Inerrancy vs. Liberalism with Joel Hunter

In this video Conversation, Joel Hunter explains why it is important that we decouple the view of scripture from the “either or” mentality, which stems from the culture’s polarization and politicization of the interpretation of Scripture.

Video Transcription

First, we have to decouple the interpretation of scripture and our view of scripture from the either/or mentality, from the culture’s polarization or politicization of the interpretation of scripture. The inerrancy versus the liberal low view of scripture is rather a spectrum than a choice. We believe that you can have the highest view of scripture and have a very humble understanding of people who would still be searching for the best way to interpret the depths of what that scripture actually said, more than just the literal or one-plane understanding of that scripture.

Inerrancy implies that the scripture itself is revelatory from God, but it does not imply and should not imply that the person interpreting it is inerrant. So that’s what we have to do. That’s what we have to decouple. The superintendency of the spirit as the words were given to the writers, or as God transmitted the message to the writers, the superintendency not only went to those writers.

But the same spirit that went to those writers is also supposed to be in us as we interpret those words. Therefore, when circumstances change, when we learn more, when we understand more the context, but we also understand our context more, then God can make those same words even more accurate in our understanding, speaking a greater truth than we understood before. So it’s not one was inerrant, and the other one was, you know.

The inerrancy grows with our interpretation because the understanding of that spirit, the superintending understanding of that spirit, grows with our understanding of how God operates in other fields and speaks to us in other fields as well as from scripture.