THE BIZARRE NOTION OF BIBLICAL INERRANCY
Jerry Harkins

The Bible is a strange book. When we first meet him, its hero is a thoroughly unlikable and unstable fellow named God. He’s a nasty piece of business who’s always looking for innovative ways to torture and humiliate people. He sends an angel with a flaming sword to evict Adam and Eve from their home because they ate an apple he was saving for himself. It seems God thinks the only difference between himself and human beings is the knowledge of good and evil which can be conveyed by the apples of that particular tree. [1] It gets worse. He turns Lot’s wife into a column of salt for the crime of glancing back at Sodom, a town he has just destroyed with fire and brimstone. [2] He utterly ruins Job — who he boasts is the most blameless and upright of men— for the sake of winning a whimsical bet with Satan. He imposes an obscene loyalty test on Abraham (although he relents at the last moment) but makes Jephthah sacrifice his daughter to fulfill a rash promise made in a moment of panic. [3]

What strikes me as really strange, however, is that there are millions and millions of people, mostly Americans, who claim to believe that every single word of this book is the literal truth. Not myth. Not metaphor. But Truth, writ large, in spite of all its internal inconsistencies and a level of gibberish that would earn a sophomore a low C. This is called the doctrine of inerrancy, an idea that floated around in the darker recesses of theological speculation for centuries before seeing the light of print in 1978. In that year of grace, 300 Evangelical Pooh-Bahs gathered at the International Congress on Biblical Inerrancy in Chicago and decreed as follows:

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.

This, of course, is nonsense; every phrase of it is utter foolishness. God-given? How did the Pooh-Bahs know that? The Bible says nothing at all about its own literary origins. And which Bible are you talking about anyway? Does it include the Apocrypha? Fifteen books? Thirteen? If it does not, do you have a Bible that does not trace to the Septuagint which does? And as to the events of world history, maybe you want to believe that God flooded the planet to a depth of 15 cubits above the highest mountains. Maybe you don’t care where all that water came from or where it went when God finally pulled the plug. But you can’t escape the simple madness of the Noah story. Consider the curse of Canaan. Canaan was Ham’s son, Noah’s grandson. One day, after the flood, Noah got drunk and fell asleep naked. Ham happened upon him in that condition. When he sobered up, Noah was furious that his son had seen him naked. So he cursed his grandson: “Slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” Now believe what you will about the source and destination of the flood waters, but do you really think that the institution of slavery is explained never mind justified by Ham’s noticing that his father had no clothes on? [4] And, where was God when Noah went off his medication? The moment the old man uttered his curse, any decent God would have struck him dead. Boy did I make a mistake. This Noah is a loose cannon. Instead, here’s what you get: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous god. I punish the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation…” Except for the sin of eating the wrong apple. Then it’s all generations.

The Catholic Church does not like to talk about inerrancy anymore because it is smart enough to be embarrassed. But press them hard enough and the official theologians will tell you this about the books of the Bible:

They are sacred and canonical "because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church. The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement.” [5]

There’s a little wiggle room there and more has been added since it was written in 1913. When Jesus warns against “…false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing,” a Catholic does not have to believe that people who wear wool suits are heretics. Real fundamentalists, on the other hand, must wear strictly polyester. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks 572 lines. Many of these are metaphorical. He speaks in parables, stories that are obvious fiction meant to make an abstract point. When asked why, he says, “… to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!” [6]

No, Virginia, the world was not created on October 23, 4004 BC. The sun did not stand still for the Battle of the Five Kings. Jonah was not swallowed by a whale. Mary was not, strictly speaking, a virgin. Lots of stuff reported in the Bible never happened. Still, it is not a fraud and the “errors” it contains are not lies. The Bible makes no claim to truth, [7] only to wisdom. And wisdom is nothing less than the ability to face an indifferent universe with equanimity. The Bible wouldn’t work if all were sweet and light and God had the Rorschach profile of Santa Claus.

For example, the story of God’s injustice to Job is not history but rather a rich metaphorical palette which allows us to explore some of the most profound issues of the spirit. Its genius lies precisely in the fact that it is plastic enough to be meaningful across generations and cultures. It is the lynchpin in the Bible’s exploration of the great themes of righteousness and justification. In it, the youthful, impetuous, egomaniacal God of the Torah comes of age and begins to learn something about divine responsibility. He still rants. Even at the end of the story, he cannot resist mocking Job: Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up dominion over the earth? But under the bluster, it is clear that God has learned that these lowly mortals have powers of their own, formidable faith and courage among them, and the greater part of wisdom might just be to beat a strategic retreat now and then in the interest of preserving as much divine dignity as possible. This epiphany comes not a moment too soon. We are about to encounter the sin of King David which the new improved God will punish but ultimately forgive. [8] The God of Genesis would surely have destroyed all of Israel for a lot less than the king’s sexual dalliance with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite.

