Limited inerrancy
Flagged as a concern
The view that the Bible is reliable for salvation and faith but may contain errors in history, science, or other details.
Also called: Infallible (purpose only), Authoritative but errant, infallible in purpose, limited inerrantist, errant Scripture
What it means
Limited inerrancy holds that God's Word is trustworthy in what it teaches about salvation, faith, and conduct, but that its human authors could and did make mistakes in other matters: dates, numbers, historical events, or descriptions of nature. Those who hold it usually love the Bible and want to protect its central message from objections about details.
A related view calls the Bible "authoritative but errant": it is the church's authority even though it contains errors. Both views draw a line within Scripture between the parts that are God's reliable word and the parts that are merely human.
Historic Protestant teaching does not draw that line. The confessions ground the authority of the whole of Scripture in its author, God, who is truth itself. The site flags this view at the orthodoxy gate as a concern: churches that hold it may still preach the gospel clearly, but the foundation under that preaching has been weakened.
What Scripture says
All Scripture, not only its saving message, is breathed out by God.
Jesus treats a passing phrase in a psalm as unbreakable Scripture.
Jesus rebukes his disciples for being slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken.
Jesus treats Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh as real history, tied to his own resurrection and the coming judgment.
Paul ties the gospel to a historical event: if Christ was not raised, faith is futile.
What is wrong with it
Scripture never divides itself into a reliable spiritual core and an unreliable historical shell. Jesus and the apostles cite Old Testament history, from Adam to Jonah, as true, and build doctrine on it. The gospel itself is history: a real death, a real burial, and a real resurrection on a real third day. If the Bible may be wrong about history, nothing in principle protects the history the gospel depends on.
How it undermines the truth
It undermines the authority of Scripture by placing the reader in judgment over it. Someone must decide which parts are God's word and which are human error, and that someone is no longer the text but the scholar, the culture, or the individual. It also undermines the character of God, who is said to have breathed out words that are false.
How it can harm a church
In a church, the line between "error" and "truth" tends to move. Teachings that are unpopular in a given age, about sexuality, judgment, or miracles, are the first to be reclassified as the human element. Members lose the confidence to read the Bible for themselves, since any passage might be one of the mistakes, and they come to depend on experts to tell them what still counts.
This page describes a teaching, not the faith of any person who holds it.
Where it comes up
Confessions: WCF 1.4; WCF 1.5; LBCF 1689 1.4
On this site: Scripture
Related terms
InerrancyHistoric orthodoxy
The Bible, as originally given, is without error in everything it affirms, because it is the Word of a God who cannot lie.
InfallibilityTerm
Infallibility means Scripture cannot fail or mislead, though the word is used today in both a full sense and a narrowed one.
Scripture as one authority among severalSerious error
The view that the Bible is one source of authority alongside others, such as church tradition, official teaching, reason, or experience, with none of them finally over the rest.