Loose meaning of "inerrant" (Murphy)

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MURPHY:

<snip>

For example, inerrancy is commonly defined as God's influence on the
writers. They might have made technical errors,
as they were only human, but that the spiritual message is preserved, by
God, in the text. Some liberal theologians go even further
in saying the symbolic language of the Bible is worth internalizing and
even striving to emulate through a faith in God, without
necessarily accepting the historical authenticity of the scriptures.

Apart from Occam's Razor, what is a good counter-argument to "soft
inerrancy" which allows for textual errors and redactions?

EDWARDS:

It's sometimes fruitful to flail them on the basis that they've started down
the "slippery slope".  If they say that the important things are adequately
preserved in the bible, then they are open to attack regarding how they
define important, what qualifies them to pass judgement on what's important
in god's plan, etc.  You can also beat on them with regard to the ending of
Mark; if they say that it's unimportant, one can always point out that it
has led to many deaths over the years, and that was probably important to
the families of the deceased. On another level, the subject of variant
readings is troubling to many folks. One can point out, for example, that
there are four variants of the ending of Mark, and ask how we know which is
true; if the ending isn't important, how do they know it's not important,
since when do they speak for god, etc., etc.

The "symbolic" people are even more fun at times, because they have the
dog-gonedest time explaining the criteria they use to differentiate literal
from symbolic language.  Inevitably, however, they keep arriving at the
conclusion that the resurrection was literal (and usually the virgin birth).
There's truly much fun to be had in getting this sort of person to explain
how a physically impossible event such as the resurrection is to be taken as
literal whereas the relatively innocuous guidance of Jesus to hate one's
family is to be considered symbolic.

These hints for fun won't work with the sort of person who knows these
things and isn't afraid to think for themselves in working it all out.  The
good part is, most of those folks never speak up on these issues in the
first place or they aren't xian ;-)

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