Is inerrancy dispensable?

ANNOYED PINOY

Is it inconsistent and disingenuous for someone like me when dealing with skeptics to affirm my belief in inerrancy, but at the same time tell those skeptics that the truth of Christianity doesn't depend/hinge on the truth of inerrancy? It seems to me it's not. If I'm wrong, I'm open to correction. Also, it seems to be very useful to say that to skeptics because it deflates so much of their objections since many of them depends on the assumption of inerrancy. 

I find that if I can convince skeptics that Christianity could be true even if inerrancy is false, it sometimes humbles them enough to be open to the possible truth of Christianity. Or it flusters them to the point that they don't know what to say next. Or they start backpedaling or conceding various points on issues they were insistent upon just a few moments ago. 

Skeptics want to argue about and focus on inerrancy for various reasons. 

- To create a barrier and buffer to protect their disbelief.

- Because to defend inerrancy inductively and comprehensively, one would have to deal with each and every possible Biblical difficulty, discrepancy and apparent contradiction. Thus strengthening their buffer. Since such debates can go on indefinitely.

- It distracts from the real issue. Namely, the issue of the truth of Christianity.

- In order to address all or even just the main apparent contradictions/discrepancies/errors a Christian would have to know a vast amount of knowledge, and they know most Christians aren't that knowledgeable or even have the aptitude to use that knowledge to formulate responses.

So, it seems to me that by asserting that Christianity could be true even if inerrancy were false does two things. 1. It disarms to a great degree skeptics of their objections, and 2. also arms Christians with a way of dealing with both a.) their own personal doubts and b.) answering their skeptical neighbors.

There are hundreds of alleged Bible difficulties. If we play into the skeptics methods, s/he can have us address every problem one by one from the smallest to the largest (in that order) in order to insulate his disbelief. Possibly saving the most difficult ones for last as a refuge/festung. Though, usually, they'll pick ones they think are really tough. 

The context of this statement is Andy Stanley's position, which is similar to W. L. Craig's. 

1. We need to unpack inerrancy. That's a one-word label. An abstraction. But what does it stand for? Over and above the concept of inerrancy is what it refers to. Inerrancy is an umbrella term that covers at least three or four categories:

i) Truth-claims about the past

The historical narratives of Scripture are true.

ii) Truth-claims about the future

Prophetic statements of Scripture are true. 

iii) Truth-claims about morality

Biblical teaching on personal and social ethics is true

iv) Truth-claims about God's nature and intentions

What God is really like–compared to religious distortions. 

But suppose the Bible is fallible in these departments. Suppose Abraham never existed. God never appeared to Abraham, to call him out of Ur. God never made a covenant with Abraham. That's pious fiction. Suppose Gen 2-3 is pious mythology. Suppose Jesus was wrong about what sins are damnable sins. Suppose Jesus mispredicted the end of the world. Suppose the Bible is wrong about the afterlife. Suppose Paul is wrong about the nature of the atonement. Suppose Hebrews is wrong about the nature of the atonement.  Suppose the Bible misrepresents the character of God. Suppose God never delivered the Jews from Egypt. That's pious legend. Suppose God never made a covenant with David. That's national mythology. And so on and so forth. Is it really the case that the truth of Christianity doesn't hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture?

A fallible Jesus is much more consistent with a merely human Jesus than God-Incarnate. 

Suppose the Bible does indeed contain hundreds of errors. Historical falsehoods. Prophetic falsehoods. Ethical falsehoods. Suppose Bart Ehrman's list of contradictions and blunders in the Gospels is accurate. How can the Bible be a reliable source of information regarding the big questions if that's the case?

2. This goes to divine providence. How involved is God in human history? If Biblical prophecies and narratives don't correspond to what God is actually up to, then perhaps God is more deistic. What if, in practice, we're on our own? Petitionary prayer is futile. God doesn't intercede. There's nothing to back up the inspirational stories. 

3. If the Bible is inerrant, then that's reality. Should we tell people to selectively disregard reality? 

4. As a Christian apologist, the onus is not on me to play by the rules of the skeptic. I don't jump when he says jump. He doesn't get to dictate the criteria. My duty is to tell him what I believe and why I believe it. I explain and defend my plausibility structure. I present the evidence that I find convincing. He doesn't set the bar for me to jump over. 

If he finds my presentation unpersuasive, so be it. I'm not responsible for what he does with his life. I give my reasons. I scrutinize his objections. The rest is up to him. 

5. Defending inerrancy doesn't entail that we must have independent corroboration for every particular claim of Scripture. Rather, we have corroroative evidence for the reliability of the source. 

It's not incumbent on a Christian apologist to have an explanation for each and every difficulty in Scripture. An anthology as ancient as Scripture is bound to have many obscurities at this distance from events. 

6. That said, we don't need to reinvent the wheel each time. There are prepared answers for most every objection. Some are better than others, but there's no dearth of intelligent answers. 

7. You can find out in a hurry that some people are a waste of time. Sometimes there are too many layers to peel away, and they aren't listening anyway. 

8. Sometimes we respond to a person on their own grounds, for the sake of argument. But that's a pressure point. It's not conceding their position. And it's just at temporary stage in the argument. 

For instance, if someone says, "For all you know, we might be trapped in the Matrix!"–I can point out that even if we were trapped in the Matrix, naturalism would still be false. The Matrix only pushes the same issue back a step. One must still account for the Matrix, as well as intelligent agents within the Matrix. Some retooled theistic proofs will apply to a Matrix-like situation.

But that doesn't make the Matrix an adequate substitute for Christianity. Although I might temporarily play along with their thought-experiment for discussion purposes, that's not where it ends. 

9. As I've often said, rather than starting with the perceived problems of Scripture, we should start with the problems of naturalism. Incinerate naturalism. Burn it out with a flamethrower so that people realize that they don't have that to turn to.