] Some people choose secular idols and thus adopt a corresponding set of criteria of what is good and what is evil.…