What do apologists mean when we use the term “biblical inerrancy”? Paul Feinberg defines biblical inerrancy thus,

“Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences” (Paul Feinberg, “The Meaning of Inerrancy,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1980], 294).

Not everyone agrees that biblical inerrancy is a valid and required affirmation for Christian orthodoy; liberal theologians are not hesitant to discard it, relegating it to an bygone era of ignorance. Al Mobler penned an article in 2010 entitled “The Inerrancy of Scripture: The Fifty Years War . . . and Counting” that detailed the escalating battle over biblical inerrancy. Mohler concludes, “we are told that we must do this [give up biblical inerrancy] in order to save Evangelicalism from an intellectual disaster. Of course, accepting this demand amounts to a theological disaster of incalculable magnitude . . . The rejection of biblical inerrancy is bound up with a view of God that is, in the end, fatal for Christian orthodoxy.”

But is the docrine of biblical inerrancy rational? Yes, it is. J.P. Moreland defends the rationality of biblical inerrancy in his theologically & philosophically dense 1986 article entitled “The Rationality of Belief in Inerrancy.” Moreland begins by explicitly declaring,

“The purpose of this paper is to argue that belief in inerrancy is rational, i.e., one is within his or her epistemic rights in believing that inerrancy is true.” He is not reluctant to present the common objections to inerrancy, and ablely refutes them with five “features of a theory of rationality . . . The upshot of my analysis of rationality is this. In order to argue that belief in inerrancy is rational, one need not show that such a belief is certain, evident, or (perhaps) beyond reasonable doubt. One can be well within one’s epistemic rights in believing the truth of inerrancy, without adopting such a strong notion of rationality that makes it incumbent on one to answer all problem passages and remove all doubts, puzzles and objections.”

In his argument, Moreland is explicit that he is affirming neither theological dogmatism nor presuppositional apologetics. He concludes, “In sum, insights from the philosophy of science show that one can be rational in affirming inerrancy in the presence of a number of anomalies even if this involves suspending judgment or using ad hoc hypotheses . . . The simple fact is that the rationality of theory change is a very multifaceted affair. The same can be said of theological systems. No simple set of criteria can be given for when one theological construct should be given up and another believed. This is not to say that there are no cases where theological or scientific hypotheses should be abandoned. But determining when that point is reached and how one knows it has been reached is another matter. Theological constructs (first order or second order), Inerrancy included, are no different from scientific theories in this regard.”

Biblical inerrancy continues to be a flashpoint of controversy between liberal and conservative theologians. For apologists, it is a bedrock doctrine that if abandoned, opens Pandora’s Box.