Position · 1972

Limited Inerrancy

The view that Scripture is fully truthful and authoritative in what it teaches for faith and practice, but is not necessarily precise in every incidental historical or scientific detail.

Its holders see themselves as affirming the Bible’s full authority while taking seriously the human authors and their settings. Terms such as “infallible” are often used for this view. It became prominent among Evangelical scholars in the 1970s, notably when Fuller Theological Seminary revised its statement of faith in the early 1970s to drop strict inerrancy. That shift prompted Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible (1976) and, in part, the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy.

Defenders of Biblical Inerrancy argue that if Scripture can err in small matters there is no principled way to trust it in larger ones.