Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Inerrancy and Me

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I was born into a Catholic family, and so was a Catholic for a couple of decades, including 8 years in a strict boarding school, St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital, run by German and Irish nuns in the Himalayas. And 14 months as a novice at Mother Teresa’s Convent.
And Catholics believed in Biblical inerrancy, and, well, so did I.
* * *
Faith faded out of my life for about 5 years as a undergraduate in Oxford, and Creative Writing Masters and Ph.D student in America.
When it made its joyful re-entry, Roy and I attended John Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we lived.
Southern Baptists believe in Biblical inerrancy, and well, so did I.
Trouble is, they didn’t believe quite the same things as the Catholics did.
                                                   * * *
Well, then we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, and attended the massive, wonderful and non-denominational Williamsburg Community Chapel. It welcomed Christians from all denominations and none. They had a theological position on millenarianism. They were pan-millenarist. They believed it would all pan out. (No, I am not joking, though they of course, were joking in earnest.)
They did, however, believe in Biblical inerrancy. And, well, so did I.
Trouble is, they didn’t believe quite the same thing as the Catholics or the Baptists.
                                                   * * *
And then, we moved to England in 2004, and I attended St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford.  Not a happy church experience for me, but it taught me to wade in the vast deeps of the Holy Spirit, and for that I am grateful.
St. Aldate’s is an Anglican, Evangelical, Charismatic Church. It believed in Biblical inerrancy. And well, so did I.
Trouble is, it didn’t believe quite the same thing as the Catholics, Baptists, and Non-denominational Christians.
* * *
After 6.5 years at Aldate’s, I made the brilliant and fortunate decision to leave. We are now at St. Andrew’s, Oxford, an Anglican, Evangelical church which has excellent, serious, meaty small group Bible studies.
As far as I can gather, St. Andrew’s permits a “free vote” on the Holy Spirit. In one of the two wonderful small groups, I attend, people talk about speaking in tongues. But we recently lunched with a brilliant, theologically minded friend from Andrew’s. “Have you been baptised in the Holy Spirit?” I asked. (You know, the kind of polite lunch time conversation well-bred English people indulge in… Not!). He looked hard at me. “I received the Holy Spirit when I was baptised,” he said. Okaaaaaay.
But St. Andrew’s believes in Biblical inerrancy. And well, so do I.
The trouble is…. Well, you get the idea.
* * *
And then, I became a blogger, and met liberal Christians who did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.
Not at all.
Heavens! So what’s a poor girl who is theologically self-taught to do?
   * * *
Should I pick and choose, and decide what was inspired by God, and which statements were, so to say, garbled in the transmission, the writer getting the word and intention of God all wrong?
Become a one-woman Jesus seminar, so to say?
                                                                 * * *
Roy and I have planted a massive, massive vegetable garden (yeah, we don’t do anything by half-measures) and digging in it gives me great time and space for theological thinking. I highly recommend it. (Actually, I highly recommend digging in mine, if you have time, since we’ve bitten off more than we can chew:)
And so, I dug and weeded and watered and pondered inerrancy.
And I thought of the Christians I’ve met, who appeared to be happy, joyous, assured, and inspiring. I thought of John Piper, whose church we had worshipped in when we lived in Minneapolis; Dick Woodward, whose church we had worshipped in when we lived in Virginia; and my good friend, Paul Miller, founder of seeJesus.net and World Harvest Mission.
And I thought of Billy Graham.
Then I thought of Christians I knew who did not believe in inerrancy. And I decided whom I wanted to be like when I grew up.
* * *
A leap of faith. That is what putting your faith in the Word is.
For Billy Graham, it was life-changing. As it will be for anyone.

In the summer of 1949, my team and I were preparing for the most intensive evangelistic mission we had ever attempted, a citywide outreach in Los Angeles, California.

Just weeks before the mission was to start, however, I experienced a major crisis of faith—the most intense of my life. Some months before, Charles Templeton, a fellow evangelist whom I respected greatly had begun to express doubts about the Bible, urging me to “face facts” and change my belief that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. “Billy,” he said, “you’re fifty years out-of-date. People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do. Your faith is too simple.” I knew from my own reading that some modern theologians shared his views.

For months doubts about the Bible swirled through my mind, finally coming to a boil during a conference at which I was speaking in the mountains east of Los Angeles. One night, alone in my cabin at the conference, I studied carefully what the Bible said about its divine origin. I recalled that the prophets clearly believed they were speaking God’s Word; they used the phrase “Thus says the Lord” (or similar words) hundreds of times. I also knew that archaeological discoveries had repeatedly confirmed the Bible’s historical accuracy.

Especially significant to me, however, was Jesus’ own view of Scripture. He not only quoted it frequently, but also accepted it as the Word of God. While praying for His disciples, He said, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). He also told them, “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law” (Matthew 5:18). Shouldn’t I have the same view of Scripture as my Lord?


Finally I went for a walk in the moonlit forest. I knelt down with my Bible on a tree stump in front of me and began praying. I don’t recall my exact words, but my prayer went something like this: “O Lord, there are many things in this book I don’t understand. There are many problems in it for which I have no solution. … But, Father, by faith, I am going to accept this as Thy Word. From this moment on I am going to trust the Bible as the Word of God.”

When I got up from my knees, I sensed God’s presence in a way that I hadn’t felt for months. Not all my questions were answered, but I knew a major spiritual battle had been fought—and won. I never doubted the Bible’s divine inspiration again, and immediately my preaching took on a new confidence. This was, I believe, one reason why our Los Angeles meetings had to be extended from three weeks to eight.

