CHAPTER THREE
THE SOLA SCRIPTURA PRINCIPLE

Sola Scriptura is the fountain of the comprehensive renewal of church and society that the Reformation brings. Thus the most foundational question this dissertation addresses asks is concerns biblical authority. This dissertation will follow convention and summarize this view as the doctrine of sola Scriptura. The classic reformed consensus was presupposed by the neo-Puritan standard used to evaluate C&S’ social theology in the author’s previous document (Kreitzer 1997).

It is this author’s contention that if any ecclesiastic document or policy denies this historic understanding of sola Scriptura, it would deny the foundational principle of the Reformation. Instead of paving the way forward into a new just society, it would be turning its back on the comprehensive freedom, true Christianity brings. Instead, it would be leading God’s people back to an "Egypt" of human bondage (see Walzer 1985).

Infallibility: Foundational Presupposition

Classic and New Definitions of Infallibility

The doctrine(s) of "infallibility" [onfeilbaarheid], mentioned in the Belgic Confession (art. 7), and "inerrancy" [feiloosheid], must be deduced from relevant biblical passages (Feinberg 1980, 1984; Grudem 1983; Wenham 1994) and the meaning of the biblical words for "truth" (Thiselton 1978, 1980).

The Lausanne Covenant, later expanded and nuanced by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and Hermeneutics (ICBI 1980, 1982), shows the inseparable connection between the two terms infallibility" and "inerrancy."

Of the two concepts, "infallibility," has a longer history of use in theology than "inerrancy." The word "infallible" originally meant, "2. Of things: Not liable to fail, unfailing. a. Not liable to prove false, erroneous, or mistaken. . . ." (Oxford English Dictionary 1970). Furthermore, "infallibility" implies "a. The quality or fact of being infallible or exempt from liability to err" (Oxford English Dictionary 1970).

Under the leadership of dialectical theologians (e.g., Barth and Berkouwer), however, the term "infallibility" has gradually changed to emphasize a division between spiritual truths and facts of history, science, and on. Through various steps, "truth" comes eventually to mean "an inexpressible feeling of relationship and experiential closeness to God." "Truth," thus, is "relational" and/or "existential." It has no necessary congruity to actual states of affairs (factuality).

Logically, this means that some must claim that the highest form of faith is to believe in spite of all the empirical evidence to the contrary. As C. S. Lewis has pointed out, this means that Christ is either a liar or a lunatic who hallucinated "truths" that never occurred. The same applies to the Apostles, and prophets of both testaments. Christianity loses its unique, absolute authority and becomes just another fallible, gnosticized human attempt to seek for "ultimate meaning" or for "the divine" by an experience of mystical enlightenment.

Thus the new understanding of truth teaches that only the first type of "truth," that is faithfulness to the central scopus of Scripture, salvation, is infallible. This means that the second type of data can be indeed erroneous.

In Scripture, however, truth involves three strands of meaning in equal balance, viz. "factuality, faithfulness and completeness" (Nicole 1983, 296). Nichole continues:

Though often intertwining the three aspects, the Bible’s presupposition of human truth-telling is basically a non-autonomous form of the "Correspondence Theory" of truth (Thiselton 1978, 1980, Nicole 1983, Feinberg 1984). "To speak or witness to the truth" is to report events accurately in actual correspondence with what occurred (e.g., Ge 42:16; Dt 5:20, 17:4-6, 19:15-18, 25:13-16; Pr 12:19; Mt 19:17-19; Eph 4:25; 1Ti 1:10).

Lastly, sola Scriptura always included within itself the concept of "infallibility" in the classic sense of the word (see Sproul 1978; Woodbridge 1982). The people of God are commanded to trust in God alone who identifies Himself with his truthful word. Thus as Paul Althaus summarizes Luther and through him all the Reformers: The synods and fathers of the "church can and have erred. Scripture never errs. Therefore it alone has unconditional authority" (Althaus 1966, 6-7; emphasis added). This dissertation uses "truthful," "inerrant," and "infallible" as synonyms.

Confessional Definition of Infallibility

The authors and revisers of C&S have sworn allegiance to the Belgic Confession and hence to its definition of infallibility. It is helpful to begin there for a more complete understanding of the historic Reformed perspective on sola Scriptura’s basic axiom: infallibility. Article 5 and 7 are the loci of the Confession’s definition of biblical infallibility:

Article 7 continues:

Sola Scriptura implies that Scripture is the most perfect and complete truth, judging all human wisdom. It is thus above every inductively or deductively discovered truth of science.

