The Great Nazarene Inerrancy Debate

Growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, I was taught since the day I was capable of grasping such things, that the Bible is inspired by God, infallible in its purpose, and inerrantly true. In every instance the subject came up, the inerrancy of Scripture was consistently affirmed. No Nazarene pastor or teacher, in my recollection, had ever disputed it as a commonly held belief among Nazarene people. That is, until some decades later. After inadvertently finding myself in leadership as the board secretary of a small church without a pastor, I made the mistake of seeking guidance in Nazarene online social media groups. 

To my dismay, I discovered an enclave of Nazarene pastors who were not just opposed to inerrancy but actually hostile toward it. As I engaged with these folks in discourse, a pattern began to emerge. This violent opposition to inerrancy was rooted in an idea that some passages of Scripture are merely man’s attempt to understand God rather than God divinely revealing Himself to us through Scripture. Shaken to my very core in learning that my experience as a lifelong Nazarene and my understanding of beliefs within the church did not at all resemble what these Nazarene pastors and teachers were saying online, I knew at that moment, that if their views were reflective of Nazarene theology, I needed to reevaluate church doctrine and decide if I was going to remain a Nazarene.

A Brief Explanation of Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical inerrancy is the doctrine that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is without error in all that it addresses, including its teachings on faith, morality, history, and science. According to this view, the Scriptures are fully trustworthy and reliable because they are divinely inspired and protected from error by God. Inerrancy asserts that the Bible is accurate and truthful in all aspects of its content. While the focus of Scripture is not on science and only addresses history secondarily as it pertains to God’s people, inerrancy holds that when biblical texts intersect with these subjects, they do so accurately and reliably, reflecting the truth of both its theological message and its contextual understanding of the world.

Inerrancy should not be conflated with biblical literalism, as is often done by its detractors. Inerrancy recognizes and affirms the Bible’s diverse literary genres, such as poetry, parables, and historical narratives, each serving specific purposes and conveying truth in different ways. This perspective maintains that while the Bible employs various literary forms, it remains wholly accurate and trustworthy, not only in its theological and moral teachings but in all that it references.

Nazarenes and Inerrancy

Many Nazarenes have affirmed and emphasized biblical inerrancy since the denomination’s founding. Early support for this perspective is evident through the affirmations of key figures and their writings within the Church of the Nazarene. The Herald of Holiness, the denomination’s official publication, consistently supported the doctrine of inerrancy in its early years. One editorial from 1925 written by former General Superintendent J. B. Chapman reflects this stance: “When men begin to question the inerrancy of the Bible and begin to ‘modernize’ it, one of the first things they reject is the blood of Jesus, and then right away they are void of the convicting, regenerating and sanctifying power of the Spirit.”¹

In an article titled The Crisis of Christianity, contributing editor Basil Miller wrote, “Our dynamic Spirit-born power is departing because of the doubting of the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, this tarnishing and defiling of the light of God.”² Miller’s statement reflects a concern prevalent among early Nazarenes about the erosion of spiritual vitality linked to modernist and liberalist ideas infiltrating the church. He argued that undermining the Bible’s authority threatened the church’s effectiveness and spiritual health, emphasizing the necessity of upholding the Scriptures as fully inspired and inerrant to maintain the church’s witness and integrity.

Founding editor Benjamin Haynes wrote, “[The Bible] can not be relied on anywhere if it be false in one place. Here is our challenge—all or none. Proof of falsity or untrustworthiness established as to one chapter or one great historic fact…loses to us the whole Bible.”³ Haynes essentially echoes the words of John Wesley who wrote in his journal:

If he [Mr. Jenyn] is a Christian, he betrays his own cause by averring that “all Scripture is not given by inspiration of God, but the writers of it were sometimes left to themselves, and consequently made some mistakes.” Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it [the Bible] did not come from the God of truth.⁴

Today, the doctrine of inerrancy has been all but abandoned by Nazarene academic professionals and the upper echelons of denominational leadership. Consequently, beliefs in liberal and modernist theological concepts such as theistic evolution, open and process theology, liberation theology, panentheism, the rejection of substitutionary atonement, and even the questioning of biblical teachings on human sexuality have become widespread among Nazarene pastors and leaders. Some are even beginning to argue inaccurately that belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is contrary to official church doctrine. One Nazarene elder implied that to hold a view similar to that of Chapman and Miller—that rejection of biblical inerrancy leads to erroneous theology—is to be out of doctrinal alignment with Article IV of the Church of the Nazarene’s Articles of Faith. 

