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Notes -
Thank you for your explanation of 1 Corinthians 7. I’d probably respect it more if it did make a distinction between inspiration and personal best judgment, but I can see how the text supports your interpretation. Agnostically speaking, I probably shouldn’t hold it against Paul in the event that he either truly always speaks with inspiration or honestly believes that he does.
I’m having trouble squaring some of the statistics in your link with broader statistics in the USA. In particular, their survey would have it that 71% of Americans, in 2021, believed that the Bible was the inspired word of God in some sense (even if it might contain errors). But in 2021, only 63% of Americans said they were Christian.
So is the discrepancy all made up of Jews and Muslims? Are there “unaffiliated” people who nevertheless believe the Bible to be inspired by God? It would be helpful to know how the responses in the American Bible Society survey split up by stated religious affiliation, honestly.
In any case, this certainly supports the idea that a large percentage of Christians think the Bible “has no errors” (even if many say some of it is “symbolic and not literal.”) Still, as an outsider, I think I’m still most inclined to define “Christian” to mean people who believe in the divinity of Christ. I don’t think that someone who believes that Paul believed in an imminent apocalypse and writes with reference to that view is somehow “not Christian” if they still think that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and will someday return to judge us all, for example.
To be clear, I gave two differing interpretations of 1 Corinthians 7 that could be consistent with asserting the infallibility of Paul in his letters.
As to the surveys, that's a good point. Here's another poll with a number higher than 63%, which is odd as well: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx
It's less clear in the options than the American Bible Society survey, but it does have a number higher.
I wonder if these have different sampling mechanisms, and ones unrepresentative of the general public?
Pew research appears to be depending on data from here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/religious-projections-appendix-a/ Gallup appears to be using telephone calls: https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/394616/220706ViewsofBible.pdf
American bible society also had theirs from online surveys, but its number was higher than Pew's, so it's not just surveys vs. telephone.
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