An important implication of this is that if the true faith of Scripture is reduced to mere Gospel truths necessary for a personal and interior salvation, it is merely another competing fideistic enlightenment with no confirmation outside a feeling. The historic reformed faith rejects such reductionism, common to pietism, neo-orthodoxy and other dualistic movements. Redemption in the Reformed faith is always a comprehensive, wholistic transformation of all spheres of life (Kuyper 1943, Bavinck 1888/1992, Wolters 1985, North 1988).

The use of infallibility in the Belgic Confession thus implies that all reductionist and autonomous truths, including man-made doctrines of "truth" derived from "writings of men" not founded upon Christ (Col 2:1ff), are "lies." For "all men are liars" (Ro 3:4; Ps 116:11) and self-deceived (Jer 17:9).

All human derived wisdom is actual foolishness (1Co 1:20-25, 2:12ff, 3:19ff). Covenant breakers, depending on their own wisdom, cannot understand nor accept the things of God. They consider them foolishness. On the basis of this antithesis, the Confession teaches: "Therefore we reject with all our hearts whatsoever does not agree with this infallible rule."

The Scriptural teaching thus is confirmed by the Belgic Confession. Man must submit to every word of God as true. "We receive all these [canonical] books . . .; believing without any doubt all things contained in them."

Thus to put anything above the authority of Scripture is "go beyond that which is written" (1Co 4:6), to put oneself above the wisdom of God (see Jas 4:11-12; Isa 8:19-20), and hence not to submit unreservedly to Scripture. If someone does not submit to Scripture as the final authority (sola Scriptura), he is not submitting himself to the God who identifies the Bible as his own truthful Word (see Ac 4:25; 1Co 1:18-4:9; Col 2:6ff; 1Th 2:13).

The creation and all that is in it are equivalent to "letters." The creation thus is the medium of an unmistakable message revealing God (Ps 19:1-4; Ro 10:17-18). The Confession is stating that both God-created nature and the God-breathed Scripture are perspicuous and can be read objectively and directly. If we can know him through both media, certainly we can know something through creation. This implies that some things can be clearly and specifically seen apart from the necessary subjective coloring of the mind, which post-Kantianism assumes.

God, and hence true facts can be known through the creation and his Word. God has given to man basic hermeneutical principles such as the ontological and epistemological law of non-contradiction, that are unmistakably and inescapably found in the Word itself but can also be clearly seen in, for example, the created structure of language.

Sola Scriptura, therefore, implies finding in Scripture even the basic presuppositions necessary to interpret the Bible, and then submitting to them. Scripture is self-interpreting. Although also implicit in created nature, there is no need to import necessary extra-biblical pre-understandings to grasp Scripture. This is one implication of Scripture’s necessity and perspicuity.

There is thus no "necessity for human interpreters to intervene between Scripture and those to whom Scripture comes" (Van Til 1974; see Van Til 1967a, 1969; see Frame 1995; and Nash 1982, 99-101 to correct aspects of Van Til). Rejecting this means again the return to human, hence autonomous sinful, authority.

Furthermore, sola Scriptura’s infallibility doctrine rejects any syncretism of Biblically derived hermeneutical beginning points with humanist philosophy (see 1Co 1-4, 15; Col 2). There is no neutral wisdom(see 1Ti 4:1ff; 1Jn 4:1ff; Ro 1:18ff).

Although man’s mind and understanding can see God’s truth clearly, he suppresses and denies that truth, causing a self-caused intellectual darkness flowing from the rebellion of his sinful heart (see Ro 1:18ff for the basic principle). The regenerating and enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, thus, is absolutely necessary to dispel this intellectual darkness so that man can see clearly what is there in fact. This includes the necessary subjective element of the Spirit’s internal witness to the truth of the Word (BC, art 5; WCF I.5).

God has thus revealed himself in his Word and creation. He is not silent. The problem of understanding (i.e., the hermeneutical problem) lies with man’s rebellion, not in the mechanism of the mind. Since God, Scripture truths found in a paper book, and other things can be known unmistakably and inescapably from created things mediated through the sensory organs, man has no excuse. Therefore, there is no inevitable coloring of perceptions by the mind so that no clear and sufficient testimony of the external world can be understood in the mind.

