Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
with Exposition
Background
The "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy" was produced at
an international Summit Conference of evangelical leaders, held at the Hyatt
Regency O'Hare in Chicago in the fall of 1978. This congress was sponsored by
the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement was
signed by nearly 300 noted evangelical scholars, including James Boice, Norman
L. Geisler, John Gerstner, Carl F. H. Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell,
John Warwick Montgomery, Roger Nicole, J. I. Packer, Robert Preus, Earl
Radmacher, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul, and John Wenham.
The ICBI disbanded in 1988 after producing three major
statements: one on biblical inerrancy in 1978, one on biblical hermeneutics in
1982, and one on biblical application in 1986. The following text, containing
the "Preface" by the ICBI draft committee, plus the "Short Statement," "Articles
of Affirmation and Denial," and an accompanying "Exposition," was published in
toto by Carl F. H. Henry in God, Revelation And Authority, vol. 4 (Waco,
Tx.: Word Books, 1979), on pp. 211-219. The nineteen Articles of Affirmation and
Denial, with a brief introduction, also appear in A General Introduction to
the Bible, by Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix (Chicago: Moody Press,
rev. 1986), at pp. 181-185. An official commentary on these articles was written
by R. C. Sproul in Explaining Inerrancy: A Commentary (Oakland, Calif.:
ICBI, 1980), and Norman Geisler edited the major addresses from the 1978
conference, in Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980).
Clarification of some of the language used in this Statement
may be found in the 1982
Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Preface
The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian
church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord
and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and
faithfully obeying God's written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or
conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and
trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate
confession of its authority.
The following Statement affirms this inerrancy of Scripture
afresh, making clear our understanding of it and warning against its denial. We
are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside the witness of Jesus Christ and of
the Holy Spirit and to refuse that submission to the claims of God's own Word
which marks true Christian faith. We see it as our timely duty to make this
affirmation in the face of current lapses from the truth of inerrancy among our
fellow Christians and misunderstandings of this doctrine in the world at large.
This Statement consists of three parts: a Summary Statement,
Articles of Affirmation and Denial, and an accompanying Exposition. It has been
prepared in the course of a three-day consultation in Chicago. Those who have
signed the Summary Statement and the Articles wish to affirm their own
conviction as to the inerrancy of Scripture and to encourage and challenge one
another and all Christians to growing appreciation and understanding of this
doctrine. We acknowledge the limitations of a document prepared in a brief,
intensive conference and do not propose that this Statement be given creedal
weight. Yet we rejoice in the deepening of our own convictions through our
discussions together, and we pray that the Statement we have signed may be used
to the glory of our God toward a new reformation of the Church in its faith,
life, and mission.
We offer this Statement in a spirit, not of contention, but of
humility and love, which we purpose by God's grace to maintain in any future
dialogue arising out of what we have said. We gladly acknowledge that many who
deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the consequences of this denial
in the rest of their belief and behavior, and we are conscious that we who
confess this doctrine often deny it in life by failing to bring our thoughts and
deeds, our traditions and habits, into true subjection to the divine Word.
We invite response to this statement from any who see reason to
amend its affirmations about Scripture by the light of Scripture itself, under
whose infallible authority we stand as we speak. We claim no personal
infallibility for the witness we bear, and for any help which enables us to
strengthen this testimony to God's Word we shall be grateful.
— The Draft Committee
A Short Statement
1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has
inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind
through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is
God's witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men
prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in
all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction,
in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires;
embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both
authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand
its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without
error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts
in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary
origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual
lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this
total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to
a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss
to both the individual and the Church.
Articles of Affirmation and Denial
Article I.
WE AFFIRM that the Holy Scriptures are
to be received as the authoritative Word of God.
WE DENY that the Scriptures receive
their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.
Article II.
WE AFFIRM that the Scriptures are the
supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority
of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
WE DENY that Church creeds, councils, or
declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.
Article III.
WE AFFIRM that the written Word in its
entirety is revelation given by God.
WE DENY that the Bible is merely a
witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on
the responses of men for its validity.
Article IV.
WE AFFIRM that God who made mankind in
His image has used language as a means of revelation.
WE DENY that human language is so
limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for
divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and
language through sin has thwarted God's work of inspiration.
Article V.
WE AFFIRM that God's revelation within
the Holy Scriptures was progressive.
WE DENY that later revelation, which may
fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny
that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New
Testament writings.
Article VI.
WE AFFIRM that the whole of Scripture
and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine
inspiration.
WE DENY that the inspiration of
Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some
parts but not the whole.
Article VII.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration was the work
in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin
of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery
to us.
WE DENY that inspiration can be reduced
to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.
Article VIII.
WE AFFIRM that God in His work of
inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the
writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
WE DENY that God, in causing these
writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
Article IX.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration, though not
conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters
of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
WE DENY that the finitude or fallenness
of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood
into God's Word.
Article X.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly
speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the
providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great
accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the
Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
WE DENY that any essential element of
the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further
deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or
irrelevant.
Article XI.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture, having been
given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it
is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
WE DENY that it is possible for the
Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions.
Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.
