Andy Stanley Says Insisting on Biblical Inerrancy is an ‘Unnecessary Obstacle’ for Believers+ Compares it to Judaizers Insisting on Circumcision
In the final part of this eight-part series on what one must believe to be a Christian, Stanley flat out argues that we must not insist that Christians believe in the Inerrancy of the bible in order to be a Jesus follower, saying that demanding potential converts believe the bible is true and without error is an unnecessary obstacle to them coming to Christ.
Pointing out that he studied under Norman Geisler, author of the book ‘Inerrancy ,’ Stanley recalls that after he received blowback for preaching his infamous sermon series Who Needs God, resulting in evangelical leaders “saying some not-so-nice things about me,” Norman Geisler called him up to encourage him, telling him, “That’s good apologetic preaching. People just don’t understand apologetics, and they don’t know what the bike is. You need to keep going.”
Stanley explains his apologetic:
The bottom line in terms of what a person must believe about the bible in order to be a follower of Jesus it’s really this simple: you just have to believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John are reliable accounts of actual events. That’s it. …because if you do, then you will also believe that Jesus, who claimed to be the son of God and our king, and everything we’ve stated in this series follows from that one idea.”
He notes that Christian apologists always build their case on the resurrection of Jesus, not the inspiration of the Bible, and that “our faith does not rise or fall on an errorless text” or a bible without error, but rather Christianity rises or falls on the identity of Jesus. He further notes:
“The foundation of our faith is an event that launched a movement that assembled the bible.”
“There is no single modern view of inspiration that is essential to following Jesus, and when the church elevates a specific definition of inspiration in order to make it the litmus test for who is or isn’t a Christian, that’s a problem.
This is tragic…when a specific view of inspiration is elevated to the status of doctrine, the bible becomes an obstacle to faith to some.
He rejects the idea that “an error in any part of it undermines the credibility of all of it” saying that “the ‘all or nothing’ view is mistaken, and it is unnecessary, and it creates an unnecessary offramp of faith for some people. It sets people up for an unnecessary crisis of faith.”
Earlier this year Stanley said “these four ancient first-century documents that depict the life and teaching of Jesus, if any one of these, not even all of them, if any one of these is a reliable account of actual events, even if it’s mostly reliable, then if that’s true, then you need to, and I need to sit up straight and pay attention.”
Stanley previously preached in 2016 in his Who needs God sermon series:
“If the Bible is the foundation of our faith, it’s all or nothing. Christianity becomes a ‘fragile house of cards’ religion. Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn’t. … What your students have discovered, and if you read broadly, you’ve discovered, it is next to impossible to defend the entire bible. But if your Christianity hangs by the thread of proving that everything in the bible is true, you may be able to hang onto it, but your kids and your grandkids and the next generation will not.”
Of course, it’s this sort of reasoning that allows heresy and false beliefs to thrive in his congregation. If people don’t have to believe that the bible is without error, specifically anything that is not ‘red letters’ then his pastors and leaders can celebrate Pride or believe in same-sex marriage , chalking those prohibitions as simply the parts they don’t agree with, and it’s not a big deal as their pastor gave them permission to do that.