The Errors of Errancy, Part I: The Assumption of the Necessity of Omniscience in Detailed Errancy

There are two main versions of errancy. The most common is what I call detailed errancy. This view has to do with factual errors in the details. These errors include statements that we now have concluded are false due to further scientific evidence or historical errors that archaeology or other written texts (including other biblical texts) dispute and are thought to be more accurate. Under the second category falls biblical texts that are thought to be contradictory with one another when one compares the details and one text says something that appears to contradict the other.

Detailed errancy, however, is a fallacious idea that neither understands the necessity of the human witness in his own language nor the artistry of literature.

Let me draw out the first objection I have to detailed errancy by pointing out that one of its core assumptions is that the text, if it comes from God, must be omniscient or reflect omniscience. If God knows all things, it is argued, then certainly He would not make any scientific or historical errors in His Word. 

This assumption carries with it a few more assumptions. The first is deals with a misunderstanding of the doctrine of inspiration held by the church.  The Bible is only God’s Word, but it is God’s Word in and through human words. This is an important point because the Bible is God communicating X through Y, not X directly. There is good reason for this that we will explore in a moment, but the distinction is extremely important, and not one often made by those who have a view that God destroys or sets aside the human element in order to preserve the purity of everything that is said, including the details. This assumption has yet other assumptions, but one of the most crucial is the idea that God desires to communicate all of the details He uses in Scripture as literal, individual truths within themselves. What this means is that if God says that He created the Bible in seven days, then it must be both the theological message He means to communicate and the detailed means through which He communicates it that must accord with reality. Many in church history once pushed back against Copernicus for arguing that the center of the solar system was the sun and not the earth, since the Bible presents the sun as moving around the earth, as many ancients believed. Many see the error of committing this specific fallacy today, but continue to apply this same reasoning to other textual details. 

What I wish to argue, instead, is that the assumption of omniscience in the details is an absurd idea that would prevent God from ever communicating to finite beings at all. First, the idea that God can communicate to finite beings omnisciently presupposes a far lesser deity than the one communicated in Scripture. I truly believe that when people think that God can communicate omnisciently to finite men they are completely unaware of the infinite complexity between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of human beings. This is not to even consider the idea that many believe the type of knowledge God has, which is thought to be archetypal, is not even a knowledge that finite creatures are capable of possessing, as many argue that the knowledge of creatures is ectypal. Not everyone agrees that God has a different kind of knowledge than human beings, but all agree by virtue of logic that the knowledge God has must be so perfect that its complexity is incomprehensible to the human mind. It would be like a rocket scientist explaining advanced mathematical formulations to a toddler, or perhaps, an infant. 

Furthermore, language itself is a convention of creatures. A Being so advanced as God, who is also the only necessary Being, would have no spoken language Himself. Spoken language is a finite tool itself created for the purpose of communication with or between creatures. This means that language, in order to communicate, must take reflect the finite mind of the creatures using it by reflecting its limitations. In other words, language, in order to fulfill its functional role of communicating with and between finite creatures must use the finite knowledge of those creatures in order for communication to take place. These observations, in turn, mean two things: (1) that it is impossible for language to be omniscient, since it itself is finite, (2) that it is impossible to have both a reflection of omniscience and for it to fulfill its role as a tool to communicate with beings, and (3) that it is, therefore, impossible for God to communicate with finite beings with any language other than one that reflects the finitude, and therefore, limited knowledge of the finite recipients. In other words, the argument that if the Bible is God’s Word it would be or reflect omniscience is false. Instead, it is the contrary that logic establishes. If the Bible is God’s Word, and God actually means to communicate, it will reflect the limitations of the knowledge of its human recipients at the time of its authorship.

This is not an argument for “why” the Bible is God’s Word, as it merely argues that if it is, it would not look any different in its details than any document written by human beings that is not God’s Word. The difference between the two might be discerned by numerous other means, but cannot be distinguished by the logically absurd objection often proposed by errantists above.

Let us turn now, however, to the second assumption, since many might say that this proves that the Bible is in error. By its very nature it must be, they might conclude from what I argued above. My contention, however, is that calling details in literature that seeks to communicate other things beside those details “errors” is a category confusion. Communication is only in error when the thing that one seeks to communicate are factually incorrect. Human language, especially when wielding the art of literature as its chosen vehicle of communication, uses its limited knowledge of details all of the time to communicate something other than those details.

What the errantist often does when he approaches the Bible is dissect the detail out of the context where it exists to communicate something else, interprets that detail as the fact that the author, and therefore, God, meant to communicate, and then concludes that the Bible is in error.

Could not God correct the details sufficiently, even if not exhaustively, in order to display His advanced knowledge? This question assumes what the purposes of God are in communicating to human beings, and that such detailed correction accomplishes the goal of communication rather than prevents it. First, the goal of God is not to prove that He has advanced knowledge, but requires faith as an act of submission to Himself. Since the primary problem of mankind is the sin of self-exaltation, God would be perpetuating the problem by attempting to get the consent of a human being by submitting to his criteria for following God. Even when God did prove Himself to men, it does not yield genuine belief and submission, but only further hubris on the part of those who are not regenerated. Second to this, to whom would God be proving He has advanced knowledge? People who will live a few hundred years past His immediate audience in the ancient world, people who will live two thousand years beyond them, ten thousand years, a million years from them? This objection usually assumes that what humans believe today is factually correct and that our knowledge has no more need of correction in the future, an illogical sentiment not shared by any philosopher or scientist that I know of. Science consists of conclusions based on the probability of data we have currently. It does not claim that we have certain knowledge of anything, as one would have to be omniscient in order to know such a thing. But since man will never obtain omniscience there is no generation in the past, present, or future that God could relate the absolute accuracy of knowledge, and have it verified by his finite recipients that would not likely be imperfect, and therefore, contain some error in it. God could relate an imperfect or false knowledge of a future generation (why He would do this or what generation He would choose is unclear), but that would also be in error, and it would actually be God communicating an error, i.e., lying, which is contrary to His nature, since the error would be the thing that God means to communicate. It is, therefore, contrary to God’s purposes in creating a humble and submissive faith in mankind as well as posits an evil in asking God to go against His nature and speak error, or it asks God to communicate from His omniscience, which we have already established is impossible, as a language that reflects omniscience cannot communicate to finite beings, nor has the capability of communicating omniscient information by its very nature. What God must do to communicate to all generations would be to communicate to ancient culture and allow successive generations to access the language of those generations. That is what He appears to have done.

Furthermore, I have already laid out the reason why God correcting incorrect details that are believed by His finite, human authors/recipients works against communication rather than with it.

In conclusion, the argument for detailed errancy is illogical. Details, as a part of language/communication used to convey other concepts, cannot be in error, since they are not what is meant to be communicated, and assigning the category of “factually erroneous” to language makes no sense since all language uses what would be considered factual errors to communicate if those details were to be extracted from it and evaluated as individual propositions in their own right.