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© 2011 by Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com Ebook edition created 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmi�ed in any form or by any means�for example, electronic, photocopy, recording�without the prior wri�en permission of the publisher. �e only exceptions are brief quotations in printed reviews. ISBN 978-1-4412-3591-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from �e Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007 Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture quotations labeled NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by �e Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by �omas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the authors’ emphasis. �e internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. �ey are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence. “Well, here we go again. In yet another generation, the inerrancy of the Bible is being called into question. �is time the issues are o�en more subtle, but they represent a clear and present challenge for those who would defend and affirm the perfection of the Holy Scriptures. Defending Inerrancy is a much-needed work and one that will start an important and timely conversation. �is is a book that cannot, must not, and will not be ignored.”�R. Albert Mohler Jr., president, �e Southern Baptist �eological Seminary “In the following pages Norman Geisler, who contributed as much as anyone to International Council on Biblical Inerrancy’s [ICBI] original legacy, and William Roach interact with evangelical hypotheses that have the effect of confusing that legacy. �ey are masterly gatekeepers, and I count it an honor to commend this work to the Christian world.”�J. I . Packer, from the foreword “Even in the days of the ICBI, Norm Geisler knew that every generation would have to address the question of the faithfulness of God’s Word. A�er all, the earliest a�ack of Satan was on the question of whether or not God had really said what our first parents understood him to say. In this superb volume, Geisler and Roach have demonstrated once again that the a�ack, though an old one, must and can be answered. Anyone engaging the culture needs to read this book.”�Paige Pa�erson, president, Southwestern Baptist �eological Seminary “�e biblical doctrine of inerrancy is both true and of crucial importance for the life and health of the church. Geisler and Roach provide an excellent, up-to-date treatment of the recent history of the doctrine, an analysis of what it does and does not mean, and a response to recent a�acks against it. I am glad to see this book come out and happy to recommend it.”�J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of �eology; author, �e God Question “Norm Geisler and I both served on the ICBI for the ten years of its existence. What Dr. Geisler has now wri�en in his new book is certainly a masterpiece and worthy of careful a�ention by all who are interested in dealing with the inerrancy of the Word of God.”�Earl D. Radmacher, president emeritus, Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon “�is volume is a call to consider the trustworthiness of Scripture. It is wri�en by one of framers of the seminal Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, 1978. I maintain that everyone interested in spreading the message of the Bible should read and absorb Geisler’s treatment of this subject. It will strengthen your conviction that God’s Word is truth and that it will stand forever.”�Phil Roberts, president, Midwest Baptist �eological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri “�is book begins with a tremendously helpful history of the ‘ba�le for the Bible,’ the controversy that dominated the evangelical landscape some thirty- five years ago. �e authors recount the powerful defense of biblical accuracy and authority that was led by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in the 1970s and 1980s. �en they give a very informative but deeply disturbing digest of several recent a�acks on Scripture that have come from supposedly evangelical authors and institutions just in the past decade. �e very same issues are under debate as before, and all the same tired, already-answered arguments have been hauled out once more against Scripture. It is time for genuine believers to awaken to this issue again and speak up with a clear, united voice of confidence and conviction. We owe a debt to Norm Geisler and Bill Roach for their willingness to stand at the front line in this renewed ba�le for the Bible.”�John MacArthur, pastor, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA; president, �e Master’s College and Seminary “Church history records many a ‘ba�le for the Bible.’ So it is not surprising that in our day, the debate about inerrancy rages. Norman Geisler and William Roach provide an excellent history of the debate and bring the ba�le up to date with recent challenges to inerrancy. �eir book is an essential manual to understand the debate and to defend biblical inerrancy.”�Kerby Anderson, national director, Probe Ministries; host, Point of View “�is is one of the most important books of the decade. Geisler and Roach not only answer contemporary challenges to inerrancy but also provide a theological, apologetical, and philosophical analysis and defense of inerrancy that is rather stunning in its breadth and detail. �eology students both young and old will benefit immensely from this well-researched, well-wri�en volume.”�Ron Rhodes, president, Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries We wish to thank Joel Paulus for the many hours he spent improving the manuscript of this book. For his diligent and scholarly efforts we are very grateful. He greatly improved the final text. Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Endosements Dedication Foreword by J. I. Packer Prologue Part One: History of the Inerrancy Controversy 1. Background of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy 2. Formation of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy 3. Influence of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy Part Two: Recent Challenges to Inerrancy 4. Clark Pinnock on Inerrancy 5. Bart Ehrman on Inerrancy 6. Peter Enns on Inerrancy 7. Kenton Sparks on Inerrancy 8. Kevin Vanhoozer on Inerrancy 9. Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy 10. Stanley Grenz and Brian McLaren on Inerrancy 11. Darrell Bock and Robert Webb on Inerrancy Part �ree: Reexamination of Inerrancy 12. �e Nature of God and Inerrancy 13. �e Nature of Truth and Inerrancy 14. �e Nature of Language and Inerrancy 15. �e Nature of Hermeneutics and Inerrancy 16. �e Nature of the Incarnation and Inerrancy 17. Answering Objections to Inerrancy Epilogue Appendix 1: Signers of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy Appendix 2: Inerrancy, �eistic Evolution, and BioLogos Notes Bibliography About the Authors Back Ads Back Cover Foreword �e two decades between the twentieth century’s world wars were years of eclipse for English-speaking evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic. Liberalism was in the saddle in the major Protestant churches, and liberalism remained as John Henry Newman had defined it: Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another. . . . It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are ma�ers of opinion.[1] �e virile Reformational orthodoxy of earlier days had been elbowed out to the sidelines, and what we nowadays refer to as the guild�that is, the theological teaching community in universities, colleges, and seminaries� seemed finally to have closed its ranks against conservative scholarship and conservative scholars. Licking its wounds, evangelicalism had withdrawn into modes of premillennialism, mainly dispensational, on the one hand and pietism, mainly of the Keswick type, on the other. In North America, the biggest of these recessive groupings took the name fundamentalism, on the ground of its strict adherence to the fundamentals of biblical faith. During the Second World War, however, a strong sense of need for a renewing of biblical and theological scholarship that would ou�hink, outflank, and outlast liberalism established itself in evangelical circles in both Britain and North America. �e outcome was that Tyndale House, a biblical research center, was founded in Cambridge, England, in 1943 as an extension of the ministry of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, and in 1947 Fuller Seminary, an academic spin-off from Charles Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hour broadcast, opened its doors. Both institutions aimed to be change agents and commi�ed themselves to essentially the same vision: evangelical scholarship revivified, evangelical scholars finding a place for themselves in the guild, and evangelical believers and congregations being resourced by biblical truth and wisdom at every point of need. Both Tyndale House and Fuller Seminary took their primary academic and ecclesiological task to be the vindicating and reinstating of the canonical Scriptures as the fully inspired and authoritative Word of God, the multiform u�erance of God in the words of some forty selected penmen, the church’s criterion of true faith and godly practice, and the epistemological foundation of all authentic, Spirit-given knowledge of God. In the outworking of this agenda, however, differences of context have led to different particular concerns, with different outcomes. Tyndale House has given priority from the start to nurturing career academics, teachers, and writers who would gain status in the world of historically oriented and technically accomplished biblical studies at the university level. In the providence of God, it has been able to pursue its goals over the years in comparative peace, and while the inerrancy of Scripture�that is, the Bible’s total truth and trustworthiness�has been a basic assumption in all the scholarship the House has sponsored, as it has always been of evangelical preaching and Bible teaching in Britain generally, it has never been the storm center of controversy in the way that it became for Fuller Seminary. �is is not the place to track the ups and downs of the ongoing debate at and around Fuller and its ripple effect on North American evangelicalism as a whole as Fuller graduates sca�ered to serve as pastors in mainline churches. Suffice it to say that out of this spreading confusion came the founding of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) in 1978. �e organizers of this body were convinced that the then current doubts and uncertainties about the Bible’s total truth reflected inexact scholarship that could be diagnosed and corrected. ICBI’s first purpose, then, was to announce this, and its second was to demonstrate it in particular cases in as much detail as was necessary. During the council’s ten-year active life, conferences were called, books were wri�en, and consensus statements produced, and ICBI’s output as a whole seemed to achieve something like landmark status for evangelical people generally. �e essence of what ICBI stood for appears in “A Short Statement,” produced at the Chicago conference in 1978: 1. God, who is Himself truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself. 2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, wri�en by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all ma�ers upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction,