We all know that inerrancy is subject to definition of necessity, and that one embraces it or rejects it based on definitions and how the phenomena of the text conform to the definitions (or not). I’d say a change in definitional orientation like that above, being content with God’s own choice to speak to a pre-modern people through pre-modern people makes the most sense in correspondence with both reality and the picture of the process in its time that the text itself gives us.

Any thoughts or guidance or references that might be useful (besides this blog) or follow-up articles given the late date of my comment would be appreciated.

In order to say that what we “know” today about the universe is “true” and be intellectually consistent, we would have to say that truth — or our perception of it — changes over time: We’d have to accept that 120 years ago, space was filled with luminiferous ether which suspended the stars and planets in a fluid gel; that 500 years ago the sun really was an umblemished sphere and the planets revolved around the earth; that 1,000 years ago disease was in fact caused by the imbalance of the four fundamental bodily fluids. Or evil spirits.

Go back to Palestine 2,000 years ago and you find that people believed all manner of frippery, glumdiggle, rum-tum and pitter-pat. Why are we shocked to find it in the pages of Scripture? And let us be fair: All of the jabberwocky we find was cutting-edge “science” in its day (rather, pre-scientific metaphysical speculation), all “known” to be “true” by learned and respectable men and women everywhere.

It’s uncharitable in the extreme to hold Moses and his ilk guilty for not having had any idea about, say, the wave-particle duality of light — which even now is being undermined by diligent men and women in white coats and big shiny nerd glasses.

Imagine if you will that Genesis began this way: “In the beginning, all the matter in the universe was compressed down into a single point. Never mind where the matter came from, or what it was doing all packed in there like that. Trust me, it just was. Someone, let’s call him God, flicked the point with his pinky finger and it exploded into a million billion trillion quintagazillion stars and galaxies.” That particular theory is already starting to erode, and in a generation or two will be counted as shamefully foolish. Besides, I barely understood that paragraph, and I typed it. How could we expect an ancient Israelite to?

Just this: Reality doesn’t change over time, but our models of it do.

Even the most hardened scientists sometimes deal in constructs that are only “true” on paper. We “know” nowadays that the planetary model of the atom Just Ain’t So. Nevertheless, it is indispensable to the task of stoichiometry. One must suspend disbelief long enough to use a model that is known to be false in most of its particulars in order to do something useful: Balance an equation so you can mix chemical A and chemical B without blowing your fingers off. For that particular task, a more accurate model of the atom is not only unnecessary, it’s downright unhelpful because it’s beside the point: Will someone please tell Dr. Heisenberg to keep his word-hole shut while I figure out just EXACTLY how much sulphuric acid to pour into this flask?

As stoichiometry, so hermeneutics: A more accurate understanding of the cosmos is not only unnecessary to understanding the Psalms, it is downright unhelpful because it is beside the point. Statements of inerrency that pound the square pegs of scripture into the round holes of scholastic philosophy only muddy an already brackish pond further.

Humility needed on all sides? I should say!

“… but I think it’s much easier to side with Calvin here and affirm something equally obvious: In communicating with humanity, EVERYTHING God tells us is in some way an accommodation to our limitations.”

Inerrancy statements necessarily focus on some minutiae, but many of them miss exactly the above. I think an aura of humility needs to work its way into our thinking. Two hundred years ago, our ‘scientific’ conception wasn’t really on anyone’s radar. Now we think we have all of the answers. What will the conception be two hundred years from now, when some other conceptions shape and form the lenses one reads the text through?

In other words, we need a conception of inerrancy that allows us to understand the text as it was communicated, not as we happen to see it. If taking a ‘pre-scientific’ worldview into account helps make sense of things which are otherwise insensible (e.g. 1Co 11 and head coverings), then it’s worth it.

But we must be humble in our approaching the text, always starting from the assumption that we *haven’t* got it figured out. Otherwise we’ll smoosh the data into what we see instead of dig to understand what the text communicates.

It ain’t (necessarily) rocket science, but it is detailed and, in some points that seem way-out wacky to us, rather difficult. Being honest about that difficulty, instead of flattening it, is the proper place to start.