The next question is, “Must we require belief in everything in scripture? Must catholics believe in the inerrancy of scripture?” This is a very complex question, but the short answer is “No” (though they certainly may, and many do).
Until the eighteenth century, belief in the general truth of scripture was pretty much universal, and therefore such belief can certainly be considered “catholic.” Yet, today there is great division — not just between those who do and do not believe in inerrancy, but over just what inerrancy means, even among those who claim to believe in it. Most believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. A few go farther and hold that God dictated the text word for word. Many more would say that God gave the writers the thoughts and ideas, but not the words – they are the product of the human authors, with all their cultural biases, hangups, and misconceptions. Most theologians and biblical scholars accept modern biblical criticism. They recognize some stories and whole books as allegorical. They acknowledge cultural influences and historical inaccuracies. Yet others do not. (Most scholarly inerrantists would balk at “historical inaccuracies,” while accepting the rest.)
One of the biggest divisions is over interpretation of the six days of creation in Genesis. If one takes this literally, the earth is only about six thousand years old. “Young Earth creationists” hold strictly to this view. Some scientists say that since the earth has been proven to be billions of years old, the Bible is all myth and garbage. And there is a whole spectrum of intermediate beliefs. “Old earth creationists” say that the “days” of Genesis are “ages” or “eons” and there is no conflict between creationism and science. (Since truth is truth, there can be no conflict between correct science and correct Biblical interpretation. This much is clear.) Others say evolution is true; it’s the way God chose to create the universe. The point of all this is that the church should not require belief in something it cannot be sure of. The Roman Catholic Church did that to Galileo, and only recently acknowledged its mistake. Just as we should not require people to believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, we should not require them to believe any particular interpretation of the creation story in Genesis. The only “essentials” in the story are that God created the universe and created man and woman in his image. All the rest belongs among the “nonessentials.”
It is prudent for the church to allow great diversity in the interpretation of scripture, while carefully considering the results of biblical scholarship and archeology. The church should be slow to embrace new ideas, but even slower to reject them. Open minds are less likely to repeat the mistakes of the past.
While inerrancy, properly understood, is a “catholic” belief, to require belief in it as an “essential” of the faith can lead to squabbles over interpretation and even purges such as have plagued the Southern Baptist Convention for the last decade or so. We do not want, and cannot accept such a prospect. We desire unity, not uniformity. We also have a pastoral concern for those who are taught inerrancy. Their faith can be shaken by the discovery of mistakes or contradictions in the Bible. Ultimately, our faith should be in God, not in the book. Neither, however, should we buy into a squishy liberalism. To treat the Bible as a collection of myths is unacceptable. To throw out everything miraculous (including the resurrection) is to proclaim God small, remote, and inept and leaves little worth believing in. While not requiring belief in inerrancy, we must teach the Bible as the reliable source of the truths that matter.
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