Our interpretation of the Bible is not inerrant

The Bible is without error, but our interpretation of the Bible is not inerrant. We need to be humble as we approach the Scripture. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and not all has been revealed to us (Deut. 29:29). Sometimes we are prone to resist the truth taught be a text. And even Peter said that some of the things that Paul wrote are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:15-16).

This principle distinguishes between the nature of Scripture itself and the human process of understanding it—a crucial theological boundary.

Scripture’s infallibility and inerrancy do not guarantee that any interpretation or interpreter of that teaching is infallible or inerrant.[1] The Bible’s truthfulness flows from God’s character, but our comprehension of it remains limited by human finitude, cultural distance, and interpretive frameworks. Determining what Scripture actually asserts requires careful Bible study, allowing Scripture itself to define the scope and limits of its teaching.[1]

When determining what the biblical writer is asserting, we must pay careful attention to Scripture’s character as a human production, recognizing that God utilized the culture and conventions of the writer’s own time.[2] This means history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole as hyperbole, and we must observe differences between ancient literary conventions and modern ones—nonchronological narration and imprecise citation were acceptable in biblical times and violated no expectations.[2]

The danger lies in claiming infallibility for interpretations. Too often the infallibility belonging to God’s Word has been claimed for interpretations of Scripture which are uncertain and which make Scripture pronounce on subjects it does not claim to teach.[1] The Bible is not an exhaustive reference work; it claims to teach all things necessary to salvation but nowhere claims to give instruction in natural sciences or grammar, and it would be improper to treat it as making pronouncements on these matters.[1]

Scripture is inerrant not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.[2] Your interpretation may be wrong; the Bible cannot be.

[1] J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God: Some Evangelical Principles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958), 96.
[2] Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 4:217.