Back in 2005 or 2006 I attended a series of lectures that Richard Bauckham gave at the University of Aberdeen, where I at the time was a humble theology undergrad. The topic? Arguments for the Gospels being substantially based on eyewitness accounts. A couple of months after those lectures, Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses came out. I bought it, I read it and I was and remain quite convinced by it. I don’t hold to this position dogmatically, since I’m no biblical scholar and I’m very aware of my Evangelical confirmation bias in this area. But as far and as honestly as I can tell, Bauckham’s arguments are good and I agree with them.

The other day I ended up in something of a debate with a friend of mine who didn’t like the fact that I had some questions about certain accounts in the Gospels. He wanted to know how much of the Gospels I actually believed - 90%? 80%? 50%?! - and thought it scandalous that someone who called themselves a Christian would question the recorded sayings and acts of Jesus. He was over-reacting. He misunderstood me, read things into what I said that weren’t there and chastised me more than my positions. I could have communicated more clearly to prevent this. I will in the future.

But something struck me about what he said. This friend of mine is also a fan of Bauckham’s. He believes that the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts. Yet, as his comments above indicate, he is an inerrantist. (I might be wrong, since we have never directly talked about inerrancy - but I think it’s a fair induction.) Which is strange. Because in my mind, inerrancy doesn’t go together with the eyewitness basis for the Gospels at all. It almost contradicts it, in so far as they fundamentally conceive of the Gospels in two different and mutually exclusive ways.

The strength of the eyewitness argument, to me, is that it’s a purely historical claim. It says, “Hey, let’s look at the Gospels as purely historical documents. Here are some things that indicate that they were written based substantially on eyewitness accounts. Maybe the Gospels are more reliable than we thought.” It assumes that the Gospels are human writings, situated in historical contingency. They could be unreliable. In order to enquire whether or not they are reliable, historical arguments must be considered. Eyewitness arguments are historical arguments seeking to establish that reliability.

Inerrancy, on the other hand, is not an historical claim. Or, it’s not a claim based on historical arguments. Strictly speaking, inerrancy could conceivable be true, even if all the historical arguments in the world were stacked against it. The Bible that fits best into the inerrantist understanding is a Bible completely untouched by human hands, save for those that wrote down precisely what God dictated. Indeed, the most crude versions of inerrancy conceive of Biblical revelation in precisely that way.

If this is true, then I don’t understand why inerrantists seem so interested in eyewitness arguments. Inerrancy and the eyewitnesses are two completely different ball games. If you believe in inerrancy, why do you need the eyewitnesses? If you believe God (pardon the simplicity) wrote the Bible, why do you need arguments about how the human authors of the Gospels can be trusted to provide reliable historical information?

Doesn’t quite make sense to me.