The New Hermeneutic in Essence

Modern hermeneutical theories, pioneered by E. Fuchs and G. Ebeling, begin the analysis of Scripture by presupposing that there exist "proven" errors in the Bible. Second, they assume, illogically using propositions that understanding and language are "beyond objectification and conceptualization," that is non-propositional (Krabbendam 1984b, 536).

They thus divide the unifying and whole, "spiritual truth" from the divisive, erroneous "facts" discovered through investigating the "phenomena" of the Bible and the historical processes of the physical world. In essence, the New Hermeneutic accepts the dualist assumption which postulates that the universe is composed of two dialectically opposed principles (Krabbendam 1984b).

Therefore, the text of Scripture cannot give an unchanging and truthful interpretation of the cultural context in which it is enclothed. Since both text and context are relative, and the modern context is relative, the process of finding eternal verities for the modern society is very complicated, actually, if the logic is pushed, not possible (see C&S, 16-18).

No longer can straight-forward didactic statements based on an unchanging moral order based on God’s character and creation (e.g., the Decalogue, the role relationships in the family, etc.) be transferred one-to-one into modern society. Therefore, some human authority needs to be imposed upon the situation to bring stability. The result is a form of subjectivism in which man as an individual or man-in-collective decides what is truth.

This dialectical process leads to a subtle reinterpretation of basic creedal doctrines and ultimately to the denial of the Trinity and of the hypostatic union. If unifying "truth" is more important and "real" than the divisive historical or chronological facts of Scripture, then unity is assumed to be better than, more substantial and indeed more logical than true diversity.

A further implication of sola Scriptura is that God’s Spirit speaks sufficiently and without error only through the words of Scripture, written through the organs of godly men (i.e., verbal-organic inspiration).

Thus the only inerrant source of information we can have is from the text of the infallible Scriptures spoken through human instruments by an absolutely truthful God. No inductive "science" such as Higher Criticism can be faultless. It can indeed "prove" nothing as philosophers of science now candidly admit (see Van Huyssteen 1989). Without the absolutes of Scripture and creation there are no absolutes but only ever changing subjectivity.

Exegesis then is the uncovering of infallible, trans-culturally valid truth, under guidance of the Spirit, within the cultural context in which a specific passage is written. Once a truth has been discovered, it can be further nuanced and deepened since we cannot know everything comprehensively as God, but it remains truthful, exact and unchanging. Truth does not evolve through deeper reflection.

In exegetical work, and unclear passage or a Synod’s reconstruction of linguistic, cultural and chronological details (e.g., of woman’s role in ancient culture) must never contradict the clear (perspicuous) information on these matters gained by careful study of similar passages in similar contexts in the whole of the Scriptures. This is the doctrine of the analogy of Scripture or analogia fidei (see Sproul 1980).

The Reformers inferred from sola Scriptura that Scripture interprets Scripture [Scriptura scripturae interpres]. Attempted reconstruction of cultural context from our cultural and temporally distant perspective, heavily relying on extra-Biblical assumptions about the existence of document traditions, meanings of ancient customs, chronologies and the forms of ancient culture is hazardous. This is the basic methodology of the Higher Critical method. Stackhouse is candid about the result: "so long sola Scriptura." "In this regard," he adds, "we may well be at the end of the Protestant era" (Stackhouse 1988, 50).

Making higher critically derived definitions and cultural reconstruction normative, especially without considering confessionally sound alternatives, is certainly over-confident. It destroys the principle of sola Scriptura. Ultimately it leads either to attempts to place a ecclesiastical collegium (e.g., a Synod) placed between the believer and God, or it leads to anarchistic, "Spirit-led" interpretations as found in certain sects.

In the light of the Belgic Confession’s clear teaching on infallibility and the submission of all areas of faith and life to the teaching of Scripture, it is wrong to claim that the Three Forms of Unity allow for Higher Criticism and views denying the full inerrancy of all the Bible (see Deist 1986, 1994).

