Biblical Inerrancy

Statement of Inerrancy The first item on my Summary of Core Doctrines from this site's Statement of Faith is the establishment of the Holy Bible as the Inerrant Word of God.

"We believe in the verbal and plenary inspiration, inerrancy, and timeless authority of the Holy Bible. It is the completed special revelation of God to man and is comprised of the 66 books recognized as the protestant canon."

This site is founded on this conviction.

Two Excellent Resources

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a written statement of belief formulated by more than 200 evangelical leaders at a conference convened by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, held in Chicago in October 1978. This is an excellent statement which is well worth reading. This is a copy of the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy.

Josh McDowell has produced books and video(s) on the "Reliability of Scripture," which are also excellent. While I was serving in the US Marines, I made quite a few notes from his video, Notes from Josh McDowell's Reliability of Scripture.

Directly Related

Natural Interpretation As we rely on Verbal, Plenary, Inerrancy of Scripture, we must also rely on appropriate interpretation. The most essential elements of Natural Interpretation are that passages should be read normally, only have a single meaning, and should carefully consider all aspects of context. Please see my section on Natural Interpretation.
Canon The "Canon" (of the Bible) is the "Recognized Books of Scripture" - The word "canon" means "rule", as in a standard. Generally speaking, there are multiple canons of Scripture, or offically defined sets of accepted books: Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Hebrew are four examples. When I use the word "canon" without specifying, I mean the Protestant canon. This is what you'll find in most Bibles not specifically identified by denomination.
Autographs The "Autographs" are not signatures, but the actual original manuscripts. It is universally accepted that there are no extant autographs or fragments of any of the autographs. The work of "lower" or "textual" criticism is researching extant manuscripts, translations, and versions, as well as, archeaology, history, and languages, in order to refine our best-effort recreation of the autographs. References to these originals is usually in regard to statements like "We believe modern translations to be the Word of God, to the extent that they accurately represent the autographs..."
English Versions of the Bible The Bible was written in ancient languges and most of us use translations, at least for casual reading. It is important that a reliable translation is used, and that the Bible uses a literal style of translation. For English Bibles, we have the known reliablity of the King James Bible, or for modern translations, I recommend either the New American Standard Bible or the English Standard Version. Most other modern translations are non-literal and should be avoided. For more information, please see my page on English Bible Versions.