Our upcoming National Conference (register here) will be on the Great Doctrines of the Bible. I will be speaking on the Bible (i.e., Bibliology). How important is the doctrine of the Bible to the rest of theology? More specifically, how important is the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy to the rest of systematic theology?

Here’s a great quote from the late Norman Geisler:

[B]y almost any count of fundamentals of the faith, the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture is to be included, as it is the foundation of all other doctrines. Every other fundamental of the Christian faith is based on the Scripture—if it does not have divine authority, then we have no divine authority for any doctrine to which we adhere. As the basis of all other doctrines, the inerrancy of the Bible is a fundamental of the Fundamentals, and if a fundamental of the Fundamentals is not fundamental, then what is fundamental? The answer is: fundamentally nothing (Systematic Theology: In One Volume, p. 377).