…if only we were sure of what Scripture was.
From John Dryden’s Religio Laici
[Of the absurdity of infallible interpretations in the absence of an infallible textual criticism]
Strange Confidence, still to interpret true,
Yet not be sure that all they have explain’d.
Is in the blest Original contain’d.
2 replies on “We Would Interpret Scripture Infallibly…”
This is why many people are KJV Only. They assume that God would have given his people the means to interpret infallibly and thus must assume that he preserved infallibly.
But this just pushes the problem a step farther back – where is the infallible indication of where that infallible preservation is?
I think we should always be wary of coming to hard conclusions about what God “would do”.
In Dryden’s context, of course, this is against the Papists, and I admit I had not thought of a wider application.
Where we have a promise, of course, we know quite certainly what God will or would do. Lacking that, of course, we can make no dogmatic pronouncements or base anything on our speculation.
If we are going to claim infallibility for ourselves, it does seem that we must claim it universally. And then it’s really too easy to be proven wrong.