The Heresy of Inerrancy

Over the weekend I listened to an interview with Mike Licona and Richard Burridge on the Unbelivable? Podcast. Burridge is Dean of Kings College London and Licona clearly identified himself as a Burridge fanboy. At about the 14:30 mark in the Podcast Burridge makes the outlandish statement that inerrancy is a 19^th century heresy!

Of course, this would have been a shock to Jesus who in Mt. 5:17—18 said that even the smallest letters of the Hebrew scriptures would be fulfilled. He might have saved Himself some embarrassment if He had known that the idea that the scriptures were preserved down to the jot and tittle was actually a heresy.

Of course, Jesus’ detractors would have been happy since in Mt. 22:32 Jesus was trying to reason with them on the basis of the tense of the Hebrew verb. Also in Mt. 22:44 Jesus has hanging His argument on one of those small Hebrew letters that makes the difference between “Lord” and “My Lord”. It is a wonder that His opponents didn’t answer by pointing out that He couldn’t rely on those sorts of things to have been accurately preserved.

Not only that, Paul’s critics would have been happy too. After all, in Gal. 3:16 Paul was making His point based on the fact that the promises to Abraham were made to Abraham’s seed in the singular, not to Abraham’s seeds in the plural. If Paul’s critics had only realized that inerrancy is a 19^th century heresy they could have dismissed Paul’s arguments as naïve if not outright heretical.

Since they were followers of Jesus and readers the Gospels and Epistles it is also no wonder that Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Athenasisus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom also followed Jesus and Paul and got the whole inerrancy thing wrong.

I guess we are all in debt to Burridge in pointing out the heresy of inerrancy

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