Don’t many statements of faith qualify an assertion of ‘the inerrancy of the scriptures’ by adding ‘as originally given’? Since nobody possesses the ‘originally given scriptures’ (assuming there ever was such a thing), the qualification and belief seem less than useful - though a strong case is to be made for the trustworthiness through transmission of biblical texts.

In some cases, apparent error can indirectly reinforce reliability. For instance, the apparent discrepancies in the resurrection accounts can suggest the kind of margin of error in eyewitness accounts which reflects their inherent truthfulness (that’s apart from their different theological emphases).

Inerrancy has therefore been joined, in some cases replaced, by the other slippery term ‘infallibility’ - which at its most flexible can simply mean ‘reliable for the purposes for which it was intended’.

It’s nice to be able to agree with Andrew about something (probably about many things), that the bible uses ‘word of God’ in the restricted sense of God addressing particular situations. However, I think it is also valid to accept that the bible as a whole addresses a broader human situation, and could therefore validly be described as ‘the word of God’ (which Andrew might not agree with). The problem this creates is when we assume we can know what ‘the word of God’ means in every detail of the situations which it addresses. In the end, there is always a great deal of interpretation going on, and we find ourselves not really talking about the text at all - or only in an indirect sense.

The problem with adopting the perspective of an ‘unbeliever’ towards the biblical texts is that the strategy simply substitutes one set of prior beliefs for another. One could argue that during the period of critical interpretation of the bible, scholars have been doing just that - reading the bible as if there needed to be no presupposition of belief, and instead bringing strongly held principles of unbelief to the text, and influencing others to do the same.

The ‘unbeliever’, whether a scholar or ordinary reader, does not approach the bible from this mythical place of neutrality with regard to belief, and always brings beliefs and mindsets to texts, whether consciously held or not.

The inerrancy debate may be sterile in itself, but it does point towards more important and significant issues of bible interpretation. But will we ever be able to get away from the bible as a text which examines and searches us rather than we it? All good literary texts do this of course, but behind the bible is the authority of the God which it somewhat uniquely describes. N.T.Wright argues a good case for the authority of the bible as residing not within the text itself (ie inerrant, inspired, infallible or whatever), but in the God whom it describes in history, and in the people whom he chose to be his own which it describes, as opposed to any other God or people.

So that adds ‘authority’ to the other words such as inerrancy, infallibility, and of course inspiration, which tend to fly around during these debates.