Table Of Content© 2011 by Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach
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ISBN 978-1-4412-3591-6
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“Well, here we go again. In yet another generation, the inerrancy of the Bible is
being called into question. �is time the issues are o�en more subtle, but they
represent a clear and present challenge for those who would defend and affirm
the perfection of the Holy Scriptures. Defending Inerrancy is a much-needed
work and one that will start an important and timely conversation. �is is a
book that cannot, must not, and will not be ignored.”�R. Albert Mohler Jr.,
president, �e Southern Baptist �eological Seminary
“In the following pages Norman Geisler, who contributed as much as anyone to
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy’s [ICBI] original legacy, and
William Roach interact with evangelical hypotheses that have the effect of
confusing that legacy. �ey are masterly gatekeepers, and I count it an honor to
commend this work to the Christian world.”�J. I . Packer, from the foreword
“Even in the days of the ICBI, Norm Geisler knew that every generation would
have to address the question of the faithfulness of God’s Word. A�er all, the
earliest a�ack of Satan was on the question of whether or not God had really
said what our first parents understood him to say. In this superb volume, Geisler
and Roach have demonstrated once again that the a�ack, though an old one,
must and can be answered. Anyone engaging the culture needs to read this
book.”�Paige Pa�erson, president, Southwestern Baptist �eological
Seminary
“�e biblical doctrine of inerrancy is both true and of crucial importance for the
life and health of the church. Geisler and Roach provide an excellent, up-to-date
treatment of the recent history of the doctrine, an analysis of what it does and
does not mean, and a response to recent a�acks against it. I am glad to see this
book come out and happy to recommend it.”�J. P. Moreland, Distinguished
Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of �eology; author, �e God Question
“Norm Geisler and I both served on the ICBI for the ten years of its existence.
What Dr. Geisler has now wri�en in his new book is certainly a masterpiece and
worthy of careful a�ention by all who are interested in dealing with the
inerrancy of the Word of God.”�Earl D. Radmacher, president emeritus,
Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon
“�is volume is a call to consider the trustworthiness of Scripture. It is wri�en
by one of framers of the seminal Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, 1978.
I maintain that everyone interested in spreading the message of the Bible should
read and absorb Geisler’s treatment of this subject. It will strengthen your
conviction that God’s Word is truth and that it will stand forever.”�Phil
Roberts, president, Midwest Baptist �eological Seminary, Kansas City,
Missouri
“�is book begins with a tremendously helpful history of the ‘ba�le for the
Bible,’ the controversy that dominated the evangelical landscape some thirty-
five years ago. �e authors recount the powerful defense of biblical accuracy and
authority that was led by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in the
1970s and 1980s. �en they give a very informative but deeply disturbing digest
of several recent a�acks on Scripture that have come from supposedly
evangelical authors and institutions just in the past decade.
�e very same issues are under debate as before, and all the same tired,
already-answered arguments have been hauled out once more against Scripture.
It is time for genuine believers to awaken to this issue again and speak up with a
clear, united voice of confidence and conviction. We owe a debt to Norm
Geisler and Bill Roach for their willingness to stand at the front line in this
renewed ba�le for the Bible.”�John MacArthur, pastor, Grace Community
Church, Sun Valley, CA; president, �e Master’s College and Seminary
“Church history records many a ‘ba�le for the Bible.’ So it is not surprising that
in our day, the debate about inerrancy rages. Norman Geisler and William
Roach provide an excellent history of the debate and bring the ba�le up to date
with recent challenges to inerrancy. �eir book is an essential manual to
understand the debate and to defend biblical inerrancy.”�Kerby Anderson,
national director, Probe Ministries; host, Point of View
“�is is one of the most important books of the decade. Geisler and Roach not
only answer contemporary challenges to inerrancy but also provide a
theological, apologetical, and philosophical analysis and defense of inerrancy
that is rather stunning in its breadth and detail. �eology students both young
and old will benefit immensely from this well-researched, well-wri�en
volume.”�Ron Rhodes, president, Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries
We wish to thank Joel Paulus for the many hours he spent improving the
manuscript of this book. For his diligent and scholarly efforts we are very
grateful. He greatly improved the final text.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Endosements
Dedication
Foreword by J. I. Packer
Prologue
Part One: History of the Inerrancy Controversy
1. Background of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
2. Formation of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
