What "Without Error" DOES NOT Mean for the Global Methodist Church
Addressing Five Common Misunderstandings
“Scripture is without error in all it affirms.” That statement appears in the proposed Articles of Faith of the Global Methodist Church. That statement has also raised important questions about what it actually entails. To what beliefs about the Bible are we considering committing ourselves? What does the statement mean? And, just as important, what does it not mean?
This essay is about that last question. My aim here is to clear up some confusion that may be out there regarding this phrase: without error in all it affirms. Each of the points made below have come up in recent months in real conversations with Global Methodist laity and clergy. I thought it might be helpful to collect them all here in one place.
For context, you can think of this as part 3 in a series of articles on the doctrine of Scripture. If you missed the first two installments, don’t worry. This one stands on its own. And if this essay strikes your interest, the two earlier posts will fill out the picture even more.
Read the Series
Part 1: What goes into a doctrine of Scripture?
Part 2: What does “in all it affirms” mean?
One more thing before launching into the discussion. It’s worth remembering that the Articles of Faith are still in the proposal stage. They have been submitted by the Commission on Discipleship, Doctrine, and Just Ministry as legislation to the upcoming General Conference. The work was done because the previous General Conference instructed that it should be done. Right now there is ongoing space for the broader denomination to engage in community discernment and provide additional feedback. Then the delegates to General Conference will take up the work in South Africa. That’s the process.
Now to our clarifications. Here are four things the claim that “Scripture is without error in all it affirms” does not mean.
1. Not the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Let’s get this one out of the way first. If the Articles of Faith of the Global Methodist Church end up saying that “Scripture is without error in all it affirms,” it does not mean that the Global Methodist Church is adopting the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement is a lengthy document of more than 1,500 words that articulates a variety of qualifications, nuances, and assertions both positive and negative about the Bible. The proposed language that “Scripture is without error in all affirms” is only one sentence composed of a few words. Those five words do not imply, entail, contain, express, or require the many affirmations and denials contained within the Chicago Statement. “Without error in all it affirms” is not a requirement of Chicago Statement-style inerrancy.
There are Global Methodists who would both agree that Scripture is without error in all it affirms and who would also affirm the Chicago Statement (I’m one of them). However, there are Global Methodists who would agree “Scripture is without error in all it affirms” and yet reject the Chicago Statement. This could be for a variety of reasons. They might quibble with Chicago’s use of certain words. They might want to frame things differently. They might desire to nuance the doctrine in a different direction. Indeed, beyond the GMC and across the North American church there are those people who would embrace “without error in all it affirms” and still raise questions about the Chicago Statement in part or in whole. The language of “without error” has been understood in a variety of ways. The Chicago Statement is well-known, but it doesn’t necessarily have a monopoly on how the language is to be understood. So, wherever the discussion goes, let’s not assume that affirming “without error” means affirming every word of the Chicago Statement.
2. Not Young-Earth Creationism
This is one I hear quite frequently, and we need to dispel this mistaken assumption permanently. “Without error in all it affirms” does not entail a commitment to young-earth creationism. I’m going to say it again. “Without error in all it affirms” does not entail a commitment to—or affirmation of—young-earth creationism.
This is where it’s crucially important to make a distinction between (1) the text of the Bible and (2) the interpretation of the text of the Bible. The text of the Bible offers us a creation narrative in the opening chapters of Genesis, and there are multiple interpretations of that biblical text. One approach interprets the text of Scripture to teach that the earth is only about 6,000 years old. Another contrasting interpretation rejects a young earth and argues for an interpretation of Genesis that leaves room for a very old earth and a very old universe. This is key: proponents of both views can and do affirm that the Bible is without error in all it affirms.
Old Earth Evangelicals
Among the latter group (of old earth creationists) are people like Tim Keller, William Lane Craig, John Walton, Hugh Ross, Tremper Longman, Deborah Haarsma, and others. Each of these folks would affirm both the authority and truthfulness of Scripture and an old earth.
Multiple prior presidents of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) have defended an old earth view of creation. This is significant because ETS requires belief in inerrancy for membership. Here are a few prominent examples, though there are plenty more. Bruce Waltke (ETS President 1975), a widely-regarded Old Testament scholar who taught at Reformed Theological Seminary, is known for his defense of inerrancy and an old earth. Wayne Grudem served as ETS President in 1999. He is a well-known defender of inerrancy and affirms and argues for an old earth.
Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Asbury Seminary, held the ETS presidency in 2020. He has argued that, “Genesis was not written to address modern scientific interests,” and “Genesis is not interested in our curiosity about the age of the earth.” In a 2012 article, Keener argued that a growing number of evangelicals are embracing various old-earth views. That reality has only increased in the years since that article was published.
What about the genealogies?
Now the objection is sometimes made that the Bible affirms a young earth on the basis of the genealogies in the Old Testament. After all, if you add them all up, it adds up to about 6,000 years. Doesn’t that mean that the Bible affirms a young earth? And while some folks in the medieval period employed Old Testament genealogies this way, there is very good reason not to. As Sandra Richter remarks in her widely-read Epic of Eden, “these early chronographers had very limited information regarding ancient schemes of reckoning time and, particularly important, the function of genealogies in kinship-based societies. Hence, the resulting chronologies were skewed” (50).
So, the answer to the answer to the question of whether the genealogies give us the age of the earth is no. And here’s why. To say that the Bible is without error in all it affirms means that the intent of the author and the literary form chosen by the author govern the meaning of the text. That observation puts us in the position to make two claims about what these texts affirm. One, the literary form of genealogy does not function in the same was the literary form of modern scientific hypothesis or as a science textbook. Second, ancient genealogies are not intended by their authors as a means for calculating the age of the earth.
The genealogies do function in other ways. Again, here’s Sandra Richter, who says that Old Testament genealogies
functioned to clarify all sorts of societal relationships—inheritance, legal access to a particular office, geographical location and territory rights, ethnology, or even a group’s particular caste or function within a society…a particular person’s genealogy could shift depending on the end goal of the individual recounting that genealogy. In addition to the array of social functions, the genealogies we find in the Bible, although derived from older archival records, have been placed into a narrative context and, therefore, have been overlaid with theological and narrative functions as well (50).
To illustrate, genealogy as a literary form functions in Genesis 5 to make theological affirmations about the rapid spread of the consequences of sin (see the recurrence of “then he died”). The many and varied ancient uses for genealogies should give us pause when appealing to them as a means for scientific dating of the earth. They were not intended to do that, and they don’t communicate in such a way as to bear on scientific hypotheses about the age of the earth. The literary form doesn’t work that way. As a result, we shouldn’t ask a biblical text to do something it wasn’t intended to do.
So, again, wherever the GMC discussion goes with regard to how we talk about Scripture, let’s not assume that “without error in all it affirms” entails a commitment to young-earth creationism. It doesn’t.
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3. Not Importing Reformed Theology
This one shows up occasionally. It’s the suggestion that a concern that scripture is without error is of primary concern only to the Reformed tradition and not to the Wesleyan tribe. This, however, is easily refuted. I wrote about this in Firebrand not too long ago. Instead of rehashing it here, I’ll simply draw your attention to what I said there. The McCall essay I refer to is Thomas H. McCall, “Wesleyan Theology and the Authority of Scripture: Historic Affirmations and Some Contemporary Issues” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (ed., D.A. Carson; Eerdmans, 2016), 171-194.
In the remainder of McCall’s essay, he goes on to show that major figures from the Wesleyan tradition have adopted and commended the classical view that Scripture is without error in its affirmations. It is well-known that John Wesley rejected the notion that Scripture is liable to err: “Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth” (Journal, 6:117).
McCall’s essay catalogues additional evidence that other leading Methodist theologians embraced the same classical view. Thomas Ralston discussed the issue extensively and concluded that the superintendence of the Holy Spirit freed the authors of Scripture from “the possibility of mistake or error” (Elements of Divinity, 603). Samuel Wakefield said that the influence of the Holy Spirit enabled Scripture to be written “without error or mistake” (71) and that the writers of Scripture were “infallibly preserved from error” (Complete System of Christian Theology, 81). William Burt Pope wrote that the Bible “cannot contain anything untrue” (Compendium of Christian Theology, 1:174). Randolph Foster said this of Scripture, “Falsity in any part will be fatal to the whole, or so far vitiate its claim as to destroy its authority” (Studies in Theology, 38).
All of these are Methodist theologians. All of them affirm and defend the classical Christian view that Scripture is without error. Consequently, the suggestion that such language is non-Wesleyan gives the appearance of unfamiliarity with what the tradition has said. The classical Christian view of Scripture is also the classical Wesleyan view of Scripture.
In addition to Reformed theologians, Roman Catholics and Wesleyans have frequently affirmed that scripture is without error in its affirmations, which is such a prominent feature of Church history that McCall (who is foremost among Methodist theologians today) has remarked, “Christians of various ecclesial and theological commitments consistently have held this view or something close to it. In fact, I take this to be settled enough that I shall henceforth refer to it as the ‘classical’ account of Scripture” (171).
