If you reject perfect preservation, where does it end?

The concern about a “slippery slope” misunderstands what rejecting Verbal Plenary Preservation actually means. Rejecting VPP doesn’t mean abandoning Scripture’s authority—it means distinguishing between God’s inspiration of the original writings and the copyist process that followed.

Inspiration guarantees the factuality of biblical events through the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit upon divinely chosen prophets and apostles, assuring the truth and trustworthiness of their oral and written proclamation, limited to the full original autographs of the Old and New Testament.[1] That’s a robust claim about Scripture’s reliability. But VPP’s fundamental problem is its false presupposition that God’s inspiration of Scripture at a particular point in human history also requires His divine preservation of every jot and tittle ever written down by anyone who ever sought to do the work of a scribe.[2]

We show that evangelical scholars maintain a high view of Scripture without accepting VPP. Evangelical Christianity need not regard those who don’t share inerrancy as hopelessly apostate—J. Gresham Machen acknowledged that many true Christian men accept the central message of the Bible and believe it is right at the central point regarding Christ’s redeeming work, even while believing it contains errors in other areas.[3]

Practically, 90 percent of the Old Testament text is not in question, and absolutely nothing essential to the major doctrines of the Bible would be affected by any responsible decision in textual criticism.[4] The slope doesn’t end in skepticism—it ends in careful scholarship that strengthens our confidence in what Scripture actually teaches.

[1] Richard A. Purdy, “Carl F. H. Henry,” in Handbook of Evangelical Theologians, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998), 268.
[2] Got Questions Ministries, Got Questions? Bible Questions Answered (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2014–2021). [See here.]
[3] Carl F.H. Henry, “Bible, Authority of The,” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 1:298–299.
[4] Peter T. Vogt, Interpreting the Pentateuch: An Exegetical Handbook, ed. David M. Howard Jr., Handbooks for Old Testament Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009), 98–99.