3. Influence of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Inerrancy
Part Two: Recent Challenges to Inerrancy
4. Clark Pinnock on Inerrancy
5. Bart Ehrman on Inerrancy
6. Peter Enns on Inerrancy
7. Kenton Sparks on Inerrancy
8. Kevin Vanhoozer on Inerrancy
9. Andrew McGowan on Inerrancy
10. Stanley Grenz and Brian McLaren on Inerrancy
11. Darrell Bock and Robert Webb on Inerrancy
Part �ree: Reexamination of Inerrancy
12. �e Nature of God and Inerrancy
13. �e Nature of Truth and Inerrancy
14. �e Nature of Language and Inerrancy
15. �e Nature of Hermeneutics and Inerrancy
16. �e Nature of the Incarnation and Inerrancy
17. Answering Objections to Inerrancy
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Signers of the ICBI Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Appendix 2: Inerrancy, �eistic Evolution, and BioLogos
Notes
Bibliography
About the Authors
Back Ads
Back Cover
Foreword
�e two decades between the twentieth century’s world wars were years of
eclipse for English-speaking evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Liberalism was in the saddle in the major Protestant churches, and liberalism
remained as John Henry Newman had defined it:
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as
good as another. . . . It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are
to be tolerated, for all are ma�ers of opinion.[1]
�e virile Reformational orthodoxy of earlier days had been elbowed out to
the sidelines, and what we nowadays refer to as the guild�that is, the
theological teaching community in universities, colleges, and seminaries�
seemed finally to have closed its ranks against conservative scholarship and
conservative scholars. Licking its wounds, evangelicalism had withdrawn into
modes of premillennialism, mainly dispensational, on the one hand and pietism,
mainly of the Keswick type, on the other. In North America, the biggest of these
recessive groupings took the name fundamentalism, on the ground of its strict
adherence to the fundamentals of biblical faith.
During the Second World War, however, a strong sense of need for a
renewing of biblical and theological scholarship that would ou�hink, outflank,
and outlast liberalism established itself in evangelical circles in both Britain and
North America. �e outcome was that Tyndale House, a biblical research
center, was founded in Cambridge, England, in 1943 as an extension of the
ministry of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, and in 1947 Fuller Seminary, an
academic spin-off from Charles Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hour broadcast,
opened its doors. Both institutions aimed to be change agents and commi�ed
themselves to essentially the same vision: evangelical scholarship revivified,
evangelical scholars finding a place for themselves in the guild, and evangelical
believers and congregations being resourced by biblical truth and wisdom at
every point of need.
Both Tyndale House and Fuller Seminary took their primary academic and
ecclesiological task to be the vindicating and reinstating of the canonical
Scriptures as the fully inspired and authoritative Word of God, the multiform
u�erance of God in the words of some forty selected penmen, the church’s
criterion of true faith and godly practice, and the epistemological foundation of
all authentic, Spirit-given knowledge of God. In the outworking of this agenda,
however, differences of context have led to different particular concerns, with
different outcomes. Tyndale House has given priority from the start to
nurturing career academics, teachers, and writers who would gain status in the
world of historically oriented and technically accomplished biblical studies at
the university level. In the providence of God, it has been able to pursue its goals
over the years in comparative peace, and while the inerrancy of Scripture�that
is, the Bible’s total truth and trustworthiness�has been a basic assumption in
all the scholarship the House has sponsored, as it has always been of evangelical
preaching and Bible teaching in Britain generally, it has never been the storm
center of controversy in the way that it became for Fuller Seminary.
�is is not the place to track the ups and downs of the ongoing debate at and
around Fuller and its ripple effect on North American evangelicalism as a whole
as Fuller graduates sca�ered to serve as pastors in mainline churches. Suffice it
to say that out of this spreading confusion came the founding of the
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) in 1978. �e organizers of
this body were convinced that the then current doubts and uncertainties about
the Bible’s total truth reflected inexact scholarship that could be diagnosed and
corrected. ICBI’s first purpose, then, was to announce this, and its second was to
demonstrate it in particular cases in as much detail as was necessary. During the
council’s ten-year active life, conferences were called, books were wri�en, and
consensus statements produced, and ICBI’s output as a whole seemed to
achieve something like landmark status for evangelical people generally.
�e essence of what ICBI stood for appears in “A Short Statement,” produced
at the Chicago conference in 1978:
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, wri�en by men prepared and
superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all
ma�ers upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction,
