Why I believe the Bible is not inerrant

First, we should define a few terms. Both to avoid confusion, and to (hopefully) stop my fellow evangelicals calling me a heretic:

I believe that the whole Bible is inspired by God (whatever that means). In other words, I believe in the inspiration of the Bible.
I believe that what the Bible teaches, carries God's authority in the life of the Christian. In other words, I believe in the authority of the Bible.
However, I believe that the nature of God's inspiration was that he only inspired the writers as far as was necessary as it was to get across the correct message. Therefore I believe that the Bible is trustworthy in all that it intends to teach. Therefore, for instance, I believe that we can believe the Bible when it tells us we are all sinners, or that God created the world, or that Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt, or that Jesus was the Son of God, or that Jesus physically rose from the dead - for these are things which the Biblical writers intended to teach us. I do not, for instance, believe that all the numerical statistics in Kings and Chronicles are necessarily accurate (especially when they contradict each other), because these were incidental to the writers' purposes.

In other words, I accept the inspiration and authority of the Bible, but I do not accept its inerrancy.

I came to this understanding as I considered the issue of textual errors in the Bible.

For those who do not know:

We do not have the original "autographs" of the books of the Bible - these were written on perishable material which has long since disappeared. What we have is copies of those autographs. And it is an almost universally accepted fact, that errors were made in making these copies (this is unavoidable; you try writing out several hundred pages of text without making a single error), and so all our existing original language manuscripts are imperfect copies of the original autographs. These errors are known as textual errors or copyists' errors or errors in transmission. The fact of these errors, is widely accepted even among conservative evangelical Christians. All modern translations, with the possible exception of the NKJV, accept the fact of these textual errors.
For this reason, almost all modern proponents of inerrancy limit inerrancy to the autographs of Scripture. That is, they do not deny that the Bibles, which we currently have, contain errors due to copyists' errors. (It is hard to claim inerrancy for the existing copies we have, because our existing copies contain a number of flat numerical contradictions between Kings and Chronicles).
Hence, inerrancy is usually defined in words such as: "The autographs of Scripture are inerrant"

But the effect of errors in transmission is interesting. Apologists will usually say (correctly, I believe) that God providentially protected the manuscripts so that no significant errors crept in, and so that the essential things in the Bible were all reliably preserved. (For my analysis of many of these, see The Bible is Reliable Despite Textual Errors) In other words, God protected the Scriptures as far as was necessary.

So here's my point: why can't we say the same for the autographs? Why can't we say that God's inspiration of the writers was as far as was necessary to reliably communicate God's message?

There are several advantages to viewing Scripture in this way:

We view errors in the originals in the same way as we view errors in the copies. I have already outlined this argument above. In both cases (the original autographs, and the copies), God has protected Scripture as far as was necessary.
The Biblical evidence is that the copies - not just the originals - are inspired. While inerrantists are fond of citing the way that Jesus and the apostles held the (Old Testament) scriptures as inspired (and hence, they deduce, inerrant), they do not seem to notice that it is frequently the copies which are regarded as inspired - yet we can be certain that these copies contained errors. So when Paul wrote, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching..." (2 Tim 3:16), Paul was clearly writing about the existing copies, copyists' errors and all.
It is a more realistic view of human nature. The evidence of Biblical scholarship is pretty clear that the Biblical writers did not have all their information planted in their head by God, but they had to research and find things out (Luke, and the author of Kings, say this explicitly). Why should God's inspiration go so far as to cover every potential error that a human might make? Why should these writers be protected from error, but not the subsequent copiers and translators - not to mention the many errors the Christian church has made throughout its history.
Why should inspiration stop at inerrancy? If God could inspire writers to not err, why didn't he go that bit further and inspire them not to ever be unclear, or ambiguous, or apparently in error? Many apparent errors have been due to the Biblical author using unclear or ambiguous language.
And perhaps most importantly, we avoid making people's faith stand or fall on minor details in the Bible. Because the inerrantist argument usually runs:
1. Jesus was (and is) God's son;
2. Jesus believed that Scripture was inerrant;
3. Therefore Scripture is inerrant.
However the argument has a very dangerous corollary:
1. The Bible contained errors;
2. But Jesus believed that Scripture was inerrant;
3. Therefore Jesus was not God's son.
But there is no need to make this argument! Scripture never claims inerrancy for itself. We do the Bible a great disservice when we try to foist upon it qualities which it was never intended to have.
God can speak through an errant Bible. The world is a messy place. Despite the way that mankind has messed up the world, God is real and can and does act in our world. Proponents of inerrancy sometimes seem to limit God, as if he is incapable of speaking through an errant Bible. But this is nonsense, since God can and does speak through sinful and error-prone Christians.
When I became a Christian, it was because I could see God at work, despite the faults of the church (at large) and my Christian friends. Similarly, it was plain as day that God was speaking to me through my newly-purchased Good News Bible, despite the fact that I knew of supposed Bible errors.
- The world contains much that is bad, but God is Creator.
- The church makes mistakes, but God speaks through it.
- Christians are sinful, but God speaks through them.
- The Bible contains some errors - but it is still God's chosen way of speaking to us.

Let me conclude by reaffirming that I believe that, overall, the Bible is extremely reliable historically. As I have said, God has protected it to a very large degree, and I believe any errors are at minor and insignificant points. Supposed errors in it have many times turned out to be correct, as I have tried to illustrate in my articles The America's Cup Myth and Harmoninsing the Resurrection Accounts. However, I am convinced that at a number of minor points the Bible contains inaccuracies. Let us not be troubled by such minor points, and instead trust that the Bible is overall extremely truthful and accurate. More importantly, let us trust in the God to whom the Bible bears witness.

Why I believe the Bible is not inerrant

Further Reading