Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
with Exposition，1978
Background
The "Chicago Statement on Biblical
Inerrancy" was produced at an international Summit Conference of evangelical
leaders, held at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago in the fall of 1978.
This congress was sponsored by the International Council on Biblical
Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement was signed by nearly 300 noted evangelical
scholars, including James Boice, Norman L. Geisler, John Gerstner, Carl F.
H. Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell, John Warwick Montgomery, Roger
Nicole, J. I. Packer, Robert Preus, Earl Radmacher, Francis Schaeffer, R. C.
Sproul, and John Wenham.
The ICBI disbanded in 1988 after
producing three major statements: one on biblical inerrancy in 1978, one on
biblical hermeneutics in 1982, and one on biblical application in 1986. The
following text, containing the "Preface" by the ICBI draft committee, plus
the "Short Statement," "Articles of Affirmation and Denial," and an
accompanying "Exposition," was published in toto by Carl F. H. Henry in
God, Revelation And Authority, vol. 4 (Waco, Tx.: Word Books, 1979), on
pp. 211-219. The nineteen Articles of Affirmation and Denial, with a brief
introduction, also appear in A General Introduction to the Bible, by
Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix (Chicago: Moody Press, rev. 1986), at
pp. 181-185. An official commentary on these articles was written by R. C.
Sproul in Explaining Inerrancy: A Commentary (Oakland, Calif.: ICBI,
1980), and Norman Geisler edited the major addresses from the 1978
conference, in Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980).
Clarification of some of the language
used in this Statement may be found in the 1982 Chicago Statement on
Biblical Hermeneutics
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Preface
The authority of Scripture is a key
issue for the Christian church in this and every age. Those who profess
faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of
their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God's written Word. To
stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master.
Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is
essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority.
The following Statement affirms this
inerrancy of Scripture afresh, making clear our understanding of it and
warning against its denial. We are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside
the witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit and to refuse that
submission to the claims of God's own Word which marks true Christian faith.
We see it as our timely duty to make this affirmation in the face of current
lapses from the truth of inerrancy among our fellow Christians and
misunderstandings of this doctrine in the world at large.
This Statement consists of three parts:
a Summary Statement, Articles of Affirmation and Denial, and an accompanying
Exposition. It has been prepared in the course of a three-day consultation
in Chicago. Those who have signed the Summary Statement and the Articles
wish to affirm their own conviction as to the inerrancy of Scripture and to
encourage and challenge one another and all Christians to growing
appreciation and understanding of this doctrine. We acknowledge the
limitations of a document prepared in a brief, intensive conference and do
not propose that this Statement be given creedal weight. Yet we rejoice in
the deepening of our own convictions through our discussions together, and
we pray that the Statement we have signed may be used to the glory of our
God toward a new reformation of the Church in its faith, life, and mission.
We offer this Statement in a spirit, not
of contention, but of humility and love, which we purpose by God's grace to
maintain in any future dialogue arising out of what we have said. We gladly
acknowledge that many who deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the
consequences of this denial in the rest of their belief and behavior, and we
are conscious that we who confess this doctrine often deny it in life by
failing to bring our thoughts and deeds, our traditions and habits, into
true subjection to the divine Word.
We invite response to this statement
from any who see reason to amend its affirmations about Scripture by the
light of Scripture itself, under whose infallible authority we stand as we
speak. We claim no personal infallibility for the witness we bear, and for
any help which enables us to strengthen this testimony to God's Word we
shall be grateful.
— The Draft Committee
A Short Statement
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,
written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible
divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed,
as God's instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God's command, in
all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine
Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our
minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given,
Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it
states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and
about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's
saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is
inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or
disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's
own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the
Church.
Articles of Affirmation and Denial
Article I.
WE AFFIRM that the Holy
Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God.
WE DENY that the Scriptures
receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human
source.
Article II.
WE AFFIRM that the Scriptures
are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the
authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
WE DENY that Church creeds,
councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the
authority of the Bible.
