Monday, March 2, 2026

It is the 2nd of March 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Happy March, if you’re coming out to the Cathedral of the Advent in Birmingham, let me know- the church is arranging some social events, but I would love to have a CHA meetup- maybe coffee or something, where we could get a group together in person. Send me an email, and I’ll send you my cellphone number. The best part about traveling is meeting all of you (and the food- feed me all the local cuisine).

 

I’ve got an email from long time listener and email sender- Jimm with two M’s. MMMMM. Jimm asked if I would talk about “inerrancy” with a nod to the Lutherans and the conversation on “seminex” on a recent show. Jimm seemingly knows that this WAS the buzzword around Seminex. It is also a term that is, in many ways, at the center of the whole modernist-fundamentalist controversy.

 

“Inerrancy” means “exempt from error”. Is the Bible exempt from error? Biblical Inerrancy is the doctrine that the Scriptures, in their original manuscripts, are free from error.

 

I used to be afraid of even talking about this- it has been at the root of over a century of the most schismatic the Protestant church has likely ever been. So these can be dangerous waters. But let me tie it in, if you listened to the so-called “openness debate” we discussed on the weekend show. Whether you listened or not, we looked at a debate around the turn of the last century over what God “knows” about the future- if he is “open” to human actions outside of his sovereignty. The rub in the news story was that it erupted in a Baptist denomination that was consciously non-confessional. That is, they rejected confessional standards as what binds together bodies of believers. With the proliferation of confessions in the 16th to 18th centuries, there is an argument to be made here! But, this flies in the face of Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed bodies that can police themselves with confessional standards.

 

BUT, what happens when the conversation surrounds new concepts and language? Can occasional documents (written for a specific occasion) speak to all future conversations?

 

This is the struggle with the debate over “inerrancy,” a term that didn’t exist before the 1800s, over a debate as to how we might understand the reliability of Scripture. This is the whole ball game: is the Bible trustworthy? And to what extent might modern discoveries slightly alter the way we talk? (E.g., the way faithful Christians spoke about Scripture in earlier centuries might differ from ours, even if we all have a high view of Scripture).

 

“Inerrancy” became the shibboleth in the last century, by confessional groups like the Lutherans who didn’t have that exact language in their confession and by Baptist and other groups who did not historically require subscription to particular language (outside of the earliest creeds- a story for another time).

 

Like any shibboleth (look up Judges 12 for that story) it divides a group into two- it’s binary- “true or false”. Is the Bible- or, at least the original manuscripts of Holy Scripture- without error?

 

There’s a lot here- as you might imagine. There are those on the far end of the spectrum who think the Scriptures are largely human writings and reflect the fallibility of humans. There have been those on the other end who hold to a strict literalism that, for instance, in Joshua 10, if the “sun stands still,” we disregard our modern understanding of astronomy. There are extremes, but what the “inerrancy” debate was trying to do was to come up with a way of combating newer ideas about the text that many believed were robbing it of its authority.

 

It’s a tricky debate- and you’ll run into a host of “I” words- like “infallibility”, which is related and refers to the text being incapable of error or deception [interestingly, prior to the late 1800s, these words show up in Church History not in debates about the Bible, but about the Pope]. And “Inspiration” is the other big I word- how are the Scriptures “God Breathed” and what place did human agency and understanding play into their writing? Jimmm, you hit the nail on the head with THE question- I don’t have AN answer, but these are the ways in which the reliability of the Bible has been debated in our most recent past.

 

Thanks for the question- you can send me yours at danv@1517.org

 

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Hebrews 3

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 2nd of March 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who told me he knew it was Danhausen in the crate the whole time… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who expects you to get about 30% of these dumb jokes. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.