An Argument Discredited

Posted By Kevin DeYoung on his blog Restless and Reformed (Link below)

Of all the bad arguments against inerrancy, the most frequent is also one of the worst: namely, that the idea of error-less autographs was an invention of Old Princeton.

The once (and briefly) credible idea that Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield invented inerrancy has been shown to be resoundingly false. Scholars like John Woodbridge and Richard Muller have demonstrated convincingly that the doctrine of complete biblical truthfulness is not a Princetonian invention. Clement of Rome (30-100) described “the Sacred Scriptures” as “the true utterance of the Holy Spirit.” Polycarp (65-155) called them “the oracles of the Lord.” Irenaeus (120-202) claimed that the biblical writers “were incapable of a false statement.” Origen (185-254) stated, “The sacred volumes are fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, and there is no passage either in the Law or the Gospel, or the writings of an Apostle, which does not proceed from the inspired source of Divine Truth.” Augustine (354-430) explained in a letter to Jerome, “I have learnt to ascribe to those Books which are of the Canonical rank, and only to them, such reverence and honour, that I firmly believe that no single error due to the author is found in any of them.” It was not modernism that invented inerrancy. It was modernism that undermined inerrancy. (Why We’re Not Emergent, 76-77)

In other words, while inerrancy may be a relatively recent addition to the theological lexicon, the truth it means to protect is as old as Christianity.


An Argument Discredited