Book Review: Defending Inerrancy by Norman L Geisler and William C Roach

Inerrancy has become an issue not talked about among Evangelicals. The issues of marriage, sex, the doctrine of the Trinity, and church discipline seem to be the hot buttons today. This was not even discussed during the Elephant Room. Inerrancy has become, as someone said, the monkey in the room. There has not been that many books on the subject as of late.

In Defending Inerrancy, Norman Geisler and William Roach take on the issue of Inerrancy (the belief that the Bible is without error). The book is divided into three parts, the history of inerrancy controversy, recent challenges to inerrancy, and reexamination of inerrancy. When talking about the history of inerrancy, Geisler & Roach discussed the formation of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), which this book made several references to. The second part, talks about pastors and theologians who have either challenged, denied, or have some weird theories regarding the issue of inerrancy. Some of the men talked about were Bart Ehrman, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Brian McLaren (I was surprised that he was mentioned in this book). The third part of the book looks more in depth into the issue of inerrancy. There are chapters that talk about the nature of God, truth, language, hermeneutics, and the Incarnation in relation to the doctrine of inerrancy. The final chapter takes the major objections dealing with inerrancy and responds to them.

A lot of great information in this book. There is so much that you try to read all at once, your brain will go into information overload (thank you Sportscenter for that phrase). This is good book for all pastors (in fact all lovers of God) to have on their shelf when dealing with inerrancy. It is lengthy but a valuable resource to have.

Thanks Baker Books for letting me review this book.