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[Silence is Golden]

That's all. The subject is the question. Do you believe the Bible is infallible?

[jimwalton]

I think "infallible" is an inadequate word for the conversation, and does nothing but confuse the discussion. When someone writes a poem, how can we say "The trees of the field clap their hands" is infallible? When someone prays a prayer in the Bible, they may be praying things that are inappropriate, but the Bible still tells us their prayer. So how does "infallible" work in that context? What about in the book of Job where people are arguing things that aren't true? They're there because we can recognize them as untrue, but what do we mean by "infallible" then? And when God changes a prophecy, like in the book of Jonah, fairly responding to the people, how do we speak of "infallibility" there? You see what I mean? It's just an inadequate word.

The Bible is clear that God is its source, but it's also clear that when God spoke words to humans, he accommodated their understandings to communicate his message. While his words are inspired (God-breathed), they are accommodating (meaning, for instance, that he communicated to them in the scientific understandings of their day and didn't try to bring them up to 21st century understandings). What has authority (and inerrancy) is the blessing, the promise, or the instruction. So we don't need to believe there is authority in everything the people said and did (poetry, prayers, prophecies, teachings, etc.), we affirm his communicative act. Walton and Sandy say, The authority of Scripture is vested in the meaning intended by the writer and given to him by the Holy Spirit. We don't need to be concerned that culturally limited words and rhetorical structures will diminish the Bible's authority, though we are not free to supply our own substitute meanings. Likewise, we will not be bothered by critics who present their evidences of error or untrustworthiness in specific passages when we recognize they are targeting aspects related to words and genre conventions, not to the meanings that can be derived through the blessings, promises, and instructions. The authority and inerrancy of Scripture are not threatened by God's use of accommodation or by the employment of comparative studies.

All this is to say: we need a different word than infallible. It just needlessly confuses the discussion.