NGK Submission to the "Spirit" not Scripture

It seems that NGK theologians are not immune to the human authority alternatives to sola Scriptura listed above. Using the two-fold appeal to higher criticism’s understanding of the "humanity of the Bible" and a non-orthodox, "special bond" between the Spirit and Scripture, NGK theologians have overturned a consensual doctrine held in every generation of the Church. Louis van Deventer writing in a Kerkbode article entitled, "The woman as minister, elder . . . what does the Bible really say," acknowledges the NGK’s paradigm shift in the doctrine of Scripture’s relation to the Spirit.

Similarly, P. A. Verhoef’s commentary on C&S (1986), also justifies the complete turnaround on a creation-based social theology. Comparing present Spirit-leading to that in Acts 15, he claims that the same church which, "in new light of new givens and new insights" once rejected slavery, now, analogously, rejects HRLS’ social theology (Verhoef 1987, 9-10).

Actually, both Verhoef and Van Deventer seem to be re-interpreting Scripture in the light of modern equalitarian ideology rather than the Spirit who is bound to his Word.

It is here that there is a correlation between neo-orthodox and Barthian presuppositions and at least one branch of the radical reformation’s doctrine of Scripture. The Reformers, following the Scriptures themselves, taught that the Spirit of God is bound to the very words of the Bible. It is not merely a "special bond" between the two. In this, he stand opposed to many libertines and radicals of his day as well as to dialectical theology and its descendants such as the Theology of Hope.

Willem Balke’s study, Calvin and the Anabaptist radicals, vindicates Calvin’s stance against these radicals:

The unchanging Spirit or the experience of the "Spirit" and his truth is not above nor independent of the narrative words of the Scriptures (see Institutes 1.9.2, 3). Absolute and unchanging truth thus is found both in the spiritual and relational or experiential aspects of the Bible as well as in the narrative accounts which appeal to various chronologies (e.g., Lk 3:23-37), histories (e.g., Mk 13:19; Lk 17:26-27; 2Pe 3:5-6; Mt 12:39-40), biological (e.g., 1Ti 2:13), scientific (e.g., Ge 1-2) and philosophical (e.g., 1Co 1-4) data upon which the Scripture may touch.

In other words, the packaging around the "spiritual" truths is just as valid as those verities themselves: "Error would distort the picture of God and his will," the contemporary Church of Scotland theologian, Nigel de S. Cameron, insists, "‘historical’ error no less than ‘spiritual’ or ‘moral’, because of the historical fashion in which the Bible reveals God" (Cameron 1983, 31). Calvin, for example, in his Institutes often repeats this truth.

The Reformers, along with Christ emphasized implicit and child-like faith in the perspicuous Word of the Living God. Nothing can be added or taken away from it by the Spirit’s guidance. The "Spirit" cannot oppose Scripture.

Thus even in the difficult matters, Calvin had an explicit trust in the absolute veracity of Scripture:

The Reformers following our Lord and his Apostles, totally trusted the Spirit-attested Bible. So must we trust

A reductionist process seems to be occurring in the NGK as a result of the rejection of epistemological and Scriptural perspicuity. Thus the "guidance of the Spirit" through the Synod may be in actuality, the rejection of the confessional sola Scriptura.

An example is a 1990 Kerkbode editorial by Frits Gaum entitled: "Die onduidelike Bybel?" [The unclear Bible?], which, in turn, is a good commentary on relevant sections of C&S:

To so limit perspicuity [duidelikheid] to merely the inner, personal "salvation" experience robs the Word of its personal and social transforming power. It abandons the external life to the socio-political and economic agendas of past and present Christian syncretists who have a clear social transformation programs.

A third implication of sola Scriptura infallibility is the logical deductive [gewettigde afleiding] method of making doctrinal and ethical conclusions from scriptural data. The Reformer’s called this the bona consequentia of Scripture.

One of the few confessionally sound NGK theologians, S. A. Strauss (UOFS), points out that to accept scriptural givens (see e.g., C&S, 105, 107) without being able to make important ethical deductions and applications from them (see e.g., C&S, 111) "bends the reformational sola Scriptura to an non-reformed form of biblicism" similar to the sects and cults which reject, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity or covenantal paedobaptism (Strauss 1987, 4; emphasis in original).

The Westminster Confession states this principle clearly:

Many modern theologians, under influence of the New Hermeneutic and dialectical theology, reject epistemological and Scriptural objectivity. As a consequence, reject the logical-deductive method of finding and applying biblical ethics to modern society.

