An issue that I find in many Pentecostal circles (though I am sure that they don't have a monopoly in this area) is that they tend to be "Theologically Light". They've taken the whole "inerrancy of Scripture" ideal and ran with it. One problem with this is that they don't adress the Bible as a whole but pick it apart to suit their own ideas. No we are faced with "dispensationalism", "prosperity gospel", and who knows what fad will come along tomorrow. The believers in the "pews" largely go along with what their pastors tell them (and rightly so) but their pastors are not trained in decent scholarship. I normally refer to it as "verse snatching".
On the opposite end is the problem of trying to justify the idea of an inerrant Bible when the entire idea has been usurped by these verse snatching quacks. How can one defend a literally true Bible that is chock full of figurative language if one has to affirm that every single word is literally true? The entire premise is stupid. That is not my understanding at all. It is my understanding that the Bible is inerrant in that it is totally correct in all that it says.
This doesn't mean that I am totally correct in my understanding of what the Bible says, however. I am still learning and it is a way too multifaceted of a book for anyone to totally grasp. I'll also affirm that what it says is literally true. When I have "what it says" totally figured out, then I will know the literal Truth. I'll be trying to unpack all of the allusions and figurative languge within its covers to discern this literal Truth.
So, how do I know that the Bible is the Word of God? It's way too subtle, way too simple, way to complex, and way too deep and obvious all at the sme time for any human being to have designed. There is no other piece of literature that even comes close to its magnitude of wholistic completion in all the world. It's a one of a kind just like God is.
Christopher
