otseng wrote:We can also ask if the belief in inerrancy is necessary for salvation.
One of the most respected apologists, William Lane Craig, says belief in inerrancy is not necessary for salvation.
If people have to jump through the hoops of biblical inerrancy in order to become a Christian, you will actually prevent people from coming to know Christ by forcing the unbeliever to embrace this belief in order to be saved.As such it is an important doctrine, but it is not a central doctrine to the Christian faith. You can be a Christian and not affirm it.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/r … inerrancy/
One of the most respected Christian apologists of the 20th century was C.S. Lewis. He did not subscribe to inerrancy.
A second shortcoming in Lewis’s doctrine of Scripture is that he believed there were contradictions and probably errors in the Bible.“Errors of minor fact are permitted to remain� in Scripture, he wrote. “One must remember of course that our modern and western attention to dates, numbers, etc. simply did not exist in the ancient world. No one was looking for that sort of truth� (Letters, vol. 3, 961, emphasis original). Thus, the Bible is not the word of God “in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science of history� (Psalms, 112).
“The very kind of truth we are often demanding was,� in his opinion, “never even envisaged by the ancients�
C.S. Lewis doubted or denied that certain parts of the Bible were historical, including books that evangelicals traditionally have regarded as historical narrative.
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/in … -scripture
However, Lewis held a high view of scripture, which I also hold.
However: despite his demurrals on inerrancy, Lewis generally had a high view of Scripture, not a low one.“I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous. Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. But this I do not hold.”
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=985869#p985869