by Sandy » Tue Jan 05, 2016 10:46 pm
You're getting into semantics, Keith. The term "inerrant" wouldn't have been used at the time the WC was written, but the concepts are quite clear. The author believed that God was the author of scripture, and that it was the word of God. How can God produce error? This is the kind of dancing around the facts that American and European liberal Protestants do with this very issue. It is why, when it was pointed out to Southern Baptists, that a movement was capable of being sustained to change the leadership in order to re-affirm commitment to this historic Baptist, and Protestant Christian teaching. The confessions declare the sixty six books of the Bible to be the written word of God, and the terminology that is used clearly indicates that those who wrote the confessions believed the Bible to be error free. It is also clearly stated that they believe in its complete spiritual authority, defined as infallibility. You can change the meanings of words and say that direct statements don't really mean what they plainly state, but you can't change the fact that Christians have believed the Bible to be without error, God breathed, the word of God, the written word of God and any of a hundred other adjectives that have been used to get that point across. Doctrine is built on that premise. Zwingli and Calvin both say much the same thing about the scriptures, and their followers have a long history of teaching and declaring it. It is a historic doctrine of Christian teaching, and to try to change the meanings of the words that the reform theologians used to describe it is liberal theological gas.