There is some real history in the Bible but essentially it belongs in the fiction section. God is both a mythic figure and a very real presence in history and, in Job, we are privileged to witness the Jews as they reach a milestone in their understanding of that presence. Previously, they had accepted the ancient Sumerian view of a deity who spoke through the thunder and who was worshiped with awe. In the new version, God would be more dependent on his own creation for fulfillment, more subtle in judgment. Ultimately, Christians would serve this new God with love. Jesus would teach, “Love the Lord, your God…Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Love in the West would become a sort of over-theme in human affairs, the glue of the social contract, if not always in practice, then at least as the standard by which we judge ourselves and each other.

Between Job and David, Israel’s religious understanding had evolved dramatically. Job could not have served this theme if he had been a Jew or anything less than a blameless and upright man. Had he been a Jew, he would have had at least a tenuous covenental claim on God’s justice. Had he been a sinner, he would have attracted neither attention nor sympathy. As it is, Job is a metaphor for the emerging idea that God and his creation do not exist independently of each other.

Mary is cast as a virgin to advance the same thesis. Gabriel tells her she will bear a son and she replies, “How can this be, I am still a virgin?” Had she not been a virgin, the idea that “…the Most High will overshadow you” would not have been taken seriously, by Mary or anyone else. As it is, she can accept the angel’s assurance, saying,“…as you have spoken, so be it.” And a short time later, greeting her cousin Elizabeth, she can speak the remarkable words of the Magnificat, “My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoiceth in God, my savior.” [9] This is a defining moment for Christians. Mary knows she is a virgin. She knows she is nevertheless pregnant. But the contradiction is overwhelmed by her faith in the angel’s explanation. Her soul, informed by this faith, proclaims, “magnifies” and actually enhances the glory of God. Before Mary, witness or worship was an obligation of law. After the Magnificat, it became a celebration of mutual love. The glory of God is now justified and sanctified by the glory of his creation. This is the end of a long evolutionary process that began when the Jews brought back the first glimmerings of monotheism from Mesopotamia. From a modern perspective, it is hard to imagine how anything less than the God of love would differ from the worship of stone idols, black holes, or one’s own formless fears.

Sadly, the idea of the interdependence of God and his creation would never become universal. Even the great Puritan theologian and poet, John Milton, explicitly denied it:

…God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best… [10]

But for three or four thousand years, that has been precisely the issue. Is religion really a set of obligations and rituals — the mild yoke, if you will — imposed from above and meekly obeyed here below? Or is it rather a nuanced creation of societies and cultures meant to promote social comity in the here and now? This question in various guises has engaged the greatest religious thinkers and continues to divide believers. To the intellectually challenged, it is blasphemous on its face because it denies the reality of God. To those with a less constricted view of reality, however, the question itself is liberating and invigorating.

The danger of fundamentalism — whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim — is that it insists on avoiding the question, seeking instead to resolve essentially trivial questions by resort to naked force. Whether, for example, Mary was literally a virgin is of monumental insignificance in the face of the sublime questions raised by the Annunciation. It makes no difference what Reverend Falwell believed about this or about the organization of the solar system or about the sexuality of Tinky Winky Teletubby. He became a menace only when he started agitating for laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution or, worse, mandating the teaching of creationism. It is not so much that his inerrancy might mislead children. Rather it is that inerrancy denigrates the Bible, robs it of its capacity to speak to the hearts of the generations, and obscures its universal wisdom. If Falwell and his ilk are right, the Bible, as both literature and moral instruction, is on a par with knitting instructions: knit one, purl two, be saved.

Notes

1. It has always interested me that Adam and Eve are accused of the “sin” of disobedience. But until they actually ate it, they did not know the difference between good and evil.

