God's Word

Satan’s accusatory conclusion in Genesis 3:4 has been levied countless times by the serpent of old and his minions, and is feasibly the most common belief about God’s word; especially these days. Satan’s indictment of God was a subtle, clever and ingenious two-prong attack; God’s word isn’t accurate, but not all of God’s word is inaccurate. It’s a popular indictment, because it gives God credit for some accuracy while denying the inerrancy of God’s word at the same time. It’s a clandestine way of having your cake and eating it at the same time. So, was the old, red dragon right, and is it really necessary for all of God’s word to be one hundred percent correct, or is there some wiggle room for inaccuracies? How do Christians defend against the accusation, “Are there any errors in the Bible?”

The unembellished definition of inerrancy is that every word of the Bible is true. The Bible isn’t inerrant, because it records every fact about any one subject, rather, it’s inerrant, because every fact that it records is true and accurate.

Moreover, the Bible can be inerrant and still use the common language, euphemisms, metaphors, etc. that were common to the people of the day. The Bible can speak, for example, of the sun rising and setting (Psalm 113:3), from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the earth, even though we know that the sun neither rises nor sets. The Bible is absolutely truthful even though it often uses common language to describe natural phenomena or approximations, etc. Language can be true and still offer imprecise statements. “I live a little more than a mile from my office,” for example, is an imprecise statement that conveys the near proximity of my home to my office. ...

... middle of paper ...

... in the manuscripts, we recognize that these mistakes originated in the hand of man and not God. Moreover, there exists the theoretical possibility of copying errors in the manuscripts, but the errors are not universal. Consider, for example, that a copyist from Rome made a mistake in copying Paul’s letter to the Romans. This error would stand out when compared to the other known copies of Paul’s letter, and the variants are minor, and they do not alter the primary message of Paul’s letter. We are blessed with more than 5000 copies of the New Testament, used by textual variant scholars that assure us of the accuracy of the New Testament.

Satan is the author of lies (John 8:44), and his indictment of God’s word is therefore false. The inherent definition of God is that He cannot lie (Titus 1:2), meaning that every word He records for man is true.