Article III.
WE AFFIRM that the written Word
in its entirety is revelation given by God.
WE DENY that the Bible is merely
a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends
on the responses of men for its validity.
Article IV.
WE AFFIRM that God who made
mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.
WE DENY that human language is
so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle
for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture
and language through sin has thwarted God's work of inspiration.
Article V.
WE AFFIRM that God's revelation
within the Holy Scriptures was progressive.
WE DENY that later revelation,
which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We
further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the
completion of the New Testament writings.
Article VI.
WE AFFIRM that the whole of
Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were
given by divine inspiration.
WE DENY that the inspiration of
Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some
parts but not the whole.
Article VII.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration was
the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His
Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration
remains largely a mystery to us.
WE DENY that inspiration can be
reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any
kind.
Article VIII.
WE AFFIRM that God in His work
of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of
the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
WE DENY that God, in causing
these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their
personalities.
Article IX.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration,
though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance
on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
WE DENY that the finitude or
fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced
distortion or falsehood into God's Word.
Article X.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration,
strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which
in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with
great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture
are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the
original.
WE DENY that any essential
element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs.
We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical
inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.
Article XI.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture, having
been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from
misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
WE DENY that it is possible for
the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions.
Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.
Article XII.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its
entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
WE DENY that Biblical
infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or
redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and
science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may
properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the
flood.
Article XIII.
WE AFFIRM the propriety of using
inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness
of Scripture.
WE DENY that it is proper to
evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien
to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by
Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision,
irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature,
the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the
topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel
accounts, or the use of free citations.
Article XIV.
WE AFFIRM the unity and internal
consistency of Scripture.
WE DENY that alleged errors and
discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of
the Bible.
Article XV.
WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of
inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.
WE DENY that Jesus' teaching
about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any
natural limitation of His humanity.
Article XVI.
WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of
inerrancy has been integral to the Church's faith throughout its history.
WE DENY that inerrancy is a
doctrine invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position
postulated in response to negative higher criticism.
Article XVII.
WE AFFIRM that the Holy Spirit
bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of
God's written Word.
WE DENY that this witness of the
Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.
Article XVIII.
WE AFFIRM that the text of
Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking
account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to
interpret Scripture.
WE DENY the legitimacy of any
treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to
relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its
claims to authorship.
Article XIX.
WE AFFIRM that a confession of
the full authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a
sound understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm
that such confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of
Christ.
WE DENY that such confession is
necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be
rejected without grave consequences, both to the individual and to the
Church.
Exposition
Our understanding of the doctrine of
inerrancy must be set in the context of the broader teachings of the
Scripture concerning itself. This exposition gives an account of the outline
of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.
Creation, Revelation and Inspiration
The Triune God, who formed all things by
his creative utterances and governs all things by His Word of decree, made
mankind in His own image for a life of communion with Himself, on the model
of the eternal fellowship of loving communication within the Godhead. As
God's image-bearer, man was to hear God's Word addressed to him and to
respond in the joy of adoring obedience. Over and above God's
self-disclosure in the created order and the sequence of events within it,
human beings from Adam on have received verbal messages from Him, either
directly, as stated in Scripture, or indirectly in the form of part or all
of Scripture itself.
When Adam fell, the Creator did not
abandon mankind to final judgment but promised salvation and began to reveal
Himself as Redeemer in a sequence of historical events centering on
Abraham's family and culminating in the life, death, resurrection, present
heavenly ministry, and promised return of Jesus Christ. Within this frame
God has from time to time spoken specific words of judgment and mercy,
promise and command, to sinful human beings so drawing them into a covenant
relation of mutual commitment between Him and them in which He blesses them
with gifts of grace and they bless Him in responsive adoration. Moses, whom
God used as mediator to carry His words to His people at the time of the
Exodus, stands at the head of a long line of prophets in whose mouths and
writings God put His words for delivery to Israel. God's purpose in this
succession of messages was to maintain His covenant by causing His people to
know His Name—that is, His nature—and His will both of precept and purpose
in the present and for the future. This line of prophetic spokesmen from God
came to completion in Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Word, who was Himself a
prophet—more than a prophet, but not less—and in the apostles and prophets
of the first Christian generation. When God's final and climactic message,
His word to the world concerning Jesus Christ, had been spoken and
elucidated by those in the apostolic circle, the sequence of revealed
messages ceased. Henceforth the Church was to live and know God by what He
had already said, and said for all time.
