[OBW]

On the whole, the 19 articles provide a more restrictive understanding of inerrancy than is often intended when it gets used as part of theological debates (on topics other than inerrancy).

But there are a few specific statements that seem a bit of a stretch to me. For example, #6:

We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration. We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

I generally agree with the second sentence, most heartily with the last part, yet with some concern on the first part.

And that concern is because the first sentence contains the unnecessary declaration, "down to the very words of the original." I find nothing that makes this statement true or false. It is a preferred position for those who wrote these articles. But I find no support, or for that matter, need for this to be absolutely true. Since virtually every word has multiple meanings, even if only in flavor relative to the primary meaning, the certainty of the speculations that arise from the parsing of individual words is too often the source of the multitude of variants of understanding.

In other words, it is the focus on the individual words that is too often the cause of division. Should it be translated "believe in Christ" or "believe into Christ"? Were the gospels originally written, or spoken? And was it in Greek? Or in Hebrew/Aramaic? Over what period of time were some of these "books" oral — and subject to variation.

Yet, having suggested variation over the period of retelling until transcribed (in a different language?) I would suggest that the revelation of God remained constant and true.

Questions like those surrounding the story of the woman caught in adultery become unimportant. Was the story part of many of the re-tellings but not all, and as the re-tellings were written down, some of the earliest omitted it and later on it was "added back"? Or was it a phantom story of tradition with no substance? I find that whether real or imagined, it is consistent with the revelation of Jesus, the gospel, and righteousness that is revealed in the remainder of the scripture, therefore any controversy is unimportant.

Preachers (including Lee) love to make things out of specific words yet the passage in which those words are found would say the same thing if half the words were exchanged for variants or alternatives. Sometimes the word is meaningful. It is often noted that Matthew spoke of the Kingdom of heaven while the other synoptics mention the Kingdom of God in the same places. While the difference may be relevant in flavor to the overall theme of the particular gospel, is there really a difference in the two kingdoms? Since most are alternate tellings of the same statements of Jesus, it is clear that he only said it one way.

Yet if Article 6 is to be taken absolutely as written, then Matthew would become altered if we rewrite it with "Kingdom of God" and likewise, Mark would be altered if rewritten as "Kingdom of heaven." While I would agree that the use of the particular words was intentional, does this not argue against the extreme view of the inspiration of the specific words?