Where were all these dissenting voices when I was being taught about the inerrancy of scripture? I guess they didn't get approved for the lists of recommended reading. I recently picked up Paul Seely's old gem of a book:
"When Norman Geisler admitted that 'the Scriptures do not clearly and formally teach their own inerrancy,' he was paralleling the confession of Ludwig Ott that the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary...'is not explicitly revealed in Scripture.' Yet it is evident that the absence of these doctrines from Scripture in no way inhibits the respective religious groups from believing in them. Rather the socio-ideological milieu of the religious group and its past religious conditioning guarantee that these doctrines will be received as necessary to true faith; and, any rationalizations developed to defend them will be received as ceratinly valid. Yet because these rationalizations are intrinsically invalid they are only convincing to those conditioned by the past and pressured by the present to believe in them. Thus rationalizations on behalf of Roman Catholic doctrines which leave conservative Evanglicals cold seem quite convincing when adduced mutatis mutandis on behalf of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The difference is not in the reasoning, but in the tradition and socio-ideological structure which they support." (P. Seely, Inerrant Wisdom, 168-169)
