First of all, the difference between the words “inspired” and “infallible” is not relevant to my argument in the slightest. If they claim infallibility, then they are setting up the words of men as on a par with Scripture, regardless of whether or not they regard the human words as inspired or not.

Infallibility is not “on par” with divinely inspired Scripture. From a Protestant point-of-view, I can see Lane’s point, but generally speaking infallibility does not entail inspiration. To use an example, God could have granted the gift of infallibility to the Apostle Paul as he preached one Sunday morning in the city of Corinth. This does not require that the words of Paul’s sermon that day were therefore the inspired Word of God.

The gift of infallibility does not entail that the message spoken is divine revelation (the Word of God). God could technically give a mathematician the gift of infallibility with regard to his doctoral dissertation about a geometric proof. There would be no error in the dissertation, yet the dissertation would not be the “Word of God” simply because the brilliant treatise was infallible and contained no error.

According to Lane’s logic, the infallible geometric proof would be “on par” with Scripture since it is infallible. This conclusion is incorrect. Hence, infallibility does not entail inspiration.