Article IV reads as follows:

We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith.⁵

By this statement, we see that the Church of the Nazarene does affirm the inerrancy of Scripture but qualifies it to only what is necessary for salvation. Beyond that, the Nazarene statement is silent. The article does not prohibit someone from holding or teaching a view of full inerrancy, so long as it is not said that full inerrancy is required according to church doctrine. Conversely, it is equally incorrect to assert that a Nazarene pastor or teacher is required to limit their belief and teaching strictly to soteriological inerrancy. W. E. McCumber in 1985 noted in the Herald of Holiness, “This clause is beguilingly ambiguous. It does not commit us for or against total inerrancy, and, as one would expect, there are proponents of both concepts of ‘plenary inspiration’ to be found among us.”⁶  

Inerrancy Considered (sort of)

When the debate of inerrancy came up at the 2009 General Assembly, the committee assigned to study it and report back to the next General Assembly concluded, “The question of whether the Bible is totally accurate in every statement is not therefore something on which the Church needs to pronounce one way or the other in its official Articles of Faith”⁷  They theorized, “Since Nazarene theologians and biblical scholars as a whole would be very strongly opposed to this narrowing of this Article of Faith, such a move would threaten a very serious division in the denomination.”⁸ The bottom line for these committee members was consensus among Nazarene theologians, but consensus does not define truth; it determines common belief within a group which may or may not be true.

Why is it that—according to this report—most Nazarene theologians and scholars are so strongly opposed to biblical inerrancy? Do they have good theological reasons for this, or is it possible that biblical inerrancy conflicts with the progressive theological concepts widely promoted in recent years at Nazarene colleges and universities?

Upon reviewing the report, it is evident that while the committee members affirm the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, they reject the concept of “inerrancy throughout.” On inspiration, they write, “The article clearly states the inspiration of Holy Scripture as ‘divine’ and ‘plenary’: that means that the whole Bible is inspired and that it is inspired, not just in the sense that a work of art may be said to be ‘inspired,’ but by God.”⁹ They further explain how divine inspiration does not permit us to take biblical passages out of context and “arbitrarily” claim an erroneous interpretation as God’s divine message. Nor does it cancel out the stylistic influence of human authorship. Those of us who affirm biblical inerrancy fully agree on these points. Because we care deeply about what God is communicating to us through Scripture, understanding the right context is essential. This includes recognizing that God chose to use human writers under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to communicate His message for humanity. This does not, however, mean that they wrote in error.

On the concept of infallibility, the committee wrote the following:

Human reason and experience may guide us in many things, but when it comes to the things of God (which shapes all of life), they must bow to what he has revealed to us in the inspired Scriptures. This belief is what is usually known as the ‘infallibility’ of Scripture, that it ‘inerrantly reveals the will of God in all things necessary to salvation’ as distinct from absolute ‘inerrancy’ in every factual detail.¹⁰ 

Again, proponents of inerrancy would affirm this concept of infallibility and would support this understanding of the distinction between infallibility and inerrancy.

The next stage of the report addresses how the infallibility of Scripture does not guarantee the infallibility of interpretation. We, as humans, are responsible for interpreting and conveying the message of Scripture with contextual and applicable accuracy. This is achieved through “careful scholarship” and complete “dependence on the Holy Spirit” as the report noted. From the full inerrancy perspective, there is no debate on this critical matter.

Most of the assertions made in the report would not be disputed by those who affirm full inerrancy. In fact, at one point, the report made a peculiar statement about science that reads much like something an inerrantist would say: “Modern science arose in a Christian culture out of Christian convictions, and ultimately, we believe that everything we know through science will be seen to be more than compatible with all that has been revealed to us through Holy Scripture.”¹¹ In response, the inerrantist would reply, “Thank you for making our argument for us. We couldn’t agree more!” 

The report further notes how Article IV affirms the doctrine of sola scriptura—that “the Holy Scripture is the only source of Christian Doctrine,”¹² and that tradition, reason, and experience are tools for assisting us in the interpretation of Scripture but are not themselves sources of Christian doctrine. Again, we agree.

Elbow Room

So far, there is nothing of note to debate about. Where, then, is the point of contention? Both sides of the issue fully affirm every word of Article IV. There is no disagreement from either side in its assertions. As it turns out, the point of contention is not in what it says, but in what it does not say. Those Nazarenes who only affirm soteriological inerrancy believe that the article, as it is currently written, is sufficient to ward off “any theology that departs from Holy Scripture.”¹³ However, those on the full inerrancy side believe there is ample evidence where “theology that departs from Holy Scripture” has become epidemic in Nazarene-funded schools and among upcoming Nazarene leaders educated through these institutions.

According to Nazarene theologian Richard S. Taylor, allowing fringe theological concepts was not the intent of Article IV. In his book Biblical Authority and Christian Faith, Taylor explains that when H. Orton Wiley added the phrase, “…inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation,” Wiley aimed to “leave elbow room in there”¹⁴ presumable to accommodate either view. Taylor further clarifies:

Obviously, therefore, the total statement limits the size of the “elbow.” The claim of plenary inspiration would rule out serious error of any kind. The elbow then would have to be confined to the debatable question whether (1) there is such a thing as inconsequential error, and (2) whether indeed such inconsequential errors were in the original autographs… Even if some room for debate about inconsequential error were legitimate, this latitude does not extend to what by any reasonable criteria would be major error. For instance, whether or not Adam and Eve were real persons (as Genesis obviously intends us to believe), whether the Fall actually occurred in a space-time setting, whether Genesis 1-11 is basically historical or mythological, whether the story of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt is to be received as embroidered legend or sober truth, whether Jesus was born of a virgin as Mathew and Luke claim, whether the Gospels accurately report the sayings of Jesus—to mention a few items—cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called “inconsequential… Obviously the ‘elbow’ Dr. Wiley wanted to make room for wasn’t that of Goliath!”¹⁵

