A case in point is William Lane Craig’s, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration in which he affirms inerrancy. Craig judges the encounter in the Garden as palpably false if taken literally. Why? Because science says it does not make sense. Craig admits that he is trying to square Genesis three account with what science thinks could be true. That seems to me to be a case of shifting authority, from Scripture to science and is an example, I think, of bending the Scriptures which undermines his professed commitment to inerrancy, at least as commonly understood.

It is concerning that in the Evangelical world there are some leaders who are interpreting the Christian Scriptures to fit with culture’s view of the world while affirming inerrancy of Christian Scripture. It raises the question of what those evangelical leaders actually think about the full authority of Scripture. In 1984, Francis Schaeffer wrote: “We can say the Bible is without mistake and still destroy it if we bend the Scriptures by our lives to fit this culture instead of judging the culture by Scripture” (TGED, 342). Schaeffer offered the example of divorce to demonstrate how inerrancy was being subverted by bending the Scripture to accommodate the surrounding culture. He wrote: “Do we not have to agree that even much of the evangelical church, which claims to believe that the Bible is without error, has bent Scripture at the point of divorce to conform to the culture rather than Scriptures judging the present viewpoints of the fallen culture?” (TGED, 342-3). I am quite certain that if we looked at the doctrinal statements of those evangelical churches and organizations who tend to bend the Scriptures hermeneutically, we would find those statements have not changed over the years. In fact, surely, we would say that those doctrinal statements reflect a commitment to the inerrancy of Christian Scripture. However, I believe that something like what Schaeffer named as “bending of Scripture” subverts the traditional view of inerrancy. I find it more than a little inconsistent to affirm inerrancy while hermeneutically re-interpreting Scripture to accommodate the culturally popular vision (scientifically or morally) of the world.

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