Article XII.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its entirety
is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
WE DENY that Biblical infallibility and
inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive
of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that
scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the
teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.
Article XIII.
WE AFFIRM the propriety of using
inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of
Scripture.
WE DENY that it is proper to evaluate
Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage
or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such
as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling,
observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of
hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant
selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.
Article XIV.
WE AFFIRM the unity and internal
consistency of Scripture.
WE DENY that alleged errors and
discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the
Bible.
Article XV.
WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy
is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.
WE DENY that Jesus' teaching about
Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural
limitation of His humanity.
Article XVI.
WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy
has been integral to the Church's faith throughout its history.
WE DENY that inerrancy is a doctrine
invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in
response to negative higher criticism.
Article XVII.
WE AFFIRM that the Holy Spirit bears
witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God's
written Word.
WE DENY that this witness of the Holy
Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.
Article XVIII.
WE AFFIRM that the text of Scripture is
to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its
literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
WE DENY the legitimacy of any treatment
of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing,
dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to
authorship.
Article XIX.
WE AFFIRM that a confession of the full
authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound
understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm that such
confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.
WE DENY that such confession is
necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be rejected
without grave consequences, both to the individual and to the Church.
Exposition
Our understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy must be set in
the context of the broader teachings of the Scripture concerning itself. This
exposition gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary
statement and articles are drawn.
Creation, Revelation and Inspiration
The Triune God, who formed all things by his creative
utterances and governs all things by His Word of decree, made mankind in His own
image for a life of communion with Himself, on the model of the eternal
fellowship of loving communication within the Godhead. As God's image-bearer,
man was to hear God's Word addressed to him and to respond in the joy of adoring
obedience. Over and above God's self-disclosure in the created order and the
sequence of events within it, human beings from Adam on have received verbal
messages from Him, either directly, as stated in Scripture, or indirectly in the
form of part or all of Scripture itself.
When Adam fell, the Creator did not abandon mankind to final
judgment but promised salvation and began to reveal Himself as Redeemer in a
sequence of historical events centering on Abraham's family and culminating in
the life, death, resurrection, present heavenly ministry, and promised return of
Jesus Christ. Within this frame God has from time to time spoken specific words
of judgment and mercy, promise and command, to sinful human beings so drawing
them into a covenant relation of mutual commitment between Him and them in which
He blesses them with gifts of grace and they bless Him in responsive adoration.
Moses, whom God used as mediator to carry His words to His people at the time of
the Exodus, stands at the head of a long line of prophets in whose mouths and
writings God put His words for delivery to Israel. God's purpose in this
succession of messages was to maintain His covenant by causing His people to
know His Name—that is, His nature—and His will both of precept and purpose in
the present and for the future. This line of prophetic spokesmen from God came
to completion in Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Word, who was Himself a
prophet—more than a prophet, but not less—and in the apostles and prophets of
the first Christian generation. When God's final and climactic message, His word
to the world concerning Jesus Christ, had been spoken and elucidated by those in
the apostolic circle, the sequence of revealed messages ceased. Henceforth the
Church was to live and know God by what He had already said, and said for all
time.
At Sinai God wrote the terms of His covenant on tables of
stone, as His enduring witness and for lasting accessibility, and throughout the
period of prophetic and apostolic revelation He prompted men to write the
messages given to and through them, along with celebratory records of His
dealings with His people, plus moral reflections on covenant life and forms of
praise and prayer for covenant mercy. The theological reality of inspiration in
the producing of Biblical documents corresponds to that of spoken prophecies:
although the human writers' personalities were expressed in what they wrote, the
words were divinely constituted. Thus, what Scripture says, God says; its
authority is His authority, for He is its ultimate Author, having given it
through the minds and words of chosen and prepared men who in freedom and
faithfulness "spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (1
Pet. 1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of
its divine origin.
Authority: Christ and the Bible
Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is the Word made flesh, our
Prophet, Priest, and King, is the ultimate Mediator of God's communication to
man, as He is of all God's gifts of grace. The revelation He gave was more than
verbal; He revealed the Father by His presence and His deeds as well. Yet His
words were crucially important; for He was God, He spoke from the Father, and
His words will judge all men at the last day.
As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus Christ is the central theme of
Scripture. The Old Testament looked ahead to Him; the New Testament looks back
to His first coming and on to His second. Canonical Scripture is the divinely
inspired and therefore normative witness to Christ. No hermeneutic, therefore,
of which the historical Christ is not the focal point is acceptable. Holy
Scripture must be treated as what it essentially is—the witness of the Father to
the Incarnate Son.
It appears that the Old Testament canon had been fixed by the
time of Jesus. The New Testament canon is likewise now closed inasmuch as no new
apostolic witness to the historical Christ can now be borne. No new revelation
(as distinct from Spirit-given understanding of existing revelation) will be
given until Christ comes again. The canon was created in principle by divine
inspiration. The Church's part was to discern the canon which God had created,
not to devise one of its own.
