Can You Believe in Inerrancy "and" Equality? -- By: Dan Gentry Kent

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 15:1 (Winter 2001)
Article: Can You Believe in Inerrancy "and" Equality?
Author: Dan Gentry Kent


Can You Believe in Inerrancy and Equality?

It is important that we not confuse two different issues.

Dan Gentry Kent

Dan Gentry Kent is professor of Old Testament (retired), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and chair of CBE’s board of directors.

One’s first reaction to the title question might be, “Of course you can, because I do!” But that hardly explores the important issues involved. The question arises because some who believe in a subordinate position for women in church, home, and world accuse biblical egalitarians of such things as “not believing the Bible”—or at least not being fully committed to it.

A letter to the editor that appeared in the Baptist Standard, the newspaper of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, spoke of “those who hold the Scripture inerrant and its principles binding (such as the husband being head of the wife as Christ is head of the church).”1 The implication is that it is impossible to harmonize the doctrine of inerrancy and belief in gender equality.

Apples And Oranges

Actually, the letter quoted and title of this article deal with two completely different issues, and we must be careful not to confuse them.

Inerrancy is a doctrinal position, a conviction regarding the nature of the Bible. A belief in the equality of male and female, on the other hand, is a matter of the interpretation of the Bible, hermeneutics: “The place of women in the Bible is an interpretive, hermeneutical question. It is not an inerrancy question.”2

Understanding Inerrancy

Inerrancy is a somewhat difficult concept, easier to claim and/or defend than to define. People have generally taken three approaches in dealing with the difficulty.

1. There are broad, general definitions. Inerrancy has been called “a metaphor for the determination to trust God’s Word completely”3 That certainly qualifies as a broad, general, definition. Inerrancy can thus be applied to the Bible in the sense of its being an authentic, dependable record of God’s self-disclosure. This seems to be what many laypeople mean who use the term. To them, “I believe in inerrancy” means “I believe the Bible.” Clark Pinnock has said of theologian Bernard Ramm: “For him inerrancy always meant something quite simple. It signaled one’s commitment to trust the Bible and to take it seriously.”4

2. There are m...

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