4. Not Wooden Literalism
Another clarification to make is that “without error in all it affirms” does not entail a woodenly literalistic reading of the biblical text. We’ve already anticipated this point above in our discussion of literary form and authorial intent, but it’s worth saying a bit more.
The phrase “in all it affirms” entails recognizing that Scripture employs figures of speech, metaphor, symbolism, and a variety of other literary devices in the various affirmations that it makes. Metaphor should be interpreted as metaphor. Symbolism should be interpreted as symbolism.
Here are a few examples. When Jesus says he is the bread of life, he does not mean he’s made of wheat. He does mean that his presence sustains our lives in a way analogous to bread nourishing our bodies. When Scripture describes beasts that come out of the sea (Daniel 7; Revelation 13), it is not suggesting we visit the nearest beach and wait for fearsome conglomerate creatures to emerge from the waves. We are expected to know that the Hebrew mind associated the sea with evil. We are also expected to know that if a beast comes out of the sea, that it symbolically represents evil powers that oppose God, his people, and his purposes for the world.
These are all symbols. They are not to be read with a woodenly literalistic interpretive posture. Such a posture fails to take author’s intent and the biblical text seriously.
When we say that Scripture is without error in all it affirms, that entails reading each text in light of the literary devices it employs. Let’s be rid of the notion that “without error” means wooden literalism.
5. Not Mere Dictation
The last misperception we’ll cover is this: To say that Scripture is without error in all it affirms does not mean that God dictated the Bible word-for-word to the authors of scripture who then wrote what they heard like heavenly secretaries. The problem with dictation theories of scriptural inspiration is that they don’t take account for the human dynamic of Scripture. When a dictation theory of the Bible is adopted, it tends to make the human agents who wrote down the biblical texts entirely passive. It overlooks their literary sensibilities, grammatical style, and the distinct personality of their writing. Notions of dictation minimize the synergistic relationship between the divine author and human authors of Scripture.
You don’t have to look far to see this in practice. Luke and Paul are very different writers. And both of them are quite different from the writings of John. God did not bypass their individual human agency in order to produce a unilaterally authored Bible. Instead, mysteriously and beautifully, God worked through the human authors as active agents to produce the biblical texts. I’m not inclined to attempt to overanalyze exactly how God accomplished this. I am deeply grateful that he did.
And I think it makes reading and studying the Bible far more exciting and interesting. If God had bypassed the individual character (and even the peculiarities) of the human authors to produce a Bible that obviously appeared to be dictated by a single author, then we stand to lose much. Consider that each of the canonical gospels invite us to look at Jesus from their distinct perspective. Matthew invites us to see Jesus from the vantage point of a new Moses. Mark asks us to look particularly at the way Jesus comes as king. Luke draws our gaze to Jesus’ concern for the plight of the poor. And John insists we see Jesus as the reality to which the temple always pointed. These cohesive but varied portraits of Jesus give us a more thorough and more well-rounded vision of who Jesus is and what he has done. That diversity represents the real input of the human agents who were inspired to write Holy Scripture. Again, thanks be to God.
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Conclusion
My goal here has been to clarify some common misperceptions about the doctrine of Scripture. To that end, I’ve engaged these five real questions that have been raised over and again by Global Methodists eager to seriously engage this discussion. Increased clarity is especially important as the Global Methodist Church reflects on its proposed Articles of Faith. To say that scripture is without error in all it affirms is to say that it tells the truth it was intended to tell. That language does not entail a commitment to the Chicago Statement, young earth creationism, or overly literalistic readings of the Bible. It doesn’t mean we’ve been taken my a particularly Reformed interest, and it doesn’t mean strict dictation. There are all sorts of interpretation questions tied up in those claims. But the claims themselves are not required by the proposed Articles of Faith.
Great stuff, Matt, as always!
It’s also worth being explicit (whether in a separate category or within the bounds of something here) about the Gospels not having identical chronology across parallel accounts — and not requiring every statement to be read at face value as a modern historical assertion. Thus, for instance, John’s Gospel doesn’t err if it places Jesus’s crucifixion on the day of preparation before the Passover as it would be “affirming,” or making the theological point, that Jesus is the Passover Lamb.
Of course, that example is controversial (maybe John and the Synoptics were using different calendars), but in general it points to the necessity of reading ancient biography according to its standards and conventions.