That God allowed errors to exist in scripture means that scripture is, in fact, errant. Unless you want to maintain that a text that has errors is still in errant which is fine, but it seems unnecessary at best.

What makes the text “inerrant” is not the text itself but the will of God discerned through a common “voice” in the text that we discern. On what grounds do you discern this voice since this is the true source of inerrancy and not the text. This is what you are arguing and I hope you can see this. Whether you intend to argue something else is up to you to articulate, but this is clearly the position you are arguing based on what you have written here.

My doctrine of scripture is tied to my doctrine of the church, and it takes spiritual discernment to figure out what part of the church’s tradition is worth holding onto, and what not.

I’m not interested at all in logical necessities nor, except as a momentary distraction, am I interested in the tiny god of analytical philosophy.

In any case, you fail the understand the first thing about my position. Scripture contains many errors of the kind you mention. Yet I wish to affirm that God did not err in allowing scripture to contain them. It is constitutive of human communication that truth of the deepest sort comes wrapped in ambiguity and error of a kind that enhances the miracle of the communication of truth that nevertheless takes place.

The example of the pericope of the adulterer is an excellent one. Why on earth am I supposed to be upset that this passage was not originally in the gospel of John or, most likely, in any other of the gospels in the New Testament? Are you telling me that, based on the witness of the rest of the canonical gospel tradition, you cannot ascertain that the passage in question speaks of the same Jesus who speaks in the same voice as we find elsewhere? Are you unable to recognize that voice?

I’m sorry I cannot spout a syllogism to prove to you that the same voice can be heard. I take that back. I am not sorry that such cannot be proven syllogistically.

Therefore infallibility is worth recovering due to tradition? This is hardly satisfactory. There was also a tradition in scriptural literalism that rejected people of color in the US and rejected equality of women and so forth. There is a tradition that says that slavery is quite acceptable as well among other things. Surely you are not saying that just because it is a tradition it is worth it. So let’s probe the root of this argument further since on the surface it is quite made of straw.

Just to be clear. If scripture is not infallible it raises the probability that God is a liar. Moreover you are again arguing for the necessary connection of inerrancy with authority without offering an argument for why they must be connected. It seems that the notion of God is a liar is that connection. Tradition aside this is your argument.

How does this account for the myriad of textual problems that the text still gives us? Is the low probability of the authenticity of a passage like John 8 a suggestion therefore evidence that God could be a liar? That there are errors in the text is as clear as the water off the Florida keys. Therefore, inerrant does not work as a hermeneutic to understand the text nor does it work as a foundation for its authority.

It sounds like the speculation over the condition of these supposed original autographs is a speculative assertion at best and therefore a straw basis for faith. Please clarify why this is not so.

It sounds like you are making an argument either without good evidence to support its necessity or are arguing something in spite of the evidence we have in terms of the text critical problems in the canon.

infallibility and inerrancy language is worth recovering because the great tradition (the Fathers, Aquinas, the Reformers) makes use of it, and it goes back to Scripture itself. Check out Isa 55. Or think through 1 Kings 22 or Isa 6 theologically, in which God leads into error, but, it is clearly understood, does not err in so doing.

In short, infallibility and inerrancy language is about such things as God’s word not failing to accomplish its purpose, about God not lying to us, about the awful possibility that God speaks to us in order to provoke our complete rather than only half-hearted rejection of his will, so that, once we taste the consequences of that rejection, we might whole-heartedly return to him. God truly does not lie, even and especially in the midst of his “strange work.” This is a theme in Luther, and it is a powerful one. It doesn’t work though if one’s mind is clouded over with questions about whether x or y people are reported to have been killed in a certain battle, and whether God should have ensured that 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles agreed on all of these details, at least in the autographs. Useless speculation. If that is what inerrancy language was about in the great tradition, yes, we could safely set it aside. But it’s not. Some post-Enlightened moderns break into a sweat about these things, and the matter has to be dealt with carefully and pastorally, but Thomas, it seems to me, already handled the issue well when he said: Any knowledge which is profitable to salvation may be the object of prophetic inspiration, But things which cannot affect our salvation do not belong to inspiration.’

As the formula of Thomas shows, it’s language that poses questions even as it supplies answers (just like the language around the two natures). When the Lausanne Covenant says that Scripture is without error in all that it affirms, that poses a question, doesn’t it? What does Scripture affirm? It’s a good and helpful question, not a bad one.

It was hard for the ancients to allow for the possibility of any kind of error in Scripture. But it’s possible to say that Scripture is clear, it does not err, it does not lead into error, it does not fail to accomplish its purpose, and still think it natural that scripture contains errors of many kinds. I presume it’s not too difficult to imagine how a two-tiered analysis of the kind I suggest works in detail, but if not, keep at me.

That’s precisely the point. The necessary connection between any doctrine of infallibility or inerrancy to legitimate authority, trust, veracity, etc. has not, and I would argue, cannot be legitimately affirmed. The argument lacks the substantive evidence and we must therefore reject it as highly improbable at best. If Hobbins can disprove this null hypothesis, then I would be very eager to see how. But I am skeptical that the methods he will bring to bear to do so will heavily presuppose the conclusion before building the case.