Is the Bible inerrant?

It depends on what you mean. Many evangelical Christians hold that the Bible is without error in everything it affirms, including history and science, as the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy puts it. Most mainline Christians hold that the Bible is wholly reliable in what it teaches for salvation, while its human authors wrote as people of their own times.

Was the Bible written by God or by humans?

Both, in different ways. Human beings wrote every page, in their own languages and styles, over many centuries. The church believes that God inspired those authors, so that their words carry God's word to us. The ELCA’s constitution, for example, accepts the Scriptures “as the inspired Word of God.”

Can I believe the Bible and accept science?

Yes. The Bible teaches that God is the creator of all things, and science studies how the created world works. The two answer different questions. Since the third century, Christian teachers such as Origen have read the opening chapters of Genesis as more than a literal record.

Why should I trust the Bible?

Christians trust the Bible because it bears faithful witness to Jesus Christ, and because the church has heard God speak through it for two thousand years. Its oldest parts were treasured by Israel for centuries before Christ. You can also test it the way the first disciples did: by reading it, praying with it, and seeing whether it builds up your love of God and neighbor.

Is the Bible True? Is It the Word of God?

The Bible is true in what it teaches about God, sin, grace, and how to love God and neighbor. The mainline churches receive it as the inspired Word of God, written by human authors through whom God’s Spirit spoke and still speaks. That does not make every story literal history or every verse a scientific claim. In the fullest sense, the Word of God is Jesus Christ himself (John 1:14).

Christians have always confessed that the Bible is true and that it is the Word of God. If you are asking because doubts have crept in, or because some passages trouble you, you are in good company, since faithful readers have wrestled with Scripture from the beginning. The church’s answer, from the early centuries to today, is that Scripture is true in what God means to teach through it: who God is, how God saves us, and how we are to live. The Bible does not need to be a science textbook or a modern history book to be true in that way.

Why do Christians call the Bible the Word of God?

The mainline churches give short, careful answers. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) accepts the Scriptures “as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life.” Presbyterian ministers and elders, at their ordination, accept the Scriptures as “the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the church universal, and God’s word to you.”

Two things follow from answers like these. First, human beings really wrote the Bible, in their own languages, times, and styles, and God was at work in their writing. Second, the Bible is a living word: God still addresses the church through these pages whenever they are read, preached, and prayed.

The classic verse on the subject comes from one of the letters to Timothy:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16–17, NRSVUE

The Greek word translated “inspired by God” is theopneustos, literally “God-breathed.” Look at what the verse says Scripture is for: teaching, correction, and training, so that God’s people are equipped for good work. When 2 Timothy was written, “scripture” meant the Jewish Scriptures, which Christians now call the Old Testament. The church later received the New Testament with the same reverence.

Is Jesus the Word of God, or is the Bible?

For Christians, the Word of God in the fullest sense is a person, Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John begins:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1, NRSVUE

A few verses later John says, “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). The Letter to the Hebrews makes the same point: God, “having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

The Bible is called the Word of God because it bears faithful witness to that living Word. On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus, “beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, … explained to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Christians read the whole Bible in the light of Christ, and they find that it leads them to him.

Is everything in the Bible literally true?

The Bible contains many kinds of writing: law, history, poetry, proverbs, prophecy, letters, parables, and visions. Each kind tells the truth in its own way. Jesus’s parable of the son who left home (Luke 15:11–32) is true about God’s mercy, even though no one thinks it reports a particular family’s history.

Christian teachers saw this long before modern science. Origen of Alexandria, in the third century, asked who would suppose that the first three days of creation “existed without a sun, and moon, and stars” (On First Principles, Book IV). He concluded that some passages carry a spiritual meaning beyond the literal one. Augustine of Hippo taught that anyone whose reading of Scripture does not build up “this twofold love of God and our neighbor” still “does not yet understand them as he ought” (On Christian Teaching 1.36.40).

So a Christian can say, without any loss of faith, that the opening chapters of Genesis teach true things about God and creation without being a scientific account. The same Christian can say that many events in the Bible really happened, such as the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon and the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate. Many other Christians read Genesis as literal history, and their love for Scripture is a gift to the whole church. For more on this, see Should we read the Bible as literal fact? and Can Christians believe in evolution?

What about mistakes and contradictions?

The Bible contains differences between parallel accounts, such as the two versions of David’s census in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. Christians answer these differences in more than one way.

Many evangelical Christians hold to biblical inerrancy, the belief that the Bible is without error in everything it affirms, including matters of history and science. The 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the best-known statement of that view, and its defenders take Scripture’s authority with great seriousness.

Most mainline Christians frame the matter differently. They hold that the Bible is wholly trustworthy in what it teaches for our salvation, and that its human authors wrote as people of their own times. Differences between the accounts show that God spoke through real people who remembered and told the story in their own ways, and the church has treasured all of their voices. See Are there contradictions in the Bible?

What do the mainline churches teach about the Bible?

The mainline churches have stated their view of Scripture in a few short, durable formulas. Alongside the Lutheran and Presbyterian statements quoted above, the Methodist Articles of Religion (Article V), which John Wesley adapted from the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles (Article VI), say that “The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation,” so nothing that cannot be proved from Scripture may be required as an article of faith.

These statements share a habit of mind. Scripture comes first and contains everything needed for salvation. It points to Christ, and it is read within the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and alongside the creeds and the church’s long tradition of interpretation.

How can I know the Bible is true for myself?

The surest way is to read it, slowly and with prayer. Start with one of the Gospels, read a little each day, and ask what it shows you about God and about your own life. The Bible makes its own case best when you meet Jesus Christ in its pages. If you are not sure where to begin, see Where should I start reading the Bible?

Thomas Cranmer wrote a collect, a short prayer, for the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, and the church still prays it. In the 1662 prayer book it reads:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, Book of Common Prayer (1662)