Unfortunately, Taylor’s optimism for Article IV has proven short-sighted in preventing the adoption of erroneous doctrines. Theological concepts that emerged from the modernist and liberalist trends of the early twentieth century—such as theistic evolution, liberation theology, open and process theology, and panentheism—have gained prominence among many Nazarene theologians, scholars, pastors, and teachers. Furthermore, numerous Nazarene elders and deacons who have rejected the biblical teaching on human sexuality in favor of a more permissive cultural standard—clearly in violation of church doctrine—remain credentialed and “in good standing” with the Church of the Nazarene. This situation is, in part, a consequence of ambiguity on inerrancy, as Chapman, Miller, and others warned us about a hundred years ago. At the very least, it represents an affront to sola scriptura and plenary inspiration.

Fallacies and Missed Considerations

The report further claims that since inerrancy is rooted in the Calvinist tradition, it cannot be considered a Wesleyan doctrine:  “It [inerrancy throughout] is part of a particular Calvinist theological method, and it cannot be understood apart from its place in the rationalism which too often characterizes that theology… Wesleyans are truer to the original Reformation. We know that we are not brought to faith by the inerrancy of the Bible proved to us.”¹⁶ This argument presents a strawman fallacy against the Calvinist perspective. No credible Calvinist claims that faith is based on belief in the inerrancy of Scripture itself. Moreover, dismissing inerrancy solely based on its affiliation with Calvinism is a guilt-by-association fallacy. This reasoning assumes that the validity of inerrancy is tied exclusively to its Calvinist roots (a misleading assertion), ignoring its merits as a theological concept that stands independently of a Calvinist context.

Our sister denomination, The Wesleyan Church, has affirmed full inerrancy since its founding—as did its predecessor, the Pilgrim Holiness Church. Article Five of their Articles of Religion explicitly states in its core doctrinal beliefs that the sixty-six books of the Bible are “the inspired and infallibly written Word of God, fully inerrant in their original manuscripts and superior to all human authority.”¹⁷ By affirming full inerrancy, The Wesleyan Church demonstrates that this doctrine has a long history with, and is indeed compatible with the Wesleyan tradition.  

Agree To Disagree

The purpose of this article is not so much to persuade anyone to change their position on the inerrancy of Scripture, but rather to show the legacy of inerrancy within the Church of the Nazarene and to defend it as an acceptable belief within the bounds of its Articles of Faith. Nazarenes on both sides of the debate fully affirm Article IV as it stands. We further recognize that not everyone who questions inerrancy is advocating for liberal or progressive theology. Many simply believe that, since we do not possess the original manuscripts, we cannot confirm their accuracy and are content to leave the question unanswered, focusing instead on what they consider to be more pressing matters. Regardless of individual views on the extent of inerrancy, the official stance of the Church of the Nazarene allows for personal conviction on this issue beyond what is necessary for salvation and does not require pastors to remain silent on their views, just as one is not required to remain silent on matters of eschatology. As long as this remains true and the church continues to address the unbiblical doctrines that have emerged in recent years—something Wiley and Taylor hoped would never happen—I am content to remain and serve within the Church of the Nazarene.

Works Cited:

1. Chapman, J. B., “The Word, the Blood, and the Spirit,” Herald of Holiness, February 18, 1925, p. 1.
2. Miller, Basil W., “The Crisis of Christianity,” Herald of Holiness, October 28, 1925, p. 4.
3. Haynes, Benjamin Franklin, “Does it Matter,” Herald of Holiness, December 1, 1915, p. 1.
4. Wesley, John, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Edited by Nehemiah Curnock, vol. 6, Epworth Press, 1909. 8 vols. 1938 ed., p. 117.
5. Church of the Nazarene, “Article IV,” Manual: Church of the Nazarene, 2023 Edition. Nazarene Publishing House, 2023, p. 27.
6. McCumber, W. E., “The Answer Corner,” Herald of Holiness. March 15, 1985, p. 31.
7. Scripture Study Committee, Report of the Scripture Study Committee to the Twenty-Eighth General Assembly, Church of the Nazarene, 2013, p. 9.
8. Ibid. p. 10.
9. Ibid. p. 2.
10. Ibid. p. 3.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid. p. 4
13. Ibid.
14. Richard S. Taylor, Biblical Authority and the Christian Faith, Beacon Hill Press, 1980, Chapter 3. 
15. Ibid.
16. Scripture Study Committee, pp. 5-6.
17. The Wesleyan Church, “Articles of Religion 218,” The Discipline of the Wesleyan Church, Wesleyan Publishing House, 2022, p. 16.