This rejection of the logical deductive method can be clearly seen in the clash between the theologians advocating an anti-apartheid theology and the late, Andries Treurnicht. Their differences are not only political but theological — a shift away from the Reformed doctrine of the Verbal-Organic inspiration of Scripture which Treurnicht, in the classic tradition, still held.

UNISA theologian, Louis Heyns, describes this shift in a revealing letter to Kerkbode entitled, "Teoloë moet met praktyk rekening hou" [Theologians must takes praxis into account]:

Treurnicht responded with a letter entitled: "Praktyk kan nie norm wees nie" [Practice can’t be the norm]. He refused to reject his inerrantist, Reformed theological company:

F. J. M. Potgieter (Potgieter 1990, 25-26), whom Treurnicht cites, cites H. Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Bavinck 1928, 1:416). Bavinck here states that absolute and unchanging principles [principia] can be obtained from the whole Scripture to apply to all of life. He denies that inspiration can be limited to the "religious-ethical part of Scripture" and that there should be a division between the religious and rational lives of man.(Bavinck 1928, 1:416).

Bavinck, following the long line of exegetical and hermeneutical practice stretching back to the Reformers and beyond, then affirms that principia serving as the foundational postulates of science can be derived from the Scripture including the historical facts of "the creation and fall of man, the unity of the human race, the Flood, the origin of the peoples and languages [at Babel], etc." (Bavinck 1928, 1:416).

These facts are "true truth" (F. Schaeffer). They can be used in the development of models for socio-political and economic systems, something denied by C&S, 16-23. To reject the logical deductive method of exegesis and application is to reject, at this crucial, foundational point, the NGK’s standards.

The War on Logic

The war on deduction, logic, factuality, and historical grounding of the faith by ancient, gnostized, dialectical theologians and their liberal and neo-orthodox allies today, was and is a war on certainty and specificity. Because no clear, absolute and unchanging propositional Word can be revealed from the Wholly Other, dualists seem unable to formulate creeds and "policy statements" that clearly divide truth from error.

Thus the shift in the doctrine of Scripture and in the basic Reformed hermeneutical principles leads to equivocation and the formulation of creeds and policy statements which can often be interpreted by different parties in different ways. C. A. Van Til, for example demonstrates this tendency in the PCUSA Confession of 1967 (Van Til 1967c).

The struggle against certainty is a struggle against history. Rushdoony states the philosophical background of this:

Rushdoony, again, polemically strikes at the source of this ambiguity and the paradigm shift in the church’s view of Scripture which has accompanied the growing use of ambiguity:

Thus the early church was faith or credo-centric whereas the modern church, including increasingly the NGK (see Crafford and Gous 1993), are clearly institutional and ecclesiocentric paralleling the Medieval period. In his overly polemical manner, Rushdoony comments on this contrast, mentioning the Synodical Letter of 384 of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople:

Fourthly, contrary to accusations, those who hold to the classic definition of sola Scriptura take into account the historical-cultural context, literary genre and metaphorical-prophetic language and the progressive nature of the unfolding revelation as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and the extensive literature built around it, proves (ICBI 1980).

The Amsterdam-Princeton, Verbal-Organic doctrine emphasizes inerrancy of the original manuscripts yet genuinely struggles to fully nuance the Bible’s "humanity." Men, along with their personality, style, vocabulary peculiarities, culture, and finite imperfections, were the "organs" God used as his instruments in inspiration (see e.g., Packer 1987; Kantzer 1987; Silva 1988).

An example of this approach is Die Teopneustie van die Heilige Skrif met Besondere Verwysing na Karl Barth [Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures with Special Reference to Karl Barth] by F. J. M. Potgieter, father of the 1992 moderator of the NGK General Synod. Written in the early 1960’s before the paradigm shift in the NGK’s theology, it clearly takes into account the "organic-human" aspect while holding to biblical inerrancy.

In so doing, Potgieter rejects the "docetic, mantic-mechanical" theory which maintains only an appearance of the humanity of the Bible. He demonstrates why the Scripture can have a fully human character and still be without error by comparing the written word to the Living Word. Christ was fully and completely human, yet without error. So is Scripture (Potgieter 1963, 12-13).

