The Meanings of Inspired, Inerrant, Infallible?

Excellent thread topic, @misterme987 . And some of my favorite types of questions.

Unfortunately, I’m side-tracked by some medical hassles at present so my responses will probably be sporadic and limited.

But I can at least refer you to some previous PS discussions on these topics, which includes discussion of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. (Incidentally, my very low-level role was more fly-on-the wall than participant per se, though I was present in the tiny draft committee room a few weeks before Christmas,1986, as J.I. Packer moderated some of the edits on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Application. When the first summit of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy trilogy met in 1978, I was still in grad school and somehow missed being invited. :wink: )

The “four legs on a grasshopper” example ranks among my personal favorites and I discuss it at this point in one of our PS “inerrancy” threads:

I’m forever fascinated at how much “flack” I usually get in some circles for explaining some very basic semantic domain and lexicography concepts which most linguistics majors understand by their second or third year (if they haven’t already grasped them when on their own when they learn their first or second foreign language.)

By the way, I thought of this ancient “four legs on a grasshopper” example just the other day when a student [I’m retired but I still teach some online seminars which sometimes drift into these topics] described listening to a couple of Texans argue the number of fingers on a human hand. He said that one guy claimed that there are “five fingers” but his associate said, “No, there are four fingers and one thumb.” It reminds me of the kinds of confusion some ESL students experience when they learn their English vocabulary from very concise definitions on vocabulary flash cards.

My apologies for not responding in greater depth but at least the thread of my aforementioned post should give you something to chew on. I hope to join in here as I get opportunity in the coming days.

I don’t know if @deuteroKJ still frequents PS but he always has interesting and insightful things to say on these kinds of topics.

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