Inerrancy and the Southern Baptist Convention
by Carroll Johnson,
Brownfield, TX

Conservatives won the Southern Baptist Convention during the past few years. They won our hearts and minds with new theology and new terms like “inerrant.” The greatest implication of “inerrant” is that it proves the existence of God. If you have an inerrant/perfect Bible, (only God is perfect) then God produced the Bible and therefore He exists.

Inerrancy continues to be an issue in the SBC as well as the state conventions. In the SBC it is one of the requirements for a person to be appointed to a board of trustees or to other places of service. In recent years several Baptist state conventions have faced motions and resolutions concerning the question, “Is the Bible inerrant/ perfect?”

Inerrancy was a major consideration in the take-over of the SBC. Even to this last SBC (’96), the committee that brings trustee nominations to the floor of the convention, certified that each one subscribed to inerrancy. They continue to fire and hire on the basis of inerrancy. However, most Baptist state conventions have been slow to adopt or enforce “inerrancy” as an official position.

A few years ago the inerrantists were saying that the Bible which we hold in our hand was inerrant. However, Baptists today have become informed and know that the Greek New Testament has many variables. Those supporting inerrancy have retreated to THE THEORY that only the original copies (autographs) were inerrant. Therefore the current question is, “Were the original copies inerrant?” Since none of the original manuscripts exist, how can we determine whether or not the originals were inerrant? Therefore, the most relevant question is, WHAT DID THE EARLY CHURCH BELIEVE ABOUT THE BIBLE?

FIRST CONCERN: If generations passed before the New Testament was accepted, it is logical to assume that the early church DID NOT look upon the original manuscripts as inerrant/perfect. What is the evidence?

The historical facts of the first few hundred years reveal what the early church believed. THIS IS THE EVIDENCE: The four gospels were used authoritatively (accepted) by about 150 A.D. and about 10 of Paul’s Epistles by 175 A.D. By the year 200, about 22 of the books that we now accept and some that we don’t accept were also being used. The last five books (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation) were not accepted until later. For instance, Revelation was accepted by the Western church in about 400 A.D. The Eastern Church accepted it in 692 while the Church at Antioch (Syrian) did not accept it until the Middle Ages.

Since the selection process took several hundred years it is obvious that the early church DID NOT look upon the originals as inerrant or perfect.

SECOND CONCERN: Did the scribes, copyists and theologians treat the original manuscripts as inerrant/perfect?. Luke showed that he didn’t believe the writers wrote inerrantly in Luke 1:1-3: …several biographies of Christ have already been written using as their source material the reports circulating among us from the early disciples and other eyewitnesses. However it occurred to me that it would be well to recheck all these accounts… and after thorough investigation… to reassure you of the truth… .

Luke did not hint that the writers or himself depended on God for Divine knowledge to reveal to them the facts, but they had reports for their source material and he used footwork to check their writings. The following is an example of Luke correcting his own copy while using Mark as his source. Mark quotes Isaiah in Mark 1:2,3 but verse 2 is actually from Malachi. Both Luke 3:4 and Matthew 3:3 corrected this oversight by simply omitting Malachi’s prophecy from their text. It is interesting to note that the editors of the KJV corrected Mark’s oversight by changing Isaiah to “prophets” in Mark 1:2.

Most of the textual variations are insignificant and there are no major doctrines in doubt. However it is still true that nearly every sentence in the New Testament does have a variation in one or more of the other 4,000 manuscripts. The editors, Barbara and Kurt Aland, of the Nestlets text of The Greek New Testament, include 1,438 of the more significant variants. In the Greek text they have devised a system to select the best variant. Additionally they use single and double brackets to denote the degree of probability as to whether or not some of the more questionable variants were in the original text.

HOW DID THESE VARIANTS GET INTO THE MANUSCRIPTS? Westcott and Hortin in The New Testament in the Original Greek write that there was an: ”…early mixture of [the] independent lines of transmission…” (p. 565). “Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom… .” (p. 550) “More peculiar to the Western text is the readiness to adopt alterations or additions from sources extraneous to the books which ultimately became canonical.” (p.550)

The early churchmen had original and near original manuscripts and yet they altered the texts for any number of reasons. We have no record that the early church tried to preserve the original wording nor did any of the Apostolic or church Fathers lament the fact that the originals were not preserved in their original state. Since the early churchmen changed, altered and accepted additions from outside sources, IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE EARLY CHURCH DID NOT BELIEVE THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS TO BE INERRANT/ PERFECT.

If we must pose a question about the Bible, let it be, “Is the text trustworthy?” Again let us accept the conclusion of Westcott and Hortin, “If comparative trivialities, such as changes of order, the insertion or omission of the article with proper names, and the like, are set aside, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament.” (p.565) In the previous quotation Westcott and Hortin have reassured us that they have reconstructed a reliable text from the more than 4000 manuscripts and 20,000 quotations.

We desperately need to believe the historical evidence of the early church. Believing as they did, they spread the Gospel to the whole world in a few hundred years. If we Baptists will accept the historical facts as lived by the early church, we can get on with the “weightier matters”—missions and evangelism.

Let us pray that the SBC cease the practice of firing and hiring on the basis of inerrancy. Let us pray that we will be so well-informed on the subject that it will not come up. But if it should, let us pray that we will be loving enough to accept one another and that we will not make it a test of fellowship or a test of employment. We need to reinstate the practice of “agreeing to disagree.”

THE BIBLE IS PERFECT ENOUGH that when it is preached, the Holy Spirit bears witness to those who hear that they should become disciples of Jesus. Since it is perfect enough for the Holy Spirit to honor, surely it is perfect enough for each and everyone of us. With this reassurance by the Holy Spirit, let us boldly “Preach the Word.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove Ill:InterVarsity 1968.

McDonald, Lee Martin. The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988.

Metzger, Bruce M. The New Testament, It’s Background, Growth, and Content. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1992

Smith, T.C. How We Got Our Bible. Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994. Westcott and Hortin The New Testament in the original Greek. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949.

NOTE: A very fine article is in Colliers Encyclopedia under the topic Bible and the sub-topic “New Testament Canonization.” More detailed articles are found in Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana.

September 1997