by Dave Roberts » Fri Sep 23, 2011 6:54 pm
I began the process of considering inerrancy back in 1978 before it became a code word in the SBC. When the Chicago Statement on Innerancy was issued, I read and studied the document with what I believe was an open mind. My greatest problem came with all the exceptions entered into the statement including that only the original autographs were inerrant. To me, since we have none of those, the whole statement seems to embody August Comte's logical positivism and combines that with a pentecostal "name it and claim it theology. Since it only pertains to nonexistent documents, exempts numbers, exempts discrepancies in parallel accounts, and has exceptions big enough through which you can back a Mack truck, I could never endorse it or see any reason it should be applied to the SBC I was quite happy with the Baptist Faith and Message of 1963, but that was never the technical inerrancy of the Chicago Statement of 1978. Indeed, historically, the word "inerrancy" only came to the SBC as grounds for the elective strategy of 1979 and years following. That is just my personal testimony in this. Nobody has to like it or agree with it, but that is where I am. Even a scholar of the conservative credentials of Dr. David Dockery found 9 differing understandings of inerrancy in the SBC. I just can't find a justification for the claims.