The following quote comes from Blake Ostler's review of How Wide the Divide by Blomberg and Robinson, "Bridging the Gulf":
Inerrancy is inconsistent with libertarian free will. Fourth, inerrancy is also inconsistent with the notion of morally significant free will asserted by Mormons and Arminians. One of the primary reasons many have given for rejecting inerrancy is that it amounts to a theory of divine dictation, an obliteration of the human personality and contribution to the scriptures. In response, all evangelical writings I am acquainted with deny that their views on scriptural inerrancy amount to a doctrine of divine dictation, as if the scripture were simply words recorded as God spoke. Blomberg is no exception: "No reputable Evangelical scholar or theologian believes in divine dictation for more than a tiny fraction of Scripture (e.g., the Ten Commandments)" (p. 37). Yet the issue is not whether evangelicals claim not to accept divine dictation, but whether their view logically entails a dictation theory, whether they acknowledge it or not. It is my position that the Chicago Statement implicitly assumes a Calvinistic determinism and is incompatible with morally significant free will despite such disclaimers.
The Chicago Statement seems to assert two mutually exclusive sources of scriptural texts. On the one hand, it asserts that all the words are controlled by God and therefore must be infallible and inerrant:
Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches. . . . Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all of its teachings. . . . We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation of God. . . . We affirm that the whole of scripture and all of its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine [i.e., infallible] revelation. . . . We affirm that inspiration . . . guaranteed true and trustworthy utterances in all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
On the other hand, the position of the Chicago Statement is that even though all the words are wholly God-given the human authors are nevertheless responsible for the human limitations evidenced in the biblical scriptures:
We affirm that God . . . has used [human] language as a means of revelation. We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine [i.e., infallible] revelation. . . . We affirm that God's revelation . . . [is] progressive. . . . We affirm that God . . . utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.14But how can God cause humans to use the words that he chooses and guarantee that these words are infallible unless he overrides their freedom to use the words they would choose? If the words of scripture reflect human interpretation, human personalities, historical horizons from the human perspective, then the words are at least in part reflective of human limitations and errors.
The crux of the matter is the different notion of free will with which most evangelicals (many explicitly and most implicitly) operate. As David and Randall Basinger have pointed out, the inerrantist's argument, when fully fleshed out, is as follows:
- "The words of the Bible are the product of free human activity."
- "Human activities (such as penning a book) can be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom."
- "God totally controlled what human authors did in fact write."
- "Therefore, the words of the Bible are God's utterances."
- "Whatever God utters is errorless (inerrant)."
The question boils down to whether premise (2) can be coherently asserted, which depends on the notion of free will one adopts. If one adopts the Arminian notion of contracausal agency—also known as libertarian free will—as the ability to do otherwise given all conditions obtaining in the moment of free decision, then (2) cannot be coherently asserted. God cannot both cause or determine humans to write the words of scripture and also leave humans free to choose words other than those God causes or determines. That is, the human author cannot do otherwise in relation to God and thus is not free in the relevant sense. If a person is free in this sense, then the words he writes are chosen by him, originating with that person and not fully determined by causes outside his control. Given inerrancy, the words are not chosen by human writers, but by God. If there were an error in scripture, who would be responsible for the error, given that God has chosen the very words used? It seems clear to me that God is responsible, and not the humans who had no control over the words used in the scripture. That is why the logic of inerrancy entails that there cannot be any errors—God is the source of all the words in scripture, God is infallible; therefore the words of the Bible must also be infallible.
- "Therefore, the words of the Bible are errorless (inerrant)."15
We now see why inerrancy is adopted by evangelicals despite the fact that it neither is found in the Bible nor can be reconciled with what is found in the Bible. It is a necessary corollary of the Calvinist theology of complete divine determinism. Without the assumption that God completely controls every word of scripture—indeed everything that happens—there simply is no reason to accept inerrancy.
The inerrantist thus assumes either the Calvinist view of soft determinism or adopts Martin Luther's acceptance of hard determinism and rejection of free will altogether. The Calvinist view assumes that humans can be free although they are caused to think and do as they do: a person is free so long as he can do as he wants, though what he wants is not up to him. Thus if God causes a biblical author to want to write the words that God chooses, that author is free to do as he wants, although his wants and actions are not his own. However, if a person's wants and desires are not up to him, if the desire to write the specific words chosen by God originates with God and is ultimately "guaranteed" by God, then how is that person's personality still present in writing the words? Why do the words chosen by God exhibit the limitations of the words the person would choose if they originated with God rather than with him? It is incoherent to assert that biblical scripture reflects the human cultures and limitations of its human authors but the words are chosen by God, who is free of such limitations. Once again, given scriptural inerrancy, God, and not the human author, is ultimately responsible for the words of scripture. Thus any limitation or errors evidenced in scripture must be laid at God's feet as the ultimate cause of these words. The problem of inerrancy is thus parallel to the problem of evil. Given the Calvinist commitment to complete divine determinism, any evils or errors that occur are actually caused by God and he is therefore responsible for them. But then any scriptural error, even the slightest mistake, is sufficient evidence to show that inerrancy is false, since God cannot be in error or mistaken. Because I believe that it is manifest that human limitations, mistakes, and errors are present in scripture, it is easy to conclude that inerrancy is an erroneous human view.
