Joe - honest question here – do you think that Jesus walked around with advanced knowledge about the universe, that he could have at any time simultaneously revolutionized every area of human learning if he were to have put pen to paper, but for some reason decided not to share that information?  I’m just wondering if you really think that he knew about disease pathology, etc. and didn’t pass on what could have saved and healed literally generations of people who died of the most commonplace illnesses after his earthly departure. It certainly would have been a great shortcut for his disciples to have established all the hospitals and health care that they ended up doing when medical technology advanced to the place where they could do that.

Michael - I think inerrancy doesn’t do the work people want it to do not just practically (which you pointed out with your evolution example) but theoretically.  I’m sort of a Vanhoozer-ian sort of guy when it comes to the nature of language (i.e. his theological version of speech-act theory) and I think the most basic observation it contributes to an understanding of inerrancy is that stating the truth/falsity of some proposition is only ONE speech-act in the Bible.  The Bible has many more sorts of speech-acts for which “error” is simply a category mistake (i.e. promises can be faithful or faithless, but not “in error”; poetry can cause you to feel certain things, but it can’t be “false”; commands can be reliable or unreliable, but they’re not “true or false” in the same way factual statements are).  So at best “inerrancy” could ever only apply to those portions of scripture that are actually making some propositional truth claim – but of course Scripture does much more than this in all of it’s promising, commanding, inspiring, encouraging, etc. The implications of that are somewhat common-sense – if mustard seeds aren’t actually the smallest seeds known to man, Jesus is only “in error” if he’s making a claim about mustard seeds. But if he’s engaging in an entirely different speech-act than propositional speech (i.e. making a truth claim about mustard seeds) – say urging or admonishing faith – he can’t be accused of error.

Incidentally, I heard someone at an Evangelical Theological Society a few years ago who said that even C.F.H. Henry, the modern architect of inerrancy, thought it was a gross misuse of the doctrine to test a person’s orthodoxy.  He separated what he saw as logical implications of it’s denial from thoroughly orthodox people who actually denied it, which is why he found Harold Lindsell’s over-enthusiasm for the doctrine to be such a frustration. For him it was a test of evangelical consistency not a test for evangelical orthodoxy.