The word canon, signifying a rule or standard, is a
pointer to authority, which means the right to rule and control. Authority in
Christianity belongs to God in His revelation, which means, on the one hand,
Jesus Christ, the living Word, and, on the other hand, Holy Scripture, the
written Word. But the authority of Christ and that of Scripture are one. As our
Prophet, Christ testified that Scripture cannot be broken. As our Priest and
King, He devoted His earthly life to fulfilling the law and the prophets, even
dying in obedience to the words of Messianic prophecy. Thus, as He saw Scripture
attesting Him and His authority, so by His own submission to Scripture He
attested its authority. As He bowed to His Father's instruction given in His
Bible (our Old Testament), so He requires His disciples to do—not, however, in
isolation but in conjunction with the apostolic witness to Himself which He
undertook to inspire by His gift of the Holy Spirit. So Christians show
themselves faithful servants of their Lord by bowing to the divine instruction
given in the prophetic and apostolic writings which together make up our Bible.
By authenticating each other's authority, Christ and Scripture
coalesce into a single fount of authority. The Biblically-interpreted Christ and
the Christ-centered, Christ-proclaiming Bible are from this standpoint one. As
from the fact of inspiration we infer that what Scripture says, God says, so
from the revealed relation between Jesus Christ and Scripture we may equally
declare that what Scripture says, Christ says.
Infallibility, Inerrancy, Interpretation
Holy Scripture, as the inspired Word of God witnessing
authoritatively to Jesus Christ, may properly be called infallible and
inerrant. These negative terms have a special value, for they explicitly
safeguard crucial positive truths.
lnfallible signifies the quality of neither misleading
nor being misled and so safeguards in categorical terms the truth that Holy
Scripture is a sure, safe, and reliable rule and guide in all matters.
Similarly, inerrant signifies the quality of being free
from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is
entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.
We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted
on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining what
the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the most careful
attention to its claims and character as a human production. In inspiration, God
utilized the culture and conventions of His penman's milieu, a milieu that God
controls in His sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine
otherwise.
So history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry,
hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and
approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary
conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: since, for
instance, non-chronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional
and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard
these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When total precision
of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it is no error not to have
achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise
by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving
that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.
The truthfulness of Scripture is not negated by the appearance
in it of irregularities of grammar or spelling, phenomenal descriptions of
nature, reports of false statements (e.g., the lies of Satan), or seeming
discrepancies between one passage and another. It is not right to set the
so-called "phenomena" of Scripture against the teaching of Scripture about
itself. Apparent inconsistencies should not be ignored. Solution of them, where
this can be convincingly achieved, will encourage our faith, and where for the
present no convincing solution is at hand we shall significantly honor God by
trusting His assurance that His Word is true, despite these appearances, and by
maintaining our confidence that one day they will be seen to have been
illusions.
Inasmuch as all Scripture is the product of a single divine
mind, interpretation must stay within the bounds of the analogy of Scripture and
eschew hypotheses that would correct one Biblical passage by another, whether in
the name of progressive revelation or of the imperfect enlightenment of the
inspired writer's mind.
Although Holy Scripture is nowhere culture-bound in the sense
that its teaching lacks universal validity, it is sometimes culturally
conditioned by the customs and conventional views of a particular period, so
that the application of its principles today calls for a different sort of
action.
Skepticism and Criticism
Since the Renaissance, and more particularly since the
Enlightenment, world-views have been developed which involve skepticism about
basic Christian tenets. Such are the agnosticism which denies that God is
knowable, the rationalism which denies that He is incomprehensible, the idealism
which denies that He is transcendent, and the existentialism which denies
rationality in His relationships with us. When these un- and anti-biblical
principles seep into men's theologies at [a] presuppositional level, as today
they frequently do, faithful interpretation of Holy Scripture becomes
impossible.
Transmission and Translation
Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of
Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the
original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as
a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course
of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew
and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply
justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence
of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no
way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely
error-free.
Similarly, no translation is or can be perfect, and all
translations are an additional step away from the autographa. Yet the
verdict of linguistic science is that English-speaking Christians, at least, are
exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and
have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within
their reach. Indeed, in view of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main
matters with which it deals and also of the Holy Spirit's constant witness to
and through the Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy
its meaning as to render it unable to make its reader "wise for salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).
Inerrancy and Authority
In our affirmation of the authority of Scripture as involving
its total truth, we are consciously standing with Christ and His apostles,
indeed with the whole Bible and with the main stream of Church history from the
first days until very recently. We are concerned at the casual, inadvertent, and
seemingly thoughtless way in which a belief of such far-reaching importance has
been given up by so many in our day.
We are conscious too that great and grave confusion results
from ceasing to maintain the total truth of the Bible whose authority one
professes to acknowledge. The result of taking this step is that the Bible which
God gave loses its authority, and what has authority instead is a Bible reduced
in content according to the demands of one's critical reasonings and in
principle reducible still further once one has started. This means that at
bottom independent reason now has authority, as opposed to Scriptural teaching.
If this is not seen and if for the time being basic evangelical doctrines are
still held, persons denying the full truth of Scripture may claim an evangelical
identity while methodologically they have moved away from the evangelical
principle of knowledge to an unstable subjectivism, and will find it hard not to
move further.
We affirm that what Scripture says, God says. May He be
glorified. Amen and Amen.
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