Terminology Tuesday: Inerrancy

Inerrancy: The doctrine that the Bible is completely trustworthy and contains no errors. The doctrine is normally qualified in a number of ways. The Bible is said to be inerrant in the original autographs, and it is said to be without error only when properly interpreted. Proper interpretation itself requires attention to genre (such as poetry, proverbs and history) and answers to questions about the intentions of the author and conventions shared by author and reader. Some Christians affirm a limited inerrancy, declaring that the lack of error holds only for certain types of truth that God intends to reveal through Scripture, primarily matters of morality and theology.1

1. C.Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 60.