Humanity thus is not synonymous with fallibility, sin, and error. If humanity is equivalent to fallibility, sin and error, then Christ could not have been a sinless, infallible human. This is compared to the "Nestorian" error in the literature (e.g., Kantzer 1987, 156).

Potgieter states the analogy in the following argument:

Potgieter responds to Barth’s doctrine that the human organs of Scripture-inspiration must have recorded errors:

Nigel Cameron agrees that Scripture’s "true humanity " does not destroy its inerrancy:

Notwithstanding strong criticism of this analogy (Wells 1980; Goldingay 1994), it has much merit (Brown 1984; Kantzer 1987). Those who assert the contrary seem to be influenced by post-Kantian philosophy and/or post-Darwinian theology.

No Reformed-inerrantist, therefore, believes that the Bible is a complete, organized textbook of science (Bavinck 1928, see also C&S, 18-19). As we have seen, that does not imply mean that Scripture must have scientific errors nor that natural or socio-political "scientific" models can be deduced from it (see to the contrary C&S, 274).

The watershed issue today is the origins controversy. Non-orthodox theologians claim Scripture is errant partly because most assume that "science has proven evolution." However, Genesis 1-11 is so intertwined with the rest of biblical revelation that to pull out this one thread will unravel the whole. Removing proto-history from literal history destroys biblical authority.

The confessional consensus in South Africa and the rest of the world has always rejected all forms of evolution. Six Day Creationism, then, is not a fundamentalist-sectarian dogma. The late GKSA scholar, H. G. Stoker, a Six-Day Creationist and Reformed philosopher, concludes the following in "Die Evolusie-Leer" [The Doctrine of Evolution].

History-Based Christianity Necessary

for Truthful Social Theology

Theologians who reject sola Scriptura and its corollary, infallibility, cannot produce a biblical social theology (e.g., C&S). The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church states the problem well:

Response to Accusations against Inerrancy

First of all, no modern inerrantist scholar of note (Reformed, evangelical, or even fundamentalist) believes in the "mechanical theory." God did not use men like robots to write Scripture. The Presbyterian and Reformed theologians who developed the verbal-organic view of inspiration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, also believed in an inerrant Bible.

Second, both the Reformed, Verbal-Organic view and the fundamentalist view of inspiration confess the classic doctrine of infallibility as inerrancy (see Cameron 1994) and the historic truthfulness of the fundamentals as confessed in the Apostolic Confession. In other aspects of doctrine they disagree.

Liberal, New Testament scholar, Kirsopp Lake, candidly acknowledged in the mid-twenties this continuity with the past:

Inerrancy Necessary for Trustworthiness

Based on Scripture’s own witness concerning itself, the Biblical authors’ "witness" to truth is itself completely honest, accurate, conforming to what occurred. Thus it would be an unreliable witness if it were merely the fallible interpretation of men reacting to a non-verbal, non-propositional revealing of the Wholly Other God. It would be untrustworthy if it claimed such "God-givenness," yet could be in actual fact even a "broadly accurate text"(Goldingay 1994, 279).

This is what the same 1986 NGK General Synod that approved C&S suggests in its own much neglected, policy document on Scripture (S&S; Potgieter 1990).

Nigel Cameron again agrees. Because the scopus of scripture is the kingdom and is indeed religious (see C&S, 19), complete factual accuracy is of utmost importance:

God’s Word, recorded by fully human men, does not record any untruths except for when it truthfully records the accounts of deliberate lies. If it ever spoke an untruth, it would make its self-testimony as God’s truthful word, a lying testimony.

There can be no certainty only probability about other factual accounts in a whole if an individual account in the whole is demonstrated to be false. God asks man to have absolute reliance in his word. Proven Biblical errors would destroy its unique authority as true Divine-human witness and lower Christianity to the level of all fallible human religions.

Finally, a reduced "infallibility" that makes allowance for historical, chronological and cosmological errors in the original manuscripts, always brings in the concept that sin is inherent in the physical nature of man, not something unnatural, the result of the Fall. If one denies the inerrancy of Scripture on the grounds that to err is human is therefore to deny a whole complex of doctrines lying at the heart of the Christian faith. Ultimately, any view equating humanity with fallibility confuses the concepts of finitude with error.

Harold O. J. Brown, in "The Arian Connection: Presuppositions of Errancy," agrees: