What is the difference between inerrancy and infallibility?

Inerrancy typically claims that scripture contains no errors of any kind in its original text, while infallibility, as often used, claims that scripture does not fail in its purpose of teaching truth necessary for salvation, leaving room for incidental imprecision.

Does inspiration mean God dictated the Bible?

Most theologians, including conservative ones, reject a pure dictation theory; they hold that the Spirit worked through the personalities, styles, and circumstances of the human authors so that the result is fully human and fully God's word.

Biblical Inspiration and Authority

This topic concerns the doctrine that the Bible is inspired by God and therefore authoritative for Christian faith and practice, and the disputes over how to understand that inspiration.

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Definition

The doctrine of the divine inspiration of scripture and of its consequent authority over the church.

Scope

This topic examines the doctrine of inspiration (verbal, plenary, dynamic, and the dictation theory often misattributed to it), the concepts of inerrancy and infallibility and their qualifications, the formation of the canon, models of biblical authority, and the relation of inspiration to the Bible's human authorship and the methods of historical criticism. The presentation is descriptive, comparing conservative, mainline, and Catholic positions.

Core questions

In what sense is the Bible inspired by God?
Does inspiration entail inerrancy, and if so, in what respects?
How is the Bible's authority related to its human authorship?
How is the canon of scripture established?

Key theories

Verbal plenary inspiration: B. B. Warfield's account that the Holy Spirit so superintended the human authors that their words, in their entirety, are the words God intended, grounding the doctrine of biblical inerrancy in the original manuscripts.
Scripture as witness to the Word: Karl Barth's view that the Bible is not in itself revelation but the inspired human witness that becomes the Word of God as God speaks through it, distinguishing the text from a static deposit of inerrant propositions.

History

Belief in scripture's inspiration is ancient (2 Timothy 3:16), and the canon was largely settled by the fourth century. The Reformation made scripture the supreme authority. The rise of historical criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries prompted the Princeton theologians (Hodge, Warfield) to formulate a precise doctrine of inerrancy, while Barth and others developed dynamic accounts; the 1978 Chicago Statement codified the modern inerrantist position.

Debates

Inerrancy and its scope: Whether scripture is without error in all it affirms (including history and science) or only in matters of faith and salvation (infallibility), and how either claim relates to apparent discrepancies and the original manuscripts.
Authority and interpretation: How the authority of scripture is exercised in relation to its diverse genres and human conditioning, and whether authority attaches to propositions, to the canonical narrative, or to the text as it functions in the church.

Key figures

B. B. Warfield
Karl Barth
Kevin Vanhoozer
Raymond Brown

Seminal works

warfield1948
barth1936
vanhoozer2005

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between inerrancy and infallibility?: Inerrancy typically claims that scripture contains no errors of any kind in its original text, while infallibility, as often used, claims that scripture does not fail in its purpose of teaching truth necessary for salvation, leaving room for incidental imprecision.
Does inspiration mean God dictated the Bible?: Most theologians, including conservative ones, reject a pure dictation theory; they hold that the Spirit worked through the personalities, styles, and circumstances of the human authors so that the result is fully human and fully God's word.