2. An interesting story, this. On his way to Sodom, God decides to share his plan with Abraham who must have been shocked at the pure evil of it. He stands up to God and gets him to agree to spare Sodom and Gomorrah as long as he can find as few as ten good men in them. Abe’s rebellion is couched in all the usual obsequiousness. “May I presume to speak to the Lord, dust and ashes that I am…?” he asks. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?” he cajoles. God agrees if only to shut him up but then proceeds to unilaterally abrogate the agreement by destroying both cities without bothering to look for good men. (It is only mildly annoying that no one seems to care about good women and children. They get buried in the hellfire and brimstone for the sins of the men. When has it ever been different?) Anyway, one of the avenging angels warns Lot and his family to flee for their lives and not to look back. (This is the test Mrs. Lot fails.) So now all Lot has left is two daughters without husbands. For some unexplained reason (after all, they have just come from Zoar, a small town that had been spared) the daughters think they are the last people on earth so, to continue the line, they have to get pregnant, and they do. By their father, of course, since he’s the only guy around. Each bears a son, Moab and Ben-ammi. Then, Moab presumably marries either his mother or his aunt and becomes the progenitor of the Moabites. Ben-ammi becomes the first of a long line of Ammonites in an analogous way. Thus, Lot was the father and grandfather of Moab and Ben-ammi and Lot’s daughters were the mothers of their own siblings. This sort of thing happens in the best of families. In the 15th Century, Pope Alexander VI may well have sired a son, Rodrigio Borgia, Jr., by his own daughter, Lucrezia, in which case he too was simultaneously the child’s father and grandfather.

3. The story of Jephthah so disturbed Martin Luther that he wrote a commentary claiming that it didn’t happen the way the Bible clearly says it did happen. Luther proposed that the line “…he [Jephthah] fulfilled the vow he had made; she died a virgin” did not mean he sacrificed her. I’ll let you make up your own mind on that but please don’t read Judges11 if you have a queasy stomach. In fact, this passage is as clear as any in the Bible and it forces the believing reader to take one of three positions. First, it happened just the way it says and proves that the God of the Old Testament was capable of behaving despicably. Or, second, Luther was right and the Bible is clearly wrong. Third, you can say that what we’re dealing with here is a parable. It didn’t happen but it’s a good story that forces you to reflect on important moral issues. The same issues are explored in the fragmentary Greek myth of King Idomeneo of Crete which, in turn, is the basis of a glorious opera by Mozart.

4. There is no mention of slavery in the Bible until Noah invents it here (Genesis 9:20-27). God confirms it when he gives the commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. In practically the same breath, he sets forth the rules that govern such matters as the ownership of the children of slaves, and the rights and obligations of daughters sold into slavery (Exodus 21:1-11).

5. “The Bible,” Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913.

6. Mark 4:10-12.

7. While it is a fact that the Bible does not claim to be true, it must be admitted that dozens of its characters claim to be speaking for God. Paul, for example, tells the Galatians (1:11-12), “…the gospel you heard me preach is no human invention…I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” The same claim has been made by saints and sinners from time immemorial. Even today, Pat Robertson speaks to God on a regular basis.  More impressively, God talks back.

8. In typical biblical fashion, others, mostly innocents, are called upon to pay the price of David’s iniquity. Bathsheba’s first born is struck dead. David’s son Absalom rapes ten of his concubines in public, in broad daylight. In other words, the wrath of God falls on women and children. But at least the principals survive and David and Bathsheba have another son, Solomon. But what is most interesting here is that David begs forgiveness in the full expectation that he will get it. In Psalm 51, he implores, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love…” It is here that the Jews first realize that God has an obligation to forgive arising out of love. It is still a tentative understanding but it is a step toward the idea that God cannot withhold forgiveness. Bill Clinton was borrowing from David’s strategy when he told the 1998 White House Prayer Breakfast, “…if my repentance is genuine and sustained, and if I can maintain both a broken spirit and a strong heart, then good can come of this for our country as well as for me and my family.” This is a direct echo of the same Psalm, Verse 17, to the effect that God will not despise a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

9. This is sometimes mistranslated to imply that it is God who is magnifying Mary’s soul. St. Jerome’s Latin vulgate says, “…magnificat anima mea Dominum et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo.”

10. Sonnet XIX. It may be that Milton was the greatest theologian of them all, greater than Jerome, greater than Maimonides, greater than Thomas Aquinas. Of him, Wordsworth wrote:

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.

In this instance, however, Milton allies himself with the most regressive theocrats of history. He was, I believe, confused by the extraordinarily obtuse eleventh chapter of Matthew, the last line of which is, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” In almost all other things, he and the other Roundheads were the theological progressives of their time. They are still regarded as heretics by those of today’s fundamentalists who can read or who know someone who can.