Don’t let anyone shake your confidence in the Bible as God’s Word.  Face your doubts and seek answers; you aren’t the first person to ask them. In addition, read the Bible for yourself with an open heart and mind. Ask God to show you if it truly is His Word—and He will.
Your life will never be the same once you trust the Bible as God’s Word. God will begin to use it to change your life.
* * *
However, you can believe in the divine inspiration of Scripture, and grow into a more nuanced view as Graham himself did. Some fundamentalists were shocked by his famous Pilgrim’s Progress interview with Newsweek.
I quote, He does not believe that Christians need to take every verse of the Bible literally; “sincere Christians,” he says, “can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology–absolutely.”
Graham spends hours now with his Bible, at once savoring and reconsidering old stories and old lessons. While he believes Scripture is the inspired, authoritative word of God, he does not read the Bible as though it were a collection of Associated Press bulletins straightforwardly reporting on events in the ancient Middle East. “I’m not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord,” Graham says. “This is a little difference in my thinking through the years.” He has, then, moved from seeing every word of Scripture as literally accurate to believing that parts of the Bible are figurative–a journey that began in 1949, when a friend challenged his belief in inerrancy during a conference in southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. Troubled, Graham wandered into the woods one night, put his Bible on a stump and said, “Lord, I don’t understand all that is in this book, I can’t explain it all, but I accept it by faith as your divine word.”
Now, more than half a century later, he is far from questioning the fundamentals of the faith. He is not saying Jesus is just another lifestyle choice, nor is he backtracking on essentials such as the Incarnation or the Atonement.
But he is arguing that the Bible is open to interpretation, and fair-minded Christians may disagree or come to different conclusions about specific points. Like Saint Paul, he believes human beings on this side of paradise can grasp only so much. “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror,” Paul wrote, “then we shall see face to face.” Then believers shall see : not now, but then .
Debates over the exact meaning of the word “day” in Genesis (Graham says it is figurative; on the other hand, he thinks Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale) or whether the “Red Sea” is better translated as “sea of reeds”–which takes Moses’ miracle out of the realm of Cecil B. DeMille–or the actual size of ancient armies in a given battle may seem picayune to some. For many conservative believers, however, questioning any word of the Bible can cast doubt on all Scripture. Graham’s position, then, while hardly liberal, is more moderate than that of his strictest fellow Christians.
·      * *
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I loved this interview. We can be a faithful Christian, but not be afraid to think. Once, when I lived in America, I told my pastor, a good, honest man, that I did not believe that relatively good people were condemned to hell because they had never heard of Jesus, or heard of him in a winsome way. Jesus himself said that he would say “I never knew you,” to those who made public professions of their faith in him, but whose lives and hearts belied it.
As I said, he was a good honest man, and he was troubled. But then he said, “If I agreed with you, Anita, there would be no point in us sending out missionaries.” He was a mild Calvinist, and accepting that virtuous pagans might go to heaven would leave his whole watertight theological system in tatters. So he didn’t. Recently, a friend gave me this reason for accepting a difficult doctrine: If we didn’t believe this, other doctrines would collapse, and there would be nothing left.
But we do not need to be afraid to think.
·      * *
So, inerrancy and me. Where do I stand?
Since inerrant is a theological word not found in Scripture, I am not going to mess with it. I prefer to use the word inspired. I believe Scripture is divinely inspired.
(Interestingly, which books were Scripture and which weren’t was only decided by fourth century Councils and synods in Laodicea, Hippo and Carthage, all places with the Biblical and classical ring. I certainly hope they got things right, but we do need to realize that our current Bible was decided by human councils 1600 years ago. Luther disputed their choices in the 16th century.)
I also say with the older Graham, I’m not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord,” Fair-minded Christians may disagree or come to different conclusions about specific points.
Which explains why all those Catholics and Calvinists and pan-Christians and Anglicans and Charismatics who all believed in inerrancy taught me very different things.
* * *
So I think a Christian can believe in the Divine Inspiration of Scripture, and pray and rely on the Holy Spirit to interpret it for her, and will not go too far wrong, if her thinking and interpretations stays within the river of twenty-one centuries of Christians who have grappled with the same questions, and whose thinking is now available to us at the click of a cursor.
          * * *

Scripture itself may be inerrant. But all the Catholics and Calvinists and Anglicans and Charismatics and non-denominational churches who believe in inerrancy are not themselves inerrant.
They’ve got some things right, and some things wrong.
Lord, give me the wisdom to know which ones!
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  2. Many Muslims believe that every word of the Qu'ran was dictated to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel – so the Qu'ran is more inerrant than the Bible, according to them.

    I think there's a distinction between something being divinely inspired, and being dictated word-for-word.

    I could inspire you to write a poem, but I wouldn't have dictaed it to you – you would have put your own thoughts and reflections in it.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry is inspired by meditating on the Divine, but I am sure no-one would claim it was dictated by God.

    Anyway, you have to pick and choose between the bits of scripture that promote love, and those that don't.

  4. Completely with you on Divine inspiration. Part of the trouble we get into when we speak of inerrancy is that we slip into meaning “My interpretation of Scripture is inerrrant,” which is clearly a load of tosh, unless I happen to be God tha Father, God the Son or God the Holy Spirit.

  7. Hey Anita – great post!! How true that so many Christians say they believe the Bible to be inherent – and they can totally disagree with one another. I agree with your closing statement – about agreeing with Biblical inherrancy but acknowledging that as humans we are capable of making mistakes. I have a meeting with another church leader this afternoon to discuss how we can move forward when we both see a particular issue completely differently. We both believe the Bible to be absolutely true – and yet interpret it completely differently. Where to go from here?!! Put our 'correctness' in an open hand and ask God to reveal his truth and will in the situation I guess.