The idea that the Christian Bible is free of error is a supersessionist imperial claim which 1. is insulting to other religious expressions, particularly Judaism and 2. entirely unsubstantiated.
Because 1. is easy enough to see: everyone can see how when one person claims that a particular cultural belief is objective and absolute then everyone else alive who believes differently, becomes wrong, and all other cultural expressions of religion become "mythology" in the very derogatory sense of the word; I will concentrate on 2.
Firstly, which Christian Bible? There's never ever been one single Christian Bible which has been accepted as normative to every single Christian person alive. The Old Testament(s) of Christianity were themselves being shaped at the same time as the New Testament(s) in the first few centuries of the Common Era (CE) and it was also in that same period that the Tanakh of Judaism was likewise achieving its final form. At the time of Jesus there was neither Tanakh nor Old Testament only scriptures in which an authority and priority was accorded to the books of Moses or Torah. The Torah was a Pentateuch, although at Qumran the Temple Scroll represented a 6th book of Moses, meaning for some Jews in Jesus' day the Torah was a Hexateuch. Not only were the Tanakh and the Old and New Testaments shaped contemporaneously but also to a certain extent in reaction to each other. Christians regard Daniel as a prophet and in many ancient collections/lists Daniel is the last book of both the Prophets and the Old Testament as it is in my contemporary Orthodox Study Bible. In the Tanakh, though, Daniel is not a prophet and the book is included in the third division, the Writings. Given how important Daniel was for Christian messianic theologies, it's hard not to think that its placement in the Tanakh amongst the Writings is designed to downplay it and the apocalyptic theologies it represented. The ordering of the Tanakh, furthermore, gives priority to the Torah - all the other books of Prophets and Writings being understood as commentary on Torah. Christian Old Testaments look forward to the New and hence the Prophets are generally the final Old Testament division, heralding the Christ event.
The New Testament of today is not and has never been the only canonical New Testament structure. It took a long time for the Eastern churches to accept Revelation. It is still not part of the New Testament of the Church of the East (Assyrian Orthodox) and while it might be part of the Greek Orthodox bible there are no readings from it included in the lectionary of the Greek Orthodox church. Furthermore, the Ethiopian Bible includes a number of additional books in its New Testament, which are placed after Revelation. In the first millennium, there were also several different orderings of the New Testament. A quite common pattern was gospels, epistles, Acts and Revelation. The Cheltenham canon, hailing from North Africa, has the ordering: gospels, Pauline epistles, Acts, Revelation, Johannine and Petrine epistles. The Apostolic canons give this ordering for the New Testament:
Our own books, that is, those of the New Testament, are: the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; fourteen Epistles of Paul; two Epistles of Peter; three of John; on of James, and one of Jude. Two Epistles of Clement and the Constitutions of me Clement, addressed to you Bishops, in eight books, which are not to be published to all on account of the mystical things in them. And the Acts of the Apostles.
No sign of Revelation but ending with Acts. According to the Muratorian Fragment, which probably belongs in the fourth century, the New Testament structure is as follows: gospels, Johannine epistles, Acts, Paul's epistles, Jude, 2 epistles of John, Wisdom of Solomon, Revelation and Apocalypse of Peter. Indeed a number of ancient New Testament lists include either Wisdom of Solomon and/or Sirach. A list included in the 6th century Codex Claromontanus renders the New Testament thus - gospels, Pauline epistles, Petrine epistles, James, Johannine epsitles, Jude, Barnabas, Revelation, Acts and then Shepherd of Hermas, Acts of Paul, to conclude with Apocalypse of Peter. Finally the New Testament according to the Codex Sinaiticus is ordered as follows: gospels, Pauline epistles, Acts, James, Petrine epistles, Johannine epsitles, Jude, Revelation, Barnabas to conclude with Shepherd of Hermas.
So there's a first initial question of: "What is canonical?" and this question has never been laid to rest, it's simply been ignored by the majority of Christians over the centuries. Another problem that arises in claiming that a particular collection of books is "inerrant" is that there is never a fixed meaning in interpreting any sort of literature (and I largely see Christian fundamentalists shying away -if not ignoring- the Wirkungsgeschichte of these books), this means that we don't really have much of an idea about what these books meant in their reception and how much, if at all, that differed from the authors meaning. Inerrancy becomes a void issue straight away. Remember that there is no such a thing as meaning without contex, so why maintain the inerrancy of Scripture if the reception context changes all the time? For instance, I hear about fundamentalist Chrsitians reading Scripture in search of hope when they are facing hard times financially, and they stumble accross Matthew 6:25-34 and feel better. Now, shall we comment on the issue from a hermeneutical perspective? Was Matthew 6 (or any of Matthew) written to said Christian? Could not Jesus have meant something very different in this passage? A cultural critique parallel to Cynic philosophy, perhaps? That's certainly possible. The point is that what is most certain is that Jesus was not looking down through time here and speaking to that single Christian in order that said Christian feels better about their current predicament. For all purposes, that Christian simply picked up a piece of text and read it into their own context, (a flawed context -something that we all acknowledge-). If Scripture is inerrant then it's inerrant purposelessly.
Let's continue, what is the purpose of inerrancy? If it is in order for Christians to hold secure beliefs in their religious writings then why use the term "inerrancy", when a more profound and accurate term like "identity" is much better? The Scripture is the Identity of Christ and the Identity of Christians, we can read it collectively and see a continuity in the faith shared by our fathers and mothers. It makes much more sense to me. But let's ask these difficult questions; why, for instance, would an all powerful God inspire a book and make it superfluously inerrant? Doesn't that shake the economy of God's power and grace? Scripture is going to be given in the hands of a corrupt mind and people are going to read it and use it for their own purposes in order to Imperialize their faith, in order to oppress minorities, in order to murder, kill and pillage, why give these people a document which is perfect if its meaning is ambiguous enough for people to be able to use it for such destructive purposes? Augustine most certainly got around this problem by subordinating Scripture to Love:
Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. (De Doctrina Christiana 36).
And I would tend to agree with this more historical expression of Christian faith, I would subordinate errant Scripture to inerrant love.
In this short response to the most recent replies, I've attempted to show the baselessness of belief in inerrancy. In the wider context of the thread name, I would give a brief anecdote:
"Liberal Christianity" may be an oxymoron in the sense that there are many liberal Christians (like the late Robert Funk and the contemporary Spong) who see their faith as a supersessionist imperial castle of truth which all cultures must accept as truth, thus destroying the possibility of the Other. It may also be an oxymoron in the sense that many liberal Christians (like Robert Funk and John Spong) attempt to de-religiousify Christianity and offer only a very Buddhist (without the hard work) airy-fairy hippy living in the first century as an historical Jesus. Yes, these are areas of interest about some expressions of "liberal Christianity", however they are not the only expressions of contemporary scholarly Christianity. Also, these are also two areas in which contemporary fundamentalist Christians also fall under suspision. I have never heard of a fundamentalist Protestant who does not see their faith as the only possible way of being human or any contemporary fundamentalist Protestant Christian who does not see more liturgical, ritualistic, traditional (historical) expressions of faith as superfluous at best or demonic at worst. So some forms of "liberal Christianity" and all(?) forms of fundamentalist Christian expressions of faith are oxymoronic.
Allan
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