Biblical Statements About Infallibility/Inerrancy (A Theology / No Science Topic)

Some Christian organizations have tenets that state the Bible and God are both infallible. I'm interested in which verses and/or passages give credence to such tenets. How are these passages normally used in an argument for Biblical Infallibility and/or Inerrancy?What I'm basically wondering is if the Bible itself really makes statements that both it's text and God are completely without error. I've started some preliminary searches but have only found arguments based on fulfilled prophecies, historical and scientific accuracy, and divine inspiration.thanx
PM1K

I approve of the message 1 content, BUT I would like to get the framework of the topic set up better.I propose that "(A No Science Topic)" be added to the topic title, and that the discussion be purely theological. In other words, Biblical clashes with scientific observations be actively excluded from the topic.Comments from topic originator or the other admins?Adminnemooseus

Yes, I'd really like to keep this purely theological.I don't want this topic to be a debate about whether the Bible IS inerrant or infallible. I'd to discuss any statements made within the Bible about God's or it's own properties as related to inerrancy and infallibility.thanx
PM1K{Edited to increase text size of portion of message - Adminnemooseus}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 10-21-2004 12:58 PM

Before I move this topic, I wish to stress the content of the topic title and the content of the previous message. This is intended as a purely theological topic. Any posted science content is deemed off-topic.I will be moving this to the "The Bible: Accuracy and Inerrancy" forum, because it is specifically about the Bible. But it is NOT really an "accuracy and inerrancy" topic.Adminnemooseus

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I started the now closed Assuming the flood was real topic. It also was an attempt as a purely theological discussion.There message 1 contained:

quote:

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Now, as I understand it, the flood is considered to be an act of re-creation, apparently to fix what had gone wrong after the original creation (which apparently wasn't as "good" as God originally thought).

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Now for the questions:

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1) Did indeed, the original creation, turn out not to be "good"?

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And more important:
2) Was the re-creation act of the flood a success? Did it's happening result is a better world, than that which would have been, had the flood not happened?

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I don't want to turn this into a "flood" topic, but my impression (as I went into at the above cited), was that God recognized that His original creation was flawed (He errored}, and thus the need for the Noahic flood.God went on to promice Noah that He would never impose another flood like event upon the Earth. To me, this implies that God thought that the flood itself was a less than good idea, or perhaps a less than successful idea (errored again?).But all this (to some degree) was followed up at at the above cited, so we may not wish to pursue it further in this topic. Perhaps Portmaster should function as a moderator on such things.Moose

First of all, can we use logic for this topic? If so, then any verse or passage would be completely useless, because it would be a circular argument.A: The bible and god are infallible.B: How do you know that the bible and god are infallible?A: The bible saids so.B: How do you know that the word of the bible is true?A: Because the bible is infallible, just like god.See what I mean?

I think the flood account would be a good place to start.My main question about the flood story is does it really demostrate an error by God? If so, then is the Bible is making a case for a fallible diety.thanx
PM1K

I agree with ya, Lam. You cannot use the Bible to specifically prove anything about the Bible. That certainly is circular reasoning.I'm interested in finding out if the Bible is truly declaring itself and the God it represents as completely perfect. If it does make such a claim then other means would have to be employed to prove that claim. I should not have used the word argument in my original post. I would have been better off asking for passages that make statements about infallibility and inerrancy.Thanx for pushing me toward clarification
PM1K

Strictly speaking the Bible cannot declare itself infallible. Because the Bible is a collection of works assembled well after they were all written. So there is no way that the Bible could talk about itself as a whole.

Can we be a little less strict for this topic? Possibly grant this topic the HUGE assumption that each of the books in the Bible were written to work as part of the whole collection (like chapters)?Pretty Please
PM1K

I am afraid that it is an important issue. Without something that identifies which books "belong" there is no way that you can find a statement that clearly speaks of the Bible as a whole within the Bible.

What could you use to compare which books should be in the Bible with which books aren't supposed to be in? It's not exactly like a jig saw puzzle where the decision makers on the Canon had a picture to go by.Can my topic even get by the issue of why this collection of writings truly belongs together in a book called the Bible? If not, then the Bible can't say anything about itself at all and my topic is dead. We'd have a situation akin to taking a collection of Shakespearean plays and wondering what comments the individual plays make about such a collection. Unless Shakespeare himself created this set of plays to be grouped together and work as a whole then each play would be completely autonomous. Any statements made by one play would not apply universally to the whole group.You made a very good point PaulK. So good, in fact, I thought it would derail my topic. Since I really didn't want that to happen, I selfishly asked to be granted a "grouping" assumption. Perhaps I requested too much...thanx
PM1K

An antholgy, for example, may contain seperate stories by different authors, but they are at least individually noted and clearly delineated. But the Bible is somewhat more complex. While it is also and anthology, the different books, stories and authors are not identified. They are also not even seperated. To make it even more fun, parts of each story are often cut a pasted into similar stories by other authors.The OT had several redactors over the years. Unfortunately, that makes it even harder, an anthology of anthologies. They were driven by theology, politics, culture and aesthetics. And again, nowhere are the insertions, deletions or modifications noted.The history of the New Testament is every bit as complex. There still is no one Canon. Different Churches include different books in the Bible. And even the major Canon, the Roman Canon, came about more as an accident than by design. When Constantine ordered his Bibles made, he specified that they should be beautiful and impressive, but did not specify the content.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The topic has to be refined a little. You can't simply look for one a single statement. What you could do is look for statements within each book about itself or about previously written books. It's not likely to add up to the whole Bible but at least it gets somewhere.