Inerrancy

How do I explain to a non-believer that the 72 books of the Bible are divinely inspired truth, while other religious writings, such as  the Koran, the Book of Morman, and other gospels not included in the  72, are not inerrant in teaching the truths of salvation?  

  An answer offered by Brad Klingele, diocesan coordinator of young adult ministries...

For simplicity's sake, let's approach this question first with the New Testament. The Catechism explains that the "… central object is Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his Church's beginnings under the Spirit's guidance." [CCC 124] In Jesus, truly God and truly man, God has said "yes" to the world by giving His only Son. The followers of Jesus experienced him in his life on earth and as Resurrected.

  God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more." [CCC 106] This means both that the Bible is both true insofar as the testament to Jesus Christ, because the Holy Spirit aided these authors, and that the authors used their own language, thoughts, culture, etc., to express what they understand. Therefore, it is not as if the Holy Spirit was doing some sort of auto-writing, as though taking their hand and pulling the pen. Thus, we have many forms of expression, many genres, and many perspectives.

While we cannot in any way be 'in the head' of the authors, one help to understanding what this might have been like is to imagine this inspiration as similar to our own experiences of speaking of the Lord to another person. When we do so, we too trust that, while we aren't guaranteed of inerrancy, the Holy Spirit is using us.

The Old Testament may also be thought of in a similar way. This is speculative, but a helpful corrective to the 'auto-writing' image. In this way, we believe that the " …the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures." [CCC 107]. "And in order …to interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. [CCC 109]. Even so, "… if the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures." [CCC 108] In other words, to come into contact with the Lord, His Holy Spirit helps us.

The presupposition of our faith is that we believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. We do not believe other Scriptures to be inerrant because they do not testify to the One, Trinitarian God, (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). While certain aspects of other Scriptures may contain truths, we do not believe them to be without error with regard to who God is, especially with regard to aspects that contradict the testimony of the Apostles to Christ and the Trinity.