Analogies of Fallible Sets
There's a popular saying in Protestantism about the bible that say it is a "fallible set of infallible books." This is not appealing. Consider two analogies.
There is a bridge. The bridge will take you to one end of a cliff, across a chasm, to another end of the cliff. It is made of boards and rope. Each board is indestructible. If you step on it, it will hold your weight. The rope, however, is not indestructible. The rope is what holds the boards together. To what degree are you willing to put your faith into this bridge? Will you bet your eternal soul to it?
I hand you a pill box. In this box, there are compartments, each labeled for a day of the week. I tell you, for every pill that works, you are guaranteed to live. But I tell you, these individual pills will give you a guarantee, but what I can't guarantee you is that the box set I am handing you actually does contain these pills. Because I can't guarantee you that, it may be possible that every pill in there will actually kill you instead. What assurance then do you have that the members of the set are safe if the set as a whole doesn't have that assurance?
In the same way, we cannot say with any confidence that the members of the set of books in the bible are infallible if we don't know that the set is infallible as well.
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