At Sinai God wrote the terms of His
covenant on tables of stone, as His enduring witness and for lasting
accessibility, and throughout the period of prophetic and apostolic
revelation He prompted men to write the messages given to and through them,
along with celebratory records of His dealings with His people, plus moral
reflections on covenant life and forms of praise and prayer for covenant
mercy. The theological reality of inspiration in the producing of Biblical
documents corresponds to that of spoken prophecies: although the human
writers' personalities were expressed in what they wrote, the words were
divinely constituted. Thus, what Scripture says, God says; its authority is
His authority, for He is its ultimate Author, having given it through the
minds and words of chosen and prepared men who in freedom and faithfulness
"spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet.
1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of
its divine origin.
Authority: Christ and the Bible
Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is the
Word made flesh, our Prophet, Priest, and King, is the ultimate Mediator of
God's communication to man, as He is of all God's gifts of grace. The
revelation He gave was more than verbal; He revealed the Father by His
presence and His deeds as well. Yet His words were crucially important; for
He was God, He spoke from the Father, and His words will judge all men at
the last day.
As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus Christ
is the central theme of Scripture. The Old Testament looked ahead to Him;
the New Testament looks back to His first coming and on to His second.
Canonical Scripture is the divinely inspired and therefore normative witness
to Christ. No hermeneutic, therefore, of which the historical Christ is not
the focal point is acceptable. Holy Scripture must be treated as what it
essentially is—the witness of the Father to the Incarnate Son.
It appears that the Old Testament canon
had been fixed by the time of Jesus. The New Testament canon is likewise now
closed inasmuch as no new apostolic witness to the historical Christ can now
be borne. No new revelation (as distinct from Spirit-given understanding of
existing revelation) will be given until Christ comes again. The canon was
created in principle by divine inspiration. The Church's part was to discern
the canon which God had created, not to devise one of its own.
The word canon, signifying a rule
or standard, is a pointer to authority, which means the right to rule and
control. Authority in Christianity belongs to God in His revelation, which
means, on the one hand, Jesus Christ, the living Word, and, on the other
hand, Holy Scripture, the written Word. But the authority of Christ and that
of Scripture are one. As our Prophet, Christ testified that Scripture cannot
be broken. As our Priest and King, He devoted His earthly life to fulfilling
the law and the prophets, even dying in obedience to the words of Messianic
prophecy. Thus, as He saw Scripture attesting Him and His authority, so by
His own submission to Scripture He attested its authority. As He bowed to
His Father's instruction given in His Bible (our Old Testament), so He
requires His disciples to do—not, however, in isolation but in conjunction
with the apostolic witness to Himself which He undertook to inspire by His
gift of the Holy Spirit. So Christians show themselves faithful servants of
their Lord by bowing to the divine instruction given in the prophetic and
apostolic writings which together make up our Bible.
By authenticating each other's
authority, Christ and Scripture coalesce into a single fount of authority.
The Biblically-interpreted Christ and the Christ-centered,
Christ-proclaiming Bible are from this standpoint one. As from the fact of
inspiration we infer that what Scripture says, God says, so from the
revealed relation between Jesus Christ and Scripture we may equally declare
that what Scripture says, Christ says.
Infallibility, Inerrancy, Interpretation
Holy Scripture, as the inspired Word of
God witnessing authoritatively to Jesus Christ, may properly be called
infallible and inerrant. These negative terms have a special
value, for they explicitly safeguard crucial positive truths.
lnfallible signifies the quality
of neither misleading nor being misled and so safeguards in categorical
terms the truth that Holy Scripture is a sure, safe, and reliable rule and
guide in all matters.
Similarly, inerrant signifies the
quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the
truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its
assertions.
We affirm that canonical Scripture
should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and
inerrant. However, in determining what the God-taught writer is asserting in
each passage, we must pay the most careful attention to its claims and
character as a human production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture
and conventions of His penman's milieu, a milieu that God controls in His
sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.
So history must be treated as history,
poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor,
generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences
between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be
observed: since, for instance, non-chronological narration and imprecise
citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in
those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in
Bible writers. When total precision of a particular kind was not expected
nor aimed at, it is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant,
not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the
sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth
at which its authors aimed.
The truthfulness of Scripture is not
negated by the appearance in it of irregularities of grammar or spelling,
phenomenal descriptions of nature, reports of false statements (e.g.,
the lies of Satan), or seeming discrepancies between one passage and
another. It is not right to set the so-called "phenomena" of Scripture
against the teaching of Scripture about itself. Apparent inconsistencies
should not be ignored. Solution of them, where this can be convincingly
achieved, will encourage our faith, and where for the present no convincing
solution is at hand we shall significantly honor God by trusting His
assurance that His Word is true, despite these appearances, and by
maintaining our confidence that one day they will be seen to have been
illusions.
Inasmuch as all Scripture is the product
of a single divine mind, interpretation must stay within the bounds of the
analogy of Scripture and eschew hypotheses that would correct one Biblical
passage by another, whether in the name of progressive revelation or of the
imperfect enlightenment of the inspired writer's mind.
Although Holy Scripture is nowhere
culture-bound in the sense that its teaching lacks universal validity, it is
sometimes culturally conditioned by the customs and conventional views of a
particular period, so that the application of its principles today calls for
a different sort of action.
Skepticism and Criticism
Since the Renaissance, and more
particularly since the Enlightenment, world-views have been developed which
involve skepticism about basic Christian tenets. Such are the agnosticism
which denies that God is knowable, the rationalism which denies that He is
incomprehensible, the idealism which denies that He is transcendent, and the
existentialism which denies rationality in His relationships with us. When
these un- and anti-biblical principles seep into men's theologies at [a]
presuppositional level, as today they frequently do, faithful interpretation
of Holy Scripture becomes impossible.
Transmission and Translation
Since God has nowhere promised an
inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the
autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the
need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have
crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this
science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly
well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the
Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in
declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the
fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.
Similarly, no translation is or can be
perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the
autographa. Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that
English-speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these
days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating
to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach. Indeed, in view
of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main matters with which it
deals and also of the Holy Spirit's constant witness to and through the
Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy its meaning
as to render it unable to make its reader "wise for salvation through faith
in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).
Inerrancy and Authority
In our affirmation of the authority of
Scripture as involving its total truth, we are consciously standing with
Christ and His apostles, indeed with the whole Bible and with the main
stream of Church history from the first days until very recently. We are
concerned at the casual, inadvertent, and seemingly thoughtless way in which
a belief of such far-reaching importance has been given up by so many in our
day.
We are conscious too that great and
grave confusion results from ceasing to maintain the total truth of the
Bible whose authority one professes to acknowledge. The result of taking
this step is that the Bible which God gave loses its authority, and what has
authority instead is a Bible reduced in content according to the demands of
one's critical reasonings and in principle reducible still further once one
has started. This means that at bottom independent reason now has authority,
as opposed to Scriptural teaching. If this is not seen and if for the time
being basic evangelical doctrines are still held, persons denying the full
truth of Scripture may claim an evangelical identity while methodologically
they have moved away from the evangelical principle of knowledge to an
unstable subjectivism, and will find it hard not to move further.
We affirm that what Scripture says, God
says. May He be glorified. Amen and Amen.
